[open] stop, drop

[altusimperius]

WHO: Benedict and whomever
WHAT: LE GRIPPE
WHEN: Guardian
WHERE: DUNGEON (and possibly elsewhere)
NOTES: cw for illness I s'pose

I. (one thread please) It was bound to happen eventually, and one might even find it a little impressive that it took this long: the illness floating around Kirkwall has somehow tracked its way to the Gallows dungeon, where it has befallen the solitary prisoner like a sackful of so many bricks.
It started out as a shudder, a sneeze, a cough one day, and over the course of 24 hours has rendered Benedict a shivering pile of blankets on the stone floor, burning with fever, and barely able to take a breath without coughing it violently back out.

To be fair, sometimes he just looks like that. But it's been a day or so and he hasn't touched his food (which he's usually so good about), and it won't take long for the right person to notice that he can't even seem to wake up properly, let alone acknowledge their presence.
He will absolutely die if left in this state. There those who are, no doubt, perfectly comfortable with that.

II. The Sickroom

Camped out on a bed in the chapel sickroom for the foreseeable future, Benedict is awake and available to interaction with healers, other sickies, or those on official business who don't mind getting coughed on. There's a lot of that happening.

III. Relocation

There was a letter, and there were orders, and one day when Benedict is a little more conscious and less feverish, guards arrive to escort him back downstairs.
He'd suspected that this would happen, and is prepared to go quietly, without a word of complaint or a muscle moved out of place. He's still weak and slow as he's shuffled out of the infirmary, but that seems to be that.

Anyone in or near the open windows of the cells will, shortly thereafter, hear the sounds of panicked, wailing protest and a futile struggle, which is muffled efficiently behind the closing of a heavy door.

Future visitors will find the prisoner curled on his side by the brazier in the center of the isolation cell, staring distantly into the coals and moving only when he has to cough.

Comments

I

[keenly]

The day after hearing that sniffle, Colin arrives a little early just to make sure things haven’t gotten worse. On seeing Benedict’s condition, the bottom falls out of his stomach. He has the guard open the cell door for him so he can examine Benedict while he fumbles for his crystal. A twist and a name have him connected with a stubborn physician who will have more experience with this than he does.

“Sister?”

helpful

[altusimperius]

Vaguely aware that someone is present, Benedict's eyes flicker open long enough for him to mumble something to Colin and close them again.

[okayimin]

It's good timing, Sawbones about to head out to the ferry to make what have become her normal rounds. She is far from the only healer in Low Town, of course, but with the city in the depths of a grippe outbreak, she prefers to be on hand if needed.

"What can I do for you, Colin," she says.

[keenly]

Colin places his hand on Benedict's forehead. "I've got a patient in the Gallows prison. He's very ill--hot, shivering, with a cough. He hasn't eaten and is definitely dehydrated. I'm going to need your help moving him."

They can get permission, or forgiveness, once Benedict is somewhere warm and under constant care.

[okayimin]

Her response is immediate. "I'm on my way."

They'll have to sort out the logistics of how she's meant to help move him when both of them are rather significantly taller than her later. She arrives at speed, skirts gathered up to give her more room to move quickly. She frowns when she makes note of who the patient is.

"Right then, you get him on his feet. Find out when he's had his most recent dose of magebane. I'll inform the guard he's under my supervision so we're not all of us arrested just yet."

And they're definitely going to have to tell the division heads sooner rather than later.

[keenly]

That wasn't the kind of help he meant, fortunately. He slides an arm beneath Benedict's shoulders and speaks to him gently.

"Come on. Try to stand up. Can you do that for me?"

His legs brace, ready to bear as much of the prisoner's weight as he can. If he can't stand, he'll have to enlist the guard's help and possibly fetch a stretcher.

[altusimperius]

Fortunately Benedict doesn't weigh very much-- not that he ever has, but these days even less so. He does as Colin asks, gripping his friend's shoulders and trying to get his own feet under him, but he's so tired that the effort is barely worth it.

[okayimin]

The guard, under the full weight of Sawbones' assumption of compliance, trails after her when she reenters the cell.

"Good, you've got him upright at least." She gestures to the guard, "Ser, grab his other arm, if you please. There's a sick room off the Chapel we can use. Take him there at once, I'll get the fire started." She turns on her heel without waiting to see if any of them are actually doing as she bids, setting off up the stairs while muttering to herself the list of things they'll need.

[keenly]

It's slow going, and after a point, the guard simply shifts Benedict into his arms and carries him. It's awkward, especially going up the stairs and through doorways, but it gets him there. Once they arrive, the guard places the prisoner on whatever cot or bed there is.

"Stay here," Colin tells him, "just guard the door. We can find the key in a moment."

The guard nods and steps outside. Colin turns to Benedict and begins assessing him further, particularly sitting him up to have a listen to his lungs. It's easy for the grippe to become lung fever, especially when the patient has been in a cold, damp room. Medicines can help the body reduce phlegm, but the diagnosis will prove which will be most effective. His heart sinks as he hears fluid in the lungs.

"He's going to need steam and expectorants," he tells Sawbones. "I think it might already be lung fever. I didn't realize he could get worse so quickly. Yesterday, he just had the sniffles."

later that night

[altusimperius]

It's late, sometime after midnight, when Benedict stirs again. He'd dropped into a deep and heavy sleep, which means, although still feverish, he's at least a little more alert when he opens his eyes again, and announces himself with a sudden cough.

[keenly]

Colin has kept the steam coming, infusing the water with embrium as he goes and throwing more in as the potency is boiled out. Mainly, he's tried to keep busy. When Benedict wakes, he is quickly at his side with a mug of hot tea.

"Drink," he says when the coughing has eased. The tea is a combination of long pepper, ginger, lemon peel, elfroot, and a generous amount of honey. "It'll help you clear your lungs and bring down your fever."

[altusimperius]

It's Colin, and he seems real enough-- and the cup is hot enough-- that this likely isn't a dream. Benedict takes it carefully, holding it to his nose to inhale the vapor first before taking a sip.
He has to hand it back quickly to cough again, which he tries to stifle with the back of his hand, his skinny body wracked with the violence of it. At least he didn't spill hot tea everywhere.

[keenly]

Colin sets the tea aside and helps Benedict get into a better position.

"That's it," he says, rubbing Benedict's back. "Give me some good, deep coughs."

[altusimperius]

If he were more alert, perhaps Benedict would find this weird. But as it stands, being held like so, and gently encouraged in a time of distress, is a balm to the part of him that has been constantly anxious and uncomfortable for months. He does his best to cough as instructed, shaking with the effort of it, and is ultimately successful.

[keenly]

When the fit passes, Colin passes Benedict a cloth to wipe his lips with before helping him to lie back on the pillows.

"Good," he says with a smile. "Do you know who I am?" A question to gauge the state of the patient's delirium.

[altusimperius]

Benedict nods, weakly rubbing the cloth on his lips and continuing to hold it as his hand slides limply to the floor. He sighs when he returns to the pillows, finding that he can at least, for the moment, breathe a little easier.

"Where are we," he asks in a rasping whisper, keeping his eyes closed.

[keenly]

"A sick room," Colin says vaguely, in case it's decided the prisoner (who knows the layout of the building) shouldn't know exactly where he is in case he tries to escape. Not that he thinks Benedict will. He goes to the fire to add another dipper of boiling water to the large, shallow bowl at Benedict's bedside. "You have the grippe, unsurprisingly, given the conditions you've been living in. I'm going to have a talk with Flint about that. Suffice to say, you'll be in this room until Sawbones or I see fit to let you leave, and that won't be soon."

iii

[okayimin]

It takes her longer than she likes to get down to the dungeons for the first time since they moved him. Still, she had other responsibilities and there was no helping it. A flurry of arranging, bribing and threatening had to be done to get eight of her regular patients on the ferry and situated in the barracks by the docks (furnished and well cleaned). Closer to the water than she would like per say, but it's a nicely separated area where the half dozen or so can safely be kept.

Irony of ironies, she likes the dungeon cell they put Benedict in a great deal more than both the proper Infirmary and the chapel sick room. It's down deep, built into the Stone and free of mists and drafts. The walls of the cell are proper Stone. Kindness and indifference, safety and danger, all wrapped in one.

She has enough awareness to not ask Commander Flint for the use of the rest. Still, she's almost in a good mood by the time she gets down there and slips into the cell. She huffs at the sight of Benedict on the floor.

"I know I didn't bust my ass getting that cot dragged down here so you could sleep on the floor, Duster," she says, no nonsense and brisk.

[altusimperius]

To his credit, the floor is warm from the brazier, possibly warmer than he would be in the cot. But that's not really what Benedict is concerned about.

The letter from Colin told him to breathe the dry air from the flame, and that's what he's going to do; it is the one instruction he knows he can follow while otherwise crumbling to pieces.

He shudders when Sawbones enters, curling defensively and avoiding eye contact. Perhaps, if he doesn't say anything, she'll go away again.

[okayimin]

He's a pathetic little lump, huddled over like that. In a kinder nurse, it would stir a softer tone. In a crueler one, perhaps violence. Sawbones only herself, emotion shelved neatly aside in the interest of attending her duties. The boy is one of those and so attend him she will. She settles her hands on her hips and frowns.

"I will pick you up and move you if needs must, Benedict," she tells him, the firm conviction of one who has had to physically move people substantially larger than her before, "And believe me when I say neither of us wants that." She has an invalid's dinner for him and doses of the tonic they'd manage to develop for the grippe. Ginger and chile from a recent trade ship with a liberal application of embrium. Not especially popular with the patients, but it did it's job of warming them up from the inside out and balancing the phlegm.

[altusimperius]

He doesn't seem stirred by the threat, because he doesn't move or even look at her. At the bare minimum, he's aware there's another person in the room, but between the darkness around the brazier, the panic over this particular relocation, and his still-compromised health, Benedict has become rather unmoored.

He continues to stare at the coals, stuck in his own head.

[okayimin]

Only one thing for it then. She huffs again, setting the tray of food and medicine well clear of the area. She's done this sort of thing often enough to know it isn't going to be especially graceful.

Being a Sawbones means sometimes one finds themselves in situations where they need to move patients. Being significantly smaller than just about any given person means learning how to do it without killing the both of them. So Sawbones rolls up her sleeves and squats down behind Benedict, looping her arms around his waist. Feet planted and grip firm, she lifts him off the floor.

It would be significantly more impressive if the nature of their height difference didn't mean his limbs would flop around.

[altusimperius]

Well now he's aware, at least to a degree.
"NO," Benedict gasps, and immediately sets to struggling, as ramped-up as a panicking rabbit in a snare. "No don't, just-- just kill me, don't do this," he blathers brokenly, his limited strength expiring quickly, though he continues to try.

This is probably not what she signed up for, but it sure is what she's getting.

[okayimin]

It is absolutely not what she signed up for, but she's dealing with it anyway.

Her grip on him stays firm and steady as she drags him over to the cot and sets his stupid ass down on the straw mattress.

"I have treated children less resistant to taking medicine than you," she says, irritably tucking more blankets around him, "Just kill me he says, Stone sake."

[altusimperius]

She successfully (eventually) sits him down, where he proceeds to sob pitifully into his hands. "No," he whimpers, now curling up here as best he can, "please, no."

To look at him, one might think the world is ending.