Who: Thomas Brandon & Isobel Hughes What: Healing Thomas Brandon Where: OAH2 When: Sunday night, immediately following this Warnings: None
After turning off her laptop, Isobel wasted little time in grabbing her bag, double checking that she had enough money for a cab, then locking the door behind her as she raced down the single flight of stairs and out the front of the building. This late in the evening, it wasn’t hard to find a cab, and giving him her destination, Isobel settled back in the seat to think while the cabbie wove through the darkened city streets. It seemed to take a lifetime before they were pulling up outside the hospital, and it was then that the nerves started to gnaw at her stomach, hoping that this wouldn’t be the first time she failed in healing someone. Leave it to her to fail on someone as important as Thomas Brandon III.
Hopping out, she paused long enough at the passenger window to pay the fare, and then with the sound of the cab pulling away, Isobel looked up towards the hospital, standing there for a long moment. Finally, she gathered a breath and made her way inside, walking with a certain amount of purpose, as though she knew exactly where she was going. It was dangerous enough being back here, she knew, and as one of the nurses gave her a look, Isobel shifted and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up and over her hair, disappearing into one of the elevators and punching the button for the proper floor.
Stepping out as the doors opened, Isobel paused in the hallway for a moment, glancing at the room number she had scrawled on the bit of paper she had in her hand, before choosing the proper direction and heading down that way. The room in question came into view and Isobel paused in front of it before giving two sharp knocks on the door.
Thomas opened the door halfway through the second knock, sharply, because this was Max's room, and one or the other of them was always at the NICU or on their way there. They took turns resting and Thomas was usually the one that went out for something better than hospital food, but he couldn't think of anyone that would seek them here unless it was one of the physicians. Isobel's hood was up and despite his faded vision he knew she was no doctor. He dropped his hand from the door and stiffened. "Who are you?" He did not sound friendly.
She almost ran back down the hall at the gruffness in his voice, but she steeled herself against her own nerves and forced herself to stand her ground. “Isobel Hughes. Uhm. Gwen sent me. She said you needed help.” As the words went on, her confidence seemed to trickle out bit by bit, leading her to go so far as to take a step backwards, pulling her hood down from around her face.
"Gwen?" No one knew Thomas' connection to that particular name except Max, Roger and Luke. "Gwen." He tried to focus even though he could not, an otherwise pale gaze dark and blank. Some of the wariness ebbed. He stepped back to reveal an empty room. His eyes narrowed slightly, though they could not see her face. "Help, is what she said?"
“Gwen. I had helped her, too.” She offered him a smile, but by the state of his eyes, from what she could tell, she doubted that the expression carried very well. “And I don’t mean to be pushy, but I’d rather not talk about this in the hospital’s hallways where just anyone could hear.” Particularly this hospital. I got caught here. The guards chased me out of here. Eli’d be proud of her, Isobel thought, for being wary. For being careful. See, she had learned, a little bit at least.
Isobel stepped forward slightly, not yet entering the room until it was offered. She could tell the wariness in his voice, and while she couldn’t relate to it directly, she could imagine how he felt. “Gwen said that you could call her if you were unsure. She asked me to come here just a few moments ago.”
He wanted to touch her sleeve, to find the nature of the fabric. He wanted to assess her stature, to better understand her origins. He couldn't do any of these things, and a cloud of frustration passed over his brow. He shifted uneasily, something she wouldn't know that he did not often do. "What number did she ask me to call?" he asked. He would be sure, because any damage to him might be damage to Amanda, and he had too many precautions to think of. He moved all the way back to the edge of the room to make room for her.
As Thomas retreated further into the room, Isobel followed, assuming it to be a silent invitation. As she did so, she fished in her shoulder bag for her cell phone. “Uhm, hold on. I put her number in here before I left Bathos, just in case...” She trailed off, flipping through the menus on her phone until she found the number in question. Rattling it off, she went so far as offering her phone to him. “You can call her if you’d like. I’d be a little wary too if someone showed up like I have, but...” Isobel trailed off, glancing around the room for a moment, and then back towards Thomas, trying to make sense of the photos she had seen of him in the paper in comparison to the person she saw in front of her now. It was unfair to judge him, she knew that.
“She told me before, when she came and I helped her with her eyes, that she had a friend that needed help, but she needed to talk to her friend first.” Isobel took a step back and closed the door just a little, to offer them some sense of privacy before she went on any further. “I’m a healer, Mister Brandon.”
He listened to the number with a sharpish look of concentration that he somehow managed while looking at the air just over her shoulder, and gave a dismissive shake of his head when she offered the phone in his direction, something he perceived as her outline wavered and her words explained it. "No. No, I believe you. Tell me what you have healed before, and whom, and where, and why. Details, Miss Hughes, details." He sat heavily in a chair without looking to see that it was in place. The hospital bed and monitors nearby were silent, but there was another chair by the door.
Closing the door the rest of the way to insure that no hospital personnel would be privy to their conversation, Isobel took the other chair near the door, settling her purse down at her feet. “I should have brought a resume with me,” she joked lightly before she started in on the handful of people she had healed. It started with her coworker after he cut his hand while chopping onions, to the little girl at this very hospital whom she cured of a fever. It was followed by Ray’s hand (an injury she had inflicted herself in order to demonstrate), her cousin’s mouth, and finally Gwen’s eyes. When she was done, Isobel sat very still, hands in her lap, waiting for his verdict on this resume of healing.
His response was sober. He pressed his fingertips together and leaned forward as if there was something to lean on, though there was not. Thomas had acquired an air of intense solemnity after his blindness, an air of concentration on himself and no other, as if he was the only person on earth. "Do you understand what ailed any of these people? Gwen? Do you understand the difference between her eyes and mine? What exactly do you do when you heal?"
And there went the questions she wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. She didn’t know how she healed, she didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but she’d try to explain, at least how she saw it in her head. “The physical injuries, the cuts, were easier. I just sped along what the body was already doing, or at least that’s what it felt like to me. The fever... I’m honestly not sure. And Gwen’s vision...” Isobel trailed off, the serious air in the room feeling quite suffocating. “No, I don’t understand the difference between her eyes and your own. I just...” Again her words faltered, struggling to put the pieces together into some explanation that wouldn’t sound rambling and insane.
“It’s just instinct. I don’t think when I do it, I just... close my eyes and kind of go into a, well, I guess you’d call it a trance or meditation. I see it as a white light, a spark of heat that I can control. And then I just let it go and try to make things right again. It seems to know what to do and I don’t fight it.” She sighed as she finished, shaking her head in the negative. “It sounds ridiculous, I know. I feel like I ought to be locked up for yammering on as I do. I’m sorry, Mister Brandon.”
He stared at her. Or toward her, rather. His hands drifted down. "You just 'let it go'?" He was not even close to reassured. Thomas was a man of calculation and care. Though the past few months had been a vast exception, he was accustomed since childhood to look after himself. It was a great leap for him to put himself in another's hands. It was even harder than taking direction from Luke. Not even Max had said the word 'help' to him in months.
She knew how ridiculous it was, but she knew no other way to put what she did into words. “I don’t know how else to explain it,” Isobel stated once more, reaching down to grab up her purse, pulling it into her lap. “I just trust it. But if this isn’t for you, then I completely understand.” Standing up, she hesitated before moving towards the door.
“I came because Gwen asked me to. But I can’t force you to accept my help. I’m really sorry for bothering you tonight, Mister Brandon.” Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she lingered for a moment longer before turning, feeling rattled and suddenly unsure of her own ability.
He stopped her. He shouldn't have been able to, but she made so much noise, the purse rattling, the fabric swishing, and he knew her height well now. He caught her by the arm, without excess pressure, and his grip was control. "Wait." He pulled her back. "I'm losing the little I have. What more damage could you do?" It was a little too pragmatic to be cynicism.
A part of her wanted to shrug him off, as his words felt more like an insult than anything else. She could tell he had very little faith that she could help, but maybe this was a chance to prove him wrong. So instead of fighting or raising a fuss, Isobel gave an unseen nod. “Hopefully it won’t be further damage,” she said lightly, turning slightly to look around the room once more. “I think it’s easiest if you’re someplace comfortable. A chair, or the bed. I’ll need to be close enough to touch your face. So choose where you’d like and we can get started. Like you said, I can’t make it worse, hmm?”
Thomas didn't look around, he just backed up two even steps, relinquishing her arm, and sat in the chair he had just vacated. He knew exactly where it was, just as he knew where everything else in this room was, because he'd paced across it so many times the image in his mind was clear. Yet he knew how much he was missing without knowing precisely what it was. The colors, the state of the room, anything out the window, anything that would change that might alert him that something was wrong... He couldn't see those things. "I'm comfortable." This wasn't true, but it was as close as he was going to come. "What do I need to do?"
When he had settled back down in his chair, Isobel sat her purse down once more, dragging the chair from beside the door along side his, facing him from the side. Settling down, she scooted close enough that her arm brushed his when she moved, though she hardly seemed aware of the contact. “Just relax. Close your eyes. And I’ll do the rest.” Isobel tried to make her voice as calming as she dared, something that was hard to do with the way her nerves beat at her stomach, but Thomas had much more to lose than she did, and it was up to her to keep her calm.
Once Thomas was as she needed, Isobel scooted that slight bit closer, arranging herself in a slightly awkward position as her fingers sought a position on his face, just against his temples. A breath was released and she closed her eyes as well, the tension draining from her bit by bit as she summoned that white light that was becoming familiar to her more and more every day. Thomas would likely feel an intense warmth spreading from her fingertips, and it was this heat that she coaxed, searching out that which was wrong, damaged, to try and correct it.
One of his martial arts teachers had told Thomas that if he was going to succeed he needed to believe that it was possible, and if he continued to be so thoroughly negative, he was destined to failure. He had learned a great many things before he had come back to the mask in Musings New York, trading his youth for skill and believing that would be enough for his purpose. Thomas had honed himself like a blade, aiming for effectiveness in every area he could humanly contemplate and pursuing excellence with a dogged determination that surpassed the desire for anything else. He had tried to find that again after he had lost his sight, because he knew he would need it to find his way through a world he couldn’t see. He had managed; better than managed. He had found ways to read, write, communicate, navigate through space, and even pick up details of his surroundings and the people in them with a fair amount of accuracy. Yet for Thomas it was not enough. He operated on a level where he expected full awareness, and such a blow as a lack of sight was like losing his mobility, or his intellect. He couldn’t accept working at a level different from what he knew, especially since it impaired his ability to support his new family. His teachers probably would have taught adaptation, but Thomas would take the risk Isobel represented because he was so desperate to be effective it surmounted everything else. He tried to think positively.
It was different from Isobel’s experience with Gwen; there was actual damage to repair, different from a cut or a scrape, different from anything she had tried before, and it was more difficult. But she pushed on, her hands shifting positions every so often, changing direction, guiding that white spark, urging it on. As the seconds turned to minutes, Thomas might become aware of a quiet whisper from the girl, soft words murmured over and over as she spoke to herself, working through this new situation.
This continued for the better part of half an hour before the heat started to recede and Isobel pulled her hands away. After Gwen, she had felt drained, as though she had just ran several miles, but this time she felt positively exhausted. Her hands fell limply into her lap and her head fell forward as she took several deep breaths, returning to herself bit by bit.
“Let... let me know if it worked,” Isobel murmured moments later, still not trusting herself to move further than required. “I... I think it should be good. But, I’m not you. Can’t tell. If it’s not right, I’ll work again. Just...” Isobel trailed off and tilted her head back, still breathing deeply.
Thomas blinked as she spoke, coming out of a meditative trance he’d put himself into not long after he felt her fingers on his face and a glow like summer sunshine under his skin. Thomas wondered if he should have tried to explain the effects of atropine and the damage it did to pupil dilation. Perhaps that might increase Isobel’s odds, or somehow make what she did more effective. The fuzzy blotches of color Thomas was used to reappeared as his lids rose, but he blinked several more times and acquired an expression of effort before the muscles around his eyes relaxed with surprise. His eyes suddenly became brighter as his pupils shrunk to a more normal point, and the sharp blue lit with a keen awareness that had not been there before.
Isobel was a pretty woman, as blonde as he had expected but also older than he’d expected, from her voice and mannerisms. He had envisioned a girl of far more youth, and as he flickered through observations about her demeanor and attire, he realized with a start that he could see clearly. He thought he could see even more clearly than he had been able to before, but he couldn’t trust his senses on that point--they were flooding with new information. He started to get a headache almost immediately, but he ignored it in favor of Isobel.
His arm came out and he supported her shoulder as she started to sway a little to the side. “What happened? Are you alright?”
Another breath, deep and as steady as she could make it, trying to put her senses back together as Thomas came back to himself. She felt light-headed, shaky as though she hadn’t eaten for some time, and when Thomas touched her shoulder, she brought her head back forward fast enough to make her vision spin. The colour drained from her face almost instantly and she reached up to steady herself with a hand on his arm, focusing on breathing, on staying still and calm. Though he asked about her, that was hardly her worry then.
“Your sight. Is it better? Did... did I actually help or did it get worse or...” Isobel trailed off, closing her eyes as her hand gripped his arm just a bit tighter, as though she was afraid of falling.
“You helped. It’s absolutely clear, you’re incredible. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” The fear in his voice seemed to counter in its escalation. His voice came down to an even level, and he sounded certain and in control. His expression was not so collected, but he’d fallen out of practice controlling it when others were present. His arm was thick and just as solid as his voice. He stood up so he could support her better. “Maybe you should lie down.”
The news that it had worked, that it had actually worked again, brought a smile to her face despite her tiredness. “Thank god. I... I was worried that I’d fail you. Like you were worried I would,” she said, opening her eyes to look up to him as he stood. “And... I’ll be fine. It just takes a lot out of me sometimes.” Isobel gave a pat to his arm, and the suggestion of laying down seemed too good to pass up.
“That... I think that would be good. Laying down.” And releasing his arm, she moved to stand, the world tipping, swaying, and she let out a laugh at the feeling. “There’s no way I could trouble you for something to drink, could I? Water? When I helped Gwen... something to drink helped, so that would be good, please and thank you.” Another laugh and she tilted her head to look up towards Thomas, blinking.
“You’re tall. I didn’t think you were that tall in the pictures I’ve seen of you.”
Thomas sometimes forgot that not everyone was used to the high standard he set for himself, and he felt a small thread of guilt at her initial words. “I was worried,” he conceded, “but it didn’t have to do with you.” That was not technically true, but it was true that Thomas had been worried for days about his little girl, and the anxiety would be there regardless. He guided her carefully to the hospital bed, which Max hadn’t occupied since they replaced the sheets, so it was clean and made. When she looked up and commented on his height, expression eased into something like a smile, his mouth relaxing. “People tell me that a lot. I’ll have the nurse bring you some water--I need to see my daughter. Are you going to be alright?” He shifted toward the door, but hovered, undecided.
The help to the bed was welcomed, and the moment she was near it, she sat down heavily, leaning to the side until her head hit the pillow and the room stopped spinning. “I’m just glad it worked. I’m... I’m really glad I could help you, Mister Brandon.” Isobel gave him a smile, shifting slightly on the mattress until she pulled her legs up with her, hands folded over her stomach.
“And I’ll be fine. I’ll be gone and out of your hair before you get back from seeing your-” Isobel paused, then sat up just a little. “You’ve got a baby girl? That... that’s so awesome. I bet you’ll be a good dad.” She laid back down, settling a bit more. “I bet she’s adorable. All babies are cute. Little girls especially...” And without answering Thomas’ question, Isobel had drifted off into a light doze.
Thomas returned to the side of the bed and took a pulse just to make sure she wasn’t slipping into some kind of creation-related coma. It would be just like their abilities to backfire in that way, and Thomas had learned that all things in this world had a cost, just like in the old one. She seemed stable, however, just asleep. Her purse was still sitting on the chair, and inside he placed one of his business cards, with his personal number on the back of it along with the words “if you need anything.” He called a nurse to check on her before he moved rapidly toward the stairs and NICU.