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[Out of Milliways: You can either try to communicate with a ship in low Earth orbit by talking very fast for four minutes out of every ninety, or you can take a friend and go up there in person. Guest starring

1nv1nc1ble.]

Well, Ellen and Mark went to the Capital Wasteland, and went up to the alien ship, and had quite the conversation there. Back in Milliways there's a lot to think about- and probably people to see. She'll find Alyx later and tell her about the batteries. For now, Ellen gets a hand-held whiteboard from Bar (it's a little weird to use markers instead of chalk, but she supposes it's probably less wasteful as well as being more precise) and sits down to start roughing out the names of people she might need to talk to, and how they'd fit into dealing with the ship's issues.

After a bit she doodles a two-tiered flying saucer at the bottom of the whiteboard, mostly because she can.

She could be bothered. No biting, we promise.

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"Mark my words, Jim-boy, you keep pushing them like that and one day it's all gonna explode in your face!" The last few words are almost shouted, making sure his retreating captain can hear them.

Stubborn bull-headed man.

Not that he himself is anything other than saintly. Of course.

Shaking his head and deciding that yes, yes actually he's earned a dinner off-ship he abandons the somewhat repetitive argument and heads towards the bar.

Ellen glances up, blinking. She knows that voice. "Oh- hi, Doctor," she calls, waving.

(She's wearing very different garb from last time they met, although the headpiece is dangling from the back of her neck. There's a heavy white overcoat hanging off the back of her chair.)

"Long day?"

He blinks, briefly, at the outfit, and wonders if the same people who design Starfleet's uniforms and their utter lack of style have been busy in her universe.

"Long month. New crewmembers never make for an easy time of it." On a normal ship, a ship not run to the exacting standards of the Captain and his first mate, new crew would probably have time to aclimate, try to fit in.

On the Enterprise they had to adapt fast, or started acting like grit in a well-oiled machine.

Only if they were originally active in China in 2076 or so.

"I can imagine. New Initiates back home take a certain amount of adjustment when they get assigned to a unit," Ellen says. "Hopefully they'll get the hang of it quickly, right?"

"Gotta have hope." It's either that or he'll have to do a lot of therapy sessions, and that's never something he loves doing. "And how are you, my dear?"

"Doing better than I thought, actually," says Ellen. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Sit down, and I can tell you all about the past couple of months-"

She pauses, as a thought's come to her.

"And I mmmmmmight need to ask you a medical question or two at the end, but... that can wait. I mean, if that's okay- I don't want to intrude on your down time, honestly. It's nothing urgent or time-sensitive anyway."

"Certainly." He's more than a little used to chats with his shipmates taking on an unexpected medical twist - it's something of a hazard of the job. "But first, let's hear all about your adventures in not being irradiated."

Checking up? What?

Never.

"All right," says Ellen. "I've been trying extra hard to stay away from anything that makes my Geiger counter go off, I promise."

Well... except for the trip to the Nuka-Cola factory, but that was an unavoidable snatch-and-grab, and she made sure to wear protective gear and take preventatives first. So it hardly counts. Right?

"After I recovered from that batch of rad poisoning you treated me for, and did enough physical rehab to pass the fitness tests again, the Brotherhood of Steel gave me a Knight's rank. I don't know if I told you about that- it's like a high enlisted man or low non-commissioned officer, I guess. And they also picked up on what I'd been doing in the Vault where I grew up, what I'd been trained for as a job, and had me resume my chaplaincy training with one of their people. That got interrupted when I got sent on a search and rescue mission, though..."

"... They're sending" He fails to say little girls, by the skin of his teeth, "Chaplains on rescue missions now?"

"Paladin Renny's been reprimanded," Ellen says, "and busted as far down the ranks as possible, from what I understand. It was an emergency situation involving a man being stolen by slavers, and the others in my group at the time being wounded. Renny thought I'd be able to catch up with the slavers before they got very far. She was wrong."

He shakes his head, and refrains from criticizing someone else's chain of command. He's not a dumb boy, he knows he can rip into his own to his heart's content only because he is damned good at what he does for that chain of command, and supports that chain when push comes to shove.

"Well, glad you're alright then."

Ellen's smile turns wry. "I'm just glad I was able to come here and get help," she says. "The raiders had a heck of a lead and I wound up tracking him from Virginia to what used to be Pennsylvania before I ran him down again. He'd been sold to slavers and they were taking him to work in the Pitt. It'd be Pittsburgh, in your time... that got really ugly and I got a couple of new scars from it but we wound up getting back alive and okay, so there's that, at least."

It's a show of his growth as a person that he doesn't go hunting for his bag at news of injuries. Maybe someday someone will get him to stop going all squinty-eyed at that news. Maybe.

"That's a good something." He points out. Sometimes, that's the best something he can hope for.

Ellen nods. "I know," she says. "His people are providing the Brotherhood with a portion of this year's harvest and we've got a trade agreement in return for all of that, so that helps, too. And there's been other stuff going on- I had to break up a cult that was stealing water shipments to irradiate them and use them in their rituals, that was interesting, and when I turned twenty they promoted me to Paladin and gave me a project that didn't involve running around shooting things or infiltrating enemy territory. We're trying to get a two hundred year old factory back to working again. I've been supervising the effort. The only shooting I've had to do has been at deathclaws and the occasional feral ghoul, and I do all of it from as far away as my Gauss rifle's scope will let me."

He has no idea what a feral ghoul is when it's at home, and doesn't care to muse on the concept of a 'deathclaws'.

"That... sounds like a very good thing." He manages, because honestly, that's... more than a little troublesome.

"Wasteland wildlife can be pretty destructive," Ellen says. "If you ever really want to know, I've got pictures. The important part is nobody's been hurt so far and I managed to save one of my Scribes by putting one of those lizards down- that's the deathclaws, they're giant predatory lizards. Nasty things. You can't even eat them, the meat's just inedible to humans."

"But we've built wind turbines for electrical power, and we're starting to restore the factory equipment, and we should be producing industrial robots soon so we won't have to expose humans to the kinds of dangers and toxins you get in the Wasteland. Robots might not be very bright, but they don't get cancer, which is the important thing."

She pauses.

"And that's... kind of what I wanted to talk to you about medically. Not cancer, specifically, but..."

Okay, so he's decided he never actually wants to see a deathclaw. Or pretty much anything else running wild on her world.

"You want to do this out here?" After all, there is the infirmary.

"The infirmary's fine," Ellen says hastily. "The last thing I want is someone walking over in the middle of the conversation, you know?"

"Yeah, I'd imagine that'd get awkward." He rises, stretching to pop vertebrae. Long days do horrible things to his posture, and he figures he'll be paying for this one for a bit. "Well then, won't you step into my parlor?"

Ellen nods, and gets up to follow.

The infirmary lights come up as he strolls in, and he makes mental notes on inventory passing by bins and shelves. He retrieves two reasonably comfortable roll-y chairs from the nominal office, and pushes one gently in her direction before taking the other.

"So, why don't you tell old Doc McCoy what's bothering you?"

"Okay," says Ellen reasonably, settling into the chair; it reminds her of the ones her father used to have in the clinic in Vault 101.

That's a good thing.

"It's like this. I've been exposed to a lot of radiation in the past," she says. "Not just what you treated me for. The first time it happened, I got an experimental treatment that flushed my system and saved my epithelial cells- you know how a really bad case of radiation poisoning kills off the lining of your digestive tract and everything eventually comes out? The treatment I got kept that from happening, and I still had bone marrow afterwards, too. And there was the treatment I got before coming here, and the work you did, which I'm grateful for- seriously, don't think I'm not. It's just-"

She glances off across the room, briefly wishing for that Bible verse plaque Dad used to keep on his wall. Then she looks back to him.

"I'm alive and I'm healthy and I'm glad for that. I really am. But I'm twenty years old and I'm not married and I don't have any kids. Before I even try to rectify that, I want to make sure I can. That much radiation's bound to leave genetic damage in places even if it's not in the form of cancer or cell death, plus I've been exposed to a number of other toxins and things over time. I want to know if I'm even capable of making a contribution to the gene pool of the next generation before I make the attempt."

Ellen Park: least romantic twenty-year-old woman in the history of ever.

Edited 2012-09-10 05:26 (UTC)

Well, that was unexpected, though maybe it shouldn't be. It's a viable concern, and he can see why he wouldn't want to ask a doctor from her universe.

"Fair enough - should be something we can figure out. Who's the lucky fella?" McCoy asks as he rises, heading for the section of the infirmary he thinks more of as 'his', with equipment he knows and understands. His more heavy-duty tricorders are stashed over there, and while samples might be necessary later, he'd like to start with making sure he's got all the right bits going.

"I'm not sure yet," Ellen confesses. "The current lead candidate's a medic named Elliott Tercorien- assuming he's interested, which I don't really know if he is or not. Yet. I'm ... not really very good at these things."

He doesn't laugh at her. It takes a fair bit of his professional training to do it, but he manages. They've all been awkward at some point.

Maybe not that awkward.

But she doesn't need that sort of commentary.

"How've you been doing in general? Any medicines I should know about?"

"No other medicines. I've been saving the stimpaks for the wounded," says Ellen. "I haven't had to use Rad-X or Rad-Away in a few weeks- Rad-X is an iodine-based chem that protects the body from absorbing radiation, Rad-Away flushes it out. No use of Med-X or lesser painkillers, and no 'recreational' chems, either."

Even if she were ever inclined to use those, she mostly finds them on the bodies of dead raider types. That is not a ringing testimonial.

"All good things." McCoy agrees, the scanner in his hand whirring in what, to him, is a very reassuring sort of manner. "And since you are recruiting me as a sort of personal physician, any pertinent history I should know about?"

It works for Ellen, too. There was always some machine or other humming back in Vault 101. Granted, Dad didn't usually use them for routine exams, but they were there.

"You already know about the radiation poisoning," Ellen says. It's okay to say this next part, as far as she's concerned. She's talking to a doctor. Talking to your doctor about extremely personal things is perfectly okay, because he's a doctor. "You're going to find some scars, though. I'm afraid I had some involuntary surgery last year- Dr. Simon Tam did a checkup afterwards and ran a full body scan to see what had happened. The simplest way to put it is that I was investigating a crash site in the Capital Wasteland and got teleported onto a ship in low Earth orbit that was being piloted by a race of aliens who were doing biological exploration and experiments."

Not going to hyperventilate. Not going to freak out. Not going to let the memory get to her. Nope, nope, nope, dammit, nope.

He is known (is infamous for) his rants. For losing his temper and snarling at the injustices of the universe because someone has to say the things everyone ignores.

But not in front of patients. He tries to not actually add to trauma, thankyouverymuch.

"Alright darlin'. He pauses his scan, setting the equipment aside to sit opposite her again. "There's no rush, take your time."

Ellen nods, thinking, and mostly looking at her knees because they're... well, there.

"Dr. Tam found a couple of things missing. Nothing- nothing all that important. Appendix, gone, four molars, gone, several throat lymph nodes and the tonsils, gone. And there's a second spleen where my gall bladder used to be and I have no idea where it came from."

She glances up and adds, "I've never taken an immunosuppressant or anti-rejection chem. I didn't even know they'd done that when Dr. Tam did the scan. A medical robot back home confirmed it was there. I can only assume it's either artificial or something grown from my own tissue somehow."

"So I'm guessing, if you're successful in all this, we're going to have to make sure you're up on your immunizations and we'll be extra careful with your diet." He replies soothingly and avoids making incoherent ranty noises about missing organs.

"That sounds about right, yeah," says Ellen, sounding relieved. "I had a tetanus shot last year, so that shouldn't be an issue- I was up to date with everything as of my nineteenth birthday, and I'm twenty now."

That's normal enough, right?

... Olya should start charging for the therapy McCoy's going to take out in his ranting tonight. Twenty.

Twenty.

The hell. How is that even remotely right.

He manages to keep the horror of it off his face, holding on to his professionalism with his fingernails.

"Sounds like just the time for a budding romance. I'll check with the Bar to see what would be considered a standard immunization protocol in your where and when."

"Thank you," says Ellen. "I appreciate it. Wasteland doctors don't always have the supplies to do much more than heal up broken bones and flush out rads, to be honest. And Sawbones back at the Citadel can do surgery if he's got some assistants."

(Sawbones is a Mr. Gutsy with medical programming. It's a floating beachball robot with three arms and the voice of R. Lee Ermey. It's actually pretty good at its job, for all that.)

(It also writes bad poetry.)

"I am honestly afraid to ask." Because the same might be said of other things - for example, he could repair the warp engines if he has enough help.

"Don't worry, darlin' - my granddaddy had me helping with general practice long before I ever got tangled up with a starship."

"Well, he's a robot. He's mostly used for setting broken bones and extracting bullets when he's not doing basic checkups and routine exams," Ellen says. "He's got the tools to do surgery but you don't leave a robot alone when it's operating on a human, you know?"

But she nods. "I can deal with that," she says readily. "My dad taught me to read out of his medical textbooks when I was a kid, but it was always Jonas who was in there working with him- I know sometimes you just have to sit back and trust the person doing the actual work. Thank you."

"It's what I'm here for, m'dear." His good-ol'-boy grin is second nature, and doesn't require that he be over the horror of her situation to produce with realism. He rises again, retrieving the tricorder and resuming the scan.

Yup.

Two spleens.

He'll just... chew on some mental scenery to keep from growling.

Ellen nods and sits back quietly. You don't get in the way when the doctor is doing an exam, you let them do their thing and you breathe or not as you're told, right? That's how it always was in the Vault, and that's how it is at the Citadel.

(In Megaton not so much, but Doc Church is a jerk, and the only way he wants to see people come into his clinic is if they're most of the way to dying already. He thinks people are whiners.)

Of course, now she's going to have to think of a way to repay him when all of this is done. He's doing her a favor. She owes him for this, whether in money or in something else.

He squints at the findings, marveling at how impossibly healthy she is. If she were to list off the sorts of changes that have been made to her to any medical student, anywhere, they'd most likely have a minor heart attack.

"Well, I'm t seeing anything here that'd actively stop you from having children."

Ellen lets out an explosive sigh of relief and very nearly deflates before his eyes. If she were Catholic, she'd be crossing herself right now. "Thank God," she mutters, and then, a little louder, "Thank you, Doctor. So much. That's- that's really good to-"

"That's been bothering me for most of a year now. Thank you."

"You're quite welcome." He decides to not tell her that a smile looks better on her, because really, there's being encouraging and then there's being cruel, and he's fairly sure that'd be going over the line. "Of course, any attempts should be closely monitored."

"Well, yes, obviously," Ellen says. "I don't want to take chances- I looked in one of Dad's texts once and found out things I really didn't want to know about ionizing radiation and the first trimester, and I figure it only gets worse from there, so- I'll make absolutely sure of that, believe me."

"Good girl. Now, onto the second part of all this - we have the technology to do some limited organ cloning and grafting. I could at least try to repair the damage done." He offers, giving her space as he packs his scanner away.

...

Extra spleen to the contrary, it looks as if she really hadn't expected that.

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