SICU

Serafíne

Phobia roll: day 1.

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 5, 5, 5, 7) ( fail )

Serafíne

Phobia roll: day 1

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Visiting hours.

Christ they're hard things to remember and they start and end inexplicably, and Sera is nothing close to punctual which is not to say that she does not have a sense of time she has a perfect sense of time when she wishes. She simply: does not so wish. She bathes in it, drifts in it. Floats in it, unmoored from the ordinary limits of human lives. Doesn't need to hold down a job, and enough people love her and take care of her that she hardly has to remember the hour, or the day of the week, or where she's going next, or why or when.

This is different though.

The place is a fucking complex. Not one building but blocks of buildings with high rises and curbs and signs pointing to the ER, parking, patient parking, all these painful, official looking signs. She spends a solid hour with a paper Starbucks' cup sitting on one of the benches framing Sunken Gardens Park and there is a mocha in the cup and she has spiked it liberally and perhaps a bit more liberally than she intended because she feels like there are hooks in her skin and needles and electrodes just looking at the place. The idea of him in there somewhere is a razor in her heart is a crack in her sternum and she has a wholly irrational fear that if she wanders in there she will be swallowed up. She will never come out.

The sun's out and the day's bright and she's dressed, well, she's dressed. She's wearing clothes and she must have picked them because she considers them respectable. Here are the clothes she's wearing:

A leather skirt. The longest one she owns. It covers her ass, slightly more than the usual barely, but no professional other than a working girl maybe would wear it ever. A rather sweet white sweater, with a modest neckline and scalloped edges on the sleeves and slightly peek-a-boo hem and lacy textures and mother-of-pearl buttons.

But transparent enough that the black push-up bra she wears beneath it is so clearly visible. She is wearing tights-not-fishnets. The ones that are solid black up to her thighs, and then show the Paris skyline. They are not torn. See - respectable.

A fucking hour before she can force herself to stand up and thread her way through the various medical office buildings and related structures to the heart of the complex. Oh, her heart is beating so fast and her anxiety is clear enough on her face and her palms are sweating and she can hear her blood in her ears and doesn't realize how long she's holding each breath she takes when she walks in and there are tears in her eyes but she manages not to shed them, there's just shining there when she stops at the information desk. Gets directions to the ICU.

Starts crying then and there just a few leaking tears, enough that the usually harried old lady at the info desk feels one of those odd twinges that one has, some days, when one realizes that one's job is someone else's world's end.

She has a little clutch slung over her body and that Starbucks cup and she has her arms crossed narrowly over her torso, feeling more and more sick to her stomach as the elevator rises. Worse when it opens on the floor with the ICU waiting room. Too many people are there, camped out, hollow-eyed, just waiting but she seams her mouth and sets her shoulders and walks quickly through the waiting room breathing in to half-swallow her tears and out to steady herself and makes it to the charge nurse's desk or whereever and sets down her mug and leans forward and says,

"I'm here to see Father Echeverría."

There's an aching lump in her throat.

She is trying so damn hard not to cry.

Ana Sanchez

The ICU gleams like something out of a science fiction film. Not a lot of traffic, glass doors leading into the individual rooms all closed, most if not all of them privatized by curtains drawn back over the windows. A security guard sits at the nurse's station so the staff don't have to wait half the day for someone to come up to them. The glass surrounding the half-moon station is bulletproof.

The charge nurse this time of day is a compact young man with a buzz cut and sparse chest hair poking up through the neckline of his scrub top. He doesn't wear his stethoscope because he's responsible for shuffling paperwork and answering the phone. His wristwatch has seen better days.

When the charge nurse hears the patient's name he says "Wait here" and then disappears. The security guard chomps his gum and eyes her through the glass and she knows before he even gets up that if she tries to find Father Echeverría on her own he's going to get up and there's not even any point to trying.

The rooms all have name tags outside the door and some of the rooms have the patient's allergies in huge letters and one room has a loud red warning that the person inside has TB. But she can't see her friend's from where she stands and then the head nurse arrives.

She's maybe 5'2" in her orthopedic shoes, with the thick hips and healthy chest of a woman who has given birth. Pink scrubs, white shoes, white lab coat. Her highlighted brown hair is kept back out of her face with a plastic clip and she wears a modest amount of jewelry and makeup. A ring on her left hand and a watch on her right wrist. Her ID badge is clipped to the

This woman and Father Echeverría wear the same age very differently. She speaks with a persistent Mexican accent despite the flawlessness of her English and her tone suggests she had had it with this shit before Sera even got out of bed today.

"Who are you?" she asks.

Serafíne

Sera is leaning forward speaking through the - whatever it is, she has no idea, she doesn't want to think about it, she hates the bulletproof glass and the security guard and everything: the array of names written outside the doors and the way they are written, the warnings and the glimpses she has, the antiseptic ruin of the place - grill, her forehead against the bulletproof glass and she's far from the only anxious person they have seen today, near tears, hungry for news of someone tucked away in their charge, kept alive by respirators and hooked up to a half-hundred machines that whistle and glow and beep and -

- but she does strain, forward still, reading those names and hoping to find his and bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet, her anxiety a rigid and frightful crawling thing up and down her spine.

"Uhm - " a sharp breath out and Sera picks up her Starbucks mug and switches it to her left hand and says, " uhm hi - " when the head nurse arrives. Flashes her a quick and charming sort of smile, which does nothing to hide her anxiety or suppress the tears that are bright in her eyes. And Sera reaches out a bit nervously offering a hand to shake. That's what people do right? She swallows hard, Sera. Doesn't really think for a moment that they won't let her in.

There's still a bandage on her left arm. Stitches in her skin. The flash of her ridiculous sharkscissors tattoo when she lifts up and switches her Starbucks mug from hand to hand.

"I'm Sera. From the uh church? So yeah, ready to go back."

Another smile, Sera's bracing, I'm-really-trying-to-be-brave-here sort.

"He's okay right?" Such a goddamned plea in those words that her throat closes near the end of them and then her mouth and she presses her lips together and looks a bit away, blinking her eyes rapidly so she doesn't start crying again.

Serafíne

(BRB!)

Ana Sanchez

The name tag the author forgot about shows the nurse's photograph and the hospital's logo and then this information prominent yet plain:

ANA SANCHEZClinician, SICU

And she does not shake the young woman's hand because she has just washed her hands or she is not feeling friendly or she does not trust that she won't try to put her in a chokehold once she has a grip on her. Ana Sánchez lifts her eyebrows when the young woman claims she's from the church but the flint in her eyes loses its strength when she sees the tears.

The bandage. The police report said two other people were there with him. The one who called the ambulance was downstairs all night while he was in surgery. This must be the other one.

Rosa Salazar did not even bother driving to the hospital when she found out that's where the priest was. She knows the drill because at least a couple times a year someone ends up at some ICU or another and the only reason Father Echeverría gets to come see them is because the family puts his name on a list or he's listed as someone's emergency contact or something. More red tape in a hospital than in Congress some days.

"From the church," Ana Sánchez says. Does not say: Bullshit. Does not give her a chance to answer. "I can't discuss details of Mister Echeverría's condition with anyone other than his family."

Serafíne

So, the Clinician, which Sera does not know means nurse or charge nurse or head-of-things in hospital language doesn't shake her hand and Sera sort of not-that-awkwardly just shifts her grip again, does not seem to take offense at the refusal of a gesture that someone else might take offense at. Just shifts her hazelnut mocha+ from left hand back to right and listens, nodding, yes yes yes, her mouth tight and her shoulders tight looking down at Ana Sanchez which is: rare, let us face it, when Sera is not wearing her fuck-me heels. She hasn't worn them tonight. But she isn't wearing her Docs.

They were covered with his blood.

"That's okay," Sera returns, breathing out this long sharp breath and lifting up her cup a bit to gesture like surrender or whatever, "I don't uh really need to know the details? I just wanna see him."

She glances off, aslant a bit. There is the antiseptic gleam of antiseptic lights on antiseptic surfaces. Everything gleams. No one here is in restraints but she knows that the windows don't open. Won't open. Hardly allows herself to remember any of that but she knows: the windows are tinted. So you never even know the actual color of the sky.

There's a hitch in her shoulders and a few tears spill onto her cheeks and Sera reaches up with the back of her left hand to push them away. Her throat's so tight she doesn't think she can breathe. Maybe she'll die from lack of oxygen.

she doesn't die.

Sniff.

But she is shaking. Hardly aware that she's doing it but it is all there beneath her skin.

"He saved my life you know? I should've been here before but - I mean his son's in California or wherever and he's probably hiking or I don't know and I really need to see him."

Ana Sanchez

his son's in California or wherever

Ana's shoulders straighten and a sunlight-on-steel brightness flashes in her eyes at that. This is the second pretty young thing to come onto the ward since Mr. Echeverría showed up. The first one lied and said she was his daughter but she was eighteen-nineteen and couldn't lie worth a damn and wasn't crying or sniffling as she tried to hold her lie together. Shoshannah let it dissolve.

This isn't a lie though and that not-a-lie paints the same sorts of picture in the clinician's head as smears itself in the minds of the women who see Sera come and go dressed skimpier and truer than she is right now. Who've seen her fall asleep on a pew or sit on the rectory porch like she belongs here when she hasn't attended a service or taken communion with the rest of them.

She really needs to see him.

"Visitors aren't allowed into patient's rooms unless they're family," she says. "When--if he's transferred to one of the units, you can see him during visiting hours."

Serafíne

(iiiiif?)

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

"If?"

For a moment Sera's fingers are nerveless on that paper cup. For a moment it starts to slip. Somewhere in the middle of all this she's crossed her arms and they're crossed tight and the if goes through her and she's got this sharp breath she draws in and the tremors deepen a bit. Become something framing, physical, visceral. There's such livid fear beneath her skin, on so many levels. Oh, she hates the lights. Hates the people camped out on the vinyl, industrial furniture. Hates the soothing prints of waterlilies or nothing. Hates the drone of the soap operas on the TVs mounted on the ceiling.

More tears fall and the shaking subsides a bit and there's this moment where she just clenches down and pulls herself back together. Not Together but together and the picture Ana Sanchez paints in her mind is likely correct and even though Sera's not wearing her skimpiest clothes they are: skimpy-as-hell. She has that sidecut and a spike through her right ear and you can see her black lingerie through her white blouse and the abuelitas would still look at her if she dressed like this every day and know she was a prostitute at best and a hussy-with-eyes-for-the-priest at worst.

"See the thing is doctor, is that I'm like family." And the priest might not see it that way but there's no lack of sincerity in Sera's voice. She means that as deeply and sincerely as anything she's ever said. She's shed everything of her old life except for the money hidden away in her trust fund without a second thought and has no family but the one she creates, like magic, from the ether.

Sera takes in a deep, ragged breath. Her sinuses are thickened from the need-to-cry and her voice is rougher now. Her eyes are bloodshot and her heart just pounds and she has her mocha tucked against her body and her free hand flat at the base of her throat and her mouth is trembling and her voice is trembling and and and -

"I just need to see him. Just for a minute. He shouldn't be alone."

- she is crying, freely, openly, noiselessly now. Crying without shame and without pretense.

Ana Sanchez

Ana frowns like tears are the worst bodily fluid she can imagine encountering up here. Without any idea who she is or what she does here Sera like as not can't even see past the protesting weight of the half-consumed and half-drunk coffee in her hand. Might have forgotten it until Ana sighs and reaches out to take it from her that she might take her by the elbow.

The clinician has cool dry fingers born of poor circulation and a ward thermostat set to 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Come on," she says. "Come out in the hall, I can't have you crying out here."

It's as soothing as her voice gets. No metal in it. Still hard and sharp enough to cut depending on how it's held but she does not slash it at Sera as she guides her back through the heavy doors bearing puck-sized magnets at their tops. Back out into the outcropping where the corridor keeps going on in either direction. The elevator banks around another corner.

Huge shatterproof windows across from the doors look out onto the city. Ana releases her here and crosses her arms over her chest, low on her ribs the way Pan does when he decides to cross his arms over his chest. Necessity for her rather than a desire to appear open. Her chest doesn't give her room to rest her arms.

"Listen. Rafael's flying in tomorrow. He's not alone now, and he isn't going to be alone. I don't know which one of Pancho's... friends you are, but trust me, you don't need to see him like this."

Serafíne

(Are you lying to me? Awareness-as-empathy plus perception.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )

Serafíne

That corridor. It just goes on. Those windows, they don't open. The floor gleams and someone comes along and cleans it. Mops it. Buffs it with a fucking machine. Down the hall the elevator bank sighs open. Spills out another handful of people, panicked, alert, raw, pulled out of their ordinary lives and into the slow-sliding disaster of a loved one in the ICU.

"I hate these places." Sera cannot stop crying, sniffling, crying. She grimace-smile a sort of apology that lingers like a bright thread of light in her eyes. Looks up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, breathes in deep and - like a confession, goes on, "I really hate them.

"Like, he just collapsed you know? And I was trying to catch him and there was his blood like - " - a sudden, hitching sob, " everywhere, and we chased them away and he was still standing and the - I tried to catch him but he's so big, you know? Like he lost some weight when he went to Mexico but he -

"All of that," Sera offers Ana a grimace of apology. " - and I couldn't make myself get into the fucking ambulance, you know? Oh my god."

She's crying openly still, but rather more softly. "I don't go to the church," a curl of her shoulders. "I mean, he protected me when he had no reason to, and he puts up with my shit. And he's fucking stupid sometimes.

"But he stepped in front of me, that night. He always does. I'm just one of Pancho's friend-friends, you know? But I love him.

"And I'm," and the quiet tears renew a bit, so that it's closer to bawling again. But there's this flash of something: brighter, awareness, compassion, this raw and slicing empathy so kindled, so bright, so enduring in its strange, strange way in Sera's eyes. The rest comes out in a rush. " - so glad he's not alone right now.

"I'm - I'm gonna give you my number, okay? Please give it to Rafael when he comes. My name's Serafíne."

Ana Sanchez

The clinician keeps her arms around herself and that pinched look of discomfort on her face because she does not want to hear about the relationship her patient has with this sobbing exhausted young woman who is the same age as her son but it is her job to soothe and comfort the sick and the dying and the loved ones of the sick and the dying.

And she didn't want to have anything to do with wizards and men in black and infernalists but unfortunately she had a child with her high school sweetheart and that motherfucker turned out to be a goddamn wizard. She didn't have a choice. Even now that they don't have anything to do with each other and they haven't seen each other since her wedding to a handsome oncologist Ana can't opt out of it. She knows too much.

She knows just by watching this girl fall apart in the hallway outside her ward that she loves the big dumb bastard lying mostly-dead behind a curtain.

And she doesn't tell Sera that he collapsed because a vessel inside of his skull burst and his brain started drowning. He's six-foot-two and weighs over two hundred pounds and it usually takes about four fucking people to move him unless they use a backboard.

Ana sighs heavy at the end of all of that and steps forward and hugs the taller younger woman. The sort of hug that traps her arms because the person initiating the hug doesn't give them often.

"It's okay," she says. "I'll give Rafa your number."

Serafíne

Sera doesn't mind the trapped arms. She gives hugs all the time. Some of them are fucking awkward. But she can tell by the way Ana moves that this is rare and she doesn't care why just: accepts both. The rarity and the hug and the trapped arms. Well: accepts all three things. Trying this smiling-through-the-tears thing, which means tightly, into Ana's hair.

"Thank you."

Sniff.

So, so, so so.

Sera gives Ana a phone number. No last name, just Serafíne. Maybe somewhere in that hug Ana can smell the alcohol: from the Starbucks cup, on Sera's breath. It doesn't matter. Sera leaves her number. Thanks the nurse, gets that something else is going on here (Pancho. Rafa.) but not quite what. The truth is stranger than she could understand.

And Sera's still crying a bit because she cannot fucking help it when she heads back to the elevator bank, and encounters Shoshannah there. But that is a story for another day.