Participants:
| Scene Title | Are You Seeing Anyone? |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Two rather unconventional agents of the Institute discuss their case… Sort of. |
| Date | December 7, 2010 |
Suresh Center: Second Floor
The second floor is an idiosyncratic combination of small medical center and psychiatric hospital. In the back of the building are several lab rooms, equipped with everything from blood-test equipment to an MRI; despite its size, the facility is competitive in a features sense with many larger and more mainstream hospitals. The core is dominated by a multipurpose room, usually serving as a cafeteria but sometimes transformed into a game hall or ad-hoc movie theater; on either side of it are the two permanently-staffed nurse stations, the balcony at the front offering a view of Roosevelt Island and the opportunity for plenty of sunlight.
One wing of this floor has been given over to a medium-term ward, intended to house medical or psychiatric patients for only a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks at most. Most rooms are double-occupancy, particularly for medical patients, but in some cases they may be allocated as singles; all have large exterior windows and are surprisingly not painted in generic institutional shades. Rather, they each have their own personal theme, from ascetic to modern, oceanic blues to autumn reds and browns. Rooms are allocated primarily by what environment a patient feels comfortable in. The opposite wing is the Suresh Center's juvenile ward, designated for the care of Evolved children and teenagers coming to terms with their abilities. It has its own rec room, several single-occupancy rooms, and at the end of the hall a larger shared room for siblings, friends, and children who do better in company. As for the adult ward, the decor is engaging and inviting rather than blandly uniform.
Visitors are required to check in at one of the stations before going anywhere else on this floor, and in some cases may be provided with an escort for the duration of their visit.
Odessa Price stares blankly at her laptop's display. A report related to the Zarek case isn't providing her with any clues the NYPD hasn't been able to ascertain on their own. She puffs out her cheeks in frustration, leaning back in her chair, thrown slightly off balance for a moment as it rock-jerks back to accommodate a recline. Kicking upward quickly to anchor herself by levering the toes of her canary yellow high heels to the underside of the desk removes the (unnecessary) worry that she's about to topple over.
"Julie!" she shouts out the door of the lab area she shares with the other physicians on the floor. "Julie! Can you see if someone sent my samples off for processing yet?"
Samples of dust taken from inside the ventilation shaft she and Agent Lupinetti suspect to be the point of entry their perpetrator used to gain access to Daniel Linderman's office without being seen. Doctor Price suspects they'll yield nothing out of the ordinary, but there's always that chance. She's a little anxious to see if there is anything to be found there. So when she gets no response from her little (borrowed) assistant, she rises from her seat to go check on her.
Odessa takes a moment to smooth the skirt of her knee-length yellow dress. The black bodice worn over her midsection is obscured by leaving the middle buttons of her white lab coat buttoned. "Julie?" she queries, poking her head out of the lab - halfway at first. Then completely at the realisation that trying to look out the doorway with only the left side of her face visible to the other space - the side with the black eye patch adorned with shiny silver stars over a scarred eye - is not going to help her see if the young girl she's looking for is actually out there.
"…M'name's Calvin," says Calvin.
He is the only living representative of the Phylum Chordata present in the lab space she's interested in at current, brows knit as if in vague concern that she might've hallucinated the presence of someone else more befitting of the name Julie. Someone with tits, presumably.
He has none, as it happens, even if he is wearing eyeliner the same way most people wear socks. Tallish and almost too clear of eye, he is host to a deliberately maintained crest of ginger dreads and a goatee just a few shades too artistic to qualify as true scruff. His clothing is appropriate: a high-collared dress shirt, a waistcoat, slacks and shiny black shoes under the heavy drape of his lab coat — no tie — latex gloves poised careful around a pair of small vials labeled with even smaller numbers. 772-A and 773-A respectively.
A slight (very slight) twitch of a narrow squint around his eyes does not strictly…translate as friendly, once he's had a better look at her shoes, but it's a subtle thing. Unconscious. Probably. "I sent her to make me a coffee."
Neither does Julie, really. — Have tits, that is. Not at her age. Not yet. — Anyway. "Oh. Doctor Rosen." Odessa blushes faintly in embarrassment over the fact that she was calling for someone who isn't there any longer. "Sorry. I thought she was still out here." The explanation of where Julie's gone off to draws a smile. "Sugar, no cream, right?" She recalls his choices from the meeting the previous morning, at least. "And Julie's quite good at making coffee. If she weren't such a brilliant mind, I'd suggest she open her own shop," she jokes.
The vials in Calvin's possession capture Odessa's curiosity and she lifts her brows. "Is there anything I could help you with? I'm waiting on the NYPD to get back to me with some information and it's… about to drive me crazy out of boredom." A hopeful smile.
"Doctor" Rosen opens his mouth after a beat's hesitation as if to make a correction once she's addressed him as — you know. But he doesn't. Agent Doctor Calvin Rosen PhD has a ring to it that it doesn't take him long to decide that he fancies, a slow, easy rock of his shoulders over his pelvis fully endorsing the promotion with his posture after less than a moment's consideration. Yeaaah.
If he had a free hand and more terrible manners he'd already be texting someone.
"Right," on the subject with sugar once he's snapped back to reality with a glassy blink and no idea what he's just agreed with or to, he glances to the door after the subject of current conversation. Julie! Julie and his coffee. That he said he told her to get for him. He scratches at the side of his nose, apparently waylaid by the stagnance involved in making awkward conversation. "Seems like she'd probably make less money. …And the benefits probably aren't nearly as good."
He says so very seriously. Almost exaggeratedly so, until he "catches" himself with an OH YOU gaff of air through his teeth and a grin that's all you scamp and you weren't serious I see now!!
It's not very nice.
"I'm alright, actually. Waiting for the chromatagraph to bake out. What about you?" He speaks quickly, hardly leaving time for thought, much less an answer before he can add, "You're looking very yellow."
Odessa blushes again, suddenly feeling rather on the spot the way he responds to her quip. And then her comments on her attire. A quick glance down at herself, as though maybe she doesn't remember what she's wearing - or worried for a moment her skirt may have bunched awkwardly or something equally embarrassing. "It's my favourite colour," she admits in a quiet voice.
She turns back to peer at her laptop which chooses that precise moment to go into screensaver. A colourful thing of virtual fish swimming in an aquarium. "I'm supposed to be getting some video footage that Lupinetti wants a second pair of eyes to go over. We've at least managed to determine that the gun used to kill Zarek is really fuckin' rare."
If Odessa thinks her language is inappropriate for the work environment, she doesn't show it with an apologetic wince or the like. "I mean, more rare than we initially believed. I think Detective Walsh said he thinks there's maybe only five hundred in circulation, period. We just have to… track it down. However that works." And that causes a small frown. "This is my first big case. I'm usually just a lab monkey. I'm not quite used to this field agent stuff."
"It looks nice on you." If Calvin thinks the dreaded f word is inappropriate in the work place he chooses to express his moral outrage in the form of disaffection or flat affect, even in the compliment, which is the sort of thing that usually demands at least a flicker of feigned interest. "Are you seeing anyone?"
Tone not having changed, he rolls his vials over each other once in his right hand before he smiles. More of a grin, really, a touch wolfish in its unwitting delay, like he's only just remembered to show his teeth along with the question.
"As far as guns go, the quickest course of action would be to research previous successful or attempted homicides with the same model've firearm to see if there's a match anywhere in the bullet striations. Assuming this one isn't so deformed that the marks are impossible to discern. I haven't actually seen it yet."
Odessa blinks and resists the urge to look around and see if he's talking to someone else. Maybe someone who doesn't have a face covered in scars and a patch over one eye. No? Huh. "No… Not seeing anyone, really." Her little tryst with Nick York - that she isn't aware is over just yet - doesn't count for the purposes of this conversation. Though she isn't sure Calvin's query was entirely serious.
Even if his grin makes her blush for the third time in this short period.
His helpful suggestion has Odessa pursing her lips thoughtfully. Her cheeks still feel hot and she silently curses for it not subsiding quickly. "Thanks. I'm not a ballistics expert by any means. I'm all… medicine and genetics. This is all really new territory for me." Her scarred lips twitch faintly before they curve into a shy smile. "You must have a lot of experience."
Unfortunately no indication of whether or not Calvin was serious is immediately forthcoming. He just almost grins at her again, nakedly amused at her expense and queerly balanced in his labcoat armored self-assurance for all that he weaves from subject to subject to non sequitor. Obviously he's very keenly aware of what he's doing. Independently of whether or not anyone else is or if it makes any sense outside of Calvinland at all.
In any case, for whatever reason he doesn't follow up with a, Would you like to be?, opting instead to show her the harder carve of his profile while he investigates the big blocky box of the lab's gas chromatograph, which is evidently still in the process of doing something inconvenient. He looks to his watch next, sleeve nudged back from his wrist while he measures the hour. "Not really. I mean, read the right couple've textbooks and pretty much anything becomes less've a mystery. Forensic science is really more of a hobby."
The lines between his brows crease a little starker with irritation once he's sure that the machine is still doing its thing, but there's no hurrying Science. Or Julie, apparently, so. He resolves to take an uneven step sideways for the door. And then three more more decisive ones, vials along for the ride. "I'm gonna go check on that coffee and verify that your assistant didn't accidentally shut herself in the pantry again or something."
Of course. A hobby. Like genetics was originally one of Odessa's hobbies, before she was asked to start assisting Doctor (Mohinder) Suresh back in her days with the Company. Calvin's jumping from topic to topic may leave Odessa feeling a little bewildered, and a little bit like she's just had a mean joke played on her, but she isn't wholly ready to give up that easy. "Are you seeing anyone… Calvin?" The name is spoken a little uncertainly, like she's hoping she didn't just take too much liberty.
For someone who's put so much effort into spinning Odessa 'round after her own tail, you'd think Calvin might've anticipated that she'd ask.
But the question catches him off guard. An uneven blink hitches into an awkward pause near the door — so close to (and far from) escape when he looks blankly back at her that a slightly faster pace might've spared him the problem of having to answer. Or even having to think on it. Which he obviously hasn't.
Or has spent far too much time thinking about it. One of those things.
"Not precisely," he answers at length, "…seeing. No." His next blink is harder, self-conscious unease sloping his shoulders before he has a chance to gather himself with a faintly dirty look at the floor.
Then, rather than marinate in the fact that he's just tripped over himself, he finishes his exeunt stage left without another word.
Leaving a smirking Doctor Price in his wake.