[closed to Watson] maladies georg, who gets harmed over 10,000 times a day,

[theotherright]

Who: Watson and Arthur
What: Much-needed medical consultation
When: Beginning of October
Warnings: Starvation and disordered eating will come up, will add more as needed


Arthur couldn't tell you why he's been putting off consulting a doctor.

It's not because of the flowers, though they were a good excuse to stay in. It's not just stubbornness, though he's sure it looks that way. Maybe it's the fear of what a doctor might ask, or what they'd be able to tell. Maybe it's the feeling that if he tries to better his lot here, he's accepted that he isn't going back to John.

It could, he admits, be argued that those aren't good reasons.

The flowers are gone, taking an excuse with them, and Arthur takes that chance to force himself down to the infirmary. He's just going to hang out there and hope to run into Watson. Yes, he could ask somebody for Watson's number instead, but he's private anxious painfully aware that he would never send that text down this way anyway, so why not?

He takes a book with him, so that he can, you know, stand sitting down there for more than three minutes.

Comments

[lightconductor]

Watson comes into the infirmary in good time, humming absently to himself. He has a book tucked under his arm, because often that is what he ends up doing down here. He was not expecting someone else to already be here, but he smiles, his best disarming, reassuring smile.

"Oh, pardon me. Did you need something?"

From him, from the infirmary, from the universe at large.

[theotherright]

Arthur's finger stills on the page when he hears that humming. He puts the book down in his lap, thumb inside to save his place, and he sits up and tries to look like... like whatever a normal person going to the doctor is supposed to look like. Jesus, Lester, it's a doctor, not a firing squad.

"Yes," he says brightly and very normally, "good morning, I-I've been advised -- well, sort of ordered, actually--" ha ha ha "to, er, ask if I might take advantage of- of your medical knowledge."

The shape of most of his body is hidden, intentionally, in larger clothes, but the gauntness of his face and the patchiness of the skin there are harder to conceal. Even though he spent September on the Serena Eterna, with plentiful food, it's been surprisingly hard to feast as he imagined he might; and it takes more than a month to gain back what he lost in the pit.

[lightconductor]

"Oh, of course."

He was already smiling, but there's a shift to a more professional front; not too professional, since he can't stand on too much ceremony when he's also socialising with his patients, but there's a certain sense of purpose in his manners. "I don't know that we've really properly talked, have we?"

Watson sets his book down and settles into a chair, waving Arthur to sit as well. "Make yourself comfortable, and tell me all about it."

[theotherright]

"What, a quick congratulations at your wedding doesn't count?" Arthur jokes, still keeping it light, deliberately not looking into the near future at the mortifying ordeal of talking about himself.

Except nope, Watson's getting straight to the point. "Right," he says, suddenly reluctant. "Well. There's not much to tell. Are you, ah... where are we making ourselves comfortable?"

He appears to be looking straight in Watson's direction when he asks this, though not exactly at Watson.

[lightconductor]

The question surprises him, a little.

"Here, unless there is some place you'd prefer?" Watson's voice softens a little. He recognises the symptoms of someone with an embarrassing ailment, of course, but look at him, he's the very picture of nonjudgmental sympathy. "Or we can lock the door, if you want to be certain of privacy."

[theotherright]

They are, Arthur realises, having a challenge of communication.

"What I mean is," he says, and then stops and starts again, bluntly. "I can't see. Though that- that's not what I'm here about. So I'll want to know where you are specifically."

He turns in order to reach onto the counter behind him, where he left his (...oh damn it, he must have pushed it... ah, there it is) cane.

"...Of course I wouldn't say no to the privacy."

[lightconductor]

"... oh, I'm a damn fool. I'm sorry. I don't know why--"

Flustered, intensely embarrassed, Watson moves to the second chair, and scrapes it across the floor slightly to indicate its presence.

"I quite forgot myself. Please, there's a chair right here. Settle yourself down, and I'll lock the door for us."

[theotherright]

"Please, it's -- ah. Thank you -- it-it's quite all right. As you said, we haven't properly talked, really." The last thing Arthur wants is for a fuss to be made about his sight, unless he's good and ready to initiate it himself. Simply perceive him as little as he does you please thanks.

He pushes his cane out ahead of him, and the ball at its end rattles informatively across the floor until he finds the offered chair. He identifies the front, pats the seat, touches the arms, and sits.

While Watson's seeing to the door, Arthur's considering how best to explain his problem without inviting too many questions about the missing information. "Thank you for listening, Doctor," he says in the meantime, even though he hasn't actually shared anything to listen to yet. "I realise it's an imposition."

[lightconductor]

"It's not an imposition at all," Watson says, returning to his own seat. "Quite frankly... well, it seems important that someone here takes this role, and as I am able to, it may as well be me."

Which is to say it's his own personal mission that he has given himself.

"I am always glad to be of service in whatever way I can."

[theotherright]

A smile, small but warm, moves onto Arthur's face at that. Watson really seems like good people. (And, incidentally, also the most wonderful case of nominative determinism. He's probably heard this a dozen times, more if he comes from a world with them, but there's this series of detective stories--)

"Well, I appreciate it," he says softly. Then: "Well, I should, er, get to the point, then."

He leans forwards slightly and rests his forearms on his knees, cane between his fingers, twisting it in restless circles. (One of the fingers, which he's kept to his side until now, is, well, black. Black and shrunken past the last knuckle, and held in place by little roots.)

"It seems that the Erda attempted to pull me here a second time, from a later point in my life, with the result that I experienced a few months i-in my world without ever leaving the ship." Not his world, very much not actually his world, but he's trying to make this the short version of the story. "All this to say, I had trouble, trouble eating right for those months..."

He's tense, and there's a flat, droning quality to his voice, like he's practiced paring down everything into those few words, unemotionally delivered.

"...and of course here, the situation is better, but I can't seem to... to shift it. The exhaustion and pain and malaise that I am certain must be worse than before. I realise the solution is to eat more and make it up, but I feel worse when I do, and--" He's talking faster now, unhappily animated. "--I've been advised th-that my body has forgotten how to safely eat, which sounds-- would sound invented, did the effect of eating on me not speak for itself."

Pause. Normal voice again, self-consciously: "So I, I would like advice on solving that issue, if you have any."