So, I'm a day late again XP. Don't know why I should even update since I got zero reviews last chapter.
Teeg slept, only vaguely aware of the fact that she was hurt, that she was being kept in the darkness of her mind by a force not of her own doing. Many times she heard conversations; the woman called Meg was the one to talk the most. This time she was talking about some memory of hers that was her favorite of a person. Other times when Teeg was the most distressed about something she could never remember, she could hear her favorite music, the soothing vocals and instrumentals of Loreena Mckinnett or sometimes she could hear a different music liked from someplace not very far from her.
"You asked me what colors were like..." the words drifted about in her mind bringing up pictures of shades and hues.
A song replaced the words as the speaker had finished talking a while ago. Her perception of time was absent in this dream of nothing.
One time she heard Finn's voice asking for her.
"She's in a coma. I had to reconstruct her ribs and stitch up her lungs, I though it would be better to keep her under till the sutures dissolved." Meg replied gently.
Coma: Short for Comatose, the state of mental and physical inactivity, to remain in one too long is dangerous. It was a very odd thing to learn you are in a coma, Teeg mused.
Swoop wasn't completely awake, but he could hear everything going on around him. He smiled slightly in his semi-sleep as he listened to Meg resist dancing about the ward to Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones, her steps still taking a rhythmic grace that she was trying hard to fight. Or when it was quiet and everyone else was sleeping, he could hear the flaps of her Ao Dai brush against her cotton pants, the soft shuffle of her slippers against the floor. Mostly though he listened and smiled when she would sit by his bed side, whenever the others were sleeping, and in her lightly honeyed south-western drawl, she would talk to him about her favorite memories form her youth.
RJ was his favorite student. But that didn't mean Meg didn't have a soft spot in his heart. Hell he even liked Dom, as much as he'd deny that one.
And he really did regret alienating her over her choice in becoming a doctor. But it was so frustrating, knowing all the potential she had, and wasting it being a bone saw. She could have taught so many people, taught dozens of candidates for hospital work. But instead she left... to become a doctor. She could have been a great Master, but she wanted to lock herself away inside this sterile hell that stunk of chemicals and the sick. He couldn't even begin to imagine that she was happy cutting up the dead and pouring over poisons and comatose people.
He felt thin fingers wiggle themselves into his hand and squeeze gently. A warning that she was about to change IV bags, that it would hurt even more for a moment. He inhaled sharply through his nose as the IV in his arm jerked and wiggled as the empty bag was replaced by a new, full, one. Once the task was completed he felt the same thin cool fingers rake at his hair in a gesture of comforting before lips were pressed to his forehead. Allowing him to smell her body spray, Oranges and Green Tea. And she was gone to feed Lily that disgusting nutritional jelly they fed comatose patients.
Lily let the vile jelly to slide down her throat, knowing there was little she could do to stop the intrusion of the substance. But it didn't mean she had to be complaint. Quite often she would work up all of her strength to close her mouth against the spoon.
"Lily... you need to eat, and I know you can hear me. You need to eat to recover faster, and the instant you recover I promise to get you a large vanilla milkshake and a slice of Black Forest Cake. But... you're never going to recover if you don't eat."
Lily begrudgingly accepted the nasty jelly.
Theo was the next of the merry gang to wake up, a full two days after Finn had, which made his time unconscious at almost a week and a half.
"Hey, you're alive." Meg commented lightly as she fiddled with the machine that was pumping the fluid out of Casey's lungs. He had developed a minor infection in his chest causing fluid to gather in his lungs. The faint sucking sound the machine made always made Meg wince as she imagined the plastic tubes to be scraping the highly sensitive tissue inside the organs. She swished the IV bag containing antibiotics around a bit to knock any air bubbles out of the bag and hooked up the line, letting the air rise out of that as she prepped his arm for insertion of the needle. Theo turned away as the metal of the needle priced the skin, and a cotton swab was taped over the puncture.
"Did we win?" Meg chuckled.
"You know RJ asked the same thing when he first woke up. Yeah, you won." Theo nodded before sinking back into his bed.
A cell phone jingle interrupted Theo's next question.
"Hello?"
The blue ranger could almost hear the response from the other person on the phone.
"I see, and how's Japan?" There was another almost audible response before Meg chuckled.
"Alright honey, you take care on the return trip and I'll see you soon." There was another pause as the doctor listened.
"You really didn't have to..."
"I see, well I will see when you get here, but I have to go I have patients right now."
"Okay, bye." Meg pocketed the phone before returning her attention to Theo.
"Who was that?"
"Isabel, my apprentice. She's on a vacation slash home remedies quest in Japan as part of her training. I sent her there partially to get her out of my hair for the moment while I did autopsies on the kraken victims and partially to further her wish to expand her knowledge in "Natural Healing". I personally don't care much for some of the more... eccentric methods of healing, but I concede that there is some truth to it." Theo nodded.
"Er... do you have a phone I could borrow? I need to calmly brother, I told him that I'd call him if I ever got hurt... he... may want to visit. Is that allowed?" Meg reached into her pocket for her cell.
"Strictly speaking, no. Outsiders aren't allowed knowledge of our society. But you're not the first to break that rule, and generally no one really cares anymore." Meg tossed him her phone before going to check on her comatose patients in the other rooms.
Theo dialed a number he had memorized by heart.
"Hello?"
"Luan, it's me Theo... listen, I'm in the hospital..."
With RJ, Dom, Finn and now Theo, up and about and all under foot. Meg was really starting to miss her apprentice.
Gods, a cup of tea would be divine right about now. She lamented. And while she could always send someone down to the cafeteria, she'd been drinking way too much soda as of late. Not only would a cup of tea sound good, she also wouldn't have to spend her time between the comatose, and the critically injured.
Wouldn't do to have them starve to death either... She mentally grumbled.
"Dom quit antagonizing the kraken infants. And all of you get back into bed." She called over her shoulder as she went to take updates on her coma patients and swap out their bags. There was a chorus of groans from the men. Meg smiled before heading into the darkened part of her ward.
On the following Monday the males had been released to Fran and Luan. Which meant that Finn had to stay in the JKP Loft with them. On Tuesday Finn was subtly asking if he could be re-admitted.
"Nope, sorry." Meg said as she eyed the Martin brothers. One was Theo and the other was Luan. Of that she was sure of. But things were complicated in figuring out who's who, when both of them wore blue and both responded to Theo's, or Luan's, name. Finally she gave up and took out a permanent marker and wrote "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" on the twin's respective foreheads. "Remove those and you're in a world of hurt." She promised before capping the marker and trotting off to pry Dom away from the kraken tank... again.
Theo and Luan turned to each other and laughed, pointing at his brother's head.
Gabby sat by her uncle holding his hand and adjusting his blanket, amused by Theo and Luan's antics. Of course she could tall them apart, Thing 1 was Theo... or was he Thing 2? She shook her head. RJ, who was sitting by Lily's bed, rubbing her back trying to calm her trhough the painful detox process, was laughing at what Meg did. Or he was until his stomach growled.
"Lunch time. I vote Pizza." There was a groan from everyone awake in the ward at his suggestion.
"Dude, you live in a pizza parlor, how can you not be sick of the stuff by now?"
"I live in a pizza parlor, what does that say about me?"
"I vote cheeseburgers." Theo said.
"Indian." Luan said at the same time. They both look at each other challengingly.
"Chinese." Meg called form the lobby where she was tugging on Dom.
"I second." Dom called trying to get back to the tank to antagonize the inhabitants more.
"Third. Or Pizza, either sounds good." Fran said from her spot on the bed Dom occupied when he was a patient.
"Chinese sounds good to me." Finn said as he was poking around Swoop's medical charts.
Gabby, who was acting as score keeper since she was up for anything, tallied off the votes.
"Okay that's Four for Chinese, Two for Pizza, One for Cheeseburgers, and one for Indian... and... I'll put my vote in for Cheeseburgers too." She said smiled at the twin she assumed was Theo before ducking her head and blushing lightly.
"Chinese it is..." Meg took out her cell and dialed the number of a local delivery.
Kraken frowned as he watched the krakens mill about. The number of them was smaller; those pesky Pai Zhua managed to actually kill a few of his beloveds. Many more were missing several arms; it would take months to recover the missing limbs.
"Recover, for soon we will feed again." He promised quietly to himself.
Lily and Phant woke up at roughly the same time. Literally, Meg walked into the room late at night, and nearly dropped her clipboard in surprise as Lily was sitting up and blinking and Phant was rubbing his bandaged arm grimly.
"Y-you're awake earlier than I anticipated." She said lamely. Meg mentally cursed at how tired she was, she should have sensed when they were going to awake.
"Why is my arm numb?" Phant asked. The woman sighed, hoping he would have at least given her a few moments to word herself.
"I had to replace the bone with a titanium replica. Your muscles attached to it perfectly, but you will probably be numb in that arm for the rest of your life." Phant nodded blankly. "You will have minor physical therapy for your limb." He nodded again, swallowing thickly. She wrote on her clip board before excusing herself from the room.
It was just them, Teeg and Swoop, left. Casey had woke up days prior and insisted on checking himself out to resume training. The doctor dug out her cell phone and dialed RJ's number out of speed dial.
"Lily and Phant are awake now. And I'm going to be taking Swoop and Teeg off of sedatives, so they might even be awake later tonight; it depends on how fast the drugs burn through their system. Even if they awake, I absolutely forbid either of them from leaving this hospital. And no training of any sort, for at least a month, Kraken will just have to be content with less of you if he decides to attack within the next two months."
"Yes Doctor Byrd." RJ laughed before hanging up.
He floated along the currents of the ocean floor, lost deep in thought. If the Power Rangers could drive back his forces once, they can do such again. He sneered at the thought, but he wasn't foolish enough to think he could withstand alone allies against the Pai Zhua twice. The first time he had made such an erroneous judgment, he had been imprisoned in a crystal in the middle of the desert long enough for the world to have changed so drastically.
However, his options were limited; most of his former comrades were dead or just as good as. His fellow Beast Gods had rotted to bones and mold in the ages since their fall. And any creature that remembered him wouldn't be likely to help. He passed by an old-world machine resting on the bottom of the sea, lost, forgotten, its gears rusted and encrusted with barnacles and sea mud.
The gears struck a memory in him, something about a girl... and gears... quite famous now that he thought of it, he never paid any mind to humans, but this girl... there was something wrong about her... something about gears...
The memory came back to him, causing the god to smile, a cruel twist of his mouth.
Oh... that was simply perfect...
With the Rangers plus affiliates, Lily and Phant awake, Swoop and Teeg expected to wake any moment, several of her colleagues demanding to see the results of her surgical technique –and asking if she would consider hosting a training seminar on it, and a few members of the Council present and all crowded in the small room with herself. Meg felt much like what a sardine must feel like.
I'm one person short of a disaster. The doctor thought as everyone talked over each other in the already crowded room.
"Hello Doctor Byrd! I'm back from Japan!" Isabel, her assistant chimed right next to the startled woman's ear.
"Speak of the devil. Hello Isabel. Would you mind waiting outside? It's really crowded in here. And I will explain once I calm everyone in here down." Isabel was a tiny girl with natural white hair and skin, and large red eyes who quite often literally hummed with restrained energy and barrage of questions about everything. Though it would appear that way, Isabel actually wasn't always an albino; she was one of the very few Pai Zhua whose spirit animal, in her case the white mouse, had a physical effect on her body. She was an anomaly since while it had been proven that there was a connection between the animal and the person on numerous levels, there was no logical explanation as to why certain animals would physically affect their humans in detrimental ways. Isabel's acquired albinism, Swoop's blindness, there had been countless tests to try and determine why, all came up inconclusive. Meg cast an eye on the crowd and decided that it'd be best to deal with Isabel first.
The mousy girl was standing in the lab room pulling open her large print bag and riffling through it, pulling out all sorts of interesting things. Though technically her color was white, the little mouse often decorated herself with bright colorful clothing. Meg suspected it was a way to deal with her feelings of inadequacy. Today she chose to wear a crimson and white lehenga. As the girl bobbed around, dancing to whatever song she was making up in her head, the room filled with the tiny chimes of her jewelry making it almost sound like it was raining.
"AHA! Here we go!" She sang and she pulled out a package wrapped in silk and a smaller green pouch attached to it. Meg took the parcel, noting the soft feel of fabric both of the wrapping and inside the package.
"Uh hey Meg, we think Swoop's waking up. So like we need you in here- Oh! Hi, I'm RJ, nice to meet you."
"Hello Master Lupin, I'm Isabel, Doctor Byrd's apprentice." Isabel extended her hand enthusiastically. RJ gasped her hand, biting back the comment once he saw the look on Meg's face.
"Please call me RJ. It's uh... nice to... finally... meet... meet?... Uh meet you." RJ recited reading the words Meg was mouthing behind Isabel's back, smiling brightly at her as she blushed in happiness that Doctor Byrd had been telling people about her. She whirled around and beamed at Meg before taking off to the crowd to see what she could do for them.
"Nice to finally meet you?" RJ asked, throwing an arm around Meg's shoulders.
"Oh shut it. She suffers from low self-esteem, she's not capable of being a doctor, and people have bluntly told her that, but she's a pretty handy lab assistant. I... I just can't crush her like that by telling her, not again, but I'm at wits end, she simply cannot calm down. And her heart's so set on being a doctor..." Meg said softly. "I'm hoping Swoop and Finn, after all this blows over, could train her a little bit. If there's anything in this world that'd exhaust a seemingly endless supply of energy, its back to back training with those two." RJ chuckled.
"You can attest to that can't you?" Meg gently elbowed him in the ribs.
"Ow, hey, watch it. I'm still bruised there."
With refreshments from the cafeteria in stomachs and an agreeable music from all sides playing from a CD in a stereo somewhere everyone had settled down and quieted enough for Meg's standards, while she explained to Phant and all listening the process she went through in replacing Phant's bone with complete success. There were several shudders from those not in the medical field, and applause from those in it. A deep shuddering breath and groan drew the attention of the doctor and room as Swoop woke up.
"Hey, how are you feeling?" Meg was at his side instantly.
"Like shit, put me back under."
"Nope, sorry, gotta live with the pain. However I can put you on a painkiller drip if the pain's that bad."
"Do what you must." He murmured. Stiffening his jaw against the pain of his IV being wiggled by accident as she put a new drip bag next to his other bags. A small buzzer button was placed in his hand.
"You press this when you feeling pain, but it will only give you a shot of painkillers every so often. I will change the time between doses depending on how much pain you seem to be in." Swoop clenched the button in his hand so hard the cracking plastic could be heard.
"Wow. Those things are made to take a lot of pressure." Isabel giggled nervously. "Uhm. Master Swoop, Hi my name's Isabel, and now that you're awake, what would you like? I can get you anything they have in the cafeteria or...?"
"Oh no, he gets hospital food, he's been under for a month now, he's on liquids until I say otherwise." Swoop grimaced and shot her a look silently begging her to pity him. "Sorry, but you haven't eaten real food in a month, your stomach can't handle anything more than jello." She said. "Isabel, be a sweetheart and get Master Swoop some chicken broth." The assistant nodded before disappearing in a blur as she hurried to the kitchens to come back with a large cup of broth.
"Aren't you going to torture me more by telling me every excruciating detail about how you saved my life?" Swoop asked in as light a tone as he could manage while waiting for the anesthesia to kick in.
"I wired up your leg and arm, I recommend not walking under any power grids for a while. You might feel a tingly sensation before you have a heart attack."
"I will walk again though?" Swoop looked incredibly heartened by that news.
"Yes, Doctor Byrd preformed nothing short of miracles on your and the others." A Council Elder spoke over the precessions. Swoop sank into his bed in relief, he didn't want to admit it but, he was afraid of what would have happened to him had he been crippled.
After questions were asked and Meg had talked herself slightly hoarse, the Council elders and doctors all left, leaving the room much more bearable to be in.
"I am so hungry I'd eat anything right about now." Meg moaned as she sank into a chair next to Swoop's bed.
"Mm, good broth." Swoop deadpanned lifting his cup with his usable hand and sipping deeply of the overly salty but ultimately flavorless broth.
"Ass. I wonder when Teeg is going to wake up." She said changing the direction of the conversation.
"Subs sound good. You're the doctor, aren't you supposed to know this?"
"I've never had her as a patient and I have no idea how the drugs will effect her."
"I say for the sake of convenience, we eat whatever's in the cafeteria." Fran said. Everyone else agreed and elected a two people to go and get food.
"Okay Doctor Byrd, I'll be right back with your order!" Isabel chirped before leaving with Luan, explaining to the inquiry of why she wore Indian clothing.
"Right away Doctor Byrd!" Dom mocked, ducking the projectile Meg sent his way. "Why does she call you "Doctor Byrd"? I hate your last name, I never use it myself."
"Dom." Lily chastened. But Meg merely laughed it off.
"Nah, I'm used to him. I don't know why she calls me that, but I can't get her to stop. And it's okay Dom I don't like your last name either." Meg teased.
"But at least my name's spelled right." Meg stuck her tongue out at him, causing laughter from the room at her immaturity.
"Wait, you own name's wrong?" Theo cried incredulously. Meg chuckled.
"Well... it's a rather amusing story... But basically one of my ancestors couldn't spell and got it wrong on a marriage certificate. And it's been our legal name ever since."
"Oh yeah the funny story your dad used to tell us about the really bad Shaman and the French Woman who thought she was Sioux, and the daughter in law who refused to take their last name because she thought it was stupid?" RJ asked, laughing.
"You never told me that story." Swoop mused as he swallowed another mouthful of broth.
"Ah perhaps later." Meg promised absently.
After Swoop had been drugged in a sleeping state by a heady dose of morphine, and the rest of the gang had gone home, including Isabel to her own apartment. Meg stretched in a yawn that she couldn't fight, and went to check on the still unconscious Teeg before heading to bed, Isabel coming in way early tomorrow to let her mentor catch up on much needed sleep.
Her fingers gently tugged on bandages to make sure they weren't loose or too tight, before she grabbed the blanket and tucked the woman up to her chin.
A hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist startling a yelp from the woman.
"Do you believe in magic?" Teeg's quiet voice echoed in the room, raspy and wheezing faintly.
"No, I'm a doctor. And you should have told someone you were awake, I'll send up a cup of broth for you."
"Then why did you mark yourself with old arcane symbols?" The other woman cracked a grey eye to look at Meg, the hand holding her wrist sliding down to rub her palm. Meg's other hand went almost instinctively to the back of her neck, where in her younger days, she had gotten a small Caduceus tattooed there. It was not a terribly suspicious thing for her to get scribed on her, considering it was the adopted symbol for healing. The Uroboros and the Pentacle beneath the Caduceus however often raised eyebrows.
"I u- Ah, one does not need to believe to find the symbols fetching."
"There's something missing in your head isn't there? I saw it in a dream I had right before I woke up." Meg swallowed, wondering if Teeg was all together in that head of hers.
"I think the medicine's giving you funny dreams, that's all. Go to sleep Teeg, I think you need it more than me." Teeg's eyes slid shut lazily and soon the woman was obviously sound asleep.
He searched the entire world before coming upon a large stone box roughly the size of a building, dropped unceremoniously onto the ocean floor.
"When will mortals learn that the sea does not swallow things like oblivion?' He muttered as his strongest most able-bodied pet wrapped the stone box up in it's tentacles before hefting it up to the surface.
Once free of the water, Kraken went about the outside of the box, his fingers tracing barely there anymore carvings before he found the trick to opening the box. He chuckled darkly to himself as the wall crumbled upon the release and a puff of rank stale air assaulted his nose. Inside the dull whirring of machinery in need of oiling echoed in the darkness. As several pairs of glowing eyes greeted him.
"Ni cashka laome ratu drehda?"
Who is it that set us free?
A Lehenga is a type of dress worn in India, originally it was a wedding dress, but in modern times it can be worn for any occasion depending on how casual or dressy the outfit is.
A Lehenga consists of a Choli, a short tight fitting shirt that bares the midriff, and a long flowing skirt.
