"Go to bed, Hank"
"Highly improbably Jean, the Legacy virus-"
"-will still be there in the morning. You can't carry on like this. You haven't slept in five days, Lord knows how your still upright"
"Physical endurance Jean, I can stay up for at least another three days without serious impairment"
"Which is why you're standing there weaving on the spot? As a favour to me, Hank, please, so I stop worrying that you're going to collapse…you're a big guy, you could fall and crack your head on something"
"You had me at please Jean, there's no need for further persuasion"
"Thank you Hank"
There are forty eight ceiling tiles in my ceiling, divided by six leaves eight but it makes two hundred and twenty eight if you times it…everyone wonders why I don't go to bed of my own accord, why someone has to come down to the lab and guilt/force/cajole/carry me to bed. They don't seem to understand. Maybe I should take the time out to explain that after a while of only sleeping sparsely it's pretty much impossible to make ones brain shut up. Shut up or stay on the right track even. Now that really is annoying, don't you find, when you're trying to concentrate on the one thing that's important and your mind is somewhere else, reciting the periodical table backwards or re-living that conversation with Bobby about where babies come from…that was not a nice experience…who knew that explaining things to an eleven year old could be so – but I digress. I always digress. There are times when I'm sitting in the lab, testing cures on the virus and I just have to…sit back, reign my mind in and try to concentrate long enough that I don't end up with raw sulphur across my hands or let the samples spontaneously combust – there's still a mark on the ceiling from where I did it last time. No one ever asks where it came from, not even Bobby. I try reading sometimes to make my head shut up, to try and focus. Nowadays I usually get little more than a few lines. I conned old times; I sat studying at the feet of the great masters: Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me – much as I love Walt Whitman that's the only bit out of the last poem I read that I can remember…I wonder if my mind's starting to get dangerous in this distracted state. Dangerous – I'm frightened that my mind is dangerous? When I can bench press 400 pounds? I broke three test tubes today with these paws, never once did the glass pass into my skin thanks to the thick fur, but there were chemicals everywhere…that was when Jean decided it would be the perfect moment to entreat me. Looking up at me with big worried eyes…so I'm a sucker for a pretty face and she knows it. It's usually Jean – not Bobby, not Logan or Cyclops but Jean that convinces me it's time to go to bed now. Always her. I know, as soon as she's in the lab, that there's either been a major accident, she needs a shoulder to cry on or she's come to order me to go to bed. Sometimes she brings food. I like it when she brings those little cheese and ham sandwiches that Ororo makes. Well, I say little. They're probably huge by 'normal' X-men standards. Though it is hard to put the words 'normal' and 'X-man' in the same sentence. There seems to be – but anyway, I like Jean. She's clever enough to make me laugh and emotional enough to get me to do what she wants. She's a lot like Bobby sometimes. Bobby…means well. He comes down here with the soul intention of making me laugh, tries to take my mind away from what I'm doing – after I've spent hours focusing and calming my thoughts down enough to get some actual work done. I snap at him sometimes. He doesn't deserve that. He seems happy though sometimes, just to sit quietly, it does nothing to help my concentration as I'm constantly wondering why he's there and what practical joke he's waiting to spring. He deserves a better friend than me, someone who can look after him. He was really hurt when Pyro went off with Magneto, spent hours sobbing silently, not that I'd tell anyone but I relive that sometimes in my mind and cringe with the thought that maybe that was really my fault that maybe if I'd have been there to help him, to guide him instead of hiding myself away from the world…I heard one of the children compare me to the phantom of the opera, trapped beneath the school with all my weird instruments, quietly conducting everything behind the scenes and a quiet, if fervid genius. I rather like that description, the more I think about it the more it seems to be somewhat accurate. Except I don't have the mask and cape. Fortunately. I read that. A while ago. Phantom of the Opera I mean, marvellous book. Bobby laughs sometimes at my eclectic taste in books, he recons that I'm trying to read everything ever written...sometimes I get the overwhelming urge to get my own back on him by saying something about erotica but I'm not quite that cruel…most of the time. He doesn't understand that I can barely read more than a few pages at a time any more, my mind is too busy yelling things at me, how I should be working, what I last had to eat and that I didn't really like it, the last book I read, I wonder if Charles is feeling any better from that migraine…and then Jean comes and tells me to go to bed because I'm weaving on the spot when I stand up. So I lie here. My eyelids practically glued together with sleep, my entire body feeling as if it weighs half a ton (ah! Wait a minute! It does! Ha!) and…listen to my thoughts until they drive me crazy and my eyes snap open and…I count the tiles in the ceiling…did I mention that there's forty eight?