The man who’d watched the Fellowship members took advantage of their distraction of the Medic on duty to slip behind the desk. He slowly rifled through a few open drawers and found them disappointing. When Junior returned to ask if he could help him, the fellow had redeposited himself on the other side of the desk and managed to look remarkably innocent.
"Yeah," he smiled slowly to the inevitable question. "Yeah, I need this refilled." He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a slip of paper. "Blood pressure medicine." The Union of Medics Junior Apprentice looked dubious, but checked a few charts.
"Hang on a second…" He took the bottle, disappeared – ostensibly to make a call or two, the waiting man figured – and returned with a refill. "Look, that’s the last one. You shouldn’t discontinue treatment, but you’ll have to see your doctor for more refills, OK?"
He took the bottle and nodded but muttered, "I doubt that," even as he turned to his female companion who’d returned from without.
"Why is that?" Junior asked him.
He laughed, turned and walked to meet the woman he’d entered with. "The Rapture has its ways," he murmured. The woman slips a small blue pill into his hand. He rolled it into his mouth. He passed her the bottle of pills he’d just acquired along with several others. She quickly but casually placed them in her bag. She whispered to him again, and left while he walked slowly back to the desk.
==
Sean Noirr, sixteen year old scavenger rat scuttled in through the lobby doors. A beautiful woman winked at him as she passed, but other than that encounter, he saw no one in the room. His rich brown eyes darted toward the cafeteria. One hand rested on the full pocket of his ragged jacket as he listened for sounds of activity from within the hospital. The cleanness of the place made him feel far more out of place than he believed himself to already be. He pushed back the matted, shoulder length hair that just might have been brown. He took a few steps forward until he saw the ER doors. Sean slid up to them, cracked one open an inch or two, so that he could see what was going on before he decided to go in.
His hands were wrapped in rags that covered his palms and disappeared under the worn sleeves of a shirt that might have once been white. It was several sizes too big and gathered around the hand he had stuffed in a bulging pants pocket. As he inched open the door, he looked nervous, ready to bolt; but as if he didn't really expect trouble.
Blatantly, the thin man who’d conned the Junior Medic made his way behind the desk while Junior watched, momentarily open mouthed. The man grabbed a box full of syringes and stuffed them into his pocket.
"Hey! What do you think you are doing?"
As if it weren't obvious, he smiled and then turned to head for the ER. Junior frowned, following him. "Elliot, call security! Hey you, come back here and take those out now!" The man sprinted for the exit amid the sudden sound of heavy footfalls and shouts from the Medic Apprentice. "Stop that man!"
A form leaped over chairs, knocked into stretchers and people all without concern as it raced toward Sean. The sixteen year old’s head jerked wildly toward the commotion, his brown eyes as wide as saucers. He saw an overhead camera pivot even as the form slammed into him. Sean might have seen the fellow sprawl backward and spill some of his stolen goods, but it was unlikely. The teen had thrown his arms up in front of himself for protection even as the man barreled into him. The brown-eyed boy was knocked backward into the doors he’d been coming through. With a rather sickening sound he thumped his head on the clean tile floor. The man spared a glance for the kid, but scrambled to his feet seeing the guards who seemed to swam into the lobby and through the halls. A few leapt over Sean's falling body in their pursuit of the other man, calling after him to stop.
Sean was sure he heard the man shout, "Sorry!" as the sound of his pounding feet fled the scene.
The lobby doors opened again, slowly and a girl darted in not long after the boy. Her dark brown eyes were wary, never resting. She spotted his back from her position, but said nary a word. She heard a familiar voice – or one she swore was familiar – moaning up from the floor between the ER doors.
The guards gave swift and effective chase, but the man running from them had been wisely chosen for his task. He was fast, wiry and had many friends waiting in dune buggies outside the main doors of the hospital. He weaved through the lobby guards and slammed through the outer double doors. One valiant guard made a flying tackle play for him and while he missed the full body tackle, he tripped the fleeing thief up long enough that several guards burst from the main doors, high voltage stun weapons drawn.
They had their thief but for his friends. "Go!" the man shouted to the buggies waiting. "Go!" A few spun out and headed across the landscape into the distance, lost quickly in the waxing night. The guards had him cornered and he weaved to the left and right but came up blocked at every turn. Varsh smiled as he saw his brethren approaching. "Listen, I haven't taken anything you can't do without. Now let me go ... these others coming will kill for what I stole. I'm sorry, but we need them badly ... badly."
The guard with him square in his weapon's sights said, "You ever thought of asking? This hospital is here to help everyone."
Other young men and women approached. One woman, the same who’d been inside earlier stepped forward. "Let him go!" She commanded. And she wasn't carrying a stun gun. The guards found themselves with little choice but to open their restricting ring. They let him go even as some of them again silently wished they could protect their charges with stronger means. At the least, the thieves were out of the building. The bottles and boxes Varsh had taken were quickly snatched up by his fellows and loaded into the buggies. Then the culprits raced, whooping, away across the dunes.
Inside, Sean reached a dirty-nailed hand to his forehead. Down the hall his ‘sister’ hid herself by the wall as a Nurse moved up to attend him.
"Suns..." the teen muttered, trying to rise. He thudded back to the tile floor. He could see several nurses rather than just one. "Are you Ash?" He blinked and tried over and over to get off the floor. Told Ash wasn't on duty he countered with, "But they say Ash takes stuff in trade. I got some stuff … some good stuff ... gauze … swabs … in packages. Found 'em.. oooohh." He rolled to his side and dry heaved as the Nurse bent down to hold him gently.
"Easy," she said softly and noted the smear of blood on the otherwise pristine corridor floor. This boy had been hurt badly. "C'mon, let me help you … "
"I didn't want nothin'.. jus' sum..." he coughed as his voice slurred. "Jus' sum food for me an’ my …"
"Sean!" He heard the worried voice get closer. He figured he must've been worse than he thought if April was daring to get close to strangers. He turned his head.
"Ah'm ahright.. don' you be scared, April… I'm okay… " Sean grabbed the nurses hand for support and forced himself to his knees.
"That's right. Here let me treat you, and then you can go and eat and take a shower if you wish." The nurse helped Sean to his feet and urged him on to a treating cubicle. He resisted going all the way until he saw whether April heard him or not. She followed closely and murmured that she knew something had happened to him.
"I'll be all right. Won't I? You tell her nurse... I'll be fine.. "
"Yes, of course," the Nurse said immediately – perhaps unwisely. "I just want to tend to this. Let me look at this …" She had a kind face for an older woman and her nametag read Fadyll. At least, that's what it looked like to Sean who’s head wasn't completely reliable at the moment. ‘Course, April read better’n he did anyhow. "That's it, just relax. Once we get this taken care of, you'll be able to bathe and rest. Maybe even eat something." The Nurse knew full well that patients with head trauma ought not to eat right away; but these children looked to be starving. She wasn't sure she could keep them from food when that's what they'd ostensibly come in for.
Sean had heard the word "bathe" and though he was clearly woozy, his eyes went wide. "I can git clean?"
"Certainly, young man. I will give you the proper passes. No one who comes into my hospital stays dirty long." In fact, she was thinking she might need to bathe him before treating him. The hair on his head was awfully matted, making it difficult to find the small wound. The girl was mostly quiet. Several times Ms. Fadyll completely forgot she was there, so adept at hiding in plain sight did she seem to be. Nurse Fadyll examined Sean's head carefully, before finding the wound. She began the job of cleaning and treating it with the proper antiseptics and even had to take a stitch or two. Ms. Fadyll was really a physicians assistant – which allowed her to offer a higher level of treatment to the patients she saw. When wounds were straightforward, this made the very busy doctor's jobs much easier. There weren't many of them in the hospital for they weren't part of the Union of Medics and it took them far longer to learn all they needed to know to be of help. Ms. Fadyll herself was forty-five and had dedicated her life to this work. She'd never even been outside New Rydynn.
Sean looked at April. Worry was stitched across his dark brows for her but he smiled at her when she looked his way. His words came out thickly, the slur growing more pronounced. "I's'okay... we're ahright here... Damn rad-dead zombees won't findush here.. "
"That was quite a fall you took," Nurse Fadyll commented softly as she worked at the last of the stitches.
"Rapture Freak knockedme ddown harrd... ishno big thing." Sean agreed.
The Nurse smiled at his bravado, glancing at his quiet companion. "Yes, well ... you should be watched." She applied a bandage to cover his wound. He wouldn't be using that shower voucher too soon as it was and when he did, they could redress the wound.
Sean blinked as he faded in and out and misheard the Nurse. "Watches? I can get you watches..." The young girl named April finally moved closer to him and he tried to get his eyes to focus. "April? You okay? Those rotters didn't get you did they?"
Ms. Fadyll smiled to April. "You look like you might want to join your friend for a hot meal."
The girl nodded to her somewhat absently, the thought of food usually nothing more than a tease in her short life. She stepped very close to Sean and in a tiny, lilting voice said, "You just get better."
Terra, having seen Garth go on up to his room after the excitement of the Guards and thieves, made her way into the exam room. She'd seen the boy helped there and had come as soon as she was able. The Nurse filled her in on Sean's evident condition and Terra agreed with the possibility of a concussion. "He fell here?" She sighed. "I’d like him admitted. We have the room right now and he should be observed." It wasn't out of fear. Malpractice suits like that … hell, most lawyers themselves, had long fallen by the wayside in the battle for survival on Sabatt in the fifty odd years since the Great War. It seems even violent, bloody war could have some benefits. Still, such concerns didn't even enter into Terra’s thoughts as she made that decision. There was no "insurance" to worry about. There were no "law suits." The boy needed their help and even if he hadn't fallen on hospital grounds she would have suggested that he be admitted for observation. Sometimes, there was fear among the doctors and staff and on the part of the Union Medics when Church soldiers were brought in – to care for them and care well lest the Church effect reprisals in the wake of their deaths. The Freemen were much easier. The Fellowship members were often in an uneasy league with the Freemen; but sometimes, like earlier that evening, the members of the Fellowship of Magic took their own unseen forms of revenge for slights they perceived inflicted on them by NRMH staff.
Sean of course was neither Church nor Freemen, FoM nor UoM. He was just a kid in need of help and that's what Terra intended to give.
"Ohh Ahm fine, kiddo... dohn worr—" Sean was saying, even as April was thanking Terra and Fadyll for taking care of him. The boy never finished his sentence. He fell back to the once clean sheets on the exam bed, his eyes open but unfocused.
"Sean? Hey … are you sure he’s all right?" All of twelve or thirteen, April became far more vocal and insistent when it seemed her brother was slipping away. Terra with Fadyll in tow checked him over. April, as determined as she was to be beside her brother, looked about to cry.
Terra’s gentle voice said, "How about a room for the night? I am Dr. Skye and we'd would like to make sure you're both OK." Terra wrote on his chart orders for the nurse to complete. "Make sure they are given adequate food … his should be simple broth at first – something more solid tomorrow. Also … start an IV and have these meds added." She turned back to the boy, resting her hand on his shoulder. "Nurse Fadyll will take you to your room."
Sean's hand clutched for his ragged jacket's full pocket and he mumbled, his eyes still unfocused, "Got gauze … we don’t take charity …"
"Don’t worry. Your sister …?" Terra glanced to April who bobbed her head. "Will be right with you. And she’ll keep an eye on things, won’t she?" She encouraged April with a smile and the girl agreed so that Sean could hear her.
But the sixteen year old was fading and murmuring, "She… ish a viiiine... sucks your life likesomush wine…" His soft sing song tone drifted into the hall and to he ears of a gray-eyed scout of the Freemen who smiled deep behind his sand scarf. Sean drifted into sleepiness and dreamt, oddly enough, of big embracing teeth …
Terra left the Nurse to her job of calling orderlies and readying a room upstairs and moved back into the reception area of the lobby. She could see Bliss asleep in a chair in the waiting room and spent a few moments checking patient's charts. Bliss, in a comfortable chair in the waiting area near to the door leading into the lobby, had indeed drifted off. Her chocolate brown eyes had fluttered closed and she shifted in her chair a few times, clearly disturbed by subconscious images. At something particularly distressing, if unclear and shadowy, Bliss’ eyes snapped open. There in her vision was a face she didn't precisely recognize. Her hand rubbed the back of her head absently, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing …
She pulled back away from the latest visitor to the hospital who sat much too close in chairs, waiting, it seemed for the next available doctor. It was clear to Bliss that nothing was wrong with the man; rather, he had no injury. Something was wrong with him … odd about him. When Terra turned so that he could catch her eye, he spoke to her, using her name. She said he had her at a disadvantage and he introduced himself as Steven Cardell and claimed, as he had earlier that evening – though this was unknown to both women watching him – that he was a friend of Commander Garth Lowinn. He told Terra that Mera Harperr had said Terra Skye was Lowinn’s doctor and that the Commander was indeed a patient at New Rydynn.
Bliss wanted to shout at Terra not to trust the man. Deep in her soul she knew something wasn't right about him. Terra seemed to feel it instinctively and claimed not to know what Mr. Cardell was talking about. She claimed not to recall who Commander Lowinn might be and that clearly, Mera must have been mistaken or was confused. Bliss crept her hand into her saddlebag as the conversation went on, slipping the clip into place in her weapon as silently as she could.
Terra excused herself – or tried too – to continue her work but the man insisting he was Steven Cardell wouldn't let her slip away. He flashed bright white teeth, his canines unusually long it seemed at first glance. Terra stumbled orally but maintained her composure. "Ss there anything else? I really … do have work to do. If you are in need of treatment… I can call a medic for you?"
"Confused? She opened the file right in front of me." The man growled in the back of his throat, angry at being so deliberately thwarted. He stood to his full height of six feet, three inches and towered over Terra, his green eyes glinting ominously in the harsh white of the hospital lights. "My name is Steven Cardell," he repeated. "The Commander is a personal friend ... we were raised together..."
"Well, I am very sorry Mr. Cardell. I told you that Commander … what did you say the name is? Lowinn? Commander Lowinn is not here."
"He is here," Cardell countered and reached for her. Terra slapped his hand away with it’s biting long nails and Bliss straightened up abruptly, her gun coming smoothly out of her pack, loaded.
"Look, the Doc said he wasn't here. You had really better let the Doc go. Now!"
The man leaned in toward Terra who's chin was in his tight grip and her composure broke. The guards, having been on alert since some syringes and painkillers had been stolen earlier that night, made their way cautiously for the trio, away of the weapon drawn. "No!" Terra gasped in protest to Cardell’s grip and kicked him hard. The hospital guards broke into a run.
==
In the curtained treatment cubicle, Sean's big brown eyes fluttered. In a moment of clarity he whispered, "April? April you okay?" He sounded consumed with worry for her. She was sitting right next to him, keeping watch over him.
"I'm fine, don't worry 'bout me. Y' jus get bettr, 'kay?" She lied through her teeth to do a fair job of convincing him that she was fine. He would have known she was lying at any other moment, but the fact that he did not just made her feel worse about doing it. Something was really wrong with him.
"'Kay kiddo..." he said with a faint smile and then fell into a sudden sleep.
Certain she shouldn't even touch him, April reached for his shoulder. She shook him gently. "Hey … Sean … you okay?"
He blinked several times to clear cloudy vision. "Hey, hey ... squirt… Don't shake me ... wanna sleep. M'head'urts."
"I'm sorry Sean … Really sorry … go back to sleep." She sat back down in her chair. She glanced from side to side, and at all the strange apparatus in the room between keeping her eyes on Sean and the door. She had her arms folded, and her right hand held her left arm tightly. Sean's breathing was shallow and far too fast. April's arm hurt but she didn't need to tell anyone about that. She needed to be strong because Sean was hurt. The Nurse, Ms. Fadyll, came back in. She was smiling that nice smile and April didn't feel quite so alone when she was there.
"He’s asleep?"
"Yes. Can … can you see if he's okay?"
Carefully, the nurse cleaned his arm well before inserting the IV. She told April everything she was doing as she worked, quickly and efficiently. Each bag, each med and all it did. The girl didn’t understand everything, but she understood the tone. "Now, don’t worry. He’ll be all right. I promise … this medicine will help him." April was scared of the machine, the tubes, the medications, but she stayed for Sean's sake; and stayed close. An orderly brought in two trays. The nurse smiled to him and explained, "We need to get them to a room." She talked with him in a few low tones and he seemed a nice kid. He wasn't much older than Sean, April was sure. Sean whimpered in his sleep and it was a sound April recognized but it was a sound he would never, ever wanna know he made.
"Thank you, ma'am," April said to Fadyll before she left the room again and they both heard the sound of rushing feet through the halls and deep voices. She would have asked, but the commotion scared her into silence. She watched as Nurse Fadyll slipped out with an angry expression etched on the older woman's kind face.
==
While Terra struggled to escape, even kicking Cardell, Bliss said through clenched teeth, "Mister I will blow one nasty hole in you if you don't let go of the Doc!"
Cardell grinned his awful toothy grin at Bliss and she grinned a feral grin back. Her gun never wavered from her target as she stood in an effortless rise to her feet. The painkillers controlled the worst of what she'd felt before and she was sure she had perfect aim. To Terra Cardell said, "You are protecting him...Know this...I will have the Commander...
"Over my dead body," Terra gasped, with hardly any volume; but Cardell heard.
"If that should prove necessary," he told her, understanding that at last she was acknowledging that Lowinn was indeed in the hospital.
"You first Mister, you first," Bliss threatened him, her brown eyes nearly black with hatred.
Terra glared at him as he released her and tossed her back where she stumbled against the desk. "I warn the both of you now... Commander Lowinn will be mine...and if have to go through his female doctor and a child then I gladly will. If you stand in my way...you will be destroyed." The guards and the Nurse all converged on the scene at once. Cardell backed off further fleeing the scene even as Terra tried to calm herself.
She answered him, with the guards behind her, in her quiet demeanor as he attempted escape and the guards pursued. "No.. you will be."
Bliss suggested that perhaps she should have shot him but she was trembling a bit herself, exhaustion setting in. Terra put further distance between herself and the departed man trembling with the rush of fear chemicals which had been readying her body for flight. The guards gave chase, but they lost the man in the ruins behind the hospital. Concerned with being too far away for too long after the earlier incident that night, they gave up and returned to lock down the hospital for the night.
Finally the Nurse returned to Sean's cubicle as the orderlies were arriving to move him to his room. April was worried and asked what had happened without. The Nurse told her everything was going to be fine, not to worry. Even when the girl seemed concerned that someone would be angry over the amount of food they'd been given to eat, Nurse Fadyll reassured her that all was well. For one tantalizing moment, April almost felt safe. She nervously pushed back a stringy lock of her dark hair and watched Sean in his sleep.
==
Bliss was giving her description to the guards and Commander Lowinn who'd returned from his room for future reference and Terra was imputing what information she could about this Cardell fellow into Elliott for the same reasons. He'd be noticed if he came back.
The gray-eyed Freemen scout made his way through the connecting doors from the ambulance bay to overhear Garth saying, "And he said to get to me, he would kill you and Terra?"
"Yes, exactly." She looked up as Terra turned from the consol to the two of them. "He called me a child," Bliss pouted slightly.
"That's because he doesn't know you," Garth tried to lighten the mood by winking at Bliss. When Terra reached them, he said, "Terra, what the hell happened after I left?"
The other Freemen's eyes sweep the room, smooth fatigues were his dress of the day. He unwrapped the scarf that had hidden his face. He had a small box under one arm and he left it on top of a supply cabinet. As he turned toward the trio across the room, a posted guard moved to question him and Bliss, nervous and twitchy raised her gun at him. He halted, accordingly, hesitant to risk his life carelessly.
Garth looked and clearly saw the Freemen soldier's face. His eyes widened slightly. He swallowed, waved off the guard – who looked to Terra for confirmation and received it – and whispered to Bliss, "Put the gun down."
Ricohh Mikkaill Gideonn paused, tilting his head at she who held the gun. A flicker of a smile touched his finely formed lips and he kept his hands raised politely while she held her weapon pointed at him.
"Please, Bliss," Garth breathed. "He's a friend."
Bliss watched him, but she had none of the feeling that Cardell had given her. None of the fear in looking at this man. "Just being careful," she sighed and lowered the gun.
"Tension seems high this evening," the Freemen Leader said. He wore no insignia of his rank or his station but Garth treated him with respect, listening to every word he spoke in his warmly modulated tone. And the woman whom he knew now to be Garth’s fiance was fearful. She chewed on her bottom lip and looked reluctant to face the man who had only that evening proposed marriage to her. She explained what had happened, filling in the details Bliss had left out like the name of the man who had come looking for Garth. How he'd claimed to have been raised with Garth and to know him well. She explained how she hadn't given him anything and the threats he'd made.
She finished with: "Garth ... you must be moved tonight. You're in danger here. I have made the arrangements."
Bliss listened, lowering the gun to her lap. With her hand empty, she absently rubbed the back of her neck. Gideonn glanced from her to Terra’s neck where smooth red welts had been raised by her assailant's grip. He noted a scratch upon her face as well. Then Mik took note how Garth looked a bit pale.
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