Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

[i_sell_drugs]

The upside to using paper and pen instead of data pads for taking notes on patients is that it's intuitive and you can fiddle with things. The downside is that, at the end of a shift, a lot of the notes have to be shredded for privacy reasons, and the details have to be entered into the data pads anyway. Despite his usual devotion to efficiency,

Comments

[haruno]

Sakura hadn't recognized half the toys that came in, if she'd been able to make sense of most of them. A few tripped her up, which might explain why she was heading back to Howard with one of them in hand now. Skip-It seemed straight forward, if she couldn't imagine how this was much of a game. Did this little counter count... what? Revolutions?

Was this also minor weapons training? Kind of a flimsy bit of plastic tying the ring to the larger round end with the toy's name. "Is this a toy, or some kind of torture device?" she asked, holding up the object in question.

[i_sell_drugs]

Howard looks up at it and squints. "I got no idea. Isn't it one of those things you stick around your ankle and try to break your other ankle with? None of the kids in there knew how to use it?"

Clearly, Howard was a kid who spent more times watching movies and playing videogames than being outside with toys ordered off TV.

[haruno]

"You literally just skip over it?" She quirked her eyebrow up, shaking her head. "Didn't seem to hit it off with anyone. Outside of maybe converting it into a blunt force trauma case waiting to happen. Not that I blame anyone."

She lowered the contraption to her side. "When I first saw it I thought it might have been a child-safe version of a flail." She looked serious for a split second before her lips quirked up at the corners. "At least you recognize this from somewhere. Anything more advanced than a jumping rope, and I'm lost."

[i_sell_drugs]

"I...think so?" He pokes at it with his Tinker Toy stick, then snickers at her comment. "I honestly don't know what most of these toys are. I found them in the city and grabbed them thinking they might be useful someday, and lo and behold, suddenly we have kids running around. Really annoying kids, for the record."

He furrows his eyebrows at her jumprope comment, then digs a Simon Says out of the box. "So, where you're from, this sort of toy would be ridiculous high technology, right? That one's pretty much the only one I was ever good at. Think I even beat it once."

[haruno]

"At that age, who couldn't be annoying?" She doesn't hold it against them, considering her own recollections of how she and her peers acted at that age. (At least not much. She tries to remind herself why patience was a virtue. Sometimes it works.)

Sakura examines what Howard has pulled out of the box, not recognizing it in the slightest. "Basically," she admits, having gotten used to the fact most people in medical are better experienced with technology than she is. "What is it? Or more to the point, how do you play?"

[i_sell_drugs]

"Don't make excuses for them," he says, his distaste for children very clear in his voice. If looks could kill, the glare he shoots into the ether would cause all the kids on the ship to spontaneously combust.

He puts it on the table, tries to turn it on, and then fishes some batteries out of his messenger bag when it doesn't work. "It's real simple. Simon here'll show you a pattern, and you have to copy it."

He gets the batteries in and turns it on. The noises and lights start pinging and flashing. "You wanna go first? Med Bay's quiet, don't think we'll get in trouble."

[haruno]

She quirks an eyebrow up at his tone, letting the topic of children slide. Sakura doesn't feel the need to be confrontational on a fact of life: they're surrounded by children, or soon will be. If Howard doesn't like them, he has his reasons. It isn't her business to figure out why -- if certainly, she finds herself wondering.

Her attention turns to the random bobblybit he called Simon. "Reproducing patterns? Doesn't sound that difficult." She looks around Med Bay, where things really are pretty quiet. What's there to lose? "Sure," she says with a smile, "I'll give it a try."

[i_sell_drugs]

"So you say now..." Howard says with a wink, turning Simon on. He's always been pretty good with pattern recognition and thinking fast, so this game's always played well to his skill sets. He's not really the competitive sort, but Sakura seems confident enough that he's like to show her up, just out of spite.

[haruno]

It's not so hard at first, since Simon starts with one color. Then two. Then a repetition of one. Then it's four -- she's doing all right up until fourteen, when a hesitation actually makes her time out. Damn! Looks like she let the speed of the lights start to get to her.

"Does it speed up the entire time?" she asks, eying the game speculatively. She needs to tune out the sounds, concentrate on the patterns.

[i_sell_drugs]

"Yep. Not bad for a first try. Wanna see who can get the highest in five rounds?" He pulls it over and starts, getting to eighteen before hitting yellow twice outs him. He cracks his fingers. "Wow, I'm rusty."

[haruno]

"Sure," she says, clasping her hands behind her back. When he strikes out, Sakura shakes her head. For rusty, he wasn't exactly doing badly. "Looks like it's my turn again."

Her concentration is improving. She hits nineteen before hitting one too many greens in a row. "Ah! Should have been a yellow!"

Who should win?

[i_sell_drugs]

"Nice. I know plenty of people who never got that high." He sets his round up again. This time each time Simon displays the pattern at the beginning, he mimics the motions he'll have to do off to the side with his right hand, muttering the colors under his breath.

After getting twenty-four, he leans back in his seat and laughs. "Top that!"

lmfao I always vote for my characters to lose so -- Howard!

[haruno]

She grins, the competitive part of her ready to take him on head to head, with another part of her glad just to hear him laughing. Hey, it beats the unending sarcastic doom. Kind of.

"I'll try." She brings Simon back over, concentrating yet again on the pattern of lights, the reptetition. She's mostly motionless until it's time to repeat the patterns, and it's actually a too rapid hit that ends her round -- at twenty-three.

She breathes out. "Almost." Almost isn't good enough.

[i_sell_drugs]

As if echoing her thoughts, he waves a finger and says "almost isn't good enough, Cherrybomb".

His next round doesn't go so well, ending at only fifteen due to a second too long of hesitation. It's enough to temper the smirk on his face; still, he has the lead by one, and two more rounds to make it up if she tops twenty-four. "I think you're psyching me out."

[haruno]

"I think you can do that all on your own," she shoots back, without any heat in her voice. She doesn't notice that she's biting down on her lip as she follows the pattern this time. It seems to pay off -- she doesn't pull ahead, but this time she meets his record of twenty-four before messing up.

She slides Simon back over to Howard, grinning. "Wasn't almost that time."

[i_sell_drugs]

"Still not enough to win, though." He's been biting his nails as she did her round. He swallows a sliver of one as he takes Simon back.

Red red green red blue blue yellow...after thirty-five in a row, he passes it back, looking a bit exhilarated. "You have one try to beat that."