Brent McGregor | Väinämöinen (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} vaino) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} paxletalelogs,@ 2017-05-19 08:23:00 |
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Who: Brent & Matt
What: Spa day goes awry.
Where: WiLoft Spa
When: Friday, May 19
Brent slouched on a bench in the steam room. His back was in one corner, his legs stretched out toward another, taking up an utterly unreasonable amount of space in the room. He rolled his shoulders against the wall as though he might nestle himself more comfortably against its hard surface. The room's only other occupant was wearing a distinctly unpleasant expression, a consequence of ten solid minutes of Brent explaining the least savory details of his work.
"So he's sitting there," he was saying, gesticulating wildly with bare, sweaty arms. "Splayed out in this wheelchair, wearing nothing but that little papery gown. He had some test or something, I don't know, I had to take him to radiology. And you remember I said he'd pissed himself, right? Well of course he shit all in that wheelchair, too. Just everywhere. And then he'd sat in it for God knows how long, so it was just everywhere..."
The other man slid farther down the bench, closer to the door, still futilely seeking a way to make his escape without seeming rude. Brent, it seemed, was having none of it.
"Have you ever been in a hospital? Because listen, you can clean things up, but I swear it's like that smell just gets stuck in your nose. Then you're just smelling shit and that cleaning stuff, and nothing really gets rid of that unless you go in the supply closet and huff some bleach or something. And I try not to -- hey, where are you going?"
The man slipped out of the door without so much as a wave goodbye. Brent made a series of guttural sounds and animal gestures in protest. The door shut and he settled back, alone, against the wall. With no-one to talk to, soon his eyelids were growing heavy; he found himself slumping further and further down onto the bench, and at last his loud snores echoed off the walls.
“Candidate 1B02 has arrived,” Matthew announced to his recorder, now fully used to the comings and goings of the different subjects and much more relaxed than he had been a mere two weeks before. While the first week had created a nervous energy around him, there was not an energy of expectation. When he had the woman on the table over a week before who had sprouted flowers and his bosses were pleased with this discovery no less, Matthew was eager to see if something like it would happen again.
He slipped his gloves on and moved toward the table. “The day is Friday, May 19. 1B02 is male, thirty-two years old, and medical records indicate he is healthy...although it doesn’t appear he takes great care of himself.” Matthew was frowning at the man before him. Dirt under his nails and maybe even a bit on his skin, stubble on his face, his hair seemed either to have a good amount of gel in it or was actually just that greasy. He was also covered in a sheen of sweat which made Matthew consider getting more than one pair of gloves.
“1B02 was placed into his sleeping state eight minutes ago,” Matthew continued, the frown still well displayed on his face. “And I’ll now administer a pin prick in different areas to ensure he is fully asleep.” Which he did, wrinkling his nose all the while as he lifted the man’s arm up and poked the soft underside of his arm and the various other places most likely to cause a reaction. The man, thankfully, remained asleep.
“Retrieving vials for the samples now. Vial one is 1B02’s mouth swab. The subject’s lips are a bit dry, possibly from dehydration, but otherwise I’m not seeing any bruises or cuts. I’m still of the belief that this man does not maintain the same lifestyle that other subjects have who have come in.”
He puttered about, cleaning the man’s arm well and good with alcohol swabs before taking his blood and noting each vial and its contents. He took note of the man’s skin, nail and hair condition as he retrieved samples of all three, and the movement over the blue light resulted in nothing. No changes in his skin, no indication of anything strange, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be an eventful time--the woman with the flowers hadn’t shown anything odd either. It wasn’t until he gave the serum that everything became dreamline.
Matthew took the man’s blood pressure and listened quietly to his heart. It was more of the same normal things to note but as he grew closer to administering the serum, he was feeling his excitement grow. Even if no one else had a reaction since that woman, there was still the possibility and Matthew was not one to give up hope so easily.
“The timer is ready to go,” Matthew announced as he lifted the small needle overhead and rid it of air bubbles. “And I am now injecting 1B02 with the serum.” He did so quickly, another skill he had. He was always complimented for his capabilities with needles during med school and beyond. Taking blood that didn’t bruise, giving needles quick and with little pain. In and out, the serum was put into the patient, and Matthew tapped on the timer to begin its ticking count as he went to dispose of the needle.
The reaction began subtly at first. Music hung in the air, one soft note after another, like something piped into the room from the spa proper. It was a maddening sort of sound, disappearing the moment one attempted to focus on it. There were voices, but if they sang words at all, they were nothing recognizable to either test subject or administrator. The music seemed loudest around the body on the gurney, but even there its details could not properly be made out.
From Brent's prone body issued the subtle but strengthening scent of animals: dirt and sweat and blood and urine. He did not stir, but when Matthew moved to approach once more, the scent came again, like some bizarre defense mechanism.
Matthew paused and looked at the man. There wasn’t anything visual that he could note that changed, but he smelt it, heard it, and suddenly felt a deep sense of dread. There wasn’t something magical and amazing about what was going on, but something bad, very bad.
Slowly, Matthew grew closer to the man and looked him over again, searching for a change, and started to withdraw his stethoscope.
The wild smell grew stronger. So, too, the music swelled, until it seemed as though the voices came from a choir in the room itself. Then the song reversed itself; inverted, notes and words flowed backward from the physician, like a tide sucked back out to sea before a devastating tsunami. Brent's chest swelled with the speed and force of it. His body strained atop the table, shuddering as if in the throes of a seizure. He gasped for breath but none came. Instead there was only the song, caught in his throat and slowly strangling him.
Matthew’s eyes moved quickly, taking in everything before him as the sounds and the smell overwhelmed him. He rushed to the wall, hitting the intercom and yelling for backup, for someone to come and help him. This wasn’t good, it wasn’t good at all. He had seen a seizure before, he had seen someone struggling to breathe, he had given CPR with ease but he had never had this mixture of scents and song.
Back to the man’s side, Matthew was prying the man’s mouth open and listening, feeling, for air to escape but none come. He quickly began CPR but was going through the list of other things he should do. Listen to his heart, listen to his lungs, search his throat for a blockage, so much but he was only one man and CPR was the top priority. Get air to the lungs, air to the brain, and help the man on the table. And still there was no air: only the song, louder when Brent's mouth was prized open. His skin began to turn a still more alarming shade, and the feral stench rose off his flesh in waves.
Matthew felt a wave of nausea but pushed his reaction aside as he had been taught. He repeated the strokes of CPR, pumping at the man’s chest and trying to breathe for him, but it was of no use. Nothing came up, there wasn’t anything lodged in his throat that he could see, and still the man wasn’t breathing. Matthew scrambled to listen to the man’s heart and caught each shuddering beat as it struggled. “God dammit, where’s help?” he cursed, shooting a glare at the doors that the table had rolled in through. But no help came. No help came at all and Matthew was stuck in a panic. He knew the basics of how to try and start a heart, how to get a person to breathe, of course he did, but what was needed in that moment was a team in an emergency room all working together to help save the man on the table.
He simply wasn’t enough.
But a defibrillator could do the trick and Matthew went for it. He pulled the item free from the wall and hit the charge button, listening impatiently for each beep until it finally gave the alert that it was ready for use. Grabbing scissors, he hastily cut free the front of the hospital robe of the man, exposing his chest, and reached for the paddles.
Against the chest they went and a quick consideration that his body wasn’t touching the table or the man, and Matthew pressed the charge button. The jolt of electric went into the man, he moved for a moment, controlled by it all, but then went still again. After a second charge, then a third, both the song and the smell emanating from Brent's still form disappeared entirely. Nothing of either lingered, not even the faintest notes. The body was just a body, silent and immobile.
Matthew stepped back and let out a ragged breath, his hands still held the paddles out from his sides and a drip of sweat lingered on his forehead. The help had never come and he did what he could do with… no success.
He had witnessed his father’s death and looked at corpses in school. He wasn’t unfamiliar with death, but he had never had someone die under his watch. He felt the bitterness of self disgust welling in his stomach as he realized he had been frowning at the man and judging him so readily when he had first rolled in, but now he was dead and Matthew was already filled with regret.
He let out a breath that made noise, almost like a sob, although tears weren’t in his eyes. He looked around and hit the off button for the defibrillator and replaced the paddles. His recorder continued, waiting for more verbal notes, but it surely had caught everything that had happened. The voices, the singing, and Matthew’s desperate noises as he tried to save the man, 1B02. The man whose name Matthew didn’t even know.
Matthew moved towards the intercom and hit it again. He glanced at the table and took in a deep breath before turning back to the speaker. He licked his lips, finding it hard to make the call and the subsequent request, but he had to start somewhere. Matthew Buchanan, a relatively young doctor in all standards, managed to at the very least speak clearly as he stated, “Candidate 1B02 is dead.”