Log:Nursing Fail

Nursing Fail

OOC Date: January 23 2017
Location: Dacon Tower
Participants: Rheisa Dirleel, Raim Shah

Learning to live without the aid of the doctors at Wayside Medical was an experience that has been it's own kind of difficult. The filtration system of Raim's suit has its own maintenance regiment that has put a learning curve on the chiss, and likely his Togruta mate. Sleep is another issue, given that attachment to a filtration system through tubes and cords are necessary for him to remove his suit and lay in the bed. It is clear that the difficulties have been putting a strain on the once strong and self reliant Chiss, and often leads to him being tired more often than not. He has at least gotten better on his 'feet' as of late and his movements are a little more fluid than that first day.

Sleep is an issue. It's a big issue. For the entire duration of Raim's hospital stay, the big bed in Apt 75-1 remained empty. Upon its master's return, the den is again occupied, but without the sense of warmth it once held. Where once she huddled against the comforting pulse of a heartbeat, she now cowers alongside the cold rhythm of churning machines and wheezy mechanical lungs. Or did. By night three, it became too much, too unsettling for the nightmare-stricken Togruta and so on night four, she's collected Umak and set up 'camp' on the living room floor on the big, furry rug. The illusion's nearly complete with the addition of a datapad, glowing with a shoddy projection of a flickering flame. Campfire?

It's not really warm there, either. She shivers, curled around the snoozing three year old. Not sleeping. Just staring. Listening, trying to catch a sign of his awakening in enough advance to relocate back into bed.

Raim's sleep has been difficult as well, the tubes and cords necessary for keeping him alive have made it almost impossible to sleep in any position except for on his back. And so as he awakens, one glowing scarlet eye gazing up at the ceiling joined by it's illegitimate mate, it doesn't take long to find that his family is not there alongside him. He had been working the past few days at his shop on a hover chair that carried a power source large enough to power his cybernetic components, and having brought it home it rests just a few meters from the bed. The Chiss gazes in its direction through the darkness, gauging the space between before he finally grits his teeth and decides to go for it. He slips the comforter and sheets from what remains of his body and then turns over, grabbing at the furniture with his hands and pulling until he falls to the floor with a thump to begin dragging himself toward the chair.

Rheisa jolts, eyes snapping open from the sudden snooze she hadn't realized she'd slipped into. Umak grunts quietly, wriggling against her belly as he tries to burrow back into his own dream. Peeling her face off the rug, she takes a moment to make sure she's actually awake, then eeeeases away from Umak and scampers on bare feet into the bedroom to check on

"Rrraim!" she scolds aoftly and dashes in to try and interfere with his belly crawl. She fires worried glances to the length of the tubes tethering him to the bedside machine and gives the hoverchair a shove in attempts to close the distance for him. Except it's not turned on. She pushes till she's red in the face though.

"No," Raim commands flatly, leaving no room for argument. "You left me in the bed, so I will do it myself!" his voice is low, obviously not wanting to wake their sleeping child in the other room, but it is clear that he means what he says as he waves Rheisa away from him. The tubes seem to have a little bit of slack in them yet, but as Raim drags his torso across the floor with a feral sort of growling determination, they begin to pull taught. He turns his head back to gaze at the machine in frustration, one hand reaching to grab the tubes and pull to no avail. His eyes turn back to gaze hatefully at his hover chair that may as well be a mountain before he reaches down and jerks the wires free of their ports in his body. Immediately the sounds of his cybernetic lungs ceases, his yellow eye going black as he lifts first one hand to grapple the arm of his hover chair, and then the other.

"Nah!" Rheisa growls right back, organic eye flashing with panic at the sudden sound of silence and his yellow one going dark. If she can't remember how to move the chair, she can at least move him back to the starting line. And so the Togruta drops to his level, tucking her head to butt /gently/ at his left shoulder to push him back while her hands wrestle with his to break his grip on the chair and grapple him backwards to the hungry tendrils of that life support system. "I fix!"

Raim really has no choice but to go with that pushing against his shoulder from the gentle headbutt, he doesn't have any legs to position against the backward pressure. His hands grip hard to the chair for what they can but he has no hope of resisting and eventually his fingers pop loose. He growls, wasting precious oxygen as Rheisa hauls him backward. His scarlet eye dims as he becomes deprived of oxygen and as Rheisa asserts that she will fix, he grabs the cords and plugs himself back in.

Thanks to Raim's swift compliance, he doesn't end up with the blood recirculator plugged into his airway, because probably that's what Rheisa's 'fixing' would accomplish. She occupies her hands with something else instead, like pushing back his eyelid to watch the red return and keeping hold on one of his armpits to try and keep him sort of upright rather than sprawled like a squashed bug. "I get it. I can get it," she whimpers with an earnest nod. "I...I am sorry. Please? No take out. No."

Raim does not pull away from Rheisa's hand clamping to his head to lift his eyelid, and a few moments after the power is renewed to his lungs the glowing scarlet light begins to return, as does the yellow and sound of mechanical breathing. He sighs as he leans back, positioning his back against the bed, his eyes turned downward, staring hatefully at the place where his pelvis is severed. "I could have done it on my own, Rheisa," he says in Togruta.

But he shouldn't have to. Rheisa releases him from her iron grip, seemingly as exhausted from the effort as the man without lungs and rolls over on her heels to mirror his slouch alongside. She swipes a forearm across her eyes, then pushes to her feet and attempts to decode the hoverchair again. Think about it, Rhe. How does it move? It floats on the air, like bird. Right, so if it is on the ground....is not going to move. Must wake it up. So many toggles, buttons...her fingers graze fearfully over the selection, studying the symbols engraved upon each aspect of the controls with as much intensity as one decrypting a cipher. Because spelling is hard.

Her toes fidget nervously together while her upper half remains stonily calm and collected. This one, on the right arm rest. It reads 'power’.

Raim watches Rheisa with an expression that reads of weariness. Whether that be a weariness from waking up in his bed alone, knowing that his mate cannot stand to sleep next to him in bed for the night, or from his own plight of being laid low by the cruelty of fate, is anyone's guess. The cords connecting him to life won't reach, and as such he can only lean against the bed and watch as his Native girlfriend attempts to decode big city life.

Good news: the bedroom doesn't get a skylight, or more airy of a view. As Rheisa flinches away, anticipating the worst, the chair chirps and hums to life. The air pulsates beneath it, tickling the tips of her toes, and it rises so gracefully to attention. A relieved smile breaks out across her features and she rewards the chair with many pats and words of gratitude. Now that it's awake, she must lead it to its rider. She turns to flank it, resting first one, then the other arm awkwardly atop the manual control pads (aka arm rests). Which one? The chair suddenly jumps back by a couple inches and she sucks in a nervous hiss. Wrong way! Her fingers curl gingerly around, applying a geeeentle pressure in the opposite direction. Then another. And another.

It might be following a terrible, zig-zagged course to cross just 2 meter's distance, but it eventually gets there. And Rheisa couldn't be more proud of herself. Ya know. If she hadn't left Raim to have the bed for himself thus far tonight.

Raim crawls forward once the chair is within reach, his hands lifting to find the arms of the chair and then to begin pulling himself upward. It is a struggle, and one that makes him grunt and growl but he does manage to pull himself into the seat. A few quick changes with now tired hands, despite having just woken up, and the chair's power source is powering Raim as well. His eyes glance toward Rheisa and he says, "Where did you and Umak go?"

Rheisa steps back, giving Raim the literal and figurative space to get himself sorted out in the chair. She watches him, though, studying the sequence of everything his hands are doing. Again. Maybe it'll stick this time 'round? "Just there," her left arm points in the direction of the living room, on the other side of the wall and expression wilts back into fretting mode. Or maybe it's guilt. "Is quiet. Just for little while. Hard for sleeps to come and I w-worry I make too much noises." A twitching, thrashing, whimpering 'gruta probably /isn't/ the easiest thing to sleep next to, truth be told, and her dreamscape has been full of violent things. Like Tarion.

"So is it just me that you can't stand to be next to?" Raim asks bluntly. "Is my..." He gestures self loathingly to his torso that rests flatly in the chair. "Is all of this too much for you? You cannot feel for me as you had?" Raim says these things toward Rheisa, but even she should be able to tell that it is a projection of his feelings and worries about himself than it is a judgement of her.

Rheisa shrinks a small step back, slapped by the abrasive tone. Unshed tears glimmer in her eyes and she musters as defensively spiteful a look as she can to arm herself against his pain-induced accusations. "Maybe I worry that Tarion is right," she cuts back then, "and is only me who can prrrotect Umak and me now," squaring her shoulders, turns her back to rifle through the bedsheets, reclaim her robe, and stuffs herself into it with flustered hands. It takes two tries to tie the band. "Maybe is better if you stay with Dr Kal and Tosha. At least there, you have someone who knows things and isn't stupid like ME!"

Time to test that hoverchair's speed function now, as she starts to march out of the bedroom, relying solely on her sixth sense to guide her feet, since the eyes are temporarily disabled by weepy woman syndrome.

Regret immediately smacks Raim in the face as he sees the hurt in Rheisa's eyes. "Rheisa," he says as she begins to walk away. "Rheisa please..." He does follow her in the hover chair, the thing soundless as it zooms along in her wake. He reaches for her, trying desperately to grab at her hand before she makes it out of the room. If he is successful he will simply hold her wrist in his hand, trying to gently pull her back to face him. "I am sorry..." he says. "Please do not go."

Raim tries to pull Rheisa in a position to where she must look him in the eyes, see the pain that he is going through that is worn plainly upon his features. He reaches a hand to cup at her cheek and he shakes his head. "Yeh ehk du behm," he says, lowering his forehead to touch her hand where she will be able to feel the clammy coldness that has taken the half of a chiss over.

She doesn't need to feel the clammy. She doesn't want to feel the clammy. She's felt it for three and a half nights when every time she'd forget and roll over, it was there. Or she'd get snared by equipment and need every ounce of self control to not flail and scream her way free of a loop of this or that.

What's worse than the clammy though is knowing that underneath the clammy is a real person with real feelings, who /is/ suffering and doesn't exactly WANT to be the clammy or the snare. Rheisa puts up just enough resistance to the downward pull to give Raim some decent physical therapy and clunks to her knees at last with the stiff, staggering drop of a defeated zombie. She stays there where she's held, eyelids cracked open just enough to meet the look she knows is trying to burn its way through her. "Det behm baijhet," she replies softly.