Old Goats

Participants:

megan_icon.gif scott_icon.gif

Scene Title Old Goats
Synopsis Megan Young and Scott Harkness discuss the future of the Ferrymen with suture and needles.
Date November 8, 2010

Gun Hill


It's been a long time since Doctor Odessa Knutson called the Gun Hill clinic her office. Yet some of her personal effecta are still here, situated on the desk that has more recently been taken over by Delia Ryans. The clinic is surprisingly well stocked for a makeshift chop-shop in an apartment basement; medical supplies and the proper decour make it look like a walk-in clinic, a strong illusion of legitimacy even if the young woman now running it doesn't actually have a license to practice medicine.

Admiring one of the leftovers from the prior physician, Scott Harkness is seated on a battered old stool, cradling a snow globe, of all things, in one weathered hand. Bereft of his jacket and all but a tanktop, the old man shows the signs of a lifetime of hardships. The bandages and temporary measures on his arm have stopped the bleeding from the flesh wound on his left shoulder from earlier in the day, but another, larger gunshot wound scar dimples flesh on the opposite shoulder, old and pale, faded from time.

On his back, another scar at the base of his neck is prominently raised but equally old, an old knife injury that looks to have been sewn up hastily, given the ugly scarring left behind. Inside the snow globe, a tiny diorama of Paris and the Eiffel tower is decked in synthetic snowflakes trapped in water.

Either from boredom or fascination, Scott is shaking the snowglobe, watching the flakes swirl as the door to the clinic opens.

Well, now there's a scene you don't see every day. A grown man hanging about staring at a snow globe. When Megan steps into the officer, the backpack over her shoulder, the strain in her expression is pretty clear. But her eyes are clear and her tone is calm as she says, "Bennet will live. I set his leg and sutured both the leg and the arm, but …. I can't touch his chest. Not here. I'm not sure I can do it at all." There's a grimace from the redhead as she plops the backpack down on the desk and pulls another stool over to perch behind and to the side of his wounded shoulder. "He's got the most amazing goddamn luck," she murmurs. "Missed his lungs and his arteries and veins. I think it may have ruptured his spleen and possibly cracked ribs, but I think he'll stabilize. I'd rather get him seen by a doctor as soon as possible."

Even as she updates him, she's snapping a clean pair of gloves over her hands and taking out a suture kit and a vial of Novacaine, along with the needle she's planning on jabbing the site with. Megan reaches up to wipe the back of her arm across her still-sweaty forehead to shove strands of silver-streaked copper hair off her forehead. "Gimme," she tells him, refering to his shoulder.

Scott's expression does not change as Megan gives her prognosis, though he does lean forward to set down the snowglobe with a clunk on the desk. Turning to look back up to the redhead, Scott's brows furrow and he turns on the stool to afford Megan easier access to his bare shoulder. "Bennet's got more lives than a cat. Still don't know how he survived being in Midtown when the bomb went off… probably never will with how tight-lipped the man is."

Offering an askance look to Megan, Scott's expression betrays no emotions, a mask of stony features he's worn for going on too many years now. "Alistair is waiting for me back at the Hangar. I've called in a few other people from out of state to help with the evacuation of the residents there. But it's going to be down to the wire now that I've been laid up like this." Brown eyes sweep away from Megan, over to one of the dusty basement windows.

"It was horrible, Meg…" It's the first time Scott's opened up about what happened since he returned. "The Army came in with Susan. One FRONTLINE officer. They just opened fire, no warning, nothing. It was an execution, they were trying to sever the whole damned head of our operation. God knows what she's told them, what's safe and what's not…"

"Nothing is safe," Megan says flatly as she removes the bandages around Scott's wound. She picks up the syringe, fills it with the numbing agent, and gently palpates the spot before poking the needle in and injecting him in two places. Then she leans back to give it a couple of minutes to kick in. "You should assume every damn safe house we have is fucking well compromised, and you should evac everyone to a fallback position before they head for the boats — someplace Susan has no goddamn clue about." She clenches her jaw and looks down. "My vision… didn't have negation gas or gunfire. It stopped just about the time you apparently shoved me and Grace into your dimensional pocket thing." She hasn't ever mentioned to him that she even had one. She's just pushed to be sure there isn't anyone in the Hangar by early evening instead of later in the night.

"They don't open fire," Scott says in a hushed tone of voice, brows furrowed and fatalism in his tone. "I… saw something. The Nichols' girl is the only person I've told, aside from Grace. She and I got into an argument before I left for the meeting this morning, I… told her how things go. If we all evacuate from the Hangar, there'll be more time for the government to close in on other safehouses. There's nowhere in our network aside from our emergency evacuation point that Susan didn't know about, so we'd have to rely on outside sources."

Scott's dark eyes flick up to Megan, a frown creasing his pockmarked face. "I'm going to stay there and make sure the National Guard that show up have every reason to waste hours searching the building for crawlspaces and hiding spots. Buy everyone some time… as much as I can, at least. If they get there and it looks like we left, they'll just move on. Right now we have one, singular advantage," Scott opines with a furrow of his brows.

"They're spread too thin, and we're spread far out." His eyes return to the snowglobe on the desk, wincing as he considers his injury and the needle. "We have to slow them down."

Blue eyes flicker back up to meet his for a long moment and her lips compress. Megan pokes gently at the wound to me sure it's numb and then picks up the suture kit to start sewing him up, her movements deft and gentle. "And everything's changed, and you know that," she says quietly as she works. Because in my vision, you weren't shot. Just because they didn't come in shooting in the vision doesn't mean they won't now." Her tone is firm, but he can tell her brain is working at high speed behind the precise motions of her hands. "You don't even know that they're hitting the goddamn places one at a time. Maybe they're hitting them four or five at a time. There's no way to tell."

"Can't take that risk," Scott admits with a hushed tone of voice, "Alistair needs at least six more hours to properly clean up and not leave a trail behind from where we were, and to make sure all our residents get to the evacuation point safely without drawing attention. We were caught with our pants around our ankles on how this happened, even if we knew it was coming." Brown eyes track to the door to the clinic, Scott's eyes shutting and lips parting in a grimace of discomfort as Megan continues her work.

He grows quiet, for a little while, letting Megan continue her work, and presumably try to counter the old goat's stubborn footing from atop his mountain. For all the Scott Harkness seems to see the guns aimed at the Ferrymen from all around, he also seems to be persistant enough to think that he could survive the hail of bullets to follow.

The nurse is quiet as she stitches up the back part of his wound. Gunshots suck massively. She snips the last thread and sets the hook and scissors down, Megan pushes the rolling chair around to the front of him. As she begins peeling the bandage off the entry wound — the exit is always bigger and uglier — Megan doesn't look up at him. "Six hours from now is … perhaps as late as 1500," she comments quietly. "The raid — at least in the vision — was after dark. Get 'em out of there before that, Scott. All of them." Only then does her gaze flicker upward and in spite of the calm facade and neutral tone, there is fear lurking. "We've already lost people. And if they come in shooting this time, different than whatever you saw in your own vision… it'll just be another bloodbath."

A shuddering breath escapes Scott as Megan continues her triage on his wound, eyes now shut and hands folded in his lap. His shoulders are stiff, tense and unmoving for ease of the medic's access. But despite Megan's warnings, despite her advice, his grunt of agreement is half-hearted and without the conviction the soldier usually gives to an affirmation.

Instead, he changes the topic.

"Where's Bennet getting moved to?" Scott looks askance over his shoulder, not enough to actally see Megan, but enough to see her hands working on his shoulder. "I know there's not proper facilities for him here, and with his status with the government we can't take him to a hospital. I heard you and Rowan talking…"

The old man's brows tense. "What'd you decide?"

Megan picks up the needle to numb the front wound, once again jabbing him twice and setting the syringe down to wait for it to kick in. Her hands remain steady as she moves and she purses her lips into a moue of displeasure. "We're shipping him over to Redbird Security. His daughter's staying there with a guy I used to work with out on Staten. My understanding is that they're unlikely to be hit by the raids due to their own ties, so it seemed a good place. Ryans is going to take him over shortly."

She doesn't wait for the wound to be entirely numbed before she picks up the suture hook to start in on the smaller entry wound, copper brows pulled together in a furrow. "Let's get you sewn up and we'll get back to the Hangar. Alistair and Grace shouldn't be there alone," Megan says quietly.

A grumble rises in the back of Scott's throat, followed by a furrow of his brows. "He shouldn't stay there for too long, we're going to need him with the rest of the remaining council at the evacuation site. We have a medical center set up there with proper facilities where he can receive the care he needs." Scott's brows furrow as he looks to the clock ticking softly on the wall, no one has been around to set it back an hour for daylight saving's time's conclusion. It makes matter seems worse than they are.

"I'll have Jensen go by and pick him up later, when we're ready to move. The last thing we need is our leadership fractured any more than it already is," and then in an undercurrent of Harkness' suspicion, "I don't trust Richard Cardinal any further than I could throw him at any rate." His tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, looks down to Megan's work on his shoulder, and gives a slow nod.

"You do good work, Young…" That's kind of like a thank you.

There's a simple nod to the information that Raith will go by and pick him up. "We just don't want him in any of the safe houses in the state he's in. He'll be a liability not just to himself but to anyone else. He can't safely get moving under his own power — assuming he wakes up — with a bullet still perforating his organs near his lungs," Megan says quietly. "As to trusting him?" She shrugs. "I don't know whether to do that or not. But Bennet's daughter is there, and whatever else goes down, she deserves the right to care for her father." Meg knows the way Bennet tries to keep tabs on the girl — she's not blind.

"Yeah. I do," the redhead retorts mildly, slanting a grin up at him briefly as she works on the stitches. "Don't tear 'em open or I'll bitch at you."

Father and daughter, that's an easier case to make for Scott, all things considered. He may never have had children of his own, but he understands the fascination, the bond. In a way, all of the Ferry has been his children ever since he'd come aboard. With a curt nod of his head and a look back to the clock, Scott's eyes shut as he reluctantly bequeaths a victory in this argument to Megan, if only for the time being.

"Yes, Ma'am."

Partial victories still count.


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