useofcuriosity | PSL Box

The look on his face when he first walks in has her turn white as a sheet, but when he reports the lack of atrophy and decay, her expression becomes confused. That's good news, isn't it? But on reflection, he is exhibiting symptoms of well...something.

She holds her hand out for the scan silently.

Just as silently, which feels weird to him but he really has no idea what to say or do at the moment, he hands the scan over to her. "'Maybe it's stress', they tell me."

Right.

Her flat expression suggests she doesn't think it's anything like that either. She opens the file, pulling out the mri film and holding it up to the light, pressing her mouth into a thin line as she studies it intently.

Something about it bothers her, he can see it in her face. It's going to take a moment for her to put her finger on it, though. It's like a whisper on the edge of her hearing, she just needs it to come to her. And then...

"Do you still have your mom's file?"

He watches her, waiting. Trusts her more than he trusts the other doctors to look at this, because he sees him. Knows him. Gets him. She'd know what to see.

And he feels like he's right. "Yeah. Hold on." In his locker. Of course it is. He gets that for her too.

She doesn't take the file right away, instead, she takes up his under his arm and grabs his free hand. Lydia's never been shy about casual physical contact, and taking his hand is the most natural thing in the world. She tugs him along determinedly to the nearest free exam room, locking the door behind them and turning on the lit exam display so she can pin up both scans and look at them side by side.

It only takes her only a split second for whatever she was straining for to click in her brain. Breathlessly, "Do you see it?"

Because whatever it is, she does.

"Look at your mom's scan and yours side by side. That's impossible."

They're exactly the same.

He stares at them, looking back and forth at the two scans and crossing his arms. "It can't be a glitch or anything. What the hell. What would cause something like that?"

She shakes her head. "I was in the lab with the tech and the doctor, I'd know if they were messing around." She stares at it. "This is uncanny. It has to be a joke. We need to figure out where your real results are. And why someone would try to hide them. Someone must be playing a trick on you."

And that pisses her off.

"Who would do that? Who would even know to do that?" He doesn't even think Peter Hale would do something like that. The guy might be a weirdo and a crazy, but this is actually something Stiles doesn't think he'd do. "I didn't even tell Scott I was getting this done."

And that? Had been a challenge, honestly.

She's honestly surprised by that, and it shows on her face. He tells Scott everything. Or so she thought.

Her expression shuts down, as it always does, at the mention of Peter Hale. She's never been able to talk about it.

Pushing that aside, she squeezes his hand. "Can you think of anything, anything at all, that would cause something like this to happen?"

He wanted to tell him, yet...something kept him from doing it. It was weird, honestly. And thinking back on it now? A little bit creepy, because he can't remember why he didn't.

"Anything else would've shown up on the MRI. A tumor or an aneurism. And those wouldn't explain this." The matching MRIs. "Does everything match? The rest of her chart?"

Lydia opens the two folders side by side, and gestures toward them. "You tell me." she says quietly.

He looks at one, then the other. Studies them like he would any other patient file. Frowns to himself. Hers: impulsive behavior, hallucinations, insomnia, night terrors, dissociative, confusion. His: impulsive behavior, hallucinations, insomnia, night terrors, dissociative, confusion.

"It's the same."

Lydia has no context for the supernatural...yet. That there might be something supernatural at play here isn't something that would occur to her. She looks up at him intently, taking his cheeks in her hands.

"Think really hard. Is there anyone who might be trying to mess with you? Anybody who has some kind of issue with your mom...or your dad, maybe? I mean, he is in law enforcement."

But it doesn't feel like the right answer, even as she says it.

"He's the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. The biggest thing in town is wild animal attacks." He shakes his head. "Even if someone was messing with the paperwork, that doesn't explain the symptoms themselves."

Lydia rubs her face in frustration. "I don't want to say you should do another MRI - I know how hard it was for you, but I can't think of anything else. Maybe you should talk to Scott about it? Would he have any ideas?"

"Maybe I could, yeah. It's...not really his specialty, but." What else can he do?

"You're not the type to develop psychosomatic symptoms just because." she insists, starting to pace. It makes her angry that she - they - can't figure this out, and it also makes her scared, which is not a feeling she's accustomed to experiencing, much less on behalf of another person.

"You could try presenting to the other interns? Tell them it's an anonymous patient?"

"Have them run blood tests, things like that. Yeah, I could do that." He snorts, a little to himself. "Maybe I'm cursed."

She immediately snorts. "You think we need to go witch-hunting then? Break out the torches and pitchforks and the dunking chair?"

"Maybe we should bake a strawberry pie." Stiles, your references are dated and bizarre.

She gives him a strange look, because yeah, that one was right over her head.

"We'll figure this out." she promises, though she has no idea how. Stepping forward, she draws him into a hug, her breath against his neck. "Is your shift over? If it is, we can go home."

"It's over, yeah." He hugs her back, "I know we'll figure it out." Well. He believes in her, anyway.

Home, once they get there, is a quiet affair. It's either Stiles cooking or them getting take-out because Lydia only barely cooks, but she fair trades for it by stacking and emptying the dishwasher along with her usual mutterings about needing a maid.

It's not that they're pretending everything's normal, it's just that they both want to avoid talking about the thing hanging over their heads because they need some relief from it. And when they go to bed, Lydia curls up against him, as much for his comfort as her own.

If he falls asleep he might miss it though; sometime in the night, Lydia gets up and leaves the room. She does not return a few minutes later. Or hours later. Nor is she there if he doesn't wake up until the alarm goes off.

It's an awful set of dreams he has. Dreams of weird tree stumps in the middle of the woods. Or the old high school. The middle of the surgical theatre. The sounds of mountain lions, wolves and foxes. The feeling of ice cold water.

It's awful, and eventually he wakes up with a...possibly louder than he'd like start. And disoriented, notices that Lydia isn't in bed with him. "Lydia?" It takes him a moment to be able to speak without hoarseness in his voice, and to get up and make his way out of the bedroom.

She isn't anywhere in the house. She doesn't answer her cell.

She's not at the hospital either.

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