This Is a Perfectly Acceptable Time to Panic WHO: Bryant and Eden WHEN: Sunday? Monday? Five minutes after he entered the caves? Bryant has no clue, really. WHERE:the love shack their cell WHAT: The huge naked Briton is just a teensy bit terrified of their new accommodations. Actually, he’s terrified of just about everything. WARNING: TBD, scene in progress
If you tell a medical examiner about a body, he’s going to want to examine it. And if you let him examine it, he’s going to be willing to look for even more clues. And if you let him look for even more clues, he winds up walking blindly into a cave that he knows nothing about with two people that he barely knows -- but rather likes, just the same, as Max and Kessie both seem a decent sort. And if all of that happens…? Apparently, the medical examiner ends up naked in some weird pod whatsit place with some truly bizarre things visible in the nearest chambers.
That was the situation Bryant found himself in upon awakening the first time, before panic had a chance to incubate and blossom in the center of his chest. Being without his clothes made him more than a little self-conscious, but there’d been plenty to see as he took stock of his surroundings. The tree, the tubes, the tactile experience of the floor and walls being something wholly unexpected. There had been maybe a good fifteen seconds where Bryant forgot all about his present difficulties: that his last garish shirt and the pair of jeans that Marcus liked him in had vanished clean off his body, that he seemed trapped in some transparent container, that he was all alone, that he didn’t have a left leg.
There had been times, right after the surgery, where Bryant would wake up and be surprised anew that his leg was gone from above the knee. The shock never lasted long, of course, and his knowledge of physiology was a soothing sort of balm for these throat-closing seconds: the good doctor could console himself that it had been the logical step for banishing the cancer, that the phantom feeling of still having a limb was already on its way out, that he had Marcus to lean on when his intellect couldn’t overcome his emotions.
This felt like that, however briefly. As if Bryant was only missing something that he knew in his head to be gone because he was in a vulnerable place for some reason and that it would all sort itself out. Reality was quick to smack the Briton in the face. He’d been working with a rather fantastic prosthetic device, one that had proven itself capable of handling not only physical therapy or time in autopsy but also roaming about a cruise ship and slogging through sand. That rather fantastic prosthetic device, the one he relied on for locomotive ability, was as absent as his clothing. Right on the heels of this realization came another gut-wrenching pang: he did not have Marcus to lean on for support in this instance because he couldn’t see Marcus no matter which way he turned. He could see some sort of aquatic creature; he could see the tree with branches unfurled and reaching toward things in the ceiling; he could see what he believed to be creatures in suspended animation (and quite possibly pregnant creatures, no less, unless his medical knowledge had taken a huge wallop during whatever had caused his blackout). But Bryant couldn’t see Marcus. And that was a problem.
Later, he wouldn’t be sure if he hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness or if whatever had caused him to be knocked out had happened again, but Bryant came to himself again after an unknown amount of time. He was still in the cell and all of the things that were so bally wrong were still very certainly incredibly wrong. As he huddled against a transparent wall and curled into a ball, making himself as small as possible -- no mean feat for a man of his size -- the trembling Bryant was distantly aware that he now shared his new space with another occupant. He didn’t bother to look to see who was with him (though the doctor in him managed to take a break from his rapid panicky breaths to check to make sure the other person’s unconscious respirations were within normal parameters) but instead let himself get sucked into the black pool of fear that had been growing in him over the last few days. When his new cellmate awoke, it would be to a sniveling, shaking, generally unresponsive Dr. Bryant O’Neill.
The one clear miserable thought he could piece together went something like this: It’s fairly bloody difficult to draw your knees up to your chest if you’ve only got one ruddy knee.