"Uh, if you say so."

"You just stay put, you don't want to walk on that foot."

Off to find Panacea.

She's more than halfway through healing the acid victims at this point.

"Oh, hi Chelsea."

She has definitely not spent the past fifteen minutes reminiscing about hugging Chelsea. 

"Hey, when you're next between patients there's a hero who looks half about to leave without getting seen at all for his burned ankle, he might need some persuading so he doesn't keep his partner waiting when she comes to whisk the both of them off into the yonder." Wistful yearning, not that Panacea really needs the push.

The wistfulness mixes with the desperation in a way Panacea is already very familiar with.

"Oh, of course. I can go and heal him ....now, all done with this patient."

"This way, he's in the lobby." How about Chelsea visibly almost leads her by the hand and then thinks better of it.

Panacea's hand twitches and she conspicuously controls her facial expression so as not to let the spike in longing show.

It's okay, Panacea, just run away from all your responsibilities to settle in a small town in the middle of nowhere with Chelsea and all your longing will be rewarded.

And here's their third wheel. Chelsea comes up behind him to put a hand on his head, fingers dipping below the hairline, doesn't that feel nice? Isn't that soothing? "This is the one."

The other people in the lobby are going to start leaving now. They're impatient and going to go look for their doctors, fretful and going to go check on their sick loved ones, have decided they hate the stranger next to them as much as they hate their worst enemy and want to be in a different waiting room -

It really is soothing, if awkward and a bit out of nowhere from someone who isn't May.

"Do I have permission to heal you?"

"Yeah, I guess."

She can touch his hand and- oh Chelsea's touching is doing such a thing to him. She can almost imagine it doing that to her...

Healing. Yes. There is ankle skin to fix.

The last bystander's out of the way now.

So she's covered if Vallis does anything sudden in response to feeling about Chelsea the way he does about his partner, then.

Copy. Paste.

Blink.

"Panacea already knows about this but I'm actually in pretty serious trouble and need help," says Chelsea, sliding her hand down to his neck for more coverage. "There's some supervillains who may be after me - the worst one who tortured me is dead but I'm scared of the rest of them. I need to get out of town, but if I go without a backlash partner, or without Panacea to help with anything the biotinker left behind before she died, I won't make it very far.

"Come with me?"

"Oh wow, uh. Of course I'll help - why don't we just fight them here? The Undersiders will probably help, or the Protectorate."

"I don't think that'd go very well."

"Oh.... Are you sure?"

"I'm very sure." Trust her.

How's Panacea doing. Would she be doing better if Chelsea held her hand.

Oh....

When Panacea manages to notice anything beyond how they are holding hands she notices how touching Tunnel Teen is making Chelsea feel. She is not going to do anything about this but she could and if she did Tunnel Teen would have such a bad time of it and since she's touching Tunnel Teen it's very easy to imagine what it would look like.

"I've got a car. I don't know how much time we have."

"Hrm, I was supposed to wait for-"

"You've got to be able to respond to new emergencies as they come up, mustn't you?"

"I really think my partner will be able to help us and she'll probably be here relatively soon? I can text her a place to meet and we can pick her up there if we need to move right now though uh, I think there are Protectorate or New Wave members on standby to intervene if there's an attack here since it's a hospital and Panacea works here - right?" he asks, looking to Panacea for confirmation.

"Chelsea can be a bit hasty but so long as she's taking us with her I'm sure it will be fine?" Panacea says, resolutely ignoring her own mild confusion in favor of focusing on the feeling of Chelsea's hand in hers.