rainbowlounge | The Hospital

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roleplay: open

The Hospital

The hospital is sterile and sprawling, its hallways and patient rooms painted a glaring white. The floor is made of something hard and shining, and the lights are that peculiar kind of flourescent that makes everyone look ill.

The first floor consists of the lobby (painted a sickly green), an emergency room, and several surgery suites, all stocked with cutting-edge, even futuristic, technology and supplies. There is a cafeteria, though the buffet line is empty; the only consumables seem to be stocked in a line of vending machines along one wall. There are no stairs, only elevators, to the upper floors, which all consist of patient rooms: made beds, glazed windows, dying flowers, and the hard plastic orange chairs that are a constant in hospitals.

The whole building smells like antiseptic and death.

((Please mark your healthcare professionals as such, and enjoy!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He was getting too old for tavern brawls.

Robin wasn't sure how that lout had managed it, but there were still bits of glass in his hair--and his shirt, for that matter, and the wound on his face was still bleeding, rather nastily.

Ah, his reflexes weren't what they used to be, he thought, staggering outside. He'd even been good; had stopped after two pints of ale, hadn't even had liquor! There was a council meeting tomorrow at the palace, and it wouldn't do for Lord Robert Lennox of the Mornvale to turn up stinking drunk in front of the Queen.

He grimaced at the blood on his shirt. This was one of his favorites--white silk, with handmade lace at the cuffs. Maybe someone back at court knew how to get those stains out, but for now the cut on his face was a more pressing matter.

Blinding white light dazzled him when he left the tavern, and what he smelled wasn't the fresh night air, but something...odd. Something overly clean and harsh, tinged with death.

There was a pretty woman nearby, dressed in those same strange clothes he'd seen when he'd last jumped worlds, her frustrated eyes belying her otherwise calm demeanor.

"Pardon me," he asked, with a sweeping bow, "I don't suppose you'd know where I could find some assistance?"

Dude was bleeding. He was also dressed like something out of a Renaissance Faire-- why Duncan liked those things she would never know-- which suggested, here, that he was from a different world. Wonderful.

"I'm a doctor, I can help," she said, crisply, and if she wasn't what most people thought of as a doctor, she did have an MD. She oriented herself. If this was like every hospital she'd ever been in the ER should be-- that way. "Follow me, and we'll get you patched up. What the hell did you do to yourself?"

"Oh, a doctor! Wonderful, wonderful. I've come to the right place, then," Robin said cheerfully. The woman didn't look that much older than the Queen, but her crisp demeanor reminded him enough of the lady princess that he figured he was in capable enough hands.

"I was having a pint or two in the tavern, miss, and...well, things escalated, to say the least."

He shook his head, and more bits of glass fell out, tinkling against the impossibly shiny floor.

"Barfight, really?" Ahava shook her head, exasperated and a little amused. "And it's not miss, it's Doctor, I just told you that." She glanced at the glass, and sighed. "Did you get thrown through a window?"

God, this guy was more and more reminding her of her brother Brendan; reckless, stupid, and yet incredibly charming. Boys.

"Doctor, then. My apologies," Robin replied, not missing a beat.

"Ah, no window. More like a wall of bottles." He frowned. "Although I suppose that would be the same as a window?"

A good thing he hadn't worn his new doublet out tonight; he didn't want anything getting onto that fine jacquard fabric!

Ahava thawed towards him a bit there. "A wall of bottles? Yeah, that would be about the same. Maybe worse; I think you'd have more glass." She thought about it a little bit, turning into the ER; there was a patient room, that should do. "Right in here. It would probably be more expensive too."

"Oh, I suppose the tavern owner isn't going to be very happy with either of us," Robin said, a little ruefully. "I didn't mean to, really, but you know how fights usually end up pulling even the most idle of bystanders in, doctor."

This room looked nothing like an infirmary--it was still so bright, even though there wasn't a candle to be found, and no herbs, no bottles or ointments.

"This...this looks very different from what I'm used to, I have to admit."

"Familiar enough," Ahava admitted. "I've got six siblings. Fights tended to spread."

Whatever hospital this was at least was really well supplied; she found gauze, antibiotic ointment, tweezers in sterile wrappings, and bandages right in the patient room. She assembled her supplies on top of the little table and turned to her patient. "Sit," she said, pointing at the bed. "And yeah, sorry, this... isn't where either one of us is supposed to be. I don't think it's even our original universes."

"Six siblings! Allow me to be jealous. I had a dear sister, once, may she rest in peace. We were lucky enough to rarely fight, though. Do you know, I can't have strawberry jam and scones without thinking of her."

The ale had loosened his tongue. He was getting old.

He nodded at the doctor's mention of universes. "That sounds about right. This isn't the first time I've left, either. I have to say I prefer the last place I was to this by a great deal. Much more pleasant."

"You wouldn't be jealous if you'd had six siblings," Ahava said, dryly. "I mean, Duncan I liked but the rest of them just kept happening. You'd wake up one morning and have two more brothers all of a sudden." Well, okay, that had only happened the once, but Brendan and Kyle had been a rude enough surprise that it had stuck. And this man... yeah, he really reminded her of Brendan.

"Hospitals don't tend to be a very pleasant place," she agreed. "It's why I haven't worked in one since my residency. This is going to hurt." She swabbed clean water over the wound on his face.

Robin chuckled. "Ah, perhaps not. Interesting world you have, where brothers and sisters appear in a twinkling. I suppose things would have been chaotic, all the same."

He winced a little, when the doctor dabbed at his face, but really, he'd had worse. He'd been a pirate captain, damn it. A scratch was nothing.

"What's a residency?" he asked, to try and distract from the pain.

"We're adopted," Ahava said. "It's not that weird."

The wound was smaller than it looked, a cut down over his cheek. "Missed the eye," she said. "And you won't need stitches. A residency is four years of training that every doctor has to go through after they've gotten their MD. It's hands-on training, making sure you won't freeze up or accidentally kill someone. That kind of thing."

Oh, that made sense. "I know someone who was also adopted," Robin replied. "He had six sisters. Don't know what they made of him appearing all of a sudden, but he was only an infant when he joined them."

He caught a glance of himself in the mirror and nodded. No stitches probably meant no scars, not that he was that vain. "Four years of hands-on training, after an...em-dee, you said? What's that, if you don't mind me asking?"

"If they were anything like me, they just rolled their eyes and said, Another one and eventually realized they wouldn't give him up for anything." The gauze was coming away clean now but for a stripe of blood where the cut was. Time for the antibacterials. "Brace yourself again. This will hurt more."

She put the ointment on a swab and applied it to his face, talking to distract him. "An MD is short for a degree called Doctor of Medicine. It means that I passed medical school. Right now I'm a practicing psychiatrist; I perform therapy and proscribe medications and medical tests as needed."

"Hmmm. I suppose they wouldn't." It had been years since Saith had left home, that much Robin did know. Whether or not he still kept in touch with his sisters was anyone's guess, although by now some of them had to realize he was the queen's consort.

Whatever she put on him this time felt like liquor. "You sure that's not a good vintage you're wasting on me, doctor?" he asked. "That does burn quite powerfully, you know."

"But what is a psychiatrist? And therapy? I daresay you sound much like the physicians I see in my own world."

"It's antibiotic ointment," Ahava told him. "Wine has some of the same properties, and a lot of people used it before we developed this nifty ointments, but what I'm putting on your face now is much more effective." She finished swabbing it, patted Robin's head absently, and went for the gauze again.

Much like his physicians? Ahava had to smile. "Not so much, no. Psychiatrists... we work with people who have mental illnesses, problems with their brain that aren't physical. Well, most of the people I see have a chemical imbalance in their brain which is physical-- but that doesn't matter. Therapy is a variety of ways we use to help people with those illnesses. Like the way you work a healing limb, to make it stronger."

Ah, the petting. He did have that effect on women, still. Perhaps he wasn't growing so old after all.

"Sicknesses of the mind, you say? Like an imbalance of their humors, then? And you can strengthen those humors or rebalance them to make them stronger? Is that what you do?"

"Um," she said, and to buy herself some time, pressed a pad of gauze to his face. "Hold that. We're going to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Uh, no, no, it doesn't have anything to do with humors."

Nothing had anything to do with humors, really, but Ahava wasn't going to start a medical revolution somewhere/somewhen she knew nothing about.

"It's... it's your mind lying to you. Telling you things that aren't true or real. Therapy helps you see the lies."

All right, yes, holding bandages to his face sounded familiar, at least.

"Ah, true. The mind can be a powerful thing. So what do you do during this therapy, then, that helps you see these lies?"

"Talk, mostly," Ahava said, leaning back against the table. "Try to find out what lies the brain is telling, find ways to refute them. Sometimes medication can help. Sometimes there's something physically wrong, and fixing that fixes the mind too." She shrugged. "There's no one way to fix everything. Just like there's no one way to fix all the body's problems."

Robin didn't quite understand what this doctor meant by talking to pick out the lies, but he decided to keep quiet. She'd been kind enough to tend to his wounds, and it didn't seem wise to offend her.

"I suppose, then, that there's no fountain of youth, nor any panacea that would cure all ills, then," he said. "A pity."

"Very much so," Ahava said, and smiled at him. "I wouldn't even mind being put out of work if it showed up. I could always go find a nice man to marry and have some babies."

Which was not at all what her parents had said to her, any of the four (she counted Dennis now), but her whole hometown certainly thought it. Even some of her professors, which was just gross.

"Oh, you haven't found anyone yet?" Robin asked. "Pardon my asking, but it seems like a woman such as yourself would have already found someone to marry. Or would you have to give up your occupation to do so?"

"Hah," Ahava said, and then continued, "Not likely. I mean, half the people in my hometown would say that I should, but there's really no way in hell that's going to happen, let's face it."

She thought about the rest of it, then said, "I'm flattered, I think, but no, I haven't found anymore. Not looking right now either-- my best friend is going through a divorce and I've gotta be there for him." Especially since he might be getting divorced because of her. Not that Duncan would ever say as much.

"That's a shame," Robin replied. "Nobody worthy of you, I suppose, not that I blame you." A lot of men didn't know how to treat women properly where he'd come from; it wouldn't have been much of a surprise if someone like the doctor completely confounded them.

"Oh, no! Your friend's wife--has she left him?"

Edited 2013-09-07 16:08 (UTC)

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