Moran woke as the man spoke, jolting up and ready to fight before he realized who it was. Shelby had gone white, but cleared his throat. "Speak," Moran said after a moment, motioning impatiently for the man to continue.
Shelby managed to gather himself enough to nod, and opened up his folder. "It's not viral or bacterial. It's some type of parasite. From what I've gathered, it's likely been bio-engineered. It's been so difficult to spot until now because it's probably been reproducing in one of her organs. Most likely her liver. It's only just now entered her bloodstream."
Moran closed his eyes, taking a slow breath. Perfect. Because her liver needs more stress.
He opened his eyes, and met Shelby's gaze. "How do we fight it?"
"Medication. I'm currently testing samples of her blood with different medications, to see if any of them work. If they don't, we'll need to come up with our own," Shelby sighed, and Lorna sighed too, rubbing her eyes. Great. Parasites. Gross.
He nodded just a little. "Let me know the instant you need anything. I'll get it as quickly as I can. Is it possible to test whether the same thing is affecting Moriarty? I wouldn't put it past the person who did this to use two separate sources of illness."
"I'm doing more invasive blood tests as we speak, to see if there are traces of it in his blood yet, if he does have it. But without a liver sample it's difficult to diagnose," he said.
He nodded a little, and stood out of bed, rubbing his face. "I'll be in Moriarty's office. The moment you have anything, call me. Keep me updated."
"Yes of course," the doctor nodded, stepping back to give Moran room. Lorna was a little dismayed that he was getting up. Her space heater was leaving.
"If that's all..." Moran said, glancing at the specialist as he pulled on his jacket.
"Yes, that's all," Shelby nodded, ducking his head as he stepped out of the way. "I'll keep you updated."
He nodded, and glanced at Lorna one more time, before heading out the door. He needed to shower, shave, change clothes, and eat. Then he would relieve Adler.
He left and she shut her eyes, ignoring Shelby. She didn't want to think about anything. She didn't want anything to be real.
He got the call almost ten hours later. He had been trying to work, but mostly he'd been talking himself into staying in Jim's office and not going down to sit beside Lorna again.
You're the only one steering this ship. You need to get work done.
But the call interrupted that. He barely listened to ten seconds of the flustered Shelby before he hung up and ran for the stairs.
"What the hell happened?" he demanded as he stormed into the infirmary less than a minute later.
"Nothing's happened, she just became unresponsive, for seemingly no reason," Shelby said, frustrated and close to stammering, not looking up from the medical chart in his hands, which was freshly printed. "She fell asleep and now she's not waking up. I can only assume the parasite has moved to her brain. What it's doing there, I can't say. It won't show up on a brain scan. For fuck's sake, the only way they diagnose cerebral malaria is through blood smears," he huffed, running a hand through his hair.
"Well then what the hell are you standing around talking to me for?" Moran snarled. "Go! Figure out a fucking cure!"
Shelby didn't even bother to respond, still not looking up from his clipboard as he turned on his heel and headed for the lab. He was too busy to be scared of Moran.
He didn't linger, heading immediately for Lorna's room. He stopped short at the door to see Armetti standing beside her bed. "What the hell are you doing here, Corleone?"
"That's not funny," he said, eyes remaining on Lorna's face. God, she was beautiful. "I imagine I'm here for the same reasons you are."
"I'm not here because I'm stalking her, so I'd have to disagree. Get out, Armetti. She wouldn't want you here." He walked over to put a firm hand on the slimmer man's shoulder.
He stepped out from the other man's grip, eyes landing hard on Moran's face. "I'm not stalking her, Moran. I have just as much a right to be here as you do. Just because she prefers you doesn't mean she loathes me," he snapped. "And don't touch me, please. I'm fairly certain I promised her the last time she was here I wouldn't fuck with you, and I'd hate to break a promise."
"Oh yes, I remember that," Moran sneered, straightening a bit to lord his height over the other man. "Lorna, dearest," he paraphrased in a whimsical voice, pressing his hand over his heart. "If your beloved Moran should perish, I do hope you would consider me an alternative to suicide- I mean really, Vince, Humperdink?" He laughed.
Vince grit his teeth, his hands curling into fists at his side. "You think I could have said that to her in any other form without her being disgusted? Sometimes the only way to win with her is to quote a movie she likes. Oh, but I guess you don't have that problem. She's too busy being abused by you to think for herself. Your relationship is sick."
He stiffened, nostrils flaring, the amusement draining out of his eyes. "And why is that, Vince? Because I'm not mooning after her despite her clearly worded attempts to ward me off?"
He let out a humorless laugh. "No, because until recently you could see the scar of where you tried to slit her throat," he hissed, still pretending amusement, and looking a little deranged because of it. "Because you used her, threatened her, said whatever you wanted to her, and she would still go crawling back. I try to respect her choices - oh my God, do I try - but staying with you? Developing a twisted addiction to the shit you do to her? I don't approve."
He smiled again, then. "Well guess what, Vincey-boy? No one gives a fucking sparrow fart about your approval, least of all Lorna. Which is what makes you angry, isn't it. It's not that I rough her up, it's that she doesn't care," he snorted, shoving a finger roughly into Armetti's chest with a sneer. "No matter how much worse I seem than you, no matter how good you are, she always thinks I'mbetter. And you, in your religious little world, you can't accept that she's wrong about anything, can you?"
Armetti smacked his hand away belligerently, fury on his face. "Of COURSE I can, you piss-ant! She's wrong about you," he snarled, poking a finger right back at Moran, pushing into his chest. "I don't care what she thinks of me. I'm fucking selfless like that. I care that you'd fucking kill her if it meant saving your own skin!"
His expression darkened when Armetti hit him away, his fist clenching, but he bared his teeth in a rough impression of a smile at the man's accusations. "I have done things that your stunted little mind can't fathom to keep her safe. What have you done, hm? Cried into your coffee? Jacked off to a box of tampons she left behind a decade ago?"
"Oh, things, okay, now I'm convinced," he scoffed, rolling his eyes. "I'm sure they weren't very far out of your way. What, did you stab her only a little? Hm? Just admit you don't love her, Moran. You're shit at pretending."
He tensed, ready to attack, but then he really smiled. "It doesn't matter if I do or don't," he said, voice oily with content. "I don't give a fuck if you believe me. The point is she never loved you like she loves me, Corleone. And she never will. She thinks you're pathetic."
He grit his teeth harder, jaw muscles jumping. "I know, fucktard," he snarled, pushing Sebastian again, the fury in his chest egging him on, "I KNOW she loves you more. It hurts, but I can fucking accept that. What I can't accept is you taking fucking ADVANTAGE of her. You're scum, and you don't deserve her. Anyone would be better than you."
He caught Armetti's hand this time, gripping it painfully tight. "Watch what you touch, little man," he whispered. "Maybe for you, but she likes me best. I could do anything I damn well pleased. Maybe I will, just because of this conversation, Vince..." He was steaming, and he wanted the man in front of him to suffer. "Maybe I'll give her a nice black eye for you to admire, since you seem to think that's all I'm good for. Would you like that, Vince, baby? Maybe some bruised ribs, a chipped tooth or two? She can tell you she fell down some stairs."
There was one advantage that Vincent Armetti had in the combat world, and that was the fact that he had been born ambidextrous, and had been trained to use it.
He didn't say anything else, too enraged to speak, but his free hand swung around his back and yanked out a carefully concealed knife, which came back around to his front in an upward slanting slash, aiming for Moran's wrist.
He saw the flash of the blade and was already moving, dropping Armetti's hand and twisting out of the way of the knife. He hadn't gotten around to getting a gun again now that he was reinstated, but it only took an instant for him to grab a pair of medical shears off of the small desk in the room, countering with the sharpened steel.
Vince swore and caught the back end of the shears with his knife, and attempted to flick them out of Moran's hands.
He was surprised by the man's skill, the sheers wrenching in his hand, but he didn't waste time on surprise, stepping back and evaluating again. There was someone at the door, sounding alarmed, but their words didn't penetrate the thickened air between the two men as Moran adjusted his grip on the shears, slipping his fingers through the handle for a better grasp as he stepped in again, trying to get outside of Armetti's knife arm so that he could get a clear shot at his neck.
Vince switched hands as Moran looked for an opening, cutting off one avenue of approach and then purposely opening another while the other man still didn't have a full grasp on his skill. He took another wild slash, in the process opening up a hole in his guard at his left leg. Take the bait, you son of a bitch.
Moran watched the other man carefully. He didn't seem very used to this sort of combat, which was where the sniper had the advantage. The gangster slashed at him again, and overreached. Moran snarled, stepping in and driving the shears deep into the man's soft thigh and ripping outward, feeling muscles part.
Armetti let out a sound that could only be described as a yowl, but still kept his head even as his leg buckled, hand latching onto to Moran's wrist, the knife hacked wildly at it, and the finger in the way fell between them.
His hand exploded in pain, and he knew immediately that he had made an idiotic error. He didn't focus on it, though, even as his hand fumbled the shears. Armetti was suddenly below him, and the agony in his hand told him exactly where the knife was. His knee came driving up hard, colliding with the other man's temple, and would have come again, had the only voice that he obeyed above all else broke through the fury.
Jim's voice was livid as he roared, "Stop. This. Now."
Moran froze, then shoved Armetti hard, giving himself time to take enough steps back that any further aggression would be clearly the initiative of the other man. He looked down at his hand, trying to assess the damage, and his stomach dropped.
No...
"What the fuck is this," Jim snarled, taking a couple of steps into the room, a very nervous nurse rolling his IV stand behind him. Armetti was curled up on the floor.
"A disagreement, sir," Moran said tonelessly, his eyes flickering to Lorna to ensure none of her medical equipment was disturbed, then to Armetti, bleeding, on the floor. There, next to him on the tile, was his fucking finger.
Jim snorted, observing the amount of blood presently in the room, eyes disinterested until they landed on Moran. On his hand. He grit his teeth. "I'll discipline you once you've received medical attention. Doctors, please."
He nodded mutely, walking forward to pick his finger up off the ground and resisting the urge to kick the prone man savagely in his wound. He wasn't going to forget this.
The knife had caught his finger just above the second knuckle, and he examined the two-inch severed digit for just a moment. His trigger finger.
He walked over to the gathered crowd of medical personnel, and held up the stump. "Whoever is going to be reattaching this had better get their ass in gear."
One of the surgeons stepped forward. Not the one whose hand had been caught- word was that it would be months before she could practice again, if she ever could- but her male counterpart. "Sir... It's inadvisable to reattach in a situation where only one-"
"I don't care," Moran said, voice surprisingly calm. "It's going back on. Now."
Nobody seemed willing to argue with the bleeding mountain of a man in front of them. They just exchanged wide-eyed looks and then the surgeon gave a rather tense, uncertain nod, and pulled a box of gauze out of his pocket, and got to work. Jim watched from a few feet away, his mind racing, analyzing scenarios, outcomes, and the odds of success for the surgery. It wasn't good.
Moran walked with them as they lead him to a back room with a small surgery table for dealing with smaller injuries. The anesthesiologist said something about numbing the area and restricting nerve response, he watched the needle enter his skin, and slowly everything below the elbow went numb. His chest relaxed as the pain eased, and he watched as one group started identifying blood vessels and nerves in his detached finger, and the other started cleaning and preparing the stump on his hand. Despite himself, the pressure and prodding of his finger stump turned his stomach, and he turned his mind quickly to other things. Harrison. How Shelby was doing with his research... He would send someone to ask, but was worried about interrupting the specialist's workflow and wasting precious minutes of his time.
Jim only stuck around long enough to direct someone to take care of Armetti's injury before he stepped out into the hallway and threw up, purposely (if childishly) aiming for the shoes of the nurse who had followed him around with the IV stand. Then he decided to go lie back down again.