Night 59: Medical Wing Hall

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[from here]

Indy got past the junction and paused a minute, listening for anything else that sounded hungry. The scratching sounds from behind them seemed to have been silenced--for now. There was nothing dead around here, although parts of his shoes were still leaving faint tracks of blood on the floor. There were a bunch of doors up ahead to their right and a hallway on the left.

"How much medicine do you suppose actually gets practiced here?" he commented to Dent, now that they had a chance to catch their breaths.

Comments

[dualistic]

If Jones said that a place he'd been before hadn't been worth looking at twice, then Harvey was inclined to believe him. The guy had led him out into those ruins before, so it was clear that he had the right judgment for what was noteworthy and what wasn't. Besides, the larger the distance put between them and that door the better.

Of course, now it seemed like they had really struck out on their own. This whole wing of the building looked to be abandoned and the fact that they had been forced to break that lock made it clear that they were the first ones to come this way tonight. That meant that if something did find them, they were on their own.

Good thing Harvey had a gun.

His initial response to Jones' question was little more than a scoff. "Depends on your definition of medicine. But either way, not much." It was more like torture and experimentation that was going on here, right? He noticed the doors that were marked as exam rooms off to his right and barely suppressed a shudder. What the hell went on in there?

He wasn't sure he wanted to find out, and so he moved to the left instead, shining his light down the hall. The first door was labeled "Medical Library." He frowned and glanced back at Jones. "They like to pretend they do, though," he said with a nod to the sign.

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Indy followed Dent's indication. "The room after it's another records room. That's where I got gassed last night." He hadn't checked the "Medical Library," but if he had to place a bet, he'd put his money on its being an actual store of medical books and journals. No bets on whether anyone actually used them, but you could never accuse Landel's of not being thorough with its cover.

Unless it included home recipes for stronger painkillers than the nurses were giving him, Indy didn't have much use for medical literature. He kept going down the hall, to the first of the doors on the right, and peered at the room label: "O.R. Observation," he read aloud. Indy wondered what kind of medical supplies they kept on hand for surgeries. It stood to reason that they'd be in the O.R. proper rather than an observation area; he moved on to read the next sign.

"Induction room" told him little, given his relatively limited knowledge of surgery (especially in this period). Indy had a hunch that if Dent had any more knowledge of standard operating procedures (har har) these days, it wasn't associated with memories he wanted to be reminded of, so he continued to the next door without asking about this one. The third door turned out to be another observation room.

The layout, with the two observation room flanking the induction room (its door was asymmetrically placed between the two others) suggested that that was the way in. The door was locked, though. Naturally.

Indy turned back to Dent. "Mind if we look around in here? I want to see if they have any supplies worth taking."

[dualistic]

Right, the gas. Well, Harvey didn't have much interest in going anywhere that might have a trap like that waiting for them. Once had been more than enough. He was guessing that Jones had originally gone there to see if his file had listed anything about his death, but it seemed that the man had either gotten the information he needed or wasn't interested in finding out anymore. Harvey wasn't that inclined to question it.

Instead, he followed after the other man, pausing when he realized that they were passing some operating rooms. It was true that a hospital setting that was this overt (the rest of this building wasn't, seeing how most of it was made up of pointless activity rooms) brought back some unwanted memories. Luckily, this layout hardly resembled Gotham General, especially since it was pitch black.

His memories of the time post-accident were pretty hazy, so he couldn't even be sure if he'd ever been in an O.R. Probably not, considering the state of his wound and how untreated it appeared to be, but he couldn't say for sure. Still, Gotham General had a burn ward, so that was probably a whole different protocol.

That wasn't really something he wanted to think much about, though, and so he focused on the present. It just so happened that Jones wanted to take a closer look, which Harvey couldn't exactly protest. "All right, sure," he said, stepping forward as he reminded himself that he was the muscle for the night. That was a laugh.

"Let's hope the sound doesn't alert anything." The last thing he wanted was another race to get through a door. Still, it couldn't be helped and so he wound up like a baseball player and took a shot at the lock.

[its-the-mileage.livejournal.com]

As Dent went for the lock, Indy turned back toward the hallway to make sure nothing was coming. No other voices, that was for sure, but he thought he could hear other sounds in the distance--scrabbling noises, like rat footsteps. (Or insects? Who knew?) Getting closer? It was hard to tell from here. Indy shot a quick glance back to check Dent's progress.

"Easier said then done," he half-muttered. It was easy to get paranoid, too, wondering if he was actually hearing things or if it was just the pain (or the painkillers, for that matter) talking. Maybe he should've brought the radio, now that he thought of it--they hadn't heard anything from the intercom yet, despite everything that was supposed to be going on tonight. Maybe the staff were too busy dealing with it to make announcements about it.

"Surprised we haven't seen any guards, actually. Earlier it sounded like they were going to be out." Then again, maybe they were and this just wasn't where the action was happening.

[dualistic]

It seemed like most of these locks could withstand two hits from his metal pipe with the amount of strength that he was able to apply to it. Harvey realized that it could have been worse, that someone smaller or with a weapon not so suited for this would have probably had to bang against it several more times, and yet it was still annoying. Especially when they were jumping at every sound now.

He was just going to concentrate and not panic. That was almost always the best way to deal with these things.

"The way I figure, with some of the stuff we saw back there, you and I are the least of their worries." They were well-armed, sure, but they didn't have some of those powers that could apparently tear a monster apart with hardly any effort. They were hardly a threat, which was frustrating in its own way.

Still, might as well take advantage of it. Harvey went in for another strike with the pipe and let out a sigh when he heard the lock break apart under the metal. "All right, come on." At least this time he didn't have to drag Jones with him.

[To here.]