Another Emergency

[Sage]

A young man was specially delivered to the hospital ER when he collapsed in the arrival area of the airport. On his wallet was a document that was titled "In Case of Emergency". Inside the document was contact information for the doctor the young man was to be meeting and express instructions to only take him to this hospital where Dr. Marcil worked.

Nurse Yvette had found the young man lying in a catatonic state on the floor. Now he was resting comfortably in the emergency room waiting his turn. He was out of the woods for now, though he had yet to regain consciousness. Or was very good at pretending to be asleep. There were several files on his wallet labeled medical records but Yvette hadn't opened them - rather she was unable to open them they were encrypted with some pass phrase she hoped Dr. Marcil would know. But Dr. Marcil was unavailable for the next few days as he was away on business. When she'd called him, he said, "The boy will be fine. Keep his medication the same. Just monitor him. I will be back tomorrow."

Yvette waited for the doctor who would eventually admit the boy. His wallet continued to beep with incoming messages. She thought about answering them, but she didn't feel right, she'd already invaded his privacy once. But sound was adding to her headache - she needed a breathe of fresh air real quick. She out the sliding doors to find some - he was perfectly safe where he was now and not really her problem,

****

The beeping of the monitors woke Sage. His hold body hurt like he'd been dropped from upon high. He knew he was in a hospital, he could tell just from the smell. But the place was busier than his last room. He sighed when his wallet buzzed. He squinted his eyes open to find the offending equipment, it was across the room on a chair with the rest of his things. He sighed - hospital gowns sucked.

Sage opened his eyes fully and tried to get a good look around. Short of the fact that there were signs hanging in Russian as well as English, it didn't look that different from the last hospital he was in.

His wallet buzzed again and Sage tried to move to get out of the bed without yanking the IV from his arm, or completely showing off his backside...

[Morven]

Morven scanned the notes on a slimline tablet as she strode through the corridor, weaving through porters and hospital staff. A patient had been brought in unconscious from the airport, where he had apparently collapsed in arrivals. They'd uncovered a name and, bizarrely, instructions from the man's wallet linking him to a Dr. Marcil. But Sage Parker was American, which meant his medical records were not easily obtained, and there had been nothing to explain the long list of strong pain control meds in his bag. Assurances from his doctor that 'the boy would be fine' did not sit well with her conscience. She wanted to know what was wrong.

Marcil. The name tickled a memory in the back of her mind.

The thought fled for now. He was supposed to be under obs, but the assigned nurse had vacated her post - which was apparent the moment she pushed open the door to find the patient trying to carefully slip out of the bed. She made a disagreeable noise in her throat, lips pursed in annoyance, and slipped the tablet under one arm. "Mr Parker. Perhaps it's best if you stay put for now?"
A dry smile lightened the irritation laced into the words, gaze glancing to the line in his arm as she moved to help him back into the bed if he needed it. "My name is Doctor Kinnaird. I'll be looking after you until Doctor Marcil is available. How are you feeling?"

[Sage]

Sage hadn't gotten very far before the door opened and a woman wearing white stepped through who looked unhappy to see him moving about. He smiled at her as he sat back down and realigned his body and the bed. He hated hospitals, but this one at least had pretty doctors to look after him.

"My wallet has been buzzing for the past five minutes. I never met up with my ride, he's probably freaking out."
Sage pointed to the corner where his wallet buzzed again. "See."


But Sage knew she didn't really care if Nox was having a break down in the airport. He just hoped that Aurora's little brother didn't come hunt him down. It wouldn't do to have an irate magic user in the hospital he was sure. Nox was prone to temper tantrums at least from Aurora's point of view. He really didn't know the man.

Sage let her do her thing and finally remember she asked him a question. "I'm feeling as well as can be expected. My wallet has my medical files, I can transfer them if you need."
It was a two handed ploy - one to get his wallett to stop the annoying messages from Nox and probably Sasha by now and two to give the good doctor what she needed to take care of him.

Sage prayed to the aether that he didn't have to stay here till Dr. Marcil was ready for him. Hospital stays were so boring.

[Morven]

He seemed lucid, which was a good sign. Vitals were also good. He was a little slow, but he responded to the question, plus motor function was unimpaired; he negotiated himself back into the bed, and threw in a grin for good measure. Bloods and other initial tests were still being processed, but for now he seemed stable. He understood where he was, and appeared to remember where he had been. All promising signs.

Morven checked the IV in his arm, then when satisfied pointed out the call button by his bedside. Of course he shouldn't have been left alone in the first place, something she was not best pleased with, but despite her own stringent attitude to such responsibilities she was already beginning to learn that her choice of a state run facility had its consequences.

"If you want, Mr Parker, we can contact your "ride" for you. Stop them freaking out, and let them know where you are. You aren't supposed to use wallets in here."
People were so attached to their tech these days. A smile ghosted her lips, but she retrieved the wallet from amongst his things despite her recitation of the rules. There was no equipment in here it might disrupt anyway, nor other patients that might have been disturbed by its buzzing.

"Aye, that would be helpful. You don't seem at all surprised to be here, and you're on an impressive amount of pain medication. I'll be better able to help if I know what I'm dealing with."
Monitor and maintain had been the instruction, and now that Sage was conscious, the hospital would be less inclined to perform expensive tests when he had private medical care arranged.

[Sage]

Sage grinned when she handed him his wallet even though it was against the rules. "I promise I'll turn it off."
There were three messages from Nox and and ten from Sasha and three from Bryan. You'd think that after Nox tried to text him they'd not have sent more - he wasn't exactly ignoring them on purpose after all. But none of them actually tried to call which was refreshing.

Sage didn't read the messages just noticed the number and frequency of them as he unlocked his medical files on his wallet and sent them to her tablet. Manually doing things was taxing. Just what little he had done was making him tired. Maybe it was the drugs or whatever was in the IV. Either way he just wanted to sleep more.

He gave Dr. Kinnaird a lazy smile as he turned off the wallet once the transfer was complete. "You are in for an eyeful. This is the second time in a week I've been in the Emergency room - so I'm not surprised."
If it were not for the medication turning off the wallet would have been panic inducing but he couldn't feel the lack of information transferring he was rendered completely useless he really was surprised he was functioning as well as he was and wasn't a vegetable. "Emergency contact for Moscow is listed in the paperwork. I'd appreciate it if you could tell him I'm here and to stop in when he can."

[Morven]

Sage was not surprised, but also not concerned, apparently. Though perhaps that was the disconnect of the medication numbing his reactions. "The previous time you were in the ER this week - it was also because you fell unconscious?"
She didn't anticipate good news from the medical records. A brain tumour, perhaps, or some other serious neurological disorder. Why had he even been discharged? Let alone travelled all that way alone. If treatment was in Moscow she understood the necessity, but not the risk.

Morven was quiet a moment while she assessed the files, fingers moving lightly over the screen. Her brows rose, but otherwise she was careful to maintain a neutral expression. Though it was difficult to stop her gaze from hardening when she understood how old he'd been when the surgery had been performed. That sort of hardware wired into a brain was difficult enough to contemplate as it was, let alone to imagine such an experiment being inflicted on a small child.

"This implant. It's degrading. And the only way to assess the damage is surgery?"
Marcil's instructions made sense now. There was very little any regular hospital could do besides keep him comfortable, and the scans implied a terminal outcome if nothing was done to repair the tech. It couldn't be removed; it had been there far too long, and in a still developing brain.

She paused, frowning. She'd told Soren she wouldn't take risks with patient safety -- and she meant it. But here was a patient likely to die without drastic surgery and specialist care; who might even die in spite of it. And potentially there was something she could do to help. It made her fingers itch with the desire to embrace the gift, but morality tempered the urge. She needed time to consider it.

Previously she'd only ever used the threads to aid her during surgery, and neither the patient nor her colleagues were aware of it at the time. Her only conscious patient had been Soren, and he had been both in an unofficial capacity and had understood what the power was -- and the potential risks. Ascendancy's announcement offered a new perspective to the general public, but it hardly meant she could go around flaunting gifts no one really understood; not in her profession and trusted position. And yet here was a situation in which she might make a marked difference to someone's survival. It was precisely the sort of thing Ephraim had hinted at, though she doubted his motives were quite so altruistic.

"There's little this hospital can do for you, Mr Parker, besides continue to ease your pain. But I'll make sure someone calls your friend."

[Sage]

Sage nodded to the good doctor when she assumed that was why he'd come into the hospital the first time. "It was the first symptom that prompted me to come see a doctor, yes."
Thinking back there were probably a lot more things but right now he couldn't really analyze such data his mind was still in a fog. Knowing what was going on was probably was a good thing.

Her question about looking at the hardware was not really a question he expected to know the answer to but he answered anyway. "I'm not sure how else you are going to see what is failing. Electron microscopes? maybe? An MRI will give you some definition if it doesn't rip out of my head in the process. A catscan might give you an image. But to really see what's going on cutting me open seems the best play - provided they only cut me open to look and don't kill me before hand. An autopsy would probably be the simplest solution to the problem of seeing how I tick - at least that's what my parents thought."
The bitterness in Sage's voice scared him. It had been years since he thought about it. Years since he'd cared enough to tell anyone his parents had thought about killing him. He didn't want to think about it.

Thankfully Dr. Kinnard had given him the perfect distraction. "Are you saying this hospital in particular can do nothing else for me? Or was that just a general statement?"

[Morven]

The words had been an inflection of her own contemplation, not a question, though she did not stop him offering an answer. At first her lips tilted into a patient smile, a little amused, but the expression sloughed off cold and still by the time he finished. Autopsies? The sheer bitterness in his tone assured her he was not playing, no matter the previously joking nature of his grin. He believed what he said; that he had more value as a dissected corpse.

Fuck.

The final admission about his parents settled ice in her chest. Then anger. Her jaw flexed as she bit back a reaction that would hardly be considered professional.

"Fortunately, I'm not interested in seeing how you tick. I'm interested in keeping you alive."
She said the words tightly, like suggestion to the contrary was an affront. But it was a promise too, hastily made; she would not be readily handing his care over to anyone who placed more value on the tech in his brain than the body who housed it.

"This hospital in particular. We're state funded."
She slipped the tablet back under her arm and considered leaving it at that. Morven was not concerned with keeping her own secret, but she did not want to offer false hope, either. She'd rather speak with Ephraim first, then realised with a curse that she was seriously considering his offer. Though Sage's fears cast a new angle to consider ... and perhaps a greater need for her involvement. She frowned, paused, then finally spoke.

"There's another option, but it's not one I could offer you as a doctor. How much do you know about the Ascendants and their power?"

[Sage]

Watching the doctors face while he spoke mimicked his own feelings about the subject. At least that was a good thing - anger at the potential of what some people were capable of might keep him alive a little longer. He was glad she said what she had and he grinned at her. "I think I'd like to stay alive too."


Sage wanted to elaborate that he didn't care how the hospital got their money. Dr. Marcil worked from here and he was the leading cybernetics and neurologist who might be able to fix what was going on in his head. And he had at least a passing knowledge of his parents work.

But was there another option? Sage cocked his head to the side in curiosity. "Ascendants. What your Ascendancy calls those who can channel this unknown power?"
He grinned at her. "I don't know enough about it, but I have a friend who knows more than I do."
He wanted to say that he was his emergency contact, but he wasn't certain Nox wanted people to know what he could do. He was very cautious in things. He and his sister both. Sage had only one photo of the possibility of Nox using his ability in public. Strange things had happened around the twins when they showed back up on the radar.

"Could this power be helpful? More helpful than technology? I know it can be used for good."
He heard the hope in his voice, could there be an alternative without giving the world more idiots like his parents to experiment on humans for the sake of advancement.

[Morven]

The nurse returned, and Morven spent a moment directing her to go and contact Sage's friend. It gave her time to mull over an adequate answer; she wasn't precious about keeping her gift a secret, but she hadn't registered it with the CCD either. Given her occupation and her specific skill-set, it was an admission likely to change her life even without her suspicions that the registry was not necessarily a good thing (and certainly not one to be trusted before observing the consequences). But she was also the sort to use every tool at her disposal; given the choice between saving someone's life and protecting her own, she chose to do good. But the power, strange and so very addictive, was not without risks.

"Unknown being the important word,"
she cautioned, once Yvette had left to call the emergency contact. The soar of hope in his voice tightened a fist around her sense of duty. She wouldn't deny him the choice, but he needed to understand that he would be putting his trust in something that was neither understood or yet acknowledged in medicine. "I can't sanction it as a doctor - it's untested and untried. But I do have some personal experience with its application. It might be able to discern a clearer picture of what is wrong - without opening you up to do so. It would certainly be beneficial during any surgery to fix the problem."
And she did intend to be there, one way or another.