[RP] 'Cause I'm losing my sight, losing my mind, wish somebody would tell me I'm fine…

[john_thane]

All told, it doesn't take long between the time Thane teleported out of the construction site to the time he teleports back in, and paramedic at gunpoint with him. One Andy Mackenzie was having a perfectly normal shift until she checked one patient into the emergency room, headed back out to the ambulance, and got pushed up against a wall by a large man with a gun and then – she doesn't even know what, except that she's very abruptly not in the emergency room any more and her wings are shooting out through carefully-tailored slits in her uniform.

She breaks the guy's grip in sort order – angelic strength is no joke, and she's always been fast – but doesn't move beside that, because angels will still go down to one bullet and she didn't survive a term of duty in the Army just to be shot down on her job in Chicao. But she is mantling, which for someone topping out at a height of 5'2 is not that intimidating, and while she's keeping her attention on the guy with the gun, her situational awareness is good enough to register the fact that this is not an inviting room.

Thane wastes absolutely no time in spinning her around and shoving her toward Dmitri. "Her. Contusions, bone fractures, one gunshot wound. You're a medic, you keep her alive."

Andy looks over the person he's directed her to help, catches her breath as she sees everything – bruises, definitely a broken nose, cuffed to a wall, and the two bloody wings lying on the ground near her... never mind that the red blood raises more questions than she has answers for, but someone's beat the shit out of this girl, and her money's on the great ape behind her with the gun. And there's something that runs up hard against her training, and she turns back to him, scowling. "Why? I'm guessing so she can wake up to more of the same?"

He was warm, when he grabbed her – not hot, not a demon, and the only war she knows about in Chicago is the war between angels and demons, and she didn't think she'd ever see a scene like this outside of a war. Certainly never wanted to.

Thane steps forward, the gun in his hands held at ready. "You help her or I start killing off the rest of them," he snaps, and it's not clear to himself whether or not he's bluffing. "You want to make that decision for all of them? They'd be better off dead?"

Andy grits her teeth, looking to Toshiko, Hart, the Doctor – no one she knows, not that she'd expect it in a city this size, and she turns back. Kneels by Dmitri, feeling carefully for breathing, for a heartbeat.

"This girl doesn't need a paramedic, she needs a hospital," she says, wings mantling more. "You want–"

"Take care of her," Thane growls. "She doesn't leave this room. And you–"

Andy turns, wings fully splayed, now. "You want her to live?"

The gun is trained on Andy's forehead, and it's not moving from there. "That's the plan, yeah."

"Then you can't just grab me and point me at her," Andy snaps. "I'm not a healing angel. Look." She peels off one latex glove, laying it on the bare skin of Dmitri's neck. "Someone–" –you– "beat this girl within an inch of her life, and either you're going to take her back to a hospital, or you're going to bring a hospital to me. You don't have a lot of options."

Ordinarily, Thane would shoot someone for taking that tone with him, but these are not ordinary circumstances. He may kill her later, but right now, he needs her. "...what do you need?"

"First, I need you to get these cuffs off her," Andy says, gesturing to Dmitri's wrists.

Thane looks at her. Looks at the cuffs. Andy growls.

"What, are you afraid of her getting up and starting to kickbox? Get the cuffs off so I can lie her down. While you do that I'm going to make a list of things you better bring me – I'm going for a notepad, so don't shoot."

"I know you're not armed," Thane snaps back, shoving his gun into its holster and stepping past her to undo the cuffs. Right. The little angel decides to pick her up and run – which wouldn't be sensible anyway – he can trace them because they can't get far. Andy is scribbling furiously in her notepad, and it only takes her a few moments after Dmitri is laid down to tear off a sheet and shove it at Thane.

"That's immediately," she says. "I don't have time to list out everything I will need, so expect to make a few trips."

She's glaring. Thane is glaring. There's no question whatsoever, exactly how much they dislike each other.

Thane snatches the list, reads it over, punches the coordinates into his wrist device and is gone without a word. Andy kneels by Dmitri's side, looking her over, making sure her airway stays open, that her heart hasn't stopped beating yet. Then she takes a bit more time to look around the room, the three other people chained there, and exhales.

"...I suppose it's reasonable to assume that he took all of your keys with him," she says, then catches sight of another pair of cuffs, severed, hanging from the wall not too far from Dmitri. "...mind you if whatever cut through those is still lying around here..."

Comments

[thatsortofaman.livejournal.com]

The Doctor looks over at Andy as she speaks, almost expressionless, and when he speaks, his voice is a little hollow. He's tried. He's tried everything he could, and there's nothing left to do - now April's dead, and it can't be long before the rest of them follow, and then it's going to be just him, and Thane... He's giving up on escape, rescue, some brilliant plan to save Toshiko and Dmitri; he just wants it to be over now.

"I'm not actually sure he has keys for all of them." It's not like he intends to let any of them out, really... "And sure, you could get it open - sonic screwdriver, shears, either way - but he'd track you down. He'll be back before we could get far enough away to... Sorry. If it helps, he probably won't keep you here." Might kill her - if Dmitri dies, or just because she's annoyed him. The Doctor doesn't feel the need to say that.

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

Andy snarls a bit, taking in the scene. Right, well, she knows enough not to challenge that. She didn't spend a term of service in the field and come out of it without a clue on how to keep herself alive, even if those Guardian Angel protective instincts are going overdrive in here.

...at least she hasn't found her Ward out of this lot. That would... suck.

She makes sure the girl isn't going to die in the next two minutes, and then scopes out the area. Giant hole in the wall – that's not going to be great for temperature regulation. Not a lot of light. Two other people who are bloodied up and probably in need of at least some medical care. The other one – the one talking – doesn't seem hurt, but she should probably check him over anyway.

"Right. My name is Andy Mackenzie," she says, just for the sake of conversation. "Now, obviously I know about what's happened to her, but as I assume all of you were witnesses..."

She's poking around the corners, into the other room – and there's not much there. More weapons than are strictly necessary. A mattress with only rubimentary bedding, from which she strips the blanket. A bag, which she goes through only to find... quite a few various sharp implements. She tucks a scalpel into her boot, and leaves the rest alone, carrying the blanket back in with her and folding it three times lengthwise, laying it out next to the girl and easing her onto it.

"Anything you can tell me would be helpful. Anything specifically about her injuries. The rest of this can be dealt with later."

[thatsortofaman.livejournal.com]

The Doctor snorts a little. The rest of this. Yeah, that's going to be dealt with. "I'm the Doctor," he says absently, since she went and introduced herself. "That's Dmitri Lang - used to be an angel, came through the Rift, more or less human now minus the wings, which..." Well, that's fairly obvious, and he doesn't want to think about that day. At all.

"Most of this is just... Thane. Lost his temper, apparently and... well. Couldn't tell you about her injuries now, beyond the fact that he hit her. A lot. Shot her a few times too - just the once today. And there's the wings, obviously. A concussion or two from... earlier..." A person shouldn't really be able to live through all that. They just... shouldn't.

He pauses, remembering that scalpel she tucked away in her boot, and just in case she's got a plan for that... "Thane's immortal, by the way, and possibly faster than you. You might be able to kill him, but he'll come back and shoot you."

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

Andy nods, taking everything in with as little reaction as she can. Ambulance crews get called on stupid fights and domestic abuses gone farther than too far and serial assaults, and the job is the same: keep the patient alive until they get into proper medical care.

...proper medical care isn't coming, here, but she's been a field medic, too, and she knows how to hold onto someone's life with both hands.

She ditches her other old glove and pulls on a pair of new ones, locating a disinfectant wipe on her person and pulling the fabric away from the shoulder wound. "Wanderers, then, the lot of you?" She's not asking what they've got themselves into. It's not going to change anything, not immediately. There's no foreign material in the wound; that's good. "–The Doctor. I swear I've heard about you on the journals."

[thatsortofaman.livejournal.com]

The Doctor makes a vague noise in the affirmative at the question about wanderers. As for the other comment... He grimaces just a little. "Probably, yeah. Sorry." Just because any time anyone hears about him, it usually involves... things going wrong or blowing up or... something of the sort. Because anyone who gets involved in his life even peripherally ends up dead or broken or with their life in pieces around them.

[john-thane.livejournal.com]

Andy might have said something in response to that, were it not for a bright flash in the middle of the room discharging one John Thane, with a large bag full of medical supplies. He puts it on the ground next to her – he's just in control of himself enough not to toss it – and stands near, looking down at Dmitri, ready to take orders.

Strange as it seems, he's still good at taking orders. It's conditioning that has never gone away.

Andy clams up immediately when he comes in, taking the bag and rifling through it, getting to work on Dmitri immediately. Lying here, even with a blanket between her and the floor, isn't going to be good for her health – it's cold in this room, and she's almost certainly bleeding internally. Not to mention that it's an open question as to how long it's been since she's eaten.

"There's only a certain amount I can do for her here," she snaps up at Thane. "And I will do my best to keep her alive, but you shouldn't be expecting her to wake up–" Like Andy would let her wake up even if she did think she was in a condition to. "–and if you cared anything about her condition, you'd let me take her to an emergency room."

"Do your job," Thane snaps back.

"I am doing my job!" Andy doesn't take her eyes off Dmitri. "My job is to ensure the maximum chance for survival of my patient by stabilizing them until they can receive professional medical attention. My job is not–"

Thane draws his pistol and fires into the wall. Andy startles, wings drawing in tight against her.

After a moment, Thane holsters his gun again. "Just keep her alive. Tell me what you need."

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

"For all I know, a surgeon," Andy snaps back. "...and an operating room," she adds, just in case he thinks of kidnapping a surgeon and bringing them in. "If you can get me a look into this woman's thoracic cavity–"

Thane growls, coming up to kneel at Andy's side and activating a scan on his wrist device. After a few moments, processor going doubletime, a hologram pops up illustrating the exact state of her internal organs. Andy jumps, looking fromt he hologram to Thane's face.

"Give me that."

"Memorize it," Thane orders.

Andy shakes her head, but returns her attention to the hologram. It's dense information, and it's a good thing she knows what it all means. After a moment, she nods. "Head, please."

Thane taps a few more commands into the wrist device, and the hologram shifts.

Andy looks at it and blanches – oh, there are certain things she's neither trained nor equipped to deal with, and this is one of them. She memorizes the hologram as best she can and looks back to the patient, checking airway, breathing, circulation and using that small ritual to steady herself. "...right," she says. "You're lucky or she's tough, one or the other. But she's got a host of problems, not the least of which is a subdural hemotoma – that's blood collecting in the brain – which is going to do a lot of damage if it's not addressed. Beyond that we've got fractures, comprehensive bruising both shallow and deep, and malnutrition enough to impair her body's ability to repair itself." She looks up at Thane again. "I am not going to promise that I can keep her alive. Not if you won't let her be removed from here. And if you want me to give it my best shot, you'd better get me anything and everything I ask for."

There's a pause, but only for a beat.

"And you're going to let me look after the rest of these people, too," she adds.

[john-thane.livejournal.com]

Thane stares. He's not in the mood to argue, which isn't to say he's not considering shooting her in the head and starting over with someone meeker. Fuck. If she needs a surgeon that badly, he can find one of them. Give them light, give them tools, give them a gun to their head, they'll work here just as well as in a hospital. He's confident in that.

"Who said you were making demands?" he asks. "There's no shortage of medics in the city. Why are you so quick to bank on the fact that I need you?"

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Because you're asking me to work in facilities that look like a third-world country shat on them, and of all the paramedics in Chicago, I challenge you to find another that served a term as a field medic in the US Army," she says. Playing a big card early, but she doesn't have time to waste. "So, decide, now. Equipment and access to all of them, or you start trolling the emergency rooms for EMTs and explain this again."

[john-thane.livejournal.com]

Thane has other things to fixate on think about, right now, and this is just one more annoyance he doesn't want to have to deal with. It'd be nice if he had a reputation, here, and people jumped when he said jump instead of having to bull through everyone to get them submissive. He'd take the Agency authority, now, thanks.

He draws his pistol. "You're walking a tightrope," he says. "Don't take on more than you can handle. ...I tell you to jump, you jump, you don't care whether or not it's right away from one of your little friends. Keep your moves careful and you get what you want. Otherwise you get dead. Those are the terms. What do you need?"

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

Well... fine. She'll take that. For now.

She looks back to her patient, then her notepad, writing out a much more comprehensive list and handing it up to Thane. "Second trip," she says – and oh, there will be more. But this one includes things like plenty of extra blankets, and IV nutrition.

[john-thane.livejournal.com]

Thane takes the list, reads it over, and activates his teleport with a snarl. One thing he was not planning on doing was becoming someone's damned errand boy. Even if it is on his own business.

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

And Andy goes back to her patient, doing what she can before her supplies arrive. "I don't suppose anyone here just happens to be an expert in trepanning, do they?"

[thatsortofaman.livejournal.com]

The Doctor pauses a moment, considering the question, and then offers, "Seen it done a couple times before, and I'm very clever. Of course, that was in France in 1525... and it was a while ago..."

Tosh, though she's been quiet all this time, shoots the Doctor a look. Don't scare the nice paramedic who's trying to help us. She remembers meeting the Doctor the first time, and he was confusing enough when she was expecting aliens and working for Torchwood already.

[riversodeep.livejournal.com]

Andy just nods along, filing him into the Crazy or Wanderer category of her mind. Which, well, if he is the Doctor so famed on the Journals... actually, both may be the right answer there. "Do you know how accurate that – whatever it was, is? The diagram." She waggles her fingers in the air to indicate the hologram. When this is over she's going to have a good WHAT THE FUCK, but at the moment, she'll take a tricorder if he hands her one.

[thatsortofaman.livejournal.com]

The Doctor shrugs. "At least as accurate as any medical equipment you're used to. If you'd like to look for another scanner, there's a trenchcoat somewhere around here, might be something in the pockets... I honestly don't remember if I had one or not..."

This is the problem with pockets that are bigger on the inside.