robothell | Bedside Manners

Entry tags:

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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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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