Participants:
Scene Title | Don't Tell |
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Synopsis | There's one Deckard on the planet that receives a little bit of tender care at the hands of a Ryans. |
Date | September 12, 2010 |
Odessa Price Memorial Clinic — Gun Hill
The lights are all off in the clinic and someone's down here. Someone or something.
There's shuffling — a clatter. Paper rustling before the near corner is clipped still between clamped teeth.
Scalpels, bandages, antiseptic. Syringes. Gauze. Disinfectant pads. Flint's midway through the process of fumbling one of the foil-lined packages open now, brow knit over the gallows light ringed cold around his eyes.
A sniff at damp antibacterial whatever rankles his nose and he pushes it blankly down into his jacket pocket before crane-clawing another fist full of the stuff into the backpack he was thoughtful enough to bring along.
Delia's been up on the roof for a couple of hours. Now that it's too dark to read, she's made her way back down tot he clinic to do a final inventory of what supplies she has. When she hears the clatter through the door, she freezes and tests it… it pulls. She could have sworn she'd locked it when she left. Closing her eyes, she pivots on her feet and takes a few steps toward the stairs. Whether it's just to run or run and get her father might never be known as she steps back to the door and pulls it open.
Flipping the switch, the fluorescent lights flicker on and she's met with the sight of Flint Deckard. Her eyes flit between him and the supplies he's scrounging up and stealing. "Wh-what are you doing?! Put those back!" Her eyebrows furrow angrily for only a split second before she takes a few steps toward him and leans to inspect him a little closer. "A-are you hurt or something? Wh-why would — Do you need help?"
The redhead is honestly confused, especially since the things he's stealing are general supplies that can easily be replaced from the stock at a drug store. Her eyes flicker over the still locked cabinets and mini fridges and then settle on him again. "Mister Deckard?"
Flint stiffens out like a cornered stray well before light washes pale through the bowels of the clinic, irises bleached grey and stature bristled upright. He's in a dusty black field jacket over a lighter t-shirt and a pair of jeans, wiry hair shorn short and grizzled at the temples, stubble collection unkempt.
All in all he looks like the kind of thing you don't want to discover alone in your basement. Wilder than when Delia saw him last, with pupils swollen all wrong for the light and not a twitch of warm familiarity to be found in the lines worn in stark around his long face. He takes a step back for the few she takes forward, backpack scraping after him towards the table's edge. It looks kind've like there's already some shit stashed down in there.
Of all the civilians to find him here, it has to be one of like three who know he has a Company-sponsored badge in a box under his cot at home.
The door is closed behind the redheaded woman and she twists the lock, it's either the worst move she could possibly make or .. the worst move she could possibly make. "Mister Deckard, are you alright? Are you— ?" Her voice cuts off as she makes her way toward one of the other cabinets, pulling open a drawer and pulling out not a weapon of any sort, but a stethoscope. "You look like death warmed over."
She's not completely without sympathy as she nods once toward one of the cots and purses her lips. "Come on, get up on there. I'll make sure you're okay…" The fact that he looks like a rabid animal only gives her a little more concern that he's actually sick and needing help, rather than just stealing supplies.
Her long strides take her toward the makeshift examination table and she pats the sheet, giving him the look a mother would give a disobedient child. "I can probably run faster than you to the door, so unless you're planning to hurt me to get away, you're just going to have to grin and bear it."
The click of the lock earns a precise tick of Deckard's chilly eyes after it. He doesn't move again, though, tension creeping steely through the cords in his neck while he smothers his own breathing down to something that sounds less like the onset of adrenaline stupidity.
Unfortunately he doesn't look all that enthused about climbing up on the cot either, left hand wrapped into the strap of his (still open) backpack when he glances to it. Like maybe he's thinking about it. And also thinking about taking the backpack with him. So someone else can't sneak in here and relieve him of it while he's distracted.
"Everything's fine," is a gravel-shot lie, obviously, but his pupils scissor down into a more human and less demented flavor of regard once he's drawn back from the mess he's made a little. "Does anyone else know I'm down here?"
"Just me," Delia emits as she moves a little closer to the man. Her eyebrows are raised a little bit expectantly and she glances between the cot and Flint a few times before breathing out a long sigh. "Come on, Mister Deckard, if you're going to raid what little supplies I have, you can at least placate me by having a seat."
Dipping her hand into one of the pockets of her scrub top, she pulls out a pair of gloves and begins sliding one of them on her hand. "I promise I won't even make you turn your head and cough." With a snap snap, they're fitted on and she's stretching her long fingers.
The young woman's lips turn up on one side as she studies him with a slight twinkle of her blue eyes. "Unless you dig that sort of thing, if you do… " Her voice dies off and she can't hide the little snort that turns into a nervous giggle. "Well I'd have to figure out something that wouldn't make Lulu green."
Fiber by fiber, Flint's on his way into a state of mind that looks to be marginally more relaxed. Or at least, safer to be in alone in a locked basement with. Free hand flexed open and closed again while he watches her, he eventually takes a slow sidestep towards the indicated cot, one boot shuffled carefully over the other.
The backpack goes with him, inevitably, black canvas set to his side within immediate reach, with the contents inside resettling at a rustle and clack. Then he settles himself into an uneasy sit, weight teetering on the cot's bare edge until he sinks a little further back and stills.
It doesn't take a whole lot've cognitive functionality to remember who Lulu is, but he doesn't smile. Or say anything. Or look at her.
After placing the stethoscope around her neck and letting the end dangle, her hands move to Deckard's collar and she begins easing him gently out of his coat. "How did you find this place anyway? I didn't even know it existed… it's not like there are any signs or anything." Delia's calm chatter continues as she slips the sleeves from his arms and leans across to lay it beside his backpack.
Tucking the earpieces into her ears, she picks up the bell and rubs it against her side before placing it gently against his chest. Her other hand goes around his frame and lays flat against his shoulder blade to hold him steady. "Deep breath in?" The bell moves twice as she listens, "Are you a smoker Mister Deckard?"
"Sometimes," says Deckard, opting to answer her second question over the first. Sometimes translates to a lot of the time, though he's only recently restarted after a dry spell in the last few months. He drinks, too. A lot. There's whiskey on his breath now, still fresh with he breathes out before he breathes in, chest, back and side all locked stiff under his shirt with an uneasy lean slightly away once he's lost the coat.
He doesn't voluntarily go anywhere to get doctored all that often.
Scar tissue is raised in a nick across his sternum. It's puckered at his right tricep and lined in three thin strokes at the join of neck and jaw, clear of the grizzled bristle that defends everything else up around there. Smaller marks mar his temple and knuckles and arms. He's been shot and stabbed and beaten about the head more than is generally healthy.
His heart's still pounding behind the cruddy sacks of his lungs, also.
"I didn't know you were Ferry."
"You should consider quitting, I can probably get something to help. Okay, out… and another in and hold it for a bit?" In contrast to his liquor scent, Delia smells like lavender and mint, a purposefully soothing combination. The hand on his shoulder blade sweeps across his back as she listens to the other lung, actually stopping talking for a moment.
When she's finally finished, the nurse pulls the stethoscope from her ears and swings it over her head, looping it around her neck. "It sounds pretty chunky in there, have you been coughing more than usual?" She starts talking again as she walks toward the wall and grabs the otoscope and a depressor, pushing a plastic specula onto the end and then flipping the light on.
She's back in front of him before he's got a chance to scurry away. Giving him a slight smile, she flips the depressor up and waves it close to her face. "I'm not, not really. I just got offered the job here after I had to leave the hospital. How about you? Open up and say Aaaah" It's a specialty of medical professionals to ask a question at the worst possible moments. Like when someone has a thermometer in their mouth or fingers or something else that can't really be spoken around.
"I dunno."
Flint's medical history, if it even exists anywhere at this point, probably consists of a lot of irritating I dunnos.
By the time she's at his back he's really started to relax. Breathing deep comes easier; the slope of his shoulders is more of a slope and less of a right-angled affair. He's started paying attention to what she's actually doing as well, more coolly curious than defensively paranoid. No longer immediately fearful of unexpected needle jabs that will make him go to sleep.
As far as specialties go, Delia's is closely in line with Deckard's disinterest in the subject of how Ferry he is or isn't. So he stretches his jaws open, whiskey breath and all and crackles an unenthusiastic, "aaah."
The light is flashed across Flint's throat in a few quick flicks and Delia's blue eyes train on any spots she might wish to revisit. Then she moves to his ears, checking them over for anything unusual, and finally his nostrils. The entire procedure takes only a few minutes and then she twists and sits on the cot beside him.
If he's surprised, she doesn't exactly notice, due to being a little too focused on her cursory examination of her first actual patient. She looks fairly relaxed herself, a far cry from the pajama clad young woman he met in the hospital, or even the one that first barged in on him. "You dunno… well, I'm going to send you home with some things." Placing a couple of fingers on his wrist, she times his pulse for the span of a few seconds and then turns her head to look up into his face. "You have a place to stay, right?"
Everything in Deckard's head is reasonable healthy, save maybe for the brain. He's tired and pale, worn out from whatever he's been up to or from being caught. Or both. But he's not obviously sick.
He doesn't mind her sitting next to him either, left hand adjusted in its grip on the cot edge to creep a couple've inches politely further from the rest of her near leg. "Yeah." He has a place to stay, unholy stare focused down past her touch at his wrist. Back towards her legs again. DISQUIETINGLY, perhaps.
"Is your dad okay?"
"So far so good, I guess, I mean…" Her voice drifts off to a silent shrug of her shoulders as she gives him something of a weak and helpless smile. The hand on his wrist slips away and smooths onto her lap, conveniently right where he's staring at her leg. "I guess it's a pretty hard adjustment for him, you know, going from homeland to fugitive… What about you? Are you adjusting alright?"
Delia doesn't know anything about Deckard's past, which is probably a good thing. All she knows is the guy she's sitting next to is her older sister's not so secret fetish. She tilts her head just enough to catch his eye, trying not to make it obvious that she's caught him staring at her leg. Even if it's an absent one, the young woman seems concentrated on keeping the man's attention on her face. It's easier to be understood that way.
"Yeah."
Flint is adjusting okay. To being a fugitive.
Again.
The fact that he is running from someone more often than not doesn't seem all that relevant while he's glumly peeping her legs. It's her hand in the way that draws his eyes back up rather than any attempt she makes to catch his attention with looks — his stare still has an eerily colorless quality to it that makes him look a little blind. Or high.
Social cues missed, eye contact not ignored so much as it isn't ever detected.
"Please don't tell anyone I was here."
One of the young woman's hands raises and is placed gently on Flint's shoulder patting him lightly as she nods her consent. "I won't, Mister Deckard, but I want you to do me a favor. Okay?" Her eyebrows raise just a little as she stares into his eyes for a brief moment before continuing. "I'd like to see you here again, to make sure everything stays fine with you."
Delia adjusts her seated position just a tad, twisting to face him a little better. "You just seem a bit off and I think I can probably help if you'll let me." The words are spoken with a soft, earnest quality, accompanied by a small reassuring smile. "Who knows, with your skills at getting into places, maybe you can help me too… if you feel better around me."
Finally, finally all the staring at his face is enough to draw Flint back into focus. Color bleeds subtle blue back into his glare; his pupils constrict back into normalcy again. She's looking at him.
He looks back for as long as it takes him to ge uncomfortable, which isn't very.
"Okay," agreed without a struggle once she's gotten touchy again, he looks to the door, which is still locked. Then down at his own boots. He's quiet for a while.
"You can tell your dad I was here."