trans_9 | Hospital visits [Open]

Entry tags:

Hospital visits [Open]

Luly has been checked into the Med Bay after a bit of an odd incident in the Mess Hall. So far she's stayed mostly of the way, given a bed in a secluded niche, and while she's ended up babbling to herself a few times or doing other odd behaviors, nothing's been obviously harmful.

With the ship's somewhat annoying lack of proper hospital robes and her disdain for the plantsuits, she's wrapped in just a sheet, hopefully while somebody figures out something to clean her usual makeshift red wrap with. At the moment she's sprawled across the bed assigned to her, focused intently on a holographic keyboard and screen being projected from a little cylinder she's placed on the bed. To look at her she could seem almost normal, except for the one hand keeps rapping out a compulsive, staccato rhythm against the bedsheets.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It wasn't that she was going out of her way to check on her friend. No, Lafiel just happened to be stopping by the medbay, on her way to the sensoriums. Or the library. Whatever. Anyway, she might as well see what's up with her. Just to make sure nothing too serious happens in the future. Right?

Right.

That VERY CASUAL expression on her face remains there as she raps on edge of her open hospital door.

Luly looks up. Her hands pause from where they were darting across the holographic keyboard.

"Reiozy?" she asks, obviously distrustful.

That look...Does she recognize me?

Lafiel gave a small wave. "Cluge sa? It's me, Lafiel."

"Say something else in your language," Luly says, a little coldly.

There's recognition in her face, but... fear, too.

"Darwa Abriel Nei Dobrusc Paryunh Lamhir, ne Basroil Chuas, kus-kral, laburec bari. I'm your...You had an episode." She doesn't like this at all. This look on Luly like she's somehow hurt her.

Luly lets out a hiss of breath, though it seems more like relaxation than resignation.

"Lafiel, could you come here?" she asks quietly. (One of her legs starts twitching a little, but her face twists as she forces it back out into place.)

Ok, good. She seems to recognize me.

Lafiel hesitantly walks closer, each step a small question mark sound on the bulkhead.

Luly reaches hesitantly to take Lafiel's hand. For a moment her grip trembles, but then her hand tightens to an almost painful degree.

"Oh, thank god," she mutters as she pulls herself up to a kneeling position. That sheet is wrapped pretty well, but—by accident or intention—it's still showing off a good bit of cleavage.

Then she pulls Lafiel into a sudden, tight hug.

I am a viscountess of the Abriel royal family. I do not blush or flail. That is not what's happening. I am not doing that. Which, of course, is exactly what she does. After a few moments she awkwardly returns the hug though. She's just not used to being hugged by anyone except her dad.

"What happened?" Her dark eyes seem to wriggle, shimmer and do other animated things with concern.

Luly shuffles back a little, trying to pull Lafiel onto the bed with her. (This jolts the holographic emitter thing a little too much and it shuts off automatically, though this doesn't seem to bother Luly any.)

"It's a... long story," she says with a frown, her gaze sliding to a point a little to the left and upwards of Lafiel's eyes. "Estoh, ah, they don't really have right stuff here for..." She squeezes Lafiel's hand again, distracted by something.

After a moment she comes back into focus. "Colo's control mechanism, part of it's... in me. I thought I could manage with the stuff I already had, but I guess trying that without a nejha doctor wasn't a good idea." She smiles very weakly. She seems... well, 'feverish' isn't quite the right word, but it's close.

Something about her friend seems not entirely there. She seems to desire contact like a frightened child. So she sits down at the edge of the bed, scooted back a little bit so she could face her.

"Is that the machine you're bonded to?" She says when her eyes seem to refocus on her. "Why does it have those effects?"

Meluly leans against Lafiel in a way that would seem almost intimate if she weren't seeming so like a lost child. "The communion process, it's—there are lasting effects." She swallows heavily, trembling. "It wouldn't be as bad if I had my doctor."

Lafiel's hands kindof do this useless, feckless twiddling thing. She spends visible effort getting control of them, trying to get a mental handle on the situation.
She reframes it as if she were dealing with the one type of creature she allows to touch her like this. She relaxes and strokes Meluly's hair in the exact same way she would stroke her family's cats. She doesn't say anything but silently urges her to go on.

"It would be so much better if I could just get to Colo," Luly mumbles, burying her head against Lafiel's shoulder. It's a lie, but the thought makes her feel better. "They don't have my cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài doctor and I'm seeing things and the only reason I even know you're really here is that I'm not nice enough to myself to hallucinate you and, nnngh!" She coughs sharply, squeezing Lafiel tighter.

Lafiel continues with this new routine. Reassigning Luly temporarily to the mental category of 'cat' has made this vastly easier. She even gets in a few scritches behind her ears. She tries to make her smile reassuring but it probably comes out strained and artificial looking.
"I am not a hallucination and we are going to find a way to heal you. Any time you are afraid of that, you can contact me on the clyu- ah, the omnicomms." She'd momentarily lapsed into the similar Abh native device.

The dark-skinned woman slowly sprawls back, knees still bent and ankles up against her thighs in a way that looks like it'd be decidedly uncomfortable for anyone less flexible. She tries to pull Lafiel with her, too, almost thoughtlessly, because now she's staring into the blank space beyond Lafiel's shoulder.

"It's not something that gets healed... it's part of being an Engel pilot. You just have to deal with it," she says very quietly, as her eyes close and her head twists back, face twisting like there's some awful crick in her neck.

Lafiel gives a little yelp as she's pulled back. Somehow she instinctively twists stomach down, as if she were playing zero-g jousting. Her face gets buried in the pillow and she frantically disentangles herself from everything. She remembers...A coffin. But not the menacing kind. This coffin meant salvation.

Then, guiltily, she remembers the strange and vulnerable state of mind Luly is in right now. She sits back up in the bed and puts her hand back on the top of Luly's head. "So it's like a froce system...But what's inside the machine that causes that?"

"It's how Engels work. It's—" She shudders, letting out a convulsive cough-hurk that might have turned into a spate of vomiting if there had actually been anything in her stomach.

She mumbles something that sounds almost like a poem, all in Nazzadi except for the single recognizable phrase "war machine". Her hands clutch at Lafiel's arm like those of a drowning girl to a lifeline. "Oh, reiozy, I'm sinking," she moans quietly, face caught somewhere between sickness and vertigo.

I have to stop this cycle before she gets drawn into it again.

Lafiel doesn't know wether to pinch her or slap her or hug her or what, but she knows she has to act quickly. Her other hand rests on Meluly's shoulder as she talks in a clear, slow tone. "You're not. We...I won't abandon you." And if that doesn't work...

"Please don't go away," Luly mumbles. She pulls Lafiel in closer against her again--selfish, maybe, though she's too out of it to really process that train of thought. "I think this is gonna be a bad trip," she adds in a whisper, and her eyes are still jammed shut, and her arms are trembling enough that Lafiel could still pull away fairly easily.

"Reiozy, it feels like you're the only person here I can tr--" The admission breaks off into a little, wordless breath of panic, and her grip on any part of Lafiel ahe can reach suddenly tightens considerably.

Lafiel considers pulling back. Leaving her to her demons here and fleeing away down the hall. She probably wouldn't remember this later anyway.

But what would that say about Abriel honor if I abandoned someone in such obvious need of rescuing?

And it's clear Luly does need that, as much as any escape pod drifting through the void. So she sits back against the headboard and puts her arms around the other woman, making nonsensical shushing noises. This is going to be a long night...

The next hour or two or three pass in a tidal thrumming of delirium and nonsense: Luly sees and hears and feels things that clearly aren't there, sometimes speaking to empty air in Nazzadi or fragmented, hard-to-interpret English; sometimes trying to hide her face, quaking; and sometimes sliding into bouts of near-self-mutilation, scratching at her hands or face almost hard enough to bleed or chewing on herself, though some faint spark of sanity seems to pull her back from the edge of any truly dire consequences. The whole experience, from the up-close view Lafiel has, is in the most blunt sense just plain disturbing, and her occasional pleading murmurs or tighter clinging to Lafiel in her rare moments of near-normality only more.

Still, she seems to be slowly coming out of--exhausted and sweating, enough energy gone that she's nearly asleep, she murmurs in rhythmic Nazzadi. Huh, there's that word "reiozy" again...

Lafiel passes the storm with the tight control she learned as a captain. She envisions herself as a rock, a sun anchored against the celestial winds and storms. That's how she's able to process the whole thing. She snatches her hands away from doing herself harm, meekly accepts the pain when those sharp teeth turn on her. She has the same nervous tic.

When Meluly finally falls into an innocent, semi-dream state, Lafiel snatches up her omnicomm and types quickly into the holographic display: Translate: Reiozy. From: Nazzadi. To: Baronh.

The translation of meaning comes up as an awkward mix of insufficient concepts: caretaker-wife-partner-clanmate. The straight literal is strange, too: "(female) keeper of the home during the opposite daily cycle". (There is a male version of the word, it turns out, just the same but with an a instead of a y.)

Luly starts, very lightly, snoring.

Lafiel's heart does a little bump when she reads the translation. Wife means nothing to her: Abh do not have a marriage concept. The rest however...She can't possibly mean me. She was hallucinating. Thought I was someone else...What have I gotten myself into?

Lafiel carefully disentangles herself. On her way out, she snatches a box of bandages to treat the marks on her shoulder and arm.

Lam mostly slept in the medbay, curled up wherever she could find a little comfort. She made rounds, checking as quietly as possible. Meluly, she checked on every forty five minutes as discreetly as possible. The wrap had been cleaned as thoroughly as she could in some sort of antibacterial wash she'd managed to find. Lam had rinsed it out in what appeared to be reclaimed water and hung it to dry.

Now, it was suitable to wear again, though it had a bit of an odd smell. It wasn't like there was washing machines anywhere, so she'd done her best.

"Meluly, I'm Doctor Lam. Carolyn. You probably don't remember me, but I helped you with your medicine the other day," she murmured.

"I thought you might want this back," she offered the clean garment. Her injured hand was wrapped in some sort of plantlike compression bandage that covered her palm like a half-glove.

"Oh!" Luly says, straightening up. "Uhh, my assistant gave me the transcript," she says, embarrassed. Along with the little holo-device currently active, she's rwclaimed the rest of her belt (currently on a little side table), but not the pistol or holster. "I'm so sorry about..." Her voice trails off as her vision unfocuses, staring somewhere behind Lam.

"You are real, right?" she asks, voice suddenly tight and scratchy.

"I'm real," Lam said quietly. "And don't worry about the bite. I've seen worse. It looks like it'll heal up just fine. How are you feeling? Somewhat better?" The unfocused look was noted, but she didn't comment.

"Pretty out of it," Luly says surprisingly brightly. "I was a dumbass and though I could... I'm military," she interrupts herself.

By now she's trying not to stare with obvious disorientation at the empty space next to Lam.

"Part of my piloting interface is in my head, there are..." She shifts position where she's sitting. "--side effects," she almost-squeaks. "And, uh, my sup, urhm, support teams aren't here."

She's keeping it together, but it's clearly kind of... tenuous.

Lam nodded, not fully understanding everything, but clearly pulling the picture together. It was clearly a different sort of military than she was used to dealing with.

"Is there anything I can do to help minimize the effects at all? I'd be willing to try. I'd rather you were more comfortable, if it's possible."

"Ah, a good psychologist might help," Luly says, voice despondent enough to suggest she doesn't view the chance of one of those being around here very high. "I've got my prescriptions, but I just kind of have to... Wait out any really severe stuff." The imaginary distraction, whatever it was, is gone, but Luly's face advertises some secret she's not admitting.

"I'm afraid the best I can offer is support and my own medical skills," Lam said gently. "If you need someone to talk with, I'm always available. I might not be a psychologist or psychiatrist, but there's a high likelihood I'll be here more often than not." She tilted her chin slightly. "I've dealt with many unexpected situations, and been through more than my fair share of incidents. Whatever you choose to discuss with me will never go beyond this room. If I can help, I will, and it will always be done with your full privacy in mind."

Her fingertips touched the edge of the bed.

Luly nods slowly, trying to keep from disorienting herself. "Part of the problem is, it's, well, a lot of it is top secret. More than top secret. I mean, like," and she's gesturingly widely, enough that it's a noticeable departure from her normal conversation, "they run you through a year of background checks before they even let you sign the papers, you know?" She looks kind of vaguely desperate. "God, I'm going to have to write my own non-disclosures..." She lets out a sigh.

"Yeah, I know," Lam said, thinking about the secrecy surrounding the Stargate program. "I'm part of a program that's about as top secret as that. I may have had that thought about non-disclosure documents myself." Her laugh was soft and warm.

"I wish I could do more than provide vague motions of comfort. I guess all I can really do is," she gestured, "make sure you're as safe as possible, then. I'm not going to make you talk about something you can't. That's hardly fair."

That laugh makes Meluly relax some, smiling a little bit herself. "I could do it, I guess, but—I don't think many people would agree to the terms of violation." Her face momentarily darkens in the 'military tribunal and summary execution' sort of way.

"And thank you," she adds. "I'm glad that—well, honestly, this is better than the last attack I had."

She pauses.

"It's a monthly cycle, give or take a little, or it is when my doc doesn't have an eye on me, but..."

"The better part's good," Lam said with a slight nod. "I know I'm not your doctor, but if this is cyclical, then I'll keep my own eye on it. Maybe you'll get lucky and one of your doctors will show, until then, I can at least help manage the things that aren't eyes only. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough," Luly says. "Thanks for... well, putting up with me. If there's anything I can do to make up for...?" She gestures in the direction of Lam's hand.

"You have nothing to make up for. You weren't yourself. Lashing out like that was a defense mechanism. I assure you, this isn't the first time I've been injured tending a patient," Lam said gently, brushing her fingers against the plantlike bandage. "And I was not 'putting up' with you. You are no imposition."

Luly rolls her eyes at that. "I've been a hell of an imposition, and if you don't think that you're just fooling yourself." She smiles a little, though. "It—should heal clean, at least. I take good care of my teeth."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hospital visits [Open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject