Participants:
Scene Title | ELVIS LIVES! |
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Synopsis | A little roadside accident leads to a bonding experience in the wee hours of morning. |
Date | November 20, 2008 |
Staten Island - Highway
She'd found this road on her way into the city proper. A tricky double lane affair with beautiful freshly layed pavement and deliciously light traffic, especially at three in the morning. You see such was Elvis, that she could only ride like a sensible adult about 90 of the time. This would be the remaining 10 of the time, as if there was any doubt.
Firmly she pushed off the peg, easing back towards the center line of the bike as it powered off corner. A quick flick of her boot, and tense of the clutch lever and she pounded through the hundred mile an hour barrier in preparation for a smooth left hander. Her magnesium studded knee puck pressed firmly to the pavement, as the big Kat slowly leaned itself to follow her into the turn. Footpeg feeler grinding harshly into the pavement, before it flew off entirely and she grabbed another few degrees of angle by grinding directly on the footpeg itself. The heavyweight sportbike took its line sure enough, peg grinding or not however and she arced ever so gracefully through the corner. Practically panting in her helmet as she pushed off to start and right the bike, but sadly things weren't quite going to plan.
Just a tenth of a degree, or maybe a spot of unseen diesel is enough to smoothly pull the tires off traction. Immediately she presses her knee against the pavement, trying desperately to keep four hundred pounds from falling just those few more inches that would seal her fate. Then, still traveling a steady one thirty or so the begin begins to swing wide.
She knows whats coming, Elvis has been here before. The suspension begins to compress as the tires begin not just skidding but melting before it can even begin to grab traction. Quickly, she cuts the steering hard to the left, trying to minimize the oncoming crash by laying the big Kat down. At first, this last ditch effort works and the bike begins to pick up more angle on its way to simply falling over. Then, the front grabs onto one of those big reflector things in the road and this sudden increase in friction is enough to provide a highside.
The bike snaps -hard- to the right and instantly the suspension completely unloads, pitching Elvis up and off in a neat ninety mile an hour pitch. The distance of flight is fuzzy, but it seems like an eternity before she slams down with a wet popping crunch into the opposing lane. That's where the leather comes in, keeping her skin attached as the leather boils, scars and abrades until she's off the pavement and into a wet grassy ditch. She lies still for a spell, letting that familiar adrenaline high begin to flood out the pain before lifting her ri-, no ok her left hand up to fish her cellphone out've a jacket pocket. Ring ring.."Hey, Abby?"
Abby's back at the Garden. A pack of frozen peas to her forehead and nose. 'No Teo, really. You don't need to go beat someone up. he beat himself up and the pavement beat him up as well. I just wasn't paying attention. He even offered to pay for.. a hospital trip or doctors trip if I needed it, but I'm sure it's not broken" She peers at the Italian from over the rim of the pea pack. But then, the phone rings from inside her purse. Switching hands to hold the peas, she rummages through her purse with a grimace or two, incessant ringing before finding it and clicking the talk button. "Stephanie Tarkin" Still with that southern accent, she can't seem to change that as easily as she changed her hair to red.
Elvis clears her throat a touch, taking a slow breath. "I've had abit of an accident darlin, this is Elvis by the way. I was hoping that I could be so bold so as to enlist a little assistance. I dont think the Katana is going to be getting me home, and I may have slightly sprained my ankle."don't alarm her, jesus the last thing she wants is for the mother fucking paramedics out here. Those stupid fuckers were almost as bad as the god damned cops. "I have a map I set ontop of Roger's gas tank, that outlines my route. I'm about."she pauses a second."halfway down the route marked with the bright yellow highlighter. I'm hanging out in the ditch right now."
They could work on that, Teo thinks. The accent. The hair, though, that's great, almost provided a sufficient distraction from the fact that her face was all black and blue and her tearducts kept streaming, triggering automatic neurological impulses to go beat profuse and miserable apologies out of somebody. When she transferred to the telephone, however, he stopped scowling and growling and circling to and fro to see what she was doing from around the bag of peas.
His expression goes inquisitive then wary: although he can't hear the exact words Elvis is speaking, he know she doesn't recognize the voice and knows, for certain, that he does recognize that off-key, rasping note of pain digitized and turned tinny by distance. His brow furrows. He takes a step backward, uncertain if he's intruding in her newly-adopted Ferrymen business.
"
Right. Elvis. Fixer upper of scooters. "I uh… Shit" A swear word is not common. "Fuck, uhh.. we'll be there, soon as we can do you know.. if there's… anything strong in the garden? Like for hurts?" Sprained ankle her ass, She knows to a degree when someone's trying to Placate her. "Toe, can you uh.. shit, is there a car outside or just my scooter?" Scooter would hilaaaaarious. Getting three people back. 'Did you come in a car? Something? Your own bike?" She's not in a state to heal, but.. Elvis brought her the scooter, and she is staying here by ferryman good graces.
Elvis leans back "Ok sweety, I'm gonna hang up now."beep."NNNNGH mafucker!"She froze there for a moment, trying hard to push the adrenaline back out've her system so she would have -some- strength left to survive this mess. Slowly she sits up, and rises onto unsteady boots. She makes the ascent onto the shoulder, in oh like about five minutes before she bothers to sit once more. Biting down hard as another surge of adrenaline took the edge of the searing pain shooting down her entire right side. Blood slowly pooling round where she's seated herself, the rash got through her leather.
In the other safehouses Teodoro's worked at, they always had paramedic supplies. He can make a few educated guesses as to where they're commonly stored, mostly determined by something his Madre called 'logic.' "I can find a First Aid kit," he says, turning on a heel. He looks through Abigail's room and beelines for the doorway, deft with urgency, his footsteps sounding off percussive on the wood, angling toward the bathroom. "I came on a bike. We can probably call Al for a cab if we really n…" His voice fades from distance along with his footfalls, a moment before he returns, his big boy-feet loud, his brow low with consternation. "Abby? What the fuck actually happened?"
Elvis hangs up, which only ratchets her anxiety up one more notch. "I was going to church after talking with Conrad. I was paying attention Iw as too busy thinking ill thoughts about the as… that man, and I tripped over a pizza delivery boy who ran into a pole. I swear it Teo, on the bible. I ate pavement. Badly. I'm hoping it's not broken, if you found something, give it to me and go grab that map. She said she's along the yellow route. I can ride on my scooter, you can take your bike and we can find her. She says she sprained her ankle but her voice.. well her voice was lying and it's cold out there" The pea pack is now forgotten, and instead Abby's grabbing a thermos from somewhere and a coffee pot filled with fresh coffee and filling said thermos.
Elvis cold or not, she needed to lay down. She was getting woozy -fast-, and she would prefer to not pass out. Slowly she lifts her good hand to undo her helmet and pull it off, setting the lid and her shattered goggles gently aside. Then off with with the scarf and bandanna, before the jacket zipper can…stay right where its frozen in place. Yeah, this was bad. Her own anxiety begins to slowly rise as she leans back, pulling her cigarettes from a pocket before groping almost blindly for her lighter. Fuck. "Oh for cryin out loud, ya'll are fuckin killin me." At this point of course, its laugh or cry and Elvis is far too cool to cry.
Teo tends to go around with a backpack, a symptom of being a high school teacher, even if it as often carries spare boxes of ammunition and aerosol cans of spray paint as books and ungraded papers. All of these things are alike democratically emptied out onto Abby's bed this time, and the First Aid kit shoved into their place, its white square contours rattling boxily around contents like denatured alcohol, wrapped thermometer, cotton swabs, scrolled bandages.
"Coffee?" It takes him a moment to realize, shouldering the bag. "Wh— oh. Right." She has to heal the woman, and for that she requires artificial energy else they'll all be fucked. He casts around a moment even as he walks swiftly back to the doorway. Muttering. He doesn't have to look up when he reaches an arm out, yanks the map off the wall in a graceful snare of fingers.
"I think this place fuckin' lays hexes on everybody who lives here, or some shit. Is there any liquor in the fridge? A fridge?" He isn't going to stop and search for long; he'll find it, haul open, look, and if he finds some he'll take it.
Other than that, they have to get their asses in gear.
"Down in the main room. Wrong map" And nothing for her nose. She digs in the box beside her bed for the bottle of Tylenol and popping the cap, drops a few in her mouth to swallow them dry. Out the door, grabbing winter gear on as she goes and pit stopping to the aforementioned bike and the map on it. "This map. Lets get going" She's not a woman for many words at this moment. Her face is on fire and she just wants her bag of pea's but Elvis is out there, and injured and it's freezing. Scooter time.
Why does this place have so many maps? Teo looks at the wrong map for a moment, casts it down on the counter as he passes, making a vague mental note to put that back where he found it lest Hana collect his parts for leaving the Ferrymen's stuff out of order later. By then, a bottle of jager has added a wobbling watery noise to every step he takes. For once, he feels the wind less as they walk out into it, blinking oddly against the Northerly that sears past his eyes like a knife.
"What's this ragazza's name?" he asks. He watches her get on her scooter, doesn't smile. They start away in a roiling rumble of engine noise, the treeline after which the Garden was named parallaxing away in a blur of evergreen and skeletal branches.
It feels like it takes longer than it does, in order to ride from Point A to Elvis' crash site. There's little doubt that it feels longer still for the woman herself. They slow down, of course, their eyes on the side in search of the telltale signs of a crash as they roll. Skid marks, the outline of a body above the level of the street, the sportbike's butchered carcass.
"Elvis" Abby answers before her own helmet in gingerly put on. She's off, puttering on her scooter doing her best to keep up with Teo and his bike. Investment in some warm clothes for biking in this weather helps, and by the time they make it to Elvis and her crash site, the tylenol that was downed take an edge off. Maybe enough that she can concentrate hard enough. Then there's the bike, there's the marks and her heart stops in her chest for a moment then two. She pulls off onto the side, careful with her 'baby' and is yanking her helmet off the moment it's unhooked. "ELVIS!" She calls out. looking for a reaction.
Elvis sits up slowly when she hears a motorcycle, hey a thumper. She lifts an arm above to wave, but its pretty clear immediately that she's a little out of it. Her shoulders are slumped, and her helmet and whatever else have been set aside. There's a long streak of motor oil and engine coolant from where the bike flipped, leading neatly waaay down the road where the Kat met a lamp post. "Hey, chill out."she offers, sniffling. "I aint dead, I'm just beat up. I think I jimmied my shoulder, but I cant get it back in its socket. Can you cut my jacket off?"
It's like an arrow, the black chemical smear that races along the asphalt. Ends at the blinky window-wiper shape of a very drunk or otherwise disoriented person twitching in salutation from below street level. Christ. A sidelong glance tells Teo that the lamp's iron trunk isn't much worse off for wear. Switching off, he climbs down, walks swiftly across the street and into the tangle of grass and overturned concrete fragments.
The backpack bangs off his ribs as he slides it off one shoulder, the strap catching on his elbow before it swings free and crashes into something. Or someone.
He leans back and snags a fistful of stony soil and weed, before finishing his descent in a split-second scuttle. Lands beside Elvis, and stares at her face with undisguised surprise for a long moment.
"Yeah," he manages, after a moment. He's gone uncharacteristically pale underneath his tan; he starts to reach for her jacket, clasp or zipper, before realizing she might actually prefer Abigail to do that, and his hand aborts toward the bag. "We can," he finishes in a mutter. In a moment, he has the medkit out, and is waggling the bottle of liquor at Elvis in an unspoken query.
Abby's following not long after and int eh darkness, her face might not be that visible, at least not yet. "I don't know to put your arm back in it's socket" When Elvis divulges an injury "I can't doa single thing for you till it's in. or … it's like.. I can't heal a broken arm until the bone is set" She looks to Teo in the vain hope that he might be able to do something about the arm. Her hands are shaking as she peels off gloves, tossing them to the side and starts searching for the safety scissors in the kit. Success. There they are. "I'm sorry" It's automatic as she starts in on getting the jacket off. Partly because she's cutting the jacket, secondly, because she's sure that it's going to hurt the woman.
Elvis just leans back, and for the most part seems ok. Until you get the jacket off, and what was a white T-shirt is now completely soaked red, which oddly enough doesn't seem to bug Elvis too much. Shrugging out with a quick gasp of pain, to expose the large section of skin, muscle and sinew just below her armpit to her hip that's been pretty much just removed entirely. "What about if there's gravel in my rash."she asks, as she calmly reaches around to her opposing bicep and after a few quick nods to pump herself up..POP..it seats and she almost crumples under the wave of pain."Just stay cool, if I'd hurt anything bad I'd have died."Optimistic, ain't she?
No jager, then. Teo lets the bottle fall, in time to watch the jacket fall away from surprised flesh and soaked-red shirt. His fingers twitch and there's a monosyllable of confirmation when Abigail looks at him: he could help, but apparently he doesn't have to. His eyebrows hike; the bottle in his hand lifts fractionally, as if he were about to repeat the offer.
He's well-aware that the only thing that hurts more than a joint popping out is popping the joint back in. Perhaps burn wounds on top of that. Then in it goes, and the young biker nearly keels over. He reaches over to grab her other wrist, keep her from falling hard if not to keep her upright. "There's stuff here to clean out the wound if Abby needs it," he states laconically, sitting on his heels, arms over knees.
'If Elvis isn't taking the bottle, Abby is, blanching at the sound of the joint popping into place. Back she tips it, a couple good swallows before the bottle is placed to the side and out of the way but well within reach. Now comes the dirty part. She's not about to find all the strips of flesh taken off, and most of the gravel she can see. So as it is, Elvis get's Abby's hands, one touches the soon to be scarred flesh. "I'll try. Teo, if you see a rock that's not pushing out, grab some tweezers and get it out. Flashlight. We'll get her good enough that she can get on a bike with you and get back. Then we'll see from there" Her other hand slides up along the woman's side to settle onto the swelling socket.
Her touch light, Abby closes her eyes, trying to push past the pain in her face and the roiling stomach. She has a false start, her lips murmuring in prayer but there's no warmth, no tingle. It's plain on Abby's face that it's not happening and it frustrates her.The second time around though, there it is, the little threads of warmth, the tingle that begins to seep forth from either hand and start to mend flesh at it's slow pace. She's no trying to push it fast.
Looks pale, like she's sick and to the touch her skin is -hot- and sweaty. "I'm."she pauses, head bobbing some. "I went too hard, I'm gonna."and like a light switch, Elvis passes completely out. Immediately, her temperature begins to drop to normal levels. Her limp form, only has a few inches to fall before she's off after all.
For Elvis's part, she seems to heal up fairly easy. little grains of sand pushing out, though one maybe two rocks the size of a grain of rice become visible along the way. Fingertips twitching lightly, as she endures all manner of fun nightmares in this adrenaline soaked unconciousness.
Tweezers and alcohol-stained swabs make short work of the embedded rock or stray threads before Teo gets himself out of the Beauchamp girl's way. The other red-haired Baptist Teo knows didn't start drinking until three years ago. The fact that the nineteen-year-old healer is swigging away elicits an arched eyebrow, faintly bemused, before his attention swivels back to the matter at hand…
In time to see the light vanish from her eyes, lids fall over them, and catch her with a long hand wrapped around the side of her neck and a gentle grip on her elbow.
An eye cocked over his shoulder, he makes sure that Abby's with the program— despite the stumbling, halting start— before gently lowering the woman's rumpled head to the ground, refraining from breaking the healer's touch. He doesn't touch the alcohol himself, except to screw the cap on again.
She saw the look. "Medicinal. I do drink. Sometimes" She's already done her prayer, god answered, or well in her mind he did. The passing out doesn't much alarm her and what she feels doesn't either. Gives her insight to the woman. On and on she plugs away though, letting flesh knit together, heal. There will be a scar, she can't spare the woman that. Minutes tick by, the trio's breath curling out from their mouths in puffs of smokes and finally Abby pulls her hand back from either. 'Done" A ragged edge. Maybe fifteen minutes passed, perhaps twenty, she looses track of time sometimes. "Can you wake her? Or are we trying to get her back another way?"
Nothing comes to mind. Not immediately. Flashlight gripped in his fingers, Teo turns the beam to and fro, verifying to himself that Elvis is, indeed, still asleep after that catastrophic wash of pain, before swiveling to study Abigail. He keeps the light from stabbing directly into her eyes. The time had passed quickly enough, for him. He knew the psalms she was whispering, and his mind had wandered. Backward, forward.
Returning to the present had felt like being snapped through the space-time continuum on the end of an existential rubber-band. "I could call someone," he says, blinking. "You could call someone. The Ferrymen have people everywhere. We could hitchhike. Or try to wake her up," he trails off after a moment, glancing down at Elvis' gauntly pale face. "See if she can't stay upright for a little while. If you go slow."
Abby's not in the state that Elvis is. She reaches for the coffee thermos, knowing full well she'd have to head back on the bike. There's time to curl up and sleep later. Maybe see if they had something harder than Tylenol in the house. 'Wake her" After a moments thought. "See if she will be able to hold onto me, or you. We can take it back slowly. I only know Jezebel, and Grace, beyond that, I'm not with the ferryman, just.. living here for the moment"
"I know a few of them," Teo mutters, though mostly to himself.
The truth is, he'd prefer this plan too. Get her up. Get her home. Partly, because it would reduce the inconvenience and logical shit like that; partly because it'd make him feel better, knowing she'd be okay enough to awaken and go home upright. He snags the edge of the medkit, drags it over with a bump and click of plastic on stone and a stray can lid. Digging out the bottle of smelling salts, he unburies the lid with a dirt-rimmed finger, flashlight jammed between his ankles.
Coughs once, catching a stray whiff. "Hang in there, Abigail," he remarks backward, quietly. Teo knows better than to fret over the healer when her patient's still on her back, but he'd be a different kind of asshole if he didn't offer that verbal token of concern, reassurance, awareness that she's swaying. Shifting the light to his armpit, he waddles on over and wafts the bottle underneath Elvis' nose, peering intently into her bone-white pallor.
Elvis awakens right on que, all to eager to swat at the offending smelly jar."Euugh.."she offers, before slowly forcing herself upright. "Got a light?"as hands begin immediately to wrap her scarf round her neck. Its a practiced routine, for a girl who's been kicked off of plenty of park benches. When the time comes to get her jacket on though, she pauses."shit. I'm goan make yous, some waffles."She blinks, blearily before looking to first Teo. Then Abby. Then Teo. Then Abby."Who's this mafucker right here, Abby what is this business."she grumbles. "Is Roger ok?"
'Roger's not okay. Shut up and drink this. Then Teo's going to get you on his bike, while I grab everything else. You can get Roger tomorrow, what's left of him." Tiredness means grouchiness and Abby's not had a good day. She sets about to getting the medical kid back into one piece while the coffee if left for Elvis to drink. Help awaken her enough to get back to the safehouse.
Teo has girl's blood on his pants, residue of smelling salt up his nose, dirt and cleaning fluid everywhere and an irritable Southern belle competing with him in quantifiable impatience. When Abigail moves to repackage the medical equipment, he's left to answer the one question that manners do compel him to, in the face of the present chaos. "Teo," he says, offering a hand. "I'm with Helena Dean. Waffles would be great, grazie."
November 20th: The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game |
Previously in this storyline… Next in this storyline… |
November 20th: Solitary |