fandom_clinic | FTEC, Thursday (4/7)

Scully's message had come several weeks ago, but between kitty-fication, the strange weekend, ~~LJ suckage~~ and various other things, Karla hadn't had a chance to see her at all.

"Hey, Scully," she said, walking into the clinic. She didn't bother with her usual greeting. It seemed out of place here. "I...got your message."

Last Friday. Once she'd found her phone again.

Edited 2011-04-07 19:58 (UTC)

Scully looked up in surprise, then smiled hopefully. "Oh, good. I heard you were a cat, so I didn't expect you to come by any time soon. Have a seat." She took out Triela's folder, and asked, "How well do you know Triela?"

Karla made a face. "Yeah, Fandom thinks it's cute, sometimes. I turned back two Sundays ago, but I didn't find my phone until last weekend."

Stupid kitty-self.

Glancing down at the folder, Karla's face fell. "Very well," she replied, quietly. "She was one of the first friends I made in Fandom. I'm sending prgress reports back to the Agency for her. Nothing physical, but..." She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Worrisome, nonetheless."

So Karla was one of the people who Triela trusted to speak for her to the Agency; good, that made this easier. Well. Simpler. None of it was easy.

"Triela's condition has deteriorated over the last four weeks," Scully said quietly, pulling out the brain scans. Bright candy colors; and slowly encroaching dark spaces. No medical degree needed to understand them, not really. "She's experiencing more lapses of memory. Based on the projections of the Agency she works for, and what I've seen so far..." She paused, still saddened by this. Always saddened. "Unless a treatment is found very soon, she's not going to be functional for much longer than another month. Two would be-- optimistic."

Edited 2011-04-07 21:59 (UTC)

"Darkness have mercy," Karla said, taking the scans and flipping through them. "We were talking about this before, but I could try some of my Black Widow Craft on her. It's risky but..." She shrugged. "It's not like we have a lot of options."

Did she sound bitter? Nooooo, surely!

Edited 2011-04-08 00:02 (UTC)

"No." Scully's tone was very sober. "We don't. How would that work?" she asked, curious but grateful for possible avenues. "Raven healed some of her physical damage, but Triela didn't want her to attempt any healing on her brain, not after we saw how painful the healing of nerve and tissue damage was for her."

"I don't Heal like Raven does," Karla said. "I don't take the damage to myself. I can repair some of the damage, depending on how extensive and long-term it was."

She gave Scully a brief explanation of how her Healing abilities worked, both in the skills of physical Healing and her Black Widow Craft.

"I don't think I could do much against the physical degradation of her mind and body," she concluded. "It's far too much. But I may be able to bulk up her defenses. Give her...a little longer."

Scully nodded slowly. Time was good. Anything that gave them leeway to look for other solutions at this point. "That should help. Or, anything to help her memory-- I know it's a concern for her." She bit her lip, and grimaced. "The main problem is she won't allow us to stop the drugs that are doing this to her; even if we could reverse the damage-- it'll just build up again. And I can't even disagree with some of her reasons, not in her physical condition right now." She sight quietly. "Every little bit helps."

"I'd need to analyze the compounds, but it's possible that after so long on those drugs that stopping their use--or even cutting down--will hurt her just as badly," Karla said, thinking back to the other-Fandom. "But I might be able to fix small things. I'm willing to try, anyway, if she is."

Scully's face fell a little. "I hope she gives you permission to do that. So far, she hasn't been able to cooperate on that front," she said. "Because of how her Conditioning works. But maybe you can analyze it from angle that won't compromise her Agency's limits. How they work, if not what they are."

Karla glowered. "That damn Agency. They use her until she's too physically and mentally tattered to be useful and then just let her--"

She cut herself off. Now was not the time. But, oh, would she have a few things to say to Hilshire when the inevitable happened.

"I know." Scully gave Karla a look full of sympathy. She knew Triela better, this had to be harder on her, and to try and function as a doctor for a friend had to be incredibly rough. "I've tried every... well, not persuasion, but argument, that I could think of, to get her to allow more intensive procedures, but. She doesn't even want to go against her Conditioning. Or desire to want to."

"It's all she's had for as long as she can remember," was all that Karla would allow herself to say in response to that. She knew some of Triela's background, but what she'd been told, she'd been told in confidence, even though it had been another world and another self ago. "It's how she defines herself. I don't know if I could give up Craft, even if I was on the brink of dying from it."

"I don't know that remembering all the things that the Conditioning is blocking would help either. Especially as she gets weaker." Scully's mouth quirked in a grimace. "She's told me you can be trusted with all of this." She fell quiet for a moment, then drew a breath. "Anyway. It's not over yet. Would you be averse to me observing the healing you attempt, so I can monitor it, and see how well it works for Triela?"

"Of course not!" Karla said quickly, shaking her head. "Please! Anything you noticed--anything that might help. You come from one discipline, I come from another. Even if nothing we do separately can help, perhaps together?"

"I hope so." Scully grimaced. "Nothing we can do will hurt her at this point, I think." Which was both freeing and depressing. "Next Thursday, maybe? Is that enough preparation time?"

"Can we make it next weekend instead," Karla asked, not foreseeing their imminent turn into children. "It will be better if we both have some time to recover. Healing this much damage is going to take a lot out of both of us."

"Of course," Scully said, voice quiet. "A couple days..." Wouldn't make much difference. "I'll be sure to let the clinic know to expect us."

Although she'd be too busy operating on dolls to follow through on that.

It was true, and Karla felt immeasurably sad about it.

Patients were seen in order of priority back home. Those who had to wait were the ones who were fine and would heal with little interference...and those who probably weren't going to get well again, no matter what was tried.

Triela...

Triela didn't fit in the first category.

"I'd appreciate that," Karla said around the lump in her throat.

"Are you going to be okay?" Scully asked gently. "This is never easy. I like and respect Triela, but I wouldn't say we're close. For you, this has got to be worse."

"I'm...not sure," Karla admitted. "I don't handle death very well. At least, not the death of people I'm close to."

Abandonment issues, she had them.

"But it's not going to keep me from doing everything I can to help her," she added, a bit more firmly. "It would be worse to stand aside and do nothing."

"Okay," Scully said quietly. "But let me know if you need a break. Or to vent. This doesn't have to be done all at once. And I don't want you to suffer with this any more than I want Raven to, or any more than you have to."

Karla gave Scully a wry grin. "I'm pretty crap at knowing my own limits," she admitted. "I just keep going until I can't anymore. It's a habit I'm trying to break, but..."

She couldn't guarantee that she'd be all that successful. Especially not with so much on the line.

Scully gave her a solemn look back, mouth twitching. And thought of having to tell Raven to stop. "I'll sit on you if you push it too far, then. Not that that's much of a threat."

But there'd be a small redheaded roadblock that wouldn't be budged, if Karla was extra un-careful.

"You sound like Ben," Karla said, thinking of her other red-headed roadblock. "There are precautions we can take, though, and supplies that will help."

Like making sure there were milkshakes for her to drink, for when she needed the calories but was too exhausted to chew. "And if Raven's there, she'll know the signs to watch out for."

Because she'd seen them, oh, roughly a billionty times already.

"Good. Now I'm tempted to ask for him to be here too," Scully said, reassured. "But we'll do that. And take it slow. Like I told Raven, we don't have to try to cure Triela all in one shot. We have... some time."

Karla laughed. "If he hears about it, he'll probably show up anyway, just for that reason," she said. "He's fussy like that."

Very fussy. It was like he'd majored in it over one summer.

"I guess the first thing to do is for me to see exactly what the damage is and then make a course of care based on that," she decided. Tapping the pictures, she added, "These are useful to have and give me some ideas, but I'm used to looking at people with Craft. I can interpret the results better that way."

Scully nodded. "I don't think Triela will have a problem with it, so that makes sense. Most of her objections are centered around the Conditioning drugs." She shook her head. "And Ben's welcome to come along, if you think it'll help, and Triela's okay with it."

"I can see if he's interested," Karla agreed. Part of her wanted to protest, but that was the same stubborn part that wanted her to do a lot of stupid things. "And even if he doesn't, Raven will happily help you sit on me, so it'll all work out."

FTEC, Thursday (4/7)

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