Molly Toombs
While there have been lapses of
communication in Nate and Molly's friendship before, this hasn't
happened recently. Since she'd dragged him angrily from the Observatory
a few weeks ago Molly has been in regular contact. She'd text
occasionally to see what's up and make conversation. She'd invited him
out for a beer and a chatter but didn't raise any important topics
during that outing. She was just trying to find some rhythm of normalcy
for them, was all.
Then Nate showed up through the emergency room
again. Not of an auto accident this time, but due to physical
assault. The story was that he had been attacked by some psycho, and
apparently this guy was a real maniac. Like, bath-salts crazy, because
he had lost blood and needed stitches and nearly lost an eyeball.
Molly
visited him once before he'd regained consciousness post-surgery,
checked nervously on his stats and hook-ups and laid her critical eye
over the work that was done. It passed her judgment, and she'd left him
to rest. When he regained consciousness she'd visited him again, but
briefly-- she'd left after twenty minutes and told him to get more sleep
after fetching him a cup of water to sip.
Today when Molly
visited, it was sometime in the afternoon. When she'd visited last she
was wearing her scrubs-- apparently she was just breaking away from work
for a moment that time. This time she's wearing clothes from her
regular wardrobe -- Tight black jeans, brown boots to her calves, a
particularly loose-fitted long-sleeved shirt that carried a pattern of
dense horizontal stripes in cream, chocolate, and burnt orange. A black
scarf was wrapped up around her neck.
Also, she'd dyed her hair
red and cut bangs into it since she'd visited last. Upon finding Nate
awake after knock-knock-walking into the room, she smiled brightly at
him and asked: "How're you holding up?"
Nate
The
last time Molly came in to check on him Nate had been flushed with fever
and the one eye that was not occluded by gauze had been glassy with it.
That was before they realized he wasn't suffering from a bacterial
infection. They have him on so many intravenous antibiotics that it
would take a virus to make him truly sick and the only respiratory
symptoms he's exhibiting are related to his smoking cessation. The
nicotine patch on his arm staves off withdrawal but does nothing for the
junky cough that comes from his cilia regaining their functionality.
If
Nate had had any squeamishness insofar as having needles or anything
else go near his eyeball when he rolled into the emergency department
last week they're gone now. Someone figured out he has a fungal
infection. They're pouring antifungal medication and anti-emetics in
through his existing IV port on top of everything else now. They also
have to give him an intravitreal injection every day.
Anyone in the audience who does not know what an intravitreal injection is is advised not to consult a search engine.
So
Molly comes in today not wearing her scrubs or her ID badge but her
street clothes and she sees Nate is no longer languishing with fever.
His color isn't very good but it never really is. He has a gray nauseous
hue to his skin but that's to be expected.
The monitor over his bed shows that his heart rate is elevated. That's also to be expected.
When
she comes in the room Nate turns his head towards her. At least he
doesn't have anything wrong that he needs to wear his gown backwards
this time. EKG leads crawl out from underneath his gown and he wears a
pulse oximeter on the index finger of his right hand. Both arms are
gauzed up to the elbows and the IV line is in his right elbow. His left
eye is the one giving him trouble. Gauze keeps whatever dressing the
nurses have to change in place.
"Get me out of here," he says in a
deadpan. He knows he isn't going anywhere. If they let him go now he's
going to lose the eye. Realizing she's going to stay has Nate pushing
himself higher up on the mattress. "Is it just me or does your hair look
different?"
Molly Toombs
It's borderline comical
to admit that it suits to say this, but every time that Molly has come
into a hospital room with Nate inside of it, she checks him over with a
quick visual scan to evaluate how he's fairing on a general level of
health. This happens this first time too, even as she's moving the tote
bag she uses as a purse off her shoulder and setting it on a chair
within the room.
His color is poor, but that's typical for him.
At least he wasn't flushed with a fever, from what she could see. His
uncovered eye looked more alert, too, and he pushed himself up when she
walked in.
She grinned a closed-lipped little smile when he
mentioned her hair change. Like many other women after changing up
their appearance, she liked the attention that followed. She did a fair
job of playing it off cool, though, and roamed over to his bedside to
check his machines and levels and all. This, too, was typical for when
she came to his hospital bedside.
"Yeah, well. I've been dying my
hair dark since my freshman year of college. I'm about done scrubbing
hair dye off counters, so I figured I'd return to my roots, so to
speak."
It was a good choice, on her part. Where the cool dark
hair color she'd worn the whole time she'd known him had made her seem
more pale, a little more washed out behind those freckles, this color
suited her better and made her skin tone seem much warmer, more full of
life. Natural hair tones often did that on a person.
"Nah," she
said after glancing over the chart and hovering leaned against the very
edge of his bed. "That infection needs to be 100% gone before you go
anywhere."
Nate
"You know, at this point, I'm about ready to just let them take the damn thing."
It's
dark humor. Dark humor is really the only kind of humor Nate knows. But
Molly knows he isn't exactly lying here with nothing to do. A stack of
nonfiction books rests on the nightstand beside his bed and one of the
chairs nestled up against what passes for a closet on the opposite side
of the room is keeping track of his Macbook Pro and his smartphone. Both
of them glow with green lights that announce their batteries' full
charge but he looks as though he feels too ill to stare at anything for
too long with his one good eye.
She knows he's too weak to walk
unassisted but it's hard to tell if that's because the injury itself has
made him nauseous and dizzy or because all of the medication they have
him on has sent his equilibrium skittering. It takes the stockier of the
orderlies and nurses to help Nate to the bathroom but they can't let
him lie on his back all day. He was just in here two months ago after a
car crash. He hasn't finished physical therapy for his broken ribs or
vertebrae yet.
And yet the poor bastard does still have a sense of humor even if it lurks in the gallows.
The damn thing: his eye. He doesn't mean that.
"What'd
you do?" he asks to get the subject back into friendly territory. She
can see him squint and frown but the frown at least is just teasing. The
squint is the fault of his warped depth perception. "Are those bangs? Damn, Toombs. You didn't have to get all spruced up just to come visit."
That's teasing, too.
Molly Toombs
"Oh
get over yourself," Molly told him in a manner that played serious, but
was truthfully playing right along. Her tell was the fact that she
didn't raise an eye toward him, and she let the small curl of a grin
take its place at the corners of her mouth. Eyes finished skimming his
chart and she leaned forward to put the chart back in its place at the
poster of his bed. She then swung her legs around so she was sitting on
the bed with her legs aimed off to his right now, toward the door,
instead of off the bottom of the bed.
Hands rested on the sheets
behind her, helping to make holding her weight upright more comfortable,
and she looked back at him conversationally.
"You say that now,
about your eye. Then you'll wish you had it when you wipe out on your
motorcycle seven times adjusting to depth perception a whole new way.
And god forbid anymore psychos come at you, 'cause you'll need to
re-learn how to aim a gun if you're that sort."
And, from there,
she seamlessly transitioned into: "What'd you ever find about the
Observatory, by the way?" She hadn't asked him when they were out to
beer that time before the attack. She'd let weirdness lay by the side
for the sake of other topics instead.
Nate
Her
admonition has him laughing for what seems like the first time in weeks.
Not a boisterous laugh but it gets his mind off of his injury and the
illness the treatment is giving him at least. He watches her look over
his standing orders and doesn't comment on it. That's just how she
rolls.
Therein lie the nurses' instructions and the lab results
and the workup that they've done so far. His reports of nausea have
increased over the last 24 hours but he hasn't vomited yet. If he starts
vomiting the physician on duty is to start a central line. He had
another consultation with the ophthalmologist this afternoon. They
haven't ruled out a vitrectomy. If the medication doesn't stop whatever
got inside his eye from spreading they're going to have to go in and
surgically remove it.
Most of the imaging they've done on him is
on the computer but someone printed out a copy of the pre-op injury.
Everything she says about riding his motorcycle and firing a handgun is
true. He came very close to losing his eye and he isn't out of the woods
yet but the doctors are trying their damnedest to get him there.
As for the Observatory:
"Oh,
shit, yeah." He clears his throat and points over to the Macbook Pro.
"If you bring the computer over here I can show you. This whole thing is
pretty bizarre. Some guy runs a website that's pretty much all shit
like this all the time, but when I emailed him I got an out of office
message saying he'd be back on the ninth." A beat. "What day is it?"
Molly Toombs
He'd
pointed and asked her to bring the computer over, and Molly was back up
on her feet before he could completely finish what he was starting to
say. Something about some guy that ran a website that posted all kinds
of supernatural stuff like this.
She was leaned down and
unplugging his Macbook when he'd asked her what day it was. She answered
him after straightening up and turning around to approach his bedside
once more. Rather than sitting at the foot of the bed, this time she
sits up more level with him, half-sitting and half leaned onto the bed
with both legs out over the bedside and her heels bracing some of her
weight. The laptop was handed over to him before she had settled
completely so he could situate it as was comfortable on his own lap.
"The
ninth," she answered through the duration of this. "So you might even
have a message or something today." She grinned almost mischieviously,
eyes alight with some small jesting approximation of a sense of
adventure. "We could learn something new today."
Nate
Nate
hauls himself closer to the edge of the mattress to make room for
Molly. He isn't the biggest person to ever occupy a hospital bed but
he's built like someone who could have had a decent high school sports
career if he weren't more interested in smoking pot and ditching class.
Once he's settled and has the computer across his thighs Nate coughs
that spring-cleaning cough into the elbow that doesn't have an IV
plugged into it and opens the laptop's screen.
At the hopefulness
in Molly's tone his one good eye ticks up from the screen to find her
face. He does not look as though he finds this to be as enthralling a
prospect as she does.
"Greeeat," he says, then huffs out a laugh
and pulls up whatever it was he'd found. "Nah, he hasn't answered yet.
He's probably going 'Who the fuck is this guy and why is he bothering
me?'"
Tap tap. He takes a deep queasy breath.
"I lied. He
said the seventh. Anyway, he hasn't answered yet. I found some things on
his blog though. He thinks the place is haunted by two ghosts. One of
them's an Arapahoe girl. She shows up just before the other one. I'm
gonna go ahead and assume that's who was fucking with you two after the
doors shut."
He gives her room to respond before going on:
"People
on the Internet seem to think the entire park is haunted. There's
stories floating around all over the place. Uh... the name 'Ana' keeps
showing up. The shade that was latched onto me, it said it wants to find
Ana before it disappeared. At first I thought Ana might be a person but
back in 1895 someone reported a dog missing. Name was Ana. And there's
accounts of dogs turning up dead in the park for no real apparent
reason. This blogger, though. Gregg. I wanna know where he's getting his
intel from. I was gonna try to set up an interview with him but, uh..."
Molly Toombs
"...but you're going to be laid up here for a little while."
Molly
concluded for him, and peered thoughtfully at the computer screen while
she spoke. It seems like it would be appropriate for there to be a
pair of glasses perched on her nose as well, were it not for the fact
that her vision didn't need correcting.
"So...," she finished
after pondering over what information he'd just shared with her. "Did
Lux tell you what happened in that room when we got separated?"
Molly
hadn't stuck around for long-- she'd insisted on heading home quickly
after they'd gotten out and wasn't much for conversation the rest of
that night.
Nate
The last thing he pulls up onto
the screen is the blog of the aforementioned Gregg. Molly also saw that
he had several emails that he either hadn't responded to or hadn't
opened at all but he hid that window as soon as he realized Gregg's
message had said he'd be back on Tuesday.
It's Thursday. A few
weeks have passed since their fright at the Observatory. Once he's
passed on everything he gleaned from denverafterdeath.blogspot.com Nate
claps the computer shut and set it down on the bedside table.
Did Lux tell him what happened.
Nate shakes his head.
"No,"
he says. "She came by after I got out of surgery but I was pretty out
of it." He chews his lip. "I heard screaming, though. And I couldn't get
the doors open."
Molly Toombs
"Mmm...," is all
Molly has to say at first. The sound is both sympathetic and
understanding. The sympathy's not for his physical wounds, though, but
feels more directed at the implied tension and sense of helplessness
when he spoke to the fact that all he knew was he heard screaming and
couldn't open the door.
A hand lifts to follow through with the
sympathetic gesture, and she rubbed his shoulder nearer to her a few
times before dropping her hand back where it had been.
"Well, that
screaming was me. The corner with the shadows was trying to pull us
in, and actually had a hold of Lux for a minute-- she was closer when
the tremors started, so it was pulling her stronger.
"I was the
one you heard screaming. It was because the room had tipped
ninety-fucking-degrees on me. I was holding the door handle to not fall
the length of the room into that shadow pit."
Nate
For
someone like Nate who's chosen a career that leads to long hours and
relative solitude there's an almost Victorian chastity to him. Like
maintaining eye contact with another person for too long is flirtation
and not regular conversation. Physical contact isn't anything he shies
away from but in his line of work the most anyone does is shake hands.
Sometimes
they hug. Molly might remember how he had confessed to not knowing how
long he was supposed to hug the sister of a man with whom he had
developed a professional semblance of friendship the night that Shannon
died. Whatever the nature of his and Shannon's relationship was he had
kept it to himself and Molly had never actually met the woman.
All
of the photographs he has framed in his living room are of his sister
and his buddies from the Corps. A lot of camouflage or plain white
t-shirts and bottles of Budweiser. Nate is not an introvert. Being
around people does not exhaust him.
Still: she puts her hand on
his shoulder and it seems to catch him by surprise. His good eye falls
shut a moment. Beneath the flimsy gown the man's shoulder is muscular.
He's still strong despite everything that's happened to him.
When Molly takes her hand back he opens his eye and stifles another garbage-disposal cough in the side of his fist.
"The room tipped?" he asks. Incredulity from the guy who has dead people chattering in his ear pretty much constantly.
Molly Toombs
"It did for me, anyways. Not for Lux."
Molly
wasn't dim. She caught on the incredulity that carried in Nate's voice
when he sought clarification to what she was saying. She watched the
screen for another moment or two, then glanced across the room to the
door. She looks at it like she's trying to use it as a canvas for her
mind to explain what had happened.
"Like, gravity was pulling me
directly backward instead of down. If I let go of the knob, I would
have slammed back into the far wall. Lux, though, she kept standing up
on the floor like gravity was normal for her. When she finally broke
away from the pull she came over to the door where I was. Tried to open
the door and when she put her hands on mine gravity came back to
normal."
She scowled a little and shook her head. "Whatever it was, it was no good. I'm going to start reading about exorcisms next."
Nate
The
notion of exorcisms being a reality and not something that horror
novelists and screenwriters have been having a field day with for
decades makes Nate laugh again. It's muted laughter though. They were
just discussing the fact that the world fell away from them and
something inside the observatory was trying to harm two of the only
people left to whom the reporter can affix the 'friend' label.
"Maybe
I should do that instead of keeping up this newspaper reporter gig. You
think you can certify as an exorcist online the way you can get
ordained?"
Molly Toombs
Nate's comment earned him
the immediate reaction of a sidelong glance that could easily be
classified as 'the side eye'. At first she wasn't sure if he was making
fun of her, and following that she wasn't sure if he was making fun of
himself.
It took her a second and a half to realize that he was
being half-serious, and she adjusted how she was propped up on his bed.
Being as she was, with her legs out and heels propped on the floor,
wasn't comfortable to hold for terribly long. She moved her right leg
up onto the bed, stretched it out straight alongside his, and kept her
left foot planted on the floor to help with balance now.
"I'd recommend it as a side-job instead. I somehow doubt you'd be able to make rent based on exorcisms alone."
Nate
"Yeah probably not."
With
Molly sat up on the bed like he doesn't have to crane his neck to see
past her to gauge who might come across the threshold mid-sentence. He
isn't due for another course of injections or a round of vital sign
collection. If he needs to use the bathroom he can hit the call button
by his bed and meals only come three times a day. Dinner is around five
o'clock. They have to supplement his trays with Ensure shakes because
he's a good-sized and otherwise healthy young man and those meals sent
up from the kitchen don't contain enough protein or calories to keep him
from losing weight.
They don't have to worry about unannounced interruptions. But Nate glances over at the door before he speaks again anyway.
"I
still... I dunno. Lately I've been wondering if I shouldn't try to
figure out how all this works. The... them-talking-to-me thing. Ignoring
them isn't exactly keeping me out of trouble."
Molly Toombs
[Manipulation 2 + Subterfuge 2]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
Nate
[perc + empathy, -2 dice because ow]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
For
a second, while Molly was listening to Nate speak, something in her
expression flickered. It turned almost unimpressed, almost upset for
half of a second. He can see that she was about to scold him, raise her
voice a little maybe, unload on him.
Jesus Christ, Nate, do
you think maybe a little?! I've been encountering these things for,
like, two months now and since then I've nearly had my face burned off,
nearly been bashed into a wall with a fucking sofa, and then I nearly
got dropped to my death across a room apropos of nothing. I can only
imagine how much you've endured, and you still haven't tried to prepare yourself a little? What's wrong with you?
All
of that flashes across her face and behind her eyes, but she flexes her
mouth and jaw some and smooths everything out again before speaking.
"I
definitely think that's the best idea. I mean, I haven't been actively
ghost hunting and I don't know if you have or not, but I feel like
since I met Flood and Tommy Lynch there's things around every corner.
You've got like one up on the rest of us in dealing with this. You
should absolutely take advantage of that.
"I can bring you in some books if you want to get any reading done while you're laid up?"
Maybe she could meet Jack at a bookshop again.
Nate
He
sees the disappointment and the irritation in her gaze for the second
that it's there and then he watches her tamp it down. And like someone
who knows he's fucked up Nate does not call her on it or try to goad her
into throwing it at him instead of swallowing it down.
If she
didn't keep her thoughts to herself when she was stood in a patient's
room Molly would have lost her job a long time ago. He isn't a patient
but he's still not one hundred percent. At this point she may start
wondering if he's been one hundred percent the entire time she's known
him. For a flickering moment back in early autumn they had picked each
other out of a bar as being normal and safe.
That lasted all of about one day.
"Normally
I'd say yes," he says to the matter of bringing in books. Ignore the
pile on the nightstand beside him. "I almost puked earlier though. I
think the shit they're mainlining into my arm is making me sick. You
think they have Psychic Phenomena for Dummies on audiobook?"
Molly Toombs
At
Nate's complaint about his nausea (which she had read about on the
chart, but was leaving alone so as not to remind him of his own
sickness), Molly blinked like she was only just reminded of that
particular symptom. She resituated herself enough that she could hold
onto the headboard of the bed and lean herself far enough to the side
and onto her left leg that she could better make out the words on the IV
drip bag.
Whatever she read had her nodding before settling back down.
"That's
probably it," she confirmed his suspicions about the medication being
the culprit. "But it's necessary all the same. I'd rather you get a
little low in weight for a couple of days than lose your fight to that
infection-- which is also not helping your stomach, I'm sure."
"If
you want an audiobook I can probably find something for you," she
carried on as though there were no jest detected in his voice.
Then,
after a second, she jerked her thumb toward the door. "It's snowing
like whoa out there. You want to stretch those legs and go watch idiots
have fender benders in the parking lot?"
Nate
One
would think Nate was ten years old again and had been operating under
the assumption that he couldn't go outside for recess until he finished
his long division.
Despite the fact that he lives his life in
front of a computer screen the man rides a motorcycle. Even if he
doesn't make it outside during daylight hours that alone gives insight
into his character. He likes having access to fresh air and even if he
doesn't crave adrenaline having physical freedom means something to him.
He and cars have a troubled history. He feels like he has more control
riding a bike than he would driving a car.
They're both from
states that folks perceive to be mostly rural. He spent the first
eighteen years of his life in Nebraska. Lying in a hospital bed for a
week would drive him batty if he weren't so emotionally stable as to
worry every doctor that's ever met him.
"Are you serious?" He is
not well enough to throw back the sheets and leap to his feet but he
does flex them beneath the covers. "Toombs, you're an angel."
Molly Toombs
Nate's
response had Molly splitting a sincere grin across her face, wide
enough to flash teeth at him. She chuckled rather than laughed aloud,
though, and pushed off his bed and back onto her feet. She took up her
tote bag and slung the straps over her shoulders, then went to the other
side of the room to fetch the wheelchair that was folded up against the
wall.
"Oh my god, you're like a kid that just got told 'Snow Day' at breakfast. It's downright adorable."
Thankfully,
Molly's a nurse. She does this shit for a living, and has been for
longer than a number of nurses that worked the department with her
(turnover rate and all that). She was able to help Nate into the
wheelchair easily enough, and she was comfortable handling his IV as
well as the wheelchair.
"Come on. Let's go laugh at other people's frustration."
No comments:
Post a Comment