Passing Painlessly (TAG)

[Tayla Smith]

Super strength. Fucking super strength. Everyone and their dog had super strength, apparently. Made things rough. Difficult, even.

I mean, that's why her arm was almost snapped in half. The good thing, she figured, was that she couldn't feel her arm. There were alarm bells going off in her suit letting her know something happened, but no pain. What was annoying was nobody could give her any information.

She had one lead, that there was some shadowy guy pulling strings calling himself Perses. It was little more than conspiracy theory at this point, one that she believed because she lived the outcome. And nobody was giving her any more information. She needed something, some extra connection, some additional piece of information to refine her search, but she had nothing. She just knew him as The Tyrant. Nobody called him by his real name. He always wore a mask, so she didn't know what he looked like. She had so little to go on, and wasn't getting anything else. She had sent an email to that Sparrow guy, telling him everything, hoping he learned something else she could use. He had a conspiracy blog, she thought he'd be receptive. Instead, she got blocked instantly. That was annoying.

She waved at the volunteer "receptionist" as she walked into the hospital. Well, waved was a strong word. More like lifted her broken arm. "Hi Jeannine. Need patched up again."

Jeannine nodded, rolling her eyes. She knew Tenebra, Tayla's alter ego, and knew she could take a ridiculous amount of damage without reacting, somehow. "You come in with this kind of shit again, you owe me a muffin."

"You got it, Jeannine."

She sat and waited for the doctors to come by and get things set. The Factory was too far away to get to, so she was going here as a stopgap, and would see Donny later to really get things fixed up. She did remember walking past someone on her way here that seemed incredibly worried for some reason. She'd have to go back once she got patched up and see if he was okay. Maybe that old guy knew something. She never knew who might know something she could use.

@blackjack

[Deleted]

Oregon State University Hospital was a beautiful campus with top-of-the-line equipment and plenty of beds. The design of the building both outside and inside was breathtaking. But Dr. Viktor Kolyanov didn't care about that. He had operated in sheds in the backcountry, sand whipping at his face. He had operated in the middle of Antarctica, fingers purple from cold. A nice hospital and equipment was a bonus; he cared about the fact that the staff was kind, that they tried their damnedest for their patients despite the odds. As did he.

After a quick few kisses with Bell, he exited the Ferrari at the employee entrance and took a deep breath of the morning air and a large sip of coffee from his travel mug. Which he promptly spit out in a fountain because there was a woman calmly walking up to the patient entrance across the way with her arm flopping lazily at her side like a dying fish. He jogged after her, making eye contact as he crossed the road. Saatana vittu how was she ambulatory?! As soon as she came into his sensing range, he knew. The woman was feeling no pain whatsoever. A blessing and a curse. Shit, well, at least she was coming to the hospital, though he did wonder if this was a recent development or congenital, like Bell? He scratched his head as she left his sensing range again, on a beeline to the front desk. Huh, well, either way he suspected he'd get her as his first patient. He was far and away the best surgeon at the hospital, and it was gonna take delicacy to deal with… that.

Viktor walked back to the employee entrance, chugging coffee, looking at his watch and planning his morning out. Okay, so after this lady came Mrs. Johnson's tumor at noon, then…

///

Viktor had changed into his navy blue scrubs, washed his hands, and reviewed this lady’s chart as he stood outside exam room 3 - because sure enough, they’d given him the lady with the messed up arm straight away. He flipped through it once, twice, asked the nurse if this was really all there was to her chart. And it was, which was puzzling. He shook his head and sighed. He’d ask some basic questions so he could know enough for surgery, but after that, he planned to ask her a lot more to fill in this empty chart.

He knocked on the door, paused to give Tayla time to collect herself if need be, then entered. His face was impassive as always, his pronounced Finnish accent flat and clipped. “Good morning, I’m Dr. Kolyanov.” He sat down, scanning through her chart once more, then putting it down in his lap, meeting her eyes. “Whoever did your intake when you arrived in Astaria left a few things off your chart. Namely, the fact you don’t feel pain. Whether you can or can’t, and under what circumstances that came about, I’d like to hear from you… but I know you don’t.”

Viktor pointed at her arm. “I’ll get a better look at what we’re dealing with after I take a look at your arm.” He then gestured at the x-ray machine in the corner. “That’s why I had them put you in exam 3. May still need to do a CT scan depending on what the x-ray shows. If it’s just the bone it’ll be fairly straightforward, but I suspect it isn’t just the bone, and I’ll need to operate.”

Tayla Smith

[Tayla Smith]

Tayla smiled calmly as the doctor walked in through the door, preparing herself to explain that no, she really wasn't in shock, and no, she really didn't need anything for the pain, it was a long story, etc. etc. But she was pleasantly surprised when he addressed that immediately.

"Nice to meet you, Doc. I'm Tayla and... that's on the paperwork, you know that all ready. Wait why the hell isn't the "no pain" thing not on my sheet? Wait hold on how did you know about it without it being on my sheet? Did Jeannine tell you? She's great, I owe her a muffin sometime."

Tayla reached up with her right arm to touch the point on her neck that activated a command in her suit to pull it back from her arm, but that was the busted one. "Ah, shit, hold on."

She used her other hand, touching a spot just behind her jawbone, and the black suit with faint gold lines in it pulled itself off and away from her wounded arm, looking almost like a digital render dematerializing and sounding almost but not quite like metal LEGO bricks being dumped out of a box.

"Anyway. Nice to meet you. Did they give you the boring version? Aegis should have a more detailed version, I dunno if they're keeping that secret or... well hell they may just think I'm nuts and have it all under "mental health" or something, I don't know. Long story short is I don't feel pain, or much of anything else really, we don't need the anesthesiologist, and can I watch if you have to operate? That'd be cool. Usually there's this guy I know that helps me heal up quick but I can't get over to him right now so I figured I should get this dealt with the normal way for the time being."

Tayla held out her now exposed, wounded arm, grateful that everything did still seem contained within the skin, that was a good thing, right? "Fix me up doc, tell me what to do."

@blackjack

[Deleted]

“Jeannine is great, but I can sense pain and manipulate it. Pretty much everyone has something that’s slightly bothering them, but you… not a thing.” Viktor noted that she seemed pleased he’d cut right to the chase. He liked her already, but it remained to be seen if she was a good patient. He also noted that it’d been a while since he bought the volunteer staff lunch. Maybe he’d do that tomorrow.

He watched the suit retract with interest, having to force his focus back to her arm before his train of thought went speeding away. He knew tech like that existed, but he’d never seen it before. The cost to make or buy something like that was too rich for his blood.

Viktor reached out to take a look at her arm, but stopped mid-gesture when she mentioned Aegis, sighing heavily. “On tää saatana työmaa,” he muttered, grinding his fingertips into his eyes. He generally did like being in Aegis, but the paperwork… dear God, the paperwork and red tape. Especially after recent events. “No wonder it wasn’t on your chart." And whoever did Tayla's intake hadn't flagged it in the civilian files, either. He made a note on her chart, then walked out of the room, returning with a computer mounted at head height on a wheeled cart.

He tapped a chip card to a reader, confirmed with his fingerprint, and he read her actual file for some time, hand on his chin. Her vitals were normal, which itself was extremely odd given she couldn’t feel pain. An electrical rather than a physical issue was the cause, he supposed, but he wanted to look into it more one day when she wasn’t seriously injured. “I see. So you know... I believe you.” Was all he said before he closed her file and locked the computer again.

The person that did her intake didn’t have very kind words to say, doubted her whole story. From his experience, 99% of the time people didn’t have the creativity to make up the truly wild shit. And why would they, anyway, when all it usually brought was trouble? So while it was hard to believe she was from an alternate friggin’ dimension - it wasn’t impossible, and why would she choose such a thing to lie about?

Viktor walked over and palpated her arm, giving a grimace at the telltale dance under her skin of a torn muscle come unmoored. The bone seemed whole, at least, but the torn muscle was actually more of an issue. He still wheeled the portable x-ray over, gave her instructions, took the pictures with a large handled square device that looked like a drawing tablet. “For one, Donny is overworked as hell, so you should come to me anyway for things like this... I keep telling him he needs to triage people to me, but he doesn’t listen,” he said, shaking his head. It took a lot out of Donny to heal internal injuries, not that he'd ever admit it. “In fairness, most medical professionals including myself are shit patients. I’ve operated on myself rather than let someone else do it.”

An assistant popped in the room with the x-ray printed on film, and he slapped it onto a lightbox, turning the lights out in order to take a better look. Instantly, he went, “Yep. Fractured humerus.” He turned the lights back on. “The bone should heal on its own, but we need to do surgery to repair your torn muscle. A bit of an odd request to want to watch, but… I get it. I’ll still have anesthesia on hand just in case, you understand. Before that, let’s get a CT scan of your arm so I can get a better picture of the soft tissue… we can keep talking while we do that.” He put a packaged medical gown next to her, then paused. “Apologies. That’s only if you agree to it. You will have to take your suit off and put on the gown due to how the scan works. I can do the surgery without the CT, but I rwould prefer we go in with as much knowledge as possible.”

Tayla Smith

[Tayla Smith]

Tayla shrugged hearing his comments while he looked over the Aegis version of her file. "S'fine. Most people just think I'm having a mental breakdown of some kind and hallucinating this bullshit."

She smiled a truly genuine smile at him. She could tell he really did believe her story. "It's nice when people actually believe what I'm saying is real, and not just a figment of my messed up brain. It's not something that happens often. And I mean, my brain is messed up but I'm seeing a therapist for that now."

She chuckled when he mentioned Donny being overworked. "Yeah. Sorry. A lot of those are me. You can't feel pain, you end up with a lot of shit breaking, and I honestly can't be laid up for six weeks or whatever. I got stuff to do. I'll probably see him after you take care of the big stuff."

She noticeably stiffened when he mentioned taking the CT scan, and that she'd have to take the suit off. She hated being without the suit. Absolutely hated it. "I... Um. Do... will... Will I have to close my eyes? Or--or have them covered?"

She swallowed the lump that was building in her throat. "I don't... I don't do well when... Um. Yeah. I can but... If you really think so. Will I have to close my eyes?

That was the worst part. Eyes closed, no sense of feeling anywhere else, the only senses she had to rely on were her hearing and smell, and there was very little you could make out with those. It felt like she was falling into a void, drowning in blackness, unable to find where the surface of this sea of ink was. Falling forever.

The suit simulated a sense of touch, let her feel gravity, restore a sense of balance. With that gone, and with her eyes closed, she was adrift in nothingness.

She swallowed again. She did feel bad, about putting all this work on Donny all the time, so maybe...

"I'll do it."

Before she could reconsider, she reached up and touched a point on the back of her neck, and the entire suit pulled itself back up into an oblong oval with sharp edges attached to the back of her neck. She pulled that off, and set it on the table, now completely naked, exposing very pale skin criss-crossed with myriad scars of all sorts, most of which looked to be the remnants of wounds that hand't been treated properly and just left to heal on their own. "...Help me with the gown. I.. I can't make things work very well without the suit."

@blackjack