"Sir, this is official Interpol business...I'm Agent Gudheim..." the beady-eyed-mouth in the dreadfully boring suit tried to explain.
"I don't care if you're Margaret-bloody-Thatcher risen from the grave!" the much-too-dramatic flash of eyes and teeth shouted back. "No one touches my patient!"
"Sir, you haven't even heard--"
"Oh, I know why you're here! My uncle sits in Parliament, you know! Keeps me in the loop!" the bulging vein of indignant pride lashed back, this time bringing his friend, the 'accusatory finger', into play. "One of the Royals got caught with 'is knickers down, and my patient here has seen-too-much, right?!"
"Sir--"
"Well, BOLLOCKS to that!"
Ian McGregor.
"Sir--"
"I took the Hippocratic Oath, you nazis!"
That's him.
"DOCTOR McGREGOR!"
Did I mention he was a Doctor?
"What?!" he barked.
In the brief moments of silence that followed, Ian's face began to retire to its normal lack of crimson red complexion that had made a guest appearance during his most vindictive statements. Also, taking a moment in this momentous, and, some would say, long coming calm, the two Interpol agents standing in the doorway of his office glanced at each other, finding some professional bearing in a look.
"We were sent here by your uncle."
The briefly mentioned, and quickly forgotten, 'Accusatory Finger' curled into a submissive fetal position.
"Oh."
Brilliant linguist, our Doctor McGregor.
"Yes, well....come in, I guess..."
McGregor stepped back from his blocking position, allowing the two agents access inside the room. His fresh-faced assistant...one third-year nurse Ruby Piper...still stood just outside the door in the hallway.
"Should I bring some tea around?" she asked in a half-whisper, leaning in through the doorway.
"No..." he replied in the same whisper. "...this shouldn't take that long..."
Beginning to close the door, her hand suddenly stopped it, as she squeezed her head back through.
"Margaret Thatcher isn't dead, you know..." she whispered.
"Go away." he whispered back, this time forcing her head out with his hand.
With the door closed, and the much-too-keen-for-her-age nurse properly put in her place...
...add a tongue to a cheek here...
...Dr. Ian McGregor slid down behind his desk, his expression going all-business.
"Now, then....what can I do for y--....excuse me. Stop that."
The other agent...the one that had yet to get a line...looked up from what he was doing. Of course, what he was doing was highly irrelevant to the purpose of their visit, and, in turn, to the purpose of this scene. Still, in all fairness to the color of the story, it should be told.
Most, if not all, physicians keep what is usually a replica of a human skull on top of their office desk. Of course, if they do not have a desk, then it is usually placed in some prominent location or venue of a selectively public domain. Like their examination rooms, or, in a locker. Of course, for all practical purposes lockers are not the most public of venues, and, in that, the storing of human skulls, replica or otherwise, is nominally frowned upon.
The words 'cult', 'pagan altar', and 'Dhamer' usually find a parking spot in the discussions of such people.
Whether this need...and some rumors have it, edict...by the medical community to display human skulls is in truth an attempt to assure the non-medical public of their prowess in the understanding of second-grade level biology, or, they just all think it's really cool, no one will say. And, as remarkable a man as Ian McGregor might be....and he just might be....he too displays the standard replica of a human skull on top of his office desk.
And, if there is one thing in the world that irritates McGregor the most, it is the need of the British to pronounce the word 'schedule' shedual.
There's a fucking 'C' in there, you know?!
But, playing with the replica of the human skull that sits on his desk is right up there on Ian's list, too.
And that's just what the agent was doing.
"Oh..." he said, sitting fully back from the skull. "...sorry..."
Ian stared at him for a moment, and, the agent would later wonder how on earth such a psychotically neurotic look could come from a healer.
"Okay." McGregor finally said, finding some calm in his life again. "As I was saying...what can I do for you?"
"And, as I was saying, I'm Agent Gudheim...this is Agent Moote'."
"Agent Mute, eh?" Ian interrupted, a small smirk forming. "I guess you're the quiet type, right?"
"Yes...that is how the standard joke goes, Doctor..." Agent Moote' replied with narrow eyes.
Ian had just played with his skull.
"We are here by request of Lord Falstaff McGregor...that's your uncle..."
"Yes, I believe my mother covered that for me when I was a child...please go on..."
"Yes sir, well, Lord McGregor's standing with the European council alone, he is beginning to feel a bit of the cook, if you understand me."
"Let's pretend I don't."
"Very well..." the agent sighed. "...this patient of yours...one Johan Oswald Baxter. A.K.A. 'Ozzy Baxter'. A.K.A. 'Johan Oz'. A.K.A. 'Oswald Barker'. A.K.A. 'Joseph Han'. A.K.A.--"
"Can we please get past the alphabet? I am a busy man, Agent Gudheim."
"As am I, Dr. McGregor." Gudheim replied in kind. "To be perfectly and honestly to the point, this is a social call."
"I'm sorry?"
"Your uncle has friends in high places, true. But, that won't be enough to keep Mr. Baxter here forever."
"And what is it that Mr. Baxter has done?" Ian demanded. "What is this all about? Uncle Falstaff filled me in on his legal exile. I know he's not supposed to be here on British soil. But, what the hell does Interpol have to do with this?"
"Oswald Baxter has a wrap-sheet that spans both oceans, Doctor. He has made business deals...bad ones at that...with some very powerful people. The kind of people that do not believe in the 'forgive-and-forget' department. The kind of people that fund countries and manipulate economies. You think it's difficult for your uncle to keep him here in the country for you? It may be of decent surprise to you that lives could be at risk if he remains on the European continent, itself."
Ian stared back, silent.
"Your uncle's life...and yours..."
Dr. McGregor thought on this for a moment, as one would do when faced with the thought of a death threat.
"What would you have me do?" Ian finally asked in a reasonable tone. Reasonable in relation to the ratio of government agents within this room that possessed firearms, as opposed to the doctors that did not.
"Us, Doctor? There is no 'us'. We are not, nor have we ever been, officially here." Gudheim responded.
"Officially." Ian repeated. "The most powerful word in modern human civilization."
"Doctor, if...if...there were two Interpol agents in your office at this moment..." Gudheim began. "...if you were all discussing what is to be done with a patient whose presence could cause great political and mortal trauma to members of your family....and, if you were seeking advice from said agents on a recourse...I would imagine, at great lengths, that the agent might suggest that you simply ship him back from where he came..."
"...if that were the case, eh...?" Ian replied with a low tone.
"Yes, Doctor. If." Gudheim said, his eyes low and convincing. "Or, one might find him or herself the victim of some dreadfully tragic accident...."
McGregor's began to chew on his bottom lip.
"...officially speaking, of course..."
The room was, once again, silent. However, this time, McGregor was wishing for a small thermonuclear explosion to cut the tension.
"Well....we've taken enough of your time, Doctor..." Gudheim nodded, he and Moote' rising to their feet. Ian rose as well, pulled along by their Jedi powers. Or, that's how he imagined it anyway.
...he could almost hear the rasping ventilator...
"Good evening, Doctor." Gudheim shook the man's hand...whether Ian wanted him to, or not. "We'll be in touch."
The two agents left as quickly as they had arrived, sans one maniac physician accusing them of invading Poland. The maniac physician, as he would be known for the remainder of this paragraph, instead, walked calmly out of his office, and watched them enter the lift. The physician, of the maniacal sort, smiled and waved at the two agents as the doors of the lift closed. The smile, of course, stayed glued to his face in some bizarre muscle cramp born of extreme anxiety, long after the agents were gone, and, quite shortly into his break-neck sprint down the hallway.
The many nurses he almost collided with in the ensuing dash would help in spreading the 'maniac physician' label.
"E.K.G.?"
Nurse Piper yelped with a quick high-pitched squeal as McGregor burst into the room, his white lab coat ruffling in passing. She fumbled with the chart, as he seemed to begin rudimentary examination of the comatose form in the bed.
"E-E.K.G. normal, Doctor Mc--"
"Blood pressure?"
"Uh..n-normal--"
"Any change in cellular morphis?" he asked, leaning close to the patient's exposed chest. He whipped a ballpoint pen from his coat pocket, tapping the grayish metal patches barely visible along the skin.
"None..." she replied, finally beginning to get into rhythm with his frantic burst of intensity. "...I can get Barbara and the lads in pathology to run another--"
"Won't be necessary." he waved his hands at her dismissively. "Besides, I don't think that's the way to go anymore."
"Doctor?"
"...hmmm..." he moaned, checking the patient's pupil dilation.
"What's going on?" she asked.
Ian paused, stood fully up, and stared at her with the look of a man that just did three lines of cocaine and was asked to smell a rose.
"What's going on, Nurse Piper, is that we are going to cure Mr. Baxter here." he announced. "And we are going to cure him as quickly as possible..."
He melted back into his work, mumbling what sounded like 'fondling puppy gong'...
...but, was in truth, 'fucking Paragon'.
