I Need a Doctor, Call Me a Doctor

White-hot. Nemo's lungs constricted violently within his core. His lips followed suit and drew from the air a deep gasp with such force as to crack his voice. Searing light. "Off," he screeched. He fought against the hands of Healers in an attempt to smother his vision in one of his sleeves.

Killmekillmekillme. His heart faltered beneath his chest as his lungs repeatedly collapsed and re-inflated with desperation. BurnburnBURN! Sharp - slice. MOVE! GET IT OUT OF ME! Nemo thrashed against himself, struggling to break free form the fleshy confines of his body as it proceeded to overheat and overwhelm itself. Skinnnnnnn - get it off. OFF! OFF!

A broken wail split the hospital room in two, harmonizing with the ever-present beepbeepbeepbeep of many a monitor of vital organs. Nemo seized upward, eyes swiveling unnaturally within their sockets.

"Stupefy," Her voice was calming, soft, and seemed a Millennium from were he lay.

Turn off the red. Muchmuchmuch - TOO!

His body crumbled against mattress, and his lips parted softly. "Shhh. Breathe... You'll be OK."

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Jack had been minding her own business (wasn't she always?) when one of the nurses ran in with Bernice, both looking concerned and uncertain. Jack looked between the two of them and they just stood there, chewing on their lips. "What?" Jack snapped. "Spit it out already." Bernice blinked and pushed the nurse forward who shot the intern a look of fear. Finally, she turned to Jack.

"Um, your friend, Mortimer? The one we helped awhile back. Someone just said they saw him get taken to mungo's He's bad. Really, really bad."

Jack stared for a moment. This was strange. Jack did not really think she had friends at the moment, but if someone was a friend to her, she supposed it would be that drunken Seer who she had saved from the grips of suicide briefly. She looked at Bernice and said, "Do what you have to to cover me." And with that, she apparated to Mungo's.


Jack pushed her way into the room, ignoring what the nurses said about 'You can't bring that in here' and 'you aren't authorized' and made her way to the bed. The nurse had been right. He looked bad. She placed the bottle of Vodka on the bedside table and looked at the nearest Healer. "What's wrong with him? What's being done?" Jack was not a person of cpmfort, but her hand settled on his forearm and she squeezed gently, finding she was genuinely concerned and worried for her drinking mate.

Mort? Again? He was becoming a frequent flyer. But she had a strong interest in this case. She collected the file, read it, and reallized that this was not for his typical reasons. And if he really was in this sort of trouble, then she was taking care of this herself. She went into the room and saw Jack there with one of the healers.

"Hello, Jack," Khaat said.

She saw her healer was a bit dismayed about the bottle of vodka beside the bed. That was the least of their problems.

"Leave it," Khaat told the healer. She went to the bed and put her hand on his forehead. He was hot. Really hot, and as feverish as he was, she knew her touch would feel cooling and soothing. She removed the stupify. She wanted him calmed, not entirely senseless.

"Peace," she cast a strong calming spell instead, allowing him to slip into deep relaxation instead of being dumbfounded. It would relax his muscles and that would decrease the itching. She went over to the potions cabinet and mixed together a potion to reduce fever and aching, one to stop the congestion, and one to stop that infernal itching and burning sensation in his skin. She put a bottle of lotion on the countertop in the room. "Use this as often as you need to to provide him additional comfort from the itching," she told the healer. Then she took out her father's thin silver flask of firewhiskey out of the inside pocket of her jacket. The potions cocktail was foul tasting. And for those who liked firewhiskey, the taste of the firewhiskey was strong enough to deflect the revolting taste of the combination of the potions.

She added a shot of firewhiskey to the glass and put the flask back in her pocket. For Khaat, it was much the same thinking as putting a powdered medicine into a spoonful of sugar. She took the glass over to Nemo. She laid her hand back on his forehead to waken him just enough to be able to drink for her.

"Mort," she called gently. "Do me a favor, would ya? Drink. It will help." She let him smell the whiskey in the glass. She knew that would get his attention. She was willing to feed it to him, but she needed to be sure he was alert enough to drink it.

Shadow-cloaked hands ripped, and tore, and peeled away the fragile layers of Nemo's broken body as he lay, unconscious and incapable of struggling against the razor-tipped fingers that plunged within his core - deep, and snipped the thin tendons that held his heart in place; slid out from between his nostrils, as from them thick blood oozed, the bridge of bone; wrapped tightly every notch of his spine in the bitterest, cold damp his body had ever experienced.

His body, inwardly wracked with instinctual flinches away from the pain and the seemingly lethal exhaustion which had enveloped him, slumped as he was freed from the binds of the charm that had been cast upon him.

And through the black, which hung as tangible drapes throughout Nemo's subconscious, suffocating in the manner that they insistently clung to his lungs, the comforting whir of a distant voice did echo. "Mort." If he could have clung to anything - moved at all - he would have grasped with every last, dwindling ounce of strength he still possessed, that voice. He willed it to replay on a loop throughout the barren maps of his dying mind, "Mort". "Mort, Mort, Mort," was his mantra.

Cold metallic lips met his, and he invited the intrusion, parting his mouth to accept the medicine he was being offered without thought. The overwhelming scent of alcohol greeted his senses like a warm wave, and dragged him with it towards reality as it washed against the shore.

Cold fire - hot. Icy - BURN.

SHRED! It's eating me!
Teeth! - dig and twist, gnawing bone.

Where are my hands? Gone! Limbs - dead tree branches, crumbling.

Nemo's throat constricted around the liquid that he'd swallowed, and he coughed, spewing from his mouth all which he'd been given. He threw himself back against the bed, pushing himself into it as though attempting to force himself through the mattress and to the floor below. Coughs shattered him as he fought to breath.

Desperate - squirming - CHOKE!

Warmth rose from the hand that lay, softly against his arm, and he twisted towards it, curling his fingers around the foreign appendage, seeking the heat that would erase from his bones the chill.

Jack heard a voice and she looked up to see Khaat entering. Thank God. She fully believed that if anyone could be trusted to save a life, it was Khaat Lupin. Her reputation and her kindness preceeded her. None of the nurses answered her- either they were panicked and rushed or they honestly had no answers for her. Khaat did not answer either, but Jack did not need an answer if there would be results. Jack stayed quiet while Khaat moved about, working.

Jack was certain that whatever was in the flask would help. His nose had started to bleed and Jack seized a nearby rag and mopped up the blood the best she could, before moving so Khaat could get her drinking buddy to drink. Which he did, at first. Then, he burst and the drink spewed everywhere, misting the shocked nurses. Jack could see he was not drawing breath, that his airwar was straining. She glanced at the nurses before pointing and saying, "Anapneo!" which would clear his airway. It was a simple enough spell, but Jack feared she might be thrown out for interference.

Suddenly, Poe grabbed for her hand. She was not sure the man knew who it was that was there, but Jack knew he needed some sort of lifeline. It had appeared she had stepped into that role. He fumbled for her and she grabbed his hand and squeezed as tightly as she could without hurting him.

Khaat had not anticipated Mort's crashing so quickly. His life signs had suddenly taken a dive, and Jack had acted appropriately by casting the spell to restart his breathing. She saw Mort clutch Jack's hand. It was worth his being rattled over.

"Go to the potions lab," Khaat ordered on of her healers firmly. The message was worded a bit cryptically, but the healer would surely understand. Khaat looked up very briefly to see the healer nod and disappear quickly to run the errand. Khaat was not about to let Nemo slip away. He just didn't get that option. For now, she saw one option until he stabilized.

She laid her hand on his forehead. It was the primary way her own healing powers worked. It was something she had apparently inherited from her father. She cast a nonverbal spell to provide him life support, and for the moment, she intended to continue to provide him those energies by contining to leave her hand on is forehead.

"Nice job, Jack," Khaat said quietly. For the moment, her magic would keep him alive and keep his bodily systems functioning. And she trusted that if he were aware, he would know that she had him on a physical lifeline, as Jack provided the additional calming reassurance that Khaat was glad Jack could provide for him.

A light unlike that which he'd experienced prior, (which had burrowed itself in the darkest crevices of the sockets of his eyes without forgiveness) faint and tender in nature, spread throughout Nemo’s prison and scattered from it the shadows which had plucked and nipped at him in the behavior of feasting insects. The blood-sticky fingers which had once slipped and slithered against Nemo’s internal organs, setting them alight with new aches with every brush of talons against tissue, had fled as this new force crawled along the hollows of his chest; mapped the networks of veins; nestled kindly alongside his bones until, alas their quaking had ceased.

But the shadows had merely retreated to his core: the nest in which they had settled and over time had manifested without fret of the introduction of a treatment, due to Nemo’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge its presence within him. Like ink being spilled across parchment, it had consumed and blackened all that with which it came in contact.

The foreign, medicinal glow had merely delayed the inevitable, as the black overwhelmed his being.

Nemo’s fingers unwound from their tight coils within palms with which he was not familiar, but he did not withdraw his hand from the contact, for fear of plunging into the murky depths to which he had previously been thrown if he so much as loosened those tethers which bound him to reality.

His chest spasmed as he breathed; frail beneath the weight of severe congestion, and he peeled his sticky lids apart to reveal his pain-stricken pupils. He grasped inwardly for some normalcy to which he could return, and find comfort as he teetered, dangerously still on the razor-thin line between existence and death. But to no avail. He parted his lips, caked with the blood that had trickled from his nose and found shelter in the corners of his mouth, “Barbie?”

Jack's compulsion to act had paid off it seemed, and Khaat complimented her. Khaat had sent away the other Healers and it was beginning get calm now, without their added voices, movement, and breathing. Jack felt her own lungs taking in more air, more air that felt fresher and cleaner somehow. Jack was beginning to breathe and she found herself the way she always was in these situations- the one who kept her head and almost seemed indifferent to the outcome.

Even though she would fight and fight for the outcome she wanted.

Khaat was doing something too, though Jack wasn't sure what it was. Poe's fingers slipped from hers but remained in her hands. She removed one of her hands and mopped up his face again, glancing at Khaat. "Any idea what happened?" She heard a deepr voice and glanced at Poe. So he was gaining consciousness. Maybe he had some answers.

"Hey, Mort," Khaat smiled at him, deciding to lighten this up. "Its a good thing I'm more stubborn than you are. You know that? I'm not ready to be without you yet. I have no idea why--except who else would I play poker with? That was a bit of a close shave you had." She looked back at Jack. "He went into respiratory arrest, Jack. The illness causes not just congestion but as it progresses, it causes some shutting down of the bodily systems...."

"You sent for me?" she heard her father's voice behind her as he came into the room. She always felt a bit of relief herself when he came to help with a case. She always had believed that his abilities superceded her own. Robert got a washcloth and went to the sink and ran it under warm water and squeezed it out. He looked at Jack. "He might feel a bit better if we clean him up just a little. Would you like to do that while we stabilize him a bit?"

He laid the washcloth on the overbed table and went to the other side of the bed from Khaat. "You've got him?" he asked her. She nodded. He laid his own hand on Mort's forehead. "Let's draw some of this off, shall we?" He laid his hands on Nemo's chest and drew off the congestion in his chest and then laid his hands over Nemo's sinus area to draw off the upper respiratory congestion. "This should help for several hours but we will have to repeat it," he said. He cast a spell to reduce pain and fever. It was symptomatic relief only but it would surely help. Robert's hope was that by reducing his symptoms first with spells, then they could maintain a certain amount of it with the potions that seemed to help everyone else.

"We can control the itching with the lotion," Robert said. "When his system settles a bit, we can try the potions again. I see that didn't go well the first time. It may go better once he stabilizes a bit." He looked at Khaat. "Can you stay with it awhile?" She nodded. "Good. Call when you tire. I'll get someone to apply the lotion to stop that miserable itching." He looked at Jack. "We're maintaining him on a life support spell until some of the rest of the spells we've set into place take effect. Once that happens, we may be able to stop the life support spell because the other spells will take over for what Khaat is providing right now for him. It looks like he's been carrying this virus for quite awhile without doing much about it. He's going to have to do something about it now. He has no choice."

Khaat explained what was happening and Jack nodded, taking it all in. She knew basic medical speak from the Healers in her opinion, but it was usually discussed about a dragon or a werewolf or griffin or something. Never about someone Jack considered to be a companion of sorts. Her attention was drawn by Robert Lupin's entrance and she jerked her head in a nod of respect to him.

He took charge, demonstrating where Khaat had inherited her expertise. At the mention of something that would make her useful, Jack nodded and took the washcloth. As they worked their literal magic, Jack used her free hand (the other still ocuppied by Poe's grip) and washed up his face again, clearing blood them from his chest and shoulders and hair.

She turned back to the two hardworking Lupins to listen to them. She had cleaned him up fairly well in the time it took them to do whatever it was that they did, and now they were going through what was next. Jack said, "Well, I'm here. I can do the lotion if you need. May as well be useful if I can."