trans_9 | I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

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I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

[ooc: Rather than spam the boards with posts for my characters, this thread takes place a few days after everything quiets down in the medbay. If your character wants to speak to either Luis or Steve, this is the place. I won't have the two of them respond to each other (I'm not quite that tasteless), so let me know who you've come a-callin' for. Alternate thread title: I Can't Believe It's Not Muncest.]

In an isolated bed near the back of the medbay, a teenage boy lay restrained. Anyone who'd caught a glimpse of Steve on the day of the incident would have said he looked much better, but he still looked like hell-- bloodless, clammy skin misted with a thin sheen of sweat, veins standing out dark and purple, a facial expression that read he had been sleeping for quite a while and could stand to sleep for quite a while longer. His right shoulder was tightly bandaged, as was his left hand, and a loose bandage had been wrapped around his head to cover his left eye. His hands were still strapped down to the bed and an IV was feeding into his arm, but it looked like the energy and the color were slowly returning to the skinny redhead.

Now if only it wasn't so goddamn boring in here.

There wasn't even the comfort of constant conversation. Dr. Sera kept busy looking out for the injured all over the medbay, and didn't seem much for talk anyway. Any time he didn't spend hunched over the laboratory equipment in the back of the room he spent sort of muttering to himself, staring at charts, or making thinly veiled passes at the female visitors to the medbay. He did have the decency not to hit on the injured.

Still, his brain was fully entrenched in Science Mode and anybody who needed to speak to him would need to flag him down.

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"I..." Bravery, thy name was not Hinasaki Miku. "I had wanted to know if you'd needed me to do anything else?" She fiddled with the black choker around her neck nervously, fingers finding some kind of comfort in the hard, smooth material. "If there isn't, I'll be on my way for the afternoon."

"Let's see," Luis murmured to himself. He still didn't really like this medical doctor gig and would always prefer being in the back of the lab with a test tube in one hand and a microscope in the other or some such. It was kind of neat having some authority though. Especially when cute girls wanted to help out.

"I guess check in with the individual patients? Stick with this row, though, let the others handle the rest," he said, waving his hand to vaguely highlight "this row."

"Yessir," Miku bowed and turned. There was just one more thing, and better to get on with it now before he went back into Science Mode again. "Sir?" Miku smiled at him. "You did remember to rest, didn't you?"

Luis smiled at her for that. "I did, amiga, thank you very much." He'd fallen asleep face down on the lab table, as usual. For a whole three hours.

Three hours was much better than 'not at all!', so Miku allowed herself to be satisfied with that answer. "Oh, good. Well, I'll be on my way, then." She bowed again and started off to help other patients.

Most of them seemed to be asleep, which was fine, Miku knew how boring a hospital could be. Even one that was on a spaceship (an idea Miku still hadn't gotten her head around yet, but was working her very best to. Becoming friendlier with Oren--- er, Tess-san had been helping). She stopped at the end of the red-haired boy's bed and kind of stood on tip toe to be sure she wasn't bothering him. He looked a lot better, certainly, and she remembered people coming in to visit earlier.

"You seem to be doing better," she adds after a moment of checking him over and remembering that it would probably be better for her to speak.

Steve looked up from his now-hourly reverie of what the ceiling and the walls of the ship were made of when a voice seemed to be addressing him. He regarded the girl it belonged to curiously.

"Huh? Me? Are you talking to me?"

Miku looked down at her feet for a moment and back up at him, "Yes, I am." Oh yes, definitely better than he had been, thank heaven for that. "Do you need anything?" she asked and shifted her weight onto her back foot nervously.

His eyes darted left and right a little nervously while he looked for something to reply to that with. "Nah, not really," he assured her. He didn't need anything that she could do for him. And he had far too much dignity to ask her to read to him or at least hold up the pages so he could read them himself. "Thanks though. I don't have much else to do but sit here."

Well... that was that then. Miku sort of frowned as she thought, worrying at the choker around her neck as she thought. He was ill and in bed, and it had been much easier talking and humming to his sleeping form than it was talking to him awake and aware.

"But if you do need anything, please don't hesitate to ask. A glass of water or someone to talk to... Ah, even though... you've had visitors." Miku flushed faintly, and bowed. "My name is Hinasaki Miku, just call for me if you do decide you need something." There. And now? Now to ~~not awkwardly at all!~~ scurry over to another patient... who was asleep.

Nope. Not the worst awkward exit she'd ever made. No sir.

Steve was a little overwhelmed by the girl's nervousness, and he wasn't quite sure what to say to keep her from rushing away.

"Wait. Hang on," he urged her. "I'm Steve. Steve Burnside. Are you a new nurse in here or something?"

Miku stopped in midstep and turned. "No. Well. More like... a... just some help, Burnside-san." She realized it was probably hard to hear her and edged closer, just slightly. "That's all."

Burnside-san? What the hell?

He smiled a little crookedly. "Oh. Well... You can just call me Steve, you know."

Miku held up her hands, flustered "I really couldn't, we don't know each other that well, it'd be... well, it'd be rude of me." But perhaps no ruder than murmuring to him to keep him company.

Suddenly, Miku wanted a very deep hole to hide herself in.

Huh? Why would it be rude to call him by his first name? This girl was weird. And skittish, too. It looked like she wanted to run away. Of course, being the King of Awkward, Steve had been there a hundred times.

"It's fine," he said, as friendly as he could with such a hoarse voice. "I'd rather be called Steve than Burnside. Are you new on the ship?" He'd heard that some unfortunate people had fallen out of the pods during the zombie outbreak.

Miku nodded and shifted again, the hand at her chest resting over her heart as if to keep it from flying from her ribcage. Maybe Oren-san was right; she really was a mouse. "...Well. Well... if you insist, then." He probably would, he was Western, after all, and they were all so funny about that kind of thing.

Still, she hadn't missed that scratch in his voice from not talking for a long while. Miku poured him a glass of water from the pitcher beside his bed and offered it to him. "Here, you sound like you could use it, Steve-san," she murmured gently.

Steve-san. Oh well. It was close enough.

Steve's eyes darted from the water up to Miku's face and down to his hands. Jesus. How was he going to explain this one. "I, uh..." he muttered, gesturing down at his hands with his eyes. "I would, but I'm a little... tied up." There was no shortage of embarrassment in his voice.

Miku's eyes widened and her face flushed almost as red as his hair, "I'm so sorry, I wasn't even thinking." Probably because she'd gotten less than four hours of sleep herself, but that was because she'd made herself wake up.

After all, if she slept... "Here, let me," she brought the cup to his lips, and even managed to look like she'd done this sort of thing before.

"You don't have to do anything like-" he protested quickly. He didn't want anybody falling all over themselves for his sake like that, but Miku moved fast and he was thirsty. Steve finally consented and drained the whole cup.

"That's good. Thanks," he said when she moved the cup away. Jeez, it was like he was a baby or something. "You don't have to go to any trouble for me, seriously."

Miku shook her head, "It isn't any trouble, really." It was simple enough to Miku that Steve needed some help, and she had given it to him.

"Yeah it is," he replied. "I hate being stuck here like this, with everybody having to wait on me. I'm not a baby or an old man who can't take care of myself. It's embarrassing."

A few seconds after he'd said it, it dawned on him that was probably going to utterly humiliate the poor girl who'd just went to the trouble of helping him get a drink. "I mean- I'm not, like, mad or ungrateful, I just... you know."

Miku smiled, a little embarrassed for both him, and herself. She could understand wanting to do things under one's own power, and felt bad that he couldn't, not right now. So how best to advise him? Patience? Enjoy the little bit of fussing over until you were all better, or at least better enough that he didn't need these.

Another little part of her wanted to remind him that his depth perception would be off, anyway. So, she smiled her small, polite smile and put the cup away, sitting down at the chair beside his bed. "I suppose I understand that, but... I like caring for others, so I feel like I've overstepped my boundaries. I'm very sorry." She bowed from her seat.

On the long list of people she'd cared for, Steve was surprisingly low on the humiliation list.

God dammit. He had made her feel bad. Now he felt like a jerk. Steve looked up at her awkwardly and gave her the least-anxious smile he could work up at the moment, shaking his head. "It's fine. I was actually really thirsty. And I'm... I'm one of those people who doesn't like to get help. But I need to get over it anyway, so it's totally fine."

Change of subject. Change of subject. Change of subject. "So, uh, are you new on the ship, Hinasaki? I'm glad you didn't get hurt in that whole mess..."

"Ah?" Miku lifted her head and tilted it to one side. Even though he didn't seem to like using his last name, he was at least respectful enough to use hers. Miku appreciated it, and smiled slightly. "Yes, it was... certainly an interesting way to, erm... wake up." Interesting didn't even cover the half of it, but he probably knew that. "I at least made a friend," she added. Tess, or 'Oren-san' as Miku had taken to calling her for the other girl's orange hair, had been a lifesaver. Literally.

"And I suppose there are worse things than this." Actually, she was almost sure of it. "How long have you been here?"

Someday they would have a good laugh over Steve's misunderstanding of Japanese naming conventions.

"I'm not sure. Time works kind of funny here, or at least it feels like it. I guess it's been a few weeks, maybe a month or so." His nose itched suddenly. He was absolutely not about to ask her to take care of it for him, though.

"This place is so strange it takes a while to get used to. But I guess if you have any questions you can ask me and I'll do my best to help."

"I'd appreciate that, thank you, Steve-san," Miku perked up a little more. Now that the first awkward hurdle had been cleared, it seemed like she had become a little more relaxed. "I really haven't thought about the - our? - situation very much since I woke up, though." Putting it off seemed like a better idea than just, well... just opening her mouth and screaming.

She had done that enough for the week. Miku paused awkwardly and laced her fingers together on her lap, "But the, ah, food, certainly is interesting."

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