The self-proclaimed 'doctor' maintains her improvised clinic at the same place as before, doing much as she always had at nights: She stays in her run-down junker of an apartment, watching junk TV to help stay awake. She doesn't get patients every night, but she gets them often enough that she has learned to just stay close to home lest anyone arrive needing urgent care only to find she's not present. It would be a horrible way to die. Iris imagines anyone discovering that would feel very betrayed, and it could even be the last thing they ever think about.
And so she settles for late-night news, gimmick gameshows, prank-based TV, and so on. It's all tripe, but it's what she gets on the money available to her, sitting on a living room couch ringed by small tables with various cell phones (all cheap disposable models, used to allow patients to have some kind of communication without being easily traced if someone knows about their normal phones) and plastic bowls of candy. She's not eating much of the candy though; those are for patients.
This is a typical evening for her, and she can only wonder if her dedication to 'staying at her post' will yield someone needing assistance. It's odd... in some ways, Iris hopes they don't. Emergency magical medical care must be scary to those brought here. In other ways, it would at least be something to do tonight.
A tear in reality opens just outside 'Doctor' Shelby's clinic. Sailor Mercury and Sailor Moon step through together, with Mercury supporting moon. "Here," she says. "See? That wasn' so far." Helping Usagi to the doorway, Mercury gives a knock.
The last time Usagi came to Dr. Shelby's as a patient, she'd been nearly incoherent as she rang the doorbell.
This time, she's more or less in her right mind, so she's much more enthusiastic as her fingers dance against the bell, a juxtposition to Mercury's gentle knocks.
"Doctor Doctor Shelby Comma Period Hyphen Iris! It's me!" Not that Iris would know her by that, of course.
Her muscles tighten and she clucthes to Mercury for a moment, fighting back words that are very, very mean.
Iris doesn't immediately get her hopes up, but does turn the TV off as she hears the knocking. Sometimes it's someone alarmingly drunk just knocking here by accident. That's the best outcome, it means nobody got hurt enough to show up here (presuming they know about it).
Nonetheless, she does get off the couch to go check. The mix of knocking and doorbell ringing doesn't rule out 'drunkard' by any means, but it does annoy her enough to make her jog up to the door instead of just walking. Opening up, Iris sees familiar patients. "Ohh... oh dear." People she barely knows, but she does understand enough to realize they're probably here for good reasons.
And so she steps aside to give them room to walk inside. Her wing hair-clip is pulled off, unfolding in to a small scanner which she begins a very quick wave over Moon, then Mercury. It's a super-quick run, only checking for things that can be determined within mere seconds. "Which one of you is hurt and how, or is it both? If you need help getting to the couch or my other patient room, say so and I'll get you there."
"Doctor Shelby," Mercury says, as she helps Sailor Moon inside. "Hi, sorry, I know we haven't met much. I'm Sailor Mercury," she introduces herself as she helps Sailor Moon to the couch.
"Sailor Moon has a fragment of a dark energy sword lodged in her back, near the lower lumbar. Purification wasn't able to fix it, and I'm not confident in my own abilities to remove it. I'm not even sure if it's safe to remove."
"So ..." she trails off as she helps Usagi sit down, "that's why we're here. I'm sorry."
There's a moment when she thinks it's passed, but when she's on the sofa her back arcs hard, face contorting into a snarl.
And it's very much not her, and she doesn't like being not her.
Mercury has the crystal, but Sailor Moon has the wand still, and it's in her hand. "MOON HE--EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAUGH!"
The wand sends a current down her arm and through her body.
Iris' super-quick scans bring up nothing obviously wrong with Mercury, so she takes the apology in stride. "That's quite alright," she steps to the other side of Moon to help with the escort-to-couch. "Your heart is showing normal functions... concern for friends, skewed priorities like apologizing for 'bothering me' while your friend is hurt... so I'm pretty sure you're at least not in critical condition." Having surmised that Mercury is anywhere from 'okay for the moment' to 'totally fine', her focus is now on Moon.
Moon, who clearly has problems. Mercury just explained one. "Sword fragments? Those are /not/ what they're talking about when they suggest iron supplements in one's diet." A tiny laugh, one that cuts off abruptly when Moon screams. This situation is clearly not fit for that kind of humor right now.
"Okay... I take it that doesn't normally happen when she's talking about the Moon and has that wand?" A question to Mercury, as she'd rather get that kind of information from a patient's more coherent friend if possible.
While waiting to hear more on this, she decides to take closer scans of Moon... this time the wing-themed scanner device is run more slowly a few inches above Moon from head to toe, but especially lingers around the lower back; Mercury DID say the biggest problem should be found there, after all. "Does it hurt right now?" A question to the couch-bound Moon, as Iris works on a more clinical, less joke-laden assessment.
Sailor Mercury reaches up to grip the wand gently, then peers at Sailor Moon. "Purifying it makes it worse," she reminds Usagi quietly. "Stop. Please. Just put the wand away and let Doctor Shelby help you," she begs quietly.
Looking to Iris, Mercury explains, "Moon Healing Escalation is a purification attack she has. She keeps almost instinctively trying to purify herself. I already took away one tool of it that works without her conscious attempts. I didn't think I'd have to confiscate this one, too."
Sailor Moon's face crumples as she lets Mercury have the wand. "But it's not supposed to be in me."
It's wrong, so very much, on so many levels. It's like an infection trying to fester.
She looks at Iris and shakes her head. Then nods. Then shrugs. "It itches."
"Okay, I'm /really/ glad you told me that because I was about to try the obvious solution." Iris winces as she ponders what Mercury's insights mean. If direct magical aid is out of the question, this requires thinking about more in-depth methods. "Itches? There's a few things that could mean. At the very least it's making you indecisive," this may be a reflexive attempt at a joke, in light of Moon's headshake/nod/shrug sequence.
"For now, I'd like to try some pain medication to see if it responds to things that aren't magic and then take some more scans. This is just a super-early guess, but..."
Her head tilts down in thought. "I'm considering whether we could operate to physically remove it. I'm not going to try that right this instant if she's still stable, we need more information before I'm going to jump in to that, but that's the line I'm going to investigate. There may be other treatments we can try too, like sealing or isolating it. It's all too early to say any one of these is the true answer, but we've got things to think about at least."
"It did seem to help when I took some of the dark energy from her, and replaced it with my own," Mercury suggests. She's trying not to hover. Really she is. But in all honesty, the blue-haired senshi is definitely hovering over Iris' shoulder, watching her work.
"I thought about trying to remove the offending shard via subspace tunnel," Ami admits, "but I'm worried about what it severed when it went in. I don't want to hurt her further."
"But-- Tomorrow. Mercury, I can't miss the rock garden. I said I'd be there, I want to be there."
There's talk about drugs, which okay, understandable. Isolating? "Picard to Enterprise, one to beam up!" She wonders if that sort of thing is even possible, but it's about the only thing she can think to contribute.
If Iris minds this equivalent to backseat-driving, she does not show it. Instead, her eyes light up as she quickly thinks through Mercury's suggestions. "Congratulations! You've just been promoted from 'probably very intelligent', to '/definitely/ very intelligent and I plan to consult with you before undertaking any specific treatment.'" Iris is impressed... and worried. "That said, you did what? You took the energy into yourself?"
Now Mercury is getting a more deliberate scan. "This is going to sound mean, but I almost want to try using you for experiments in that case... presuming the reactions would be more mild since you probably have less in you. Not my first solution, but it's on my mind to see what happens if I try directly healing you."
Moon puts up protests and seemingly random remarks about ship captains Iris doesn't even know about... the Midchildan hasn't really had time to become familiar with 'Picard.' "I think that's what your friend was talking about, in a strange sense, but they're right to not try that JUST yet if we don't have to rush. Here..." She rises to go retrieve a nearby 'pill box', picking out a few pain-killers and trying to get them to Moon with some water. "Let's see what happens if we go with this. I'm sorry to say that rock gardens might be out of the question right now, but... if it makes you feel better, we could glue flowers to stones and say 'close enough'?" A giggle at her own silly suggestion follows.
Sailor Mercury has no idea how to respond to her promotion. So she doesn't. She just moves right past it to focus on the matter at hand. "I did," she explains. "I was able to draw some of the dark energy into myself, and allow it to dissipate into my life force, and in exchange replace some of Sailor Moon's life force with my own. This gave her the energy to get to here," she explains, "but not much else."
Ami glances at Usagi, then explains, "it's mostly dissipated, by now. But I can do it again, safely, if you need to witness it in action. I've handled dark energy a little, before."
Looking back to Shelby, Sailor Mercury says, "Whatever it takes to heal her, I will do it. If you need me to be a guinnea pig, or a consultant, or a donor, I will do it." Not even an ounce of hesitation.
"Mercury's 'definitely very much lots smart."
She swallows the pills and takes a sip of water. There's still that moment of taste on her tongue, and the look she gives Shelby is that the pill was really gross.
She does giggle, though, at the image of gluing flowers on Kunzite. "He won't like that but it would be funny!"
But Mercury has her worried. "No! You're not a consulting guinea pig donor!" Her eyes are wide and nearly frantic when she looks at Iris. "Don't hurt her! I'll bite you if you do!"
"Wow... that's devotion." Iris says this with an impressed gasp as Mercury promises to do whatever it takes. Moon referring to a 'stone garden' as 'he' is assessed as Moon possibly being delirious, though the self-proclaimed doctor does not openly voice this in hopes of keeping Moon relatively calm.
Threatening to bite her draws a swift retort with bright eyes and a teasing smile. "Don't. You have /no idea/ where I've been, you'll get all kinds of germs from chomping on me like that!"
She then tries to take another scan to see if the area around Moon's lower back is showing any kind of reaction, good or bad, to trying conventional medicine. Iris is already pondering how to proceed with this, as she does have a decent supply of such things.
...All of them bought on the black market because there is no way she can legally get them, she is by no means a real, accredited doctor recognized in Tokyo. It's part of why she lives in such a dive; most of what money she has goes in to such things, and it leaves scant budget for fancier homes.
"Mercury's very divited." Sailor Moon nods. "But she can't be a guinea pig!" She snuggles against Mercury's arm as she says this, and her henshin drops to that of a school girl. She pouts at Iris.
Then she sticks her tongue out. "Your cooties don't scare me, Ms. Dr. Shelby Comma Iris! I have an eleven year old brother! They're invested with cooties!"
"With an average twelve percent annual return," Iris picks up on Sailor Moon's-- or rather a normal person, all of a sudden -- mis-use of terms about brothers. "Which means he's overloaded with them by now, and if you had even a residual amount of that in you, once you bit me you'd trigger an epidemic consuming the entire city... so you really better not!"
The drugs kick in completely while Shelby's painting the picture of a cootie infestation. "Nooooo, if that happened, we'd be overrun by eleven year old boys! That won't do, that won't do! I don't wanna be a boy!"
She clutches Mercury's arm. "I don't wanna be a boy, Mercury! I don't wanna learn how to pee standing up!"
Having properly terrified her patient, Iris lets up some of the pressure. "Well, you won't have any of those problems if you don't bite me. For now, your real issue is we need to figure out what's going on. You seem to be stable for now, so I'm going to keep you here for observation until we figure out a good way to treat this."
Her mind still lingers on some form of surgery, but this is daunting because she's not sure if a magical sword-shard responds to conventional medical efforts in the first place... and even if it does, she is not trained on high-precision surgery. It might be viable if there's some room for margin of error, but if it proves to be something very specialized...
...then the Midchildan ex-TSAB field medic is not truly a doctor despite appointing herself to be such here on Earth, and she is not suited to something that delicate. This thought repeats itself in her head over and over, and while Iris is all smiles and giggles right now to keep the mood in the apartment high... inward, she is much more concerned and trying to come up with other possible solutions.
"Can we watch movies while you observe me? Do you have Disney movies? What about candy, can I have some candy?"
She doesn't really wait for an answer. For now she just sort ofrests her head on Shelby's lap. "Maybe the aardvarks will plant petunias."