[hospital]

The intercom transmitted into every hallway (the components they'd been able to scavenge from the wreckage of the Villefort Municipal Airport hadn't been enough to wire every room), so after the first page, Greg finished wrapping the sprain he'd been treating and began to amble towards Carl's office. At the second page, he quickened his pace. At the third, he was running.
         He blundered through the door. "Jesus, Carl, I was treating a six-year-old girl, try to keep the swearing to a bare minimum, for fuck's sake."
         "Except in cases of emergency?" Carl asked. He pushed a manilla folder across his desk towards Greg. The dark purple edges of x-ray films jutted from the sides.
         Greg's smile dropped from his face as if slapped. "Mutation?"
         Carl rubbed his forehead. "Please just look at them and tell me what you think."
         There was a knock on the doorframe. Opie poked his head around the corner. "I didn't even know you knew words like that, Carl."
         Greg stared at the x-rays for a long minute. When he spoke, he didn't look up. "Opie, I was wrapping up Tina Gehring's ankle down in the east wing, you wanna go give her some crutches and send her on her way?"
         "What's up?" said Opie, stepping into the doorway.
         "Opie," said Carl softly. "Go take care of Tina."
         The young tech looked from Carl to Greg and back to Carl. "Is it --?"
         "Don't let her forget her shoe, Opie," said Greg, staring fixedly at one film. "It's on the shelf under the table."
         "Right. Tina's shoe. Got it." He shut the door on his way out without being asked.
         Carl stared at a pen in his hand while Greg stared at the film from the John Doe. Finally, Greg spoke.
         "This isn't a mutation."
         "I didn't think it was."
         "What exactly do you think it is?"
         Carl shook his head. "You first."
         Greg sat down and spread the films out on the desk. "These formations in the middles of the fingerbones -- apart from there being no reason for them, they look, well -- natural."
         "What do you mean?"
         "Sure, they almost have to be implants of some kind, but -- they don't look like implants. See? And this musculature in the forearm," he pointed at another film, "I can't be absolutely sure without a biopsy, but that looks to me like cardiac muscle."
         Carl leaned forward. "I hadn't noticed that part of it."
         "Well, I can understand how the skull and fingers might tend to hold one's attention."
         "Does the skull seem natural to you?"
         Greg sat back in the chair. "Again, I guess it would depend on what you mean by natural. Does it look like someone altered it in some way? No, it doesn't. Is it something that would occur without someone altering it? Absolutely not."
         "Yet you say it's not a mutation."
         Greg looked up at his boss. "It doesn't look like one. But I sure as hell can't think of any other explanation for it."
         "You want to meet him?"
         "Sure. Let me scrub up and I'll meet you down there."
         "No need to scrub. He's in Rita's office."
         "Why are they doing an autopsy in --" began Greg, and then his jaw stopped working. "He's..."
         "He sure is," said Carl. "Alive and kicking."
         "So it's almost certainly not a mutation. You could have told me sooner."
         Carl shrugged. "I was going for effect."
         "Let's go."

Carl put a hand on Greg's arm before he could rush through the door of Rita's office. "He's a little jumpy, so take it easy."
         Greg laughed. "He's jumpy?"
         "Just take it slow with the kid."
         "Kid? How old is he?"
         "He says he doesn't know. I'd guess late teens, twenty at the most."
         Greg stared.
         Carl smiled. "Yeah, he's quite a piece of work. Come on."
         They knocked gently on the door, then opened it and walked slowly into the darkened office. Once their eyes adjusted, they could see Rita seated in a chair next to her examination table. On the table was the John Doe, sitting with his knees drawn up against his chest.
         Whatever Greg had been expecting, with his mind recalling the ghastly images of past mutations -- the gnarled limbs, the extra limbs, the multi-colored skin, the all-pervasive smell -- whatever he'd been expecting, John Doe wasn't it. He looked like a perfectly normal highschool student, with light brown hair and a runner's physique. His eyes were wide and alert. And intelligent.
         Greg had never seen a live mutation, had never spoken with one, had only dissected them, so he had no direct experience regarding a mutant's intelligence level. The surgeon in him, after examining several mutated brains, didn't see how normal function could ever occur in an organ that had undergone such sudden, overwhelming change. But the humanitarian within him had other reasons, nowhere near as scientific. Greg simply didn't want to consider that a being could undergo such a violent twisting of their body and mind, and still remain cognizant of the world around them. The thought filled him with sympathetic horror almost too great to be endured.
         So it was the quick and calculating gaze of John Doe that banished all thoughts of mutation from Greg's mind, more effectively than the solid evidence of his undamaged physiology.


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