And Finally, Absolution

[Prennis Keeoli]

{ Location: Somewhere in Chasin City, Commenor }​

{ Equipment: Scrubs, basic medkit }​

{ Tag: [member="Noah Corek"] }​

~ † ~​

She had just gone through an unbroken string of lectures and laboratories only a few hours prior, but she had long forgotten today was still today. She tended to get caught up every time she volunteered in the free, full-service clinic.

It was mostly student run by all levels of learners from the various medicine departments at UoC (University of Commenor): undergrad, graduate, and doctorate students studying biomed, epidemiology, hospitalism, toxicology, nursing, and more. They all intersected here, bound by the opportunity and desire to help the waning numbers of the Commenori homeless. It was a wholly collaborative experience, for what skills one individual lacked another would offer.

It was also truly transformative. Of course, it was a lot of hard work--as evidenced by how Prennis would temporarily forget what day it was. She forgot, too, that she was volunteering for swathes of time she spent with the needy, mostly because they changed her rather than just the other way around.

But even the best, most rewarding of jobs got to their doers every once in a while, not that the state of some of these beings was what got to her now. No, rather, the reality of her actions stoked up the fires of guilt in her gut. Her stomach churned, not at the blood she meticulously drew, but at the raw memories of Doctor Terrani.

She had called Matlock over, another training nurse, to relieve her as she stepped out into the hall. As she left, she peeled off and threw away her microsensory gloves, and then doubled over a cleared table out in the corridor.

People, help the people.

That had been her medical mantra through her professional career with the Order, from beginning to end. In all actuality, it was some miracle that such a conviction lived on in the other empire for so long, but, somehow, it did.

A simple ideology, no matter how moral, turned out not to be enough, though. The things she had done--the things she had not been able to do and thus left undone... She had done her best, but it wasn't good enough and it still haunted her.

One instance stood out immediately from all others: all those innocents on Sullust she had cleared for grueling work--

"Lia'ry, are you listening? That's like the third time I've--" Melfina. Prennis straightened up and turned towards the almost-doctor, who now appeared shocked. "Oh goddess, are you crying?"

"What?" Prenn rose her hand instinctively to her cheek and wiped under her eye with her fore- and middle fingers. She pulled them back and looked at them, before whiping them on her scrubs and glancing back up to Melfina. "U-uh, no. My eyes just water when I'm really tired."

"Go home then," she almost cut off her friend, voice a little harsher than she likely meant for it to be. "We got it. See you tomorrow." The Rutian Twi'lek made a shooing gesture, though she had a gentle and understanding smile on her face.

There was no point in arguing with her classmate. Not only was Melfina the only one who actually liked her, but Prenn had already committed to the sleep deprivation lie. Therefore, she only nodded before turning down the hall towards the locker rooms. When there, she unlocked her assigned cubby, took out her leather jacket--tanned, as not to remind her any more of her past--as well as her nurse's tote. She shrugged on the former and slung the latter over her shoulder, and pushed out to the street through the back door.

She was halfway though silently cursing herself for apparently lying so well before an authentic yawn came over her. Covering her mouth with her hand and then pulling up her hood when she realized it was sprinkling, she walked out from under the clinic awning. Then she started down the sidewalk she knew from weeks of experience would lead her back to her apartment near campus, her holographic disguise matrix safe from the rain under her scrub blouse and clipped to her belt.

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Prennis Keeoli"]

Noah Corek was many things but the one thing he pride himself on not being was arrogant. So he was not reluctant to admit that him getting stabbed was something he didn't see coming. Looking down at his abdomen Noah grimaced as he saw the handle move with every twitch of his muscles and intake of breath. Noah had been on Commenor to collect some intel on the Empire but of course that's not the way it went down. He arrived at the meeting point to find his contact dead and that's when it happened, he was jumped, for a lack of a better term.

The first assailant had shot at him with the blaster pistol, though he hadn't expected Noah to be wearing full phrik plate armor and was surprised when the bolt was shrugged off. Though his surprise didn't last long before Noah put two slugs through his chest. The second attacker attempted to over power him, only to received a neck chop and then a snapped neck. It was the third and final attacker who got Noah. He was smarter and waited for Noah to relax after the attack before he struck. He stabbed Noah in a gap in his armor but his victory was short-lived before Noah's knife found his way into her sternum.

That had been a little over a quarter of an hour ago and Noah was now struggling to drag himself through the dark and dank alley. Almost immediately after taking stock of the wound he had looked up the nearest clinic on the Holonet and was relieved to find that there was a nearby free clinic. Noah stumbled and smacked straight into a trashcan, the sound of metal striking metal almost as loud as the groan of pain that resulted from the jostling. Standing once again Noah thought he caught sight of some sort of doctor at the end of the alley. "Help!"

 

[Prennis Keeoli]

At the sudden call, Prennis's eyes snapped up from her datapad watch--texting? For a quick moment, she swept her gaze around the sidewalk and street before glancing into the alleyway off to her left. "Oh--!" was all she was able to exclaim as she leapt into action and all but sprinted to the man. She had actually barely even began to process what was wrong as she went to support half of the man's body weight with her arm under his and across his back, even as blood began to soak onto her skin.

They stumbled together across the street and into the clinic, leaving blood smears on the glass front door. "Prenn, I thought I--?"

She cut off Melfina. "Is Trauma open?" she asked about the specialized ER room, heavily insinuating an order instead as she led on down the hall in the direction of said room, occupied or not. Fortunately, it wasn't. "I need an EKG, AXR, and full blood work five minutes ago." A few nurses had begun to flock around her and Noah. They followed the two into the trauma room, and a male nurse then helped lower Noah into the empty treatment bed.

"You'll be okay, sir," she cooed as warmly as she could with the urgency that had settled over her. Then she asked, "Know your blood type?" more to gauge if Noah was responsive at the point than for the answer. She could just as easily use a handscanner to figure that much out; in fact, one of the nurses was running both the abdominal x-ray right now. Thus, answered or not, the very same nurse soon foisted the tablet on Prennis and ran off in search of a compatible blood pack. So, to another, she said, "Left abdominal trauma. Get me a laparoscope."

Then she turned back to the injured. "I need to have a quick look inside to make sure your organs are alright." It was a far cry from asking for permission, but she always had thought it polite to keep the patient appraised to procedures even if they had little to no idea what the medical jargon meant. At the very least, the talking--about something--kept the person awake and aware, with her, which was in most cases much more preferable than the alternative.

And thankfully they were: somehow none had been grazed. That left only the nicked veins to be seared closed and the entire wound area to be sterilized and bandaged. After she and her fellow nurses were finished, she was left in the room. Her shoulders slumped out of suddenly used up adrenaline as she stood at the end of Noah's--still a mystery man--bed, calmly filling out his charts while his blood transfusion continued.

~ † ~​

[member="Noah Corek"]​

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Prennis Keeoli"]

Noah groaned as he opened his eyes and was attack once again. Except this time instead of it being a knife it was the overhead fluorescent lights. "Can we dim the fucking lights please? I feel like it is going to give me a migraine." Noah spoke, well more grunted out, to anyone who would listen. Groaning once again, now from the his injury, Noah sat himself up and half glared and half glanced toward the foot of the bed to the woman who was standing there. Blonde, a little below being thirty, much shorter than him and obviously extremely tired.

"Don't know who looks worse right now Doc, me or you. Looks like you haven't slept in a couple of days doctor. That wouldn't be because of me would it?" Noah asked as he finished pushing himself up and leaned back into the frame of the bed so he could look the woman in the eye. "Alright I need a couple of things Doc. First I need all the gear that you guys obviously took off me when you were working on me. That means my armor, my rifle, my pistols and my knives. Secondly I need to know the prognosis and how long you suggest I rest. Third where exactly am I?" Noah asked most of his with intensity to make sure that Prennis understood just how serious he was.

 

[Prennis Keeoli]

Hearing the patient's mumbled request, another nurse-in-training that had been watching over the drip but was now going to leave, hit the lights and they dimmed. It wasn't a lot, however, as Prennis still needed to do her work, but it was better than turning a deaf ear to the man.

Upon hearing the man for herself, however--first the shifting in bed and then his voice addressing her much more clearly--Prennis chuckled. "Probably me, sir," she said, still focused on the datapad as she recorded that he had woken up. Truthfully, she had not had a chance to look in a mirror for the past few hours, so she didn't know that for sure, but she certainly didn't want to tell him that he looked worse. That would be bad bedside manner even if it was a lie, but, honestly, the man's injury hadn't been that bad relative to what she thought it was at first. Plus, she and her fellows had cleaned it up pretty nicely for him.

Then the misnomer threw her through a loop as she was triggered into remembering what she had left behind. She stared for a beat longer than she had meant to at the softly glowing screen, but she was able to tear her focus away and gently correct him as she began to look up. "Nurse Prennis, actually."

When she saw him, her breath caught in her throat--only for a moment, though. There was absolutely no way that he would recognize her this way, in her present disguise. "Uh, y-yes, that's all stored in the locker room down the hall," she replied to his first order of business. No nonsense. It was like treating a stormtrooper.

No! Mentally, she shook her head. You're free now. Don't go back there, S'ona.

Second. Prognosis? She smiled kindly, approaching the end of the bed to slip the datapad back into its holster in the footboard. "I expect a full recovery. You're lucky that none of your organs were perforated." She paused. Not everyone could process medical words as quickly as she could. "I'd say four days bedrest. We're at a clinic." Then it occurred to Prennis that this man might have forgotten the city, or even the planet, they were on. "In Chasin City, on Commenor. This clinic's mostly equipt for quick procedures--vaccinations, check-ups, minor injuries--not in-patient care. I'm glad we had enough laying around to stabilize you here, but you might want to be transferred over to Mercy Hospital. I can call an ambulance."

~ † ~​

[member="Noah Corek"]​