Sally Po was not pleased to be informed that a former Gundam pilot was going to be cluttering up her infirmary, but she kind of relaxed when she heard it wasn't me. God, how many times do I have to apologize for the aquarium incident? [1] She still wasn't pleased, though.
"What's the prob, Sal?" I asked her over the vidphone the next morning. "Quatre's quiet and good. What are you getting all bent out of shape for?"
"The 'prob', Duo, is that he's got 28 sisters and 40 soldiers that like to check up on him frequently, not to mention you four. That's a rather large entourage for me to accommodate." She snapped. Yes, Sally snapped at me. I'm hurt.
"Sally, the sisters and the Maguanacs don't know about this." I told her, and I could almost feel the sheer relief coming off her. "We told them he's off visiting some friends somewhere and will be back in about two weeks. Jeez, don't you think we thought about that?"
Now, I love the Winner ladies to bits and Rashid and the guys are just plain cool, but honestly, the thought of having 68 worried family members plus assorted husbands, wives and kids tromping through the house fussing over Quatre was enough to give me nightmares.
"Okay, so then it's just you four." She said with a little bit of a smirk.
"Yeah, and Rufus."
The smirk disappeared. "Who is Rufus?"
I forgot. Sally hadn't been by to visit lately, so they hadn't been introduced. I gave a whistle and pretty soon 80 pounds of very happy Old English sheepdog came bounding into the room. He put his front paws in my lap and stood up to lick my face when I slung a chummy arm around his shoulders. "This is Rufus. Say hi, boy!"
Rufus gave a ringing bark and Sally dropped her head into her hands and started to whimper.
December 25, AC 199Could this crisis have possibly come at a more inconvenient time? I mean, it was a week till the Bicentennial Celebration and the Preventers were overworked and understaffed enough as it was, then I find myself with a handful of Quatre Reberba Winner to deal with.
Don't get me wrong, though; I adore the kid. I think he's all that and a bag of chips, at least when he's in his right mind. He isn't, though, and it doesn't have anything to do with something as simple as Zero System this time.
When I first saw his medical charts and the X-ray, I immediately ordered an MRI and a spinal tap, and I was NOT happy with what I saw. Quatre's neurotransmitters were royally fucked up, to borrow one of Duo's terms. His entire brain chemistry was in an uproar, and what was worse was that I didn't entirely understand how they were fucked up. His serotonin levels were so low that it was a wonder he was functioning at all, but there were other abnormalities that only showed up in Alzheimer's patients and full-blown schizophrenics and OCD sufferers—all at once. I know from his medical records that Quatre never showed any pre-disposition for any of those conditions, not that they occur that often in this day and age anyway. So how the hell did his brain suddenly decide to go FUBAR on him?
The obvious answer is, of course, that foreign object in his skull. That thing is going to have to come out pronto. I'm scheduling surgery for tomorrow morning, very early.
[break]
Oh God. Duo just called. He's coming by to give us Christmas dinner and fleas.
Don't ask. Okay? For the sake of my slowly unraveling sanity, just don't ask.
December 25, AC 199Cajun goose isn't all that bad, actually. I knew Duo had improvised a lot with the recipe, but when you scraped all the char off the skin, slice it thinly and make a sandwich out of it with cranberry sauce, it wasn't bad at all. Sally seemed to like it also—she munched down two of the things while we pored over the data she had gathered on Quatre.
I cannot claim to understand all the medical details, but Sally had drawn me aside because of my hacking abilities.
"Heero, part of this thing is silicon, so I'm thinking it might be a computer chip of some kind. Do you recognize any circuitry or anything?" She asked between bites of sandwich.
"I don't see any circuitry, per se. There's no pattern on the surface. In fact, it looks kind of corroded."
She wiped mayonnaise from her upper lip. "That's what bugs me. I can't quite get a grip on what the thing is actually made of. It seems to be partly silicon and partly organic, but I've never seen its like." She sat back in her desk chair with a sigh. "Damn. I hate having to root around in Quatre's head to get it out, but I'm going to have to. I have an extremely bad feeling about this."
"Sally, you do what you have to do." I put my hand on her arm because Duo says that's what you do when you want to reassure someone. "We trust your judgment."
She turned her head to me and gave me a smile that made me feel warmer and more relaxed. Duo says that that is a sign of a genuine smile rather than a forced one. "Thanks, Heero. That means a lot." She straightened up in her chair. "So, shall we join the party?" She inclined her head to the infirmary, where Duo and Wufei and Trowa and Rufus were visiting Quatre. "I'm sure they left us plenty of treats."
My mouth turned up at the corners involuntarily. I think I was giving her a genuine smile. "Sure, Sally. Lead the way."
December 25, AC 199This is just going to be a quick entry since the guys pretty much wore me out. I'll get the salient points across as quick as I can before Sally's sleeping pills knock me out.
1) Today is Christmas. According to Duo, we should celebrate friends and family with food and gifts and visits. Well, we did that to the best of our abilities since I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything, but my friends were all there, including Rufus. I still don't think I can talk to them, but it was nice to have them around.
2) There's a chip in my head that's messing with my brain chemistry.
3) The chip is what was messing with my self-preservation instincts. Or, to put it bluntly, it was what was making me want to kill myself.
4) Sally will be removing the chip in a few hours. It will either cure me or kill me.
I need to sleep now…
====================================================[1] This is a bow to my favorite GW fanfic of all time, 'Reunion' by Mel & Christy. You can read the original scene here: http://4dw.net/deathndragon/gwfic/Reunion_3.html if you scroll down about 3/4ths of the way down…or just search for the word 'fish'. 5x2, 1xR warnings apply, though.