as_damaged | ☤ nineteen

[Accidental Video;]

[The view is wavering and poorly focused, the camera on her PDA just barely poking out from a pocket as Cameron walks down a clinic hallway. The lights are dimmed, the exam rooms on either side dark.]

Chase? [She's not bothering to hide the frustration in her tone. She's only here because he isn't answering his phone, even though he paged her. Even though she suspects it's likely some misguided game, the slim chance that it's an actual emergency is enough to lure her down to otherwise closed clinic.]

Here. [The answering voice, and the hope in it, is weak but audible. On the floor of one of the exam rooms, Chase has managed to elevate his leg with the help of a chair. The amount of blood soaking through his pants and pooling on the floor suggests this is a recent development.] C-Cameron? In here.

What is-- [The question dies with a gasp as she marches in upon the scene, shocked into a moment's pause before training, habit, takes over. The view shakes as she rushes to grab something off a countertop-- a bundle of gauze, something clean to apply pressure-- and kneels next to him, heedless of the mess.] What happened?

[He's been applying pressure himself, tie pulled off to make a crude tourniquet. A last resort move, but it's obvious he wouldn't have gotten far in this state. Shaky and sweating, pale as a ghost, he lets himself fall back as she takes over.]

Came off my bike when I was s-six. Severed... popliteal. [He twitches, swallowing hard to force his jaw into unclenching.] Would have called House. Didn't... think I had... time.

It just... opened up? [She doesn't look up at him, fingers shifting over his leg, trying to get a sense of the damage, pressing the gauze on top of his soaked trouser leg, unwilling to risk pulling or cutting it away, lest it make the damage worse. She presses as hard as she can, trying to keep the artery against the bone, above where she judges the break to be.]

It was Eden. For God's sake, Cameron. [He doesn't have much of a voice left, and still less colour in his face, words hissed through teeth that won't ungrit.] ...Help.

[Cameron doesn't reply, bending to peek between her fingers to see how much blood has seeped through. Too much. One hand still curled firmly around his leg to keep pressure, she reaches up to press her fingers against his wrist, feeling for his pulse.]

I'm calling the ER. [The camera view jostles as she shifts back, obscured by the shadow of her hand as Cameron reaches for the pocket it's sticking out of.] I can't staunch the bleeding, and you're hypovolemic. You need a transfusion, and I can't move you mys--

[The transmission cuts off midsentence as Cameron turns off the device, never noticing it was recording.]

[ooc; speech color = Chase, Cameron. all network replies will come after Chase is out of her hands and in more stable condition. ♥ ♥ ♥]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's not apologising for breaking yet another unspoken contract. That much

wasn't

his fault, and even he can't find a means to skew it that way. Sheer, bloody bad luck, and that's what he's sorry for. The blood, having to see him in that state. That most of it is a blurry, sticky mess in his head only makes matters worse, conjures up things he might have said. She shouldn't have had to take responsibility for him.

He didn't mean to scare her. But maybe that's projecting. Maybe he's only remembering choking on his own pulse, slowing heart still threatening to beat its way out of his chest and the pain he hasn't mentioned to anyone - doesn't plan to. Worse than made any kind of sense. Enough to feel like it alone could kill him. Something in him knows he'd have gone to pieces if he'd had to be the one to find her. That's why he waited, almost long enough to run the clock out on his own chances.

"I know. One of the first victims we took in was a member of the police force. Not the smartest move."

He rubs a hand across his face, still too cool and clamming to the touch. Leaves it there to shield his eyes.God, he's so tired. "That's not Eden. When they find her, if they don't know how to fix her they'll only break her worse."

"Holly." It's not question, she's put together a rough picture of events. Cameron nods, mostly to herself. Eden's one of the handful of people here she'd consider a friend, which makes this that much worse. "She called herself Aodhan." Whether the difference means anything, Cameron has no clue, but it's oddly uncomfortable to imagine Eden running amok, pulling open old wounds with no apparent remorse.

She's been oddly calm about the whole affair, more focused on the practical aspect than its implications-- only now, face to face with Chase up and talking does she have the leisure to consider the mess, consider how close he came to joining the ranks of the City's living dead, cold and curiously animate. Bleeding on the floor. A thought she pushes away, reminded of things she won't consider.

"I've no idea how you fix that," she admits with a faint frown. Controlling the damage is at least comprehensible.

"Everyone keeps telling me how impressed I'm supposed to be with their magical powers. Maybe they should try using them for once." He hadn't heard the creature's name, but he had spoken to it, and there wasn't anything of Eden visible in those creepy black eyes. Just remembering the sight gives him shivers he hopes she would attribute to tiredness.

The girl had been his friend, too, but obviously they weren't friendly enough. He'd bought her a couple of dinners when she was feeling down, teased her about House and got into picky argments with her right up until the point when it looked like she might pull out a weapon (and, after three months in the city, he'd just about acclimatised himself to the idea of armed teenagers being a fact of life), but he hadn't known her. Even if he had - what the creature with her body had told him rang true - alcoholics could be masters of the art of hiding their condition right up until it tore them apart.

He'd indulge himself with guilt about that one later. Not his responsibility, maybe, but she had to be someone's.

"There's a story in the bible about Jesus coming across a man so riddled with demons he couldn't speak with his own voice. Jesus cast them out into a herd of pigs. That thing's borrowing her body - maybe it just needs to be given a home of its own." He wouldn't bring out the bible quotes with just anyone, maybe not even with her in a less vulnerable state, but it's not like his seminary education is a well kept secret between them. When you're near death you're closest to God. Maybe that gives him license for a moment's belief.

The story doesn't faze her, but it worries her a little. His background isn't a secret, but it's not something she's used to hearing him discuss. Maybe he's more shaken than he seems.

"That sounds too simple, somehow," she murmurs. Bound and suppressed, she-- it?-- had said; not that that made it any clearer. She didn't know Eden as well as she ought to, perhaps-- maybe if she did this would make more sense, but Cameron has shied away from delving too deeply into the topic of magic or mysticism with anyone. She can accept its existence, but she doesn't have to like it. Her conversations with Eden have been mostly medical, sometimes more personal-- but always grounded in what Cameron can't help but consider reality.

"So I'm assuming the answer is like crap, but how do you feel?"

They used to be reality, to him. Demons, miracles and wine that was the holy blood of the lamb. And though he never fully subscribed to all of that, the memories stay with him like childhood stories that can't be true but leave you turning a light on for safety, just in case.

"Like crap," he answers, obligingly. "My head's killing me." Beyond the headache and the dizzying tiredness, there's a blood bruise from the IV on one arm, spread out in varying shades of purple to about the size of a tennis ball. His legs are stiff, but it's when he tries to bend one that his face really falls.

Popliteal artery. Back of the knee. There's a helpless irony when he looks up at her again. "Think I'm going to be walking with a limp for a while."

Cameron can appreciate God as a concept. She can sympathize with the desire for a point of reverence, but can't quite make the connection herself between some grand, creative power-- something infinitely vast and yet allegedly connected, concerned, intimately, with each living creature. It's hard to imagine that capacity for faith-- even harder (most of the time) to see its traces in Chase.

She might have smiled, joked, if the air were clear between them. He and House could have matching canes. But this conversation only works because he's a patient for the moment, and as such she can push aside their issues.

"It doesn't look like there's any permanent damage, at least," she consoles him.

☤ nineteen

[don't go out tonight, 'cause it's bound to take your life]

[don't go out tonight, 'cause it's bound to take your life]

[don't go out tonight, 'cause it's bound to take your life]

[don't go out tonight, 'cause it's bound to take your life]

[don't go out tonight, 'cause it's bound to take your life]

[don't go out tonight, 'cause it's bound to take your life]