IC contact for lastvoyages

[cactusy]

[If I don't have an active post up, feel free to use this post to have your character call, videochat, text, or knock on Shaw's door.]

Comments

[cactusy]

Ugh, no way.

[She wrinkles her nose.]

I just think double dates are lame; makes me feel like either a middle-schooler or a suburban housewife.

[tarakan]

Ken has graduated.

I am very proud of him, announcement will be made soon. However, I will also be leaving soon

Know that this is not slight on Ulla or Leickenbloom when I say this. But I know some people here would prefer doctor who knows what a MRI is. I am not asking you to take up soon to be vacant infirmary post. But you are one of very few people here with modern medical knowledge and one of fewer people I trust. At least consider making house calls, so to speak.

[cactusy]

[She listens to the message as soon as it comes in, but doesn't answer immediately: waiting about fifteen or twenty minutes, mulling over the request.]

I ever tell you that I didn't finish my residency?

[tarakan]

You did. You did not think you had personality for working with patients, yes?

[cactusy]

Neither did my supervisor. The situation was "quit to save face, or get fired and have that mark on your record".

[tarakan]

Shaw. Look at me. In no way, shape, or form do I have personality fit for conventional hospital.

[ Hilbert sucks and he knows it! ]

But this is hardly conventional hospital. What matters on Barge is doing right by your patients, whatever it takes to solve problem and keep them well. I have faith in your ability to do just that.

And, selfishly, I feel infirmary should not be staffed entirely by magic children.

[ "but Ulla and Florian are in their twenties," still counts, okay??? ]

[cactusy]

You don't think there's any kind of important, baseline difference between you and me?

[A brief pause.]

Look, bottom line, yeah, you've definitely hurt more innocent people than I have, and you justified it to yourself in whatever way you could. But you also changed, graduated, and proved yourself plenty of times over. You're gruff and blunt and not too popular, but everything that was really wrong with you was based in your actions, and actions can be adjusted.

The things that made me an unfit doctor were brain chemistry deep. And the end of my residency - that was the first time I was told how awful and terrifying it is to have a doctor who can't care properly, but it wasn't the last. I did some research after I was fired. Nobody wants a sociopath for a doctor, no matter how experienced and qualified they are.

[abrightboy]

I didn’t go on any dates in middle school. Or high school. I did go on two in college. …Well. Three if you count the joke one. ……………And now I’m engaged. That’s weird, right? But also… amazing.

[tarakan]

If I thought there was important, baseline difference between us, I would not ask you in first place.

And frankly? I think because you are worried about your inability to care, that means you are better fit than your realize. If you were true sociopath, then why would you let supposed inability to care stop you from the job? If you were true sociopath, why are you worried about patients?

[cactusy]

Are you actually asking, or is this just rhetorical?

[tarakan]

Whichever choice makes you stop doubting yourself. I am not picky.

[cactusy]

Not gonna happen, because there's a lot of reasons to doubt my ability to be what people need in this area. But okay.

You know the difference between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy?

[tarakan]

Cognitive empathy is objectively knowing why people feel something. Emotional empathy is when you can tap into emotional state, akin to feeling their emotions in shared emotional experience.

[chaos_drifter]

::I spent the last few minutes with Will. If you come looking for me, you might find him first. Neither of us have gotten far.:: [They would rather avoid her being injured because of them.]

[cactusy]

Yeah. So-- I could inject potassium chloride into a patient's IV, and it wouldn't do diddly to my emotional state. But I know that doing that to an innocent person would be a bad thing, and I know that doing bad things is, uh-- bad. And the thing that keeps me from doing things that are really bad - like, murder levels of bad - is analytical knowledge of right and wrong, an understanding that a lawless society is a crappy society, and a lack of motivation to hurt people for no reason. Not fear of being wracked with guilt during endless sleepless nights.

That's the thing that gives people the willies.

[tarakan]

It does not give me willies.

[ There's a pause where Hilbert decides what to say before he settles on, ]

I was in hospital for large amount of time when I was child. Very bad, was in and out for multiple years. Do you know worst thing I heard at the time? "I am so sorry this is happening to you." Sorry would not make treatment work faster. Sorry would not put money into research trials. Sorry only made people who could not do anything feel better. What mattered most was not "I am so sorry," what mattered is "here is what we are doing today." I know I am not only person on Barge to feel this way.

I would not ask you to take up infirmary post if you only had medical knowledge. It is combination of your medical knowledge and previous actions on Barge that made me ask you.

[cactusy]

Okay.

[Okay. That's a concrete example, and one that shows an understanding of the way her deficits can be harnessed as strengths, as opposed to him pinning all his hopes on the idea that maybe she's secretly not as deficient as she thinks. That she can maybe work with.]

I wanna test the temperature of the rest of the ship before I make any decisions.

[tarakan]

Perfectly understandable. After all, this is not decision to be made on whim.

[cactusy]

Thanks.

[She goes to hang up there, but then stops.]

Thanks for wanting me too, I guess.

[tarakan]

No need for thanks. You have proven yourself in my mind already. Do not sell yourself short.

[cactusy]

Just trying to be a realist, Doc.

[cactusy]

Definitely weird.

[Sorry, Malcolm.]

No weirder than my dating history, though.

[cactusy]

You don't have a flashlight on you, do you?

[chaos_drifter]

::No, but my communicator screen could provide some light. Why?::

[abrightboy]

Oh no, did you get asked out as a joke, too?