((Hooray for blah titles!))

Mort had just finished visiting with Norm again. He enjoyed it, but today he had been lying when he said he had to go home. He did not, in fact, need to go home for another couple of hours. He'd left Norm's room so that he could think about whether or not he wanted to gather the courage to ask a doctor to look at those stitches. On the one hand, he'd be risking an investigation, but on the other hand...he hurt a lot of the time, and he was starting to doubt that he could take much more of it.
He had somehow blundered his way into the lobby area of the pediatrics ward, and was pacing back and forth, one arm placed across his stomach, his face twisted with mingled distress and pain.

"Are you all right?"

The voice is concerned and the face to go with it is just as concerned, and there's a pale hand resting on Mort's shoulder all of a sudden.

You might think that Alan couldn't find specific persons in distress, with all the pain going around in a hospital, but he's never really questioned the way he feels echos of other people's physical pains. It's always been that way, so it won't ever be any different.

"Is there some way I can help you?"

And he's obviously a doctor.

He flinched, jumping back away from the hand. He couldn't let him get that close, he might see the antennae through Mort's hair...
And the way Mort felt safe, or comforted, or somehow better with this doctor standing here only made him more nervous. He shook his head.
He'd decided against asking for help.
"No...I'm fine. I was...I was just visiting a friend, and I got lost."

Alan looked even more concerned by Mort's reaction and resisted the urge to bite his lip.

"Are you sure? You seem distressed..." And the twinges in Alan's belly tell this particular doctor that the boy really does need help of some kind, and probably of the kind that Alan can give him.

Trust me, say the big blue eyes. I won't hurt you. I want to help you.

Look at him, he wouldn't hurt a soul...

Mort stared, thinking that the doctor would help him, and then with the best of intentions, alert the authorities. Damnit, he wanted the help, too.
"I'm fine." he forced a smile. "Just a little turned-around."

Alan frowned slightly, but sighed and gave Mort directions to the exit. He could hardly force Mort to stay here and let him help, whatever was wrong, because...

He patted Mort's head--yes, he does do cheesy things like that. What about it?--and turned to... Wait.

He turned back and looked hard at the top of Mort's head, eyes going rather wide...

Not again!
He turned and ran (again!), panic giving him strength for a short while. He never did get up much speed, though, and ended up doubled over just inside the entrance to the service stairs, clutching his stomach and whimpering softly.

Alan followed him and caught up with him and touched his shoulder and actually tried to appear safe, instead of giving off an air of safety unconsciously. (The effect was rather remarkable; to magical senses, he glowed with a peaceful aura...)

"Hey, hey, I won't hurt you. It's all right. Relax, okay? Let me see what's wrong, okay? Please?"

Mort gave up.
"There was some guy, I think he was crazy, he made me go with him to his house and he had a surgery table in his basement, and he cut me open and sewed me back up, and he put feelers on my head and now I'm a freak."
He sniffled and lifted his shirt to show Alan the stitches.
"It hurts and Tylenol doesn't work anymore."

Alan's mouth tightened angrily. (Too bad he isn't just like his father; he'd go running off and impale Douglas.)

"Come on, let's go see if I can find an examining room, okay? I can't do anything about those out here."

He offered Mort his hand, just as if Mort were a little boy who needed to be taken care of. (Which, come to think of it, he is.)

He took the offered hand, sniffling again.
"You're not going to tell anyone, right? They'd sell me to a zoo or a lab or something...and my sister really hates police officers and stuff..."

"I won't let anyone send you to a zoo or a lab..." Pause. "I really should report this to the police, but I don't think they'd believe it..."

He wonders if the same crazy guy attacked Mort as attacked Bo. He's pretty sure that Mort's feelers aren't artificial; they don't feel right to be synthetic, and it would be really complicated to do such a thing... with or without magic.

"I won't tell anyone. Are you going to tell me your name, though? Mine's Alan."

He likes to keep things on a casual level. (Oh, and here's an examining room, fortunately empty.)

Mort's feeler, rather.
"It's Mortimer."
He got up (or rather dragged himself onto) the table and stared at Alan with a please make it better look in his eyes.

"Take off your shirt, please? So I can have a better look."

He's already figured that he's going to need to prescribe antibiotics. If Mort doesn't have a staph infection already, he's probably well on the way. You just don't do surgery and just leave it like that.

"I'd like to look at the 'feelers' you said he put on your head, too."

He did so, and then smoothed his hair down so that the antennae were visible.
"There's only one left. I still haven't figured out why he would put them on and then chop one of them off."

Alan looked at the antennae for a good long time, touching them only lightly and...

"... these don't seem to be artificial, Mortimer..." he said softly, at last. "They appear to be quite natural..."

Which probably surprises him less than it does Mort.

"But--no!" he shook his head wildly, pushing his hair back up to cover them. "I never had them before. I didn't even start feeling them until a little bit after. I...I'm just a kid, I'm not some kind of big insect person..."

Alan caught Mort's hands and shook his head.

"No, no, of course you're not. But, Mortimer... those are. Not. Artificial. Believe me. I know this sort of thing."

"You don't understand." he fought to free his hands. "It's much better if someone made you a freak...I can't have been born one, that would make me...a...a worse freak. Norman wouldn't like me anymore."

"Well..." And now Alan's in a quandary.

"Most people don't tell others things like this..." He's got a couple secrets of his own. "It's just... not done. You wouldn't have to go to Norman and tell him right out that the antennae are natural. Just if he asks..."

This while he's examining Mort's stitches to see just how much of a mess the lad is in.

Hm... if the feelers are natural, then he's not human...

"Have you ever taken antibiotics before, Mortimer?"

"But he already knows they're there. If I didn't tell him, it would be like lying."
He kicked his feet in the air, looking dejected.
"Uhhh. Yeah, I had strept throat once when I was little."

"If he knows they're there," answered Alan reasonably, "Then he probably won't ask about them anymore. It isn't lying, it's not telling him something that would upset him."

Which is often a bad idea, but it's one of the things that innish people do to survive. Alan does the same thing, doncha know. Except he actually has to lie right out about his father.

"Ah. Good."

That means that antibiotics shouldn't hurt him.

"Yeah...that makes sense. 'Cause until we decided that maybe the crazy guy put them there, he thought we were both crazy." he nodded solemnly.

Alan shook his head.

"You're not crazy."

And he pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and scrawled a prescription for something on it.

"Get this filled, okay? And make sure you take one every day. And this one..." he scrawled something else. "Is for a painkiller. Don't take it unless you're really hurting, okay?"

And for those antennae... He touched the stump of one, gently, and thought longingly of how he'd like to fix everything for the child.

"How old are you, Mortimer?"

He took the pieces of paper, nodding seriously at each one. He didn't care about the limitations on the pain meds, as long as they were stronger than what he'd been taking.
He twitched, gasping, when Alan touched the stump of the cut-off antenna.
"S-seventeen."

Alan was distracted.

This was because he hadn't yet figured out that he was using magic when he did stuff like this, and anyway, he didn't ever do anything on this scale. Making something grow back is much different from strengthening a body to heal on its own...

"I thought you were younger than that..."

I imagine it feels very odd to Mort, don't you think?

"I...uh..." he sneezed. Something felt very weird...it hurt, too, but it was a sort of stretching hurt that meant that things were being mended. "Yeah, a lot of people say that...um....younger than I look."
It was hard to keep his mind on the conversation, with...whatever Alan was doing.

Alan was rather preoccupied himself. Because he'd never see things grow back before, and he was trying to figure out what was going on, and why was he...

And then he was finished.

And then he crumpled to the floor and lay still, breathing steadily, but softly. (Alexander would have given one of his pupils a very stern lecture for letting themselves use all that energy at once... but Alexander isn't here, now is he.)

Alexander isn't here and Mort doesn't know what's going on. He hops off the table and kneels by Alan, shaking him.
"Doctor? Doctor, wake up now!"
He was too busy panicking over the unconscious man on the floor to notice that he had two whole antennae now.

Alan made a soft noise and his eyelids flickered. He was perhaps a shade or two paler than usual (if that's even possible), but he didn't seem to be actually injured.

Just... very exhausted.

"Nnn?"

"Are you okay?" Poor Alan. Mort didn't stop shaking him. "You...you fell down. Do you want me to get someone?"

Alan thought he could hear his brain rattling.

"N-no, I'm fine... I just... " Have one hell of a headache... "I just fainted... Must have been dehydrated, or something..."

Right. He thinks of that explanation instead of the magical one. Typical Alan. (But I don't have magic! Really!)

Finally, Mort stopped shaking. He put him down and went back to the table to get his shirt and comb his hair over his antennae. Once dressed, he knelt beside Alan again.
"Can you get up? I'll help you go get some water."

Alan smiled, despite the headache, and sat up. "I think I can get up, yes."

He grabbed the edge of the examining table thing, and rose to his feet in a surprisingly graceful movement for someone who's just crumpled to the floor in a faint.

He swayed a little, because the edges of his vision dimmed, but did not fall again.

"Water sounds good."

"Hold onto my shoulder if you think you're going to fall--not that I'll be able to help, but I can try."
He owes the guy something, after all...he does feel much better. Speaing of which, "Um...am I supposed to pay you or something?"

"Oh, good heavens no."

Other than the fact that Alan is one of those silly people who helps everybody out of the kindness of his heart, he also would get in trouble for treating Mort without all the paperwork and all that.

And off to find somewhere to get some water.