TJ Wagner (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ax_nocturne) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ax_main2017-12-02 10:08 am
ax_nocturne) wrote in ax_main2017-12-02 10:08 am
Entry tags:
TJ and Hank - Backdated
TJ goes in for a medical and meets this world's Hank. All the blue, all the awesome!
TJ bounced down the stairs to the infirmary a few at a time. She hadn't thought to ask whether Moira would be around, but she hoped so. If she was working with this Charles, she was bound to be good, and seeing another familiar, non-evil face would be welcome. She was still dressed in her brown leather skirt, but she'd taken a pair of scissors to an X-t-shirt to crop it.
"Talia Josephine Wagner, reporting for medical check-up," she singsonged as she walked into the infirmary, looking around for any sign of life.
The most immediate sign of occupation was the faint, airy sound of music piping sedately through the med-lab's PA system. The next was a burly form seated at computer terminal tucked away against one wall, a short distance from the entrance. The figure had one bare foot braced against the desk, the folding chair beneath him somewhat precariously balanced on its back two legs. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his pug nose, and a specially fitted lab coat hung around his shoulders, spilling onto the floor below. One clawed finger swiped sedately, if carefully, across the surface of the PAD he held in a massive, paw-like hand. As the new arrival announced herself, Dr. Henry McCoy glanced up, bright blue eyes blinking, and pushed his glasses up to sit more comfortably.
"I believe your scheduled appointment time was at least ten minutes past, Fraulien Talia Josephine Wagner," came a friendly rumble from the luxuriously blue-furred figure, lips quirking into a sharp-tooted, though nonetheless warm, grin. "Luckily, I'm a great deal more tolerant of the vicissitudes of fortune and timing than the estimable Dr. MacTaggert. A good thing, too; attempting to parse the details of a Scottish diatribe is a task that even my modestly robust faculties struggle to achieve."
"She gives diatribes?" TJ asked, lips twisted into a moue. Her Moira had been more of the warm encouragement type. Left the diatribes to others. Like, say, Scott. She shut down that train of thought and grinned at Hank McCoy. "I had no idea you were here! No one said. It's great to meet you," she added, bouncing the rest of the way to offer him a three-fingered hand, her own fur a darker shade of blue. "Sorry I'm late."
"With any luck, you'll never have to live the distinct lack of fortune which presages one of the good doctor's tirades," Hank told her, engulfing her small, tridactyl hand in his massive paw and holding it for a moment. "And never fear. I've served in academia long enough to be fairly well acquainted with the only passing respect most adolescents have for other people's schedules." A bushy blue brow rose curiously. "You are our trans-dimensional exchange student, so I'll go out on a limb and assume you probably know me from another context entirely. I can only hope that version of myself upheld the sort of scholastic and humanitarian ideals to which I myself aspire. And maybe, perhaps, won a Nobel or two."
He waved toward one of the examination tables. "Shall we begin? I shouldn't need to keep you more than a few minutes, but, if The Walking Dead taught us anything, it's that we'd best cover our bases where potentially unknown pathogens and parasites are concerned."
"I'm pretty sure none of us are carrying anything crazy," TJ told him. Well, not anymore, huh Cal? She bounced onto the examination table, easily crouching on its edge. "We're not supposed to decimate other worlds. But we've had encounters with the Legacy Virus, and the Brood, if you wanna check me for those. If you know what they are."
"It's all Greek to me," Hank replied amiably, bounding to her side just as easily and producing a small hypodermic needle from one pocket. "We'll run some EM scans while you're here, of course, but I'm afraid blood work is unavoidable. Trust me--I've done this a million times. You'll hardly even feel it. We'll be looking for precisely those unknowns you mention--Dr. MacTaggert, the Professor, and I collectively enjoy access to what might very well be one of the world's largest repositories of microbiological and biogenetic data in existence. So we'll be targeting those elements which that collected knowledge cannot pin down."
He gave her a sideways look. "Would you care for a change of music? I enjoy the Classical masters for solitary study, but it seems a bit stilted for such young and vibrant company."
TJ grinned at the compliment - hey, young and vibrant totally was a compliment! - and lowered the arm she'd been offering up to his needle, for now. "Sure. I'm kinda curious what you think would fit this young and vibrant girl."
Smile broadening, he reached into one pocket of his lab coat and ran the pad of his thumb over the remote inside, changing the music to something a touch more modern and upbeat. At almost the same moment, Hank adroitly touched the needle to one of the veins in the young Ms. Wagner's bicep, drawing a trace amount of blood--but more than sufficient to complete the necessary tests. "There," he said. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
TJ gave him an amused look. "That trick was welcome when I was six. I can sit still for a blood draw now. But the music is way better."
"And here I'd never believed I'd ever have much of a future in pediatric medicine," he replied, grinning as he returned to his chair and carefully fitted the sample into Moira's highly-specialized and entirely unique genetic sequencer. "The fangs tend to make the wrong sort of first impression with the ten-and-under set. That's why I always keep a few of these on hand." Hank carefully dipped his fingers in his breast pocket to retrieve a brightly-colored, cellophane-wrapped lollipop, which he tossed over his shoulder with near-pinpoint accuracy in his patient's direction. "Even the most fearsome countenance can be mitigated with the judicious application of sweets, I find."
His voice, though still jovial, was now faintly distracted, as he studied the initial results of the sequencer's analysis being fed into his terminal. "I still cannot believe they discontinued the venerable Twinkie. A crime against lovers of portable dessert snacks everywhere, in my considered opinion."
Her tail caught the lollipop in mid-air, and she unwrapped it. "Hey, I'll never turn down sweets. Fangs or no fangs." Which, of course, she had no problem with, given the slightly elongated canines that adorned her smiles. She stuck the lollipop in her mouth for a suck, then pulled it out (with a hand) to ask, "Do we even have actual kids here? From what I've seen, it looks like Teen Central." Which was its own kind of weird.
"Another roadblock to my aspirations of becoming a beloved children's doctor," Hank acknowledged, though absently. Most of his attention appeared to remain fixed on the screen, and he scrolled through the information quickly, the light glinting off his glasses. "'Teen Central' would, alas, be a fairly concise assessment of our present housing situation. But one can never say; some of our students, like Kurt or Clarice, have obviously been mutants since birth, but hidden. In time, we may see younger generations admitted to these sacred halls of learning. Though whether openly or in secret remains a vexing, and as yet insoluble, question."
"Fingers crossed on openly, though," TJ stated, tail flicking idly through the air. "I'm really hoping you're just a little behind schedule compared to most worlds, but you'll end up something like mine." Especially if she was going to be stuck here.
That caused the massive, blue-furred doctor to glance back over his shoulder, still grinning. "You're telling me? I hold multiple Ph.D.'s in three different academic disciplines, and no fewer than twelve published articles in peer-reviewed periodicals of note, but I can't walk down the street for a cup of coffee without fear of the National Guard being called out in response. If your world is indeed a more enlightened version of this one, then I do hope we're just behind on the times, and not some awful backwards throwback dimension."
More enlightened wasn't the way TJ would have put it, but instead of arguing vocabulary - especially with Hank McCoy, walking thesaurus every time she met one of him - she focused on figuring out whether the words that had come before were an exaggeration, or the sad state of the world. "Please tell me they wouldn't actually do that? The National Guard thing."
"Well," he amended, "perhaps just the local constabulary. Either way, I would be on the evening news as either a detainee or evading arrest by five." He continued to scroll through the sample data as it was analyzed, humming thoughtfully to himself. "This world was not safe for obvious mutants even before Magneto's compelled announcement on national television. I'd hazard a guess that our reception in public would be even frostier, now--if not outright hostile."
"Not safe is different from illegal," TJ replied, yellow eye blazing, tail swishing through the air unhappily.
"The line is somewhat blurred, at the moment," Hank admitted, turning around in his chair to face the younger mutant again. "We are not, strictly speaking, illegal, as such ... but we would be seen as a disruptive and potentially dangerous public spectacle. Nothing we could ever be convicted of, certainly, but enough that we would no doubt be escorted back indoors as expeditiously as possible." He sighed, shaking his shaggy blue head. "Unfortunate extraneous circumstances aside, would you care to hear your short-term medical prognosis?"
Unfortunate, her furry blue ass. This was worse than unfortunate. But TJ just sighed, and nodded. "Sure. Hit me up. This can only get worse if I am carrying Legacy."
"I still have no idea what that is," Hank told her, turning his chair to face her and smiling patiently. "But initial findings give us cause for hope. There are a handful of presently-unidentified bacteria drifting around in your bloodstream, but none of their profiles lead me to believe they present an imminent health hazard for the natives of this dimension. You may want to consider getting a flu shot sooner rather than later, as your immunological progression has been quite different. I'll also want to vaccinate the other students against a few of the viruses you're carrying, just to be on the safe side. Otherwise, Miss Wagner, I'd say you're the picture of health--though I expect you to alert a member of the medical staff immediately, if you begin to feel unwell. Trans-dimensional medicine is, as far as I know, a field of study wholly unique to this school, so there's bound to be some considerable guesswork involved on all our parts."
"Whatever you say, doc," TJ told him after another suck on her lollipop. "Can we get the flu shot done now?" Might as well get it all over with.
"I see no particular advantage to deferral, in that regard," Hank agreed, and pushed his chair across the lab to the refrigerated storage area, soon producing a syringe and needle. "Though I will advise you now that your reaction may be somewhat more acute than is typical, given this will be a strain entirely different to anything your body has had to ward off previously. You'll no doubt feel a bit yucky for a few days."
"Damn, I might have to skip classes for a bit?" TJ asked, eyebrows raised innocently, before she gave him a grin. "Shoot me up, doc."
"Given that, in addition to my role as a researcher, I am also an educator, I cannot help but feel I should attempt to dampen that enthusiasm for truancy," the furry scientist smirked, and held out a massive paw for TJ's arm. "But I fondly remember my own share of sick days, snow days, and miscellaneous other unexpected time off from classes. So I suppose I can let it go."
"You're too kind," TJ told him, amused, and laid her forearm in his paw. "What classes do you teach?"
He took hold of her arm with surprising gentleness, saying, "I've taken over Biology from Dr. MacTaggert, to free up a bit more time for her research. And the Communications classes--rhetoric and literature are both great loves of mine, surpassed only by the sciences, and even then only marginally." The needle slipped in and out so quickly it was hardly noticeable, until he was pressing a clean cotton swab to the small puncture wound. "Which classes were you interested in taking?"
"I'm behind on everything," TJ complained, as she reached up to take over pressing that swab on her skin, so he could deal with the needle. "But sign me up for bio for sure. And physics. Who's teaching physics?"
"Dr. Corbeau will be handing the physics courses, I believe," he told her, discarding the used needle and syringe in a nearby Sharps container. Hank shrugged. "We're only casually acquainted, at present, so I suppose there's a fair chance you know him better than I do. If they have one of those back in your reality of origin."
"Doesn't work like that," TJ replied with a shake of her head. "People can be as different as night and day, from one world to the next. At best I'd think I know him, and it'd come back and bite me in the ass when it turns out I don't." She threw the little cotton swab in the trash can from her perch on the exam table, and grinned around her lollipop when it went in.
"Or perhaps you simply haven't bumped into a world close enough to your own for the usual rules to apply," Hank observed. "After all, with an infinite number of parallel universes, most differing in only the smallest of degrees, it stands to reason you might eventually find one where everything is precisely as you remember it, except you take after your mother more than your father. Though I will concede that this is almost certainly not that reality."
"I don't know about your eventually, because I don't have immortality as a mutation, but this is definitely not that reality," TJ confirmed with a quick smile. "Are we all done with medical stuff, or is there more?"
"Oh, I've a few more tests to run, but those will be a great deal more time-consuming, and I don't see any practical need to keep you isolated for the duration." He had certainly never enjoyed being cooped up with only the company of pedantically-minded adults for distraction at that age, never mind that he could happily spend all his time in the medical labs now. "I'll let you know when your final diagnosis is ready. I'll also try to cultivate cultures for as many of these unknown microbes as possible--but that's more a result of inveterate curiosity and my desperation for a pre-posthumous Nobel Prize. Otherwise, it is my professional opinion that you are fit to return to the general and no doubt more congenial school population."
TJ had been about to jet, but that cooled her engines significantly, and she settled back on the exam table. "Be really careful, okay? There's bad shit out there I've been in contact with." Perhaps not the best language to use with a teacher, TJ realized belatedly, but she'd lost the habit of watching her mouth, the past couple of years.
Rather than dismissing her warning, Hank gave a sober nod; a degree of prudence was only common sense, when dealing with extra-dimensional forms of life--even if they were single-celled forms. Potentially, they could be even more hazardous and destructive than a tentacle-faced monstrosity from beyond all time and space; the latter, at least, was much easier to identify and engage. "Worry not, Miss Wagner," he told her reassuringly. "Dr. Henry Phillip McCoy is nothing if not cautious when dealing with potentially reality-ending substances. And besides," he added mischievously, a grin returning to his face, "one of my Ph.D's is in kicking ass."
TJ huffed out a small laugh at that, and moved off the exam table. "Good. I'd rather not be the cause of an epidemic."
"If you're asking for my learned prognosis," Hank said, turning back toward the data still being fed into his computer terminal, "then I would suggest that the most infectious thing about you currently is your personality. Though that may be subject to revision, if you happen to pick something up from one of the other students."
TJ laughed frankly at his conclusion. "Mono would not work for me," TJ assured him, because of course her mind had gone there. "It was nice meeting you, doc."
"The kissing disease," he mused teasingly. "Interesting that you would have thought of that one first." Hank waved an oversized paw back over his shoulder at her as he continued to pour over the prokaryotic details. "And it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, as well, Ms. Wagner. I trust you won't be a stranger, or limit your visits only to times of direst medical necessity."
She shot him a grin that seemed to say, I'm a teenager, what can you do?, then waved at him with her tail as she turned to go. "I'll see you in class!"
TJ bounced down the stairs to the infirmary a few at a time. She hadn't thought to ask whether Moira would be around, but she hoped so. If she was working with this Charles, she was bound to be good, and seeing another familiar, non-evil face would be welcome. She was still dressed in her brown leather skirt, but she'd taken a pair of scissors to an X-t-shirt to crop it.
"Talia Josephine Wagner, reporting for medical check-up," she singsonged as she walked into the infirmary, looking around for any sign of life.
The most immediate sign of occupation was the faint, airy sound of music piping sedately through the med-lab's PA system. The next was a burly form seated at computer terminal tucked away against one wall, a short distance from the entrance. The figure had one bare foot braced against the desk, the folding chair beneath him somewhat precariously balanced on its back two legs. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his pug nose, and a specially fitted lab coat hung around his shoulders, spilling onto the floor below. One clawed finger swiped sedately, if carefully, across the surface of the PAD he held in a massive, paw-like hand. As the new arrival announced herself, Dr. Henry McCoy glanced up, bright blue eyes blinking, and pushed his glasses up to sit more comfortably.
"I believe your scheduled appointment time was at least ten minutes past, Fraulien Talia Josephine Wagner," came a friendly rumble from the luxuriously blue-furred figure, lips quirking into a sharp-tooted, though nonetheless warm, grin. "Luckily, I'm a great deal more tolerant of the vicissitudes of fortune and timing than the estimable Dr. MacTaggert. A good thing, too; attempting to parse the details of a Scottish diatribe is a task that even my modestly robust faculties struggle to achieve."
"She gives diatribes?" TJ asked, lips twisted into a moue. Her Moira had been more of the warm encouragement type. Left the diatribes to others. Like, say, Scott. She shut down that train of thought and grinned at Hank McCoy. "I had no idea you were here! No one said. It's great to meet you," she added, bouncing the rest of the way to offer him a three-fingered hand, her own fur a darker shade of blue. "Sorry I'm late."
"With any luck, you'll never have to live the distinct lack of fortune which presages one of the good doctor's tirades," Hank told her, engulfing her small, tridactyl hand in his massive paw and holding it for a moment. "And never fear. I've served in academia long enough to be fairly well acquainted with the only passing respect most adolescents have for other people's schedules." A bushy blue brow rose curiously. "You are our trans-dimensional exchange student, so I'll go out on a limb and assume you probably know me from another context entirely. I can only hope that version of myself upheld the sort of scholastic and humanitarian ideals to which I myself aspire. And maybe, perhaps, won a Nobel or two."
He waved toward one of the examination tables. "Shall we begin? I shouldn't need to keep you more than a few minutes, but, if The Walking Dead taught us anything, it's that we'd best cover our bases where potentially unknown pathogens and parasites are concerned."
"I'm pretty sure none of us are carrying anything crazy," TJ told him. Well, not anymore, huh Cal? She bounced onto the examination table, easily crouching on its edge. "We're not supposed to decimate other worlds. But we've had encounters with the Legacy Virus, and the Brood, if you wanna check me for those. If you know what they are."
"It's all Greek to me," Hank replied amiably, bounding to her side just as easily and producing a small hypodermic needle from one pocket. "We'll run some EM scans while you're here, of course, but I'm afraid blood work is unavoidable. Trust me--I've done this a million times. You'll hardly even feel it. We'll be looking for precisely those unknowns you mention--Dr. MacTaggert, the Professor, and I collectively enjoy access to what might very well be one of the world's largest repositories of microbiological and biogenetic data in existence. So we'll be targeting those elements which that collected knowledge cannot pin down."
He gave her a sideways look. "Would you care for a change of music? I enjoy the Classical masters for solitary study, but it seems a bit stilted for such young and vibrant company."
TJ grinned at the compliment - hey, young and vibrant totally was a compliment! - and lowered the arm she'd been offering up to his needle, for now. "Sure. I'm kinda curious what you think would fit this young and vibrant girl."
Smile broadening, he reached into one pocket of his lab coat and ran the pad of his thumb over the remote inside, changing the music to something a touch more modern and upbeat. At almost the same moment, Hank adroitly touched the needle to one of the veins in the young Ms. Wagner's bicep, drawing a trace amount of blood--but more than sufficient to complete the necessary tests. "There," he said. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
TJ gave him an amused look. "That trick was welcome when I was six. I can sit still for a blood draw now. But the music is way better."
"And here I'd never believed I'd ever have much of a future in pediatric medicine," he replied, grinning as he returned to his chair and carefully fitted the sample into Moira's highly-specialized and entirely unique genetic sequencer. "The fangs tend to make the wrong sort of first impression with the ten-and-under set. That's why I always keep a few of these on hand." Hank carefully dipped his fingers in his breast pocket to retrieve a brightly-colored, cellophane-wrapped lollipop, which he tossed over his shoulder with near-pinpoint accuracy in his patient's direction. "Even the most fearsome countenance can be mitigated with the judicious application of sweets, I find."
His voice, though still jovial, was now faintly distracted, as he studied the initial results of the sequencer's analysis being fed into his terminal. "I still cannot believe they discontinued the venerable Twinkie. A crime against lovers of portable dessert snacks everywhere, in my considered opinion."
Her tail caught the lollipop in mid-air, and she unwrapped it. "Hey, I'll never turn down sweets. Fangs or no fangs." Which, of course, she had no problem with, given the slightly elongated canines that adorned her smiles. She stuck the lollipop in her mouth for a suck, then pulled it out (with a hand) to ask, "Do we even have actual kids here? From what I've seen, it looks like Teen Central." Which was its own kind of weird.
"Another roadblock to my aspirations of becoming a beloved children's doctor," Hank acknowledged, though absently. Most of his attention appeared to remain fixed on the screen, and he scrolled through the information quickly, the light glinting off his glasses. "'Teen Central' would, alas, be a fairly concise assessment of our present housing situation. But one can never say; some of our students, like Kurt or Clarice, have obviously been mutants since birth, but hidden. In time, we may see younger generations admitted to these sacred halls of learning. Though whether openly or in secret remains a vexing, and as yet insoluble, question."
"Fingers crossed on openly, though," TJ stated, tail flicking idly through the air. "I'm really hoping you're just a little behind schedule compared to most worlds, but you'll end up something like mine." Especially if she was going to be stuck here.
That caused the massive, blue-furred doctor to glance back over his shoulder, still grinning. "You're telling me? I hold multiple Ph.D.'s in three different academic disciplines, and no fewer than twelve published articles in peer-reviewed periodicals of note, but I can't walk down the street for a cup of coffee without fear of the National Guard being called out in response. If your world is indeed a more enlightened version of this one, then I do hope we're just behind on the times, and not some awful backwards throwback dimension."
More enlightened wasn't the way TJ would have put it, but instead of arguing vocabulary - especially with Hank McCoy, walking thesaurus every time she met one of him - she focused on figuring out whether the words that had come before were an exaggeration, or the sad state of the world. "Please tell me they wouldn't actually do that? The National Guard thing."
"Well," he amended, "perhaps just the local constabulary. Either way, I would be on the evening news as either a detainee or evading arrest by five." He continued to scroll through the sample data as it was analyzed, humming thoughtfully to himself. "This world was not safe for obvious mutants even before Magneto's compelled announcement on national television. I'd hazard a guess that our reception in public would be even frostier, now--if not outright hostile."
"Not safe is different from illegal," TJ replied, yellow eye blazing, tail swishing through the air unhappily.
"The line is somewhat blurred, at the moment," Hank admitted, turning around in his chair to face the younger mutant again. "We are not, strictly speaking, illegal, as such ... but we would be seen as a disruptive and potentially dangerous public spectacle. Nothing we could ever be convicted of, certainly, but enough that we would no doubt be escorted back indoors as expeditiously as possible." He sighed, shaking his shaggy blue head. "Unfortunate extraneous circumstances aside, would you care to hear your short-term medical prognosis?"
Unfortunate, her furry blue ass. This was worse than unfortunate. But TJ just sighed, and nodded. "Sure. Hit me up. This can only get worse if I am carrying Legacy."
"I still have no idea what that is," Hank told her, turning his chair to face her and smiling patiently. "But initial findings give us cause for hope. There are a handful of presently-unidentified bacteria drifting around in your bloodstream, but none of their profiles lead me to believe they present an imminent health hazard for the natives of this dimension. You may want to consider getting a flu shot sooner rather than later, as your immunological progression has been quite different. I'll also want to vaccinate the other students against a few of the viruses you're carrying, just to be on the safe side. Otherwise, Miss Wagner, I'd say you're the picture of health--though I expect you to alert a member of the medical staff immediately, if you begin to feel unwell. Trans-dimensional medicine is, as far as I know, a field of study wholly unique to this school, so there's bound to be some considerable guesswork involved on all our parts."
"Whatever you say, doc," TJ told him after another suck on her lollipop. "Can we get the flu shot done now?" Might as well get it all over with.
"I see no particular advantage to deferral, in that regard," Hank agreed, and pushed his chair across the lab to the refrigerated storage area, soon producing a syringe and needle. "Though I will advise you now that your reaction may be somewhat more acute than is typical, given this will be a strain entirely different to anything your body has had to ward off previously. You'll no doubt feel a bit yucky for a few days."
"Damn, I might have to skip classes for a bit?" TJ asked, eyebrows raised innocently, before she gave him a grin. "Shoot me up, doc."
"Given that, in addition to my role as a researcher, I am also an educator, I cannot help but feel I should attempt to dampen that enthusiasm for truancy," the furry scientist smirked, and held out a massive paw for TJ's arm. "But I fondly remember my own share of sick days, snow days, and miscellaneous other unexpected time off from classes. So I suppose I can let it go."
"You're too kind," TJ told him, amused, and laid her forearm in his paw. "What classes do you teach?"
He took hold of her arm with surprising gentleness, saying, "I've taken over Biology from Dr. MacTaggert, to free up a bit more time for her research. And the Communications classes--rhetoric and literature are both great loves of mine, surpassed only by the sciences, and even then only marginally." The needle slipped in and out so quickly it was hardly noticeable, until he was pressing a clean cotton swab to the small puncture wound. "Which classes were you interested in taking?"
"I'm behind on everything," TJ complained, as she reached up to take over pressing that swab on her skin, so he could deal with the needle. "But sign me up for bio for sure. And physics. Who's teaching physics?"
"Dr. Corbeau will be handing the physics courses, I believe," he told her, discarding the used needle and syringe in a nearby Sharps container. Hank shrugged. "We're only casually acquainted, at present, so I suppose there's a fair chance you know him better than I do. If they have one of those back in your reality of origin."
"Doesn't work like that," TJ replied with a shake of her head. "People can be as different as night and day, from one world to the next. At best I'd think I know him, and it'd come back and bite me in the ass when it turns out I don't." She threw the little cotton swab in the trash can from her perch on the exam table, and grinned around her lollipop when it went in.
"Or perhaps you simply haven't bumped into a world close enough to your own for the usual rules to apply," Hank observed. "After all, with an infinite number of parallel universes, most differing in only the smallest of degrees, it stands to reason you might eventually find one where everything is precisely as you remember it, except you take after your mother more than your father. Though I will concede that this is almost certainly not that reality."
"I don't know about your eventually, because I don't have immortality as a mutation, but this is definitely not that reality," TJ confirmed with a quick smile. "Are we all done with medical stuff, or is there more?"
"Oh, I've a few more tests to run, but those will be a great deal more time-consuming, and I don't see any practical need to keep you isolated for the duration." He had certainly never enjoyed being cooped up with only the company of pedantically-minded adults for distraction at that age, never mind that he could happily spend all his time in the medical labs now. "I'll let you know when your final diagnosis is ready. I'll also try to cultivate cultures for as many of these unknown microbes as possible--but that's more a result of inveterate curiosity and my desperation for a pre-posthumous Nobel Prize. Otherwise, it is my professional opinion that you are fit to return to the general and no doubt more congenial school population."
TJ had been about to jet, but that cooled her engines significantly, and she settled back on the exam table. "Be really careful, okay? There's bad shit out there I've been in contact with." Perhaps not the best language to use with a teacher, TJ realized belatedly, but she'd lost the habit of watching her mouth, the past couple of years.
Rather than dismissing her warning, Hank gave a sober nod; a degree of prudence was only common sense, when dealing with extra-dimensional forms of life--even if they were single-celled forms. Potentially, they could be even more hazardous and destructive than a tentacle-faced monstrosity from beyond all time and space; the latter, at least, was much easier to identify and engage. "Worry not, Miss Wagner," he told her reassuringly. "Dr. Henry Phillip McCoy is nothing if not cautious when dealing with potentially reality-ending substances. And besides," he added mischievously, a grin returning to his face, "one of my Ph.D's is in kicking ass."
TJ huffed out a small laugh at that, and moved off the exam table. "Good. I'd rather not be the cause of an epidemic."
"If you're asking for my learned prognosis," Hank said, turning back toward the data still being fed into his computer terminal, "then I would suggest that the most infectious thing about you currently is your personality. Though that may be subject to revision, if you happen to pick something up from one of the other students."
TJ laughed frankly at his conclusion. "Mono would not work for me," TJ assured him, because of course her mind had gone there. "It was nice meeting you, doc."
"The kissing disease," he mused teasingly. "Interesting that you would have thought of that one first." Hank waved an oversized paw back over his shoulder at her as he continued to pour over the prokaryotic details. "And it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, as well, Ms. Wagner. I trust you won't be a stranger, or limit your visits only to times of direst medical necessity."
She shot him a grin that seemed to say, I'm a teenager, what can you do?, then waved at him with her tail as she turned to go. "I'll see you in class!"
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