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coolcattime · 1 year ago

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Ambulance Chaser [OC AU Snippet]

Hi hi!

This is a little snippet from an OC AU that me and my friend @theiratlas brainstorm about. We have quite a few AUs that we discuss a lot, but I've always felt a little nervous about sharing cause like sharing my OCs is a little bit anxiety inducing, but I wrote this scene and I felt very proud of it and wanted to share it!

This is an scene from a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure AU we've been discussing where this particular scene just got stuck in my head. It's meant to be the intro scene of kind of the 2nd act of the story but I hope it's still enjoyable to read out of context! (Also big thank to Atlas for editting and their little additions)

If you have any questions, I'm super happy to answer cause I always love rambling about OCs ^-^

Content warning for description of injuries and mild body horror.

He felt like he was going insane. Maybe he was, honestly at this point it would make more sense than what was in front of him. The doctor was scrambling to make sense of anything really, trying to give what little explanation he had to the person on the other end of the phone, hoping they could be of any kind of assistance. He couldn't believe it himself, that he, Rhys Mourningdove, hadn't come up with any information in weeks. What was particularly frustrating to him however was that he knew there must be some obvious explanation he was just missing.

He hadn't exactly been asked to do any kind of investigation, to look into the odd happenings at the hospital. It was more that he just couldn't stop thinking about it so took it upon himself to look. What was he meant to do when apparent miracle cures kept happening and no one had any sort of documentation, let alone explanations for how they had treated the patients. Rapid miracle cures that left patients not only better but as if they'd never been sick in the first place, completely ready to leave in a matter of hours, did not exist. If they did, Rhys is sure he would know about them, the world would know about them and be using them. It was infuriating that no one seemed to care just how weird it was, but him.

As long as the press was good, he supposed, but he couldn't believe that no one found this suspicious but him.

"So your problem is that patients are being cured at the hospital?" The sceptical voice of the man Rhys had been connected with tinnily echoed through his office. He was really from the Speedwagon Foundation? He must be an idiot, Rhys thought.

The voice on the phone introduced himself as Isaac Sharp, an accountant or an archivist or just someone who supposedly has a vested interest in making sure there wasn't anything suspicious going on at the hospital. Yet even as he had explained his findings, explained that people were getting cured with no logical explanation, the voice seemed to have absolutely no qualms with how things were going.

"No, my problem isn't the recoveries, it's that no one seems to know how the patients are recovering, there's not even treatment plans for them, it's impossible," Rhys explained this for what felt like the hundredth time, resisting the expletive on the tip of his tongue. It was as if Isaac wasn't even listening or maybe he just didn't care.

Rhys pushed his glasses up to briefly pinch the bridge of his nose. This wasn't how medicine worked. Someone on the medical teams treating the patients should be able to tell him the method that had been used. The handful of patients he'd managed to talk to before they'd been discharged had all recalled some kind of sting they described as being like an injection or a blood draw, usually within the hour before their miraculous recovery, but nothing of the sort had been documented even if a single miracle injection was any sort solution.

"Nothing's been documented, no aftercare has been scheduled or prescriptions written. This isn't like patients recovering, it's like they suddenly were never sick in the first place."

"Rhys."

"..." Rhys’s silence was pointed and chosen.

"Doctor Mourningdove," Isaac said, more than a little exasperated by this phone call. His job was meant to be easy, he wasn't meant to get phone calls complaining that the hospital was working too well because that was a ridiculous thing to complain about. Yet here he was, dealing with a man that was beyond simple academic concerns, obsessed with the fact that patients were leaving a hospital happy and healthy. How had his life come to this? "I understand that it must be hard to see another doctor come into a similar position as you and get all the accolades you're used to receiving--"

"No!” He snapped down immediately “No, this isn't an ego thing."

It was a little bit of an ego thing. Rhys was a good doctor, most would describe him as a great one, but he certainly was not a person who did the job out of the goodness of his heart. He liked the praise he'd gotten, obviously he did, who wouldn't? Maybe someone new and apparently more brilliant coming onto the scene was the original reason he had begun looking into the so-called miracle recoveries, but that didn't change the facts of what he had discovered.

"Logan Charles is a fraud! I don't know what he's doing to cure these patients, but he doesn't know a thing about medicine and I sincerely question whether he even has the credentials needed to call oneself a doctor!"

"Doctor Charles is successfully treating patients. He certainly isn't calling me to spread crackpot-nonsense conspiracy theories about a peer. Maybe you could learn something from him," He didn't sound nearly as forceful as he wanted to. Rhys certainly wasn't intimidated. But fine. Maybe he'd need to jump through a few more hoops to get the Speedwagon Foundation to actually listen to him even if Rhys still hadn't found any proof that their brand new miracle doctor had even attended medical school. He'd do this by himself.

"Fine, I'll go treat some patients right now."

"Why do you sound so aggressive?"

"..."

"Doct--" Rhys hung up the phone cutting Isaac off numbly, he had another led to follow who also happened to be a patient, which was good, he was pretty sure his break was over.

He wasn't sure if anyone praising the apparent miracle doctor had noticed, in fact he was pretty sure just that they hadn't, but at the same time as the last "incurable" patient was somehow magically cured, a young woman had fallen suddenly ill with the exact same illness despite having been completely healthy days beforehand. There was no way she wasn't somehow connected to this, even if he currently didn't have any idea how. Thankfully she was responding well to treatment, he just hoped that she would recover soon enough. Both for his own investigations, and the fact he'd been specially requested to be in charge of her care by the hospital's key donor not named Speedwagon. At least that meant no one was attempting to put any frauds on her medical team.

He turned to leave his office only to startle and stumble backwards as stood leaning against the doorframe of his office was “Dr.” Logan Charles, a shit-eating grin plastered on his dumb face. Rhys panicked. How much had he heard? The mass of muscle and ill fitting scrubs took a few steps inside, the door closing behind him. Rhys probably would have noted the door closing as if by a person despite there being no one around to do so but he was preoccupied by the cheap aftershave on legs swagging toward him.

Logan finally stopped less than a step’s distance in front of Rhys’ thankfully wide desk, though it definitely didn't provide nearly enough of a barrier.

"So, I'm a fraud huh?" He said with far too wide a smile. His voice was low and far too calm. Before this moment, Rhys had assumed he could never be scared by Logan; irritated and frustrated certainly, he never exactly wanted to be near him, but fear was definitely a surprise. "Lot of pretty serious claims you have there, I mean how would I have even gotten a job here if I'm not a doctor?"

Rhys considered his options and chose to provoke the protein powder-keg in front of him. The reasons why still escape Rhys even now.

"I'm not sure you do have a job here actually. You just showed up one day as if you were meant to be here and everyone went along with it," It was not the most sound argument, but he couldn't figure out the trick. He knew that Logan must've been hired, but he couldn't imagine the man making it through any sort of vetting process without his glaring lack of medical knowledge rearing its ugly head.

There was a single moment where Logan's smile dropped, it may have only been half a second, but it felt like an absolutely terrifying gotcha moment. But then that terrible feeling got worse. It was as if the “something” that had been clouding Rhys’s mind was suddenly lifted and now the starkly terrifying reality had set in.

Rhys stumbled back as the pieces connected in his head. Logan Charles didn't work here. Logan Charles probably wasn't even a doctor. Logan Charles had just appeared one day as if he was meant to be there after she…! He needed to get out of there.

The realisation dawning on his face was not well hidden and the other man saw it.

Rhys took off in a sprint. Logan tried to grab him only to be met with a sharp pain in his right cheek. Stumbling back as Rhys fled into the common areas, Logan tore out a fountain pen from his cheek. So that's how it was? Sure, he'd come to put an end to the man, but he wasn't meant to realise anything. Stupid damn memory stand, never should've trusted anything he didn't set up himself. Well, the annoying doctor shouldn't be too hard to track down.

Clutching his new face hole, he walked down the corridor, spotting the door to the stairwell open.

“Probably headed for the fire exit, but there was no way he'd’ve made it out yet” Logan found himself narrating. Entering the stairs he could hear someone hurriedly heading down, and looking down the middle, there he was, Rhys attempting to make his escape. Logan smiled.

"Ambulance Chaser. Total Recovery."

Rhys didn't hear those words, nor did he see the stand summoned by Logan. All he felt was a stinging pain in his back and then the most overwhelming pain in every nerve ending in his central nervous system from his spine and his toes, to his gums and ear drums. It was a kind of terrible that's hard to describe especially when internally all he could do was scream.

Rhys dropped immediately, falling down the flight of stairs he was currently running down, the pain of which he didn't notice, too overwhelmed by the ever-multiplying number of injuries spontaneously appearing with each second.

Doctor Rhys Mourningdove would be found less than a minute later barely conscious and be rushed to the hospital's emergency care. His wounds were more akin to that of a vehicular accident than anything that logically could've ended with a man being found on the hospital’s second floor stairwell. No one had any idea what could've caused such terrible injuries to appear, and it wasn’t certain that he’d even make a full recovery.

Although Doctor Charles had volunteered to lead his care, clearly he would be in good hands.

Unnoticed in all the chaos, a young man that had been admitted to the ER after a motorcycle accident was discharged in what could only be described as a miracle or a bizarre shared hallucination from the patient and paramedics alike. Despite the crash seeming severe, he walked away with no injuries, only a few cuts and bruises, his only memory between the crash and being wheeled out of the ambulance being that of a sharp pain akin to an injection.

#cat's writing #cat's oc #rhys mourningdove #logan charles #isaac sharp #oc jojo's au #i really just enjoyed writing this and wanted to share ^-^#cat's fanfiction

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