Page 8 of Gunpowder

The automatic doors welcomed him like it was a much more pleasant place than it was. He checked them in and sat with Tristan in the pediatric waiting area, obnoxiously bright compared to the white and chrome of the main waiting room. Blair tilted his head back against the mural on the wall. He was pretty sure he was sitting against a giraffe. Tristan leaned against his arm and fell asleep almost immediately, stirring only when they were called back by the triage nurse.

They were moved to an actual room after she checked Tristan’s temperature. Tristan sat on the edge of the bed and pulled at his shirt where it stuck to him. Some of his red hair was curling at his temples with sweat. Blair wanted to help him, but his limited medical knowledge had been gathered from whatever he read on the back of pill bottles and what a couple drug dealers told him. He had considered taking Tristan to Nolan but with everything going on he didn’t think getting his little brother near Incindious was safe. Plus Nolan knew a lot about pharmaceuticals but maybe not so much about how to diagnose an illness.

On the bright side it was only another fifteen minutes before a doctor came in. Blair had started to doze in the plastic chair he occupied next to the bed when he heard the curtain being moved aside. He forced his eyes open and readied himself to answer all the same questions he did in triage. It turned out he was not ready in the least.

The doctor was young and tall, with just enough hair to be pulled back in a ponytail, though most of his bangs had fallen back out of it and hung to one side of his face. His expression was too serious for someone in Invader Zim scrubs but he couldn’t have been much older than Blair’s twenty-one. There was a blurry image floating around Blair’s mind, distorted by the stress and exhaustion of that time, but it was starting to resemble the man in front of him.

“Let’s get you taken care of, Mr. Kennedy,” he said.

That voice. It was the same person.

The man was talking to Tristan, but Blair still sputtered out, “Sunshine?”

The light caught three black rings pierced through the top of Sunshine’s right ear as he looked over at him. Blair tried not to stare at them. They hadn’t been visible when the other man’s hair was down. Why did he want to stare, anyway? It was just jewelry. It was just jewelry on a normal person, who looked like anyone else and definitely didn’t look a whole lot better without the constant haze that had surrounded everything for a while after Blair woke up in the hospital. Not that the guy’s appearance was a priority to him at the moment, but it was one hell of a difference from what he remembered.

Just like when Blair had called him out for his attitude before, Sunshine’s surprise was visible for an instant before his face became unreadable again. He clicked his tongue and walked over to the bed. “You again. Blair, I believe.”

“Kennedy,” Blair corrected him. He hated his first name. Only his siblings and Marie were allowed to call him that. It irritated him even more with how slowly the doctor enunciated it, like he was taunting him.

Sunshine put his stethoscope against Tristan’s back and asked him to take a deep breath. He did the same in a couple more spots before he hung the stethoscope back around his neck and said, “Well my patient here is a Kennedy, as well.”

Blair glared at him, and Sunshine seemed to take his silence as resignation.

“Blair it is, then,” Sunshine said with a smirk, then turned his attention back to his patient. He pressed lightly along Tristan’s throat. “Tell me if any of this hurts, okay?”

Blair watched with folded arms, ready to swoop in at the first sign of the doctor being as much of a dick to kids as he was everyone else. He grinned as he came to a realization. “Looks like I was right, Sunshine.”

He didn’t get an answer, just an inquisitive sound as the other man noted something on his clipboard.

“Told you we would see each other again,” Blair said smugly.

Sunshine didn’t look up from his clipboard. “Yes, thank goodness your little brother wound up in the hospital the same week you got shot in the leg. You must be ecstatic.”

“I bet you’re real fun at parties.”

“His name isn’t Sunshine,” Tristan said, who had apparently found a reserve of energy just for meeting a new person. “It’s...hold on.”

Blair cringed as Tristan squinted at the doctor’s badge. Well, he guessed Sunshine wasn’t a full fledged doctor yet, but he acted as one so it was weird to think of him as a student. Tristan mouthed soundlessly as he worked out the name. Tristan usually wore glasses and Blair hadn’t concerned himself with their absence when they left Aradia earlier.

“Max...Maxters. That sounds like our iguana’s name! His name is Baxter. He’s mean, though, I don’t like him. I like you better Mr. Maxters.”

Both of the doctor’s eyebrows went up over his glasses. Tristan kept big, hopeful eyes fixed on him until Sunshine finally sighed and said, “Thanks.”

Blair stifled a laugh into his fist and masked it as a cough. Whatever Sunshine’s name was, he didn’t think it was that. “So how is he looking?”

“I’m not qualified to diagnose him without the oversight of the attending doctor.”

“Mr. Maxters, where’s the bathroom?”

“Down the hall and to the right, I can take you if—” Sunshine started, but Tristan was already off the bed and running out into the hall. “...Okay.”

Blair wanted to follow his brother but he remembered how little he wanted to be babied at that age, so he decided to give Tristan a few minutes before he went to check on him.

“How is your leg?”

“Is Sunshine worried about me?” Blair asked, seizing the opportunity to make a nuisance of himself, if only to retaliate for Sunshine’s insistence on using his first name.

Sunshine clicked his tongue. “I’m just doing my job.”

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