Molly Toombs
Nights like this, the emergency room is
busy without being interesting. Temperatures had plummeted earlier in
the day, and a combination of freezing rains followed by snows had made
driving conditions despicable at best. There were plenty of minor
accidents, slide offs and the like. A number of people were brought in
with no injuries, simply on protocol because they complained about
feeling a little unnerved or woozy.
Molly's shifts stretched over
twelve to fourteen hours on any given day. Today she was in from noon
to two in the morning. It was about thirty minutes shy of midnight, and
while the volume of traffic in and out of the emergency department had
slowed there was still not a lot of downtime. Just plenty of busywork.
It
was distracting, at least, but Molly was slipping back into the
same-old same-old routine that she had been in for years before now.
The only difference was that she was uncannily aware of the shadows
these days. She studied up on concepts of death and what lay beyond,
and went on dates with particularly homely men because they would have
these conversations with her. And even that was a few weeks ago. She
hasn't been out much since.
She hasn't seen the vampires that she
knows of, the ones that used to come knocking. It has her wondering if
there was some flux in the war that Flood had mentioned to her, but she
hadn't reached for the small stack of business cards kept on her dresser
back home. She was dreadfully curious, perhaps even a touch concerned
about losing touch with her access to the Unknown and Absolute Real, but
unwilling to...
...what? Seem desparate? Invite more trouble? Who knew.
Regardless,
Molly's been something of a communicative black hole with the people
she knows, wrapped up in her books. Tonight, in this moment, she was
wrapping up a particularly unpleasant smelling man who was sitting
slumped and semi-conscious in the waiting room with a thick, heavy
blanket and trying to encourage him to warm his hands on a hot water
bottle that she was holding on to. The expression on her face is blank,
void of actual concern for the man's well being. An officer had
brought him in, having discovered him in a drunken stupor against a
train station wall with frostbite starting at his nose and cheeks and
fingers.
She isn't a tender, caring thing, looking to save every soul that comes through the room tonight. She's just doing her job.
Waste
Molly is doing her job and
her job involves coming across people at their worst. In the midst of
the gauntlet of life and losing. This man is one, the woman with the
child on her lap and another screaming just as loud in the next chair is
the next, and the man holding a piece of gauze he'd gotten an hour ago
over a deep cut on his chin is after that.
Triage.
It's
deciding who gets treated first and who gets treated second and dealing
with the glares and, “I was fucking here fucking first fucking bitch,”
whether it's muttered or said with a full and unapologetic throat. It's
managing resources stretched thin and expectations barely holding up a
tension barrier of rage. When it gets very busy? It could even be
likened to deciding who lives and who dies. Though that usually gets
handed off to the doctors on duty.
And when she gets into the
steadiness of her rounds, dealing with bodily fluids and dispensing
medications and changing IVs and sticking people who they don't want to
be stuck, removing and replacing tubes keeping them alive, cleaning and
turning them and all the while hoping even worse manifestations of
humanity won't creep up in the form of harassment. Or that beeping that
would summon her to the creep down the hall's room. Or the louder
beeping that meant someone had flat lined. Maybe even the louder shouts
that meant it was time to call in security or, worse, the police.
Even this is a pattern. And this time the pattern is interrupted in a way so subtle she almost doesn't notice.
The
patient has been unconscious. No real reason to remember his name other
than to see if he remembers it if he wakes up. It's on the sheet. Peter
Glennen. Along with notes on what goes in the IV in the arm attached to
a body that...
Is not the body of the person she had seen at the beginning of her shift.
Lines
stretched long to crow's feet around his eyes. Eyes that flutter in
response to that loud squeaking door she pushes open to let herself in.
His skin is thinner as he struggles to adjust himself under the weight
of the drugs and the blanket and the tubes. The veil of white pale flesh
shows his veins. Hair on his head is shocked with gray where it had
only been a light peppering before. Muscles thinned away. Bigger ears
and nose and sagging skin.
But this is the right room. That is the right sheet. And that is the right bag connected to the right IV.
That is the same sailor's tattoo on the half-exposed upper bicep of his arm.
Other
than having regained consciousness Mr. Glennen seems to to exhibiting a
new symptom. One that should definitely be noted on his sheet and
brought to the attention of his physician.
It's too bad he's reaching for his breathing tube and trying to pull it out. That all will have to wait.
Molly Toombs
With
the homeless man in the front room wrapped in a blanket and finally
convinced to take a water bottle between his hands while he waits, Molly
is able to part away from the front room of chairs and twin television
sets and head into the back, through the swinging double doors and up
the hall to check vitals, charts, what have you.
She pauses to
speak with the lead nurse for the shift, and gets told to go check on
"Glennen in room 8". Molly takes the duty and goes with it without
complaint or protest or anything of that sort. She wasn't the sort to
socialize at work in the first place, to make friendly with the people
she shared space with so many hours out of her days. Today she was
particularly ready to call it a night and go home. The weather had made
the evening a drawn out and difficult one, and as she checked the clock
in the hallway on her way up to room 8 she sighed. She still had just a
little more than two hours left to go before she could put on her
layers and make the walk home through the snow and the cold.
Molly's
quiet when she enters the room, as she always is. If patients are
sleeping she doesn't want to disturb them. So the door opens quietly,
and closes just as softly behind her. She didn't immediately glance up
at the man in the bed, not until after the door had closed, but when she
did there was cause to go still.
She'd been in here before, and
the man that was in the bed about an hour or so ago had to be at least
fifteen years younger than the one that lay in the bed. But the basic
facial structure was the same, the tattoo on the arm was the same. Her
eyes had widened, and she glanced briefly behind her, through the small
window at the top of the door, as though she was checking to see if
someone was behind her laughing at their own prank that they've pulled.
No one was there, and the patient was trying to fish the breathing tube
out of his sinuses.
"Oh, Mr. Glennen, no...." She crosses the
room on legs that aren't particularly long or even necessarily muscular,
but are accustomed to moving her to and fro throughout the night on her
work shift and have to be strong enough to at least help for leverage
in situations precisely like this. She couldn't count the number of
times in the past month that she's had to stop people from pulling tubes
out of themselves, so this was nothing new.
She reaches the side
of his bed and moves his hands firmly, but patiently away from his
face. She urges them back to his sides instead. Her dark hair was
pinned out of her face with bobby pins but left down about her neck and
behind her ears otherwise. By virtue of heritage she couldn't hold a
tan in the first place, but her palor was that so her freckles stood out
a bit more in this moment than they had when she was in the hall.
She
doesn't ask him what happened to him, or what's going on. She doesn't
expect that he'll know. But she is definitely studying him intently
while keeping his hands from dislodging his breathing tube or his IV.
"Just relax, okay? We're taking care of you."
Waste
Mr.
Glennen tosses his head to the left and then to the right, just in time
to see his own hand all the more grizzled, the hair on the back of it
grown out and bristling. Its digits are all the more claw like for its
aging, though frail as the gnarled limbs of a tree. He moans and his
eyes, their light blue dampened by the dim light of the room, open wide.
He groan this time in protest before opening his mouth.
Only a
moment later he is spitting out two bloodied teeth before he can suck
down cool hospital air and try to talk. Teeth that seem to have worked
themselves free and fallen loose of his gums.
"You've got to call
Sophie. You've got to call her. Please," and as if the name is some
glimmer of hope at the end of the dark tunnel that is his condition -
one he seems to only now be fully realizing he's in. "What day is it?
What time is it? Is it night?"
He seems to be trying to focus.
Trying to get a handle on his mind and push it toward lucidity. "My
things. Where are my things? I need my phone. I need my phone right now
or I'm going to die here."
Details. His mind seems to be getting a
grasp upon them as he turns his head again. This time toward the IV.
"What are you giving me?" This time he begins shaking his arm, the other
reaching for the needle in the back of his hand. Another tube he is
trying to pull out.
Molly Toombs
Teeth get spat
out, and Molly's penciled-in eyebrows hop up on her face in surprise, a
bit of shock, but not disgust. The man's becoming more frantic, and
there's an urgency in his voice, something that she's fairly certain
sounded differently at the beginning of the day. He wants his things,
he needs someone named Sophie, is it night? He's going to die here.
"Jesus Christ, man, slow down!"
Now,
it's a known fact that people have different tones and inflections when
they're at work talking to the people they work with. When Molly had
first urged him to relax and let them take care of him her tone was
lighter and calmer. It was practiced to be calming and uncommitted
both. When she spoke this time, though, her voice had dropped about
half of an octive and her personality had returned to it. She's not
being gentle anymore, not being calming. She sees that something is
happening here that is out of the ordinary, something that she's pretty
sure that the nurses that she works with shouldn't see, that the doctors
could do nothing about.
So, when she tells him to slow down, it's
with a firm authority that isn't kind or polite, but isn't closed up
either. There's no finality to her tone, she's willing to work with
him. She's scowling now, and once the surprise had left her brow it had
lowered into a furrow instead.
The hand that reaches for the IV
gets taken hold of and moved again, and she's more firm about pressing
it back to his side and leans over the bed in a way that would cause a
blouse to gap provocatively, but since she's in standard pale blue
scrubs no such thing occurs. She locks blue eyes on this man's
similarly toned ones and speaks clearly when asking:
"Who is Sophie and what am I telling her? You need to let me know what's going on for me to help you, Peter."
Waste
Peter
is not looking at her any more. He seems to be getting his bearings. At
least trying to get a hold on his surroundings without her answers.
Toward the window and its drawn shades. To its edges. It looks like
night. The sight at least seems to relieve one of the pressures he is
feeling.
"Tell her that-" he begins before stopping, almost a reflex of consideration before he continuing in earnest- "you need to tell her that Henry,"
emphasizing the name that isn't the one in his records, "is in the
hospital and that he needs to see her immediately. That time is of the
essence. You have to say it like that. Please," a glance toward the
door, like he can't wait for her to be walking toward it, before he
looks to the bag hanging to feed his IV with that steady dripping.
As
he speaks more the dulling of his voice leaves a bit. He remembers his
tongue and it leaves behind groans and moans of pain and dissociation as
it remembers his accent, a slightly Southern thing that sounds
roundabout Mississippi.
"Please," faster again. He'd almost
forgotten. Not only the drugs, and not only the head injury that had
left him unconscious, but the fact he seems distracted and addled. The
other two might slow him, but he seems to be having trouble aligning his
needs. But he focuses on it again.
"If there are blood thinners
or replacements or anything in that bag you need to take it out of my
arm. Have I had a transfusion?" And his thoughts seems to be gaining
traction.
Triage. Priorities primary in two fields. Civilian and
military medicine. His directions become more regimented and more firm,
like his questions, and he seems to more clearly be aligned with the
latter and how they concern his continued survival. And he is at least
starting to sound less like a mad or concussed man and more like a man
interested in the details of his own preservation.
Molly Toombs
If
any other nurse had come in here tonight to check on 'Peter Glennen',
this conversation wouldn't even be happening. They'd have called for an
orderly or a stronger, probably male nurse to come in and help contain
the man. They might have to drug him if he fights too hard.
Molly,
though? She listens to him, and though her expression is stern and she
looks incredibly displeased to have walked into the situation that she
did. In her mind Molly was going to be home in two hours, taking a
shower to warm up after the trek through the ice and the snow, and
falling asleep in her bed soon thereafter. She could already tell that
this wouldn't be the case. She had a feeling she would need to meet
this Sophie, or take this Henry, not Peter, to her somehow.
He
was concerned about blood thinners and blood transfusions, and Molly
made a face that was confused and suspicious both. Something about him
being worried about the state of his blood struck a chord, as most
things about blood will when you've recently come aware of the fact that
vampires are a very real thing.
"I'll check, hang on," she tells
him, and her tone is a little impatient, a bit snippish, and she circles
around to the chart hung up on the foot of his bed. Her eyes move
quickly over the information there, making out notes and accronyms.
They're still down on the page as she tells him:
"You're marked as
being in a car accident. You've been unconscious for... a week.
There've been two blood transfusions because of internal bleeding, and
you're on medication to help prevent blood clots."
When her eyes
move off the page, they level on him solidly. "I'm not taking your
lines out or stopping your drip. But I will call this Sophie for you.
If you start pulling on shit while I'm out of the room another nurse is
gonna come in and I promise you they're not gonna entertain this like I
do. You get me?"
Waste
"Take it out," and again he reaches across
himself, limbs slow as those of an insect and so thin they might as well
be, struggling against her stronger, more vital, so much younger hands.
"Or I'm fucking dead," gritting his teeth, then bearing them as lips
pull back in a rictus snarl, then wincing painfully at the sound of
another cracking under the pressure he exerts. The stab of pain through
his psyche seems to give him clarity.
"I am refusing fucking treatment.
Do you hear me? I do not want to be treated," said like he'd heard it
on some medical program or television drama, though with a more
emotionally invested weight to it.
Until he realizes. He's keeping
her from that door. And his arms again fall motionless at his sides. He
looks up, his face loosening as his jaw slackens and his head again
relaxes back into that sterile white pillow.
"Please. Sophie.
Before it's too late," the exertion seeming to overtake him. He again
slips back into a restless unconsciousness, his breathing ragged as his
heart begins to slow with the beeping of its monitor.
Molly Toombs
The
man who had aged drastically since Molly had seen him last virtually
snarled at her that he's refusing treatment, that she needs to take the
medicine feed out of his arm and fish the breathing line from down his
throat. His hands are weak and slow, and though Molly is listening that
doesn't mean that she's obeying every request that he makes. She
understands that there are agencies at play here that she hasn't quite
wrapped her mind around yet, but she still takes his hands by the wrists
and thumbs and guides them back away from his medicine feeds.
But
then he realizes that the longer he fights her on this, the more of his
own time he's wasting, so he relaxes against the pillow and asks for
this 'Sophie' person one more time before passing out again. Once the
man's hands and limbs go still Molly straightens herself back up and
frowns in contemplation down at the man. Her hands seek out full, round
hips and settle there, elbows out, while she studies the situation
before her and rolls all of the knowledge that she already has through
her mind.
He was very concerned about diluting or replacing his
blood. He needed Sophie to come help fix what has happened. The young
nurse licked at her lips and hesitated, only for a second, before
muttering a curse to herself and circling around to the other side of
the bed where the IV was set up. She takes about twenty seconds to do
this, for working as a trauma nurse for as long as she's been has
imparted speed upon her when it comes to executing her duties. Soon
enough, the bag that was feeding medications (pain killers, blood
thinners) was replaced by one that simply feeds him fluids and keeps him
hydrated.
She knows he's unconscious, but she still announces to
him in a tone of voice that is pressed flat with mild aggravation:
"I'll be back." A pause, and then a lick of irony as she turns and
walks out of the room: "Don't go anywhere."
---------------
They
keep patient belongings behind the counter at the nurse's station.
Molly's been working here long enough that she isn't typically
questioned when doing her work. She's never had to be talked to about
breaking any rules or policies at work, or for doing a poor job.
There's a reason that she's asked to return up to the NICU and Newborns
unit that she'd originally started in when they're short staffed and
someone is able to cover her place down in the trauma bay. Molly's as
experienced and knowledged as half of the doctors here. Anyone who's
been working with her for more than just a few months knows that what
actions she takes on and for the patients is grounded in medical
know-how and reason.
This, thankfully, bleeds into areas outside
of patient healing too. So when she sifts through the cupboard behind
the nurse's station and finds the plastic hospital bag with "Glennen,
P." written on the blank white sticker, no one stops her when she takes
it by the drawstring handles and returns to the patient's room.
Once
back in room 8 with Henry/Peter passed out in his bed, Molly sifts
through belongings until she finds a cellphone and hunts for the name
'Sophie' in the directory. She'll not hesitate to press the 'Call'
button on the phone, but she does pause, only for a moment, before
bringing it up to her ear.
While listening to the line ring and
worrying her lower lip gently between her teeth, Molly sought a wallet
or other form of identification from the belongings bag to nose through
and try and get a better understanding and feel for the rapidly
deteriorating man in the bed.
Waste
The contacts
list in the flip phone is strangely short. All first names or
occupations. There's an Adam, Barber, Ben, Gloria, Home, June, another
(or maybe the same) Peter, Smith, and of course a Sophie.
She calls and after three rings the line opens with a click.
"Dear
Henry, I was beginning to think you might have left town. But you're
not one to skip off on a gold rush," the voice thick and feminine,
nearing a deep as a woman's might get without losing even an octave of
its seductiveness. There's confidence and power in it. She seems neither
perturbed by the call or unprepared to answer it. This is the banter of
one who is use to having the upper hand. The accent is similarly
Southern, but in a way different from Peter's more slurred crafting of
words. More practiced and proper. It hints at a thorough and varied
education.
The wallet had most likely gotten the same autopsy most
billfolds get on the way to the emergency room. The cash is gone, a
50/50 chance when it comes to the ambulance staffers getting their cut
of a man who could go the way of carrion before they even drop him off
at the station. The identification is a picture of a younger man. A man
she recognizes from earlier in her rounds. A man who ought to still be
in the bed she's standing beside. Peter Glennen. All the credit cards
give the same name. So does his insurance card. Other than that, though,
the wallet is devoid of any hints at his everyday life. No family
pictures. Not even a club card from a restaurant or retailer...
Until she goes to pull free his driver's license, that is, in search of something about this man's past, present, or future.
A
small rectangular picture with worn edges hides behind, a crease down
the center lit it was once folded in half. It shows a house. A large
house on forested property in black and white with a family standing on
the front porch between its tall white columns holding up the front
awning and balcony.
The picture is old and there is the slightest
of family resemblances to Peter who might be Henry or who really knows
at this point who the Hell he is, a resemblance to the two young boys,
in their late single digits, and there is also a young girl on the verge
of her teens, a woman in her twenties, an older woman and an older man,
both looking to be on the far side of sixty. All seem dressed in their
Sunday best, black and white hiding the color of their dresses,
schoolboy uniforms, sun bonnets and suits.
The picture looks not of this century or the previous century.
Answering
questions about this man on the bed seems to be a dangerous game that
only unearths more. Sophie, though, still waits on the line for an
answer to her greeting.
Molly Toombs
What she
finds in the wallet is pretty typical. An I.D. with his face on it that
pronounces him to be Peter Glennen, which made since since that's the
name that wound up on his charts. The credit cards are unexpired and
say the same thing. The picture, though, catches her interest. She's
got it unfolded and is standing with her back to the door, facing the
patient's moniter to make it seem like she's watching it or checking
vitals or something like that.
When the line picks up and a
woman's voice purrs into it, deep and seductive and self-assured,
Molly's expression goes a bit stark. There's something chilly and
familiar about the type of confidence and refined nature to the accent
that struck as a bit familiar in a way that settled in the small of her
spine.
Eyes go from the picture to Henry's aging face, suspicious and cautious, when she answers.
"Your dear Henry is wasting away in a hospital bed at St. Luke's in Denver, Colorado."
She
leaves a moment for that to sink in. Despite the crawling sense of
uncertainty, suspicion, and the growing feeling that she's walking up to
the edge of something that she really shouldn't be getting involved in,
Molly's voice doesn't show any of that. She sounds curt,
matter-of-fact, and down to brass tacks. What the woman can pick up
from her voice on the phone is that Molly is a younger, healthier woman
with plenty of life left in her. With a voice that sits average on the
scale between deep and high, and a sense that she knows what she's doing
and what she's talking about based on the tone and inflection that she
speaks with.
Sure, Molly doesn't always know what she's falling
into, but making it seem like she knows her ground and holds it firmly
has behooved her in the past. No reason to stop that practice now.
After the message had a second to sink in, Molly continued.
"He says that time is of the essence and he needs to see you immediately."
Waste
Molly's
pause to let Henry's condition settle and process seems enough, because
once she relays the next part of her patient's message the woman
responds a tick of the second hand later. "Would you mind telling me,
miss, just how far his condition has progressed?"
Is progressing.
The next time that she looks at Peter, the gentleman seems another five
years older. Gaining on a decade. Hair that had been tousled up into a
silver halo around his head is now falling like wind-freed fibers of a
dandelion. Time seems to be ravaging him, age setting in as spots sprout
along his arms and hands.
His blood pressure if fluctuating, not
in a race toward death as much as it is a steady march toward one
befitting the life cycle of the humans she has seen come and go. A
weakening heart getting on in years and struggling to do its best when
best and worst are very much relative terms.
The voice is colder on the other end of the line when it cuts through again. "Guesstimate, if you must, my dear."
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Empathy 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
The
monitors start to indicate declining health of the heart and blood
pressure. Not to any degree that would cause alarms or alerts to go
off, but now his vitals showed as an old man that had perhaps another
ten or fifteen years of life left in him, assuming that none of his
organs failed or cancer didn't settle into his colon.
Sophie
wanted to know how far his decline had fallen, but her question isn't
answered immediately. Instead she hears Molly cuss again, a quiet
little: "Son of a bitch...," before the cellphone jostles
against skin and hair and fabric. Molly shifted from holding the phone
with her hand to having it tucked between her head and her shoulder.
This freed her hands so that she could work to remove how the monitor
was hooked up to the man without sending any alerts to the nurse
station. At this rate she was pretty sure that he would flatline in the
next five to ten minutes, and she didn't want to have to deal with the
aftermath of nurses rushing into the room to find her there with a man
who had suddenly aged three times over the course of an hour.
While
she worked, tucking wires and sticky pads back on the hooks of the
monitor itself, she spoke in a tone of voice that was pressed and
bothered, but not shaking or wavering in any way.
"Well he went
from being a healthy, albeit concussed 35 year old man to being about 50
over the course of I'd say an hour or two. Then in the past fifteen
minutes he reached 70. If this pace continues, it's not gonna be worth
your time to come out here in the next... oh, I'll say ten minutes or
so."
Waste
One might assume that Sophie is, from
her tone, judging what action might be taken to help Henry based on the
information that Molly relays. Might mistake it for the calculations of a
physician, disconnected emotionally from a patient, but still looking
for a means of remedy.
Molly, though, can see behind that veil
something far more cool and logical. She is weighing her options and
perhaps considering cutting her losses rather than stick her neck out
for what might be, at best, a salvage operation. Easily likened to
preserving organs for transplant once its known their current receptacle
is too far gone.
Molly, it seems, is correct in that last bit of information she is sharing. As to whether or not it is...
Worth her time.
"What
a waste. But he did know a full life. And then some. Please do send him
my regrets I could not be there to aid in his recovery," finally
speaking after having remained quiet, listening to the curses and the
sound of that beeping growing slower. Taking in the context of Molly's
recommendations.
And with that the line disconnects.
Molly Toombs
[Intelligence 3 + Occult 2: Come on, girl, work it out. Spending WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 2, 7, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Molly Toombs
When
the woman on the other line resigns to the fact that this man will die,
Molly does not jump in or cut her off or try to convince her
otherwise. She merely presses her lips together, purses them like a
school teacher surveying a student who misbehaves but doesn't respond to
scolding, and takes the phone away from her ear to look at the screen
on it. It informs her that the call was disconnected and reverts to its
default screen.
She wants to rake her hand through her hair out
of habit, and nearly does but her fingertips stop at her forehead when
she remembers the bobby-pins and that she'd only tangle herself up. So,
instead, she scrubs the heel of her hand against the ridge of her brow
before placing the cell phone on the bed between the rail and the man's
waist.
Her mind has been ticking and whirling through the whole
situation. The significance of the blood, the cool, old, detatched tone
on the other line, and how easily it drew to the conclusion of cutting
ties and calling losses, without even a fleck of remorse. The fact that
she'd said this man had already lived a full life.
How old had Kragen actually said he was, again?
She'd
had guesses before, and truthfully this was one of the first things
that she'd tentatively been wondering, suspecting, even as she'd left
the room to go fetch the cellphone from the man, before she'd even heard
Sophie's voice.
She leans over the bed once more, and places her
hand on the side of Henry's withering face. Taps her fingers against
his cheek a few times. Ordinarily she would pinch sharply at the skin
on the back of a hand to wake someone in the hospital bed, but at this
rate his skin was growing to be paper thin, and doing that would cause
more damage now than it would have an hour ago.
"Henry," she tells him. And then she tries: "Peter." Instead.
"She's
not coming. I think I can try to help, I know people, but I can't
promise they can get here fast enough. I need to know if you want me to
try, or if you just want to go." Her voice is as firm as ever, but
takes on a far more solemn tone now. This was death they were
discussing, after all.
Waste
Henry wakes up. His
eyes flutter and this time they are a bit milkier than they were before.
Duller and clouded at the irises. He finally manages to focus on her.
First her face and then her words, the ones after the names she tries,
and he takes in her proposition.
He finally nods. Something about
the gesture seems to break him. Like a man moving his last chips in a
blind bet, he finally resigns to consent, but the way his deflated lips
wrinkle and purse together at her it is like he has taken a long drink
of sour milk. He glances down. The IV is changed. He can tell by the
splotching of bruises on the back of his hand and the new bag. There is
still a sharpness to him, the fact he doesn't need to ask, instead seems
to now.
Glancing back up. Lips move again, wrapping around
questions he does not ask, most likely, "Who?" Only the rounding of the W
is made, but the possibilities are there. Who could she know? Who could
some night nurse in some hospital - he doesn't even know which -
possibly know that could help with his particular problem? Mend a body
falling in on itself and verging on the great equalizer.
But he
nods, yes, then waves his hand. More barely raises his fingers, letting
it fall, and looks to her own. The one that had been tapping his cheek
only moments earlier. And closes his eyes again.
Molly Toombs
She
manages to rouse the man back into consciousness, enough to get an
answer. He tried to ask her a question, and given the way that he
looked at her with his increasingly bushy brows furrowed in confusion
and doubt, she could take a pretty good guess at what that question
was. How do you know what I need? Who would you be bringing to me?
Who are you, to understand what's happening here?
None of
these questions are answered, not just because he closes his eyes to
rest, but because Molly didn't feel much like explaining herself, simply
put. She didn't know this man, and frankly she didn't trust him
either. She knew that he was the sort that was interlaced in the world
of vampires enough that he'd formed a bond with this Sophie, and that he
drank of her blood. She figured that this was his real age catching up
to him, finally, and that the picture in his billfold was probably one
of his father's family before him, or something like that. She didn't
want to believe that one of those children was actually him, but she
wouldn't argue it if he told her so.
She knew that Kragen was
impressively old but only looked to be somewhere in his mid to late
forties. She also knew the kind of emotional bond that developed when
you let yourself be bound to a Vampire-- she and Kragen had a long, and
incredibly informative conversation about this in the front seat of his
car. She hasn't told anyone, not a soul, but he had offered to give her
the same path that he had-- to have the powers and longevity that he
could boast without needing to be so painfully bound to an Undead man or
woman (or thing, in some cases).
She'd declined, and he'd left
the offer on the table. As far as she knew, the offer was still there.
She was content to leave it.
The man closed his eyes, and Molly
moved away from his bed. His cellphone was left there with him, and her
own was fished out of the deep pocket of her scrub pants. There's a
phone number programmed in there, even though the business card is kept
on her dresser at home. She goes to the 'F' section, finds 'Flood', and
hits 'Dial'.
Her right hand holds the phone to her ear, her left
hand cradles the right elbow, and she watches the door of the room while
she waits for an answer.
Waste
Molly cycles through the possibilities the same way that a healthcare professional might consider treatments. They have their merits and their drawbacks. Kragen. Perhaps Tommy. Maybe she considers a consultation of her books? But the progression and prognosis offered by Sophie might leave her feeling she lacks the time to do so.
And finally she comes upon Flood.
The nurse turns away from her patient, leaving him to the hands of time that draw lines in his skin like striations on a sand dune, and guards the door as she waits. As the phone rings. One time. Twice. Not a third time. Flood's voice follows the opening of the line.
"Good evening," it begins, all the charm and tonality of a mandolin in its expression of syllables, "and all the better for hearing from you," that last word accompanied by the sound of a smile that resonates even once his tongue has silenced it.
And the silence continues as he awaits a reply from the woman on the other end.
Should she turn in the midst of this just begun conversation Molly would see the patient whose chart says he is Peter continuing to age. On through his late 70s, his early 80s, though perhaps slowing? Or perhaps the body has found an equilibrium, a dried leather cover to a tomb, though that does not mean its meat is not still crumbling to dust.
What had she ventured to guess? Ten? Perhaps fifteen minutes at the most? Only a few have passed, but it is continuing, and perhaps the slowing is also just because of that change of intravenous drip.
Molly Toombs
While the phone rang in her ear, Molly stood in the middle of the room, somewhere between the bed at her back and the door in front of her. One hand held the phone to her ear, the other cupped that arm's elbow. Fingers drummed against her arm while she waited for the phone to pick up. Every so often, Molly would glance back over her shoulder at the man, to watch and see how the aging continued, to check and see if his breathing would cease. She had to detach him from his monitors for fear of him flat-lining-- if that happened, others would come in to try and save him, to deal with the damage. Then they would see that there was an old man where a younger man should be, and the questions would start up. Since Molly was in the room with him, alone, the questions would fall on her. What did you do? What kind of a sick joke is this? Take your shit and go.
Thankfully, his fragile chest continued to move under the sheets and the aging seemed to slow just a little bit, though not enough time had passed yet for her to know if it would stop or if it just seemed like it was slower because the only place he had left to go was cryptkeeper.
The line picked up, and Flood's melodic voice greeted her as she had anticipated-- all full of the same charm that the snake in the garden of Eden had to boast.
"Evening, Flood," she greeted him by name, which suggested that she was getting accustomed to familiarity with the undead man. He could tell just from the first few syllables that her voice carried that her tone was tight, that her words were stressed and a little rushed. The mortal was under pressure, and she didn't waste time with catching up chatter before continuing on.
"I've got a... situation here at St. Luke's, and it's the kind that someone like yourself would be better at handling than I could hope to."
She knew there weren't cameras or audio equipment in this room with her-- that's now how hospitals worked. Privacy was considered, to an extent at least. So long as she wasn't doing this out in the hall no one but the dying man behind her would overhear.
"There's a Ghoul trying to make a scene about dying."
Waste
"I would be happy to be of assistance," he answers calmly from the other end, his voice a little less cool than she might have expected.
Then it chimes back with a bit more whip-wit, "Please ask him or her to indulge me a brief intermission so that I don't miss the end of the show."
"I will ring you back when I arrive at the hospital," he finishes. Each word has the cadence of a step, and though he does not breath, the exhalation necessary to finish this final contribution to the conversation is disturbed with the rhythm of one spurred to movement by her request.
The line closes and the shallow rise and fall of the now old man's chest continues. On and on for the next portion of the hour, a hearty pie slice of the clock eaten up by big and little hands, until this time it is her phone that receives a call. Her relative autonomy in her rounds would soon now begin to be tested and the reason for her disappearance into this room might just begin to raise eyebrows.
But the dead man, summoned, has arrived. And is waiting for his call to be answered.
The man in the bed behind her once again begins to stir, though this time more slowly than before, eyes fluttering and opening as he again begins looking around the room. At the machines. His arms remain at his side and he looks up at Molly, silent, though his mouth does open a bit around he tubing framing it down from his nose.
Molly Toombs
There's a brief pause after Flood explains that he'd be happy to assist, and Molly chirps in somewhere in between his confirmation that he would be there and his requesting that she tell the old man to wait before dying: "Really?" She sounded surprised, but had not much more to say or add beyond that. He said he'd call her back when he arrived, and Molly wasn't sure how far he would be coming from but expected that it would probably be within the next hour or two, given the condition of the roads. So, she ended the call with a nod that nobody was seeing and by saying: "I'll keep my phone on me. Thank you."
She hoped she wasn't thanking him prematurely, and that the situation would not become exasperated instead of resolved by his introduction to the equation.
---------------
Molly was able to hover around the room for another five or so minutes before she noticed that the aging process had slowed itself down to either a stand-still or a crawl that was so slow that she could no longer perceive it. She'd nudge the very old man awake, gently rousing him by touching his shoulder and arm. When she had enough of his attention she explained flatly, simply: "I have a friend coming. He may be a little while-- the roads outside are terrible right now. I can't just stay in here, so you need to just rest and keep quiet. I've turned off your monitors, and I'll be in to check on you. Just... hang on until he gets here, okay?"
Whatever answer she may get is going to be turned into his accepting her conditions, but chances are high that he just plain didn't argue. With that being the case, Molly resumed her shift, making her appearances checking on other trauma patients and even going so far as to do a quick patch-up job placing stitches in a five-year-old's split chin. She'd gone back to check on the old man twice since she left, as promised, and thankfully each time he was still breathing, fluttering, hanging on but just barely.
By chance she was just closing the door to Peter/Henry's room behind her, closing herself inside, when her phone started to buzz and ring in her pocket. This caused the old man to stir, and Molly glanced at him, pulled the phone from her pocket and glanced at it, then spoke for the withering patient to hear. "This will be him. I'll be right back, okay? Don't... " She paused, frowned a little, then shook her head. "Don't go anywhere."
Yeah, as if he would.
Molly was on her way back out the door, walking toward the emergency room entrance doors (where she assumed Flood would be entering through, but she could be wrong), when she answered the call. Her phone had to ring four times before she got to it.
"Flood, you're here?"
Waste
As much as the wizened face can be twisted into hesitance those muscles still attached to wrinkled and loose skin work to do so. He does not remain silent, but it's not words he answers with, only a sigh of consent that comes with the slightest of nods. The man still seems to be slumbering. He looks tired. A spirit slumbering inside a foreign form. Trapped and on the edge of hopelessness. That is until Molly speaks again.
"Flood," he responds to her announcement of the Lasombra's imminent arrival. The now-aged man repeats the words. It is almost less of a reply, more a question he is asking himself, the last thing she hears as she turns away and heads out the door and goes to meet the one who she has petitioned to be his benefactor. He seems hesitant. Disbelieving.
Cautious.
This seems to be his true state. A more familiar one. A glimmer of the man he was only hours earlier.
But the nurse-turned-necromancer does not have time to inspect and analyze this turn in her ward's countenance. The dead man she had summoned has arrived and she is off to meet him.
If an entity can look alien in a locale it would be Flood in St. Luke's Hospital. It is a hub of those on their way out of this world or otherwise shackled by the frailties of their living condition. The tower of a man with his straight back and confident gait could never seem imprisoned by any weakness. It is a venue of procedure and prognosis. A place of science and rote. Its staff move in carefully choreographed routines, taming the wild nature of injury and tending it, moving through the nexus of hallways and caves of wires and machines like worker ants serving a greater purpose: the common good. Let's not talk about Flood's relationship with good and evil. Let's focus on the fact he has none of the sterility of this place. Of the scrubs and gowns that are its denizens' uniforms. He is precise, yes, but charming and simply more fluid. There is character embellished or emblazoned on every tailored inch of him.
Blue suit, brown brogue boots laced up past his ankle so that they peek with the rise and fall of pant hem break, buttoned vest and darker paisley blue and white tie, and of course a hat. A white pocket square. A crisp spread collar shirt.
And a mission judging by the measured swiftness his steps carry him to the woman.
"I am," speaking through his phone as he goes through those doors she had anticipated. As he breezes past the outer rings of this ammonia-and-disinfectant onion. As he continues toward her and spots her and shuts the phone to slip it into his pocket.
This time to her face, "As you can see," that he is, indeed, here.
He does not seem to mind this foreign place. This place where... Where, there is only one room for people like him, only one place in a place like this and that place is in the basement and tucked away where the patients do not need to see their future.
And as he speaks and moves to stand before her, it is obvious he has an inherent refusal to retire to such a place.
He would much rather explore this new mystery, a tempting incantation from an Irish witch, the one she has lured him with.
Molly Toombs
Flood's answer goes through the receiver some child-sized fistful of seconds before Molly herself appeared in the E.R.'s waiting room. Double doors that granted access back into hallways for the admitted swing open, and her distinctly blue eyes (not the green of the Isles) were already skimming faces and bodies to find the man on the line.
Mercifully, Flood is incredibly easy to pick out of a crowd. Between the pallor of his skin, his almost profound height and stature, and the fact that he dressed like a million dollars, Molly was able to locate him almost immediately. As he closed his phone and put it in his pocket, Molly did the same-- ending the call and dropping the little device into one of the deep thigh pockets of her scrubs. He walked toward her as she did him, and they wound up meeting face-to-face in the empty space between chairs and carpet tiles where people were herded to wait and the double doors that Molly had come through initially.
Seeing her in person, Molly's face was as intense as her tone in the initial phone call had indicated. She didn't smile to greet him (but that wasn't something that she did often, anyways, so that itself wasn't out of the norm), and the energy about her hummed and jangled with insistence and urgency alike. She held it together well-- she always did, but she didn't pause for small talk. Only took enough time to nod at him in agreement and meet him in the middle before turning about and leading the way back through those double doors.
One of the nurses at the receptionist's desk watched the brief exchange curiously, suspiciously at first. She would hopefully fall back on the trust that M. Toombs was a professional and always knew what she was doing. It was a busy night anyways-- she had people standing waiting to be addressed to worry about.
As Molly led Flood back through the hall to the room that housed the ghoulish man, nestled into what was increasingly promising to be his death bed, she glanced briefly back at him, then forward again. "Hope I didn't pull you away from anything," she said while briskly carrying herself on sneakered feet. She was commenting on his attire-- she'd never seen him dressed in anything less than a suit before, but it was worth breaking the silence over. She hadn't seen him since their cigar date, since he set the grounds on what she was or was not to be saying to her reporter friend. She could only guess whether he knew about Marszalek's recent brush with death or her involvement in keeping him on this side of the river of life and death.
That wasn't what they were here for, though.
However Flood may answer, Molly listens. Even while they reach the door to the room she's been flitting in and out of. When she opens the door and holds it open for Flood to step inside first (if he doesn't decline and usher her ahead of him, anyways), she starts to explain. "Here he is. He's been this way for probably about the past... hour or so."
Only after she closes the door does she become more free with her speech.
"He was admitted looking like a healthy man in his mid-thirties. Then we did some blood transfusions and put him on blood thinners, and when he woke up he started... withering. Aging, I guess. At first it was insanely fast-- right before my eyes fast. But then it slowed down and paused here. I'm guessing that's because this is how old he actually would be, without the blood?" When the question was raised, she glanced back to Flood for confirmation. Aside from that, though, Molly approached the bed to check and make sure the man was still breathing.
Waste
Once she opens the door he steps through. Here he is her guest, here at her request, and enters the patient's room. Molly gets more than confirmation. The nod isn't just one that supports her theory. It also tell that he is impressed with her formulation. There's the hint of a smile in it that fades once he turns his attention from her and toward the dying man.
Dying. Not dead. He is still breathing. He seems to be preparing himself for the moment. For this meeting. At least as much as he can in his hospital bed. He pushes his head upright. Nestled back and forth enough to adjust the pillow and keep it there. Levels a steady gaze onto Flood. Not looking him in the eyes, but instead as close to his cheekbones as he can come to the raw emerald shards, and holds there.
"You know what I am?" The man doesn't nod.
"I am Lasombra," and his eyes don't widen when Flood says the words without any accent that would denote a modern language. There is nothing contemporary about it. She had head him order cigars before. Heard him twist Spanish words with the accent of someone fluent in Italian. But this? It sounds unearthed. Primordial. Prehistoric. At least before the history of the living. Oh, the word is Spanish, but the way he mashes it together with a different fluency makes it something altogether different. The weight of his voice - and the word's own gravity - crushing it from simple shadow to black diamond and leaving little mystery that the noun is very proper in its semantics.
"Do you know what that means?" He says. His words become a bit softer. As if they would become easier for the man to chew upon in this husk of a body.
The man nods.
Flood finally looks him over. It is as if he is examining an object. Maybe nothing so cursory as a trinket or tool. More like an old car. Judging its use in a way only a vampire can judge the use of the living as if they are chattel.
It is brief and he seems to make a decision in the few moments that span between being presented with the man - and Molly's - problem.
"I can help him," so he must be speaking to Molly again. "And he can help me," bending forward to look at the man's face one last time.
"Quid pro quo," and he turns toward Molly. Finally. Doesn't look her up and down the way he sometimes does. Looks her straight in the face.
"Do you want to be here for this?" The question is direct and at the same time alludes to her witnessing some unknown transaction. Like the signing of some contract with the devil.
Molly Toombs
As it turned out, the man was well and conscious enough to scoot and adjust himself in the bed when she and Flood had entered the room, so Molly didn't need to go check the man's pulse and breathing after all. Instead of approaching the bed, in that case, she hovered near the center of the room, partway between the bed and the door. She'd stayed on top of her job and made sure that everything was in order with the front desk pertaining to this patient. Charts submitted, nurses alerted that the patient was stable and doing as well as to be expected. They shouldn't be bothered at all. But, still, Molly was nothing if not cautious, especially about guarding her place here at St. Luke's. So, she stays aware of the door.
If she were an eager pupil, she would probably have shown more excitement with the way that Flood had nodded, indicating both that she was correct and that he was impressed with her being able to draw that conclusion on her own. If he'd said anything to commend her aloud, she probably would have just had to remind him: What? I'm smart, remember.
The Undead Man stepped forward to survey the withering human in the bed, looking him over as he would a piece of equipment that could be salvaged. He seemed to be calculating cost versus return. Molly was silent through the exchange, but given the old, historic, heavy way that the word Lasombra was dropped had the word immediately and forever dog-earred and highlighted in the book of her mind. Flood was a Vampire, Flood was Sabbat, and now Flood was Lasombra on top of that. She'd make a note to ask him what that entailed later. For now, she watched.
She watched until Flood turned to address her again, at which point her eyes sharpened from the half-away cast they'd taken while she was contemplating the origin of the new word she'd learned from him. She looked him in the eye, while the man in the bed would not, as though she could not understand or didn't see any problem with it.
I can help him, and he can help me.
"Good," was Molly's answer. Her tone was a little curt, but without ill intent. She was clearly just eager to see this breach in reality resolved as quickly as possible.
Do you want to be here for this?
The follow-up question gave Molly only a moment's pause. It was just long enough for Flood to see her roll the question over partway before recognizing the potential behind it. Her eyes lit up. This was an invitation to witness something new, something supernatural, something that she's never seen before. It was an opportunity to learn, and more than that, to understand. He may have meant it as an offer to bow out and not witness something grotesque or uncomfortable. He may have even meant it as a challenge, to gauge and judge how she'd answer.
Given the enthusiasm that he'd left nestled in her breast for the otherworldly when they'd last met, he probably already knew that her answer would be--
"Of course." Her eyes flicked toward the man in the bed for a second, like she should ask and receive his permission to stand by as well, but she didn't outright ask. And she would stay regardless of how uncomfortable the prone old man seemed to be with it anyways.
Molly Toombs
The answer is given and met with another kind of subtle approval that comes with the slightest of nods. Flood seems far less concerned with the old man's reaction to her presence for the sealing of their blood covenant. He turns back and looks down. Not at him. At the cuff of his shirt. His fingers find the cufflinks their with an easy precision and pry them free. Folds back the cuff of his shirt and then pulls back the sheaths of cotton and wool to show his wrist. Its skin is as white as the marble of the famed David of Florence and just as lifeless despite the movement.
It goes to his mouth. The teeth there are a different manifestation of the same milkiness. Glimmering pearls that focus the light to their points. Extended they find a home in his flesh as his wrist flexes back. He closes and open is mouth and when the swath of flesh shows itself again it is broken by two telltale pinholes.
Pinholes that begin to well with dark vitae. Not blood. It does not flow with the pulse of a heart. It sits there welling in two growing droplets. Flood's hands are not balled into fists and at first this might seem strange. They are open. It is like some joke of benevolence the way his fingers splay and straighten. It is almost as if he is giving a gift when he moves the wrist to hover mere inches from the man's mouth.
A mouth that opens willingly. None of his own natural teeth remain. They, spit free, had tumbled down to rest in the nooks and crannies of his hospice nest. There is now show of effort and still the blood begins to flow more deliberately.
And freely.
Almost bountifully.
Almost.
Just enough. The man's lips suckle at empty air for a moment and there is a hatred in his eyes when the flow stops.
Flood doesn't dwell on that frustration and look of wanting. He focuses on closing the wound - she will notice he does so with the lick of his tongue, the muscle spread wide and leaving the limb stainless as before. Then he turns back to Molly.
"I will take him off your hands, if you wish, my dearest Molly. He will have a certain resilience now, but anything more might make him less-than-tractable. These things take time and I'm certain no one in this room wants him here in the interim," and interesting choice of words, that last one, in that is denotes the establishment of a new status quo. A period of flux and readjustment.
Molly Toombs
The entire process was regarded with the same grave silence that would be offered were this some sacred ritual. Molly made not a sound, but watched with wide and focused eyes every step of the way. Eyebrows lifted, regarding Flood while he put twin pinprick holes in his wrist. From there she watched the man, toothless after rapid aging had ravaged him. Her eyes only hopped away when the blood flowed more freely and the man drank more desperately. She didn't stop watching entirely, but she refused to look at faces any longer. Something about bearing witness made this feel like voyeurism, so she watched the back of Flood's head and monitored his side profile instead.
When he straightened up, she showed particular interest in the trick with the healing tongue.
Once Flood turned back, he'd find Molly standing several feet away with her hands in the pockets of her pants. She looked bright eyed, a little flushed in the cheeks. There was excitement, no doubt, at witnessing and learning something new in this supernatural shadow of the world that she grew up in. She knew about Ghouls and what they needed to become one, thanks to a detailed conversation with a man she hasn't seen in some time, but seeing it first hand was different. She'd also had no clue about healing capabilities-- that tidbit was exciting as well.
She looked pulled from a daze of discovery when addressed, and blinked once before refocusing her eyes onto Flood's so she could pay mind to him while he spoke. He was offering to remove the man from the hospital, and cautioning that what he'd just offered the man, what the man had just greedily sucked up like a hungry calf with a bottle, would cause.... well, he didn't say for certain. All that Molly could glean was that the man should probably be taken away for whatever changes he was about to undergo.
The nurse nodded her head and removed her hands from her pockets. "Yeah, we can't leave him here if that's the case." In a moment of thought and distraction, she turned her head about to find the wall clock and gauge the time. Her jaw moved behind closed lips, she seemed to be thoughtfully working her tongue or cheek between her molars. "My shift is up-- it actually ended about ten minutes ago. I can help, if you give me time to go sign over to the next nurse on duty?"
Waste
"That would be very helpful," is Flood's first and foremost response to her offer. That and another pleased smile at it. It isn't necessarily a warm expression, but it get the point across in displaying a certain interest in her continued offer of care for this man who she doesn't know from a chart or Adam - other than the fact he is somehow tied to the supernatural. It's the mix of her tempered sympathy and precocious curiosity that seems to interest him most.
"The whole spectrum seems represented, doesn't it?" An almost conversational tone. More relaxed now that the situation is seeming to stabilize itself. You, this man who is in between the two worlds you know, myself, and on the other side of that door," the door he looks up to and through its slit of wire-crisscrossed-glass, "all the absolutely clueless individuals who will no double live and die as such."
And then a glance at the clock.
"Yes. Take your time. I will take some more time to become acquainted with our now-mutual friend," a nod to her that shows she may take her leave - though whether he thinks she is waiting for his permission to do so or not is more veiled.
Molly Toombs
Molly had nodded her head when Flood had agreed to wait for her to officially sign off from her shift. Her attention had shifted from Flood to the man in the bed, watching to see if any drastic changes were already beginning to happen. Or, perhaps, if there were any cues that his behavior would become erratic.
This is why she's distracted, and a little taken aback when Flood's tone shifts and he begins speaking conversationally, commenting casually on the states of life being represented in all four here as though it were as interesting as a hummingbird at the feeder outside the window. Oh, look and see.
"Yeah, I suppose...," she said semi-cautiously, like she wasn't too sure what to make of the observation, and then glanced back over at the man in the bed one more time before nodding again and walking to the door.
She paused just long enough to turn back over her shoulder and say: "When I get back we'll take him out through the side entrance instead of the emergency doors. Those visitor doors are less busy." And with that said, she left the room to go sign over to the next nurse.
----------------
It takes her perhaps seven minutes at most before she's back again. When she returns she has her bold red peacoat on and buttoned up. It has a cinched waist and a sash that tied about it as well. You had to hand it to her, the nurse at least knew how to shop for her figure.
Flattering though the coat might be, Molly's strange blend of a flickering sense of adventure and grim caution had her feeling anxious. She sounded hurried when she closed the door behind her.
"Is he ready to go?"
Waste
Whatever change is taking place waits to be obscured by door and distance. Perhaps it is a sense of pride. Not wanting to display any more powerlessness than necessary in her presence. While Molly is gone remaining tubes and patches of sensors are removed and discarded. Whose power this effort is undertaken by she can probably ascertain by Flood's remaining aloofness and the fact his feet don't seem to have strayed from where he'd been standing when she left. Either way Henry is sitting up at the edge of the hospital bed with his gown still gone.
Flood probable would've gone quiet or changed the subject (but maybe he did?) if he didn't want her to hear his last words (and of course he gets the last word) in the conversation that had played out while she was gone.
"Say what you will," he delivers with his unmistakable assertiveness, "but you're the one who got yourself into this predicament, and she is the one who fished you out from the river Styx," a matter-of-fact smile, light as the tiny shake of his head, as he turns toward the sound of the opening door.
"He may still need a wheel chair," to Molly.
"I don't need a fucking wheel chair," to Flood, most certainly not to Molly, a certain respect he now refuses to give her, despite the way his tongue works more easily. Thanks to her calling of the vampire now present. There is a slight slur. His lips don't form around the words as easily. But he says it nevertheless. And propels himself onto his feet. Might stagger before finding his balance.
"I have a coat in the car," he says. "I can pull it around and meet you at the door with it, so that we aren't waltzing out him in his nightgown," looking for her...
Consent?
Yes, he wants to know if she agrees to the plan. There is a growing respect in the many-decades-dead man's voice instead.
Molly Toombs
The conversation that she had walked into did not go unnoticed. Neither did the tone that filled the room-- there was a sense that they might have been arguing about Molly's continued involvement in the matter, or something along those lines. What she'd stepped in to hear Flood finishing up indicated that Henry may have been naysaying her in some way. This seemed to be confirmed only by the fact that the Ghouled man didn't seem inclined to acknowledge her directly.
As far as Molly was concerned, that was just fine-- for now. There was an undeniable flared of insult that she felt in her breast, but that was tamped down and pressed off to the side for later. If the Ghoul got too ungrateful, she had little doubt that he would find himself cut off and struggling to make his way on his own. He'd probably try to crawl back to the vampire woman who left him for dead. Ultimately, at that point it wouldn't much matter to her. For now, she had to worry about getting him out of here so her job could stop being threatened.
The man insisted he didn't need a wheelchair and stood up. Molly watched him toddle, but he kept his feet in the end. She looked down at the hospital-standard socks on his feet (complete with rubber grips on the bottoms) and thought about shoes for a moment, then shrugged and looked to Flood instead.
"That sounds good to me. We'll meet you there." The significance of Flood's deferring to her for agreement is missed for the moment. She may reflect upon it later, but not now. Now, instead, she would wait for Flood to get moving before looking to the man and putting her hands in her coat pockets. Her eyebrow raised and she asked: "Well, shall we?"
Waste
"Rhhmm," more the sound of his throat clearing than consent or agreement with Molly's question. Finally, "Yes," ambling once or twice before gaining enough momentum to almost topple himself. But he stays on two feet and off the floor. One could only imagine the difficulty he'd have getting himself up from all the way down there.
Flood is gone in two strides. Out the door and into the hallway and then he's around the corner in just a couple more to retrieve his vehicle. In the time it takes for Molly to walk the man to the exit she has in mind for him little sound gets uttered from him. Nothing in the way of thanks. It might be mistaken for the despondence of old age if she didn't know that instead of having time to adjust all the weight of worn joints and breaking down form was so quickly thrust upon him.
But Molly has her eyes on the prize and they make their way unmolested to meet with the dead man again.
Flood has emerged from his car and crossed into the lobby again, this time a long wool coat folded over his arm. He unfolds it and shakes it open before cloaking the man in its warmth-trapping fabric. The entire gesture is done with as much sentimentality or outward sign of care for the old man as it can whilst being undertaken. It's more similar to the dressing of a deer after the kill than the word's other meaning.
And there is the car. The same Duesenberg Model J. It's the only one she'd been in before, but in an entirely different state following an encounter with dark things in an antique store he'd broken into. This time it is a hospital jailbreak they are engaged in. Once the man is covered Flood looks over to Molly to see if she will be coming along for another ride and continuing this adventure to some conclusion.
Molly Toombs
The nurse doesn't harass the man whose age had caught up with him impossibly quick. She didn't press him for conversation or bully him for a thank you that he clearly did not want to give. Instead, wrapped up in her pea coat that mismatched against the scrub pants and sneakers she wore, Molly just stayed near the old man's flank and walked with him. They didn't go back to the emergency room lobby, but instead to the side entrance that she'd expressed to Flood as being the best option. This was a single door at the side of the building rather than at the front-- thankfully, it wasn't on the other side of the building from the emergency room. They didn't have to go far, any of them.
When they reappeared to meet Flood just outside of the door, Molly was walking with her hand out to guide and brace and support the man while he walked. If he lost balance she would hold his arm or elbow, or catch his back and chest between both hands if the stumble was sudden or severe enough. Whatever growls or grumbles she got back were ignored-- she's gotten much worse from disgruntled patients. At least he wasn't spitting in her hair and calling her filthy names, like innumerable other patients that have come through those double doors before him.
Once outside, once Flood had wrapped the man in a coat and started guiding him toward the car, there was a pause. Molly had hung back to let Flood take over, and was standing on the curb of the sidewalk still with her hands in her pockets while the men departed. When the undead man glanced back to see if she would come along, Molly just hitched one shoulder up and down at him in a shrug and glanced out at the landscape briefly. It was snowing heavily still, but wind that blew wasn't a sharp or vicious one. She would survive the walk home intact.
"I can make my own way home," she told him, not waiting for him to ask. She wasn't in the mood to pussyfoot around niceties, not at all as she had been over cigars and drinks some time ago. "I don't know what he's about to go through, but I'm probably better off not being around it."
She didn't start walking, though. Apparently she planned to stay put where she was and watch them drive away. While standing and waiting, though, she'd hesitate a second before asking:
"I'll hear from you, right?"
Waste
Molly says she will not join and that it means she can make her own way along that gauntlet of urban byways between the hospital and her home. That she thinks she will be better off spared from Henry's presence causes his ear to twitch and his mouth to go flat, but he focuses on watching the old man open the door and climb into the passenger set of the car. Flood doesn't finally look up until she asks if she can expect to hear from him.
It makes him turn his head. It's a slight cant to the side that is less curiosity and more contemplation of these words and, judging by how his eyes flit the other way for a moment, of the previous ones.
"Of course you will. And if you don't it won't be for my not wanting to," the old man curling forward to reach out and grab onto the door handle, shutting his eyes to shield the now-clouded irises from a gust of wind, and then pulling it shut. Flood places two hands against the door to give it a final push close, verifying it is secure, and then rounds the car to the driver's side.
The Italian and Irish hybrid, anachronism or timeless depending on the light and angle, pulls the door open and while climbing in takes a moment to stand on the door sill and tower over the cabin's roof. To give her a last wordless look, only a thoughtful expression on his face, before his eyes sharpen and he bends down to disappear in. The engine comes alive and with the cranking of gears powers her problem and problem solver off into the night.
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