Logs:What We're Here For

What We're Here For
CN: references to violence and injury
Dramatis Personae DJ, Lily, Polaris
In Absentia	2022-03-10 “Was kind of hoping there wouldn’t be a long game.”
Location <NYC> Bellevue Hospital - Kips Bay
Sandwiched between NYU Medical Center and the VA, the venerable Bellevue is the best known safety net hospital in Manhattan and the oldest public hospital in the entire country. Pledged to accept patients regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay, it hosts several free clinics open to the public daily. Despite a persisting reputation related to the bygone horrors of its psychiatric hospital wing, this is a fully modernized, full-service medical center with solidly rated service. The hospital room is small and its fixtures aging, but it's clean and well-kept. The monitors set up around the single bed are arcane and intimidating to the uninitiated, blinking and chirping softly at irregular intervals. The bedside table holds a glass of water, several get-well cards, a small box of fidget toys, and a stack of books--a well-loved paperback of Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, a copy of The Book of Mormon bristling with colorful note tabs, and on top, Knit One, Girl Two by Shira Glassman (the bright cartoon cover depicts two women in swing dresses kissing and a pibald cat playing with a ball of yarn). The bed is in a reclined sitting configuration, on which in the midst wires and tubing, Polaris is nestled beneath the blankets with a plush penguin tucked in on one side and Good Luck Bear on the other. In a shapeless jade hospital gown, she looks pale and exhausted and wears no makeup, but her hair at least has been brushed and meticulously done up in a crown braid. She has a handful of rainbow ball bearings pooled in her palm, her eyes drifting vague and unfocused from her current fidget to her visitor. "Sorry you got voluntold to babysit," she's saying, her speech only a little slow, now. "I know there's like, other actions. And stuff. I'd like to say I'd be...woulda been fine, but." Her shoulders hitch minutely. “But, uh, no.” Lily brushes a lock of hair behind her ear and shifts her focus from the beeping monitors back to the patient. She is dressed plainly in black jeans, scuffed Chelsea boots, and black v-neck tee, hair falling out of a loose braid and a peek of silver dangling out her right front pants pocket. She’s tossed a grey hoodie with red duct tape on it on the seat of one of the chairs for visitors. “They can cope without me for a little bit. I’m sorry, I should have come more prepared.” Lily certainly seems prepared enough — tucked under a visitor chair is her black medic pack, the red duct tape cross peeling at the edges, and she hasn’t yet removed the fanny pack from across her chest. But there is a distinct lack of extra healing happening to Polaris at the moment, a complete absence of a mutant cleric in the room. Lily looks back to the monitors, chewing on her lip. “At least I can speak doctor." Polaris nods abstractly. "Right and...well, everyone needs breaks. Gotta pace ourselves for the long game, you know?" The steel beads in her hand spiral up into the crude shape of a blooming flower before melting back down into a pile. "I was just worried like--I figure if we're shorthanded, medics probably have it worse." She hugs Good Luck Bear closer. "And after yesterday, a lot of folks gonna be afraid to come out. I do appreciate the company, but this is way better than getting shot." Her brows furrow slowly. "Except for the whole hospital and possibly jail after I get out thing. And the part where it's heckin' embarrassing for a magnetokinetic to get taken down by a steel knife." “Was kind of hoping there wouldn’t be a long game.” Lily breaths out a tired sigh. “Everyone’s shorthanded. I’ll be back out there tonight but I just — needed to be here. For a little while. Bully a nurse or something. Make sure they aren’t as incompetent as the cops.” She sinks into her chair, shoving the hoodie up against one of the arms, and lets her eyes flutter closed just for a moment. “What’s more embarrassing, the metalbender getting stabbed or the cleric forgetting to prepare Cure Wounds?” Lily taps her fingers on the edge of the chair’s plastic arm, eyes flicking up to the monitor again. "I'm pretty sure it's my thing -- yours happened too goddamn fast." There's three soft knocks on the door a few moments before it opens. DJ has a brown suede jacket over one arm, blandly dressed in green and grey flannel, carpenter jeans and sturdy brown work boots. He hesitates when he sees Lily at Polaris's bedside. "Oh! Sorry, Hive said --" He shakes his head, lingering in the doorway with one hand on the handle. "Wasn't trying to interrupt. Do you still need --" He chews for a moment uncertainly at the inside of his cheek, his eyes skimming the small room, its assortment of Get Well Soon cards, the books on the table. "-- anything?" "Yeah but yours didn't end up all over the Internet." Polaris bites her chapped lower lip and grumbles, more quietly. "I should have been able to stop it. But please don't antagonize the staff, even if they're...I mean I was a pretty awful patient last night." She turns to the door only a moment before the knock and offers DJ a weak wave and a tired smile when he enters. "Hey. Thanks for coming, and I don't think you're interrupting." Her eyebrows lift in Lily's general direction. "Is he interrupting? I was just wining and she's like pinch...sitting? So Hive could get to saving his foreman. You can both hang if you have wanna, but I'm not so good at like. Conversation right now. Cuz of the drugs." Lily hums in a faint acknowledgement of Polaris’ point. “I won’t piss them off — I’ll just be a little annoying. Let them know someone who knows what’s up is checking up on you.” She looks up at the knock, relaxes a touch when DJ. “You’re not interrupting. I wasn’t on the official schedule, I’m just here.” Lily tilts her head at the identical chair beside hers. “I can be out of your hair if you’d prefer, but I was going to linger until the doctor swings back around.” DJ slips in further, pushing the door not-quite-all-the-way closed behind him. "You think they're gonna keep you much longer?" comes with an almost immediate frown as he takes the seat beside Lily. Whatever's rumpled his brows he doesn't voice. The expression melts away into a wistful smile as he examines Polaris's reading material. It's Knit One, Girl Two he reaches for to glance over the back cover with an idle, "... looks like a Wendy kind of book." He sets the book in his lap, fingers resting light against its cover. "No, you're good," he assures Lily, and to Polaris, "They been giving you trouble? ... trouble besides the cops waiting outside?" "I just don't wanna get on the bad side of people making decisions about my pain management, you know?" Polaris frowns, then winces as she shifts to better face both of her visitors. "Uh. Badder. More bad. Whatever. But also like he's a whole doctor and also a dude, which shouldn't help but." Her shrug is very small. "You probably know all about that." Her smile returns brighter when DJ picks up the book. "Oh yeah, Wendy was reading that to me. It's cute! I'm kind of hazy about the beginning, though." Her eyes track to the door at a delay and flick to the empty wall to either side of it--or, more likely, the cops stationed on the other side. "I'm not sure, they're at least keeping me for observation overnight, but tomorrow... Kinda hazy on that, too. They haven't been super friendly cuz I broke some equipment yesterday. By accident, but like, I'm not looking forward to that bill. Or getting dragged down to the Tombs." She's gamely trying to sound casual, but the faint shiver of metal in the room betrays her distress. "Probably the whole being-a-criminal thing isn't endearing me to the staff either. They haven't even seen my rap sheet." Lily presses her lips together but nods, lifts her hands to communicate that no, she will not go Full White Woman on the nurses. She relaxes slightly when DJ doesn't shoo her off, her own eyes drifting over to bore holes through the skulls of the hidden police. “Should be one of those fucking bikers laid up here under armed guard.” She sounds frustrated and tired. Lily looks up at the ceiling, lets her eyes flutter closed. “It'll be some bullshit if they can get anything to stick, with the video going around.” DJ sits subtly straighter when Polaris points out he is in fact A Whole Doctor, a hint of smile fleeting on his lips. All he says is, "-- got no other plans today." Mention of the Purifiers twists his half-smile down into a grimace. "Some of them already been back up Riverdale way making themselves a nuisance. Got run out quick, but --" He shrugs one shoulder. "Haven't actually seen the video, I've just heard their gloating. Was it..." He hesitates, looking down at his hands, and lets this sentence drop into nothing. Instead: "You know a good lawyer?" Polaris levitates the beads from her palm and joins them delicately into a circle that twists and waves hypnotically in the air. "The last time I got hauled in and they couldn't make anything stick, they just stuck me in a lab instead." Perhaps she'd meant this as bravado, but she just sounds afraid. "You're uh...not missing much with the video. I guess the boom part is pretty satisfying, just hard for me to enjoy since I was busy getting knifed at the time." The ring of ball bearings wavers in mid-air, and Polaris sighs. "I do, but she's kinda busy trying to get Jax out of jail which. Is kind of a bigger deal than the misdemeanor they're probably gonna slap on me for literally just trying to stop violence." The rising anger and indignation goes out of her all at once. "Fat lot of good that did." Lily’s hand dips down to her pocket, runs her thumb over the maille running from her belt loop to the pocket a few times. “We’re not gonna let them do an encore of that.” She tilts her head back down and opens her eyes, glancing sideways at DJ. “The video doesn’t do the boom justice. Was much more impressive in person.” Frowns at the last bit. “We gotta have more than one lawyer.” DJ's eyebrows hike way up when Polaris says just trying to stop violence, and he clamps his mouth shut tight. Waits a beat and then another before replying carefully, "Nobody died, so maybe it did some. -- If your lawyer's. Busy. I can hire you another." He leans back in his seat, tipping his eyes up toward the ceiling -- then cutting them to Lily. His mouth twitches to the side. One leg starts to bounce, quick and restless. Once again his reply comes on a noticeable beat of delay: "You were there?" The restless bounce grows faster. He presses his hand down against his leg as if this will stop it (it does not.) His voice is gentler when he reassures Polaris, "There's not gonna be any labs this time. That's what we're here for." "It was too frakking close--Ryan almost died." Polaris floats her ring of beads up and settles it on her head just above where the braid wraps around. "I mighta also been in deep poodoo if one of the 30 to 50 feral hogs there decided to pull that knife out before EMS got to me. I mean, we had medics there--" She tips her head at Lily. "--but they weren't letting any of our comrades through. Anyway like it kinda depends, who's we? Legal Aid has hella radical lawyers, but most of them get a lot less radical if they have to defend radical freaks." The rueful quirk of her mouth was probably intended to be a smile. "So, yeah...I would appreciate help with a lawyer. Probably they're a lot less put off by the mutant thing if you like. Pay them." She's quiet a moment, staring down at her empty hand, adorned only with the CTR ring today. "I--yeah. No more labs." She tugs the blanket up farther over her and re-tucks the plushies beside her. "Thank you both. I don't have words express what it means to me, not having to be here alone right now." “Yeah.” It comes out defensive. Lily twists her head towards DJ, meeting his eyes, lips pressed thin. “Right on the other side of the cop shields. Saw — not the whole thing, but the parts where people got hurt.” There’s a brief flicker of frustration over her face, quickly replaced by a more neutral expression when she looks back to Polaris. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees when she echoes her dimensionally transposed sibling. “That’s what we’re here for. We aren’t going to leave you here alone.” "What I've heard makes almost got assassinated sound like just another Tuesday for him. Kinda got the impression this hospital duty roster thing is like, a well-oiled machine by now. Anyway, he's in good hands." DJ's eyes return to the ceiling a moment after Lily looks at him, his lips pressing thin as well. He plants his foot deliberately, its jittery bouncing freezing. His voice comes a little easier when he speaks again. "Tch, you don't need to explain. Just need to get better. Meetings are not going to be nearly as interesting if you aren't there."