ways_infirmary | (no subject)

(no subject)

Hawkeye is in the infirmary today. He does his best to keep up with the medical journals outside the bar, even with the limited resources that he has in Korea. Just because this is a side gig and lives don't tend to depend on it, here, doesn't mean that he doesn't take his duties in Milliways seriously.

Of course, what passes for medical journals in Milliways is pretty crazy. The bookshelf in the infirmary has a number of books (and things that aren't books; strange electronic devices that Hawkeye can't seem to figure out and he thinks he may have to ask Simon Tam about) on every imaginable medical condition and bit of anatomy, both human and non. Milliways presents a unique challenge in medicine, and Hawkeye Pierce intends to meet it.

This is why, anyway, he's currently thumbing through said bookshelf, in search of something useful-looking to read.

He's wearing a red kimono over his uniform, and a brightly-coloured lei.

It may be better not to ask.

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It reminded Toki of the medical wing of Mordhaus, to be honest, and gave him bad memories of his bouts of diabetes and rabies.

Again, better not to ask.

He led the troupe, the one with the dark hair and blood coming out was the one in need of attention. Obviously. "We has a dude with a sword wound, can you takes a look at him?"

Obviously, he shouldn't have been the one to explain things. Eloquent, Toki wasn't.

"There was a duel outside," he explains. So security won't be needed.

It's a very important point.

"A fair fight," Merlin adds, before forcing his wings back into his shoulderblades. The back of his shirt is about done for, and kind of bloody, so he hastens to add, "Not me. Him." And points to Teja.

"It's nothing, but they insist," Teja says.

His shirt is dark, so the bleeding isn't quite as obvious.

Not as obvious, but it's visible to the trained eye, and Hawkeye had closed the book and started toward the group of them before the first man had even spoken. There are wings involved, and a very, very white man, but Hawkeye is a professional, both at medicine and at Milliways; he focuses on where he's needed.

"Come on, pull up a bed," he says, taking the wounded man's arm and steering him in the direction of the nearest bed. "What seems to be the trouble?"

Toki smiled weakly. "I thinks dat it might needs a stitches on his chest, I puts gauze to it, but it got pretty messy." He wandered over to a sink to wash his bloodied hands, replaying the duel (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/18780570.html) in his mind.

"Something to keep the wounds from infection, if possible," Yrael says. "Antibiotic."

It was among the first things he found modern Earth times to have that he felt were worthwhile.

Along with CD-players and recorded music.

"Yes, maybe put some spirits on," Teja says, taking off his shirt.

His skin is very pale, so the smear of dried half-blood looks much more dramatic than it is.

At least in his opinion.

"Thank you, doctors," says Hawkeye dryly, a note of amusement to his voice. "Always nice to meet colleagues."

He lends a hand with removing the shirt; he would have cut it off, personally, but the man had it most of the way off by the time that Hawkeye could have stopped him, anyway.

There's gauze on the wound, inexpertly applied (though doubtless with the finest of intentions); Hawkeye peels it back, as kindly as possible but quick. "Ahuh," he says, giving the puncture wound a look, and then quickly glancing over the scratch on his throat with an expert eye. "Nothing to worry about; we'll have this patched up in no time." He steps away for a minute, shifting the lei back so that it hangs over his back rather than his front, and going to wash his hands in the sink. "I'm Dr. Pierce; you get stabbed often?"

"Normally, I wear armour," Teja says, "but the last time, despite my armour, a spear pierced my lung; I died."

Pause.

"I a Teja, son of Tagila; I was the last king of the Ostrogoths in Italy. I died in battle, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, in the year 552 of Christian reckoning."

Pause again.

"So this is not that bad, by comparison. Most battle wounds, we doctored ourselves, or for each other."

"...Well," says Hawkeye pragmatically, pulling on a pair of gloves, "this might be a little different than the doctoring you know and love." He comes back over with a tray (disenfectant, stitching-up materials, scissors, and more) and sets to wiping away blood and cleaning the wound. His hands are deft and quick, and he talks as he works. (It's a distracting thing. Also, Hawkeye just talks a lot in general.)

"So, Vesuvius, huh?" he asks. "It hot there?"

"Yes, it's a volcano," Teja says, calmly. "Also, Italy is never as bitterly cold as the area out the back is at the moment. It was nice, warm weather, and a beautiful view of the Bay of Naples, when I died."

Hawkeye asked because he knew it was a volcano, though he mostly asked because he knows of the famous eruption that buried Pompeii. Irony, you and Hawkeye Pierce are BFF.

Without missing a beat, as he dabs some disenfectant on the throat scratch, then starts to disenfect the wound to the chest: "This ought to sting a bit." He goes on, "Sounds picturesque." If death-y. His tone is a clear invitation to continue.

Teja flinches at the sting of the substance in his stab wound, but doesn't pay it any real attention.

"It must be the most beautiful place on earth," he says. "When I was guarding the gorge in which my people were holed up, I had looked out every day over the bay, the two arms of land embracing the sea, shimmering away into blue distance. On the left arm, Stabiae and rocky Surrentum, with the villa of old Pollius Felix at the fingertip, where he was said to have bred muraines in the times of the early emperors. The right arm, much darker, held the Phlegraean Fields where the very earth boiled with sulphur, and dark Cumae, a mystery of old, stark hills that held memories and mysteries. The balls these hands were juggling, the islands of Capri and Ischia, hide-aways of the early Caesars - they sat on the horizon, blue and nebulous. And down underneath the vinyards and fertile fields, there had been the lost cities that Pliny wrote about, Pompeii and Herculaneum, that the mountain had swallowed, much as it would swallow the rest of my people - never to be seen again, I believed. But my people got away, and even the cities were found again, 1,200 years after my time."

Hawkeye listens, a hint of a genuine smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He works quietly, for once, letting the patient do the talking while he fixes him up. Hawkeye just may have met a man with a more gilded tongue than his own.

The wound missed major internal organs and is not so deep as it could have been; this won't be long at all.

No, it wasn't long; then, Teja thanks the doctor, puts the shirt back on (he would not walk about without!) and goes to join his friends where they have been waiting.

Tonio looks around the room curiously. It is very different to what he had expected of a doctor's rooms - and it smells strange. Still, after the duel (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/18780570.html?thread=791293338#t791293338), he is in need of medical attention, however strange. he just hopes they won't maim him. Or insist on leeches. Ew. Primitive.

Hawkeye had, briefly, gotten a little lost somewhere back behind the bookshelf and a cabinet or two; it takes him a minute or two to wiggle his way out when he hears the voices.

He stops short for a second as he catches sight of the furry blue man, but -- it's Milliways. These things happen.

"I see I have a customer," he calls, headed over to the bed. "I'm Dr. Pierce." He leans over and shoos the pair's hands away from the shirt, peeling the cloth away a little, just enough to give him a peek at the wound under it. "It's a pleasure to make your side's acquaintance. What happened here?"

The furry blue man who had brought Tonio in has done what he could to make him comfortable and the doctor's life easier, and is now going to...fold the boy's coat over this chair here, give him a smile, and move away so that he and the doctor could have some privacy.

"Thank you," Tonio says to him as he moves off. "I appreciate your help, Signore Wagner."

He nods to the Doctor.

"A duel. I won, but sustained a wound. I don't think there's anything very wrong, but it should be stitched, perhaps?"

"Certainly," says Hawkeye, rolling up his sleeves -- both kimono and uniform jacket -- and taking the couple of steps over to the sink to start scrubbing his hands. "I must ask, who's your interior redecorator?" Over the noise of the running water: "Am I going to have to refer the good sir or madam to security for his good work?"

Tonio blinks several times, rapidly, trying to translate that until it make sense, and then laughs.

"No. It was an honourable duel. I would not have him troubled over it."

"Ah," says Hawkeye, dryly, shaking his hands dry and pulling on a pair of gloves. "As long as it was an honorable duel."

With a couple of necessary items on a tray -- disenfecting materials, needle and thread, tweezers, antibiotics, and a few other things -- Hawkeye comes back over to the bed. He sets the tray down on a table, and turns his attention to carefully peeling the ripped edges of the boy's shirt away from the wound. "Now then," says Hawkeye, as he works with the aid of tweezers, "I make a habit of learning the names of the bellies I put back together. Yours is...?"

For all the constant (meant to be distracting) pattern, his hands are quick and light and sure, and as gentle as possible.

"I don't think my belly has a name," he says wryly, watching with interest.

"But mine is Marc Antonio Treschi. Tonio."

"One works well enough for the other," says Hawkeye flippantly. "Nice to meet you, Tonio." He affects a voice, one that would be instantly recognizable to soldiers in the O.R. as that of a Patton or an Eisenhower or a MacArthur; clipped military precision, a squint, a tilt of the mouth that suggests a cigar clenched between the teeth. "Where you from, son?"

It may, however, not be instantly recognizable to Tonio. Sorry, Tonio?

With the cloth out of the wound, Hawkeye pulls out a pair of scissors and starts cutting the shirt off of him.

Tonio blinks. The man changed his voice. . . for some reason. He suspects that there's a joke that he doesn't get.

"Er, Venice," he says. "Although I'm living in Florence at present." It doesn't occur to him to give the year - he hasn't been around Milliways for long enough.

"Ahhh, Venezia," Hawkeye says, back in his own voice again, pausing for a moment's stare upward, and then he pulls the remnants of the shirt off the boy's shoulders. "I hear it's nice there this time of year." He sets to work wiping away blood. "Any time of year."

"Very beautiful," Tonio agrees, shrugging the lace cuffs over his hands and pushing the shirt off. The lace, at least, may be able to be salvaged. He winces as the doctor works, but he knows it needs to be done, so bears it as best he can. Ow.

Edited 2008-01-14 23:46 (UTC)

As the doctor takes care of his patients, Kurt finds himself in the middle of the room, off out of the way. Which is right where he started, more or less, only now with a roof over their collective heads.

He can't help but chuckle at Teja. The man had enough honor to accept defeat, but still had to try to wave off medical attention? Yup. Another symptom of Takes Himself Too Seriously Syndrome. Ah well, it's true what they say that it's the flaws that make a person, as much as the good points, and Teja was a great person.

Yrael comes over, once Teja's in the care of the doctor, and flops on an empty bed near Kurt.

What? These beds are comfy.

"I don't think I caught your name back there," he smiles by way of greeting.

Toki finished washing his hands off and sat down as well, taking off his coat and setting it aside.

It still hadn't occurred to him yet that the not!cat was the not!cat that his sister-friend had spoken of previously. He was quiet as he watched the doctor take care of his wounded friend.

Kurt perches on the footboard, then. He is a professinal percher, and can present references on demand.

"Nor I yours. Any of you! Though the theatrics were distracting enough, that's no surprise. Kurt Wagner, pleased to meet you, friend of Teja."

He grins, toothily. "Pleased to meet you, Kurt Wagner. I am Yrael, also a friend to Teja."

Toki smiled weakly, "Toki Wartooth, please to meets you both. Teja's a good pal."

Beat as he turned to Yrael. "Do you knows a lady call Rachel Grey? I thinks she talks about you to me once."

Kurt perks up and actually answers first. "Rachel Grey? Also called Phoenix? Red hair, green eyes, makes a pretty bird out of fire?"

He purrs. Yes, he's in human-shape, but he purrs. "I know her, yes. She is like a sister to me, and I will be honored and glad to count myself her brother until even my kind fade from the universe."

Toki nodded emphatically to both. "Ja! She's my sister-friend, too! She creates for me a dragon, and den she gives me dis also..." And with that, he pulled a small braid from other plaits of his hair, with a tiny red bead that was still warm to the touch, and always would be.

Then to Yrael, "She tells me dat you plays piano, too!"

If Toki will let him, Kurt reaches for the bead, just to touch, and smiles. "The Phoenix Force. I know her well, and her mother before her, in my own universe. Good friend and wonderful comerades. ...Though the Rachel I know is currently caught up in a war in a far galaxy. Perhaps she has also been Bound here. I should find her!"

He gives Yrael a curious look. Extinction was a topic on everybody's mind back home.

"You should," Yrael smiles. "She is the best of people."

"I do play piano, indeed. Piano and harpischord, violin, guitar and recorder, so far. And I sing, on occasion."

"I agrees, Rachel is de nicest persons ever. She understands me in ways dat other people just never gets."

He turned to Yrael, "Is because she's empath. You plays guitar too? Wowee! I plays rhythm guitars for Dethklok. She gets me back into playings de piano, and I can plays de pipe organ. I offers to teach it to Will Turner, but he don't seems interested." There was a lopsided smile at that.

"Telepaths are wonderful that way, especially those with kind hearts like Rachel's."

He looks between the two, smiling. "Such musical talents! And...Will Turner? The pirate?" Zomg those are THE BEST MOVIES since Lord of the Rings!

Yrael grins. "He's the one with the pipe organ on his ship. Teja said he would tell me next time is makes berth here, so I might go and play upon it."

He has just the song, too.

"I've been tempted lately, with my access to New Orleans, Louisiana, to try my hand at jazz music. I was well received the other night at the club, when I performed."

Toki nodded, "Well, he's a kinds of not-pirate, but he's de new captains of de Flyings Dutchman. I knows him before that, though, when he just works with metal."

He turned to Yrael, "Wowee, dey do open-mics? Maybe we should sets up a thing like dat here! So dats people can has fun and plays de music. Teja could plays his harp or even his new guitar!"

Flash thought!

"Dethklok could plays here!" Toki exclaimed.

"The rafters would come down," Teja says, patched up, and back in his shirt.

"But I would still enjoy it; rafters tended to come down at times where I lived. Enough cities got sacked."

Pause.

"Thank you for your help, all of you."

Merlin seems to have gone; Teja will thank him separately.

"And now I will get some breakfast; I only had tea before the duel."

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