26. HP
[[File 21.1 SA]]
"I think he's awake."
The words emerged from foggy uncertainty, one shocking slap of clarity amidst a world of muddled noises. Sounds… sounds he thought he should recognize. All was hazy void.
Something clopping. Something responding. A voice of some monster. Could not hear the words. Mind swimming in colloidal nothingness.
He forced himself to open an eyesocket. Groaned at piercing brightness. Shut it again.
A sluggish thought. where am i?
Tried to listen through the unwilling mud of a lethargic mind.
"SANS?"
Even while drowning in a mental mire, he recognized the voice.
He processed something, slowly. my brother's right above me.
Once more he sought to open his eyesockets. Painful bright light lasered into him again. However, after blinking desperately, vision slowly acclimated to the environment – mostly, anyway. The world appeared strangely flat and non-dimensional. Whatever. Sometimes the body stubbornly refused to cooperate when one woke from a deep sleep, and all Sans currently cared about was that he no longer winced as he peered about the room.
He did, however, pause in shock at the images.
i'm… in a hospital?
what had…?
And then it all came crashing back to him.
He immediately wished he were unconscious again.
"SANS?" spoke his brother a second time. Papyrus did indeed hover over Sans, eyesockets wide, jaw clenched in a worried frown, finger bones nervously fiddling about one another. It appeared his brother would not allow him to lapse into unconsciousness. Not right away, at least.
how long has he been here, waiting for me to take up? Sans would not have expected it of him. Since when had he and Papyrus been close? Eleven years apart… one brother an academic workaholic, the other a spirited athlete… the two only rarely coinciding in the same room… it did not make for a deep sibling connection.
And yet… here Papyrus stood, standing worriedly over him, fatigue smudging his eyesockets and suggesting he had been waiting for quite some time. wow. Touched… Sans felt touched.
"heya bro," he croaked in a gravelly voice unaccustomed to speech.
"OH MY GOD! PPPPHHHEW! ! ! YOU'RE OKAY! !" Relief passed through Papyrus' face. "HE IS OKAY, ISN'T HE, NURSE?"
Only now did Sans notice the third monster in the room. Leaning unobtrusively in the back with a clipboard, the nurse seemed content to watch uninterfering with the sibling reunion. They maintained their black and white diamond face strictly on their medical notes. However, upon being prompted with a question, they stood straighter, looked Papyrus in the eyesocket, and responded. The words came out in a slightly uncertain jumble. "H-he's... stable."
Not precisely the most comforting reply.
The vague, uncertain statement nevertheless ameliorated Papyrus' tensions. His neck jerked up straighter and he hooted with a smile, "WONDERFUL! ! I KNEW HE'D BE ALRIGHT!" He appeared ready to begin dancing at the news he falsely perceived as positive.
But Sans squinted at the nurse. He could not be so simply fooled. what the hell happened after i passed out? i feel… fine…?
"alright," he grumbled, in no mood to listen to rose-tinted euphemisms. "spit it out. what is it?"
The medic shifted. They rubbed their back against the wall for a long while, and if they had not been awkwardly clearing their throat, they might have appeared to be trying to itch a hard-to-reach spot near the spine. At last, stepping forward, the nurse gestured to Sans with both their hands. Easing into it, they questioned, "Uhhh… so… how do you… feel?"
"head's a little muddled, vision isn't perfect, but other than that, i'm dandy."
"Really?" The single word inflected up with astonished interest.
With no little irritation, Sans drawled back, "can ya tell me why that's a big surprise?"
"Well. We've never… seen anything like it." great start. More useless, meaningless hand gestures. "When you came out of the CORE, you were losing HP rapidly."
"makes sense. i was injured." How injured, he could not recount, yet if it landed him in the hospital, waking up seemingly a long time later, this indicated the injury had been significant.
And yet the nurse disagreed with Sans' assessment. "N-n-n-no, n-no, not like that.
"You said you feel… fine? Like you've been healed?"
"sure. like i've got full hp."
"Well… you've got one."
At first, the statement sounded like semantic gibberish. It could not be parsed, could not be comprehended. Then Sans' gut dropped. no… they can't mean that, can they? Seeking clarification, he asked, somewhat slowly, "ok. one… what?"
Gravely: "One HP."
what the hell? Aloud, his voice remained calm and smooth. Pulling up a smirk, Sans might as well have been accounting a joke rather than delving for pertinent medical information. "damn, that can't be right. you sure your equipment's functioning properly? i don't feel like i'm on the brink of death. my hp's fuller than that."
"I guess… your HP is full?"
"but you just said i had one hp left. out of three-twenty. three-twenty's my full health."
"No, you don't have three hundred and twenty Hit Points. That's what I mean. You have one."
"one… total?" what the fucking hell!?
"Y-yes."
He stared around the room, at the pristine white equipment; the unused chairs; the nurse; his frowning, straight-backed brother. Though sunlight still streamed into the room through cracked shades, though he could hear birds chirruping in the distance, though nothing had changed in sound or sight or smell or touch… the world suddenly seemed… different. A different sort of cloudiness overtook him. His mind buzzed more sharply than ever but… the realization – the realization – of what had happened to him… it fogged his experiences in another sense. The world felt static, still. Reality distant and flat. His emotions… no. No. He would not let himself feel any emotion. Those were flat, too.
" As s-s- – as I s-said, you came out of the C-CORE and l-lost HP. As in, you weren't being drained of HP. You were – i-it's that your maximum was lowering."
The words, the meaning, the consequences settled in. He could feel his eyesockets blacken.
His speech came out cold and emotionless. He could not show emotion before his brother. Not when the emotion threatened to dam tears up behind his eyesockets. He felt uncomfortable enough with Papyrus' astonished gaping; he needed not add worse sentimentality by allowing waterworks to flow down cheekbones.
"something i would have barely noticed before – like, say, stubbing my foot against a chair leg – is now… lethal?"
"Maybe not something that inconsequential, but yes. A broken arm. A fractured hip. A single magic bullet. All of those would be…" The nurse's voice trailed off, but Sans filled in the rest of the sentence. He and his conversant allowed the unspoken word to float like a ghost throughout the room. It danced across the hospital bed, the equipment monitoring Sans' vitals, the other awkward skeleton standing in the room.
how the hell did this happen?
He choked around a single word. He was not one for much swearing, but the time certainly called for it. "shit."
"SANS, WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE," Papyrus moaned, at the same time chewing on his distal phalanges. Papyrus finally comprehended the situation's gravity and seemed ready to cry.
"heh." Dammit, but Sans could feel the tears overflowing his own eyesockets. A single drop slipped from the left side. Hastily, Sans pulled up his left hand, closed the one eyesocket, and scrubbed away the tear.
"oh my god." The entire world had descended into darkness. Complete darkness. His left hand dropped immediately to his side and he shot both eyesockets open wide immediately. The room snapped back into vision – perhaps the image coming in flat, but at least it was present. "what the fuck is wrong with my right eye?"
He whirled toward the medic, seething. "when were you planning on telling me? holy shit! i'm blind, aren't i?"
Wordless nod.
"and it's not gonna heal, is it?"
Wordless headshake 'no.'
Sans sat back. Suddenly, his imperfect vision made sense. Without binocular vision, his depth perception would be limited. This was the best he would ever be able to see.
"might want to try telling your patient all his health updates, right? how 'bout you try that one?" He knew he was being unfair, but the bitterness escaped anyway. "so. let's go for it. anything… else… i need to know?" As if he actually wanted to know.
"The doctor will update you with all the details later today. But no, there is nothing else big to mention."
"ok." He settled into a sullen lump on the hospital bed. Though he tried not to close his eyesockets, tried not to think of anything, he could feel the right side of his face burning. "cool, i guess."
Left eyesocket flared blue. Only the left. The right was dead.
Papyrus stared upon his brother with troubled concern.
"fuck."
Thankfully, Papyrus did not scold his brother a second time about his word selection. The taller skeleton lingered, surprisingly wordless, along the side of the bed. Only when the nurse announced they were leaving did Papyrus respond with a mumble, and then he might as well have forgotten the third individual had ever existed in the room.
"SO…" Papyrus sighed, looking downward, "I GUESS THIS MEANS YOU'RE SLIGHTLY NOT OKAY, HUH!?"
Sans almost expected to hear a "NYOO HOO HOO" at the end of the comment. In truth, Sans nearly supplied the sob himself.
What a disaster.
Though this experience was already nightmare enough, Sans forced himself to ask another question. He feared this question far more than anything he had asked the nurse… but needed to know. He had to know, even if he feared the truth.
"hey, papyrus," he said quietly. "the others. how are the others? it wasn't just me in the core, y'know."
"I DIDN'T HEAR EVERYTHING, BUT I'M SURE ALMOST EVERYONE IS SUPER! SPLENDID! ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR! ! ! THEY'RE SURFING THE WAVES OF A SAFE AND SECURE EXISTENCE IN THE OCEAN OF LIFE! EXCEPT FOR GASTER. AND…"
"he's dead, isn't he?" Sans bit his teeth at the "d" word.
A stammer. "Y-YES. YES. HE IS."
i couldn't reach him in time…
"rain?"
"HE'S VERY ALIVE…"
"good."
"…SORT OF."
Though it would mean masking vision – something Sans did not wish to think about now – he buried his face in his hands. He rubbed at his forehead for a long while, leaning in, attempting to process the news. He felt himself rocking from his seated position. Face still in hands, he mumbled, "…what do you mean?"
"I… I DON'T KNOW."
He could hear the sincerity in Papyrus' voice, so Sans allowed the information to slide. He would learn soon enough Doctor Rain Pearson's fate.
In the meantime, he lingered, feeling utterly helpless, on the hospital bed.
He could not hold back the tears any longer.
At least Papyrus held him while he sobbed.
[[File 21.2 SA]]
[Sans and Rain's artwork?]
[[File 21.3 SA]]
[Sans sees rain for the first time – maybe then goes home to artwork and get rid of current 21.2]
One scientist lost the strength of his body. The second lost his SOUL. The third had left the wreckage of the CORE with a lost mind.