Hide the spoons...

[bythewhiteelm]

Who: Adora Cain
When: around lunchtime
Where: outside the hotel (and hopefully to medical attention)
What: Adora's arrival [COMPLETE]

Comments

[cptn_browncoat]

Mal was out for a walk. He'd thought about taking a car. And he thought about taking a horse. But today he was going for a walk.

As usual, the oppression of freedom preyed on his mind. No ship. No crew. Just a group of people caught in a place where they had no hope of leaving.

He walked the circuit once... twice... three times. The hotel still showed up on the horizon just as it disappeared behind him. He was on his fourth pass when he saw... something. A person perhaps. This person didn't look so good. Mal altered his course and made his way towards the figure only to find a very battered looking woman.

"Shèngjié de mǔqīn, fú (Holy mother of Buddha) he breathed as he reached out to catch her. Images of River in her bad moments flicked through his brain. "How long have you been out here miss?"

[leverage_hitter]

Jogging sucked. Jogging in the heat sucked. Jogging in the dry heat sucked worst of all. If he hadn't been going loopy, climbing the walls for something to do, he wouldn't have put himself through this. No, that was a lie. He would have, even then. His body had been his weapon for years and weapons maintenance was order number one when in a hostile territory. This place was just about as hostile as one could get. Subtly so. Insidious.

Goddamn, but he wanted to go home.

As he finished his first circuit of the Hotel grounds, just starting to work up a sweat, he caught sight of movement out of his peripheral vision and looked to see a figure staggering toward the hotel. The gait was a familiar one... injury and pain. He adjusted his course and picked up speed, arriving just as another man did. He skidded to a stop in the sand and watched him reach for her.

"What happened?"

[bythewhiteelm]

The sun was bright. Not the normal two-suns bright, either. It was actually brighter. Thank the Gale that her eyes were swelling shut, because it did block quite a bit of the light. If she was a bit more coherent, Adora might consider that it was brighter simply because there was nothing on the ground to deflect the light.

She could see the fuzzy outline of a person - a man, by their size - and she stopped, turning her right shoulder away. She wasn't going to be able to run. Another step and she could see the coat. "Longcoat" she managed in a whisper, and took another step back.

Then he spoke, a calm voice; a nice voice. He didn't sound like a Longcoat. "I.." she started, trying to focus long enough to discern which side he was on. Forget it, she was too tired. Maybe he'd just finish her off. It was about that moment that her legs finally gave out. How long had she been walking, anyway?

"Where?" She managed before another voice could be heard. Adora turned her head in that direction, but she didn't see who the voice belonged to.

[cptn_browncoat]

Mal caught the woman easily in his arms and shifted so he blocked the sun as best he could. She was beat up bad, and he was dismayed to see her frightened reaction towards him.

"I don't know. I was out walking and suddenly she was here," he said to the other man who'd shown up. "Ain't ever seen her before neither. But we need to get her inside. To the infirmary." It was quite obvious, but he was good at obvious. Mal picked the woman up carefully. "We're from the hotel Miss. Gonna get you a nice glass of water and find a doctor to heal you."

He hoped Owen was in the infirmary. Hell, he hoped the infirmary would be easy to find.

[leverage_hitter]

"C'mon." He rushed up the front steps to get the door, holding it open for the man to carry her in. The infirmary was one place he was well acquainted with, since arriving. And while medicine wasn't his specialization, he had plenty of field training for battle injuries. If she didn't need surgery, he could at least keep her comfortable until a real doctor showed up.

"You got a name, sweetheart?" He asked the woman, hoping she'd stay conscious until they made sure she wasn't going to stroke out on them. "Where ya from?"

[bythewhiteelm]

As soon as she left the ground, Adora cried out, which made her throat feel like it was on fire. Okay, it wasn't just a broken wrist. "Sh-h-lder," she managed between deep breaths. "J-st.. pop'tin. Wh'sky..." Any more words were too much and her hand moved back to her throat.

After being strangled to within an inch of her live, Adora realized Whiskey probably wasn't the best option, either. Damn Zero.

The other voice was talking to her. Right? Maybe she was hearing things. As they passed him, Dree managed to open her eyes and, just for a moment... "Jeb.." He was okay. Thank the Gale. And the one holding her.. the feeling of his coat, his arms...

"Wy..."

[cptn_browncoat]

Mal followed the other man to the infirmary, being as gentle as he possibly could. "We're going to find a doctor to take care of your shoulder. And everything else." Kaylee flashed in front of his eyes... Kaylee with a stomach wound. If only the good doctor were here right now.

"She's hallucinatin'" Mal told the other man. "Unless your name's Jeb."

He laid the woman down on a bed picked up one hand, feeling for a pulse. Owen was nowhere to be seen. "You know any doctors here? Where any of them might be?" he asked as he searched for a cup. Water was the first thing on his mind.

[leverage_hitter]

"I don't know anyone named Jeb." He shook his head, and started checking her for injuries. The bruises on her throat were obvious, but the way she was favoring her arm suggested bone damage somewhere. Bones, he could set.

"Hop on that terminal over there and hit up the network. See if you can scare up a doctor. I can handle the surface problems, but if she's hurt internally, there's nothing I can do." He shook his head at the question. "Doctor Jones is the only one I know of, although I've heard of two others I haven't met."

He looked down at the woman. "You're gonna have to forgive my Southern bleeding through here when I call you sweetheart, since I don't know what else to call you, okay? Looks like you've got a busted wrist and a dislocated shoulder. I can pop the shoulder in and splint the wrist, but it's gonna hurt. Need you to hang tight while I dig up some painkillers to take the edge off, okay?"

[bythewhiteelm]

Adora's head was starting to spin, but she could make out their words. Mostly. Clearly, she wasn't dead. But, where in the name of all things was she? As Eliot leaned closer, she flinched - it was an automatic reaction - but his words weren't at all threatening. Neither were the other man's

[cptn_browncoat]

Mal nodded and tapped the trackpad to wake the thing up. Figuring the quickest way was a Universal Transmission, Mal typed up something quick. His fingers still weren't used to the keyboard set up without corresponding Chinese characters. Once done... he sat and waited for anything... looking anxiously back at the woman on the table.

"Is there anything else I can do to help?" he asked as it seemed the other man knew what he was doing better than Mal did. Mal was better at gunshot wounds.

[leverage_hitter]

"Yeah, in a minute you can hold her still while I pop that shoulder back in." Eliot looked through the medicine shelves until he came to a painkiller he recognized and could administer. He picked it up and a syringe, rolling over a tray with some cleaning items on it. He sterilized the injection site.

He looked down at her. "This'll take the edge off and make you a little loopy, but you'll be alright. Hang on, okay?"

[bythewhiteelm]

Adora was honestly glad she couldn't really see what he was doing. "Sss-t-ik," she managed, and nodded, preparing herself for pain, not that she had much of an idea as to just how much pain was coming.

Eight annuals of battlefield medicine, she knew to give a person a stick, a cloth - anything to keep the patient from biting their tongue off.

[cptn_browncoat]

Mal turned from the computer again. "Seems the only doctor here is Dr. Jones. Says she's in bedrest with three broken ribs and needs to be carried down here."

He hopped off the stool he was on and found a washcloth. "So she doesn't bite her tongue clean off when you pop the shoulder back into place," he muttered.

"And after we get the shoulder in place, I'll go get Dr. Jones?"

[leverage_hitter]

"Sounds like a plan." Eliot administered the pain killer as gently as he could to the woman's uninjured arm. Nodded as the man offered her the folded up cloth to bite on. After a couple minutes to give the drugs a head start, he reached to take hold of her arm, positioning himself to pop it back into place. "You ready?" He asked his partner in piecemeal medicine.

Once the other man was holding her, he glanced down into her eyes. "Here we go, sweetheart. Count of three. One..." With a quick yank, he popped the arm back into its socket. Better to go before she had a chance to brace up and get tense. Another battlefield trick he'd learned that most civilians tended to not appreciate.

[bythewhiteelm]

Adora didn't know she had that scream in her. Whatever he'd put into her arm, it didn't seem to be enough. Or the pain was just that excruciating. She was also quite thankful for the rag in her mouth, because it muffled most of the noise.

She was seeing stars, which was a trick since she could barely see anything. Well, she'd seen him, hadn't she? Well, his face. Maybe it was Wyatt. After all, it had been so long...

And Wyatt never waited for three, either.

As the pain lessened, Adora nodded her head. It was back in the socket. And, just as soon as that pain had passed, it was as if all the other bits that hurt started screaming in pain. What had he given her?

She was tired. So very tired....

[cptn_browncoat]

Mal held onto the other woman. The scream didn't phase him. He'd popped enough shoulders into place on the battlefield to know what to expect. Once that was done he carefully took the cloth from her mouth and smoothed back her hair. "You did great," he assured her with a rare smile.

Then he looked up towards the other man. "Right, I'm gonna bring down Dr. Jones."

((He's just going to go and then come back... Since both are my characters I don't see too much of a need for me to play out him knocking on her door and picking her up etc. Do you two want a tag or two before he comes back in with Martha or should one of my peeps tag in the next round?))