Poisoned...again...(open to one)

[January]

Smathers rolls over in bed and stares at the clock. 9:30 AM. Damn, he was late for morning classes. Since he was so late already, it wasn't hard to fight down the impulse to hurry off to school; what difference would it make if he was a few minutes later. He tugs the covers over his head and tries to recapture the dream he'd been hav-

"Wait a minute...clock? BED? COVERS?"

Smathers violently rotates back around in bed, staring screwdrivers at the analog timepiece that had so unexpectedly intruded upon his previously comprehensible existence. "What in Jack's name..."

Smathers sits up in bed. Yes it was a bed, with clean white sheets. Now Smathers may be disoriented, but he's not stupid, and it doesn't take long for it to click that he's in a hospital of some sort.

A moment passes.

"I need to get out of here before they try to bill me!"

Smathers scrambles from bed, locates his clothes in a nearby bureau, and dresses. He throws open the blinds and is assaulted by the blinding sun of a clear morning. "GAH, what is that beastly light!? Turn it off, it offends me!" he shouts in spite of himself.

He hurls the window open and hurls himself out, but not before checking the chart hanging at the foot of his bed. Alcohol poisoning. Figures...

Anyways, it was a long and uncertain three feet to the sidewalk below.

Smathers finds himself in a little park. With the rakish morning light casting long rays and shadows from the horizon's razored rim, the place is an islet of perfection.

"But wait...no...NO!!!"

It was the hospital's courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the hospital building itself.

Smathers seats himself on a bench, bewildered by the morning's events. "How did I get into that bed?" he wonders aloud, then suddenly a thought struck him. In his helplessness, some good soul must had gone out of their way to see to his care. "Me, a worthless street-crawler..." Moved to tears, the young man hangs his head in his hands as he contemplates the beauty and goodness that still exists in the nooks and crannies of the world at large. He is filled with a strange internal pressure, as if his appreciation of that goodness wished to burst from his every pore.

So there sits our strange vagabond, hunched over in the morning sun and suffering from the curious condition of wearing a hospital bracelet.

[seishounohana]

Unfortunately for the hobo, Emily was one of those 'volunteer student nurses' that were assigned to his ward, and unfortunately endorsed to him.

She was a persistent nurse, and was idealistic. Whoever this mister "Johnny" was, he was going to need an IV drip. The beta-block counteracting the poison was working, and the poison was more or less going to dehydrate him quite a bit.

And yes, Emily was wearing a rather sultry looking nurse uniform, and her hair was up in a bun. No cap though, that's reserved for the RNs. She was just an SN.

Sacricia Emily Lourdes E. delos Santos, SN.

Yup, that sounded quite good.

Emily stopped in front of Johnny. The picture on his chart said he was her patient. How convenient that the hospital Layla had referred her to had computerized charting?

"Do you mind staying on your bed? You still have a few more days to go before we'll discharge you."

Yeah, he should be ashamed of himself.

God these pumps were troublesome.

[January]

Smathers looks up at the nurse. Her words confuse him. "What...a few more days!? It's just alcohol poisoning...I drank too much; this happens all the time...If I stay hydrated I'll be fine."

He is about to say something about it, but then he realizes something. "Wait a minute...if I tell her that, she'll probably want to discharge me...and therefore bill me...I had better play along..."

Smathers stands up and stretches. "Sure Ms. Nurse, whatever you need me to do, Smathers is at your service, yours and your family's!" To be honest, Smathers is a little surprised at her apparent youth...she must be either talented or genetically blessed.

Now that he thinks about it, this might not be so bad after all. Meals, a bed, a pretty nurse...he would just have to dodge the moneybags on his way out.

Smathers starts talking, unprovoked. "The psychologist Thomas Sasz supposes that mental illness as a concept is merely a social construct and not an actual factor of absolute health. Society has a more or less solid definition of normalcy, and there is a certain range of mental traits and states that are conducive to functionality within said society. What lies outside that range is defined as 'unhealthy' not because it detracts from a person's ability to live, but from their ability to function within the artificial construct and framework that makes up society."

Smathers paces and leans against a tree, fingering a leaf that hangs on a lower branch. "Imagine then, that by extending the argument to include states of physical health, that the idea of being healthy is itself a construct of culture. What is it to be healthy? How separate or linked are the concepts of 'happiness' and 'health?' Does it mean merely physical function, or is it something more, or perhaps something less? If it weren't for the stigma surrounding the ideas of death, illness, and injury, such phenomenon would be of far lesser concern and would perhaps be recognized as acceptable states of being by the collective."

As he speaks, now mostly to himself, Smathers begins to wander off across the courtyard, not in an attempt to run away, but because he is becoming a little lost in speculation. "As man evolves to be less and less like a beast whose primal urges and instincts dictate that in order to survive one must avoid illness and injury, he begins to lose the idea that such things are adverse effects. Perhaps even our nervous sensation of pain and discomfort will deteriorate as it becomes less and less useful in aiding our survival as a species...."

It continues in this way for quite some time unless interrupted.

[seishounohana]

If there was any emoticon that could express Emily's face right now it was a: o_o;;;

She let him talk for a moment, before sighing and grabbing him by the hand. "Inside you go. The doctor will be mad at me if I let you out longer than I already have, if you're good I'll tell the cafeteria to stop feeding you sodium-free food."

In fact, he'd probably need the sodium -- what, with the dehydration and all he'd need to retain water, even by a bit. She would have him sit on a wheelchair and wheel him back to his ward. Which wasn't really that expensive anyways, at least in Emily's eyes. He would be staying there for two more days at least.

Just for observation and to make sure he's in great physical condition when he leaves. They would make their quiet trek from the elevator to the room where he was supposed to be: his bed.

"I don't suppose I'll need to help you up onto the bed, mm? You seem well enough."

[January]

(OOC: Character development time, awwwwwwl riiiight)

Smathers looks around frantically, as if expecting an escape to come tramping sloppily up to him like a dog with down syndrome. Nothing did present itself, so he lets out an impressive sigh and resigns fully and truly to the healing process.

Smathers is not shy, and wastes no time stripping back down to his t-shirt and boxers. "HIYOO SILVER!" he shouts, and vaults over the bedrail, coming to rest on his back in the bed.

"All right, Ms. Nurse, you got me..." he says. "What's your name? For some reason I feel I've seen you somewhere before..." Somewhere in his gut there is a vague tickling sensation, as if the Travelocity gnome had taken up residence in there at some point without Smathers' knowing.

Smathers considers this, but shrugs it off. Maybe this was normal when one has the attention of a pretty nurse. He speaks again after a pause. "Say, you're pretty dedicated to your work. Kudos, I say. Simply I.N.S.P.I.rational!"

As he says it, something inside his mind shakes loose of its netting and falls off a shelf, shattering against the floor. What in Zeus' name did I mean by that..." There is a thumping, thrumming sensation of pain's shadow somewhere in his confused brain, and as it grows his stomach begins to churn and he breaks out in a sweat and his heart races. Whatever was going on upstairs in his head, it wasn't good.

Suddenly, the vagrant teen wasn't feeling so well anymore.

[seishounohana]

(Homg INSPI. XDDDD I dropped that idea... oh gawd. XD -remembers-)

Emily smiled as she watched him jump to the bed. Yup, he was pretty much in good health. His energy said so. If she pulled the strings around here, she'd say he was pretty good to go.

Darn protocol...

"All right, Ms. Nurse, you got me..." he says. "What's your name? For some reason I feel I've seen you somewhere before..."

"Emily." She said, pointing to her I.D. Pin by her left breast. Of course, yet another retarded protocol. Guess what, only student nurses had to put up with this shit all the time -- it's sad, really.

"Say, you're pretty dedicated to your work. Kudos, I say. Simply I.N.S.P.I.rational!" Emily laughed and put up his bedrails, pressing a few buttons to put him a more comfortable position. It was then when she saw him getting pale and pained.

"... are you... alright?"

He looked awfully familiar...

Emily was hoping he wouldn't go lapse into a seizure though.

[January]

(OOC: Just so Marianne will stop picking on me to post in here...better late than never though I s'pose!)

Smathers body jerks in the bed, but only once, and his eyes burst open wide wide wide. But if one looked into him one could tell that he was not staring outwards, but inwards, into memory.

---

***FLICKER***

"...Good, all set. Pass me the syringe, Jenkins," says an aged male voice.

"Yassa" says another, in a colorful accent.

Roland's eyelids swing open like great rusty portcullises roused unexpectedly from their idle state, and he blearily beholds an eery teal-lit room. There are three people in white coats; an old man, a woman, and a yound dark-skinned fellow.

The woman steps back from Roland, who is apparently strapped to a table that's set to a 45 degree angle. "Doctor..." She says nervously, and the other two people look up from their tasks to peer at Roland.

"He's awake!" exclaims the the dark man, who scrambles to examine something off outside Roland's field of vision, presumably an instrument panel of some kind. His eyes are like white orbs in the shadow, and seem to float disembodied above a medical mask.

"Good for him, he won't miss out on the show. You're gonna love this stuff," says the old man jauntily. he raises a hand and waggles a syringe between his fingers. it's filled with a vile green liquid that seems to glow of its own volition. As if it was straight out of cliche sci-fi, my friends.

Roland cannot struggle...he's been paralyzed in some way, and the needle comes in at him. It's HUGE...he can see the angled point and the circumfrence of the razor-sharp micropipette that tips it. Its tip goes below his field of vision, and heads for his neck...

---

"AHHHHHHHH!" Smathers shouts into the air, and starts lashing out randomly. At the nurse, at the equipment, and even at himself.