general clinic log

[testsonseashells]

Who: Drs. Solus or Strider, various patients.
What: Echo checkups
When: Whenever
Where: LSR clinic

The LSR clinic, despite its run-down, beat-up appearance, is actually fairly clean on the inside. Lit by white fluorescent lights, it's generally pretty empty, with the occasional non-network patient coming in to get something looked at. A volunteer is usually found running the front desk, organizing papers and responding to phone calls, while Dr. Solus and Dr. Strider take care of the actual medical business.

The waiting room is barebones compared to other clinics and medical practices - LSR doesn't have the money to get entertainments for the waiting patients, so all that's available are a few chairs.

When it's your turn for an appointment, whoever's at the desk will direct you down a hallway to the left, and you will meet one of the doctors.

[ooc: general clinic log! all checkups for crazy echoes can take place here. specify dr. solus or dr. strider in the subject line.]

Comments

[somesayinfire]

[she watches Ravi begin taking the cast off, complying with his requests the entire time, and when he cuts through the padding, well. there's been a bit of a change.]

Oh my god.

[her shoulder down to about her elbow has turned slate grey and gained the pockmarks of volcanic stone that, before today, Brooke had been lucky enough to only see in books and elementary science demonstrations. trailing down her forearm are jagged veins in the same color, some of them noticeably thicker than others.]

[for all she'd joked about her arm feeling like it had turned to stone, she never once suspected it might actually be true. her jaw hangs as wide as her eyes; how is she supposed to process this? this shouldn't be happening! this didn't happen to humans!]

Ravi. [her voice is shaky.] What's happening to me?

[healspec]

[as the cast comes off, all he can do is stare in stunned horror at what's revealed.]

[when he mentioned 'soft-tissue ossification' to her as a possibility, that was about as close as medically possible to 'petrification'. This is not ossification. That is not what bone looks like, and tissue does not ossify in veins like that. This is literal petrification. It's not the first time he's seen something that's medically impossible, but it's certainly the most visible and extreme example of it.]

[and it is happening to someone he considers a friend, who is an amazing person who does not deserve this.]

[he doesn't know what to say. he can't say anything to make that better.]

[maybe...maybe he can get some insight into what's going on. He doesn't answer her, too focused on the issue in the way of someone who wants to make sure something is unfixable before acknowledging that it's broken.]

[the knowledge of how to use his magic has, thus far, been pretty specific. but because it's so specific, he thinks he should at least be able to tell if there's anything under the stone to heal. he lays his hand over her upper arm, closes his eyes, and concentrates on his magic. It appears as a warm golden glow from his palm, shining through the cracks between his fingers.]

[he can heal flesh, so he sends the magic through her arm in search of any.]

[somesayinfire]

[Brooke stares at his hand, horror and wonder mingling on her face. there are so many things going on that she can't explain, but if this is what Ravi's powers are, she won't argue.]

[unfortunately, there might not appear to be any reaction. her arm has petrified all the way through; there's no flesh underneath it, no meaty tissue, no nothing—science be damned. it's stone through and through. she doesn't know that, of course, but she kind of suspects that something isn't entirely right. something additional, rather.]

[horror wins out on her face ultimately. she has to stop herself from having another breakdown, which is easy considering she's too stunned to catastrophize about her arm right now. small favors.]

[healspec]

[while he's improvising a way to use his magic as a diagnostic, BAM--ECHO. he suddenly understands how to do that properly.]

[There's a momentary pause as he mentally processes this, but fuck it--he ain't complainin'. He tries again, this time able to understand much more of the information he's getting.]

[It doesn't help. There's nothing there. Nothing that could even remotely be construed as organic matter. It's solid rock.]

[Fuck.]

[He steps back, folds one hand into the crook of his elbow, covering his mouth with the other. He looks at Brooke. The 'this is some serious shit' look.]

...All the way through, it's like that. [he doesn't want to say it, but this isn't the sort of thing you give a person false hope for.]

[somesayinfire]

[Brooke recognizes that look. does she ever recognize that look. Ravi doesn't need to say anything for her to know what he's found out.]

Oh.

[if she could sound any more hollow, she'd collapse in on herself.]

So I guess there isn't anything we can do.

[healspec]

[the fact that this kind of thing can happen... To any of them, without warning and without recourse...]

[He just shakes his head. There's nothing to say. No reassurance to give. Whatever she wants to do about it is up to her, and all he can do is help with whatever that choice is.]

[somesayinfire]

[she stares at her arm in silence, not even looking up again to see if Ravi's offering any kind of visual... anything. it's not important. her arm is made of stone right now, and. and she won't be able to use it again. ever. it might spread to the rest of her body. she might turn into a statue.]

[she might die because of this.]

I think we should make that cast reattachable. [the sentence comes out almost emotionlessly. she looks away, at her arm again, and pretends she can't imagine the stone pulsating with her heartbeat. the word "depersonalization" springs to mind.] And then I can figure out what's going to happen from there.