How do you get that out of 'er, then? Who: Domino, Moira, and Pete What: Bad News, then Very Bad News. When: Yesterday, sometime after this text message Where: Moira's Lab Ratings/Warnings: PG-13ish I guess? Triggers for child loss, though this situation isn't a miscarriage. Triggers for general medical stuff and chips in one's head. Status: Complete
The Wisdom Mobile pulled up at the hospital with its usual screeching of tires. By this point, the staff was almost used to Pete making these kind of entrances, which was good, because he'd also done the usual flipping off of the desk nurse while guiding a somewhat shaky and spider-monkey-esque Neena to the elevator.
The Desk Nurse didn't even blink anymore.
Good. She shouldn't blink. She should behold his fingers held up in the two-fingered salute, as he escorted his spider-monkey to the lift. It's not an elevator, it's a lift. And they were going up, and exiting, and then into Moira's lab, with him being clung onto the entire way.
Moira was used to this by now. She pointed wordlessly at the medical table, finished chowing down on some kind of sandwich, then sanitized her hands and pulled gloves on, "Mind ye, I'm still on call if needed downstairs, unless this is life threatenin' o'course."
She wheeled her precious machine over.
"It might be life threatening?" Neena hopped up onto the table, then glanced over at Pete. She glanced back at Moira, and then back at Pete, then back at Moira. Like it was a tennis match, only no one was playing any tennis.
She added, under her breath, "I think I'm bleeding, too."
"...that's brilliant, only not really," said Pete, looking concerned but trying to stay out of Moira's way. This wasn't really the time to give the Scottish woman any grief, since she looked like she'd been running a marathon, and was probably going to fall over.
"Well that's what we need tae find out," Moira replied. She didn't respond to the bleeding assessment, but she already knew what that meant. The scanner confirmed it, though not how she suspected.
"Och."
"Och? OCH?" Neena gave her look and tilted her head to the side, then lowered her voice a bit, "What och? Och what? ... it's the bad och, isn't it."
"I think you should wait an' see wot she says first, an' then flail. Only a suggestion, luv," Pete pointed out, trying to not frown, because then Dom might take that the wrong way. And he couldn't openly worry while she was looking ready to flail right off the exam table. Of course, he reminded himself, that Moira's 'och' usually wasn't a sign of good things around the bend, so to speak.
"Yuir havin' yuir period. I cannae even find any residual hormones." It turned out to be a surprised och, as she'd clearly been anticipating giving them sad news of a miscarriage, but this.."It's like ye were never pregnant tae begin with, which is complete bollocks, because ye were!"
Pete just stared at Moira like ‘wot?’ in a most profound way, because that did not compute.
The look Neena gave Moira was completely deadpan. It was like the news simply refused to register on some level for quite a few seconds. Then finally she looked down at her stomach, and back over at the scanner, "Check that thing again. There has to be something wrong with it."
“Right, wot she said. Check it again.” Pete pointed at the scanner, accusingly.
Moira recalibrated it, then shook her head, "That's what it's tellin' me, lass."
It didn't make any sense...except Neena seemed to be paler, and if her readings were correct her body had finally reached equilibrium with itself.
"Unless ye were knocked up in that other world an' that bled over. Sae tae speak."
It sounded preposterous on the face, but after a few seconds of thought, it hung there in the air and seemed... less crazy than the events of the day.
"I'm nae discounting that ye weren't pregnant, but there's a good chance t'egg never actually stuck."
Pause.
Double pause.
There was another, soft, almost bemused, "Och."
Neena ran her hand up into her hair and blinked her eyes a few times. If she was never actually pregnant then what was with being starving and exhausted all the time, and the cravings, and the ... and if it bled over then whose child was it, and was she glad it didn't stick?
She worked her mouth open and shut a few times, then glanced back over at Moira as the other 'och' registered. Wearily, she asked, "...what now?"
Wishful thinking? Pete almost said that outloud, because that could have been a possibility. But he thought better of it, bit back on anything he might've been feeling since Neena was no doubt feeling worse, and was left staring, mutely, at Moira again. That stare was as though he was saying she was the doctor, so she should be able to explain this further, somehow or other.
The bemusement turned to horror. Her eyes widened but she kept her face carefully neutral. Moistening her lips, she said, "I think that's t'least of ye problems..."
The chip had grown a bit, but that wasn't the alarming part. What was alarming was the extent of the tendrils threading through and around her spine, integrating with her nervous system. Wordlessly, she turned the monitor to show them.
"...Because being not pregnant isn't a pretty damn big problem when you wanted it as badly as--" Neena had been about to berate Moira with the kind of tone of voice that implied she was taking whatever her own pain was out on the woman.
But when the scanner flipped around and she saw what Moira was talking about, she paled even further than before, and started tracing the tiny tendrils with her finger, "Fuck..."
Pete leaned to look around at it, and made a face at the tendrils and...things. Incredibly invasive things. Which he pointed at, and asked in a snappy voice that demanded some answers, "How do you get that out of 'er, then? Can you get that out of her? Make it stop? Will it keep growing, like one of those things in those Aliens movies, until a nom monster pops out o' 'er and starts eating faces off?"
"It seems tae have stopped growin' for now, but I thought it had before, an' I was clearly wrong." Moira shook her head, "It's nae.. alien, I dunnae think. But it's nae of this world that's for damn sure. I cannae remove it. Nae without cripplin' or killin' ye."
"... and I'm pretty sure the absence of it was what was making me so ill before," Neena mumbled. Her finger was still tracing the tendrils, and some inner part of her was in full on panic mode.
It was the kind of panic that could easily give way to one of her states where she couldn't speak or even respond, which was simply not an option right now. She reached for Pete's hand, instead, and squeezed it a bit.
She forced her tone to stay even, "Even if we took the actual chip out, I'm not sure how you'd get all of these ... this is more than microfilaments now. You can't just yank these out. Can you?"
Her hand got a very reassuring squeeze in response. Now was probably not the best time to have a freak out, while trying to get some information on what was going on. So for her, that meant no catatonic states. For him, that meant no fingerpointing and raising his voice, because who the fuck puts those things into people anyway?!
With that in mind, he tried to keep his voice very even and not snippy, which was difficult considering most days, no matter what universe it was, he felt the need to be antagonistic to MacTaggert, and vice versa.
"Can it be shut off. It has to have some sort of power or neural input, right? So say, like I mentioned to 'er the other day, offhandedly? If someone like Pryde ghosted 'er hand through it, would that make things worse or shut this off so she's back to how she would be if it weren't in 'er...or wot?"
"Nae. It'd probably take half ye nervous system out with it." Moira leaned against her machine, running her hands through her hair, then removing her gloves.
She walked over to a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of scotch and three paper cups. She filled the cups and brought them over, "I cannae say. That could do untold damage tae her nervous system. Paralyze her, maybe. None of me studies have given me any answers tae how tae shut it off. But finding a way tae shut it down is the way tae go."
She shrugged, "We could electrocute ye. The good news is ye have another twelve or fifteen years tae have a wee bairn, at this point, tae."
"... are my organs that much younger now? Jesus christ," Neena ran both of her hands up into her hair, then reached over to the paper cup with the scotch in it, and knocked the entire cup back into her mouth. She swallowed it, then reached the cup out to Moira and shook it in place. Like it was empty, and she better fill it back up.
As to the other stuff, she didn't know what to even... all of it, really. She'd been prepared to have a child and finally settle down. Now she was younger again, and not pregnant, and had all of this shit all up in her neural system.
When it rained, it poured. She glanced at Pete, then back over at Moira, "But we don't know what it would do if you electrocuted me."
"Are you sure we can't just have Pryde graze it with 'er pinkie finger an' see wot happens? Electrocuting 'er seems a little bit...drastic." Pete hadn't even taken a drink of anything yet. He was feeling a bit sober for the moment, and he'd probably get tanked later. When things had sunk in even further. Right now, it was damage control. That was why he was pointing at scan images with an accusing finger of finger pointingness. "And another thing. While we're at it? Could she e'en have a wee bairn...seriously, do you haggis munchers not speak plain english? Could she e'en have one with...that...inside 'er, weaving its way around an' about, howe'er it likes?"
"We could try? Worse case scenario a graze might knock ye out," Moira replied, though she said it so quickly it almost sounded like 'knock ye up.' She paced a little, knocking back her own cup as she thought about it, "I think sae, yes. It's nae interferin' with her reproductive system. Her hormones aren't even out o'whack. I'd have tae study it further. There's a chance it could interfere with conception."
Pete glared at Moira because he seriously thought she said ‘knock up’ in there, for just a moment.
"There's a chance it could interfere with conception, she says." Neena pulled the bottle over and poured herself another drink, while trying to wrap her head around all of this. Her brain touched back on an earlier subject, "... And what's to prevent me from mysteriously getting magical ghost pregnant all over again? Or am I finally done becoming that other woman? Because my skin isn't white yet, and I don't have a spot yet, so I doubt that I'm done with ... whatever the fuck transition this is."
Neena knocked that second drink back, then hopped down off the table and started pacing.
Well, she was pacing again. Pete thought if there was any moment for it? By gods, this would be that moment. So she could have at it. He was still standing there, in place, digesting it all.
"That, I cannae say because it should be impossible. But so should changin' colors, gettin' younger, an' items showin' up out o'thin air!"
She slapped her hand on the scanner to emphasize her point about items coming out of thin air. She smacked it again, as if that would change the readout, but alas, nothing changed.
Neena stopped pacing and looked over at the scanner again. The thing was more invasive than it had been, even in that other place. She wondered how that bitch Gryaznova would feel about that. Probably, she'd be ecstatic.
"I have to ask again, now that it's growing like this. Do I need to worry about it making me sick somehow? Cancer, or anything like that?"
Because if she didn't, she was half inclined to leave it the fuck alone and go get plastered.
Well. There was a good question, so Pete nodded along and drank everything that was in the cup he’d been given, in one go. Then HE wagged the cup around like it needed to be filled up again.
"If it worms it's way intae ye heart it could kill you. If yuir reduced reflexes dunnae kill ye first," Moira replied quietly, filling Pete's cup. "It's a foreign object, leavin' it in an' active is the last possible resort."
That sounded bad. That was why Pete handed Moira the cup and he took the bottle, instead.
Leaving it in was obviously not in question. Leaving it in, and inactive? Neena wondered what that would do in the long run, but there was probably no knowing. It seemed like her only options were leaving it on or shutting it off.
"... So no matter how we do it, our priority should be disabling it. Only we don't know if that'll kill me, damage my nervous system further, paralyze me, or if I'd just be entirely fine."
"If ye ask me, an' yuir here so ye are, I'd say we try some low level charges in a controlled environment tae test it." She pondered this. Maybe they could start with twelve volts.
"Well it's not like we need to worry about harming the child." Neena hopped back up on the table and took her jacket off, "Let's do this. Unless you can come up with a compelling reason not to try it."
That last bit was directed at Pete. They might have decided that there were many decisions they didn't need to consult each other on, but she wanted his point of view on it, anyway.
“Like maybe I don’t want to stand ‘ere getting pissed blind and watching you die? That sounds like a great reason not t’try it.” So said mister sarcastic. Because...yeah. It seemed compelling enough, really.
Moira remained silent, letting them suss this out.
It did seem like a damn compelling reason, to Neena. She hadn't really thought it all through, either. There was a long moment, where she ran her hand up into her hair again and fluffed through it, while trying to think.
Then she grabbed her jacket, and put it back on, "Alright. We leave it as is for now."
“Oh, cheers,” Pete replied, though he was nursing that bottle. Sorry, Moira. You aren’t getting it back. And he couldn’t be too sarcastic, because...while he was grateful that he didn’t have to watch her maybe possibly dying or anything...that stuff was still IN her. Hello?
"Well if ye do decide tae try somethin', come tae me please? An' dunnae do it yeself. Nae without a doctor present!" Moira was serious face and serious voice and 150% serious! "I'll call ye if I figure anythin' out."
"I'll call you if I decide to electrocute myself in the bathtub," Neena replied lightly, while heading for the door.
“I’ll call you if I find out she’s gone and tried that,” Pete reassured Moira, then toasted her with the bottle he was stealing as he followed Neena’s lead.
"I'll send ye the bill," Moira quipped. "but keep the bottle."
In a more somber voice, she added about the bairn, "I'm sorry. I really am."
“Shite happens?” Pete said with a shrug, and then waved off the bill like he’d pay it.
"Yeah," Neena mumbled to herself. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked out of there, "Shite happens."