Emergency Brass Injection

Participants:

eve3_icon.gif hailey_icon.gif julie_icon.gif sasha_icon.gif

Scene Title Emergency Brass Injection
Synopsis Aunt Eve comes to cheer her Doolittle up, things don't go as smoothly as she likes. There is an unshowered man.
Date February 22, 2018

Elmhurst Hospital


The operation was a success. Even though she wasn't awake to hear it, the doctor told Gillian that Hailey would eventually regain full use of her shoulder, it would just take time. This 'joyous' news was relayed to Hailey the moment she regained consciousness along with a set of instructions. There's pain pills, a sling, a strict warning to not use the arm for four to six weeks, and the threat of a hospital stay. She won't be leaving this place tonight.

Still a bit groggy from recovery, Hailey is lying in bed, playing with the controls. Head up… head down…. legs up…. legs down… head and legs up…. head and legs down… over and over until she finds a position she likes. In other words, Hailey is bored out of her mind. Also worried about Jim. She's been separated from the little monkey for more hours than she'd care to count and can't feel him. Somewhere in the background a rousing polka tune is being played.

…. wait… Polka? In a hospital?

One wouldn't say that Eve is bad with kids… but she's not good with them either. Nonetheless the Lighthouse Kids were, in Eve's eyes her charges. Now she is flighty so she's the type of aunt you don't see for five years and then blows through your house like a hurricane.

Eve blows into the tuba as hard as a hurricane as she waddles down the hallway. Her dress and messenger bag trailing in her wake as she TUBAs her way to Hailey.

FALAPPPPRTTTTT

FALAPPPPPRRTTT

She is not that great at tubaing. But she wants to cheer her girl up. A nurse peeks down the hallway alarmed as he notices this.. "The Hell?" Before running after her, "Miss!!" Eve briefly removed her mouth from the mouthpiece to cackle it echoes but not as loudly as the tuba. "Sorry buddy boy! My little Doolittle needs me!"

FALAPPPPPPPRT

Doolittle, that’s a name she hasn’t heard in quite a while.

Hailey pushes the button to lift her back up a little into a seated position and she cranes her neck to peek past her curtain to the door. The tuba is new, and not completely unwelcome as her expression shifts from anger and depression to wide eyes and curiosity. Aunt Eve is always good for some sort of entertainment and it seems like today is entertainment of the musical variety. What Hailey really wants though is encouragement. Something to give her hope that the ones she cares about are alright and safe because right now, she’s hopeless and discouraged.

As the sounds come near, she arranges the blanket over her waist and legs with her good hand. Her other is completely useless and just hangs limp in the sling she’s been fitted with.

There's a bunch of commotion and then Aunt Eve is sliding into Hailey’s room. Her gaze wild as she looks over her shoulder slightly out of breath. Tubas were heavy. “Doolittle! Darling!” Eve slams the door behind her and locks it. There'll be a pounding on the door any second.

“What have they done to you?” Eve sucks her teeth and sweeps in the room, a few:

FALAPPPPPPPRT’s feel the room before she's sliding the tuba off of her body and into a nearby chair with a loud clank. She hums as she wheels another chair around and shoves it under the door’s handle wedging it in place. “Whoops. Looks like we have a little time.” The darker haired woman strides forward and sits one leg on the edge of the bed peering down at Hailey in worry. Hailey has always been one of her favorites, she has all the animals!

“Do you hurt? Who did this?” Eve didn't see it, it makes her angry that one of her pseudo niece's has been hurt.

Ah there's that pounding on the barricaded door.

“Is that a good idea?” Hailey asks as she sneaks a look at the door. She’s uncertain for a moment or two but then shrugs her working shoulder and smiles to Eve. “But thanks though, you always know how to make me feel better.” Aunt Eve knows she likes it away from other people and locking the door is a nice reprieve from being bothered every fifteen minutes for vitals.

As for who did this….

“A guy from Staten Island and his friends, his name was Brady…” Hailey says quietly, lowering her eyes to stare at her legs under the thin blanket. “One of them pointed a gun at Jim… and I lost Jim…” Large tears well up and threaten to spill over the moment she looks up again.

The pounding quells for the moment and outside the door is oddly silent.

“Anything for my Doolittle.” Eve says warmly, she had been calling the girl by that name for a long time now. And to see her here in a hospital hurt like this.. it makes her mad. Angry who would do such a thing?!

The older woman’s brow furrows and she leans in closer to Hailey and sighs as she cups her cheek. “Ah.. Brady.. he likes to hurt animals.” She whispers and looks angry as she runs a thumb across Hailey’s cheek. “I'm sorry Aunt Eve didn't see this before it happened.” Stuff can still slip through the cracks for her. She leans back placing her hand in her lap and not even paying attention to the door at all or how quiet it has gotten. It's all about Hailey right now.

“I will help you find Jim.” That much is obvious because Eve will not let this stand. “Are your brothers looking already?” They must be.

Hailey just shakes her head, no. “I didn’t go to them, I went to Gillian. Joe and Lance wouldn’t know what to do and just go off on some cowboy adventure anyway.” She doesn’t have a high opinion of what the younger Lighthouse ‘kids’ can accomplish. Wrinkling her nose, she snags her tongue between her teeth and makes the same face she used to when she was a young teen when the subject of her brother came up. Not that there’s any animosity, Hailey’s just of the opinion that the-more-phine-the-better right now.

“I shouldn’t have come here at all,” she mutters, blinking the tears from her eyes as she looks away toward the window. “I don’t want to be here, I want to be looking for Jim, and Dayton, and my friends are all alone. They need me to take care of them.” The same story she’s been repeating to everyone that will listen. Maybe Aunt Eve will hear her.

“Oh good Gilly is very good with those sorts of things. I will find her.” She almost always knows where her friend is. “Cowboys can be useful! But maybe us girls do need to handle this one.” She winks at Hailey. Rubbing her arm absently Eve looks the girl in the eyes directly. “I..”

The older woman struggles, seeing her this sad about her lost friends almost makes her give in. “Gilly would want you to get better Doolittle. What..” then the older woman is standing up. “Hailey you must get better.” She hates sideling the girl from her own adventure from her own friends. But it's what the responsible adult would do and ever since the Coney Island debacle back in the day with the kids, Eve has been very earnest in doing right by them.

“We will look for them as you heal! Aunt Eve and Gilly have found so many things. Nukes.. people!” Come on you can trust them to get the job done!

“What about best friends?” Hailey sniffles, lifting a hand to wipe at her eyes. Large tears have erupted and slide down her cheeks, only to drip near her chin and then drop to the blanket. For as long as Eve has known her, the young blonde has had a special affinity for the animals in her life, but none have ever reached this level of attachment. “Have you found best friends before?”

Once again, the pounding starts back up. This time it’s a brand new set of voices demanding the door to be opened.

Hailey frowns in its direction but doesn’t actually look at it, her eyes are trained on Eve and not letting up. “Aunt Eve, will you stay with me tonight? I don’t want to be here alone, I’m scared.” Whether or not it’s likely, due to the locked door, is another story.

“Gilly is my best friend,” she smiles a small one at the young blonde. “I have found her many many times my Doolittle. Don't you worry.” And she's stroking Hailey’s chin before wiping her tears away. Oh no this is heartbreaking

Then there's some more banging on the door and Eve looks over her shoulder now as if she is just hearing it for the first time. “The medicine fairies might not let Aunt Eve stay the night,” maybe she shouldn't have brought a tuba here.

Shaking her head she gives Hailey a hug and sits back on the bed. The banging gets louder and Eve bites her lip. She doesn't wanna leave Hailey here to be alone. “I left my grenades at home.” Or she’d bust Hailey out of this joint right now at the sight of her being so sad.

“..nnnnnoooooooooooooooooo…” Hailey’s cry is little more than a desperate mewl. With her good hand, she grabs the one of Eve’s that’s closest to her and squeezes it tightly. Lance always seems to make fun of his sister’s man-hands, they’re not delicate like she looks, neither is she. Her grip is tight and it seems as though she’s not prepared to let go.

“Please don’t leave me here alone,” the empath continues, her voice cracking slightly into a hiccup at the end. “They feed me jello that’s been in a fridge too long and chicken broth. I don’t like jello and chicken broth, Aunt Eve. I miss home, I miss my zoo, and I miss my friends.” Not the people she grew up with in the Lighthouse, but the animal ones she keeps now.

In this moment Eve is happy she doesn't have children because they would get absolutely anything they wanted from the older woman. Eve grips Hailey’s ‘man hand’ tight. Eve’s hands being delicate hands of an artist but over the years and all the fighting there are scars, and calluses on all the pale woman’s hand. She looks Hailey in the eye and dips her head.

“I think you have to stay babe.” It's a sad admission, now she's all to aware of the pounding at the door it makes the raven haired woman flinch. The soft martial of her dark purple dress rustling with the movement. “I don't want to leave my Doolittle. But Aunt Eve is already in trouble so I might need to sneak out the window.”

There is the tuba though, she can't leave her trusted tuba.

Eve Mas.” Comes sternly from the doorway of the hospital room, muffled through its closed surface but it must have been a shout to be so clearly heard. Staring through the narrow window on the door is a familiar, if entirely nonplussed nurse with blonde hair tied back into a ponytail. Julie Fournier-Raith looks both surprised and entirely not surprised at all that the woman in Hailey’s room is the mad seer.

Open. The. Door.” No cheerful greetings, no how’ve you beens, just the steely blue eyes of a nurse who is beside herself with frustration. She’s grown up.

The sight of Julie peeking through the door nearly scares the living daylights out of Hailey and she shrinks back on the bed. “It’s not Liette,” the empath murmurs to the seer, “one of the people who isn’t happy with my zoo.” She doesn’t let go of Eve’s hand, in fact, she keeps the grip steady in an effort to keep the other woman here. “Don’t let her kick you out, please.”

I want her to stay!” Hailey speaks up, her voice carrying through the door and quite possibly (she hopes) through the door too. To Eve, she murmurs, “Maybe if I promise to be good, they’ll let you stay… if you unlock the door.”

Then… Hailey feels something.

And another something.

Her eyes widen as sparks of life fire into her consciousness like stars popping into the night sky. Rats, so many rats. The negation is wearing off and it gives Hailey a sense of ferocity and too many ideas. Not good ideas. Vermin from both outside and inside of the hospital perk up and become aware of her too. Curiosity piqued, they move toward the source.

Juliette!” Eve doesn't look surprised to see the young woman. She seems excited years ago she had been needing to connect with Julie. Something that Else had said about making her better. She never quite understood what that meant. “Look at you!” Your blood isn't poisoned! You're strong and stern.” The Oracle is buzzing with excitement and she looks over to Hailey nodding her head, “She's a friend,” a serious one but, “I trust her, she's just a big girl now. Must do her job.”

She gets up from the bed making sure to give Hailey a kiss on the forehead, “Be right back Doolittle don't worry.” She tries to sound positive and optimistic as she bounces over to the door, pressing her face against the glass to peer at Julie, “You’ve been taking care of my Doolittle! I brought my tuba friend to cheer her up! Gilly and I are so grateful, Julie you look bright! So bright, you aren't dimmed anymore.” She snickers behind her hand as she leans back from the window, placing her hand at the door to unlock it, “I have to give you a gift.”

The Oracle is rummaging in her messenger bag as she backs up from the door to allow Julie in.

It isn't Julie who steps in, but two broad-shouldered orderlies who step in front of her. There's a hospital military police officer behind Julie, arms crossed and expression sour. Julie steps in behind the orderlies, offering an apologetic look to Hailey before squaring a more stern look at Eve.

“This is a hospital.” Julie sternly levels at Eve. “We have people in here with serious injuries and post-traumatic anxiety and you're blowing a fffu— ” she censors herself, “blowing a tuba. I have a patient in the ER who is uncontrollably sobbing in panic.

One of the orderlies comes over to Hailey, not to do anything to her but to softly ask. “Are you ok, sweetie?” He asks in a soft voice while the other orderly looks out the window. “Do you know this woman?”

Hailey is not okay.

Panic sets in the moment the military uniform steps in behind Julie. Hailey’s skin turns a sickly shade of white as her breathing speeds up and becomes much too shallow.

From the bathroom, there’s a burble and then a splash.

Screams of terrified staff and patients sound out from all over on the floor as hundreds of rats appear from seemingly nowhere. They scurry through the hallway in a virtual river of wet and dirty fur. In Hailey’s room there are more rats as the toilet becomes so crowded that they are able to spill out from under the lid. They come up from the sink, the drain in the bathtub, the heating vents, every place accessible from outside the building. They feel what Hailey feels and they are running in fear.

“Aunt Eve!” The empath screams as she tries to wrestle away the mess of wires she’s attached to and out from under her blanket. She trips and nearly rips the stitches in her shoulder in an attempt to flee. “Don’t let them take me!! Please!!”

Internet celebrities galumphing down hospital corridors with tubas draw a lot of attention. Incidentally, so do screams and the raw sewage stench that rolls down the hallway on the backs of hundreds of rats. One man is moving toward the commotion rather than away from it as he shoulders past fleeing orderlies and patients with their hospital gowns hiked up around their waists.

Little rodent feet catch in the fabric of his slacks and draw blood inside the legs of his pants. The animals, responding to Hailey’s fear, are so desperate to get away that they’re unable to differentiate between a legitimate avenue of escape and, say, a sock. Sasha is trying very hard not to think about all the diseases he’s being exposed to— or worse, the diseases that his patients in the adjacent rooms are being exposed to.

This is exactly the sort of thing that the registration system of old was supposed to combat, he thinks, and — not for the first time — finds himself sympathizing with Humanis First. In spite of all the terrorist bombings and hate crimes, maybe they had a point.

Maybe Kazimir Volken had a point, too.

As he steps into the doorframe, he reaches down his pants and fishes out a squirming black mass that twists in the vice that his fingers. A sharp blow against the closest wall puts an abrupt end to its panicked squeals. He tosses the corpse at the foot of Hailey’s bed.

Brisk strides carry him past Eve and Julie and directly alongside the hysterical teen, who he grabs roughly by the throat with one hand — covered in scratches and a few dozen bite marks, raw and red and bleeding — and stabs in the neck with an emergency syringe of Adynomine using the other.

“Are you kidding Juliette you brought the fun police?!” Eve is so offended and not entirely paying attention to the other men who have walked into the room in front of Julie. “I'm her Aunt Eve for Christ’s sakes when did a tuba become a Weapon of Mass Destruction?!” The seer is still digging in her messenger bag. “I know I have it here somewhere.. silly silly always misplacing things..”

And then there are rats and there are screams and Eve is snapping her head up to look back at Hailey and then at.. oh dear. “See!” she yells at them all exasperated, these guys just don't get it. And then she's pulling out.. a nice sized cube of cheese. Actually.. she's got a bunch of cubes of cheese. “Here be useful,” She tosses a few at Julie, a couple might hit her in the forehead with no force but a gentle ploop.

And then there's this man no.. beast striding in and Eve’s eyes widen as she stops her movements to stare. The dark haired woman just gapes. “Hubba.. hubba.. does he not shower?” But then that man is stabbing negation juice into her pseudo-neice’s neck and Eve does not like that. “Breathe Doolittle! Breathe!”

The Oracle clutches her messenger bag to her chest and kicks booted feet at the rats swarming the place. She uses her bag to knock the rat off of Hailey's bed. “Do no throw her friends dead on the bed, it's rude.” This coming from the woman who was just tubaing down the hall.

The rats, the screams, everything. Julie is momentarily overwhelmed by it all. The chaos, the orderlies pushing, Eve’s antics, and then Sasha is suddenly nearby and he's injecting Hailey with something. There's negation gas in a thick, rolling bank, and the drones are circling around for another volley. Her sister is trying to save her mother. She can't breathe.

She can't breathe.

All anyone else sees is Julie freeze up, start trembling, and wrap her arms around herself as the chaos cracks her momentarily. By the time one of the orderlies, kicking and stamping rats away, gets over to her she's red-faced and furious.

Julie breaks away from the orderly and winds up to— the orderly grabs her wrist before she can smack Eve. Eyes reddened, face flushed with embarrassment Julie is incandescent with anger. She just stares at Eve in disbelief, abject and horrified disbelief.

The MP, who had ducked into the hall at the sounds of screams is coming back in. “Animal telepath, uncontrolled incident. Hospital staff is mitigating. No further assistance needed. Will advise..” He's talking into a radio at his shoulder, then points two fingers at Eve. “Ma’am you need to leave, right now.”

One orderly, sitting in a chair and watching as the rats continue to ebb and surge, for the full minute it takes for adynomine to take effect, stares at Sasha with wide-eyed silence. There's still shouts and screams coming from other rooms. It will take time for the full effects of the panic to subside.

She thought the military man was the one to be afraid of but no, there’s suddenly a neanderthal with too many teeth in slacks and a doctor’s coat reaching into his pants. A rat flies limp toward her and she doesn’t have time to mourn before he’s grabbing her by the throat too. Her wild eyes fly to the rat and she’s sure she’s about to share its fate, she told Gillian. Hailey’s good hand comes up to claw at Sasha and add to the damage the rats have already done. She thrashes, struggling against his grip to get away as much as she can to get away but then there’s a pinch at her neck and the lives start winking out of her consciousness. She can see they’re not dead, except the one just brushed off her bed.

“No no no no no no no no no no no no…” Her entire body goes slack, the rats that were once reacting to her fear are now in full control of their own… it doesn’t exactly change their course of action. Panic is panic and they’re in a sterile hospital rather than their sewer pipes, alleys, and garbage cans that they are trying to get back to. The only one not panicking is Hailey, she just falls back into her bed and goes as numb as her negated mind.

Sasha eases Hailey back down onto the mattress, a hand braced against the center of her chest for good measure. He glances over his shoulder at Eve and there’s a threat in his eyes that he has the sense not to voice out loud in front of the orderlies. “She breathing,” he assures her instead.

Because she is. Hailey might be limp, but Eve can see her ribcage expand with every breath her body pulls in, and although it looks like the Russian is being unnecessarily rough, his patient meets no resistance from him when it comes to something as simple as taking in oxygen.

“Fournier,” he calls to Julie. “Benchmark Center. You phone them now, please? Ask for Lynette Ruiz.

The tide of rats ebbs. They take shelter under beds and in cupboards, curling in the darkest corners of nearby supply closets if they can’t find and shimmy their way back into the pipes. Someone at the end of the hall is wailing something about Pollepel Island, but they’d be wrong; this isn’t the same thing, and as soon as the orderlies have Hailey restrained for her own safety, Sasha is making a beeline for the nearest janitor’s closet.

He needs to clean up before WSZR catches wind of what happened here, for Hailey’s sake.

And his own.

To her credit, Eve handles most things of this nature rather well. Chaos is where she lives on the daily. But there is almost always a point where it becomes too much. When the whispers and echoes of her dreams decide to reverberate louder, the door that's always open a peek swung full open. In these moments Eve forgets what's real or a dream. That lucidity that she tries to hold onto amidst her visions and thoughts can slip even more so.

Seeing Julie’s tears and expression cause Eve to pause. Her crazy can have adverse side effects on everyone around her. And it would seem that the serious young woman has been wounded by Eve’s antics. The older woman slouches forward, her shoulders hunched and her eyes cast to the floor. She's unable to speak for the moment, eyes squinting she balls a fist into the fine material of her dress, a booted leg shaking. Pale gray eyes meet Julie’s blue ones and she leans against her tuba, the instrument clanging against the wall. “I…”

She wrings her hands and looks over at Hailey, a worried expression on her face. She did cheer her up, temporarily. But at the cost of everyone else’s peace. There's a glitch in her head and she fidgets and then nods slowly, she has her grasp on the door inside her mind. Those echoes crawling all over her as she pulls it shut, “So sorry Juliette, you know.. my brain bucket..” there’s a moment where she bites her lip and stands straighter, holding her shoulders back, “I'm not as good as Else was, I’ll do better.” It's a promise she's tried and failed to keep. Over and over. Eve just cannot keep the door closed all the way.

Walking forward an inch she clutches her bag close to her chest as she makes for the exit then Sasha is saying, “Oh NO NO NO, please don't call Lady Zeus. Otter eyes will umbrella me to Spain.”

It takes a while for Julie to walk back down the halls of her consciousness and return to the present from a moment of disassociation. Wiping one hand across her cheeks, she swiftly moves away from Eve and the orderlies. She swallows, dry and loud, affording no one even a moment of eye contact as she storms out of the room to follow Sasha’s instructions. There are still rats scurrying around on the floor, looking to find a way back out, though the number is rapidly diminished.

The MP who had stepped into the room offers a look to Sasha, then steps aside as Julie passes. One of the orderlies waves him off, and the square-jawed young man just gives a small and uncertain nod before slipping back out of Hailey’s room. One orderly sticks by Sasha’s side to ensure that he doesn’t need anything else, while the other firmly — but gingerly — takes Eve by the arm.

“I believe you were asked, nicely, t’leave.” The young orderly looks at Eve, head tilted to the side. “The request wasn’t a metaphor.

Hailey knows what she did was wrong. She lost control and that is frowned on by expressives and non-expressives alike. On top of that, she can't exactly blame the doctor for what he did. After her fear-of-death panic has subsided (right about the time her throat is released), she simply concentrates on breathing, in and out, in and out.

She watches as Sasha leaves, not offering an apology for the additional scratches on his arm. There's probably time to do that later, a mental note she makes while the orderly straps her to the bed. The empath watches as one naked tail disappears out the door and around the corner. Then her eyes flit to Julie first and then to Eve, and she swallows the dry lump in the back of her throat.

"I'm so sorry…"

The seer barely protests until she remembers, “But my Tuba!” She tries to reach for it but the officer has his grip on her and she's being steered out. Steered away from Hailey, out of the hospital. Her light gray eyes are wide as she drags her feet in but she's still pulled away. “Be good Doolittle! Don't fret, Aunt Eve will see you soon. Unhand my boob sir!”

The seer slaps at the officer who pulls her along more roughly, “She needs me,” The kooky seer is worried for her Hailey but there's not much she can do. “Don't send me to Lady Zeus, she might lock me in there.” Not that Lynette had ever tried to lock Eve up, but she's in a frenzy now and is prone to paranoid thoughts.

As she is dragged/pulled out the door and around the corner she grabs onto the door edge. “I.. i..” she looks at Hailey with a sad expression in her eyes, “I love you sweetie.” And she's yanked out of view. A moment later,

“Looks like Aunt Eve is blasting off againnnnnnnnnn.”

And she's gone.


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