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 Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:54 pm
It had been hours since he first heard about the disaster that had seized Destiny City. It took more than an hour for the ambulance to show up to his father’s house to pick up his father and sister to get to the hospital, and it took even longer for them to even find some room to put them. While laying on a gurney in the hallway among many others, Ladon rested against the wall, tired, worn, exhausted, and filed out two packets of emergency information. (The hospital long since ran out of clipboards for him to use.) After a while, he resorted to sitting on the floor between the gurneys and writing out what little information he knew about his father and sister. At a point, he had to fish out his dad’s wallet from his khaki pants to write out more information, but felt a sick feeling at seeing how many blanks he had left on the pages. Why didn’t he know more about his father and sister? What if they died with him not knowing as much as he should know about them? Did he waste valuable moments with them where he could be asking them probing, meaningful questions? The blank spaces judged him for not being more interested in their lives, calling them more often, visiting them regardless of how tired he had felt. It also told him that he was a child, and that he never had to do such demanding paperwork before. What would happen if this lasted too long and he needed to pay bills? How would he handle that paperwork? What about their houses? Wasn’t he now responsible for them both? Would they shut down the utilities and then take the houses on the bases of some legal reason he didn’t know of?
Hours were spent looking at the packets, trying to squeeze out more answers he could give to fill in the spaces, but he worried that he might screw something up. What if he didn’t write something valuable in or forgot to write something that was necessary for a serious medical decision? What if he had to make some sort of call?
He tried calling his mother again, but no one answered, and he went back to the front desk to shamefully hand off the two packets. The nurses, busy, took them and set them onto a pile. While the nurses rushed around, trying to attend to the demands of a filled hospital with people crowding their desk and demanding the impossible from them, Ladon could only stare at the piles of patients just like his father and sister. He returned back to their gurneys and waited a few more hours on the cold floor before they were later moved to a room where he couldn’t follow. Told to wait, he went back to the hell that was the waiting room, jam packed with families and people waiting with minor injuries. There were no seats available, so he went over to a free spot on the wall and sank down to the ground, resting his forehead against his knees as he set the phone in his lap, waiting for his mother to call.
Hours passed, and he still didn’t get any response. It was too noisy to fall asleep, and he was too worried he might miss one of the nurses or doctors calling out ‘SHEPARD’ if he rested his eyes. Fighting to stay awake, he sat with the mass of others waiting for good news when nothing but bad news kept coming through the doors on gurneys.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:06 pm
Ivan had been on call. This was just about the story of his life; cardiologists tended to spend most of their time on call. Mostly the critical care nurses on his ward could handle any issues that came by, but--well, an entire section of the city suddenly falls into a coma, and everyone, everyone reacts. Even cardiologists. They needed every doctor they could find.
It proved fortuitous that he had been called in. The sheet he had been handed when he had first arrived had been his niece's. His niece had apparently been one of the first brought in, and so had ended up in a proper ward--many of the comatose were not so lucky, or were even being moved to different hospitals. There were too many for Destiny City Memorial to handle.
So, he finished with one admission sheet--Jane Doe--and took another. Shepard, William? Could it... no, it couldn't be anything to do with Ladon. He admitted the man, noting that there was a resemblance, and then peered out into the waiting room. "Shepard," he called, adjusting his glasses. "Shepard?"
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:15 pm
Despite the noise and commotion of the waiting room, Ladon was slipping into a half sleep, resting his head against his knees and letting his eyes close from the horrible, artificial light that was hurting them. At that point, he was in a mixed daze of being awake and slowly sleeping, taking in precious minutes of rest before jerking up when someone brushed his sneakers or when he thought he heard his name. When his name really was called, he scrambled to his feet, his legs having fallen asleep and now prickling as he stumbled over through the people and slipped up to see none other than Ivan Konstantin.
“Ivan!” His eyes were wide and he stained to be heard above the intercom paging doctors and a loud man causing a ruckus at the nurses’ desk to demand he see his son. “Ivan, is everything okay? How’s my dad? How’s my sister?! Are they okay? Where are they? Can I see them?!” He wanted to get out of the waiting room and back to his family.
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2010 8:14 pm
He led the way to Shepard Senior's bedside. "I've not seen your sister, but if she's here, it's likely she's not at all well," said Ivan, who believed in being honest with the family of his patients. "Your father is in a coma, and we're waiting on tests to determine exactly how bad it is, but..." The doctor stopped next to Ladon's father, put a paternal hand on the young man's shoulder. He also did not believe in saying the word 'impossible' even when it was throbbing in his own ears. So instead, he said nothing.
"Where's your mother," he asked after a long moment, adjusting his glasses with one hand.
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2010 8:40 pm
This was not the news he wanted to hear, and he was even more in a state of panic than he was before at the fact that they had moved his sister somewhere and now couldn’t find her. “She was right there! She was right next to my dad! They both were together when I filled out their paperwork, when they took them! Did they LOOSE her!” He looked around, finding himself in a similar state of panic he was in the moment he got out of the ambulance and saw his sister and father not rushed into a room but settled in the hallway in a line of other gurneys like a waiting line for an amusement park. This was INSANE!
”I don’t know where my mother is! I keep calling her and she won’t pick up!” Saying this didn’t improve his mental state, and he felt frustrated and angry, helpless and completely out of control that he wanted to show Ivan into a wall just to take it out on someone. “Why aren’t you helping me?! I thought we were friends? You’re a doctor! Why have they just up and lost my sister like that! What is wrong with this hospital? Just because there are more people here doesn’t mean you should care less!” What if Ivan wanted to talk to his mother, because it was something bad? What if he was waiting for his mother, an adult, because he wanted to deliver the bad news to her instead?
“I’m the only one here for everyone. My mother isn’t here and no one else in my family lives here. I’m the only person who is here right now, who cares right now, so if there is anything that needs to me said, then say it to me! I’m the one who called 911 after all, who came all the way here and waited, who filled out all the papers and who’s still awake! TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON!"
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Posted: Mon May 24, 2010 11:12 pm
Ivan waited through Ladon's rant, only shushing him when he started to yell. "No one has lost your sister," he said, sternly; "I assure you, Ladon, she is here. It's simply that there are so many people; I am doing the best I can to help. We all are." They were getting strange looks from other people in the ward, and Ivan pulled the screen shut a bit.
"Everyone is very stressed out. More than a thousand people have already been brought into the hospital and processed; it's very possible that your sister might have been moved to a pediatric ward or elsewhere, to clear a space for someone who might need to be here." Ivan was trying his best to keep calm and explain--he was a cardiologist, not a neurologist. This was a bit outside his purview.
He looked down at Shepard, Sr. There was a vague resemblance. "I care very much for what's going on," said Ivan. "Do you have a place to stay?"
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Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 8:27 am
When he came to see his father, he moved to the side of his bed, looking at his father as he slept. Seeing him like this worried him, and at the same time, made him uncomfortable to be beside someone when they were resting. He felt his very presence was disturbing him from getting the rest he needed to get better, but then he felt that he wasn’t doing his part as a member of the family, as his son, as blood, to be by his side regardless of his age and relationship to watch over him when he was ill. During this time, the idea of being the man passed through his brain, and he tried to answer that call by becoming stronger to this new position he was in. Instead, he felt lost and worried, wishing he didn’t have to deal with any of it and someone else could take the reigns, but he was the only person here. He was the only Shepard around, and with his mother not calling, he was the only one to watch over his family while the rest of the world was busy handling everything else.
While he stood there, gripping a piece of fabric from the hospital blanket as he watched his father sleep, he looked around and wondered where his sister was. It probably would get him kicked out if he started to search the place, but he felt sick inside to think she was forgotten somewhere when she needed someone to make sure she wasn’t being neglected. With so many people in the hospital, he was sure a few of them were being ignored. It was not the hospital’s fault, but people were bound to be looked over quickly in order to get them in the doors and then sorting things out.
“I’m sorry.” He apologized, trying to calm himself when all he wanted to do was go back into hysterics. It felt he was at least doing his part to be worried by making a show, and shouting at least releaved a bit of the tension inside of him. It was something he could do when he had nothing else to occupy his time but worry about what could and might happen.
While he was more concerned with what was happening now, he hadn’t even thought about himself. Asking where he would stay was a thought, one he was amazed he didn’t think of yet, that had yet to flood his mind. There was too much to think about that thinking about something as simple and basic as where he would go after visiting hours stopped didn’t even register to him until now. “I… I guess I would just go home. Wait for my mother. See if she’ll come home.” He touched his head, feeling a migraine from all the thoughts pushing inside, more and more stuffing into a skull that didn’t have the space for it, overloading his system. “..I didn’t think about that yet.” Now he wished for a chair, but he wasn’t about to move away from his father’s side to go to the far side of the room and drag it over. Maybe later, when he felt he had the energy.
Thinking about it, he didn’t like the idea of returning home where it was empty, but maybe his mother was waiting there. Maybe she forgot her phone or the lines were down. Maybe she was worried about him and waiting there too. “I think I left the TV on at home.” At least he remembered to turn off the range when cooking. He should go back and check on his father's house to see if everything was turned off and safe. No point in seeing their house go up in flames for something being left on unattended.
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