Garth stumbled a bit upon exit, but managed to keep his feet. He looked back at the door, then as fast as his weakened legs would carry him, he went to the elevator. Thank Sabatt, joyous Sabatt, glorious Sabatt, it was still down at the basement level. Garth pushed the button repeatedly until the doors opened and boarded the lift as fast as huumunnly possible. Once inside, he pushed the button for the lobby. Up, up it went and when the doors opened on level one, the Freemen stumbled out of the lift and thanked Sabatt audibly, over and over. He made his way to a chair and slumped down, holding his head in his hands.
Pausing beside where Garth sat in the chair on her own way toward the elevator, Ash asked him, "Hey, now. You okay?"
Garth looked up and smiled, relieved to see someone he considered normal. "Depends on what your standard of ‘OK’ is." He didn’t mention his situation with the strange coroner.
"Yeah, well. You look like you need to be up in your room, resting. Not traipsing around with the coroner." No, she wasn’t clairvoyant, she’d simply seen the elevator come up from the Basement.
"Traipsing is not what I'd call it. I don't feel like resting... I'm looking for Terra."
Ash put on her "difficult-patient-face." "Terra? Yes, well I'm sure she's very busy in the lab. You won't do her any good getting worse, right?"
"I didn't look like this last night," he snorted. "I woke up like this earlier." He was being cryptic, giving only minimally and that, hardly worth anything.
Still, Ash wasn’t fooled. "Uh huh. Right."
Garth grinned even as she smiled and nodded. "I can tell when someone doesn't believe me."
"Oh, I believe you." Ash scrubbed her fingers through her blonde, bristly hair. "I also believe in following doc's orders." The old, but white corridor echoed slightly with the words of the bald-faced lie.
Abra Linn had entered the hospital but until that moment, hadn’t been seen by Ash or Garth, engaged in conversation as they were. Her bizarre, stiff posture, twisted movements and erratic steps screamed the limitless plain of catatonia. She drew the eye as much as her ragged breaths of self-drowning drew the ear. Her dangerously thin form twisted viciously with the haphazard whims of her broken emotions. She whirled crisply into a loud, and fatal sounding, maelstrom of heavy and blood-ridden coughing. Death, life, and that which lay in between blurred into one as she spit a grotesque composition of vomit and blood into her open hands.
Garth looked over at the girl whom he remembered as having vomited into her hands before. Ash’s head simultaneously snapped around to the sound of phlegm-rattling coughs. Garth reached up and scratched his nose but didn’t notice the small pieces of skin that came off on the nail. "You don't sound good..." he said absently and obviously to the girl. Ash turned her head turned back to Garth, back and forth, again, a double take and the thought occurred to her that getting out on the road again would be a good thing.
The girl named Abra was drowning. Unrelenting was the roaring storm of bodily substances; the reality of her existence seemed to her most likely thoroughly obsolete.
The voice of the Elliott Computer came on in the lobby speakers. "Mirandahh, remind Chumba to lay out more insecticide traps. Thank you."
"Abra," Ash breathed, rushing over to the woman as though pushed into movement by Elliott's voice. She wrapped an arm around Abra's shoulders. "I swear," she said, "I'm hearing voices. They sound like Elliot."
Abra managed a tortured smile through the blood to Ash.
"C'mon, sister. Let's get you to a bed." Ash guided the woman she had met before toward the elevator. She hoped to avoid more of the horrible storm of Abra’s wasting disease. Suddenly the girl folded almost fully in half, bent into a twisted and pliant sculpture of torment, on the verge of collapse. As she went down, Ash moved with her, dropping into a crouch. It was instinct on the part of a Union trained Medic no matter the situation. Stay with the patient, calm the patient, keep contact. Ash kept one arm always there to steady Abra even though she couldn’t be sure the disease that caused the coughing wasn’t infectious and/or airborne. And the girl’s hands were still full of vomited phlegm and blood. Ash pulled a handkerchief from her pocket with a fluid motion of her free arm and handed it to Abra who could barely hold it.
"Shall I prepare a station in the ER or OR, Mirandahh?" Elliott asked.
"Elliot ... I need treatment options for consumption, now." She cast a look about her, mind a whirl as Elliott whirred above them. All interest in Garth’s condition faded from her mind as he faded from her view and Abra commanded her attention. For a fleeting fraction of single moment, the near-strangled possibility of lucidity passed through Abra’s faded orange-cinnamon hued eyes. Those orbs, that had once been dazzling despite her current demise, now writhed with pale strains of catatonia as Ash looked into them. "It's gonna be okay, Abra... You just lean on me..." the medic whispered to her.
Though her body was still impossibly bent and her energy seeped from her she offered back what might have been a nod to the faithful Ash. Abra was all but oblivious to the potential fact that she was choking on her own blood. Anyone would say that’s not a way to die -- not a peaceful way, in any case.
"Symptomatic treatment is all that is possible," Elliott said, almost – quietly.
Ash pointed to Garth, remembering him at last. "Get the elevator for me please."
"Expectorants," Elliott went on, "fluids, bed rest."
"Then I need an IV or two of just that, Elliot."
"Room C in Ward II has been prepped and is ready, Mirandahh."
Ash counted silently and hauled Abra up and into her arms. "And maybe a crash cart," she added as they shuffle stepped together to the elevator. Abra’s an attempt to breathe as she was pulled up left her worse than before, and straining to keep from fainting. "I'm gonna need oxygen too, Elliot..." The doors slid silently open and in they went. Ash leaned heavily onto the buttons and they all lit up.
"Noted, Mirandahh," Elliott said inside the elevator. "O2 tank connections to Ward II, Room C are now active."
Ash could see Abra begin to fade away in the droop of her eyelids and the limpness of her form. The girl’s weight was nothing to the medic and she talked as the lift took them up, as much to herself as to the girl. When the lift stopped at the second floor, Ash did a shuffling drag-sprint down the hall to Room C. She maneuvered Abra into the prepared room and could see the IV drip already up on its rack. Like a mother laying her child to rest, she settled Abra onto the bed. She got the oxygen mask over the girl’s face and the drip into her arm with swift efficient effort.
"Get a doctor in here, Elliott. She may need a respirator."
The computer's voice boomed out over the entire audio system of the building. "Available medical staff, please report to Ward II, Room C STAT."
Ash checked and rechecked everything. There was nothing more for her to do but wait for the doctor on call. Still, for some strange reason she stayed when they arrived. She helped where she could and stayed out of the way when she couldn’t. Soon it became apparent that there was absolutely nothing left she could do. The surgeons declared that Abra had tuberculosis and it was clear that Abra’s lungs were horribly filled. They did the best they could with suction pumps and Ash felt her chest tighten for the girl on the table. Ash heard them talking to Abra, reassuring her, but Ash found herself needing to retreat. She backed out of the room and slunk away to finish packing. She promised herself she’d check up on Abra as soon as she could.
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