In Everything But Blood
Alright, I finished the giant paper I had to write (40 pages jesus christ) and then grad school kind of kicked my ass for a while BUT I AM HERE, back from a months long hiatus to finally write the claudia henderson thing I wrote weeks ago. Enjoy, there will be more but this was so long and I only got to like halfway through it but I wanted to post this.
TW!!!! Seriously TW, graphic descriptions of gore and injuries, medical talk, THIS IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE GRAPHIC ON PURPOSE
~~~~~~~~~~
Steve wasn't fully aware of how he was still moving but he wasn't going to question it as he sprints into the hospital behind Nancy and Robin, Eddie draped over his back and getting blood everywhere, Dustin limping as fast as he could behind them. He would probably be panicking more if he couldn't feel the little puffs of air Eddie was breathing out every few seconds against his neck.
The nurses all turn to the doors when Nancy slams them open and while there are already plenty of people who look worse for wear in the waiting room, no one looks quite like the group that just walked in. They're all covered in dirt and ash and sweat and lake water and blood blood bloodbloodblood-
Okay, maybe Steve is starting to panic a little.
Nancy yells for help when no one immediately moves and the gun she's holding definitely helps encourage any nurses and doctors to get over any issues they have treating Eddie.
Robin has to pry Steve's hands off of Eddie's pants. He didn't want to let him go, too scared that he would die and Steve wouldn't be there to help. She manages to gently guide him away from the doors they took Eddie through and she sits him down in a chair before sitting next to him and leaning her head on his shoulder.
"He'll be okay, Stevie. We got him here, he's okay."
Steve knows that she's only saying it to help calm him down, and probably to calm herself down too, but he appreciates it all the same.
As they sit there Steve feels the adrenaline starting to fade and he gets a very stark reminder of how his sides are stinging and every breath makes his shirt rub against the scrapes on his back and arms. If he hadn't been in a state of panic already, worried about Eddie and Max and Lucas and Erica and-
He takes a deep breath and leans into Robin's weight at his side. He can't get help yet, not until he knows everyone else is okay.
(If he were feeling braver he might also admit that he's been a little scared of doctors since Scoops, but he's not feeling very brave at the moment.)
A little while later Steve sees Lucas and Erica and forces himself to stand, hurrying over to check on them, to find out where Max is. He instantly knows that something went wrong when Erica slams into him and holds on tight. He only gets more concerned when Lucas leans in to hold onto Erica and Steve at the same time. And then the pit gets bigger when he feels tears hit his shirt.
"Lucas, hey, you're alright. Hey, look at me- hey. What happened? Where's Max?" Steve stares at Lucas's face as he speaks, trying to get an idea of how he's feeling.
Lucas takes a shuddering breath in before he answers, "She-she-.. it was going fine and then... Jason-Jason fuckin'- he crushed her Walkman and I couldn't-she was floating and Jason had-had a gun and I-She was-was dead, for a minute, and then she-she just started breathing again and I dont-"
Steve pulls Lucas closer again, a hand on the back of his neck to give him support as he spoke quietly. "Okay, alright, you did good. She's here, right? She'll be okay. She's gonna be okay." Steve stayed there with them for who knows how long, only separating when he heard a familiar voice gasp from the door.
"Oh thank god, Erica, Lucas!"
Both of them turned to see their mom in the waiting room and ran at her, where she met them in a crushing hug. As Sue held her children close she looked up, tears falling and made eye contact with Steve. Steve saw her mouth 'Thank you' to him and it made his stomach fall to his feet. Sue had always adored Steve for protecting her kids, first from Billy and then in the "fire" at the mall. But this time, Steve was the reason they got hurt. He let them go off on their own and they got hurt.
He nods and walks back over to Robin and Dustin where they're sitting, suddenly remembering his injuries again as he moves away from the Sinclairs. He has to force himself to walk normally just to make it to the chair, only to nearly collapse back into it.
~~~~
"Alright, time to go, Dust. Now that your foot's been treated I really need to get you home. Claudia is going to start calling morgues if I don't," Steve grunts out as he helps heave Dustin out of his seat and get settled on his crutches. Robin stands once Dustin is steady and she follows them out of the hospital and climbs into the passenger of Steve's car. (Nancy had left once Eddie was taken to stash the RV somewhere and she came back with his beemer. Steve isn't going to ask.)
The ride to Dustin's house is quiet, Steve can tell each of them is silently asking anything out there that the Henderson house was spared. Thankfully when they pulled into the driveway the house was in one piece and only seconds after parking Claudia is yanking open the front door and running out to meet them at the car.
She runs up to Dustin who had managed to stand up using the car as support and they both cling to each other in tears. Steve watches them for a moment before he has to look away or he'll start crying. He spaces out for a bit, just holding Robin's hand when he get startled by the harsh knocks on his window. Looking up, he locks eyes with Claudia and he can't quite read her expression but he can hear her say, "Get your butt out of that car, Steve, I need to look at you. You too, Robbie."
He and Robin make eye contact for a split second before hurrying to comply. As soon as Steve is standing fully he finds himself being yanked down into a hug, Claudia's arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Steve has to take a deep, shaky breath and blink very quickly to stop any tears. He loves Claudia's hugs, they feel like birthdays and Christmas and being wrapped in a fuzzy blanket with hot chocolate all at once. When he hears her mumbling about how glad she is that he's okay, well, maybe he cries a little.
After he and Robin are both fully looked at by Claudia and then each given at least 3 hugs, they climb back into his car and pull away form the Hendersons.
"Am I taking you home or are you coming with me?" Steve glances over at Robin as he says it. He knows the answer without he responding, just because her face pinches in the way it does when she's afraid of making Steve sad.
"I know last time we went to yours but I just... I need to see my parents. I'm so sorry-"
"Robs, it's okay to want to check on your parents. I'm not upset. Can you just.. keep your walkie on our channel tonight?" Steve glances at her again, getting hit with another Robin look that says she can see right through him.
"Always, Stevie. I am sorry though, I hate the idea of you in that house alone."
"I'll be okay, Robbie. I'm just gonna sleep as soon as I get home anyways."
Robin stares at him for a moment longer and then nods, grabbing one of his hands to hold in hers for the last half of the drive. She only lets it go to give him a tight squeeze before hurrying out of the car to her front door.
Steve waits until she's safely inside before he pulls away and goes to his own house.
The moment he shuts the door behind himself it feels like all of the energy in his body has been drained away. He can barely keep himself standing, only the pain that shoots down his spin when he leans back onto the door keeps him upright.
He forces himself to trudge upstairs and goes right to the bathroom. He starts with getting the clothes off, deciding to just cut them off so he doesn't have to lift his arms.
Then comes the cleaning. He first tries to shower but he can only handle standing with pressured water pelting his back and soap stinging his feet for a minute at the most. When he gives up on the shower he figures he should at least try to clean the bites.
One second he's standing in front of the mirror and reaching to pull off the fabric, the next his whole body is covered in sweat and he's sitting on his ass on the tile floor. His hands are shaking at he wants to vomit from the pain.
No changing the bandage then.
Steve forces himself to at least wash his face and hands with a washcloth before he collapses directly into bed and falling asleep in seconds.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Claudia is worried. She had already been a little concerned when Steve showed up two days earlier for lunch with a flushed face and too pale skin. She watched him and he didn't act any different but she kept note of it so that she could watch him. But then, when they were supposed to have lunch at 12 and Steve still hadn't shown up or even called by 1, well, Claudia was concerned. Steve always insisted on being on time, claiming it came from all the sports he had done (but she had heard him mumble about his parents harassing him about being late before when he had a head injury, so she just nodded along to his excuses). Being an hour late was entirely out of character and something in her gut, the same feeling she had experienced multiple times over the past few years about her Dusty, told her that she needed to go see him, and soon.
Dustin was thankfully not at home, spending the afternoon with the Wheelers, so she didn't have to tell him what was happening before she got into her car and drove to Steve's house.
What greeted her when she parked only made her more nervous. Steve, she had noticed, had strange habits relating to many things. He had to sit close enough to touch the person next to him, he tried to hide it but he never kept alcohol in the house anymore, he kept the curtains closed facing the backyard, and he always, always leaves the porch light on.
But that afternoon in early April, the porch light was off.
Claudia parked quickly and hurried to the front door, not even bothering with knocking. Instead she pulled out the key Steve had made for her and Dusty after the previous summer and let herself in.
The dread that had been growing in her gut only intensified when she entered the house and a very familiar smell hit her nose.
Body odor, sweat and salt and morning breath.
Bodily fluids, urine and vomit. And blood.
Infection, sickly sweet rot mixing with something like ammonia.
Time seemed to freeze as Claudia ran up the stairs, calling Steve's name all the while. She knew those smells, she had dealt with them at work too many times to not know them, and to smell them in relation to Steve made her blood run cold. She needed to see him, this boy who cared for her Dusty so much, this boy who had wormed his way into her heart, this boy who was her son.
Rushing into Steve's room she was greeted by her worst fears. Steve was lying on his bed, the sheets clearly kicked off and tangled around his ankles. He was only wearing his boxers and they had clearly not been changed in a few days, stained with his sweat and urine. His skin was covered in sweat, his chest and cheeks were bright red and the rest of his skin was a waxy yellow. He was shirtless, vomit covering his chin and chest and staining the pillow and sheets below him. He had what looked like scraps of a sweater or shirt wrapped loosely around his stomach. It was filthy, saturated with sweat, blood, dirt and pus. The smell in the room was much stronger than by the front door, her eyes watering briefly before she forced herself to focus. She was a nurse, she could handle this.
Claudia moved to the bed and gently kneeled onto the mattress. As she moved closer she could hear Steve mumbling to himself but it was so quiet and so slurred that nothing was legible. Claudia placed a hand on his forehead and jerked back in shock at how hot his skin was. Glancing around frantically for anything to help she saw the phone at his bedside table and grabbed it, punching in 911 before cradling the receiver between her ear and shoulder as she continued to check over Steve.
The next moments all passed in a blur for Claudia as she explained who she was and where she was to the dispatcher before they hung up and she waited for the ambulance to arrive. The ride to the hospital passed in what seemed like a blink of an eye and suddenly Claudia found herself in the empty waiting room at Hawkins General and she became aware of two equally important facts.
Her sweater and hands were saturated with Steve's sweat and blood.
She needed to call Robin.
The blood would have to wait, because she knew that Robin would want to be there for Steve so she managed to wipe her hand with some tissues before dialing the Buckley's house.
"Buckley residence, this is Robin," Robin's voice came through the receiver and Claudia let out a loud sigh.
"Robbie, honey, thank goodness you're home. I have some bad news. I'm at the hospital right now sweetie, it's about Steve." Claudia paused after she finished speaking, waiting to see what Robin would say. Unfortunately for Claudia, rather than saying anything, she had to listen to a gut wrenching gasp and sob from Robin, so she chose to keep talking. "I went to his house and found him in his room. I think he had been hurt and it got infected. If your parents are home, I think you should come here, he would want you here."
Robin mumbled a few okays, clearly through tears before she hung up. In the silence after Claudia had no choice but to go clean herself up, allowing herself a minute to collapse onto a toilet seat and cry. Her boy was hurt and she couldn't help him, he was so hurt he didn't even know she was there and she didn't know what to do.
Robin arrived about 10 minutes after they ended their call with a surprise in tow.
Jim Hopper, thinner and without a mustache, but somehow alive and marching into the hospital like he was going into hell. Knowing about his daughter, he probably felt like he was in hell.
Robin spotted Claudia first and ran over to her, arms open and Claudia pulled her right into a tight hug, rocking her back and forth the way Steve always loves. Robin held back just as tight and cried into her shoulder while Claudia whispered to her, "He'll be okay, he's going to be okay."
Jim didn't say anything, just nodded - as if she hadn't thought he was dead until that moment - before he collapsed into a chair, head in his hands and knee bouncing with anxiety.
Hours passed, Robin had curled herself up in a chair next to Claudia and was leaning into her side. Jim had moved to sit on the other side of Robin and surprisingly she reached out and held his hand.
After ages of sitting there in silence a doctor walked through the doors. Claudia recognized her immediately and knew that she had been lucky to find Steve alive if she had been called in. Dr. Graham was one of the only wound specialists they had at the hospital and she focused on the worst cases.
Claudia straightened in her seat, her two companions also coming to attention as Dr. Graham came to sit with them.
"Hello, Claudia. I'm sorry you had to come in on your day off but you got very lucky. If you hadn't brought him in today he may have gone into sepsis. Thankfully he has you listed as his emergency contact so I can fill you in on everything. I want to start by saying that he is currently stable and on heavy medication. He had multiple heavily infected wounds, primarily on his abdomen but there was also apparent road rash across the back of his arms and upper back. We were able to debride the wounds from the rash relatively easily but his abdomen was more difficult. The bandage he had been using was extremely dirty and not made for wound coverage so many fibers had been imbedded into the open wounds. Luckily there had been little necrotizing fasciitis but there was enough that we had to remove the dead tissue. I do want to make sure you understand that he was very seriously injured and delayed treatment made it worse. We are going to test the pus we collected for different bacteria to narrow down the treatment for him but I'm thinking it may be leptospirosis, since he is visibly jaundiced and the injures are obviously animal bites. We have him sedated currently and on heavy antibiotics in the ICU. If you wear protective gear you can visit him for a little bit, but only people on his emergency contact list can come."
Claudia's head was spinning, she was hearing the words being said and she was following the doctor down the hall to the ICU. She was putting paper scrubs on over her clothes and donning a mask and gloves, but it was all in a daze. She needed to see Steve, she needed to see him breathing, then she would be okay.
She was not okay.
Seeing Steve only made her collapse into a chair in tears. He looked so small in the hospital bed, wrapped in wires and tubes. But he was breathing. Robin collapsed onto the foot of his bed and bent over his shins while she sobbed and Jim stumbled into the wall by the door with a hand over his eyes as his shoulders shook with silent anguish. They knew he wasn't out of the woods yet, but he was breathing and he had to be okay.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alright that was part one, I'm working on the next half but wow that ended up being really long
Taglist
@maya-custodios-dionach @ape31 @eldtritchlizardblast @y4r3luv @devondespresso @zerokrox-blog @disrespectedgoatman @finntheehumaneater @estrellami-1 @jonesn4coffee @whatexactlyismyhoohah @lingeringmirth @my-hyperfixations-hell-blog @spectrum-spectre @steddieasitgoes @puppy-steve @frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe @nburkhardt @sllooney @princessstevemunson @yellowdevilkitten @emchant3d @steddie-island @afewproblems
183 notes
·
View notes
About bending lightning...
This is a little snippet from Part 2 Chapter 1 (17 if you go by Chapter count) where Katara is practicing her bloodbending on Zuko. While doing this, she learns that the heart generates electricity, and Zuko explains that is why lightning can't pass through the heart.
This is a real thing.
Our bodies naturally generate low quantities of electricity. This is a concept used in The Matrix if you've ever seen it. Humans are used as 'batteries' in that universe. It's a cool concept and actually based on real science. Our bodies are also conductors for electricity as well. We are, in a sense, actual lightning rods.
Because of the minerals, elements, and water content in our body, we make excellent lightning rods because the lightning can pass through without interruption to the ground where it is dispersed. Remember, lightning is energy. It is neither created nor destroyed. It becomes other forms of energy. It is a visible energy that is the fourth state... plasma.
So how does a firebender like Ozai and Azula generate that kind of energy?
Lightning is a lot of energy. It is measured in volts and amps. It is also hotter than the surface of the sun... which is also plasma.
I'm exploring this because lightning both fascinates and terrifies me. But again, how does one generate that kind of energy?
I'm actually glad that lightning is used sparingly in the show because to generate a true bolt of lightning, it would require a lot of energy. Energy that you have to consume and convert from things you eat. I'd imagine that once you use lightning, your body will be depleted, causing fatigue and sluggishness. They don't show it in the source material, but that is something to think about.
But could lightning be absorbed by a well trained firebender? Maybe. Remember, lightning is energy. The body can only take so much and be able to sustain it. Redirecting it, in Zuko's case, means absorbing and releasing in a short amount of time. You aren't really taking it all on, just redirecting it. Iroh teaches Zuko to redirect through the stomach, not the heart, because the stomach is what helps convert energy. The Sea of Chi, as Iroh calls it. This is why Zuko was able to survive Azula's lightning, where Aang was severely compromised from it. Aang was also hit in the spine where the nervous system is compact.
Bending lightning is a high-risk, high reward move if used correctly. But it can also weaken the bender at the same time. So that is definitely a reason not to use lightning as a weapon all the time. Which is why you don't see firebenders using it much.
As for why it should not cross the heart? Because that much electricity passing through the heart could disrupt the rhythm. This is why we use defibrillators to correct tachycardia (rapid heartrate) and myocardial infarction (when the heart can't beat correctly or in layman's terms... a heart attack).
Anyway, this was my deep dive into why bending and redirecting lightning is not used much in the series.
And it was a little morsel from the recent chapter.
I will probably go deeper into why Bloodbending is the strongest form of bending. At this point, we should just call it Body Bending.
31 notes
·
View notes
it's nice that we're getting anything i guess, but, i'm gonna be what may come off as a little petty and whiny here; it'd be cool if either iteration of the gen 9 anime so far was actually about gen 9's characters instead of using them as cameos to promote original stories we have no investment in yet
it's like, i dunno, like the bait and switch with sonic appearing in wreck it ralph ads, except if wreck it ralph existing meant there would never be a sonic movie, and if you were invested in those characters and recognized they weren't generic platformer mascots, sucks for you, nobody cares
maybe they're just giving the DLC space to do its thing with them first (if they do anything at all...) but idk, i was cautiously optimistic about nemona in horizons, only for her to be a character of the day that the episode wasn't about, and pretty excited by "gen 9 prequel anime" only to find out it's going to be like, four short stories about OCs who have quick brushes with them. these are like the lacroix hint of what an anime about the game could've been like and you're left to imagine the rest yourself
i shouldn't be that surprised if the gen 8 anime reduced hero of galar hop to a character of the day with a level 5 wooloo in order to let the galaxy revolve around ash battling his brother because epic charizards, but man. what if it wasn't like that that now that ash is gone.
we haven't seen penny and team star at all because they're the hardest to talk about without bringing up the trauma of school bullying and the fear of being yourself at school when you're way too young to be dealing with all that drama responsibly. she's still learning to love and forgive herself and feel wanted.
arven's story is about, like, being a latchkey kid to a self-absorbed parent, being unsure how to feel about repairing the relationship or how seriously to take them saying they love him, and struggling to make friends due to misdirected resentment toward people he's jealous of for having apparently normal families and the stubborn self-reliance he was forced into. he's still trying to process things, find himself, and let people in.
nemona is supposed to have been a directionless lonely and depressed kid who hated being called gifted when everything was hard for her, until she met the player character and gained a peer who understood and appreciated she was a little different and she didn't have to mask her true self to have friends anymore. she's happy for now, but may still be under a little too much pressure to be perfect at the expense of her own personality, and probably won't deal well with being abandoned.
as much as they resonate with adults and are a little darker than usual pokemon fare, they're also smaller scale and realer. they are all stories that are explicitly about and meant to be relatable to kids going to school! y'know, your audience! you don't need to paint over them with 3-4 new characters and new stories every time like there was nothing there, or something shameful you need to sanitize and cover up! you can just use the game the way it is!
this got a little more heated than i intended, i just feel a little ridiculous waiting anxiously for loose scraps of a sign that this story isn't over and in the trash already and nemona's life-changing attachment to the player character isn't going to go totally ignored, as we are bombarded with what is supposed to be followup material that almost all seems eager to talk about literally anything else like they think the main story was a mistake they need to run away from
now, i'm not one to complain about original stories being told, but this was already a story that had room to grow. imagine a world where the gen 9 anime was actually about nemona, arven, penny, and the friend who brought them together. or what their lives were like before that friend came along. every episode. that would get me to watch the anime again and whatever movie came out for it. ask yourself why we don't have that, or even the traditional, like, 1-2 characters tagging along with the MCs per region thing that would leave us knowing them better than we know some irl friends
how was starting over with 100% original characters and new lore that might conflict hard with the upcoming DLC the safer bet? why is a 44 minute miniseries specifically for fans of the game making up OCs for them to get invested in and scrambling to tell their stories as quickly as possible before throwing them in the trash instead of being about the damn game?
sigh. i shouldn't get invested in a series that's about selling monster plushies just because it had one story that stuck with me
10 notes
·
View notes