Iris Morgenstern (unsteady) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-06 12:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *narrative, iris morgenstern |
Who: Iris
What: Hospital (in and out)
Where: Gotham
When: Handwavey now? Past few days all condensed into one post?
Warnings/Rating: Hospitals, injuries.
Iris hated hospitals. She really did. For all the time she'd spent in them, for all the different reasons, she would have been glad to never see the inside of a hospital room again. She would have been glad to not be back in Gotham (where there were so many reasons she shouldn't be there - Bruce, Sam and Shane, her other siblings, the penthouse, the rumors and tabloids). Wonderland was supposed to have been a place that she could disappear and not have to be somehere that others didn't want her. But even Wonderland wasn't the right place.
She didn't have the memory of how she'd gotten from the clearning in Wonderland's forest to the hospital bed in Gotham. There were certain things that were sharp in her mind (the feel of claws in her flesh, the drag of dirt along the skin of her back, familiar and unfamiliar voices, and then waking up in the hospital room connected to IVs and with a few pints of someone else's blood in her veins), but the details were missing. She knew the voices had been at least some members of her family, but how many and who? The information simply wasn't there.
Once she woke up in the hospital, clean and in a standard issue gown, bandages all along her body, painkillers still clouding her mind, she did her best to try to put the pieces together. Staring up at the ceiling, she fished around in her hazy recollection for the glue that would put things together.
The Cat had attacked her in Wonderland. Dragged her... somewhere. She remembered her journal, so she could only assume that at some point she managed to notify someone. The familiar voices - she could remember Louis, so that meant family. Family had come to get her. That in itself surprised her, after everything. And they'd brought her back to Gotham. Even though she wasn't supposed to be there. She supposed it made sense - that's where they were staying. All of them in the penthouse that had been one of the problems that had worried her and chased her away from the villa in Italy.
She didn't know where the doctors had come in, but if she was in Gotham (though it didn't quite make sense, with the other things she'd been thinking about where she was and wasn't wanted), and she was in the hospital (under care of doctors, and doctors meant money), with the staff treating her with a certain sort of gentle care, then she had to assume that Bruce had had a hand in it. She didn't understand, her mind still confused around Italy and his disappearance, around him telling her not to come to Gotham any more. It felt like she was missing something somewhere, but she didn't know what or where.
Days passed, and the doctors and nurses came through on regular rounds. Turned the television on ("Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham - what it means for stock prices!"), turned the television off. Checked her vitals, her IV, the levels of medication, her bandages. The first time someone had come to change them, Iris had nearly vomited what little was in her stomach. The cuts - scratches - were long and deep, parallel and criss-crossing, angry red, some of them held together by the precise lines of black thread stitches. The nurse had given her a sympathetic look, softly told her that she was being taken good care of, that her cuts likely wouldn't scar as badly as she was fearing. She only nodded, not yet having said a word to anyone in the hospital, but she knew differently.
More days passed. The doctors began to pull back on the level of her painkillers, switching her IV drugs and antibiotics to pills, which she took just as dutifully as everything else. Her skin ached and stung and as the healing slowly started, itched. Once the itching started, the doctors came in to let her know the 'good news' that she was well enough to be released. She'd have to come back to get the stitches removed once she was healed enough, come back for check-ups, but she was ready to go. And who should they contact? They didn't have anyone officially on file as an emergency contact, other than the penthouse phone number, and no one picked up there. She was maybe still a little fuzzy-headed, but it wasn't that hard to smile softly and find her mother's voice somewhere inside of her, letting the staff know that of course there was someone there to help her. They were simply too busy to pick up the phone at the moment. And of course the staff understood that.
She'd been through enough releases from the hospital that she knew how it worked. Paperwork, contact info, more paperwork, instructions on what to do what to take when to come back. And paperwork. And then she was being wheeled carefully to the front entrance, where there was a taxi waiting for her. She'd called for it in between the rounds of filling things out, and the driver waited patiently as she made the painful transfer from wheelchair to back seat. She only carried a plastic bag with her copies of things, a small bottle of painkillers and a larger one of antibiotics. And some vitamins that one of the nurses had insisted she take with her. Insisted with a worried look at the slimness of the limbs beneath the bandages. She'd also been given a set of scrubs and a pair of cheap flip flops, and she knew she wasn't a glamorous picture as she sat in the back of the cab. The driver didn't say anything, though, simply drove her to where she'd requested.
She didn't have cash on her. Nothing at all. But this was Gotham, and the driver (after a token argument) took those prescription painkillers as payment for the ride. And then she slipped out of the car, moving slowly, feeling the tug of stitches and tape when she moved too fast or in the wrong direction.
She'd called ahead here, too. Had received an agreement, that it was fine for her to come and stay for a while. There was someone waiting for her, which was actually comforting, though the horrified look at all her bandages was a little unsettling. Maybe she could have been a bit more honest. But they'd agreed, and it was too late now for the night to turn her away. Not that she was certain they would anyway. So she was welcomed into the Women's Center (a different one than the last time she'd found herself without a place to go in Gotham), shown to an empty cot. She felt the gazes of the other women there, knowing that so many of them had been hurt in the past as well. Knowing that they would assume that it was her (non-existant) partner who had done it to her. She hoped (between her time away and her current appearance) that no one would connect her (connect this) to Bruce. There was always the possibility that someone would, but at the moment, all she could do was hope. And then, when shown to her place after even more paperwork and questions, she could also lay down and rest.
Tomorrow she would take the next step.