ways_infirmary | (no subject)

Nathaniel walks into the infirmary, Jason's unconscious body in his arms and tears on his face. He's calm, though. On the outside, he's solid as a rock, but inside... inside he's a terrified mess.

"Hello?" he calls out, walking deeper into the infirmary. "Is there a doctor available?"

Guppy looks up from his box.

"I'm a doctor, my name's Guppy. What happened?" he asks, moving over quickly and helping get Jason on a bed. He feels for a pulse and checks vital signs.

Liz moves silently behind Nathaniel keeping close but not too close to catch his heels when he stops or shifts. The worry and upset show through the edges a little.

"He OD-ed." She answered quietly.

"He wasn't breathing when I found him," Nathaniel says, reluctantly releasing Jason and taking Liz's hand, glad to feel Yrael's presence in the room as well. "I did CPR and he's breathing again..."

He doesn't know if Jason's heart had stopped, and he doesn't really care. All he cares about his Jason's breathing. Jason not breathing had been the most terrifying thing he's seen in recent months.

"Cocaine?" Guppy asks, motioning them all to stand back while he checks Jason's vital signs.

"Jason, if you can hear me, can you open your eyes? Can you squeeze my hand?"

He gets his keys out of his pocket and tosses them to the nearest bystander. "Can one of you open the third cupboard from the left and get me the box labelled 'Silver needles'?"

Liz's hand squeezes Nat's before they left his to automatically catch the set of keys that had been tossed. She moves to the cupboard and unlocks it, pulling out the box indicated.

Moving back to them, she held out the box and keys to Guppy. "Here." Once her hands are free she'll take Nat's hand back. Having Yrael and Nat here was a comforting presence on her nerves right now.

"Thanks." Guppy, having put an oxygen mask and monitoring on Jason, starts putting a line in to take blood and give fluids. He puts the blood sample in the machine.

"Anyone know how much he's had? Has he taken anything else?"

"Just the coke, and a lot of what he had," Nathaniel murmurs. "It's also uncut. Pure stuff."

Which made it that much more dangerous.

Guppy starts scanning him whilst the machine is working out what's in the blood sample.

"He's burning up." he says, taking his keys back and going to another cupboard, to get the cooling pads.

"Which of you is his next of kin?"

"I am," Nathaniel says.

They were practically brothers. He'd been the first one to speak to Jason after Jason had been turned.

"What are you doing?"

"These are to cool him down." Guppy says. "The rest is to help keep him stable until his body gets the drugs out of his system."

"You can't cool his body," Nathaniel says, his words adamant. "When we're healing, we run high fevers. If you cool us down, it'll make it worse."

Guppy hesitates.

"Are you sure it's meant to be this high?" he asks. "It's higher than he was last time he was in, and that can be an effect of the poison."

Nathaniel grips Liz's hand in his, leaning against her.

"Watch it," Nathaniel murmurs. "If it keeps going up, we can cool him down, but if it stays like this, then to cool him down could kill him. He's done a lot of damage..."

"Okay." Guppy says, not putting the cooling pads on him for now.

"Do you know how this happened? Was he attacked again, poisoned, anything like that?"

His grip on Liz tightens.

"It seems Ruin... Ruin made him see something. It was something from Jason's nightmares. He then went to his room and did the coke."

He should've been there. Nathaniel knows if he'd been there, they wouldn't be here now.

"Is he still around?" Guppy asks. "Do we need to get Security in here to keep an eye on him?"

He checks the scan for any additional injuries.

"He seems to have escaped a heart attack, which is fortunate."

Liz shifted her hand out of his to pull Nathaniel against her into a one armed hug, hand resting at his waist.

"Ruin shouldn't be bothering Jason again. He disappeared after a fun family discussion." Her voices says it wasn't fun, or an actual discussion. Not really. Her head turns to nuzzle Nat's hair a little.

Yrael, keeping silent through all this, shook his head. "Ruin won't be allowed near."

He'll find a test of his immortality waiting for him if he tries to approach.

Though Yrael still almost glows in the florescent brightness of the infirmary, his white clothes and pale skin seeming almost to reflect and magnify the light in the room, one who knows how to see may find his green eyes dulled, as if he were not just seeing the daylit living world. "Jason is... still near the border between Life and the River, but at least he is no longer leaping heedlessly into the current."

Having been pulled from the River, his spirit is settling back on solid ground, little by little.

"If he comes in here, please try and take the fight outside." Guppy says. "A lot of things in here are extraordinarily dangerous in the wrong hands. This button on the wall will call Security; please do so even if you think you'll win, for Jason's sake."

He nods. "He's stable at the moment, but he could easily go into cardiac arrest and needs to be monitered closely."

Glancing at Nat. "You seem to know about what he was taking. Has his dealer been reported to Security yet?"

"I don't think so," he says, pulling Liz closer to Jason. "One of us will always be with Jason. He won't be left alone. Someone will go up to our room and dump the coke."

He'd played by Jason's rules and look where it'd ended up. While he was writhing atop Asher tonight, Jason was--

Nathaniel shakes his head. He could think about that later.

"This ends," he says, firmly, the words so sure coming from him as to be disconcerting.

"This must not happen again, to Jason or anyone else." Guppy says quietly.

He cannot help but feel partially responsible; he knew about Ramon from Teja before he went away on his quest with Atton and Will. Unfortunately his thoughts of reporting the matter had then been forgotton in the distraction.

"If none of you are able to report Ramon then I will do it myself." he says. "I do now have a bulletproof vest at least, if he does manage to trace it back to me."

Nathaniel nods.

"Report him if you like. None of us will stop you. I need to stay here with Jason. I need... I need to make sure I'm here when he wakes up," he insists.

Guppy, mildly surprised that they aren't keen to take down Ramon for his part in this, just nods. Perhaps what happened to Jason would have happened anyway; that still doesn't mean it should be allowed to happen to anyone else.

"All three of you can stay with him in here, providing you're quiet. Once he wakes I think we need to keep the level of visitors at a calm and sensible level; some of the ones he had last time he was here seemed to do more harm than good. He will need time to recover and rest before he confronts concerned friends and his own demons."

"We'll be careful who comes in here. No one but us to begin with, I think."

He takes control.

It's strange, but necessary.

"One of us will always be with him to referee."

"That's a start." Guppy says. "Just make sure it's Jason's choice of visitors, okay?"

If all else fails, he can ask people to leave himself; but he doesn't know who it's good for Jason to see.

Nathaniel looks up from Jason to Guppy.

"We know who should see Jason and who shouldn't."

They were Pack.

They would take care of him.

Nathaniel's arm tightens around Liz, and he gives a glance to Yrael before his eyes turn back to Jason's far too-still form.

"Thank you," he mutters, not angry at Guppy but upset with the whole damned mess.

"In here, the patient's wishes come first." Guppy says. "And I will enforce them."

It's not a threat, it's said as a calm fact, despite the fact that any of them could most likely overpower him by poking him in the tummy with one finger.

His eyes lift.

He holds Guppy's gaze, but doesn't say anything.

They would take care of Jason now that they knew he wouldn't die.

Guppy holds the gaze calmly, with no signs of feeling threatened.

But he hopes that Jason won't want the three of them to leave; he doesn't fancy the job of enforcing that. In the meantime, the three of them will be good protection in case Ruin turns up.

He continues to closely moniter and tend to Jason as necessary throughout the night.