The shift that Jay was forced to take over continued to be slow and uneventful, and resulted in him doing much more internet surfing than anything else. Sure, he could have played a few hours of Smite to pass the time, as he was prone to do whenever he loaded up his favorite game, but for whatever reason, browsing absently through Reddit held his attention. His mouse hovered over the link that would take him to the Reddit 50/50 challenge, his eyes narrowing into a squint as he stared at it. He didn't know why he was always brought back to it every so often... Maybe he liked the risk, maybe he liked the reward, maybe he liked the punishment...

The telltale sound of the front doors opening followed by the upbeat two-tone sound that rung out over the otherwise silent lobby made the Joy sibling look up from his computer. He was genuinely surprised that yet another visitor to the Pokemon Center entered during what was generally considered to be the 'graveyard shift'.

"Welcome to the Pokemon Center, how may I help you...?" The greeting was instinctive and scripted, but had genuine intent behind it as always. The Pokemon Center's receptionists always got a bunch of goodnatured grief from people about how they almost robotically offered the same welcoming every time. A smile was already on Jay's face as he picked his head up to see who had just come in, reflexively putting on the charm to make whoever might need his assistance feel comfortable.

The smile didn't falter when he saw who had come in, but there was a hint of confusion on his face. Strolling through the sliding glass doors was someone dressed in abnormally heavy clothing for the relatively warm weather that the region had been graced with recently: A light gray hoodie with the hood pulled low and baggy sweat pants on their bottom half. If Jay didn't know better he might have been suspicious of their intent, and prejudged it to be malicious.

Optimistically assuming the best, however, the young man held his smile and demeanor as the figure approached the desk, keeping their hood so low that it was a miracle they could see where they were going. It was clear to Jay that they were trying to go unnoticed if at all possible, similar to how he used to when he was younger and trying to avoid getting teased for his hair.

The figure was about a head shorter than Nurse Joy (Nurse Jay Joy, that is), and surprisingly spoke up in a soft, feminine voice. "I don't want to inconvenience you," they began quietly, moving their hands quickly from where they had been in their sweatpants' pockets to the single hoodie pocket, where they were jammed into and folded together. "But I don't really know where else to go." Now Jay's smile disappeared, replaced by a frown that communicated the confusion that he had kept hidden up until this point. "You see, the hospital turned me away and said they have the right to a discrimination policy. Getting medical care has never been an issue for me, but you see I'm not from here."

They stopped speaking abruptly and continued to stare down at the floor from underneath the concealing safety of their hoodie, and Jay took this opportunity to regenerate a smile. "Here at the Pokemon Center, we would never turn anyone away under any condition. Everyone deserves to be cared for."

Silence followed, Jay anticipating the stranger to give a response that never came. The only reaction to his words out of the hooded woman was tacit: a small nod.

"I don't want to pry," Jay started up again carefully, leaning forward and craning his head downward slightly in a fruitless attempt to catch a glimpse of the mystery person. "But what made them turn you away? I've never heard of such a thing happening before in this town." In fact, Jay was familiar with a handful of those working at the human hospital a few blocks away, and knew them to be helpful regardless of any demographic or characteristic a potential patient might have. Needless to say, this was very confusing for him.

The hesitation was evident as the hooded woman shifted her feet, which Jay had noticed on the way in were some kind of rain boots with a rubber toe. "I would have preferred to keep it a secret, but if you're going to be taking care of me I guess there isn't any way for me to hide it..." With that, she pulled her hands out from her pocket, and Jay saw that she even wore gloves. Surely she was sweating, about to die of heat stroke perhaps. The gloved hands reached up to the hood, pulling backward and downward with both hands to reveal her head and face to him.

Jay's eyes widened. "You're-"

He was cut off immediately by the woman, who was obviously used to getting such a response out of people. "An anthro, yes." Her arms folded across her chest, and Jay could think to do nothing but stare at her. She looked to be his age, perhaps a little younger, and the frown that she sported slightly wrinkled her skin, skin that was covered in orange and black striped fur. It was thin and light, but the color pattern was so strikingly flamboyant that it could never go unnoticed. She had beautiful blue-green eyes and her nose was wrinkled in a sort of prude, somewhat annoyed expression. Her hair was a deep black that matched the trim of her fur, trailing down and back behind her into her hoodie.

"We've never had any of your kind here before," Jay responded after a few more awkward moments of staring at her. As though mentally retracing his steps and realizing what he had said, he quickly tried to clarify. "I didn't mean it like that, no like derogatory or anything, just-" He paused, collecting himself. It was unlike him to be frazzled so easily. The girl in front of him slowly, almost begrudgingly sprouted a smile, and he smiled back at her. "Sorry. I just haven't had any experience with anyone other than Pokemon before," he explained, moving back out from behind the front desk, causing the girl to watch him cautiously, as though expecting him to lunge at her at any given moment. "But I'll do whatever I can to help you. Why don't we get you checked out," he offered kindly, and after another moment's hesitation the furred girl nodded and fell into stride behind Jay, who had begun walking off toward the exam rooms.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds as neither of them spoke, neither entirely sure what to say, and then the nurse introduced himself. "I'm Jay, I work here as a nurse along with my sister and a few others. I'm the only one on duty right now." He turned his head to look at her, and she looked back at him as though unsure what he was waiting for. As if by spontaneous generation, she realized that she was being incredibly rude.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Nice to meet you, Nurse Jay, I'm Amber." She reached out a gloved hand to him with a smile. Jay took her hand in his, looking at her curiously before pulling his hand away and turning to one of the closed exam room doors. He produced a key from his pocket, jamming it into the lock after a bit of difficulty and pushing the door open. Everything on this hall was manual, as far as doors and locks went. It was a bit more personal in Jay's opinion, despite being slightly old-fashioned.

After he stepped inside, he moved one stride to the side and held the door for her so she could walk in, revealing that the room was just like any other one of the many examination rooms in the Center. Amber gave him a small smile and slid in past him, looking around absently at the cupboards and table and-

Wheely chair.

With a grin she moved over toward it, seating herself and reclining back against the seat's back, spinning around then to see Jay giving her a strange look. He had just closed and locked the door behind them, probably in recognition of her desire for privacy, and his arms were folded across his chest, the white sleeves pulled somewhat tightly against his musculature because of this. "What?" she asked innocently, swiveling back and forth slowly and looking up at him.

Jay watched her for a second before smirking and shaking his head, making his way to the exam table seeing as his preferred seat choice was already taken. "Nothing," he responded flippantly, leaning against the edge of the table and looking at her analytically. "So what seems to be the problem, miss Amber?" He paused, gesturing with one hand to her attire. "Other than the fact that you're hell-bent on sweating yourself to death." A smile; a suppressed giggle in response.

"Well," she began contemplatively, her eyes training on a spot on the ground rather shyly, admiring the way that the tile on the floor came together. "Ever since I left Kanto I haven't been feeling very well. I told myself that I was just getting airsick, and then that I was just getting seasick on the boat, and then that I was just getting carsick, but I think it's safe to say that something's the matter with me." She looked up at him, then. His eyebrows had raised at the mention of the Kanto region. It wasn't often that they got interregional travelers in their small town.

Jay leaned over and grabbed his clipboard from the nearby counter top, flipping to a new page and taking out the pen from where it was clipped onto the top of it, tapping it against the virgin paper silently. He looked like he was lost in thought, trying to identify what could be wrong with her, but really he was trying to find a way to ask his next question that she wouldn't find offensive. "Did you... come with anyone from Kanto...?" He looked to her cautiously, seeing if he had struck a nerve or not.

A confused frown briefly made Amber's canine ears pull to the sides of her head and away from one another, but was shortly thereafter replaced by an understanding smile, ears relaxing again. "If you're asking if I had a trainer the answer is no," she informed him kindly, pulling off her gloves and jamming them into her sweatpants' pockets. The same color pattern was on her hands, and from what Jay could see under her sleeves, it was the same on her arms as well.

"There are many different regions that treat my kind in many different ways," she explained patiently, rolling her chair back and forth slightly, eyes shyly finding the floor again. "In Kanto, we're considered to be more like people than Pokemon, and are treated like a different race of humans like any other. Then there are some like Hoenn, where we're considered Pokemon and it's legal to capture us with a Pokeball if we're still 'wild'." She frowned. Clearly that was an uncomfortable concept for her. She looked back up to Nurse Jay again. "Then there's places like this one, where it seems that they don't want to classify us so they just discriminate against us instead."

Jay tried not to look as sympathetically hurt for her as he felt, tearing his eyes away from her and back down to his clipboard, clearing his throat. He was glad that he knew that now, but he was definitely not glad that he had asked; she didn't seem too terribly comfortable talking about it. "Right. I knew that," he boldfaced lied to her; not that he was fooling anyone.

"Well," Jay started while breathing out, pushing off of the exam table and looking to her. He patted the table he had just gotten off of, indicating that he would like her to switch spots with him. "Let's get a look at you, then. We're not going to figure anything out by sitting here and chit-chatting." Realistically, he wanted to ask a lot more questions, but he didn't think that he could do so without being excessively awkward.

Amber seemed disappointed to have to get out of his wheely chair, but nonetheless she stood up, only to climb on top of the table, dangling her legs off the side. She looked to him expectantly, and he wasn't entirely sure where to start. As a matter of fact, she had provided only minimal, inconclusive symptoms of her ailment, which could be anything from the common cold to leprosy to the black plague to a sinus infection and anything in between.

He frowned, moving in toward her and reaching around his neck, removing his stethoscope. He placed the earpieces in his ears, grabbing hold of the bell of the stethoscope (the elevated part at the end of it), placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'm just gonna listen to you breathe first," he informed her quietly, and reached for the bottom of her hoodie in the back, placing his hand between it and her body at the small of her back.

"Deep breath," he prompted her, listening carefully as she did so. He moved the cup upward and around her back a few times, pausing in between to listen to the sound that her lungs made. He pulled his hand back, lowering her hoodie back how it was and put the stethoscope back around his neck, frowning again as he started to realize that doing random tests was going to get him nowhere.

She was looking over and up at him, her eyes wide at the frown that he had after the procedure. "Do I have a respiratory infection," she spitballed somewhat fearfully to him, which prompted him to shake his head that No, she didn't. "Pneumonia?"

"What? No." He looked over at her and laughed, giving her a gentle shove in the shoulder. "Why are you automatically assuming the worst? I can't see a single thing wrong with you, at least not on the outside." He moved over to the computer, intending to search the on-site medical database for any information that they might have on anthros. "What did you say your symptoms were, again? Specifically?"

He looked over to her briefly, seeing that she was thinking hard about it. "Well," she began, one of her canine ears flickering once before resting again. Jay smiled, finding the involuntary twitch adorable, simultaneously typing into the search engine. He keyed in the letters "ANTHROPO", which appeared in all caps in the search bar, but he had no search results that had any words beginning in those letters. So much for that idea. He tried a few different 'slang' terms for anthros, but still got no success.

It was at that point he looked back over to Amber. She hadn't said anything, rather just sitting there in silence and looking at the floor. The silence in the room that came as a result of Jay stopping moving and her stopping talking suddenly seemed to get to her, and she looked up at him and then looked away again. There was a sort of rosy tint to her cheeks where the fur was thin enough to see her skin underneath. "I don't want to say," she admitted after another second. "It's embarrassing."

Jay couldn't help but smile, sliding into the wheeled chair and rolling over to her, placing a hand comfortingly on her knee. "It's okay, Amber. I'm a doctor, I've heard and seen it all." Honestly, he clearly hadn't heard or at least not seen it all, considering how surprised he was to see an anthro walk through the front doors, and how clueless he was about them as a race.

Needless to say he was all but shocked by her response:

"I think I'm in heat."