Hi, and: “Nope. You’re not the first nor the last person to try to weasel your way out of getting a checkup.”
This way of levering the professional responsibilities as an excuse to talk to him, a smokescreen to check in on what he’s really asking— well, it’s a tried-and-true technique, and that’s why it works. Stephen waves Mobius into the infirmary (clean, empty, they don’t have any long-term residents at the moment) and gestures for him to take a seat by the desk at the back.
It’s still a step down, becoming something more like a general practicioner and casting this broader net: now the Head Healer is attending to the everyday concerns of taking temperatures, measuring pulses, pressing his fingers to lymph nodes. He tries to tell himself that the banal, everyday nature of these checkups are a good thing, that it’s not a crisis or broken bones or contagious blood plagues,
but, still, perhaps some part of him does crave the crisis. It would scratch the itch for a puzzle to solve, adrenaline to keep him running. So Stephen’s often a little bored, going through the motions with this sort of thing— except, that as Mobius is finally shooed into the room, the doctor’s already craning his head to look at his hands as he retrieves a piece of paper.
“So. Any changes in the last five months?” he asks, dryly; they both know the change.
no subject
This way of levering the professional responsibilities as an excuse to talk to him, a smokescreen to check in on what he’s really asking— well, it’s a tried-and-true technique, and that’s why it works. Stephen waves Mobius into the infirmary (clean, empty, they don’t have any long-term residents at the moment) and gestures for him to take a seat by the desk at the back.
It’s still a step down, becoming something more like a general practicioner and casting this broader net: now the Head Healer is attending to the everyday concerns of taking temperatures, measuring pulses, pressing his fingers to lymph nodes. He tries to tell himself that the banal, everyday nature of these checkups are a good thing, that it’s not a crisis or broken bones or contagious blood plagues,
but, still, perhaps some part of him does crave the crisis. It would scratch the itch for a puzzle to solve, adrenaline to keep him running. So Stephen’s often a little bored, going through the motions with this sort of thing— except, that as Mobius is finally shooed into the room, the doctor’s already craning his head to look at his hands as he retrieves a piece of paper.
“So. Any changes in the last five months?” he asks, dryly; they both know the change.