And here is part 4. Sorry for cutting it where I did, but I couldn't find a better place. The meeting with whomever is pulling the strings will happen next, and there was no clean place to break it off once that got underway.
----------
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 4)
The next four days were not nearly as bad as the first three. I was able to see small but measurable improvements in the details I could make out around the room. Tim even made good on his earlier offer and let me go over my own patient file. He even scrounged up a palmtop somewhere for me to use.
Enlarging the font size as much as possible made slow, but legible, reading. Making out the details of the the graphs on the palmtops small screen were a lost cause, but with nothing else to do I was able to get the gist of it. The amount of radiation I was putting out hasn't been constant, or as close to constant that a weeks worth of half life should account for. It was all over the board. Some times it almost seemed to disappear. At others it peaked high enough that I worried about Tim's potential fatherhood. I could tell it was following some sort of rhythm. But without access to statistical analysis software and a screen large enough to see the results (not to mention being able to read those results), the details behind the rhythm was lost on me.
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered to read the nitty gritty details in someone's file. As an Registered Nurse in the ER I didn't have the time or the necessary background to understand the details of the blood titration they had last time they were here. And I didn't need to know, the doctors (or the doctors assistants) had that job, and they wrote summaries. Summaries that I could understand and act on. It wasn't a perfect system, but it worked, and it kept the deaths in the ER to a minimum.
One of the failings of the system was that it required a doctor, or someone equally knowledgeable, to look at the raw data and condense it down to something the rest of us could understand; and that took time. Time that was in short supply. Time that got prioritized based on how likely someone was too survive without it. And that meant I was at the bottom of the list.
So unless we won the war tomorrow I wasn't going anywhere any time soon. And even if we did, there was such a backlog that I probably wouldn't be looked at for a month. I had the one thing the doctors needed more of: Time. Unfortunately, I lacked the knowledge to make sense of the what was happening to me. So instead of looking at the slightly less blurry ceiling (that got boring after the first few hours), I attempted to correct that shortcoming.
Fortunately I had access to the hospitals knowledge base system. Contained within was a massive collection of generalized information about superpowers. Everything from how to adjust dosage for patients with accelerated or otherwise altered metabolisms, to what types of metal needles where safe for the various fey and fey-related patients. By no means did it replace the doctors or other specialists. But combined with an accurate hero evaluation it gave the ER staff enough of an idea to not accidentally kill the patient on the table.
I quickly hit my first roadblock a few hours after reading all the general primers for radiology. I had no initial evaluation. No idea if this was due to the various bodily fluids I ended up elbow deep in, the energies I was exposed to when the ship crashed, or some combination of the two. And that left me with a lot of possibilities to cover, and no easy way to pare them down.
After spending a few moments cursing at the absolutely massive list of possibilities that 'all' comprised, I started the not-easy way to pare them down. Reading them one by one. For some of them I didn't need to read more then the introduction (I didn't turn big and green), for others didn't get past the introduction due to only understanding one word in three.
By the morning of the fourth day I had discovered a lot of things I was not, and even more that I didn't understand, but I was no closer to figuring out what I was. My further enlightenment about just how much I didn't know was put on hold when Tim came, and this time he wasn't alone.
Of course I couldn't tell who he was with, just that there were two blue suits instead of one.
"Hello Lisa." Tim's greeting answered one question, but the occupant of the other suit was still a mystery. And I still couldn't make out the details of either face.
"Hi Tim." I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. More tests were not something I was looking forward too. "I thought the testing was on hold until thursday?"
"What? Oh - don't worry." Tim's voice sounded apologetic before picking up the pace. "This is Mr. Stephenson from Warding. He's going to get a feel for you and see if we can come up with something that will get you out into the world."
While Tim's voice was upbeat I could read between the lines. They needed this room. They needed it bad enough to pull someone off a more important job long enough to make me 'safe'. I just smiled at Mr. Stephenson and asked "Anything I need to do?"
"Not really, just relax and stay calm. It might feel a little weird." His voice was robbed of whatever inflection it originally had by the suits speaker. He took off his gloves and held his hands over my torso while muttering in a voice too low for the speaker to pick up.
After a few minutes of this he took out his palmtop and consulted something on it. He looked at me, the palmtop, back at me, and then finally Tim. "I thought you said she was biological?" Even I could hear the confusion in his voice.
"I said we thought she was biological, you've seen how closely her output correlates to the circadian rhythms."
I ignored the fact that they were both talking as if I wasn't there; they were dispensing information I hadn't been able to glean from my earlier readings.
"And just because of that you think she's biological? I swear half the staff at this hospital need a bioinfomagics refresher." His small tirade against employee training was abandoned as he started to sketch runes in the air. The patterns that his glowing fingers drew were too fine in detail for me to make out, but I could tell they were complex. And when he finished less than a minute later, the two interconnected concentric circles changed from a soft white blur to a green on the inside with blue streaks on the outside.
"I mean look at it." The mage said when he was done, his exasperation evident even through the suit speaker.
Tim was silent and still, apparently staring at the glowing structure that hovered above my chest. Since he wasn't going to get me any answers for the time being, I decided to solicit my own.
"What does it mean?" I asked Mr. Stephenson, craning my head in an effort to get better angle. The fact that the construction stayed parallel to my chest conspired with my poor eyesight to thwart any effort of understanding it on my own.
"You can't -" he resumed his earlier tirade before catching himself, "Oh right, your eyes." The second bit almost sounded apologetic.
He was silent for a moment before turning to Tim. "I don't have time for this, you missed it, you explain it." He said while shoving his palmtop into Tim's hands and walking out the door. A trailing "I'll be back in two hours" was all he said before the door swung shut.
It took my brain a few seconds to catch up with what just happened. When it finally did I took out my frustration on the only available target: Tim. "What the hell was that! What the hell is this?" I badgered him, gesturing first at the door, then at the glyphs floating above my chest.
"Your magical?" Tim's voice was apologetic and questioning, as if he wasn't sure of the answer himself. The plastic hood crinkled as he looked between the palmtop in his hands and the hovering glyphs.
Despite my agitated state, I recognized that Tim had a much better chance at understanding what was going on that I did, if only because he could actually see said glyphs. So I refrained from more verbal abuse and settled on simply glaring at him until he started talking sense. It didn't take long for more of an explanation to appear, though the amount of sense it made was up for debate.
"Your magical core was- um, stressed, by something you were exposed to. And, uh, it attempted to reach a new, equilibrium. With the environment you were in." Tim's explanation was fragmented as he tapped on the palmtop and looked at the glowing symbols. "Your body is trying to, uh, adjust to this. So it's taking longer than normal to heal."
There was a pause in his explanation as he muttered something to softly for me to make out. I was about to ask what he said when he continued. "You should be able to control your output on a conscious level with some training. And I think the side effects should be minimal."
"You think." I didn't make much of an attempt to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"Runic color theory was never my strong suit." Tim offered as an apology.
I couldn't blame him too much, all I remembered was the meanings for single colors. Once you add in more than one the best I had was guesses as well. Our collective lack of knowledge did spark one thought in my head though.
"Tim, since when was I important enough to rate a visit from someone of Mr. Stephenson's caliber?" I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer or not. I wasn't a serious enough case to rate a visit from anyone above an intern for quite some time. And suddenly someone skilled enough to draw a multi-element diagnostic ward, freehand, sans supplies, was having a look at me. Even if they needed to move me to a different room, it shouldn't have taken one of the new mages more than a few hours to ward up a suit for me; It only needed to last for half an hour at most.
"As far as I know? Never. But Shining Fist, the hero you brought in, asked about you the day before yesterday. I told him you were still in Iso. due to unknown causes, but you seemed to be stable." Tim said as he shifted on his feet. I didn't blame him for the minor breach of privacy, if someone saved my ass I'd want to know if they made it out ok.
When I didn't bite his head of for telling non-staff about my condition, Tim continued. "I didn't think much of it yesterday, but this morning your case is at the top of the queue. When I asked Dr. Fisher about it, he said that certain people felt you had been overlooked and that a better use of resources could be made."
Even if I had been unable to hear the sarcasm in Tim's voice I would have smelled the political maneuvering from a mile away. Someone had put the pressure on to get me out of Iso, but I had no idea where I was going to end up. For all I knew I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. "Any clue who is puling the strings?"
"No idea." Tim said with a shrug. "But I bet if you pay Shining Fist a visit you may be able to find out."
"Yeah, seeing as how that's not currently an option, want to try and explain Mr-Vastly-Overqualified's notes again?" I said with a gesture at the palmtop Mr Stephenson left behind.
"Uh, ok." Tim clearly wasn't overjoyed to try and slog through a topic that showcased something lacking in his knowledge, but he was willing to give it a shot anyway. I needed to remember to do something nice for him when I got out of here.
*****
We spent the better part of the next two hours slowly grinding through the notes that Mr Stephenson had left. I know we didn't pick up on the nuances of everything. I'm sure we missed an important point or two when the glyphs finally faded out. But we had a much better idea about what was happening to me.
While the root cause was still unknown, we had a better handle on the end results. Or at least an extrapolation of the end results by someone who knew what he was talking about.
* I was now inherently radioactive, and it looked like I would be as long as I was alive (or at least as long as my cells metabolized things).
* The amount of energy I put out strongly correlated to how excited/stressed I was, the inverse was theorized but not confirmed.
* I mainly emitted in the infrared spectrum, with a few small patches in higher energy ranges. Given what I was exposed to (a room full of burning teleporters and hospital equipment), this is assumed to be an attempt by my body to compensate.
* With enough training I should be able to control my power. But until that point in time staying calm and wearing protective clothing would be sufficient preventative measures.
Tim and I were struggling through some of the second level effects (sunburn may never be a problem for me again), when Mr Stephenson came back in. This time he wasn't bothering with a hazmat suit, and he carried a bundle of white cloth under one arm. He tossed the bundle on my bed and announced "Get dressed and put that on. You have a guest in the waiting room." Having said this he retrieved his palmtop from Tim and left once again.
I stared blankly at the bundle of cloth for a minute before Tim spoke up. "I'll go get your clothing." was all he said as he made his way out of the room.
I got out of bed and held the bundle of cloth at arms length, letting it unfurl until it almost hit the floor. It was a large lab coat, or at least it started life as one. Now it was covered in a series of embroidered runes. Some that marched from the cuffs to the shoulders, other that circled around the waist and collar. On the back were a pair of protection glyphs, large enough to be identifiable to even my blurry vision. Having nothing better to do, at least until Tim returned, I tried it on. The bottom reached all the way down to my calfs, but it wasn't uncomfortable, just heavier than I expected.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something change on the monitors by my bed. By sticking my face right up next to the screen I was able to read what had changed. Gone was the orange warning about hazardous (but not lethal) levels of radiation. Instead it had a green notice about a slightly higher, but still well within safe range, level of radiation.
I sat back down on the bed and smiled for the first time since the incident. The thought of who was waiting for me a distant worry in my mind. All that seemed to matter right now was that I could actually go out there and meet them.
-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 4)
The next four days were not nearly as bad as the first three. I was able to see small but measurable improvements in the details I could make out around the room. Tim even made good on his earlier offer and let me go over my own patient file. He even scrounged up a palmtop somewhere for me to use.
Enlarging the font size as much as possible made slow, but legible, reading. Making out the details of the the graphs on the palmtops small screen were a lost cause, but with nothing else to do I was able to get the gist of it. The amount of radiation I was putting out hasn't been constant, or as close to constant that a weeks worth of half life should account for. It was all over the board. Some times it almost seemed to disappear. At others it peaked high enough that I worried about Tim's potential fatherhood. I could tell it was following some sort of rhythm. But without access to statistical analysis software and a screen large enough to see the results (not to mention being able to read those results), the details behind the rhythm was lost on me.
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered to read the nitty gritty details in someone's file. As an Registered Nurse in the ER I didn't have the time or the necessary background to understand the details of the blood titration they had last time they were here. And I didn't need to know, the doctors (or the doctors assistants) had that job, and they wrote summaries. Summaries that I could understand and act on. It wasn't a perfect system, but it worked, and it kept the deaths in the ER to a minimum.
One of the failings of the system was that it required a doctor, or someone equally knowledgeable, to look at the raw data and condense it down to something the rest of us could understand; and that took time. Time that was in short supply. Time that got prioritized based on how likely someone was too survive without it. And that meant I was at the bottom of the list.
So unless we won the war tomorrow I wasn't going anywhere any time soon. And even if we did, there was such a backlog that I probably wouldn't be looked at for a month. I had the one thing the doctors needed more of: Time. Unfortunately, I lacked the knowledge to make sense of the what was happening to me. So instead of looking at the slightly less blurry ceiling (that got boring after the first few hours), I attempted to correct that shortcoming.
Fortunately I had access to the hospitals knowledge base system. Contained within was a massive collection of generalized information about superpowers. Everything from how to adjust dosage for patients with accelerated or otherwise altered metabolisms, to what types of metal needles where safe for the various fey and fey-related patients. By no means did it replace the doctors or other specialists. But combined with an accurate hero evaluation it gave the ER staff enough of an idea to not accidentally kill the patient on the table.
I quickly hit my first roadblock a few hours after reading all the general primers for radiology. I had no initial evaluation. No idea if this was due to the various bodily fluids I ended up elbow deep in, the energies I was exposed to when the ship crashed, or some combination of the two. And that left me with a lot of possibilities to cover, and no easy way to pare them down.
After spending a few moments cursing at the absolutely massive list of possibilities that 'all' comprised, I started the not-easy way to pare them down. Reading them one by one. For some of them I didn't need to read more then the introduction (I didn't turn big and green), for others didn't get past the introduction due to only understanding one word in three.
By the morning of the fourth day I had discovered a lot of things I was not, and even more that I didn't understand, but I was no closer to figuring out what I was. My further enlightenment about just how much I didn't know was put on hold when Tim came, and this time he wasn't alone.
Of course I couldn't tell who he was with, just that there were two blue suits instead of one.
"Hello Lisa." Tim's greeting answered one question, but the occupant of the other suit was still a mystery. And I still couldn't make out the details of either face.
"Hi Tim." I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. More tests were not something I was looking forward too. "I thought the testing was on hold until thursday?"
"What? Oh - don't worry." Tim's voice sounded apologetic before picking up the pace. "This is Mr. Stephenson from Warding. He's going to get a feel for you and see if we can come up with something that will get you out into the world."
While Tim's voice was upbeat I could read between the lines. They needed this room. They needed it bad enough to pull someone off a more important job long enough to make me 'safe'. I just smiled at Mr. Stephenson and asked "Anything I need to do?"
"Not really, just relax and stay calm. It might feel a little weird." His voice was robbed of whatever inflection it originally had by the suits speaker. He took off his gloves and held his hands over my torso while muttering in a voice too low for the speaker to pick up.
After a few minutes of this he took out his palmtop and consulted something on it. He looked at me, the palmtop, back at me, and then finally Tim. "I thought you said she was biological?" Even I could hear the confusion in his voice.
"I said we thought she was biological, you've seen how closely her output correlates to the circadian rhythms."
I ignored the fact that they were both talking as if I wasn't there; they were dispensing information I hadn't been able to glean from my earlier readings.
"And just because of that you think she's biological? I swear half the staff at this hospital need a bioinfomagics refresher." His small tirade against employee training was abandoned as he started to sketch runes in the air. The patterns that his glowing fingers drew were too fine in detail for me to make out, but I could tell they were complex. And when he finished less than a minute later, the two interconnected concentric circles changed from a soft white blur to a green on the inside with blue streaks on the outside.
"I mean look at it." The mage said when he was done, his exasperation evident even through the suit speaker.
Tim was silent and still, apparently staring at the glowing structure that hovered above my chest. Since he wasn't going to get me any answers for the time being, I decided to solicit my own.
"What does it mean?" I asked Mr. Stephenson, craning my head in an effort to get better angle. The fact that the construction stayed parallel to my chest conspired with my poor eyesight to thwart any effort of understanding it on my own.
"You can't -" he resumed his earlier tirade before catching himself, "Oh right, your eyes." The second bit almost sounded apologetic.
He was silent for a moment before turning to Tim. "I don't have time for this, you missed it, you explain it." He said while shoving his palmtop into Tim's hands and walking out the door. A trailing "I'll be back in two hours" was all he said before the door swung shut.
It took my brain a few seconds to catch up with what just happened. When it finally did I took out my frustration on the only available target: Tim. "What the hell was that! What the hell is this?" I badgered him, gesturing first at the door, then at the glyphs floating above my chest.
"Your magical?" Tim's voice was apologetic and questioning, as if he wasn't sure of the answer himself. The plastic hood crinkled as he looked between the palmtop in his hands and the hovering glyphs.
Despite my agitated state, I recognized that Tim had a much better chance at understanding what was going on that I did, if only because he could actually see said glyphs. So I refrained from more verbal abuse and settled on simply glaring at him until he started talking sense. It didn't take long for more of an explanation to appear, though the amount of sense it made was up for debate.
"Your magical core was- um, stressed, by something you were exposed to. And, uh, it attempted to reach a new, equilibrium. With the environment you were in." Tim's explanation was fragmented as he tapped on the palmtop and looked at the glowing symbols. "Your body is trying to, uh, adjust to this. So it's taking longer than normal to heal."
There was a pause in his explanation as he muttered something to softly for me to make out. I was about to ask what he said when he continued. "You should be able to control your output on a conscious level with some training. And I think the side effects should be minimal."
"You think." I didn't make much of an attempt to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"Runic color theory was never my strong suit." Tim offered as an apology.
I couldn't blame him too much, all I remembered was the meanings for single colors. Once you add in more than one the best I had was guesses as well. Our collective lack of knowledge did spark one thought in my head though.
"Tim, since when was I important enough to rate a visit from someone of Mr. Stephenson's caliber?" I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer or not. I wasn't a serious enough case to rate a visit from anyone above an intern for quite some time. And suddenly someone skilled enough to draw a multi-element diagnostic ward, freehand, sans supplies, was having a look at me. Even if they needed to move me to a different room, it shouldn't have taken one of the new mages more than a few hours to ward up a suit for me; It only needed to last for half an hour at most.
"As far as I know? Never. But Shining Fist, the hero you brought in, asked about you the day before yesterday. I told him you were still in Iso. due to unknown causes, but you seemed to be stable." Tim said as he shifted on his feet. I didn't blame him for the minor breach of privacy, if someone saved my ass I'd want to know if they made it out ok.
When I didn't bite his head of for telling non-staff about my condition, Tim continued. "I didn't think much of it yesterday, but this morning your case is at the top of the queue. When I asked Dr. Fisher about it, he said that certain people felt you had been overlooked and that a better use of resources could be made."
Even if I had been unable to hear the sarcasm in Tim's voice I would have smelled the political maneuvering from a mile away. Someone had put the pressure on to get me out of Iso, but I had no idea where I was going to end up. For all I knew I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. "Any clue who is puling the strings?"
"No idea." Tim said with a shrug. "But I bet if you pay Shining Fist a visit you may be able to find out."
"Yeah, seeing as how that's not currently an option, want to try and explain Mr-Vastly-Overqualified's notes again?" I said with a gesture at the palmtop Mr Stephenson left behind.
"Uh, ok." Tim clearly wasn't overjoyed to try and slog through a topic that showcased something lacking in his knowledge, but he was willing to give it a shot anyway. I needed to remember to do something nice for him when I got out of here.
*****
We spent the better part of the next two hours slowly grinding through the notes that Mr Stephenson had left. I know we didn't pick up on the nuances of everything. I'm sure we missed an important point or two when the glyphs finally faded out. But we had a much better idea about what was happening to me.
While the root cause was still unknown, we had a better handle on the end results. Or at least an extrapolation of the end results by someone who knew what he was talking about.
* I was now inherently radioactive, and it looked like I would be as long as I was alive (or at least as long as my cells metabolized things).
* The amount of energy I put out strongly correlated to how excited/stressed I was, the inverse was theorized but not confirmed.
* I mainly emitted in the infrared spectrum, with a few small patches in higher energy ranges. Given what I was exposed to (a room full of burning teleporters and hospital equipment), this is assumed to be an attempt by my body to compensate.
* With enough training I should be able to control my power. But until that point in time staying calm and wearing protective clothing would be sufficient preventative measures.
Tim and I were struggling through some of the second level effects (sunburn may never be a problem for me again), when Mr Stephenson came back in. This time he wasn't bothering with a hazmat suit, and he carried a bundle of white cloth under one arm. He tossed the bundle on my bed and announced "Get dressed and put that on. You have a guest in the waiting room." Having said this he retrieved his palmtop from Tim and left once again.
I stared blankly at the bundle of cloth for a minute before Tim spoke up. "I'll go get your clothing." was all he said as he made his way out of the room.
I got out of bed and held the bundle of cloth at arms length, letting it unfurl until it almost hit the floor. It was a large lab coat, or at least it started life as one. Now it was covered in a series of embroidered runes. Some that marched from the cuffs to the shoulders, other that circled around the waist and collar. On the back were a pair of protection glyphs, large enough to be identifiable to even my blurry vision. Having nothing better to do, at least until Tim returned, I tried it on. The bottom reached all the way down to my calfs, but it wasn't uncomfortable, just heavier than I expected.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something change on the monitors by my bed. By sticking my face right up next to the screen I was able to read what had changed. Gone was the orange warning about hazardous (but not lethal) levels of radiation. Instead it had a green notice about a slightly higher, but still well within safe range, level of radiation.
I sat back down on the bed and smiled for the first time since the incident. The thought of who was waiting for me a distant worry in my mind. All that seemed to matter right now was that I could actually go out there and meet them.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy