The full seasonal event can be read here! Below are the main seasonal items for quick reference:
1. A thread reacting to the season's weather in some ways.
2. A thread in the part of the city your character doesn't live in!
3. A thread relating to your vocation.
Of The Season
Quote
"Tell Dr. Nate that Gale sent you, and he still owes me for the mushrooms. Except that it takes you a while to reach the clinic, and by the time you do your fever is spiking, and so instead of the requisite message you instead tell the poor soul who greets you that 'A gale'a m'shrooms sent me cus'a my hands.'" - Zephyr in Oh help me, please doctor, I'm damaged
my head feels too loud sometimes like a monsoon in the summertime
It’s a slow afternoon. Most afternoons are slow this season, planting and rebuilding carrying relatively fewer risks than floods or drought. Truth be told, that simple fact alone is what makes the appointment strange. Walk ins are welcome, at least here in his ‘official’ practice.
Shadows on the wall drag longer as the appointed hour draws closer, Nate taking the few minutes to stand and straighten out his clothes. All the sitting has creased the front of his shirt, and he’s just untucked it and started pulling it straight when the bell above the door chimes, drawing his attention across.
His patient, presumably.
“Afternoon.” The greeting is a touch warmer than his gaze, something about the woman, the way she holds herself, steeling something in his spine. “Mallorie, right? You’re new around here?”
you can’t drag me down like a beast underwater with no soul
Mallorie was used to clinics that smelt of medical cleanliness, with plastic floors and a sickly pallor cast by overhead lights. She wasn’t used to little bells over doors and personally being called in by the physician on site.
She’d never been fond of seeking out medical attention when she was up on the plates, she saw no reason to change that opinion now, in a practice smaller and with a somewhat more lived vibe in than any she’s stepped into before. If it were a house, it would be charming. For a doctor’s clinic it was…disarming. As was the most direct and unthreatening greeting she’d received since moving to the drenches.
Mallorie nodded, affecting the closest thing to a smile she could when she replied.
“Not too new, I’ve been here a few weeks though…” she looked around herself a little self-consciously, “I imagine people can live here for years and not be used to the…everything.”
The last part came out a little more helpless than she intended; since she’d moved to the Drench she’d been somewhat overwhelmed by the teeming of it. All the nooks and crannies and the way people seemed to just know their way around. It was enough to give her headache. Speaking of which, she rolled her shoulders, feeling the burn of the movement down her side. Less than it had been in the time after acquiring it, but more than it had been when she was still living up on the plates.
my head feels too loud sometimes like a monsoon in the summertime
“Couple weeks is still new.” Nate grins, not unkindly, and let’s his head tip to the side, a shoulder rolling in a lazy shrug. “You’ll get used to it.” Thees an easy note of assurance in his voice, though he means it as a fact. “You figure out your own yard first, then expand out.” His hands move in an automatic spiral, stretching out long after he’d finished speaking, and shifting to gesture towards a door behind him. “Course there is.”
The door is opened into a tight room, an examination bed filling most of the space, and a small cupboard and sink claiming the rest. Unlike the waiting room outside though, this has the look of a proper clinic, stark white walls carrying a faint scent of cleaner, and crinkly paper covering the padded table.
Grabbing a clipboard hanging on the wall, Nate gives his patient a moment to settle in while he reads the notes he’d left himself, a luxury he’s unused to. “Mallorie… what brings you in today?” A pen appears in Nate’s hand as if by magic. The intensity of his gaze is nothing if not professional, a fact that makes it seem more piercing and not less.
you can’t drag me down like a beast underwater with no soul
He wasn’t wrong, she supposed. A few weeks, a month…either still denoted ‘recent’. Mallorie found the doctor’s words strangely soothing in their practicality.
“One foot, then the other.” She nodded, with a faint, more genuine smile.
The exam room is clean. Aseptic. Comforting, she supposed, for a certain type of person. For her it was just one more discomfiting feature of a room she didn’t particularly care to be in. Still, Nate was clearly confident, and the sharpness of his eyes had her somewhat mollified that he knew what he was doing. Mostly.
It was hard to know how to answer, exactly. It was a twinge most of the time, then breathtaking pain on the rare occasions it flared up. She suspected she should have stayed longer up top, completed physio before moving into a neighbourhood she imagined was somewhat less conducive to recovery. Mallorie frowned, and unconsciously drew her left arm closer to her body.
“I have…an injury. It’s…playing up?” She said. She considered for a moment, then added, “It’s causing me pain. More than it was.”
my head feels too loud sometimes like a monsoon in the summertime
There’s no sense of urgency, the doctor more than willing to sit and give her all the room she needs to find the words for what ails her. She booked an appointment after all, she gets the whole block of his time.
The shift is more telling than any words and it has Nate’s head cocking, eyes focused on the extra care given to the arm. It’s not as if it’s something he can really place, not from such slight evidence, but it at least gives him something to focus on, his pen scratching on the clipboard as he makes a note of his observations.
“An… injury.” Nate repeats slowly, looking over Mallory’s again. She… doesn’t seem the type, but that’s a thought he immediately chides himself for, his brows pinching as he glances at the door. “Do you need to… get away? From this injury?” The pen taps against his clipboard, Nate’s voice growing softer as he speaks. “I can help make arrangements if you need.”
you can’t drag me down like a beast underwater with no soul
Mallorie appreciates Nate’s willingness to let her be, to talk at her own pace. A trait she found rare among doctors on the Plates. But it doesn’t make it any easier to admit weakness, no matter how much she needs to ensure she’s acting at full potential.
She flexes her arm self-consciously and sighs.
“Getting away from this injury would likely involve amputation,” she shrugs, “I think I’ve run away from it a bit too much.”
Pretending it didn’t exist had landed her here, after all, watching Nate take notes in a room that smelled disarmingly clean. She dredged the will to talk from deep down and attempted an explanation.
“In my old line of work there was…an incident. With moving down here I suppose I didn’t keep on top of it…”
She vaguely remembered a physiotherapist being involved, and exercises she should probably have been doing. But with everything it had somewhat fallen by the wayside, and now she was paying for it. Her entire left side ached and she sighed before giving Nate a resigned look.
“I need someone to check I’ve not screwed it up for life. And maybe some advice on how to not screw it up in future.”
my head feels too loud sometimes like a monsoon in the summertime
Wide eyes stare at Mallorie for a moment, Nate letting confusion sit nude on his features before the hazy picture of his mother is replaced by neighbours and relatives with work injuries. “Ah.” At least he has the sense to sound a little sheepish about his earlier snap to attention.
This required a slightly different approach then. Simple enough. “Are you comfortable sharing the… details, surrounding your incident?” His head tips, the hand with the pen gesturing towards the favoured arm. “Something in the joint, or just the surrounding area?”
It’s clear she’s not comfortable, though it’s hard to know if it’s with him, or with needing to ask for help in general. Both are equally likely, and he’s seen everything in between as well. No matter the cause though, Nate’s always found the easiest way to address it is keeping on track. Faster they take care of things, faster everyone’s happy again.
you can’t drag me down like a beast underwater with no soul
She catches the slight change in Nate’s demeanour, though she can’t place the cause. Perhaps he expected her to be malingering, though she can’t think of anything she’d rather not do than approach a healthcare professional for any reason.
The details around her injury are…not uncomfortable, exactly. But she’s aware that the circumstances around it probably won’t inspire trust and good faith from the locals here in the Gasp Alleys. Still though, she’s come this far…and he is a doctor is he not? Bound to similar rules as those up top. Or at least some semblance of them.
Mallorie inhales minutely.
“I was on duty. At a disturbance.” She was sure Nate probably knew what she meant by “disturbance”, the coding not exactly subtle. “At some point there was a crush and...well. My arm…”
She hadn’t paid attention much to the terms the doctors had used back then. Now she mostly just knows that her arm and side aches when it’s cold, when she’s tired, and when she goes too long without remembering to be careful of that side. Which is a nuisance, given it was her dominant hand.
She frowned and added, “It’s stiff. Hurts when I use it - hurts when I don’t. There’s weakness on that side since the incident, though I assume that’s down to being laid up unable to use it for a while after. It’s mostly in the shoulder.”
That was probably the most she’d said, willingly, to a medical professional, in her entire life. Mallorie pauses, a little bereft now the words are out. Judgement - and hopefully treatment, all that remain.
my head feels too loud sometimes like a monsoon in the summertime
At this point Nate isn’t really too sure what to make of Mallorie, her injury. There’s something about her that half reminds him of a wounded animal, hiding the pain to avoid being seen as weak. She’s not the first and she won’t be the last, though it’s not necessarily something Nate can do anything about.
Thankfully, she does better than some of his other patients and offers an explanation, Nate’s brows pinching from the very first line. ‘On duty’ and ‘disturbance’ aren’t exactly uncommon words, but they do bring a very specific profession to mind.
Enforcers don’t live in the Drench though, and they definitely don’t come to him out of uniform, at least not to the clinic. It’s enough that he shoves it out of his mind completely, focusing on the symptoms.
“Theres a few options for injuries like this.” Nate begins, looking up from his clipboard knowingly. “I actually see it stuff like it pretty often. First things first, did your initial doctor give you a list of exercises to do?” It’s only now that anything even approaching judgement creeps into Nate’s tone, though in the gentler skin of a tease.
you can’t drag me down like a beast underwater with no soul
Mallorie relaxes a little, relieved at Nate’s professional, medical response. She thinks before she answers, “Some, yes. I lost the list some time ago, and with moving here…”
…And she lets the sentence trail off, unsure how she feels about admitting that she managed to forget something so important because of something so simple and mundane as moving. Then again, she’s already had to tell Nate that she’s allowed her injury to become bothersome enough that she requires outside help. So that’s pretty embarrassing.
In her old home, her old line of work, it was bad enough to have her superiors assign her medical leave, or an alleviated workload. She needed the work to keep order - to keep from wandering too far off the beaten path in her own mind. Explaining that had never worked in her favour however, and. Well. Just another reason words like “difficult” were thrown about before she resigned.
She clenches and unclenches her left fist in a nervous tic and tries to be more helpful. If she’s going to be vulnerable she can at least be helpful.
“I’ve been busy, so…things fell by the wayside. I remember there were stretches in the exercises I was given, but I don’t want to try something and make things worse.” She grimaces slightly, just the sliver of a wry smile. “And then things got worse.”
