ways_infirmary | (no subject)

Well, here was another living one, clawing its way through skin and fat, and the screaming stopped, though.

The screaming stopped because the pain stopped and everything felt numb.

But not entirely numb. It was like having a tooth drilled or removed. You could feel the dentist prodding around, scraping the root of the tooth against the bone, even though it didn't hurt.

He coughed out blood, and shook, and saw it clawing out of his skin, stretching it.

"There's always...always lots of them. Were...fourteen last time. Takes a while," he said distantly, as the thing struggled to tear through his skin. "Takes a long time to die. Small wounds. Slow bleeding. Takes a while. S'why we...we'd kill them ourselves. Killed them and built pyres--burnt 'em. Burning them was better. If--if you buried them sometimes the larvae could crawl to the surface and...and then they'd come after us. Had to burn...had to burn..."

He coughed out more blood. He was completely soaked in it now.

"They burned Siobhan and Declan, burned...their skin curled," he babbled deliriously. "Ma cried. She...she promised my aunt. She promised, when she died that she and Da, that they'd...they'd look after 'em. It smelled kinda like bacon--haven't been able to eat bacon, ever, since then. They burned..."

The creature tore through the skin at last and he could see his own intestines.

Too much blood. Humans were fragile creatures, and died too easily.

Same reason we stop to admire a sunset

Wide-eyed, she stares at Harper as he babbles, tail twitching nervously, then looks up at Duo and Nita as the next magog bursts out.

"... We need a healer, a doctor, someone. You both know more here- I'll get one. Should be one here, I'll find one." Laini takes a breath to say more, then leans down to brush a kiss on Harper's forehead before she bolts for the door.

A few seconds later they can hear shouts for a doctor coming from the bar.

It's just their luck that there is a doctor in the bar that night.

It's just his sort of luck to get called in on not one case, but two as soon as he appears in the bar.

He almost beats Laini back to the infirmary.

You can tell he's arrived when the steady stream of cursing starts up.

"Status." His orders are crisp and clear as he pulls on surgical gear at a speed that can only be gained through practice - gown, mask, cap, gloves.

Man down.

Duo swallows. "Infestation of alien creatures called 'Magog'. Unknown quantity, burrowing out from lower stomach area. They vanish after appearing, which isn't normal. Painkillers, no effect. Theta-delta wave device is apparently functioning as it should. Blocks pain."

"Direct to the nerve endings," Nita adds.

"What kills them?" Normally, he's all for preservation of alien life.

Not when they're killing his patients.

He spies a medkit he recognizes and hauls it off the shelf, snapping it open and laying it out with economical motions. Scapel, laser cauterizer, suture, right.

Then he hurries to Harper's side and observes the damage.

The cursing gets more empathatic. And switches to Klingon. It's more satisfying to curse in Klingon.

"We don't know. They disappear before we can capture them."

She takes a deep breath. "If you can get them out, I can patch him up. I'm a healer."

That earns a raised eyebrow that's difficult to see under the cap, but he doesn't comment. Snarky comments waste time. Instead, he grabs a few hemostats and adds them to his collection. No way is he picking those things up with his bare hands.

Targeting the closest of the wriggling lumps, he slices it open deftly, internally cringing at the thing inside. However, when he reaches for it with the hemostats, he freezes.

"Not going to work. Is there some way to destroy them where they are?" He doesn't elaborate. There isn't time.

"That's s-supposed to hurt, isn't it?" Harper rambled. He laughed, deliriously. "This is--this is cool. If I wasn't g-gonna die...I'd use this thing all the t-time."

His eyes started to roll back in his head, but he stopped it, even if they stayed unfocused. He told Bones, "You c-can't take them out. I t-told you. They l-latch on."

He gurgled a bit, then went on, "It's really c-cold in here. I'll get on those environmental controls right away, b-boss. I just...I just g-gotta fix the d-damage to the s-slipstream core, first."

"... Shock." A worried look to Harper, then she looks back to Bones, then and Nita.

"Well, wizard- think you can help burn them out without hurting him?" Laini takes a deep breath, and stretches her arms out. The flickering flame of fox-fire collects around her hands, and she looks back at the magog larva latching on to Harper's insides. Laini narrows her eyes.

"... Just very carefully."

Direct and controlled, the foxfire glows no brighter than fireflies under the bright lights of the infirmary. But it works. Quick as lightning, it starts weaving around one visable magog and contracts- and with a flash and a whiff of ozone, its gone.

She starts on the next she can see.

Nita swallows hard.

"I have to be able to see something to blast it. For something this precise, I might have to be--" She cuts off, swallows again.

"I might have to be able to touch it. Better safe than sorry."

"You, sir..." McCoy assures Harper as he slices expertly through as many of the wriggling lumps as he can see, leaving the critters exposed to his lovely lady assistants' magical touch, "Will be fixing nothing until I give you a clean bill of health. Which will happen, by the way."

"I dun'...I dun' like doctorsss..." Harper slurred, his eyes rolling back in his head. "I can't...I c-can't see. I c-can't s-see Isaac, B-Brendan. They're--the uuuubers're g-gonna kill'im. He d-doesn't know it's an ambush."

"They're all right. You got the numbers you need, man." Duo learned last time that it's better to humor a Harper in shock.

Giving a slightly panicked glance at his hands, Duo hurries to wash them off, then gather the supplies for an IV. Stand, artificial plasma, needle.

He returns to the bedside and prepares to hook it up when the doctor signals.

McCoy gives Duo the go ahead for the IV. He is still carefully searching for more of the larva, and Laini is weaving foxfire around each one that is found.

They do not survive much longer than that.

Four out before. Six more found. Four more to go, if Harper's estimates of fourteen are close enough.

"... Almost there, Super Genius. See? Told you so." Laini murmurs quietly.

They're getting harder to find, little buggers. But he's patient, and quick, and soon they fall one by one.

While Laini fries the last of them, McCoy loads up a hypospray with the standard shock drugs - epinephrine, steroids, lidocaine, atropine. Those are shot in to the jugular while he monitor's Duo's blood drip rate, and nods. It's going to be messy, but it'll work.

Quickly he begins suturing and closing, running scans every few minutes to make sure he isn't closing in any more of those creatures. However, he can't quite keep the victorious smile off his face.

Feels good to save them.

Duo watches Laini and Nita work carefully over the larvae, then acts as another pair of hands for the doctor, passing over thread, needles, scissors.

He flips a sweat-soaked and bloody clump of hair out of his eyes. Another day, another set of scars.

Another day, another set of scars.

Another day.

Harper could have screamed.

No more days. That's what he wanted.

But he had another day, and that meant he was going to keep living and hurting, and things like this would just happen over and over again. Over and over and over and over, it made him want to slam his head into the wall over and over and over and over, until all he saw was red and then he saw nothing.

Maybe he was just delirious, or maybe he was just fried because every endorphin in his body had been used up, leaving him unable to cope with stress.

Maybe he just felt miserable.

Come Bitter Rain

And Wash from my Heart

That Saddest of all Words

Home

He wanted to go home.

He wanted his mother, and there was blood everywhere, like when her throat was slit, and he kept seeing red and it was always red.
"Don't--" he croaked out, his eyes flitting open.

Red everywhere; voices...

("You get your hands off my son! Run, Seamus! RUN!" "Dad! DAD! MA! YOU BASTARDS! I HATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOU!")

"Why did your father fight when the slavers came for your mother?"

"Because he was a fool. Would you shut up about my father?!

"He fought because he was sick of lying down for them, because he was sick of being spat at. Laughed at, stolen from and beaten. Sick and tired of living in fear and desperation. So tired that he was willing to give up his life so long as he hurt them!

"Yeah, yeah and they laughed at him right up until they slit his throat and after."

"That's true but in the end, he laughed back. We both heard it Seamus. He fought. He finally fought. And after that nothing else mattered."

"Yeah, especially not to him."

"Seamus, you gotta let it go."

"I don't have to let squat go! You don't know what you're talking about! You don't even know what happened! You wanna know what really happened?! They didn't come for my mother, they came for me! Okay? They both died because of me!")

("Then leave. Then just leave. Leave! And let me do my job! You know, Harper, I've saved your skin before, and I'll save it again. But you have got to get off my back or SO HELP ME, I will drop you back on the trash heap where I found you!")

His blood was spilling across the floor in a pool, even though it wasn't, spilling out over two bodies and then more bodies and his cousins, their stomachs writhing like his own had, and--

Spiral, spin, ride the whirlwind.

Knowing when the drumming stops,

There’ll be no second dance

"Nooo," he moaned, trying to struggle away from McCoy. "Nooo. Don't. Stop. Wanna die. Wan--wanna die. Wanna sleep. Wanna sleeeep."

"You can sleep when we're done, Harper," Duo replies firmly. "But then you'll wake up, got it?"

He leans over the prone man to hold down his shoulders.

"Or just sleep now." Laini bites her lip, helping to pass instuments to McCoy.

She is still watching for more of the magog as well, but her ears are up. She is hopeful. And looking forwards to telling Harper an "I told you so" after he is better.

A faint smile, and she pats his hand, then looks to McCoy. "Is there something, so he can sleep now?"

"How about vodka?" suggested a groggy, semi-delirious Harper, tears pricking his eyes.

He was going to drink and drink after this...

("You wanna know how to deal with life, cuzzo? You wanna know how not to give up? Then you remember three things: liquor, laughter, and women." "Laughter, Brendan? Laughter?! Oh yeah, life's a huge laugh, isn't it. Isaac's dead, hahaha, hilarious--" Smack. "Issac's dead, Seamus. Now either we laugh at the time he got piss-drunk and wandered naked into Anders bunk, or we just--we just." A sigh, and a long pause. Then, "That was pretty freakin' hilarious, wasn't it, Brendan." "Yeah. Yeah." Laughter. "You remember that time that Isaac got his hands on those proton cuffs and got himself caught in 'em, and you had to saw 'em off with--" "Aha, god he was a freakin' idiot sometimes.")

He's fast, and he's careful - internal organs first, repair the fascia holding it all together, make sure the muscles are all attached correctly, dermis, epidermis. All done with one eye on the heartrate and blood pressure, wishing to God that the man would fall unconscious. He always feels like something of a butcher when he has to work on conscious patients.

"That's just about done it." He finally announces as he trims the last suture.

Harper fumbled with the straps.

"Screw sleep, I wanna drink," he insisted. Shakily, "At least get these damn straps off. I don't like--I don't like being restrained...I don't like it."

Laini laughs quietly, and pats Harper's shoulder gently.

"I can get you a drink. Prolly not much of a problem with that, but hold still so the doc here doesn't stitch you up to look like Frankenstien, okay?"

She looks questioningly up to the others.

Duo raises an eyebrow. "You sure that's such a hot idea, man? Dosin' yourself might make you feel better for about two seconds until the alcohol hits your guts."

"Fine, no drink, just get the damn straps off."