Cyanide and Old Lace

"How's she doing?" Tony was standing in an observation deck, looking in on Kitty in her clean room. He turned to the nurse and asked, "Has she woken up?"

"She's responding very well to the treatment." The nurse nodded her head. "She was awake just long enough to use sign language to ask about the other two infected patients."

"How long will she be intubated?" Tony asked, looking over at Kitty again.

"When she can breathe by herself with no problems, the tube can stay out. But until then, we have to keep it in to make sure her airway isn't obstructed in case she goes into respiratory failure again."

"Okay," Tony nodded, rubbing his tired eyes with his fist. "Okay, so do you have any idea when she can come home?"

"We should be able to have her out of here by Christmas, if everything goes alright and there's no delayed reaction to the treatments." The nurse encouraged with a kind smile. "She was very lucky that she figured out the the flowers were poisoned when she did. Another ten minutes and she wouldn't have made it."

Kitty kept her eyes shut, but raised her arm and started signing.

"She says, 'Hey, dad.'," Malik, who had been transferred to be Kitty's nurse, stood next to her bed and started translating for Tony. "And she wants to know if you've found someone named Ashley."

Tony pressed the microphone button in the observation room and said, "No, we haven't found him yet, Kit."

Malik watched as Kitty opened her eyes and aggressively signed. "She says she's going to rip him into pieces." He said with a bit of a laugh, obviously unknowing of what this tiny blonde was capable of.

"I don't exactly think you're in a position to be ripping anyone apart, Kit." Tony reminded her.

Kitty raised her hand high enough so he could see it and slowly extended her middle finger up.

Malik smiled and turned to face the glass separating the rooms. "Do you need that one translated?"

Tony rubbed his neck. "No, no. I got that one."

Kitty started to sign again. "She says she wants the tube out…" Malik notified them, waiting until she was done before continuing. "And to see Logan."

"We can't take the tube out until your breathing is stable." The nurse in the observation room explained to her.

"Logan, then?" Malik translated. "Please?"

The doctors and nurses exchanged nods. "I suppose if you two were both exposed to the same poison, there's no harm in you two seeing each other." She took her finger off the microphone button and turned to the nurse. "That way he stops bothering you guys about her."

"Hey, Kitty?" Tony asked. "Is it okay if I drop by the Tower?"

"She said to go get some sleep and say 'Hi' to Steve. She'll be fine here." Malik reassured Tony, who left the observation room.

Malik, still in his hazmat suit, walked over to a door almost fully camouflaged in the white wall and swiped a key card, opening the door. She saw Logan sitting in a room extremely similar to hers, only he wasn't hooked up to multiple machines. When he saw that the door was open, he stood up and followed the nurse into Kitty's room. Kitty waved at him and started signing.

"She said 'Nice scrubs'." Malik told him.

"They won't give me back my clothes because they're contaminated." Logan pouted.

Malik watched her sign before saying, "She doesn't think it's fair that you're healed."

"I know it's not fair." Logan agreed, sitting on the corner of her bed since there were no chairs in there. Kitty moved over as much as she could so he could be comfortable.

"Sorry for the poison." Malik translated.

"It's okay." Logan assured her. "At least it won't kill me."

Kitty started signing very fast and Malik fought to keep up. "She said he's still a… A what?" He asked her, and Kitty slowed down again. "Ohh, gotcha, gotcha." He nodded his head, then turned to Logan. "She said he's a filthy bastard. She would also like you to know that she is fine and can be extubated, but as an RN, I beg a differ on that last one."

"Kitty, I don't think you're alright."

She decided to ignore Logan and instead signed Malik for a pen and pad of paper.

He nodded. "Yeah, I can get you that." The nurse got up and left the room.

Kitty pointed at Logan and held up her thumb in an 'Okay?' gesture.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

Malik came back with a notebook and a pen, handing them off to Kitty. She awkwardly started writing with it, frustrated that her handwriting was coming out shaky and warped. She handed it to Logan. "When can we leave the bubble?"

"That's a great question." He turned to Malik and held up the notebook for him to see.

"You've got another round of B12 to go through." The nurse explained through the hazmat suit. "We need to make sure that your lungs can handle breathing on their own before we take you off the oxygen. They can probably take out the metal bars in your calf around that time and slap a plaster cast on there. Then each of you need to be decontaminated again."

Kitty wrote, "Oh. Yay. (Sarcasm)" on the sheet and showed it to him. She pulled it back down and scribbled, "So, what was it?"

"The docs think it was some form of a homemade cyanide. It's not nearly as lethal as regular cyanide, but still pretty powerful stuff. Both of you went into grand mal seizures and you," He pointed to Kitty. "Became delirious. You tried to fight the doctors when we had to resuscitate you." He nodded to Logan before turning back to Kitty. "Kept screaming and crying and punching anyone who came near him. Then when his heart stopped, you were threatening and screaming for them to save him. You put up a pretty good fight for someone with that amount of poison in your system. Even gave one of the doctors a black eye. They finally had to knock you out and separate you two because they were afraid that you were going to injure yourself or someone else."

"Sorry about that." Kitty wrote, showing it to Malik. "I've been known to be 'overly aggressive when provoked'."

Logan gave a short laugh. "Overly aggressive when provoked?"

"It's what they wrote in my personnel file before I was discharged." Kitty divulged on her paper. "Apparently it's only okay to be aggressive when you're doing what they tell you to do."

"Yeah, that sounds about right." Logan nodded. "Hey, is there anyway to get a chair or something in here?" He asked Malik.

"We can bring your bed in here, but that's all the furniture allowed in the clean room." Logan stood up and helped the nurse bring his bed over to Kitty's room. By the time they got there, Kitty was fast asleep, the pen still in her hand and the paper in her lap.