We resume with the good doctor and Jack having been slightly injured by some malevolent seaweed, as Alex recovers from a... vision, and Darrion is sitting in the car.
"Darrion," Brune says, briskly, as they near the car and he hauls Jack towards the side door; he looks extremely haggard and sounds like he's barely holding himself together. "I'm sorry, lad, but we need your help. Jack needs help getting in the car, keep the pressure on his arm, we need water and some clean linens - don't get near the chair -"
Darrion shakes out of his disassociation. He coughs, shifts in the seat to get more comfortable. Something's itchy, probably a seam from clothes that weren't intended for running around with heavy carts. "mm, where?"
"All right, all right." Brune pats his good arm awkwardly, seeming like he's trying to apologize. "Get in, hurry. Is there any objection to transporting our friend to the hospital immediately? Darrion, can you drive?"
Brune eyes Jack nervously, seeming to want to object to his patient climbing into a vehicle right after bleeding horribly, but then remembers that Jack shares a lot in common with him - that is, he's not one to ask for help much either - and lets it go. "Let's get going, then."
"...Normally someone with your level of advanced malnutrition wouldn't even be able to stand without collapsing," Brune says, with a note in his voice that implies he's decided this is some kind of supernatural ailment and not a physical one. "If the food didn't help you, I think we ought to get some fluids in you. Hospital. For both of you."
"I am open to alternate suggestions," Brune says, tersely, "but Mr. Rivers needs medical treatment immediately. That can be arranged at other locations, but we need to get him somewhere with a kit and bandages - mmph." He grips his arm tightly to his chest and trails off, grimacing.
Brune glances at Darrion and gestures, wearily, to the chair. "That seaweed, don't make skin contact - we need it as a sample." Then, to Alex, "There are few places I would consider safe here, but I imagine my hosts wouldn't mind me bringing guests, if you want to fetch pills and medical supplies from my arrangements. Or we could return to the hotel - I can't imagine they would not have emergency supplies."
"I will go where you go," Brune murmurs, exhausted, and rubs his arm again. He sounds like he has lost the energy to debate any further. He glances out at the water again, trying to catch a glimpse of the boat that was pulling in.
Brune massages his forehead with his palm and seems to revive a little. Something about the stress of everything that just happened and several of his new companions getting injured and not being able to help everyone and being in pain and not knowing what to do just seems to be emotionally draining him, but he musters some strength and says, "That seaweed, Darrion. Your laboratory..."
@Ginger "We can order some food to the laboratory," Jack says not seeing anything wrong with that statement, "Let's go," and Jack starts to drive, and quite fast
@bobble "I think I remember the way, just shout if I'm going wrong..."
Brune leans back in the seat, apparently resigning himself to pushing onwards, and massages his face with his palm again. He feels a strange sense of irony that in the one moment he was trying to persuade everyone to stop and rest, they had the same reaction he normally would, and kept going. I must have rubbed off on them, he muses.
"At sea, I saw a man get tangled in some ropes and almost got degloved, I damn near lost a finger untangling him" Jack says casually as he's speeding asking
With the vague sense that this is a terrible idea, Darrion notes, "There's that one dining hall the undergrads can get into for buffets... problem is, it's real bloody expensive if you don't have a dining plan..."
"My dear lad," Brune murmurs, seeming to come out of himself a little, "you may as well ask me to defuse a missile for all the help I might provide with technology." But he takes the phone regardless.
Going quickly, you zoom through the streets. Suddenly, around a bend, another vehicle appears, slightly over the median. Jack wrenches the wheel, slamming on the brakes. The car swerves and skids; you come to a stop on the side of the road, slightly dazed and shaken, but mostly unhurt. The car has some scratches and a couple new dents, but it should still work.
Brune is thrown back a few inches against the seat and utters a sound that might have been a curse, gripping the armrests and clinging to the chair white-faced and trembling. "...Good God," he manages, unsteadily. "What was that?"
Brune looks pale and shaky, as if this is bringing back some older flashbacks from many years ago. He pulls himself painfully up back to a sitting position. "...Everyone is all right?"
The fundamental sense of wrongness begins to cling to Brune again as he surveys his eerily nonchalant friends. He clenches the seat rests a bit tighter.
Brune attempts valiantly to breathe deeply, even though it sounds more like a pained wheeze. Somehow he feels as if some unknown deity is conspiring to make him as uncomfortable as possible.
For some reason, Brune's tattered psyche wanders back to the kidney patient. The unsolved thread in his mind keeps irking him, like an itch he can't scratch. Something went wrong and he doesn't know what. The only people in the room were him and Julia...
His breathing clenches and his chest goes tight again, and the murky revelation hovering on the edge of his subconscious fades.
"A photo of you in my phone - from that dino-themed prom the paleontologists put on, remember? - showed you hair like it is now, with the" wave "white stuff. But a year ago. Then it went back to normal"
"Please -" Brune bursts suddenly, as if the word had been trying to force its way up for several minutes and only now just burst free. He clenches his jaw and tries valiantly to control himself. "...Can you please... you can go to the university, just drop me off... I need to be alone. The house. Just for an hour or two. Please?" He sounds desperate, pleading.
@Sciborg "Doc," Jack says with practiced levelness, "Bless is not the time for anyone to be on their own"
Jack has heard that tone before, and doesn't like it. Resolutely he says, "We're all here for you... For eachother. Whatever this weirdness is, I feel like it doesn't get resolved unless we stick together"
Brune subsides, shaking, chest rising and falling unsteadily. He inhales slowly and tries to return his mind to order. "I cannot..." He trails off, leaving it unclear what it is he cannot do, exactly.
"They rang three times for eleven o' clock once, if memory serves." Brune sounds like a different part of him, a still stable part, is delivering the words by rote. He looks down vaguely at the offered stress ball, recognizes it as the kind he would give children when they were scared before surgery, and something about that seems to suddenly center him, calm him down. He smiles a faintly old-Brune smile and quietly takes it and squeezes it a few times.
In the meantime, by around 3:15, you're pulling up back at the university, which you'd left around an hour prior, now with seafood and some new injuries.
@AncientSwordRage Thinking back on it, there may only have been three gongs from the bell. What Jack thought was the fourth may have been from the car hitting the guardrail.
Brune gently cradles the stress whale as if it is the most precious gift in the world. When he next speaks, he sounds much more stable. "I can't recall. I've been thinking about those bells."
"I don't think that is out of the ordinary for us, Mr. Jenny," Brune says, sounding like his old self again. He tucks the stress whale into his breast pocket next to his reading glasses, so that there is a little happy whale face poking out of the coat of an otherwise grim doctor. "I have been thinking. We have heard those bells so often in our dreams. They seem to be what life in this place centers on. Time, the passage of it."
@Sciborg Jack starts the process of unloading and assembling the wheelchair, "Maybe just now it was three... But I'm sure it's rung odd times before..."
Now out of the car, Jack faces the reality that he's been walking with his cane, "You go ahead, I'll catch you up"
"Your cane is in the basement, Mr. Rivers, if memory serves. I don't suppose we could fetch it before we..." As Brune pulls himself over to the door to slide into the chair, the thought from earlier floats back, making him trail off. Julia... it was her and I... and that morning, that surgery...
@bobble Not at all. The campus is mostly deserted, with only a few stragglers walking around or sitting with books. People's expressions are worried or confused, for the most part.
...I left her alone with him... Brune settles down into his still slightly-sandy chair, brushing some off the wheels again, and stares off into space, as if some great revelation has just dawned on him. ...and that morning...
Brune's mouth presses into a tight line, panic sweeping over his face as if he has just put several pieces together, but then as quickly as it comes, he calmly resumes his normal expression. "...I'm quite all right, Mr. Rivers." Then, to Alex, "You can hold onto my chair if you need, it can take it."
"As long as we can get them some seafood, it can't hurt to try." Brune starts rolling behind Jack, knowing better than to offer to him that he can hold onto the chair. He knows that Jack, like him, can advocate for what he needs, and he would have said something if he had wanted help. It's as simple as that. "Don't forget the seaweed, lad."
Darrion, the next few seconds are not going to be fun.
3
You wrap the seaweed in cloth, securing it around the edges with a piece of string so that it won't unravel or fall out.
You then proceed to pick it up and begin to walk towards the lab building (or the food truck).
After you walk a few steps, you notice a strange pull on your arm - as if someone grabbed your arm from behind.
The sensation is matched by a similar feeling on your leg.
And then the pain sets in.
Wrapped around your arms and your legs, the seaweed digs into your skin, like needles burrowing in and grabbing hold. Tangled, the seaweed pulling at your legs, you fall over, further embedding it.
Please roll a d4 to see if it comes into contact with your face. On a 1-2 it does, on a 3-4 it does not.
Brune swivels around sharply on hearing that, and his face goes completely white. "Darrion!" he bellows, with undisguised anguish. He rolls at top speed back towards him like the chair is on fire. "Lad, don't move, don't move!"
Jack turns round sharply, wincing as that pulls the nerves in his back, and pursing his lips in pain starts walking back, have strode some distance already
"Alex, my good fellow," Jack says remembering how Doc spoke, "I'm going to need my cane if I'm going to be of any use. Or enough vikadin to knock out a horse"
"Don't pull at it, lad, don't touch it - it's all right, it's all right -" Brune sounds like he's in tears. "He's lost too much blood - Jack, how far are we from the hospital -"
"Your cane, right... where is it?" Alex is, for the moment, less concerned with their hunger than with Darrion; his anguish seems to have distracted them
@AncientSwordRage No ambulances are going to show up; none of the phones are working. You're going to either have to administer medical aid here or somehow transport Darri to the hospital.
"The ambulances aren't coming," Brune barks, trying valiantly to get low enough to reach Darrion to start doing what he can and struggling. "Ah, God, damnit -" With a valiant push, he pushes himself most of the way out of the chair, collapses in a half-heap beside Darrion supporting himself half-upright with his trembling good arm, and starts trying to stop the bleeding as quickly as he can.
Brune, you do know that there should at least be some rudimentary medical supplies here, since there is a med school program here. It's not the same as a full operating theater, but you may be able to pull something off.
You can make a First Aid or Medicine check. A success will stabilize Darrion for the moment, a Hard Success will make progress towards getting the seaweed off, and an Extreme success will prevent Darri from passing out.
You staunch the bleeding somewhat. Darri, your shirt is a loss; it's been torn into makeshift bandages, wrapped around your arms, legs, and torso. Other clothes are brought and are also torn or cut into bandages. You cut off some of the seaweed, carefully depositing the pieces out of the way, Jack helping to make sure nobody gets too close.
Brune works with a feverish speed, tears rolling down his face unashamedly. Darrion getting hurt like this is the sort of thing that should only happen in a nightmare, not in real life.
Alex heads down into the tunnels, moving as quickly as they can. Right, right, straight, left, straight, 527192 on the lock, straight past the closet...
Brune grips his neck to check his pulse, his shirt and face wet with tears. He scoops up the whale. "Jack, if we can get him into the medical school area, lay him down, they might have supplies..."
They arrive at their office panting and out of breath. Jack's cane lies in the corner, and their computer sits, inviting, still unlocked and waiting for a command.
Brune pushes himself half-upright and starts clawing into the parking lot with pure arm strength, teeth gritted, trying to lift his uncooperative body back towards his chair.
"...Thank... you..." With massive effort, Brune painfully pushes himself back into his chair and sags there as if all the strength has gone out of him. It's not the first time he has had to lunge down to help a patient, but usually Vance would pull him back up. "We need someone to lift him. Alex is fetching the cane..."
