[Open] Dr. Medic's Sleepaway Funtimes Camp

[mementomoritz]

I. So girl keep telling me [network post]

[About three hours after the whole post-Esmeeting kerfuffle, every phone included in the Executor group chat suddenly blares loudly with an incoming post that appears to have every possible alert and priority notice the person writing it could find attached to it.]

ANYONE WHO ATE ANYTHING AT ESME'S HOUSE REPORT TO MEDIC IMMEDIATELY YOU ARE POISONED


[Well, you can't accuse her of burying the lede.]

i'm in my lab in invidia [The exact address and coordinates of the lab are attached along with the message, including a helpful photo of a scribbled map just in case anyone is really bad with directions.] if you ate ANY of the food esme served or if you're feeling sick, come here so i can treat you
if you find someone unconscious or unable to move on their own, BRING THEM HERE
if you don't have anyone around and think you need help getting here, reply to this message immediately

i threw up, so i tested some of the leftovers i took home
and that food is very, very poisoned
(also, if you brought leftovers home, don't eat them)


II. pick me up whenever i'm feeling down [in-person log]

[True to her word, Medic is ready and waiting in her lab the second anyone arrives.]

[The living room of the apartment she commandeered has been turned into a makeshift hospital. She's dragged cushions and mattresses in, laying them out on the floor and covering them with clean sheets and blankets to make sickbeds. Next to every bed is a glass of water and a bowl for, uh. Any stomach issues you might have to deal with.]

[Anyone healthy who walks in the door will be cheerfully pressganged into nursing duty.]

[The beds are set up facing the living room's lone TV, but well... this is Invidia. Guess who's probably on every channel.]

[You might have better luck with putting on a movie, but no one actually saw this coming, which means your available selection consists exclusively of stuff Medic brought with her from the Limbo library when she came down to Invidia. By which we mean exactly one film.]

[Whether having to see Esme's face is better or worse than watching Brutal Instinct again is a choice you're going to have to make amongst yourselves.]

Comments

[phantasmagorial]

Ah– okay.

[ Feeling a little wrong-footed still at all the fussing, Rei pushes herself up into a sitting position. She's not quite as dizzy as she was before, so it's not the end of the world, but laying down is definitely more comfortable. ]

Do I just... what was it? Bite the end of it?

[ Area Executor Has Never Been Sick In Her Entire (Un)Life ]

[mementomoritz]

[Sorry, Rei, but your teammate has a literal career in fussing. If they didn't keep denying her graduation from medical school on ethical grounds, she'd have an entire degree in it.]

Mm-hm! You just hold the metal bit on this end here under your tongue until it beeps.

[She hands the thermometer over to Rei, using the other one to steady her by gently resting it on her shoulder, just in case she starts to tip over and needs someone to catch her.]

[phantasmagorial]

[ Rei maneuvers the thermometer under her tongue with what can only be called a dubious expression, like she half expects to be told this is a prank. But this is Medic, who is never serious about anything but medicine, so she knows it's not a goof.

The thermometer beeps and Rei pulls it out of her mouth, handing it back to Medic without even glancing at it. It's not like the numbers will mean much of anything to her anyway. ]

Has it gone down?

[mementomoritz]

Yep! [The numbers do mean something to Medic, who makes a little note of it on her clipboard before disinfecting the thermometer and putting it away.] It's been dropping pretty steadily for a while now. You're pretty much back in the average human range already, but it's hard to say whether you're back to normal when I don't have a baseline to compare it to...

Maybe come into the lab sometime when you're feeling healthy, so I can take your vitals and see what they're like normally, okay? [This is ninety percent because she cares a lot about your health, and only ten percent because she wants to know for science. Really.]

Anyway, I'd say you're set to make a full recovery soon- as long as you don't do anything silly and strain yourself in the next day or so.

[I Hauled Your Dumb Ass Out Of The Grave And You Swan-Dived Back In: the story of every healer who has ever had to handle an entire party. Thank fuck for Chiron.]

[phantasmagorial]

You don't have to worry about that with me. [ She's not saying 'Ariel', but She's Saying Ariel. ] I just about have enough energy to get out of bed, so I don't plan on getting myself into trouble anytime soon.

[ We'll see how long she keeps to this. ]

And um, Medic...? Thank you for all the hard work you've been doing. I don't imagine it's been easy.

[mementomoritz]

[We were all thinking it.]

Oh, don't worry about it, this is what I live for! [Pauses.] Unlive for? ...We really need to sort out our vocabulary. I'll have to start inventing some new phrases.

[phantasmagorial]

"Unlive for" has a nice ring to it. Though we'd better be careful about saying too many things like that in front of the Specters. The last thing I'd want to do is accidentally wake someone up.

[ The world's most existential alarm clock! ]

[mementomoritz]

Really? I tried telling a lot of people that we were all dead, back when we first woke up. No one seemed to notice.

["Good morning, it's death."]

[phantasmagorial]

Really?

[ That seems to have caught her by surprise. ]

When you say they didn't notice... how exactly did they react?

[mementomoritz]

Mostly they didn't react. They just kind of... glazed over? [She shrugs.] It wasn't catatonia, they reacted like usual to everything else, it was like they hadn't heard me say anything.

[And by now, she should know that an excited Medic getting up in your face is pretty difficult to convincingly ignore.]

When they did reply, they'd respond to anything else I said- comments about the weather, or asking for directions- but never anything about being dead.

[phantasmagorial]

Almost like they don't even want to know?

[ That's definitely interesting... ]

[mementomoritz]

Maybe... It didn't really seem like they were doing it on purpose, though. It was like they just kept not noticing, somehow.

[phantasmagorial]

I guess it's not that much different from whatever keeps them from noticing how strange things are down here. Unless they're awake, they just seem to assume things are the way they were back when they were alive.

Do you remember anything like that, from before you woke up?

[mementomoritz]

[She shakes her head.] I don't remember anything from before I "woke up" at all. Nothing in Limbo even seemed familiar.

It's really unfortunate- having firsthand knowledge of the Spectral mindset could be very valuable!

[phantasmagorial]

I guess it's sort of like waking up when you've been having a really deep dream... even if you remember bits and pieces of it at the time, you almost always end up forgetting the whole thing by the time you wake up.

It'd be interesting to know what goes on in their heads, though...

[mementomoritz]

It really would! [A brief pause, looking thoughtful.] Well, I could tell you if the average Specter is having similar brain activity to someone undergoing REM sleep- I'd just need the right equipment. ...Also, we might have to ask someone to help us wrestle them into the fMRI machine.

[Science: the solution to and cause of all afterlife problems.]

[phantasmagorial]

... what... is an FMRI machine?

[ She looks SO CONCERNED ]

[mementomoritz]

[Oh no, you've opened the floodgates, she looks thrilled.] It's this device for monitoring brain activity- it stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. You can use it to track changes in blood flow, to see which parts are- [A pause. Her eyes widen.]

We don't even have blood. [She looks like she's having a revelation.] I have to test how pneuma responds to being magnetized, this could tell me so much- [Aaaand she's frantically diving for the nearest pen and starting to scribble more notes.]

[phantasmagorial]

I... guess that's true?

[ Sorry, Medic, she's lost. She at least knows Medic well enough, though, to catch on that she's set her off running down the path to SCIENCE. ]

Um, what do magnets have to do with anything?

[mementomoritz]

Oh, it has more to do with- [She stops. Considers for a moment.] How much do you know about gradient fields? ...and how much do you want to?

[A glimmer of self-awareness. Purgatory really is good for her.]

[phantasmagorial]

Assume I don't know anything about it and see if you can explain it in ten words or less.

[ Look at that, Rei's learning too. ]

[mementomoritz]

Mmm... [She visibly has to make an effort.]

Blood emits special energy when in magnetic fields. [Medic pauses, mentally rewinds that while counting on her fingers, and realizes that was only eight words, so she ends with a belated:] ...because science!

[This is overly simplified to the point that it verges on outright lying, but that's how most intro-level science classes work anyway, so it's fine.]

[phantasmagorial]

Okay...

So you're... going to see if pneuma does the same thing? Is that it?

[ She sounds so hopeful that she gets it. Bless. ]

[mementomoritz]

Close enough! [In that anything she got from that explanation wouldn't be perfectly accurate to what Medic wants to do, because what Medic wants to do probably requires five thesis papers and a full course of study to fully explain every detail.]

[Then again, on a practical level, there's only so much detail you need for "do thing to thing. Record results and/or evacuate lab premises accordingly." So really, she's pretty much got it.]

It'll be fun! I just hope my equipment is accurate enough- I've been kind of working with what I can find, and I'm not exactly an engineer. All of this would be a lot easier to figure out if I could find an actual working hospital. [And then break into it.]

[phantasmagorial]

I wonder what a hospital down here would even be stocked with... it's not like they'd be able to do much for injuries with regular medicine, I don't think...