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WHO: Ravi Chakrabarti
WHERE: Hospital
WHEN: April 22
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: General illness/unhappiness of digestion
STATUS: Open!

Ravi hates everything.

No, that's too kind. Ravi loathes everything with the fires of hell layered upon teenybopper performances and CDC-firing bosses on top of that. Ever since he'd woken up from the morning after the feast, he's felt sort of off. Then, this morning, 'off' became the fiery guts of Dante's circles of hell, at least four through seven. He's trudged to the hospital on the auspices that he might work, but truthfully, as soon as he's arrived, he collapses face down on the nearest bed and manages to groan. Even that ends up hurting his body, peering out through blurry vision at a shape that seems to be coming in the door.

What he hasn't actually noticed is the rash, mainly because he's been so occupied with feeling miserable. He turns onto his back and stares at the too-bright ceiling, squinting as he drapes his arm over his eyes, wishing death upon himself.

"Why?" he complains, searching for something to drink because he doesn't even know what would make him feel better. He doesn't even know what it is, because this has no hallmark of food poisoning and he doesn't think this is a disease that he's seen before. Or maybe it is and he's just too discombobulated to actually tell what's going on.

He stares at the person, squinting and reaching out with a needy hand. "Please tell me you've come to put me out of my misery," he pleads.

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Beverly isn't usually in the habit of overworking herself, but when it comes to a patient's survival, she can sometimes make an exception. Being overworked never ends well and she can't help someone else if she's not working at her peak. Strange illnesses usually make her adjust that ideal, especially if she has ha hard time coming up with a diagnosis, let alone a treatment on the fly. With as little technology and medicine as they have to work with, that's even more true.

So when she walks through the door to find one of her fellows looking miserable, she makes her way immediately over, all thoughts of her own comfort completely disregarded in favor of helping her colleague. Taking his hand in one of hers, she presses the back of her free hand to his forehead in a very primitive way of checking his temperature.

"How long have you been like this?" she asks, completely ignoring his plea. There's no need to get into that and he wouldn't even be asking her if he'd known her long enough. She's here to help, yes, but not the way he seems to be expecting.

Ravi lets his head fall back against a very comfortable pillow, but his neck itches in the process, which makes him reach back and discover little bumpy things on the back of his neck, whining a little as he opens one eye to peer at blurry blonde, but the familiar voice helps him, in this case. "This morning, it got bad," he admits, gesturing to the back of his neck.

"Rash, there's bumps, something," he tries to get her to look, even if his whole body aches to move just enough to show her. Honestly, this is why he's always been grateful for a strong immune system. He's terrible at being a patient. "Dry mouth, bumps, vision is blurred, something is happening, some sort of disease."

If she had her Starfleet medical equipment, let alone a proper sickbay, this would be easy. She feels as though she's flying blind and she hates that. It won't stop her from trying to do her job, but it does make that duty much harder.

When he moves, she takes a look at the rash, her expression remaining stalwart for now. Concern seeps into her mind, but she doesn't show it, hiding behind her doctor's mask for the moment. "This doesn't sound like anything specific I know of," she says thoughtfully, reaching for his shoulders to gently coax him back down onto the bed. It could be a lot of things and ruling out each one will take precious time they might not have. "I'm going to monitor your symptoms and see what else I can find with the equipment at hand."

The very archaic equipment, though she feels that goes without saying. In the effort of having some semblance of a decent bedside manner, she refrains from commenting.

"Do you feel flushed or achy?"

What she wouldn't give for a tricorder, a hypospray, and her normal supply of medicine and vaccines.

Edited 2017-04-25 14:42 (UTC)

Ravi feels like he's having trouble swallowing, but he can breathe just fine, so there's no obstructions and it's probably just that he's incredibly thirsty. Peering at Beverly through his squinted vision, he tries to move a little more and nods. "Achy," he agrees, but he isn't sure how much of that is contributed by the rash he's got going on.

"Thirsty," he admits, incredibly parched as he works himself to a vertical position that's mostly him slumping against a pillow behind him. "Do we have any water?" Ravi asks, his words scratchy.

It could be the rash or whatever else this disease is doing to him that's causing the aching. It could be a fever or something far more sinister. Whatever it is, Beverly knows she needs to figure it out as soon as possible. She just wishes she had some actual decent technology to work with. That, at least, is something all of the doctors agree on, despite the differing background they have each come from.

"The good news is that I don't think it's contagious." Mostly because she hasn't contracted it yet, though the rash does look something like what the ancient disease measles would have. At least as far as textbooks used to show. That disease was wiped out a long time ago for Beverly, so all she has to go on there is historical testimony and research. "The bad news is I'm not sure what it is."

A drink she should be able to manage. "I'll see if I can find some," she tells him, even as she tries to keep him from overdoing it. "Just be careful, all right? It doesn't look like you have much strength right now, so you need to rest."

"No, definitely not," Ravi agrees, feeling miserable and squinty and generally awful. It's probably related to all the food, he surmises, but this isn't food poisoning at all, it's not even intoxication, so he's not sure what it could be. Not to mention, he'd seen plenty of people eat at the feast and it seems like only a certain number of people are in the same situation as he is.

"I'm not going anywhere, I am fully prepared to whine for days," Ravi assures Beverly, clutching the blankets tighter as he drapes them around himself, trying not to look pitiful, but it is a bit hard, at that.

It doesn't appear to be food poisoning from what she can tell, though if it were that would be easier to deal with. At least from a medical standpoint. Beverly would have to be sure Ravi didn't overdo things and was kept hydrated and fed when he could keep things down, but it would be a lot easier than some mystery disease with measles-like bumps.

She hopes it's not measles. Otherwise, they're all in trouble.

A wry smile crosses her face as she moves to find a glass and a water supply. It doesn't take her too long, at least, and soon she's back. She might have to keep a good supply of that in here while she's around, too. And in her house.

"All right. Can you think back to what you did last night? What did you eat?"

Time to try to rule out some sort of food-borne illness.

He gives her a face that implies she's not going to like the answer he gives her, mainly because he's not sure that he could isolate what he ate. "It might be better to tell you what I didn't eat," Ravi says, in the tone of voice that a child might use to tell his Mum that he's drawn all over the walls. Even what he didn't eat is a small list, starting at the salad, stretching to the rice pilaf, and ending right around some of the meats he just hadn't had time to get to.

"Did you get any of the food?" he wonders. "Maybe we should be starting with analyzing it for spores or mold or something..."

Beverly's lips twist wryly. "Well, that's a start. It doesn't help me rule out food poisoning." She still doesn't think that's what this is, but at this point she can't really rule anything out and it's frustrating.

"I did. I can bring a sample up to analyze once someone else has joined us. Can't leave you here without anyone to complain to," she teases gently. "I also ate some yesterday, but I feel fine. Either you're allergic to something in the food that I'm not or you were just lucky enough to get the bad parts of it."

He's not sure he's even seen a variant of food poisoning do this before, but the truth is also that he's too weak and feeble and pathetic to really put much attention to what's happening to him outside of it hurting, him being miserable, and wanting it to be better immediately. "So why are you fine?" he demands, not relishing the idea of a scratch test when he's already so ill.

"We should find out if anyone else is sick," he says, trying to stand up and flopping over to collapse in the bed, a little. "What if this is a targeted attack?"

"That I don't know," she admits. It's a weird situation, for sure. She's never seen food poisoning in Terrans work like this, either, but if it was some sort of alien food, there's no telling what kind of allergy might spring up in a human. At this point, it's hard to rule anything out.

"I will try to find out," she corrects, pressing her hands to his shoulders to keep him down. "You need to rest. Honestly, you're just as stubborn as one of my best friends."

Jean-Luc never liked coming in for his monthly check-ups, usually she had to hound him into showing or drag him into sickbay practically by his ear, and he was a terrible patient. Ravi seems to be just like him in so many ways.

"I don't want to rest, I want to find out why I feel like I've developed smallpox," he complains, aware of the hyperbole, but also aware that if he doesn't describe it to colourful fullness, someone might miss out on exactly how sick he wants to complain about being. "I can be helpful and sitting," Ravi points out, seeing as he might feel awful, but he's still aware they're a few hands down a normal hospital and not just that, but he's not the only one who's sick.

"Tell me what to do, doctor," he gets out past his scratchy, dry throat.

Not for the first time does Beverly wish they had Starfleet and technology and vaccines. At least then she could rule out just about every known disease that affects humans. She folds her arms over her chest and regards him shrewdly.

"As long as you stay right there," she tells him pointedly. "If I feel you're overdoing it or you try to get up again, I really will have you lying there and counting the dots on the ceiling."

If there are dots. She hasn't really looked in all honesty.

"If I had a decent way to analyze a blood sample, that would be a good start."

Decent, as in Starfleet technology level, which is, again, frustratingly impossible.

Ha, Ravi's already counted the dots, take that, Beverly.

He's not sick enough to actually say that out loud, however, because he still has a fairly good sense of self-preservation, no matter how terrible he feels. "You can borrow my microscope," he offers, because he's cleaned and sanitized several of the slides, which means they're ready to use again. "I'm not exactly rushing to be excited about giving you my blood," he admits, "but I'd rather feel better."

Even if he is going to miss out on all the analyzing, which feels like a double gut-punch. He has to feel miserable and he misses out on science.

Well, he can count a second time, so there.

A microscope is also a start, though Beverly doubts it has the range and specifications of the ones she's used to using. She sighs at the rest of his comment. Not that she can blame him, she isn't exactly hyped up to be using something as barbaric as a needle and syringe, but they don't have a lot of options.

"Honestly, I'm still getting used to the lack of decent equipment here," she says with a hint of frustration. It isn't meant to be superiority speaking, simply observation. "If you have a better idea, I'm all ears."

On the plus side, she'll at least offer him an analysis as she goes, see if he's coherent enough to offer anything while she works. They could tag-team it that way.

Ravi frowns and gives her a wary look because they might be a little back in time, but needles haven't changed that much, at least not in the mechanism, but this his sick-addled mind clears just enough for him to remember that she's not from his time. "What do they use where you come from?" he asks, gesturing to one of the medical kits he'd stolen, where there should still be some disinfectant and a few disposable needles for her to use to draw the blood.

He's not going to like it, but he's used to samples, especially when he uses himself as a non-zombie control for so much of his work back home.

Beverly hesitates, even though she knows she'd walked right into that one. There's still a lot she isn't comfortable with admitting, even from a medical standpoint. Maybe she can gloss over some of the details. That won't be admitting too much. Hopefully.

"Let's just say that everything we do is entirely non-invasive," she explains slowly as she grabs the kit and picks out what she'll need to do this. "And I'd be able to heal the pinprick of a needle in a nano-second if we did have to use one. Being here has its own learning curve for me."

Edited 2017-05-08 15:32 (UTC)

Ravi thinks he must be hallucinating because there's no way she's said what she just did. Things like that don't exist, honestly, and if they did, he'd be the first one in line jumping up and down desperately and trying to run away with it to selfishly hoard the technology himself. "You live in a fairytale world of fancy needles," he says, the fever possibly starting to boil his thoughts just a little.

That, or it's the constant bedrest that's starting to make him more than a little far from trustworthy when it comes to what he's saying. "That can't exist, it's too perfect."

Beverly's lips twist. Either he's just not willing to believe her or he's so far into this fever that he won't remember this in the future.

"Yes, it's a perfect fairytale world where aliens exist, humans aren't exclusively born on Earth, and technology can heal almost anything," she continues in a tone that usually conveys a joke, all the while prepping the needle and disinfecting it. "If I lived in a world like that, why would I need to know how to use one of these?"

Which she clearly does, as she moves to find a vein in his arm to extract some of his blood. Not too much, but enough to hopefully provide something of an answer.

Ravi wants to live in a world where he has the option for space travel and time travel and the ability to hop between universes and meet aliens. He's met some of them here, but they were all disappointingly human-shaped, which means that he's still on the lookout for others.

"How come I meet all these space travelers and none of you look any different?" he complains, scratching at the bumps and hives on his neck. "It's not fair, I want to meet a proper alien. I deserve it, by now."

Hopping between universes is never all that it's cracked up to be, really. Beverly has had more than enough of dealing with that. And time travel? Don't even get her started. She'd just come back from a trip through time to deal with the Borg of all things. Honestly, she'd really rather be safe at home in her time and her universe.

Aliens, though, are terribly commonplace, though that term has become something of an improper term.

"Well, if I ever see one, I'll let you know," she says with barely-contained amusement as she moves to find the microscope. One step down, several to go. "Should I ask what you would do if you did meet one?"

"Probably just touch any different appendages," he admits. He's tired and fuzzy and the fever is likely making him say a few things that he wishes his tact would stop before they come tumbling out of his mouth, but here he is, unable to help himself. "Ask to take pictures, blood samples, other samples," he drones on, "The same as I would have for any of the Seattle zombies," Ravi says, not realizing what he's talking about.

The fever is definitely cooking his brain and later, he'll care, but right now, he's more concerned with his tongue. He sticks it out at Beverly, mindless of what he's just said. "Ith my tongue thwollen?" he asks, sticking it out at her. "Are there hives?"

It’s the mention of zombies that catches Beverly’s attention. She isn’t entirely sure if he means actual zombies or if it’s a pop culture reference a couple hundred years ahead of her time. What she does know is that it makes her think immediately of the Borg, the race of cybernetic zombies. Hivemind cybernetic zombies.

“Well, hopefully those guys don’t have a queen to follow,” she says casually. “I hear zombie queens aren’t very pleasant.”

It’s mostly true. She’s never met the Borg queen face-to-face, but she’s known people who have. And honestly? She never wants to be one of those people.

Ravi sticks his tongue out at her and she can’t help the laugh that bubbles up within her. It’s more than she expected, but then again he seems delirious. Chances are he won’t remember this when he’s back to normal. “Not that I can tell. Does it feel swollen?”

Ravi makes a noise and tries to think about whether there's a queen. "There's a douchebag would-be-king," he says with a disdainful wrinkle of his nose, "but I made him human again, so not a zombie anymore," he says, wishing that he could've left Blaine as he was, but he'd done far too much damage like that. He'd turned Liv, he'd killed Major, and he'd slept with Peyton.

He knows the last isn't the worst, but to Ravi, it sort of feels like it. "It feels too big in my mouth," he complains, "and dry. It's a very dry tongue."

"That's probably why it feels swollen," Beverly comments, barely looking up from her work. Her lips curl upwards with amusement, though. She likes Ravi normally, but this is almost hilarious.

"You did? How'd you manage that?" It almost sounds like the time Beverly had pioneered the techniques to return someone from their life as a Borg drone. If she had the right equipment, she could do it again easily. Well, maybe not easily but she could do it. Here, though? She doesn't expect to ever get that equipment and the surgery is delicate enough with it. She isn't sure she would dare try without.

So if a Borg drone ever turns up, they might be in deep trouble.

"It's still a work in progress, the cure doesn't work permanently. The subjects re-zombify unless you give them an additional cure, but that one causes memory loss," he rambles. "The initial change was biochemistry, tainted drugs mixing with an amped up energy drink that caused...well, it caused Night of the Living Dead," he rambles, reaching up to touch his tongue every once in a while, like he can't exactly believe that it's dry until he checks it, then understands yes, it's dry as he remembers.

"So it was just reverse-engineering the effects using similar ingredients and a lot of lab rats. Rat labs?" he squints. "Rat labs," he says confidently, through his cooked brain.

"That sounds familiar," she comments, doing her best not to laugh at the 'rat labs' part. He really is well and truly fried. Hopefully she can find a cure for this or she might start worrying about the permanent state of his mental faculties.

She had, after all, needed to learn the cybernetic ins and outs of the Borg drones in order to turn Locutus back to Jean-Luc. Many of those implants could never be removed, not without killing the patient, but she had done enough to save him and return him to the person he should be. Not a drone. She can still remember seeing him as a drone, turning that corner inside the cube to see him at the end of the corridor. The eye. The cybernetic implants across his face. Knowing, knowing, that he no longer was her best friend and captain. That he was likely lost forever. That his body would still function, but his mind was long gone.

A shiver runs down her spine that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room.

"Here, I think I've got something. Can you sit up for a few minutes so we can look at this?"

It's nothing, really. She doesn't have a cure or even a real reason why he's feeling like this, but she wants to focus on something that isn't the Borg. Or zombies. And maybe with two sets of eyes, even if one of them is a little off right now, they can come up with something.

Ravi grimaces at the question, but he thinks that if he doesn't, it's only going to get worse. He can practically feel his brain cooking and every moment that passes with him not getting the temperature down is a minute spent worrying about the damage it's doing. Well, it would be, but the fever is making him a touch stupid.

He nods, swallowing with a great deal of effort, and trying to take his mind off it. "What did you find?"[ ]

Beverly will worry about his fever enough for the both of them. She shifts to help him see what she's got. "Well, it's not much--" But it's better than worrying about zombies and the Borg, that's for sure.

Edited 2017-05-23 02:10 (UTC)

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