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 Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 10:55 pm
Twisting out of the way, Sircha dodged an oncoming stretcher, accompanied by three doctors, two nurses, and an attending running behind with a rolling vital sign monitor. Pushing against the wall, blue patient file to her chest, she waited until the troop had rushed past before continuing her own way. The vital sign machine continued to beep as it continued down the hall behind her, until the bump and swish of the surgery ward doors muffled the sound.
Brisk paces brought her closer to exam room B, where a new patient had just been placed. A brief look showed his name as Antony Parraw. Possibly. Sircha paused and squinted down at the chart in front of her. She didn't have to see the scrawl at the top to know Mary had filled the chart; the old woman was sweet and patient as a saint, but her handwriting and terrible memory made Sircha want to forceably retire the old bat. Half the chart was blank, and though Sircha would have gone over it with the man (she assumed Mary had at least gotten his gender correct) it was still protocol to get the preliminary information up front. How the woman had managed to survive on the staff when Sircha could hardly get a raise was beyond her and a minor point of unspoken, one-sided contention.
Snapping the blue folder shut with one hand, Sircha twisted the knob with the other and pushed the door open with her shoulder. Hopefully the man wasn't injured too seriously and managed to die while waiting. It would be fitting for Mary's eyesight to fail as well, after all, the day was already going so well.
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Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 9:30 am
Anthony Darrow was sitting in the room he had been stuck in, thinking he had been forgotten. They had seemed a bit busy, and though he was lucky enough to get a room to wait in he still felt like he was abandoned. Sitting on the examination table, bed, thing, he had his torn shirt tugged around him modestly. The front part of his shirt had been melted away by acid, and there was a ring of a burn on his chest. It hurt like crazy, but he supposed that came of not taking care of it right away. Instead of seeking a hospital when it had happened, he decided to go home, wrap it in a towel with some anticeptic, and go to bed.
That hadn't been his best idea. The burn wasn't terrible, but it had removed the layer of skin as well as some flesh. The nerve endings still intact, it hurt non-stop and he wanted something to soothe it. He had a few bumps and scrapes, bruises, from the attack in the library, but nothing as pressing as the burn.
Looking up when the doorknob was turned, he expected yet another harried staffer just poking in to tell him it would be a little while longer. The last one had been some time ago. When he saw she was coming in to the room, though, he straightened up a bit, still holding his jacket closed over his chest.
"Ah... hello..." he ventured carefully, "are you my doctor?"
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Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 3:37 pm
He sat awkwardly on the bed, straightening as she entered. Sircha glanced up, mouth already open for the token greeting when she paused for a moment at his guess, incorrect as it was. Of course she wasn't a doctor, was he blind? Doctors, outside of surgery, didn't wear scrubs, she certainly wasn't old enough, and nobody actually saw the doctor immediately upon being admitted, everyone knew that. She bitterly wondered if he actually was blind before forcibly returning to her usual script for patients. "No, I'm a nurse. Sircha Doherty, and I'll be attending you this afternoon." He looked at her too directly to be blind, and she immediately noted the awkward way he held his jacket over his chest. A chest wound, though apparently not too serious. "If you're having serious enough trouble, I can get a doctor after a preliminary examination."
She took her time opening his chart. "So what does seem to be the trouble, Mr...?" She trailed off suggestively. They'd get his full name when he checked out, but she wasn't about to embarrass herself by trusting Mary's chickenscratch.
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Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 3:59 pm
"N-no, it's not so bad... no need to trouble a doctor." He blushed a bit, feeling out of sorts.
"Darrow," he said, filling in the blank, "Tony Darrow. Ah. I, uhm, had an accident at the library and..." he shifted, showing her a bit of the burn, just the top part because he was still self-conscious. This kind of a situation was unbearable for him, as awkward as he was. He watched her imploringly, hoping she'd go easy on him.
"It's a burn... chemical," he said, trying to be vague. He didn't want to tell her a giant, acid spitting book worm had tried to eat out a hole in his chest. "I put some antiseptic on it last night but... it seems to be a bit angry today..."
He looked at her, hoping she would just give him some ointment to soothe the irritation and send him home. Hopefully it wasn't infected, or something time consuming like that. Of course, he might have prevented it a bit better if he had cleaned it more than dabbing it with a wet cloth.
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Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 4:48 pm
Darrow. Though he said his name was Tony, she could clearly see 'Anthony Darrow' in her mind, engraved on a desktop nameplate. She'd seen this man before, or at least his desk. Sircha didn't get out too too many places, but she'd seen that name at one of them. He mentioned the library, was that where she'd seen it?
"Chemical burn?" Sircha fixed him with a hard stare as she pulled a pair of disposable plastic gloves from the wall-affixed plastic box. He was hiding all but a small part of the burn under his jacket, and she could only guess at how big the whole thing was if that was what he was willing to show. "You should have come to the hospital immediately for a burn of that size. Take off your jacket and lie down. We're going to pray it's not infected, it'll heal much quicker that way."
Setting down the chart, she wriggled her fingers into the gloves. "But if it is infected," She snapped the second glove and stepped to the side of the examination table. "You may suffer some serious damage, and not just on the surface. Any number of infections can take hold in an open wound." Sepsis, gangrene, staph, she ran through the list in her head and considered threatening the man with them as she stepped to the side of the examination table. The absolute idea, running about with an open burn treated with over-the-counter antiseptic and nothing more than a jacket and an apparently torn shirt between it and the bacterial world. The man was practically asking for an infection.
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Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 5:14 pm
"O-oh... okay, but..." He frowned. How was he going to explain this? He had wrapped the thing in a towel after trying to clean it, but when he woke the next morning it had eaten through the cloth, whatever lingering acid remained. It had also eaten through his shirt on the way over, which was why he was using the jacket to cover it.
Youmas were not things he yet understood, so the how and the why were a mystery to him. But he did as ordered, removing his jacket and laying down slowly. He had only just gotten his shoulder sorted, getting rid of the sling, and now this. It had been a rough month so far.
Looking like he was already well threatened just by the promise of infection, without needing details, he watched her carefully. It hurt rather badly, and he winced even when taking the jacket away from it, though he had been trying to be careful not to let it touch.
"I hope it's nothing... too serious... I tried cleaning it this morning but... I don't think I did it very well. I thought perhaps I could get something here...?"
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Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 8:15 am
Sircha had seen far worse during her days at the trauma ward, however, her first question wasn't 'what' but 'how'. The burn was in the form of a ring, and took over a good expanse of his chest. Her first idea was some form of hazing, though the gray in his hair betrayed just enough age for her to tentatively dismiss the idea. Her hands fluttered over the wound, not touching yet, but getting a good image of it. Perhaps self-inflicted? It would explain his reluctance to show her the whole wound, as well as the hesitation in coming to the hospital. It was farfetched for someone who seemed rather grounded, but then she'd been wrong before. One never really knew what kind of cults and fraternities lay in the underbelly of Destiny City. It would be her luck, of course, to be dealing with a cult member. The hospital had enough problems dealing with the terrorists; the last thing they needed was a cult with a burning fetish.
He looked quite chastised though, and certainly in pain. Which brought her back to the original question: exactly how did a mild-mannered possible-librarian get such a burn?
"It's not infected." She said at last, pulling her hands back. "Though you should have come to the hospital when it happened," She tilted her head and fixed him with a severe look. "That antiseptic may have saved your life. The skin around the burn area is a bit inflamed, but it doesn't look serious enough for a prescription." Stepping back, she snapped off the gloves and picked up his chart. Writing in the margins, she wrote his correct name and the details of his burn. "We will, however, be cleaning it, and you will walk out of here with a proper bandage, as well as a followup appointment." Snapping the folder shut, she dropped into a squat to check the cabinet for supplies. Frowning and gritting her teeth, she stood and closed the cabinet as professionally as possible. She should have known it wouldn't be stocked, it had been a busy day and the janitorial staff usually started on the opposite end of the hospital anyway. Giving Mr. Darrow a tight smile, she moved toward the door. "I'll be right back with a cleaning kit and a bit of local anesthesia, and we'll get to work."
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Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 8:33 am
Tony listened intently as she spoke. Letting out an audible sigh of relief when she told him the wound wasn't infected. That was one less thing to worry about, anyway. He nodded at her, taking a mental note that he would have to come back here, and not to let himself get any more injuries between now and then. He didn't want to start looking like some crazy who liked to hurt himself.
Really, he was just a monster magnet. That wasn't much better as far as 'not crazy explanations' went, however.
Noting that she couldn't find what she wanted in the cupboard, he nodded slowly, glancing away. He sat up a bit, feeling silly laying down, and watched her go to the door.
"Ah, okay," he said, "whatever you think is best."
Tony wasn't one of those people who hated the hospital or doctors, but he certainly didn't like being there. In conversation he might hear himself saying 'I hate hospitals' when someone else does, but he always stops to wonder why he said it. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, after all, and generally he came home the better for it, as that was what they were there for.
Still, he preferred not having a reason to go.
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Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 11:39 am
Nodding once, Sircha slipped out the door, closing it quickly against the din in the hallway. Dodging a doctor running with a shrill beeper in hand, Sircha nudged in between patients to get into the supply closet a few doors down. Another nurse was already in there, making panicked sweeps for burn kits. She glanced up with a harried and nervous expression as Sircha entered and closed the door behind her.
"Fire down on 8th Street, Burn Unit's flooded." The woman, perhaps a little older than Sircha, chattered exasperatedly.
"Good luck." Sircha said bluntly, grabbing two kits that had fallen onto a lower shelf. Grabbing a pair of cleaning kits and some bandages, she slipped quickly back out the door, flattening immediately against the wall as a male nurse pushed a bandaged woman in a wheelchair swiftly through the crowd. A few moments and a bit of sidestepping, she was back in front of the door, and awkwardly twisted the doorknob, balancing the supplies with her other hand.
Twisting inside just in time to dodge a pair of interns hauling a portable defibrillator, she nudged the door shut with her heel and nodded in greeting to Mr. Darrow. Dropping the supplies on the counter, she separated out the ones she needed and moved them to the counter next to the examination table. "Now, Mr. Darrow, lets see about that burn." She pulled two more gloves out of the container and wriggled them on. "It's quite an unusual pattern of burn..." She strove for nonchalance. If he were indeed a cult member, now would be about the time the lies showed up, and she'd heard some pretty good ones through the years. "Exactly how were you injured?"
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Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 12:59 pm
The librarian waited patiently on the examination table, tapping his heel against the bottom rails mindlessly. He was a patient man, years of library work teaching him that skill, so he didn't mind too terribly if she took a while.
From all the sounds outside, it seemed very likely that she might not come back. He caught voices above bells and whistles, and put together that there was some kind of emergency. But when was there not, in a hospital? He heard talk of a fire, and wondered if everyone was okay.
Clearly not.
Mind occupied by these thoughts, he looked up when the nurse came back in. He shifted, so she could get a better look at it. Frowning a bit, he looked down at his burn when she mentioned it was strange.
"I ah, work at the library," he said, like that might explain everything. He pressed on, though, just in case, "a science teacher put these chemicals on reserve for students... they promised they were harmless, and though I was trying to be rather careful, the container tipped back on to me."
He looked at her, blushing a bit. It was a silly story, but something he was at least likely to do. Not that she knew him, but still. If he was going to lie, it might as well be in character.
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