2022-03-11 - Opening the Floodgates

With the location settled, it was just a matter of getting all of the clinic's stuff out of storage and setting everything back up at the new location. Thankfully it was all done without too much of a fuss. Granted, they had to wait for the paint to dry from the fresh coats on the wall and the wax on the floors. Then they had to wait for the smell of those things to relent. But now everything is looking all shiny and new.

The walls are painted a nice shade of blue. Calming, like the ocean on a perfect summer's day, which might just be a matter of color theory at play on Ava's part. Doctor's Offices can be frightening, after all. The seats are nicely spaced and comfortably padded, a much deeper shade of blue. There are hard wood tables with neatly placed, recent magazines on display for perusing. Off to the side is a small area for kids to play with a circular plush carpet underneath to prevent any hurt knees while they wait. And of course there's a receptionist's area with it's own sleek, hard wood style and a sliding glass partition for privacy and very slight noise control.

The office is currently closed to normal patients, but Ava is here after hours waiting on someone who was pre-planned to join her. She's sitting at the receptionist desk and chewing on the end of a pencil as she goes over paperwork, hair up in a messy bun, with another pencil stuck into it, probably what's keeping it up at all. She's dressed for work in greys and blues, but it doesn't seem like the color theory is doing much to keep her particularly calm at the moment. Her brow is furrowed as she goes over a page, looking annoyed.

Some people dress up. Some people don't care what they look like. And some people, like Ravn Abildgaard, sport the same kind of business casual anywhere, anytime -- formal enough to not draw attention in a business or university environment, casual enough to work at home or at a coffee shop, too. As Ravn will say, when people ask: It's easy to do your laundry when everything is black. (Odds are even he is not ignorant enough to just toss that blazer in the washing machine too, though).

He is a tad dubious about all of this. Nothing to do with Doctor Brennon -- and everything to do with being hauled from one specialist to another for most of his childhood, by parents who wanted their son fixed. His father, in particular, was not happy about his offspring being weak like this. Abildgaard blood is not an asthmatic kid with anxieties and touch issues. He has no idea whether his father ever outright accused his mother of sleeping around, and heaven knows he looks much like his old man did at his age, but the resentment was there.

The Dane slinks in and looks around; a man can be a turmoiled sea of concerns on the inside and still keep a pleasant facade on the outside. "I dare say you've made this place look very nice. Am I the official patient zero?"

Ava hears the door start to open and glances up from what she's working on. Her smile warms when she spots Ravn and gestures him in. "Just hit the lock when you close the door, so nobody wanders in when we head into the back," she asks of him. "Thankfully, everyone was really quick about getting everything done and in place. It came together really nicely." Ava is already starting to make her way around the receptionist desk so that she can prop the door open in the space between the waiting room and the exam rooms.

"You're not my first clinical patient, if that's what you mean. Brennon Clinic was open before I left town a year ago. But you're patient zero at this location, yes! Which means, after this, you get to pick a prize from the treasure chest. OoooooOOooh." As he comes back, she gestures to the old chest that's been painted to look like a pirate's treasure chest, filled with little toys and candies that kids might like. Rewards for being good at the Doctor's Offfice, clearly. "I'll let you pick out a sticker, too. But only if you behave. No passing out," she teases.

"I am such a lucky boy," Ravn murmurs, chuckling. "Good idea, though. I remember most doctor visits as a kid as pretty tedious and uncomfortable. I'd probably remember them with more fondness."

He turns to close the door as instructed, and then looks around again before arching an eyebrow. "Do I need to -- take my shirt off, something? I've gone through a lot of these exams and it tends to vary a great deal depending on where the specialist thinks the issue is. Some of them think it's all a psychiatric disorder. Had one tell me I just needed to stop being afraid of people, then touch would feel good. I tried to explain that when touch feels awful most of the time, it's a little difficult to trust other people enough to get into a crowded subway train but I don't think they understood what I was saying. I also think they may never have been on a subway train."

"The luckiest boy," Ava assures with a laugh. Leading the way to the exam room, she gestures him in. It's a typical room with the sterilized equipment and the posters on the wall, however, glancing up, there's a nice tiled in poster of beach. Again, meant to calm the nerves as someone lays back on the table, and give them something to look at other than just the tiles themselves.

"Those sound like some shitty doctors," Ava says. "A big part of today's society seems to be that a lot of doctor's are so busy jumping from patient to patient that they don't really listen to what each of them has to say. That's why small clinics are the best ones. You can take your time." Ava sits on a rolling chair and gestures for him to sit on the bed. "I can do a physical exam if you'd like me to, but we already know the diagnosis. Plus, I can literally just use my abilities to know everything that's wrong with your body like a filthy cheater," she chuckles. "Would it make you feel more or less comfortable for me to go through the formal motions of doctorhood before we get to the magic part of things?"

"Honestly? I think we might as well skip the physical." Ravn plops his backside down on the visitor's chair. "Like you say -- I know the diagnosis, and I've been examined inside out on a number of occasions. Have done psychological evaluations as well, and given how the shine works, it won't really surprise you if I say I have half a dozen psychiatric diagnoses. That's what happens, after all, when someone claims they see the dead and that they can move objects with their mind. Pathological liar, schizotypal disorder, chronic depression, schizophrenia, PTSD, you name it, someone's suggested it."

"You know there's nothing wrong with you psychologically. At least, not in that regard." Ava smirk. "Nothing more than what's wrong with me, or Una, or any of the others here that see the exact same stuff. " Ava taps her lips. "Funnily enough, psychological issues are one of the things that we can't fix. Which seems odd, since it's really just misfiring and poorly wired things in the brain. But it's so intricate and deeply imbedded into personalities and who people are that I think there's just a barrier there that the magic just won't ever be able to break through." She frowns for a moment. "Honestly, that's probably for the best. Because as much as I can help people, these skills can also be used to hurt. I can send Cancer into remission, but the opposite is true. I can literally give a person Cancer."

There's a shudder. "If we could effect mental disorders on top of that? I can't imagine what kind of horrible things could happen if that kind of power got into the wrong hands. There's horrible people out there that don't have the shine. They don't need that kind of help." She shakes her head, trying to shake off the horrible thoughts that brought on. Instead, a hand goes out towards him, palm up. "Glove off," she murmurs quietly. Her hand is steady and unmoving, allowing him to place him as gently as he needs to on top of it, giving him all the control of the touch.

"There are people in Gray Harbor who have the shine but definitely don't play for Team Humanity. People who have struck some kind of devil's bargain, sending other people to their miserable fate instead of themselves. People who think that they can appease the monsters. And people who simply take pleasure in hurting others. Sometimes, we find them. I helped find and stop someone who sculpted in flesh -- much like you say. He used healing powers to -- well, not heal." Ravn traces a spot on his arm; the man had a meat cleaver, and he was not afraid to use it.

Then he shakes his head. "Mental disorders are part of what you are. I think that's a very case by case basis. You might be able to improve the life of someone with severe clinical depression, rewiring the broken part of their brain to allow them to retain serotonin. But take away my ability to see ghosts, label it a side effect of schizophrenia, and you would be taking away an integral part of what makes me, well, me. Never mind the fact that if I am hallucinating the ghosts, my hallucinations apparently affect others around me so they can see them too."

The Dane peels his kidskin glove off one hand. He has long, slender fingers -- ironically, the kind some people call surgeon's hands. His fingers are strong and callused where a violinist's fingers would be. And when his palm comes to rest atop Ava's ditto, it feels exactly like any other hand. "It doesn't hurt when I know it's coming. Like now. If you'd grabbed my hand without me expecting it, I might have felt like you burned me, or I got an electric shock."

"People can be monsters just as much as the Monsters can be. And sometimes the Monsters can be surprisingly people-ish. Our lives especially aren't so black and white. All we can do is keep our eyes open, adapt, and keep fighting the good fight until we get ahead of the game. I think there's still a chance for us to eventually get ahead in the game if we play our cards right. We just have to figure out what all the cards are, first." Which isn't easy when the other side keeps hiding all the cards.

Ava takes his hand, making no effort beyond a simple reach over of her thumb to grasp it, to do anything odd with the hand offered to her. Her touch is formal, doctorly. He's here as a patient and she's clearly giving him that level of respect in this moment. "That's good to know. I never want to accidentally hurt you. But there have been times I have wanted to flick you," she chuckles. "Also hug you. But I figured that would make things worse." He's seen her Glimmer on full display before when the stealth comes off and she shines bright and green like a lighthouse. That's what happens now as she takes a deep breath and begins to work her magic.

Green wisps of power flow through Ravn's veins and nerves. He braces for impact -- and sure enough, the sensation feels a bit like there is liquid fire invading his system. It is not a particularly great feeling, even when you do see it coming. He knows healing should not feel like this. He knows that it will.

It's not an unfamiliar sensation, after all. He remembers it from lying half unconscious on a shopping mall floor, blood seeping out from the shot that went straight through his lung; breathing became hard and almost too much effort and darkness began to settle -- and on his way out of consciousness he felt that fire, consuming the pain, consuming in some strange fashion, the injury itself. He lost conscious knowing that he would eventually regain it. And he did, in the ICU later, and he has yet to figure out who actually pulled him through.

He remembers the same fire from sitting on a basement floor, amidst the rapidly dissolving remains of ghosts and ghouls, his face crushed and his ribs sporting half a dozen fractures. It was the same kind of fire that kept him alive -- him and Vyvyan Vydal and several others. One hell of a beating, that one, really.

So many times. So many other times. Hell, he even remembers Aidan's probing fire, trying to do the very same thing Ava Brennon is trying to do right now.

Except Aidan is no medical practitioner. He went straight to 'feel better!' And Ravn did -- for a couple of hours.

Ava's exploration differs slightly. It speaks a language loud and clear, of broken connections, of a nerve system wired just a little wrong -- or is that a little too right? A hair's breadth too much this and too little that, synapses communicating slightly wrong or slightly right, all things depending. A little too much spatial awareness, optic nerves a little too efficient; and the result? A permanent infection of cytokines, damage to the outer brain, a condition not unlike a chronic pain disorder. Possible to dampen, perhaps, with pain suppressants -- but to do so means to dampen the entire sensory system, leading to that glass bubble effect Ravn has complained about to medical practitioners so many times.

He's wired wrong for processing physical input. And wired just right for seeing into parallel realities. Whether the trade-off is worth it -- is probably something scientists could argue over for a very long time.

"I know it's not entirely comfortable. I'm sorry for that," Ava offers as if that were any actual consolation. "Sadly, there's no lube to make this sort of thing any easier." Maybe jokes will help. Was it a sexx joke or a doctor joke? It's hard to tell, but either way, Ava's grinning. Those tendrils of green around her glow brightly, druidic light filling the air around him. "Alright. I can see all the different places where the wires just need a little tweaking." Looking at it from a medical standpoint does, indeed, give her a different view.

Those multicolored eyes narrow for a moment, head tilting as she flinches, her magic pushing into him a little more intensely. "Sorry. I can see it, it should be a simple matter of just willing it to be, like anything else. But something--" Something what?

Her brows knit as she keeps trying, the smile on her face shifting down, jaw clenching. She doesn't give up that easily.

Reality shifts.

One moment there are nerves and synapses, small currents of electricity that makes up the human frame, directing skin and bone and sinew in the complex dance that is living. What is biology if not a complex orchestral suite, directed by the nerve system, like an director in a concert hall -- and falling silent when he does?

The next moment there is the sensation of falling and of darkness; a glimpse of an alternate reality, an image -- and for just one second, Ava is somewhere else --

-- a grand concert hall, an opera house, a decadent display of crystal chandeliers and plush carpets, where a hundred musicians sit with each their instrument, at the beck and call of the maestro. His white wand waves -- it flicks this way and the music rises to a crescendo, and then that way, drawing out the plaintive howl of woodwind instruments; with his other, gloved hand, he beckons forth the tinkle of tiny metal triangles, then to be drowned out by the booming of brass and grand drums --

Rite of Spring? Classical music returned to a savage past, of sacrifice and suffering and human misery? Or just the complex dynamics of human existence, of the complicated and intricates processes of biology rendered into some kind of musical simile?

The conductor raises his hands. And then lets them drop. The entire orchestra falls silent.

He turns. He looks directly at Ava. His lips mouth just one word, carrying towards her as loud and clear as if it had been delivered by loudspeaker.

"Denied."

-- And then there is the clinic and the man sitting on front of the doctor, quirking an eyebrow. "Doctor? Ava, are you all right? You zoned out a moment there."

A concert hall.

You aren't supposed to speak while the music is playing, which may be why Ava cannot find her voice. She tries to claw her her throat, but she can't really find her hands either. Is she really there? No, it's just a vision. Is it a vision, a warning? This doesn't feel like a Dream. The music is silent and she opens her mouth to speak. Where is her mouth. There isn't even time for words before that one is vibrating through her ears.

Denied.

Denied? How dare he? Who is he to tell her she can't use her power to help her friend?!

Ravn's voice calls her out of where she was, her breath coming back to her like a shockwave as she blinks. Hands, throat, mouth. All there. This is reality. Wide eyes settle on Ravn, and he can see the green taking on flickers of red along the edges. That can't be a good sign. "Were you there with me?"

Ravn arches an eyebrow again. "I'm right here." And maybe because he has lived in this bizarre town long enough to realise what the doctor actually means with a question like that, "I didn't go anywhere. I take it you did?"

Sometimes, Dreams are just a blink of an eye, after all. They say that if you come upon someone Dreaming you will find them sleeping, impossible to wake. But if they sleep only so long that they don't even have time to collapse?

"Are you all right?" The folklorist resists the urge to pull his hand back, to put his glove back on. There is a strange, prickling sensation at the back of his neck, inspired no doubt by the expression on Ava's face and the one of her voice. He does not like it. "Where did you go?"

"I did." Ava frowns when she realizes she went alone. "It was just meant for me then. He said, Denied. There was an Orchestra. There were a lot of them, it was beautiful. The maestro-- he stopped the music suddenly to turn around and he just said 'Denied'. Then there was you." Her eyes lift up to catch his again, angry fire burning in them. "I don't know who he thinks he is, but he clearly doesn't know who I am." Ava states matter of factly.

The green blazes again, with that red glow around it. Those tendrils try again, this time with all of her passion and might. "I need to see if it happens again," she warns, gentle still with his hand. "This isn't right. Something isn't right."

Rage.

A sensation of red-hot rage, building, like distant thunder coalescing on one spot on a stormy sea, like a tropical storm from a clear blue sky. Impossibly strong. Impossibly fast. And here is Ava, the spiritual equivalent of a single sea gull picked up and tossed against a rocky shore by gales and battering winds, amidst torrential rain, a small and frail form amidst --

-- that's not rage. That's power. Strike a match, and you can light up the dark around yourself for a small handful of fleeting seconds. Now compare with a nuclear reactor. There's a tad more juice there.

Imagine, then, that you are that match stick. And maybe, maybe the smart choice is to lie still in your matchbox and be grateful that your life will be at least a little light in the dark, however briefly gone. Or be the dying light, raging against processes so powerful that if something hiccups in there, the entire civilisation that produced you will cease to exist.

Rage against the dying light?

That presence of power becomes a presence of -- well, presence. The matchstick metaphor fades like the seagull metaphor before it, and with the fluid absence of continuity of a dream just before you wake up, there is the sound of a woman's laughter. It sounds amused but beneath the amusement there is a strange undercurrent, almost mechanical -- as if somebody found a sound clip of a human female's laughter, and plays it over and over again.

My dear child, the light is far from dying. Silly creatures that you are -- imposing rules one moment and trying to break them the next. I don't make the rules here, darling. Is this the power you want?

Ravn watches as Ava's gaze grows distant once more. He knows this expression; someone using their power to work some small miracle or other, focusing on the task at hand.

He sees her eyes widen as she tumbles about in the tropical storm of her own mind, as she finds herself comparing the flicker of a match to the furnace of nuclear fission, and even he feels the pressure building.

He pulls his hand back. "Whatever you're doing -- "

The folklorist has no power of the kind that Ava is using. He is only an accidental witness to the counter-current. And yet he is thrown to the ground just like her, when the pressure valve is released.

Furniture goes flying. Windows shatter and fall like crystal rain into the street below. Birds outside are smashed into the wall of the building across the street; some of them recover enough to reel and flap on, others leave a bloody smear down the bricks. The sound is deafening. A scalpel sits stuck in a door frame, silent testimony to the power of the blast.

Growing up in a town like Gray Harbor, there is a lot that Ava has heard about, and a lot that she has seen and experienced. But nothing has quite prepared her for this. She has never been in the face of this level of power before and it's overwhelming to say the least. She's gasping as she's caught up in that power like that tiny little matchstick amongst a blazing inferno. "I impose rules to keep myself in check. To keep things from getting crazy. I don't need more power. I've had these powers for twenty-six years and I wanted to help one person one time. With my power. Why do you care?"

Ava hasn't moved from the chair, but the moment Ravn's hand is pulled away is the same moment that the pressure releases and she's snapped out of her mind's eye and back into the present.

There's a sharp cry as she suddenly goes from a swirling mass of power surrounding her and back to the office setting where she's being whipped around and down to the floor in a sudden explosion of energy. "Ravn!" she gasps, searching for him first through the explosion. That had to have hurt worse for him than for her, due to the very thing they were here for. Like some kind of twisted game.

There is no answer from the folklorist. The pressure threw him against a wall hard, and while he is certainly still breathing, the angle of that arm does not look good -- it's very much broken unless he was somehow born with two elbows on each side.

That's going to hurt in the morning.

So's the insurance bill.

And the sticky note -- the bright pink sticky note stuck to the table lamp that slowly turns a few times around itself and then falls off the table with a sad little thud -- reads simply, "Denied."

There. There's Ravn. Knocked out is probably for the best, because setting his elbows back in place before healing him is going to really hurt. "I'm so sorry," Ava whispers to him as she crawls over to his slumped form. She's careful, and gentle, not wanting to cause him pain even if he is out cold. Each arm is reset as quickly as possible, the bones making some horrible noises as she resets their positions.

Yup, she saw that sticky note. Yup, she's not happy about it. But right now, making sure that Ravn is okay is the main focus. Pushing on with her own adrenalin, she does exactly what got them into this situation in the first place and calls on those same green tendrils of power to sink into him and start repairing and mending broken bones and any chances of internal bleeding. Anything she might have missed in the initial scan.

Speaking from a purely medical perspective, Ravn is doing fine. Oh, are broken elbows from hitting a wall at high speed going to hurt in the morning? You bet. But not nearly as much as if they had been mended the old-fashioned way with screws and splints and please don't use your arms for eight weeks. If there is one thing the folklorist has learned in this town it's to be grateful for the miracles that healers perform.

His vitals are decent. Elevated pulse, shock, what you'd expect.

The sirens outside are a relief, after a fashion. The man will be in a hospital bed soon enough -- where, no doubt, some doctor unaware of Gray Harbor's true nature will tell him that he has been extremely lucky to just bruise and sprain his arms like that. Rest, take Tylenol, and don't do any heavy lifting for a while. Yes, you can go home now, but if you start to feel ill, please contact your regular GP.

The paramedics will probably defer to Ava. After all, she's obviously not in shock, and a twisted ankle is hardly a lethal injury.

What the emergency responders and the fire department -- and the Gazette -- will make of this? Probably a gas leak. Again. In fact, Gray Harbor's gas piping could probably do with a lot of maintenance given how often something blows around here.

Ava falls back with a heavy sigh once she sees everything beginning to mend the way it's supposed to. "I'm so sorry, Ravn." You already said that, Ava. Her head thunks back against a busted cabinet door as eyes squeeze shut and she waits for the paramedics to make it into the building. She gathers herself in the time between now and then, letting those shaky breaths fall away so that they don't see her like that. Have to put the strong face on. Crying can come later, alone, in a shower or something. Here? It'd just look weak.

Once they arrive, she is quick to start offering helpful suggestions rather than giving demands. Ava lets them wrap up her ankle and insists on riding in the ambulance on the way to the hospital just in case. Nope, it doesn't look like they're getting her out of the room until he wakes up and she knows for certain when she knows that he's okay. Then he can have all the privacy he wants. Until then, he has a watch-Ava guarding his room.

Once he's back home and settled in, that's when she can start to call around. Something's wrong. She's going to need some help.