To the Visitor Belong the Spoils (Sean)

[Rhea Hartman]

One of the problems with being a meta, one of the few in Rhea's case, was that doctors didn't know what to do with you.

Routine concussions were one thing, but a concussion combined with a thirty-person suppression that pushed you to the brink of unconsciousness? What were the long-term risks of that? Heart damage? Aneurysm? After the disaster at the holiday party, Rhea acknowledged that she needed medical attention. But she would have been content to stay overnight at one of the familiar beds in Pilot Ridge's small clinic and be done with it. But the head nurse insisted that she needed more qualified care. So off Rhea was shipped to a research hospital two hours away, where they “hm”ed and gave her MRIs with a more hurried, scholarly air than they had at the clinic, and in the end told her to sit in a bed and wait to see if anything bad happened.

Daniel, Miriam and Haden had already been to visit, and had left behind flowers and a few of her favorite movies. Haden had given her a small stuffed rat that she didn't have the heart to take off her bed. She had turned it facing away from her, where it stared at the daisies and collected 1997 season Broadway musical disk set.

Her head still felt muzzy and her body ached, but she felt more frustrated than anything else. It would be weeks before they'd let her off desk duty, forget basketball or boxing. She eyed the small pile of gifts glumly. Maybe this time she'd finally take up knitting like Miriam kept telling her to.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Nobody could accuse Sean and Rhea of being friends. They had little in common beyond the fact that both were meta-humans, both had opinions about gun control (which lined up in ways that the rest of their social and political opinions did not) and both lived in Pilot Ridge, Vermont. Most of their conversation revolved around the most banal of small talk, when they found themselves forced to interact in social settings. He knew that his powers made her uncomfortable, and that his general demeanor and other aspects of his personality got on her nerves. In turn, he didn’t particularly relish interacting with that, although he bore her no ill-will.

He bore her no ill-will. More than that, he knew the painful side effects and potential health complications which came from over-extending one’s powers. He was also familiar with landing oneself in the hospital for such reasons.

He had been at the Holiday Bash when she had suppressed the meta-humans in the room (himself included) to the point of collapse, in order to stop the chaos. He empathized with her for the stress involved.

And so, he had put together a couple of get-well gifts and driven off to Maddock to visit her. Signing in without difficulty, he made his way to her room before finding it. He knocked on the door to announce his presence, before stepping through, although he hovered in the doorway, rather than crossing immediately to her bedside. “Good afternoon,” he greeted pleasantly.

[Rhea Hartman]

Sean entered on a sunny private room with a pile of gifts on the window. Rhea herself was a large figure in a hospital smock hunched over a pair of knitting needles with her tongue between her teeth. She didn't understand how a scarf that was only an inch and a half long could already look crooked.

Presented against the confusing monotony of knitting, Sean's surprise was welcome. Rhea tossed the needles aside and greeted him with a broad smile. "Sean! You made the trip!" She noticed the gift bags and was genuinely touched. "That's so thoughtful of you," she added.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

If Rhea had been in a better mood, or if this wasn’t a hospital room, Sean might have smiled upon seeing her knit. Not due the incongruous nature of her height and build with what had long ago been designated a feminine (and often grandmotherly) activity, but because they had that in common. The telepath knit, more for charity than as a hobby these days, although he did so when he needed to relax in a way that could allow him to focus on something else, and he looked equally incongruous, given his height and his size.

However he didn’t smile about that or remark upon it. Instead, when Rhea greeted him with a smile, he returned it and stepped further into her room.

“I know how dull it can be,” he replied, and he empathized there. Nobody liked being hospitalized, particularly not because of power-related problems after a chaotic and dangerous situation.

He eyed the pile of presents on the windowsill and then asked, “Should I put these over there?” He gestured with his shoulder at the window. “Or would you like to see them first?”

They were her presents; she should dictate what he did with them.

Then, he cut to the crux of the matter. “How are you feeling?” He knew that it might be an obvious question, but he also thought that, if she wanted to vent about being in bed, or about the hospital food, he could provide her that opportunity.

[Rhea Hartman]

Rhea was so pleased to have a distraction that the question "Would you like to see your present?" was endearingly characteristic rather than insipid. "I'd love to," she said with a smile and a twitch of one eyebrow. "Come on in."

She reached one arm out to the side of the bed and pulled over a beige hospital chair for Sean. "I'm feeling fine," she said with a shrug. "A concussion's a concussion. Still haven't tried a suppression yet, that'll probably hurt though." She sat forward with her forearms on her knees. "How's everyone else shaping up?" Her heavy-lidded eyes creased. "It was Shay Hawthorne, right? Poor bastard."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean had meant the question sincerely, since some people felt self-conscious looking at presents in front of the person giving them the gifts, and other people felt put-upon. Since he tried to accommodate other people generally, and certainly when they were currently hospitalized, he hadn’t wanted to put her out.

However, she said that she wanted to see the small tokens he had brought, and, invited to come closer, the telepath stepped through the door fully and walked across the room until he was at her bedside. “This is nothing special,” he warned her, as he held the bag towards her. “But from the last time I was in, I remember needing a few things to keep my wits about me.”

To that end, he knew she liked fitness magazines, and so he had gone to the SuperKwik Food and Fuel Mart (where he did not typically shop apart from getting gasoline for the car), in order to buy those fitness magazines. He knew nothing about them, and so he tried to get an assortment, in hopes that she would like at least a couple of the ones he had purchased. Additionally, when he had been taken downtown for a police interview in the aftermath of what had transpired at the Bash, he had taken the opportunity to ask around about her favorite snacks, and he had filled the rest of the gift bag with those.

He nodded sympathetically. “I can imagine it would.” As a psychic, head injuries held deeper concern for him than they did for many other people, and given how disastrous head injuries could be for the average person, it was a deeply-ingrained fear.

At her question, he nodded again, his expression shifting briefly. “It was, and I can’t begin to imagine how he felt. EMS took him in for an exam but let him go after looking him over. I haven’t seen him since.”

[Rhea Hartman]

Rhea opened the gift bag to find several magazines, a bag of pork rinds, and sunflower seeds. "Aw, thanks Sean!" She pulled out the snacks first, set them on her bedspread, then leafed through the magazines.

Rhea's favorite kinds of books were ones of the right thickness to level an uneven table, but she enjoyed magazines. Travel, celebrity gossip, and fitness journals were her favorites. She was not surprised that Sean had selected Flex and Women's Muscle and Fitness from the display at SuperKwik. When shopping for her, acquaintances generally reached for whatever product had a shiny, lumpy, scantily-clad person on the front.

526 Ways to Use a Pull-up Band would have to wait for now. Rhea smiled warmly at Sean and shrugged her shoulders. "It's not the first time. The worst part is staying cooped up, to be honest. I'd be happy to have a camera shoved wherever they want it if it means I'd get to walk around."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean watched while she opened the gift bag, pulling out the snacks and the magazines one by one. He smiled at her thanks. “You’re welcome.”

He hoped he bought the correct magazines. While he had been given a lead about the genre of reading material, and so he wasn’t concerned that she would find fitness magazines offensive, he knew nothing about the titles and had instead grabbed them at random, coupled with a cursory scan of the clerk’s mind to try to assess which were the most popular. Given her reaction – flipping through the magazines as though interested in the articles while simultaneously not perplexed or horrified by his selections – he assumed he had done an adequate job.

Good. Having been in a similar position, he understood the importance of keeping oneself occupied.

“Have you asked for an arm monitor?” He expected that she had, given that she could advocate for herself and, as someone involved in emergency services, she was more familiar with the equipment than most people. By contrast, while Sean kept up with the literature, he hadn’t practiced medicine in a hospital for almost three decades, which meant that he was far removed from standard procedure and could be woefully off-base. “I know sometimes they offer that as a compromise.”

[Rhea Hartman]

"Oh yeah, yeah," Rhea replied absently. By 'walk around' she had unconsciously meant 'basic activities,' which included sprinting and contact sports. While she did not resent the hospital staff for denying this, her skin still felt ready to crawl off her body and out the window. "They let me down to the physical therapy gym earlier, but it's almost worse when all you can do is watch."

As her eyes settled on the neatly groomed psychiatrist, an idea popped into Rhea's head. Dr. Neville. A medically trained escort. "Did you ever play basketball?" she asked abruptly.