Participants:
Scene Title | Bring Us Your Poor and Sick |
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Synopsis | After a run on the soup relief vans, Megan speaks to Jake about the need for a little more relief than we're carrying. |
Date | May 31, 2009 |
Camp Miller, Staten Island
The caravan of vans got back to the camp not more than an hour ago. As has been the norm with them, they usually return to the camp close to empty. Up to this point, the drivers and volunteers haven't reported having to fire weapons yet, but their activities are starting to draw some notice from a variety of quarters. The turnout today was a little less than it's been the past couple of nights. The tall redhead leading the convoy is the only one left near the vans by now, and she's sitting in the open back of one of them re-reading the manifests and checking the clipboard in her hand against the one that was hanging inside one of the buildings. She looks comfortable enough and kind of at home in this environment, wearing black cargo pants and a black T-shirt topping a pair of beat-up combat boots that have clearly seen a lot of use covering her feet.
The man who swaggers up does so with the quiet confidence of someone who thinks he owns the place, although he appears more interested in looking the vehicles over than trying to talk to anybody or give them orders of any sort. In dark BDU pants and a tight-fitting t-shirt beneath a bomber jacket, the too-short haircut marks this guy as paramilitary in some vein. All he's missing is a weapon, which if he has one is most definitely not a rifle. The woman with the clip-board gets a glance. And a second, longer glance. He walks past one of the trucks and kicks one of the tires, then picks a bit of broken glass out of the tread (prolly would've caused a leak later) before heading her way.
There's a brief glance up as he nears the vehicles, but caring for them is not part of her job description and Megan mostly ignores his actions until he walks toward her. Then she looks up and offers a faint smile and a nod, settling the clipboard in her hands down into her lap. "Morning," she greets, not rising from the perch on the back bumper of the van. "They look in decent shape still?"
"Mm. I guess. Not my problem really, but I try to be helpful around the edges." offers the man, grinning easily in that way that says I'm Checking Out Your Tits With Peripheral Vision. Then he offers a hand. "Jake Hunter. You a new hire?"
She's old enough and savvy enough to know exactly what he's checking out, and a faint smirk crosses her face but she leaves it alone. "Megan Young," she replies as she takes his hand. "Something like that. Volunteer at the moment. Mr. Kobrin asked me to head up some of the relief convoys." Her handshake is firm. "What do you do around here?"
Jake crosses his arms after the handshake and settles into that relaxed stance of someone who's prepared to stand there for a very long while. "Well, right now? I'm on my own program. But on Staten I've assigned myself to security. I work directly for Mr. Kobrin so I have the singular priviledge of defining my own job most of the time." He grins, probably because he's keeping the real scope of his job from her just now, but also because his eyes concentrate more or less on her face now and she's got that effect. "On a professional level, you had any issues with the convoys? Any reports of people throwing shit at the trucks or making you run over things you shouldn't have to?"
Megan considers the question and nods. "I've only run four out of here so far. The first couple I ran out of here came back without too much trouble. People were skeptical, but once they realized what we were carrying, they started showing up at the stops. I'm dealing with a lot more medical than I really expected to be, and a number of the questions I'm getting are making me think that we may need to see if stepping up the med services might be possible. Kevin … well, we'll leave that be for the moment. The last two runs have been a little more tense. The same people showed up, but there've been some folks lingering at the backs of the groups watching things. I'm expecting at some point, we're going to get hit." She grimaces. "It's like driving through a refugee camp out there — all the "other guys'" soldiers have figured out that we're up to something they haven't bothered to supply."
Silence as Jake rubs his nose and listens, letting Megan finish what she's saying. He pays attention to what she's saying though, perhaps saving the ogling of what she looks like for later. "It is a refugee camp. This is the kind of thing that went down in Angola in the 80s when the South Africans were fighting them, or Sudan right now. Only it's happening in America and that's embarassing, so the news crews aren't invited to come take pictures and write their stories about it. And Rupert Murdoch does what his congressional handlers tell him to, as well as his circle-jerkin' media buddies." At that point he takes a very obvious measure of Megan, looking her up and down. "You carryin, Megan?"
"I am," Megan replies calmly. "And before you ask me, yes, I know how to handle myself. Though I seriously doubt a pistol's going to be much use if the convoy actually gets hit, based on what I'm seeing out there so far." She moves to stand up, hanging the clipboard in her lap on a small hook at the back of the van. "Kobrin's relief efforts are going to take time to really help, and I'm not entirely sure the guys running their bullshit businesses out there are going to give us the time to actually help out before they fuck with us."
"I already figured you could." replies Jake easily, pointing at Megan's feet. "Broken-in boots. Means you use em. You wouldn't use em if you weren't in some kind of real world shit somewhere. Doesn't necessarily mean you know how to fight and shoot, but I'd be willing to bet you're at least not afraid to give it a shot." He takes a deep breath and sighs through his nose, thinking. "So. When's your next one goin out?"
There's a quick laugh. "I haven't got more than your basic self-defense courses in terms of fighting, and I pretty regularly track 'expert' on the range — but that's about the extent of it. Never been in the shit that way. I'm a nurse and field medic," Megan tells him. "I work out of St. Luke's ER nowadays. So no.. I'm not a groundpounder, nor am I going to be a lot of help out there, but I will definitely give it the full four or five clips worth of shots that I've got handy." She grins a bit. "Next one's going out tomorrow. I gotta put in two twelves at St. Luke's today and tomorrow, and I'll come by after. In between, I gotta see what I can do about getting us some good antibiotics out here."
There's a scowl at that. "Kind of a rough schedule you got worked out for yourself there, doc." Jake observes. "What kind of meds you need?"
Megan shrugs. "Not too bad — the convoy runs only take about four hours — and that's if we don't get turned back halfway through like we did yesterday. Kobrin said not to engage right now, just come back if we ran into anything that looked odd." She pauses and considers. "Just the basics — some amoxicillin, maybe some erythromycin to cover in case someone's allergic. I've had several patients with infections that need a course of treatment I can't give them here, and they won't see a doctor." She grimaces. "I'm loathe to actually prescribe without a doctor — it could get my license pulled. But I'm kind of figuring it this way: If I can't get a fucking doctor over here, and Staten is technically not part of New York anymore, then it doesn't really matter, does it?"
"It doesn't matter. Don't prescribe a thing. Just hand it out. We're not here to ask permission." says Jake, clearly throwing his own version of a mission statement into things. "Listen, if you get me amounts of the antibiotics you need, I can have em here in a couple of days. No questions asked. Think you can do that for me?" For him? It's more like for her and for these people on Staten Island.
She gives him a long look. She'd planned to speak to Kobrin/Fedor about what she needed, or barring that, Kailin. But Megan's not entirely sure what Kevin's gig is, and given her man already works for Kobrin, she's leaning more toward trusting someone who definitely works for him. "All right," she finally says. "If you can get me a case of each, injectable, or …. " She does mental arithmetic here. "1000 grams of each in 500-milligram pill form, it's should hold us for long enough."
Briefly Jake pats his pockets, digs in his jacket. "Shit." he mutters. "…I never have anything to fuckin write on. You got some paper or something? I'll never remember that."
Megan laughs softly, turning to the van to lean in and grab the clipboard. The move flashes the .45 in the back of her pants at him, which she doesn't think a thing of, and she turns back with the inventory list from before — she'll just write what she needs on the bottom of it and tear off a piece of paper from the bottom of the list for him.
Jake looks up and watches Megan's ass appreciatively until she turns back around. Then he takes the offered scrap of paper. A brief nod and he says, "I'll take a trip and we'll get this up here in a few days. It'll have to come out of Mexico, but that's no big deal. All the local Big Pharma factories are in Mexico as it is so the medicine's the same. Just cheaper and off the books down there." He looks back up to Megan and pockets the paper. "You'll be here in three days?"
Megan smiles faintly, her eyes touched not my amusement but by sadness. "I have a feeling I'm going to be here a lot. Seems like I'm needed here." Not that she's not needed at St. Luke's, but she's considering taking a hiatus from the day job just to do this one. It's a tough call.
Perhaps the sadness is why Jake's not asking her out for a drink. Or maybe it's professional courtesy. Or just some kind of sixth sense. But he just nods and says, "Okay then. You just gave me my new project for the week, so I'll catch you when I'm back." He cuts a lazy salute to the woman and offers an answering smile as he turns away to swagger off.
Megan calls after him, laughingly, "That's the slackest salute I ever saw, soldier!" He seems a nice enough guy, and one who'll take occasional bits of shit in the spirit they're meant.
"Marine Corps. Never soldier." Jake says without looking back, offering a different middle-fingered salute over his shoulder.
Megan snickers. "Figures," she comments to no one in particular.