robothell | Bedside Manners

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Bedside Manners

Who: Red Alert, Sentinel, and anyone
Where: Medical clinic somewhere in the city
When: Two weeks after arrival (Or whenever really)
What: Red Alert finds a medical clinic and works on getting it up and running
Warnings: Red Alert's bedside manners

The medical centre is in somewhat decent shape. She does have some problems though. For one, she's having trouble getting power to certain parts of the station. A medic she may be, but a technician she is not. Luckily, she manages to get some crucial machines working, but if anyone needs any surgical work done, then they're very much out of luck. Still, this is more than she had before, and she's quite pleased with the progress she's made.

She asked Sentinel to help her, and he did. In return, she fashions him a (semi)brand new hand. It isn't pretty, but it is functional. He's just have to be happy with that. Now, she really, really, really wants him to leave. To her credit, she at least tries to be subtle about it.

"That's all for today." She says, shortly after Sentinel had moved a piece of furniture from one side of the room to the other. "Now please leave."

Later on, after finally getting rid of Sentinel, Red Alert is found outside the clinic, trying hard to dislodge a piece of debris from what used to be a window. Sure, she could have Sentinel do that for her, but she had forgotten to ask him in her haste to get rid of him. Unfortunately, her small, thin frame is no match for the hunk of rock. That doesn't stop her from trying.

After that, she could be found indoors, doing whatever medics do when they don't have reckless idiots to scold.

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Ratchet watches a slimmer Cybertronian in medics red-and-white struggling to clear a window. He hesitates, not seeing a faction brand one way or the other, but... hell with it. There wasn't much of a point to worrying about that at home anymore, and it seemed even less useful here.

"Need a hand?" he asks, coming closer, still moving carefully in case she's hostile.

She stiffens at the unintended pun and turns slowly around to look at him. Her gaze is piercing and frosty as she looks Ratchet up and down. Red Alert knows a medic when she sees one, so Ratchet is lucky that she bites down a scathing reply. Instead, she chooses to be civil. Somewhat.

"Some help would be appreciated." She says curtly. "I had someone to help me earlier, but I forgot to mention this piece of debris."

Ratchet's optics widen as she turns and he gets a good look at her wrists.

"...ah," he says, wincing slightly, and he at least has the good grace to look embarrassed. "Right. Sorry. Let me get that for you." Ratchet's not the biggest mech around but he's built to hold down struggling larger patients, and when he puts his shoulder to the stone and shoves hard it crumbles and shifts away from the window, clearing it.

"There. ...you already have a setup here? I just arrived, but I was thinking about putting something together." He dusts his hands carefully and inclines his head. "I'm Ratchet."

At least he had the decency to know where he made his mistake. Red Alert felt rather gracious in accepting the apology and moving on. She stepped back and allowed the larger mech to roll the stone away from the window. As proud as she was, she was genuinely grateful that someone had come to take care of that for her.

"This is the Medical Centre I've set up, yes." She said coolly, "And thank you for helping me, Ratchet. I think it might be more beneficial if medics stayed in one location." After a pause, she suddenly remembered introductions. "My name is Red Alert."

Ratchet's optics widen, looking thoroughly startled.

"Oh," he says, then catches himself, shaking his head. "Sorry. I know someone by that name but he's, um. Not you, clearly. But yeah, you're right--better to pool our resources, I think." Ratchet's mouth twists up wryly at one corner. "So, is the war over, where you're from?"

One day Sentinel would give an order about something Nautica didn't agree with and they were going to have to have a chat about just exactly which Prime she answered to (ie, not him) but today was not that day. While having a fully functioning medical facility struck her as a good idea in general, apparently no one here felt any need to stay in one piece for more than a few days at a stretch, upgrading the clinic from merely useful to completely necessary.

Knocking on the door frame with a knuckle, she stuck her head through the clinic door. "Red Alert?"

Red Alert looked up from the device she had dismantled on the counter and gave the newcomer a cold once-over. She didn't hate what she saw, given that the newcomer was obviously an Autobot, so she gave the friendliest greeting she could muster, her tone is curt and professional.

"That's me. What do you want?"

It would take more than that to put Nautica off, and she smiled cheerfully at Red Alert as she entered the building.

"Hi, I'm Nautica." She waved with her wrench hand, both in greeting and to illustrate her purpose, since she avoided fights and was quite healthy--being trapped in a confined area with Ratchet made the latter inevitable even for someone less inclined than Nautica to be cooperative. "Sentinel said you were having some problems with getting the clinic up and running and asked me to have a look." Sentinel would probably not characterize that exchange as 'asking' if consulted about it, but, well, see above as to who her actual boss was.

Good, because Red Alert was as warm as a frozen asteroid. She did scowl ever so slightly at the mention of Sentinel's name. Sentinel annoyed her, as useful as he had been. This wasn't knew however, everyone annoyed her in one fashion or another. At the rest of the introduction, Red Alert almost seemed to lighten up. Here, at last, was someone useful. Naturally she didn't smile, but she wasn't scowling anymore either.

"I would greatly appreciate your help. I've been having power troubles and some of these machines could use some work. I would pay you for your service, but I'm afraid that I have nothing to offer you."

Nautica, always an open book, blinked in confusion. Pay her? Why would that even be a consideration? "I don't think a market economy is the optimal one for our circumstances. Besides, a functioning clinic is a public good."

Megatron didn't follow Ratchet and Red Alert after they, thankfully, responded. It was all rather surreal after he fully realized the extent of the damage he'd inflicted on the Prime. There's no doubt he hated Sentinel. He despised him. But he was also unnerved at how easily a sworn enemy could be reduced to nearly lifeless torn metal. One well executed attack - and an entire Cybertronian life would be gone.

He didn't want to face that again, not yet, and thus did his well best to avoid the two doctors after they were occupied with his opponent. They would be busy anyway.

But as sturdy as he was, the years of the lack of maintenance and injuries from the fight were taking their toll. With his abdomen dented and blasted to hell, he would soon find warnings ping from the continued strain of travel. He couldn't keep going like this.

Resignedly, he uses the remainder of his energy to his way to the clinic, his already damaged frame low on energon from broken lines in the gunshot wounds of his arms and torso. He wasn't sure what to do with the tcog he'd sequestered from Sentinel, so he just kept it in a storage compartment. It was impossible to hide the fact that he clearly didn't want to be here, even through the blackened ash and scrapes on his face.

"Hello?"

Ratchet's optics flick up, his mouth crimping at the corners as he takes in Megatron and looks back down, finishing cleaning the tools in his hands.

"Took you long enough," he says, folding them back into their makeshift case and setting them down on a counter before he turns his full attention to Megatron, his optics narrowed. He points to one of the medical slabs.

"Go on, sit."

He's surprised at how calm Ratchet was throughout all this. Though perhaps that's why he and Red Alert were the surgeons. He looks at the medical slab, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the thought of being checked over by him after having torn apart the Autobots' former commander, but eventually does as Ratchet asks.

Megatron finds himself watching the Autobot's hands, silent and uneasy. May as well get this over with so he can leave.

Ratchet catches the hesitation on Megatron's face and his mouth twitches at one corner as he walks over, flipping a scanner out of his wrist and regarding Megatron steadily.

"No other medics on-planet yet, huh?" he asks, his tone conversational as he runs the scan and watches Megatron out of the corner of one optic. "I assume you'd be there instead of here, if so."

No need to contest that. He'd absolutely have dragged on somewhere else if there was a Decepticon who could treat him anywhere within a several mile radius. Even if he'd met Ratchet before, it was different from actually trusting him with something like this.

Scanning. Scanning seems harmless enough.

"You seemed to be expecting me."

Edited 2015-01-06 20:42 (UTC)

"I knew you'd be injured, and I figured we were the only game in town still. Though you absolutely should have come earlier, I'm surprised you managed to drag yourself in here at all."

Ratchet closes the scanner, looking irritated, and extends a delicate soldering tool from his wrist. "I need to patch those leaks before I do anything else, or you'll just keel over anyway. We'll get more fuel in you once I'm sure I'm not going to have to clean it up off the floor in ten minutes' time."

He gives Ratchet a quiet nod. It wasn't his ideal choice, but if Ratchet kept explaining as he went, it'd be less unnerving than simply laying there and wondering what he's was doing.

"You aren't bothered at all?"

Given Red Alert's distrust of Decepticons, he was expecting something a lot more difficult when he entered. He wasn't sure how strong factions played here, but his natural assumption is that there's be friction, especially after what happened.

Edited 2015-01-06 21:02 (UTC)

Ratchet's hands move, quick and steady, and it doesn't take long before the largest leaks are gone, and some plating smoothed back into place besides.

"There's an injured mech in my medibay, and he needs treatment," Ratchet says, his voice very steady as he goes to work on the smaller injuries. His optics flick briefly up to Megatron's face. "Not exactly new for me. You think there's some other reason I should be bothered?"

He finishes and draws back, folding his arms and just watching Megatron for a hard, considering moment. "Besides that t-cog you have stored in a compartment, anyway. That bothers me." He holds out a hand, no-nonsense and brooking no argument. "Hand it over, come on."

He's quiet as Ratchet works, impressed with the speed and precision of his hands. The sealing was fair less messy than he expected. There were little pinpricks here and there, but he was unbothered by them.

It isn't long before some of the alarms in his systems settle as the major leaks are sealed, and he was beginning to feel a little more comfortable on that slab.

But then of course, came the question. He almost immediately tenses.

"If what I did to Sentinel had no effect on you whatsoever, then I don't see why you should care about it."

"I care that there's a random organ in your side pocket. What the hell are you going to do with it, hollow it out, fill it with bolts, and use it as a maraca? I'm not going to sit here and blow exhaust telling you that I don't think Sentinel deserved a good beating, but something like that should be in a clean container in a medibay, not rattling around unsanitized."

Ratchet's lips thin and he squares his shoulders. "Give it to me, or we're done here," he says, hoping sincerely that Megatron will decline to call this bluff, considering that's exactly what it is.

Ratchet gets a stubborn look back, and he stands up off the medical slab. He didn't particularly want to wince on his way back to two feet again, but he manages to plant down firmly.

"What am I going to do with it?"

His hand reaches inside the compartment, taking out the dripping tcog,"Because of people like him, generations of Cybertronians were treated like mindless machines. Disposable parts for Sentinel and his masters to prop themselves up on. Judged and given value because of this."

The hand closes just a little too tightly over the organ,"Here's what I'm going to do - get rid of it for both of us. I don't care what happens to this as long as Sentinel feels some of the pain that he's caused."

Ratchet's optics widen slightly as Megatron pulls the tcog out of the compartment, making a face at the mess--but when Megatron's grip tightens, Ratchet reaches out automatically in a flash, gripping Megatron's wrist and jamming a thumb firmly into a mechanism at the base of the hinge of his palm. His grip loosens helplessly and Ratchet's free hand connects sharply with the back of Megatron's hand, sending the tcog up for him to snatch impatiently out of the air as he lets go of Megatron's wrist. He moves immediately to rinse it and check for any critical damage, casting a baleful look over his shoulder.

"In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly rolling in resources over here. Excuse me if I'm not of the opinion that we can going around crushing potential transplant organs to make a point before we actually have the facilities to be able to make proper new ones should someone who doesn't have a bootheel on the necks of the oppressed actually need something!" He finishes checking--there are a few slight finger-shaped indentations in the outer casing, but no serious damage. Air shunts roughly from his vents in a sigh and he sets the tcog gently down on a countertop, turning back to Megatron to fix him with a full glare.

"You don't need to tell me about the evils of the senate, kid. I worked for them. And I've been running free clinics in slums like Rodion and cleaning up messes like you before anybody knew what a Decepticon was, so you can spare me the damn lecture." He hesitates, wary of getting in arm's reach again and trying not to let it show on his face.

"Are you going to let me finish my repairs or not?"

It was a good decision to keep his distance, because the miner's first reaction to the maneuver was a hostile step forward, the pinched hand in question immediately clenching into a fist as soon as it was able. He tests it as Ratchet speaks, having the other at the ready to launch this Autobot through a few walls should he get close again. He may have been injured, but he was more than capable of defending himself if need be.

But he stops, his own venting calming as Ratchet continues to explain. Were it not for his earlier reactions to Sentinel and Megatron's own appearance, he'd be giving him a much more skeptical look. Ratchet had a point. A very valid one. It was his own distrust of that red insignia and his personal hate for the bot in question that was keeping him from cooperating.

Fortunately, he was too weakened and out of medics to continue to be stubborn with him. At least for the time being.

"Just get it over with," he growls back, sitting back down on the medical slab. He could talk to Ratchet about assurances after he was fully refueled.

Ratchet watches for a other moment, still and narrow, making sure Megatron isn't going to deck him as soon as he gets in range. Once he's satisfied, he steps in again, but his hands are slower now, slightly more careful of making sudden, startling movements.

"Good," he says waspishly, his temper just as foul--if Megatron was going to punch him for being obnoxious he wouldn't have waited this long to do it. "You need one desperately, and not just because you had the tar kicked out of you. I don't even want to think how long it's been since your last maintenance check--your last proper check. Possibly never." Ratchet passes him a cube before his hands come down on Megatron's playing again, unbuckling large crumpled sections as best he can and popping smaller dents as he finds them. "Your internals are running at two-thirds capacity if I'm being generous, your fuel processing efficiency is down by half, and you're about a million years overdue for some crucial immunizations. Just 'getting it over with' isn't exactly going to be an option, sorry."

"That bad?" He sounds genuinely surprised, simply because he certainly didn't feel like he was running at half capacity. He didn't even want to touch on Ratchet's actual question, because the last time he was in a doctor's office wasn't for the patient's benefit.

Megatron is annoyed he has to put up with the doctor's equally foul temper, but seemed to be over his want to punch him into low orbit. He lays down on his back, as much as the treads would allow.

"Fine. What do you need to do?"

Ratchet stares briefly as Megatron lays back, the trust implied in the gesture shaking him a little despite it being essentially what he'd demanded. He falters, a completely unreadable expression on his face for a long, suspended moment before he manages to shake it off and is moving again. His face is still set, but his hands are almost gentle as he tests the flex of joints, brushing grit away with delicate fingertips and tightening or loosening as necessary, making irritated tsking noises at the faint, stressed warps in the metal.

"What I need to do is cobble together a power washer and take you out back to turn the hose on you," he says, fingers buried in the joint of one of Megatron's knees now, under thick plating as he carefully loosens overtaut cabling. "You have an incredible amount of debris in here that's limiting your movement and stripping your gears. I'm doing what I can for it now--you'll be able to move easier when you get up. I think I've got the chemicals I need to mix you something clean out your lines. It'll be an uncomfortable, unpleasant, slightly disgusting process, but you'll feel better afterwards."

He seems to almost relax as he works, as much as he ever relaxes, and his face softens from 'deeply annoyed' to merely 'concentrating.' But his hands stay steady and careful as he moves to Megatron's other hip joint, forcibly refraining from dwelling on the last conversation he had with Megatron while he was flat on his back on a medical slab with Ratchet working on his legs.

Don't get too emotional over it, Ratchet. He's only on his back because he has to be. After a minute or two of tensely observing the doctor tending to his joints, he slowly manages to somewhat relax himself. Enough to pause his hawkish staring to take a sip from the cube.

All said and done, he was compliant once Ratchet begins to work underneath his plating, The noises his joints emitted at the light stressing made him raise a non-eyebrow. It was only after Ratchet had made a face that he noticed they made any kind of sound at all.

"How long will it take to clear my lines? I assume you mean my energon lines."

"If I had my way, I'd hook you up to a dialysis machine and make you sit still for--" he sizes Megatron up briefly "--eh, six hours, so you couldn't cause any more trouble. However, I don't have a dialysis machine, and if I actually had my way I wouldn't be here at all, so as it is I'll mix you something to drink that will clear out most of it. I expect it's a combined effect of rock dust and poor quality energon that's causing the problem, neither of which should crop up at the same rate here, at least, and undo all my work."

Ratchet leans back and knocks twice on Megatron's shoulder, light and brisk.

"C'mon, up. Finish that cube and I'll start getting everything else together." He eyes Megatron critically, then reaches down to fiddle at his wrist. A syringe pops out, the barrel flush with a pinkish-blue liquid. "These first, I think, actually. Sit still for a minute."

Megatron sits up to finish the rest of the cube in hand, stopping his drink mid-sip after seeing the syringe eject from Ratchet's wrist. He swallows the energon, cautiously, after getting a good taste of it, and turns to face him.

"Whats that?"

As tentatively trusting as he was with Ratchet out of necessity, he still wanted to be walked through what exactly was being done to him. The more invasive, the more he wanted to know.

"I said 'immunization' and I meant it," Ratchet says, eyeing him and flicking the barrel of the syringe gently. "It's one of six you have to get and two of them have to go in the back of your neck or they'll get cleared out by the next stuff I have to give you, so hold still."

Ratchet will find his wrist, needle and all, firmly seized by Megatron's free hand. Not in a threatening way, per say, but just to make sure his forearm is kept right in place where he can see it. Of course, making it threatening would take very little effort on his part.

"Do you always carry around these formulas on your person? You're a combat medic, aren't you? Why would injured soldiers need this in a battlefield?"

Megatron doesn't like this 'back of the neck' business at all.

Ratchet eyes the grip on his wrist, then transfers his gaze up to Megatron's face, looking annoyed but not overly worried. He's been threatened by patients much bigger and more unreasonable than Megaatron has been, but he does keep relatively still.

"War's over, when I'm from. And having my number of charges go from several million to about two hundred gave me the time I needed to make sure everyone did proper routine maintenance." Swerve. How he'd ducked so many shots and exams, Ratchet had no idea. You'd think a metallurgist would know better.

"Anyway, if you don't trust me not to inject you with acid, why the hell are you here in the first place? Don't tell me you're this frightened of needles, come on."

"Find another site," that sounded like a cold order.

"Get the other ones over with. But the ones at the base of the neck - find somewhere else to insert them."

He keeps his hold on that wrist, insistent but not overly forceful. It was more caution than an attempt to intimidate.

Ratchet opens his mouth, looking steadily more irritated before he meets Megatron's optics and something in them makes him stop dead. His own optics flicker, just faintly, his expression shifting slowly until all of the petty annoyance is drained out of it to leave a kind of icy, sick realization, transparent as smooth crystal. His wrist goes slack in Megatron's grip, and hard of the heels of that nauseated understanding is a hot flare of something sharp and bare and uncomfortably close to rage before he looks quickly away, letting warm air from his vents in a slow, shivering hiss. His voice is quiet and very level when he speaks again.

"All right," he says, his gaze even as he looks up at Megatron again, still not pulling out of his grip. "...all right. They can wait, the extra ones. I can put them somewhere else after the other maintenance is done, if you'll come in for a follow-up."

Edited 2015-01-07 05:18 (UTC)

There's a pause, and Ratchet's wrist is let go. He wasn't expecting the Autobot to concede so easily, but he was glad there was an unsaid understanding. He'd rather not explain any further.

The miner's plates relax, and he settles back into the slab. He was getting a little more comfortable with this doctor.

"Get going."

"...yeah."

Ratchet watches Megatron's face for another moment, tanks churning. He almost asks--who it was, what they took--if he knows what they took. But it's not his business, not really, and it's not like there's anything to be done about it now.

"Yeah, all right. Hold still." He takes Megatron's elbow and presses the syringe to a major line bared by the hinge of the joint there, pressing the plunger and watching it empty with a soft, pneumatic hiss. He does this twice more before he lets Megatron go and steps back, looking suddenly very tired.

"Go on, sit up. One more thing and you can go." He starts collecting some of the chemicals they've managed to scrape together, his mouth set into a thin line and his optics dim.

It isn't his business, and given how fresh the event was in his mind at his point in time, it's be unlikely he'd be willing to share any of the details. Not like this.

Unsurprisingly, he watches Ratchet as he inserts the hypo into his line as the blue-pink fluid was swept up into his system. The other two are pressed in with no struggle from him, and Ratchet will find him to be quiet and tolerable for the rest of that procedure.

He gives Ratchet a curious look as he sits up again, wondering why the doctor suddenly looked so exhausted. But he doesn't say anything, opting to drink the rest of the energon while he prepared a chemical solution.

"You're done? Good. Drink this next."

Ratchet presses the mixture into Megatron's hand, his mouth twisting.

"It's going to be disgusting, not to mention uncomfortable, but it'll burn some of the buildup out of your lines. It's the best I can do right now, anyway." He steps back, sweeping over Megatron with a dispassionate, critical optic before he looks up at him again.

"And I want you back in a few days for a follow-up, to make sure. Anything else you can think of, while you're here?"

Megatron gives the solution a good whiff before twisting his own expression a little bit. He was far from afraid of discomfort, but like with the rest of the check-up, he liked to know what he was tossing in his tanks.

"It smells like the proppant we used on Nova Peak." Similar purpose, he supposes.

But Ratchet had plenty of opportunity to hurt him if he wanted, so it was bottoms up. He could feel the burn immediately as it washed down his throat, and it's clear in his expression. He actually needs to pause for a second - halfway done, gripping the edge of the table, to relax and cycle air through his vents.

After a few seconds, he drinks the rest, leaving the container empty and looking slightly sick as the fluid made its way past his tanks and into his pumps. No warning signs from his systems, at least, but it certainly did feel as awful as Ratchet warned him.

Edited 2015-01-07 12:30 (UTC)

"Yeah, I bet it does," Ratchet snorts, looking almost amused as Megatron drinks one half of the mess, then the other. He hesitates, watching Megatron's face narrowly, his own expression closed.

"You all right?"

Soon enough, the feeling subsides enough for his expression to fall back to a neutral stare. Looks like the answer to Ratchet's question was yes.

Megatron reconsiders his original plans for ending their little meeting on a threatening note, given that his tanks were still churning. He does cross his arms as he looks back at the tcog laying on the counter behind Ratchet's head.

"Consider that a donation to the clinic," he looks back to the doctor,"As long as it doesn't end up back where it started."

Ratchet vents a crack of black laughter, his optics glittering.

"I'm more worried about someone else I know is around getting his grubby little addict's hands all over it, but I won't be so unkind as to undo all the hard work you put into removing it in the first place, don't you worry."

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Bedside Manners

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Post baby fight (let's say a few days after the clinic opened)

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