Delilah (deewall) wrote in neogenesisrpg, @ 2009-03-16 20:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | delilah waller, gil hatayama, nana kimigawa |
Who: Delilah Waller, Nana Kimigawa, Gil Hatayama
What: Delilah is among those infected by the tainted serum.
When: Saturday night to Sunday
Where: Seattle Medical
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
"You gonna be okay?" asked a gruff voice with some small measure of concern from the front seat of the cab. Delilah had no illusion that he gave a fuck except if she threw up all over the leather upholstery. She handed a twenty irrespective of the fare, stumbling out without an answer. Why bother? Once she was on the sidewalk she was her own problem. Her legs wobbled, knees weak like jelly and she grabbed onto a railing for support. Thank God for wheelchair access ramps because she didn't feel particularly able to climb any steps. The sliding doors wavered in and out of her vision, blurring slightly around the edges. Inside, the waiting room was full. What was it they called it on TV? Triage. Right. Delilah grimaced, trying to pick out the uniformed stick figures from the ones that looked like her. The ones that couldn't help her. Eyes latching on to the first, she made the effort to take another step. And went down.
What a fantastic time to be short staffed! They were very busy tonight, busier than she'd seen it in a while. "Miss? Are - oh!!" She gasped when Delilah fell, calling to the other nurses to come and help. She was loaded up quickly and taken back to be examined. There was no obvious trauma, and she had a fever. Some sort of infection, maybe? It could be a billion and one things, running the gamut from simple to hopelessly complicated, minor to life-threatening, and all subject to change - But they couldn't know just from looking. A blood test was ordered, and an IV started. Once that was set up, Nana stepped up to take her blood pressure. Hopefully she'd wake up soon, hopefully it was just a stomach bug and she'd gotten dehydrated or something. Something that would be simple to fix, and they could send their patient happy and on her way.
She came to on a distinctly softer surface than the floor and in an entirely different room. What theatrics will get you, Delilah thought dimly, barely able to keep her eyes open it felt like such effort. A woman was standing close to the bed - uniformed - and doing something outside her field of vision. She opened her mouth to say 'hey, thanks for not letting me crack my skull' when a sharp pain shot up her arm and straight into her brain. She wanted to scream and felt entitled to it, but her mouth was to dry and the only sound that came was a rush of air, torn from her lungs with force that left her gasping. "Stop--stop." Had she hit her arm? She couldn't remember. It didn't matter as long as she could stop the pain. "Fuck, please."
Nana hesitated for a second, but took the blood pressure cuff of. It could wait a bit, couldn't it? "Does it hurt?" she asked, frowning. "Did you injure yourself?" It didn't seem to be injured, but she wasn't the patient. She didn't feel it. Just because it didn't look injured, just because it looked fine, didn't mean it was. And if it wasn't and she was just delirious - That was fine, they could handle that, but she didn't want to hurt her if she was injured.
"No. Yes. I don't know." Delilah pressed her other hand to her forehead and the heaviness in her temples receded only to come back again, vengeful as headaches often were. "It didn't hurt before--in the cab. I'm... what's wrong with me?" She glanced to the other woman. She was a nurse, she had to know. She had to fix her. Someone had to.
She seemed confused, but was clearly coming back to her senses. "Well," she said, giving her a smile. "We've drawn some blood and we're trying to figure that out. Can you tell me how you're feeling? What were the symptoms that you came in for?" That might help to narrow things down for the doctor.
"I had-have really bad cramps. My ovaries feel like they're trying to crawl out of me... or something." Good with descriptions she was not, but she knew how she was feeling. "I took two Tylenol for the fever but it's only gotten worse. Didn't know what to do." And now her arm was hurting. What was up with that? Frowning, she glanced at the offending limb and tried to close the fist. It was as though needles pierced her skull and she groaned, jaw set because it hurt so bad she could cry. "Fuck, what... I didn't do anything to my arm, I swear--"
Nana tried her best to keep a cheerful expression. It could be anything, but the cramps pointed to something more serious, coupled with that fever. She wasn't a doctor, though, and she smoothed down her scrubs before patting her hand lightly. "Are you in a lot of pain? Can you tell me on a scale of one to ten - ten being the worst - how much pain?" She felt silly asking. She looked like a ten. "I'll see what we can get done about it."
"Twenty," Dee answered with a grimace, teeth clenched to channel some of the tension in her body. "Get me morphine, get me something, please. I can't--fuck, even breathing hurts." She laughed hollow and scared, hysteria worming its way into her psyche. Because she hadn't done anything, because she hadn't taken anything, this had to be serious. Some freak disease no one had ever heard of and she'd have it. Fucking figured.
Nana nodded. "I'll be right back," she said. "Don't worry, we'll get this fixed up." She disappeared behind the curtain to retrieve a doctor. She returned soon after with him, standing to one side and helping as best she could. Pain medication was ordered through her IV, as well as a bunch of prying questions about her periods and things.
"Once the labs get back, we'll go from there," the doctor said, preparing to leave again. "Nana, please get her information, will you?"
"Of course," Nana said, nodding.
It was amazing that she was still conscious, Dee thought bitterly. Amazing and utterly unfair. If there was ever a time to sleep, this would be it. Her head still pounded, but at least the panic was under control and the way the room tilted wasn't so frightening anymore. "Call--" She swallowed in a dry throat. "Call my husband. He should be around. Somewhere. I think." He'd better be working today. Someone had to take care of Jez if she croaked. It wouldn't be fair to let her make the call to mom and dad.
"Does he work here?" she asked, surprised. Was this a doctor's wife, or a nurse's? "What's his name? Do you know where he works?" She probably knew him - She knew nearly everyone around the hospital!
Delilah closed her eyes. Oh, sleep, sleep, sleep. She could sleep for centuries. "Hatayama," she answered through chapped, burning lips. "Gil Hatayama." He was her next of kin, oddly enough, and the thought occurred to her that she was probably losing his kid. Her eyes snapped open. "This isn't--I'm not miscarrying or anything?"
"You're Gil's wife?" she asked, surprised. So this was Dee! Well - "Are you pregnant??" she gasped, staring. Oh no. Oh please no. Not to him. "W-we'll find that out, we'll see. I can't tell you anything yet but the doctor should be able to tell you all of that soon."
Delilah nodded shakily. Gil's wife. That was she. No name, no identity besides that. She might hurl. "I don't--I'm not sure. Maybe?" The other woman was supposed to be the nurse. Her pretty uniform said so. She was supposed to know.
"We'll find out," she said, trying her best to keep her voice steady and soothing. "They'll check for that with the blood test as well. Do you know if you're bleeding at all? That might not be the case." But it could be, or it could be an ectopic pregnancy, or... Oh, Lord. "Let me go page Gil, okay? You can try to sleep a little if you need to."
She glanced down at her body and it was like lifting a ton of bricks. Whatever they were feeding into her was doing its magic. "Yeah.. yeah, page... him." Her eyes fell shut again and she forced them open, determined to see the woman's nametag before she zoned out. So she could thank her later. Or haunt her, in case she died.
Nana left and paged Gil, running her fingers over her stomach absently. She prayed with all her might that Dee wasn't miscarrying, that this wasn't related to her possible pregnancy. Please, please... Gil was her friend, she couldn't bear to see that happen. She put up the phone, then went back to see if there were any changes at all.
Sedatives made sleep an easier feat than anticipated and they worked fast. By the time Nana came back, Delilah was out, her arm lax over the side of the bed and perspiration on her forehead. She was still burning up, but she didn't feel it anymore.
"Page Sorenson in anesthesiology, let her know to try an Brachial plexus block on Mr. Friedman." Gil talked to the nurse beside him in low tones as she mixed a saline bag with the prescribed antibiotic and attached it to the patient's IV. At first, Gil did not understand why he was first paged down to the ER, even when short-staffed he wasn't a general practitioner. It wasn't until the symptoms of the patients started to circle down to a common denominator and the numbers kept growing did Gil's presence made sense. The serum.
Contacting the main office and the CDC were the easy parts, finding treatments that were effective in saving the affected patients was harder. Near impossible, was communicating with everyone working the ER department amongst the chaos? Impossible.
Gil moved to the next gurney, starting in on the patient's vitals and asking the standard questions when his pager buzzed against the side of his hip. Another department, the priority level set too high to ignore. Above all, it was from Nana's number. Apologizing to the patient, he tapped a nurse retreating to the confines of the nurse's station and passed over the chart. "Kel, could you take over? Notify Masters."
He walked over to the station and picked up the phone, dialing the number on his pager. He organized scattered charts as the phone rang. "Hatayama, RN Kimigawa paged me. Is it one of my patients?"
Ah! The phone! Nana picked it up. "Oh! Good, it's you. No, it's not," she said, relieved that he'd answered so quickly. He really needed to know. Hopefully he wasn't too busy. "No, we have your wife here. She's got a high fever and is complaining of severe cramping and pain in her left arm. She's stable, but she asked me to call you and let you know that she's here."
Her wing had not been updated. Who knew how many patients were suffering from the oversight. "She's going to need an antibiotic administered immediately. Check to see if there are any other patients with similar symptoms in your department, I'll be right up. Inform the physician in charge that there's a bacterial infection that seems to be tied to recent serum injections. The pain appears to be neuromuscular, do whatever you can to keep people comfortable. I'll be up as soon as I can."
Somehow, that was reassuring. An infection they could handle, they could fix that. They couldn't fix a miscarriage. "Thank you. I'll tell him. We'll see you soon," she said, then put up the phone and hurried off to tell the doctor in charge. She returned a few moments later with an order for a shot of antibiotics for Dee. There were three other patients, at least, that seemed to be suffering from the same thing, and she was feeling very grateful that they'd gotten a hold of Gil. How long would it have been before they'd found out otherwise? How many more people would come in, sick and in pain, before they knew what was happening?
Gil hung up the phone and sat down at the station and pulled up the center's reporting system. Detailing all that he could about the current situation, he printed it out in memo form, signed, then faxed it through to all of the nurses stations in the hospital.
He also forwarded an electronic copy to the hospital director and board, imploring them to release the information to be released to the public. It was one of the few times he hoped that there would be a hacker sniffing between the internet lines. What he wouldn't give for a well-timed leak, but he lacked the time or the knowledge of how to do so without being caught. He pulled up his electronic file and made a note of the lot number of his last injection to compare with the ones already reported.
Gil felt fine, but for how long? He hated being unsure, and the knots in his stomach were not helping. Taking the steps instead of waiting patiently for the elevator, Gil strode to the nurse's station in search for Nana or a chart with his wife's name on it. "Where's Dee?"
Nana had been peeking every minute or so to see if he was there yet, and she hurried out and patted his arm before the nurse behind the counter could say anything. "She's in here, we've got her in a bed. She's napping," she explained. "I told Dr. Padilla what you said and he ordered the antibiotics for her, and three other patients we have." She gave him a warm smile. "So thank you. It was really a big help."
(7:07:13 PM) Ebony: "It was nothing." he said, heading over to the room Nana directed him to and took a hold of Dee's chart from the door, taking a look at how she was doing and making sure all of the bases had been covered. "With the bloodwork, did they order a pregnancy test?"
They had been trying, and there had been no word on how this infection affected pregnancies. It was best to be sure.
"Yes," Nana said, nodding. "There's no word back, yet, though. They're a little backed up, it seems." She took a moment to look over Dee's vitals. "She came into the lobby and then fainted. George is saying he's probably going to keep her overnight for observation. How successful have the antibiotics been with your patients?" She looked up at him curiously. How strange... A contamination of the serums, no doubt. What could have happened?
"Too soon to say, but it seems to be responding to it." Gil said, noting that his and Dee's lots where markedly different. "The inportant thing is to break their fever and manage their pain."
He stepped into the room proper, placing his hands on the support rails as he looked over Dee, placing a hand on her forehead to see if the fever had started to abate for her.
It wasn't quite like coming up for air, because that would be poetry and poetry had dick to do with real life, contrary to what her sister seemed to believe, but Dee cracked an eye open at the feel of someone touching her, ready to bitch out - or at least attempt to bitch out - whatever nurse had come to poke at her. Seeing that it was none other than Gil, she saw no reason to censor herself.
"Hey... Wanna swap places?" She could play the doctor while he lay there dying. Wasn't that an appealing deal?
"Maybe some other day," he smiled, lowering his hand to let it rest lightly against her cheek, a reassuring caress in lieu of gauging temperature. She was still too warm. "How're you feeling?"
"Like I'm lying in strawberry fields... do they know what's wrong with me yet?" Because she was on a timer. She needed to get to a very important meeting. With her maker. Or so it felt.
"There was an infection going around that seems tied to the serum. Seems you were one of the many unlucky ones. We have you on something that will clear that up, in the meantime we'll just have to keep you comfortable, yeah?"
Delilah frowned, confused because the serum was supposed to be foolproof, just like every other thing that seemed to be going to shit in their little state. She made a move to take his hand before she remembered her arm and grimaced. Bad idea. "Fuck. How bad is it?"
"Pretty bad, there's chaos all over the hospital. We're still learning about the infection as we go, but you're in good hands." Gil answered honestly, noting her grimace as she moved. "How is your pain right now?"
"Do the scale thing to me and I'll punch you with my other fist," she warned, only half serious. "Feels like it's twice the size it is." What that meant, she wasn't sure, nor cared especially, just as long as they could fix it.
Humm... Cute~ Gil genuinely cared about her, didn't he? Nana left for a moment to check on a few things, then returned with a cup of ice water, which she set on the table next to the bed. "Um, if you're still feeling bad, please let someone know. It's our job to make you feel better," she said, earnestly. "And the antibiotics might make you feel nauseous. If that happens, please say something." She honestly wanted Dee to feel better, just as she did with all her patients... And she could definitely sympathize with the nausea, which recently had been ramping up for her more than she wanted to admit.
Delilah nodded, turning her attention away from Gil to smile at the nurse. Or attempt to. It was closer to a grimace. "Thanks. Is there a button or something I can press?" She didn't figure there would be someone there with her 24/7 and now that she wasn't dying, she wasn't terribly eager to keep Gil around until she felt better. What were they going to do? Do crossword puzzles?
"Yes, right here," Nana said, pointing to the button on the side of her bed rail. She smiled a bit. "In a little bit the doctor will be back to see how you're doing. Then, we'll probably move you to a regular room for the night." She resisted the urge to pat the other woman comfortingly - She had her husband for that, right?
"Thanks," Dee repeated. "I'll try to stay awake for that but I make no promises." The tranquilizers were still in her system and the temptation of sleep made it easy to just tune out the fact that there was a whole world out there, slowly getting as sick as she was. Or maybe not as. Maybe just close to.
"You can sleep if you like," Nana said, nodding. "You ought to rest, even." She smoothed her scrubs down over her stomach. Oh no! Fidgeting! "I'll let you do that. Please don't hesitate to call us if you need anything."
"Rest," Gil echoed, taking a seat in the recliner next to Dee's bed. "I'll rest too, at least until your fever breaks. I know I have an admin mess to deal with later, but family comes first."
"Ass," she muttered almost fondly because she wasn't good with compliments and that was touching. She didn't need the company, but if he offered... "Suit yourself. It's going to get very-" she heaved a sigh, eyes falling shut again- "boring in here."