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Dr. Whale idly flipped through the charts, looking down at the man sleeping in the hospital bed. David Nolan was deep in sleep after Whale had convinced him that yes, you should stay the night, I don't know how you woke yourself up from a coma but I'm going to run some tests and find out. The tests...unfortunately all proved negative. Though he would never admit it, he had absolutely no idea how David managed to wake himself up from his coma. It defied all scientific explanation; coma patients simply didn't do that. The fact that Regina's kid had kept on saying it was 'true love' only managed to make Whale's head hurt even more. True love didn't wake up coma patients. True love was nice and maybe it was even plausible, but it just didn't wake up coma patients. What the hell did he have to go on in a situation like this?
That night, he drank half a bottle of wine, while still thinking about David's mysterious awakening. Eventually he sighed, decided not to think about it, sat down on the couch and watched 'Show Boat' because it was either that or watching 'Children of the Corn' for the twelfth time.
---
"Paging Dr. Whale, Dr. Whale to surgery."
Kathryn Nolan, David Nolan's wife, missing and presumed dead, turned up in an alleyway with no recollection of how she got there. Again, what the hell did he have to go on?! She looked perfectly fine, her vitals were normal, she just didn't know how she turned up in an alleyway. He silently cursed the Nolan couple for making his life so confusing. He had browsed through the latest medical journals, he had run all the tests he could think of, he even had asked the other staff at the hospital what they had thought (although he never could catch one of the other doctors, for some reason.) Nothing. Nothing was turning up.
That night, he made himself a mojito while watching a PBS period drama-which seemed oddly familiar for some reason. Maybe he had seen this one before? He paused, reflected, and realized what a sad state his life was in that he might have seen a PBS period drama before. God, he needed a day off. Or at least a one night stand. Either worked for him. After the second mojito, he took to drinking the rum straight out of the bottle while yelling at the drama.
---
Sometimes he felt like the people of Storybrooke enjoyed making his life miserable. Case in point: Henry. While he was alright with the kid normally (in the sense that he didn't mess up the hospital when Mary Margaret brought the kids to talk to the invalid patients), the fact that Henry had managed to slip into a coma for seemingly no reason was definitely wearing on his nerves. What was it with these people and unexplained comas anyway? This was the second on this year! Add that on top of a woman who broke her leg, a man with appendicitus and a flu virus going around meant that Dr. Whale was feeling the strain of overwork.
Sitting in the staff room, he quickly took a shot of whiskey. Fortunately, there weren't any operations scheduled for the day, so he felt no shame in drinking on the job. Besides, he needed a little liquid courage.
"Paging Dr. Whale, Dr. Whale to surgery."
"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered to himself, as he sighed and started to scrub up.
Sometimes Dr. Whale felt like he was the only damn doctor in this hospital.
---
Victor Frankenstein knew he was the only damn doctor in this hospital. Just like how he knew that Granny's was the only place in town you went to if you wanted a cup of coffee and how he knew that Archie was the only shrink. The problem with cursing a hundred or so people was that you only cursed a hundred or so people. The odds of more than one person in that hundred or so people being a fully qualified medical doctor was slim. The curse was stretching the definition of 'professional' enough as is, what with turning a cricket into a trained psychologist.
Still, Victor liked Storybrooke. He had way too much fun using the x-ray machine after his anger at Regina had simmered down and abated. He marveled at the defibrillators, planning just how he could use those things to help replace and revive the heart and, more importantly, if he could bring one of them home. And, he liked the fact that he suddenly had all this twenty-first century medical knowledge in his head. A small upside of the curse. However, all that did not change the fact that a woman who might have been a mermaid had broken her foot, the Ugly Duckling had the chicken pox, Little Miss Muffet was recovering from a poisonous spider bite, and he was the only doctor in the hospital.
It was enough to work a man to death.
Victor suppressed the urge to swear as his pager started to beep. Frown on his face, he walked up to the front desk. "What's going on?" he asked the desk nurse, as she frantically filled out paperwork.
"Car accident at the city limits-it looks like a man hit a pedestrian. Both look pretty nasty, EMTs at the scene think there may be internal bleeding and broken ribs."
Motherfucker. "I guess I'll scrub up," Victor said, nodding at the desk nurse, as he walked back to the scrub room, mentally cursing the driver for hitting the pedestrian, the pedestrian for getting in the way in the first place, and Regina for not putting another doctor under her curse.
He needed a drink.