The Bird Flu {Victor, Leo}

[Holly Baxter]

Holly had finally been ordered by Christian to see a doctor, and since she didn't really want to, she'd dragged her feet all the way to where she'd seen Victor standing, chatting with... Leo. She frowned. She'd been trying to keep all of her nasty sick feelings out of conversation, and that meant from Leo - she'd told him she'd just come down with the flu, and he'd taken that bit and accepted it, but after the second week, everyone was on her ass to get checked out. Mitchell wasn't at the Frost Guild house, though, incidentally, and she'd thought she was in the clear until Christian reminded her Batten was coming in for a visit.

Damnit.

She made her way to him, trying to appear as unobtrusive as possible, though it was difficult to see straight with the fever cutting her vision so hard. Church had been good to her, though, and for that she was grateful. He'd even made her soup, and burned it somehow, but the effort was there, and it made her feel a little warm fuzzy, which was really odd considering Holly wasn't the fuzzy type.

"Doctor Batten," she said, voice weak. She greeted him all the same, coming to stand by Leo's side. She was washed out so far that she looked almost like a vampire (not that it was anything new), but the pallor had even affected her lips. She looked wretched, really. Her pink hair had been long since washed away, changed to a rich auburn hue with blonde patches so light they appeared almost white - she'd removed most of her piercings, too. Holly looked so different that she didn't fault Leo for opening his mouth a moment, probably to comment on how much nicer she looked without metal objects pinned to her face - she saw him shut it, though. She knew he wouldn't lecture her about her appearance, but she didn't expect both of them to jaw-drop when they saw just how shitty she looked.

She felt it, too.

"Christian wanted me to see you, to find out why I'm still sick, and what I have," she explained, leaning against the wall for support. She looked like a mental health patient - flannel pajama pants, a white tanktop, and a green hooded jacket - and giant bunny slippers. Holly was pretty pleased with those slippers.

[Victor Batten]

Victor had been facing the direction Holly had come from, so he saw her approaching and had already narrowed his eyes in concern and definite interest by the time she was close enough to address him.  Oh, this just looked delightful.  This was definitely Mitchell's department, and if he got vomited on...that would not be good for anyone who wasn't ill and happened to be in the area, because he didn't clean up vomit.

"Miss Baxter," he returned, taking in the weakness of her voice and her appearance without comment, though he was certainly startled by it.  She definitely didn't look well.

"Still sick?  Come with me, we'll see what's going on.  How long have you been like this?" he asked her, gesturing for her to follow.  He assumed Leo would as well, given how close he and the girl were.

[Holly Baxter]

"Two weeks, roundabout," she said, waving her hand in the air as a guesstimate. "Church has been attempting to look after me, but I shooed him off a few days ago since he was getting behind on other things," she added, a small snort following it. "I've been eating right, working out, taking it easy..." she sighed, running her hands through her hair before holding them in an awkward position behind her head, elbows up.

"I don't know what the hell it is. It all started after I got really drunk at the Mojo Lounge." She shrugged a little, looking from Batten to Leo, brows raised. "I feel like I'm on fire. It's either too hot or too cold, I'm alternating between being ravenous and vomiting at the scent of food..  And my heart is beating a million miles a minute. Do you think I have SARS or something? Ebola? Black Plague? I mean.... T-Virus? What?"

She looked at him expectantly, hands still clasped behind her neck.

[Victor Batten]

Actually, the more she said, the more Victor's eyes narrowed, until he looked at Leo with an unfriendly, suspicious look that had nothing to do with the older man and everything to do with the fact that Victor was pretty sure he knew what was wrong and didn't like it.  She'd been like this since she'd been to the Mojo Lounge?  Oh, that was absolutely brilliant.

Leo shot him a concerned, curious sort of look, and Victor wasn't surprised.  It wasn't Battaglia's department to know anything about these symptoms.  He just blew shit up, and he was good at it.  Victor actually liked him because of that, and because of the fact that they rarely saw each other on business.  Victor never needed anything to explode, and Leo was rarely injured.  It was a good sort of friendship.

Now, he found himself dealing with the man's little protege, which could have been fine except for the fact that the girl got hurt far more than Leo ever had in his experience, and she was extremely ill.  If he didn't have his suspicions, he'd have told Leo to get out of there just to avoid catching it.  "Leo, please refrain from coming in contact with her blood.  Not that I think she'll be bleeding in the next few minutes, but just in case," he warned the man as he got her settled on an examination table.  "Miss Baxter, I would appreciate it if you warn us if you feel the urge to vomit.  Leo, there's a trash can right there that you should grab if that happens."

Leo didn't look pleased, but Victor didn't doubt that he'd do it.  He trusted him not to want to get vomited on, and Leo was a good guy.  He was honestly concerned about the girl, which also helped. 

As soon as he hand her settled, he set to getting a blood test together.  "You said it started after you went to the Mojo Lounge.  Did anything strange happen there that you can remember?  Anything that stood out to you?  Blood contact with someone else, strange drinks, anything like that?" he asked.  He already had gloves on to protect himself from blood contact, and he was wrapping a rubber tourniquet around her upper arm even as he asked his questions.  She was right, her skin was incredibly warm.  He was already planning what to do when he finished with the blood test by the time he'd stuck her with the needle.

He hoped it was wrong, but he doubted it.  It wasn't even bragging when he said he wasn't often wrong about these things.

[Holly Baxter]

  It was roundabout the time Victor told Leo to get the trashcan that Holly's hand shot over her mouth. She hated to vomit, it was so goddamn undignified around these two. Victor was an ass sometimes, but he was a good doctor, and Leo was like her father, which meant that puking in front of him was like admitting she was still not old enough to go out past nine o'clock at night. However, when she began to vomit and blood started to appear between her fingertips, things she had been using to try and suppress the action, she became wildly much more aware of her situation.

  She held her other hand up to keep them back, palm out and flat, trying to wave them away. Blood, why was she fucking puking blood? Her insides were so raw from her constant puking as it was that they'd begun to protest. As soon as she stopped, she grabbed whatever she could to wipe her hand off with, and then just stared at Leo until he handed her something antibacterial for her hands. Not that it mattered; Victor was already swarming her with needles and squeezy-arm things and fucking Christ, her head hurt.

  "Strange drinks? No, just alcohol. I didn't bleed on anyone; I started getting sick right before we left. I was with Sarah and we were drinking, then Paris came out and gave me this stupid feather, and after that I started to feel really gnarly, and then..." she trailed off. She looked at Victor, and shrugged. "Listen, nothing happened. There was no blood, no guts, no nothing."

  She couldn't help but wretch again, entire body crumpling forward as an unattractive BLURRRK sound escaped her throat. She didn't puke, but she held her head over the trash for a minute, waiting to see if she would. Having her blood drawn made her feel like she was a balloon and someone was siphoning air out of her. It always caused her to gag.

[Victor Batten]

It was inconvenient that Holly chose that moment to start vomiting, but at least he'd warned Leo and the man had taken the appropriate steps to deal with it.  Victor NEEDED that blood sample, and he needed to get someone testing it immediately.  That was why, as soon as he had it, he left her in Leo's care to get the sample labeled and and set aside.  As soon as he got her eased into a more comfortable state, he was going to run the tests he needed and figure out what was wrong with her.  It only took a few moments, but by the time he'd returned, her stomach seemed to be emptied of anything she might want to turn into a weapon of mass destruction.  That was the way he preferred it.  Leo was looking a little ruffled by all the vomiting and watching his star pupil spill her guts, but Victor gave him credit for not looking at all ill himself.  It was amazing the number of hunters who could handle blood and gore, but couldn't deal with vomit.

He hadn't missed the fact that there was blood, either.  As soon as he felt that she was giving the vomiting a momentary rest, he grabbed a new can and 'suggested' that Leo dispose of the bag that was in the first one; preferably in a second bag, and then another that was labeled hazardous.  Blood wasn't a good thing.  Fortunately, Leo didn't need to be told to wash his hands, either, so Victor left him to whatever it was he was busying himself with while Holly filled his attention.

"I'm going to run some tests on your blood, but in the meantime, I need to check a few other things.  Have you had any luck holding down water?" he asked, grabbing a glass in the event that she could.  If not, he'd try ice chips and then finally go on to an IV if he had to, but a glass of water would be much easier.  She couldn't be allowed to dehydrate, which was probably one of her problems already if her throat was so raw that her vomit was bloody.  That generally meant that she wasn't keeping anything at ALL down, which probably also meant the IV would be necessary.  Even as he considered that, he was checking her blood pressure, heart rate and temperature.

No, this wasn't good.  She hadn't had any strange drinks or blood contact?  That made absolutely no sense to him.  What 'stupid feather' was she talking about?  As much as he hated to admit it, he knew that the voodoo man who ran that place could do things that were strange even in the Nyeusi community, and he didn't like it.  At all. 

[Holly Baxter]

  "I held water down until about four hours ago," she answered, voice utterly ragged. She tried to clear her throat, visibly wincing when she did so because it did hurt, and she was done trying to act manly about this entire situation. She stood as she was ushered, and gave Victor a very stern glance when he directed her into the equivalent of a hospital bed. "At least I can keep my clothing," she muttered, laying back against the pillow.

  She didn't object to the IV, because she had no right to bitch about being pricked by that and being in pain when she had HOLES IN HER FACE. She watched Victor as he worked, and then suddenly she felt incredibly tired. "Hey, did you d -- "

  She'd meant to ask if he'd dosed her with something to knock her out, but the room spun for a second and went black, and all she was left with was the low sound of him muttering to himself and the soft feeling of a pillow behind her. She'd never felt a pillow so good, actually, and Victor's mumbling got quieter and quieter until she couldn't hear him at all.

  When she awoke, she was staring at Church for some reason. The room was otherwise empty, and he was looking incredibly tired. "Hey," she said slowly, voice raw and raspy from the damage she'd done to herself. She was still hot - burning up, in fact, as indicated by the monitor that she found the strength to fiddle with - but the blankets felt so nicely against her that she couldn't shove them away.

  "How long have you been here?" she asked. She looked over at the IV, and then tried to remember what had happened. She'd come in for a flu, and there had been needles, and - "Did Batten hook me up with the good shit?" she asked, her laugh coming out scratchy and not unlike someone who'd lost their voice.

[Victor Batten]

By the time Holly woke up, Victor was finished testing her blood samples and on to tasks that didn't even have anything to do with her.  Considering what she'd said about her condition and being cared for before, he assumed that leaving her with Church wasn't such a bad idea, and the big man had orders to send for him as soon as she was awake and coherent.  He'd also promised to keep Leo up to date, since the older hunter had a date with some C4 and a vampire den a few hours outside of the city.  Victor wasn't about to keep him from it, or distract him with worries about Holly.  He was of the opinion that Leo should never be distracted, not when he was playing with explosives so often.

He may have been perceived as stupid, and he was a little slow when it came to book-smarts, but Church wasn't stupid at all.  He just wasn't a math whiz and didn't just know things.  He had common sense, and he had practical knowledge that he'd picked up due to necessity.  He knew that when Doc Frankenstein said to all for him when Holly was awake and coherent, the Doctor didn't want to be bothered until Holly was functioning.  That mean that Church was staying there until she was.

He wasn't complaining, even though it meant he did NOT get the sleep he wanted.  It bothered him that the woman was so completely vulnerable like this, even if she was in the infirmary and should have been entirely safe.  She was already small and not the best fighter (she depended on explosives instead), so leaving her there alone hadn't actually been much of an option even without Batten saying that he wanted to be informed when she was coherent.  It also meant that he had a lot of 'false alarms' with her seeming to wake up, only to be completely out of it, get a sip of water if he could manage it, and then she'd pass out again as though she'd never even woken up.  He didn't even try to talk to her after the second time, not until she talked to him louder than a murmur.

She was really, really warm still, and that was starting to really worry him.  He hoped Batten had dosed her with something good to fix all this, and quick. 

"Yeah, he must have dosed you with the good shit, 'cause you've been in and out all afternoon and night," he told her, not specifying how long he'd been there, but it had been awhile, and he'd been up early.  He was exhausted, but not about to conk out when she might wake up.  "How're you feelin'?"

[Holly Baxter]

  Holly just gave him a strange look when he questioned as to whether or not she was coherent; until, of course, she realized how in and out she must have actually been. She couldn't remember waking up, but that wasn't to say it hadn't happened a few times. She'd been put under before for a few mishaps on the training, so she wasn't entirely doubtful. She hoped she hadn't said anything too terribly stupid, though.

  "I feel like someone put me in a microwave, dude," she said, taking her casual approach despite feeling like crap. "Seriously. I'm burning up, but my skin feels cold." She reached for his hand, and she felt like a dumbass doing it, but seriously, Church had, given his looks, sacrificed sleep to sit there with her. It wasn't a bad thing to wake up to. In fact, she'd never admit it, but it was her favourite thing.

  That and bombs. But she didn't make a habit of snuggling with TNT.

  "Did they get any word as to what the fuck I've got?" she asked hopefully, rubbing his hand lightly with her own small fingers. He felt funny to her - she couldn't place how or why, but it was like her sensory nerves in her fingers were giving her mixed feedback. She felt as though she could feel every detail on his skin - imperfections, scars, whatever. She frowned a little, but ignored it for the time being.

[Jaxon Church]

Church, of all people, was immune to strange looks.  He got them all the time, whether it was because of the way he looked, something he wasn't on the same page as the other person over, or something he'd just done.  Whatever the reason, he was used to it and her doing it to him really didn't accomplish all that much.  Especially given the fact that he KNEW he had plenty of reason to be questioning whether or not she was coherent.  She'd been pretty out of it for awhile.

"You might feel cold, but your skin feels like you're overcooked," he told her the second she took his hand, though he didn't pull away.  Instead, he gave her a little squeeze, too tired to care if either of them looked like dumbasses.  He liked her, and he wasn't going to let his image get in the way of that.  Besides, she'd reached first.  He was okay.

Ah, did they get word, yet.  Yeah, that was a tricky one.  "I think Doc Frankenstein knows what's up, but he won't tell me jack shit.  I think he told Leo, cause the guy keeps coming in to check on you lookin' all nervous and shit, but he hasn't said what's going on, either.  Those two are friends, so I guess it makes sense, but it fucking sucks being outside that whole fucking circle or trust or whatever they got going on.  The Doc wants to talk to you when you're feeling up to it," he told her, and it was evident that he really wasn't pleased that Batten wouldn't tell him anything.  So he wasn't technically Holly's anything because there were no legal bonds or anything, but he sure as hell was Holly's something when she wasn't feeling good and he sat by her bed, or she decided she didn't feel like sleeping and she kept him up all night with acrobatics. 

Yeah, he was pretty pissed at Batten AND Leo.  Assholes.