To Tango on a Clock Face
Alfons Heidrich
[Chapter One: (Unprecedented Medical Mystery)]
"Well Alfons Heiderich, you've certainly stumped me."
The young woman slapped down a thick stack of papers onto her desk, making nearby post-it notes flutter up in the air, paperweights on the haphazardly-cluttered mass of open books barely keeping the correct pages open.
She fell back heavily into her chair, hand immediately reaching to massage her temples. Her zircon eyes narrowed slightly, taking in the vast amount of research on the pages displayed before her for the sixth time.
There were hundreds of diseases Felicie could name, and she could specify each and every unique symptom they were associated with. There were over a hundred respiratory diseases she could examine to try to help her, and there were pretty much over a hundred tests that she could couple with them to help prove her theories, or disprove them.
Either way, they were all beneficial in diagnosing the young man's disease.
Felicie often compared a disease to a puzzle, or even to a court case. There was always a reason behind it, always a big picture, and it was up to the person interested to research all they could, think up every possible theory, and find out the cause and effect to come up with the thesis to cure them.
In a large way, the mystery behind that which is all sickness is what intrigued her the most.
The blonde doctor threw out a page containing a test result. Its crumpled form hit the inside of the trash bin, and found its rightful place atop its predecessors. She twirled in her chair, eyeing the remaining stack.
She had run every test possible in the time allotted, getting her hands on every test up-to-date. She could care less what the other doctors had said. And then she ran them again. And now, she was running all the tests known to man that she had left.
"We need to expedite this process," she muttered to herself. She splayed her fingers over the sheets, spreading them out. She skimmed them through, pushing them one-by-one off the desk to see-saw slowly to the floor within a few seconds of her eyes landing on them.
"Trash. Bogus. Unlikely. Unrelated," she muttered with each banishment of a paper from her desk. Finally, she reached the last sheet of paper on her desk. She glared it down, sourly doubting its ability to prove itself better than the others. She closed her eyes, flicking it away.
"Unheard of."
After a moment, something gradually fell into place in her head. She hummed deep in her throat in thought, the sound reverberating through the depths of her through. Felicie rounded her desk, kneeling down carefully to pick up the paper that she just discarded. She frowned, touching upon the feeling in her gut that instinctually told her there was something there.
She read it more carefully this time.
There was absolutely no relation between this man's disease and her patient's current—the file's turned out that the bad throat illness set off a heart disease, sending him to a completely different wing of the hospital. But still, in the meantime, they were treating him for a throat issue, until the signs of the damage to his heart were obvious enough even for doctors not deeply studying in that field.
His body was dissected in an autopsy for research later, and gave birth to the knowledge of a new, rare disease.
Case in point: the man died, his time ticking away on the clock because his doctors refused to consider that it was something different—that there wasn't another disease out there for which there were no tests for.
Felicie rubbed her chin, gently placing the paper at the very center of her desk.
Alfons's case certainly might be the same sort of thing. And she'd be damned if she was like one of those fools who'd figured themselves the epitome of all medical knowledge, far above their peers, and far above reasoning with anything suggesting other than what they knew.
She knew she was very much human, and human nature is to develop and learn—that's what her job was. To find out an illness and learn to treat it. And things weren't always mapped out.
Especially since human's weren't the only things developing.
Felicie finally sighed after critically glancing over the sum of information, flopping the outside covers over and shoving them all to the end of her desk in a tall arrangement. They all had brightly-colored post-it notes marking pages of importance that'd she'd want to use as reference later.
It appeared that she'd need just about as much research gathered if she wanted to cure Alfon's disease.
Running her hands over the miniscule amount of free workspace, she shoved herself back off of the desk. She had that same tingling feeling under her fingertips, the tension at the back of her neck. Clasping her restless hands behind her back, she leaned against the windowpane to glance out at the mild, darkening street below her. Her eyes lazily picked out a few passer-by's, but not really registering them.
Her mind was far away.
"Is Mr. Heiderich still waiting outside?" Felicie asked her secretary, and she shot her a strange look before poking her head back outside for a brief moment before returning it back. In a frazzled manner, she responded.
"Why, uh, yes he is."
Felicie sighed, but a paradoxical smile lit the corners of her mouth. She stood from her chair, and glided out into the reception area. She didn't often venture there, usually nose-deep in some report in her office, so she glanced around the room of chairs, tables, and magazines with slight unfamiliarity until her gaze settled on a blonde head.
"Alfons," she said calmly. She beckoned him with her hand, leading him into her office. The door closed softly behind them, but it was like a stone being cast into a pond—the small noise rippled, extending into the solemnly-quiet corners of the room.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the look in Alfons's eye turn enigmatic, and noted the slight tense draw into his muscles.
Perhaps he could sense it, she thought to herself, before pulling a lowly armchair next to the one her patients often sat in, withering under the hefty news her job required her to bestow upon them. Alfons fell into place in the chair like a puzzle, and faceless people flitted across her mind in the same position.
She brushed the mannequins out of her mind, and slapped Alfons to the forefront of her conscious.
He was her priority. And she wouldn't let him be caught in an unstoppable downward cycle.
She could do this.
"You have tremendous patience," Felicie commented, grinning minutely at the blonde man adjacent her. "If it was me, I'd have left the facility by now."
His mouth quirked into a crooked smile. "Time flies when you have a year's buildup of old magazines at your fingertips. Makes you really familiar with the petty history of our country's fashion wars and year-old gossip."
Felicie snorted to stifle her laughter. "Yes… I'll have Linda go and fix that soon. But I assure you, the only reason this took so long was because I retested all the samples and examined plenty of former medical cases."
Alfons paused for a moment, but couldn't resist asking. "And what did you find?"
Felicie sighed for a moment in self-disgust, rubbing her eyes into her hand. "Yes… this is where it gets tricky. I didn't find anything. In fact, as far as all I have, I don't see a precedent. Your disease has so many common symptoms with other diseases—tuberculosis for example. But here you are, all hearty, healthy, and somehow chronic."
Alfons's face deadpanned serenely. He might have seen this coming, although due to her bravado earlier in the week, he almost expected her to whisk him into a whirl of treatments, and he be without the constant nag of coughing fits.
The slight upward tilt of his eyebrows gave him away, and her heart gaze a squeeze at the helplessness he was trying to conceal for months.
"Although…" she drawled, suddenly reeling him back into the conversation. She didn't want him getting lost in a sudden rush of fear and saddness, drowned in his emotions badly enough to not hear her. "I must say, there's something there."
Those arched eyebrows furrowed in thought. "What do you mean?"
She re-crossed her legs."What I mean is that I don't think your disease is unsolvable. Puzzling, yes, and unprecedented, you betcha, but I think I can solve it. You could say you interest me, Alfons, and that's a good thing. I think I'll take your case and run with it—I'll be doing some research and I will find what's troubling you."
He cocked an eyebrow, shifting a little closer to listen.
"I'll take out some more books; contact a few friends of mine. Maybe they have something in their files that can help. Maybe I'll catch something promising. In the meantime, try to take some downtime, okay? I'll contact you when I have something, or need any more information."
His eyes flickered to the side for an instant, but Felicie caught it and narrowed her precise gaze onto him. "Alfons," she warned. She knew that look. All young men had that look when they were going to not follow orders.
He sighed. "Okay," he said remorsefully. "But I still need to work. We're looking to get sponsored, and we really need to impress right now. My friends and I are counting on it."
It was the doctor's turn to sigh. "Fine," she said. "But only if you make sure to rest and get plenty of food and fresh air. I don't want you overstressed or overworked. I mean it. I can take hefty measures if I have to."
"All right, all right," he laughed, putting his hands up in surrender.
She smiled approvingly. "All right then," she said, smiling coyly. She uncrossed her legs and stowed some books in her bag, glancing at the clock. "Well, I do believe it's far past closing hours, and my secretary is in dire need of rest, no matter how much coffee she ingests. Let's get some sleep."
"Sure," Alfons smiled. "See you soon, hopefully."
Felicie hoisted the bag further up on her shoulder, staring out at the finally-dark streets of inner Munich. Hotel lights glowed warmly in the distance, a few rogue cars flashing through the streets, moon illuminating their paint and casting malevolent shadows on the churches and other architecture integral to the city.
Her own car patiently was parked directly below, silently waiting.
It's time I leave, she thought, thinking of a few moments ago when she'd seen Alfons out the door. She glanced over her desk, and stared at the multitude of books and coffee-ringed pottery mugs.
It's been a few days since I've been home… I think I'll take these with me and go shopping tomorrow, she decided, pushing more scientific literature into the waiting mouth of her firmly-woven bag, and hooking her finger around the handles of the mugs.
She took a quick glance around her office, having multi-functional purposes, such as serving as a temporary home, which looked very sad at nighttime. Maybe the fountain of emotions had soaked into the walls, the normalcies of her day-to-day job finally taking their toll.
The pulmonologist shook her head.
Ridiculous, she thought, and headed out to her car, slamming the ornate door behind her.
[Brush away the nagging of doubt.]
{A/N: A degree in, oh, medicine might help me write this story. x3 But alas, you'll all have to put up with my research and "convincing" vague-specificnesss~. :D Reviews are very much appreciated; it keeps me vivacious. ^^}