Lola Hawkes
It's 9:23am on Saturday morning, in a
room on the third floor of the Denver Health Medical Center. There is a
woman laying in a hospital bed in the OG/GYN department, with her
clothes cut off and replaced with a hospital gown, recovering not from
delivery but from emergency surgery to close off a severed vein and
stitch back together torn flesh and muscle from what looked like the
losing end of a fight with a lawn mower.
There's a nurse, a woman
somewhere in her late thirties, and she's checking the woman's vitals
and recording them onto a chart. This woman, whose name was documented
as 'Hawkes, Lola Y.'. This was discovered from the wallet that was
found in the woman's truck-- the keys to which were left at the front
desk by a boy in his late teens (apparently, anyways) with glasses and
an all-too-chipper attitude. He had only hung around long enough to
make sure that she made it out of surgery and someone could assure him
that she would wake up and live.
The chart indicated that the
woman was pregnant when they ran a series of standard blood tests. Her
body showed signs to reflect this, but there was no way to effectively
gauge how far along she was. She showed no signs of miscarrying, so
they wheeled her up to OB/GYN post surgery. A surgery that, by the way,
was the only thing that saved Lola's life that night.
The nurse's
pen was scratching paper when the hispanic-looking woman in the bed
started stirring. She had only enough time to look up at the patient
from over her chart and open her mouth to greet her before the woman
started to react to her circumstances by pushing her feet into the bed
mattress and trying to sit up-- jarring her surgical wound and causing
sufficient pain. She then tried to pull the breathing apparatus from
her nose and brush the tubes from her arms. The nurse managed to
convince her to stop, explaining to her that she was in a hospital and
just had surgery. Lola eyed her warily and wouldn't speak English for
her. She acted as though her vocabulary was limited-- out of spite more
than anything (don't talk to me i don't like you and won't answer your questions). All that she would communicate was that she wanted her phone.
When
she got it, because the nurse was about to ask if there was anyone they
should call for her, she glared at the nurse and told her to leave in
that same stubbornly limited English, and waited until she was gone to
dial out.
Ring - ring - ring
"Hector? I need you to come to town."
Hector Ghosh
Lord
knows what Hector does when he knows Lola is going to be gone on a
patrol and he's stuck at home by himself. A mission whose success and
reduced chance of injury relies on a Garou he's never met before and no
word reaches him until morning results in his just about driving himself
up a tree.
So he sat all evening entertaining himself and then
night fell and he went out into the woods to hone his teeth and claws on
whatever got in his way and he wasn't expecting she would be home by
then but he hoped she would have at least called. She did not call. She
did not text. She did not come home before dawn.
He had the sense
not to blow up her phone but whether that sense was not to interrupt her
mission or that blowing up her phone would do no good for whatever
caused her not to come home.
When the phone rings it only rings once for the speed of his plucking it up.
"Where are you?" he asks, before she can even get out his name.
Lola Hawkes
"Some
fuckin' hospital," is Lola's answer. She sounds different-- pained
because she may have popped a staple when she flexed her leg to try and
escape the bed when she had come to initially. She didn't remember
anything outside of the stairwell going back down to the ground floor of
the office building that Fentress Architects is located in. After that
she remembers a vague flash of Milton grinding the fuck out of her
gears when he pulled the truck out of a parking lot, and she remembers
blurred faces and lights and someone shouting 'Girl, stay with us!' into
her face as she was staring up at a ceiling. After that, she'd assumed
she died. It was cool and quiet and dark and restful.
But then
she came to, and her head was woozy and her stomach was sick and she was
in a bland sterilized room in a bed with bars on it. She didn't
recognize the inside of a hospital room immediately, she'd assumed she
was in worse circumstances. She'd expected to be coming to in someone's
bedroom or on a couch of a Healer in the city, not to be at a fucking
hospital.
"My shit got wrecked last night. I was with a New Moon, he can't heal. They ain't asking questions yet, but they will."
The last is half a request(demand) and half a plea. "Come get me."
Hector Ghosh
She
can't hear him breathing at first but the more she talks the more she
can hear him starting to lose it. Hector does not have a temper. Hector
has the disposition and the patience of a puppy but he has the Rage of
the beast that he is and the longer she and the drugs don't tell him
what he needs to know to come get her the more he rankles with it.
"What hospital!"
But
he's not helpless. He's moving. She hears the front door bang open as
he storms through it and then he's walking fast enough that she can hear
the wind roaring past the phone and the crunch of small rocks beneath
his boots.
"I'm coming. Okay? I'm on my way right now. Try to find
out what room you're in and call me back. It's gonna take me a few
hours, I'm sorry, just hang in there."
Lola Hawkes
"Uhh."
Is what he gets when he demands that she give him the name of the
hospital she's in, so he knows where to go. In the room she glances
around, then finds a plastic water mug, still wrapped in plastic and
unused sitting on a table in the room. She has to squint, but she gets
it. "Denver Health Medical Center." When she does this, she remembers
vaguely saying the same hospital name to Milton as he was carrying her
hurriedly down a staircase, with one arm hooked around rocky Glabro
shoulders and a manila file folder jammed between her body and his,
getting thoroughly smeared with blood.
"Okay, okay." She's
groggy, anesthesia does a number on you. The manic way he was speaking
was stressing her out. "I'm not lettin' them know I know as much
English as I do. I don't want them asking questions."
He'll be there, he says. They hang up. After thirty minutes he gets a text with a room number.
In
the time it took Hector to get to the hospital, Lola has done as
promised and stubbornly refused to communicate with anyone that came
into her room. When English-speakers came through the doors she would
speak in Spanish. When they sent Spanish-speaking staff in there, she
simply wouldn't talk for them. She's thrown up from the queasiness that
the anesthesia caused, but has been able and allowed to sip water.
The
nurses have figured out that this is going to be a simple case of
insuranceless Mexican girl taking up space in their hospital. They
answer her open hostility by just checking her wound and vitals
regularly and not trying to make conversation with her. The moment
she's okayed to leave, they'll send her on her way. It's not like she's
going to pay them for the bed she's in anyways.
They sent someone
in to do an ultrasound. The doctor had explained to her (in Spanish,
she was still playing that game) that she came up positive on a blood
test for pregnancy, and they needed to check and see if she was
miscarrying or not. This solemned Lola up. Her surly attitude
lessened, but that's only to make room for stern silence.
The doctor is tossing his gloves into a garbage can and wheeling the ultrasound machine back when Hector walks in.
Hector Ghosh
[gnosis: can he maybe pop in through the gauntlet and avoid scaring everyone in the entire hospital?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Hector Ghosh
[wp: can he avoid scaring everyone on the entire OB/GYN floor?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Hector Ghosh
Hector doesn't walk in so much as he -
Well okay let's back up a bit.
It
took him no time at all to push through the Gauntlet and run in his
wolf skin from the Homestead to Littleton where he could jump onto the
light rail. He is a lithe and lean little bastard and between the energy
of youth and the hot lash of his Rage whipping at him he reached the
station just as the northbound train was leaving. Jumped a turnstile and
slunk past the ticket dispensers and the security station and bolted
through the train door as it closed behind the last patron. Sat in a
corner with his hood down so he did not scare the suburbanites worse
than he already does.
His leg started joggling after five minutes
of stillness but with nothing to be done for it. Thirty-five minutes
after his leg started joggling the train reached the station and he
rushed off of it and ran into another bathroom before security could
get a bead on him.
When he checked his phone it told him what room
she was in but gave no directions or even a floor number. No point
running down the street like a madman. He could get to the hospital
faster in the Umbra than he could on the bus so he pushed across the
drywall-thick Gauntlet and set off again.
At some point he pushed
back across and it was like sliding through a brick wall without getting
stuck but he did it. Did it in another bathroom. Calmed himself down
enough to approach the information desk and ask a woman with soft white
hair where that room was.
She was the only person to witness the
color the young man's face turned when she explained Lola Hawkes was on
the OB/GYN floor. He managed to thank her and step back without
reacting.
By the time he made it up the stairs and through the
door and past the nurse's station where the woman couldn't get him to
slow down long enough to identify himself he was losing hold of his calm
but it was still there.
- rushes over the threshold with what's
left of the momentum that carried him all the way from the Homestead
starting almost three hours ago and he almost bowls over the doctor and
his equipment. Pauses long enough to confirm that's his woman in the bed
and yep, that's a fucking ultrasound machine, ignore it ignore it, he
goes around the side of the bed that isn't plugged into an IV and he
doesn't quite climb in with her but he does bend down about kneeling on
the gurney and hugs her up in his arms and all he can do for a few
seconds is bury his face in her neck and pant to get his breath back.
Lola Hawkes
The
doctor is startled when Hector comes wheeling into the room, half out
of breath and worked up into a flurry. He's terrified when he spins
about to meet the man that barged in with such force, when he meets
Hector's eyes (they're level in height) and sees the Beast that lay
barely below the surface. He was going to say something, but words and
breath immediately fail him.
Then Hector has moved on. Away from the human doctor, away from the machine that he'd brought in with him (oh god just ignore it's there) and down to meet Lola on the side of the bed that wasn't housing IV hook ups.
Lola's
been scrubbed clean, bathed of the blood and gore and oil ichor that
had coated her when she'd come in through the emergency room doors,
carried along by a struggling young man that looked like he had no
business even knowing who this woman was. Her hair is pinned back in a
bun, away from her face and off her neck, loose enough though that she
could lay her head back comfortably on a pillow. She has a hospital
gown on and probably nothing more. Her blankets are down, feet are
out. Whatever damage was done to bring her here is not visible, so he's
still in the dark as to what's wrong with her exactly that put her in
this hospital bed. Her face is unbruised, she doesn't have any casts on
her limbs. She just looks uncomfortable and worried and frazzled and
angry.
While Hector's arms are around her, he can feel that her
muscles aren't responding like they often would. She's on pain killers,
doped up probably through the IV drip still, and this makes her loose
and slow to respond. Her head turns when his face buries into her neck,
and a hand that doesn't have tubes stuck in it lifts to go to his head,
fingers in his hair, holding him also.
The doctor's just
staring. He's seen overreactive spouses and partners before, but Hector
is a force of nature he's never felt before, and it was confined in
this room with this still-recovering woman. He's immediately convinced
that the man may finish the job that he started. But Lola is allowing
him near, sharing a moment that shuts the human doctor out completely.
Then she turns her head and tells the doctor:
"Él es mi compañero. Puedes ir."
Yes, he can be here. Go away.
All
the while, the printing mechanism connected with the ultrasound machine
was ticking away. The doctor cleared his throat, made a sound of
affirmation and explained that he would be back to check on her before
giving an okay for her to leave. Then he tore the ultrasound image from
the machine, tried to hand it to Lola but she only stared at him, so he
placed it on the bed and left.
He couldn't be happier to be out
of that room. As soon as the door was closed, Lola turned her head back
into Hector's and spoke into his shoulder. "Let's go."
Hector Ghosh
And
if a security guard had been set outside the door or the doctor had
tried to be a hero and step in front of the young man they would have
had bigger problems than they do right now. Their problem at the moment
is that there was an entire city between Hector and Lola and he could
not have reached her fast enough if he had teleported from the Homestead
to the hospital.
He is not as hardy as she is and for several
seconds all he can do is hold himself up with one hand while clutching
her against him with the other and she can hear the distance he's
traveled in the fervor of his respirations and the desperation he'd kept
at bay come through in soft yet involuntary vocalizations. Gasps in her
ear mild at first for the short span of time the air spends in his
lungs and as he rests and lets himself return to normal they turn warm
and then hot and lose the sound of his voice.
A tearing of paper
precedes the image on the end of the bed. Hector doesn't speak Spanish
but he doesn't say a damned thing while the doctor is in the room and
then they're alone again.
She speaks into his shoulder.
He
sits down on the edge of the bed and it's probably a Veil breech at this
point but the thought of taking her out of this place with a busted -
he doesn't even know what's wrong with her all he knows is she's on the
baby floor and she's woozy and not acting right. The gurney rattles with
its supported weight doubling as Hector sits himself down by her hip
and starts to rummage through his medicine bag.
"Can't believe that little four-eyed bastard couldn't even bother bringing anything with him to--"
Lola Hawkes
Hector
gasped to catch his breath, vocalized quietly to her ear while doing
so. Then, when he's got himself pulled back together and his lungs have
their wind back, he straightens up and sits down on the bed beside her,
at her left hip (the hip away from the door, away from the IV). She
tenses and puts a hand at his back to prevent him from leaning backward
any at all.
"My leg," is what she tells him, warns him. This is
why he can't see any damage-- it's all hidden under her gown. If he
were to lift it up to check the wound (as he likely would need to do in
order to use his talen anyways), he'd see that her entire thigh was
wrapped up tightly with gauze, and she's spotting blood into the padding
underneath the wrap. It covers her whole thigh, all the way up to the
point where leg meets pelvis.
She could have lost the whole leg.
If she hadn't been bright enough to cut her leg off from her heart with a
belt then she would have poured blood onto that office floor and died
outright. Human medicine is what she has to thank for saving her life.
Not that she ever would.
"He brought me here," she says, voice
woozy and uncomfortable. Her hand slid down his back and rested near
his hip instead. "I don't think I would've made it if he wasn't there
to do that." Her head rests back on the pillow, and she looks down to
her right arm and starts working on pulling the tape from her arm where
the IV was hooked up.
For some stupid reason, she seemed to be defending the nerdy Urrah Ragabash. Maybe it was the pain killers talking.
Hector Ghosh
"Yeah
and you probably wouldn't be here in the first place if he knew
anything at all about going on a recon mission with someone who can't
just lie on the floor covered in fur until their--"
It took him
longer than a few seconds to find the tiny glyph-covered gourd because
he was ranting so vehemently but the fact that he rants means he's at
least in control of himself and his mental faculties. As long as his
mouth is running he isn't surging up into his war form and trying to
destroy the building that kept Lola alive.
So he rants and he
finds the gourd and then he shucks back the sheet as unceremonious as he
shucks it back from himself in the morning and that's when he finds the
gauze-swaddled leg and the gown and the blood coming from a source he
can't find and Hector bristles and she can feel the Rage as it courses
up his spine and tightens up his muscles before bouncing off his brain.
"--I'm
gonna kill him," he says, calm as you please. Sets down the gourd and
brushes Lola's hand away from her elbow. The tape comes off quick and he
finds a small cache of supplies on the bedside table that one of the
nurses left in her wake. Unwraps a piece of gauze and presses it to the
place where the needle meets her vein. Holds the gauze down while he
guides the needle back out into the air. He forgets to shut off the IV
but it drips down onto the floor and he does't particularly care.
"Hold this."
He
puts her thumb over the gauze but it doesn't stay there long. He leaves
the gauze over her thigh because they're going to be booking it out of
here in about thirty seconds. In the meantime he closes his eyes and
awakens the spirit inside of the gourd and crushes the tiny earthen
thing in the palm of his hand.
The water drips down onto the gauze
and soaks through and wraps her up in warmth. All of the pain and all
of the damage and all of the drugs coursing through her system leave her
body and go back into the world. The dust left in his palm is damp and
as rote as he's done anything else today Hector lifts the hem of Lola's
gown and rests his palm over her midsection. The touch leaves behind the
paste born from broken clay and spirit-water. For all he knows there's
nothing left to fix but for furious as he is he isn't stupid. He knows
what floor they're on.
No lingering though. Soon as she starts to stir he takes his hand from her and leaps up from the bed.
"Ugh, they probably have all your things behind the desk. Hang on, I'm gonna go steal your keys."
Lola Hawkes
She
frowns when he brushes her hand away from her arm, but is still and
compliant while he stands up and digs through supplies in the room so
that he can find the materials he wants to appropriately take care of
her. Didn't he say something about his dad being a doctor? This made
sense, then. She watches while he works, and frowns soft and confused
looking while he rambles about how Milton should have known better,
should have been prepared to heal someone who can't heal themselves.
When
he sees the size of the injury, he announces with a final note to his
tone that he'll kill the Glass Walker. Lola makes a noise of protest,
like she's going to defend him again, but decides that no-- he probably
should have been prepared. They were going on an information scavenging
mission, not into the heat of battle, but they still should have been
prepared. She was prepared enough to have her gun and to park nearby,
after all.
He cracks the gourd and drizzles its contents onto her
leg. Lola closes her eyes and breathes deep as the sense of healing
comes over her, washes the pain away and clears her mind. They fly back
open, though, when he lifts her hospital gown up and presses his hand
to her stomach, below her navel, and holds the crushed gourd and water
there for a second.
"Hector--," she starts to say, but doesn't
know how to finish. The doctor had told her that the baby was intact,
for now at least. He warned her that they couldn't make promises that
this would remain the case. She was relying on the healing powers of
her people and her own sturdy constitution to make up for what modern
medicine cannot guarantee.
He's up and moving again, though, and
she brushes the hem of the gown back down over her thighs. He says he's
going to go nab her keys, and she nods her head and sits up straight in
the bed. She was about to swing her legs over the side of the bed and
rise to her feet, but remembered that there were still a ton of humans
around and nurses that would check on her. They couldn't explain the
healing. So she dragged the sheets back up to her waist, laid back, and
waited.
Her fingers would drum away her anxiety on the rail bars of the bed in the meantime.
Hector Ghosh
Whatever
happens out there at the nurse's station is either going to be a story
later or something that goes to the grave at Forgotten Questions with
the young man. He moseys on over the threshold with an air of affected
calm but Lola can see the tension tugging his shoulder blades. It makes
him lope instead of walk.
Little human lingers about him during
that week and a half that the moon swings from one side of gibbous to
the other but right now he isn't alone. The entire Nation is less able
to control themselves this weekend.
Time ticks by and just as Lola
may begin to worry that security has come to collect the Galliard she
hears the whistling of an empty wheelchair driven by footsteps she can
recognize not for the sound of them on linoleum but for the cadence and
the fact that nothing impedes them. Hector can step lightly when he
wants to. He wants to step quickly. The wheelchair skitters into the
room ahead of him and he doesn't clamp on the brakes because he's
holding the thing still. Her bag of belongings hangs from a handle.
"Come
on come on come on," he says. Once she's seated he wings the bag around
to rest on her lap and if she hasn't already grabbed it he takes the
printout off the bed and hands that to her.
As soon as Lola is settled in the wheelchair he swings around and hustles her out of the ward.
Lola Hawkes
Lola
was beginning to worry. She knew that though Hector may try to remain
composed, he would still make his way through the hallway and up to the
counter in front of the elevators like a hurricane. She thought that
security might have started an altercation that they wouldn't win with
him. She worried, not because she thought Hector wouldn't make it back,
but because she knew he wouldn't fall short of bashing a security man's
head off the counter and leaving him crumpled in the floor if he got in
his way.
The moon was Full, and Uktena would not be impeded.
When
he gets back into the room and ushers her to hurry, it's with a plastic
sack on the handle of a wheelchair. Inside of that sack is a leather
jacket that they'd managed to save for her, as well as a satchel bag
that had herbs and a bottle of water and some other miscellaneous odds
and ends as well. He's got her keys, having already found them.
She
hurries, as prompted, and brings herself around to sit in the
wheelchair. The bag goes into her lap, and the ultrasound picture
(which it seems she was content with leaving behind on the bed) was
handed to her as well. She's looking down at it, concern etched across
her face, as Hector wheels them out of the room and down the hallway.
Hector Ghosh
It's
rare that one sees anyone wheeling a woman away from the obstetrics and
gynecology wing at the speed at which Hector moves. He manages to truck
her along slow as they move through the corridor. It's wide enough to
fit a stretcher and four points of people but it's also cluttered with
VitaSign machines that the nurses wheeled out without replacing and
linen bins and people who get the hell out of Hector and Lola's way. Her
leg looks like hell and it's hard to tell whether that sense of
impending doom comes from the young man or the young woman.
Once
they're out into the floor's main hall though he picks up speed. Like as
not he's worrying that someone has called for law enforcement
assistance. That is not at all rooted in reality. Lola is here on the
taxpayers' dime and the only reason she wound up in the room she wound
up in is because the emergency department is under federal obligation to
treat every patient that comes in the door. Her blood told of the baby
growing in her belly and, well, they have to treat the embryo too.
If
she had wanted an abortion or the embryo was a toddler the taxpayers
would have had no interest in helping her but she's still alive. Hector
won't exactly write the taxpayers a thank you card. He hauls ass towards
the elevators like someone is about to holler after them.
And she
might wonder why he doesn't let her get up and start running with him
as soon as they're clear of the floor. She doesn't have to wonder for
long. She knows him well enough by now to guess what he's thinking.
Once
the elevator arrives, empty, and they're inside of it Hector pushes the
escaped shocks of hair back out of his face and scowls at the button
bank until he finds the one marked with a star. He punches it with his
thumb and then rests his forehead against the metal panel and pinches
the bridge of his nose until he thinks he can open his mouth without
sticking his foot into it.
They have four floors to descend. He still hasn't said anything after one floor.
Lola Hawkes
The
only reason Lola didn't ask him to let her up out of the wheelchair is
because they already have momentum, and to ask him to stop for her to
get up and out would just slow them down. He wasn't a slight man,
pushing his woman in a wheelchair wasn't taxing and did not slow him
unreasonably, after all. Plus, she was certain there was concern wired
through his bones for the third party here, one that they just became
aware of within the hour. Lola's had a little more time to process the
news, but not by much.
Plus, that time had been used to imagine all of the terrible consequences that this mission-gone-sour could have ended in.
Could still end in.
Once
they're in the elevator, quiet settles around them, dense and cool like
hanging moss. Hector rests his forehead against the elevator wall.
Lola is still for a handful of moments while thoughts and questions roll
through her mind and muscle for the forefront.
Did we get the
information we needed? What happened to the monster's body? Was it
found, are there news stories? Do we need to talk to someone about
that? Will this baby survive? How far along am I, anyways?
Instead
she reaches out for Hector's hand and gives it a squeeze, firm and
grounding. "It didn't end with me gone. I'll survive this. It could
have been much worse."
Hector Ghosh
[hahaha. haha. hah.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
Hector Ghosh
This
is the first time in three hours Hector has stood still and held with
him the knowledge that his woman is still alive. Her voice on the phone
was swimmy and stupid and he had only recognized her because her voice
is something he has woven into his memory by now. He knows the soul of
it and he grew so enraged to hear it because something was wrong and he
was so far away from him and even pushing himself so hard as he was he
couldn't get there fast enough.
Now she's got her jacket in a pink
plastic bag and her keys are in the pocket of his army jacket and her
hand is in his. He hasn't even looked at the paper laid on her lap. Some
part of his brain that can remember his father dragging him to the
hospital once a year starting when he was old enough to walk like to
indoctrinate him early knows what it is. They don't give women who've
miscarried pictures of what their ultrasound machine found. But he
hasn't stopped to think yet.
Standing still as he is he starts to
think and then her hand squeezes and he exhales hard and he hears her.
His intelligence and his imagination often get the rest of him into
trouble. She tells him it could have been much worse and he believes
her.
The air in the elevator crackles like a power line has
snapped free but it doesn't hit the floor. He hears her and the Rage
lashes at him but it doesn't catch.
They're two stops away from
the ground when Hector starts giggling. The hand that was pinching the
bridge of his nose goes to cover his eyes and the giggling threatens to
turn into I-have-gone-completely-fucking-insane laughter.
Lola Hawkes
Laughter
is supposed to be a positive sign. It's been called 'the best
medicine', after all. When Lola hears it coming from Hector, though,
the giggling sounds more worrying than reassuring. It's much like how
when humans smile they show their teeth, but when animals (chimps) do
it, that's a sign of aggression. This is how the sound seems-- humans
would expect it to be a positive sign, but Lola knows he isn't human.
She isn't entirely there herself, by lineage and capability. She was
worried by it.
The wheelchair is abandoned now. She had been
staying put because of concerns about security cameras catching that she
was up and walking. Now, though, she didn't care. She didn't think
that anyone would care to find out where she and her whirlwind --
husband? boyfriend? something -- went. She was an uninsured woman who
only spoke Spanish. Now the bed could go to someone that they could
bill.
She switches the shopping bag into one hand, tucks the
picture away into it, and with her other hand she reaches out to grasp
his shoulder, squeeze it in a hand that's full of renewed strength, no
longer loose and swimming from pain-numbing drugs.
"We still gotta go past this elevator and get home. Hector. Reign it in, at least until we get into the truck."
Hector Ghosh
This
is a woman who once grabbed a creature writhing with his own fury
threatening to spill over into frenzy and hollered at him to shift
before he could lose himself to the Wyrm's thrall. She had plenty to
fear then from him but she did not fear him. And now she is the one who
lost an entire night and part of the morning to anesthesia and
disorientation, who could have lost a leg. Could have lost a pregnancy
she didn't know was hers.
Her hand grasps his shoulder and he
draws a deep hard breath to rein it in. Time was once he could ignore
that part of him that made him what he is. That time is past. He
controls it now.
Doesn't make him any easier to be around but nothing about today is easy. They get through it anyway.
The
elevator starts to decelerate and Hector turns from the gleaming
soulless metal and looks into her eyes for the first time since he
barreled over the threshold. Not just a fleeting glimpse as he has while
in the midst of doing something else or thinking five steps ahead of
where they were at that moment. Hector looks at her and he draws another
breath and puts both hands on either side of her face. Kisses her on
the brow.
"Dude, sit down," he says. "Somebody's gonna fuck with us if you try to walk out of here."
Either
she sits down of her own accord or he bumps her in the calves with the
wheelchair to nudge her into it. Hector rushes around behind the chair
as soon as the doors open and this time a troupe of visitors waits with
balloons and bated breath to board the elevator. They get the hell out
of the way as a tall long-haired man with blistering eyes pushes a
exhausted-looking and sullen girl out of the elevator.
He follows
the arrow that will point them towards the emergency department. He's
trying to think like a moron. A moron would have left the truck in the
lot immediately outside the ER instead of parking it in the garage.
"It
rained earlier. I think I saw snow, too. When we get outside I'm
carrying you to the truck. Don't argue with me, I haven't gotten to do
anything manly the whole time I've been rescuing you."
Lola Hawkes
Just
as this had worked when Hector lay lashed open and spasming, virtually
seizing from injury and Rage and pain, it worked now when he was moments
away from hysterical laughter and banging his fists off the metal walls
and tearing the place down around him. She grips his shoulder firmly,
pushes it to turn him more toward her, and he quiets. Then his hand
moves from his eyes and he looks at her-- really looks this time.
She
meets his gaze with eyes that were hard and full of the potential for
fire, much like flint. Standing tall and strong and firm, because they
weren't home yet, because the gravity of a Crinos Garou tearing its way
through a hospital elevator and a Kinfolk to boot was a heavy thing to
consider. He takes her face in his hands and leans forward to kiss her
brow. She closes her eyes and breathes deep near him for a moment.
Then
he's reminding her to get back in the chair, and she does so without
complaint or protest. As he wheels her out of the elevator they pass
through a family and scare the hell out of them. Lola doesn't turn
about and apologize as most Kinfolk would. She's a great support, but a
shitty P.R. rep.
He expresses that he's going to carry her out to
the truck and she can't argue, and Lola just smiles (though the
expression is still a bit grim) and reaches up to affectionately rub his
arm before digging through the pink plastic bag in search of her
leather jacket. She didn't expect that it would be warm outside in a
hospital gown.
Hector Ghosh
[dex + drive: lol. +1 diff for not having any skill.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Hector Ghosh
[WAIT THIS USES HIS SPECIALTY REROLLING DAT 10]
Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (9) ( success x 1 )
Hector Ghosh
He
doesn't so much follow the signs screwed into every corner along the
winding route from the elevators to the emergency department as he
follows the promise of fresh air and the backwards trajectory of the
people moving towards the path they're escaping. Not booking it down the
hall anymore either but Hector still keeps up a decent clip until they
hit the ER waiting room.
And this is where she doesn't remember
coming last night. They go whisking past the broken limbs and the
nosebleeds and the abdominal pains and the inconsolable and idiopathic
infant wailing and the front desk is unmanned so no one asks them where
the hell they think they're going.
At the sliding doors Hector
slows down the chair so she will not fly from it and lets her stand on
her own and walk as far as the edge of the grimy carpet. The doors fly
open and hit them in the face with cold wet air. It's drizzling. Hector
says, "Alright," and then an arm is across her shoulders. He waits for
her to sling her arms over his neck before he lifts her off the ground
and books across the parking lot.
The antiquated truck is sitting
waiting for them but he doesn't put her in on the driver's side. She's
the one with the license and the years' experience driving. He's the one
with the expired learner's permit that never sublimated into anything
because he dropped off the grid when he was sixteen maybe seventeen
years old he can't remember anymore.
Once she's settled and belted
in he sprints around the front of the vehicle and climbs in. Sits there
for a moment hoping muscle memory will come back and punch him in the
back of the head.
Hand brake off: okay.
It's in neutral: swell.
Ignition. Fuck. He has to reverse.
"I
hate this," he sings as he slings his arm around the back of the
vehicle like he's seen her do before and executes the world's slowest
sloppiest seventeen-point reverse turn. But he doesn't grind her gears
when he shifts from Reverse to First and he doesn't peel out and he
doesn't hit anything.
They're in the goddamn clear.
Lola Hawkes
They
reach the edge of the emergency room, and Lola is urged up out of the
chair to walk with him to the parking lot. She complies, and when they
reach the pavement outside she has thrown on her leather jacket and
zipped it up. Hector put his arm behind her shoulders and she glanced
at him, lifted her eyebrows and offered him a small grin, then held his
shoulders and helped to support her own weight while his other arms
tucked under her knees.
They make it across the parking lot on
long, well-traveled legs and Hector tosses open the passenger door and
deposits Lola in the seat. She eyed him cautiously as he ran around the
front of the truck, but buckled herself in anyways and leaned back to
watch him drive.
He cursed about hating this -- he could be
talking about driving her giant crotchety old truck, or about this
entire night of worrying and day of even worse stress. Lola agreed with
a low vocalization in her throat but nothing more. It took him a
while, but he'd backed out of their parking spot finally and was able to
set the vehicle into rocking and swaying motion. Out of the parking
lot, onto the street, and soon enough onto the interstate as well.
If
Hector doesn't say anything during the truck ride, neither does Lola.
She looks out the passenger window in a half-resting faraway manner, and
unless he speaks up that's all she does, while Hector presumably just
focuses on driving.
When they rock and rattle their way up the
gravel road that just turns into tire tracks in the dirt after a while,
until they are finally home and able to put the truck into park. When
the truck has stopped and is still, Lola unbuckles but doesn't open her
door just yet. Instead, she reaches across the truck's bench seat and
rests her hand on Hector's thigh, just above the knee. Not to seduce,
hardly that at all. Rather, to reach out for support, and to lend it
herself.
This is Lola we're talking about. She isn't the
strongest with her words, or expressing her emotions. Of course she
isn't the one who breaks the silence.
Hector Ghosh
Times
like this she has to feel a sliver of gratitude that the Garou she
chose was a moondancer and not a warrior. He feels like a warrior,
scares humans like a warrior, can tell tales of battles and fallen
comrades like a warrior, but he does not lose himself to the keen of the
warsong. When he stands up to speak it is from experience and history.
Not from instinct or honor.
But he is an honorable wolf. He
respects territory and respects Kinfolk and protects those who cannot
protect themselves. Rescues those who need rescuing. Would have claimed
her if Lola indicated she wanted no hassle from other wolves. Would have
stood up at the moot and announced their partnership.
He told
Tamsin he doesn't care if an Athro arrives at the door to grab her by
the hair and take her off to his cave. It was a joke. She'd shoot the
bastard before he had a chance to fight him. It would not be an
honorable challenge but they haven't had to think about it yet. They've
only shared a bed since the last waxing gibbous moon.
And he
drives like this is the most stressful thing he's ever had to do in his
life. Hector is focused but he also clenches the steering wheel like he
doesn't trust it and flinches hard like he's about to bare his teeth
when he has to start shifting into higher gears and he buckles his
seatbelt only so a state trooper will not pull him over. Growls a couple
of times when someone cuts him off and takes a hard-hard breath when
someone honks for no goddamn reason but he does not scream at the other
drivers and he does not take out his terror on the inside of the
vehicle.
It is terror. This vehicle weighs more than he would if
he were in his war form and if he crashes Lola will be right back in the
bed she just left. The little picture from the ultrasound machine is
tucked inside the pink belongings bag but he knows it's there now.
Laying his hand over her flat abdomen hadn't told him anything but Lola
had said his name. He was moving too fast to hear the rest of the
sentence. It isn't just his woman who he's driving home at like
fifty-four miles an hour because he's shaking at the thought of
something happening while he's driving.
At the terminus of the
driveway he yanks on the hand brake and kills the engine. A huge sigh
and he sinks back into the seat and scrubs his face. Her hand grips his
thigh and Hector covers it with his own. The rings he wears have
absorbed the heat from his flesh and he's all but permanently indented
his fingers gripping the wheel so hard. When he collects her hand in his
own the terror is gone. He does not grip her hand. He laces their
fingers together and looks over at her.
He isn't an Ahroun. He's
the one who tends to break silences. Half the time with jokes. Now is
not one of those times. He sounds like his heart is still racing even
though they're parked and home and safe.
"... we're gonna have a baby?"
Lola Hawkes
The
drive back should be terrifying because the young man drives like he's a
teenager. It should be frustrating because he's going 55 MPH in a 65
MPH zone. Lola just takes the time to process. To think ahead a couple
months down the line when she needs to start dedicating a room to a
child and adjusting wardrobe and not going out on these patrols and--
man that sounds awful, that last part.
She starts thinking back
instead. Tries to recall details from the night before. She does
remember Milton tossing a manilla folder of bloody files into her lap
and asking her to hold them while he carried her down the stairs. She
remembers that they fled the instant the monster stopped moving and made
no efforts to hide the body. She remembers that Milton didn't know
where the nearest hospital was and she managed to remember that one was
just up the street, thankfully. She remembers him saying that police
would only take seven minutes to respond in this neighborhood, and that
they had to flea not just for the sake of her health but because police
would be responding to her gunshots.
She remembers passing out in the Ragabash's arms and almost dying.
She
doesn't know if the files they grabbed held information that was worth
her blood. She doesn't know if the body was ever cleaned up. She's
scared to check the news. Worried about the consequences for her injury
and their consequent sloppiness.
The truck comes to a stop in
front of the shed (really, it's a free standing two car garage, but Lola
keeps calling it a damn shed anyways) and Hector places his hand over
Lola's when she reaches for him. She relied on him to break the
silence, and reliably enough she did. He asks if they're going to have a
baby, and Lola's answer is to make a noise that's somewhere between a
wretched sob and a loud laugh.
"Yeah. Yeah. The man said it's
still intact." Her brow furrows, and her chest aches to remember that
the doctor was grim even when informing her of this-- he didn't think
the baby would make it. Lola could only wonder if the healing gourd's
magic could reach so far as an embryo. She could hope, at least. She
doesn't say this out loud, but Hector's not stupid. He was raised in a
house full of doctors and future doctors. He's probably figured that
out himself.
Hector Ghosh
She could feel blind
violence if it were bubbling up from the well within him. Their hands
rest together but they're on opposite ends of the cab's bench. When she
makes that noise Hector untangles their fingers and pushes the arm rest
up if it isn't folded back already. Slides as close to the center as he
can get before his big feet and his skinny legs get in the way and then
he puts his right arm around her shoulders to haul her closer.
"Hey..."
Still
as they are their thoughts of the future and their understanding of the
exam begin to set off in different directions. His end up doubling back
to follow hers. A baby he can think of in terms of decades and what it
will mean for the Nation but for the next however-many months it means
Lola won't be able to do things she is used to doing not because of
anybody stopping her but because of anatomy and physiology. The doctor
told her in unemotional Spanish that the pregnancy was still intact but
it might not stay that way.
The poor bastard had intended to come
back and sit down and talk to her about her options. Tell her how far
along she was and inquire about the father and give her a referral to
Planned Parenthood. Then the father came tearing in. Sorted that right
quick.
Hector holds her against his side and in his arms and
smooths hair back from her face. The bun is mussed from resting against
the pillow and they both stink of hospital now, she more than he.
Doesn't stop him from kissing her brow and her temple and her cheek.
Whatever he can find while he's soothing her.
A thought grips him
and he rests his left hand against the side of her face. Then he sees
her and the entirety of the situation settles in his brain and he
breathes like breathing was not a priority for a moment.
"We're...
holy shit. No, we are, you're okay. You're okay. It's... the... I...
the water spirit healed you, anything that was wrong with you, even if
you had a cavity you don't anymore. It's okay, I know it is. -- Oh my
god, Lala. We're gonna have a baby."
Well that's about the worst
goddamn way a person could find out. Hector looks like he doesn't know
whether to faint or start laughing so he just hugs her again.
"I
love you." He can't hug her tight enough. "I mean it. I love you so
much. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I should have been there. Let's go
inside."
Lola Hawkes
She's soothed and comforted
because of the noise she'd made, when all of the stress and anxiety and
terror from almost dying (almost losing another life) caused her strong
shoulders to buckle, just for a moment. She was red in the face, her
hair was trying to escape the bun and hung in wisps all around her
face. There's chunks down in the back, laying on the collar of her
jacket.
Hector scoots into the middle of the bench and puts his
arm around her and pulls her against his side, hugs her close and kisses
her face and cheek. She takes the comfort that's offered, leans into
his shoulder, into his side, and tries to be strong again.
We're okay, he tells her. The water spirit would have healed anything and everything.
Holy shit, we're gonna have a baby.
"Hey,
it wasn't your mission. They needed a Kin, and they needed someone
good with computers-- that's why they sent who they did. You've got
your job, that was mine." His was still coming, and the fact that there
was no guarantee he would return was suddenly a much heavier, much more
worrisome reality to deal with. He says for them to go inside, and she
couldn't agree more.
"I love you, too. Let's go in. I want to
shower." And inside they go, the truck left on the dirt path, Lola in
hospital socks and a gown and a leather jacket, tugging her hair down
out of its bun as she walks. Once inside she will, true to form, take a
shower. Wash the smell of rubbing alcohol and sanitized air out of her
hair and off her skin. Dress in her own clothes. Spend the rest of
the day at home-- outside watching the rain from the porch, inside
telling the story of the night before to Hector, sending texts and
making phone calls to be reassured that the situation was handled and
the information they found was helpful.
By the skin of her teeth, she was back home, and they both knew in different ways just how close a call it really was.
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