I don't own Sailor Moon

(All the things I learned in) my misguided attempts to better myself

Chapter 1: Introduction

It took a lot to shock Ami. Her parents' divorce, the price of calling an ambulance in the US, and the method by which figs were pollinated were the first to come to mind. When she was fifteen, she received a B grade for English literature, and prompted fainted. And now here she was ten years later, stood frozen in the hallway with a freshly graded manuscript gripped in her hands, and she was rather at a loss for the appropriate reaction. Really, it showed a stunning lack of personal growth. If a B brought on loss of consciousness, how best to convey the big red 67% carved into the paper right beside her name?

A D-plus. Her jaw was slack with incredulity, and her heart bet loud in her head. There's got to be a mistake. She'd already read and reread the paper, and that was the humble conclusion she had drawn. So there could only be one solution. In another move demonstrating extraordinary lack of personal growth (putting her head down, working harder, consulting a peer or two), she took a deep breath with her hand poised over the doorknob, before sweeping in to demand an explanation from the department head himself.

It was a modest office for the Chair of Medical Education. Her critical eye took in the slate-blue upholstery and window fixings, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled to the brim with titles, and the slab of mahogany desk that dominated the room, before she suddenly realised that she'd never actually been in here before. Or so much as met the Head himself. If possible, her heart started pounding even faster. She willed her shaking fingers to unclench. She'd never argued for a grade before; then again, she'd never gotten anything less than an A-minus in the last five years.

A running tap turned off somewhere out of sight, and she silently steeled herself as the tap of a dress shoe brought the man into view. "Clearly not one for knocking, I see," he quipped as he came out of an adjourning bathroom, rolling down his sleeves and fixing the cuffs.

Professor Winters was young, much younger than she imagined a head of department could be. With a start, she remembered talk about the maverick who had taken over from Professor Religa some years back. She couldn't help but stare as he rounded his formidable desk and sank into the chair. So this was him? If she had seen him in the hallways or the wards, she would have thought him a fellow student, or maybe a post-grad assistant.

"Well? Do you intend on staring and wasting my time, or do you actually have a purpose here today." His dry tenor brought her out of her reverie, and she coloured deeply. What a first impression to make, Ami.

Reaching into the recesses of her courage, she stepped closer and lifted her chin. "My name is Ami Mizuno. I am taking Doctor Bryant's History of Medical Racism class this semester."

"Emily Bryant," he nodded absently as he flipped open some manila folders. "Continue."

"Yes," she swallowed. "I am here to contest my grade."

His eyes flickered up to hers for a moment, and she was struck by their startling vivid green. He looked at her emotionlessly, and she bit her lip out of nervous habit.

"Take it up with Bryant."

She sucked in a breath when he finally broke the silence.

"She told me to come to you." She thought she heard him sigh under his breath, and she fiddled with the edge of her paper.

"Fine, bring it here."

Her feet moved of their own accord and before she knew it, she was close enough to trace the wood grain of his desk with a finger. He thumbed impassively through the pages she handed him. From this distance, she could see the red in his dark blonde hair. He had grown it long, and had swept it away from his face into a low tail. The hard lines of his mouth and jaw betrayed his age to her satisfaction, but even then he couldn't have been any older than thirty or thirty-five. His fingers were long and tapered. She had heard that he had been a promising surgeon before some accident drove him into academia, and she studied the flex of his joints, the stretch of the pale skin with a curious fascination.

"Are you done?"

Her eyes snapped back to his, which were now watching her. He didn't seem angry, simply… bored.

"Sorry, sir."

He slapped the cover page back over her assignment, and leaned back in his chair. "I remember this one. You write well."

There's a 'but' in there…

"But you missed the point of the assignment completely, for which you have been awarded a just mark."

Her mouth fell open. "I wholeheartedly disagree! The development of nanotechnology in the field of precise diagnostics is a viable and crucial step in the—"

He held up a hand to stop her run-away train of thought. "The question was not whether current methods could be supplanted by a new method, deus ex machina style, but if the current methods held any merit."

She jammed a finger into the stack of paper. "I wrote that I disagree with the current method, and have offered nanotech as an alternative." She could feel her face heating up again, but she found that she didn't care.

"Tell me, Miss—" he glanced down to find her name "—Mizuno. Will you be alive in a hundred years' time?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You're about to tell me that the technology is irrelevant to me because I will never have the chance to use it in my practice."

"Very astute." He had the uncanny ability to sound perfectly professional, and at the same time, bitingly sarcastic. "Nanotech as it exists today falls in the realm of idealism. There is no room for idealists in medicine."

Ami blinked. "…I'm sorry?"

His eyes fixed on hers again. "You have to be realistic in this profession. When you're practising, you must use all available facts to make the fastest decision. This means taking race into account."

"I don't agree." She had no idea where this audacity was coming from, but she pushed forward. "With increasing globalisation, this is not a reliable measure any more. Will a Chinese girl brought up in Australia take on the risk factors of her genetic make-up or her environment? How can you make an accurate diagnosis just based on her ethnicity? What about mixed race individuals?"

"It doesn't matter." He stood up. He was trying to intimidate her, she could tell, but she made herself keep her spine ramrod straight. "You don't have time during an emergency to try to calculate all the odds. You have to follow your gut."

He gestured down at her abused stack of paper. "This essay wasn't an opinion piece. We are training future doctors in this department, not waiting for a breakthrough in science fiction."

She took a deep breath. "With all due respect, sir—" her hands were shaking. Why were they shaking? "Gut feelings are a product of training. We need to be trained to think holistically, and know that cold hard statistics are a factor in decision-making, not the be-all-end-all."

She was not a tall woman, and he was only a head or so taller, but he seemed to tower over her in that moment. "It seems we are at an impasse," his voice had returned to a resonant tenor, but his gaze penetrated her still.

He leaned in minutely. "Luckily, I am the one who decides on the curriculum and method of training in this institute, Miss Mizuno." There was something compelling about the way he said her name that she resolutely tried to ignore. "And I agree with Bryant: your treatment of the assignment is not adequate."

She groped for further rebuttal, anything to back up her bid, but came up empty. He was sitting back down in his seat and gathering up her loose sheets. "I've never received such a low mark before," she whispered – mostly to herself – in disbelief.

Ah there it was – the anticipated light-headedness, a la English lit.

He paused, and was fixing her with that fathomless stare again. He was probably waiting for her to vacate his space so he could get back to some real work. "Here, let me get rid of that," she brusquely reached for her stuff. She must be as red as a tomato. She had never been so embarrassed in her life, barging into an office like she had had any leg to stand on with that stupid essay. She must have been deluded to think that she could change his mind. "Sorry," she mumbled indistinctly. She had to get away from his penetrating green eyes, meting judgement with every blink.

"Would you like to make it up?"

It took a few seconds for his words to register, and she stopped her paper-shuffling with a frown. "What?" Couldn't he appreciate that she was trying to make a quick exit with the remainder of her dignity?

"I need a personal assistant for a short time." He'd leaned back in his seat. "Consent to work for me without pay for the rest of the semester, and you may have the mark as part of extra credit."

What? Her fingernails were digging into the pages. "What, like a slave?" her voice was edged with a tinge of resentment. Careful Ami, your sarcasm is showing.

It was her turn to stare as his lips curved in a smirk. Even this condescending half-smile served to soften his features and make him almost… approachable. "Consider it a clerkship of sorts. To learn the administrative side of medicine."

Spending regular hours in this office, with a man that made her twitch nervously, and clearly thought her academically lacking to boot?

"Who knows – if you are interested, I'll roster you as a scrub assistant for the TAVR procedure."

Now her jaw really dropped. "R-Really?" She could swear she was normally articulate and put together, and opposite to everything she was demonstrating today. He really had a knack for bringing out the worst in her, and they'd only been acquainted for fifteen minutes.

"Wha—" she cleared her throat. "What would my duties be?" Inner Ami was clearly considering the unprecedented opportunity to humiliate herself on further occasions with this man. Holy hell.

"Twenty-five hours a week. You will compile my meeting notes, take dictations, and make phone calls when Nadia isn't available." He cut her off as she was beginning to protest. "Nothing stopping you from studying here when the tasks are completed."

Her mouth clicked shut.

"In return, you will clerk for me when I perform TAVR. I also attend the ECHO meetings every fortnight." He was watching her expectantly. She felt a twinge of irritation that he was baiting her so unabashedly, when he knew very well that she was going to say yes. Which ambitious student wouldn't? If she didn't know him to be such an inflexible stick in the mud, she'd say that that glint in his eye bordered close to amusement.

"Twenty hours and an A grade." She willed her voice to be clear and steady. "I won't do any marking, and I'd like to assist in the cath lab too."

He swivelled in his chair just a bit – probably by mistake – and she noticed again the red tinge of his copper-blond hair. She was going to Google him later to find out how old he really was.

"I'll have a word with Professor Furui," he conceded after a beat.

That wasn't a no.

"I-In that case, I accept. Thank you, sir."

He merely inclined his head. She wasn't sure what she expected – a smile? A handshake? A bear hug? "See you on Monday after your rotations, Miss Mizuno. I do not tolerate tardiness."

She supposed that was a functional dismissal. Already he was turning his attention to his monitor. After a stuttering hesitation, she ducked her head and made for a speedy exit. But he did save one last comment to accompany her, chagrined, out the door –

"With a grade like that, I wouldn't let you near my marking anyway, thank you very much, Miss Mizuno."

Asshole.

Author's note

So I'm meant to be studying right now, and what was going to be a 1000-word prompted drabble for 101 introspections turned into a new 5-chapter story for Zoisite and Ami. All hail academia.

Who wants our young professor to misbehave?

xx

*Professor Zbigniew Religa – sharp-eyed folks will know this to be a reference to the surgeon who led the team that performed the first heart transplant in Poland in 1985. He was famously photographed in 1987 after another successful procedure.

*TAVR: Transcatheter aortic valve replacement – a pretty cool procedure where they replace one of the major heart valves without having to perform open-heart surgery

*Cath lab: Cardiac catheterisation lab – where many important procedures for major heart problems are performed, e.g. heart attack, ablation treatment for heart arrhythmias, pacemaker implantation, etc.