simon_doctor | (no subject)

Can't complain.

Spill it.

-j

At the infirmary where I do volunteer work, we admitted a patient who'd recently lost his leg and was in constant pain. Before we'd determined what we could give him besides morphine, an unsupervised visitor gave him a cannabis cigarette, and disabled the smoke detector so he could smoke it.

The stupid part is I confronted someone who I'm fairly sure was that visitor.

Can we go to vid for this? Because this seems like a long story.

A few moments later, there's an incoming vidwave chime on Jordie's pad.

Jordie appears on Simon's screen, hair rumpled, but otherwise okay. "So you confronted somebody."

"Yes. Right outside the infirmary."

Simon looks weary, and resigned at himself. "I didn't actually intend it to turn into a confrontation. I thought I would be able to point out the problem and let it go at that."

Jordie looks amused. "Does that ever happen?"

"... I'm sure it has once or twice." Wry. "In human history."

"So it turned into a confrontation."

Jordie lets out a sigh. "How?"

Simon rubs his forehead. "He was angry to begin with, I think. It wasn't immediately apparent, but ... He didn't actually know the patient. He just saw a man in pain and wanted to help. And then along came the doctor who hadn't helped enough to begin with."

"Some security measures might not be a bad plan." Wry.

"I'm considering asking for some." He shakes his head. "It might be overstepping my authority to arrange for my own independent security force."

Jordie snorts. "Might?"

"Might." Wry. "That's part of the problem. I don't know if I've explained that aspect of this place before --"

(He's pretty sure Jordie understood his circumlocution about the infirmary; he's hesitant to say anything more explicit over a wave.)

"-- but there's really very little that's actually against the law here."

"Tam. You want to start your own army."

Jordie says this slow and deliberate, with an air of are you fucking kidding me?

"No," he says, startled and somewhat indignant. "Are you insane? That's a terrible idea. I'm just saying it wouldn't be breaking any law if I did."

"Well, if you're not going to do it -- what are you going to do?"

"I'll probably speak to the regular local security. Ask them to assign someone to keep an extra eye on the infirmary."

So the privatized army. Because that never goes wrong.

"Over some cannabis?" Jordie's eyebrows have ratcheted up a notch. "Have you considered instructing patients not to take candy from strangers, instead?"

"The cannabis isn't the problem." He sounds mildly irked.

"No, it's not." Jordie just sounds mild.

Beat.

"All right. From what I've told you so far, what do you see as the problem?"

"Well." Jordie runs a hand through his hair. "How often do people show up in that infirmary offering a second line of treatment?"

In an unconscious near-echo of the gesture, Simon rubs his forehead again. "I don't recall it ever happening before. Not without speaking to one of the doctors. Of course, that could just mean it's happened before and gone unnoticed."

"...has anybody died?"