DAY 65: Breakfast

[envy_the_sinners]

Scar came to slowly, vision blurred and head throbbing. His memory of the previous night was vague and somewhat scattered. What he was most aware of was his renewed and increased hatred for the man called Lingormr. The Ishbalan didn't give a damn if he had been a special counseling patient. That bastard had enjoyed every second of tearing Scar to shreds. What he may or may not have realized was how much it had affected Scar emotionally. He had felt a renewed sense of drive at the start of the night; the disruption on the intercom and the news of the 'cure' had rekindled a fire that fueled Scar to drive forward. To have a little hope.

Lingormr had promptly crushed that.

He was in pain. So much pain. The cut on his hand was only fading scab at this point, but stitches now pulled at the deep gashes in his legs and back. Not only had the nausea not settled, but his stomach was beginning to cramp. The rash on his arm was impossible to hide without the old bandages covering it. It had nearly reached his elbow.

Scar's hazy eyes could make out the nurse, now pushing a wheelchair up to his bedside. This was humiliating. And he was too exhausted and hurting to lash out or become angry. He was just broken. He still tried to take some sort of grudging control, insisting that he didn't need to be pushed around, that he could at least turn the wheels of the damned chair himself. But he didn't make it down the hallway before the pulling and sharp pain in his back became so obvious on his face that the nurse took over.

He entered breakfast with a frustrated, tired, but overall defeated look to him. Scar felt too sick to eat. He sat at the table and brooded, wishing more than anything to simply be left alone.

[For Goku!]

Comments

[dualistic]

To make the transition from sopping wet and freezing to something far more comfortable was an improvement on the usual switch from night to day, but also very jarring. Harvey woke up coughing, as if there was still some water in his lungs, but it soon became clear that what felt like a few minutes ago was more like a few hours.

He rubbed his hand down his chest and then up to his bandages. The water getting into his wounds had been intensely painful, but at least all of that had faded away by now. For once, he didn't really mind the fact that the staff had wrapped him up again.

So they had gotten through one so-called challenge down in those damn caverns, but Harvey had no idea if that was going to lead to anything. Had they actually accomplished anything by going through that free fall? It still felt like some ridiculous challenge that would have been required of a character in a movie, but at least they'd figured it out and hadn't ended up jumping to their deaths.

He was curious about what had come of that intercom clue, even though it wasn't something affected him or the people he worked with that much. For that reason he didn't make it a priority, giving the bulletin board only a quick glance over before he moved into the cafeteria.

With the way his wounds had been aggravated last night, Harvey couldn't say that he was in the mood to eat. Still, in case the hunger won out over discomfort as the shift progressed, he decided to get himself a plate of french toast. With that in hand, he looked around for a place to sit, and right nearby was Ryuuzaki, who was waving him down.

He was as good of a breakfast partner as any, Harvey decided, and so he stepped over and set his tray down on the table before taking a seat.

"Been a while," he said as he took in Ryuuzaki's face, and it didn't take a genius to realize that the guy was under the weather -- or worse than that, even. For once, Harvey felt like he was one of the few people who had dodged this bullet. "You caught the bug, huh," he muttered as he glanced down at his plate of food.

[ryuuzaki]

"A bug," he replied, with a little shrug of his good shoulder, one which tugged at the tape on the bandages that covered his bad one. Under the circumstances, especially after spending the previous afternoon asleep on one of the couches in the Sun Room, there was little point in claiming that he felt fine. "But you look all right."

This was relative; Dent was half-masked with bandages, and L had seen the livid wreck under them. He loaded his fork with another bite of french toast as he continued.

"Pilgrim and Taylor... they're also unaffected?"

[dualistic]

The correction seemed strange. Did Ryuuzaki think that not all of the patients were suffering from the same illness? That seemed to complicate things unnecessarily, but in the end it really wasn't Harvey's problem. Ryuuzaki seemed like the kind of guy who would analyze this situation to death, especially if he was involved.

"That's right," he said in response to the question. "While everyone else was probably gunning for the medical wing, we headed downstairs." Which had a fifty-fifty chance of having been a successful venture.

"So I guess I'm behind on the news," he said as he started to cut his french toast up into bite-sized pieces. "Did anyone actually change?" It seemed that if someone had turned into a monster, that would already be seen as big news.