as_damaged | ☎ voicemail

Amory can walk too, which is very distinct difference. He is altered from his sickly state, maybe a little leaner, a little more pale than two months back, but all and all he seems to be functioning. That's the face he wants to present to the world, anyway.

"Dr. Cameron." He nods. His response is more awkward than usual, embellished with something of smile. He should walk away, should stop talking, but a curse propels him forward, locking his feet to the stone floor- besides a side step to let the other customers pass. "It's been awhile," a pause. "A good while."

"You're looking well," she says, and she means it-- though of course you could argue, it wouldn't take much to fill that criterion. But really, it's a little awkward for her too-- though not so uncomfortable, as she isn't cursed.

"I hope the new year is treating you well?"

A good while, in that Amory Felix has not returned to the hospital where Cameron works. To be frank, he's never had any interest in her as an individual before. Rigid, boring, were the words he had drawn from his surface glances at her post. And jaundiced, is his view, by the key fact that Cameron is a doctor.

Irrational, maybe. But Amory's reservations are formed by the hard clay of personal experience.

"Better than last month," Amory replies, still awkwardly. Rearranging his fingers around cup sleeve, he finds himself paying for her coffee even before he realizes it, setting the orange down on the counter with a clink.

Augmented sense of generosity and gratefulness? It doesn't stop there.

That's a bit of a surprise because, to the best of her knowledge, Amory is kind of an ass. She has a fairly high tolerance for that, of course, but it means buying her out of coffee seems a little out of place.

"Thank you," she says honestly, looking at him in a way that isn't palpably different, just slightly colored by a new little level of interest. You know what they say about anomalous behavior.

"I'm sure," she replies, with a wry little trace of a smile. It's a sympathetic one. Being sick is, after all, never any fun, even when you're not on the verge of death.

Amory is kind of an ass. You could call that the axiom of his existence. Yet things do shift depending on what kind of eyes the viewer chooses to wear, or what faces Amory decides to try on. Right now it's not a matter of choice, as he find his attention clinging to the doctor like static.

Though his lips feel like heavy lead, Amory's words gradually shift from awkward to light and easily, tumbling into the air between them. "Thanks. I mean it," he adds, as he steps to the end of the counter to reach for the little brown sugar packets. "Really, ask Chase. Normally I despise your type."

Amory never takes sugar in his coffee, strange.

"My type?" she asks, her tone suddenly edged. It wouldn't be the first time in recent memory that someone spilled their guts for no apparent reason, but well, curses don't tend to repeat that quickly. So it seems likelier to be a not-so-veiled-at-all insult... which doesn't make much sense either, because she hasn't done anything to warrant being pursued for the purpose.

Cameron sips her coffee thoughtfully, but doesn't take her eyes off him. Her gaze is guarded, as always, but curious. Talk about anomalous behavior.

"Doctors," he responds, casually, brushing aside the fact that he might have insulted Cameron, though he's under the opinion that his last words were neither pointed nor full of bristles. A fact, that's all. "At home, my experience with them has left me with two words: conniving bastards.

So jaundiced is his view that his words themselves could just as well appear yellow, if not spiked and bristled. He knows that that being a bastard is not a mutually inclusive quality of being a doctor, just as being a 'geek' doesn't translate into a career as a physicist (thank you very much). But emotions are awfully good at twisting up rational deduction, even in the minds of those that declare pragmatism, breaking straight lines into a multitude of tangles. Amory takes another sip of his coffee and leans against the condiment counter, looking completely impassive as he does so. For now, the waters remain still.

"It's not exactly an uncommon sentiment," she points out, almost amused not at his story but at the bizarreness of this situation. "People see us when they feel worst, after all. Or they're afraid of getting bad news." A light shrug of her shoulders, and Cameron sips her own coffee.
Curiosity wins out, though, of the professional variety. "Were you seeing an immunologist at home?"

He taps an index finger against the cardboard cup sleeve in response. Stalling.

"No, I wasn't seeing anyone," he lies. Amory has had doctors before, but that's precisely why he has none at the moment. Well, that's actually a lie. Chase is his doctor in a way. Mentally, he registers him as that asshole, a variant spelling of friend, which overrides the taboo association.

For all his supposed logic, Amory Felix is a man of impulse and irrational associations.

"Allowing a doctor to treat you is like letting a murderer place a gun against your head," he pauses, catching Cameron in the eyes. His tone is light, even prepping for a joke. "Except that sociopath's less likely to be operating under a false pretense. His intent is clear. He wants to blow your head off. The doctor, on the hand, will tell you he wants to help. Then in the afternoon, he cuts your fingers off while you're asleep."

"Well," she says utterly innocently, "if we do that, they wouldn't have done you any good, anyway." She manages to keep a straight face at that. Cameron has definitely been working for House too long. But it's hard not to feel a little defensive in the face of Amory's accusations. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd be willing to look at things from her perspective, either.

"If it came down to it," she adds, a little softer both in volume and in tone, "would you rather lose a limb or your life?"

When someone challenges what you've dedicated your life too, being defensive is only expected.

"I was using the finger example as a metaphor," he shoots back, intentionally being vague. "If the limb needs to come off, then it needs to come off.

She doesn't give any hint to her thoughts on the matter.

"Not everyone would agree with that."

Sooner or later, Amory's restraint is going to unravel. By then, they'll need a table.

"It'd be sad day when everyone does," he jokes. One last sip of coffee and he's done, which he tosses into the trash, "Because you're better dead, than living as a cripple? That's a coward's perspective."

"Maybe," she answers simply, disinclined to weigh in on the issue and not (thankfully) forced to get emotional about it, today. It's kind of a funny position for Cameron to be in, given the way things usually are.

"But that's an extreme situation. A lot of people avoid doctors because they're afraid of getting bad news to begin with."

☎ voicemail

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;

guess I'm not the fighting kind;