The Hospital

[rainbowmods]

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!))

Comments

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

Brenda laughed. "I'd ask what you've learned, but if you're like my stepdaughter, your answer's not going to be the one I'd like to hear." Sam would have at least offered the right one. Dawn would have just gone straight for, 'Not to stand so close when I set it on fire,' according to Bill and Sharon's stories. "In here." She pushed open the door to one of the rooms.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"I learned to practice experimental safety," Ivy said, primly. "Goggles and gloves from now on." She thought about it for a moment, and added reluctantly, "And probably no more fire until I'm grown up and can do anything I want, but that's only 'cause Mom'll make me."

She followed Brenda into the room and, experienced, hopped up on the bed without using her hands. They hurt a little less, she thought, when she was distracted.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"That's better than what Dawn would say," Brenda noted. She stepped over to the sink to scrub her hands clean, then looked back at Ivy as she was drying them. "No fire until you're an adult is a good idea, even if it does make your mom seem like a buzzkill. For one thing, child services can't be called on your mom once you're an adult. Not," she added instantly, "that I'm going to. Like I said, I have kids. Plenty of doctors and nurses would, though." There was also the minor detail about not being able to know when-and-where Ivy was from that threw matters off.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

Ivy wrinkled her nose. "Ew," she said. "As if. No way my mom would hurt me, or my dad. No matter how bad I am."

Bradley Spitzer leapt to mind suddenly and she frowned, worried. "They wouldn't go send me to live with my biohazard, would they? He's not my dad anymore, the court gave Dad all those rights. That means I don't have to go live with him, right?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

Well, that was easy enough to parse.

"If he doesn't have legal rights, then you don't have to even see him." Brenda found lidocaine gel to get started with and pulled on a pair of gloves. "Biohazard. I like that." She'd have to share it with Liz; she'd approve.

She turned and pulled the stool over with her foot. "Hold out your hands, okay? This is going to numb them. Then I'll examine them better. So why is he bad enough to be called your biohazard?"

Really, she was just glad the hospital had lidocaine gel. It'd be hard to get even a smart, good kid to sit still for burns to be examined without them being numbed.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

Ivy held her hands out obediently and braced for a sting. "Because he sucks," she said. "He tried to make my mom not have me, and then he ran away when I was a baby. And Mom said he called her lots of names, too. I don't remember him but I know he's awful."

Mostly, granted, because she'd been eavesdropping. And once because she'd been so sad and so afraid, and her daddy had held her and told her nothing was wrong with her, nothing at all, it was all her biohazard. And she believed what Dad said, implicitly.

"Dad's the best dad ever though," she added, positively. "I'm so glad Aaron shared. Aaron's my brother. I mean technically my stepbrother or my half-brother or whatever but he's just my brother really."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"Well then, I'm glad you have both of them." Brenda smoothed on a dollop--that was the technical name for it--of the gel, gently, over the back of Ivy's hand, then palm. "My kids think their stepdad's the best dad, too, so yours has competition." She grinned at Ivy to take away any sting from her words as she gently worked the gel around one finger at a time. "I called Dawn my stepdaughter earlier, but that's only because she was fourteen when my husband and I got married. She's the same age as Sam. I adopted her when my husband and I got married. Aaron's older than you?" She switched to Ivy's other hand.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"Yup," Ivy said. It didn't actually hurt that bad, and her hands felt cool when the gel was on them. Kinda nice, actually. "Five years. He's way nice, too, he lets me hang out with him and Jay sometimes and he walks me home from school." She couldn't quite remember when he'd started that, maybe sometime after the whole Incident with Ellen, but she hoped he never stopped. "He lets me win at Monopoly too. He thinks I don't notice but I do."

Clearly Brenda's kids were wrong about their stepdad, but Ivy let that go. She could be generous in victory.

"My dad adopted me," she added. "When he married my mom. It was my birthday present for being five."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"Aaron sounds great," Brenda said with a smile. "And that's an excellent birthday present. Tell me when your hands are numb. I'm going to do your face now." She suited actions to words. "There's five years between Dawn and Sam and Karen, then five more between Karen and Zach. It's a big age difference, but it works for us. It sounds like it works for you guys, too. Did your mom adopt Aaron?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

Ivy shook her head as much as she could without messing up Brenda and the cool gel. "No, Aaron's mom is still around. She's nice. She let me and Aaron stay at her house once when Mom and Dad had to go out of town really quick." She had to close her mouth then for her chin, but after that she went on. "I don't think she likes kids a whole lot 'cause she didn't like it if I got noisy, but I know she really loves Aaron." Ivy smiled, a little bit because of the gel, but she wanted it to be bigger. "I'm glad he has a mom, it means I don't have to share mine. Did your husband adopt your kids then? Like my dad adopted me?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

Brenda smiled a bit at the idea of Ivy not having to share her mother. "If he lives with you a lot, isn't that a little like having to share your mom?" She smoothed the gel over the last bit of Ivy's cheek and sat back. "No, he didn't adopt them. Their dad still has rights." Much as Brenda and Bill, not to mention the kids, hated that particular fact. "If we can ever get his rights terminated, though, Bill wants to adopt them. We talked about it before we got married. How do your hands feel?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"Numb," Ivy said, and then sputtered a little indignantly. "So are my lips! Gross." But it was better than hurting, she had to admit.

"Anyway, no. Mom is Aaron's stepmom, but she's my mom and nobody else's. It doesn't count as sharing. I hope your husband can adopt your kids soon. It sucks not having a real dad. Even if you have to share him when you get him."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"Time to get those burns cleaned, then." Brenda stood and stripped off her gloves, then mixed up water and hexochlorophene in a basin and brought it and cotton over to set down by Ivy. New gloves, then time to tend her hands. "And it does suck, yeah." She sat again, dipped cotton in the solution, and wiped it along Ivy's hand just hard enough to dislodge anything that might be embedded in the burns. She was numb; she should be fine. "Dawn's already okay with sharing her dad--they mostly already call him 'Dad', and he is in the important ways--and I think she'd be even more okay with him adopting them. It was her idea that I adopt her."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"That feels weird," Ivy said, and it did, all pressure but no pain or any real feeling. "Like at the dentist. Dawn sounds smart." She thought about it for a moment and then asked, "Is she thirteen? Does she like boys? Would she like my brother?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"It's the same thing as at the dentist, just without a shot." At the question, Brenda laughed. "Dawn's sixteen now. She does like boys, but I don't know enough about your brother to know if she'd like him. Probably, though. He sounds like a good kid. Just a little young for her." More cotton, other side of her hand. "Now, I do have a thirteen-year-old niece, and she also likes boys. Girls too. Where are you from, Ivy?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"New York City." Now that her hands didn't hurt, Ivy could watch what Brenda was doing. Cleaning, it looked like. "Does your niece want a boyfriend? I don't," she added, "boys are gross, but Aaron's not gross. He'd be a really good boyfriend."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"That would be a little long-distance. We live in Hartford, Connecticut." Brenda finished up her right hand and moved on to her left. "Since neither of them can drive, and I bet Aaron isn't allowed to take the train on his own, it's too far for it to work easily." Of course, there was always the Internet.

Then again, there was also always the possibility that they were from competing timestreams and didn't exist in the same realities.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"That sucks," Ivy said, and pouted. "But Aaron's a good guy, he'll find one, right? Or a boyfriend if he wants one of those later."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"I'm sure he will," Brenda reassured her, smiling. "Don't worry. Good people usually end up finding good people, even if it takes some work."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"Like Mom!" Ivy said, perking up. "And Aaron's mom. Okay, that's good. Did you find a good person?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"I found an excellent person," Brenda said. "It just took a little effort. I bet it's not going to take you as much work. How's your face? Still numb?"

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

"Yeah," Ivy said. "I can still feel my tongue though. I hate that about the dentist when you can't feel your tongue. Or worse you can't feel half your tongue."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

Brenda laughed. "Half the time, I end up finding out I bit my tongue and didn't even know it. Have you ever done that? Close your eyes," she added once she had another bit of cotton ready and could start cleaning Ivy's face.

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[bookblather]

Ivy closed her eyes obediently. "Yeah, all the time. It's kinda fun to spit blood and freak out my brother but it always hurts so much when you get feeling back."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

[brenda_young]

"Mhm. Ivy, you're not going to have eyebrows for a while. And I hope you're okay with having bangs while your hair grows back in." Not to mention her scalp being uncomfortable while her burns healed...