@nathanmarchand:
His eyes lift upwards, somewhat wondering if there’s another doctor here to treat him who doesn’t miss the arrival of one of his wife’s relatives. Time to meet with Aurélie more often than he does, clearly. “Have you been working a lot lately?” he asks, feeling a chill creep into his limbs. “Explains how you didn’t know before now. Tía is easily distracted, too, as you know.” Stitches were his thought too, so it’s nice to know he’s still sound of mine. A little, given the way he grimaces as he tries to take the shirt off and settles for ripping it down the front rather than trying to stretch his arm above his head, which is impossible. Nathan waits impatiently, unconcerned about his shirtless state except for the way the cold air feels on his wound. He tries not to twitch too much, but shifts slightly as Gabriel returns with his little cart of pointy objects, thread, and general healing supplies. “You have done stitches before, correct? On someone alive?” From what he remembers on the little bit of a file they have for Gabriel Meadowes, he owned the funeral home, and he isn’t quite sure when Gabriel made the transition from there to nurse. Nor living to dead, but that’s another question for another time. “She is my Abuelo Abel’s sister which makes her my tía abuela. My great-aunt,” he clarifies, at once unsure about how much his tía has told this man about her family. Nathan knows little of them or their relationship, either. “How did you meet her? Obviously this is not a family story anyone on my side knows given I’m the only one who knows she is still alive. Suppose one of us should know something of it.”
“Lielie is preoccupied for reasons that I’ll let her tell you, yes. I’m easing into working with patients again. It’s...an adjustment.” Gabe said, his placid expression going sour at Nathan’s question about stitches. That earns Nathan a glare and a pause long enough to be borderline uncomfortable, then he nods. “I was a medic in London during the Blitz and you aren’t my first patient since switching disciplines. But y’know, thanks for the faith.” It was lucky for Nathan that he had only just started cleaning the wound when he mentioned Abel, because Gabe’s terse little laugh quickly blossomed into a larger one that required him to step away for a moment. Abel, his favorite of his wife’s siblings. Abel, whom he had sent champagne to every year for his birthday since the late 40′s, who had nearly gotten them arrested in Avignon more than once. This was his grandson? The sense of humor clearly got lost somewhere in the family tree since Abel, but he could see it in the looks. “Ah fuck. So he did keep his mouth shut about me to the rest of the clan, I’m deeply impressed. Incroyable qu'il puisse, mon frere Abel.” While he reminisced though, Nathan was still wounded, so he gathered himself after a few moments. Went back to cleaning, then prepped his needle. “I met her during the war. I was an unworldly Catholic priest in training, she a lovely ball of fire. Abel I met at her funeral, when we thought she’d been killed.” Luckily Gabe had stitched enough wounds in his life that it was relatively easy to stitch and talk, but he looked down often between his words. “There are bars in Avignon that we’re permanently banned from. A casino too, but that’s his fault for dragging that swordfish he’d won into their lobby. Finally got him to call me recently, but it’s uh...” Gabe finished the last stitch with a flourish, then shrugged. “It’s hard to explain to humans why you don’t age. He knows, no one else did.”
