AU: Beautiful (Rhea)

[Rhea Hartman]

Whether he'd said he could wiggle his toes or not, Rhea could hardly believe that Sean had emerged from a pile of rubble barely the worse for wear. “Lord Almighty,” she breathed. “Sean, you are one lucky sixty year-old man.”

Sounds of movement and shouting came from the west wing as they approached, and Rhea slid down a pile of debris to come to rest on a clear patch of the old hardwood floor. The earthquake had left capricious destruction in its wake. Heaps of debris spilled up against an untouched painting of Pilot Ridge's first mayor, a whole window with glass barely cracked rested against an overturned desk up ahead. Rhea found it more unsettling than a uniform field of destruction would have been.

“I've been better, but I'll be just fine,” she replied, unconsciously flexing her hands. Her shoulders still ached, but she had suffered enough sports injuries in her life to know the difference between a sore muscle and a torn one. She took a step forward as the group from the west wing spilled into the entry hall.

This group had not been as lucky as Sean. Two of the five were injured, one supported between two others and on the verge of hysteria. Rhea pushed her way forward and immediately took the frantic young man and rested him on the ground.

Torn flesh, a long, slimy red saber of wood where it certainly should not have been. Rhea pointed to the most grounded-looking member of the group. “You! I need you to take these three,” she commanded, pointing at the rest of the party, “Outside. Now.”

They responded to Rhea's invisible uniform even as the young man on the ground made a hysterical lunge forward. Rhea pushed him back to the ground and pinned him with a forearm. "Sir, I'm trying to help, you need to keep still." She cursed in her head. Every movement cost him blood. She had no supplies, nothing to work with... “Sean!” she called, trying in vain to calm the screaming youth. “I could use some help. Do some--telepath shit, or something." The young man was not listening to her. It was difficult to persuade someone that you were trying to help when you were wrestling them to the ground.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In any other situation, Sean might bristle at the remark about his age, correcting her that he was so luck that he was only fifty-seven. Sixty remained three years off, and, while closer to his age than fifty or any other bygone milestone, he considered not yet reaching sixty (while still having the ability to do so) a matter of personal pride.

However, he had more important matters on his mind. Making sure that Josh was alive and safe and unharmed. Making sure that everyone else received as much care as possible, if they were unsafe or injured, while hoping that they were as safe and unharmed as he himself had been.

From a cursory scan, many people were all right, if scared or possessing minor injuries. That was better than it could have been; Vermont buildings weren’t built to withstand earthquakes, as such events happened so infrequently as to be unheard of in these parts.

After answering his question, Rhea disappeared to help others, and Sean took the opportunity to dust himself off and stretch, before seeking out the first people that he could find. It had been a long time since he had needed to do any sort of emergency care; however, he remained a doctor first, even if he specialized in mental health.

He had just finished checking one of the security guards when he heard Rhea call out to him. With a “you’ll be all right” to the guard in question, he jogged over to Rhea’s side. Quickly, he glanced down at the hysterical, before moving into action behind him. He placed both hands on the man’s shoulders, using his weight to help keep him down (although not supplying pressure lest he injure him or worsen an injury). Fortunately, his powers didn’t require touch, and so he dove into the man’s mind and pressed hard enough on his memory cortex. The man calmed down, slumping back as though in a daze.

“That should last for about fifteen minutes,” he told her, as he helped to ease the man flat again.

[Rhea Hartman]

Rhea glanced up as soon as Sean lent his weight to hold down the thrashing man. She shifted back, still restraining their patient but examining the injury. "Good, hold him there, I'm going to--" She paused as the young man suddenly fell still. She spared another glance for Sean before sitting back and pulling her shirt off over her head. "That's damn useful," she said as she began tearing strips of fabric free.

She worked rapidly, snapping off the saber of wood a few inches away from the skin and wrapping it tightly in place with makeshift bandages. That completed, she checked his vitals and moved to splint the broken arm.

The young man still had two thirds of his daze to go when Rhea wiped her bloody hands off on his shirt and pulled him into a sitting position. "All right," she said to Sean as she crouched and let the injured youth fall over her shoulders. She braced one hand on the overturned desk and pushed herself to her feet. The man's limbs dangled and bounced weirdly for a moment before Rhea squared herself and balanced her passenger. "Let's go."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“More people than many people realize,” Sean murmured in response. In his experience, non-psychics gave little thought to the broader implications of mental powers, aside from basic wish fulfillment (doing whatever they need to succeed in life or dating) or nightmare fuel (how loud and terrible it must be to see the worst in everyone all of the time). The more practical aspects of certain mental powers – such as using memory manipulation as a makeshift anesthetic – typically failed to register until a non-psychic saw them first-hand.

However, that was neither here nor there. Sean wouldn’t dwell on it when they had far greater concerns. Instead, he kept himself behind the young man, perched and ready if Rhea needed his assistance with anything. She appeared to have matters under control, but he was cognizant, able-bodied, and a doctor, which meant he could provide better than average assistance.

However, Rhea apparently required none, at least with the young man in question. When she moved him, Sean rose from where he had crouched, stepping out of her way. He nodded in assent and then said, “I need to look for Josh.”

Telepathy confirmed that he was alive, but Sean needed to find him and tend to whatever injuries he had sustained or free him if he was trapped.

[Rhea Hartman]

When she finished with the puncture wound and Sean still hadn't shown signs of panic, Rhea did begin giving him instructions. "Keep pressure here; hold this; hand me that piece of plywood." She left treating the wounds to herself, but it helped to have the extra pair of hands.

Rhea could not look over her shoulder with a body draped across her back, but she paused at Sean's statement. She felt a crackle of disappointment to hear such a civilian suggestion from him, and realized that she had unconsciously lumped him in with the fellow officers and firefighters she always had by her side when she entered these sorts of disasters.

But Sean was not a firefighter. "No," she replied sharply. "I know you want to help, but you'll do more harm than good if you try to find him. You don't know anything about getting around damaged buildings, you wouldn't be able to dig him out if you found him, and if you get hurt I'll have to come after both of you." She spared another drop of her passenger's blood to add, "You'll do more good helping people outside."

She wouldn't stop him if disregarded her advice, not with an injured young man on her shoulders. So she began heading again towards the door, careful with her load. "Come on."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean was not a firefighter; he was not an EMS responder. He was a civilian. A psychiatrist and thus a medical doctor, a teacher, an administrator, a gifted psychic, and a patient person who oozed calm and self-discipline, but he remained a civilian. His training came from medical school and residency, from continuing education courses, from conferences and medical journals, and from sitting beside people day in and day out as they shared their innermost pain and fears and their deepest secrets.

He didn’t rush into burning or collapsed buildings to retrieve people or to retrieve bodies after the fact. He had no delusions otherwise. Yet just as he didn’t speak her language, she didn’t speak his. “I don’t want to dig him out,” he explained, although he followed her towards the door since his immediate medical obligation was to the clearly injured person that she had in tow. “I want to comfort him.”

He was in his late-fifties. Josh was in his mid-fifties. If Josh had been buried under a pile of debris, neither man would be able to free him alone, or working in tandem. The telepath realized this, and he accepted it for what it was. But his partner was prone to anxiety, and he lacked both the telepathic aptitude and the training to seek Sean’s mind for reassurance. The telepath wanted to find him to assure his partner that he wasn’t alone, and to assure himself that Josh wasn’t so badly injured that he might miss his final moments. He could do that in closer proximity; he didn’t need to touch him for that.

[Rhea Hartman]

This comment was so much in line with Sean's character that Rhea almost laughed. Hysterical and wounded people stumbling out of buildings outside, who knew how many more buried, and he wanted to find his partner to talk about feelings. At least he wasn't trying to run back in and shift rubble.

However, concerns for what Sean did or didn't do did not take up much space in her head at the moment. Carrying a full-grown person across your shoulders was not like lifting weights at the gym, and the field of debris did not make it any easier. "Just wait," she said as she tested a rock with her foot, then hauled across to a clear patch of floor.

The sound of sirens brought a wash of relief through Rhea as they cleared the door of the town hall. At least one truck had made it out.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean overheard Rhea’s thoughts despite his split attention between the present and his efforts to find Josh’s mind and establish a clearer connection. Certainly, he didn’t agree with Rhea’s assessment of the situation or of his intentions, as this wasn’t about discussing feelings. It was about assuring the person closest to him in the world that he was alive, and assuring himself that Josh was as safe as possible given the situation, while not worsening it by his efforts to move rubble without adequate emergency training and while in the body of a fifty-seven-year-old without the gift of physical meta-human powers or telekinetic enhancement.

But Sean had no intention of arguing. It was a waste of his time, and it was a waste of Rhea’s time. They were in the middle of a massive emergency situation.

So the telepath followed behind her, exiting the town hall carefully behind her – and waiting as she tested their footing before following behind (all the more carefully as he outweighed her even though she possessed far greater muscle mass). Once outside, his attention was drawn by the fire truck that had parked outside – albeit with some distance from – Town Hall. That would help a bit.

“I can take him so you can go back inside,” he offered, with a nod towards the man she carried. He could lift a grown man for that distance, even with his knees and back.

[Rhea Hartman]

Rhea had already started down the steps in a hasty jog, keeping the young man clamped tightly over her shoulders. "Follow me," she called back to Sean as she made a beeline for the fire truck.

Her breathing was heavy by the time she reached the crowd around the truck. It was a bewildering but familiar mess of the injured, hysterical, gawkers and helpers, instinctively drawn to the siren and uniforms. She spotted Tracy and Lon in the back with the medical suite and shouldered her way through the crowd.

"Tracy," Rhea gasped as she set the young man on the yellow tarp already decorated with wounded. The other woman looked up from her patient, and Tracy's whole body sagged with relief to see the shirtless and dust-stained Rhea. "'Ve you got medical?" Rhea insisted.

There was a brief, tense discussion, some shouting to distant members, a bandage for Rhea's hands, and a hug. Then she jogged around to the equipment bay and began pulling free supplies.

Helmet. Fire jacket. Gloves. Harness. First aid. Halligan tool. She didn't have time for the full gear and it would make navigating the rubble difficult, so she only took the essentials. She felt her focus sharpen and the back of her mind calm as she did up the clasps of the coat and pulled on her gloves.

She snatched an extra jacket and helmet from the truck bay before ducking back into the crowd. She found Sean and handed them over. "If you want to go back in you need to wear these. Careful with the coat, it's heavier than it looks. Come on." And with that she set off back towards the courthouse at a run.