Participants:
| Scene Title | Bloodwork |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lucille visits Elmhurst Hospital in search of answers to her miraculous healing. |
| Date | May 15, 2018 |
Afternoon hustle is going on at Elmhurst Hospital, the halls echoing with activity as nurses and loved ones hastily make their way to their destinations. Among them are three Hounds, Lucille leading the trio looks over her shoulder with a sheepish look on her face, “Thanks for coming guys.”
Pale blue eyes survey the hall as the male their way forward. She nervously plays with the silver locket at her neck. Lucille’s attire the usual of asymmetrical dark grey blazer, gloveless hands and minimal accessories. No makeup. Auburn hair pulled back, a few strands flying into her face every time she whips her head around to talk to her friends.
She was looking for answers, she was also afraid of what she would find. Having Colette and Berlin there to help was a godsend.
“S’nothing,” Colette reassures Lucille, though her attention appears to be on her phone when she does. Nine notifications pop up one after another once the device connects to the cell tower at the hospital. Pacing back and forth outside of the room they were told to wait at, Colette chews at her bottom lip and keys something in to the phone with swiftly moving thumbs. “Usually stuff like this’ for I’m suddenly sick, not, I’m miraculously better.”
Colette’s blind eyes briefly look up from her phone to reassure Lucille that she’s paying more attention to her than the device. But at the next chime she looks back down again. “Sorry, it’s… Joe. I swear to Christ that kid texts as much as he — ” another notification pops up, “ — nnh — as much as he talks.”
"Yeah, we don't mind being moral support," Berlin gives Luce a small smile. "Just some blood work, right?" She looks over at Colette, nodding to her words. "Yeah, it isn't like there's something wrong with you. So it can only be good news, right?" Right.
When Joe is mentioned, Berlin tilts her head a little and glances to the phone. Her expression is hard to read, really. But she has seemed uncomfortable since they came near the hospital. "Joe Winters?" She doesn't seem to actually want the answer, though, seeing as she turns to Lucille a moment later. "You think we're going to smell like this all day? You know, like latex gloves and old people?" Like a hospital, she means.
The voices united in support bring a soft pang to her heart and she smiles softly with a nod. “Hospitals freak me out a little, Delia is all about them,” obviously, but Lucille.. they reminded her of her mom’s death. As Colette texts Joe back she grins, “One of your children.” She pokes fun at Col with a snicker and running a hand through her hair.
Luce looks over to Berlin as she seems to ask about that.. “Winters as in Brian?” The world is so small for them.
“I hope just bloodwork, I mean I feel… fine… but.” You could feel fine and have a life threatening disease.
“Yeah,” Colette belatedly answers to both of them in one monosyllabic response. She taps a few more keys then exhales a sigh and tucks her phone into her pocket. “Yeah, Winters. He’s a good kid, I practically raised him when I was staying at the Lighthouse. He’s just… talky.” Blind eyes finally come up and surveil the hospital room, and then Colette steps out and eyes up and down the hall.
“I… haven’t been in a real hospital since before the war started,” Colette notes, looking back in to Berlin and Lucille. “Battlefield triage doesn’t count. It’s not…” she looks suddenly uncomfortable, remembering where she was and what was happening. The stories Berlin and Lucille both remembered about Tasha’s near death and her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head. The girl who refused to die.
Colette swallows awkwardly and looks back out to the hall. “Nurse better come soon, this place is…” She doesn’t finish the thought.
"Mm." Berlin's noise is noncommittal as far as Brian goes. Joe's talkativeness also gets similarly sidestepped. Instead, she looks between Colette and Lucille. "I don't like hospitals, either." With her sense of peoples' illnesses, perhaps it's understandable. Her fingers lace together and back out again, a gesture to ease her own twitchiness. For Luce's sake.
"So we're all in this together," she ends up saying with a warmer smile. "And everyone here is very mundane. Nothing crazy." No headshot wounds. No wild viruses. Just normal hospital patients. Normal illnesses. It's likely that she's just saying that to try to help ease them both, but she says it with enough confidence that it certainly sounds true.
Talkative didn't really describe Joe’s dad and it made her smile softly, sometimes kids turned out wildly different than their parents, genes or not. Luce twists the silver chain around her finger as she looks up towards the ceiling with a soft exhale of breath. Her leg begins to bounce as she taps her foot anxiously but slowly the movement stops as she goes through the motions of mediation in her mind, not deeply immersed but just breathing deeply.
The younger of the three seemed to be the most calm and Lucille was grateful for that. Her eyes traveled over to a nearby nurses station her own mind going back to her own near death experience, the triage hospitals.. “Yea, helping one of my friends Meg during the early days of the war… didn't help with my feelings on this place.”
The woman was determined to hear what was going on with her body.
“There’s a nurse coming,” Colette notes from out in the hall, walking in to the examination room afterward. There’s a look on Colette’s face, one of uncertainty. “I think me’n you might know her,” she adds to Lucille, looking back to the door. “She looks familiar. Maybe from Pollepel?” There’s an approaching sound of footsteps that comes after that question, and Colette waits with one brow raised.
Through the door, a short blonde woman in her early twenties emerges with hair tied back into a bun, pink scrubs over a black long-sleeved shirt. Her sneakers scuff on the floor as she comes to a stop, nametag clearly displaying Juliette Fournier-Raith. Julie carries a clipboard with documentation on it, paging through as she flashes a familiar smile on walking in.
“Jesus Christ, it is you.” Julie strides in, walking up to Lucille. “I saw the name and I thought…” she looks down to the clipboard, then back up again with scrunched brows. “I haven’t seen you since… the island and…” Julie clears her throat, setting down the clipboard and walking into arm’s reach of Lucille. A smile is flashed to Colette and Berlin, though less familiarity there.
“So, I took a look at your medical file — what of it we have. It… stops several years ago, before the war. Which, honestly, we see a lot of.” Julie reaches up and pulls a pen out of her twisted bun, then waggles it idly between two fingers. “I remember you had a neck wound,” Julie walks over to a counter space, getting a pair of rubber gloves and pulling them on. “Which, according to what you wrote on your check in papers, the scar disappeared?”
Snapping the gloves on, Julie tilts her head to the side. “Do you mind if I have a look at your ability?” Which might be the weirdest question Lucille’s been asked as of late. “I can… sense powers, figure out what they are. I might be able to determine if you were misregistered or maybe if you’ve gained some sort of regenerative aspects.”
Slowly, Colette arches a brow. “You… can do that?”
“Mnhmm,” Julie vocalizes, though Colette doesn’t say anything further. Her mind wanders to thoughts of Robyn, however, and her peace of mind.
"I don't envy you that," Berlin says to how Lucille spent the beginning of the war. She glances over to Colette when she pops back in, her head tilting some. So when Julie comes in, she glances at her, at her name, but she settles herself back against a wall to make room for the actual examination.
"Her power stabilized, too," Berlin offers, when the disappearing scar is brought up.
She's being helpful.
Her eyebrow lifts, too, nearly in time with Colette's, and she glances from Julie to her friends and back again. There may be a glance toward the door mixed in there, but she tries not to be too obvious about it. "That's handy," she eventually comments in Julie's general direction. Her tone is a little flat, though, so it's hard to say if she's being genuine.
Colette’s musings on if Lucille would know the nurse walking up to them catches Lucille by surprise, Delia doesn't work here anymore.. and then Julie comes into view and Lucille’s eyes widen. The two women both nearly lost their lives in the water that night, there's a weird bond when you go through that with someone, not that they were friends exactly.
“Julie, holy shit.” Lucille grabs onto the other woman’s arms gently as she comes to stand in front of them. “It's great to see you. Yea uh… I'd say we’re both doing a bit better than last time.” It's ironic too that she is coming to talk about the injury from that night and Julie is the one to receive them. There's a brief, tight hug and then Lucille backs up a little to give her room. “This is one of the toughest ladies I know, no offense Col and Burr. Meet Julie. Julie? Meet Colette and Berlin, Colette was on the island with us.” History lesson over she nods and listens to what Julie and the others say.
Looking to Berlin and nodding, “Yea, it started over March.. just slowly fading and then in April.. all gone. Ability working right.. it's been six years and I just can't think of what could cause this? Not that I'm ungrateful.” The part of her that was like her father was very weary of this. But she was so grateful for this second chance, this miracle.
“Look.. uh.. I mean of course.” Luce blinks and holds out her arm as if she's getting blood drawn but then looks sheepish at the trio around her and tries to stand very still.
Though flushed with color of embarrassment at the embrace, it is only at mention of the name Colette that Julie looks awkward. She glances over at the photokinetic and then down to the floor. “Ah,” she loses her voice for a moment, then looks away and seems momentarily anxious. Her attention moves to Lucille’s arm, and Julie instead chooses to focus her attention on the biokinetic’s arm, as if she needed to.
While Julie inspects Lucille, Colette crosses her arms over her chest and steps beside Berlin, brows furrowed and offering the blonde nurse an uncertain expression. She’s quiet for a time, then chimes in. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I remember her from… actually…” When Colette dithers, Julie looks up, expression momentarily nervous. Berlin recognizes the expression, the fear in her eyes.
“Actually, I might be remembering Liette…” Colette finally decides, looking away and running a hand through her hair. “Sorry, I — ”
“It’s okay,” Julie interjects, relieved. “I get that a lot. My sister was… she was memorable.” Swallowing awkwardly, Julie turns her attention to Lucille again. “Ah, your ability… absolutely is biological manipulation, outward and inward. I’m… not certain it can affect your metabolism enough to heal your wounds, but I wouldn’t rule it out. But being able to recover from long term nerve damage is…” Dithering, Julie purses her lips to the side. “Well, they’re practically rewriting the books on people like us every day. I suppose there’s room enough for anything.”
Stepping away from Lucille, Julie picks up the clipboard again. “I know this might be an obvious question, Lucille, but do you know any people with the ability to heal others? The off chance that you were exposed to another’s ability is just as likely as your own ability adapting. We can do some tests to make sure nothing unusual — uh, beyond the… expected levels of unusual — is happening, but I don’t think it’s going to find anything too conclusive.”
Berlin watches as Julie feels out Luce's power, but her attention is taken when Colette moves next to her. She glances between her and the nurse, then back again. Expressions noted, exchange noted, but nothing remarked on.
That relief has her tilting her head. This trip to the hospital might be more interesting than she expected it would be, really. Berlin reaches over to hook her arm through Colette's, a bit of support in her direction as well. Since the professionals have taken over Lucille for the moment. "It would be pretty awesome if you ended up biomanipulating yourself, Luce," she says, that one more sincere. Definitely useful in their line of work. She looks over at Colette, though, tilting her head toward Julie and giving her friend a questioning look.
The mention of Liette makes Lucille stiffen, she remembers Julie’s twin. She had encountered her one day, helping the Ferry in the initial stages of getting Liette to safety. There's a soft smile, “She was and you are also.” She counters with a pointed look towards the other woman.
“Maximum Evolution.” She looks at Burr with a grin. Maximum Evolution. Julie’s assessment and question causes her to tilt her head. “I.. I’m not sure if I have. If I did it was without my knowledge.” The notion that someone could have done this to her without her knowing makes her skin tingle. “I have been to a few social things and out in public where there were crowds.. like the gala I saw you there… a wayward ability?” She sounds very unsure.
“I noticed your scar looked different before the gala, though,” Colette chimes in, crossing her arms over her chest and slouching back against one of the counters in the exam room. “It was… smaller? I dunno, I barely noticed it. But now that this’s happened, it’s harder t’ignore.” Flicking a blind-eyed look over to Berlin, Colette shrugs and seems at a loss for how this could have happened.
Julie, making a noise in the back of her throat, steps away from Lucille and over to another counter space, pulling open a drawer and retrieving a few items from within as she talks. “If it does turn out that your own ability is at work here, you may way to consider taking an external training course. There’s… I think one available at Brooklyn College, it might help you discover corners of your ability you haven’t experienced yet.” Walking back over to Lucille, Julie has a freshly alcohol-washed cotton ball that she dabs around the inside of Lucille’s elbow.
“It’s an old injury, though…” Julie says knowingly, looking up to Lucille. Her brows furrow, and she pulls the cap off of the needle and without hesitation gently slides it into Lucille’s arm at the disinfected point, beginning to slowly draw blood. Colette looks away when the needle goes in. “Most healers I’ve ever heard of can’t fix something that the body has already mended.” Julie explains, “Especially injuries that old. The long-term healers are usually remarkably gifted once-in-a-generation kinds, from a historical perspective. Daniel Linderman, Abigail Beauchamp…” Julie’s brows furrow as if trying to call to mind one other capable of such a feat, and she can’t.
With a needle of blood drawn, Julie smiles faintly and withdraws it from Lucille’s arm. “If you can heal your own injuries, it’s entirely possible you could heal others. And if what you can do is not only the manipulation of biological forces in the way you’re registered to, but also healing, it could make you one of the most prolific healers of our generation. It would also mean you may have something as exotic as full-on life-force manipulation.” Julie’s brows raise slowly. “I’ve never even seen that in action before.”
"Would a blood test be able to tell something like that? That her ability's been changing?" Berlin crosses her arms as the needle skins into Luce's skin, as if watching it makes her uncomfortable. Her shoulder rolls and she turns her attention to a loose thread at the hem of her shirt.
"Life-force manipulation? What does that even mean?"
Berlin risks a look up, but looks away again rather than watch the vial fill up. The thread wraps around her finger methodically before she breaks it off. And when that causes the hem to bunch up, she seems perhaps overly focused on trying to straighten it back out again. "It sounds like one of those philosophical questions. What is the soul, what is life-force."
“Abby? Man I haven't seen her in years. I use to work for her.” She offers to all the women as a side bit of information. When Julie mentions college before inserting the needle in her arm, Lucille snorts. “Dad always wanted me in school and not walking runways.” An old argument she had won. Strong will that she has. Luce tries not to move as the gentle pressure of the needle enters her arm, she looks up towards the ceiling. “I.. would be interested in that.” Classes that is.
But then she's mentioning something called life force manipulation and Lu tilts her head. “That.. huh, yea what is the life force.. maybe the real essence of us?” The talk of the soul from Berlin earns the woman a smile. Burr is intelligent and Lucille often admires how the young woman thinks.
“I hope the blood test does offer some answers as well as this class. Not knowing what's going on with my body.” Is nerve wrecking to say the least.
“It’s bullshit,” Julie notes with a raise of her brows, “is what it is.” Pulling the syringe out of Lucille’s arm, Julie flashes a briefly-present smile. “The classification, life-force manipulation. It’s a holdover from the days when there was literally no standardization in classification of abilities. When you had people with ID cards that read chromakinesis right next to color manipulation. Nobody knew what they were doing, tests were faulty, and there was no research being done.”
Colette bristles visibly at that line. “Research like the Institute was doing?” It’s an uncalled for jab, and even as much as Colette is prone to bring that up with each and every Institute ‘refugee’, it lacks some of the heat it usually has. Julie in turn regards Colette with partly-lidded eyes and a flat expression and lets it roll past her. She deserved at least that barb.
“Honestly Abby’s ability and its counterpart are probably bad examples. Nobody really knows fully-well what either of those things were. It was more like the kinds of things that people like Sylar could do — mosaic abilities — than any one single thing. Possession, body-hopping, entropic healing, who knows?” Julie brings the filled syringe over to the counter and begins prepping it to be sent off to the lab.
Colette is, momentarily, quiet. Though she moves over to Lucille not long after, resting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze, before looking back to the blonde nurse.
“Anyway,” Julie digresses, “I suppose it’s not really here or there. The last recorded person with a similar ability was in the arcology when…” Julie looks down to the floor, zippering a plastic bag closed. “It doesn’t matter anymore, especially to you, Miss Ryans.” Setting the bag aside, Julie walks back over to Lucille and Colette meanders away at the same speed like opposing ends of a magnet repelled from one-another as they are brought close.
Colette comes to land beside Berlin, arms crossed over her chest and a brief look fired over to her friend. Julie, however, much-belatedly takes a cotton swab and daubs it at the inside of Lucille’s elbow and then bends her arm to keep pressure on it. “For what it’s worth you didn’t heal from the needle prick,” she says as if her delayed triage of it was intentional, “so I don’t think you have a continuously rapid healing. If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of what you can do that would require more intensive lab tests, and from there you’d have to go with private practices doing research into people like us…”
Colette immediately starts to get defensive at that, but Julie sees the tension and dismisses the concern. “Which, I can understand is a point of contention. There aren’t many research groups in the US anyway. I think the ReGenesis Foundation has some labs since they were taken in by the Deveaux Group, but I’m not certain. Either way, a hospital test here won’t really tell you what you want to know.”
Smiling, Julie raises her brows in a knowing gesture. “Which, is why I stopped by when this isn’t normally my job.”
"Luce, I don't get it," Berlin says, her lips curving into a frown at the patient's last words, "this is a good thing, right?" A worried look follows with her as she looks over to Julie. Her declaration of life-force being bullshit might normally get a laugh— a smile at least— but today it doesn't.
By the time the Institute is brought up, Berlin has to rub a hand over her face.
"You say 'Abby's ability and its counterpart' like everyone is supposed to know what that means," she points out as her hand falls heavily down to her side. "And how would entropic healing even work?" But all of this curiosity is set aside as Julie addresses Lucille.
Berlin doesn't look particularly comfortable with the idea of research, either. "Point of contention might be an understatement, in this group, Jules." Given who they all are, what they all do. "Do you know anything about ReGenesis? Are they on the up and up? Maybe we should do our own research, yeah?"
There's a lot of talk between everyone and Lucille is just hearing the words Institute and mosaics being held there before her eye refocus. “I was at the Alaska facility, never got to see the Arc.” Though Colette knows that, as does Berlin. Even Julie maybe. Looking down at her arm before it's swapped and covered she raises an eyebrow, ah no healing after all. “Good test.” She rumbles with a hint of a smile.
Colette’s hand of comfort is noted and needed by Lucille and she closes her eyes and grips her hand that is on Lucille's shoulder to squeeze before Colette moves over to Berlin’s side. The mention of labs and experiments makes Lucille’s inside chill. “ReGenesis..” piggybacking off of Berlin’s questions.
“We should look into them. I don't want to not know what the fuck is going on.” Luce looks a little nervous. “I'll take that class at the college too, dad will be so proud.” Her father the war hero and always restless agent type. Her mind going back to Abby and her counterpart, she doesn't know much of it either. “I believe she was turning into fire when I knew her.” Is said casually about Abby and then Lucille is smiling at Julie. “I really appreciate you coming to check this out with it having nothing to do with your job.” It means a lot.
“Look at it this way,” Julie begins, tugging off her rubber gloves and throwing them in the medical waste bin. “ReGenesis is run by Carla Dove. She answers to the founders of the Deveaux Society, two of whom are the Secretary and Public Relations directors of SESA. All three of whom are professionally connected to the Secretary of State Catherine Chesterfield.”
Raising her shoulders into a shrug, Julie crosses her arms. “I get why you're cautious, but some places come with as clean a pedigree as you're going to get in this world.” With that, she moves over to the plastic bag with the blood sample and takes it in hand.
Berlin’s question, such as it was, finally bounces around in Julie’s head enough for there to be an answer. “Entropic healing is… imagine that every living thing has an internal store of energy. This is getting into mitochondrial microbiology, but layman’s terms it's cell energy. An entropic healer can steal that energy, causing cell death in a target, and use it to restore themselves.”
Colette, wide-eyed, looks at Julie. “Kazimir Volken.” She’d read Wolves of Valhalla enough to recognize that description. Julie briefly meets Colette’s stare and offers her a nod in confirmation.
“He's the only historically accounted one,” Julie notes. “The Institute had another, but…” she shrugs. “Anyway, I should drop this off at the lab and get back to my regular work. If you experience any more weird symptoms, don't hesitate to come back. Your boss, Epstein, has my phone number if you need anything else.”
“Wait,” Colette looks at Julie with a distracted blink. “Why does Avi have your number?”
Julie dithers for a moment, moving to the door, then pauses and furrows her brows. She's briefly silent, then looks up. “I'm his daughter’s primary caregiver.”
Colette stares in silent confusion. His what?
"It's probably for the better," Berlin says dryly, "Not seeing the Ark. Not much to see of it now, that's for sure. Unless you're into rubble." Her tone's on the bitter side, and it carries into her next point. "So their bosses are okay, maybe. The money people. But, I don't know, if I was a former Institute scientist, where would I hide? Assuming I'm good enough to fake my identity or maybe I have a friend in the right place."
Which is to say, she is all for the plan of digging into them. Maybe not for the same reason Lucille is, but it all works out the same in the end.
Berlin folds her arms again when Julie explains that particular power. There's a twitch when Colette speaks the name that everyone is thinking. "Well," she ends up saying, quieter, "I think we can rule that one out, as far as whatever's happening to Luce." Her head turns to Colette, her brow furrowed. "It's kinda weird how Hana has that cane. Gives me the creeps." The creeps might account for the sharp look that she shoots in Julie's direction at the mention of another.
But she doesn't ask. Doesn't get a chance to, seeing as Julie's next piece of news hits close to home for all of them.
"Avi's— daughter. Of course," Berlin says with a sheepish sort of laugh, "We should have realized his daughter would have a dedicated nurse. Duh." She taps her temple with the word, to drive the point home. Silly girls, forgetting very obvious and important information. "We'll definitely be in touch if anything weirder happens to Luce, though. Thanks."
“The Deveaux Group… I… my dad worked with Charles.” Everyone knows of her father’s past with the Company, her past. “He was a nice guy.” From what she remembers when she was little.
The cane weirds Lucille out too if she's honest but she pushes that into the back of her mind as well as Kazimir Volken.. shuddering Luce rubs her shoulder absently as she looks over to Julie. “Dove, got it. I'll look her up.” But the thing that makes her eyes widen is the mention of Avi and Julie being Emily’s caregiver. Lucille’s hand twitches and she looks over to Colette as if she has something to confess but at least not in front of Julie… coughing into her hand, “Emily?”
Before anyone can look at her strange for knowing the girls name she offers, “I noticed you guys were together at the gala, we spoke.” That's a severe understatement. “She hated that shit they were doing to the lights. Hurt her eyes or something,” looking over to Colette and Berlin.
“She’s photosensitive,” Julie admits in a deferential tone. “It’s ok, though. She’s… difficult to get along with, but she’s a good person. I’m sorry if she was sour with you at all. She uh, doesn’t hold grudges though. Usually. Just…” Whatever Julie was going to say is dismissed, and she passes it off with a pleasant smile. “I’ll have someone get in touch with you with the bloodwork results when they’re done. Might be a week or two with how understaffed we are.”
“Thanks,” Colette quietly offers on her way to the door, looking back at Berlin and Lucille. “I mean, for making sure Lucille isn’t turning into a pod person or something.” There’s a wryness to her tone and a crooked slant to her smile. Julie laughs, even if just a huff of breath, and nods back as she starts cleaning up the exam room.
“Jury’s still out there,” Julie admits with off-handed humor.