correct philosophy | joshua

Though they were allowed in the staff room that normally housed all of the teachers and professors, on break the staff of the medical wing usually retired to one of the back rooms for their coffee and chit-chat. Every employee was entitled to their break whenever they wished to take it, within reason, and Joshua was drinking a cup of Tim Hortons coffee as he waited for the last few minutes of his to wind down. One of the volunteers was in the room with him, a high school student working on getting in her hours. She was friendly enough but a bit slow to pick up on things, a factor that made him glad that he was not one of those forced to supervise. That was left up to the real doctors who would no doubt be blamed for any of her mistakes. He liked responsibility but not in that way.

A glance at the clock told him that he had two minutes left in his break but as he tipped the last few drops of cooling coffee into his throat he stood up, deciding to go back to work early. There was no use sitting around on his ass if it wasn't necessary. The girl, whose name he knew to be Claire, followed after him. He figured that she was going to split off and go her own way but she was with him all the way into the main area of the wing that housed the waiting room and a couple offices. He tracked down his supervisor in the man's office, pausing outside the open door. "Got anything for me?" The man didn't so much as pause as he leafed through papers on his desk. "Go and check if the patients in the eastern block need anything, would you?" Josh pressed his lips together. Babysitting again, oh joy. This supervisor didn't trust him as much as some of the other doctors did. Joshua wasn't fond of the guy and he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

He turned around and nearly bumped into Claire, blinking in surprise and then narrowing his eyes. "What?" She seemed to detect the irritation in his tone and expression, hesitating before she asked. "Mind if I come with?" He got the feeling that she wanted to get her hours done with as quickly as possible but he wasn't the type of person to be overly sympathetic about that. Not when he had a job to do, and especially not when his current supervisor was on duty. If she breathed in the wrong direction he'd get in trouble for it. Resisting the urge to tell her to go and bother someone else, he said, "You want to shadow me while I walk around doing nothing? I don't think so." She made an irritated noise in her throat and he had to hold back a biting comment. "Go ask the receptionist, maybe she'll find something to keep you occupied." Sufficiently irritated by a combination of the girl and the fact that he was being treated more like a babysitter than an assistant, he resigned himself to the task and headed down the eastern hallway.

There was some kind of illness going around and Kennedy's room wasn't the first he stopped in. He noticed upon pausing at the threshold that she appeared to be asleep and the Fire graduate frowned, wondering if he should skip it and check back later. No, he'd never let me live that down. Bitter by the attitude of his boss, he rapped his knuckles softly against the open door before walking in, hoping to give the girl (who he didn't recognise) a head's up. "You awake?" She might have been a deep sleeper for all he knew. "It says here that you're sick." He tapped the clipboard in his hand before setting it down. It didn't say much, just 'complained of illness'. Not much of a lead. "My name's Joshua, I'm an assistant. How are you feeling?" His tone was decent enough despite the ire circumstances had instilled in him. It wouldn't take much to change his mood for the worse, though. He was on edge.

[She can recognise name, if you want xD So she'd know he was a traitor.]

Her eyes flickered open soon after he announced his presence and the Fire graduate concluded that she was either a light sleeper or that perhaps she'd only been resting her eyes. As an incredibly light sleeper himself, it took little more than a loud breath to wake him. It could be irritating at times. He could fall into a deep enough slumber that his wife shifting beside him was no issue but if someone opened the door to the room, it would rouse him. It was good in case of an intruder but not so much for a good night's sleep.

He had not so much as glanced at the 'element' section of the form that was filled out for each patient upon their admittance into the medical wing. He had found that he worked best at treating all of his patients equally when he did not know. He might have graduated and taken on a staff position but it was hard to grow accustomed to treating his former enemies like decent human beings. So when she came at him with her snide comment, Joshua did not need to so much as look at the field to figure out which side of the alliances she likely hailed from.

Wonderful.

He wished that he could roll his eyes and walk right back out of the room. He hated dealing with people like Kennedy. If he had been working under one of the supervisors that liked him a little more, they would have understood. But the man calling the shots today was a Thunder and while he didn't say it outright, he adhered to the same grudge-holding traits as his high-school kin. He had never been fond of Joshua Dale.

He pressed his lips together briefly to bite back a cold comment of his own. "There is no elemental discrimination in the medical wing between students and staff." He sounded a lot like one of those cheesy posters they had up in the classrooms about respect and the golden rule and all of that crap but that was what they were taught. If they did not treat everyone as an equal, they could kiss their position in the wing goodbye. He did not want to lose his job. "The alliances no longer dictate who I am. I'm here to do my job." Adults had much more breathing room. The leaders couldn't do anything about treachery and the label of 'traitor' was more of an insult that an official title. It did not mean that all the Thunders and Fires wanted to be buddy-buddy with him now, it simply meant that he couldn't get in trouble for having a friend in Thunder like Skye while being married to an Earth like Nell.

Blinking, he said calmly, "So is there anything that you need?" He didn't like having to cater to her desires but that was part of being an assistant. One of these days I'll have more power here.

[It's fine! Josh is trying to be all ~professional haha]

He considered the girl with a carefully neutral expression, deciding whether or not he would humour her with an answer to her question. She had not been quite as snide about asking as some of her kind were in the past but it was a sensitive subject no matter how one went about it. They were discussing how he had turned his back on the element he'd led once, it was fragile ground. He did not regret his decision but that did not mean he felt he had to justify himself to anyone that thought it was their business to know his reasons. Was the ring on his finger not explanation enough?

He blinked at her and decided that he would take the bait if only to let her know that he was not messing around. "I am no longer a student at the Academy and so the wars do not concern me personally." It might have seemed like he was dancing around the issue yet again but he was not finished. He didn't give her time enough to interject before he added, "However, during my time at the Academy I made no secret of my allegiance. I side with my wife." He nodded at the wedding ring. If Nell had been a Wind he would not have betrayed his own unless they had been keen on forcing him out. He had turned on them originally when they had made Nell an enemy of the alliance and put a target on her head. If she was threatened, he would step up to defend her.

He expected a snide comment about how she wasn't going to accept anything from a traitor and was appreciative of the lack of snark when she requested water without any cold comments on the side. He got paid to deal with the bullshit that he faced each day but that didn't make it any less irritating. He went to fetch the water and handed it to her, having no idea of the jab she'd regretted not mentioning.

There was not much that they could do in the medical wing for illnesses that did not have a remedy but there were procedures to follow either way. He'd had them drilled into his head as a volunteer to the medical wing and now as an assistant he was bombarded with them all the more often. The job title meant more responsibility but it also meant more rules to follow. That was all right with Joshua—he did well with rules, with structure. "Do you need an out for any classes?" If she really wasn't feeling well then they weren't going to send her back unless she was feeling up to it. "We can get in touch with any teachers and inform them of what's going on so that your absence isn't counted against you." No one liked detentions.

He considered the smirk that formed on her lips, wondering if she was glad to be getting out of class. She certainly looked it, though it was possible that she was thinking something else entirely and so he was going to try and avoid assumptions. Instead he nodded. "Got it. I'll go and take care of that in just a moment." It was possible that she was faking illness to get out of class, they had plenty of that around the medical wing, but she didn't look like she was feeling completely up to scratch. He would ask a couple questions and check her out to be sure. Better safe than sorry.

He blinked at the question, a frown tugging his lips as he tried to figure out what she was talking about. "Back when?" He was busy thinking about his job, his mind already having moved away from the issue of the alliances. He didn't think about it nearly as often as he used to. His life was different now. He was different.

She clarified, though, and his expression hardened. It had not been phrased cruelly and she was not mocking him from what he could tell but being interrogated didn't please the Fire elemental. I have nothing to be ashamed of. And he wasn't. Betraying his alliance had been a difficult choice but marrying Nell had been the easiest one he'd made in his life, the one he regretted the least. "We weren't so much as friends when we first met, so no. The alliances were exactly as they are now. I didn't betray my element because of our relationship, anyway." The details were undoubtedly foggier now to all those who hadn't been directly involved. Rumours twisted stories and drove them in new directions. He wouldn't be surprised if word through the grapevine said that he and Nell were already deep into their relationship when he'd first been branded a traitor. Shit happened.

To give Kennedy a little more perspective and to prove that he wasn't simply making excuses for himself, he said, "She was my friend, so I protected her. That was all." Things escalated later. He fell for her, he asked her out, they dove through hell and washed ashore together. He wouldn't get into all of that with anyone. Kennedy had asked about the alliances and so he'd told her.

Switching back to business, he asked her, "So what kind of sickness is this? Anything we'd be able to detect or is it more like a simple stomach ache?" To explain why he was asking, he added, "If you'd let me do a quick examination, I could put it on file and it'll be more credible than just a simple complaint. Some teachers assume anything is an excuse." He actually remembered that from his own high school days as well. He had a near-perfect attendance record and a doctor in the family so his issue had never been all that profound but there were a couple people he'd grown up with and attended classes beside who hadn't always been so lucky. You could only fall ill so often before it raised suspicions. "Not that I'm accusing you of faking it, it's just standard procedure." He had a job to do, after all.

[dahw kenny <3]

While he wouldn't call it gratitude, Joshua felt a certain respect for the fact that she didn't sneer at him or call names when he told her the truth. He had heard enough of that over the years to become tired of it and it was more of a nuisance than a real cause of upset. It was irritating. So the fact that Kennedy was willing to take his answer for what it was and close the subject with her silence was something he appreciated. He didn't like to go on about those days. The past was past. Dead and gone, buried. History was only interesting when it wasn't his own.

Being no stranger to headaches, Joshua knew how much of a bother migraines could be. Sensitivity to light and even the softest of sounds, a sickness in your stomach that wouldn't go away, the feeling that someone was taking a mallet to your skull. They were an absolute nightmare to deal with and even Josh would consider taking an absence from class if he woke up with a really bad one. He could not say for sure that Kennedy was telling the truth but as he didn't recognise her to be one of the serial 'ill' students who came to the medical wing to get out of class, he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Would you like some Advil?" They had the regular pills as well as the extra strengths for migraines. A lot of students stumbled in complaining of headaches and so they kept a full stock of them. "I'm not authorized to give out prescriptions but as they're over the counter, I could get you some from the back. They might help." Some migraines stubbornly fought against the pills taken to alleviate them and others caved in to the all mighty power of medicine. He'd experienced both in their extremes but he figured that if she was really in that much pain, it was worth a shot.

He nodded. "Yeah, we've seen a lot of the stomach bug cases come through here as of late. It's a nasty piece of work but I've heard that it passes quickly. You should feel better in a couple of days, if that." Some patients reported feeling better as soon as the next day, others took a little longer. Everyone was different. He was only glad that it wasn't the flu. That was not a fun thing to go through by any means. "Makes sense. You seem to be telling the truth and so I'll mark that down in the report. I don't think you'll be hearing any complaints from your teachers." His lip twitched slightly. He was growing accustomed to correcting his bedside manner even around those who initially rubbed him the wrong way. In a way, it felt like his job in the medical wing was preparing him for the real world. He appreciated it.

[that's all good! <3]