Work Text:
Ian boots up another ranked match. His player character idles on the loading screen, its straight stature a far cry from Ian's slumped posture in front of his PC. He really didn’t have the energy to sit upright.
He was on somewhat of a losing streak– limited playtime and weary fingers will do that to a man. Some quick mental math tells him only two wins would finally secure him that diamond rank. He’d only need another fifteen minutes, assuming his assigned allies were minimally competent–
“Dr. Ian.”
Dr. Ian. That name sounded silly to him, he considers, as the game whirrs in an attempt to find a match. “Doctor” was this all-encompassing, impressive title. Nine whole years of his life, earning that! A metaphorical golden star on his record, an honorific that declared he had the resolve to stick it out through any hardship, a promise to all that he would and could do his best to treat and solve any problem caught in his crossfire. All of that, placed right next to the name Ian. And Ian was, well, Ian.
Ian had a full name, but no one ever took to using it. The patients only ever saw him for minutes at a time, his mother was, well– his mother, Dr. Paige was gone, and Dr. Edega was never one to waste time with silly superlatives such as surnames.
“Dr. Ian. You don't get paid to dawdle during work hours. Get off your silly game and play it at home, next time.”
He jolts up, speedily closing the once-open window (and shamefully accepting the automatic forfeit it declared upon him). He blinks the exhaustion from his eyes as he straightens his posture to avoid more complaint. Edega, having gotten his attention, rattles off a list of tasks he expects him to complete before the day is up. Ian writes them down, yet does not retain the information being relayed. He hopes his sleep-addled scrawl is legible enough for future Ian to piece together. He does recall writing the term ‘Miracle Defibrillator’ a number of times; yet this comes as no surprise. “The work on my Miracle is never quite done”, he can hear echo in his mind. Were Ian a bolder man, he’d take more credit in its creation, but his already weary mind left little room for a strong resolve. Especially against his boss.
Once Edega leaves him alone with only the company of his newly-acquired list of over fifteen to-dos, Ian spares a glance at the clock. Five P.M., he manages to read only after taking a moment to clean his lenses with a wipe from his sweater. Checking his phone, he confirms the carer is scheduled up to seven. He has time to complete– well– at least some of the tasks assigned to him.
Work on the defibrillator was a given. The Intern had taken a shine to the machine rather quickly– Ian, of course, had no complaints on that front. Less work for him. However, there was one thing he was required to do that the Intern was unable, and that was to correct its multitude of errors and bugs. Shoddy prototypes leave room for plenty of them. Not least of which was its proclivity to letting Connectifia Abortus into their servers. He’d been brainstorming ideas for a firewall the past few days, but work on the Miracle Defibrillator leaves him with little time for any such frivolities.
Either way, that was work he could do remotely from home. He supposes his first and foremost focus should be on rounds, even with his mental aversion to performing them.
Despite her absence dating back almost two weeks at this point, Ian still mentally allots rounds as “Ada’s duty” that he takes over for. Regardless of them now being solely his responsibility, he takes no more enjoyment in them than before.
It’s not like his rounds last long, anyways. He has not the mental energy nor the bedside manners to indulge patients with small talk. Alas, this doesn’t stop them from trying.
Mr. Brew was one he found particularly apt to try to waste his time. Today was no different. He asks if Nicole had spoken about him– why would Ian bother remembering details like that?– Yet, he plays along. If not, Cole gets restless. He confirms that Nicole had asked about his silly music contest, and that she was rooting along. Thankfully, that seemed to satisfy him to a point that Ian was able to sneak away without any more questions or concerns to attend to.
He’s also stopped up by that baseball player– Lucky, if he recalls– asking about persistent shoulder pain. Ian finds himself both relieved and taken aback when the man takes Ian’s given naproxen without fuss.
The other patients, thankfully, were all none too interested in mindless chatter. He’d harbor a guess that none of them liked him much– at least, not nearly as much as they liked Ada– and he thought that was perfectly fine. It makes things easier for him in the long run.
The last hour of his shift is dedicated to Miracle Defibrillator work– as if he had any choice in the matter. The machine can barely be called a prototype in this stage; more accurately, it ought to be called a cobbled mess of Dr. Edega’s most hopeless ambitions. Yet, Ian continues to work. He dares not think what would happen if he were to refuse his boss, or worse, if he were to be fired.
After an hour of mind-numbing, headache-inducing work, Ian has at least some of what Edega had requested implemented into the clutter of wires and machinery that lay upon his workspace. Does it work, effectively, without bugs? Almost certainly not, but it’s a result Ian can sit on Edega’s desk, and keep his job for another day.
He does so. Thankfully, the man isn’t present in his office, so Ian is welcome to clock out nearly on schedule for the first time in a long while. He’s sure, were he to have seen Edega, that more duties would be assigned to him. He can’t afford to keep paying the carer overtime.
He pushes open the door to his apartment just after seven. An older lady is there to greet him; the carer. She gives him her daily updates. Mom tried to go to work. Tried to get up to make dinner for Dad. Ian tunes her out. She could’ve told him she’d tried to jump from the window, and he’d have been no more surprised.
He pays the carer, and she’s on her way. She takes what Ian thinks is a very fair rate, yet, when you pay someone a nearly full-time job’s worth of wage, even what some would consider his “cushy doctor’s salary” is left rather bare. Not like he often had the time for extra expenditures, anyway, aside from a new game release or two every couple of months.
He sets down his things, removes his lab coat, and checks on his mother. She’s where she usually is. It’s none too surprising, as the table next to the couch was always the easiest spot to place her oxygen machine. That, and the fact that their small place had far too little room for supplementary seating.
Ian greets her, and she responds with a name that is not his. He has a mental list of them– he thinks this time, it belongs to her old co-worker. He plays along. If not, she gets restless. He confirms that the fax paper in the machine had been refilled, and that the new employee they had hired a few days back sends his well wishes. It seems to satisfy her.
He gets up to make them dinner. He really hadn’t had any time to go to the supermarket. If he’s lucky, some days the carer will agree to stay that little bit longer to let him pick up groceries, but he hadn’t had such good fortune in a couple weeks. Thankfully, he finds just enough scrounging around in the cupboards to cobble something together.
As he waits for the stovetop pot to boil, his mind wanders.
He thinks, distantly, back to when Dad was the primary carer for Mom. It was much easier then. He’d tell Ian to focus on university, and that he’d be there to support him, and his mom, too. When the tables turned and he was gone, the sudden additional workload of primary care had him leaning on Ada for support in university and up through their Middlesea internship and beyond. Now, too, she’d been taken from him. Some, deep, recessed part of his brain wonders if he’s harbored some sort of curse to burden and lose every person he’s ever leaned on.
He prays the same curse doesn’t befall his mother.
Yet, his mind continues to wander. About the collection of events that lead him to right now. Where the pressure he feels, the boulder upon his back, originates from.
It would be a lot easier if she were gone.
The thought festers in Ian's chest until he feels ill. The overpowering smell from his dinner makes him want to hurl.
Great job, Dr. Ian. You want your mother to die. You just wished your only remaining family to die. You might as well kill her yourself, you sick fuck. Yeah, go right ahead. You clearly want her dead. Go unplug her oxygen machine, make life easier for yourself. If she had half the mind to know what you were thinking of her, she’d never call you her son again.
Ian sets the bowl down in front of her, and is thanked with a name that is not his.
He sits across from her. They have a rather pleasant discussion about his aunt’s new daughter. He remembers her, vaguely– he’d seen her last Christmas. She’d just gone into high school.
At some point, the conversation quiets to listen to the TV. It’s an old gameshow his parents often had on when he was just a kid. He didn’t understand the rules back then, though he understands them now. Once you do know all of the ins and outs, the show is frightfully boring. Yet, he has no choice but to listen. The volume is always turned up too high so that Mom can hear it over the sound of her machine.
He gets up and cleans the dishes. She hadn’t eaten much. She rarely does. He returns shortly after with her handful of medication, eight differently-colored pills that rattle in his palm and, when set down in front of her, have her turning up her nose. She asks why she needs to take them, and he explains. Yet, she only repeats the question.
This dog-and-pony show was a battle he fought every day, and today, he collects his losses after she’s taken only three. At the very least, they were the most important ones, and she was completely unreceptive to taking any others. Back in the pill bottles they go.
He sits on the couch, the other side from his mother, and begins his work on the defibrillator. There were a few more bugs the Intern had reported over the course of the day. Fortunately, most were small code tweaks he’d have no problem solving without hassle.
However, only a portion of his time could be granted to work. Mom was having a particularly rough episode today. She’d gotten terribly agitated and Ian needed to help her calm down. He’d gotten so used to dealing with symptoms like these, the pit-of-his-stomach fear he felt the first time one had occurred had dulled significantly to almost none. Almost, of course.
He helps her into bed not long after. It’s a rather long process, helping both her and her machinery a room over. Not that he wasn’t used to it. He bids her goodnight, and is responded to in tow with a name that is not his.
He prays that she will wake up, the same prayer he’s recited every night for the past months.
Ian doesn’t attempt to stay awake much longer than her, and is in bed by an early nine P.M . Dr. Edega had told him to come in early tomorrow to work on defibrillator testing– some asinine idea about adding numbing effects to dull dopamine receptors. No more absurd than the other ideas he’d spat in the last weeks.
As he looks at the ceiling and listens to the hum of the oxygen machine in the room adjacent to his, he thinks about the project that'd been at the forefront of his mind these past few weeks– the “Miracle Defibrillator”. Truly, the most farcical idea Edega’d had of the lot. Ian is firm, in the rational part of his mind, that no such wondrous invention would exist during his lifetime. Much less sculpted by his own hands.
Yet, every day, as he lay on his bed, he prays to a God he knows is not up there that the machine will work. Exactly as Edega foretells.
Not for the piece of the spotlight he would share, not for the knowledge that his mechanical abilities surpassed those of all who came before him, and certainly not for the whims and wishes of his boss.
Purely for the selfish ideals of wanting to be called by his real name again. To be fully and completely recognized, and to sit comfortable in the knowledge that he, too, would continue to recognize.
May one day he be allowed to be selfish.
Dr. Ian certainly finds the notion enjoyable.
Dr… Ian?
He pauses. Considers. That terrible, sickening feeling returns to his chest.
Does
he
even
remember
his
last
name?
Ian drops down onto his chair after his morning rounds. He feels exhaustion down to his bones, in no small part due to Dr. Edega’s insistence that he arrive at work by five A.M . Again, a list of to-dos sits beside him, scrawled in barely-legible handwriting. Despite this, he breathes in the feeling that he finally has a moment to himself.
Eyes hazy, he opens his MMO. Just fifteen minutes, echoes in his mind. Fifteen minutes of time when, finally, he may let his mind run empty. Fifteen minutes, and finally may he feel the self gratification of seeing his efforts pay off in any meaningful sense. He was granted these fifteen minutes, and he plans to use them to their fullest extent.
Halfway through the loading screen, a clearing of the throat jolts Ian up and nearly out from his chair.
A voice then reverberates behind him, a deeply dissatisfied tone that carries clearly both the emotions and the manner of the man who’d spoken them.
“Dr. Ian.”
Ian sighs, and closes the window.
He supposes his break can wait for another day.