squintwrangler | Clinic Ideas (for Rollie)

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Clinic Ideas (for Rollie)

She was worried about the clinic. It wasn't like they had a lot of serious cases to deal with, but Dr. House and Dr. Zimmerman were both gone now, which meant that the little admin things, not to mention the med students, were sort of left to their own devices. Rollie was a great doctor and he took good care of things, but if he ended up running the clinics and the med students all by himself, he was going to give himself a heart attack.

She wasn't sure what the answer was, but she liked Rollie and she'd rather he didn't need a triple bypass for so many reasons that had nothing to do with the lack of an ICU or cardiology ward. Maybe she should talk to him about it. She knew he'd be in the second clinic at this time of day, so she strolled down from the compound and walked in, hoping he wasn't in the middle of stitching someone's knee or something.

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Rollie is, in fact, out back in the garden making sure the medicinal plants are still flourishing; they might be able to get medications by other means now, but Rollie doesn't trust much on the island and that means he stays as self-sufficient as he can.

It's good that Cam doesn't look like she's come down with any urgency, because Rollie needs to wash and sterilize before he can handle anything medical.

"Business or pleasure?" he says, standing up and brushing dirt off his hands.

That was marijuana, among other things. The US's drug laws had never made much sense to her, probably because she'd had to try to enforce them, but it was still a little startling to see it grown in the open. Still, if you needed a calmative, that worked really well.

"Business, unfortunately," she said. "Not my own, though. No doctoring required, so feel free to keep working if you want."

She'd even help, if he needed it. She was dressed to wander the island, not work in the clinic, which meant slacks and sensible sandals. Still stylish, of course, but sensible.

"It's not really that time sensitive," says Rollie, giving her a mild shrug as he glances over at the garden. Nothing's being overrun or eaten by vermin at the moment, anyway. "Just something that gets done in between all the other things. What can I do for you?"

"At the moment is the key word when it comes to gardens, I think," Cam joked lightly. She hadn't really had anything but a potted tomato in DC, but that didn't mean she'd never had a garden.

"I'm worried about the clinic," she said directly. "We've had a lot of staff disappearances lately."

"That's pretty much the circle of life around here," says Rollie, suppressing any other reactions he might have to the indisputable fact of disappearances. "Are we really short right now?"

It was pretty amazing that people built lives knowing that there might be a disappearance any moment, but she suspected it was like being a perpetual police officer - you never knew which day was your last, so you just went for it and lived life as you could.

"A little, yeah," she replied. "Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. House are both gone. They were in charge of the clinic and the med students, respectively, as far as I can tell. Which leaves you as the only person in charge of anything."

"God help us all," says Rollie. "There was a time I wasn't sure I should be in charge of my own life." But when it comes to his clinic, he's always been the final authority. Very few other doctors came to the island knowing much about medicine outside of a modern facility; it might not be as much of an issue anymore, but they're still far from a major hospital. "Things starting to fall apart yet, or is this a preemptive strike?"

"Pre-emptive strike," Cam admitted. "I'm not sure if I've mentioned yet, but at home I was the director of my team. Worrying about whether things are happening the way they should is something that comes naturally to me. And I don't want anything to happen to you if you have to try to run everything."

She was sure he'd be better at it than he said, but she understood not thinking one could even run one's own life. She'd had those days.

"You're management?" says Rollie. "Shit, take on everything you like, no one's gonna fight you on the paperwork. Probably. Even when we do have an abundance of doctors, they're usually more interested in cutting people open than managing anything."

She had to laugh at that particular judgement of management. Her particular brand of management, in which she cut people open and did paperwork, was not always the way it went and she knew it.

"Well, I do like being an actual doctor more than I like pushing papers, but I understand your meaning. I was the coroner for New York City at one point. Now that was too much paperwork. It fought me more than I fought it."

"Once upon a time I might've had that life," says Rollie. "Not coroner, not New York City, but a life that kept me in a hospital somewhere, working my way up. And instead I fled the country for a decade."

"I considered that too," Cam admitted. "I think we all have, after a particularly bad spot in our lives. You actually did it, though. That takes guts."

Her flee the country moment had been after September 11, which she almost never talked about for various reasons. If people had lived through it, they got it. If they hadn't, explaining it was really not the easiest thing to do.

"I don't know about guts," admits Rollie. "I guess sometimes there are moments when the right choices for you are suddenly really clear. Mine turned out to be field medicine. Believe me when I say I'm happy to have someone else worry about administration, even part time."

She'd had those epiphany moments. They weren't always fun, but they were usually pretty clear. Rollie seemed to be saying pretty clearly that he didn't mind if she helped with the clinic, and that was good.

"How do you feel about handling the med students?" she asked next, since that was an important detail too.

Rollie thinks about that, scratching the back of his neck. "I've taken on a student before," he says, "who came to me personally for mentorship. But the central administration ought to go through the main clinic. How many do we have right now?"

"Four or five, I think," Cam said, mentally counting the names off in her head. "Officially, only one, but four or five that are interested in doing something with medicine."

Henry already shadowed Aidan, but the others didn't really have anyone to shadow right now.

"I'm still not your best bet to organise anything," he says, "but I can help out in that area, sure. As long as they don't mind a little field work. Frankly, everyone who works in medicine on the island should get a little experience with that."

"I tend to agree," Cam said. "Although I think we might also need a list of first responders, just in case. I mean, I can handle a gun and suture a laceration, but that's not normal."

"I do some work with the ITF, too," says Rollie. "I'm no soldier but I've spent more than enough time in war zones to know what's what."

"I've never been in a war zone, but I'd imagine it's not fun," Cam agreed. "It's important to have a known list of people who can deal with trauma in a dangerous situation. Didn't we have a giant squid attack or something? That's not ideal triaging time."

"More than one," says Rollie, "though hopefully we've seen the last of them. Squid seem to be a recurring peril here, which actually makes more sense than a lot of the stuff that happens."

"Squid at least are aquatic," Cam agreed. "Unlike the dinosaurs. And what was it, a large troll in the caves a few months ago? I thought I heard someone saying something about that."

She wasn't sure whether she should believe them, since trolls conjured up images of things with jewels in their navels and spiky hair.

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Clinic Ideas (for Rollie)

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