The Sailor Man

Participants:

isis2_icon.gif zachery_icon.gif

Scene Title The Sailor Man
Synopsis Adding insult to injury, Zachery is rudely awoken by the curious redhead that helped him into the hospital.
Date March 13, 2019

Elmhurst Hospital, Patient Room


In spite of it being a cliche, it's often true what they say about doctors being bad patients. Even when said doctors have… fallen from grace, one might say. Regardless, this bad behavior is slightly easier to deal with when a patient is unconscious, which is exactly the state Zachery has been put in since he arrived last night after he came stumbling into the hospital, bleeding and half piled up onto the shoulder of a complete stranger. He'll blame that on survival instincts later.

But it's been a good few hours now and he still appears to be sleeping soundly. Perfectly still, on his back, in one of two hospital beds this room offers, sunlight painting streaks of warm light across his blanket and hospital gown. Apart from his breathing, there's not much movement to his form. The bandaging that covers his left eye socket is wrapped all the way around with gauze, crossing over from his left cheek to the right side of his forehead, cutting a pressed line of white into the fairly freshly un-bloodied mess of his hair.

Maybe he IS still out. It was a bit of a grueling day, yesterday. Or maybe the wayward overbed table - along with some pudding cups atop it - that has been shoved all the way until it hit the other bed in the room tells a different story. Or the water bottle tucked halfway under a blanket, gripped loosely in a hand with a small piece of gauze taped to the back of it, corroborates.

Maybe the quiet's just nice.

Isis’s face is still struck with a dumb, confused expression when she comes to the doorway. When the nurse had told her that she could go in and check on the stranger she had escorted into the hospital, when it was clear no family or friends were coming to relieve her of the duty - she took on that stupid expression, gave an absent nod, and set forth. So, here she stands, looking in on the apparently sleeping, one-eyed man. Now what?

With her left hand tucked in her pocket, the white bandage stained red-brown tucked out of sight of those well-intentioned, needle-wielding doctor sorts around the hospital, Isis moves as quietly as she can over to Zachery’s bedside. She makes it, but her eyes aren’t on him - instead its on all the contraptions nearby. She can’t name them, can’t tell you their purpose, but neither can she take her eyes off them as her alabaster complexion takes on a silky pallor. She rubs her free hands roughly at her brows before resting her hand on the bed beside Zach, more to steady herself than an act of kindness.

“Hey,” her voice is hoarse from a night spent silently on edge in the Hell Hole that is a hospital waiting room. “So, um, just wanted to see how you were holding up - see if there was anything I could do… anyone I could call?” Curiosity slowly leaching over the field of fear, Isis lifts her chin and pulls up onto tiptoes as if drawn by the tip of her nose to leeeaaaaan slowly over Zachery. To give her some credit, she doesn’t jab the sleeping figure.

For all her discomfort, Zachery looks… at home. At least, until Isis speaks — he cracks open his eye, turns his head to look at her, and immediately closes it again with a furrowing of his brow. It's a tired sort of annoyance. A gathering of thought, maybe, as well.

"Jesus. Why are you still here?" His own voice is hoarse, the words rasping out of his throat in chunks, likely due to having had a tube down his esophagus until fairly recently. He's not leaving her any time to actually answer his question, either, "Anyone you can— no, I'm already at the hospital, who would you call?" He opens his eye again to look at her, as if genuinely confounded by the question, and reaches for his face as if in reflex. But… then lowers his hand before it reaches halfway up there, attention drifting away again. He may still be a little woozy.

Instead of touching his face, he reroutes this energy to the bottle he only got access to after a VERY STERN nurse made him promise to drink all of it because he insisted that an IV wouldn't be necessary. And drinking it he is, seeming to take advantage of the time to glug it down as time he doesn't have to talk.

There’s a narrowing of hazel eyes down on the groggy figure emanating that growly reply. Isis lips purse off to the side in a thoughtful manner before her heels drop back to the floor and her spine straightens, pulling her back out of that nosey, looming posture. “Well, that explains why no one came to claim you,” she offers in a smooth, quiet, alto. It’s a statement without judgement, just an astute observation when that piece of the puzzle seems to answer one of several questions that had filling her thoughts during the hours spent in the waiting room. “So, no friends or family then - got it.”

The redhead runs a hand through her hair, banishing a few errant coils from her pale face. That same touch is lowered to rub the back of her hand over her forehead as she seems to consider the tired, wounded, grouchy, one-eyed creature before her. “That’s not a normal kitchen accident you got there.” The bandaged hand in her coat pocket shifts slightly. “The staff were asking if I knew anything…” It’s a hanging, entitled, and expectant statement.

The bottle comes back down, nearly drained of the liquid within. "I've got family. I didn't spring out into the world fully formed, and all…" Zachery trails off with a wave of his hand, sloshy bottle still within it. Friends? That's not addressed.

The attention he gives Isis seems… distracted. Up goes his free hand again, to trail fingertips up across his left cheek until it hits gauze, and then slightly further, pushing in between cheekbone and dressing. Her expectant look is noted and mulled over as he opens his mouth to run his tongue over his teeth in consideration. Whether she knows anything…? "You don't." He states dryly, looking at her. Past her? Then, almost offhandedly, as he's draaagging himself into a more upright position, "What about that kitchen accident of your own?"

He hasn't look at it yet. Not as such.

“I don’t,” she agrees simply. “But, I’d like to.” She watches Zachery adjust himself on the hospital bed before her hazel gaze wanders. Instinctively, she reaches out and adjusts the starchy white blanket - part compulsive habit, part time taking care of Lighthouse kids. Belatedly noticing the faux pas she covers up the carrying gesture by spidering her free hand over to the corner and fidgeting with a frayed, loose strand of thread. She twists it around her fingertip and gives it a yank, snapping it away. “I could have left you out there with Sparky,” she notes offhandedly as some testament to why she is deserving of an explanation for the man’s strange wound.

She finally looks back up to Zach and wrinkles her nose, drawing her left hand up from her jacket pocket. The gauze is wrinkled and bears rust-colored blotches. “An actual kitchen accident. I should know better than the try and cook. Two microwaves and one proper kitchen fire don’t scream qualified chef.” She shrugs but a ghost of a smile begins to work its way to her pale lips.

There is… a certain type of tense stillness to Zachery as 'his' blanket is fidgeted with. But he's staying put, one hand still on his face — gotta touch the thing, can't feel it so gotta touch it — and one hand pressed into the thin mattress below him.

Maybe the fact that they're both fidgeting, in their own way, brings a lopsided grin to his face, even if he is shifting his weight to lean away from his unexpected visitor. It's not fear, it's not disgust, just… sort of an uncertainty. What is this.

"… Sparky?" this nickname doesn't seem to… spark his memory. His grin pulls back slightly, his eye-eyed gaze hardening as his expression borders, momentarily, on adopting more of a sneer. "And… strangest thing. Guy comes into a bar, weird green hair, white face, pulls out a pencil. Next thing I know, I'm in here. What a day." All said as monotonically as one could manage.

The little thread is rolled up and tucked into her pocket out of sheer laziness as she watched Zachery. Her brows lift into high arches before wrinkling a bit of pale flesh on her forehead where they draw nearer to one another. “Nevermind,” she adds regarding Sparky-and-Friend. Isis tucks her wounded hand back out of sight. “Sounds like you pissed off th-…” Her head slowly cants to the side and one can almost see the light bulb go on overhead. “The Joker.” She rolls her eyes and a smirky purse of her lips cuts off most of her chuckle. “Not my favorite villain, but fine, play mysterious. See if I care.”

She sticks out her tongue, but clearly she cares since… “But, if you’re not going to bleed out and die, and your not going to give me enough to keep me interested…” She makes a gesture of putting her thumb over her shoulder. “Perhaps I’ll just go and send back in that nurse lady with the weird whiskers growing out of the mole.”

"Don't be mean-spirited about Harriet." Zachery fires back almost immediately, judging Isis in a dispirited tone of voice while his brow crumples into something sympathetic. He sinks back into his pillow as he prods carefully under his gauze some more. Inching his fingers ever so slowly upwards. "It's not her fault she ended up growing on nurse Maureen face."

He's keeping a straight face, still, doing a good job of looking like someone who also actually gives a shit. At least— until he presses those fingers up too far below the dressing, and he jerks his hand down with a sharp intake of air and a pained wince. Almost immediately, he bring it back up again. In any other situation, reflexes would have him PRESS his palm into his face, but he stops just short; sort of… hovering. As if to seek a distraction, he spits out some more words in a downward direction: "What's your name?" Simple, cold, strangely urgent.

“Oh! Look, he does humor.” That earlier pursed smirk cracks and reveals a proper smile. The expression is stuck fast to her lips as her hazel eyes move to follow the creeping ascension of Zachery’s digits up under thee gauze. Isis is inclines her chin, lips parting to make a remark but… Zachery’s hand shoots down and her chest gives a subtle heaving. Her smile is exchanged for the universal ‘that-had-to-hurt’ grimace.

“Hm? Oh-” She was too busy staring at the bandaging, wondering how much of the mess the doctors were effectively able to clean up. That gouging, bloody eye hole she saw has been playing a grisly center stage in her mind all night, after all. “Sorry. I’m Joanne. Jo will do. And, while you have dodged my first question - I’m going to need a proper name lest I resort to calling you Pop-eye.”

Distractions or not, the way Zachery's gaze bolts back onto his visitor's face should be enough to tell her that this new nickname is just not going to happen. Not if he can help it, anyway, which might be what prompts him to offer, curtly, "Dr. Zachery Miller. And Joanne…" No Jo, apparently.

He does not, in fact, sound grateful. It's the sort of tone one might use on a misbehaving child, or while scorning a pet. The one hand still near his face, lowering in what seems to be slow-motion, he glowers. Evidently, the humor was short-lived. The hoarseness only claws itself into his words more violently when he raises his voice - controlled, but through gritted teeth, bearing the weight of wanting to shrug off nice, inside-voices entirely.

"… I'm going to need you to get out."

Isis exposes her teeth in a something that is a cross between a grimace and an apologetic grin. “Yeah, you’re right… too soon.” Isis tucks her shoulders up by her ears and turns swiftly on a heel. Her red hair has barely disappeared around the doorframe when an offkey, but unmistakable, whistled tune of Popeye the Sailor Man drifts back over her shoulder and into the room.


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