Participants:
| Scene Title | Misstep Part II |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Raith puts out a medical 9-1-1 to the The Garden after a failed reconnaissance mission leaves one missing and one in very bad shape. |
| Date | August 8, 2011 |
Situated in a copse several miles away from the nearest stretch of asphalt, the Garden is accessible via an old dirt road that winds snakelike through the woods and dead-ends at the property's perimeter, which is surrounded by stone wall plastered with wicked coils of rusty barbed wire to keep would-be intruders from attempting to scale it. Those with a key can gain entry via the front gate.
The safehouse itself is a three-story brickwork cottage over a century old and covered in moss and ivy. It slants to one side, suggesting that the foundation has been steadily sinking into the wet earth; incidentally, this may be one of the reasons why its prior occupants never returned to the island to reclaim their property when government officials lifted evacuation orders and re-opened the Verrazano-Narrows shortly before its eventual destruction.
Inside, the cottage is decorated in mismatched antique furniture including a couch in the living room and an armchair nestled in the corner closest to the fireplace that go well with the safehouse's hardwood floors and the wood-burning stoves in some of the spare bedrooms. A heavy wooden table designed to seat eight separates the dining area from the rest of the kitchen, which is defined by its aged oak cabinetry and the dried wildflowers hanging above them.
"I brought some stuff," Monica says as she makes her way into the Garden. She was close enough to come at the distress call, thankfully, and she comes complete with a backpack of supplies. And one dagger, but that's unrelated. "It's mostly bandages and antiseptics. Some scissors. Could grab much else on short notice." It's something, at least?
She also comes with years of terrorist bandaging experience, none of which she learned via her ability, sadly enough. But she comes in and sets the bag down before moving to start clearing a place to lay the wounded out that's at least somewhat cleaner than, say, the floor.
There's few times that Deanna Cash, once known as Kasha Beauchamp, has used the Ferry information— it's so uncommon, that she isn't recognized by many who answered the call, or those who look after the building. Any challanges were met with proper codes and signs, however, and an single explaination of why she arrived. She was in the area and heard the emergency. Though there may be more to it than that.
A rather stoic expression sits on her face, steel blue eyes shifting around at those also gathered to the emergency call this afternoon, watching each one carefully. If she was anxious, it's difficult to see. She doesn't fidget with anxiety, and she looks quite calm.
At least until one notices the fine whiteness to her knuckles, or along her jawline. A backpack of supplies lies on the floor next to her feet where she leans against the wall.
Sometimes, timing is everything. It didn't really matter, now, why Robyn Quinn had been in the area - delivering supplies and hopes of checking on friends and checking in with places, mostly, none of which had panned out thanks to how rigid the island has become since her last visit, even more so than she had been aware - but what mattered now was that now she had a better reason.
It's been several months since she was last at the Garden, but she hasn't forgotten the ways of getting thier without being noticed. The ability to turn momentarily invisible helps, even when one doesn't actually need to make sure of it.
She's there just after Monica, pushing open the door slowly, a worried look on her face. "Monica! Oh thank God, I'm not the only one who came," she says, eyes moving over to look at Cash, an unfamiliar face. "Oh," is her only way of greeting,a small wave and smile offered to her. "What's the word?" she asks, hoping for an update - she has some first aid experiance, and she's hopping it'll be of some use.
The word, apparently, is 'medic,' although the only indication of this is the barked command of, "Medic!" from outside the Garden's walls. A second later, the door that Quinn entered through and shut is abruptly kicked opened, probably with enough force to damage its lock, and Jensen Raith comes charging in. In a bizarre twist of fashion, he has opted not to wear a shirt, wearing a vest of Dragon Skin body armor haphazardly fastened shut. The reason why he has chosen this bizarre fashion combination is in his arms
Abigail Beauchamp has seen better days, made painfully obvious because Raith's bloodsoaked shirt is wrapped carelessly around her stomach, cinched tightly into place with his belt (from which his Glock still hangs in its holster). Whatever happened, the ex-spy wasn't kidding when he'd said it was an emergency. And judging from how out of breath he is and the sheen of sweat on his exposed skin, whatever happened, he ran to the Garden while carrying Abby. Both of them have seen better days.
"Table!"
It's a testament to her continuous attempts to learn to control her ability that's pretty evident right now. In the fact that while Raith is half naked, she isn't. Original clothing intact save for holes that neither god nor friendlies put in her and the red that's coloring both his shirt and her own, a saturated sheen that accounts for the pale in her cheeks.
That's not to say that Abby's not having issues if the sweat dripping off her forehead, isn't a clue, irises that have gone orange underneath eyelids clamped shut and teeth grinding against each other in an effort to not burst into flames and take the head of special activities with her. Not a sound from the blonde/brunette - It's not an option when your trying to not be noticed while running across no mans land - But she hurts, she knows that where she was shot is a shitty place to be shot - Sometimes literally - and that the medic that would ordinarily be responding to something like this, is the one actually hurt. Just hold tight with one arm wrapped around Raith's back and the other, holding vainly to the shirt and belt that's trying to keep insides, in.
Monica's reply to Quinn starts with a lift of her shoulder, but she doesn't actually get to say anything as Raith and Abby come in and promptly get all her attention. "Right here," she says as to Raith with a pat to the table she's cleared. She doesn't ask how bad it is, she just starts rolling up her sleeves. She means to help, apparently.
"Either of you any good with this kinda thing?" She asks of both Quinn and Cash while she opens her back pack and starts pulling things out. "There hot water in this place?" It's an attempt at lightheartedness, but a serious request at the same time. A hand moves to Abby's forehead, pushing her hair out of the way, "We're gonna get you taken care of."
The whitenessed caused by tension disappears as much of the color drains from Cash's face at the sight of the fabled hero of old carrying the woman who would become her mother in later years. Even in her youth, she still looks like herself. And no one else could look quite like the legend of the Ferry that is Raith. Him alone would have caused her to stare despite herself, but him carrying the bleeding woman certainly has a majority of her attention.
The legend is almost an afterthought in comparison.
Bending down, she reaches into her bag for some of her own supplies, which seems to amount to a set of latex free gloves she quickly snaps on and a lot of bandages and other things. Including a sewing kit and a box of small tools. "I know some," she says in rough but quiet tones. Her usual calm is being put to the test, but somehow able to be maintained, even as she looks down at the woman. "You will be all right," she says to her mother, voice gaining a tone of determination.
Quinn visibly jumps when the door is kicked in, having not expected such a quick response. That's certainly one way of making the word known, so to speak. Immediately, she scrambling, looking for what she can find to help. It's been a while since she was in The Garden, but she recalls there being a bit of first aid supplies about - pretty much a requirement for being on Staten, as far as she was concerned.
A look back over to Monica, and then to Abby and Raith, and finally to Cash. "Depends on what needs doing," she says nervously. "I have some first aid training, and I can kinda sew, but I'm nto a doctor. I'll do what I can, though, an' whatever you need, Raith." She offers a nod in the solider's direction. "How bad is it? What do you need?" She looks down to Abby, frowning. "Is she - awake at all?"
"Awake enough." Raith doesn't say much else, as his immediate priority is to get Abby onto the table where she can be properly examined. Or at least more properly examined. "Gunshot wound, abdomen," he says with a puff. As soon as Abby is on the table, the ex-spy steps back to get out of the way, and to catch his breath. "Didn't see any blowthru." Meaning the bullet is probably still lodged in her body somewhere. This may have even been to Abby's benefit: Odds are good that it's stopping any blood vessels it severed. For the moment, no more explanation is forthcoming. At least not until more air is forthcoming.
Of course she'll be alright. Why wouldn't she be alright? "Less placating, more fixing. I don't rightly think that I got much more blood in me or gonna stay non-crispy much longer" Abby intersperses between ragged breathes to those who are trying to fix her. Eyes vacillating between blue then back to orange, as she switches her focus to the blonde that would be her daughter and fights to maintain control. "Lighthouse. She's at the Lighthouse- Lord tell me I taught you well enough" She wants to curl up in a ball and shoo everyone away from her middle. Last time she'd been shot there, Logan was the responsible party and she was sure she was going to die in some dirty alley on Staten Island.
Today, that thought wasn't that far away, hovering behind eyes that clamp shut again as a fresh wire of agony cuts up her belly and back and she tries to stifle a scream, grab quinn's hand and hold on far too tight.
Monica nods to Raith's description, but she gives Abby a crooked smile, "Well, stop talking then, hun, and hang in there for us." She doesn't have gloves, so she'll leave the actual digging around to Cash, but she grabs the scissors to get things started. "I hope you've got quick fingers," she says to Cash. She's a decent assistant, at least.
"Quinn, find what you can. I don't have needle and thread, but we're really gonna need some soon here."
"Afraid this was never my area of expertise, but I did learn enough— you needed a steady hand to help you out more often than not," Cash says quietly, offering a hint of smile, though it's not reassuring so much as just there. "Quinn, I will need light," she states rather firmly, as if expecting to be followed at this moment. She knows all the tools in the room better than she should. "Dawson, keep your hands steady— I brought needle and thread."
She adds as she reaches back into the small 'toolkit' of sorts and pulls out a small knife, something that could be used to extract and the sewing kit, which is laid aside for now. Instead she grabs the disenfectant and quickly pours it over the tools, handing a flat tool and gauze to Dawson for holding skin back and dabbing the blood.
There's a bit of alchol quickly found - not of the medical variety, but probably could do in a pinch, or at least so Quinn imagines. Wherever the first aid kit is, it escapes her for the moment. It sounds, as though, that the matter is covered pretty well Drawers and cabinets are closed, Quinn rushing her way back over to the table. Normally, at this point she's just snap her fingers and send a little ball of light floating voer to help them. This, however, requires more precise light, prompting her walk over, foxused on the light overhead as the ambient light in the room dims just a bit, focusing form the light down in a brighter cone on Abby, with some added from Quinn's hands just to be sure.Silent, she grimaces as she watches and waits, looking between the others present.
"Hate to, interrupt." Raith pauses just long enough to suck in a large volume of air. "Has anyone heard, from Eileen?" The tearing of velcro and popping of snaps is the next sound from Raith as he starts peeling off his body armor. "I don't know where she is." So, he sticks to what he does know. He knows there is a drawer with a hand towel in it. He knows there is some ice in the freezer, probably. A few seconds after he finishes with his armor, he is loading ice into the towel and tying it off, before he makes his way to the sink, soaks the bundle with cold water, and then interposes himself at the table just enough to place the rapidly cooling cloth on Abby's face. Every little bit helps. "is there morphine?"
Please let there be morphine, or no amount of ice is going to help even though the sharp ache that the ice and water soaked cloth invites helps to give her a focal point other than her middle or looking to the instruments that are being rudimentarily cleaned. Where Eileen is, she doesn't know and if she had will to speak, she would ask too, worried for the woman. Instead there's another attempt to grab at Quinn's hand and hold, try to lay still on the makeshift surgical table. "Call for Francois, teeth chatter over conflicting temperatures. "Or Megan, or.. or…" Or fuck if she knows who else. "Knock me out. Safer"
"Steady as they come, don't you worry," Monica says to Cash as she takes the supplies from Cash. By the time Raith speaks his interruption, she's holding Abby's wound open and sopping up as much of the blood as she can get. "What, Eileen?" She's a little distracted, since she doesn't take her attention off the surgery. "I haven't seen her lately. She missing missing?" As opposed to just taking some time to herself.
"I couldn't tell you if there's anything for the pain around. It'd be with the medical stuff, if it's there. I'd rather not have to knock her out if we can avoid it."
"We do not know if any of them can get here in time. Staten Island is not exactly easy to come and go on," Cash says with a kind of confidence she may not actually feel. Morphine is a definite no, even if she happens to be working in a place that can cater to many desires— it's not something she carries around. However, she does have something that can help knock the woman out.
"I do not know where Eileen is, Raith, but I hope she is all right. In the bag, I have a bottle of chloroform and some rags. I am sure you know how to use them." And when she starts cutting and digging, the woman is going to need that to be done.
"I havne't seen Eileen in a while myself," Quinn replies a bit sadly, looking over at Raith with a shake of her head. "I imagine you'd find her before me, but I can see what I can do when I leave here." Not taht Quinn would immediately know where to look, but she can certainly try.
When Monica voices her desire not to render Abby unconcious, Quin's eyes go wide. "No. No, no, no, no. You haven't been standing a bit too close to her when she starts t' heat up, Monica, I'm a little amazed we're not all on fire as it is. She," Quinn says, nodding towards Cash, "has teh right idea ehre, trust me."
Chloroform? Really? Whatever, no time to question it. The bundle of cloth and ice is set aside while Raith, still struggling to catch his breath but doing much better than he was, starts rooting around in Cash's bag. "She distracted them so we could get away," he clarifies. Here's the rags. "I don't know where she is now." And the bottle. Jackpot. "I found it. Do you see the bullet?"
Good Lords graces is why everyone isn't on fire. Especially when Monica's getting right in there and she can feel each finger and press of white gauze that turns red. Tears were already forming, already had been flowing, but a fresh batch wells up, slips between lashes and trips down an already carved path down towards her ear, begging eyes on Raith. Chloroform. Please. Now. Even as her right foot is moving side to side as a way that bodes very unwell for her control.
"What I meant," Monica says to Quinn, "is that givin' her the haymaker would do more harm than good." It is, after all, the way she usually knocks people out. "I didn't know chloroform was on the table," she adds, lifting an eyebrow in Cash's direction. It's a shortlived look, surprised, but not necessarily judgmental. It's a crazy world they live in. She'll compliment Abby on her control later, after they're done getting elbow deep in her innards.
With the additional light and the steady hands, Cash is able to get an idea on where the bullet is for extracting, but she's avoided actually digging deep for it until she looks up toward Raith, sure that he has the bottle, so she can nod in response and reach in. She trusts he'll make sure she doesn't feel much. And if she bursts into flames— at least she knows a way to defend against it— it just won't help the others very well.
"She will be fine," she murmurs softly under her breath as she uses the light and the assistance to go after the bullet, with a quick instruction to Monica so that the woman won't bleed out as soon as the bullet is pulled. Her hands can shake later— but for now, her mother needs her steady as a rock. Which fortunately she's rather good at being.
"You're probably right, but I'd take a haymaker over risk of spontaneous combustion. Sorry, Abby,' Quinn remarks apologetically, offering a weak smile down at the pyromorth. Keeping her hands steady, she focuses down long enough to see Cash looking for the bullet, and immediately looks back away. There's a reason Quinn never watches stuff like ER or Grey's Anatomy besides teh awful fake drama. Funny how that works out sometimes, isn't it. "Do we have the thread and all ready? I can leave the light and get it, if you neeed me too," she murmers, one eye opening tentatively as she looks back down.
"Don't breathe too deeply," Raith cautions as he douses the rag in his hand with the chloroform. Once he returns to the table, however, his suggestion changes somewhat. "Except you, Abby," he says, holding the wet rag over the face of the soon-to-be human torch. "Breathe deep. You'll be patched up and ready to get into trouble again before you ever wake up. Promise."
Just in time, just in time, thank you lord on high and Raith, Cash, Monica and Quinn because even as eyes lock with raith over the rim of the sickly smelling rag, she can feel that hand digging in her. Not that she'll likely remember that particular aspect of it all thanks to the quickly drooping nature of her eyes and the sandman swiftly claiming her as she tries to breath in as deep as wounds allow.
And just like that, threat of combustion is eliminated tonight as a potential method of death for those here in the immediate future with the limbs relaxing and tension melting away in medically induced unconciousness.
Monica doesn't yank to poke too much until she's feeling Abby relax, but she's not wasting much time, either. Gut wounds make her nervous. So once Abby's out, the real work begins. Starting with the beginning of a pile of bloody gauze on the ground by her feet. "Thanks, Quinn. It'd help if it was ready to go." The faster the better is her general outlook on field medicine (as it were), and Francois or someone with more finesse can do the fine tuning later on.
While not nearly as good as Megan or Francois or even the woman she has under the knife at the moment, Cash does know a few important things about stomach wounds— it's better to get it out quickly and fix the damage than it is to wait until someone better can get there. Stomach wounds are too dangerous to let sit.
And luckily most of her experience was in follow-up. Post-op, as it were.
With a clink, the bloody bullet is dropped away from the body and she immediately goes into stopping the bleeding and closing the woman up. While she didn't seem anxious over removing the bullet, there's something far more practiced in these motions, with cleaning away the blood, sewing up the holes, than there was in the first part.
After she's sure the bleeding is slowed enough that she asks outloud, without looking away, "Do you know who did this?"
With a pair of lights hanging over head, Quinn moves to Cash's pack, producing the needle in thread just in time for Cash to need it, and with that done, she takes some of the antispetic and a rrag and begins to prepare for cleanup - not that any of this has been fun, but she imagines this will bbe the least enjoyable part of this little happening.
"I was wondering the same thing," Quinn admits as she walks back over, wiping her arm across her forehead. "An' are you okay, Raith?" Since no one had asked yet, as far as Quinn's heard.
"Just got to catch my breath." That's as close to a straight answer as any of them can hope; he could be the one on the table with a bullet in his gullet, and he would insist that he just had the wind knocked out of him. "We were doing recon out at Eltingville. Security forces found us, we exchanged fire, Abby caught a round, Eileen drew them off, and I came here as fast as I could. I don't know who did it, I just know they were in a uniform. That's all."
"Where does Eileen usually check in after stuff like this?" Monica's thoughts drift toward the stray one of that number, but apparently she's not thinking along the lines of her getting snatched up. But then, she's an optimist, for the most part. She's a little quicker with the gauze once the bullet's out, and the retraction, making sure things are clear while Cash stitches up all those little holes. "We can check around when we go contact someone to come give Abby a look over."
"If you need to go back out looking for her, go ahead. Eileen is important to the cause," Cash says knowingly, with much of her attention on the woman on the table. And the cleaning up that needs to be done. "Once you have caught your breath, of course. And others may answer the bulliteen still, so you may have help. You can even take one of us. I think two of us can get — Abigail fixed up."
"Fucking Eltingville," Quinn grumbles with a shake of her head as she asists in lighting and clean up. "That place is a cancer. I'm glad it wasn't the robots I've heard about that got you guys, though." She lets out a bit of a sigh, eyes closing for a moment. "I can help with Abby, if you wanna go with Raith, Monica. Probably safer that way, I'm still working on my shot," she remarks with a bit of a laugh and a nod over towards Raith.
"We'll wait a bit, first," Raith informs everyone, stepping back from the table, capping the bottle of chloroform, and discarding the rag in the sink, where he promptly runs water over it. "If she turns up on her own, there's no sense in putting more of us at risk. If we don't hear from her after a day, then we'll go looking. We do it before then, I can't guarantee she'll be happy with us for doing it. One day, after we know Abby is stable." Sucking in another breath- facing away from the chloro-rag- something important suddenly dawns on the ex-spy.
"In the meantime, will somebody please find me another shirt?"