rainbowlounge | The Hospital

Entry tags:

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

"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."

"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?"

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?"

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?"

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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?"

"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."

"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.

"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."

"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."

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

"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?"

"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."

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.

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."

"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...

She made a face at the idea. "Ugh, I look awful in bangs. I guess this is why people don't play with fireworks."

Edited 2013-09-08 02:11 (UTC)

Brenda laughed. "One of a few reasons," she agreed. "I think the burns and potential for eye damage rank above the hair loss for most people, though."

"That's why I should've worn eye goggles," Ivy said, seriously. "My teacher's really strict about practicing safe science."

"As they should be," Brenda said, just as seriously. "Next time you mess around with anything flammable or potentially explosive, protect your eyes first. If I knew where to find one, I'd have an ophthalmologist come lecture you."

"My mom's gonna," Ivy said. "And my dad-- he's an architect so he's on construction sites a lot. And my brother 'cause he feels responsible for me sometimes-- weird, huh? Oh, and my teacher. And probably Kiki."

"Not so weird." Brenda swabbed around Ivy's mouth and kept talking so that she wouldn't get a mouthful of disinfectant. "My older sister still won't stop lecturing me if she thinks I've made bad decisions, but it's because she thinks she's still responsible. Sam and Dawn are both convinced they're responsible for Karen and Zach no matter what we tell them--Sam especially." Since all she had left was Ivy's chin, she felt it was safe to ask, "Who's Kiki?"

"Kiki's my science friend," Ivy said, proudly. "We always do our science projects together. Sometimes we blow stuff up but that's not on purpose." Not really, anyway. "But why should Aaron feel responsible for me? We've only been siblings since I was five, it's not like I've always been there."

Re: Nurse Practitioner: Brenda (Young) Meyers

brenda_young - 2013-09-08 02:45 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only