2019-12-30 - Sometimes It's Best Not To Know

It was a struggle by itself to get out of the Jeep with a crutch, and enter Addington Memorial's proper after setting an appointment to see Dr. Hailey Stevenson, because she's polite and never fails to set one when she intends to see someone in their place of work. Her left foot is encased in bandages and gauze, with waterproof bindings on top of it in an attempt to keep it away from the elements. A futile endeavor at best, when she's inundated by an unnatural chill that shows in the manner in which she is dressed - she's bundled up in Arctic-grade gear, complete with a scarf that hides most of her face and a hat pulled low on her forehead. She wears gloves, a hand clutching the crutch she is leaning against as she limps towards the doors.

She nearly gets into an accident when a car pulls up, and stops short just in time - had she not been wearing an over-the-counter hearing aid (thank god for Amazon Prime), she wouldn't have heard it coming at all and would have secured herself an actual hospital stay. With a disgruntled look flashed at the driver, she proceeds to head inside.

Isabella stops at the counter, tells the nurse on duty that she has an appointment - to see to a foot injury, as well as ruptured eardrums. There's also a lovely purple-and-black bruise on her cheek, but compared to the rest of her aches and pains, it's minor. And then she proceeds to wait until the doctor can see her.

As is her custom, Hailey has that end-of-shift look about her. Maybe that's just how she always looks? Like, her hair is flyaway and there are a couple of splatters of don't-ask-whats on her scrubs, but she's in one piece, so she's got that going for her. No bruises, no broken bones, just busy-ness that sees her swinging around the corner to the nurse's station in due time to be handed the paperwork that the nurse totally had Isabella fill out. After a quick glance over all this, she's looking up and into the waiting room to ask, "Reede? Hi, I'm Doctor Stevenson." Blink. "Oh, we've met. Hi. Welcome back."

And promptly head-tilts toward one of the exam rooms, though a glance drops down to the crutch-necessitating injury. "Do you want me to get you a chair? Ahm, a wheelchair?" There's one, like, right here in this convenient hallway, and she drops her chart-free hand on to the thing invitingly.

"Thanks, Dr. Stevenson," Isabella says, and while it's almost irrational, she looks both sheepish and apologetic to be in the hospital. Again. This really needs to stop happening. She rises from her seat to greet the doctor properly, and she extends a hand for a shake. "It's good to see you again. How's your day?" Busy, considering her appearance, but she asks it regardless. Reaching for her crutch and favoring her right side, she pauses at the offer of the wheelchair and in spite of herself (and her stupid reckless pride), she's unable to keep the relief off her face. "That would be great," she confesses, hints of embarrassment bleeding into her tone.

Whenever she's allowed, she'll take a seat on the wheelchair, and sets the crutch across her lap.

"Almost over," is Hailey's chirpy answer for the quality of her day. Like most adult humans, end-of-shift is a highlight for Hailey, and she can see that highlight at the end of the tunnel! She swings the chair on around and lets Isabella get settled for the short, bumpy trip down the hallway and into one of those little exam rooms. "The tile in here could use some work, sorry for the bu-bu-bumps," she chatters along the way, steering wide around a rough spot in the doorway before braking at a paper-covered bedside with an, "Eerrt," noise out the side of her mouth. Like the sound of brakes squealing.

Anyway. "So, have a seat, Miss Reede, and let's see if we can figure out what ails ya, shall we? Did you... fail at sledding? Or ice-skating?"

Oh god, everything hurts. Isabella manages to lock her jaw to prevent herself from letting out a squeak when she's jostled by the bumpy ride, and attempts to keep her injured foot off the rest and nearly takes out another person when it brushes past the back of someone's knee in passing. It's crowded in the hospital, as usual. "Sorry, sorry!" she exclaims as she and Hailey wheel past towards the examination room. Getting there draws a sigh of relief.

The brake-squealing noise does put a faint grin on her lips, though. It's adorable.

She stands up slowly and settles into the examination bed, leaning the crutch to the side of her. "Uh." She hesitates, but she remembers their last conversation and decides to go for it. "Well, if I failed at anything, it's using common sense," she tells the doctor somewhat dryly, but truthfully. After another pause, she continues with, "I got pulled in some dangerous snow game involving some amorphous predators and these were because I was cheating. An icicle went through my foot, and...I guess there were some birds that were screaming very loudly, enough to rupture my eardrums. I think that's what happened, anyway?" She turns her head to show Hailey the hearing aid lodged in her left ear.

"That," begins Hailey importantly after the bit about common sense, "is an ailment that afflicts many." She quiets after dragging a stool over next to the bed, listening to the tale of predators and icicles with lifted brows, large eyes landing on the foot that needed the crutch with an ahhh of enlightenment. Then she's leaning forward, looking at the hearing aid with a sympathetic crumple to her forehead. "That sounds awful. I'm sorry for you." She really is, it's not just lip-service.

"Let's start with your ear. Then, if we need to page someone, we'll be ahead of the game, right?" There are tools for this kinda thing already staged in the room, so she beckons at Isabella with one hand and collects the little flash-light-mirror-stick-thingie with the other, for looking in ears. "Does it hurt? Your ear, I mean?"

"Desperation is what it is," Isabella tells Hailey quietly. "I honestly need to stop losing my head when other people are involved in unfamiliar situations. I should be a little better than that." It isn't as if isn't aware - the young woman dives for a living, panicking under water is simply not an option. But it's difficult to apply the same principle when there are actual monsters out to get her friends, who were also dying from hypothermia in the process.

She removes the hearing aid dutifully as Hailey offers to check her ears. "I have a bit of tinnitus," she confesses. "There's a persistent ringing, it hasn't gone away. And it hurts - and it's uncomfortable. But I'm more worried about...not hearing very well." There are ways around it - modern technology is great, if one is willing to pay for it, but the discomfort on its own had nearly driven her to drink another packet of the chicken soup again. It's the fact that she doesn't want to tempt fate any further that stays her typical recklessness.

After a pause, she ventures. "I also wanted to ask about...your old job. With Doctor Marshall."

See, that's a good way to get stabbed in the ear by the pokey thing. Hailey follows along well enough while Isabella explains about the desperation and the ringing in her ears that it wrought, all while peering inside Isabella's ear-hole - and then jumps a startled jerk after the pause and the comment that chases it. "Ahhhhm. Okay. You weren't - " She pauses, carefully taking the thingie out of Isabella's ear and dropping it over on the tray where all that crap goes. "Hold on. I'm gonna - " Walk over to the little phone on the wall and ask for a consultation from the ear-doctors. Focus is important.

With that done, she looks back at Isabella, head tilted, and finishes the thought that she abridged a moment ago. "You weren't a patient there, were you? Like, you're not another Steve trying to go back or whatever?" Based on the perched-on-toes posture she's assuming, there's a good chance Hailey will just run away if the answer comes back as a yes.

Oh god, everything hurts.

Isabella winces at the jerk; her eyes brighten with additional moisture, but at least she isn't outright crying on the examination bed because that would be embarrassing and she's had enough of that this week. She does blink rapidly to hold them at bay and watches as Hailey rises from where she has seated to get to the phone to consult with someone. There's no wariness at her observation, but she is curious about the young doctor; how she ended up here, and why she left the Asylum.

Questions she doesn't ask - not yet, anyway. But when Hailey asks a question in turn, she shakes her head. "No," she confesses. "I met a couple of people who were patients there, but I wasn't a patient myself. There was a..." She struggles with it, the gray field blanketing the back of her mind, littered by hazy shadows and vague, formless shapes. "....I...think...I...visited...once? But I'm not sure. I..." She attempts to focus. "...do you remember any of your coworkers? While you were there?"

"No." Hailey says that whip-quick. She shakes her head to underscore the certainty of that single word: no. "Only Doctor Marshall and he's," she takes a deep breath, looking more through Isabella for a moment than at her, "dead. Or something." Then she reattaches her attention to Isabella properly, scooting her stool on back over with her gaze fixed on the icicle-foot. "I'm gonna unwrap this and poke at it a little bit, okay? Just put your foot up here." She clap-slaps the top of the bed, indicating where said foot should be relocated.

Also, with an apologetic smile, she tacks on, "It's easier to just forget about that place. And better. Easier and better."

"I heard from another patient that he tries not to think about that place, also," Isabella tells Hailey. "That he felt that thinking about it was...corrosive, was the term he used. On other things." There's a searching look delivered onto the doctor's face as she hears the words, wondering if what she says makes sense, or some manner of confirmation. Alexander had told her that she didn't seem to remember much of her time there, also. Perhaps there was an actual correlation? "I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry, but Alexander...." She hesitates. "...someone he cared about was attached to the place. Or rather, someone who was connected to a patient there. I'm just trying to help him on that end. I've tried to convince him before not to keep pursuing it, but he's...really stubborn when he wants to be." Hints of frustration, there, but also unmitigated fondness. "So I figured if I can't do that, I might as well try and see if I can figure out what he's actually getting into, here."

There's a sigh. "From what I hear, it's really easy to forget about that place," she tells her, but she dutifully helps the doctor lift her foot so she can unwrap and inspect it. "Why did you leave?" she finally asks, her eyes on Hailey's face. "I heard you were awarded a scholarship or a grant or some kind."

There's a sad-looking shake of Hailey's head when Isabella talks about Alexander's quest. So she stays away from that subject entirely, focusing instead on unwrapping the damaged foot. "Corrosive is an interesting word for it. I never thought about it hard enough to come up with one, but yes. I agree. You can tell him that I agree." Here, she exchanges the sad smile for a quick, helpfully pleasant one.

It's short-lived, that smile, going away when the questions persist. Her frown is tinged with thoughtfulness while she pokes and prods at Isabella's foot. "Because Doctor Marshall died," she answers for having left. "Yes, that's true. A grant. For school. I don't - " She manages not to bend Isabella's foot in a terribly uncomfortable way, but she probably doesn't need to pinch the woman's toes as hard as she is in the curl of her fist. Apologetically, "I'm not trying to remember that place, Miss Reede. It wants to be forgotten. I think it should get what it wants."

"I'll let him know," Isabella promises simply, though she's still watching Hailey's face intently - the flicker of disparate emotions playing over striking blue-green eyes and a face that promises no actual hostility or even malice. There are hints of a struggle there, in her inward attempts to reconcile what she heard about the Asylum with what she is learning and seeing at the present moment.

Poked and prodded, she manages to stifle a groan when her toes are pinched. Oh god, everything hurts. Still, the way she puts it is interesting enough - as if the facility itself were sentient in some way.

"Why do you think that is?" she wonders. "That it wants to be forgotten? I'm not going to...I'm wondering about your personal opinion."

"I don't." Hailey shakes her head quickly, taking a breath that prepares to speak... then holding it in, expelling it through her nose instead of making words with it. She leaves off the toes, dropping her hand back over to the chart, starting for her pen and then hesitating before she actually does anything with. "I don't think about why that is. It's not a healthy thing to do to yourself." Her attention goes back-and-forth between the injured foot and Isabella's eyes, finally leaving her frowning and tapping the pen irritatingly on the edge of the clipboard.

"Trying to remember, trying to understand - it's self-destructive, Miss Reede. It won't make you happy. It will just make you confused and sorry that you tried." Hastily, she adds, "I'm sorry to have to say that, but it's really very true. I'm sorry." Did she say that already? Well, she says it again, just to be sure it lands.

She gauges Hailey's remarks quietly as she fiddles with the pen, examines her foot - there's a hole in it, but it's surprisingly well-tended to; at the very least, it hasn't developed an infection. Alexander had done a good job applying first aid and whatever treatment necessary to prevent the injury from getting worse. Isabella glances down at the wounded appendage with a grimace - under the harsh white lights of the examination room, it looks awful; bruising has mottled around the opening.

"I believe you," she says at last, lifting her head up to look at the doctor directly. "Please don't be sorry. I did ask for your opinion. For what it's worth, I think your profession suits you - trying to save us nosy idiots from ourselves, at most, and discouraging us from foolhardiness at the least." She exhales quietly. "So what's your prognosis, doctor? Am I going to live? Is the damage to my ears permanent?" God, she hopes not.

"Do you think so?" asks Hailey in the kind of tone that suggests the question is purely hypothetical. "I'm thinking about shifting my focus to pathology. Dead men tell no tales. Unless you cut them up and poke at their insides." Which concept seems to delight Hailey far more than it should, so says the smile while she rattles off that addendum. "Anyway. I'm really very sorry that I don't know what you want to know, Miss Reede. But that place - it's not all terrible, it's not what people think it is. It needs to exist, there needs to be some place, but - " Clip the string, Chatty Kathy.

She shuts herself up and drops back into the pleasant, friendly-looking smile of the sort that promises it'll only hurt for a minute, don't worry. "You're definitely going to live, and I don't think you're going to be permanently deaf, but I'm going to send you upstairs to have Doctor Multine," totally an ENT doc on staff, "look at your ear for you. And I have to ask, have you had a tetanus booster lately? Because you really really should. Like. Really should." She puts a pointed look on the damaged foot.

"Yeah? I know a few people who'd be interested in that, if you do," Isabella tells Hailey conversationally. She probably knows who she's referring to, or at least one of them. "I met the city's new medical examiner, recently - he originally went to medical school to become a surgeon, but he shifted focus midway, also." She shakes her head again at the apology. "It's alright, I honestly can't blame you for wanting to...not." She gestures to the side with her fingers. "Anything on the other side can be dangerous, and finicky."

It's not what people think it is.

"...what do you think it is?" Because she can't help but ask for her opinion, since memories seem to be off-limits. "I've no cause to doubt you, really about it not being terrible - it seems to have helped other people also, to...cope. With strange and difficult things. You've experienced it - I can barely remember what I did see there, if I did visit it." She doesn't seem all that certain about that, harboring vague recollections of the morgue and the post-it left behind for the Marshall Party. But other than that, everything is hazy.

There's visible relief, at not just her continued survival (for however long that lasts at the rate she's going), but most especially on that note regarding her hearing. "Whew! I was starting to worry, but yeah, thanks, Dr. Stevenson. I'll go see Dr....Multine, once you refer me. And I...honestly don't remember the last time I had a tetanus booster. I think my last trip to Casablanca? But that was three years ago, almost four."

Searching the ceiling as if for inspiration, Hailey remembers, "The guy whose name isn't actually Christmas." Yep, she nailed it, look at her beam for being so clever to remember that. (And then contemplate if it's REALLY worth it to go chasing this asylum, when you're left a person that's happy to not even be able to remember a single name~!) Then she nods at the things Isabella might remember and might not, dropping her happy smile for a sympathetic one, soft at the edges but stubbornly refusing to rummage through those memories, no matter how sorry she claims to be. "I mean, the fact that you can't remember suggests...?" But that's as far as she's willing to go, and winds up shrugging helplessly at the end.

"Okay, well. I'm going to recommend that you get a booster. They're good for a decade, supposedly, but if I got stabbed by an icicle that isn't really real?" She lip-bites and then eases that into an eek-face, teeth on edge. "I'd get a tetanus shot. I can give you one before you go if you want?" Don't judge her for liking stabbing people with needles; everyone has their thing.

"....yes, him," Isabella confesses with a smile, though she's still watching Hailey swinging from happy to melancholy to sad at the drop of a hat, and then back again. She has a very expressive face. But she seems to realize what she's getting at and she groans quietly. "Right, well, I guess I can include that in my growing list of terrible decisions, then," she sighs and glances morosely at her foot.

All in all, she seems happy to take up a medical professional's suggestion of a booster, and she's already rolling up her (layers of) sleeves so she could offer her arm out, just like she did the last time Hailey vaccinated her for the flu. "I'll take your word for it," she tells her with a grin. "No use tempting fate any more today, and then I'll go see the ear doctor. Thank you, Dr. Stevenson."

Not the world's best bedside manner, this one, but Hailey patpats Isabella on the shoulder gently. "Don't beat yourself up about it. We all make terrible decisions sometimes. By seeking and blundering we learn." Beat. "Someone said that. I don't remember who, though. But it was definitely on a motivational poster." She glances around this particular room, but nope! No motivational posters in sight, just ones that talk about flu shots (lol) and places to put medical waste. And also 'ask your doctor about [pill] today!' posters.

Anyway, Hailey probably has to call a nurse for that booster, but let's hand-wave the boring bits and stick to the bits where: She totally jabs that needle right into Isabella's exposed arm, after doing cotton-ball-things to the area. "I'm sure your ears are fine, but - " She withdraws the needle and sticks cotton-ball + medical tape to the pricked place. " - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

The booster injected in her arm, Isabella rolls down her sleeves and flashes Hailey a small smile. "I definitely tend to learn the best by learning lessons the hard way, like most," she grumbles and makes sure that the bandage is in place before drawing the cuffs down to cover the dandelion charm bracelet she wears on her left wrist. "Thanks again, Dr. Stevenson. Which floor is Doctor Multine at?"

Once she gets directions, she'll use her crutch and heads back up to see the ear doctor, and will probably have to spin a creative story as to how she blasted her eardrums the way she had. Luckily, she had experienced Alexander's noise-cancellation headphones recently, and the kind of chaos his cat can inspire.