Day Job [open!]

[Walter Jenkins]

[ooc: HEY. YOU. Do you have a sick kid? A kid who fell out of a tree? Who had a power mishap? Throw 'em here. And yes, they can make fun of Walter for being a male nurse, he has heard it allll before]

Walter really liked his job, all things considered. Working at Hammel made things infinitely more exciting, if a little baffling at times. The Institute was just pretty full of ridiculous mishaps, which made sense. Any place that had a concentrated group of teenagers would have their share of accidents. Kids with powers just made it more...creative? He supposed that was a good enough word to use as any.

But he had gotten used to it. So when someone came through the door--as someone always did every day without fail--Walter looked up with a smile already on his face.

"Hello, what seems to be the problem today?" It was an old line, but always a good place to start.

[Rhett Goddard]

Rhett was just coming out of his little "meeting" with Lani and, understandably, the first place he thought off to go was the infirmary. It was early morning and he wondered if there was going to be someone there, but as he got closer to it, his ESP let him know that his walk there had not been in vain.

He entered the room with a hand in his stomach and a quite noticeable inflammation on his face, more specifically, around his nose. Lani had punched him hard, and unfortunately Rhett couldn't be one of those who said "you should look at the other guy" as all he had managed to land on the other blonde was a punch to the nose that was very probably weaker than any of the ones Rhett received. Of course, he was not going to say anything about it. He had a perfectly good story if, or rather, when, he was asked.

"I hit my nose?" Rhett asked as he pointed at his face, thinking that it was probably obvious what he had come here for. "And my stomach as well, for that matter." He immediately sat in one of the chairs as he cleaned more blood from his nose. "I don't think it's broken, though." He touched his nose slightly. "I've had it broken before, I know what it feels."

[Walter Jenkins]

Walter, having admittedly seen worse, didn't react too much beyond a sympathetic wince, more for the student's benefit than his own. The teen's face was smeared with blood and he was leaning slightly to favor his stomach. But he was a tough kid. He seemed mostly exasperated than anything else. Since he'd already sat down, Walter ran a washcloth under warm water, wrung it out and handed it to him.

"Here you go," He said, "you can clean up with that, don't worry about getting it bloody." Once the student had done so, Walter was able to get a better look at his nose.

"No, you're right, it doesn't look broken at all, but I'm going to check it for breaks just in case, if that is all right with you." He always believed in letting his students know what was going on, instead of reaching for their face without any warning.

And, for the sake of polite conversation, he asked, "What's your name?"

[Rhett Goddard]

Rhett grabbed the cloth handed to him and proceeded to follow instructions. He rubbed the area around his nose very softly as the most minimum of contacts send waves of pain to his brain. He looked at it with every rub and understood clearly what the man had said about not worrying about getting it bloody: there was much more red than the blonde had initially expected. Mostly dry blood by now, but still more than he could have guessed.

"Hey, it's your job," Rhett nodded at the man as he asked permission to check his nose. "just be... OUCH!" He screamed slightly at the man's touch. "Gentle?"

That Lani surely knew how to throw a punch, but hey, at least Rhett managed to land one as well. He continued rubbing his nose slightly with the cloth even if it apparently wasn't necessary anymore, but realizing that he had walked through half the campus with a bloody face forced him to be a little more meticulous this time, even trying to look around, to no avail, for a nearby reflective surface.

"Rhett Allexander Goddard, nineteen, senior, allergic to penicillin." He decided to go ahead and say any information the doctor would need, which brought him to the question... "Why is the doctor covering the infirmary anyway?" His ESP would probably have answered his question before asking out loud, but it was certainly off after the adrenaline of his date with Lani wore off. "Since when is Hammel short on staff?"

[Walter Jenkins]

“Ah, sorry, it’s going to be sore.” Walter said apologetically. “It is definitely time for a cold pack. Gimme a second.” He stepped across the room to get a white package from a drawer. He cracked it and icy-cold spread through his fingers. “Here you go, try to rest it on the bridge of your nose, once you’ve cleaned up a bit. It will sting a lot, but it will help.”

“Nice to meet you, Rhett. Thanks for the information.” He jotted down a quick note in case Rhett needed a note out of class. “Hammel’s always short on medical staff nowadays.” Walter said with a smile. “Also, I’m just a nurse, so I don’t get to do the fancy doctor things.”

“Okay, so you mentioned that you had been hit in the stomach? Have you experienced any painful swelling? May I see?” The question of “how did this happen” was coming soon, but Walter had to make sure that nothing more serious hadn’t happened beyond a nasty bruise.

[Rhett Goddard]

((psst psst, sorry for how long this took. crazy long week and weekend and blabla write here more excuses ))

Sore was one subtle way to call it. Rhett continued to endure silently and gladly accepted the cold pack and placed it in his nose, hoping it would numb his face enough for him not to feel the pain anymore. All he had to do was take a breath and not complain for the coldness, which was considerably less bothering than the real pain anyway, so it was good.

"Nurse?" Rhett raised an eyebrow. He was having a bad day, but being a male nurse at his age, he was having one bad life. "I wish my face and body weren't aching so I could think of something awfully clever to say to that," He said as he pressed the ice to his nose. "but hey, I bet you've heard pretty much everything from 'that must be sad for you' to 'is your name Gaylord Focker too?'"

God did Rhett hated that movie. He couldn't remember at the moment why had watched it, probably Odion, but he had hated it as much as he had hated any other Ben Stiller movie. Scratch that. He had hated pretty much every comedy movie he had ever watched, this one was just extra bad for him.

"Have a blast." Rhett said as he showed his stomach to the man, dark red marks in the spot where Lani had hit him. "Since I my ESP is probably going to take the day off, I'm just gonna go ahead and ask," Rhett said blandly. "did Ben Stiller based his character off you or the other way around? Why a nurse?"

[Walter Jenkins]

Walter chuckled a little bit. "Yes, I guess you could say I've heard 'em all. It's all right, I think most of them are funny." It helped to have a bit of a sense of humor in those kinds of situations. And if he couldn't handle the slight bit of ridicule, then he wouldn't be a good fit for the job. While the gender expectations that nurse equaled woman and doctor equaled man made him a little disappointed, he didn't particularly blame the teenager.

"Ah, I've heard of those movies." Walter replied with a distracted laugh, inspecting the bruises. They were certainly deep, but Rhett didn't seem to have any unusual swelling, which was good. "I've never seen them, though. So I don't know."

The question of why a doctor instead of a nurse was a common one. "I like the people aspect of the job, which happens a lot less as a doctor," Walter replied. "That, and people are far more scared of doctors than they are of nurses." He didn't like the idea of frightening someone with just his job.

"All right." He straightened up. "Ice your side, obviously. Once your nose stops bleeding, it should heal up on his own." Walter looked a little more serious as he continued. "And I have to ask how you got these. Nobody has to get into any trouble yet, but I have to make sure there's no bullying happening."