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[open] stop, drop

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.

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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?”

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Being carried in the guard's arms, while it would upset Benedict on any other day, at the moment is the perfect excuse to take a nap. It's when he's set down and sat up that he grows a little irritated, resisting faintly, but not enough to prevent Colin from doing his work.

It's so much warmer in here. A great deal of tension begins to leave Bene's body in shudders, held in for so long by trying to sleep on a stone floor in a damp room.
He actually falls unconscious sitting up, his head resting on Colin's shoulder.

"Fuck," Sawbones supplies helpfully, bustling into the room with her medical bag and a large pot. There's a slowly building fire in the grate so she plops the pot down on the stand over it. She drops her bag and kicks it toward Colin as she does.

"I've got a bit from Darktown still. Juniper, some embrium and pine. Out of chilies though. Can you get him sorted while I fetch water?" No time to call someone else to do it and she trusts Colin more than enough to keep their patient managed while she's gone.

"There's more of everything in the apothecary," Colin tells her as he arranges pillows, "just take what you need. I have him."

Gently, he rests Benedict back on the stack of pillows, keeping him at an incline so he can breathe.

It's two trips, first to the water and then to the apothecary. Best to get the steam going at speed. There's a great deal of bustling about to do whenever one is first setting up a sick bed, but there comes a point in every illness where all they can do is wait. Wait for a fever to break, for for convulsions to start, for some kind of sign in what direction to move next.

It's only when they reach that point that Sawbones uses a little of the hot water to make tea for the two of them.

"Well," she says, grimly, "So much for hoping the whole mess would stay in Kirkwall."

After everything is set up, after asking another guard to find the key for this room, after pouring spirit healing magic into Benedict's weakened body, Colin doesn't entirely know what to do with himself. So far, he has been calm because he knows he can do something about this, knows what comes next in this process. That list of things to do has come to an end and Colin now sits at the bedside holding a cup of tea and slowly realizing that staying busy was keeping a lot of anxiety and sadness at bay.

He rocks gently in his chair, gaze turning dull. "He's been in that cell for months. He had to weave a curtain out of straw to keep some of the chill out. He didn't want to ask for anything and I respected his wishes. Should I have insisted?"

Sawbones settles into her own seat with a soft noise and eyes Colin.

"You're a friend of his then," she says. It's not a question. "Suppose there's nothing wrong with respecting a friend's wishes, but as a healer, yes, you should have. Dungeons are cold and wet, blasted breeding ground for illness." If he's looking for absolution, he's asking the wrong person. She grimaces and takes a sip of her tea, "Still, I knew he was there and hadn't taken the appropriate precautions myself because he seemed hale enough. We were both careless."

Not absolution. Guidance. But at least he isn't alone in this mistake.

"He came very close to being executed," he says. "Any time I've mentioned him, people didn't want to listen, least of all Flint. I didn't want to push my luck or his. And..."

A soft sigh. "I was never acting as a healer. As his friend, I felt I was too close to the situation. I just want to know where to draw the line. Or if I can't separate my personal and professional lives, how to combine the two ethically."

"They're going to have to face up to it now," Sawbones says, "It's a waste of resources to keep a prisoner indefinitely." And the look she shoots him is entierly amused. "You're asking the wrong person entierly about that. I've rarely had the luxury of considering the ethical dilemmas of the work I do. Some Duster needs doctoring, I'm gonna do my duty. Doesn't matter how I feel about them or what happens to them after I'm done."

"I never realized it was that simple," he says thoughtfully. He likes this woman. She gives it to him straight, even more so than Anders did. He offers a tired little smile.

"I did go to Flint a few months ago, saying Benedict shouldn't stay in the cell, that if he wasn't going to be executed then something else needed to be done with him. I was essentially told he should be grateful for what he's got. And it's just...it's not the prisoner's gratitude that matters, nor even what he did, which obviously, was bad. But it's how we conduct ourselves as an organization. And leaving people in the cold and draft for months at a time, with no opportunity for exercise, until such a time as we stop being angry with them, then...acting like being confronted with this should keep him there for longer? I...I stopped confronting Flint about him because I was afraid it was hurting his chances. I don't actually know what kind of man Flint is, or if he'd be that spiteful. I just know that if he is, there's nothing I can say to him that will get Benedict in a better place, only things that will get him in a worse one."

It's a relief to have someone to say these things to, who will understand.

"Plenty of other things are complicated enough without us complicating the bones of our duty."

Because the rest is complicated. "Haven't ever spoken to the man myself, but generally folk in power don't give a fuck about the well being of those below them. We wouldn't have places like Darktown if they did. If you're trying to appeal to them for the sake of Benedict as a person, then you're going about it wrong. Like as not he's not a person to them." She shrugs and takes a drink of her tea, "Either way, we'll have to speak to him now. I'll do it."

Colin nods, unable to argue with that. It's been his experience.

"Thank you," he says. "Do we want to take shifts with him?"

"Better. I've still got rounds in Kirkwall I need to do."

After she washes up. Grippe and lung fever weren't the same as the Taint, but old habits die hard.

"Would you be able to run by the Darktown clinic as well? Or possibly ask Sidony to go instead."

That he's required here doesn't mean his other patients should suffer for it.

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