Chaz de Coventina
Dec 15th, 2010, 03:53:12 PM
It went something like this:
Magda knocked on the wall with a tight-knuckled fist and then flicked on the overhead light in the staff alcove, drawing a miserable groan from the figure slouched over the table. The chief medical assistant smiled what was an alarmingly evil smile for a moment before sighing and setting down a cup of hot, steaming tea. It smelled of feet. And sweetener.
“You’re sick,” she announced.
“I am not.”
If she had been a lesser woman, perhaps Magda would have cooed back a sympathetic insistence that the subject in question was sick but she had been installed in the convoy’s shifting medteam for long enough to know that cooing didn’t accomplish much, particularly when the cooee was likely to kick you in the shins for deigning to do so.
Magda rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. You look terrible.”
“Once again, Magda, your observations are both unnecessary and inaccurate. Go away.”
“No.” Taking a sadistic pleasure from torturing the other woman, Magda kicked at the leg of her chair with a toe, jostling it. “Get up and go lie down on one of the gurneys, you can’t treat anyone when you’re like this.”
Chaz would have liked to glare at the assistant but that required lifting her head and it was just so comfortable resting on the cool, cool duraplast tabletop. At first the tickle in the back of her throat had been so innocuous that the doctor assumed she had merely caught a cold, perhaps from Madam Meorrrei. Over the course of a few days however, the scratchiness had developed into a heavy, dragging feeling and a general desire to lay down and die. Violently.
“I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” Chaz grunted.
“You said that half an hour ago.”
“And you kept interrupting me every twenty seconds.”
“You’re going to infect everyone. Don’t be such a terror.”
“Magda. If you do not go away, I will...” the threat hung unfinished for a long moment as Chaz tried valiantly to think of something, anything that would scare off the bull of a woman pestering her. Usually it came so easily. "Do something suitably heinous that will scar you for life."
"Lovely. You can't see me but I'm quaking." Magda's eyes gleamed and she casually continued, "I called for Doctor Henning, by the way."
The announcement had it's desired effect. Chaz's head shot up, swaying at the sudden motion before deciding that yes, it could manage to stay upright. "What? Why in Maalar's name did you do that?!"
"Because you can't see well people while you're carrying the plague and because maybe, just maybe, you'll stop being such a stubborn hag about it and listen to him." Ignoring the grumbling, bleary-eyed redhead, Magda pushed the mug of tea closer. "Drink this and try not to breathe on everything. I'm going to man the front, I'll send him back when he arrives."
With a triumphant air, the assistant turned and marched out in her sensible clinic shoes, leaving the ailing medic behind to slump miserably over her foul-smelling herbal concoction.
Magda knocked on the wall with a tight-knuckled fist and then flicked on the overhead light in the staff alcove, drawing a miserable groan from the figure slouched over the table. The chief medical assistant smiled what was an alarmingly evil smile for a moment before sighing and setting down a cup of hot, steaming tea. It smelled of feet. And sweetener.
“You’re sick,” she announced.
“I am not.”
If she had been a lesser woman, perhaps Magda would have cooed back a sympathetic insistence that the subject in question was sick but she had been installed in the convoy’s shifting medteam for long enough to know that cooing didn’t accomplish much, particularly when the cooee was likely to kick you in the shins for deigning to do so.
Magda rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. You look terrible.”
“Once again, Magda, your observations are both unnecessary and inaccurate. Go away.”
“No.” Taking a sadistic pleasure from torturing the other woman, Magda kicked at the leg of her chair with a toe, jostling it. “Get up and go lie down on one of the gurneys, you can’t treat anyone when you’re like this.”
Chaz would have liked to glare at the assistant but that required lifting her head and it was just so comfortable resting on the cool, cool duraplast tabletop. At first the tickle in the back of her throat had been so innocuous that the doctor assumed she had merely caught a cold, perhaps from Madam Meorrrei. Over the course of a few days however, the scratchiness had developed into a heavy, dragging feeling and a general desire to lay down and die. Violently.
“I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” Chaz grunted.
“You said that half an hour ago.”
“And you kept interrupting me every twenty seconds.”
“You’re going to infect everyone. Don’t be such a terror.”
“Magda. If you do not go away, I will...” the threat hung unfinished for a long moment as Chaz tried valiantly to think of something, anything that would scare off the bull of a woman pestering her. Usually it came so easily. "Do something suitably heinous that will scar you for life."
"Lovely. You can't see me but I'm quaking." Magda's eyes gleamed and she casually continued, "I called for Doctor Henning, by the way."
The announcement had it's desired effect. Chaz's head shot up, swaying at the sudden motion before deciding that yes, it could manage to stay upright. "What? Why in Maalar's name did you do that?!"
"Because you can't see well people while you're carrying the plague and because maybe, just maybe, you'll stop being such a stubborn hag about it and listen to him." Ignoring the grumbling, bleary-eyed redhead, Magda pushed the mug of tea closer. "Drink this and try not to breathe on everything. I'm going to man the front, I'll send him back when he arrives."
With a triumphant air, the assistant turned and marched out in her sensible clinic shoes, leaving the ailing medic behind to slump miserably over her foul-smelling herbal concoction.