ArchivedLogs:Drawn

Drawn
Dramatis Personae Jax, Steve
In Absentia	2015-12-04 (Part of the Flu Seasons TP.)
Location <NYC> Mount Sinai Hospital - Harlem
On the cutting edge of many medical technologies, Mount Sinai Hospital is often ranked as one of the nation's best hospitals. The medical school attached is one of the best in the world, meaning that even your med students know what they are doing. Chin up, then -- when you come in here badly mutilated after the latest terrible catastrophe in Times Square, you're in good hands. It's a hospital room: boring and sterile, two beds each with a bevy of attending medical monitors and chairs for visitors. Curtains on long rails can be drawn around each bed for privacy, but they are open at the moment and the flat screen TV shared between the two sides of the room dark. Steve's bed is adjusted into a reasonably chair-like configuration, though he is slumped in it as though he'd just as soon be asleep anyway. It's rare to see him so weary and pale. Perhaps he is also unused to it, for he has been insistently keeping himself busy while the IV drips away steadily into his arm. He has a yellow legal pad in his lap which looks like it's on its last few pages. Still, he sketches away at it laboriously, if slower than usual. At length, apparently satisfied, he tucks his pencil behind his ear and holds the pad up over the guardrail of his bed for his roommate to see. The drawing shows Dusk just about to land, wings beginning to fold inward, legs bent, one foot only inches from the ground. The shadows across his face suggest night-time, and make his features stark and hungry, keen eyes fixed directly at the viewer. Jax glances over from where he is propped up against many pillows in his own bed. His current state of wan and pale has been more the norm, the past little while. The pad in his own lap is /actually/ a sketchpad, larger, its paper heavier. He sets it down against his sheets as he looks over towards Steve. The queasiness and exhaustion in his expression is chased away, for a moment, by a quick smile, flashed bright and warm as he takes in the drawing. Looks it over, gives one approving nod. Then scrubs a hand (slightly dusty with grey) over his own face and looks back downward. For a while there's quiet. Scritching of graphite on paper. Beeping of many monitors. Occasional hisses of frustration. But, a long while later, a crumpled up wad of paper (it contains one of /many/ scrapped drawings) is chucked across the room towards Steve's shoulder. Jax tips his own pad up. On it, an outlined stretch of city block -- buildings cracked and broken, windows shattered, doors hanging crazily askew, some boarded over, cars abandoned and broken in the middle of the street. There's a number of small creatures, though; climbing out of the sewers, swooping down from the sky, creeping out of alleyways, twisted and gnarled, clawed and hoofed and sharp-toothed and huge-black-eyed, no two of them quite the same but all of them kiiind of Eerie. The battalion of tiny monsters is armed with tools, hammers and nails and screws and the like (one small winged one wears a tiny hard hat), descending on the broken scene to begin the process of patching it back up. Sluggish though he may be from medication, Steve still manages to catch the paper ball. /Probably/ with more intensity than the 1oz projectile really warrants. The tightness in his jaw fades when he glances over and sees Jax's drawing. Leans over the railing of his own bed for a better look. His eyes go a little wide, but then he smiles--the expression guileless and unguarded. Nods once, appreciative. Chucks the wad of paper across the room into a wastebasket by the door. He returns to his own drawing for a while, erasing very infrequently and never scrapping anything altogether. Dozes off very briefly and wakes with a quiet start. It's a quite a while before he finishes his next sketch, this one depicting a shaggy-soft dog with one ear drooping and the other upright, head cocked slightly as they look up. One paw holds down a worn, much-scored bone, as if the dog had interrupted their chewing to attend to the viewer. There is a mournful intelligence in their dark brown eyes, and a lift of their curly, bushy tail that suggests a wag. By the time Steve has finished this drawing, Jax has dozed off, himself. He's tipped somewhat over to the side, thankfully with both pillows and guardrails to catch him. His sketchpad has slid down against the sheets, tipped sideways as well and half hanging off the edge of his bed before it falls the rest of the way to splat to the ground between their beds. The drawing on it this time, only half-finished, is the Treehaus balcony at the Commons; the tall figure leaning against the railing is only a sketchy suggested outline. Horus, though, is clearly detailed, bright-eyed and keen, a (curious? Mischievous?) tilt to his head as he lifts up away from the railing, Steve's shield gripped between his large talons.