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 Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:18 pm
Occurs post-battle and post-Negaverse-ORP on November 1st. In the Negaverse, there was a protocol for everything. Injured senshi and officers would be taken up, in order of urgency, to their new hospital for medical treatment. New acquisitions, he assumed, would either be evaluated and taken up to treatment, or they would begin assigning mineral names to the new ones and setting up their orientation. Half-youma officers, the ones who proved easier to treat, would likewise be taken up to medical facilities or evaluated and returned to their duties. Faustite, however, was not in any of these categories.
It was all Taenite could do to drop him off at the infirmary. It was where he belonged — where he could expect to find treatment. But with the demand for so many officers to be seen, much of the regular staffing transferred to the hospital temporarily to accommodate the workload. That left a skeleton crew that Faustite had never met before.
He was laid out on a metal gurney — recognized the thing for when some unfortunate soul passed while they were in the medical bay — and laid there to wait for a half hour. A nurse was by to take his vitals, ask him some questions about what happened, then she was off again. Minutes passed. Faustite started to drift.
Then in came a portly fellow that he likewise didn't know. Balding at the top, face bloated and ruddied from years of heavy drinking, with a bulbous nose and a thick, parted mustache with a full beard. White hair that settled like a cloud ring, with overlarge ears and a pinched face that scrunched easily under thick white eyebrows. Florid complexion. Wide, squared shoulders made to accommodate heavy physical labor, a barrel chest, and a round belly filled out an otherwise nondescript simple uniform. By feel, Faustite judged that this man was a Lieutenant. Strange to see someone of base rank in the infirmary, but not terribly uncommon.
It was, however, unheard of to see a medical professional roll in with a danish sticking out of his mouth. Faustite lacked the blood and energy to complain about it, though.
"Evening, er… Faustite? That's you, right?" Portly fellow took a quick gander at the chart display on his communicator, then stuffed it back into his back pocket. Took another bite of danish, brushed a few crumbs out of his beard, and traveled to Faustite's bedside to look him over. "Name's Rockatanskite. Been a nurse practitioner for, eh, prob'ly twice as long as you been alive. Don't worry, kid; I'm gonna take good care o' you."
Faustite's gaze crawled from him toward the door, then around the room, then back to this Lieutenant. "Where's the doctor?" He managed breathlessly.
"Oh, the doc?" Big man slapped a meaty hand on the rim of the gurney as he chewed his way through the question. "He's got bigger fish to fry, no offense. Cases that ain't so cut-n-dry as this one. T'ain't no big, though, you jus' tell me what you need."
Faustite blinked, then winced as an errant danish crumb fell in his face. He wiped the thing away, then flexed his fingers as he held them out from his face. Thought, for a moment, that it should be Rockatanskite's duty to discern what he needed. "Energy," he replied, then after a beat, "blood."
"Heh heh, see? Easy case! Open n' shut!" Bellowed a hearty laugh, this one, then clapped Faustite on the shoulder. Winced soon afterward and drew his hand away, shaking it out when it was safely distanced from the burning General. "Damn, they ain't kidding when they say you're on fire. Alright, kid, we're gonna say… Energy orbs for the energy goblin, and… Oh, what's your blood type? Looks like I don't got one here."
Faustite slowly shut his eyes. "Don't know."
"Don't know? Well, we gotta to guess, then. Whaddaya say we jes' pick one outta the fridge? Ooh, we could do it roulette-style!" He exclaimed, slapping the edge of the gurney as he riled himself up.
"What…"
"Eh, don't look so pale, friend. We don't got that much blood that we can risk the good stuff. Y'see, blood's been in high demand for a long time, gotta pay a real premium for the universal donor types. Seein' how you're a youma n' all, we can't type ya as-is, so we're goin' with whatever we got the most of." Having finished his danish, he then grasped the side of the gurney with both hands and wrung on it idly. "Can't even be sure how your body's gonna react with whole human blood, y'know? But we know how human officers react with normal blood, and we gotta keep a good deal of our stock on reserve for them, y'see, so all I can spare ya is what we got the most of."
He pushed off, then, and started toward the exit. "Real shame, though. Prolly coulda avoided this whole shtick if you knew yer blood type. Oh, and if you were human… Damn shame, ain't it? Shouldn'ta eaten all those starseeds…" The Lieutenant continued to muse to himself as he left the room.
"Wait," Faustite mumbled as loudly as he could. "Wait," but the Lieutenant had left without heeding him. Sucking in a few ragged breaths, Faustite tried to force himself up on his elbows before the world lurched and blackened.
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:26 pm
When he roused again, he cracked open a bleary eye to spot the Lieutenant hanging a red bag on an IV pole. He struggled again to sit up, which was thwarted by a tick paw pressed hastily to his chest. The jolt of adrenaline for that —
"Whoah there, bud. We ain't even gotten started yet. Now you jes' sit tight and lemme do my job, here. Gotta run this line…" The big man turned around to another stainless steel tray, then brought both his fists down on it with a clangorous thud. "Aw hell! They gave me the wrong stuff. Dammit, hold on. Know they kept what I need 'round here somewhere…"
When Rockatanskite tuned his back to sift the cupboards, Faustite squinted up at the blood bag hanging from the pole. Looked like it said A+ on it, and Faustite could hardly guess what that meant. Then he tried to sit up far enough to see atop the table that the Lieutenant was using, but the farther up he tried to go, the more his consciousness lurched. Finally he gave up and laid back down, freshly dewy with cold sweat, as the Lieutenant returned to his bedside.
He thought, however briefly, that he was going to die on that gurney. Didn't know what happened to someone who got infused with the wrong blood, but he knew they died from it eventually.
"Awright, now we got the good stuff here. Lessee… We gonna spike the bag with this end," he paused as he uncoiled a long tube with a metal protrusion at its tip. After ripping some piece of plastic off the blood bag, he cranked the spike into it. "Now, need your hand, kid. You got veins in there?" He didn't wait for Faustite's approval; Rockatanskite gave the hand a heavy squint without touching it. "Ah, yep, I see one in there. Nice big fat one, gonna be like a sausage on a spit. You like sausage, kid?"
"General," Faustite managed through gritted teeth.
"Aw come now, don't be that way. Rank don't matter when you're dead, General." Rockatanskite licked his bare fingers, framed Faustite's wrist with them, and with the needle in his free hand, threaded it into Faustite's vein.
Faustite's breaths came ragged and needy. "Wait," he wheezed up at the old man. Glanced frantic between him and the lone clamp that kept the bag of blood separated from his body.
"Where'd your balls go, General? Need me to go diggin' for 'em?" A pause, then another bark of laughter erupted from the man. "Jes' think of it like gettin' a flu shot. It's better to get it over with than to sit there fussin' about it. Here, I'll make it easy." Reaching out, the nurse-Lieutenant unclamped the line and left the blood to fill the clear tubing. "Yer body'll take care of the rate n' all that. You jes' need to sit tight and let it do its job. Be back in five, kiddo — gotta get my pipe."
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:47 pm
Faustite felt cold sweat funneling down his forehead as he watched the red line creep down the tubing. Felt like a death march, a death sentence — and end stop to his stream of consciousness like a fat dollop of spilled ink. Couldn't guess what was waiting for him when the blood hit his system. Couldn't sit up enough to rip the thing out of his arm or reach the clamp.
He'd tried, of course. He dug at the surfeit of tape covering his hand, that wedged the fateful needle in place, but he lacked the strength to peel it away. Lacked the ability to wrench the whole ensemble out of his hand. Twice he tried to sit up enough to reach the clamp, but both times lost his vision and had to lay quite still, lest he pass out again.
His third option — his only option — was the nurse call button. Blessedly, it was left in his reach, and only required that he follow the cord down blindly until he found its buttons. Pressed the one he assumed was the call light, and was answered with a soft, routine beeping from a speaker on the end table.
Faustite's veins ran cold when the line picked up.
"'Ey, kid, be with ya in a sec. Can't find my matches anywhere, can you believe it? S'like they jes' walk off on ya when you need 'em most…"
"Don't want to do this," he managed in an oxygen-starved scramble.
"Don't you worry about wanting. You jes' gotta do it. It's like gettin' yer flu shot, I told ya. Welp, can't be helped 'bout those matches. Be right in." <********," Faustite breathed. He dug fruitlessly at the tape, felt a few assuring pricks that he would've drawn blood if he had any, and a last weary idea occurred to him. He picked at the thick plastic with his nails, hoping against hope that he could poke a damn hole in it before the blood breached his vein —
"'Ey now." Spoken with sternness, Rockatanskite snatched up the General's hand. Felt a little sorry for it, too, with the way he tossed the thing to Faustite's other side like it was on fire. Once he shook out his own hand for the light burns, he wiped it against his chest. "Sit tight, I said. You don't wanna do this with restraints on, I promise. Not that we got restraints that are fireproof enough, probably. Heh! Oh, that reminds me…"
Faustite didn't give a damn what the Lieutenant had to say anymore; he shut his eyes when he felt the first bloom of cold in his vein, and knew that blood was crawling its way into his circulatory system. Felt his panic grow, fester, and constrict. Felt his heart patter uselessly against his birdbone ribs, all tantrum and protest for what was to come.
Faustite only opened them again when he felt a clanging against his grate.
"There we go! Damn, that's useful." Rockatanskite brought his now-lit pipe up to his lips and took a deep puff. Aromatic cavendish filled the room, wafting out as smoke rose lazily toward the ceiling. "Ah, yep, that's the stuff."
Faustite chewed his lip hard enough for the pain to lance through the panic. Kept his brows tense, tried to steady his breathing against the wild need to wrench that tube out of his arm. Knew he couldn't try again, not with the Lieutenant standing over him like this.
Rockatanskite dragged a metal chair to Faustite's bedside, its dying screech against the floors echoing Faustite's expectations. The stout Lieutenant collapsed into it with a groan, and settled in with both legs spread wide to accommodate his belly. "See, my wife always nagged me to quit smokin'. She kept tellin' me how bad it was for me, how I'd get cancer, how she didn't want secondhand smoke — all this s**t, right? Girls, I tell ya — jes' wait 'til you get a girl of yer own — then I got this pancreatic cancer, and she'd be tellin' me she told me so, that now's as good a time as ever to quit smokin'.
"But what the hell's it gonna do to me? Gimme more cancer? Pshaw," he swatted away the thought. "Turns out my cancer outlived her anyway. She passed 'bout a year back, and the cancer's been dormant. There's a lesson here, kid, but you ain't listenin' enough to hear it."
"Don't ******** care," Faustite replied, his voice a margin stronger.
"You should." The Lieutenant took another drag off the pipe, manipulated the smoke into rings. "Point is, she was right. Now, her bein' dead ain't got s**t to do with s**t, that ain't the point. Quitting smoking, though, it'd've helped me out a bit. An' she always had my best interests at heart, but I didn't trust her at the time.
"You starting to put it together yet?"
Swallowing, Faustite shot him a soured glare. "No, now get this ******** thing out of my arm."
The Lieutenant sighed, lofted his brows dismissively, and cocked his head. Examined the boy on his table real close, watched him for nearly a full minute before he responded again. "Can't teach kids anything, these days. Fine, I'll spell it out for ya."
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2021 5:04 pm
"Doubt you know who I am, General, or you wouldn'ta reacted half as bad. I'm one of the leading medical minds on half-youma treatment — been studyin' you, n' folks like you, for a good few years now. N' your case, special as you might think it is, was cut n' dry like I told ya. Half-youma means you're still half-human, you can still take whole blood donations like you ain't never caught fire. That means treatin' blood loss for a youmafied officer's the same as treatin' blood loss for a human.
"As for the blood… You might not know yer own blood type, but someone had you typed before I got ahold of ya. Readin' yer chart, probably happened during one of those surgeries that got all that metal put in you. Turns out yer AB pos. Know what that means?"
Faustite only stared at him. "Get to the ******** point."
"It means yer a universal acceptor. As in, any blood I'da gotten outta that fridge woulda done you good. I picked A pos because we had the most o' that on hand, and a bunch of our O pos and O neg were goin' to recruits with pickier bodies n' yers.
"N' this thing? You mighta been wonderin' about it." He flopped the thick plastic line that connected to the half-filled blood bag. "It's old as hell, one o' the old civil war sets from back in the day. But it's been autoclaved specifically for use in you, since you'd melt any line I put in ya.
"Speakin' of, no need for gloves with you, unless I wanna melt 'em to my skin. See, found out yer so hot that there ain't any way bacteria'll live in ya. Pretty damn convenient, if you ask me. Ain't no way you're gettin sepsis, even if I licked the damn needle before I put it in ya.
"Thing is, Faustite, you were never in any danger this whole time. But, people of your rank, they think they know goddamn everything. Especially the half-youma ones. Think there's no medical professional out there that could possibly know their bodies better than they do, even though they ain't never had a diagnostic test done on 'em since they youmafied. They don't trust, n' then they s**t bricks over nothin'. Sound familiar?" He laced his hands over his belly as he scrutinized the bloodless boy.
Rockatanskite, he reminded himself. "Get ********. Leaving as soon as that's done."
"Heh heh heh. Be my guest. Oof, gettin' old's the shits," he muttered to himself as he heaved his way to his feet. "If you change your mind about that, I could sure use a General to sign off on some o' my research. Would be a damn boon to the whole project if that General was part youma, but if you can't see past yer own nose, you can't see past yer own nose. Kids these days…" Rockatanskite sniffed, then scratched his a** as he headed for the door.
"Assumin', seein' as you know everything 'bout yourself, you know how to get rid o' that line and patch yerself up. Jes' hang it up when you leave n' we'll get it all cleaned up." He knocked on the doorframe with the rim of his pipe. "Be seein' you, Faustite."
"General Faustite, you ******** clod," he seethed. Then he laid there for a time, staring bitterly up at the slowly emptying bag.
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