RVA: Shadow of Doubt, Damage Assessment
May. 2nd, 2016 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalThe air ambulance landed on the roof of the central city hospital, and Salli followed the EMT’s and Ali as they went down to the emergency room. There she was stopped short at the doors of intensive care, where she was met a medtech with a records tablet and a lot of questions, while Ali was moved inside to placed in the deep evaluation scanner.
“You’re the next of kin?” the medtech asked briskly.
“No, I’m the noble she’s leigesworn to and the officer in charge of her indenture,” Salli repeated. “I’m going to contact her family shortly.” Something she was definitely not looking forward to. Given the intensity of emotion all of Ali’s surviving family had shown when discovering she was alive, especially her Aunt Razi and brother Lu, the news that she was now in the hospital and badly injured was going be difficult to take.
“Oh, in that case may I have your name.... Lady…?” the medtech asked, apparently guessing her status by her Noble style dress.
“Lady Sallivera Darktail, heir to Countess Matrinal Darktail,” she said, and was rewarded by the medtech immediately snapping to attention. Good. For this once she was more than happy to wield her Noble privilege to the hilt if it got what she wanted and Ali what she needed.
“Lady Darktail, my apologies for not recognizing you. How may I serve you?”
“Let me in so I can see Miss Blacksailor and speak her physicians directly.”
The medtech bowed suitably low. “Of course, Lady Darktail. This way please.” He paused, then asked diffidently, “Would you like a set of scrubs to replace your dress?”
Salli looked down, just noticing the drying brown blood on her skirts and sleeves of her dress, all Ali’s. “Yes, I think that would be best,” she agreed. It wasn’t as if the physicians would be able to tell her anything before they had a chance to examine Ali.
Ten minutes later Salli’s blood soaked paws were cleaned and disinfected, she was provided with a VIP visitor pass, and she was dressed in blue hospital scrubs and sterile booties. From there the medtech led her towards the intensive care unit, where she entered a room with a padded examination table floating through a scanner tube, one medtech working on Ali’s mauled arm while a pair of doctors looked through the data the scanner tube was providing them. Ali lay still on the examination table, eyes shut, a plastic tube shoved down her throat and secured with medical tape, her good arm partially shaved to allow more smaller tubes to be inserted in her good arm. The little blood cleansing machine had been removed, and she was now attached to a much larger machine whose turning drums of blood reminded Salli for a highly disconcerting moment of a fruit smoothie maker.
More disturbing was Ali’s injured arm. It was sticking out at an angle, strapped down on a small extension, a tourniquet strapped tight her bicep, while the medtech poked at the muscles her forearm, obviously assessing the damage. It made Salli think of small animals in a science class being dissected. The only time she had seen Ali so gravely injured before now was after she’d rescued her from Bloody Margo’s torture.
She cleared her throat briefly and one of the doctors, a vixen with sharp grey eyes and a generous peppering of white her muzzle, looked back at her in annoyance.
“This a medical examination room, what’s your business here?” the doctor asked, taking a quick glance at the pass hanging from the lanyard around Salli’s neck.
“I’m Lady Sallivera Darktail. Miss Blacksailor there is both oathsworn and indentured to me. Are you the physician in charge?.”
“I’m Dr. Coldwater, and yes I am,” she replied brusquely. “What do you want?”
“Details on Ali… Miss Blacksailor’s condition. What happened to her?” She reminded herself that Dr. Coldwater here to help Ali, and Salli’s own presence was annoyance at best, an interference at worst . Grabbing the physician by the shoulders and trying to physically shake a diagnosis out of her would be counterproductive.
“Well, Miss Blacksailor is one very ill vixen. We’ve nearly completed clearing the toxins out of her bloodstream, but I’m afraid the damage is done.”
“What toxins?” Salli demanded. “Are saying someone tried to poison her?”
Coldwater shrugged. “Can’t see how it’s anything but deliberate on her part. Painful way to commit suicide, though I’ve seen patients snort, swallow, or shove equally stupid things into their body.”
“What… toxins…?” Salli repeated slowly, trying not dig her claws into her palms as she clenched her fists.
Coldwater rattled off the names of a series of chemicals Salli didn’t recognize, ending with, “In other words, you leigesworn injected what looks to be a very powerful household cleaner into her arm. Which immediately began destroying the veins in her arm and the muscles surrounding them. That’s also why she started bleeding out so spectacularly when her brachial artery disintegrated.”
“How far does the damage extend?” Salli asked, feeling her stomach knot up.
“The EMT’s did their best, but it unfortunately reached her heart. It was diluted a bit by the time it got there, but combined with the already existing damage, we’ve had to shut it down and get her onto full life support before her aorta tore loose.”
“Wait, track back a bit,” Salli said, brow furrowing. “What previous damage?”
The physician pointed to a large holographic display on the wall nearest Ali’s head, where the other doctors were huddled. It currently showed a real time display of Ali’s torso, her internal organs and circulatory system highlighted, many sections of which were colored an angry red or worrisome yellow. Coldwater waved a finger at the display, and it presented an expanded view of Ali’s heart. “Her entire cardiac system is falling apart. Looks like there’s long term damage of her heart muscle, Also there’s significant loss of function in her renal organs and liver.”
“Why? What would cause this?” Salli asked.
Coldwater cocked his head. “You said she was indentured to you. Why?”
“Don’t you follow the news?” Salli asked, surprised.
“All I’ve got time for in my life is medical journals, and not enough for even that sometimes.”
She sighed. “Ali was a child soldier for nearly twenty years, starting at age six I gather, when she was taken prisoner by a pirate lord named Bloody Margo. She only recently managed to gain her freedom, in a manner of speaking, from that life, when she was finally arrested, tried, and convicted for her crimes.”
Some of Coldwater’s irascibility seemed to fade, and she looked at Salli with what seemed genuine regret. “That fits then. The organ damage seems to lay within the pattern for some soldiers I’ve examined, who engaged in long term abuse of combat drugs. Their entire system, but especially their hearts, become deeply stressed and damaged over time.”
“How… how much damage.... are we talking about?” Salli asked slowly, tail curling up in distress.
“Without cloning and replacing almost every organ in her body, a process she was in no position to survive even before this poisoning, she’d have been lucky to live to seventy. If she lived to eighty years old I’d considered it a miracle of the Mother Goddess.
The average foxen lifespan being to about a hundred and twenty, Salli knew, even discounting extreme medical procedures. “So short?” she said weakly.
“A lot shorter now,” Coldwater said. “If she has family on Foxen Prime, I suggest you don’t waste any time before you call them.”
“You’re the next of kin?” the medtech asked briskly.
“No, I’m the noble she’s leigesworn to and the officer in charge of her indenture,” Salli repeated. “I’m going to contact her family shortly.” Something she was definitely not looking forward to. Given the intensity of emotion all of Ali’s surviving family had shown when discovering she was alive, especially her Aunt Razi and brother Lu, the news that she was now in the hospital and badly injured was going be difficult to take.
“Oh, in that case may I have your name.... Lady…?” the medtech asked, apparently guessing her status by her Noble style dress.
“Lady Sallivera Darktail, heir to Countess Matrinal Darktail,” she said, and was rewarded by the medtech immediately snapping to attention. Good. For this once she was more than happy to wield her Noble privilege to the hilt if it got what she wanted and Ali what she needed.
“Lady Darktail, my apologies for not recognizing you. How may I serve you?”
“Let me in so I can see Miss Blacksailor and speak her physicians directly.”
The medtech bowed suitably low. “Of course, Lady Darktail. This way please.” He paused, then asked diffidently, “Would you like a set of scrubs to replace your dress?”
Salli looked down, just noticing the drying brown blood on her skirts and sleeves of her dress, all Ali’s. “Yes, I think that would be best,” she agreed. It wasn’t as if the physicians would be able to tell her anything before they had a chance to examine Ali.
Ten minutes later Salli’s blood soaked paws were cleaned and disinfected, she was provided with a VIP visitor pass, and she was dressed in blue hospital scrubs and sterile booties. From there the medtech led her towards the intensive care unit, where she entered a room with a padded examination table floating through a scanner tube, one medtech working on Ali’s mauled arm while a pair of doctors looked through the data the scanner tube was providing them. Ali lay still on the examination table, eyes shut, a plastic tube shoved down her throat and secured with medical tape, her good arm partially shaved to allow more smaller tubes to be inserted in her good arm. The little blood cleansing machine had been removed, and she was now attached to a much larger machine whose turning drums of blood reminded Salli for a highly disconcerting moment of a fruit smoothie maker.
More disturbing was Ali’s injured arm. It was sticking out at an angle, strapped down on a small extension, a tourniquet strapped tight her bicep, while the medtech poked at the muscles her forearm, obviously assessing the damage. It made Salli think of small animals in a science class being dissected. The only time she had seen Ali so gravely injured before now was after she’d rescued her from Bloody Margo’s torture.
She cleared her throat briefly and one of the doctors, a vixen with sharp grey eyes and a generous peppering of white her muzzle, looked back at her in annoyance.
“This a medical examination room, what’s your business here?” the doctor asked, taking a quick glance at the pass hanging from the lanyard around Salli’s neck.
“I’m Lady Sallivera Darktail. Miss Blacksailor there is both oathsworn and indentured to me. Are you the physician in charge?.”
“I’m Dr. Coldwater, and yes I am,” she replied brusquely. “What do you want?”
“Details on Ali… Miss Blacksailor’s condition. What happened to her?” She reminded herself that Dr. Coldwater here to help Ali, and Salli’s own presence was annoyance at best, an interference at worst . Grabbing the physician by the shoulders and trying to physically shake a diagnosis out of her would be counterproductive.
“Well, Miss Blacksailor is one very ill vixen. We’ve nearly completed clearing the toxins out of her bloodstream, but I’m afraid the damage is done.”
“What toxins?” Salli demanded. “Are saying someone tried to poison her?”
Coldwater shrugged. “Can’t see how it’s anything but deliberate on her part. Painful way to commit suicide, though I’ve seen patients snort, swallow, or shove equally stupid things into their body.”
“What… toxins…?” Salli repeated slowly, trying not dig her claws into her palms as she clenched her fists.
Coldwater rattled off the names of a series of chemicals Salli didn’t recognize, ending with, “In other words, you leigesworn injected what looks to be a very powerful household cleaner into her arm. Which immediately began destroying the veins in her arm and the muscles surrounding them. That’s also why she started bleeding out so spectacularly when her brachial artery disintegrated.”
“How far does the damage extend?” Salli asked, feeling her stomach knot up.
“The EMT’s did their best, but it unfortunately reached her heart. It was diluted a bit by the time it got there, but combined with the already existing damage, we’ve had to shut it down and get her onto full life support before her aorta tore loose.”
“Wait, track back a bit,” Salli said, brow furrowing. “What previous damage?”
The physician pointed to a large holographic display on the wall nearest Ali’s head, where the other doctors were huddled. It currently showed a real time display of Ali’s torso, her internal organs and circulatory system highlighted, many sections of which were colored an angry red or worrisome yellow. Coldwater waved a finger at the display, and it presented an expanded view of Ali’s heart. “Her entire cardiac system is falling apart. Looks like there’s long term damage of her heart muscle, Also there’s significant loss of function in her renal organs and liver.”
“Why? What would cause this?” Salli asked.
Coldwater cocked his head. “You said she was indentured to you. Why?”
“Don’t you follow the news?” Salli asked, surprised.
“All I’ve got time for in my life is medical journals, and not enough for even that sometimes.”
She sighed. “Ali was a child soldier for nearly twenty years, starting at age six I gather, when she was taken prisoner by a pirate lord named Bloody Margo. She only recently managed to gain her freedom, in a manner of speaking, from that life, when she was finally arrested, tried, and convicted for her crimes.”
Some of Coldwater’s irascibility seemed to fade, and she looked at Salli with what seemed genuine regret. “That fits then. The organ damage seems to lay within the pattern for some soldiers I’ve examined, who engaged in long term abuse of combat drugs. Their entire system, but especially their hearts, become deeply stressed and damaged over time.”
“How… how much damage.... are we talking about?” Salli asked slowly, tail curling up in distress.
“Without cloning and replacing almost every organ in her body, a process she was in no position to survive even before this poisoning, she’d have been lucky to live to seventy. If she lived to eighty years old I’d considered it a miracle of the Mother Goddess.
The average foxen lifespan being to about a hundred and twenty, Salli knew, even discounting extreme medical procedures. “So short?” she said weakly.
“A lot shorter now,” Coldwater said. “If she has family on Foxen Prime, I suggest you don’t waste any time before you call them.”
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 01:19 am (UTC)Also, if I might suggest EMTs rather than EMT's -because they're plural and own nothing in that sentence.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 04:34 pm (UTC)It sounded like a heart transplant isn't an option.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 03:11 am (UTC)(And you've doubled up on 'good arm'. I might just stop that sentence at 'insertion'.)
no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 08:05 am (UTC)(Also, thanks for the catch!)