Welcome to Gaia! ::

Smiling, perhaps a bit regretfully, Dr. Brown rises once more. "The machine is in the next room. I'm going to need to have you pop over there for a short while." he informs her carefully, moving back toward the door.

"I'll get things set up, it'll be just a minute" he adds quietly, then looking to Hitsuga. "And maybe your husband can give you a hand with the ties in the back?" he asks, giving him a smile (and thankfully not enough time to answer) as he excuses himself.

Hitsuga blinks, knocked flat by the assumption, his projections a clipped flurry of illegible, frantic, things that strain against his mental wall like a rampaging mob of force. gonk

Hitsuga doesn't seem all that convinced, though he has not believed things were fine since this ordeal began. Having been told to stay put in the office, having watched the human woman enter the room to adjust and press something that clicked loudly on the apparatus hooked to the wall that Baikou had pointed out earlier...

He didn't like it. And he is barely containing the urge to suggest they ought to leave, knowing it isn't his decision to make. At the very least, the anxiety of not knowing what was happening and concern has, for the moment, taken priority over her crumpled paper gown she is barely wearing.

Is Baikou sure that she's all right...? confused

Hitsuga listens to the patter of her thoughts, and the uneven, almost-urgent cadence they have as she seeks his agreement on her points.

Yes...he--

Well he'd like to think so.

He supposes so.

He hopes so...

And if not for you, she would not BE in this state. an ugly voice of self-doubt spoke up on its own somewhere in the depths of his mind.

.....

Drawing in a breath, holding it, and then letting it hiss out over his teeth, he draws nearer to help her get resituated if she should need.

Hitsuga is....is sorry Baikou is being put through this.

Hitsuga, again feels heat rise in his face (if it had, in fact, ever left since coming here), at both what she's said and at the request and...

Y-Yes....he'll do his best sweatdrop he assures her, his thoughts a staccato of various things that flit by too quickly to be focused on, though worry, as usual, is firmly at the front of the line.

Stepping around the back of the table, slightly-trembling fingers take hold of the strings that dangle haphazardly along the gown's sides, on either side of her back, cinching them shut as quickly and deftly as he's able.

At the moment she chooses to look back at him, he is just looking up from having finished fussing with her ties, and there is a beat of awkward silence as he meets her gaze...

....and then his eyes dart to the side in the direction of the still-closed door.

He's sure it....well, it surely can't take -too- much longer...

Not if they're only pictures...

He seems heedless of the disarray of his hair for the moment, though under normal circumstances it would have him scurrying for a mirror to straighten it.

How badly is Baikou hurting, he inquires, changing the subject to something more favorable -- namely the prospect of leaving. Should they plan to stop along the way back so that she can rest?

His...wha? His eyes momentarily and comically cross for a second to look at her finger and--

Oh...!!

He draws back, fingers already fumbling the tie free as he smooths the flyaways back into their proper places with the same nervous precision of a finch preening its feathers, small puffs of flustered embarrassment lingering about him.

As he cinches the tie back into place, he is dimly aware of the galloping beat his heart has taken on, and wills himself to calm, drawing deep, even breaths. Getting this worked up over his hair being a mess, of all things...?

He is not given time to ponder further as there is a polite rapping at the door, followed by the resurfacing of Dr. Brown who enters the room, carrying with him a manilla folder.

"Good news," he informs them pleasantly as he crosses the office to flick a switch on a white panel affixed to the wall, causing it to illuminate with a gentle glow. "It isn't arthritis."

"Hear me out, here..." he tells her gently, consulting the X-rays. "The notes on your file suggested that you were experiencing joint pain when you moved. But if you look here...." Dr. Brown says, tracing the outline of one of her joints. "....nothing is inflamed. None of it is. And there's nothing that suggests your bones are being depleted. And that's what I was beginning to think we were going to find once I actually talked to you."

Hitsuga's nails bite small half-moons into the meat of his palms as he walls away feelings of exasperation. If he had suspected they would find nothing, why.....why even put Baikou through such indignities?

Has he really just dragged her here, with assurances Gaia's doctors can help her pinpoint her problem just to come away directly where they'd started?!

Perhaps sensing the tension on the air from the two Porcelain, or perhaps just finally getting around to making his point, Dr. Brown continues. "That's not to say you're imagining these pains either, Baikou. We'll need to do some bloodwork to be sure, but what your symptoms sound like, to me, is something called Allodynia, which sometimes comes with Fibromyalgia."