"Helping Hand" Oneshot (ST:ENT, Phlox, M, Allergies)

[SleepingPhlox]

I am not abandoning my longer stories, but I can't properly work on them on my phone during work breaks, and oneshots like this I can. And I am just in such a fetish daydream overdrive at the moment, I needed to write something or I'd just explode. And I came up with this idea and my brain ran with it which is weird because I usually like colds and just go "allergies, meh".

Just a heads up: while there is absolutely 100% no underage sneezing in any way, shape or form, the main (sneezing) character spends time interacting with a child while he himself is sneezing. This is done to demonstrate a part of his personality I wanted to showcase, however, I do understand that the mere presence of the younger character can squick people out hard, so just know that it's there.

Also, I apologise for not spelling out sneezes. It just didn't feel right in this.

And with all that, here's some Dr. Phlox being allergic to Earth. Because if you think about it, it actually makes so much sense.

**************************************************

Phlox looked up at the trees lining the path to the entrace of the hospital where, most days, he worked. It was like a perverse test of endurance, that in order to reach the place where he could obtain relief, he had to make his way through a gauntlet of the very things he needed to seek relief from.

His species, the Denobulans, had evolved with incredibly efficient immune systems. It was a trait developed out of necessity from millennia existing as a species that thrived in a densely populated, highly communal society. Microscopic bodily intruders were dealt a swift, brutal justice. However, when the advent of space travel hit, the more adventurous among them found that the evolutionary advantage had a downside. Many Denobulans settling in foreign, exotic locations for any length of time found their overachieving immune systems reacting to foreign, exotic pollens.

Although he could boast of visiting nearly 200 planets before he came to Earth to live and work as part of the Interspecies Medical Exchange program, Phlox had not settled on any one of them long enough for his body to take umbrage at the mating habits of the local flora. Now that he had settled here in San Francisco, he got the distinct impression that every species of greenery had held a meeting and decided his presence was unwelcome, and teamed up to mount an all-out assault on his nasal passages.

He held the dubious honour of being the first Denobulan to suffer allergies on Earth, and therefore was the first to find out that the medication developed for use by Humans did exactly nothing for his species. In fact, the only thing that would work couldn't even be manufactured here and had to be shipped in from a nearby star system. To heap further insult upon a pile of injury, it had a remarkably short shelf life and could not be stored in any decent quantity.

Still, all in all, the arrangement usually worked out fairly okay. That is, until the most recent transport ran into difficulty, delaying the shipment and leaving Phlox in a four day limbo between the time his last dose wore off, and when the new one arrived.

It had been a miserable four days.

He raised a well-worn tissue and dabbed his nose with it as he approached the pristine glass automatic doors framed in polished aluminum, which dutifully slid open on his arrival and allowed him to pass into the spacious, perfectly air conditioned reception area.

Carol, the ever-attentive receptionist, looked up at the sound of the doors, preparing to greet and give her best attention to whoever entered. Carol was friendly and took a huge amount of pride in her job. He liked Carol.

"Oh, Doctor Phlox. I thought you didn't work on Wednesdays...oh." As soon as he looked up and she caught sight of his streaming red eyes and streaming red nose, she remembered why he was here today. "You're here for your injection. I'll just call someone to fetch it from refrigerated storage. Lets see...room 114 is free. You can wait in there and I'll get someone to bring it to you."

Phlox nodded, and was about to thank her, but didn't get a chance as a sneeze erupted explosively from his lips. A baby, which had been peacefully asleep in a woman's arms nearby, suddenly began to scream in response to the sudden noise.

"My apologies," Phlox said, from behind a tissue. The woman merely glared at him for a moment before turning her attention to soothing the frightened infant. Phlox smoothed his shirt rather self consciously, then decided to make his way very quickly to room 114 before his sinuses caused an interplanetary war, or something.

The ground floor mostly housed the offices of the paediatric doctors, the reasoning being that it was impractical to have to lug children in need of medical treatment up a number of floors. Phlox naturally agreed with this reasoning. However, he did very much wish that he did not end up sitting in a room full of toys and brightly coloured posters, and nothing whatsoever that held his interest.

The room did have fresh tissues, and he was taking full advantage of that, as he blew his nose as hard as he could, depositing the results into a medical waste bin. That almost brought some relief, until three harsh sneezes started the flow of thin, watery mucus all over again, and he was forced to grab two more tissues, double them up, and attempt to clear out his sinuses.

Then he sat, running a hand through his tousled brown curly hair, as his other hand poked idly at a red plastic toy car on the counter.

"No! Go away! I don't want it!"

A shrill voice rang out from a room nearby. Phlox jumped up and stuck his head into the hallway out of curiousity.

"It will hurt, I don't want it!"

"Hyposprays don't hurt, I promise."

He followed the voices to a room two doors down and poked his head into the open doorway. A small female human child, visibly upset, sat upon the examination table while a young doctor tried unsuccessfully to calm her.

Phlox cleared his throat, both to grab the young doctor's attention, and because the constant four-day runny nose had left him feeling a little phlegmy.

"I don't mean to interfere," he said. "But is there anything I can do to help?"

"Doctor Phlox!" the young fellow said with an audible sigh of relief, looking him up and down. "Nice to meet you. I'm Doctor Murray." He added in a barely audible whisper directly into Phlox's ear. "I'm new, and already I think I'm in way over my head."

Phlox did wonder for a moment how the young man knew who he was, when he was certain they had never met before. But, he supposed there wasn't many that he could be mixed up with, was there? He nodded his assent to Doctor Murray and then addressed the young girl:

"Now. What seems to be the trouble, hmm?"

She regarded him with a mixture of fear and suspicion, staring at the facial ridges and startling blue eyes that marked him out as something other than human, and blurted out. "You're an alien! Go away! Don't come near me!"

Phlox straighted up in exaggerated obviously feigned offense. "Well, that is certainly no way to address someone who-" He was forced to break off to turn away abruptly to sneeze into the crook of his arm, then thank Doctor Murray for handing him a tissue.

The girl's distress manifestly increased, and she cowered from Phlox.

"You're sick. Please, go away. I don't want to get an alien disease and turn into a monster or die or turn into a monster and then die."

"Ah. Hmm. Well, first things first, I am not sick, I am having an allergic reaction. And as for the rest..." He pulled up a stool so he could sit eye level with the girl. "I think you're going to have to start at the beginning and explain it to me."

Balling her hands into fists tightly in her lap, she looked at her feet and mumbled something incoherent.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

She looked up, tears forming in her large brown eyes. "Kevin said that's what would happen."

Phlox dabbed at his nose as it threatened to drip. "I see. And who is Kevin? An expert on interstellar medicine, I presume," he said with a grin and a wink.

"My friend. Well, he was my friend until I told him that me and my mom and dad were moving to a new colony on another planet and he got real mad and said that we would all get alien diseases and turn into monsters and die and I said nuh-uh because I was getting 'nokulashuns' and he said they do that with a hypospray and the hypospray shoots a huge hole into your neck and hurts real bad so I better just not go to the colony at all."

Tears forming in his eyes, Phlox finally let out a sneeze he had been struggling valiantly to hold back until she had finished pouring her heart out. It seemed like it would be cruel to interrupt her, whether with words or nasal expulsions. Holding a hand over his nose and mouth he motioned to Doctor Murray for another tissue, which he gratefully used to clean his face.

"Well," he said softly, punctuated with wet sniffles. "It sounds to me like Kevin is very upset because he will miss you when you leave, so he's saying mean things to you to try to make himself feel better. I think you should talk to him and tell him that you will miss him too, but you can write to each other, and maybe his parents will even bring him to the colony for a vacation. Hmm?"

She thought this over. "Do...do you think he still wants to by my friend?"

"I would be very certain of i-" He swivelled around in the stool to sneeze again.

The girl cracked a small smile. "You sneeze real loud. It's silly."

"Ah, yes, to humans I do sneeze very loud, but back home my sneezes are considered rather quiet." He chuckled. "Now, if we are to continue to chat, I think we should learn each other's names. I'm Doctor Phlox."

"I'm Emily."

Of course it would be a name that his stuffed-up nose would be unable to pronounce entirely properly.

"Very nice to meet you, Emily."

"Um...Doctor Phlox?"

"Yes?"

"What if...what if I don't like living on another planet? What if it's scary, or I get lonely? What if nobody there likes me?"

"You know, I had the same fears before I came to live here. It's very scary being the first person from your entire planet to live in a new place. But, I ended up liking it here very much. And your mother and father will be there with you. It's natural to worry, but you mustn't ever let worry stop you from doing things, or you could end up missing out on something fun."

A young woman appeared in the doorway of the room.

"I thought I heard Phlox in here. I was expecting you in room 114, you know. I have your hypospray," she scolded.

"Well, now that you found me, you can just hand it to me in here," he said with a friendly smile, noticing as he took the device that Emily shrank away from him again.

"You..." she said, her voice shaking. "You were just pretending to be nice to me so you could trick me into getting the hypospray. Go away! I don't want it!"

"Oh, you've gotten it entirely backward, you see. This hypospray is for me, to stop my sn-" He reared his head back as he felt a powerful tickle in his nose, then breathed a sigh as it faded away into nothing. "My sneezing. And you are going to administer it for me."

"Me?"

"Yes. You are going to be my doctor today. There is one condition, though. If you give me my hypospray and you can see that it did not hurt, and that it did not punch a giant hole in my skin, you must allow me to administer your hypospray. Do we have a deal?"

She nodded hesitantly.

"Well then. You take this. I will show you where to hold it on my neck. Once it is in place, you simply press this button. If you hear a small puff of air, that's it, it's finished. Do you understand all that, Doctor Emily?"

She nodded, her face full of grave seriousness over the importance of the task she had been entrusted with.

"Good," Phlox said, using his crumpled tissue to wipe away a drop forming at the end of his nose. "Let's hurry, then. I cannot stand another moment of these allergies." He leaned forward, exposing the side of his neck and putting his finger on a specific spot. "Administer the hypospray right there."

She held it to his neck, applying exactly the right amount of pressure, which was impressive for someone with no training. He heard the "fsst" of the device but she still held it to his neck, as if she was afraid to remove it..

"You can take it away now. We're finished."

"Really?"

"Really," he said, straightening up. "Now. Did it seem like that hurt me? Is there a giant hole in my neck?"

She shook her head "no" to both questions. Then, without waiting for a prompting from Phlox, said "I'm ready for my hypospray now Mister Doctor Phlox."

He stayed for a couple more minutes, after giving her the hypospray of innoculations, talking to Emily about space travel and living on other planets, but very soon it was time for her parents to take her home, and Phlox's medication was starting to assert itself, and he had the whole rest of the bright sunny day to enjoy. Outside. That small injection would provide him with a month of blissful relief, and he planned to enjoy every minute of it.

As he left, Doctor Murray pulled him aside and said "How do you do it? What's your secret?" and Phlox could only smile and answer "My secret is that human children really aren't that different to deal with than Denobulan children. Don't worry, it's a skill you'll easily pick up with a bit of practice."

___________

Phlox strode into reception the next morning a completely different man, humming cheerfully as he prepared to start a day's work, greeting Carol as he passed.

"Good morning, Doctor. You're certainly looking a lot better today. Oh...wait! Phlox!" She motioned for him to come back. "Something was left in with me...I'm pretty sure it's for you," she said with a wink.

From under the counter, she produced a sheet of paper, which she handed to him. On it were two colourful crayon-drawn figures. He figured the one with squiggly brown hair, a green shirt and a bright red triangle for a nose was probably him. The other smaller figure, with round brown eyes and a wide pink smile, had a speech bubble over her head with the words "Thank you Dr Flocks" printed inside it as carefully as a child's hand could manage.

He smiled. This was a keepsake he'd be holding on to.

THE END

[Cutelittlenose]

This was so cute! I do hope that Dr. Phlox is not allergic to the entire planet. I can't imagine allergy medication needing to be shipped in from space, or the fact that everything available to you can't work. That sounds hellish! Good thing I don't have allergies. I like the idea that he might be younger here, maybe. (If I'm wrong please correct me.) The image of Phlox waiting in one of the children's ward's vacant rooms is hilarious. And I find it interesting that even though his allergies seem to be causing a lot of pain and discomfort, these do take a back seat as he's more concerned about a young child who is not his patient and it is his day off. And the techniques and manner he uses is quite like many pediatricians [based on generalizations] . Emily's and Dr. Phlox's interaction is simply adorable and gentle. It's cute he let her play doctor to show her to not be scared, and it was an important trust moment. I could go on and on about this. It's just precious.The ending was cute, too. You don't think a lot of moving as having to go to a new planet, but it was so sweet he helped her out there, too.

And I think Emily's drawing was a silly little nod to a child's outlook. And she spelled his name wrong! So cute!

Everything was perfect! Loved this fic!