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 Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2016 3:34 pm
Aspects of the night’s meeting stole away his attention from nurses, assistants, and procedures that sought for his time. Hours spent in the emergency room left him with ample time to mull over Pax’s instructions. Now the lot of them remained peers to those they once served, bidden to continue the tradition with poaching more from this ceaseless cycle. He wondered, then, if his new station amongst the Court offered him a spectator’s view of the struggle he remembered. Others fighting against a nameless enemy, a presumable threat to all of humanity… That was how these stories went, wasn’t it?
So withdrawn to his own thoughts he remained that one of the nurses remarked upon it as unresponsive to a curious point - and she wondered, amongst her peers, if he really meant to end his own life. She wondered if the long gouge, the lone tally on his arm, meant anything more than a cry for attention. Their conversation continued with further speculation, further jaded remarks, until he shouted loudly that he could hear them from his side of the ER. Inferences into his condition halted immediately.
The hours counted to six before he found transition to a new room - a semi-private observation area meant to monitor him thusly. The walls knew medical white paint and the occasional painting of a flower, drab, and hardly noticeable to the mind. The soft, gauze-like curtain to his right served as a potent divider between him and the comatose patient who shared the room. A nightstand stood next to his bed, featuring a telephone for in-house calls and a pad of paper with the Good Samaritan logo. A single number was penned across its cream surface with Autumn Smith written above it - the only poaching of contacts he managed out of the staunchly protective nurses.
With little more to do but ponder over his fetch or lament his condition further, Alois picked up the drab beige phone and started dialing out with his healthy hand. Dialing 9 proved the universal code for civilization, and afterward he tapped out the unfamiliar digits. Dial tone shifted to a ring. He swallowed.
The voicemail caught, and Alois licked his lips while he tried to formulate his message. „It’s Alois,“ he started, and somehow found this lacking. „You said zat you would help me any way you could. I need you to find someone for me. Ra-… Bennett, ach… Vaughn. He goes by Rabbit sometimes. If you can find him, bring him to ze Good Samaritan Hospital. Ze one on Sachs Street.“ He paused and considered his options for goodbyes. A number ran through his head, spanning different languages, before an audible sigh punctuated the exchange and he hung up entirely.
„I don’t know what I’m doing,“ he confessed in a sudden dearth of confidence. The room offered no answers.moonstone dazzle please quote a smerds in with your post~
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2016 4:27 pm
When Autumn had said 'call for anything', she had truly meant it. Alois seemed like the kind of guy who needed a friend, needed a shoulder to... not cry, but for something. Just a friend in need. She hadn't expected to hear from him, being the kind of stubborn guy he was. Maybe a text to humor her worry, or something equally disdainful. A sort of... acknowledgement, without showing too much care and understanding.
The late night call had not been what she was expecting.
It was a damn good thing she knew Rabbit, or the instructions to find him might've been impossible. Even in small town Ashdown, calling up someone with a half hearted 'I was told to find you, do you go by Rabbit?' wasn't the sort of thing people responded well to. How odd and fortunate it was that she worked with Rabbit, knew him on well-enough terms. Friends, she'd told him. And now here she was, dragging him out in the wee hours of the night to go to the hospital for Alois.
The Uber ride stretched in silence after fetching him. Nothing to say, no clever remarks from the silent abyss of her mind. Just questions- more questions for herself, for the universe, for Alois. Was this what Ezra had meant, when he had said he couldn't save them? That she was meant to find Alois, in a hospital somewhere, his intents clear? Would the so-professed father even care what had become of one of his sons?
No, no. The anger was misplaced. Autumn forced her focus to the flashing street lights as they went by, blurring together in lines along the road. Impassive in the wake of what had happened. Uncaring that her friend had-
Well. That... Alois, was there. Probably didn't even consider her a friend. Who was she kidding, anyway?
And what did that make Rabbit? Were he and Alois friends? Victims of suffering together? Were she and Rabbit even friends? It felt wrong, poison on her tongue, to offer the man apologies. Paltry feelings in the wake of near-tragedy. Tragedy nonetheless, that none of them had caught it. That none of them had bothered to check, to think, with how far he was gone...
Her stomach churned.
And here, here was the hospital. Not as haunting as the Other Ashdown hospital, but depressing in its own right. Oppressive. Thank god she wasn't in heels, to hear the clicking hunting her as she walked. Remind her of the hallowed silence she was breaking. No, she was here in a crop top and shorts, thrown on haphazardly without care as soon as she had gotten the call. How funny that something so intimate- people seeing her without makeup- was turned into... this.
They arrived at the room, and with no ceremony, Autumn opened the door. She stepped to the side, letting Rabbit in as well. What was she to say? What was she SUPPOSED to say? There weren't the right words, even the right feelings.
Instead, she moved to the side, found a chair, and waited (prayed) for Rabbit to have more of an idea on. This. All of this.Smerdle Congrats, Autumn kidnapped u to go to the hospital. You are here my friend.
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:30 pm
Rabbit had never been in an Uber before, having had a license since he was old enough to take the road test and a car for most of that time as well. He might have mentioned that, but when Autumn Smith called you in the middle of the night and told you she was coming to pick you up in a car to go to the hospital, you didn't argue, especially not when you'd barely slept since your return from fairy court.
What was his life. Seriously.
As it turned out, all of the horror stories he'd heard about raising kids were true. Every last one. He might have grown used to a little of the hardship by now, had they been normal children, but he had been thrust into the terrible twos without preamble, made to deal with near constant squeep-squeep-squeeping and crawling and tiny hands grabbing at everything within reach and shoving said things into tiny mouths. He couldn't sleep unless they were, for fear that they might accidentally off themselves, but they were never asleep at the same times, forever exploring, forever making noise. He'd had to take them outside to avoid questions from his sister, which meant a closer watch and even less time to rest.
They were quiet now, nestled in the sprawling front unipocket of an old, oversized hoodie, and as such Rabbit was sleeping too, head knocking against the backseat window every time they hit a bump or turned the corner. He already knew what had happened, what Alois had done, and while he was very glad that Thorne had taken care of him and even more glad to finally meet him on this side of reality, he simply couldn't keep his eyes open, lulled by the rumble of the car's engine and Autumn's silence.
When they got there he followed her down the hall, stifling at least six yawns before they'd even made it to the door. He didn't know what to say either, but when he rounded the corner and saw his brother there, pale form swallowed up by his pale bed, the words came out on their own.
"I told you..." He lowered his voice so as not to disturb the kids. "I said getting murdered wasn't acceptable, and neither is murdering yourself, especially not when we're free. What the ******** did you do?" That was a stupid question. "Why?" That was more the Rabbit he knew, defeated and a little whiny.
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 3:57 pm
For a moment, Alois wondered how he might’ve looked to them. He lay there as an ivory effigy among sterilized white sheets, against the white backdrop of the hospital wall and the yellowed eggshell headboard that separated his pillows from the gap between bed and wall. Even his IV stand was white, with a black face to allow the digitally rendered numbers to stand out from the monotony. Perhaps worst of all, covering him was a single white hospital gown with pale blue filigree to set the hospital apart from otherwise stereotypical perfections. The only defiant contrast to the room lay in his shock of black hair, now spread out as a terror upon the white pillow. He smiled, if only due to the garish mockery of his ritualistic devotion to the color black.
„Murder is a funny word,“ he started as he sat himself up carefully. His right arm tired of taking the whole burden. „It sounds exactly ze same as Mörder, but zat means murderer. Murder, in German, is simply Mörd. I wonder where ze extra er came up in translation?“ He paused, then looked to the pair in their similarly worried, tired expressions. „I’f had a lot of time to sink about ze important and ze inane.“ He considered it a worthwhile justification.
More seriously, he addressed Rabbit’s concerns. „It’s not a simple enough choice to define clearly. It wasn’t made from just one conclusion eizer. Besides, what makes you sink you haf’ a use for why? What would you do wis’ a why? Would you use it to chastise me for my actions, or explain to me zat my reasoning wasn’t good enough? I argue zat you don’t have a need for why.“ Reaching out to the nightstand, he plucked a plastic water bottle bearing the name of the hospital from its surface. While he hated the ridged bendy straws, he dealt with them for now. After a sip, the bottle was left to sweat on the fake woodgrain formica. „If you want to help me, zen say zat. If you’re trying to convince me against doing it again, zen do zat. But don’t go beating around ze bush asking for why when zat’s not what you mean.“
His normal scowl faded and he looked to the thin ripple of sheets about him. His toes struck up like mountains across the otherwise serene scene. Slowly he wiggled his toes. „It wasn’t completely pointless. It gaf’e me insight about certain sings zat I haven’t really sought much of before.
„But I’m rambling, and none of zat is why I asked you here. Sit,“ he commanded, and waved toward the chair parked in the corner of the room. „Bring it over here. We haf’ much to discuss.“
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