[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

[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.

[locum_tenens]

Niska was built to be a tutor and a teacher and support, but she was not programmed with empathy, which is why she's working so hard on refraining from rolling her eyes. "When did you start feeling your symptoms?" she asks, seeing as that's possibly the most pertinent question.

This is just a brief kindness. Solving the disease will be much more interesting, honestly.

[spoileralert]

Steph has to think about that for a moment.

"Yesterday, I think?" She covers a brief coughing fit in the inside of her elbow. Finished, she rubs at her aching throat.

[locum_tenens]

"Name them," Niska demands next.

It's not only for her to find out what's happening, it's a test for the girl to keep herself coherent and walking, focused on the actual problem at hand rather than wanting to go back to sleep and collapse wherever she likes.

[spoileralert]

"Cough," she answers immediately, her voice a little rough from that symptom just now. She has to think a little about the others. What has she been feeling that isn't normal? She's just so tired.

"Fatigue... headache... fever, maybe. Flu stuff."

[locum_tenens]

If that's the case, then hydration will be the most important thing. Niska knows that she doesn't intend to let the woman simply go off and feel awful, but it seems rather simple. "Then we'll get you in a bed and start to hydrate you," she notes.

"If you don't feel better after that, perhaps you should see a proper doctor," she recommends.

[spoileralert]

She nods tiredly.

"I will. Promise." Then she's overtaken by another coughing fit, and has to stop until it passes. Somehow she finds herself thinking fondly of the times she's been sick and only had the sneezes. At least then she could enjoy some hot soup. Now the thought of eating has been making her nauseous.

"That one," she's finally able to rasp, pointing to a small red house just a little down the road.

[locum_tenens]

Niska hefts her up when it appears that she's getting weaker, hoping the woman won't necessarily notice that perhaps Niska shouldn't be able to do what she's doing. After all, she's strong, why should that be questioned?

"Hold on, because I don't want to carry an unconscious body around," she says, more for her benefit than anyone else's. "They'll think I've kidnapped you."

[spoileralert]

"I'm not-" she coughs twice more, like aftershocks, "-passing out." At least she hopes not. She's having a hard time keeping her eyes focused after that coughing fit and the resulting pounding headache. She's far too feverish to notice something like how Niska can so easily prop her up with just one arm.

[locum_tenens]

Niska gives her an amused look, because it sounds all too much like what other humans would stubbornly insist when they're clearly not up for a task. "Of course you're not," is placating, but hardly soft. There's certainly no empathy in her tone.

Depositing her at the doorstep, Niska opens it with a push. "Go," she insists. "And sleep. I'll see if someone wants to come and check that you're still alive later."

[spoileralert]

“Uh huh,” Steph intones as she catches her balance again. It takes a mighty effort to drag herself through the doorway after having so much help getting here.

“Cool. Ask Jason. Thanks. ‘Night.”

She just barely remembers to head for the kitchen for a glass of water. She fails to remember to close the door behind her.

[locum_tenens]

Niska might not have the most empathy, but she does at least have common decency. While she's not about to go in after her, she still makes sure to close the door behind her, rolling her eyes at what's been on display so far.

Best to get to the hospital, she suspects. If one person is this sick, she has to imagine more will be soon to come.