faderift | [open] stop, drop

[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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Sawbones, who has stood in the deep, dark parts of the Deep Roads and seen the end of the world, lets out a long suffering sigh.

"What exactly are you fussing about?" she asks, hands back on her hips, "It's a perfectly good tincture, you've had it yourself from Colin before without all of this." Colin also has a better bedside manner than she does, but she'd like to think it's not that vast a difference.

He doesn't answer, and instead just continues to weep into the pillow of the cot like a person who has lost everything. Forming sentences is too difficult at the moment, and there's a good chance he doesn't even know who she is.

Well. Can't do much about that.

Another tired sigh and Sawbones moves his soup close to the grate to keep it warm before seating herself, angled so she can keep an eye on the Duster. She fishes one of her field journals and a stub of pencil out from her habit, flips open to an empty page and starts taking notes and making lists.

She'd expected a little trouble, so she'd pushed checking on him closer to the end of the day. Clearly, that was a wise choice, but it did mean she would be tending to the Chapels' sickroom later than she would like...

It takes at least an hour for him to calm down and stop shivering. When he does, it signals itself as a deep breath, not unlike a gasp, as he suddenly notices the soup in front of the brazier. Then, realizing he's not alone in the room, his gaze shifts to Sawbones with another little start of surprise.

"You," he says uncertainly, "how long...?"

"An hour," she says. It's always easier to track time underground, when there's not a bunch of celestial bodies to distract and make one worry about them crashing down. She looks up from the field journal to eye him, "Are you ready to eat now?"

He's still shaky, his gaze still flitting to and fro like he sees something she doesn't, but at least now Sawbones seems to be something of a grounding presence. She's really talking to him, isn't she?
He can smell the soup, that has to be real. Doesn't it?

Benedict nods faintly, and bends to pick up the bowl. His hand is still trembling so violently he can barely hold the spoon, and drops it a few times.

When he drops it the second time, Sawbones moves to take the spoon from him. Tucking it in one of her habit pockets, she produces another spoon from a different pocket and begins to feed him herself.

"How are you feeling then? Chest sore? Any difficulty breathing?"

He reaches for the second spoon, not wanting to succumb so quickly to total helplessness, though it's clear he's still having trouble keeping his wits about him.

"I'm-- coughing a lot," he says, but quickly moves on. "What did I do?" His voice is tremulous.
"To get put back in here?"

She let him have it, keeping a sharp eye out in case he drops it again (does she have a third spoon? the depths of her habit pockets are vast and unknowable).

"The coughing is perfect normal. I'll fetch you some drops when I go back that should soothe your throat." His questions earn him a slight grimace, "You didn't do anything. Or well, you did whatever landed you here in the dungeon in the first place. I was the one who asked for your cell assignment to be changed." She gestured to the little cell, "No windows, much easier to keep out a chill and any miasma rising from the bay at night."

He manages to hold onto it this time, gripping it tightly despite how his hand still shakes. He listens intently, still seeming to have some trouble understanding the situation.

"...will I be made Tranquil?" he asks timidly, after a pause. That's why he's here, isn't it? Except maybe not? Things aren't adding up.

That question stumps her. So much so that it actually takes her a moment to respond.

"That wouldn't cure the Grippe," she says slowly, "So no. If that was their plan for you, I can't imagine why they haven't gone and done it." And saved themselves quite a lot in magebane. But that part is best left unsaid.

He shudders, and lowers the spoon with a light thud into the partially-eaten ration. He can't imagine either, but he also can't imagine why he's been put in solitary, why Colin is forbidden to see him now-- did she just explain one of those? If he could keep his thoughts together longer than a few seconds, maybe he'd be easier to convince.

"So I," he stammers, blinking rapidly and trying (and failing) to collect himself into a lucid sentence, "so I get to be... not in here?"

They're clearly working cross purposes here, which isn't conducive to getting him to eat.

"When you're better, you'll be returned to your regular cell," she says, with confidence. That hasn't actually been confirmed, but considering she's rather officially involved, it doesn't seem to presumptuous that she'll have some call in the matter.

He nods, appearing at least to understand that much, even if he isn't happy about it. A few more bites of his soup, and it seems Benedict is done asking questions.

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