crystal & medical questionnaire.

[portalling]

FORM: Sending crystal + blank questionnaire available at the infirmary
SENDER: Stephen Strange
RECIPIENT: Everyone
NOTES: The form is below! Submit your character’s response as a reply to that sub-thread, and this will also be linked from the Riftwatch orientation & infirmary wiki pages for posterity, so you can edit/submit a new one if details change. Your character does not have to take this super seriously. Strange might just come nag if they don’t.

What with the new faces recently, I’ve been working on the medical curriculum and refreshing the infirmary’s recordkeeping. It’s high time to establish some better-kept patient files.

To that end, we’ve provided a written questionnaire at the infirmary — thank you to Amsel for her neat penmanship — and I’d appreciate it if you could fill out a form for yourself and drop it off. The records will only be referenced by healers in the course of their duties, and otherwise locked away; your personal details will remain private. Having as much information as possible will only help the healers take care of you properly.

If you don’t read Trade or otherwise require assistance filling out the form, say as such and we can have someone sit with you. Any other questions, let me know.

— but also, fill it out.

Comments

[portalling]

( This, the bright side of Riftwatch being so relatively small and lean as an organisation: the infirmary isn’t always bustling. There’s mostly just the everyday aches and pains of their people to tend to, someone bitten by a griffon, someone else ate some bad meat in Lowtown, sometimes someone receives a worse injury in combat on a mission, but generally the intake of patients is a gentle ebb-and-flow and not a tsunami.

Other times— they’re not so lucky.

But today the infirmary is quiet, no one trying to sleep out in the main room, and there’s only Doctor Strange at his table at the back, crystal sitting on the desk. He glances up. )

Yep, that’d be me.

( Fairly informal; he waves her on in. )

Doctor Stephen Strange. We spoke. You said you had glass syringes?

( And he still hasn’t received her form. But maybe they can fix that now, too. )

cw its opiates and addiction talk time

[undergrunn]

It's nice to meet you, Doctor.

( "Strange" felt on the nose for how life had been these past weeks and their circumstances in general. Abella spares him; no one needs to be subject to the obvious joke, let alone one that's not actually funny. )

Yes. ( Taking the bag from her shoulder as she moves to the desk, Abella sets it down carefully. A small bundle is set down. ) There's four or five syringes in there, but I imagine you might be more discerning if any damage means they aren't usable.

( Evidently that's not all, as she's still looking through her bag. )

I was going to keep hold of this in case a friend arrived, but it doesn't feel right to keep it to myself for someone who might never get here.

( A glass container of white powder is set down. )

This is a painkiller, in my world. It's called heroin - you need to prepare it and administer via syringe. I've seen it done, so I can write down instructions. I don't know much about the dosage... I think that's enough for three? Le--

( A pause. It feels like a betrayal to out Levi's addiction, even though he's not here. Even though, in theory, if he did arrive they'd need to let the medical staff know. That's not relevant to the here and now. )

A friend is dependent on it, after the war, so it could be that he is more resistant to the effects. Maybe you could stretch more uses out of it here?

[portalling]

( The doctor had eagerly set himself on the bundle of syringes and he’s already lifting them carefully out of the bag, trembling slightly as he holds the glass up to a shaft of sunlight, searching for any hairline cracks in the tube. His hands aren’t shaking from nerves or anxiety or excitement; just a baseline tremor whenever he tries to hold anything very still for inspection.

He’s so absorbed that it takes him a moment to snap his attention back to Abella and her jar of white powder, and when it does, his words sharp with surprise — )

You rifted in with heroin??

( Good lord, he can’t tell if he got the better or worse end of the bargain with the giant tentacled eyeball monster. )

[undergrunn]

Y...es?

( The force of his surprise has her slightly thrown, and she looks at the doctor with outright confusion. Is he upset she's kept it to herself for a few weeks? )

I know I should have brought any medication here sooner. Hoping that my friends would get here made me want to hold onto it, just in case.

[portalling]

No, that’s fine, glad you brought it, I just… wasn’t expecting that. Most people come through with, I don’t know, a sword. A non-functional watch. A monster. I had a suit.

( Strange sets down the needles, and stares at the jar of powder, thoughtful. He doesn’t exactly have much firsthand experience with measuring doses and administering this as a painkiller, but having it at all is at least an additional tool in the infirmary’s pocket. Something more powerful than elfroot tinctures, for truly dire cases. Maybe Cosima can help him with some body-weight calculations. )

Do you know for certain that it’s functional? Some things are fundamentally changed when they come through the rift; it might have become, I don’t know, flour. Powdered sugar.

[undergrunn]

A suit? Like a business suit, a tuxedo..?

( Abella's eyebrows raise a little, )

I haven't used it. I mean, this needed to be used sparingly before I fell into a world without any of it.

( He has a point, though. Abella carefully opens the vial, and taps a tiny amount onto the table. )

Levi would test it, sometimes. He's not a talkative guy, but I asked him to teach me in case his withdrawals were too bad for him to get it ready. Making sure I had the right stuff was step one.

( And that's why Abella scooped some heroin up and rubbed it on her gums in front of a medical professional. )

[portalling]

A business suit, yeah. I still keep it for special occasions where I need to look snappy but places where they won’t mind the obviously rifter fashion—

( The doctor sounds a little distracted, mostly talking just for the sake of talking, filling up the space between them; but as soon as Abella tests the substance, Strange goes still. Spine straight in his chair, all his attention wired on the woman as he waits for her verdict. )

[undergrunn]

( Barely a moment passes before Abella makes a face, the bitterness of the powder more intense than she remembered. Enough that she squints a little bit. )

Blergh-- do you have any water?

( She wishes to no longer have this taste in her mouth, even if it's futile with the amount she used maybe being small enough that rinsing it out won't make a significant difference. )

It's definitely not sugar. ( If only. ) Tastes like the stuff in Prehevil, except-- the bitterness is stronger. Ugh.

( Concentrated might be the better word, although Abella's not really aware of the likelihood and risk of heroin being cut with other substances. She's just unhappy about the taste, not even taking note of how intently Strange is observing her. It wouldn't be hard for him to notice how her pupils retract as the drugs enter her system. )

[portalling]

Good, ( Strange says, leaning back in his chair, satisfied. He appreciates her being able to verify. Most of his casual exposure to white powdered substances hadn’t been heroin, but rather cocaine: overtired med students running on fumes, staying awake for their studies, crunching for exams.

There’s a pitcher of water and a couple cups on his desk, and he pours one for Abella and slides it across the surface. )

To be transparent, I’m not accustomed to administering it myself — I used to have professional anesthesiologists and pain management doctors to take care of that sort of thing — but having it on hand just-in-case is better than not having it when we need it, I expect. It gives us an option.