Forty Percent

Participants:

colette_icon.gif doyle_icon.gif eileen_icon.gif else_icon.gif raith_icon.gif rourke_icon.gif

Scene Title Forty Percent
Synopsis Andy, Colette and Else bring an unconscious Eric Doyle to Eileen's apartment in Brooklyn for treatment after a disaster at Summer Meadows.
Date January 27, 2010

Fort Greene — Eileen's Apartment

Original hardwood floors and a pair of French doors painted black are the most prominent features of the living space, which has been sparsely furnished with loveseat, cozy chaise, built-in bookshelves and various pieces of smaller furniture to make it feel like more of a home, including a dining table for two and claw-foot chairs. The walls, like the radiator, have been painted white to contrast with the rich colour of the floors and the cabinetry in the modest kitchen, just large enough to fit one person comfortably.

The French doors separate the bedroom from the rest of the apartment. Like the living room and kitchen, it has been decorated with simplicity in mind. The bed itself is a queen-sized platform that takes up most of the space and is covered in a white goose feather comforter for warmth in the winter. A steamer trunk filled with clothes sits at the foot of the bed in lieu of a dresser — there just isn't enough room for anything else except for an antique vanity, its mirror badly water-stained and in dire need of repair or replacement.


Cold, unrelenting.

It's the last thought that crossed through Eileen Ruskin's mind when the door that Aviators left through just three minutes ago came shut. She's not even had the time to make her way back to the kitchen table before the distant chime of the elevator in the hall outside her apartment door sounds out, and the haggard noise of someone struggling to carry a heavy weight echoes down the hall. There's voices two, women, footsteps, all of them seeming together frantic. "Which apartment is it? Andy! Andy which apartment's hers!"

"That one, five oh five."

"Oh my god, oh my god— h— hold on Eric."

"This way, they go up, This way." What comes next is not that sound passing by Eileen, but rather coming to her door in thunderous knocking. The rapid-fire pounding of a hand against Eileen's door mixed in with all of this other confusion of her day can only push what little patience and emotional stability she has left to the breaking point. That an ex-rockstar is now standing on the other side of her door may perhaps add some measure of confusion to it. Just on the other side of that wooden door, Else Kjelstrom stands back straight and heel of her palm thumping against the door, blonde hair in a tangle and olive drab army jacket slung loose over her lanky frame.

Behind her, Andy Rourke, operator of the Ferrymen safehouse the Brick House is struggling to carry the weight of an unconscious and bleeding Eric Doyle, who is slouched and unmoving, one arm around Andy's shoulders, feet dragging dead weight behind him. At Doyle's side, Colette Nichols is holding a blood-soaked black hooded sweatshirt to his throat, trying to stop the bleeding.

Aviators' voice is still fresh in her ears, and now this.

She doesn't have to open the door.

There are no supernatural forces that will compel her to do otherwise if she chooses to show the peephole her back and retreat deeper into the apartment, taking shelter in the cramped confines of her bedroom crawl space until the muffled voices fade, dwindle away into nothing and are absorbed by the wind and the rain.

That's not the type of person she is, though. When the door opens, the small but austere figure standing upon its threshold fills the frame with her livid presence rather than her body. Pale skin, dark hair and eyes made of silver embers lit green — Eileen's features are familiar to those who have met her and make a harsh impression on those who haven't. She looks mean.

What she says, however, isn't. "Bring him inside." Already, she's moving out of the way to make room for Andy and Colette, front door held open by the ringed fingers of her left hand.

It'd probably be a lot easier for everyone involved if Eric was mobile, but unfortunately, he isn't, his considerable bulk weighing down against Andy's shoulders as he's hauled along with Colette desperately pressing that sweatshirt to his neck. There's been a lot of bleeding, the side of his shirt soaked in red, that much is obvious at least, and with his eyes rolled up in his head and his head lolling a bit with their movements, he's obviously quite unconscious.

"O'god a'think m'goin' t'be sick." Else Kjelstrom just waltzes right inside without so much as a hello the moment the door's opened, coming to an abrupt stop about four feet from the door, starting to move one way, hesitating, then moving another until she finally sees the kitchen and makes an immediate shaky procession across the hardwood floor with clomping steps to hunch over the sink. Apparently she's not quite accustomed to the sight of blood, or this is giving her some untoward memories of her encounter with Feng Daiyu. Strangely, for Eileen, she is now in the presence of the very woman who started the mad quest to find Munin by way of accidental precognition.

She's also puking into her sink.

Andy Rourke is another unfamiliar face, tall, dark and clean shaven, he's spattered with Doyle's blood up the side of his face and down one side of his shirt. "Bloody 'ell love, thanks for be'n 'ome." It's also made abruptly clear that Andy Rourke is not from the United States, but very much a British transplant like Eileen. "Buddy's lost a lot'a blood, I dunno 'ow much but it's all over th' bed a'my truck." Staggering under Doyle's weight to drag him in, Andy leaves Colette to stretch back and shut the door with her foot, leaving a muddy boot mark on the wood, and proceeding to leave equally buddy boot marks all across the nice hardwood floor.

"It's okay Eric, it— it's okay, come on, wake up— wake up…" It hasn't been long since Eileen's seen Colette, but she's never had the misfortune of seeing the girl crying. Perhaps holding someone's bleeding throat while they drain pale is a bit more than she was prepared for when she woke up today. The teen's fingers are red with blood stains, and the black sweatshirt is clealy soaked with it.

"Where d'you want me t'drop this sack, love?" Andy asks with a groaning grunt of his voice, knees buckling for a moment as he guides Doyle's inert form with Colette following alongside, keeping that sweatshirt pressed tight to the wound.

The sound of Eileen guiding the door shut punctuates Andy's question. A moment later, the lock turns and the young woman is following swiftly at his heels. She breezes by the kitchen without so much as a glance at Else stooped over the sink — vomit is nothing that can't be rinsed away with a liberal application of hot water. Worse has been put down the garbage disposal.

The apartment isn't very large — big enough that two people could live comfortably if they shared the same bed, but not big enough to accommodate all five Ferrymen without making the space seem much tighter than it really is. Eileen throws open the French doors that separate the bedroom from the rest of the living space and gestures Andy toward the bed itself with a lifted chin.

"Colette." Her voice is hard, terse. "There's a list of phone numbers on the refrigerator. I need you to call the one next to Bo Ling's Chinese Take-Out. Do not use the landline."

Eric Doyle, for his part, is lugged around like the sack that he's named; he's still bleeding, which is a good thing in that he's still alive - and a bad thing, in that he's still losing blood. There're better places to take a grazed bullet that the side of the neck, as it turns out.

At least he's unconscious, though!

"Ol boy here could— " Andy lets out a grunted growl, nearly letting Eric's girth slip free after one false step, " — hhh— he's gonna' 'ave to shed a few pounds 'fore I do this for 'im again." Wrestling Doyle into the bedroom, Andy practically throws him onto her bed with a roll of his shoulders, leaving Doyle's legs dangling off to the side. Exhaling a relieved sigh and stepping away from Doyle just so he can feel what it's like to not have a bent spine any longer, Andy rolls his shoulders, pops his neck from side to side, and looks down to Colette holding the sweater to his neck.

"Go on, do what th' bird asked. I've got 'im." Grabbing a hold of the sweatshirt, Andy pries Colette's shaking fingers from it, looking up towards the sound of Else's retching, then over to Colette at the dark-haired teen staggers away from Doyle, hands covered in blood. She looks up at Eileen, blinking back frightened tears, then looks towards the kitchen over her shoulder and chokes out some sort of sound of affirmation.

As she moves, Colette's doing her best to fumble her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers smear blood over the plastic casing as she walks into the kitchen, looking at the refrigerator. She gets halfway through dialing the numbers, stops when she hears the sounds Else is making, then looks back and finishes dialing the number. She didn't even ask who she was calling, she doesn't even know who'll be on the other end.

"Man, some shit went down in Summer Meadows. Dunno what th' fuck was goin' on. Colette an' me 'eard some shoutin' up while we were on the secon' floor. Came down an these guys were swingin' knives aroun' an' broken bottles an— it was a clusterfuck. Eric got shot in the neck, dunno 'ow bad." Afraid to pull the balled up hooded sweatshirt away from the bleeding, Andy furrows dark brows, looking up to Eileen and offering out his less bloodied hand towards her. "Andy Rourke, by the by. Wish we'd met under better circumstances, yeah?"

The phone isn't ringing for long before someone on the other end picks up. The answer, however, is most likely not anything that Colette would have reasonably expected to receive, all things considered.

"Boiler room. Hot enough for ya?" It's a familiar-ish voice, at least, so that has to count for something.

Doyle's blood soaks through the goose down comforter that covers Eileen's bed, staining it an ugly shade of red that competes with the cashmere scarf draped over the seat of her vanity — an old gift from Amato. As she maneuvers around the side of the mattress, her reflection passes across the surface of the water-stained mirror, obscuring Andy's distorted view of himself should he happen to be looking in that direction.

Heedless of the blood, she takes his hand — she'll have plenty more of it on her in just a few moments — and gives it a firm squeeze before her fingers slip from his and feel Doyle's. She replaces the sodden sweatshirt with a cotton towel she keeps under her nightstand for reasons inscrutable to anyone except the person who lives and sleeps here. "I don't have the equipment to treat an injury this severe," she says, applying pressure to the wound with one hand and propping Doyle's head up with pillows using the other, "but Colette's getting someone on the line who does."

It could be that Eric's fingers squeeze back against hers - but maybe it's just a spasm, or her imagination, because he's limp enough soon enough. He's looking rather pale, likely from that same lack of internal fluids, but at least the injury doesn't look too severe. A graze, at best, just in a rather unfortunate location across the side of his thick neck. It's a very thick neck, or it'd be worse.

A blood covered thumb prepares to disconnect the call because Colette had to have dialed that wrong. The teen stares blankly at the floor opens her mouth to speak, but only a croaking sound comes out— and of course the background dry-heave of Else hunched over the kitchen sink— before she turns and makes a hustling approach towards the bedroom again, muddy bootprints ground into the floor again. "E— Eileen— " Colette covers the receiver with one hand. "It— who— " she looks down at Doyle on the bed, eyes wide, then up to the brunette. "Who'm I calling? He— he said it's the boiler room?" Dark brows are raised, confusion sets in, and Colette seems to have not quite yet recognized the voice of Jensen Raith— it's been a few months.

Strangely, when she went looking for these very people they were gone. Now, all of the sudden, they're practically falling out of the walls in front of her.

Andy takes a step back from the bed, watching Eileen, then begins pacing around the foot of the bed, bare hands rubbing forefingers and thumb together, trying to get the feeling of blood off of his fingertips with little result. "E's gonna make it, right? I mean— e's gonna make it?" Andy's the kind of guy who needs something to do in a time of crisis, something to occupy his hands with, and the idea that he's out of anything to do now that muscle has done all it can is somewhat disconcerting.

Still hunched over the sink, Else manages to spit a few times, stringy saliva dangling from her bottom lip. She exhales one shuddering breath, pulling back her hair to hold it behind her head, spits again, and then leans wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, leaning away shakily from the sink, turning on the faucet to wash off her hand and rise the drain out.

"Hey." On the other end of the line, Raith actually whistles into the receiver of his own handset. "Yo, I don't have all day to do this, so cut to the chase. Who are you, what are you doing to Eileen, and why wasn't I invited? Remember, you're under oath."

Eileen turns Doyle's head so his cheek rests against the pillow's surface, the weave of her cotton sheets grating against stubble. Although the thread count isn't very high, the linens are at least clean and smell vaguely of lilac-scented detergent rather than sweat and whatever else one might expect a young woman's bedding to carry the aroma of.

As soon as she's sure that Doyle's airway isn't obstructed by his tongue, she checks his breathing and then his pulse, two fingers pressed firmly against his neck above the hem of the towel. Andy's question about the unconscious man's chances of survival goes ignored, which is in itself never a good sign. "There's a first-aid kit in the crawl space," she says instead, directing him toward a small door built into one of the walls that looks like it was made with either a dwarf or a very small child in mind. "I need you to get it for me."

To Colette: "Tell him I want morphine and some chemical haemostats — Quickclot, Celox. I'll pay him back."

Staring blankly at Eileen from the open French doors, Colette takes a moment to actually parse what was asked of her. When her hand comes away, she's not answering the question that the man on the other line had asked of her. "I— Sh— she needs some medical supplies. Our friend's hurt— I— " swallowing dryly, her mind races to try and remember all the words and terms, she wasn't hardly paying attention, despite having little else to pay attention to. "Morphine. she needs morphine and— something— hemo— hemostats? Um, she— " a sharp breath exhales, think Colette. "Celix? Quick clotting— Celox! Celix, she needs Celox and Quick Clot." There's a jerk of her head to the side when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and Colette only then notices Else standing by her side.

The distraction is only momentary, and with a quirk of her head Colette's pinning the phone between her cheek and shoulder, wiping blood off on her shirt. "She— Eileen says she'll pay you back for it? I— " her voice raises, clearly asking Eileen and not the man on the other end of the phone, despite Raith obviously still being able to hear it. "Does he know the address?" She's assuming he's not actually in the boiler room.

But with Raith, honestly, he very well could be.

Andy is far less concerned about that matter, and more with looking askance at the small door in the wall of the bedroom. "This where all your voyeurs hide?" He asks, not knowing just how unfunny and ironic the question really is. He crouches down, fingers finding the door's seam, pulling ot open and ducking his head down as he looks inside. "You know, I've 'eard about you from the other people in the Ferry. Said you were a frien' of ol' Mage, o' used'ta run th' Garden yeah?" There's a metallic clink inside where Andy is reaching in the wall, and he retrieves the first aid kit, rising up to stand straight and bring it over to settle near Eileen on the bed.

"They say you're frien's with some kinda' mercen'ry folks?" Dark eyes assess Eileen as Andy nudges the first-aid box towards her. "They say lot've things… guess none'a that matters now'n you're sewin' up ol' boy 'ere…" There's something understated and perhaps biting about that comment, implying he's heard the bad with the good.

"Hey, stay with me here." If Raith was, at any point, not taking this situation seriously, the hard, focused edge his voice now carries over the airwaves will undoubtedly dispel any concerns. "Take a breath and calm down. What kind of wound, gunshot or knife, where, and how long ago? Answer one at a time, don't forget to breathe. You're doing fine."

Eileen looks away from Doyle long enough to glance askance in Andy's direction, her eyes made dark by the lashes that veil them. "I don't keep very many friends," she answers in that same curt tone, which is neither a yes nor a no, but before he can ask for clarification, her attention is back on Colette.

"Your average adult male has five litres of blood in his body," she's saying, and though she'd never to admit it to anyone, it's to guide her own thought process rather than educate the younger woman about what's happening. Like a stage actor rehearsing her lines to commit them to memory, she speaks the words aloud in an attempt to arrive at the correct conclusions. "Pressure begins to drop when he loses twenty to thirty percent. Brain death can occur at as low as forty." And Doyle's lost a lot of blood. "Morphine," she repeats, and this time it is for Colette's benefit, "chemical haemostats, either Quickclot or Celox, and saline solution. Intravenous needle, catheter."

Eileen has made her decision about what needs to be done, and it apparently involves more supplies than she initially requested. "Pull yourself together, lovely."

This time Colette's repeating it back as it's said; "M— Morphine. Chem— Chemical hemostats, ei— either Quick Clot or Celox. Saline solution, and— and a catheter and an intravenous needle." It was better that time, since she actually was paying attention, not just saying she was.

Breathing out a sharp breath into the phone again, Colette nods her head once, then it just sort've starts bobbing, like she's confirming a mental checklist of things that are wrong in her head right now. "Um he— " She only then remembered Raith asked her questions. "It was a gunshot. I— I dunno. There were people shooting, and he was bleeding a lot— and it— Eileen's got him now. She— I dunno— I dunno. I didn't look at it, there was just so much blood." Wiping her hand across her face, not quite realizing what she's done by this, Colette leaves some crimson fingerprints across her cheeks.

"I had a sweater, it— I dunno how bad it— " Colette realizes she can just ask right about there. "Ei— Eileen? Your— boiler guy wants to know— he wants to know how bad it is." Before Eileen answers, she's curling her fingers tight around the plastic of the phone, swallowing anxiously. "He got shot about— God, I— fff— fifteen, twenty minutes ago?"

At Colette's side, Else seems to be a bit less shaken up, but she seems to be in no hurry to take the phone away from the teen either. Giving Colette something to focus on right now is probably helping her more than standing around and worrying would, Else is doing enough of that herself. Giving one last squeeze to the teenager's shoulder, Else is braving the room where Doyle is, but stops short when she sees Eileen handling the first aid kid, feeling her stomach turn, and turns right around and heads back for the kitchen as a safety precaution.

Andy, remarkably, is just quiet. The way he watches Eileen work on Doyle is something of the way that Aviators probably watches her through her window at night with a telescopic lens on his camera; scrutinizingly. Maybe this is what Aviators meant, that she was being observed. Not so much in the way that criminals are watched to make sure they stay on the straight and narrow, but in the way people are judged based on their actions— past and present.

You blow up one school full of kids and everyone's got a grudge.

Certainly, that's a sentiment that Eric Doyle could empathize with. He's done a number of horrible things as well, but for some reason people can't seem to forget about them…

The pale puppeteer just lays there where he's been set, like a particularly small beached whale, his baseball cap lost somewhere along the way and his pink-paint-stained overalls and the long-sleeved shirt beneath them darkened with blood. He's breathing, if shallowly, and his pulse is weakening from lack of blood but not dangerously so… yet.

Gunshot. Fifteen or twenty minutes. Has to be small caliber. Not that it matters at this point: If it was twenty minutes ago, that means a grand total of nearly an hour before they'll get proper fluids. "Keep them hydrated," Raith says into his phone. In the background, Colette can hear the sounds of equipment being shuffled around and fabric brushing against metal. "Sports drinks'll be best, sugar water's next best. I can be there in half an hour. If you can get oxygen, I suggest you administer it. Half an hour, maybe less."

Eileen removes a pair of latex gloves from the kit and pulls them onto her hands, the material conforming to the shapes of her fingers while leaving little room for it to wrinkle or bunch. She can only vaguely hear Raith's voice on the other end of the line — it comes off sharp and tinny, his words too abrasive for her to decipher them from where she's sitting. Likely, she would not appreciate him telling her how to the job he once trusted her to handle unsupervised in the Dispensary's infirmary when she and the others were still living there.

"The victim's in shock," she offers Andy. "He's still breathing, but he's got a weak pulse, which means the window we have in which to act is getting smaller. The man on the phone with Colette is going to bring me the supplies I need to perform a blood transfusion. While we're waiting, I'm going to clean and disinfect the wound so you can help me sew him up — is that all clear?"

Right about now, Else is particularly happy not to be in that room any longer. Andy looks a bit taken aback by all of this, to be perfectly honest, "You— Sew him up? He— he ain't a pair of pants he's all flesh and blood an'— " Andy grimaces, wiping one hand over the top of his shaved head as he is often wont to do, except he leaves a bloody streak in doing it, and regrets the motion immediately. Everything sounds just dire enough for him to actually listen to Eileen, and contemplate the idea of stitching someone up like a split pair of jeans. "Yeah, yeah fine fine. I— jus' tell me wha I gotta' do."

Outside of the bedroom and still pacing back and forth across the floor, Colette seems distracted enough by Raith's conversation to not break into a panicked fit. "O— okay, I— alright. Thirty minutes, please— please hurry it— this— " Colette shakes her head, swallows awkwardly and makes an exasperated sound into the receiver. "J— Just try and get here as soon as you can. He— I think— Eileen's gonna try and sew him up, s— so— please, hurry."

It's likely possible she still doesn't recognize him for who he is, and it's hopefully also true that when Aviators left this apartment, that he didn't bother to stick around. Because this particular collection of individuals in Eileen's apartment could make for a sticky situation.

"Fast as I can," Raith replies, "Just keep it together. You're doing good. You're doing just fine. I need both my hands free, so I have to hang up, but I need you to do something for me. I need you to make sure all the curtains are closed, and then I need you to help Eileen with whatever it is she needs. Whatever it is, you can do it. I just need you to do that for me." If Colette were perhaps more familiar with Jensen Raith, his general demeanor and attitude in this situation might seem strange. Then again, even if she was more familiar with him, this is an emergency. Maybe not so strange after all.

Nodding her head, despite the fact that Raith can't see her, Colette seems intent on trying to not break apart into a thousand pieces like she wants to right now. "Okay, okay, I— I can do this. Thank you— thank you so much." Swallowing tensely, the girl waits until she hears the click of the other line closing off, and then immediately presses a bloody finger to the end call button, and without explanation goes about moving to the apartment's large windows that overlook the darkening Brooklyn streets, yanking shades closed with a clattering rustle of the curtain rod and rings.

As each window closes, dried clumps of mud falling from the soles of Colette's boots leave tell-tale signs of everywhere she's been in the apartment. Colette's not sure why this has to be done, she's not even sure that she's closed all of the curtains, double-checking the kitchen and then looking over her shoulder to the main room by the front door again. Her hands are still trembling, and she's realizing that she's moving on auto-pilot. It's what takes her, awkwardly, back to Eileen's bedroom, because that's what Jensen told her to do.

In times of crisis or panic, she defers without question. Her father taught her that bad habit. At least, for the time being, it's positive trait.

A lot can happen in twenty-eight minutes.

On the other side of New York City, a man steps off a subway platform and into the path of an oncoming train. Police respond to the scene before the blood has dried on the rails, and while the station is being sectioned off with bright strips of tape in crime scene yellow that flutter in the breeze generated by the tunnel, a woman named Eduarda Guerrero receives a phone call from a man identifying himself as Detective Vega who tells her that her brother's body has been identified at the Cathedral Parkway station. Just down the street at the maternity ward of St. Luke's hospital, five babies are born, including one set of fraternal twins delivered via emergency c-section by a doctor whose wife has just finished writing him a letter so he doesn't panic when he comes home at the end of his shift to discover that she'd left him even though she knows he'll only care she took the cat.

To these people, what happens behind the curtains of apartment number five-o-five is entirely inconsequential. By the time Raith arrives, Eileen is washing the blood from her hands in the bathroom sink and carefully avoiding her reflection in the mirror as she scrubs under her nails. It would appear as though the Quick Clot was only a precaution — white gauze stained pink covers the bullet wound on Doyle's neck and the sutures holding it together. Although the puppeteer hasn't been moved from the bed, he lacks the clothes he had on when the Ferry brought him in, leaving only an additional set of white cotton sheets to cover him below the waist and preserve what remains of his dignity.

Eileen wanted to be absolutely sure they didn't miss anything.

The sound of the tap running is punctuated as Raith, having been let inside only moments earlier, quickly but carefully empties out, of all things, the modified tackle box he's brought inside, compartmentalized to serve as a less obtrusive med-kit nevertheless filled with disinfectants, drugs, bandages, gauze, tape, glue, sutures, syringes and two IVs of saline solution. It doesn't take him more than a few seconds to lay out everything they're about to make use of, leaving him with plenty of time to take stock of the room while Eileen finishes washing up. Two people he doesn't recognize, and two he does: One from Halloween, one from Pinehearst. Big Apple, small world.

It's probably for the best in the sense that those clothes were likely mostly ruined by blood, but most would probably empathize for anyone who had to strip Doyle down - of course, he would probably take offense to such reactions. He's still unconscious, of course, in shock and bloodloss; mercifully the bullet didn't hit anything particularly vital as it grazed his neck, but it was a close thing. One little gust, and he'd be a dead puppeteer right now.

Colette hasn't been much other than overwrought with concern since this all started. She's sitting at Eileen's table, boots now off and most of the mud on the floor cleaned up, wringing her fingers around her cell phone, debating on something that seems to be nagging at the back of her mind. When green eyes angle over to Eileen's bedroom and the bloodstained sheets, she shakes her head and pushes out her chair. "I— I'm gonna go make a phone call…" she offers in a hushed tone of voice to no one in particular, starting to make her way to the door of the apartment, passing right by Raith with a somewhat blank expression on her face.

Looking up from a mug of coffee where he sits at the table, Andy gives a silent — if not somewhat disconcerted — nod to Colette as she starts to get up, then looks up to Raith with furrowed brows. "A'seen you 'round Staten before, ain't I? You got a familiar face, ain't never talked before though. Gots to say, thanks for pulling through like you did here. Means a lot t'me t'know that someone'd come up out've the blue to patch up Big Boy 'ere." He's got that exact same grating accent Ethan has, with all the wot and oo, it's slightly different from Eileen's.

"Never did much say 'oo I was." Pushing his chair out, Andy carries his coffee in still bloodied hands over towards where Raith's settling down everything. "Name's Andy, the little one makin' a phone call's Colette, an' Else is in'na bathroom tryin' not to puke no more, prol'ly from shock." A dirty hand is offered out to Raith, looked at then lowered with a frown.

On her way out of the bathroom, drying off her hands with a fresh towel, Eileen moves past Else, careful not to jostle the other woman unnecessarily. Apart from a smudge of blood crusting on her cheek, she appears clean — but just in case, the first thing she helps herself to is another set of latex gloves now that her original pair has been discarded with the rest of the rubbish. Next, a length of plastic tubing is wrapped around her wrist as she selects two needles designed for intravenous use, medical tape to secure them in place and a bottle of disinfectant small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.

She hasn't said anything since shutting the French doors to sequester Doyle from the rest of the apartment, and the tightness in her jaw suggests that her silence will continue to extend for the next few minutes while she makes her final preparations.

"I go outside from time to time," is the only answer that Raith offers as to why Andy finds his face somewhat familiar. He's a bit distracted at the moment, but not because he's about to operate. This is Eileen's house, Eileen's associates, and that means that Eileen is the surgeon, not Raith. "What do you need, doc?"

Appreciative of Eileen's concern where she sits on the closed toilet, hunched forward and backs of her thumbs resting against her forehead, Else doesn't seem to do much for that appreciation, aside from murmur something that might be an apology against her legs. She does look up as Eileen leaves, dark brown eyes settled on the Briton's back, wondering how someone over ten years younger than her has a better handle on a situation like this than she does. It's somewhat embarrassing.

Andy's mouth opens as if to deliver a comment, but Raith's question of the approaching girl over his shoulder makes him step back and away, bringing the coffee cup up to his lips instead, drawing in a sip as he looks from Eileen to Raith and back again. "E's all sewn up shut, right, you din' need none've that clotty shit, yeah?" Andy keeps the coffee cup by his mouth as he talks, not quite tipped back far enough to drink from. "E's all set, we can pick 'im up in the morning?" There's a nervous look between Andy and Eileen, right about the same time Colette's closing the apartment door and making her phone call out in the hall.

"No later than five, five-fifteen," is Eileen's clipped response to Andy. "He'll be safer with Grace and Scott at the Hangar — Greenwich isn't far from Morningside, and we have operatives at St. Luke's who can look in on him between shifts. I'll continue doing everything I can, but I'm only a field medic and an amateur one at that." That she's willing to entertain the possibility of Doyle surviving the night is a tentative sign that his prognosis has improved, though the steely quality of the Briton's voice cautions against optimism. She doesn't want to make any promises to people that she can't keep.

Her bare feet are moving across the floorboards in the moments that follow. When she addresses Raith for the first time, she does it with her slim back to him. "I need an extra set of hands," she says. "Bring the box."

It's without any verbal response that Raith brings the tackle box over. He's playing nurse, tonight, and is fairly indifferent about this fact. He doesn't comment on the conditions of the room, or the patient, or anything. This is Serious Business.

Looking into the bathroom to make sure Else seems alright in her huddled silence, Andy furrows his brows and heads round past where Raith and Eileen are headed back into the bedroom. He's a bit noisy with the heavy footfalls, but otherwise trying to stick close and at least be tangentally helpful. Though he's given pause when the apartment door opens again, and Colette comes walking back in, crusted blood on her fingers flaking off as she tucks her cell phone into the pocket of her pants. "I— I called Kaylee…" she offers up with a quiet tone of voice, "told her what happened to Eric. She says she's gonna… um, be over? I dunno if she actually knows where this place is or not."

Socked feet carry Colette across the floor towards the bedroom of the apartment, standing on the other side of the double french doors from Andy, peering in at Doyle's partly covered form. She seems a lot more calm and in control than she did earlier, and it's with a fond crook of her head and a look towards Raith that she manages a smile.

"Heya, King." The tiny brunette offers with a wrinkle of her nose, followed by a further approach into the room. "Do— do you think he's gonna wake up any time soon?" Green eyes divert to Eileen when she asks that question, but Andy's focused on something a little bit less important but wholly mystifying, which he directs to Raith.

"Your name's King?"

His name is Vithar, actually, but Eileen isn't going to tell Andy that. Neither is she going to admit that this is the first time she's attempted anything of this nature. She's read about it in books and has stood where Colette stands now, lingering in the periphery of someone more equipped to handle the situation than she is. If she succeeds, it may be best to attribute Doyle's survival to the teaching methods of Dr. Constantine Filatov and the man she spent several months studying under when she was still a member of the Vanguard.

If she fails, she has only herself to blame.

Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, she ties a rubber band around her left arm several inches above the inside of her elbow and tightens it until the material is cutting into her skin with enough force to drain the colour around it. This done, she takes one of the needles in her teeth by its casing and unwinds the catheter from her wrist. "Better if he he doesn't," she says to Colette around the plastic. "He's going to be in a lot of pain."

"That's what the morphine is for, if his heart rate's not too low." Raith foregoes, whether by accident or design, answering Andy's question, opting instead to stand by, ready to assist Eileen in the event she asks for it, or starts to keel over. Any questions about blood types are shoved aside: From what he could piece together, Eileen was every bit as dangerous in Madagascar as she was before some of her memories went slip-sliding away, and that should mean that she remembers everything she knows about blood.

Probably.

Suddenly this is all making a little too much sense for Andy. As he sees what Eileen's doing to her arm and in what she's likely preparing to do, he blurts out, "Is— are you— I mean, do you even know his— " She's got to be a professional, right? Andy just raises both of his hands, palms out, I'm out he signals, taking a few steps back from the bedroom doorway. Best to give the doctor her room. When he's heading out of the bedroom, Else is heading out of the bathroom, and Andy's quick to make his way over to the waifish blonde, resting his hands on her shoulders, turning her right around, and walking her into the kitchen. "You ain't need'n t'see any of what's goin' on in there darlin', trust me if you were makin' toilet noises at what 'appened earlier this ain't much better."

Wanting to look away, but too concerned for Doyle's well-being, Colette moves to the opposite side of the bed, watching what Eileen's planning to do. Her green eyes look up worriedly to Raith, and then of course back to Eileen as she asks the obvious. "You've— done this before right?" There's a smile that nervously creeps up on Colette's lips at the question. She has done this before, right?

"Course she has. Dozens of times," Raith replies to Colette, adding under his breath, "Sure, why not?"

As Eileen connects the needle to the catheter and tightens it to prevent the immediate flow of blood into the tube, she briefly lifts her eyes to meet Colette's. They're a paler shade of green than the teen's, almost gray except for the iris around her pupils, ringed in amber and reminiscent of a cat's. "My blood hasn't got any antigens in it," she says. "That makes me a universal donor. Type O-negative. There's still a chance something might go wrong and trigger anaphylactic shock, but it's the best chance he has."

She inserts the needle into Doyle's arm and secures it with strip of medical tape so she doesn't have to hold it in while she goes through the same motions with herself after wiping down her skin using a cotton swab soaked in an astringent disinfectant that smells strongly of alcohol. One twist begins the transfer of dark-coloured fluid through the tube twisting across the space between them like an angry red snake. Another admits it into Doyle's circulatory system and replenishes lost blood at a slow, seeping creep.

Hopefully it doesn't stop his heart.


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