"Maybe they'd go for a floor of a parking garage ­– lots of people drive cars to hospitals, so the hospital has to have a big space for the cars to go right near them, and if it's paved then they can wheel out patients more easily."

"I don't know of any reason that shouldn't work."

"All right. We might want to look at clothing first, this would be a public outing and a bulletproof vest is an item of clothing."

"Of course."

As it turns out, clothing does include some armor discussion.

On the one hand, there's obvious reasons to want to wear armor. If he's going to wear armor, they can get him the nicest stuff he's up for wearing, with, sure, his magic chainmail as a layer. It can be shiny and metallic, or red and white and with the sword-and-sun symbol on it, or if there's some other convention they can also go for it probably.

On the other hand: People normally don't wear armor. Wearing armor somewhat implies that you're expecting to be in a deadly fight, and that's the sort of thing that people who plan to attack people expect and normal people don't expect. One of the deadliest jobs in the country is the presidency, due to assassinations, and the president doesn't wear heavy armor. (He does get lots of other security measures, which people are also doing for Blai.) Admittedly, image is very important to the presidency, and looking violent or scared isn't good for that.

If the president decided to dress like a medieval knight it would be very strange. If the magic alien who in fact was a fort commander at a time period where it was normal for fort commanders to wear armor frequently decided to wear armor it would possibly not add any additional strangeness to the situation.

Also, he should have some tailored clothing and get fitted for shoes in person. Situations go a bit more smoothly for people who are more handsome, so having tailored clothing is useful. If he likes any of the pieces in his wardrobe, they can be adjusted to fit better now that he's here. If he doesn't have aesthetic opinions, they can put together something reasonable and give him and his assistant instructions on what goes together.

He should probably have more holy symbol necklace options, and some pins, and such. If he can cast with a necktie with pictures of swords, or he otherwise likes them, then he should also have some of those.

Also, he should probably get a professional haircut and beard trim periodically.

He's willing to forego the armor if they think that's best - it does slow him down considerably. He is willing to be measured for things and get a haircut. He doesn't really have aesthetic opinions except that he does not understand the appeal of neckties and does not think it improves them to have tiny pictures on them.

If someone is making a really dedicated attempt to kill him, heavy armor is probably not going to be all that significant a help. If someone is making a less dedicated attempt to kill him, then he will not drop dead immediately, meaning he should be able to heal himself. And probably nobody is going to do either of those, really.

Neckties are common in formal secular outfits in this context and in theory being able to cast spells with your necktie could be an advantage.

If he remembers how formal religious dress for Iomedans looks they can also get that manufactured, probably.

...he is accustomed to situations where the heavy armor actually makes a serious difference in how easy he is to kill and it would be kind of odd if this changed completely here. And he's pretty sure that formal religious dress for Iomedaeans is in fact... armor... but maybe they do something different for, like, retired people? He has not met a retired Iomedaean cleric before.

Someone should go with him to a shooting range and shoot some armored dummies later, maybe even one in his chainmail if he can fix damage to the chainmail, but that's not their department.

Anyway, for today he can wear armor to the hospital visit if he likes.

It seems most straightforward.

After this, people would like to ask him questions about his healing before they head to the hospital.

They understand it doesn't do diseases or poison. If someone is low on blood, will it generate more blood? If someone's had an internal organ removed on purpose, will the organ come back? If someone has parasites, does it also heal the parasite? Are there any cases where it makes diseases worse?

He has not weighed anyone before and after to find out if it generates more blood, and there are certain magical ways of removing blood from someone that it will not fix, but someone whose problems due to being conventionally injured include having lost a lot of blood will tend to be up after a Cure. Organs and extremities and such that have completely parted company with the person will not come back, that wants a seventh circle spell. He would tentatively expect it to not work on parasites due to the way it targets (he would neither, for a channel, have direct line of sight to a parasite, nor, for a Cure, be touching one) but he thinks it does work on in-progress babies though he's never tried that himself, and he's not completely positive which thing he's wrong about or if there's a secret additional difference between a parasite and a baby. He's not aware of any situations where it makes a disease worse outright but if someone is, say, having their health magically siphoned by a malefactor, healing them would cause there to be more of it available for this purpose which is probably undesirable if you don't have a plan to kill the malefactor? He's gotten the impression that doesn't come up on this planet though.

There's a complicated disease where some of the little pieces of the body end up with bad instructions and grow weirdly. They have pictures if he thinks he'd recognize the growths, they're big enough to show up during surgeries.

Otherwise they can just put some mice with the disease in the channel radius and see how it affects them.

He doesn't think he'd recognize it, he's done very little civilian healing. Mice are a good idea.

In that case he can head to the hospital with a security team. Patients will be arranged for him and they'd like it if he didn't answer questions yet because he hasn't gotten an introduction to public relations.

How categorically would they like it if he didn't answer questions? He can plan on not answering questions or he can definitely not answer questions but they're different things. Also should he like, say some non-answer such as "I'm not taking questions today", or just stand there silently.

If the doctors ask "could you stand over there" or "you're here to provide the experimental treatment, right" or such, he can answer if he'd like. If someone asks him what his relationship to Jesus is, or what Iomedae thinks about same-sex marriage, or whether he's fought any zombies, he should say "No comment". If he's not sure, he can confer with his assistant and the security team.

Okay, he thinks he can distinguish between these categories of questions. What about patients who have questions about the experimental treatment?

The medical staff are supposed to discuss that with the patients. They can pass questions onto him if needed.

They're pretty sure nobody's going to want to hear it direct from him?