Okay, there aren't too many parts left. I am thinking somewhere between 2-4 more parts will finish it.
TOC ******************************
Medical Miracles - Part 11
Lois felt a large grin spreading across her face. She couldn’t help it. This woman had just insulted her in so many ways, yet she really wasn’t that mad any more. Okay, obviously she was still mad. She was Lois Lane, after all. However, the situation seemed extremely absurd. After all, here she was sitting in her living room with a woman that looked and sounded exactly like her yet was so different. Dr. Lois had been right. Even though their husbands seemed to have so much in common, she couldn’t see anything that she and Dr. Lois had in common other than their husbands – and the fact that they both believed that they had nothing in common.
Lois looked at Dr. Lois, relived that she had been the first to say something. “Oh, thank god!”
“What?”
“I’m so glad I don’t have to fake it any more?”
“Fake what?” Dr. Lois wondered, genuinely surprised.
“Fake that we actually have something in common. I’m starting to think that the only thing that the two of us can agree on is that our husbands seem so similar…”
Dr. Lois finished, “… and that we aren’t.”
“Exactly. I mean, come on, what could I possibly have in common with an engineer?”
“And what on Earth could I possibly have in common with a reporter?”
Then there was silence again. The silence definitely was not a comfortable one. It was sort of like the calm before the storm. And with the two Loises involved, the storm was sure to be worse than a hurricane!
Lois’s eyes flickered, mirroring the anger that Dr. Lois felt. She couldn’t believe that someone would insult her profession – her life! She had worked too long and too hard to have someone belittle her like this! After all, she was an award-winning journalist, well respected in many circles.
Dr. Lois felt the hair at the back of her neck bristle. How could a mere reporter insinuate that all engineers were nerds? Should she tell her that she thought that all reporters were slimy weasels?
“Well,” Dr. Lois said with a slight rueful laugh in her voice. “I guess we have one more thing in common.”
Wait, no, she hadn’t really meant that. If she had, that might mean that the two of them could possibly have something else in common. No, no, she couldn’t be thinking along the same lines as this, this, reporter! Even her mind, she stumbled over the word!
Lois raised her eyebrows and said, “Really?” in a suspicious tone.
She didn’t want to admit to anything – especially not that there was any more common ground between her and Dr. Lois. In fact, she was fairly sure that there was no possible way for the two of them to ever find any common ground – besides their husbands.
“Unfortunately,” Dr. Lois answered with a very dejected sigh. “I mean, I agree that we don’t have anything in common. After all, I never actually thought I would be having a conversation with a reporter for the ‘Daily Planet’ of all things.”
“Is that an insult?”
“That depends,” Dr. Lois said, trying to remain neutral. After all, she was trying to be insulting – but only if Lois was being insulting by that ‘engineer’ remark she had made.
Lois rolled her eyes. This woman was impossible – absolutely insufferable! How could the other Clark – who seemed so much like her husband – put up with her? But, then again, she had come into this situation with a large preconception. Obviously, Dr. Lois had, too. Maybe they had more in common than she was willing to believe. After all, besides being married to Superman, which was an obvious similarity since Dr. Lois was the only other person she had ever met that she shared it with. Plus, they both seemed to despise the other’s profession. And they had both come into the situation with obvious preconceptions about how the other would behave.
Lois sighed loudly. Then she said, “You know, this is really getting us no where. We really got off on the wrong foot with each other. Why don’t we just start over?”
Dr. Lois raised her eyebrows. What was Lois trying to do? Was she really being genuine here? She was right, though. They had definitely gotten off on the wrong foot. Maybe Mr. Wells had done something to misguide them about each other. Obviously she didn’t know him very well, but she had a strange feeling that he had somehow led them astray.
“Um, okay. But how do you propose we do that?” Dr. Lois was genuinely confused. It was much harder talking to this version of herself than she ever imagined it to be. Maybe a fresh start would help them.
Lois shrugged her shoulders. Dr. Lois’s guess was as good as hers. After all, neither of them had ever had any experience in dealing with an alternate version of themselves before.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you go out and ring my doorbell again. It would be like we were meeting for the first time again.”
Before Dr. Lois could say “okay,” a strange feeling came over her. It was a very familiar feeling of distrust. She did not know this woman at all – even though they could have very easily been identical twins. What if she was trying to pull something?
“Wait a second. Why should I be the one that goes outside? Are you just going to lock me out there?”
Lois groaned loudly. Here she was making the effort to be nice to her guest – to start all over with an open mind – and she was being second guessed!
“Lo-is,” she said, in a tone reminiscent of Clark’s, “Just do it!”
When Dr. Lois didn’t jump up and run towards the door, Lois felt her frustration reaching the boiling point. “Okay, fine, I’ll go outside and knock on my own door.” Then she muttered, “It’s not like the neighbors don’t already think Clark and I are crazy.”
“And they wouldn’t think you were crazy if they saw a pregnant version of yourself knocking on your own door?” Dr. Lois wondered. “Well?” she continued, trying to hold her anger under check.
Lois rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to admit that Dr. Lois did have a point. However, she wasn’t asking Dr. Lois to go beyond the vestibule. None of the neighbors would even see her, right? Oh, none of this was making any sense any more. Nothing had made any sense in the reality domain ever since Wells had come to visit them.
“Aah! Fine, if you won’t do it then I’ll do it!”
Without turning back, Lois stormed to the door and slammed it as she completed her act of leaving in a huff. Once she was outside, she took several deep breaths trying to calm her emotions. It would not help anything if she suddenly turned into “Mad Dog Lane.” She credited herself with really being able to control her emotions now that she was older. When she first graduated from college, she could not control when she would snap. Now she snapped at very categorically planned occasions. And this was not one of them.
Dr. Lois shook her head as she watched Lois storm out the door. Part of her wondered if Lois would even come back. Actually, a small percentage of that part of her almost hoped that Lois would not come back. However, when a loud knock came, she forced herself to go through the motions of going to the door any opening it for the alternate version of her self. No, not the alternate version of herself - the psychotic version of herself!
When the door whipped open, the two Loises were once again face-to-face. However, this time, reporter Lois, at least, was going to try her hardest to get their relationship restarted on the right foot. Of course it was impossible to think that they would be able to forget all of their preconceptions about each other and everything that had already happened between them, but they were going to have to try to at least be civil with each other. They were both adults – and intelligent adults at that. Not only were the intelligent, but they were probably very close to being brilliant.
Dr. Lois gazed at the woman at the door – who was grinning at her with the most fake expression she had ever seen. Maybe it was easier to read Lois because they had many of the same facial expressions – and this was definitely a forced smile. It was sort of strange, but Dr. Lois thought that she almost felt like she knew exactly what Lois was thinking.
Lois burst in the door and stopped right in front of Dr. Lois with her hand extended. “Hello,” she said in a loud, determined voice that she often used in an interview. “My name is Lois Lane, Kerth Award-winning journalist from the ‘Daily Planet.’”
Oh, so this was the game they were going to play. Dr. Lois flashed the same toothy grin at her counterpart and replied, “I’m *Doctor* Lois Lane, Young Experimenter of the Year Award-winning biomedical engineer from Metropolis Institute of Technology.”
Lois felt her cheeks flushing. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Obviously Dr. Lois had just challenged her. “Well, I will eventually win the Pulitzer Prize.” She raised her eyebrows and waited for Dr. Lois’s retort.
“Huh,” was the first thing out of Dr. Lois’s mouth. Who cared about the Pulitzer Prize? “The Pulitzer Prize? I’m going to win the *Nobel* Prize plus I’m going to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.” Now that was definitely a better award if she had ever seen one. Heck, it was probably two or three times the award – or even fifty times the award, if she was really going to be technical.
Lois felt her cheeks redden when she said, “Well, I get published every day in the ‘Daily Planet.’ People all around the world know my name.”
Dr. Lois shrugged her shoulders. “You think that’s really important? I discovered a neural regeneration procedure that allows severed spinal cord neurons to regenerate! People all over the world know my name. And you think I don’t get published? I’ve published over 50 articles in scholarly journals including ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’ and I have written three book chapters!”
Lois felt her anger reaching a boiling point. Who was this woman to imply that just because she had a PhD and because she had published book chapters she was better than Lois Lane. Okay, even if she was Lois Lane. Her idea had backfired to the extreme. They definitely hadn’t started off on the right foot. They had picked up right where they had left off.
Finally, Lois decided that this bickering absolutely had to stop. It wasn’t helping anyone involved for her and Dr. Lois to be fighting like this. If anything, she knew that if Clark would come home to see the two of them screaming at each other, he would rub it into her face for years to come. Yes, she was acting like a child – the very thing she had promised Clark that she wouldn’t do.
“You know what?” Lois said slowly, in a much more subdued tone.
Dr. Lois notice the change in Lois’s demeanor immediately and almost felt her thoughts. Indeed, she knew that if her husband would return and find the two of them at each other’s throats, she would never hear the end of it. Maybe they had to try to mend their broken fences if only just to prove Clark wrong. She and Lois were adults. They could handle being in the same room together.
“What?” Dr. Lois responded her voice suspicious, but no longer yelling.
“I really think we’re more alike than we think.” Lois paused for a second waiting for the inevitable argument. But when Dr. Lois said nothing, Lois was sparked to continue. “After all, I mean, we are both hyper-competitive – even with each other.”
Dr. Lois could sense where Lois was trying to go with this. She was trying to build a bridge of common ground. “And I suppose that we are both the best in the fields we have chosen.” Wow, she even held her tongue when the thought that her career was better crossed her mind.
“Obviously,” Lois said and they both laughed for the first time that day. “Plus, we both love seeing our name in print – whether in my case in the newspaper each day or on the cover of the novel I’m writing or in your case in your scientific papers and textbook chapters.”
Dr. Lois found herself nodding. Lois had a very good point. It seemed like they were definitely more alike than they had first realized. She had made some good comparisons – all very valid. Now she was going to speculate. “Did your mother leave your family when you were a little girl?”
“No,” Lois said, but her mind was trying to digest what Dr. Lois had just implied.
Strange, Dr. Lois’s mother had left. That meant that she had grown up with her father. And hadn’t hated him. Maybe that was why she had become an engineer. She had taken after her father. It was the direct consequence of actually having a relationship with Sam Lane. Yep, she was the best investigative reporter in the world for a reason. She felt her mind screaming, ‘Go deductive reasoning skills!’
When she noticed that Dr. Lois was looking at her like she was crazy, she added, “But my father did.”
Dr. Lois now understood why Lois had not followed in her father’s footsteps. If her father had left their family in the way that her mother had, she would have felt the rejection of abandonment from the different side of the parental spectrum and would have denied anything to do with her father. Thus, she would haven never even considered becoming a biomedical engineer. In fact, it would have been the last possible career she would have ever seen herself embracing. So that is why Lois had become a reporter. A reporter was probably the farthest thing from an engineer that she could think of. Maybe she and Lois did think alike; they were just governed by drastically different life experiences.
“You know, Lois, maybe we have more in common than we ever realized.”
For the first time, Lois found herself agreeing with her engineer counterpart. They really did have a lot in common. They were both married to Superman; they both were abandoned by a parent at an early age; they both strived to be the best at everything they did. Yes, maybe they did have something in common.
“You know, you might be onto something.” She smiled and extended her hand once again. “Do you want to start over? This time for real?”
Dr. Lois grinned at her counterpart and grasped her outstretched hand. For some reason, it felt like all of the tension in the air had been cleared. Maybe it was the revelation that they had very strong reasons for choosing such different lives that released all of the confusion and doubt in the air. They were truly ready to start out on a fresh leaf.
“Absolutely,” Dr. Lois said with a very large grin. “My name is Lois Lane and I am married to Superman and was abandoned by my mom when I was a little girl.”
“Hi, Lois. Do you mind if I call you Dr. Lois to avoid confusion? My name is Lois Lane, as well, and I am married to Superman, too, and was abandoned by my father when I was a girl.” She knew that it sounded really lame, but it was a step towards peace.
“You know, would you like to sit down in the living room? I know we have a lot to talk about.”
Lois wrapped her arm around her counterpart’s back and said, “Absolutely. I have so many questions for you!”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
While the two Loises were getting to know each other, the two Clarks quickly flew towards South America at breakneck speed. Just after they took off, Dr. Clark wondered, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Clark, how do you find time to be Superman with such a demanding job? I love my job because I can leave for hours and no one really misses me. When I think of working for a newspaper, I sort of think of daily deadlines and I am not sure I would be able to meet them.”
Even though they were flying almost faster than the speed of sound, Clark was able to answer, “I don’t know. It’s not that hard. I’m close to the news, so I am on top of everything that happens. Plus, Lois is there to cover for me.” He shrugged his shoulders brushing of the comment like he though that what he did was really nothing special or even slightly out of the ordinary.
“Hmm. I can see how that might be advantageous,” Dr. Clark said.
Even in his low-pressure job, he found that having Lois in on the secret definitely helped him – especially if he was in the middle of a class when he heard a cry for help. Lois always seemed to know exactly what he was teaching and always was able to fill in for him. She was his saving grace.
Before Clark could ask Dr. Clark the same question, they found themselves flying above Ecuador. As soon as they saw the damage below them, Clark came up with a plan. He was really glad that Dr. Clark had come with him because this was a job that was almost too big for just one man – even one Superman! The disaster area was just too large for him to cover by himself and save everyone that needed help.
As the two Supermen surveyed the damage, Clark voiced exactly what Dr. Clark was thinking, “I’ll start on the far east and you start on the west. Make sure you’re on the look-out, though, because we don’t want to get too close together.”
“Right. We don’t want anyone to know that both of us were there. But I think it is so much chaos down there that no one will even notice. They’ll be so grateful for the help.”
“True, but we can never be too careful,” Clark agreed.
Dr. Clark nodded and then said, “Okay, I’ll watch out. If I see that you’re getting too close, I’ll head to the sky.”
Clark nodded in agreement and then the two men surveyed the damaged area one more time. They needed a second to mentally prepare themselves for the death and destruction that lay below.
With no more than an initial survey of the damage, the two Supermen set off to perform their duty. Sure, they knew that there was going to be devastation and destruction, but they both hoped that they would be able to be as much help as they humanly, or more accurately Kryptonianly, could.
Edited by wendymr to fix TOC link
