| PHD #371: What You Love |
| Summary: | Khloe visits Pallas in the recovery room. |
| Date: | 04 Mar 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | Latest Swarm |
| Players: |
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| Recovery Room - Deck 10 - Sickbay - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| A much more quiet area of Medical, this elongated room is also lined with beds. Each is similarly outfitted with privacy curtains as necessary and even the paint on the walls has been lightened in an attempt to help lift spirits. Chairs are readily available all over the place so that visitors can pull one up to talk to the patients during their recovery. Near the entrance, visiting hours are posted with a very conspicuous 'No Smoking' sign. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #371 |
Pallas has been in and out of surgery a few times since arriving in Sickbay. His hand and foot were easy enough to treat, as were his bruises and burns - but his chest is in bad condition still. The internal bleeding has supposedly been dealt with, as have the broken ribs, but he's still having some difficulty breathing, not to mention the severe pain. At the moment, he's laying back in his bed and breathing on his own without a tube, but medical staff are checking on him frequently to make sure his condition doesn't worsen.
Like a dutiful SL, Khloe checks in on all of her pilots that get laid up in sickbay overnight. Even her own behind was parked in here for 24 hours several weeks back when she had her right side turned into Canceron barbeque, and a few of her Knights came to visit. We're a family, someone keeps saying. So, this is what family does.
Except this is like the belligerent younger sister and the older, party-animal brother. Family that should be better left alone for the greater part of the year, saving up their tolerance for the once or twice they see each other during the holiday season.
Tugging the curtain aside a little so she can peer in, there's an immediate look of worry and concern creasing Khloe's brow (as opposed to the 'I hate everything I am a hardass' frown she usually wears). "You alive, Lieutenant?" She asks softly, obviously not wishing to disturb him if he were sleeping.
"I live to disappoint," comes the barely audible response from Pallas. She might not even hear him, though she can probably hear his dry lips moving underneath the oxygen mask; his voice his hoarse and barely a whisper after being intubated. And puking several times. He tucks his chin in a little to look in Khloe's direction, though his eyes don't really focus on her. There are several powerful drugs running through his system to keep him from registering pain.
Khloe slips inside, pulling the curtain back to its original position. As she draws closer to his side, she tugs her uniform blues jacket flat - as if he could perceive or care that she doesn't look like she's slept much in the past 48 hours. Gray-blue eyes search his face and down past to his chest. "You are a tough bastard," she murmurs, her right hand flexing as if resisting reaching out to touch him. Needing to do something with her hands, she puts them behind her back.
Pallas's face creases with a faint smile. "Takes more than that…" he murmurs, eyes wandering back to the ceiling heavy-lidded. A brief moment passes, followed by heavy labored breathing and wheezing. Then he tries to slide himself up a little bit, but the effort is too much for him. He can't even lift his head up enough to prop himself up with pillows. Instead, he gives up and lifts up his bandaged left hand. "Check it out," he says with a stoned smile. Grabbing a pen off the pad next to him, he pushes it straight through the middle of his hand and leaves it there.
Gasping, Khloe is quick to grab his hand and carefully pull the pen out. "What the frak is wrong with you?!" She hisses, quite literally flinging the pen away with a backward toss. Both hands grasp around his damaged hand, now, completely unmindful of any bleeding. In fact, if his hand has been repaired to the point it's going to, there probably isn't any bleeding at this stage. Just a small hole where unrepairable, necrotic tissue used to live.
Giving the hand a faint squeeze between her hands, Khloe says, "You need this to heal, Spiral. You are frakking useless to me if you can't fly. Stop frakking around!" Her gaze is a curious mixture of furious, reigned anger and tremendous concern and worry; apparently, it takes pilots dying under her command in order for her to reveal that she is, indeed, human, underneath.
Pallas laughs at her reaction, which causes another bout of wheezing and hard breathing. "Hole," he says, showing her the piercing in the gauze where the pen went clear through his hand. There's a little bit of blood, but it's dried and crusted; that hole's there to stay, pen or not. "I'll make it," he assures after getting his breathing under control. The hand returns to his side with a heavy sigh; apparently, that took a lot of effort for him. "Need a smoke."
"Maybe by being laid up in here you'll get over your addiction and you'll stop," says the straight-edge ex-addict. Khloe's hands return to her side, and then they begin fidgeting; she begins picking at her own fingernails. Giving a grunting sigh she shoves them behind her back again. "Other than that, is there anything else I can do for you? Get for you? I'm not about to go diving in your locker; I'll get Drips to do that. But I can order him to fetch something for you." She nods; her speech is a little more rambly than usual.
"Still preachy," Pallas observes, his quiet voice registering some degree of disappointment. He thinks for a moment, though, about what he might need from his locker. "Whiskey, porn, guitar," he answers. The first two aren't surprising, but what does he expect to do with a guitar in his condition? His eyes flicker over in the direction that Khloe flung his pen. "Need that back too." He nods to the pad at his bedside, which is full of sketches, scrawls, and scribbles.
Khloe lets a small sound out that sounds like a laugh, but she's quick to stow it. "You're full of holes and all you want to do is drink, jerk off, and play that damned noisebox," she mutters, shaking her head in disbelief. At the mention of the pen, though, she leaves his side and goes to search around where she flung it. It takes her a moment of being crouched over to find it, and when she does, she takes it over to a sink to rinse off and run over it with a paper-towel before bringing it back to him. "This, at least, I can do for you."
"Life is short," Pallas replies simply. "Shorter, for us." Pilots, that is. He takes a moment to even out his breathing again before imparting the third part of his sage drink/wank/play advice: "Do what you love." As Khloe returns his pen, he acknowledges with a simple, "Thanks." The drugs (or maybe the near-death experience) have drained all the usual sarcasm and snark out of him - it sounds sincere.
Khloe presses her lips together in a slight grimace. "I'm not sure what I love, Pallas," she says quietly. Placing the pen at his bedside next to the pad of scribbles, the hand moves to pat his shoulder. A rare gesture of intimacy. "There'll be a drink waiting for you when you get out, Lieutenant. I still haven't touched what you passed me at Tisiphone's funeral. Now get some rest, and heal. That's an order."
Pallas looks down at his shoulder in confusion as though he's not sure whether she actually patted him or if he just imagined it in his drug-induced haze. "Drink it," he urges quietly. "'sfor you." Order or not, he's exhausted from just their short conversation, so he closes his eyes and yawns. "Find what you love." With that, he falls back asleep almost immediately.
Khloe blinks several times, lips still pressed together, looking down at him. There's a quiet sniffle, and then the Captain retreats, extricating herself before she's caught shedding a tear for someone under her command.