[MINGLE] Worried/Sick 1: Symptoms Manifest & Reaction

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Anywhere; multiple locations
WHEN: Apx. 13-18 November
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Serious illness and reactions to such

IMPORTANT NOTES: This is the first of two mingles. Please see the timing and general event details here.

Illness Presents and Putting Heads Together will have their own top-levels in this post, but you may make separate top-levels for whatever you like! Anything is welcome, as long as it tangentially relates to the Worried/Sick plot.

Please keep in mind the established plot details, but creative license is welcome and encouraged as long as it doesn't step on toes.

Comments

OTA

[spoileralert]

Steph has never really done 'sick' well. She takes care of herself, sure. Having a nurse for a mother tends to do that to a person. But being sick is miserable, and she hates being grounded when she can muscle through it instead. Like any reasonable person, she thinks to herself.

She's been going about her business more or less as usual, though a great deal grumpier than normal. A cough, a headache, the occasional chill, an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion, none of this is very alarming. But it is, of course, exhausting. So she takes breaks when she can.

She falls asleep just about everywhere she lands. She sits in a chair in the inn after dropping off her kills from the day and falls asleep in it. She sits under a tree after a very sad workout and falls asleep on the ground. She even sits down on a random doorstep on the way home and falls asleep against the door.

Everything hurts. Let her sleep?

[locum_tenens]

Being a synth means never getting sick yourself, which would look suspicious, but it seems that there are others immune. Typically, Niska would remove herself from the affairs of humans, and especially whiny, sick humans, but she's been bored enough that she wants to give her medical knowledge a bit of a test.

On her rounds, she finds yet another woman who appears impacted by the illness and she draws out some of the smelling salts she's created, bending down to put them beneath her nose, hopefully shock her into alertness.

"Awake," she insists. "That's no place to be sleeping, especially when you need proper rest."

[spoileralert]

Slow, deep breathing gives Steph the full effect of the ammonia and turns first into a startled cough and then into a hacking one. She can only half sit up while turning so that she's coughing into the ground and not on anyone or anything that might not appreciate it.

When the cough starts to subside she rubs at her chest, sore from coughing. The rest of her is pretty sore too, but not quite so urgently.

"What?" she finally manages to ask, her voice beginning to croak after the abuse on her throat. If she heard what the woman said she's forgotten it now.

[locum_tenens]

Niska doesn't lean in and there's no sympathy to be found on her face. She might have an encyclopedic knowledge of medicine, but bedside manner is not to be found. "You're ill," she says bluntly. "You need to be lying down somewhere more conducive to allowing your blood to pump and you need fluids."

Giving her a pointed look, she holds a hand out firmly. "Come on, you're going to the infirmary with me." It's not a question.

[spoileralert]

Steph rubs at her aching head, taking a moment to remember where she is. Right... she was working out. She can definitely feel the impressions of dirt where she was lying on her side.

"It's just a bad cold," she protests, though she doesn't hesitate to take the hand and drag herself exhausted to her feet.

"Maybe the flu. I just need a little sleep, then I can go home and take care of myself."

[locum_tenens]

Niska pulls the woman up with ease, pressed lips together showing how utterly unimpressed she is with that opinion. "I know human anatomy well enough to know that you're sicker than you think." If pressed, she'd cite the appearance, but she can read the temperature and the exhaustion from her moves.

"Come hydrate at the hospital, rest there, and then I'll think about releasing you," she says, as if she's being kind.

[spoileralert]

Steph coughs some more, but this time she can raise her arm to cough into her elbow and not Niska's face.

"Like to see you try," she mumbles, mostly to herself. She's never been so tired... No, wait, yes she has. She's been a lot more tired and in a lot more pain. She takes a deep breath and stands a little straighter.

"Alright, but I still think there are nicer places I could rest."

[locum_tenens]

Niska has crushed the foreheads of metal-built machines before. She can absolutely do more than try, but the look on her face is bored and passive, because this girl has done nothing to her the way Hester had hurt her family.

"Then name them. I'll stay with you until I'm sure you're not going to die." And, lest anyone think she cares, adds. "It wouldn't do well for people to think I'd murdered you if you turn up dead."

[spoileralert]

Steph definitely feels like she could take her if her whole body didn't feel so... fuzzy. Niska is right though, she would desperately love a mattress under her. Even a cot with some give to it.

"Home is..." She looks around and finds herself totally lost. The buildings are familiar, she just can't place them in her mental map of the village.

"God, where am I? It's, like, red? And near the inn. The first in, the, um, south one."

[locum_tenens]

Niska rolls her eyes, wondering (not for the first time) how humanity had survived given their seeming weakness in the face of an illness. Or, rather, how stubborn they are when it comes to taking care of themselves. She bends down to help haul the woman up, bracing her with her strength (which is more than a typical human's, but with her so sick, she doubts it will be fully noticed).

"We'll walk past all of them," she says, "and when you see the one that's yours, tell me and I'll help you inside to lie down." Or to get worse, but that's her decision.

[spoileralert]

Steph's head spins for a moment as her very weak balance is thrown off.

"That works," she generously concedes, then groans as the spinning turns into pounding. It takes a little while for the pain to die back down to its previous obnoxious level. Finally she starts looking at houses. The order makes no sense to her addled mind, but she'll know hers when she sees it. There aren't that many red houses around.

[scathefires]

When Jason sees Steph unconscious on the ground beneath a tree, he of course assumes the worst, and hurries over to check on her. He cares about her a lot, and if something happened to her - well, let's be real, he'd probably first blame himself, and then go on a violent rampage.

Luckily for everyone in the village, once he's made it to her side, it becomes apparent that she's not dead or gravely injured, just asleep. Jason exhales a small breath of relief and reaches for her shoulder to gently shake her back to consciousness.

"Hey ... Steph. Wake up."

[spoileralert]

She groans to be woken up with shaking, which combines with her fever dreams to make her feel a little dizzy. Grudgingly she opens her eyes and recognizes the man demanding consciousness from her.

"What," she asks, much in the tone of one who's been woken up to answer a question and expects to go right back to sleep. She manages to turn her head away before she starts coughing.

[scathefires]

"You fell asleep right out in the open - that's what." He's a little gruff, but only because his anxiety about something harming her has been kicked up. That's not normal behavior, and the cause is a little more evident when she coughs.

"You're sick," he says, and immediately feels stupid for saying it, because it's obvious. "How long've you been feeling like this?"

[spoileralert]

“Huh?” His explanation confuses her for a moment, but looking at the ground she does appear to be outside. She fell asleep outside? With no defenses or anything? Well that’s not right. That’s not right at all. She coughs again.

“Uh... maybe a day or two, I think? How long was I out?”

[killorder]

Jake isn't sure how he came out on the upper side of this, but he's not willing to hide just because, so far, he isn't showing symptoms. So instead he works on keeping Cougar comfortable and hydrated as best he can but he knows there are others dealing with this as well.

So when he makes trips to get stew from the Inn, he notices someone beneath a tree, maybe asleep and maybe... God, he hopes she's asleep as he moves closer. Quiet, kneeling down beside her so he had a better ankle on the rise and fall of her chest. Frowning, realizing that she is definitely looking worse for wear.

Shifting back slightly, he tugged off his neon pink sweatshirt. Cold in the tee shirt he's in, but not thinking about that as he moves slowly to settle the sweatshirt over her like a blanket.

[spoileralert]

Steph coughs in her sleep and shifts under the sweatshirt, pulling it tighter around herself as well as an unconscious person can. Sadly in the process she loses her balance and starts to slide roughly down the bark.

[killorder]

The moment she shifts, Jake moves eagerly to help her, to catch her before she falls too far. Unwilling to let her just fall to the ground, even if he is terrified that she will wake up swinging - it's happened to him before - but not enough so that he'd let her hit the ground.

[spoileralert]

That's more or less exactly what happens. She rouses with a confused grunt and finding herself in the arms of a stranger attempts to punch him in the face. Luckily for Jake she's so tired, achy and feverish that whatever force her punch has misses its mark and is directed at the thick part of his skull instead.

[killorder]

"Whoa whoa..." And he doesn't have enough time to dug, taking the punch with a gasp at being hit. Wide eyed and stunned, though he doesn't pull away from her, still trying to keep her safe from tumbling to the ground.

"Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

[spoileralert]

She struggles for a moment, wide-eyed and breathing fast, before she gets enough of a look at her surroundings to know she isn't in her nightmare anymore and she isn't actually being restrained. She takes a few breaths to calm down, each a little longer than the last. As she stills it becomes apparent that she's shaking slightly.

"Huh? How'd I get out here?" If she was doing something before she fell asleep she hasn't woken up enough to remember it.

[killorder]

"Uhmmm.... I found you here," he admits, looking a little sheepish then, worrying she might not believe that. "You looked cold and probably shouldn't be napping outside? I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Which is true, but now he's feeling a bit like a creep, even if he wasn't being a creep but he could understand she might not believe that, especially if she didn't know how she got out there.

"Are you feeling okay?"

[spoileralert]

She rubs the side of her face in an attempt to force wakefulness as she looks over at a random building, letting her mind wander.

"Must've fallen a-" She stops short, coughing into her elbow. In short no, she is not feeling okay.

[killorder]

"Definitely fell asleep," he murmurs, trying to keep his voice down not to upset her, or to cause any pain if she has a headache or anything. "You know, maybe we should get you up to the hospital, let someone there have a look at you and make sure you're okay. I mean, if you're okay with that."

Because he doesn't want to force her, and he's hoping not to get hit again.

[spoileralert]

Coughing definitely makes her head pound, but now that she's a little more aware of her surroundings she's also aware that a strange man is holding her in his arms. Well, she's seen him around town, so he's not that strange, but stranger than she wants someone holding her to be. She pushes him away, gently... a little too gently, actually. Her arms feel like achy noodles.

"Hospital seems a little-" She's interrupted by more coughing. "Extreme."