ArchivedLogs:Feeding Time, Redux

Feeding Time, Redux
Dramatis Personae Iolaus, Jackson, Toby
In Absentia	2014-01-04 (Immediately after feeding Dusk.)
Location <???> Jail Cell, Federal Corrections
Cramped and small, this thick-walled concrete room offers very little by way of comfort or privacy. There's a cot on one side with thin grey mattress, thin grey blankets, thin grey pillow. On the other side sits a lidless steel toilet with built-in sink atop it. There's not a whole lot by way of /room/, about six feet by eight feet. No windows to the outside, and a solid heavy steel door rather than bars; a barred window in the door is usually kept shuttered from without, as is the slot in the wall where a shelf protrudes and meals are often slid through. A single wan light in the ceiling provides dim illumination whenever the guards care to turn it on. The sound of approaching footsteps is much quicker than before, and more numerous - boots, shoes, all hurrying towards a door that is already groaning as the locks slide back into the frame. The face framed in the window is now in the cell with Jax, followed immediately by both Iolaus and the prison doctor, and tailed by a second guard. "Jax, are you alright?" Iolaus' voice is concerned, as he looks over the prisoner. There's no answer, from Jax. He's curled up on his side on the mattress, blankets tugged over him. Pale and considerably colder than the over-warm body temperature that is standard for him. His eye is closed and he is unmoving -- though still breathing! Shallowly. Hands and forehead a little clammy with sweat. The two doctors exchange a glance, and this time it is both of them that push past Toby in the closed space. Jim unslings the bag from his arm even as Iolaus reaches forward to take Jax's pulse. "Right arm has an easier vein," he says to the other doctor, as he stretches out Jax's legs and turns him onto his back. The prison doctor is working quickly as well, pulling out a needle and probing at the inside of Jax's arm, feeling along the vein. It takes the doctors under a minute to start the IV of D5NS, Iolaus holding the bag up in the air. The prison doctor is the one to turn to the guards and instruct, unprompted, "Get a stretcher. I'm ordering him tranferred to medical." Jackson is a very docile prisoner. Mostly owing to unconsciousness. His pulse is there, weak and thready, and he's pretty easy to manhandle in all the turning-about and finding-veins. Through all this he doesn't actually -- move. Or do anything at all. Things move quickly, from this point. An alarm sounds down the corridor, and the door stays open. A guard comes jogging down the corridor with a stretcher, and the two doctors move Jax onto it with a coordinated lift, getting the third guard to assist. Doors open ahead of the moving stretcher and little knot of people, as a way is cleared in front of them. Halfway across the building, on the very edge of the secure areas, is the medical office that they carry Jax to. There, the bag of D5NS is replaced for a bag of D50 with Thiamine mixed in. The two doctors bustle back and forth, with Jim taking the lead and Iolaus assisting. The animity previously on the prison doctor's face is gone, now, as he passes a bag of IV nutrition for Iolaus to hang and tie into the line. Through all this Jackson is -- still quiet. Still still. It takes a considerable while before this state changes, really. The first signs of Jackson returning to consciousness don't come in actual movement from /him/ but from the room's lights. A soft glow hovering against his skin. Ghostly hazy half-images forming smokily at the room's edges. Occasionally these resolve into things concrete enough to be identifiable. The slight figure of grinning teenage shark. A flash of a scalpel. A doctor in white labcoat. Malthus's calm face. No image stays overlong before melting back into a general swirl of misty-shadow. The other doctor lets out a noise of surprise when he spots the shifting shadowy images for the first time, looking up from some paperwork. "Holy shit!" Iolaus glances up at this and follows the other man's gaze, then he chuckles. "Jax's dreams are a little bit more visible than most of ours. Thank god." His smile fades slightly as he studies the shifting images before it fades completely. "Or his nightmares, as the case may be." He puts a hand on the younger man's shoulder, squeezing gently. "Hey, Jax." There's a moment where the images come into still-sharper relief. The twins' bodies bloody and carved-up, Malthus's hands closing around Micah's throat. Jackson whimpers, tensing for a moment at the squeeze before his eye shoots open. The images vanish. His breathing is a little too quick, a hazy glow lingering around his body. The look he gives the room is briefly panicked, but this fades into just blank /confusion/ as he looks at Iolaus. "-- Sir?" "Easy, Jax. Easy." Iolaus' grip on the artist's shoulder remains there, a firm presence. "You're in the medical wing of the prison. When Doctor Reynolds - the prison doctor - and I came to check on you, we found you having a hypoglycemic attack. We brought you back here. Just lie back and rest for now." Iolaus says, as he looks up to the other doctor. Jim, for his part, gives Jax an apologetic look. "Mister Holland-Zedner. I'm sorry that I didn't ask the state prison doctor more. Their records are usually of more help than this with diabetic patients. Or... the equivalent. If I had known, I would have made sure you were getting more than just an expanded calorie diet." There's been a growing hope blossoming in Jax's expression as he studies Iolaus -- it blinks out into blank tired resignation when Iolaus explains where he is. His eye closes, palm coming up to press against it, and there's a brief tremble of light around him as he takes in a shaky breath. "Oh." Just that, very quiet and small. His hand is shaking when he drops it back to the bed, the light still trembling. He looks around the medical office again, looks at the IV hooked up to him. His breathing grows notably more ragged before he closes his eye again, nodding numbly as Jim speaks. "Thank you, doctor," he finally manages, low voice not particularly steady, either. "It's okay. I can be a kinda tricky person to feed." "I'm sorry." Iolaus says, softly, hand squeezing down on Jax's shoulder. "Unfortunately, it's not a dream." He pauses, looking up at the other physician before he sits down on a stool and scoots it over towards the edge of the stretcher, hand still resting on Jax. "Why don't you tell Doctor Reynolds about some of your dietary needs?" he suggests. "It's better coming from you anyway." Jackson nods slowly at this suggestion, but it takes a while before he finds his voice again. He clears his throat with a small flush creeping into his cheeks. "M'--" He catches himself, signs 'sorry', drops his hand to the mattress to continue. "Basically eat like a hummingbird. Need a bit more'n regular amount of food, in terms of calories, but above that if I don't get plenty'a access to sugar all the time I -- well, this happens. It's just, it's hard because my metabolism's six kinds of crazy, and I can't even just eat /more/ sugar at meals. I'll burn it off an' crash 'fore next mealtime. At home I usually keep fruit or snack bars or juice or candy on hand so I can have some regular every hour or two. And I'm vegan besides, sir," he says this with a dip of his head, a trace of apology, "so all the turkey an' milk an' things they're giving, I ain't even --" He shakes his head. "... and light." This last is quieter. "Sunlight's best but I need access to light to function just as much as I need sugar. My cell's in pitch dark -- by the time the mornin' comes after hours of lights-out I literally can't even stand." The doctor takes all this in with a frown, scribbling notes on a pad of paper with a pen, and occasionally making noises of acknowledgement. "Tricky indeed." he murmurs. "Well. I can certainly have you placed on a vegan diet easily enough, and get you more calories and sugars at meals. I will have to talk to the warden about letting you have food off mealtimes, though. He has to make an exemption for you." The expression on the doctor's face shows just how likely he thinks that to be. "Jackson was also a test subject when we were developing Sina, as well as bringing researchers and food in. He's one of our clinic security staff, when we were one of the few safe havens in the City." Iolaus says, softly. The doctor's fingers tap along the clipboard, lips pressing into a thin line. He presses on, ignoring Iolaus. "Daylight is out of the question, unfortunately, but I can have that light in your cell replaced with a daylight CFL and left on all the time. I will need you to request that in writing, though; normally, that would be considered a kind of torture." "Thank you, sir." Jackson sounds tired, but still makes the effort for manners. His eye closes again, hand shaking where it rests at his side. "Don't mean to be difficult, my genes just -- get kinda demanding sometimes." He flinches reflexively at Iolaus's use of the word 'city'. "-- Careful." Iolaus flashes a grin at Jackson. "I've found it's an easy way to get people's attention these days," he says. "{Sorry.}" he adds, in spanish. "I think we should probably keep him here under observation for a while, just to make sure he levels out correctly. Probably should get another few bags of dextrose into him as well, and something to eat." The other doctor nods, slowly. "Yeah. I agree. Maybe switch him over to D5NS after that bag finishes and let the guards monitor him for a bit. We have to go back to see... what did he call himself? Night?" "Night?" There's another blank moment of confusion in Jax's expression, thinking back -- to the /clinic/, really: "No, that's -- Night, what's Nightmare doin' here he can't be." His eye squeezes shut again, wincing like he's in pain. Which, as malnourished as he has been, he probably is. "Thank you. For your help. I was gettin' a little worried that I'd --" He shudders, and shakes his head quickly. "Dusk." Iolaus says, softly. "Not Nightmare. I can't see him doing much of anything, ever, that'd attract the law's attention. Dusk's alright. We got him blood, and he's going to be straightened out with it more regularly, too. But... he's here too." He coughs, once, frowning. "And there's outstanding warrants out for a few more. But the media is crawling all over the Prometheus case. People are recording videos of what it was like, and... I think public opinion is starting to turn in your favor." Jackson draws in a sharp gasp of breath at Dusk's name. His head shakes quickly. "No, he --" He swallows, though, hard. Scrubs knuckles against his eye. "He got blood. He'll be getting blood." He says this slowly to himself before opening his eye again. There's an uncomfortable reflexive tension that claims his muscles every time he looks around the medical office, at the monitors, the equipment, the doctors. "... videos? People are tellin'. What it was really like? I was always. Worried, you know? The first time we gone to the press on it they shut us down. But after that I thought -- what if we go an' we tell everyone what they're doin' and people /agree/ with it." "Videos. Lots of them. And... there's some of that, but not as much as you would expect. Too many horror stories." Iolaus hesitates for a moment, squeezing down harder on Jax's shoulder. "Shane did one. Some of his friends. Daiki, too." He drums his fingers along his leg. "And Vector did one. That has gotten the most press." Iolaus looks uncomfortably at Doctor Reynolds for a moment, who shrugs his shoulders and glances towards the door. Iolaus drops his voice as he adds, "So far... we'll see. Lots of noise, not a lot of action." Jackson relaxes a little bit at Iolaus's squeeze of hand, though only a little bit. "Oh, no," he whispers at mention of the twins and Daiki. "That's not -- going to make things any easier for them, they keep. Just getting /horrible/ stories in the news. Ohgosh." For a moment he presses his knuckles to his lips, a little choked. "This must be so -- I can't even imagine -- they must all be so. I just wanted t'give 'em a good life, sir. An' now look where everything is." His eye widens at the mention of Vector. "... but how?" "I have no idea. I only know what I've seen in the news and on the website." Iolaus says, with a shrug. "People don't tell me anything, and I'd much prefer not to know. I heard one report say that he put a DVD in the mail? I don't know." His smile is somewhat wry and he rubs Jax's shoulder in a slow, circular movement. "I don't know if anyone is going to be giving Daiki a hard time. And the twins... are strong. Besides, I think they're probably happier doing something to help their dad than not." He glances up at the IV bag which, thankfully, he no longer has to hold. "Your lawyers probably know more than me." "No, probably best not to know." Jax shifts on the bed, pressing more heavily into Iolaus's touch. "Haven't talked to my lawyers since I got here. Figured they're just -- running with this completely ridiculous terrorism nonsense, means I don't got a whole lot no more by way of rights." His words are growing more tired, again. A little sleepy-slurred. "Rest, Jax. I'm going to go check on Dusk and bring him some more blood. We'll be back after that, and I think Doctor Reynolds is going to keep you here under observation for the rest of the day." Iolaus says, gently, hand still moving slowly on the younger man's shoulder. "We'll leave the lights on, too." He looks up at the other doctor, who is rummaging through a small refrigerator and muttering to himself about the price of whole blood. "Sound alright to you, Jim?" "Fine, fine, sounds fine." Doctor Reynolds doesn't even bother to turn around. "Just hang another bag of dextrose off of that line, and then we can go. Actually, while you're here, there's one other prisoner I'd like you to take a look at...." Jackson nods. He relaxes further when his eyes are closed than he has managed while looking at the room he's in, forcing his breathing slower and calmer. Wispy-smokey haze starts to curl at the edges of the room, though. "Okay," he whispers, a tired mumble. "Okay." Iolaus stands up as the prison doctor pulls out another bag of blood with a triumphant sound. "I knew I had another one in here somewhere. I'll have to call the blood bank and get them to ship us a bunch more." "We may be able to help with that as well. Let me know if you end up having problems with requisition." Iolaus says. With one last squeeze on Jax's shoulder, he follows the other prison guard to the door. A knock on it, and the doctors are replaced by a guard - Toby. The guard watches Jax for a moment, warily, before sitting down in a chair next to the door and pulling out a cell phone. There are some pigs who need to be taught a lesson.