Visiting Hours [Alex mood]

[vesta]

There are many ways of opening doors, especially those that would normally be barred. Keys, picks, stealth. Knowing the right person, the right handshake, the right words. The right bluff. Or the right uniform. It’s well after normal visiting hours when Alexander walks into the hospital. It’s not hard to find the right room and the guarding nurse at the main desk is perhaps a little easier to get around for someone in uniform than random people walking in off the street. It’s part of the unspoken deal between some of the public services – I’ll keep you safe, you put me back together again after.

“Room 306. I’d say try not to wake him, but...” The nurse shrugs and points the way down the corridor.

He finds Kalen asleep, unrousable, in a hospital bed. The room lights are low and the monitoring equipment at the head end of the bed throws a little extra light into the room, making Kalen look paler than he really is. The plastic tube from a drip disappears under the sheet. The equipment is silent in its watch over its charge.

There’s an empty chair to one side, which Alexander moves over to the side of the bed. He sits on it, then crosses his arms on the bed rails and rests his chin on them. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

He stays there, quietly watching the comatose man. Eventually Alexander starts to feel sleepy, feels the drag of his eyelids downwards. He stands, returns the chair to its original spot, then moves to the door. He pauses under the frame and looks back at Kalen’s still form. Says quietly, “I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be.”

A few more heartbeats pass before he turns back and leaves the hospital.

[vesta]

In another room, elsewhere in the hospital, Sid lies sleeping. Her body, at least. Dim light shines in through the window as the city is pelted with a summer storm thrown off the mountains, and a dull drumming on the window panes is the only sound in the room. Although Alexander doesn’t really know Sid, he’s still come to visit her. This time there’s a small gift – a small potted cactus sitting on the window sill. Something that shouldn’t cause any concerns about the ‘no flowers’ rule being broken. Something a little different that – hopefully – she’ll like when – hopefully – she wakes up again.

Getting here had taken a little more work than Kalen had.

*-*-*-*-*

Alexander had tried tracking her down after his second visit to see Kalen. Although he’d only ever been introduced to Sid by that single name, the note from Grace gave a couple of other possibilities. Sid or Amelia Weston. The receptionist at the front desk had tried to help, but there’s only so much that can be done when you don’t have the right name for someone.

He was stood on the opposite side of the reception desk to the middle-aged woman dealing with enquiries and pointing people in various directions on that particular morning. Her blonde-and-gray hair were held back in a tight bun, make up scrupulously applied. Experience dealing with members of the public not getting the answer they want, meant that he was getting nowhere fast.

“I’m sure she’s here. A friend asked me to check in on her and she definitely said this hospital. Can you check again? She’d either be listed under Sid or Amelia Weston.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there is nobody here with that surname, and I can’t just go fishing for everybody with those first names. Have you tried the other hospitals in the area?” She looked up at Alexander, knitting her fingers together and resting them on the desk in front of the keyboard.

“She came in at the same time as the other caught in… whatever it was that happened in that club.” Alexander sighs, resigned to where the conversation is inevitably headed – nowhere.

“I’m sorry, sir. But we didn’t take all of the casualties that night. Our ED just wouldn’t have been able to handle them all. All I can think is that she ended up somewhere else. If you’ll excuse me…” She turned away, pressing a button on the quietly ringing phone next to her keyboard. “University of Colorado Hospital…”

Before he turned from the desk, Alexander said quietly, “I appreciate you trying, thank you.” The receptionist looked up, gave a quick nod, and then returned her attention to her PC.

*-*-*-*-*

There is more than one way to skin a cat, though.


The mystery of so many people going comatose at the same time is something that is going to get looked into. The police, and possibly other more sinister organisations, are going to take an interest in the circumstances. The police, in particular, looking for evidence of drug-related activity that could have turned bad. A dangerous new drug on the street? A new dealer, mixing something already known with something different?

For those with the means of access, getting a peek at various reports isn’t too difficult. But the investigation into blood results, forensic screening, toxicological and biochemical examinations of the various – known – substances in the club aren’t where Alexander look. He was looking for something much, much simpler. A list of casualties and where they had been taken. A simple list, put together on the night when it had all happened as person after person was assessed by EMTs and paramedics, checked for ID, then transported to one of the receiving hospitals.

It’s a simple matter of deduction from there:
The number of Amelia’s – none.
The number of Sid’s – two.
The number of Sid’s taken to UCH – one. White. Female. About the right age.

One Sid Rhodes.

*-*-*-*-*

And so here he is. Potted cactus on the windowsill. Chair pulled up to the bedside again. Quietly watching, just for a little while. Then he leaves to visit Kalen again. There’s a little something for him too.


vesta @ 3:26PM
[Int+Inv]
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

[vesta]

Back in room 203. Everything mostly the same from the previous visit. Kalen has been moved slightly – bed sores are not good things, the blanket a washed-out green rather than the well-washed white it was before, the blinds pulled up to let what little light remains of the day into the room, the TV left on as quiet background noise set to a different channel. The water jug next to the bed remains untouched. Kalen’s eyes remain closed, although his breathing stays at the slow, deep rate that it has been for the past… days? Weeks now?

The same chair is pulled up to the side of the bed and Alexander settles down in it. Where Sid was given a plant, Kalen is given something else. Time, and the contents of a book. It’s pulled out of a messenger bag that has been set on the floor next to the chair and appears to be new, judging by the lack of creasing along the spine.

“I don’t know what I can do to help you. But I know you like books, so…” the sentence trails off as he flicks through the first few pages of contents, imprints, titles, getting to the actual text. He starts reading, on the off-chance that there’s anything of Kalen in his body to hear.

“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:-- it was the black kitten’s fault entirely…”

And so, Alice travels through the looking-glass.