Nightshift 46: Patient Possessions Storage

[perfectrecord]

[From here]As von Karma set foot inside this room, he clicked his flashlight back on and waved it around to see whether any dangers were present. So far, all he could see were two long shelves on either side of him, containing small, flimsy boxes in apparent alphabetical order

Comments

[she_is_ruin]

[from here, and pretending she came in at a different time for simplicity's sake.]

If her main priority had been scavenging for things she might find a use for, her time might have been better spent in the storage room after her stint in the janitor’s closet.

Instead, Yomi stood in the threshold of the patient possessions room and pulled her flashlight out to illuminate the space within.

So this was where the hospital kept the “patient” belongings. Assumedly what they would’ve had on them when they’d arrived. What Yoshiko would have had. And there were rows and rows of such storage boxes, stored in a more orderly fashion than what’d been in the room she’d just left behind. For a moment, she didn’t move, merely kept letting her light drift amongst the shelves. There was no practical reason why she should be here. She’d taken her file with the partial desire to remove the copy from the records, but now wasn’t entirely sure if it hadn’t simply respawned in the filing cabinet the next night. No real assurance Yoshiko’s belongings

[sir_savien]

[from here, also at a different time from everyone else]

The door had been kicked open. That was the first thing Kvothe noticed as they reached the room. It swung open easy at a touch of his hand and the flashlight beam bounced from the no longer so orderly rows of boxes within. "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about getting in," he muttered to Demyx under his breath. Each of the boxes was labeled with a name, and he started moving toward the 'K's. "How are they ordered?" He asked after a moment, looking toward Demyx. "Our real names, or the names they call us?"

[sitard3d]

"The names they call us, 'm pretty sure," Demyx replied, idly moving along the shelves and occasionally peeking into boxes that had interesting names on them. He couldn't actually help Kvothe much in the way of looking; he didn't know the name the institute called him. "I didn't really need to know for myself, 'cause my sitar was sitting out by itself; too big. But when I was here before with my roommate - I don't think the boxes had the real names of the people they were for on 'em." Too bad he hadn't remembered what those names were; maybe he could have found them and seen if there was anything useful he could bring back for Soubi or Ritsuka or Kio.

"How big's your lute?" he asked, as an afterthought. Maybe it wasn't in a box, either.

[sir_savien]

He held his hands apart approximately the length of the lute. "Probably too big for any of these boxes," he said. At least if you wanted to get the lid on, and anything else inside..." He shone the flashlight around again, the beam stopped after a moment on a dark shape that wasn't a box. "Like that, maybe." He rushed toward it, grinning as he recognized the shape. "It is!" He tucked the flashlight under his arm as he carefully pulled the lute from the shelf, the box next to it was neatly labeled "Keane, Charles," and he pulled that down, too.

[sitard3d]

Demyx felt as though a weight was lifted as he saw Kvothe lift the lute into his arms with that wide smile. Responsibility, maybe, since he'd been the one who'd promised to help him get it back; maybe some sort of sympathetic stress, too, since he knew himself the feeling of a musician without his instrument. Either way, he found himself grinning right along with his bandmate.

"Mission accomplished," he announced, holding up a clenched fist in victory. "You'll have to play it for me sometime." A thought struck him. "Or hey, maybe we could even do a duet!" Actually, he wasn't sure if he'd ever actually heard a lute, so he didn't quite know if its music would blend well with a sitar, but - well, they'd find a way. He'd used to think humans would never accept a Nobody, either, and he'd been proven wrong more times than he'd ever have believed since he'd arrived at the institute.

[ninelivesonce]

Before looking at any of the boxes, Taura did a second scan of the spaces between. Nothing but shelves and boxes, though there was no guarantee it would stay that way. When she finished her scan, she was, apparently, in front of the Ms. March, Marsh, May, Michaels, Morales. That gave her direction and location. She stepped one long step to the left and looked again. A-ha! At the front of that row was Fuchs, Keane, which meant...there. She lifted the last box from the back of the row and set it down near von Karma before returning to the row she'd passed over.

Jackson, Katherine was exactly where it belonged. Something shifted inside as she picked it up and reread the nameplate. It wasn't like her to be indecisive, and it was just more lies, but she still hesitated to open it up.

She turned fully away from von Karma and his box -- there was something private about seeing pieces of a life laid out like this, like possessions boxed up before a funeral.

[perfectrecord]

Thump. The aging prosecutor gave a start as the abrupt sound jolted him back into full consciousness. He peered in the direction from which the noise originated and found a box at his feet. Fuchs, Karl was written upon it in large letters. This was the one, no doubt. But how had it materialized on the floor like that?

There was only one valid explanation: Ms. Taura must have found it first and set it down before him. But how had he missed seeing it? It was then that he found himself standing in front of the "L" row. He had completely overshot his target by several letters.

Damn you, Landel! I refuse to fall victim to this induced senility.Attempting to control his internal rage, von Karma looked up at Taura. Her back was turned towards him, but he could see that she had already retrieved her own box. Was she facing away from him for her own privacy -- or for his? It truly mattered little in the end. In a weary yet still dignified tone of voice, he said, "Thank you, Ms. Taura," although his gratitude was more for the respect she had

[ninelivesonce]

When he was done scowling at his "own" box, or was alerted by the rhythmic sound, the sight that would meet his eyes was an odd one. Taura had slid the top off the box, and was holding a basketball over her head. It bounced off her fingertips, grazed the ceiling in a slow arc as she rocked forwards, and met her hands only to bounce off again as she leaned back. Her brows were knitted in concentration, and the rest of the box had been briefly abandoned by her feet, her flashlight propped up inside it.

Each time it came down, she adjusted the splay of her fingers and the angle of her arms -- what started out as a stiff motion gradually relaxed, until her shoulder blades had settled back into place, and her hands met rubber like a caress.

[perfectrecord]

To ensure that he had not overlooked anything important or useful, von Karma examined "Dr. Fuchs'" belongings again. Aside from the perfect custom fit on his ring finger, the plain gold wedding band was unremarkable. The wire-framed reading glasses also fit just right, though he was loath to admit that he would ever need them in his practice. It was the fault of printers and publishers for making text such an infinitesimal size that one had to strain his eyes to read it