open: "accidents" will happen.

[aberratic]

WHO: Ness Tavane (aberratic)
WHAT: An "accident" and an amputation
WHEN: Backdated-ish to mid-March
WHERE: The Gallows/Infirmary
NOTES: CW for amputation of a limb, illness from infection in said limb, confusion and disorientation as a result of fever. Lmk if you need any other cws and I'll add them!

It's early morning one balmy day in the middle of Drakonis, and the central tower of the Gallows is quiet. A few early risers have already made their ways to their offices, not to mention those who fell asleep in their offices—or those who never slept in the first place—but most of Riftwatch is still asleep, or at least milling about the dining hall. Coffee and tea are still brewing, breakfast is still being served, the work of the day is still at least an hour away for most.

This is purposeful; it means there's no one near the Quartermaster's office to see what happens. There is only silence, and then a sudden cacophonous crash to break it, and a high, sharp scream.

Comments

for stephen & kostos, @portalling & @exequy

[aberratic]

Distantly, Ness is impressed by how well this part of the plan has gone. The heavy bookshelf has her pinned by the anchor arm, but nowhere else. Falling books pelted her about the face and body, but nothing hit her so hard she's concussed. Her arm must indeed be broken at a minimum, at least based on how badly it hurts. She's dazed from adrenaline, anticipation, nerves, pain—but she's conscious, coherent, and only as hurt as she intended to be.

Phase one went off as well as could be expected. Time to begin phase two.

She reaches for her sending crystal with her free hand, and opens a connection to Stephen. Her trapped arm throbs as she moves, and the first thing Stephen hears through the crystal is her shocked, high-pitched gasp.

"Doctor, Stephen," she starts, and then grits her teeth, cut off by another throb of pain from her anchor arm. Her whole body is prickling with the knowledge that this could get very bad, very quickly. "Please hurry, the Quartermaster's office—"

[portalling]

Stephen’s been sitting in the Head Healer’s office, hands interlaced between his knees, boot bouncing restlessly against the stone floor. Pretending he’s in for some early work (not unheard-of), but where he’ll be nearby to be summoned, waiting for the scream.

He dislikes this play-acting — for multiple reasons, moreso than when they started — but he still thinks it’s better than the alternative. Give the girl plausible deniability. Don’t start a rash of rifters chopping off their arms and leaving them with no working anchor-shards left.

So when it happens, he rises to his feet from where he’s been sitting, grabs his crystal and demands “What happened?” (and feels like his own voice sounds dreadfully fake, affected, surely everyone’s going to see right through this shit) even as he leaves his office and goes striding down the corridor, towards the quartermaster’s door.

Once he’s inside, he surveys the scene, mouth pressed into a thin line. He sinks to a knee and starts trying to heave the bookcase off her; it’s heavier than he expected, and he can’t fling it off in one go, especially with most of the books still in it. Shit. They might actually need a second pair of hands for this part —

[aberratic]

It's better for both of them not to have to lie too much over the crystal, so she doesn't answer his question, and that's not so strange—he's close enough it hardly matters, anyway. When he enters the room, her relief is visible. His presence calms her, even when he fails to shove the bookcase off of her in one go, but maybe because she expected that: they're her bookcases, after all. She knows how heavy they are.

"Is this like a falling injury?" she asks, words coming slow to master the shake of pain. Her left hand grips the edge of the bookcase, white-knuckled. "Should I not move until you've assessed my neck?"

[portalling]

“Depends. But stay put, to be on the safe side. Did you hit your head? Either from the bookcase hitting it, or your head bouncing off the floor?”

Even without the deception, these are valid questions: the injury is real.

Ness is pinned under the bookcase, the entire thing having landed squarely on her right arm. Just as planned. It’ll be a bad compound fracture, he suspects; the type that won’t heal cleanly, just a mess of crushed and pulverised bone, and they don’t have an Isaac.

Stephen starts flinging books out of the bookcase, making it lighter. Shouts out into the hallway: “Anyone there? We could use some help!”

ota, visiting hours

[aberratic]

In the first few days following her "accident", it looks as though the worst complication to befall Ness may well be boredom—her arm is healing as well as can be expected under the circumstances, and Ness herself is taking the amputation in stride. She's allowed visitors, who she's happy to see, if only to reassure them herself that she's alright, she's not traumatized, she'll be rejoining them again before any ofthem know it—she particularly wants updates about the war, the Gallows, the work she's been unable to keep up with since being bedridden.

Throughout this period, she's following all of Stephen's instructions about how to care for her residual limb meticulously, sticking to the schedule of cleanings and dressing changes he prescribed even if she has to rope a visitor in to assist when Stephen isn't there to help himself. Ness is a dutiful and patient patient in most all ways... with one notable exception the longer Stephen keeps her in the infirmary: Anyone who comes to visit her without any particular agenda of their own will be treated to good-natured and easily side-stepped requests for work to do while she's out of commission. Nothing strenuous, she insists, or that she'll have to get out of bed to do! And if Stephen finds out, she won't snitch, she promises.

[armd]

Abby, conversely, does not have to be roped in to helping Ness with a bandage change — she's here on purpose for her shift in the infirmary and arrives already briefed, a little wary. When Yara's arm was amputated there was blood, sweat and the stink of disinfectant in the air and Abby doesn't think she'll soon forget her uncomfortably pale smile or the jacket sleeve knotted off at her elbow. Part of her is nervous Ness will look the same, but she doesn't. They're a few days out from the incident and she's had some time to recover, her body already pulling together, working out what to do now that part of it is missing.

She says, "Hey," as she holds up her kit. "How're you doing? Strange said you're due for a refresh."

[aberratic]

Ness has looked better, but she's looked worse, too—she's not too pale anymore, her smiles are genuine, if slightly dimmer than usual, and the sleeve of her shift has been rolled up over her residual limb instead of tied off below the stump. That part's as much for convenience as aesthetics, but still: she's looking as good as one who's recently lost a limb could hope to, and as good as anyone who has to interact with her might want her to.

"Right on time," she smiles, and shifts forward in her bed to proffer her arm for Abby's attention. "It hurts, but no worse than could be expected, I think. I'm taking that as a good sign."

[armd]

"Yeah, that's a pretty good sign." Reassuring for both Ness and the people who have been looking after her. Honestly, Abby didn't know what to think when Strange reached out to debrief her, as he would have done for everybody pulling shifts; he didn't go into any of the sordid details. She didn't ask for them.

She never saw what was underneath of Yara's bandages or sleeve so it's part morbid curiousity that has made her interested in seeing. She starts to take the dressing off, working slow.

"Strange said it was a compound fracture. That fucking sucks. I've seen one before."

[ipseite]

“Mademoiselle Tavane,” Petrana greets her, pleasantly, a slim folder beneath her arm as she approaches and a not immediately identifiable contraption in her other hand. “I hear tell that you are bored in your confinement.”

It seems likely that Strange will confiscate anything that seems overtaxing, but it hardly seems that she should be prevented from any occupation whatsoever. If one is well enough to find healing tedious, one is well enough to be provided with some consolation, surely.

[aberratic]

The way Ness's eyes light up at the sight, specifically, of the folder—not Madame de Cedoux herself, or the mystery device she also carries—probably speaks to something unhealthy in her... Though given where she is and why, it may be the least unhealthy something anyone needs to be concerned with at the moment.

"Terribly," she confirms, and pushes herself up to sit a little taller in her bed. It's less effective with only one hand with which to brace herself, so she has to wiggle a bit and really think about it to get herself in the position she wants—something to work on. Finally upright with a respectable posture, she lays her hand in her lap, and tries to look very, very healthy.

"I've finished the book the Doctor brought me, and every time I try to help with stocking duties someone yells at me."

[ipseite]

Setting the folder down — temporarily out of Ness’s reach — Petrana busies herself with unfolding the metal contraption she’d carried in alongside it, producing something once secure that’s rather like a sturdier music stand, designed to hold not pages but books open in place. It will certainly more than serve for the sheaf of busy-work reports that are, admittedly, largely rather dull in their particulars,

“Familiarising yourself with these will not, I think, tax you so that anyone feels the need to scold for it,” she says, setting them up in the stand; she has already organised them by chronology (and priority, where appropriate). “But so as you might not feel quite so apart from what’s done in your absence, or lost when you return from it.”

A long-standing habit of her own, even if sometimes she’s asking Julius to read them to her so she can fall asleep.

infirmary buddies

[thereneverwas]

Not a visitor, per se, but here comes something more of a roommate who only in the last day or so has had the wherewithal to get out of bed and take some shaky steps around the infirmary.

It's an odd thing to say Barrow is looking a little thin, but there are shadows around his eyes to match the heavy stubble on his jaw as he shuffles by to sit nearby, offering a smile as warm as it is sad.

"What're you in for," he asks gently, only to notice a half-second later and regret the question. A low whistle, and he shuts himself up.

[aberratic]

She's not mean enough to laugh... but she does smile.

"If you'd like to ask a different question, I can pretend I didn't hear you."

[thereneverwas]

The smile at least suggests she isn’t offended, and Barrow mirrors it.

“All right,” he agrees, “does it come with a good story, at least?”

[youwonscience]

As a practical matter, Cosima takes fewer infirmary shifts than she did before she became the head of Research. But fewer isn't none. On her first shift after the "accident," Cosima arranges to arrive early so she can pay a visit too. (If all is quiet, it's possible she'll just end up rolling bandages in Ness's earshot anyway, but Cosima finds it pays never to assume.)

She hasn't pressed Stephen, purposely, and for now it seems like everything is going actively better than expected for "major surgery without modern equipment or antibiotics." At least Ness has the energy to put up a front, if that's what it is. Cosima likes Ness, though she doesn't assume they're especially close, and if this goes better than expected, well. She won't begrudge the other woman a bit of luck.

"So have you reached the bored out of your mind stage of surgical recovery yet?" Cosima asks, lightly, as she comes to sit by Ness's bedside for a while. As in their chat before the event, if Cosima has any feelings about the choice to amputate, the choice to stage it as an accident, or both, they're impossible to read in her manner. As usual, the vibe is laid-back but warm.

[aberratic]

"Surpassed, in fact!" is the cheerily-chirped response to Cosima's question, though Ness appears good-natured about her boredom, at least. She's not dead; that's a miracle of Rifter medicine she needs to be grateful for, and not throw in Stephen's face by flouting his rules regarding her recovery... No matter how difficult it is to stay abed and unproductive for this long.

"I've been spending the time considering what should be done with me now—I'm something of a singular resource, aren't I, at least while Madame de Foncé is in Orzammar?"

Perhaps it's a bit gauche to refer to oneself as a resource, but Ness doesn't seem bothered by it. It's merely a practical description of what she is now, after all.

"Do we have records of what experiments were run on Madame after her own amputation? It would be prudent to determine if their conclusions are replicable with me."

[youwonscience]

"Long term, maybe, yeah. Though two data points still aren't statistically significant, unfortunately. Same problem with all rifter science, there's just too few of us. But once you get the full all-clear from Stephen, we can talk about what we want to keep an eye on." If Ness reads that as we are absolutely not doing any experiments on you until you're medically cleared, well, she's reading correctly.

That said, Cosima isn't going to dismiss the idea out of hand. To wit: "I have Madame de Foncé's report, and some notes of my own from discussing the matter with her. And Viktor co-authored the study. If nothing else, it would make sense to carefully observe your relationship to lyrium, though as you know better than most, lyrium's a tricky thing to work with." Quietly; she can imagine it's not the thing Ness is most looking forward to, but it is the most measurable.

ota, a fever of 103

[aberratic]

Nothing in Thedas can be easy, of course, and shortly after Stephen allows that Ness can be discharged from the infirmary—and despite the meticulous care and attention to her stitches on both their parts—her stitches tear, and she's right back in the infirmary for him to stitch her back up. This time, the wound begins to fester almost immediately, going red and hot by the end of the day.

Ness is determined not to panic, and insists no one visiting her at this time should either—she has the best doctor in all of Thedas attending her personally, after all—but it's undeniable that the situation has begun to deteriorate rapidly. The fever that started the morning of her second stay in the infirmary has only gotten worse, and she's begun to lose herself to bouts of disorientation and confusion. She needs the anaesthetic cuff on constantly in order to be able to sleep. Visitors, while Stephen will allow them, are now likely to catch her in a state of confusion such that she doesn't know where she is or why. Her magic is a little haywire at the moment, which could lead to broken beds in the infirmary, delirious telepathy, or worse.

vignette style, across the length of ness’s stay.

[elegiaque]

Infirmary work is a familiar routine.

Gwenaëlle has off and on provided her services — growing more knowledgeable and more adept for the practise and the access to guidance in the meantime — for the better part of a decade. The maintenance of healing wounds is well within her wheelhouse; the procedures, the necessities. Where everything is kept. Ennaris Tavane, likewise, is well-known to her. A visit, if anyone were inclined to think on it, would be expected — her expertise in assistance, likewise.

Her routine in the infirmary doesn’t discernibly vary. She’s neither there less often nor more, briskly professional about the usual tasks that occupy her when she leaves her office for Dr Strange’s domain; she occupies herself mostly with the tedious minutiae that’s best taken out of the hands of dedicated healers, inventory,

to any observer, it would seem as if she’s completely unaware that Ness has set foot in the infirmary, let alone that she’s a patient there. There’s no acknowledgment; no moment where she hesitates or pauses, considers and then turns away. She makes other conversation with other people, unrelated, leaving concern for Ennaris’s care to those appropriate. The decision was made elsewhere; much like an amputation, there is simply an absence in its wake.

The kindest thing she can say to Ennaris is nothing. She comes and goes from the infirmary, saying nothing.

for stephen & isaac, @portalling & @wythersake

[aberratic]

It's quiet when Ness wakes up, dry lips parting to drag a beleaguered breath into starved lungs. She tore open her stitches and had to come back to the infirmary less than a week ago—not that she knows that. She knows it's getting hard to breathe. Her arm is completely numb, she knows that too, but the rest of her body has begun to hurt. Pulling her thoughts together feels as exhausting as swimming through molasses, and her throat is so dry. It feels like her whole body is pulsing with some unnatural heat. She doesn't know why she feels like this, but she's not worried. Why isn't she worried?

The answer feels like it takes hours to reach her—time is fuzzy right now—but it makes perfect sense when it does: Stephen. Stephen will help her, he always does. Even when he didn't remember her he helped. He'll know what to do.

Ness reaches out with her left hand, the only hand she has left, searching uncoordinatedly for her nightstand and the sending crystal she keeps atop it when she sleeps—and hits something cool, flesh-textured. She frowns, distantly puzzled.

"Stephen?" Her voice is little more than a croak. "'m hot, 'm—am I in the infirmary? I don't remember..."

[portalling]

What he wouldn’t fucking give for Luc-Mercier Volante to have gotten the penicillin working already.

But the infection worsens, and worsens. Doctor Strange keeps the wound clean, rinses and changes her dressings, applies an embrium salve, keeps her well-hydrated, follows all the right steps, wishes for fucking antibiotics, wishes for proper healing magic of his own. But Ness has still been getting worse and worse, and despite himself he remembers, not too long ago, hovering in this infirmary helplessly watching another patient cratering in critical condition.

Think all our doctors been murderers.

The words echo in his ears, unpleasant, galling. He sizes up the girl’s drawn pale face, her croak of a voice. Presses a cool wrist to her forehead and feels the heat blazing.

“You’re in the infirmary,” he confirms, as crisp and professional as he can make it. Rather than try to carry on an extended conversation, he reaches for his own crystal. Speaks into it: “Healer Isaac?”

Any other time, this message might have contained some friendly grousing about the man’s surname and lack thereof, how the doctor’s paperwork is all fucked without it, he needs a better way to refer to his colleague. This time, it’s simply to-the-point.

[wythersake]

Enchanter,

"J'arrive."

Muddled by sleep. The slumped sound of someone shoving upright, hammering hand to eye against the crack of daylight. Enchanter. But he's said healer, which may as well be a knock at the door; the turn of a key. Isaac's pulling on sleeves before he finds the sense to ask:

"Tell me what's happened."

Can't guess what he's walking into — back a day, perhaps two; not long enough to catch up to the business of business. Hinges creak. Footsteps, steadier for a few, gathering balance along the open line. A couple minutes downstairs, a couple more to navigate the yard. He's coming.

@wythersake, afterward.

[portalling]

It’s been a rough night.

It rankles that he had to call for desperate assistance from someone he didn’t even remember existed a few weeks ago; that Doctor Strange looked at all his modern knowledge and years of complex medical experience and residencies and specialties and asked himself what else he could do for Ennaris Tavane, and the answer was, nothing.

Ordinarily he might be wielding more of his customary sharp sarcasm, but all these sleepless hours have wrung him out and sanded down those edges. He owes Isaac a great debt. He looks clammy, tired. The helplessness had been strangling him. And this, after Barrow—

Once the girl is safely out of the woods and stabilised and unconscious again, her breathing steady and fever gone, Stephen moves through the infirmary and goes for a locked cabinet at the back, by his desk. Unlocks it and removes two cups and a bottle of wine. Break in case of emergency, he thinks.

“Care for an Orlesian red?” he asks, weary. “Not white, since there’s no ice-box.”

[wythersake]

"Yes,"

Automatic, with no intention of touching the cup. He doesn't often drink, and this a poor time; rot in his nose and Fade at the door. The gesture stands. The drag of Stephen's voice does. Isaac pushes his face into damp cloth, breathes in. Tonight's seen lyrium in some quantity. Hardly his first brush with mana imbalance, but he's growing older. Every year a little slower.

(Whispers in another place: The man without a face, and so he doesn't close his eyes beneath the rag. He doesn't lift it, either. A child needn't look to know the monster's there.)

"You're very fond of her," Observation, muffled for the cloth. "Why is that?"

A warmup — there are other questions he means to have answered. It asks a very particular set of circumstances, to crush only one's anchor-hand, and not waste the upper limb; to choose amputation, before outside assistance.

He could press Tavane, Isaac was younger than her when he entered the liar's trade. But there's no point to underlining what he already knows. Hers isn't the tongue in question.

[portalling]

“Why is anyone fond of anyone,” Strange — Stephen — says, but it has the sound of deflection and delay while he cleans off his hands, pours the wine, and pulls up chairs at his desk, one drawn up to Isaac in invitation. The desk’s at a distance from the private patient’s room and the beds. He never eats in here for crumbs and contamination, but: a steadying drink. That he can do.

And then he considers the question in seriousness. It’s not one he’s ever sat down to consciously consider.

“She’s clever and a hard worker,” he eventually says, which sounds more like a good grade report but he makes himself push on, “and tried to help Riftwatch and people in Thedas even faster than I did. We saw some awful shit in Sarrux together, and she’s still been trying hard ever since. We’ve been working on her magic together. She’s a good kid.”

He might kvetch and complain and grouse about how he hasn’t the patience for people, but the truth is, it’s all noise. He’s reminded too much of another young witch with out-of-control powers he wasn’t able to help — another plucky teenaged girl who lost her parents, and barreled into him for a hug — an oddly-shaped absence in his memory except that he remembers a young voice, pleading, Come on, Strange, have a heart.

“Weren’t you fond of any of your students?”