Unreasonable Addiction
Chapter 2 - Surprise
By Yumegari and LRH
The next day was made better only by the fact that security had managed to screen most of the reporters out. The kid was no better, and there was signs of possible paralysis in his face and neck as well, which ground relentlessly at Clair. She picked up the phone twice, meaning to call the research center that had her drug and tell them she was going to use it, like it or not, but she didn't. She also didn't meet with the boy's family when they came to visit him, bringing their own media circus along. She did her job as quietly as she could until her shift ended and she could leave. Grateful, she drove home through the pre-rush-hour traffic, turning into smaller and smaller streets until she reached the lane that led her home. With a sigh of relief, she pulled into her side of the garage as if it were sanctuary, and went inside. She dropped her briefcase on the kitchen table, shed her coat into a chair, and turned around to go into the living room.
She stopped at the sight that greeted her. The curtains had been drawn, leaving the room dim, but she could still see at least the shape of the large individual who sat on her couch, elbows propped on his knees and fingers folded before his face. The big black longcoat was something of a dead giveaway, as was the sleek black hair. He didn't move, but said, only, strangely slowly, "Hello, Clair."
She stopped dead, one hand finding the frame of the arch for support. "Octavius," she said dully. "What are you doing here?"
He didn't move, but spoke with that same strange, deliberate slowness. "I came to find you. You knew this would happen, didn't you?"
She nodded stiffly. "Eventually. I"m not as good as hiding as the FBI would like me to be." Her hand was only a few inches from the light switch, and she flipped it, throwing the room into warm lamp-light, banishing every shadow except for the one sitting on her sofa.
His eyes narrowed behind the shades at the light, but otherwise he didn't move With the lights on, she noticed he looked almost exactly the same as he had the last time she'd seen him, except that his face seemed drawn. His actuators were no-where to be found, but propped against his knee was what she could have sworn was a black walking stick. He regarded her silently before speaking again, just as slowly. "Oh, you hid very well. That isn't what I figured you knew would happen."
"You want another treatment, don't you?" she asked. "You've done all the damage again." She examined him cautiously.
"So very convenient for you to stand here and blame me for this," he replied, anger speeding his words a little and letting show a slight slurring. "I'll have you know ... I was fine until ... two days ago."
"What happened two days ago?" she asked, pushing away from the doorway and stepping into the room.
"Hnnn..." That thoughtful sound again. His speech resumed its slow, deliberate pace. "Two days ago, during an ... encounter with the arachnid, I experienced some sort of ... seizure. When I came round again, I realized I'd lost most of the function to my right side, and that my vision was blurred." His tone grew bitter. "Now I can barely speak properly, I can barely walk, much less fight. I'll be dead within a month if this continues, by whatever cause."
"It sounds like a stoke," she said concernedly, coming over to his side to look closely at his face. "You're lucky to be alive." She reached up to take his glasses off, so she could compare his pupils. "How's your sense of balance?"
He hissed in pain as she removed the sunglasses, but attempted to open his eyes again, the left one making it further open than the right. The pupils were all but invisible against the black of his irises and unnaturally large. "It's ... serviceable. Only just." His right hand dropped and hung draped over his knee, almost useless.
She checked the dilation and put the glasses back. Her fingers walked down his face, checking muscle tone, and then she picked up his right hand, moving the fingers. "You walked in? How did you get here like this?"
The muscle tone had survived somewhat, mainly because the incident had been so recent. His right eye drooped almost halfway shut, though, and she could tell the loss of mobility to his face was what slurred his words. "If you must know, I took a flight here to Seattle and then a cab here to your residence," he replied drily. "The flight was interminable and the cabdriver only spoke Swahili and reeked of cigarettes from a mile away."
She got a sudden image him in coach, sitting between a snoring fat man and a woman with a squalling infant and had to bite her lip. "Nice to know that our airport security is on top of things. You left the, eh, the arms in New York? Here, squeeze my hand." She put her right hand into his. "As hard as you can. I need to test its strength."
"Of course I did, that's how I managed to get here. Without them or the goggles, I'm barely recognizable, after all," he replied, the fingers of his right hand curling around hers and squeezing, barely tightly enough to be felt. He looked down at it, brows meeting.
Her brow furrowed. "I want to get you in for an MRI," she said, trying to figure out how she would do that. She pinched his fingertip. "Can you feel that? Pain or pressure?"
"Hnnn. Do tell me how you plan to do that." He watched as she pinched the tip of his index finger. "Only just," he said. "It's dulled."
"If they didn't recognize you in a New York airport," she pointed out. "They're not likely to recognize you in a Seattle hospital. Two days is a dangerous amount of time to leave a stroke untreated." She frowned, setting his hand back on his knee. "Can you stand? Come on, I want to get you help as soon as I can."
He growled quietly, the first time she'd heard him do that since she found him in her house, and grasped the walking stick with his left hand, hauling himself to his feet a little unsteadily. He shook her hands from him and started for the door, slowly, right leg dragging slightly, his right arm curled inward a little so as to avoid it hanging and looking ridiculous. He made a shuffling progress toward the door, hunched forward slightly in a manner that told her he was far too used to counterbalancing the weight of those actuators.
Watching his halting gate anxiously, she scribbled a note on the whiteboard by the garage door Thing came up, working late and opened it for him, going out to empty her cluttered passenger seat. She pushed the seat back as far as it would go, and stepped back to dig her keys out of her purse when her cell phone rang from the dash of the car.
He paused outside the car, regarding it and her cellular, slowly bringing his right hand up to rest on the roof of the vehicle.
She looked at the phone as well, then grabbed it, checked the number of the caller, and switched it off, her face paling slightly. "Come on," she said shortly, getting in the driver's side. "Just get in. Two hours was too long to leave this, you need treatment."
He stuffed himself into the car, noticing that at least the seat was far back enough for his long legs and his walking stick, and settled in, watching her as she climbed in, as well.
She pulled out and headed back into the city, considering their options as they crossed the long bridges. "We can admit you as a John Deer. If I'm pushing you through admissions, they're not going to ask too many questions."
"Mmm," he said, nodding. "It would probably be preferable to using my name. I was wondering how you planned to circumvent that little difficulty." He rubbed his right shoulder absently and watched the buildings go by.
"I think even here they'd catch that," she agreed, thinking as she took the familiar exit. "Just look as lost and pathetic as possible."
He made a sound that could possibly be mistaken for a laugh. "Lost and pathetic? I'll try..."
"I'm not going to be able to do all of the work myself, and someone will probably ask you a lot of questions. Just, don't answer them." She shot him a glance. "You're good at that, if I remember right."
"A dig..., probably one I deserve, I suppose," he answered vaguely, still watching the scenery. "I'm at least lucid enough to maintain secrecy, if that's what you're wondering."
"Good." She pulled into the hospital's parking garage and parked. Getting out, she ran over to the elevator and got one of the wheelchairs that was always left there, bringing it back to his side of the car. "This will be easier for you," she offered.
"Nonsense," he harrumphed, hauling himself slowly out of the car. "I'll do just fine on my own--" he lost his balance and nearly fell, but caught himself just in time on the frame of the chair. He breathed for a moment. "On second thought..." he admitted, and seated himself, the walking stick between his knees and his right arm curled on his lap.
She frowned, a little surprised. She hadn't expected him to accept. It was more than a little worrying. Grabbing her purse and looping it over her shoulder, she pushed him into the elevator, taking him up to the main floor. Nora in admissions looked at her in surprise when she came to the desk. "I thought you went home, Clair. Governor Roth and his crowd are still here."
Clair shook her head, getting an admissions sheet and beginning to fill it out. "I found a guy on my way home. I haven't been able to get much from him, but I think he's had a stroke. I'm admitting him as a John Deer."
Nora looked over her shoulder at Octavius, then whispered loudly to Clair. "You brought him here yourself? He looks dangerous, Clair. And he's like eight times as big as you are."
Dangerous? Oh, if only she knew... But it was advantageous to keep up the act. Lost and pathetic. "Nnnh," He said, letting his eyes slip shut and his head drop forward. "Miss... where am I?" he mumbled. Truth be told, it wasn't as much of an act as Clair would be led to believe. He was becoming terribly tired again.
"He's really out of it," Clair assured her friend, glancing at Octavius. "I just want to get him upstairs for an examination and an MRI. Is there an empty bed anywhere?"
Nora checked her charts and nodded. "Room 719's free, and the MRI's not taken for another hour, if you want to get that done first. Who do you want for attending?"
Clair thought about it. "Dr. Heights. When he's available." The old doctor wouldn't notice too much if one of his scheduled visits was missing. "I'm not on the clock, so I'll stay with him for now."
She waved away Nora's offer of an orderly, and pushed Octavius into the other elevator, heading up. She leaned against the wall. "So far so good."
"Good," he muttered. "If I'd thought I'd have a career as an actor, I wouldn't have become a scientist."
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and Clair rolled him out, turning left and heading for the MRI lab. She'd hoped to find it empty, but three techs were lounging around, waiting for something to do. "I know this scan isn't scheduled," she said, drawing the most senior aside. "But it's a rush job. If my diagnosis is right, his stroke was two days ago. I need to make a definite assessment before I can treat it, and time is of the essence."
"Got it, Doc," nodded the tech. He smiled at Octavius, and took his wheelchair. "We'll take good care of you, fella."
"Will you, now?" Octavius muttered. "I think I'll be the judge of that."
The tech just smiled and wheeled him into the examining room. Inside the examining room stood a machine that looked like nothing more than a huge, white metal cylinder with a table inside the hole, sticking out like a tongue. This was the structure to which the tech brought Octavius, turning the wheelchair so that he faced the machine at something of 45-degree angle to the table, locking its wheels. Then the tech circled round the chair and tried to help its occupant to stand, receiving a growl of "Don't touch me," and something of a shove, though since it was done with his right hand, the tech didn't go far. Leaning heavily on the stick, Octavius patted a hand along the table's length before forcing himself up onto it and lying down, his head poking into the circle.
"All righty," the tech said cheerfully. "Looks like we're under orders to take pictures of the inside of your head, which shouldn't be too hard as long as you lie perfectly still. Otherwise it'll blur the image and we'll be here all day. Don't think ya want that, huh?" The tech handed him a small device with a button on it. "Call button. Just press it if you start getting claustrophobic. You'd be surprised how many people start panicking in this thing." There was a clicking and the table retracted further into the hole until he was inside it up to his waist. "It's gonna be kinda noisy, just to let you know."
Clair watched through the windows, leaning over a junior tech's shoulder so she would be able to see the monitor when it started receiving images. She had her suspicions about the nature of Octavius' stroke, but she needed the MRI to confirm it before she started any treatment.
As he lay inside the machine, clunking and banging noises could be heard, as of metal slamming against metal. Movement of parts, more banging, all at different speeds and for different durations. It started to get terribly dull, as he'd already ascertained its workings in the first minute or so. Magnetic Resonance Imaging, after all, was pretty self-explanatory, resonant waves as a result of the striking together of magnets created an image of whatever was caught in the crossfire of these waves. Ho, hum. His eyes closed and he started to drift off to sleep.
Clair stared avidly at the screen as the images began to come in, pale-glowing patterns. The tech whistled. "Where'd you find this guy, Dr. Holmes? He's got the densest structure I've ever seen. And look at these bright spots, there." He pointed to the cerebellum and the parietal lobe, which stood out immediately. "Some hyperactivity there, and scarring." He looked out the window at Octavius. "Weird."
Clair tapped her fingers discouragingly on the desk. "We're not here to speculate. None of that is threatening his life. The stroke is. Now where, ah, there is it." The clot finally showed, bright white and nestled more or less where she'd expected it; between the motor and sensory cortexes on Octavius's left side.
"Textbook," she said casually, although the sight of it made her rather anxious. It was big, and the area of atrophied tissue around it was extensive. "An ischemic stroke in between the cortexes. I can put him on t-PA to dissolve the clot, although there's not much I can do for the existing damage. Bring him out. I've got a bed for him up on 7."
The tech looked though the window. "Looks like he dozed off in there," he observed before leaving the room to extend the table-like surface and prod the patient awake. It took a moment, but eventually Octavius came out of it and blinked up at the tech, his expression growing sour as he recognized the person standing over him. He forced himself up with one hand and rather shakily to his feet. As it had been doing for the last two days, this served to do nothing more than anger him. To think, Otto Octavius, the feared Doctor Octopus, was now stuck in a hospital in Seattle and hobbling about like an eighty-year-old. It was limiting, and anything that limited Otto Octavius only got him angry. He'd come to expect himself to accept no limits, nothing that could possibly stand in his way. He killed or destroyed what stood in his way and now that thing was the one thing he couldn't destroy--his own body. It was an incredibly irritating thought. A thought that created a mood that had him seated in the wheelchair and growling at the tech for even coming near him. The tech, for his part, delivered the patient to Clair as quickly as he could.
Clair took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed him back down the hall towards the elevators. "If you don't tone down the "Don't mess with me" attitude," she whispered. "Someone is going to recognize you. We have news here too, you know."
"You're the one who wanted me to become more human," he harrumphed a little cryptically.
"And you're very human at the moment. Giant blood clot and all. You should have gone for treatment immediately. It was an ischemic stroke," she explained. "Right between your sensory and motor cortexes. Not as bad as it could have been, but still dangerous."
"Where would I have gone, you tell me that," he grumbled. "Any hospital in New York I could have walked into would have probably had me shot on sight, oath or no oath."
"You still don't trust people, I see," she said, calling the elevator. "You could have tried just this, coming in as a John Deer. Without your arms, they probably wouldn't shoot first anyway." She shook her head. "Which may be the oddest sentence I've said today."
He was about to ask who would believe a person checking himself in as a John Doe, but he realized a little belatedly that he could have simply feigned amnesia. This angered him further that he hadn't been able to think of it himself, and he simply growled something about hindsight being 20/20....
"I know the feeling," she said as the elevator arrived. She punched the buttons for the sixth and seventh floors, and they got off at the sixth, which was quiet and nearly abandoned. "We're leaving," she explained, heading to the other set of elevators at the opposite side of the floor. "One of the techs noticed more oddities about your MRI than the stroke, and I don't want to still be here if anyone asks questions. I just need to get the t-PA from downstairs."
"You insisted I come here, and now you're insisting I go?...." there was a pause. "What oddities?" he asked, sounding vaguely curious. He turned to look back at her.
"You needed the MRI," she defended herself. "It could have been a hemorrhagic stroke, which would have required a whole other treatment. I didn't intend for you to stay here, at any rate." She took a corner, then another without answering his second question, and called the other elevator.
"I grow tired of this runaround," he grumbled, facing forward again with the air of one who knows that, for the time being, anyway, he'd been defeated. But only this once.
"I'm just trying not to say I told you so," she said as they went down, back to the ground floor. "There's a lot of damage in your parietal lobe and your cerebellum, the parts responsible for spatial orientation and coordination."
"Is there, now?" came his reply. "Stands to reason..." But he said nothing further, gazing off into the distance in thought.
She sighed, listening to the rumble of the slow elevator. "If any of this ever gets public, I'm in deep. I'm going to heal you, when I failed with the senator's son."
"You didn't simply use your serum?" he asked, only half-interestedly, as it appeared he was dozing again.
"It's not been approved for public use yet," she said disgustedly. "Testing and retesting, trying to see what its limits are. I had to use tried-and-true methods on him, and look where it got him! His Wernick's is still so messed up that he can't recognize his own mother."
"'Not approved for public use?'" Octavius echoed, snapping awake and turning to look at her. "That's it? You let a little thing like bureaucracy stand in your way? Let it limit you? You allow it to stop you doing what you're obviously meant to do?"
"Hey, I'm under observation every minute I'm inside a patient's head," she snapped back. "If I used it, I'd lose my license and never be allowed to help anyone, ever again. That would stop me from doing what I am meant to do. And until an hour ago, I was in hiding. I couldn't even bring up a controversial issue, because it might get my picture in the paper. I haven't been able to participate in the research on my serum, because someone convinced the FBI that my life was in danger, and it would be too much of a risk to let Dr. Clair Holmes work on the Clair Watson Project."
He shook his head and turned to look forward again. "You've already failed if you allow others to control you in such a fashion."
"It's the price I pay for living a conventional life," she shrugged. Then she smiled. "But it's not like I'm not doing any research at all on it. I'm just not part of the project, and I can't publish."
"What, you conduct it independently?" he asked.
"Mmhm," she nodded. "No more human testing, of course, but I've been working on refining the process. You can't weed out the side effects, though." She grimaced, remembering that. "They're just what happens when you inject what amounts to a stimulant straight into the brain. And I've been seeing how drastic a cure it can effect." She grinned excitedly. "I haven't found a limit yet."
"Samples can only do so much. What will you do when continuation of your testing necessitates a human subject?" He asked as the elevator doors opened, revealing the first floor.
"I've got one, don't I?" she murmured, smiling as she pushed him out to the waiting room. "Wait here," she said politely. "I'll go get that medicine for you, and I'll be right back." She nodded to the on-duty as she passed, and got a nurse to let her into the ER's meds locker. Which was technically against the rules, but it was a rule broken so often as to be unremarkable. She collected the vial of t-PA and a box of disposable syringes and was back out in only a few minutes. Nora was curious, but Clair put her off, explaining that the homeless man (for so the John Deer had turned out to be, in a more lucid moment, she explained) wanted to go to a different hospital, and she was giving him a ride.
Octavius sat in the lobby and waited as Clair ran off to fetch medication. Crowds. He always hated crowds. It made him scowl just thinking about it, and he did so, his head dropping slightly as it had a tendency to do when he was in a very heavy scowl, the lower half of his face disappearing behind the opened but still high collar of his longcoat. A blond fellow with a cast on his arm walked past, glanced at him, then did a horrified double-take. "HOLY SHIT!" he screamed in a New York accent, pointing at Octavius with his good hand. "IT'S DOCTOR OCTOPUS!"
The entire lobby fell dead silent.
Clair's heart skipped, and she ran into the waiting room, hoping to keep all hell from breaking loose. The last thing Octavius needed right now was to be taken into custody. She couldn't help him there.
Octavius' grip tightened on his walking stick and his eyes widened. He leaned back in the wheelchair. He seriously considered making a run for it. His eyes darted about the room, taking in the exits, their distance, the amount of time it would take to reach said exits, the probability of having to kill anyone on the way--
"Idiot," the large, dark-haired man next to the blond grumbled, smacking the other against the back of his head. "What the hell would Doctor Octopus be doing in a hospital in Seattle?"
"Dude, look at that scowl! That longcoat thing! That's Doctor Octopus, I'm tellin' ya!"
"Oh yeah, if that's Doc Ock, where are his tentacles, huh?" the second demanded, dragging his friend away. "Shoulda locked you in the mental ward when we had the chance, ya headcase..."
Clair breathed a little easier as she joined Octavius, watching to make sure the loud-mouth left with no more incident. "Sorry about that," she said in as close to a normal voice as she could manage, handing him the brown paper bag with the medication in it. "You get some loonies in every waiting room, just like old magazines. If it's any consolation, I don't think you look anything like that madman."
"Mmm," Octavius said, letting his eyes droop as he breathed a barely concealed sigh. "Heh... coulda bin famoush, there," he slurred as Clair wheeled him from the lobby. However, as they drew closer to her car, he turned and fixed her with a dubious stare. "Madman?'" he echoed.
"All I could think of," she said, hiding a smile poorly. "Except for maybe 'evil genius,' and that just seemed over the top." She opened his car door, but let him get in himself while she put the wheelchair back where she'd found it. "That was close, though."
"Too close," he said quietly, shifting into a more comfortable position in the seat. He looked at her as she climbed back in and blinked slowly. "As it appears that I am, for the moment, at your mercy," he said, his speech sounding a little fuzzy, "Where do you plan on taking me, now?"
"Home," she said, starting the car and looking over her shoulder to back out of the spot. "I have my lab there, in the back."
"Mmm," was his noncommittal reply. The runaround seemed to have tired him, and he fell silent, gazing out the window again. Things seemed strangely disconnected again, almost as though he expected himself to awaken any moment from what felt so much like a dream. He idly scratched at his hand, only a twinge registering in his mind that he barely felt it. The scenery flowed past him as she drove. His eyelids drooped further. Things felt so cottony as of late.
Clair glanced over at him as she drove. If he fell asleep, all the better. He probably needed it. She shook her head, baring her teeth in a silent laugh. Surreal. This was too surreal for words. Just like last time.
After a moment, his head slipped to the side to rest against the car door, stray strands of hair creating unsteady black lines along his face. That, in and of itself wouldn't have been evidence enough that he was asleep until a barely audible sound made itself heard, a quiet snoring.
She took her exit and drove straight home, noting with relief that the two-car garage was still empty as she parked on her side of it. Considering, she leaned over and tapped his shoulder. "Come on, wake up, we're here."
All she received for her troubles was a muffled "MMfh," and continued motionlessness on his part.
She thumbed the switch to close the garage doors and came around to his side, opening his door, careful not to let him fall out, since he was leaning against it. Shaking his shoulder, she persisted. "Come on, Doctor Octavius. I need you to wake up. I can't leave you out here in the garage, and I sure can't carry you."
"Mmmfhh.," he said again, and his eyes fluttered open behind the sunglasses. "Nnn. Damn," he muttered, sitting upright. "Last thing I need, falling asleep like that," he mumbled, his words barely intelligible. He managed to remove himself and his walking stick from the car and shuffle to the door.
She shut the car door and slipped into the house ahead of him, turning on lights and leading him down the hall to her dim, cluttered lab. One wall held a storage unit, and incubator, an autoclave, and a number of small cages; mostly empty, but one, the door open, held a sleeping cat. The rest of the room was filled with a long, stainless table nearly buried, by papers at one end, and by a powerful microscope, a long-limbed contraption with tiny appendages that resembled a spider bolted to the table, and its accompanying junk at the other. A long, low sofa filled the remainder of the space. She shoved another cat off the sofa and shooed it out the door, gesturing for him to sit down.
He dropped heavily onto it and looked about. Spotting the device with the limbs, he nodded toward it. "What's that?"
"It's a micro-surgery set up. With that, I don't need to wear those actuators of yours." She shook her shoulders to chase away the physical memory. "Which is good, seeing as I don't have a set of my own, which would really have set back my research."
He tilted his head to one side for a moment, and then hauled himself to his feet again, shuffling slowly toward the device in question. Too slowly. But he wasn't going to let that bother him for the moment, it wasn't as though there wasn't time. He stopped before it and leaned on the table, reaching out his hand to run it along one of the limbs.
She stood next to him, looking at the set-up proudly. She'd had to pull a lot of strings to get this, and she hadn't had very many to begin with. "You control it here," she explained, indicating a complicated set of joysticks and levers. "It's not as precise as the actuators were, but it's good enough for both the cellular and the surgical work I do."
His fingers ran along some of the controls and he gazed at it for a very long time. Almost as though he were blind (and with the sunglasses and walking stick, the image was a hard one to dispel), he ran hid fingers over almost every inch of the machine, as though committing it to memory. He mumbled something under his breath.
"Did you say something?" she asked, turning away to open the t-PA and read its dosage. She hadn't dealt with a stroke in a while- they usually went to the attending surgeon, not her. And dosing almost always went to a nurse, anyway. "Do you know how much you weigh?" she asked clinically.
"Hnn... no," he said. Ignoring the second question, he looked up. "Microsurgery.... Why do you need surgical tools if you do no human testing?" he asked, his left eyebrow quirking.
For an answer, she reached out and scratched the ear of the cat in the open cage. It shifted and woke up, uncurling to reveal a mis-shapen face and a missing eye. "This is Frankenstein," she said, lifting him down, revealing that he was a tripod as well. "I found him about two years ago. He'd been hit by a car and mangled very badly. I brought him in to die in comfort, because, you know, sometimes there's just nothing you can do. But he pulled through, physically. He lay in my kitchen, in a coma, for about six weeks. The vet said to just let him go, but I couldn't do that. So I tried the Zombie Juice. And as you can see, he's quite alright now."
"Hnnn..." He gazed at the cat for a moment. He'd never really liked cats, or any animals for that matter, but the fact that it was alive thanks to the Zombie Juice was something whose implications couldn't be ignored. "You've at least one more successful test subject, it seems," he murmured.
"Frank here was clinically brain-dead when I finally tried the Juice," she said, rubbing his chin. He arched up, almost over-balancing himself out of her arms, and she set him down. She looked up at Octavius. "I do need to know how much you weigh, or I'll get this dosage wrong."
"Mm?" he said, looking up from watching the cat make its way across the floor. "Two twenty-three," he muttered absently, his attention wandering back to the microsurgery device.
"Alright," she said to herself, running her finger down the dosage chart, then drawing the correct amount into a syringe. "It's a good thing that you're used to needles."
"Would it really have changed things if I wasn't?" he asked, looking up at her from where he was still examining the device. The cat rubbed against his leg, but it was easily ignored, as it rubbed his right leg.
"Not in the slightest," she said reasonably. "It's one an hour for seven hours, though. And that's before I can get started on actually helping you. This is just to dissolve the blood clot." She checked her watch. "If you're ready, I need you to take off your coat and roll up a sleeve."
Seven hours. He opened his mouth to speak. A part of him wanted to object, to stop her making demands, to tell her just what happened to people who treated him this way, but ... there was no point to such sound and fury. It really did signify nothing. In his condition, and without his actuators, he had no way of backing up what he said. All it would succeed in doing was insuring that she refused to give him the serum. And that would insure death.
And he did not want to die. Not yet. Not... again.
He swallowed whatever he was going to say next and lifted his hand to the collar of his longcoat, slipping the button free. And the next, and the next. One-handed, it was slow going. But he persisted and, once the coat was undone, he shrugged it from his shoulders, catching it and dropping it on the table. He slowly unbuttoned and rolled the right sleeve.
She took his hand and pulled his arm towards her gently, finding the vein in the hollow of his elbow with practiced ease and sliding the needle in, injecting the t-PA and withdrawing it. She tossed the needle into a "sharps" container and let go of his hand. "So. We get to wait. Do you want to sleep? It's a great couch."
He stood over her, looking down. He was nearer to her now than he had been for quite some time, and strangely, all that meant was that he got a closer-up view of her grey eyes. One didn't often see grey eyes. He eventually tore his gaze from her and looked at the couch, upon which at least one cat was curled. It looked good. In this condition, all he wanted to do was sleep. Sleeping didn't require movement. Taking up his stick again, he shuffled toward the couch. Damn this shuffling when he used to cover ground at forty miles an hour. He dropped heavily onto the couch again, and the cat opened one sleepy, disinterested eye and looked at him.
'Don't mind the cats," she said, plucking this one off the couch and sending it on its way. "There are only the three, though they're underfoot often enough to seem like more than that. Just give them a shove, and they'll leave off. Except for Frank. Nothing discourages him." Sure enough, the three-legged cat jumped back up onto the couch with Octavius. "If you need anything, I'll be around the house. Um..." She appeared to be searching for words. "If you hear anyone else, stay quiet, alright?"
He lay down on the cushions, pushing a pillow-like thing under his head a little better. "Wouldn't do to let them know you've got Doctor Octopus for a houseguest, hmm?" he mumbled. The three-legged cat lurched its way along the cushions until it found a spot next to his head, then curled up, purring. He didn't bother pushing it away, knowing it would just come back again. He'd be shooing that cat out of his space all day and night. Might as well just let it stay. He sighed and closed his eyes.
Clair watched him a moment longer, set a timer for an hour, then left, shutting the door quietly behind her, and went to find something to busy herself with. She eventually settled with a book in her living room, but she found herself listening to the clock tick in the silent house. Unconsciously, she rubbed at the line of tiny scars down her back and waited for the timer to ring.
The cat purred, looking at Octavius with its good eye slitted nearly shut. He'd never liked animals, but that purring sound... it was ... calming. He sighed a second time, longer, and his consciousness drifted, sinking down into sleep, where his snores sounded suspiciously like the purring of the cat who lay next to him, its eyes now closed.
