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CHARACTERS: Combeferre, OPEN
LOCATION: Medical Bay
WARNINGS: None really, yet
SUMMARY: Combeferre had a special surprise last month and it's jump-started his desire to return to medicine almost a year after his jump. Ah, progress.
NOTES:

Combeferre found himself hesitating, still, just a little, as he made his way toward the medical bay. It was not that he did not come here when he had his headaches and ran out of the medication they had given him for them here, but today he was here for something new, something, a little voice inside his head pointed out, rather sternly, that he ought have been doing all along.

If he had asked his questions, offered help, several months ago, then who knew where he might be now? Instead, he had tried engineering, messed about with microwaves and science, and been dismal at the actual practice of each one, even when the theory made perfect sense. He was hoping, perhaps, that a return to medicine, in whatever capacity that he might be able to perform, a chance to learn more of it, would be a much more viable way of helping his fellow passengers here.

And, having received his surgical kit, and spent the time cleaning it off, the tools had felt familiar in his hands, like old friends, of all things, reminded him, as the blood was scrubbed away,that they had not only been used upon the barricade, in vain, and for some other purposes than that. It, and speaking to Jehan of things, had made him keen to try again. He'd nearly been a full doctor at home, scheduled to recieve his degree at the end of the semester during which he'd died, he'd done a great deal of reading in the medical sciences since he'd come here, and perhaps...he hoped they may find some use for him here, an orderly perhaps, while he continued to play catch up with what areas he had yet to fill in.

Either way, he was hopeful, finally entering the bay and looking about for someone he might approach, who he could explain things to in more detail.

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Will was not a doctor. Nor did he look particularly approachable, leaning with unfortunate posture over a workbench and peering down at something in his hands. To be honest, he still hadn't officially joined Medical himself. But nevertheless, he was the first person in sight.

Combeferre's entrance didn't distract Will: he was too absorbed in his own thoughts. His concentration was somewhat legendary at the FBI Academy. Right now, he was analyzing the data before him, print-outs from the machines, and considering whether or not it was worth continuing.

Combeferre did glance at Will as he entered, and seeing he was the nearest person, did approach. He hated to interrupt someone at work, having been through the experience himself, but perhaps he could at least point him in the right direction? Something of that nature, at any rate. And so, he found himself clearing his throat, almost apologetic about it.

"If you would excuse me for interrupting your work, I was wondering whom I might speak to about volunteering here?" He tried.

Will didn't even notice the throat clearing, and it took him a moment to realize that the man was addressing him. He looked up, a little startled, and then looked away again. He preferred not to take in too much of strangers here. Or — anywhere.

"I don't work here," Will said, though then he looked down at his microscope and papers and reconsidered, because obviously what he was doing right now was working. Here. "I mean, I'm not a doctor. Not in the medical sense."

"Oh, right." He had not looked much like a doctor at that, though Combeferre had not been positive on that front. One never knew here, after all. "What do you...sorry that's probably rude, and I really didn't mean to interrupt."

He knew, after all, how irritating that could BE. "Well, at any rate, might you know who or where I could ask besides the network. I...was nearly a doctor at home, and I have some services I could offer here if they needed me."

Edited 2014-01-20 00:36 (UTC)

"It's fine," Will reassured him. In all honesty, he was fairly used to having his concentration interrupted, here and back home. When he was working for the FBI it was an irritant, but his work here wasn't really important enough for him to begrudge anyone who pulled him from it.

"Nearly a doctor," Will echoed, considering the man before him. "There are a couple of doctors here. Doctor Tam and Doctor McCoy seem to be the guys who know what they're doing." And they're the ones he was recommended when he first arrived and needed somebody to handle administering his ongoing treatment. "Got a specialty?" He asked, curious.

Doctor Tam had introduced himself when Combeferre had arrived here, he remembered now, when he'd asked about obtaining laudanum for his headaches and first learned how much medicine, as in the actual medication side of things had changed. It was one of those things he had yet to study in a good deal of depth here, since at home, things had been different.

And specialties, well.

"Not as it would be defined here and now, I suppose." He answered, after some consideration of that. "I've been trained as a surgeon, and worked in emergencies for the most part. I had an internship at the Necker and worked in a free clinic where a good deal of what we saw were patients who had severe trauma. It was some time ago, though. I know that things have greatly changed."

"The hospital for sick children?" Will asked, though he knew already that the fact which had floated to the top of his mind was a true one. One of the few benefits of having an eidetic memory was the ability to place such offhand references. Of course it did not, for Will at least, outweigh the drawbacks.

He tried to school his expression into something more neutral than surprise, as he was not sure what it was currently doing. Interest, perhaps, would have been appropriate, but Will was an impatient, nervous man and had little time for small talk.

"You say some time ago. What level of technology are you used to working with?" he asked.

"That would be the one. It's good to know it is still known." He'd done the reading on that, after all, curious to find out what had happened to it. "And that the practice seems to have continued for treating children." Combeferre considered, for a moment there, all of those who had gotten to the hospital's doors too late, the way illness had seemed to take so many of them then, the days and nights of cholera and..

Well, it was certainly nothing pleasant, that was certain. And nothing for the moment, at least, beyond finding some happiness in the fact that there was still work being done in that direction. It was a better thought than most others with regard to how things had changed, certainly.

"I was last there in 1832, so as you see, a good deal of advancements have managed to pass me by. "

Edited 2014-01-26 21:20 (UTC)

"1832," Will breathed, a hysterical kind of laughter in his voice. He knew better than to disbelieve a fact like that by now, when he conversed so easily with Lucrezia Borgia, but it was still strange to him, these men and women who were so far out of their time.

"Yeah," he agreed, because he could see how that would make continuing a career in medicine difficult. "I'm from two hundred years after that, and some of this stuff is too advanced for me. But you..."

Surgery had changed a lot since that time. Medicine had changed a lot. Will couldn't help but wonder how someone like him would have been treated in those days. Likely he would have been lobotomized.

The hysterical tone there was something Combeferre was vaguely familiar with. He'd had that happen himself, upon a few occasions here, but he'd also heard it from Joly, when they'd worked together, or from patients at the clinic he had worked at outside of the Necker when he had the time to spare for it. So, he didn't find it at all strange or odd or anything that Will reacted like that.

"Yes." he agreed. "I still feel that way myself at times. Every jump, with the tubes..."

That was a distinct shudder from him there as he thought about those things. So horrible. He particularly hated having the thing jammed into his nose and time had not made it easier. Climbing into stasis, waking up after a jump, both of those were good times to focus his attention on his moths and knowledge of them. ...Right now probably wasn't, so he forced his mind away from that thought instead.

"I admit, much of this makes me feel rather like, well, entirely out of time, I suppose, if we use that sense of it. I'm told so much has changed, so much more has been discovered, and all of the machines...it's why I think I am not so likely to be performing full surgeries any time soon. But perhaps in emergencies when simple care is needed, or for assistance... it IS something, I suppose."

That would depend, probably, on how badly things affected Will. For the moment, Combeferre would not have noticed anything wrong, so it would be...harder to classify. To him, personally, it would have felt wrong to change something so much a part of someone's make up, but with the wisdom of the day, well. Better that they were here and now, by far.

"Yeah, of course," Will agreed, because he realized belatedly that he probably sounded as pessimistic as he felt. He didn't want to be the guy who scared off a potential new recruit for Medical. "All the departments need as much help as they can get," he added, because it was true.

Fortunately, he stopped himself before he could suggest a nursing position. While to Will's modern sensibilities that was just support staff, he imagined that an old fashioned guy might not take so kindly to being cast in the role of Florence Nightingale.

"The technology's different, but people are still the same," Will reassured Combeferre. "Probably always will be."

"So I have been hearing." Combeferre nodded. "I had meant to stop in a long time ago but..." Well, it was not quite the subject to bring up with a stranger, he supposed.

"Well, I am here now, and there must be something." Nursing would actually be not so much of a problem. Nursing, skilled nursing was nothing he was quite familiar with, of course, not having come into vogue quite yet at the time of his death, so there were no built up assumptions in his mind at least.

And as for people..."True. If anything, there must be more to learn that has been discovered but I HAVE been trying to catch up to the reading that's cropped up in over a century."

"That's... a lot of reading to catch up on," Will pointed out, somewhere between surprised and amused. "Though I have to say, if I woke up and found myself in the future, I'd have a hard time pulling my nose out of all the books too."

"I think I've spent much of my time here in the media library." Combeferre confessed, a smile crossing his face. "There has been so much. It was difficult to decide anything, at first, if I wished to branch into something new." And destroyed kitchens. But he was not going to mention this.

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