Bad Medicine |Tag: Oz, Jessica, Force sibs, whoever|

[Gunnar Arissen]

Walking into chaos?  Always fun.  Walking into chaos in the form of a couple dozen injured people in various states of emergency status?  Even better.  Midnight sure knew how to throw a party.

After being shuttled from one place to the next by Taro (who claimed that he was just the chauffeur and they were under Noelani's orders) in an attempt to maintain some semblance of control while the rest of Diamond decided whether or not they were going to take an active part in this, Gunnar was already 'in the zone' by the time he was dumped in Onyx to set up a slightly more permanent shop.  He had a lot to do, a lot of people to help, and not a lot of time or energy to waste.  He actually passed Dev Rashana in the hall and gave the guy a short, mangled salute by way of a greeting on his way to the infirmary, and they both knew that Rashana recognized him for exactly who and what he was.

Diamond, and more importantly, help.

The infirmary itself was a mess of people, many of whom didn't need to remain there and not enough who knew what the hell they were doing.  He was about to step on someone's toes, and he knew it.  Making a silent apology to whoever it was, he dropped his bag on top of the desk off to the side of the room (loudly) and proceeded to take the room's attention.

"EVERYONE QUIET!" he shouted, and yes, it worked.  It always did, at least for a moment.

"Who the hell are you?" what looked like the youngest person in the room demanded, and the sad thing was that Gunnar recognized him as being one of the few that knew what they were doing.  Gunnar knew the medical staff for most of the guilds by name and reputation, even if they didn't know him.  It was a good practice.

"I work for your boss' boss, kid.  Listen, if we're going to get anywhere, I need one of you," he glanced from Oz to a dark-haired woman who wasn't even supposed to be IN this guild, "to clear out anyone who isn't an emergency.  If they don't have bones sticking out and aren't in danger of dying or being permanently handicapped, I need them to be in the hallway or another room."

There was just too much bad energy swirling around in there, and the sheer volume of people was making the room feel claustrophobic.  Since he was about to start clearing out the worst cases, they'd make room.  "While someone's doing that, I need to be shown who needs care first, starting with the worst case and working down."

[Jessica Markova]

 Jessica wiped a bead of sweat off of her brow, a syringe clamped in her mouth as she tried to hold someone down to the table who didn't want to be held down. She finally took it out of her mouth, delivering a harmful blow to his sternum long enough to keep him down. "Fine," she said sharply, "we'll do it the hard way." And she jammed him in the arm with the needle. He yelled, she yelled, and then he passed out. She took the two seconds of silence to bow her head, ignoring how hot the room was getting. Or was it her coat? She was in the process of stripping off her white overcoat, which by now was complete with a set of bloody handprints that trailed off of it, looking like she was the survivor of a zombie attack.

She pulled her shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail and pushed the sleeves of her dark green v-neck up, looking over at Oz, who was trying to set someone else's broken arm. She turned away sharply as he re-broke it, wincing. Sometimes working with shapeshifters wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Then, of course, the doors flew open and she nearly sliced herself with her own scalpel. She stood open-mouthed as the blonde began giving orders.

Oz immediately went to questioning him, and then took the job of separating the sissies from the people who needed help, which he appeared to take great pleasure in doing by yelling "GET OUT!" at no less than eight individuals who were all level three and below. Jessica didn't really know what to do for a second, but she was nervous as hell. Boss' boss? Who was their boss' boss? She wasn't so new she didn't know how to do her job, but she didn't know about Diamond, either. Things that she didn't know worried the hell out of her, too.

"Uh, over here," she said, her voice a little wavering. "These are our priorities right now," she said. She brought him to the next room where a mixed crowd of human and shifter were, other staff trying to work their damndest to stabilize them. She didn't say who they were; it was assumed they were family or hunters, which made them important to someone. "Most everyone else I've gotten sedated to the point where they can't fight back and hurt themselves worse, which means they're stable and not in any immediate danger. They just keep comin' in," she said, her slight Texas creeping in. Overwhelmed? A little.

[Gunnar Arissen]

Gunnar would have appreciated Jessica's 'methods' if he'd shown up in time to see them, but as it was, he missed it and was instead appreciative of her ability to do as she was told quickly and efficiently.  She seemed rattled, but he couldn't really blame her.  This was a big situation even for him, and he'd gone with Diamond into some serious situations.  The problem with this was that it was spread out AND massive.  Ground zero was much too large for a single healer to make his rounds in anything resembling a decent time-frame, and he'd run out of steam first.  It was just too much at once, and he had the kind of experience he needed to deal with it.  He felt bad for the doctors who were working their asses off on all of this.

He could understand her being overwhelmed and even scared, but nervous wasn't something he would have expected.  He'd said who he worked for only because he wasn't dealing with Oz Watkins questioning his presence there and giving him shit while he tried to get this infirmary into shape, and he certainly didn't need her tip-toeing around and worried about who he worked for.  That really just wasn't important right then, not to her.

"They're probably going to keep coming.  We'll just do the best we can," he assured her, because there really just wasn't anything else he could say or do.  Midnight wasn't a joke.

Following her into the next room, he took a quick glance over the patients there and guessed that they were all each was as bad off as the next, so why not dive in?  He rolled his sleeves up, thanked Jessica, and gestured for everyone to step back from the closest one, a small child (he'd chosen her first for a reason).  "Alright, sweetheart, you ready to go back to your mommy?" he murmured, brushing a stray bit of hair away from her forehead before pressing his hand palm down onto the clear bit of skin.  He centered his other hand over her heart in a gentle, but firm touch, and that was when the fun began.

She'd been cut up pretty badly by a shapeshifter of some kind by his guess, and some of the wounds were much worse than others.  If she were an adult, he may had taken into account the fact that he had an unending stream of patients and saved her life by healing the dangerous wounds and leaving the more harmless ones for a later time, but she wasn't an adult.  She was all of about 8 years old, her mother looked hysterical where she was forced to keep some distance while he worked, and he was still relatively fresh.  When he started pumping energy from his impressive internal stores, he maintained the pacing he'd long ago learned to avoid burning out too quickly, but he didn't stop as the deeper wounds slowed in their bleeding and even kept going as the skin started to knit itself back together.  He ignored the way the skin on his hands started to heat up and his breath quickened, closed eyelids fluttering at a frantic pace that he wasn't even aware of while his concentration was so fixed on the internal metaphysics of a little girl, and after the few minutes that felt like an hour when one is siphoning life energy into another body, even the more minor wounds closed up and disappeared.  He had no way of guaranteeing he would run into her again, so he'd saved her the trauma of spending the rest of her life with horrific scarring.

He released her with a sharp step backwards, returning to the present and snapping out of the quiet he'd maintained while he was in contact with the child, and his eyes immediately shot to his hands for a brief second before he gave them a few shakes.  Another reason why he didn't typically heal from start to finish on such serious injuries was that it posed an actual risk to him, but he'd have to do much more than that for much longer.  He'd be fine with a moment to cool down.

The little girl was already stirring, and the mother jumped up with a shout.  Mission accomplished.  He glanced at Jessica with a tiny quirk of a smile as he quickly stepped out of the woman's way, lest he be bowled over.  There were definite pluses to his job.  "Next?"

[Jessica Markova]

 "You're a healer?" she said, her voice soft, and it was clear she was talking to herself but she just had said it aloud out of sheer amazement. That was an ability Jessica could only dream of perfecting. As it was, she was just plain normal. Sure, with practice she could be good with medicine, but she'd never be able to do... that.

She shook her head a little, the look of surprise on her face just as obvious as ever. Jessica was incredibly expressive; her face told an individual everything she was thinking - even when she didn't want it to, a lot of the time. It was something that she got flack for, and in fact the only time she wasn't telegraphing her thoughts was when she was talking to a patient. She could at least form some degree of calm, impartial masking when she had to, but when interacting with people to whom she wasn't delivering potentially horrible news or trying to calm them down before they bled out? Yeah, no. Like right now. She was practically starry-eyed over this new guy, which wasn't something that Oz would have missed had he'd been there, but he was in the next room yelling.

"Uh, right. Of course," she said, shaking her head a little as she turned. "I've only been asking for one of you for the last six hours." She hurried to the next bed, giving him a quick briefing of what happened. She was more than a little worried that some of these people had come back to the guildhouse not of their own entire doing. She was incredibly suspicious by the idea that Midnight would resort to biological warfare, especially since she'd had a few people who were showing high fevers and other flu-like symptoms. Of course, they could all actually have the flu, but... she didn't trust anything right then.

Commotion from the front caught her attention, and she actually left the new guy for a moment. She turned back to him and pointed a finger. "Stay here," she said. It was obvious she didn't know who she was talking to, but the fact of the matter was that she was trying to shield him from a potentially dangerous situation. When she came through the door, she really knew why, too. There in the floor was a girl, her brother, and a vampire. The vampire had Oz by the throat.

"Oh, God," she said, dropping her clipboard.

[Jeremiah Talbot]

 Jeremiah couldn't really tell you how he got to where he got, just that his Mistress commanded him to go and thus he went. He was running low on energy, but she told him that he couldn't feed, and so he knew that he must not. What he did know was that he was to do everything She said to the most minute detail, because if he did not than She would reject him and he would surely die.

When they arrived at the hospital, it was in complete disarray. "I can take him in anyways," he told her. "I can make them treat him." He attempted to pull Cody from Her, and She lashed out at him violently.

"NO," She snarled. She turned so that Her body was facing him and Cody's was less accessible. She had him leaned on Her for support, but it was tiring Her out, and Jeremiah could tell. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes, trying to think. Her mind was racing, but so very blank as it came up with no conclusions she could use.

"Please, let me take him. You need your strength," he began. She cut him off with a wave of Her hand, looking around frantically.

"You're too stupid to hang on to him, and have you forgotten you did all of this?" She snapped, narrowing her eyes at him. Jeremiah shrank away, and then fell to his knees. He took hold of one of Her legs and began sobbing. She kicked him in the face and sent him back a few feet, but only because she was in crazy Super mode at the moment (Amanda under no circumstances could punch a vampire hard enough to send them back a few feet after being beaten senseless on her very best day had she not some crazy power flowing through her).

"Take us to Onyx," She suddenly commanded.

Jeremiah nodded tearfully, and then grabbed Her, and by proxy, Cody. They vanished, and reappeared to just outside of the Onyx guildhouse. Mistress commanded him to carry the boy, and then She ran ahead, opening doors and pushing people out of the way. Mistress' eyes were as black as his own, and people thought for a moment She had turned into a vampire herself, but then they saw Jeremiah rushing in behind her with Cody, and they moved.

She threw the doors of the infirmary open, finding Oz in the middle of quickly wrapping a minor cut for a hunter. "Put him down there!" She screamed to Jeremiah, who obediently put Cody on an open bed. "Help!" She screamed at Oz, who was frozen with shock - and a little fear.

"Amanda? Is that a vam -  GERRRRRGK"

"MISTRESS TELLS YOU TO HELP HER BROTHER AND SO YOU WILL HELP HER BROTHER!"

Oz swung his feet rapidly, feeling the very tips of his shoes scrape against the floor.

[Amanda Force]

 The hospital had been a bust. The vampire kept begging her to let him take Cody in, but for what? There was no electricity. She couldn't explain that to him in his stupified state, though. All the vampire - Jeremiah, she'd figured - knew right then was that she was his one and only everything and anything, and her word was law and he was made to obey it. She didn't know how it worked, or how she even knew what was happening, but she did. Moreover, she knew that her brother was dying.

"Hang on, hang on," she whispered, pressing her lips to the matted hair on her brother's head. The vampire was crying and grabbing her leg, and she pulled back and kicked him with all of her might. She sent him face-first into the asphalt and nearly into a parked car, which would have been amusing except that he was their transportation. Alex was dead. The other vampire had gotten away. Samantha had gotten Rose, but had they escaped? Some part of her knew she had been wrong to leave, but most of her had made peace with it. Her priority was Cody. That was it; that was all. However, her priority was going to die if she couldn't get him medical attention. Wait - there would be a doctor at Onyx.

"Take us to Onyx," she demanded. The vampire ran at her after stumbling to get up and spit out a face full of gravel in the process. He'd literally just laid there and cried the entire time. Pathetic. She didn't know how long this hold she had over him would last, though. She needed to make good use of it.

He did as he was told, dropping them just at the property line. Well, she couldn't have expected him to get them any closer, realistically. If he'd never been there, how would he? She had him locked out of her mind, so it wasn't as easy as taking a quick peek. She passed Cody off to him and began running towards the doors, and she continued straight to her goal, nevermind whoever got in her way.

Once into the infirmary, the first thing she was was Oz. And, actually, that was the last thing, too, for a second. She wavered and grabbed something for stability. Jeremiah may have been casually ignorant to the fact that he'd tortured her, or maybe he wasn't, but all of his sudden remorse and worship wouldn't undo the damage just yet. She looked like she'd been hit by a car. Her wrists were still encircled by the severed handcuff links, and some of her fingers were still broken. In fact, there was a fucking great deal of shit that should have caused her to be on the ground, unconscious or even dead, but she was still standing with those scary demon black eyes. She didn't look like a vampire - she looked like a goddamn minion from hell. It didn't help that she was covered with dry blood.

"Help," she begged. Her voice came out panicked and foreign. He wasn't moving. Why wasn't he moving? Jeremiah grabbed him up suddenly, sensing that she was not satisfied with his quality of service.

Then there were more people in the room and Amanda felt herself slipping. "Put.. him down.. you moron," she uttered. She felt the ground become closer and the upright become different. Her last thoughts were of the idiot vampire screaming like a girl and yelling that 'His Mistress' was going to die. It didn't even fucking matter anymore. She'd been too late. Cody was dead.

Or at least, that's what she thought before she passed out. Cody was hanging on by a very, very short thread.

[Gunnar Arissen]

At her question, which could have been just as much a rhetorical thought spoken out loud as it was an actual question of him, he smiled a little more and nodded.  "Yeah, I am," he told her, voice also soft.  He had NO IDEA that 'starry-eyed' was a good term for how she was feeling, but he found her reaction to his abilities to be amusing and a little flattering nonetheless.  He was used to getting some awe initially (maybe) and being pointed at injuries like he was nothing more than a tool.  One that was appreciated and taken for granted most of the time, missed when it was gone, but never this, and from a pretty girl?  It was nice.

Six hours?  Probably because Single Earth was utterly swamped, so they couldn't spare any healers for the guild, Victor Batten was missing and Colleen Watkins was at Frost.  He understood why she couldn't get help.  "Well, here I am," he told her simply, because he wasn't discussing Diamond and their reasons for getting involved.  He didn't know what they'd decided and he didn't care; he was here to help people, whether Diamond's warriors joined the fight or not. 

He got the briefing and nodded, not all that far from her thoughts on the 'flu' as she described it as being part of the patient's problems.  He didn't know if Midnight would employ such tactics, either, but he hoped not.  It would mean a hell of a lot more trouble, and probably something really resembling an 'unending flow' of patients.  She'd barely finished telling him about the one he'd been about to 'fix' when the commotion started outside, and 'stay here'?  He blinked at her for a second as she tried to run out there, stopped to turn around and tell him that, then twisted around again and bolt out the door.

Yeah, because with all of that yelling on a night like this, he was going to stay put and let the untrained female do it.

He reached up under his jacket to pull his Glock (his favorite only because he had a weird tendency to end up in very literal messes, a lot of them wet) free, and followed her a bit more slowly than she'd left the room.  It was probably good that he had, since he was had a chance to observe the situation with the vampire before acting, and he wasn't stupid; he'd never seen a vampire refer to some random hunter girl as 'mistress' before, and the vampire didn't look as though he had been hurt.  There were no cuts or tears in his clothing and nothing to suggest that there had been fight, except that the two humans were severely hurt.  Something was fishy, and the girl that the vampire was demanding help for had just passed out.  Either the vampire was going to go batshit because his girl was down, or he was going to freak the fuck out because she'd been in control, and either way, there were way too many potential casualties hanging around here.

Jesus Christ!

Just the understanding of the damage they were looking at made him jump forward, gun still trained on the vampire.  "I'm going to heal her and then her brother, you just let Oz go and then stay put, you got it?" he 'asked' the vampire, and he pressed the gun into Jessica's hands.  "If he doesn't release Oz or he does anything crazy, shoot him in the head.  This won't take long."

Did he really think that anything would happen in the short time it took him to revive Amanda?  No, but he was leaving himself open to attack, so having some kind of protection in place was a damn good idea.  He shifted Amanda as carefully as he could and might have assessed her injuries before trying to heal her if he'd had time.  Somehow, he got the feeling that he didn't, so he didn't waste it.  Once again, he laid his hand on his patient's forehead and over her heart (he could use other points, but those were very strong, and very direct) and started pumping energy into her.  If one was watching, they'd have quite literally been able to see her fingers pull themselves back into a proper, whole setting, the holes in her thighs close up from the inside out and her other injuries just dissolve away.  The internal damage may have even been more impressive, since she'd been electrocuted for so long, but that all just sort of...disappeared as his energy washed through her.

When he let go, he leaned back and flung an arm out quickly to catch himself, having not expected quite that level of damage and probably done it a little too quickly.  He flicked his eyes up to the vampire, most definitely wondering if he had been the one to torture her, but he didn't know for sure and had no reason to push it right then.  What was important was that she was conscious again and that he took care of her brother.

"Alright, Jessica?  Oz?" he asked, but the vampire had dropped the boy like he'd asked and not moved, so they were obviously making progress. 

If possible, the brother was worse.  If there hadn't been a good reason (and yes, he thought it was a damn good reason) to have helped the girl first, he would have definitely tended to Cody.  "Shit, this kid is dying," he murmured, taking a quick look over the ridiculous chest wound he was displaying on top of the obvious signs of the same type of torture his sister had endured, and there was just no way around essentially pumping energy right into that wound.  He wouldn't dare use a weaker point than the heart, so he set his hand lightly over the bloody mess (it was so close to Cody's heart that Gunnar didn't know how he wasn't dead already) and then the other on his forehead.  It had only been a matter of time before he got all bloodied up, he knew that, but Cody's blood was everywhere. 

Holy shit, he thought, rather vaguely, before pumping more focus into the job at hand.  It was like rebuilding the mess of a chest cavity that was Cody's, including the fried bits from the electrocution (it was amazing there hadn't been a heart attack from that kind of abuse), and that wasn't an easy, quick task.  He had beads of sweat building up on his forehead and his hands had grown hot and reddened by the time he was done with just that, and then there was the boy's face to put back together and even more electricity damage.  Wherever these two had been, Gunnar was guessing that they were lucky they'd gotten out.  Lucky they'd gotten to him, because Cody would have died without an actual healer.

When he released the boy, he was breathing hard and refused to touch anything else, including the gun that Jessica seemed eager to give back to him.  He needed to cool off a minute, especially after two huge cases being followed by the fairly big job that had been the little girl.  The guilds were going to knock him out tonight, he was making that a guarantee.

[Amanda Force]

 Amanda woke up rather quickly - or so she thought. There had been a margin of time that had passed while she was unconscious that she could not account for, but then again, the first words from her lips were, "Cody!?" and she sat bolt upright. Jessica had both hands on her shoulders, trying to ease her down, but the vampire in the corner erupted into a fit and began yelling for her to unhand his mistress.

Amanda closed her eyes. Shit. Passing out had sucked all of the power right out of her. She only had a few minutes before this went bad - really bad. She pushed herself up off of the bed, literally limping to the vampire (sure, she was healed, but there was still some pain), and reaching out to him. She grabbed the front of his shirt in a fist and yanked him down the few inches so that his face was directly in front of hers.

"You will leave here, and you will forget this place, and you will forget me. You will forget the last forty-eight hours. Am I understood?" she asked. She felt like her voice was breathy, but the pressure in her lungs from the fluid was gone. It must've just been her head.

Jeremiah nodded solemnly. "I understand," he said.

"Good. Leave." No sooner had she released him than did the vampire vanish into thin air. She stumbled a little in spite of herself, and then accepted the female doctor's help in getting back to where she could sit. "Please, don't ask," was all she said, shaking her head. "Will my brother be okay?"

[Jessica Markova]

 So, the perfect guy had just turned into a commando. Since when did healers engage in melee? She felt like this guy didn't understand the class system of the game so well; especially not when he handed her the gun - and told her to make a headshot happen with it! She just nodded, but in truth that wasn't something she felt she could accomplish. Nice of him to be so confident in her, though.

As soon as he was done with Amanda, homeslice dropped Oz, and she could try to help the girl up. She'd regained consciousness but she looked disoriented. When she tried to get up, initially Jessica had stopped her, but then the vampire went all buggy again. Amanda seemed to take care of the situation as much as it could be, and then pre-empted Jessica's questions by telling her not even to ask. By then, her brother was looking more like a boy and less like a crash-test dummy, and so Jessica gave the gun back to Gunnar with a shaky hand, and checked his vitals.

"Thanks to this man, yes," she said honestly. She didn't recognize them at all save that they were hunters; she'd physically seen them around, but she didn't know their names or... anything else about them. Well, besides that they were related. "Is this your guild?" she asked. When the girl nodded, Jessica nodded, too. "Okay, what's your name? I need to let Dev know that you're checked in and accounted for. I think you'll be grounded for the day."

"Force. Amanda. And Cody," she added, a dry cough wracking her. There was that prospect of biochemical sabotage, again. Jessica narrowed her eyes a little, and then shook it off. She jumped up to give Oz the information, especially since he looked eager to be NOT in the room any further. Then, of course, there was the healer.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked, her voice unsure. She didn't know quite how it worked.

[Gunnar Arissen]

Having been distantly aware of the situation with the vampire, Gunnar wasn't really shocked when he caught his breath and turned to a room that was minus one creepy vampire.  He'd chilled out a bit, quite literally, so returning the Glock to its holster when she gave it back and getting his own glass of water wasn't a big deal.  Gave him a breather, too.

As he took his time with the water, he watched Jessica with the Force siblings, absorbing what little information they gave so that it could be put to use figuring out exactly what had happened with the vampire.  He didn't trust it, and it certainly made him wonder if Amanda was to be trusted.  Could she do that to anyone?  Just vampires?  Even if it was just vampires, Diamond had quite a few of them, which wasn't acceptable, and that was just Diamond.  This was something that needed to be passed along for further investigation.

The idea of a bio-weapon was also going to need to be looked into, though it still wasn't at the top of his list.  If he'd been willing to offer more energy to Amanda in one sitting (he wasn't, so if she needed more help, it'd be at a later time), he could have made sure that she didn't have any kind of cough or illness, but there were just too many people that needed attention.  He figured his break was over when Jessica turned back to him to ask if he needed anything.

Raising the paper cup of water in response, he shook his head and then finished it, threw the cup away and glanced at the Force siblings.  "Make sure they stay put, would you?  They should be fine, but they're going to be worn out still and that cough of hers has me wondering if anything else is wrong," he told Jessica, which essentially offered her the chance to bring up her own concerns about the fevers she'd run into thus far, if she wanted to.  "I'm Gunnar, by the way."

It had occurred to him rather suddenly while she was asking Amanda and Cody for their names that he hadn't actually introduced himself.  He knew her name because he'd made sure he knew who was considered staff in the infirmaries for the guilds before he came out, but she had no reason to know him and definitely had no reason to expect anything at all out of him.  He obviously wasn't the kind of healer she was used to, he'd realized that from the look on her face when he'd drawn the gun and especially when he made her take it, but the kind of healer she was familiar with wasn't exactly doing the trick right then, was it?  Besides, he knew for a fact that Victor Batten was as violent as he was skilled in medicine.  Gunnar had seen that man's records, knew he'd been a hunter before going to med school, so it wasn't SO unheard of for a healer to be trained in fighting.

Headed back to the room with the critical cases in it, he wasn't exactly positive that she was going to follow or not, but he knew he'd prefer it if she did.  It was nice to have someone to field the patient if he had to regain his bearings afterwards, which he usually did with cases like these.  The more he had to push, the more it was like standing up too suddenly or holding your breath too long.  There was an instant of dizziness and disorientation before he got it together again on really serious ones, and Jessica checking vitals, asking questions and moving them out of critical care was much easier on him, especially when he was doing it one after the other.

That's exactly what he was up to, too.  He immediately returned to the patient he'd been briefed on before Cody and Amanda arrived, and didn't hesitate in getting right to work.  Pacing himself was important, but the brother/sister duo was a good reminder that they were going to have a lot of new patients rolling in.  He had to make room in critical care for the new ones, and quick.  Less serious medical cases could wait a little while.

[Jessica Markova]

 "Can we go to our rooms now?" Amanda asked Jessica. She seemed eager to get the fuck out of there, and she seemed incredibly willing to carry her brother if it meant she got him out, too. Jessica glanced back to Gunnar, who had just told her that they needed to stay put - he was busy sucking down water, and it didn't matter, since he'd already said no. She didn't know why she'd even looked over to him, honestly - the staff in the medical part of the guilds weren't known for rapid changes of mind when it came to injuries and rest. She turned back to the girl who was sitting as demurely as could be - a very drastic change from who she'd been moments before.

"No, sweetie, I'm sorry, but you need to stay for a little." She paused. Amanda had a way with her big brown eyes that looked utterly crushing and sad; Jessica was a sucker, too. But the girl wasn't feigning the emotion, at least, which was good for Jessica. "I'll tell you what," she said, gently smoothing some of her long brown hair from her face. "Why don't you help me with your brother, and I can get you guys into that room over there. Nobody's in it, and you can rest without being bothered. I'm sure you don't want to separate right now."

Amanda seemed to consider this, eyes flicking at the man who'd healed them for a moment. She looked back at Jessica, and then nodded the 'okay'. They both stood and helped Cody to the next room, which was difficult, but not impossible. Once she had them settled in, she came back to Gunnar, shutting the door behind her and shaking her head, her eyes wide and unfocused like people tended to do when they didn't believe something.

"Really amazing," she muttered to herself; of him, no less. She looked up when he introduced himself to her, and for a split second she seemed almost embarrassed. "Oh, sorry. I'm Jessica - Jessica Markova. Resident squishy. Everyone else seems to have taken a level in badass so I just hang out in the background and staple them shut when needed." She smiled a little. "Sorry if I freaked out a little there... I'm not used to people shoving weapons into my hands. I know I work for Frost, and you'd think that meant I'd know a little bit more, but I just... I don't know. I get nervous. I don't want to hurt people. I'm all for violence, I mean - I just don't stomach it well, myself."

She didn't know if what she'd said made sense. She went back to checking vitals ahead of him, trying to get some semblance of an order together as other people were admitted in. Thankfully the rest were easy-come easy-go. She hoped she wouldn't see anything so bad as Amanda and Cody, but she knew she was only wishing on a black star for that. She twirled the little silver cross necklace around her finger as she read over a chart. The cough made her nervous, but it could have been from so many different things.. she tried not to think about it. She may not have been as awesome and capable in a fight as the rest of them, but she probably had the best bedside manner - in fact, there was debate as to why Victor even seemed to tolerate her for how sweet and lovable she was. Nobody really knew, but she was good at keeping people calm, which didn't hurt her case any.

[Gunnar Arissen]

Gunnar refrained from informing her that he'd already known who she and Oz were -- he'd called them by name already without ever having been introduced -- and instead smiled at her introduction and apology.  Frankly, he'd known better than to shove a gun into her hands from her file (it said she had no training as a hunter and was strictly medical personnel), but he'd trusted her to be competent and hoped it worked.  Obviously, it had been okay, since she didn't end up shooting him instead, or something equally ridiculous. 

"Don't stress it, most of the healers and doctors in the guilds are non-combatants.  I think Victor Batten and I are among the few that are qualified hunters and he was a hunter before he was a doctor," he told her with a shrug, like it was no big deal.  What he wasn't saying was that his guild required that anyone who entered the field be a Level 6 hunter, capable of taking charge of a guild themselves, if necessary.  Gunnar was probably the least talented hunter in Diamond, but that was purely because he wasn't a hunter when he was recruited.  He was a prodigy of a healer, and they force-fed him the hunter training.  He qualified as a Level 6 because he had to, but he was at the low end of that ranking (as much of a 'low end' as Level 6 actually had) and he definitely didn't have any thoughts as to taking over a guild.  An infirmary, absolutely, but not an entire guild.  He'd leave that to someone else.

There was probably something wrong with the fact that he could maintain some semblance of a coherent conversation with Jessica as they worked, especially since his definition of 'work' involved zoning out for a few minutes to heal someone.  She adapted quickly, however, and that probably helped because she stopped talking when he got down to it, then they picked up again immediately after like nothing had happened.  It was efficient and made the job feel less like 'work' for the company.  He wouldn't have minded having her around more often when he had to do jobs like this, though she probably would have been upset by the idea. 

"So, what brought you to Frost, Jessica?" he finally asked, and of course he would actually be interested in the answer and be interrupted by his phone ringing.  He was also about to fix the next person, so the call was rather badly-timed, but there was no way he was going to ignore it when he saw Eithne's name on the caller ID.  "Excuse me, just a second."

He took two steps away, not bothering to even leave the room, before answering with a quick, 'hello?' and listening to what she had to say.  Tonight, nobody in Diamond seemed to be mincing words, and Eithne was no different in her explanation that Aaron and a mystery woman had come in with crossbow injuries, Aaron to the chest and the woman in the back, that they needed him back at the guildhouse.  "Whoa, wait, I can't just leave here, Eithne.  For every person I heal and send away, one to two more are coming in.  Are they stable?"

If they were still in critical condition, he'd go because he wouldn't ever leave Aaron to die, but if he and the woman were both stable, couldn't they wait a few hours until he got back to Diamond?  There were people here who were being brought in that couldn't wait that long, so time mattered.  It just sucked that it was Eithne calling, because the last thing he wanted to do was tell her 'no'.  She'd already gotten more consideration on the topic than if someone else, such as Taro, had called on Aaron's behalf.

[Jessica Markova]

 "Actually, I heard a rumor Olivia did, too, back in the day. Even Oz can hold his own. I just don't take well to violence, I guess. Doesn't make any sense considerin'," she muttered with a roll of her eyes at the general state of affairs. Of course, that she was in Frost made even less sense since they were the ones who were considered to be the most barbarian with their fighting techniques. Perhaps she did her part to balance out their heavy burden; a smooth piece of silk to their gritty sandpaper mood.

She'd been about to tell him something like that except incredibly less eloquent when his phone rang. She busied herself by checking on the Force siblings, who were both sleeping, and taking it in stride that the lull they were having wouldn't last for very long. It was, of course, punctuated as another hunter came in, this time a low level one with a dislocated shoulder.

"You couldn't do that on your own?" she asked. She frowned and set her clipboard down, then took him by his good arm, turning him around. She pressed two fingers along his shoulder blade for a moment, nodded to herself, and then POP - positioned his arm correctly. He screamed because he wasn't expecting it, and she only sighed in response. "You obviously can't be from this guild," she observed, "if you still react like that. I heard Zaine trains all that out of his recruits."

The hunter rubbed the back of his neck. "Shit still hurts, no matter how much someone beats you," he informed her. He took the 800MG of Motrin she held out to him and made for a dry swallow, waving a thanks and leaving the clinic. She frowned, deeply. What they had to go through to get their training she certainly did not envy; that Gunnar was evidently from the guild on top of theirs meant that he'd probably had to endure worse than even Zaine could offer - if that were possible.

[Eithne O'Shea]

 Eithne hadn't wanted to call Gunnar, but she really needed to cut time on the progress of her two "patients" down as much as possible. She wanted to get more information from them both, but it was hard to do when neither was coherent enough to give her anything. Well, that was a half-truth; she suspected the woman was, but that she wasn't willingly going to say anything for a good while. Eithne would have been right to think that, too; Azhure wasn't keen on telling anyone anything at any point; now would be no different.

"Stable is relative," she said. It wasn't a total lie, right? "Aaron was in Midnight. I think the disservice he's endured deserves a hasty remedy, especially since he's drifting in and out of medicated sleep and I need details now." She didn't believe he'd soon forget his experience, but she did believe that details would be retained only as fuzzy notions rather than increments in time she could use to splice together more information to take to the other Therreyans about what was happening inside those black walls.

"It won't take but a few moments. I promise, you don't have to stay and chat. Just get them to where I can talk to them. Please?"

[Gunnar Arissen]

It was hard to believe even when he thought about it, but even as a healer, he'd had to go through harsher training than these trainees that were here at the guild now.  Granted, it got him a much higher ranking, but still.  It seemed kind of wrong that these kids should even be here, but if they weren't, the guilds would be even more outmanned than they obviously already were. 

His attempts at making Jessica feel better about her lack of training totally blew up in his face, too, which was unsurprising.  That seemed to happen to him a lot with females, but at least he tried, right?  That his phone rang in the middle of their conversation hadn't helped, nor that it was Eithne (his reasoning abilities tended to suffer when she was involved), and then she was asking him for just a little more than seemed reasonable right then.  Leave Onyx to go back to Diamond, heal two people who were apparently in no real danger of dying before he got to them at a more reasonable pace, and then come back to Onyx to continue what he was doing.  Yeah, that made ZERO sense logistically, but he probably would have done it, anyway.

Then, Eithne said where Aaron had been, and Gunnar's jaw snapped shut rather suddenly, cutting off whatever he'd been about to say.  Midnight.  A Diamond operative in Midnight.  For how long?  Aaron was supposed to have been overseas dealing with some other guild issue, and it didn't really make much sense for Midnight to have gone there to get him.  Had he been there that whole time?

Jesus Christ. 

Okay, Gunnar wasn't going to argue with going and fixing whatever he could quickly, even if it was going to make things difficult here for a little while.  "Fine.  Is there anyone nearby that can give me a lift?  I have to be in and out, but I'll take care of them," he promised, and that was that.  Too bad he had no idea what he was walking into with Aaron's 'friend'.