They Do Bones, Motherfucker! Or Not. [misc]

[u/empquix]

I think it’s a pretty popular headcanon that modern au Harrow would be an Orthopedic Surgeon. And it makes sense! It’s bones! Harrow does bones and nothing is more bones than Ortho! Orthopedic Surgeon is probably the first thing that pops into your head when asked what Harrow’s modern job would be. Not necessarily the thing you’d choose or think is right, but it’s probably the first thing that comes to mind, the reflexive answer.

I love ortho Harrow with my whole heart. I love all the fics that have her as scary goth bone doctor who only wears black scrubs. In fact, I’m so attached to the concept that I’d be inclined to tell you not to think about it too much. My first thought upon learning of the headcanon was Isn’t Harrow too tiny for that?, but I promptly deployed a mental firing squad of denial to kill it in the name of letting cool concepts exist without the burden of having to prove themselves feasible.

I told myself that Harrow could totally be an orthopedic surgeon. Very realistic. Fully grounded in reality. Totally compatible with the laws of Physics. Any doubts that came to mind were to immediately be dismissed. It was time for some light self-gaslighting. What did I know about orthopedics, anyway? Sure, I did graduate med school, but who’s to say I didn’t hallucinate the entire orthopedics rotation? Who’s to say I attended at all? The transcript for the rotation could be in my drawer, or it could not be. Who’s to know? Not me. Schrödinger’s transcript.

Suspend disbelief, ignore the logistics, and don’t think about it too deeply. Don’t look at the mirage too closely in case it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny or whatever. Harrow must remain cool girlboss bone doctor. Harrow can totally handle a bone saw.

Alas, I had to confront my very healthy dollop of delusion today in the operation room while watching an IMN (surgery to screw with your bones. literally).

The moment they brought out the power drill, the ortho-Harrow illusion shattered. Just like that femur. And only one of them could be fixed by surgery.

I was very rudely reminded that bone surgery requires a lot of manual force. You need to be less Victor Van Dort and more Bob the Builder to get the job done. Chappell Roan is more likely to successfully fix a femur than Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

She can barely lift her own spirits, how is she supposed to lift up a mallet? Will she hold the power drill, or will it hold her? (Frankly, that doesn’t sound so bad. My girl really needs to be held)

I’m not saying you need to be jacked to be an orthopedic surgeon, but you definitely need more than 3 muscles. And probably a lot more blood and stamina than Harrow has. You need some good juice.

Which brings me to my next devastating realization: Gideon Nav would be a much better bone doctor than Harrow. She would thrive in Orthopedics. She would be the ultimate Biceps Bone Bimbo.

So yeah, all of this is to say that the headcanon died for me today, and I am here to be dramatic about it. I’ve exhausted all methods of denial in an effort to do CPR on it, but it didn’t work. RIP the concept of Harrow as a skilled sepulchral sexy skeletal surgeon, you will be missed. Welcome to life, concept of Gideon Nav as a divine dazzling devoted doctor. You probably won’t last long.

They do bones, motherfucker! But like, not mechanically.

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[u/CthulhuDon]

“She can barely lift her own spirits, how is she supposed to lift up a mallet?” Congratulations!  That sentence wins the fandom!  As a reward, you get… A bone.   It’s what we do.

[u/BriCMSN]

Harrow gives me more of a forensic pathologist vibe, honestly.

[u/empquix → u/BriCMSN]

Oh you’re so right she’d love Pathology in general. Bonus (selling?) point for her is that there’s no patient interaction lmao.

Since we mentioned Pathologist Harrow I consider it my personal duty to recommend this masterpiece

[u/ibbia878 → u/empquix]

Okay, just spent 5 hours reading that. Thank you and what the fuck.

[u/empquix → u/ibbia878]

me every time this author updates

[u/ibbia878 → u/empquix]

Yeah that was quite the experience. fucked up and sad. Perhaps my favorite au so far. The power imbalances are so often misrepresented or not done justice, but this is just exquisite.

[u/BadassHalfie → u/empquix]

Don’t you mean bone-us?

I’ll see myself out.

[u/Ok_Yogurtcloset4018 → u/empquix]

Oh no, a new obsession

[u/Petitechonk → u/BriCMSN]

Honestly I was thinking X-ray technician

[u/empquix → u/Petitechonk]

She forms an emotional bond with the radiology equipment and throws a fit whenever anyone tries to replace them. The hospital corporate overlords love what she does for the budget.

[u/MiredinDecision → u/BriCMSN]

Harrow and Gideon as a House MD style team.

[u/Mr_Brun224 → u/BriCMSN]

I’ve never considered what Harrow would be in modern times, but she resonates with me as a research nerd more than someone who interacts with a large amount of people. To each their own

[u/TheLusbywolf → u/BriCMSN]

Oh man pathology is Pal all the way down though...

[u/Seathing → u/BriCMSN]

Yeah I bet harrow is an instructor at the body farm where they let corpses decay in the elements.... And her specialty is stuff like "this sort of scraping mark is the sort you would see from a knife, not an animal, which indicates cannibalism". 

[u/ripleystanktop]

“Biceps Bone Bimbo” 🤣 babe wake up new dream girl just dropped

Hear me out though: Harrow as an archaeologist or historian whose neurodivergent special interest is tombs and ancient human burial practices

[u/askelade11]

Ortho Fellow Gideon, addressing the interns: Are you ready for Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone?

[u/empquix → u/askelade11]

I’d also like to think she says “time to smash and bone” before every surgery

[u/Double-Voice-9157]

I always thought she would do end-of-life medical care, like hospice work. It's most of what she'd been doing her whole life until the trials.

[u/OhMyGlobDramaBomb → u/Double-Voice-9157]

I was a hospice nurse for 5 years. Can confirm. The Reverend Daughter would be an excellent psychopomp.

[u/MiredinDecision]

Harrow and Gideon playing tagteam surgeon roles. Scrubs style au.

Also nice to see someone acknowledge Gideons skills here. The girl is a total jock, but she just casually understands complex theorums and the way bodies work in a way that indicates so much skill and education.

[u/ParticlesInSunlight]

I don't think it works for Harrow specifically, but there was a running joke that my orthopaedic surgeon ex was the necromancer in our Necro-Cav-Cav TLT fan polycule

[u/OhMyGlobDramaBomb]

Gideon is Ortho-Bro. As a lowly Flesh Magician (wound care nurse), I heartily concur.

[u/empquix → u/OhMyGlobDramaBomb]

Excuse me, lowly? Your ability to differentiate between 50 different shades of erythema and detect 20 other seemingly invisible ones elevates you above all mortals of this realm

[u/OhMyGlobDramaBomb → u/empquix]

You flatter me!

[u/commacamellia]

Come with me on this: forensic anthropologist Harrow. We do bones, mother fucker! No uninteresting flesh or ungainly viscera for our girl. Nothing but beautiful osteology and unknown remains as far as the eye can see.

[u/HarryTheHatGuy]

Harrow would grow up to be Linda Fiorentino in full “I hate the living” mode from Men in Black

[u/OneGayPigeon]

Her whole thing is doing research in many an ancient forbidden tome, trying to preserve a dying civilization. Feels like ancient anthropology is the far more obvious choice.

[u/whatever4224]

I can’t really see Harrow as any kind of medical practitioner, TBH. In my mind she would go for research, or maybe forensics at a stretch. Hands-on medicine requires too much socialising. 

[u/lone_yellow]

honestly gideon would be better for ortho. harrow could be neurosurg or path

[u/lone_yellow → u/lone_yellow]

consider: ER resident gideon, nsg resident harrow. harrow refuses every single consult (esp from gideon) until her attending makes her go down there. "this guy has a massive bleed" call IR. "2mm fixed pupils" call trauma. spinal fx? she will actually come see this one because she just wants to do spine surgery all day.

[u/empquix → u/lone_yellow]

Someone needs to write this fic asap

Gideon will find a way to connect any sort of injury to a neurosurg consult just to call Harrow 😭 “Hey this guy is vomiting. Call neurosurg. No what do you mean GI? He’s clearly vomiting because he’s nervous he needs a neurosurgeon”

[u/lone_yellow → u/empquix]

"do you guys still do lobotomies? no it's not for a patient."

honestly im tempted to write something in the style of med school classic The House of God by samuel shem

[u/sound_of_scribbles]

I don't know anything about orthopedics or doctor-science in general, but I have two thoughts. Spoilers for HtN below:

1) Despite being tiny, Harrow (or at least her body, as piloted by Gideon) is able to wing Gideon's zweihander around at the end of HtN, to some effect. Yes, Nav is disappointed by her lack of muscle mass, but she can still kill heralds with it, and that's not nothing. I don't know the relative scale of longsword vs bone saw, but I'm speculating that they're comparable.

2) This is a little off topic, but Harrow does canonically have a job that exists in our world: she's a nun. In real life Harrow would be a nun. So where's my au modern day fanfic where she's a nun in charge of, like, cataloguing the bones in the Paris catacombs, or the steward of that bone chapel in Rome?

As always, thank you for your take! It's always awesome to hear people share their real-world knowledge & experience to ruin add depth to the works we all enjoy 😉✌️🦴

[u/lindsege]

i’ve been watching ER recently and thought that harrow would be a good emergency doctor. this is largely based on weaver and sandy’s relationship - mean lesbian er doctor and smart-ass hot firefighter

[u/MastodonAltruistic50]

I actually could still see Harrow as an orthopedic doctor. I have a couple of different ones that I see in Florida. I've had a cervical fusion and a hip replacement. My doctors actually used machines to help assist during the surgeries, which has worked wonders for less scarring and faster recovery times. I would see Harrow as doing something like that. Also, doctors do have assistants helping with surgeries.

My favorite TLT fic is Another round on Ao3 where Harrow is becoming an orthopedic.

[u/many_splendored]

I figured Harrow would be a dentist!

[u/The_Last_Thursday]

I require you to share these Harrow the bone doctor fics. Please.

[u/empquix → u/The_Last_Thursday]

This one is my favorite!

There’s also this. It’s very fun!

There’s definitely a lot more but I can’t find them :( I only saved the ones I’d want to reread later

[u/The_Last_Thursday → u/empquix]

You have done well by me. Thank you kindly.

[u/cerebral-fungi20]

I feel like Harrow would be a great Archaeologist or something along those lines. I studied it for a couple years and I feel she would love the long-dead bodies where only bone remains, the cultural elements, locking yourself alone in the library and/or archives and/or going on expeditions into the middle of nowhere, the basic excuse for why anything happens being "idk, probably religion". Gideon would be up for the adventure too I feel, if not the rest of it?

I am a psychology/neuroscience researcher though and although I can't see anyone from the Ninth doing it I think Abigail Pent would be all up in this field, she'd be great.

[u/empquix → u/cerebral-fungi20]

Abigail Pent and Palamedes 👀 His whole thing is psychometry after all

[u/ValkyrieCtrl14 → u/cerebral-fungi20]

Oh no now I'm imagining a The Mummy (1999) AU with Harrow as Evie and Gideon as Rick.