#i operate on the idea that if a project isnt finished it wont be which in turn leaves more unfinished projects

[kristie-rp]

[2018] Garrett: Turning

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone acting particularly weird in the hospital must be in want of Doctor Vincent Constantine. 

Okay, no, that’s not true, exactly. It’s more a truth acknowledged only within the hospital itself, and weirdness is relative, and they don’t always know they need Constantine’s expertise. That’s just how it gets explained to Garrett when he starts his placement during med school, by a curly haired woman speaking behind her hand in a stage whisper. Doctor Constantine himself snorts and shoots her an unimpressed look, and does a double take when he sees Garrett. There’s something vaguely familiar in it, and the intern smiles politely. “Hi, Doctor Constantine.” 

“Call me Vincent,” comes the reply. “She’s right, in a manner of speaking. If something seems particularly... peculiar, then I am the resident expert. Feel free to come to me.”

Garrett doesn’t think much about it, afterwards. The thing is, he doesn’t work in Vincent’s department, at least not at first. The older man operates largely out of the basement, where a morgue would be in any other hospital: it has been turned into a ward, and the windows of half the rooms are blacked out with heavy tarps. It’s eerie. When Garrett brings his toddler daughter April to work some days, when she is too young to be home alone and not able to be at daycare, she tends to spend time with the old man. He doesn’t get it, but he allows it. 

He’s been a fully qualified medical practitioner employed by the hospital for eight months before he thinks about the description of Vincent’s specialisation. A couple have brought in their terrified daughter, who is incredibly pretty for a human child and also very quick-witted and persuasive. She has talked the nurse out of at least three lollipops before Garrett arrives in the room to introduce himself and shoo the nurse away. 

“Do you really need so many,” her mother is asking a little helplessly, taking the third one from her daughter. The little girl shrugs, and asks her dad to get her some water, please, from the vending machine. Because her mother is the one with money, she goes, too. The little girl is alone with Garrett. 

“They think I’m sick,” she informs him flatly, pouting slightly. “I don’t think they’re wrong. I mean. I know I’m not like the other girls. And there are these.” She tugs at her beanie and it lifts away to reveal small horns on her forehead. She is very careful not to rip the wool. “My mom’s worried.”

“Cutaneous horns aren’t unheard of,” Garrett tries. He doubts it’s that simple; the very sentence sits wrong on his tongue. Plus, every instance of cutaneous horns he’s heard of presented in the elderly. 

The little girl, apparently, is aware of this. “I know how to Google,” she says dismissively, “and I know only old people have that happen. So why is this happening to me now?” 

Garrett hesitates. He can order tests – of course he can. But something gives him pause. The mother and father return, and Garrett makes up his mind: he leans out of the door to catch a nurse as she passes by. “Hi, sorry – can you run down to the basement and find Doctor Constantine, please? I need a consult.” 

The nurse looks at him curiously, but returns in fifteen minutes with Vincent himself. He looks between the couple. “Are you her father?” 

The man shakes his head. “We adopted her a few years ago,” he explains. The little girl doesn’t seem bothered by this, and her mother has rested a hand on her little girls shoulder. “We have the record of her biological parents medical information –” 

The mother starts to search in her bag for the papers. Vincent stops her with a wave of her hand. “No matter, they won’t be accurate.” 

The parents make outraged sounds, and the little girl blinks at him. “You know what’s wrong with me?” she asks. Her voice is much smaller than it was earlier, alone with Garrett. He can’t blame her, really; Vincent has that effect on people. 

“Have any of you heard of a Cambion?” is what Vincent asks, completely without preamble. Garrett starts, because he’s heard of those, in fascinated Wikipedia spirals that almost always end with him looking up different takes on mythological beings – and this doctor, whom he respects, is talking as though the creature is real. “It is the result of a sexual union between an Incubus and a human woman. I’d bet the mother listed her boyfriends information before giving her up, knowing exactly what she was getting into.” He pauses, addressing the girl directly. “The horns may be surgically removed once they are fully grown, but that won’t happen until you’ve completed puberty. You likely had almost no pulse until you were seven, and you’ve likely noticed you barely need to breathe. You’re clever and beautiful, more than human girls, and you’re persuasive. Many would call you manipulative. Does this sound right?” The little girl is staring at him, somewhere between dumbfounded and fascinated. Garrett can see in her face that this explains everything. “You have the potential to be evil, but with good parents – nurture over nature, all that – it can be subverted or at least limited. Any questions?” 

If there are, Garrett doesn’t hear them, watching the girls face instead. He can’t see Vincent’s, but that girl is looking at him like he told her the meaning of life, and has no longer left her confused and wanting, unsure what she is. 

Garrett doesn’t know if he entirely believes the story, but he’s half-way there. It helps that the little girl pauses to give him a hug and to thank him on the way out, beanie back in place.

Garrett’s co-workers think that his fascination with Vincent’s so-called department – which exists primarily due to the Constantine’s donating more money to the hospital than the accounting department is willing to disclose – is ridiculous and confusing. They think Vincent is insane, or delusional, or at least eccentric, for all they respect him as their fellow doctor. But every single one of them is willing to call the older man for a consult when the situation calls for it, which is really all Garrett can hope for, so he mostly ignores the opportunities to mock them.

(Mostly, because sometimes he cannot bite his tongue fast enough to ensure he is less sarcastic in the workplace than he is at home, with April, who by now is a teenager who really ought to have a more sincere parental figure to turn to.) 

Anyway: it is not uncommon for Garrett to visit Vincent’s basement, either to ask pointed questions or chat with patients kept so separate from the others. He does this more predictably on the nights when April is not supposed to be coming home, and tonight she is staying at a friends place while they work on a project for class. He does not have to be home in time for dinner, so he meanders down to where he can visit at his own pace. 

There is a woman with albinism in one room. She greets him warmly, as she had the last time he’d been here, by putting on a terrible Transylvanian accent and calling herself a vampire. Garrett quirks a brow at her, thinking something along the lines of you wouldn’t be quite that pale if you dined on blood, Zoe. She laughs aloud. “Alright, fair enough, I’ll let you have that one. Stop by on your way out, Doc,” she insists, and he can almost feel the idea settling in his mind, ensuring he will do as asked later. 

“Is your tail ever going to heal?” Garrett asks the man in the next room, curious.

The merman with his blue-tinted skin snorts, his teeth growing in jagged rows; according to what he’s told them, he is a hybrid of some sharks that wouldn’t ever frequent the bay around Port Lyndon. “I’m not the doctor,” he says, splashing impatiently. He is caught halfway between human and mer form, and the pain shows in how pale around the gills he is. “Ask Vince.” 

“Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that. Straight after my stopover at H.L. to let them know what I am,” Garrett retorts, earning a laugh from the mer as he splashes contentedly. 

He stops at the door of the selkie to smile and let her know that he’s passing through, because he knows she’s mostly here because of the debilitating anxiety that came from losing her pelt – only she hasn’t felt compelled to actually go to anyone, so it isn’t stolen, just legitimately lost. There’d be more chance of finding it if it was stolen, from what Garrett understands – it is hard to get her to talk, because Vincent is the expert, and he’s not exactly personable. 

The next room was home to a slightly burned dryad the last time he was here, but his bark was basically finished moulting, which means he should be gone, and the room should be empty. Garrett opens the door to check, eyes widening when he instead gets an eyeful of a wolf-like being – it’s a fully transformed werewolf, he knows that – and yet his immediate panicked reaction is to step closer and slam the door closed.

Yeah, his self-preservation instincts have always been terrible, he is aware. He does things like drink hot sauce on a dare (college) and break into his parents liquor cabinet (high school) and grab the arms of angry looking people on crutches to prevent them from walking into traffic (summer between high school and college, and actually he’s proud of that one). He has a feeling he’d step in front of a gunman to save someone, even a stranger.

That might explain locking himself in with an angry looking werewolf. One that’s currently edging closer. 

“Crap,” he croaks, panic making his voice crack, and presses himself against the door. 

He blacks out. 

It’s probably for the best.

“I have to hand it to you, Garrett,” a familiar voice is saying when he comes to, blinking at a white tile ceiling, “if you were going to be infected by a supernatural condition, this is probably the best possible place you could’ve done it.” 

“That’s nice,” Garrett says. He thinks he sounds about as sarcastic as usual, but he might be a little dazed. It’s something to do with the fact that he can make out the little specks across the surface of the tiles, which is weird, because he should be wearing glasses, and he can’t feel them on his face. “I think my veins are on fire.” 

“That’d be the wolfsbane,” the voice answers, apparently unbothered. It’s Vincent. Garrett is not surprised. 

Garrett closes his eyes. “You’re suppressing a transformation, aren’t you. Isn’t that a bad idea?” 

“Which one of us is the expert?” 

Garrett scoffs. “Which one of us is a werewolf?” 

There’s a long silence that makes Garrett want to open his eyes, but it’s bad enough that he can hear a heartbeat that he’s pretty sure isn’t close enough to be Vincent. Which means his co-worker doesn’t have a heartbeat. Which – he had to pass a medical to get this job; how did Vincent get the job with no heartbeat, without causing some sort of crisis? He keeps his eyes firmly shut, thanks ever so much. “Touché,” Vincent says at last, and Garrett can hear the amusement in his voice. 

“How long was I out?” 

“A couple of hours. Your phone rang; it was your daughter. She’ll be here soon.” 

“Sure, that’s a brilliant idea,” he mutters, sarcasm heavy in his voice. Garrett’s eyes fly open and he sits up a little quicker than he would like, blinking against the abrupt change of scenery and the headrush. “By which I mean, you just said I’m a newly turned werewolf, Vincent, what the fuck?” 

“At least you already know werewolves exist,” he says.

It’s not helpful. Garrett gives him the glare he thinks he deserves, and then lays back down, pressing his palms into his closed eyes. Maybe if he thinks hard enough, this will go away. “I can’t be a werewolf,” he says, as if it will change anything. “I have a teenage daughter. I’m a medical doctor. I work night shift half the time, I can’t take every full moon off!” 

“That’s what the wolfsbane is for.” 

“Oh, right. How could I forget? My veins feel like they’re actually on fire and this is the only way to not turn into a wolf that will bite anyone around.” 

“You’re a very negative person, aren’t you?” 

Garrett grimaces. He’s just realized what the heartbeat he can hear actually is, and attempts to peer at the other occupant of the room, the one he missed. “Sorry, Dave. I didn’t mean any offence. Much.” 

Dave, the werewolf responsible for this entire thing, snorts, but it sounds half-hearted and exhausted. He is trembling. “I should be the one apologizing. I ruined your life, man. I owe you.” 

“Should I be worried about the shaking?” 

“Doc didn’t give me any ‘bane until I’d already transformed, is all. Remember to take it like you’re s’posed to and it works out better.” 

“Great.” Garrett takes medication for anxiety on the daily. He now has to add injections of liquidated wolfsbane to his schedule at least once a month, twice in a blue moon, and he really doesn’t want to wish harm on Dave – so he doesn’t. He closes his eyes again, takes a deep, supposedly steadying breath. “This is just what I needed.” 

“Dad?” 

Garrett opens his eyes and looks up. April is standing over him with a look of concern, the door open behind where his head has been resting this entire time. “Hey, sweetie,” he says, trying for a sincere smile. He doesn’t know how close he gets as she dumps her bag and kneels down beside him. “I hear your sleepover wasn’t that great.” 

“Muriel is being mean, so I called to come home. Vincent said you were – hurt?” 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just – um.” Garrett pauses. He cannot lie to his daughter, she needs to know what is going on. It isn’t fair to keep her in the dark. 

He has to tell her about supernaturals, if she hasn’t guessed already.

Garrett groans aloud, pressing his palms back into his eye sockets. “Remind me to kill you later,” he mutters. “It’s the least you deserve.” 

Vincent snorts, and Dave’s noise is more like a whimper. There’s something decidedly lupine in it, and that’s exactly the sort of thing Garrett needs to hear right now. 

“So,” he starts, pulling his eyes away, “you know how there are humans in the world, and they have different races? African, Asian, Caucasian, Mongoloid.” 

“Yes...?”

“Well, those differences are just aesthetic. The differences that actually matter a little bit are the ones that make human beings into something – supernatural.” 

There’s quiet for a long moment. “Are you trying to make a joke about that TV show?” April asks, wary. 

Garrett sighs. He wishes he was. “I wish I was,” he says, “but what I’m actually saying is that vampires and werewolves and dryads and all that – it’s real. That’s what’s special about Vincent’s patients. That’s why they are in the basements, that’s why pretty much everyone avoids him and thinks he’s insane.” 

“Hey,” Vincent says. It’s mild enough that Garrett doesn’t believe he actually cares. 

“Also, that’s Dave. Say hi to Dave.” He waits for April to wave awkwardly at the patient. “He’s a werewolf. And he bit me.”