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: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

Which was still very, very strange, but he was hardly a medical expert with tactics he did have experience with, in any case. "All right, if you say so..."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"I do say so," Summer snapped, exasperated. She had just saved this woman's life and this... this man was questioning her expertise and training? She was so sick of that, of being constantly questioned. "I earned my degree. I did my residency same as anyone else. I do my job same as anyone else, I am good at my job and frankly you're lucky you got a pathologist, do you have any idea how few people would know what strychnine poisoning looks like?"

Quite a few, actually, but not immediately, not without consulting the books, and the woman might have died.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"I apologize," he said. "I didn't mean to offend, I just...nothing you're doing is familiar to me, and she's my wife." He took a deep breath. Diplomacy. If what she can do works faster, maybe my people could gain from whatever I can learn here. "I apologize again. Do pathologists specialize in poison?"

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"No," Summer said. "Autopsies. But we had a rash of poisonings recently and anyway it's a fairly common cause of death."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

...autopsies? He stared at her. "...you take apart dead people?"

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"Yes?" Summer blinked at him. "How else would you find out how they died?"

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"I...that makes sense, it's just...not typically a specialty where I'm from," he finished, well aware of how weak that sounded.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"It's probably a bit more specialized now," Summer said, as kindly as she could manage. "There's a lot of things we know now that we didn't use to." Like the circulatory system, for example.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

...future. Am I in the future? How am I in the future?

...on the other hand, apart from that nasty how business, everything made a hell of a lot more sense with that little tidbit.

"And suddenly everything starts to make sense," he managed to get out.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"It takes you like that."

Summer checked on the woman's pulse and found it, reassuringly, slowing down. "I think your wife will be all right," she said. "I wouldn't... take it as read just yet, but she's responding well."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"Oh, thank gods," he said. Very very carefully, he raised the hand he held to his lips. "It was probably meant for me. She...she must have taken the wrong glass..." Though of course she couldn't have known.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"I'm sorry," Summer said, sincerely. "Why would anyone want to poison you?"

It was a serious question, but she'd pass it off as not if he took offense. Zack had taught her that, one of his own tricks for when he got mad at somebody.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

...oh, right. Deep into the future or a strange world or both, there was no way she could know who he was.

And, he reflected, no way she could do further harm when she did. Besides, an outsider perspective might help him narrow down the potential culprits. Especially if she was an investigator.

"Because I'm the King," he said, softly.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

Summer blinked at that. A king? She had a king in her emergency room? Huh.

"King of what?" she asked, politely. She'd never met a king so she didn't exactly know the etiquette, but she was fairly sure that basic politeness should help.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"Feredar," he answered. "For the last thirteen years. Nida and I have been married for ten."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"Congratulations," she said. "That's quite some time."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"Thank you," he said, with a genuine, if still slightly shadowed, smile. "Are you married?"

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"Yes," Summer said, and smiled. "We've been married for six years. We have a three-year-old son."

All right, so he hadn't asked about children, but Summer was so very fond of Thomas, she couldn't help it.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"Congratulations," he said. "My older son is three, as well. What's your son's name?"

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"Thomas," Summer said, and smiled shyly. "What about your son?"

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

He smiled back. He was more than happy to talk about his children. Better that than Nida now, since she seemed to be stable, at least. "Kellom is three, and our younger son, Mellir, is one. Our daughters are ten, eight, and five."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"Oh, how lovely!" Summer exclaimed. "I would like a daughter, I think, but we've agreed to stop with Thomas."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

He nodded, though how they could ensure that was a little beyond him. "We have as many as we need, for a stable succession now, but I think Nida and I..." If she survives this "...well, we agreed that we wanted as many as possible." Which was mostly my idea, but Nida hasn't changed her mind after five deliveries, so I doubt she was agreeing just to make me happy.

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[bookblather]

"Well, if you can support them," Summer said, practically. "It's quite expensive living where we do, and we all have strange work shifts-- even between the three of us it can be very difficult to take care of Thomas."

Re: Patient and Spouse: Sorell and Nida

[shadowsong26]

"We have help," he admitted. "Though we're a great deal more involved with them than my parents were with me or my brothers." A flash of long-buried grief there, which he tried to ignore. "Or hers were with her, from what she's told me."