exsiliumlogs | (open) days go by and still i think of you

Entry tags:

(open) days go by and still i think of you

Date & Time: June 4th - 9th
Location: Initiative Hospital
Characters: Collette & Open!
Summary: Shenanigans while ill at the hospital.
Warnings: Hospital gowns, illness, trauma, silliness.

[ June 4th-7th ]

Her fever spikes the most during her first few days in the hospital. Collette hesitated to tell anyone; there was little to do but wait it out, and she was more preoccupied with the coughing when she was awake and aware of her surroundings than she liked.

She's even abstained from using the network that often, having difficulty concentrating on the bright screen.

What she didn't expect took her, and several nurses, and any potential visitors, by surprise. When the fever ran too hot, and her delusions started edging toward frightening territory, Collette reacted.

Once, where there'd been a sick girl, there appeared a crocodile. Mouth opened, it hissed and growled at everything that moved in the room, one lash of its tail taking out the IV pole. The privacy curtain is doomed to be half torn down while Collette isn't taking charge of the reptilian brain: it was one very frightened crocodile reigning over a disheveled hospital bed.

[ June 7th-8th ]

She had the crocodile under control when she found herself having episodes of coming to while morphed golden retriever or coyote, hiding under chairs, or wandering the hall with her hospital gown trailing awkwardly between her legs.

Twice she ended up in the cafeteria. Collette really didn't quite understand how she got there.

[ June 9th: after this ]

On the 9th, the fever broke, but it wasn't something she noticed. Not after everything else that happened after she escaped to the hospital roof.

Collette was shaking from something entirely unrelated to her illness, even if the shivering could have been attributed to it. She was scared to close her eyes, scared of coughing because it left her vulnerable, tired and sick and scared all around.

This, she decides, Takes the award for royal suckage.

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He had no idea.

Neither did Collette, having struggled toward consciousness in the middle of another raging fever to find she'd taken the faulty logic of going something cold blooded to escape. It hadn't worked yet. Sometimes an active imagination and wishful thinking was a liability instead of a benefit.

She was coming out of the fever haze while the crocodile operated on instinct. The scents, sights, and sounds of the hospital were so far outside its range of understanding that it could do nothing but react, frightened and defensive. Its growls were low and rumbling, the relative narrowness of the bed compared to its bulk keeping it from crashing over the side and making a stand on the floor.

Its gaping maw opened at Jaime, reptilian eyes watching with apparently cold impassion. It wanted sand, it wanted water, it wanted things that smelled like real things. All it had was antiseptics. It lashed it's tail, stomping forward to the end of the hospital bed, displaying at Jaime and trying to drive him off.

Collette was slowly coming to her senses, but she wasn't there yet.

Jaime took a couple more steps forward, trying to rationalize exactly what was going on here. He'd faced down enemies ten times bigger and badder than a wild animal, but the part of his brain that still operated on instinct was telling him very insistently that wild animals with mouths as big as these ones were seriously bad news.

"Hi there," he said, raising his hands in front of him and slowly approaching the bed. "Just gonna walk over here. Good crocodile. Nice crocodile. Let's get you out of here and into a nice... swamp? Do crocodiles live in swamps?"

He exhaled shortly, then muttered with apparent exasperation, "Why am I talking to a crocodile?"

He already got accused of being crazy and talking to himself often enough as it was. Jaime glanced around the room, and upon not seeing any handy animal wrangling tools nearby, made the silent decision to clamp its mouth shut with his suit and fly the creature back into the wild where it belonged. He just had to get a little bit closer without it freaking out first.

What was difficult to understand about having a morph get away from you was how deceptive the slip really was. Disorientation fed into disorientation, and as the crocodile hisses at Jaime, Collette was hissing because she's told danger by the same senses that register Jaime as stranger.

Indeed, stranger danger, a concept more amusing and elementary for Homo sapiens, but equally present for Crocodylus acutus.

Of course, six plus feet of crocodile is more intimidating than five plus feet of sick, hallucinating girl.

Collette still hadn't registered this wasn't a fever dream. She'd had too many similar; the Blue Beetle was a new friend, and harder to recognize with reptilian vision.

What helped was the fact he continued talking. The words didn't make sense at first, but the fact they kept coming, without being shouted like the shrieks of the nurses, kept the crocodile from snapping at Jaime and taking the fall down to the floor to find more defensible space.

It held still, Collette thirty seconds from coming to the realization she'd done the improbable again.

Jaime morphed his arm into a clamp as he continued moving forwards. This was one function that he hadn't found much use for lately, being mainly a defensive maneuver when shooting things was somuch easier, but he gathered it was strong enough to keep a crocodile's jaws shut. His own knowledge of wildlife was mainly confined to the goldfish that Milagro insisted on feeding and subsequently killing.

This was not a goldfish. Happily, where his own personal knowledge failed, television prevailed. Not so happily was the fact that he didn't give Collette thirty more seconds, wasting no time in rushing forward to clamp down her jaws and straddle her back in one smooth motion.

Which made an exceedingly awkward time to come to the forefront of the crocodile morph's mind, pulling the animal under control even as her thrashing wasn't entirely instinctual. Collette raced through what she knew, making herself go still against the crocodile's every instinctual urge.

For one, there was a clamp around her mouth, and she knew that cut down a lot of the crocodile's offensive power. For another, she was still in the hospital, and no one had come at her with a shotgun aimed between her eyes.

They'd just, you know, gone Buckaroo Bonzai on her.

< Woah! > she called out, keeping her thought speak channel aimed solely at the person on her back. < This croc ride is strictly by invitation only! You must be approximately a really good friend to ride. >

Delivered with laughter behind her tone, since it was a joke, if perhaps a poor one. (Not perhaps, Collette. It's terrible!)

< Or drowning, but I'm not sure anyone drowning would want to hang on to a croc if they saw what was coming for them. I'm good! I promise, no more thrashing around or taking out the... oh. That was the IV pole, wasn't it? Oops... >

Jaime froze in place for but a moment, horrified as he caught onto the implications of a very familiar voice entering his mind. "Oh my god."

He scrambled to get off of her, releasing the clamp and ending up with one leg halfway tangled in the sheets as he got off her bed. That was not what he had been expecting, though it made a whole lot more sense than a crocodile managing to wander into a hospital and mysteriously ending up perched on a bed.

"Hi. Sorry, for, uh... Sorry. Man, I was gonna take you to a swamp or something." Which was, of course, something that he would have regretted after finding out precisely who was in this scaly body. He shook off the covers and moved to right her IV stand. "Why didn't you speak up earlier?"

< A swamp? Around here? >

She managed the mental laughter since it came at no physical cost to herself. < I think you would have been flying around with me for a really long time! >

There was no ready, easy answer for why she didn't speak up earlier that wasn't a little frightening on some level. Collette settled on something mostly true. < I wasn't entirely checked in, > she admitted. < I think I just wanted to cool off really badly. What's cooler than a cold blooded animal, you know? >

She laughed again, not feeling it was all that funny.

"I didn't say it's something that I actually thought through," Jaime returned with enough warmth to match the sensation of her laughing inside his head. Still, it didn't take a genius to figure out at least the basics of what had happened to her.

Needless to say, he didn't laugh at her second joke. Without the damage to her own body, what had happened was more dangerous than Jaime felt comfortable considering. If she had been out of it enough to really bite someone, she could have killed someone. He frowned, then tugged a wheeled chair that had been tucked neatly by the wall over and sat on it backwards, arms resting on the backrest.

"You're that bad off? Did you tell your doctor?"

< The fever's been burning hot and lower for days. They know, and they're supposed to know to get out of here if I start going not-a-girl. > She wasn't as careful in hiding how that made her feel, uncertain and almost scared, tainting her mental tone of 'voice.'

< You must have hit a shift change! They're supposed to close the door and wait a few minutes. I always figure out what's going on by then. > Though the first time it'd been confusing enough that she didn't know she had to respond to familiar outside stimuli. Caesar's scent had ultimately pulled her back, before anything else.

Hello, I smell you, I remember you? She had to laugh in the confines of her own head. Now wasn't that just the thing to tell your friends!

< Do you see a hospital gown around here anyplace? >

Jaime grimaced in sympathy. Even having minimal experience with losing control of his own body, that was enough for him to realize how utterly terrifying it was to not be able to control something as elementary as your own actions.

"She probably didn't know," he said, getting up to look around for it in the mess that he'd made of the covers. "Shifts have been changing all over the place. Tons of the people working here are just volunteers."

Including himself, but he figured it was his responsibility to do all that he could as someone who could make himself immune to the illness for as long as he needed to. His mom being a nurse herself only added the extra drive to work a little bit harder for the haggard men and women rushing down the halls. He laid the hospital gown delicately on her bed. "Here."

Then, realizing that she probably wanted to shapeshift and get dressed again, he said, "I'll just turn around now."

< It's probably the same over at the Exile Hospital, > she commented, holding herself still. Collette projected her mental laughter as he turned around, tinged with gratefulness. She guesses a bonus to being in a big blue bug-suit is that even if you blushed, no one would know.

Politeness is something she appreciates. Especially right now, when she's embarrassed at and scared by her actions all on their own.

< Thanks, > she said, the last word before she pictured herself in her mind's eye. It was the uncoordinated, jarring act that it always was, legs first, then eyes, then snout, then a feeling that traveled down her back until the sensation was lost all over again. She didn't even know her tail was last to pull back up, inverting and sucking into ehr spine like some improbable costume prop.

Belly down, Collette reached out for the gown before managing to pull herself to her side, then onto her back. Arranging her legs takes a little longer, though she didn't go through exaggerated care just yet. With the gown on over her front, Collette fanangled and maneuvered her way into a sitting position. She managed the snaps on the front, starting on the ones at her neck and working down as far as she could reach. She twisted around to work on the ones that would be at knee level, pressing them together with definitive click-click-clicks until only an expanse of her upper hip and lower to mid back is still visible.

"I'm mostly decent," she said, sounding chipper as always. "If you don't mind helping a girl out, think you could finish the last five snaps for me? I promise it's not racy." She reached a hand up to pull her hair around over one shoulder, avoiding looking directly Blue Beetle's way.

"Yeah, of course," Jaime said, moving forward to do her gown up for her. This was the first that he'd seen Collette in her human form, and he was almost surprised to see how normal she looked. She was about his age, by his judgment, and he probably would have never looked twice at her if he passed her in the hallways of his school.

As he fastened the last of the snaps, he asked, "So is this what you normally look like? Human-shaped?"

She looked back over her shoulder, eyebrow quirked up in a curiosity that swiftly becomes amusement. "Yeah," she said, twisting her torso around enough to take pressureo ff her neck. Readjusting her legs would take longer, and involve more potential flashes of leg he didn't need to see right now. "I'm one hundred percent human!"

From her dark hair, to dark eyes, to darker skin and prominent cheekbones more characteristic of her mother's lineage out of India, her particular history was up to debate, but that she was human, and American by speech pattern, was cleraly apparent. "Underneath the blue, I'm guessing you're somebody pretty nornal looking too!" Collette smiled, though her attention shifts to glancing around for the sheets and blanket not long after. Her fever comes on in waves, and while she burns up, she knows getting too chilled is a bad thing too.

"Yep. One hundred percent human on this end too. The armour just means I can help out around here without getting sick," he said, taking the blanket from off the ground and giving it a practiced shake before settling it over Collette.

Which was another way of saying that he could actually spend some time with the patients to keep them from going absolutely stir crazy without them having to worry about getting others sick. It was a small service compared to what the medically trained professionals were doing, but it wasn't as if every patient here had friends or family around to visit them.

"So? Can I getcha anything?"

She tugged on the blanket once it settled, the cool waft of air forced out from underneath causing her hair to stir. A few hairs tickled her nose. "Sunshine," she said with a sigh made more dramatic by her carefully flopping backward. "Clouds in a blue sky, and not a brown one, or a gray one, for once! And on the list of other currently impossible things, I'd also like a raise. Or a pony. Or a motorcycle, that'd be fun!"

She grinned, shoulders relaxing in fractions. "Did you make your bed at home?"

"We've got books and board games," Jaime returned, a slight curve to his mouth. "You might be in luck, though, 'cause I saw a bunch with ponies on the cover. The font's, like, point eighteen, but I bet they've got some blue skies in there."

He felt a little more at ease joking with her now that they were out of the red. She was still far from well, but as far as he could tell, she wasn't as bad off as some of the others patients he had seen, who were practically catatonic where they lay.

"Yeah, I made the bed. Most of the time. Half of the time? Usually after school," he said. This was a nice way of saying that he generally made it after his mother rolled her eyes at him and said, honestly, mijo, how hard is it to keep your room tidy? to which all protestations fell on suddenly deaf ears. "That's kind of a random question."

"You're just good with the blanket," she said. It was a strange sort of detail to focus on, but he hadn't been clumsy putting it back on, so she'd wondered. "I think I'd prefer real sky, but in a lack of that, maybe your pony books will stand in. Though if you go for the books, you'll have to read them to me. Complete with voices."

She nodded sagely, as if this were a deep, sacred duty. It lasts all of the minute before she breaks into a grin, breathing thick and heavy as if she were about to laugh, but holding off. "I don't think I've been read to in bed since I was like... five!"

It's nothing she expects him to actually do. Teasing and joking about it was simply easier.

"I've been hanging around the hospital since this whole thing started, so I guess I got some practice in."

Not that that meant he was actually going to start making his bed now that there was nobody to say that he really ought to. The query as to whether or not he was to read the books to her garnered a sidelong, amused smile in her direction. He had no idea how she managed to be so relentlessly cheery in the state she was in, but he was game to go along with it.

"Well," he said, sounding as if he was truly considering this idea's virtues. "I am pretty good at the voices."

"All the voices?" Lips curled up in a lopsided smile, she tilted her head to the side and cast him a dubious glance. That it was as she shifted to be more comfortable and support her upper torso wasn't incidental, but it was a better transition than some she'd had earlier. It keeps the awkwardness at bay.

"Most of the voices. I think you'll be able to catch on when I suck at the animal noises. We don't get a lotta farm animals in the city. And you might be a little more selective than the five year olds."

Jaime paused, taking in what kind of shape Collette was in. There was only so much sleeping a soul could take inside a hospital room, depending on how sick they were, but it was worth checking. He tilted his head back at her, unconsciously mirroring her gesture, and said, "It's a little thrilling, though. Think you should get a little shut-eye after all that?"

She quirked up an eyebrow, lips still curled in an amused half-grin. Really, when it came to the "little shut-eye" comment, along with the little thrill, she could only show her amusement. Thus her response was to what he'd said earlier, regarding being picky about animal noises.

She might turn into animals, but she, too, was a city girl at heart.

"Cows go baa, right?"

The fact that Collette saw fit to simply skim over Jaime's hints made his position abundantly clear - besides, if he were in her position, he'd be aching for at least a little conversation beyond take your medicine.

"You might be onto something there, but I'm thinking they go cluck."

And really, he managed quite an uncanny chicken impression. This wasn't something he liked to advertise, but when one has a little sister about nine years one's junior, desperate measures must be taken.

Besides, it will be a sad, sad day when he can't make chicken noises at Milagro, just to tease her.

She giggled, impressed by his impersonation. "Were you a clucking cow in a past life?" she asked, all the more ridiculous when facing a guy in a blue bug suit.

Clucker? Maybe cuckoo, but weren't they all?

"You don't really need to tell a story. Not on ponies, anyway. I'd prefer something real, if you wanted to share anything at all." Real stories about real people -- she liked that kind of escapism best.

"Something real..."

That stumped him for a moment. He couldn't share any number of amusing stories he had gathered over the course of his short life, because he didn't really want to go into the whole secret identity thing. It wasn't that he was that conspicuous in plainclothes, but he had quickly learned at least some measure of caution.

That left the whole superhero gig which, while very very cool, ended up being a bit bleak more often than not. He'd stick with the lighter fare. "Huh. Well, where I start off depends on what you know. You know anything about superheroes?"

What does she know about super heroes?

"They have costumes," she said, because it was easy, and simple, and true. "The fight big battles. They tend to destroy a lot of things 'cause whatever they're fighting tend to be destroying a lot of things. But they save a lot of things too! They save the world. They're isolated. They hide who they are 'cause they need to, to protect the people who aren't super heroes in their lives. If I believe the Robins," and with that, she smiled, something softer and reminiscent, "It's something necessary and sometimes brutal, for a reason. I don't know, Beetle. Superheroes are only in comic books where I'm from."

Her thoughts turned to Barnaby, and she breifly closed her eyes. "Some of them are too dumb to know the difference in dying in pursuit of a cause, and just dying because you thought the way things are somewhere else is the same as where you're from." Barnaby, you idiot! He'd scared her so thoroughly in being reckless without the cause he thought he had.

(open) days go by and still i think of you

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