[Hamartia]
JJ had reappeared, he was stood beside the police officer looking terribly young and terribly brave: his head and spine very straight as if drawn up by invisible strings. Paramedics had a habit of looking like that, Toby knew, when they wanted very much to be sick. It was easiest to pretend you didn't feel small and useless and ham-fisted if you behaved as if you knew everything and kept quiet -- Toby was like that herself when children came into the ER, until they could be handed over to someone else.
Her eyebrows drew together as she tried to see more clearly; which hospital they were going to, whether the girls were responding -- the female paramedic appeared to be losing patience, her head kept turning to her left where her radio-mike was kept. Something more important than beaten girls: the triage of it was brutally simple. They were alive, they could be tended to, there was nothing that needed the rush and grit of paramedic field medicine. It was a job that required finesse and time, paramedics usually had one but never the other. She wasn't due to work today -- to go in and see if she could help? If this was Creation business then the poor girls' suffering could make sense to someone who understood... Or to stay away from it, to keep Lily close and plug in the vaporizer and hear the rattle-choke breathing ease into something thick and harsh but safer than what had been before. It wasn't a decision at all, really.
Toby didn't turn her head to look away from the scene, to look up at him -- possibly because it involved craning her neck and Toby never much liked the reminder of just how small in stature she was. "It's a horrible death," she said now, her voice vague and soft, her mind elsewhere. She shifted Lily's weight to make it more comfortable, "Wouldn't be a way to go I'd choose." The child lifted her head to look more intently at Ryder, solemn faced and then settled herself, a brightly colored stuffed fish tucked under her elbow. Her thumb found her mouth, observed him over the top of it.
"At least people care," Toby said and now her head turned and she looked at him as though caring were the most important part of things, "At least it's not so normal they don't notice."