simon_doctor | (no subject)

It's not a big place -- five exam rooms, ten beds for the increasingly rare times that a patient stays overnight. Signs in four languages give instructions; pamphlets in six languages give advice. There's a meeting room, with a discreet door off to the side that reads SOCIAL WORKER on the nameplate. Jordie explains in a low voice that three of them share that office.

He himself shares a desk in the very back corner, within a strangely-shaped alcove: the majority of the clinic itself is underground, the basement of a nondescript building deep in the Fremont district, and while it's clear they've tried to make it as welcoming as possible, it's still a windowless place where miserable people come to see if there's anything that can be done for their myriad physical ills.

"Standard consent rules apply," he says over his shoulder, tiredly, pulling on his coat and clipping on his badge, "but assuming they're all okay with it -- you want to do the ridealong for the actual examinations? I cleared it with administration."

"I'd like that," he says quietly.

Small as the space is, it's considerably bigger than the shuttle he worked out of; why does it feel so much more cramped?

(Maybe he's just gotten spoiled, lately.)

Five patients in the morning; four in the afternoon. The first three are children under the supervision of social services, all siblings, all there together. Jordie busies two at a time by letting them play with his stethoscope while he checks the range of motion on the others, showing them cloudy scans of their bones. He stays good to his word, too: all three of them stay quiet, and he teaches them bad names to call people in Spanish, with a stern warning not to actually use them.

He murmurs to Simon, as he fills out the paperwork, that the words are actually words for flowers in his aunt's yard.

An elderly man; a young boy with scoliosis; a tattooed tough who tore his ACL in a manner that he doesn't want to discuss, and he absolutely doesn't want to go in a hospital to have surgery. Jordie's eyes darken, and without looking around he orders Simon out of the room and closes the door. After the young man leaves, Jordie doesn't elaborate.

Before the last patient of the day comes in, the assistant sticks her head in and says timidly -- after a glance at Simon -- that there's an update, and she's going to have it sent to his datapad, and the admin would like his opinion on the language when he gets a chance. Jordie nods, and gives her a quick, rueful smile.

"I've got a little paperwork to do after this, but it shouldn't take more than half an hour." Absently, as he pulls up the chart of the upcoming patient. "Think you can amuse yourself?"

"I think so, yes. Xiexie."

If Simon sounds a little subdued, he's not really aware of it.

After Jordie sees the last patient, Simon wanders around the waiting room, leafing through pamphlets without really seeing them.

It's a lot like the mobile clinic, except ... he can't even really articulate the difference, but it's there. Urban and rural, Core and Rim; there's more to it than that, though.

He's still puzzling at it when Jordie comes out.

He tips a wink at the assistant and shoulders his bag, looking at Simon. "Primarily food or primarily alcohol?"

"Let's go somewhere we can get real food, but start with alcohol?"

He reaches for his jacket and his own bag.

They wind up back at Costello's, and a word to the man behind the counter gets them a booth in the back corner, far away from everyone else.

Jordie hangs his jacket up on the hook embedded in the side of the seat, slips in, fishes the pack of cigarettes out of the inner pocket, and tosses them on the table, where he glares at them.

"I'm not going to do it," he announces. "I'm just going to look at them."

"Fair enough," Simon concedes. "What're you having?"

The selector screen in the center of the tabletop is still faintly grainy and jittery, but it works.

Jordie keys in a sequence for huevos rancheros and a beer, and presses the button to flip the screen Simon's way.

The cigarettes stay where they are. Jordie reaches in his jacket pocket one more time, and pulls out his datapad.

Simon taps in his own order -- a beer as well, and a chicken sandwich with a side salad -- and waits.

You'll get the whole story, Jordie told him.

Abruptly, without looking up: "I know you know how blackout zones work."

"...Yes?" It's an agreement, but a slightly wary one.

He's got no idea where Jordie is heading with this.

"Refresh my memory."

"-- what, now?"

(What he doesn't say: Jordie, you're the one who first told me about blackout zones.)

"I said -- "

He looks up, gaze hooded.

" -- refresh my memory. So I know what holes I'll need to fill in."

... Oh.

Simon looks at the tabletop, frowning slightly. "Well -- they're off the grid. Blank areas in the general public surveillance. It's, ah ... seeking them out is considered automatically suspect by law enforcement, for that reason."

A beat. He's not sure what in particular Jordie's looking for.

"There's a terraforming quirk. Geologically speaking. There are deposits under parts of Fremont that make traditional surveillance difficult because they interfere with broadcast instrumentation."

He taps one long finger on the pack of cigarettes. "There's one under the clinic."

Simon glances up, faintly startled.

That would explain --

"Go on," is all he says aloud.

"The clinic gets inspected regularly by the OPH, we get audited, we don't have the resources to hide anything and OPH knows it. So they're not the problem."

Jordie glances up, eyes glittering, smile small and hard. "So tell me, Tam. Who can you think of that would find an underground lair where the feds can't hear you extremely useful in their line of work?"

Beat.

"Criminals." A touch dry. "Or did you mean specifically?"

"That's specific enough for government work." Bitter, as he reaches for the pack of cigarettes -- but doesn't take one. Not yet. "As best I've been able to find out -- they're based on Beaumonde and trying to expand inward, and they need a base of operations. And they're trying to go quasi-legal with it."

He taps the pack on the table. "They're trying to exploit what they see as a loophole in the clinic's lease to get us evicted. Which, considering neighborhood rents and the eminent unsuitability of pretty near every other building in a ten-block radius, means we shut down." Tap. Tap. Tap. "That's roughly ten thousand visits per year that have to go to other clinics that are farther from home for these people -- who are already sick to begin with, who are usually having to take time, unpaid, from work."

(There's a deep vein of anger running closer and closer to the surface -- a slow boil.)

"And do you think OPH is lifting a finger to help?"

Simon's sitting up a lot straighter.

"Quasi-legal," he says. "Which is why you're trying to fight them on that ground. Do you -- would it help to get a lawyer involved?"

"If there was money to do it, do you think I'd have research scattered all over my place?"

He opens his mouth.

And closes it.

"What can I do to help?"

(He knows damn well that Jordie would never ask for money on his own behalf, and would take the offer as an insult. He doesn't know how Jordie would take an offer towards the clinic.)

Jordie looks down at the pack of cigarettes.

Removes one.

"Don't say a rutting word about my lungs." And pulls out his lighter.