And here is part 2, now I'm off to grind a few more level out of Decay before DoubleXP weekend is over.
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Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 2)
My return to consciousness was sudden and disorienting. I awoke from disjointed nightmares about burning buildings and flying rubble to darkness. Not the dim half shadows of a dark room, but the total absence of light. The fear that I was blind lasted for all of a second, when my hands encountered a thick wrapping around my eyes. Remembering the explosion of the teleporters and the muted and blurry images from afterwards, I decided to leave it on for now.
Without much else to do I tried to relax a bit and take stock of my situation. I could wiggle my toes, and feel the sheets shifting on my legs as my feet moved around. That combined with being able to use and feel things with my hands ruled out major body or nerve trauma. I sat up with some difficulty, I must have pulled or strained a few muscles in my back dragging the hero to the teleporter.
I ran my hands over as much of my body as I could reach, making sure that there weren't any further injuries that I couldn't feel. There where a few sore spots in my arms and legs, but that was it. Without seeing the color of the bruises I was unable tell if they were minor things from crawling around on the rubble, or if I had some deep muscle bruising and was pumped full of enough pain killers that they didn't feels as bad. But regardless of of how bad the bruising was, I seemed to have come out unscathed. Aside from my eyes.
I was confident enough that I wasn't totally blind. The explosion may have caused some damage to my corneas, but anything that short in exposure that didn't leave me blind right away probably wasn't going to. Especially since it wasn't left untreated for long.
The normal sounds of the hospital seemed unbearably loud, what I usually dismissed as background white noise was being picked apart by a subconscious desperate for situational awareness. It really shouldn't have surprised me, but there is a difference between knowing something and having visceral first hand experience. Lacking anything better to do I tried to pick apart what I was hearing: the hum of machinery in the room; the muted conversations that were taking place outside, too muted to make out individual words; the occasional squawk of the PA system. All of them were familiar and helped to calm me down. It took me a few minutes of listening before I clued in of the obvious. I didn't hear anyone else in the room. The only machinery I heard was positioned at the head of my bed, slightly offset to my right. If someone else was being monitored I should have been able to hear their machinery, or their breathing. But there wasn't anything else. Which meant I was in a room by myself.
This wasn't a good thing. The hospitals didn't have rooms to spare. If I was in isolation it meant I was either unable to defend myself against the common cold, or I was a danger to those around me. I felt fine, and I hadn't bummed against a isolation tent earlier when I sat up, which ruled out the first option. And that only left option number two. I chocked back a hysteric giggle, afraid it would turn into a cry by the time it left my mouth. Everyone on the hospital staff knew the dangers of working in the ER, there were decontamination procedures for a reason. But those procedures got left on the floor like a pair of used gloves when we were attacked. I don't want to think about how many different people bled on me, or what I may have been exposed to when the teleporters blew up. But something had obviously happened, and I was dangerous.
I didn't know if whatever had happened to me would kill me in a few days, a few weeks, a few years, or if I got to spend the rest of my days in a class A hazmat suit. I had to distract myself from thinking about what might be wrong, I knew far too many unpleasant things that could have happened to me. That way lead to madness. The distraction that finally tore my thoughts away from morbidly listing what I might have contracted was a full bladder. The sheer mundanity of it left me blinking dumbly for a few seconds. Then I as slowly leveraging myself upright and carefully sliding off the bed to stand up. This was an isolated room, which meant that they had an toilet, all I had to do was find it.
The air was cool against my arms and legs, the thin almost paper coverings that the hospital called clothing wasn't very good at retaining heat. I ignored the minor litany of complaints that my body raised as I slowly shuffled my way around the room. I could deal with cold feet, sore muscles, and better clothing after I had taken care of the base necessities. I bumped into 2 chairs an a lamp, I think, before I found the bathroom. I knew it was the door to the bathroom, and not the outside, because it opened when I tried the handle. Rooms in isolation are secured, and require at least a badge to enter and exit. My shins, once again, were the first things to find the toilet. But by now I was more relieved than mad. As I sat down I kept one foot wedged in the door, I didn't want to get stuck in the bathroom because I somehow managed to lock myself inside by accident.
I was trying to find the sink and keep the bathroom door open at the same time when I heard the door to the hallway beep and unlock. I gave up my my search for the moment and turned to face the door. When they came through the door I was puzzled for a second; their shoes squeaked and their clothing crinkled.
"Miss Quinn?" The voice was muffled and muted. It took a second but it clicked together, they were in a hazmat suit, and from sound of things a rather bulky one. With that realization the last glimmer of winked out. I had something bad enough that normal people couldn't even breath the same air as me. These things never went well, I saw them every once in while from inside the suit. I can't remember one patient that lived a normal life, or at all.
"Miss Quinn?" The voice repeated, it sounded feminine but I couldn't be certain. The footsteps moved closer, and I had to grip the doorframe to stop myself from shutting the door and hiding in the bathroom.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked. Part of me didn't want to know how much longer I had to live, but I knew that I would obsess over it if I didn't know.
There was a brief hesitation before I got an answer. "Your eyes suffered some minor coronal burns, nothing to worry about. You'll need to apply some eye drops to prevent infection. But you'll be seeing things normally in about a week." They were sticking to the safe and comforting subjects first. Not that I blamed them, it was a textbook example of what to do. Unfortunately it doesn't do a great job of calming down the patient when the patient has also read the textbook.
"That's not what I meant. Why am I alone when you could fit three more beds in here at least? Why are you in a hazmat suit? What happened to me?" I stopped asking questions when I realized I was shouting. I leaned against the doorframe and tried to relax,"Sorry, I don't mean to take it out on you. It's just that I've been running though every single thing I know that would leave me here, and none of them are pretty."
There was a longer pause this time before the voice finally answered. "We don't know. Your radioactively hot. Hotter than anything else left at the crash site. Shining Fist, the hero you arrived with, is showing the effects of radiation exposure as well. But he is no where close to your levels. We have been able to piece together a rough idea of what happened from what he as told us, but his story is understandably vague. Any details you could tell us would help."
I noticed that they didn't say how much I was giving off, but I let it slide. "Ok, but can you help me find the sink first?"
"Feeling nauseous?" The question was asked quickly, but the respirator hid any inflection.
"No, I just haven't washed my hands yet." I tried to say it with a smile, but my expression felt more like a grimace.
"Oh. It's waist height, your seven o'clock, about two feet away. Paper towels are about a foot to the right."
"Thanks." I managed to find it with minimal fumbling.
After I had washed up, they led me back to the bed. I'm sure they tried to be comforting. But thick rubber gloves and respirator do a surprisingly good job of hiding emotional clues when you can't see someone's face. I laid back in the hospital bed, surprised at how tired I was from the short trip to the bathroom.
"Anything you remember is useful. I'll be recording it, so I may have some question later. But for now just walk me through what happened." They said as I heard them set something hard on the bedside table.
I took a steadying breath as visions of the event swam up from the blackness. "It was a fairly normal day until the invasion alarms when off..."
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ETA: corrected spelling
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
----------
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 2)
My return to consciousness was sudden and disorienting. I awoke from disjointed nightmares about burning buildings and flying rubble to darkness. Not the dim half shadows of a dark room, but the total absence of light. The fear that I was blind lasted for all of a second, when my hands encountered a thick wrapping around my eyes. Remembering the explosion of the teleporters and the muted and blurry images from afterwards, I decided to leave it on for now.
Without much else to do I tried to relax a bit and take stock of my situation. I could wiggle my toes, and feel the sheets shifting on my legs as my feet moved around. That combined with being able to use and feel things with my hands ruled out major body or nerve trauma. I sat up with some difficulty, I must have pulled or strained a few muscles in my back dragging the hero to the teleporter.
I ran my hands over as much of my body as I could reach, making sure that there weren't any further injuries that I couldn't feel. There where a few sore spots in my arms and legs, but that was it. Without seeing the color of the bruises I was unable tell if they were minor things from crawling around on the rubble, or if I had some deep muscle bruising and was pumped full of enough pain killers that they didn't feels as bad. But regardless of of how bad the bruising was, I seemed to have come out unscathed. Aside from my eyes.
I was confident enough that I wasn't totally blind. The explosion may have caused some damage to my corneas, but anything that short in exposure that didn't leave me blind right away probably wasn't going to. Especially since it wasn't left untreated for long.
The normal sounds of the hospital seemed unbearably loud, what I usually dismissed as background white noise was being picked apart by a subconscious desperate for situational awareness. It really shouldn't have surprised me, but there is a difference between knowing something and having visceral first hand experience. Lacking anything better to do I tried to pick apart what I was hearing: the hum of machinery in the room; the muted conversations that were taking place outside, too muted to make out individual words; the occasional squawk of the PA system. All of them were familiar and helped to calm me down. It took me a few minutes of listening before I clued in of the obvious. I didn't hear anyone else in the room. The only machinery I heard was positioned at the head of my bed, slightly offset to my right. If someone else was being monitored I should have been able to hear their machinery, or their breathing. But there wasn't anything else. Which meant I was in a room by myself.
This wasn't a good thing. The hospitals didn't have rooms to spare. If I was in isolation it meant I was either unable to defend myself against the common cold, or I was a danger to those around me. I felt fine, and I hadn't bummed against a isolation tent earlier when I sat up, which ruled out the first option. And that only left option number two. I chocked back a hysteric giggle, afraid it would turn into a cry by the time it left my mouth. Everyone on the hospital staff knew the dangers of working in the ER, there were decontamination procedures for a reason. But those procedures got left on the floor like a pair of used gloves when we were attacked. I don't want to think about how many different people bled on me, or what I may have been exposed to when the teleporters blew up. But something had obviously happened, and I was dangerous.
I didn't know if whatever had happened to me would kill me in a few days, a few weeks, a few years, or if I got to spend the rest of my days in a class A hazmat suit. I had to distract myself from thinking about what might be wrong, I knew far too many unpleasant things that could have happened to me. That way lead to madness. The distraction that finally tore my thoughts away from morbidly listing what I might have contracted was a full bladder. The sheer mundanity of it left me blinking dumbly for a few seconds. Then I as slowly leveraging myself upright and carefully sliding off the bed to stand up. This was an isolated room, which meant that they had an toilet, all I had to do was find it.
The air was cool against my arms and legs, the thin almost paper coverings that the hospital called clothing wasn't very good at retaining heat. I ignored the minor litany of complaints that my body raised as I slowly shuffled my way around the room. I could deal with cold feet, sore muscles, and better clothing after I had taken care of the base necessities. I bumped into 2 chairs an a lamp, I think, before I found the bathroom. I knew it was the door to the bathroom, and not the outside, because it opened when I tried the handle. Rooms in isolation are secured, and require at least a badge to enter and exit. My shins, once again, were the first things to find the toilet. But by now I was more relieved than mad. As I sat down I kept one foot wedged in the door, I didn't want to get stuck in the bathroom because I somehow managed to lock myself inside by accident.
I was trying to find the sink and keep the bathroom door open at the same time when I heard the door to the hallway beep and unlock. I gave up my my search for the moment and turned to face the door. When they came through the door I was puzzled for a second; their shoes squeaked and their clothing crinkled.
"Miss Quinn?" The voice was muffled and muted. It took a second but it clicked together, they were in a hazmat suit, and from sound of things a rather bulky one. With that realization the last glimmer of winked out. I had something bad enough that normal people couldn't even breath the same air as me. These things never went well, I saw them every once in while from inside the suit. I can't remember one patient that lived a normal life, or at all.
"Miss Quinn?" The voice repeated, it sounded feminine but I couldn't be certain. The footsteps moved closer, and I had to grip the doorframe to stop myself from shutting the door and hiding in the bathroom.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked. Part of me didn't want to know how much longer I had to live, but I knew that I would obsess over it if I didn't know.
There was a brief hesitation before I got an answer. "Your eyes suffered some minor coronal burns, nothing to worry about. You'll need to apply some eye drops to prevent infection. But you'll be seeing things normally in about a week." They were sticking to the safe and comforting subjects first. Not that I blamed them, it was a textbook example of what to do. Unfortunately it doesn't do a great job of calming down the patient when the patient has also read the textbook.
"That's not what I meant. Why am I alone when you could fit three more beds in here at least? Why are you in a hazmat suit? What happened to me?" I stopped asking questions when I realized I was shouting. I leaned against the doorframe and tried to relax,"Sorry, I don't mean to take it out on you. It's just that I've been running though every single thing I know that would leave me here, and none of them are pretty."
There was a longer pause this time before the voice finally answered. "We don't know. Your radioactively hot. Hotter than anything else left at the crash site. Shining Fist, the hero you arrived with, is showing the effects of radiation exposure as well. But he is no where close to your levels. We have been able to piece together a rough idea of what happened from what he as told us, but his story is understandably vague. Any details you could tell us would help."
I noticed that they didn't say how much I was giving off, but I let it slide. "Ok, but can you help me find the sink first?"
"Feeling nauseous?" The question was asked quickly, but the respirator hid any inflection.
"No, I just haven't washed my hands yet." I tried to say it with a smile, but my expression felt more like a grimace.
"Oh. It's waist height, your seven o'clock, about two feet away. Paper towels are about a foot to the right."
"Thanks." I managed to find it with minimal fumbling.
After I had washed up, they led me back to the bed. I'm sure they tried to be comforting. But thick rubber gloves and respirator do a surprisingly good job of hiding emotional clues when you can't see someone's face. I laid back in the hospital bed, surprised at how tired I was from the short trip to the bathroom.
"Anything you remember is useful. I'll be recording it, so I may have some question later. But for now just walk me through what happened." They said as I heard them set something hard on the bedside table.
I took a steadying breath as visions of the event swam up from the blackness. "It was a fairly normal day until the invasion alarms when off..."
----------
ETA: corrected spelling
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy