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Whatever he was doing, he was doing it in a lab coat. He was doing it with a clipboard, too, and he was doing it with an empty plastic ID badge holder clipped to his lapel. In fact, all except for the badge he was missing -- which begged the question of how in hell's name he got all the way up here -- whatever the hell Ray Gordon was doing, he was doing it dressed like a doctor from Destiny City Memorial. He closed the office door behind him with a click and leaned on it, crossing one of his feet over the other and tucking his clipboard under one arm and giving Gene a five-star grin that said, in a word, ta-da!

"You know, I don't know," he said. "Normally they say if a girl don't return your call after three days, that's a hint, man, take it and cut your losses. But -- I heard another school of thought teaches she might be playing hard to get. So I just don't know what to believe. Had to take a walk to think about it. Just so ran into you. Though," he flicked a pen out of his pocket and clicked it once, then threw it up in the air -- amazingly, it spun a perfect wheel and he caught it again, "there's another philosophy in vogue these days that says, hey, she's an ER doctor, she's busy saving lives and taking names, maybe she's just forgotten. Give her a little time."

Ray clicked his pen again, which was a Zoloft pen. He did have a sense of humor. Someone had a sense of humor. Something had a sense of humor.

"Or," he concluded, and raised his eyebrows over his horn-rimmed glasses, "she might just be playing hard to get."

Whedonitis aside, what the hell was he doing here?

"So what's your take, Doc?"

"You been Bejeweling all this time? I thought that was like bending your elbow past a certain point -- men aren't usually born with the ability," said Ray, who was never charming for too long without sliding a little dagger into your pride just so when you trespassed. Gene knew how shysters and confidence men played their game: he went to college with one for four years, after all, and wasted a solid handful of his twenties with him afterward. He was only charming-nonthreatening to people he didn't want to scare for one reason or other; otherwise it was charming with teeth, little baby teeth like a puppy, that left a little sting so you didn't get too big for your britches. Nowadays professional pickup artists made money teaching people what Ray had figured out in 1999. They claimed to their customers it didn't work if the target knew it was happening, like a magician's trick.

They were wrong. "You're pardoned," Ray informed him with that same Vote-For-Me grin. "This time. Next time, though -- a man doesn't get a call back, a man starts wondering if he's still got the right number in his phone. A man starts speculating on tactful ways to figure this out. A man starts running some real questionable Google searches. But let's not get into that. Don't tell me Crystal's still got a surprise sex problem?" It was occasionally hard to believe the man was a schoolteacher. "Aren't they supposed to be rich or something? Where's the cover-up?"

"We don't mix business with pleasure." Ray bored of clicking his pen and started playing with his empty plastic nametag holder instead. How did he get here? How did he even know where to get? Gene ascribed it to general Ray powers of bluffing, trickery, and the devil's own luck, all of which he'd possessed as long as he'd known him, but then again it wasn't a satisfactory answer. There was the devil's own luck, and then there were the security protocols of DC Memorial. "A couple of her orchestra girls wound up in the hospital, actually. I think one got pulled out of the dorms by her mom. I'm telling you, this stuff doesn't happen at Meadowview. We've just got girls whose boyfriends beat them up here and there. Which doesn't surprise me too much," he said, "given as 'Hillworth boyfriend' is the new 'purse dog.'"

Hillworth boys sometimes turned up at DC Memorial too, tight-lipped and uncooperative, but that wasn't wondrous. Reform schools were Oliver Twist nightmares. Not even well-meaning young doctors reported stuff over there any more.

Ray ducked his head and looked up at him with a smile that was less million-dollar and more normal, person-to-person, person-to-person-they-were-happy-to-see. Another game. (Or was it? What was flattering himself more, that Ray had come here without an ulterior motive or that he'd come here with one?) "I like your office," he said. "Can we swap?"

In fact, Gene had never seen Ray shower more than when he'd come home around 7:00 every night covered in engine grease. He would always throw his oily shirt in the "crap hamper" (as opposed to his decent clothes on weekends, which got treated to a pile on the floor) and head straight for the bathroom like a kid in chemistry class who'd gotten acid in his eyes. It wasn't even like he was obsessively cleanly. This was Ray they were talking about, Ray who tried to wash his hair in the sink in college. It was just how it was. Even so, the crap hamper started making his room smell faintly like gas and oil, which after a while creeped onto his skin over the sweat and Old Spice. But he'd made a valiant try.

"I ripped out a lab tech's heart. He looked kind of like me," he said, "so I took his ID and lab coat and used it to get up here after I looked you up. Then I flicked my phoenix-feather wand and Apparated past the locked door to Administration. Pop."

Ray spent about 90% of the time blowing off serious questions, so it wasn't really a surprise that he was, again, blowing off a serious question. It was still a pretty annoying not-really-a-surprise. Gene's fuse for him was still quite short, he found, shortened a great deal over two whole years: if Ray had Apparated here to make fun of him he could Apparate right the ******** back out. But Ray clicked the Zoloft pen and smiled at him that way again. "Nah, one of my students had a birthday here in the hospital, so one of my coworkers talked me into dressing up like a doctor to give them the class birthday gift. Now I'm just trespassing. Didn't you like the other story better? I like the other story better. But anyway," he gestured, "how I got here or how I didn't get here, that is not the question. The question is --"

Flick. The pen spun in the air again. That was a hell of a trick.

"-- how the hell am I getting out?"

Ray brightened. "I knew I could count on you," he said, which was the best he could do for having waltzed unauthorizedly into someone's office on their break, apparently, but what could you do. He crossed one foot over the other at the ankle again.

This turned the sole of his shoe up again to Gene's line of sight. There was dirt caking still clinging to the bottom. It had rained earlier today. There was probably mud. It was a thin, crusted layer on the rubber, flakes of which were shaken off by the movement and were settling on the office carpet.

The nearest long-term ward was a wing of the hospital and an elevator ride away. Very -- very -- persistent. Mud.

"So anyway," Ray interrupted. "Less talk, more rock. Come on, let's walk and chat, my car's all the way in the visitor's lot. It'll be an adventure. We'll bond."

Ray's lab coat didn't totally fit him, something you only noticed when you saw lab coats 24/7. Maybe he sucked at lab coat shopping. It stood to reason, since he sucked at every other kind.

"Roger that, cap'n," he said with a grin. "Raymond Low Profile Gordon. Written right on my birth certificate."

And with that, he took 'act like you know what you're doing' to mean 'stride right ahead of me whether or not you know where you're going,' because that was exactly what he did. He followed suit after Gene and then overtook him at the door, then down the office hallway which, Gene noticed, was strewn here and there with little bits of dried mud. It trailed off at the door to the elevator bank, which Ray held open with a flourish -- was there a single door anywhere Ray had ever managed to hold open without flourishing? -- let Gene through with a cheerful, "Pearls before swine," and then promptly walked ahead of him again. This set of elevators would take them to the halls which connected to Ward B, which connected the fastest to the parking lot.

Ray punched the down arrow on the elevator. It came quickly. Hospital elevators always did. If they could not stop for death, it kindly stopped for them. It was full of people, too. Hospital elevators always were.

Unfortunately, several of them were doctors: more unfortunately, two of them were doctors Gene recognized. Ray filed in like he worked here every day of his life; Dr. Villalobos and Dr. Olson, however, both gave Gene slightly odd looks. However, they weren't quite on speaking terms, thankfully. "Dr. Gordon" seemed not to notice and Dr. Baskov was content to keep it that way.

The elevator let out on the second floor and Gene pushed past to get out before there was time for Ray to stall or look odd. They both therefore got out in a hurry and then milled about for a moment or two to wait for Dr. Villalobos and Dr. Olson to pass them. The danger was almost past. Gene was beginning to breath a sigh of relief.

"I say, Doc," said Ray. "This place sure is huge, I get lost in it all the time. Which way is out again?"

Right then Ray broke in with what Gene hoped wasn't more improv. "How do you do," he said with a smile. An awkward, bashful smile. A smile that had never before been plastered on Ray Gordon's face and probably never would be again. "I, uh, I haven't been back from Fallujah for too long, I keep getting lost. DC Memorial's pretty big, I ain't ever worked somewhere bigger." He also sounded like he was fresh off the boat. The Memphis boat. "Robbie Snare, First Lieutenant. Hey, Doc -- O? -- can you point us towards the parking lot? I'm real sorry, I got no memory for faces or directions. Or Doc -- Wolf --?" He blinked with his best impression of totally not getting a joke.

"Down that hall, down a flight of stairs and follow the signs," said Dr. Villalobos briskly, who, bless his wonderful heart, could be counted on to run out of patience with the annoying so beautifully quickly. "Excuse me." He walked a little faster and Dr. Olson followed him, shooting them both an apologetic look of he's in a hurry, before they both disappeared into the morass of people.

The smile wiped itself right off Ray's face again as they went: just peeled off like a layer of dead skin. He didn't look ashamed of himself or grim or anything else he normally did when embarrassed. He just raised his eyebrows a little and watched them go.

Nevertheless, he waited for them to disappear before setting off at a walk in the direction Dr. Villalobos had indicated. "Well, that sure was a close call," he remarked. "Dunno what I would've done if you weren't there, Genya. Would've been right S.O.L. C'mon, show a little hustle, visitors is two lots over, ain't you supposed to be in some kind of shape?"