Berthside Manner
A Transformers Prime FanFiction
"Okay Jack let's try this again," Arcee called out.
The blue Autobot strode exactly twenty paces to the west, shuttered her optics, and offlined her sensors. Several hundred meters away in a dry gully Jack lightly ran his fingers over the screen of a bulky handheld device. The surface lit up in response and began broadcasting a very specific signal. The human tossed the device into his backpack and shouldered a long coil of rope. He trotted up to the edge of a steep slope and began to scramble down.
He hit the bottom of the slope and scampered under a shallow ledge. He leaned against the sandstone and glanced at his watch.
"Five seconds, four, three, two, and go!" the lanky boy whispered into the night air.
On the desert flat above the blue Cybertronian's optics suddenly brightened. She scanned the area around her until she detected the signal the device was giving off. Arcee set off in the directions indicated by her sensors.
Below the seconds ticked slowly by as Jack waited for his partner to locate him. He shifted a little and rubbed his hands together. The clear desert air swirled around his feet and drew his warmth away into the night. Time seemed to stretch out. The human finally sat down on a boulder and pulled a book out of his back pack. The signal device gave off just enough light to read by. He had finished four chapters when his phone rang.
"Hey," he answered.
"Return to the starting point Jack," Arcee's voice sounded clipped and frustrated.
"Sure thing," Jack put the book and the signal device back in his bag and started up the slope.
"So, still not working right," he said as he came up to Arcee.
She was an impressive sight standing there in the moonlight. For being entirely made of metal her skin reflected very little of the full moon's glow. She'd explained to him once that the lack of reflection made her a more difficult target in battle. Here it gave her the appearance of some guardian spirit of the Paiute tribes that had long ago left their mark on the canyon walls. Two cerulean optics burning in the face of a form that blended into the desert stone.
"No, there's no avoiding it now," she growled. "The problem must be in my core programming interface. I'll have to go back and have Ratchet realign the entire matrix for this new tracking program."
"What exactly is the problem with that?" Jack asked as he loaded the gear back into her saddle bags and strapped on his helmet. "You told me yourself that he's the best medic you've ever known."
"And how much do you like going to the dentist?" Arcee asked archly.
"Touché," Jack said with a grin.
"What?"
"It means you scored a point," the human explained, "a phrase from the martial sport of fencing."
"Ah, I see. Arcee to base we need a ground bridge."
The green portal opened several yards away.
"You know you could always ask my mom to do it instead," Jack offered with a grin.
Arcee stopped dead and frowned down at him.
"Hey, I was just joking," he said quickly, feeling that sinking in his stomach he got whenever he offended someone he cared about. "You know, because she patched up Bee, but brain, I mean CPU, work is probably way different."
"Let June do it," the Cybertronian murmured thoughtfully as if she hadn't heard him.
"Are you coming back or not?" Ratchet's voice snapped over the comm. "We're burning energon here."
Jack saw Arcee flinch at the tone. Her faceplates grew thoughtful as they continued towards the portal.
"Let me get this straight. Arcee wants me to perform brain surgery on her?" June Darby stared up at the red and white Autobot certain she'd misheard.
"Her CPU; and it is hardly as complicated as you make it sound," Ratchet pointed out shortly. "You simply need to make sure the matrix readings are aligned properly. This will not be your first experience working with Cybertronian physiology. "
"Patching a mesh wound is one thing," the nurse said shaking her head. "This is orders of magnitude more complex."
"You are more than capable of handling it Nurse Darby," the mech dropped the human sized med scanned he'd made for her on the table beside the woman. "You need experience with something other than battle damage and accidents of irresponsible youth. Now chop-chop, Arcee has put this off far too long in any case."
Ratchet turned back to the consol; not dismissively, but as she had seen the doctors of her hospital do so many times. He was gladly handing over a heavy responsibility to a competent nurse.
The woman hefted the scanner and strode over to where Arcee and Jack were sitting. The boy was perched on the Cybertronian's leg leaning back against her chestplates absorbed in a thick book. June smiled at the picture they made. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.
"Arcee," she called out. "Ready for your realignment?"
The blue fembot glanced up and smiled eagerly.
"So did you decide to do it?" she asked the human.
"Well more like the Doctor decided I'd do it," June replied ruefully holding up the scanner.
Arcee shot a knowing look in the direction of the brusque medibot, and smiled down at the woman.
"Look, if you're uncomfortable…" she offered.
"No, I am confident that I can do this so step right this way please," June put on her best comforting smile and led the cyclebot into the lab.
"Thank you for doing this June," Arcee said quietly as she lay down on the med berth. "It's not that I don't trust Ratchet completely, it's just that this procedure is a little," the Autobot hesitated as she searched the English language for an appropriate word. "Personal," the cyclebot finally decided on.
"Ah, should I leave then?" Jack asked a little nervously.
"Only if you want to Jack," the Autobot replied. "But I'd kind of like to have you here."
The young man nodded and perched on a counter out of his mother's way.
"I'm glad to think that you would trust me for such a personal procedure,"' the woman said soothingly. "All right let's get started. Please enter dormancy phase beta and disengage your dorsal cranial armor plates."
The nurse held her breath and mentally reviewed what she'd told Arcee. It all clicked with the protocols Ratchet had been teaching her. The Cybertronian suddenly lay very still. The constant inner hum quieted as various mechanisms went dormant. Seven small plates just above and behind her left audio receptor pulled up and out revealing an intricate mesh work of wires and pathways. A web of glowing blue surrounded a rainbow of flickering lights.
"Beautiful," June whispered as she stared at the complex network underneath the outer armor. When she caught a glimpse of their inner workings like this there was no doubt in the woman's mind that the Autobots were living beings.
She shook herself and refocused on the task at hand. The nurse carefully ran the device over the exposed area, double checking each frequency.
"Well, it looks like you are a perfectly healthy Cybertronian," she quipped lightly to her patient. "There's just that odd variance in the synchronization of the new programming and the old. Now I'm going to attach the transcircuitry stimulator."
Carefully, step by step the human explained what she was doing to her patient. It was as much to calm her own nerves and focus her mind as it was to keep Arcee informed. As she grew more comfortable with the procedure June began interspacing the strictly clinical observations with more personal comments, just as she did in the emergency ward, soothing and comforting the patient.
"There we go. It looks like a simple energon flux issue as predicted. I'm deadening the pain circuits to the area now," Nurse Darby gently touched the neural deactivator to the area and watched as the light pattern subtly shifted. A glance at the scanner told her that the area was completely numb, though Ratchet had warned her that with this kind of procedure some discomfort was unavoidable.
Sure enough when she attached the phase synchronizer there was a subtle shift in the Autobot's faceplates. Arcee's optics brightened briefly and the delicate gears around them seemed to tense. June kept up the soothing talk but felt her heart lurch at the sight.
Jack watched the procedure closely. His attention torn between sympathy for his partner and unabashed pride in his mother. She looked so calm and collected. 'Yeah and what does your mom do?' 'Oh, just helps heal the two story tall alien warriors that are currently protecting our planet.' Jack smiled at the imagined conversation. Maybe one day he'd get to have it.
"Jack," his mother's tone of voice brought the young man immediately alert. It was that perfectly calm obey or die tone that every child recognizes. "I need the plate separator."
Jack glanced around the lab frantically.
"It's by your left hand," she pointed out.
The young man leapt to hand her the device. He watched in fascination as she carefully closed the seven plate juncture.
"All right Arcee," she called out. "That's a wrap. Initiate reactivation sequences."
With a sound like a metal sigh the Autobot stiffened and then relaxed. She swung her legs down over the side of the berth and stood up.
"So, how do you feel?" June asked.
"And how did your apprentice do this time?"
Ratchet jumped slightly at the deep voice sounding behind him and wondered, not for the first time how a mech Optimus's size moved so quietly.
"She preformed perfectly as expected," the medic huffed. "As if there was ever any doubt."
The leader of the Autobots smiled at his old friend's back. From the monitors it was clear that the red and white mech had been minutely monitoring every step of the procedure.
"I am pleased to hear that," Optimus said sincerely.
Ratchet stiffened at a subtle tone in the Prime's voice. He turned to face his leader with a scowl.
"But…?" he prompted.
Optimus looked at him searchingly and the gruff old bot shifted awkwardly on his peds.
"Ratchet, I have no doubt that if you say Nurse Darby is competent to perform the procedure she is. But you have no other duties at the moment and this is a fairly complex operation. I am curious as to why you are not observing from the lab itself, instead of covertly from here."
The medibot leaned back against the consol and rubbed his optics ridge tiredly.
"Optimus, it is no secret that my berth-side manner could stand improvement," he began. "I can patch up almost any injury that comes in off the battle field. But even before the war I always tried to turn things like this over to more, let's say more pleasant tempered colleges," the medic said.
"Things like this?" the Prime inquired.
"This procedure, while simple to effect, has a serious drawback," Ratchet explained. "The subject must be kept completely immobile and yet entirely aware during the realignment."
The red and blue mech nodded his understanding.
"You can imagine why Arcee has been putting this off for as long as possible; trying to repair the misalignment internally. Having, even a trusted, medic poking around in you CPU subsystems while in forced stasis lock is unnerving to say the least. Well, in this case the small unintimidating size of Nurse Darby is a distinct asset, as is her naturally pleasant temperament and well developed berth-side manner. In addition Arcee is deliberately attempting to befriend her since the polarity gauntlet incident."
Optimus smiled as his old friend finally ended his speech.
"I see, so for Arcee's sake you abstained from hovering over Nurse Darby."
"Yes, and as I knew she would the human performed admirably," Ratchet said reaching down to pick up a tiny tray holding a variety of human dishes. He selected a metal container full of a light green liquid and carefully placed it between two open panels on his forearm.
"Ratchet?" Optimus observed the strange proceedings with raised brows.
"Oh, tea for Nurse Darby," the medibot said dismissively. "It calms her nerves after a stressful procedure. Also humans seem to share the Cybertronian proclivity for discussing work over a drink. This is the most efficient way to heat it to the desired temperature." Ratchet indicated the teapot clamped firmly against a secondary energon line.
Optimus watched the medic stride out to meet the nurse. She and her son were headed for the human's living area. The woman walked eagerly up the stairs and sat down at a table while Jack gathered up his backpack. Ratchet carefully set the dink and its accoutrements on the surface and waited for Mrs. Darby to serve herself. Once she had settled in the medic struck up an animated discussion. Jack leaned in to claim one of the edibles on the tray.
Looking at the scene from across the silo some old memory stirred in the Prime's circuits; a faint whiff of altered lubricants and spilled energon. Macadam's Old Oil House, he realized. Something about the two humans interacting with the Cybertronian reminded of the old dive in Iacon, and a pair of organics he'd kept as pets for a short time. Arcee strode over and claimed Jack to run yet another test of the offending tracking system. Bulkhead roared into the silo with Miko's music blasting out of his speakers. The computer signaled his comm. with a message from Fowler. Optimus turned to the task at hand and the faint but pleasant memory faded back into the recesses of time.