[downtown]
(danya)
Bootsteps.
The first thing that announces his presence in the Cook County Chief Medical Examiner's Office is a heavy and slow cadence of deliberately measured steps echoing upon linoleum tile. They slow and stop when confronted by the security desk. Proper identification presented earns the tall young man passage into the maze-like tunnels of the building accompanied by a precise set of directions to the desk of Dr. Imogen Slaughter herself.
So perhaps, if she is in her office, she would hear his bootsteps even before knuckles curled to rap upon the wood. A slow, rhythmic pulse crescendoing with the closing proximity of his carried weight on thick rubber soles to the very habitat of her workspace.
(imogen)
OCME. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Cook County is the only county in all of Illinois where it is not a coroner system. It's a true medical examiner system, with a chief medical examiner and all his minions.
And there is Danya walking toward the office of one of them. He probably called to confirm. Most doctors do not work Saturday, but for the one on call, and the hallways have an echoing empty quality to them, silent but for the deliberate steps of a single occupant, and the security guard's radio playing in the front lobby.
"S'open," British cadences and accent, even in two words (one word, really, she makes it one word), and holds true, in that the door is unlocked, if he takes the word for what it is, an invitation.
At first he's presented with the doctor's back, not facing him as she rifles through an open filing cabinet, seeking a file of some sort. The office is not large, and has no windows and every inch of available wall space is made up of either filing cabinets or bookcases. File cabinets are left shut, and tidy, and book cases are neat, with books crammed in with magazines and journals, reference material and paraphernalia.
It's always a shock to meet Imogen and realize just how small she is. She is looking in the top drawer of a filing cabinet nearly as tall as she, and as a result, had to reach, just to look at the names.
"...Sorry," says the woman as she turns, a brief double take at the person at her door, before she recovers (maybe she expected a woman) "Yeh must be Danya?"
(danya)
The smile he wears is probably not from the amusement of realizing a doctor with such a forceful name presents such a slight stature. He knows, perhaps better than currently letting on, that size is not always what matters. Nor is the significance of an appelation. Her breif double-take was noted: not many expect a man standing 6'4" with spikey black hair and eyes of lagoon's darkest green to carry such an ambiguous name. Most likely the absent smile is a reaction even he is not aware of to the music still filtering softly from far down the twists and turns of the hallway.
Because the rest of him seems all business. Starting with a curt nod confirming his name which is immediately and ultimately betrayed by a widening of that small smile as a lapel of heavy navy peacoat is pulled aside to reveal the labshirt and corporate identity tag still in place. Danya V. Tretiak, HPLC Analytical Chemist, ChemoCorp Pharmeceuticals.
"Interesting case you sent us." A thick manila envelope stocked with neatly noted printouts and a tidily concise report presents itself in the air between them. "I ran the tests three times to confirm."
(imogen)
Saturday, and the small woman wears jeans, low slung on slender hips, a pager clipped at her hip, and a medical examiner's shield hanging from her pocket where it had perhaps been left there, ignored (forgotten?) after her last page. Clipped to the hem of her blouse, cut as to be the type to be left untucked, dipping at front and back and cut at her hips, as another identification badge, this one for the building itself. Danya was given one, himself, a visitor's badge that he was told would only permit him access to this corridor.
After hours, the medical examiner's office is full of locked doors and security pads, the activation lights glowing red.
The woman is likely a junior medical examiner, considering her age, and perhaps the hours she is currently keeping, working a saturday. Certainly an easy example to dispell the image of a forensics pathologist being an old man making crass graveyard jokes as he works his way through a corpse's innards. There's even a tattoo, the edges just visible because she did not wear her lab coat (laid across the back of her chair) and the day was warm enough that the blouse she wore was short sleeved.
"It's as we thought, is it?" she asks, dropping the file she'd found in the cabinet onto her desk with one hand, and pushing the drawer shut with the other, before she turns to cross the small office, reaching out with her left hand to take the manila envelope from him, flipping it over when she receives it, slender fingers starting to undo the string that kept the envelope's mouth closed.
Fingers pause after a moment, "Need to sign anything, do I?"
(danya)
"Mmhm." The light sound serving as confirmation to all of the above. One hand extracts a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of dark blue jeans. Once unfolded, he takes the two steps needed to bring him from the doorway to her desk and sets the little bit of red tape down for her to sign. It's nothing more than a copy of one standard permission form documenting he did, indeed, deliver the file as directed.
He, too, is probably little more than a junior member of the corporate team fresh out of the hiring pool - and college, by the rather trendy flair to his choice of dress and youthful glow (that, too, may only be the resilient leech of working all night beneath flourescent lighting, as well). Assigned the task of running tests for another office, probably fresh off a graveyard shift in that he's still wearing a coat fit for last night's temperatures and not today's sudden warming. Since it took him until now to have the tests ready for delivery - it's safe to assume he ran them after his own paid hours ended.
"But it gets a little more interesting. I found evidence of Bortezomib - which is not on par with the cocktail for the guy's diagnosis nor among the scripts you sent with the samples."
(imogen)
The woman steps back as he steps in, walking to her desk, reaching over to pick up a pen from her desk, scrawling her name to the sheet, and printing it afterward, to make up for her inarticulate scrawl. It's interesting to note that Imogen is left handed.
Her hair, flaming hues and bright, and pulled back from her face in a braid that leaves a few strands spilling across her face. It's these strands she pushes from her eyes as she turns to glance at him, an eyebrow lifting.
"That's... what? Velcade?" Her uncertainty is understandable. In her profession, she needs to cover the entire gauntlet of knowledge and so, sometimes, the specifics are lost. Which is why she has nearly every reference book under the sun.
Her signature tendered, she picks up the envelope again, unwrapping the string and lifting the envelope's lid, pulling out the thick sheaf of papers, "What were th'levels, d'yeh recall?"
(danya)
Again, that curt nod. With the door still open behind him, the guard's mellow symphony still drifts down the hallway. While his head tilts in what seems concentration's recollection of data and facts, perhaps he is also distracted to a slight degree.
"Previously LPD-341. FDA approved it less than a year ago to treat muptiple myeloma - plasma cell cancer. It's a modified dipeptidyl boronic acid for IV use only. Blocks the cascading proteolytic action of the proteasome... basically seems to - reversably - inhibit the ability of the cancer cell to protect itself against the damage regular chemo causes, inhibiting Bcl-2, antiogenesis and metastasis: death by apoptosis while the normal cells are supposedly spared. No extensive reaction or side effect data available, and no formal drug interaction studies have been submitted for publication - I checked this morning. So far it's only hypothetical bortezomib shouldn't be used with Lipitor - which this guy was on, scripts and confirming data a few pages in - because it increases the chance of periphreal neuropathy."
Information rattled off while his own signature is added, under witness, to the documentation slip.
"Pretty aggressive treatment for a relatively new diagnosis. This is usually the last resort because other treatments haven't helped. Fairly high levels, though I don't remember the numbers offhand, meaning this guy got it recently. And since it can only be admistered by or under the supervision of a doctor...." The phrase drifts off with another of his slight smiles.
(imogen)
As he speaks, she looks over the neatly printed notes, leaning against the edge of her cheap desk, tendrils of hair slipping uot from behind her ear to fall before her profile, "Can I get a copy of that," she asks abstractedly, a hand leaving the reports she hold to gesture to the paper as he signs as witness, before offering him an apologetic smile (..goes no deeper than her teeth), "I'd offer t'make one, but our xerox is broke."
Her attention distracts again, the apologetic smile fading as if it never was, and she continues scanning the reports as he speaks, nodding, briefly absently from time to time. "Then it was either administered illegally - doesn't seem likely, since it was a new diagnosis an' he wasn't far advanced enough t'be desperate - or by mistake."
It's interesting to note that Imogen at her work place is probably drastically different than something a Garou or another kin might see. While still cool and professional, she borders on pleasant and polite, if only because without these features, she will never get what she needs from whom she needs it. Detached friendliness that she has, to a point, become skilled at keeping just that, either by never allowing it to go farther or simply shutting down attempts from the other party to do the same.
"Thank yeh f'r yer help," she says now, reaching around and behind her to pick up another file folder from her desk, and an butterfly paperclip, clipping the thick sheaf of papers and adding them to the file folder for later perusal. "I'll be able t'file th'report on monday."
(danya)
Her apologetic smile is met by negligent wave of hand, nimble fingers manipulating the small paper to separate the carbon copy from beneath. It's torn free and returned to presentation on her desk. Aside from the file notes now in her hand, it seems they share a common thread of polite diplomacy in the face of business. When speaking of chemistry and lab readouts and other such analytical information, Danya seems a wealth of friendly knowledge. In other situations, he seems a probable far cry from so pleasently polite.
Not with the way deeply green eyes seem to brood beneath his brows.
"I'm not sure of the details..." Paper folded and returned to his pocket. His uncertainty here is, also, understandable. The samples were provided for him to confirm the presence of certain chemicals within the victim's blood, and assess their correlation to legal perscriptions. Nothing more. He has no idea of how the man died nor any other affective diagnoses. As a labrat, it was not his place nor need to know. "... but if the guy had any liver disease on top of the cancer diagnosis it may lean more towards malpractice than mistake since he was on Lipitor as well as the chemo-cocktail."
"My extension's on the last page, if anything needs clarification." It won't. The report is as neat and tidy as it is complete. Recent graduate that he is, there's no question on how professor-quality the file is. All the tidbit of information will provide is an avenue to reach him which does not include navigating through the company operator's switchboard.
He turns to head for the door. Business concluded, there is no other reason for him to stay. Until an afterthought causes him to look back while framed in the hallway. "Any nearby diners to hit or avoid? I'm new in town and haven't been able to get through on my family's number..."
Those eyes - they should be looking at her out of polite and professional respect, but intead they dropped to the bare hint of ink peeking from beneath her sleeve. The bottom half seemed familiar, but he words the request carefully enough to seem vaguely shy (highly improbable) in the face of personal questions should he have been wrong.
(imogen)
Her eyes are a particular colour of blue, dark dark dark, like deep oceans or starry nights, and they look at him for a long momet, a gaze that is abruptly as untelling as her previous demeanour had been polite.
His gaze on the sinuous curve of her tattoo (branded.) is abruptly cut off as a slender hand closes over her bicep, obscuring the black ink carved into pale flesh (she's just answered his question), and the slender woman looks at him for a moment more, before (she forces herself not to do as she's done before and) she says simply, "It would depend on who yer family was. I know a few blokes. Maybe I have a better number?"
Even with near incontrovertable evidence to the otherwise, she still plays the game. because the price of misstepping is far worse than the price of caution.
She steps away in her small office, starting to walk behind her desk.
(danya)
If her sudden covering of the inkstain surprises him, it does not show. Whatever mockery he made of being shy disappears instantly as she does, indeed, answer his question. There's a sudden luxation as his body, in all appearances to the guards far down the hall, seems to relax and lean a shoulder against the door.
"They call my grandfather Thunder."
(imogen)
Hands rest flat on the edge of the desk, for a moment as she looks at him, and perhaps she's trying to recall if she's heard anything about a grandfather named Thunder, and maybe she comes up empty.
"You'll have t'skip th'double entendres," she says as she considers him once more, "because I don't know what yeh mean," easily stated. there are some things she is accostumed to, and her poor knowledge of the nation is one of them.
The double entendres, though, bother her, in a way, and after a moment, her hand reaches up to her tattoo, to her sleeve and perhaps she was going to cover it again.
Not so: she lifts the sleeve for the tattooed glyph on her arm, curving along her bicep, showing it to him, briefly, a smirk twisting her lips, abruptly wry and ironic, "T'make yeh feel better." Fianna.
She's been told by multiple people that doing this, these days, is dangerous. Maybe she doesn't care for her safety.
(danya)
For the first time since they met perhaps an hour ago, Danya laughs. It's a soft sound. Just a mere chuckle rolling from somewhere in his chest.
"Yes..... but if I had been mistaken?" Dark green eyes drop to her exposure, then back up to where professional decorum keeps attention focused on her face. The music down the hall has stopped. As also seems his distraction. He, too, played the game of caution which continues in the further softness of his voice even if affirmation was found in her ink. "Lord."
A slight shrug of his shoulders in skimming apology for not showing is own branded mark.
(imogen)
"I would have been a terribly confused person," she says with a slight shrug, before she shakes her head slightly. Her voice has never been loud and certainly isn't now.
"I only know o' one o' those, 'nd I haven't seen her in ages. Might be she's still around," might be she's gone, might be she's dead, "'er name's Katya."
(danya)
Chin dips towards collarbone in another in his series of curt nods. "Noted." A black brow lifts. "And about that diner?"
(imogen)
"There's a restaurant two blocks away, called 'RED' 're somethin'. As f'r diners, yeh'll probably find one or another in between here and there. I don't know any f'r sure," she answers with a brief shrug, "but knowin' the area, there's got t'be somethin'."
No more shrugs of apology from her, that she didn't know the area, or a smile of it, anything. Trappings of civility that apparently a human deserved and a kinfolk (or a Garou) did not.
(danya)
While he is ignorant of the descriptive trials and tribulations inherant in the city's layout and eateries, he is not unaware of the flat delivery accompanying this information in comparison to their earlier nod towards polite conversation. "Thank you for your time, Dr. Slaughter."
The visitor identification badge is returned to the security desk. And just as he arrived, there is little more than the cadence of bootsteps in the hallway to signal his departure.
(imogen)
A brief inclination of her head is his farewell, and even as he walks away, she's already turning back to her desk.