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

[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!”

[aberratic]

"Not that I noticed," which might sound insane to someone who hasn't experienced a full bookcase falling on top of them, but there was a lot happening to her in a very short amount of time, "but I did definitely get smacked in the head by a number of books."

She's started panting, the pain in her arm mounting higher as the adrenaline of the fall works through her. Listening to Stephen in this situation is her highest priority; it's also the hardest thing she could possibly be doing at the moment, because all of her body is screaming for her to help him shove the bookcase off of her, and she can't do that. At least she can help with the yelling.

"Please," she calls into the hallway, and she doesn't have to act scared and in pain, "I'm hurt!"

[exequy]

Strange's call catches him on the stairs, bouncing off the stone in a way that makes it difficult to be sure whether they're coming from the floor above or the floor below. But his first guess is right — that's all his luck for the week, probably — and when Ness's follows it he's close enough to hone in on the room and appear promptly in the doorway.

It takes him a second of standing there, processing the tossed books and Ness's pinned arm, for his expression to shift from put out at having been waylaid to alarmed.

He says, "Fuck," under his breath, and he's not a healer and he's not a force mage, but he's dealt with the severely wounded often enough to do what he can do: he spreads his hands ahead of him and blankets her with a barrier that might at least prevent things from getting much worse if the bookcase shifts or falls again while they try to get it off of her the old fashioned way.

Which he is trying to do now, a first attempt made without trying to coordinate the lift with Stephen at all. He's always thought himself a bit stronger than he is.

[portalling]

The doctor isn’t sure who he was hoping would come out of the hallway — not Clarisse or Abby, for certain, he doesn’t want to drop this kind of horrifying morning on his infirmary assistants without warning — and when it’s Averesch, he doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, either.

But the other man is young, not built like a twig, and he’s got magic. Good enough.

The first attempt is lopsided, mistimed. But Strange finishes offloading most of the bookcase, getting the worst of the heavy tomes out of the way — this really underscores the importance of anchoring IKEA bookshelves, doesn’t it — and then digs his fingertips under the edge. Grips hard on the bottom rim of the bookcase, despite that instant surge of pain through his hands when he does so. He meets Kostos’ eye and nods once, brisk.

“One, two, three—”

And they heave.

[aberratic]

They heave. Ness stays dutifully still—aside from the scream as their efforts jolt her arm.

The bookcase moves slowly, the heavy wood fighting them every step of the way as they attempt to shove it back. It scrapes and catches on grooves in the floor, resists their strength and threatens to slip from their fingers, splinters angrily in their hands—and finally drops heavily again, flat on the floor, with a resentful thud. The floor shakes, and the other shelves with it, but nothing else falls. Only their laboured breathing remains to fill the silence in the office.

Ness still isn't allowed to move. Her eyes lock on Stephen's, and she can only imagine what she looks like—hair frizzed from sweat, eyes wild with pain, skin drawn paler than a moon elf, to say nothing of her arm. She hasn't looked at it to see the damage for herself. Oghma willing, she won't have to.

"I would," she says, voice thready with the effort of maintaining coherence, volume, sanity, "very much like the cuff, please, Doctor."

[portalling]

The Head Healer wipes real sweat from his forehead, already somewhat tired from the effort, already knowing there’s a much longer morning awaiting them without a motorised bone saw to speed things up. If they were worried about the veracity of the accident, at least they’re making it look real as hell.

“The cuff’s in the infirmary,” he says, looking steadily and unblinking at the injury, sizing it up. Crushed bone, shattered from the weight, not the kind of clean fracture which could be splinted and easily healed. Good. That’s what they wanted.

“Which is where we’re headed, immediately. Averesch, can you carry her?”

The girl’s pint-sized, another thing in their favour —