Editing Bleeding Out (Warhammer High) (section)

===The Night Staff===

One of the staff of the intensive care unit poked his head into the break room and coughed discreetly.  “Grant?  You awake?”

“Naturally,” one of the nursing staff replied, glancing over his slate.  “Which room?”

“Not a call, just a heads-up.  Your screening came back negative.  You’re cleared for the isolation wing.”  Grant raised his eyebrows and very carefully set the slate down.

“Really?  Which shift?”

“Midnight, if you can make it.”

“Count on it.  Tonight?”

“Yeah, you might want to get over there.  Meet the Treasury guys.”

“Sure.”  Grant stood, cricking his back.  “Hey, why didn’t you get past the screening?”

“Dad’s in the Ahmaku League.”

Grant blinked.  “It’s a fucking video game club.”

“And they took sponsorship money from a member of the Council once.  That’s all it takes.”

“That has to be,” Grant grumbled, hitching his scrubs up and attaching his mask, “the dumbest background screening ever.”

“I’ll say.  You got through it.”  Grant shot the other nurse a cold stare and shouldered past him.

“Cards?” he asked, holding his hand out.  The other nurse dropped a few small, plastic squares in his hands, color-coded for the medicines on them.  Grant eyes each one as he walked down to the isolation ward, pausing as he reached the elevator.  “Seriously?  Orange?  What the fuck?”

“Degenerative lung disorder.  BEFORE she was shot.”

“Yikes,” Grant mumbled.

Both men entered the elevator, Grant still shuffling the cards.  “How many active ingredients were in that inhaler?” he asked in surprise, reading off chemical codes he certainly hadn’t seen on his grad school application.

“Something like twenty-eight in the primary, plus two more in the emergency.  She carried two.”

“Well, that’ll be fun.  How do I look?”  Grant asked, holding his arms out.

“She can’t tell,” the other nurse quipped.  Grant stared at him.

“Are you dumb?”

“Yeah, that…yeah.  Good luck,” the nurse said, holding the door open as Grant walked out, letting the door close behind him.  Grant glanced from side to side, taking in the number of guards in the hallway with a shiver of apprehension.  No mere beehives these, they were wearing the green, black, and white of Death Guard serfs, several of whom were even wearing the skull masks.  As one, they had turned to look at him as he stepped off the elevator, and when they sensed his hesitation, at least a fifth had, completely without hesitation, drawn or gripped sidearms.

Grant shook his head, unlocking his legs.  With a glance at the flags on the doors of the relatively widely-spaced rooms, he found his destination.  The process was accelerated somewhat by the cluster of doctors outside, some of whom were looking nervously at the Guards.  He walked down the hall, both hands on the cards, his mind shifting into professional mode.

The cluster of doctors outside the sitting room were busy arguing amongst themselves when Grant walked up.  “No, no, the cloned organ will be safer despite the tissue scarring, specifically BECAUSE the immunosuppression from her first operation is in effect,” one doctor argued, gesturing angrily at the fistful of documents in his hands.

“We agree that cloning it in is the answer, but shouldn’t we ask what SHE wants?  Wouldn’t an augmetic lung that has no necrotic damage after a month be more conducive to her standards of living?” another asked with strained patience.

“If Lady Morticia were capable of telling us, she would.  In the meantime, a machine is breathing for her.  We don’t have time to debate,” the first one said, as Grant slipped by into the waiting room.

That room was full of people too.  A pair of Treasury agents and a few more Death Guard serfs were lingering near the door, one of them speaking quietly into his collar radio.  On the chairs in the center of the room were a few piles of detritus.  Clearly, someone had made the room their home.  A few piles of get-well-soon cards and other knickknacks were stacked on the end tables of the couches near the walls of the rooms, and…standing next to the observation window was a man in full Power Armor.

Grant pulled his eyes away and walked straight up to the door of the isolation room, grabbing a pair of sterilized covers from the box at the door.  Snugging them over his face and hair, he reached for the door handle.

“One moment, sir,” a raspy voice next to him said.  Grant turned to see one of the Treasury agents waving a card scanner.  “Let me see your ID card.”

The young nurse held out the card, and the Treasury agent swiped the reader over the barcode.  Glancing at the little machine, he nodded once.  “Go on in.”

“Thanks,” Grant said crisply.  Didn’t he have to use his ID to enter the elevator anyway?  Pushing the door open, he walked into the little room beyond, looking for his patient.

He didn’t have to look far.  Lady Morticia was on the only bed in the room, plugged into about seven different machines, including two respiratory systems and a heart stabilizer.  A woman in scrubs, probably a new ICU doctor, was glancing over the readouts from the machines and jotting them down.  The Lady herself was out cold, of course.  Grant looked sidelong at the chemicals on her IV.  Several different sedatives and antibiotics, of course, and one he didn’t recognize.  The medicine for her respiratory disease, maybe?

“Doctor.  How does she look?”  Grant asked, slipping the cards in his scrubs pocket.

“Stable, poor thing,” the doctor said, glancing over her shoulder.  “Don’t make eye contact with the man at the window.  Lord Mortarion doesn’t like the fact that he can’t come in.”

“L-lord Mortarion?”  Grant stammered, his fists clenching in sudden fear.

“Yeah.  Didn’t you wonder why there were Death Guard troops in the hallway?” the doctor asked, stepping back from the bed.  She slid her dataslate back into its hermetic bag and sealed it.  “What do you need here?”

“I was supposed to match her IV contents to the prescription cards,” Grant said, fumbling the cards back out.

“All right, I’ll leave you to it.”  The doctor left the room, speaking a few words outside the door to Lord Mortarion, who stirred from his view of the room long enough to respond.  Grant glanced over the girl on the table, and gingerly ran his fingers over the IV line.

“Okay…blue, blue, green, blue, white, red, orange.  Looks right,” he said aloud, trying to suppress his nerves.  He fanned the cards out over the table under the IV, glancing them over.  “…Vantercin.  Wow.”  He looked over at the comatose girl again, shaking his head, and slipped the seven cards into the pocket hanging off the IV tree.  “All right, Lady Morticia, be back soon.”

“…mgh,” she murmured faintly.  Grant started.

“Lady Morticia?” he asked.

“…ow,” she managed, eyes still shut.  Grant’s jaw dropped.  He stared at the sedative bag on the tree.  It was full.  He stepped to her side, his heart pounding.  He ran a nitrile-clad finger over her neck below the IV point, and felt her pulse: strong, slow, but very slightly faster than it had been.  He stared at the heart rate monitor, to confirm his results.  She was waking up.

“Fuck, what are you made of, girl,” he muttered.  “There’s enough sedative in your system to put a wrestler in a coma.”  He twisted the dial on the IV a bit, carefully tweaking the spigots on the bags to increase the dosage of the sedative alone.  Her facial muscles twitched a bit, then slackened as the sedative hit her system.  She settled back into the bed, briefly, then cracked her eyes open.

“…wherr am I,” she slurred.  Grant’s pulse spiked as he fumbled for an answer.

“Startseite hospital, Lady Morticia.  Intensive Care.”

“Whysit bright,” she said.

“Ah, we had the lights on so we could attend the equipment, my Lady.”

“Who…whoshotme,” she mumbled, her gray eyes peeking out from beneath her unkempt hair.

“A sniper.  They caught him.”  Grant heard a loud tapping on the glass behind him and he nearly jumped out of his skin.  He glanced over his shoulder, and saw Mortarion glaring at him through the glass.  He walked over quickly, pressing the talk button next to the window.

“She’s fine, my Lord, the sedative is just starting to wear off.  I’m going to increase the dosage so she can get some sleep,” Grant said quickly.

“She’s awake?  She can talk?”  Mortarion asked, his throaty rumble shaking the glass.

“Not for long, sir, she’s still very dizzy from the sedatives.  Please, let her rest,” Grant said.

“I want to talk to her.”

“Naturally, my Lord, but she’s in no shape for it.  She’s still missing a lung.”

Mortarion stared at the young nurse, his jaw flexing.  “Fine.  Fine.  Tell her I’m…I’m here for her.”

“Of course I will, my Lord,” Grant said, backing up with a small bow.  He walked back to the girl in the bed, her father’s grey eyes burning into his back.  “Lady Morticia, I’m going to increase the dose a bit, so you can grab some sleep.  All right?”

“Legs asleep…already,” Morticia, said gamely, trying to lift her head to see her limbs.  Her muscles were too slack to allow it, and she sank back into the bed with a groan.  “Hard…to talk…”

“Your lung is missing, my Lady, you’re on a respirator,” Grant said, examining the bag.  He discreetly pressed the call button next to the bed as he did so.

“Wheredi…get hit…” she managed.

“Straight through the back, my Lady,” Grant said, before a gaggle of doctors burst through the door, rushing over to the bed.

“Grant what the HELL did you do?” one hissed, elbowing the nurse aside, and nearly sending him into the IV tree.  At the last second, he managed to grab the metal rail of the bed and stabilize himself.  He pulled himself straight up, glaring at the doctor.

“Nothing, SIR.  The sedative dose was too small.”

“Whass going on?”  Morticia asked, her eyes glassy and unfocussed.  The doctors’ voices overlapped each other as they each tried to explain, their hasty declarations ranging from the complex to the patronizingly soothing.

“Enough,” the Head of Surgery declared, her voice slicing through the babble.  “Doctor Morgan, increase her dosage and let the Lady sleep.”

“I did already,” Grant said tightly, pointing at the IV tree behind him.  A dozen pairs of eyes examined the bags of medicine, confirming the claim.  He leaned past the cluster of doctors to look the Death Guard Lady in the eyes.  “Madam, your father wants you to know that he’s here for you.  OK?  He’s at the window, looking over you.”

“Dad?” she asked weakly.

“That’s right.  He’s here, all right?  And he’ll try to be here when you wake up next, OK?”  Grant said, glancing over at the window.  Mortarion nodded, confirming Grant's suspicions about the Primarch’s hearing.

“…okay,” she said weakly, as her eyes slipped back shut.  The heart rate monitor slowly spun its rhythm down as the girl drifted back off to sleep.

“Doctors, I would appreciate it if one of you could tell me what just happened,” Mortarion said.  The tone in his voice could have frozen magma.  The doctors all looked at each other, trying to find a volunteer.

“Her tolerance for the sedative is substantially higher than it was when she first went under, my Lord,” one of them finally said, holding the Talk button down.

“Well, that’s Progenitor biology for you,” Mortarion rumbled.  “Now, let her sleep.”

“Of course, my Lord,” the Doctor said, as the group filed out.  Grant was last out, closing the door and dimming the lights as he did so.  Mortarion waited by the window, his arms crossed.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Her body is adapting to the sedatives we’re using, my Lord,” one of the doctors admitted.  “It’s…unnaturally fast.  There should be no way-”

“She’s not human, doctor, she is more than human, and I want to know what our options are,” Mortarion interrupted, staring sideways through the glass at his sleeping daughter.

“Few, Lord.  A different sedative, perhaps?” the doctor offered.  “But we need to decide whether to give her a cloned lung or an augmetic once.  Immediately.  Or we won’t be able to sedate her during the surgery.”

Mortarion huffed with impatience.  “And what do you recommend?”

“I recommend a cloned-in lung, Lord.  Much lower chance of rejection,” the doctor said, to which half the room grumbled or shook their heads.

“Then do it.”  Mortarion turned back to the room, his superhuman eyes staring at his sleeping daughter for a long moment before he sighed, and sank into a reinforced chair next to the window.  “Will she wake up again?”

“I increased her dosage such that she should stay under for another day or so, my Lord, but the dosage she had should have done it too, so…” Grant volunteered, trailing off uncomfortably.

“Fine.”  Mortarion rubbed his eyes, weary from the day’s vigil.  “…I should be getting home.  Let me know if anything changes.”

“Of course,” one of the doctors said, allowing the Power-Armored giant to walk out of the room.  A few seconds of silence passed, before the collection of doctors dispersed, some into Morticia’s room to check on her, the rest either following the Death Guard out or heading down the hall to check on other patients.

And unseen by his target, one of the Death Guard serfs who had observed the exchange silently scanned Grant, locking him into memory.