"Let me know when you figure it out and I will undercut the shit out of you," Alli jokes. "We could-" she's cut off by her phone's text message sound going off, and she checks her texts.

tedds 2 dunk to drive come get me

"Oh, for shit's sake," Alli sighs. where r u? she sends back quickly, then makes an apologetic grimace at Theo. "Hey, so I have to go pick up my mom, her not-boyfriend's a dumbass. Want a ride home as long as I'm driving?"

"Yeah, that'd be cool, thanks."

So Alli drops Theo off at home first, promising to catch up with him at school at some point, then turns north. She fetches her mom from whatever fancypants restaurant Tedd picked this time then drives her home. Her mother spends the ride rambling about the delicious wine at Fancypants and how they really must go back with Tedd sometime, since she's about as good with drinking age laws as she is with the ones about learner's permits. Alli spends it rolling her eyes so hard it's practically audible.

The next day passes by without too much of a fuss, and after it Theo has soccer practice! Or trials, or something. He met up with some of the guys and suggested he might be interested and now: voilà, soccer practice. Or whatever. They suggested he come show them his skills, so, probably more like trials.

He is demonstrably rather good at it. Until, that is, he trips and lands badly.

On further inspection the coach seems to think he might have sprained it – he's having pain moving it, it looks discolored – and decides he should go to the hospital to get it checked out.

Intake is about as much fun as pulling teeth, but that's intake for you. Once he's gotten to wait in the emergency room for a good long time, and then been called up to enter in all his personal information, insurance information, school information, and probably his favorite color just for fun, he is sent back to wait some more. And some more.

Finally he gets called into a "room" with a nurse, which is mostly distinguished by having curtains for walls and not in fact being much of a room at all. The nurse is a friendly young woman with a nametag that says Anderson. She offers Theo a clipboard. "Double check your information please, Mr. Garder?" she asks. "I'm sorry, I know you've done nothing but paperwork, but, well. The paperwork to correct it later is much worse."

"It's no problem." He takes it, smoothly, then starts checking over the details.

The coach lurks, mostly non-threateningly.

Nurse Anderson smiles at him and makes polite small talk until Theo's done. It's always nice to see teachers who care about their students.

He's sort of required to wait here while Theo is here and he would really rather not have the kid turn out to have a fracture that went unnoticed, so yep.

Theo is done shortly thereafter and lets her know as such.

"Thank you," she says, filing the paper in a folder on her desk. "Let's get you x-rayed, shall we?" She wanders outside the curtains for a second and returns with a wheelchair. "In you get."

"… I'd, uh, rather not if I don't actually have to."

"You have a potentially broken foot and no one likes liability paperwork. I promise it doesn't bite."

He raises an eyebrow, but sighs and gets into the wheelchair.

Once his ankle is x-rayed, he's wheeled back to his coach while they wait for the results to come back. Nurse Anderson spends the wait entering Theo's pile of paperwork into a computer that looks probably older than Theo. When her pager pings, she leaves for a minute, then comes back with a stack of x-ray pictures in her hand. She shoos the coach, apologetically citing medical privacy, then rounds on Theo.

"You- you're not human! What are you doing in a hospital?!"

"I – uh – pardon? What – why am I not meant to be in a hospital?"

"You- You're at least part Shaar and you had an x-ray. I had to delete them before the radiologist saw! Don't your parents have a doctor you can use?"

"… I can honestly say I didn't know I was part Shaar, and I didn't realize it would show up on x-ray."

"...I am not caffeinated enough for this. Explain."

"I knew I was something – found out a few days ago – but I did not know the something I was would show up on x-ray." Pause. "Or does that not explain the right bit?"

"It explains, um. The lack of confusion or denial. Not the part where you didn't know. A few days ago?"

"… Yep." Pause. "I hear I'm unhumanly graceful."

Well, this is a mess. Emma sighs. "I'll write down my email for you; I don't have Shaar physiology memorized, but it'll be in one of my books at home. You should probably still talk to your parents about it, though. For now, um. I'll tell your coach you just have a sprain?"

"I haven't seen my mom in – about ten years now – but I'll make sure to let my dad know."

Emma suppresses a sigh. Of course he hasn't. She is clearly winning at Family Drama and Secrets bingo today. ...but on the bright side, she doesn't often get to feel like her parents are a model of normalcy and disclosure. Silver linings.

Emma scribbles Theo a note for his "sprain" and a separate piece of paper with her email address and the word 'Shaar', just in case, since he seems unlikely to be focused on spelling. "You can give this to your dad too. Any other questions while you have me? That don't require an encyclopedic knowledge of demonology books, at least, nursing school was bad enough."

He pauses. "I guess it would be silly to ask if that's a transliteration or if they speak English?"

"I just know enough biology to recognize species and 'reasonably neutral', you really do have to wait for me to get home to my dictionary. Sorry," Emma says apologetically, but then adds thoughtfully, "Though really, at least one must speak English just fine, if you exist."