2017-05-06: The Unkindest Cut

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<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

There had been a report of some suspicious activity in the Adlehyde region, which had ultimately led to the first official mission that Loren had taken part in as a member of this detachment of Gebler when the source of the disturbance had been traced to a particular network of caves. It had gone...

...

...Probably about as well as he expected, to be honest. Though he supposes they /could/ have all died.

The young medic's 'to-do' list is long; medical staffing is a little short these days in Aveh, stretched as they are between various operations, and even his immediate superior under medical he's seen a total of once (she's apparently locked in to an endless string of meetings and other urgent events). So as it happens, fate has contrived to leave him, /at present/, as the only person actually accountable for the infirmary.

Which means of course that 'personal leave after a difficult mission' is just a fading dream.

Fortunately, no one's come in today with some fool injury or another.

Unfortunately, on the 'to-do' list that someone lower-ranking had undoubtedly been dodging for several weeks is 'inventory'. Which means that it's now on his to-do list.

And whoever's been in charge of organizing things in the infirmary has been doing a bad job of it. A really, really bad job.

Case in point: when Loren opens one of the upper cabinets to check what's even in there (it's helpfully unlabeled) and is immediately greeted by a rain of disposable glove boxes. 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly had, by contrast, not been put straight back to work, and had slept about eleven hours before getting up to mill listlessly around. Eventually she had the idea that perhaps she really ought to see a doctor about all of this, and so she has come, by eventualities and dusty paths, to the infirmary.

Just in time to see Loren getting buried in a rain of disposable gloves made out of some enigmatic quasi-latex material. "Oh!!" Elly says. "I'm sorry - here, can I...?"

And she steps right forwards, reaching ahead without much high-grade coordination. Elly is out of uniform at present, wearing a sleeveless tunic typically worn only for heavy fatigue duty or physical training, the hem of it over the waistband of her stockings, which are conclusively revealed thusly to be something closer to tights than something involving a garterbelt. The boots are the same as they ever were.

Elly's eyes are slightly glazed and she seems to be breathing more heavily than she really ought to, although she does not have many problems crouching down to try and nudge and lift boxes back towards Loren if not stopped. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Only his ego's bruised, even the hard edges of boxes can only do so much damage. This would have been bad enough on its own.

But now there's a witness to what can really only be described as 'an enormous indignity'.

And even worse, it's van Houten.

He turns, just about bumping into the counter, raising a hand to readjust his now decidedly askew glasses. Not that he needs those to see, but it's the principle of the thing. "Wait, hold on --"

He, comparatively, is in full uniform, but he's probably that kind of person who would default to full uniform in most cases unless the situation really did call for 'something else'. Even the heat hasn't stopped this habit.

She looks strange. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Is this how it looked, right before that accident? Did she lurch, expression dull and glazed over, towards her unfortunate victims before unleashing a fatal pulse of ether?

"S-sit down!" he barks, grabbing a box from her and dropping it unceremoniously on the nearby counter, before gesturing towards one of the wayward chairs jammed up against the opposite end of the (cramped) room. 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly drops a box of gloves, jumping back. She is reacting - it must be sleep dirt in her eyes or something. At least she's looking at Loren and there's no gathering storm of etheric tension suggesting his imminent demise. "Y, yes - of course!!"

And then Elly quickly goes over and sits down.

Her hands fold on her knee.

Soon enough her head tilts forwards. Externally it probably looks lazy; inwardly, Elly is feeling the familiar machinery spinning back up and grinding against her heart.

And she waits her turn. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

She sits down. It's almost anticlimactic. Loren takes a breath, inwardly grappling with the twin emotions of relief and chagrin. Now that he looks at her, she just looks tired. Unwell. Not murderous. He stands there like that for five seconds or more, frame tensed and face expressionless, the entire weight of his attention upon her where she sits.

There's not even the hint of roiling gathering ether in here.

He stoops after a moment, lifting a couple of the boxes to drop them on the countertop haphazardly. Then, kicking a few out of his way, he slowly approaches her.

Once again, she's on the receiving end of the full weight of Loren's critical stare. "Van Houten. Are you sick?" 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly looks up to meet Loren's gaze now. She nods once with an affirmative sound in her throat.

That's not really enough, is it, and Elly has been to the doctor enough to know. "While I only had superficial external injuries from... the event, and I know I don't have a reaction to the sols, I've had a lingering headache and some breathing difficulties. And..."

She looks to the side, as if struggling to articulate the next part. This may fill Loren with a subtle dread which may yet be relieved when she says, gesturing at her mouth, "My tongue is still numb. It didn't seem particularly discolored, but I wasn't sure what might cause that."

EARLIER

A centipede dives inquisitively into Elly's open mouth. It dies, of course, shortly thereafter.

NOW

"I ah - I see you're on duty already," Elly concludes, lamely. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

What does Loren do? He sighs, of course, staring down at her as he folds his arms over his chest while she explains a few of her symptoms.

Fungal spore exposure, possibly. Or who-knows-what-else, inside those caves. There could have been a viral or bacterial exposure, given the look of those animals outside. Or if could be exhaustion, after the strain of the mission -- she had used a lot of ether. "I knew we should have worn better protective equipment," he remarks, narrowing his eyes.

Straightening, he unfolds his arms and pulls away, turning to open a drawer. And then the one next to it. There, that's what he was looking for. He's going to have to have a talk with the junior medical staff, this is uncalled for.

"Sit up," he directs Elly, approaching her with the diagnostics tool in hand. It should only take a moment to run the scan to pull the basic vital signs, and more importantly tell if there are signs of an infection taking root. She glances away as he approaches, though, and for a moment, a fleeting jolt of anxiety unwinds in his gut. But then she speaks.

She's 'not sure what the cause could be' for her numb tongue. Loren just looks at her for a long, long moment, his gaze slowly shifting towards a silent version of 'are you kidding me'.

This is coupled with, as she observes he's on duty, a flat, "Yes. I certainly am." 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly gets tricorded. Her vital signs are within the standard deviation for her established baseline (blood pressure slightly below average, heart rate slightly above; detailed bloodwork requires actual blood but oxygenation levels seem normal). She coughs, thickly.

Her hands rest on her knees. Inwardly she writhes like a snake being thrown in ice water. It's like dying /but she knows it's happening/. But it's all emotional, at least.

"It was... a little rough, wasn't it? I suppose I thought it might just have all been rumors or myth. I hope we don't have to go back down there. And those poor people..."

For a certain value of people anyway.

Elly has the strange feeling that she's pushing a conversation forwards on her own, but dogged persistence keeps her going. "I agree, though, about the protective equipment. You know, one of the officers - or whatever - in the Black Ties is always wearing one of their air filter masks." A beat passes. "Have you had any reports on what that... material, the agent there, actually is?" 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Loren glances over the results. Everything seems in normal range, suggesting no sign of a serious infection at this point, though a few of her vitals do lend strength to her physical presentation. If he had to guess, short of running bloodwork or further analysis... probably it would fit 'opportunistic virus'. Probably brought about from overwork/stress and exposure to unknown agents. Trauma medicine is his specialty, not disease, but Jugend is thorough about these things.

He returns the equipment from whence it came, opening another one of the cabinets to retrieve a few bottles. "I suppose," he comments, squinting at the labeling on one of the bottles before opening it to shake out one of the pills. This should handle the headache, assuming it's not a sign of something more serious. "They were just animals, but they weren't acting right. It's possible that this situation was some sort of neurological disease outbreak, but that just suggests that something else is going on if there are that many. It's hard to believe even Lambs would get massacred by other animals," he says, counting out a few tablets from one of the other bottles.

"Though I wouldn't be surprised if it were a contamination event. The depths of those caves were... foul," he finishes at last, after fishing around mentally for a word that seems 'correct'. However he might frame it in terms of 'natural possibility', something was off down there. He furrows his brow. "If we had gotten more samples..."

It goes without saying, really, that Loren is /not/ the finest conversationalist Jugend has ever produced.

His bedside manner is also very much lacking.

"Here." Loren approaches Elly again, handing over the headache tablet. Without... water. "Take this now, and start taking these at night." He's at least measured the others out into a separate container, which he hands over. "If you feel worse, come back and we'll run some bloodwork."

Which is naturally followed by silence as Elly... agrees with him about the filtration, and wonders about the 'material'.

"I have not. Whatever they found in necropsy or in the people we collected, it hasn't been released in a report yet." 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

It is true there's more germs around here than in Etrenank.

Elly says, perhaps by way of speculation, "They might have been taken by surprise. Most of our success was from Ether use or from that ARM. If they only had their conventional weapons, I could see them being overwhelmed by sheer numbers..." She sounds vaguely pitying.

She watches Loren as the tablet is offered. Nodding, she takes the pill, holds it for a moment like a big dumb idiot, and then puts it in her mouth. She attempts to swallow it several times, which ends up with some wretched coughing into her curled-up hand but, at least, no great further disaster.

She swallows again. "I understand," she says, accepting the other tablets, holding them loosely in her hand as she looks at the floor, and then -- there's an air of her screwing up her courage --

And it comes out. "... Are you upset with me...? I know I wasn't at my best during the mission, but I couldn't anticipate what it did to Mr. Hauch or the captain. We're lucky the adjutant was there to keep things from going completely off the tracks." 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Loren doesn't frown -- of course, he never seems to emote much, south of his eyes. But he gives the overall impression from his gaze alone that he /might/ have. "If they were ambushed, then they were more foolish than I thought. They shouldn't have advanced on an unknown threat without taking proper precautions. Even sheer numbers shouldn't have led to that sort of slaughter," he says, as if to suggest they got what they deserved. He sounds almost scornful.

Dry-swallowing tablets is a skill, one that Loren apparently forgot most people don't innately have. Maybe he should have given Elly some water.

But she doesn't seem to choke.

There is a moment of silence on his part. Is there anything else? He might not be the best with people, but even he has the sense of something being unsaid.

'Awkwardness', in a sense.

"...Upset with you?" Loren again lapses into silence. It would be more accurate, he reflects, folding his arms across his chest as he stares down at her, to replace 'upset with' with 'terminally concerned for his safety by', but...

His silence proceeds, as he tries to think of the most... diplomatic approach. That isn't straight-up lying.

So he punts, a little. Which he'll probably regret. "...Why? Because of what they did? No."

It's more likely she might think that because he almost drew his sidearm on her the other day. 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

The tablet's taste sits in the back of Elly's throat, grittily, but it's there at least. The pain is relieved, if through the placebo effect rather than the medicament having had much time to suffuse her body yet. She takes in a deep breath and lets it out again, having trouble staying right dead on Loren, focus-wise.

"..." She makes herself. She /makes/ herself look at Loren dead-on.

I wish I brought my sunglasses, she thinks irrelevantly.

"I had thought you were about to aim your weapon at me, in those caves," Elly says, with slow deliberation that also makes her voice quieter, almost pathetically so, even if it's easy enough to hear in the infirmary, quiet as it is at present.

"... It was just the insects, though, wasn't it?"

Elly is trying to make it a casual interrogative. Instead it comes out a lot closer to a plea. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

It's funny, but if he were the type to feel any sort of sympathy for another person, he might have empathized with her a bit here. This would be a familiar sort of experience for him -- the sense of having to grit one's mental teeth and bear up against a social situation.

Right now, it feels almost like the balance in the room has shifted. It's not him looking at her -- it's her looking at him. Loren straightens, tension gathering in his shoulders.

There's no one else in here. Even any machinery that might hum or otherwise make a sound are safely sequestered to another room. He can hear every word of hers clearly, even when she speaks so quietly.

When she pleads with him.

He remembers that look on her face, back there in the cave. Had that even been genuine?

Loren is silent, looking down at her. Then, "That's because I was, if you had lost control." He pauses. "Again."

No, in the end, he has no reason to lie uselessly. Not to her. 

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

"..."

Elly's head tilts downwards.

Inside of her that ice-cold snake bath kicks up again. She raises up her hands and looks at them, which may alarm Loren if it occurs to him that this might have been the exact sort of pose that they FOUND HER in, but then again perhaps the report wasn't that detailed. Who is to tell.

She wants to cry until her eyes wash out. At least then, she thinks miserably, she'd be like Kelvena, and they could all get past it. Except of course that Kelvena can open her eyes when it's peaceful or when she needs to read something.

This morbid introspection doesn't leave her lips. She answers Loren almost inaudibly. "I understand. ... I'll report back if I have any other symptoms. Do you think that will be all...?"

Much of her wants to run - and indeed, the question is now '/when/ will she sob into her pillow,' not 'if' - but it's not a large enough percentage to override military discipline, which tells her not to run away from the corpsman. 

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

The report hadn't been nearly as specific as that, but it didn't have to be -- she's staring silently, perhaps blankly, at her hands, her exact expression unreadable from his current angle. A brief pitch of anxiety unwinds within him, and Loren wonders, distantly, just what it takes to push a person with her capacity and psychological profile from quietly complacent to calmly murderous.

The report had said she'd been covered in the blood of her victims. Her hands then, of course.

He's just clever enough to hurt himself thinking.

He doesn't move. He stands, there, staring at her, both daring and dreading her to say something.

Then, at last, she speaks.

"...That's everything," he answers, as if he hadn't just been cruelly honest to her. He still doesn't move, the wariness still rooting him into place where he stands. "I'll make a note in your files." With any luck, if she does come back, it won't be him in here. But he knows better than to trust too much in luck.

Perhaps it's also too much to hope that if she understands how dangerous she is, she'll rein it in better.

Loren hesitates, then says more out of a sense of duty than any real concern for her well-being, "If that's it, then you can go."

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