Chapter 25

From the elbow down, his Dad's left arm is gone. After two hours sitting in the waiting room, worrying and fretting over what a 'work accident' could possibly mean, a nurse walks them into his hospital room and his dad's arm is—it's fucking gone, just a stump all wrapped up in white bandages, and the first thing Dad says to them all when he sees them is, "Don't worry, kids, I'm all right. Heh—get it? I'm all right?"

A dad joke. Jerry Smith is missing half his arm and he's telling a dad joke.

Those painkillers must be fantastic.

"Jesus Christ, Jerry," Mom says, somehow managing to sound both exasperated and concerned all at the same time, like obviously she realizes this is an injury worthy of concern, but there's still this part of her that remembers how Dad got himself shot trying to shove his dick into an alien ambassador's chest cavity, and looking at this injury now, she wonders if he did something similarly moronic.

Of course, Mom's still wearing the shirt with the giant wine stain on it, so they're both pretty equally disasters.

"Oh my god, Dad, what happened?" Summer asks, a hand pressed over her mouth.

"Turns out that new equipment at work is harder to operate than I thought," Dad says, and he actually sounds sheepish, like he's embarrassed about the whole thing. Whoops, got my arm ripped off. Clumsy me!

Morty kind of feels like maybe it's his turn to say something now, but he's still so fucking tired—he only really got like an hour of sleep before Mom woke them up to come here—and his brain does not feel like cooperating long enough to string together a coherent sentence. Literally the only thing floating across his brain right now are unhelpful variations of 'that sucks, sorry.' There are also a couple of vague thoughts about needing caffeine, but other than that, yeah, his mind is a trash heap of sleep-deprived delirium.

Luckily, there's no need for him to say anything, because it's at that point that a Federation agent walks into the hospital room. Whoever they are, they're a lot skinnier in the torso area than the usual insect species Morty sees everywhere, and taller too; all sharp edges and twig-like, yet they still somehow manage to pull off a three-piece suit. Honestly, Morty's kind of reminded of a stick bug that's just trying too hard. The alien has to hunch over on itself so that its antennae don't brush against the ceiling, a multitude of needle-like limbs tucked up close to its body to avoid knocking into anything.

"Courteous greetings, Smith Family," the insect says, sparing them only a brief glance before focusing buggy red eyes back down on the tablet device clutched in their clawed grasp. The universal translation device clipped to the side of their neck uses distinctly feminine intonations when they speak. "I am from the Federation Occupational Incidents and Injuries Council, similar to your Earth's OSHA."

Summer crosses her arms tightly over her chest. She does nothing to hide her disdain of the alien, her eyes narrowing and her lip curling up in a sneer as she says, "What do you want?"

The agent ignores her completely, or at least doesn't address Summer directly when she explains, "Mr. Smith, I'm here to evaluate your condition and gather details regarding the circumstances of your accident."

"Wait, already?" Dad says, taken aback.

"Yes, unfortunately these sort of incidents must be addressed promptly," the agent says, idly tapping on the tablet's screen and sounding so completely unconcerned by any of this. Morty has to wonder if Dad isn't the only person she's visiting today, like maybe there had been other people injured by the same accident; either way, the agent's presence does not bode well for their current circumstances.

"Are you serious?" Summer says, her hackles up and her hands curling into fists down by her sides. "The blood probably hasn't even dried on the stupid machine that ripped his arm off."

Morty worries that she might start swinging if the wrong thing is said, but he'd like to think his sister has more sense than that. While he silently agrees with her that this is seriously bad timing on the Federation's part, their lack of tact is so commonplace it's to be expected at this point, and Summer should know by now that a direct confrontation with this agent isn't going to accomplish anything.

"Actually, no. I'm glad you're here," Mom says, thankfully stepping in to take control of the situation. She rests a restraining hand on Summer's shoulder, and despite how buzzed she probably still feels, she manages to sound completely levelheaded when she says, "because now we can get straight to the matter of what you're going to do to fix this."

"Fix it?" the agent says, actually looking up from the tablet and giving them her full attention for the first time since she'd walked into the room.

"Regrow his arm, replace it with a robot arm—something," Mom says, making grand gestures in the air, and Morty can tell from the way that she sways on her feet that, yeah, she's definitely still buzzed. Her voice remains steady though. She's not even slurring her words. "You can't possibly be telling me that with all your fancy, advanced alien technology that you can't fix this."

And that would be the best-case scenario, wouldn't it? Your world has been conquered, but at least these aliens know how to 3D print you a brand new fully functional arm—take a pill to cure cancer, whatever—the point is, you should be able to enjoy the perks, right? The Galactic Federation can't have their worker bees dying, after all.

That isn't the reality they live in though. Maybe in some other dimension, there's an Earth under extra-terrestrial control that's been turned into a perfect utopia, or at least an okay one, but that's not what happened here.

Here, if you get your arm ripped off, you're as good to the aliens as a horse with a broken leg—a concept Mom is closely familiar with by this point.

"Unfortunately, Mrs. Smith, the anatomy of the human body is still very new to us," the agent explains stiffly. "The fact that your species simply can't regrow the limb yourself is an anomaly to us. So as of right now, no, we do not have that kind of technology."

"Yeah, bullshit," Mom scoffs, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "I've seen this man get shot multiple times and one of your outer space hospitals was able to fix it like it was a papercut."

"Mom," Summer says in a sharp hiss, grabbing onto Mom's arm and drawing her back a step, "That hospital wasn't in this dimension, remember? Grandpa took us through a portal."

Despite the soft voice Summer uses, it seems the Federation agent heard her anyway. None of them miss the way those buggy red eyes narrow at her words, not so much suspicious as accusatory.

This would be the point to back down. The last thing their family needs is more scrutiny, especially about anything Rick-related, but Mom seems to take the whole thing as both a personal slight and a challenge. She wrenches her arm from Summer's grip, takes an unsteady step towards the agent and says, "Is this an insurance thing? A species thing—like you're all so much better than us—"

Honestly, Morty doesn't know what to believe at this point. As unlikely as it seems, maybe the Federation really doesn't have the medical technology to fix Dad's arm.

"—or is this because of who my dad is?" Mom says, still going. "As if my husband isn't worthy of treatment just because my father happens to be an asshole you all have a grudge with."

"Christ, what a mess."

The comment comes from just over Morty's shoulder, and at the same time, the hospital lights flicker above. It takes longer than he'd like to admit for his brain to actually register the familiarity of that raspy tone, and even longer still to realize that the voice—Rick's voice—isn't just a thought in the back of his head, or some imagined memory, but that he's actually hearing this out-loud, like Rick is standing right there next to him, which is of course impossible.

That doesn't stop Morty from looking though, his eyes darting to his left as he takes a startled side-step away. The hospital lights flicker for a second time, or that's what he thinks at first, but when the third flicker happens, he realizes that it's actually his vision that's going wonky. Like the pages of a flipbook moving just a bit too slowly, all around him the hospital room glitches in and out of existence, each time being replaced briefly by the familiar surroundings of his garage—back and forth, back and forth—until it's only the garage he's standing in.

And Rick is standing there, and all his lab equipment is there too, stacked up and scattered around in its usual organized chaos, like nothing's changed at all and the Federation never stormed in and raided the place.

"Grab that for me, would ya?" Rick says, and Morty looks down to where the man's pointing to see a severed arm lying there on the concrete—not Dad's, but Rick's—flopped over palm up, still half dressed in the torn sleeve of Rick's lab coat. There's a small puddle of blood around the torn end of the arm along with a trail of wires, cybernetics of some sort.

Rick walks past it all like it's the least concerning thing to ever happen to him.

Another flicker and Morty's back in the hospital room with that familiar dizzying twinge in his head. Time has passed. Not a lot, but enough for the conversation between Mom and the Federation agent to have skipped ahead and shifted to include his dad in the discussion.

"Mr. Smith, you have a prescription for sleeping medication, do you not?" the Federation agent is saying, looking at her tablet now and clearly going through a list of questions. Asking things like, "How often would you say you take this medication, and at what time of day?"

And then of course Mom will cut in saying things like, "Are you honestly suggesting that this is his fault?"

Morty presses one hand to his forehead, close to his temple and right up against where the muted throb of a headache seems to be forming. What just happened, a vision is the only explanation that makes sense—except there's no music playing anywhere around him, nothing that should have triggered it. There's nothing else it could have been though. It wasn't like what happened at the library, and it goes so far beyond the waking hallucinations he'd had just hours before. No, this—this had been fully immersive, and just like every vision before, Rick had been there, the focal point of it all.

'Fair to say that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…'

Maybe it's just because of how crummy he feels, but… it feels like this one hit him harder than they usually do, like he'd been binging on visions for an hour instead of having just the one. There's a faint ringing in his ears, and everything around is too bright, too loud, too… disproportionate. Mom and the Federation agent are still talking, but the conversation comes to him in fragments.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Mom is saying with an extraordinary amount of sarcasm, "did my husband's dismembered arm damage your precious machine?"

"It did," the agent says in a matter-of-fact way, as if the question had been a legitimate one. "A very expensive machine too."

It's like he's become disconnected—bodiless—his mind not clicking into place correctly when it came back from wherever it had been. He can only barely follow what's being said around him.

"Wait, am I being fired?" Dad's voice, sounding far too concerned about a shitty job he literally lost a limb for.

"That remains to be seen, but no, most likely not," clipped and impersonal, the words of a soulless drone. "All workers, even the defective ones, are an important part of the Federation workforce."

Staring down at his shoes, Morty tells himself to focus on the details, on everything that's present and real in the here and now. He's not in the garage, but a hospital room, his Dad's hospital room. The walls are white and the floor tiles are an off-color peach. There are blue curtains to divide up the room if need be. White blankets, white bedsheets, white pillows. Dad lying propped up with half his arm missing, Mom standing by his bedside with her fully-intact arms crossed over the wine stain on her shirt, glaring up at the alien looming before her—and it's funny how that works, isn't it? Mom gives Dad grief on almost a daily basis—they all do, really—but the moment someone outside of the family tries passing judgment on the man, suddenly the claws come out and Mom's ready to spit acid.

He knows he should be angry too, about the way they're treating his dad, the transparent attempts to somehow shift the blame onto him—further investigation revealed the cause of the accident to be human error—but honestly, he's not in the least bit surprised by any of this. It's not even a Federation thing when you really think about it, just a… a bureaucratic thing.

They're bureaucrats. I don't respect them. Just keep shooting—

Human companies have been doing the same thing long before the Federation got here. Protecting their own asses, doing everything they can to make it seem like you're the one who messed up, and are you sure the missing arm wasn't a pre-existing condition?

A hand rests on Morty's shoulder—Summer's hand—but he barely feels it. She half turns him away from the scene unfolding before him, drawing his attention over to her and the pinched frown on her face.

"You alright?" she asks, brows furrowed. "Maybe you should sit down."

For her to be paying attention to him and not Dad in the middle of all this—man, he must really look like shit. She does have a point though. He's not exactly feeling super steady on his feet, so sitting down would probably be a good idea.

Actually, sitting down right now sounds like an amazing idea.

He doesn't want to do it in here though, where Mom's practically shouting and the tension in the air is palpable. If he's going to get his head back on straight, it needs to be somewhere quieter.

"I-I'm gonna go grab some coffee," he says as an excuse, gesturing over his shoulder at the door out.

To be honest, he's not much of a coffee drinker, and he's pretty sure Summer knows this. She doesn't call him out on it though, just glances over her shoulder at the ongoing argument, sighs and says, "Go on then. Grab me one too."

.

.

His quest for coffee gets him lost, partially due to the fact that he'd only been half-paying attention to where he was going because he'd been too distracted trying to make sense of what had happened to him in the hospital room. In his defense though, this hospital is huge, so he probably would have gotten lost either way.

It certainly doesn't help that a lot of new signs have been added to the hallways, all of them printed with weird alien symbols he can't read—because apparently aliens require medical care too, and the Federation was more than happy to provide a crap-ton of upgrades to better suit extraterrestrial needs, never mind that this is probably taking beds away from humans who have their own medical needs—but whatever, he is far too tired to give a fuck about such things, let alone tell his left from his right and find his way back to his dad's hospital room.

He does manage to find coffee though. Awful, terrible coffee that comes out of a boxy brown and cream-colored vending machine that was probably built back in the sixties. There's a grittiness to it that he's hoping is just a few stray coffee grounds floating around, and it leaves the worst kind of aftertaste in his mouth. When he drinks it, the word 'slurry' comes to mind. Still though, it's powerfully strong, and after adding in ten packets of sugar, he's able to choke it all down pretty quick.

He even pours himself a second cup in addition to the one he gets Summer; not because he actually wants it, but because his current level of exhaustion is not going to be fought off by just one cup of coffee.

Fuck. His kingdom for an energy drink right now, seriously.

'Can I just… lay down on a stretcher and someone wheel me back to my dad's room? Is that too much to ask?'

At least he has a good reason for not getting back to the room right away—a stupid reason, sure, but still a good one—and maybe by the time he does find his way back, the Federation Agent will be gone and Mom will have calmed down a bit. Summer's coffee is definitely going to be cold though, and unless that somehow miraculously improves the drink, she's probably not going to want it.

Turning a corner, he pushes his way through yet another set of double doors—and Jesus, this place is a fucking maze—hallways turning and branching out into more hallways, all of them marked with signs and arrows, very few of which he can actually read. Morty's honestly not even sure what floor he's on at this point; too many trips up and down in the elevator and too many stairs climbed when he couldn't find said elevator.

It's not like he hasn't asked for help either; he's already talked to a couple different check-in desks and nurses' stations just trying to find his way back, but so far, their directions have only managed to get him more lost and confused.

Finishing off his coffee and tossing the empty cup away, he checks his phone for what's probably the sixth time; no new messages from his mom or his sister and a little over an hour before school starts. Morty debates just how embarrassing it would be to give up and call Summer to come find him. She'd be free to roast him for pretty much the entire walk back to Dad's room, but he supposes it'd be worth it just to get back without any further hassle.

"Step back, make room!"

The call comes from up ahead, and Morty side-steps just in time to avoid a mixed fleet of both human and alien medical personnel rushing down the hall. They're clustered around some kind of modified stretcher that looks a bit like a fish tank. Either he's crazy or the thing is filled with giant fish eggs—or maybe frog—a thick mucus bubbles over the lip of the tank and drips down the glass sides as the group hurries past him. With his back pressed up against the wall, he slips his phone back into his pocket and absentmindedly wonders if all the hospitals have been modified for alien patients or if it's only the busy ones like this.

Tiny drops of goo dot the peach-tiled floor, marking the path the stretcher had taken. Morty scuffs his shoe across one, more out of curiosity than anything. It's as slick and slippery as you'd expect; definitely a slipping hazard. He follows the trail down the hall in the direction the stretcher had come from, follows it around a couple corners and through some double doors, and before he knows it, he's made his way into the ER admittance wing. It's as crowded as you'd expect, just about every seat filled with both aliens and humans and a line going up to the check-in desk.

At least he knows where he is now. It would be easy for Summer to find him here, and honestly, if he really put his mind to it, he knows he could probably find his way back on his own. It's easier to find your way when you're at the start of the maze instead of in the middle of it.

And then something draws his attention; first just the sign, because it's so big compared to everything else around it; rows of alien letters carved into a bold blue placard in a way that's meant to be eye-catching. He has no clue what it says, but when he looks down into the entryway it's hanging over and steps a bit closer, he gets… kind of an idea as to what it could be advertising.

It's some sort of communications hub.

Through an arched entryway, past a thick glass wall and sliding double-doors, are rows of what looks like a cross between phone booths and shower stalls except much more high-tech. Each booth has a glass door that swivels shut behind you and seals you in—soundproof most likely—and encapsulated within is what looks like a small screen, speakers, and a whole panel of buttons to push.

It's clearly a new addition to the hospital, and it has the same kind of Federation security checkpoint that the library had just to get in, so he knows that whatever's in there is at least somewhat important—he also knows there's no way they'd let him in there anytime soon.

It does make him think though. Standing near the entryway and watching a number of different alien species and even a few humans wedge themselves into those booths, dialing some random code and communicating with whoever pops up on the screen, he thinks about how—if only it were that easy—if only he could just dial Rick up and say, 'Look, Dad's hurt and we could really use you down here.'

Except Rick's cellphone went out of service just hours after he left them, and Morty doesn't know of any other way to contact the man. He doesn't have a phone number for anyone Rick might consider an acquaintance or a friend, has no way of trying to pass on a message, and even if he did, he doubts Rick would care enough to actually do anything. It's no secret how much Rick hates his dad.

And who's to say Rick is even in this dimension anymore? Sure, his portal gun got destroyed at the wedding, but Morty has no doubts that Rick would be able to make a new one. Rick probably left this dimension months ago.

Jaw clenched with anger, Morty turns to leave, and it's then that he realizes he recognizes one of the humans standing in the phone booths. The woman standing in the booth on the far right, she's dressed in powder blue scrubs with her hair pulled back into a tight bun. He can't immediately place her in his mind—where he knows her from or why she's so familiar—whoever she is though, it's enough to pause him mid-step.

He watches as she has a heated conversation with whoever's on the other side of that screen—completely silent to Morty, as the words don't carry past the glass walls between them. She makes a few wild gestures with her hands, jabs her finger at the screen like she's poking the person she's talking to in the chest, and then quite abruptly the screen goes black; not a disconnected call, but a phone hung up on her mid-sentence.

She stands there frozen for a moment, her finger still pressed up against the screen, but then shock turns to anger and she pounds one fist against the black monitor screen, a strand of hair falling loose to hang over wide, furious eyes. The alien in the booth next to her angles a few long eyestalks in her direction, but quickly draws them back into its gelatinous head the moment she turns to leave. The woman doesn't seem in the least bit concerned about an audience though, and she makes a point of slamming the swivel door shut behind her as she exits the booth.

It isn't until she passes back through security that her face finally clicks in his mind and he remembers where he knows her from—the woman who had taken care of him after his unexpectedly intentional car crash. Smile lines around dull eyes, a look of 'does any of this even matter anymore?' She doesn't look so downtrodden now though with that fire burning through her very being.

"House?" he calls out tentatively, taking a step toward her.

She looks startled, but only for a second before her features smooth out into something more neutral when she catches sight of him. Pushing that unruly strand of hair back behind one ear, she straightens her scrubs out like she's smoothing down ruffled feathers, and after a long, slow exhale, says, "It's Dr. Jones, actually."

"R-right. Sorry," he says, internally wincing, because there's a Federation security guard right there, and what's the point of codenames if you're just going to go blurting it out everywhere?

Closing the distance between them, she rests one hand on her hip and looks him up and down in that clinical way that only a doctor can. Morty knows how he looks though, so he's not surprised when her mouth turns down into an unimpressed frown.

"Normally I'd say something like, 'you look better than the last time I saw you,' but in this case, you don't," she says bluntly, and doesn't even look a little sheepish when she adds, "You know, we have an excellent rehab program here."

Jesus, does everyone think he's doing drugs? And why is that the first place their minds go to? It's like he's not allowed to get sick without having everyone look at him and think he's in a bathroom shooting up heroine or whatever.

"I'm—I'm not doing drugs," Morty says, frustrated by the whole thing. "I'm just, I-I dunno, sick with something." Or suffering from some kind of neurological seizure disorder, but who the hell knows at this point? "A-and then there's the insomnia…"

"Oh, uh—I'm sorry to hear that," she says awkwardly. It's clear that bedside manner is not her strong suit. "Who's your doctor? It's not Woodsworth, is it?"

"What? No, no, I-I'm here for my dad, not for myself. He got hurt at work. His room is…" Morty shrugs and makes a vague gesture behind himself. "Somewhere."

Dr. Jones hums, giving him that calculating once-over again with sharp grey eyes. Morty doesn't need to hear her thoughts to know that she's making a mental diagnosis. He can't be sure what conclusion she comes to, but whatever it is, it's enough for her to suggest, "You should probably consider admitting yourself too. Or at least make an appointment with your Primary Care. You really don't look well, kid."

"Thanks, I'll—I'll think about it," he says even though he knows that he won't, or at least he won't anytime soon. He's not really sure why, to be honest—if he's scared of the results or if he just doesn't want to go through the long, arduous process of getting an official medical diagnosis; tests, tests, and more tests, and first we'll try this medication for two months, and if that doesn't work, then we'll try this medication for another two months—either way though, it's just this feeling Morty has, this unspoken instinct that's telling him to wait, telling him no doctors, do NOT—

"So, uh, y-you have access to these booths?" Morty asks, changing the subject in the only way he can think of. "Is that like, some kind of doctor privilege?"

"Yeah, my colleagues wish," Dr. Jones says with an amused snort. "No, it's more of a 'mom' privilege," she explains, reaching into the pants pocket of her scrubs and fishing around for a moment before she pulls out some kind of tan square sticker—a nicotine patch, he thinks. "My son is up there in one of the Federation's stupid gifted schools. Damn kid has always been too smart for his own good." She pauses, gives him a curious look, "Why? You got someone you need to call intergalactically?"

"Not really," Morty says, fiddling with the lid on Summer's cup of coffee. He takes a sip without thinking, grimaces at both the taste and the fact that, whoops, this was not meant for him. Staring down at the cup, he frowns and says, "I mean, I wouldn't really know how to reach them. They don't exactly have a phone number I can call up, ii-if that thing even uses phone numbers."

"It doesn't." Dr. Jones says, peeling the nicotine patch from its plastic backing and slapping it onto one arm. Morty can't be sure how quick those patches work, but from the moment Dr. Jones puts it on, it's like all of her muscles relax, the tension flooding out of her along with a content sigh. "That coffee is shit, by the way," she says, one hand pressing down against the patch. "You have to go to the fifth floor if you want the good stuff."

Morty blinks, confused by how she could possibly know—

"I recognize the cup," she says before he has a chance to ask. "The good coffee is served in blue and green paper cups, not... that." Her nose wrinkles up at the sight of it. "Anyway, my break is just about over, so I should probably be heading back."

"Wait, uh," Morty says, fumbling to stop her, because this is as good an opportunity as any. "I've been wanting to ask, is there anything you can tell me about Tyler—I mean—a-about what he's like? What the group's like?"

And just like that, all of Dr. Jones' tension is back. She quickly looks over her shoulders at the Federation guard hovering just ten feet away from them by the door to the phone booth room. The bug doesn't seem to be paying them any attention, but Dr. Jones clearly thinks they're standing too close to be having this conversation. Clapping both hands down onto Morty's shoulders, she walks him to the opposite end of the ER waiting room and off into a corner by a potted plant, far enough away from both the guard and any eavesdropping patients.

"Are you crazy?" she hisses the moment they're out of earshot from everyone, and she does another quick glance over her shoulder to make sure no one's noticeably staring at them.

"Sorry, just… I've been thinking a-about joining?"

That's a lie, but he needs some reason for why he's asking questions. He knows he could just say that he's worried about his sister, but if someone really is listening in, he doesn't want to implicate Summer in anything.

It's not like the thought of joining had never crossed his mind. The fact that his 'condition' makes him a huge liability hasn't changed though. Getting as involved as Summer is would only put him in more danger in the long run—especially if this hallucination thing is going to be happening all the fucking time now whether there's music or not.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on with his brain?

"Jesus, you guys are getting younger and younger," Dr. Jones mutters under her breath, her face scrunching up in disapproval. The way she looks at him, it's like she's looking at a toddler holding a knife.

"So… about Tyler?" Morty prods.

She folds her arms across her chest in an agitated way, does another quick look around to be sure that nobody is watching them before she hesitantly offers, "Well, I think the pseudonym he picked for himself speaks for itself in terms of Tyler's character."

"Pseudonym?"

"His, uhhh—codename? 'Tyler' isn't actually his name, y'know, just like my last name isn't House," she explains. "He got it from that book—movie, whatever—Fight Club. Tyler Durden, the psycho that ran that little cult of man-children with daddy issues." She frowns at her own wording, then quickly amends, "Not that this is actually a cult. No one's burning kisses into the back of people's hands or starting up creepy chants, but… there are a few similarities between the two. No denying that."

"Y-you don't seem the type to get involved in that sort of thing," Morty says, mulling the information over in his head and thinking about how not good all of it sounds. He saw that movie when he was like eight, and all he really remembers about it is a bunch of guys beating the crap out of each other and then a building exploding.

Dr. Jones shrugs. "We all have our reasons. Mine just happens to be however many miles into space on a floating satellite school." And here she pauses to glare up at the ceiling, like she can see straight through it to the sky above them; tiny blinking lights being the only thing you can actually see of the schools from down here. "Now there's a cult if I've ever seen one."

For a moment, the muttered comment distracts him from thoughts about Summer's group and Mr. Fight-Club Tyler—because there's so little known about the Federation's higher education schools outside of what's shown on so-called reality TV, where everything's crisp and perfect and so clearly staged; smiling cookie-cutter students reading books and working in labs and this could be you if you just work hard enough. Take the IQ Admittance Test today!

To actually hear about the schools from a legitimate source, someone who has a real connection to whatever it is that's going on up there… and she called it a cult…

It's possible she's just exaggerating, but the implications he's hearing now aren't promising.

Dr. Jones sighs, drawing Morty's attention back up to her—and right, yeah, this isn't about the schools, it's about Tyler. They'd been talking about Tyler.

"Look, kid, this isn't the sort of thing you can just call and sign up for," she says. "There's no standing on a porch and getting yelled at about all your shortcomings for a few days and then they decide you're in. They have to be the ones to contact you." She hesitates, then says, "But, uh… I can at least let them know you're interested if you want. Beyond that, there's not much I can do. Really, your sister would be the quickest way to get you in on this."

Except Summer wouldn't allow it, too protective of him to let him be in any way involved. It doesn't matter what argument he brings to the table, her answer will always be no—No Morty, it's too dangerous. No, I don't want you involved. Just stay out of it.

If he wants to talk to Tyler, find out more about him and this group, he knows he won't be getting any help from his sister.

If he had more than just one person passing along the message though, not just Dr. Jones but those two seniors from his school, maybe then that'd be enough to get Tyler's attention.

"Y-yeah, if you could let them know?" he says. "I'd really appreciate it."

He's long past due for a chat with this guy.

.

.

Summer's coffee is ice-cold by the time she meets him down in the hospital lobby. She drinks it when he hands it to her away, so fast he wonders if she tasted it at all. Morty waits until after she's had her caffeine fix to make his proposal.

"School?" she echoes him incredulously. "Morty, you can't honestly be thinking of going to school right now. Dad's in the hospital, he's lost half his fucking arm. If that's not a legitimate reason to take a day off, I don't know what is. His doctors can even fax a note into the attendance office, okay?"

The clock on the wall above them reads 7:03AM. If they leave now, he can make it there before the first warning bell. Plenty of time to do what he needs to do.

He tries to think of something he can tell her, something that's sort of the truth but not really, because he knows how much she'd disapprove if she knew his actual plan. His brain of course comes up with absolutely nothing helpful though, so he decides to keep it simple and vague by saying, "There's just something I need to do. A project I'm working on."

The now-empty coffee cup crinkles in Summer's hand, a protest on the tip of her tongue. He's not sure if the anger he's seeing in her eyes is actually for him or just a result of whatever else went on up in that hospital room after he left. Either way, he speaks up before she gets the chance to come up with a valid argument on why he should stay.

"Me sitting around here at Dad's bedside isn't going to change anything," he says, and when she has nothing to say to that, he's quick to add, "If you don't want to drive me, I can take a bus."

For a moment, Summer just stares at him. There's a touch of suspicion in her eyes, like she can sense the lie but isn't sure if she should call him out on it. Briefly, Morty thinks that she actually will make him take the bus, but then she sighs and all of the anger drains out of her. It's then that Morty realizes she's probably feeling just as tired from this all as he is.

"No, no," she says, eyes closed, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. "Let me go grab my keys."

.

TBC