Breakdown - Logs 1-3
Jul. 27th, 2021 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsMaya and Nica arrive at the Claremont Hospital for a day of volunteering.
"You okay?" Nica asked, glancing over at Maya as she turned off the ignition. They'd borrowed one of the mansion's fleet of cars for their day at Claremont Hospital, since it was likely they'd be finishing too late for public transport. Maya's phobia of driving seemed to have improved over the years, but Nica knew she wasn't comfortable with being in a car.
"Yeah, just doing my breathing."
Maya had improved, thanks to lots of both exposure therapy and a very understanding therapist who didn't push her when pushing would have caused worse trauma then the initial incident. Maya would always be thankful to Haller for giving her good suggestions for people who could help her. Not that she liked cars in any sense of the word, she preferred her bike in all ways. Especially since it gave her the freedom to move through traffic like an eel through water even in the worst of traffic jams but for this particular day, she'd let Nica drive her.
"What do you think it's going to be like?"
"No idea." Nica was taking care to face Maya and shape her words, given the lack of cochlear implants. "Busy, probably. But it's an awesome chance to see things happening. Instead of on TV." Nica was a big watcher of medical dramas.
"I'm just here for the college application benefits." Maya stated, walking backwards so she could read what Nica was saying on her lips. Nica would warn her if she was going to walk into anyone. "Helping the old and infirm looks great to those stuffed shirts."
"Such philanthropy," Nica replied with a snort and a grin. "And here I was thinking you'd developed community spirit." She was joking, of course - the two friends often teased each other about the differences in their world views. Nica was the optimist, Maya the cynic.
“It’s what the whole gap year is all about, making sure I have a kick ass application.” Maya replied with a shrug and a smile. She needed to be the best if she wanted to change the world, it wouldn’t change itself, after all. “Did Jean say she’d meet us here or inside?”
"Here," a voice spoke up with a smile as Jean came into view wearing her doctor's coat and some emerald green scrubs. "Glad you could make it. I've got a shift in the ER, which you'll be able to get a peek at later in the day. First up, though? Let's get you checked in with your day pass badges and then orientation."
Jean attends a patient in the ER and discovers something unsettling is afoot.
Jean had just finished her second cup of coffee when the doors to the ER opened and EMTs rushed in with a woman on a stretcher. Tossing her empty cup into the trash, she rushed to meet them. "Hey Mickey, what do we got?" she said.
"Female late 30s, GSW to the shoulder. BP's 120 over 80, heart rate 151. Bodega store owner heard a scuffle out in the alley, then a gunshot. Found her outside but she ain't talking," Mickey, the EMT, said.
Jean nodded. "Thanks. Christine, what's open?" she called over to a woman about her age with long brown hair.
The woman looked up from her station. "Uh...trauma 2," she said.
Walking with Mickey and the stretcher, Jean helped them wheel her into an exam room. "Hi there, I'm Dr. Jean Grey. I'm here to take care of you. What's your name?"
Esme didn’t know what was happening but she knew one thing at least - she was in excruciating pain. There was a steady flow of tears coursing down her face, and she felt her one good arm (how was it that she had a good arm and a bad arm now) tighten as her fingers gripped the stretcher.
Swallowing thickly, she turned her head, wincing in pain as she focused anywhere but at the doctor in front of her. Anonymity was the only safety she had. THEY know who she was. It wouldn’t be too long before they knew where she was and she wasn’t about to make it easier.
When the woman wouldn't reply, Jean left the silence for a few moments while she got everything ready.
"I'm going to clean your wound so I can see how bad it is, okay?" she said. She studied her.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
How could Esme say what happened when even she didn't know what happened? How did things get this far? It was too much. No one could be expected to handle this amd here she was, their pawn.... but she had no choice.
Sniffling, she tried to calm her breathing a bit. In. Out. In. Out. Focus on the wall, on the weird little smudge that looked vaguely like a fingerprint. Think about the fingerprint. Try to think of that. Anything but the incident. For the rest of her life, she'd be thinking of Before Incident and After Incident. Before Incident she'd never even seen a gun. After Incident she would be terrified of them. And this doctor...all these questions...
"I don't know," she finally responded. "It happened fast." In her mind, she was answering calmly and rationally. She knew that wasn't the case, that there was a waver, a hitch to her voice that wasn't there before. Her eyes flickered briefly to the doctor, then to her shoulder before back to the smudge. Was she convincing enough? It all depended on that. “My shoulder hurts. Everything hurts.” Her body, her heart... what was her daughter doing right
now? A fresh wave of tears sprung out of her eyes. How scared was her little girl? Esme just had to focus.
"We'll see what we can do about that," Jean said gently. Something felt off. The woman was fearful, evasive, which was understandable after being shot. Her first thought was perhaps a gang. Regardless, it was not anything new.
Waiting until the nurse left, Jean gently dabbed at the blood, quiet for a moment before speaking. "If you need help just let me know. I have to call the police as a requirement for any gunshot wounds, but if someone is after you...they can protect you."
No one can, Esme thought to herself. Instead, she stayed quiet. Things were going exactly how it was explained to her. The caring doctor, the gunshot protocol... her shoulder ached and she wondered how anything could ever go back to the same way again.
“I told you what I know. How can I be expected to remember anything else?”
Jean studied the woman. She was about her age, maybe a year or two older. "Fear can make people do a lot of things," Jean said. She nodded toward her wound.
"I have a feeling you didn't do that to yourself. And that you might have an idea of who did. Am I right?"
This was getting harder than Esme thought. The tears she'd managed to quell earlier started to roll down her face again. Instinctively, she reached up to wipe them away, not realizing which arm she was using until the jolt of pain caused her to cry out. Was it time? How long had she been in here? She wasn't even aware of anything but she knew she had a task to do and maybe it had been long enough.
With a nod, she choked back a sob. "Yes. They're going to find me. Finish it off. They promised they would." And they promised her daughter's safe return too... "I should go. It's not safe here. It's not. No one is safe while I'm here. I just hurt everyone."
Alarm bells were ringing in Jean's head. Something was definitely off here. "You need to tell me who they are," she said, a feeling throwing in the pit of her stomach.
This was it. Show time. Esme's whole part in this stupid awful deception was here. The doctor's interest was piqued, Esme's shoulder was throbbing, and soon, very soon, she'd have her daughter back and in her arms, safe where she belonged. Lowering her voice, she whispered. "They're horrible. They're horrible people who do terrible things, and they know I'm here, they know I came to the hospital, they know you have to report it .... they want that. They want these questions. And I'm telling you, they're terrible." Her voice dropped even more. "The Purifiers." She couldn't help the shudder that followed the name.
Jean narrowed her eyes at the name, not from fear but from anger. It was a name she'd heard more and more in the news over the last few months. Human bigots who would 'purify' the world of mutants by whatever means necessary.
"Yes. They're pretty terrible," she said. Shaking her head, she reached over to grab more gauze but found only a small amount left. The nurse still hadn't come back yet.
"I need to grab some more supplies. I'll be right back. Stay here, okay?"
Pushing her way out of the room, she quickly made her way to the breakroom. This was not looking good.
Jean was correct - things are most certainly not looking good when the Purifiers turn up looking for Jean’s patient..
The ER was full of regular hustle and bustle like any other day. As Jean saw Esme in the trauma room, things ran like normal. Until the screaming started.
The doors slammed open again, this time not by a medical team but instead by a large group of men and women dressed in body armor adorned with a stylized cross. A security guard pulled out his gun.
"Stop right--" His words were left as a gurgle as a red hole appeared in the middle of his forehead and left red and pink matter on the wall behind him. He slumped to the floor.
Christine started to reach for a panic button under the desk but one of the men in body armor pointed a gun at her.
"Uh uh uh. Hands where I can see them," he said.
Hands trembling, Christine raised them above her head.
"Atta girl." Matthew Risman's voice was low and rich, and even without seeing him, Christine could practically hear the sneer in it. He strode in, his eyes flickering for a moment to the security guard who he'd shot with his rifle moments earlier. Then he looked to the squad he'd assembled. "If anyone tries to leave," he said, "shoot them. They'll get the message."
A walkie-talkie on his belt crackled, and he reached for it. "Yeah," he responded. "We're in. Deploy the field."
"You got it," a voice replied on the other side of the walkie talkie.
The air around them seemed to feel ionized, and a low crackle was heard before a bright blue light shot up from the ground outside of the ER doors. Sparks shot from an ambulance sitting out in the bay that had been cut in half, a short wail of its siren sputtering out with an almost confused whine.
A patient looking out the window on the third floor let out a gasp as a bird flew into a shimmering blue shield, then dropped to the ground, stunned.
Back in the ER, people started to clamour from the sight before another gunshot into the air from one of Risman's men brought swift silence, save for some sobbing from a little boy, his father desperately trying to quiet him with a tight hug.
"W-what do you want?" a frightened blond haired man asked, his badge read Dr. Steven Lang.
"Want?" As Risman turned to look at Lang, his contempt was all too clear. "This isn't about want," he sneered. "This is about need. Do you even know what's in your hospital right now?"
He scanned the room coolly, taking stock of the people hiding behind chairs for safety, the panicked expressions on their face. "You fear me. You fear us. But in this facility, there is a genetic abomination who could end your life in a second. They take her here, they tell her she's human. That she's normal. But she is an affront."
He looked back to Lang. "Tell them, doctor. Tell them about the woman your staff is protecting. A living bomb who exploded in her home. Who took the life of her husband, an innocent man whose only sin was to love and who was met with her deceit. That thing took his life, and then she took her son's life, a young man who will never get to offer anything to the world."
"This is a hospital. We see a lot of people here," Lang said, swallowing. "If this woman d-did what you say, the police should handle it. Not...thugs."
Matthew Risman snorted at that. It was performative -- his audience was not Dr. Lang -- though the contempt behind it was real. "The police are out of their element here. They have their hands tied by activists demanding they give up their budgets to social workers and look the other way when genetic miscreants cause crime." He shook his head. "And the police do not know how to protect from this."
He picked up his gun again and locked eyes with Lang. "Who is she, doctor?" he paused to read the man's ID badge. "Dr. Lang. Who's this woman that you would jeopardize all these lives to protect?"
Lang was silent for a moment or two, swallowing, as he glanced around at the frightened people around him. Finally looking back to him, he shook his head.
"We didn't get a name but...a Jane Doe came in about 10 minutes ago with a gunshot wound," he said quietly.
Risman studied Lang. Then he offered a self-satisfied smile. "You see, doctor? Was that so hard?" He turned to the two men nearest him, and his expression changed again. "Take him. I have questions for the good doctor over here. And we need his security badge."
He then turned his attention to the people who were cowering, silent around them. "You fear us," he said, not bothering to soften his tone. "But we are like you. Human. Soon you will see the light. There is much more to fear in the unknown."
"You okay?" Nica asked, glancing over at Maya as she turned off the ignition. They'd borrowed one of the mansion's fleet of cars for their day at Claremont Hospital, since it was likely they'd be finishing too late for public transport. Maya's phobia of driving seemed to have improved over the years, but Nica knew she wasn't comfortable with being in a car.
"Yeah, just doing my breathing."
Maya had improved, thanks to lots of both exposure therapy and a very understanding therapist who didn't push her when pushing would have caused worse trauma then the initial incident. Maya would always be thankful to Haller for giving her good suggestions for people who could help her. Not that she liked cars in any sense of the word, she preferred her bike in all ways. Especially since it gave her the freedom to move through traffic like an eel through water even in the worst of traffic jams but for this particular day, she'd let Nica drive her.
"What do you think it's going to be like?"
"No idea." Nica was taking care to face Maya and shape her words, given the lack of cochlear implants. "Busy, probably. But it's an awesome chance to see things happening. Instead of on TV." Nica was a big watcher of medical dramas.
"I'm just here for the college application benefits." Maya stated, walking backwards so she could read what Nica was saying on her lips. Nica would warn her if she was going to walk into anyone. "Helping the old and infirm looks great to those stuffed shirts."
"Such philanthropy," Nica replied with a snort and a grin. "And here I was thinking you'd developed community spirit." She was joking, of course - the two friends often teased each other about the differences in their world views. Nica was the optimist, Maya the cynic.
“It’s what the whole gap year is all about, making sure I have a kick ass application.” Maya replied with a shrug and a smile. She needed to be the best if she wanted to change the world, it wouldn’t change itself, after all. “Did Jean say she’d meet us here or inside?”
"Here," a voice spoke up with a smile as Jean came into view wearing her doctor's coat and some emerald green scrubs. "Glad you could make it. I've got a shift in the ER, which you'll be able to get a peek at later in the day. First up, though? Let's get you checked in with your day pass badges and then orientation."
Jean attends a patient in the ER and discovers something unsettling is afoot.
Jean had just finished her second cup of coffee when the doors to the ER opened and EMTs rushed in with a woman on a stretcher. Tossing her empty cup into the trash, she rushed to meet them. "Hey Mickey, what do we got?" she said.
"Female late 30s, GSW to the shoulder. BP's 120 over 80, heart rate 151. Bodega store owner heard a scuffle out in the alley, then a gunshot. Found her outside but she ain't talking," Mickey, the EMT, said.
Jean nodded. "Thanks. Christine, what's open?" she called over to a woman about her age with long brown hair.
The woman looked up from her station. "Uh...trauma 2," she said.
Walking with Mickey and the stretcher, Jean helped them wheel her into an exam room. "Hi there, I'm Dr. Jean Grey. I'm here to take care of you. What's your name?"
Esme didn’t know what was happening but she knew one thing at least - she was in excruciating pain. There was a steady flow of tears coursing down her face, and she felt her one good arm (how was it that she had a good arm and a bad arm now) tighten as her fingers gripped the stretcher.
Swallowing thickly, she turned her head, wincing in pain as she focused anywhere but at the doctor in front of her. Anonymity was the only safety she had. THEY know who she was. It wouldn’t be too long before they knew where she was and she wasn’t about to make it easier.
When the woman wouldn't reply, Jean left the silence for a few moments while she got everything ready.
"I'm going to clean your wound so I can see how bad it is, okay?" she said. She studied her.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
How could Esme say what happened when even she didn't know what happened? How did things get this far? It was too much. No one could be expected to handle this amd here she was, their pawn.... but she had no choice.
Sniffling, she tried to calm her breathing a bit. In. Out. In. Out. Focus on the wall, on the weird little smudge that looked vaguely like a fingerprint. Think about the fingerprint. Try to think of that. Anything but the incident. For the rest of her life, she'd be thinking of Before Incident and After Incident. Before Incident she'd never even seen a gun. After Incident she would be terrified of them. And this doctor...all these questions...
"I don't know," she finally responded. "It happened fast." In her mind, she was answering calmly and rationally. She knew that wasn't the case, that there was a waver, a hitch to her voice that wasn't there before. Her eyes flickered briefly to the doctor, then to her shoulder before back to the smudge. Was she convincing enough? It all depended on that. “My shoulder hurts. Everything hurts.” Her body, her heart... what was her daughter doing right
now? A fresh wave of tears sprung out of her eyes. How scared was her little girl? Esme just had to focus.
"We'll see what we can do about that," Jean said gently. Something felt off. The woman was fearful, evasive, which was understandable after being shot. Her first thought was perhaps a gang. Regardless, it was not anything new.
Waiting until the nurse left, Jean gently dabbed at the blood, quiet for a moment before speaking. "If you need help just let me know. I have to call the police as a requirement for any gunshot wounds, but if someone is after you...they can protect you."
No one can, Esme thought to herself. Instead, she stayed quiet. Things were going exactly how it was explained to her. The caring doctor, the gunshot protocol... her shoulder ached and she wondered how anything could ever go back to the same way again.
“I told you what I know. How can I be expected to remember anything else?”
Jean studied the woman. She was about her age, maybe a year or two older. "Fear can make people do a lot of things," Jean said. She nodded toward her wound.
"I have a feeling you didn't do that to yourself. And that you might have an idea of who did. Am I right?"
This was getting harder than Esme thought. The tears she'd managed to quell earlier started to roll down her face again. Instinctively, she reached up to wipe them away, not realizing which arm she was using until the jolt of pain caused her to cry out. Was it time? How long had she been in here? She wasn't even aware of anything but she knew she had a task to do and maybe it had been long enough.
With a nod, she choked back a sob. "Yes. They're going to find me. Finish it off. They promised they would." And they promised her daughter's safe return too... "I should go. It's not safe here. It's not. No one is safe while I'm here. I just hurt everyone."
Alarm bells were ringing in Jean's head. Something was definitely off here. "You need to tell me who they are," she said, a feeling throwing in the pit of her stomach.
This was it. Show time. Esme's whole part in this stupid awful deception was here. The doctor's interest was piqued, Esme's shoulder was throbbing, and soon, very soon, she'd have her daughter back and in her arms, safe where she belonged. Lowering her voice, she whispered. "They're horrible. They're horrible people who do terrible things, and they know I'm here, they know I came to the hospital, they know you have to report it .... they want that. They want these questions. And I'm telling you, they're terrible." Her voice dropped even more. "The Purifiers." She couldn't help the shudder that followed the name.
Jean narrowed her eyes at the name, not from fear but from anger. It was a name she'd heard more and more in the news over the last few months. Human bigots who would 'purify' the world of mutants by whatever means necessary.
"Yes. They're pretty terrible," she said. Shaking her head, she reached over to grab more gauze but found only a small amount left. The nurse still hadn't come back yet.
"I need to grab some more supplies. I'll be right back. Stay here, okay?"
Pushing her way out of the room, she quickly made her way to the breakroom. This was not looking good.
Jean was correct - things are most certainly not looking good when the Purifiers turn up looking for Jean’s patient..
The ER was full of regular hustle and bustle like any other day. As Jean saw Esme in the trauma room, things ran like normal. Until the screaming started.
The doors slammed open again, this time not by a medical team but instead by a large group of men and women dressed in body armor adorned with a stylized cross. A security guard pulled out his gun.
"Stop right--" His words were left as a gurgle as a red hole appeared in the middle of his forehead and left red and pink matter on the wall behind him. He slumped to the floor.
Christine started to reach for a panic button under the desk but one of the men in body armor pointed a gun at her.
"Uh uh uh. Hands where I can see them," he said.
Hands trembling, Christine raised them above her head.
"Atta girl." Matthew Risman's voice was low and rich, and even without seeing him, Christine could practically hear the sneer in it. He strode in, his eyes flickering for a moment to the security guard who he'd shot with his rifle moments earlier. Then he looked to the squad he'd assembled. "If anyone tries to leave," he said, "shoot them. They'll get the message."
A walkie-talkie on his belt crackled, and he reached for it. "Yeah," he responded. "We're in. Deploy the field."
"You got it," a voice replied on the other side of the walkie talkie.
The air around them seemed to feel ionized, and a low crackle was heard before a bright blue light shot up from the ground outside of the ER doors. Sparks shot from an ambulance sitting out in the bay that had been cut in half, a short wail of its siren sputtering out with an almost confused whine.
A patient looking out the window on the third floor let out a gasp as a bird flew into a shimmering blue shield, then dropped to the ground, stunned.
Back in the ER, people started to clamour from the sight before another gunshot into the air from one of Risman's men brought swift silence, save for some sobbing from a little boy, his father desperately trying to quiet him with a tight hug.
"W-what do you want?" a frightened blond haired man asked, his badge read Dr. Steven Lang.
"Want?" As Risman turned to look at Lang, his contempt was all too clear. "This isn't about want," he sneered. "This is about need. Do you even know what's in your hospital right now?"
He scanned the room coolly, taking stock of the people hiding behind chairs for safety, the panicked expressions on their face. "You fear me. You fear us. But in this facility, there is a genetic abomination who could end your life in a second. They take her here, they tell her she's human. That she's normal. But she is an affront."
He looked back to Lang. "Tell them, doctor. Tell them about the woman your staff is protecting. A living bomb who exploded in her home. Who took the life of her husband, an innocent man whose only sin was to love and who was met with her deceit. That thing took his life, and then she took her son's life, a young man who will never get to offer anything to the world."
"This is a hospital. We see a lot of people here," Lang said, swallowing. "If this woman d-did what you say, the police should handle it. Not...thugs."
Matthew Risman snorted at that. It was performative -- his audience was not Dr. Lang -- though the contempt behind it was real. "The police are out of their element here. They have their hands tied by activists demanding they give up their budgets to social workers and look the other way when genetic miscreants cause crime." He shook his head. "And the police do not know how to protect from this."
He picked up his gun again and locked eyes with Lang. "Who is she, doctor?" he paused to read the man's ID badge. "Dr. Lang. Who's this woman that you would jeopardize all these lives to protect?"
Lang was silent for a moment or two, swallowing, as he glanced around at the frightened people around him. Finally looking back to him, he shook his head.
"We didn't get a name but...a Jane Doe came in about 10 minutes ago with a gunshot wound," he said quietly.
Risman studied Lang. Then he offered a self-satisfied smile. "You see, doctor? Was that so hard?" He turned to the two men nearest him, and his expression changed again. "Take him. I have questions for the good doctor over here. And we need his security badge."
He then turned his attention to the people who were cowering, silent around them. "You fear us," he said, not bothering to soften his tone. "But we are like you. Human. Soon you will see the light. There is much more to fear in the unknown."
