Sullen Drinks

[Miriam Bell]

At first Miriam is irritated that the feeling she's getting lost inside is slipping away from her and she reaches out for it, only to find it elusive and fragile. The realization stabs through her like a dagger of ice. The fading, the sliding from her grasp, away into silence. It's so painfully familiar, her whole body goes still and she recoils away from Chione, hands shaking. If she still had a heartbeat she thinks it would have stopped, a choked feeling welling up just underneath her collarbone. She feels like throwing up just to try and rid herself of this feeling.

"No... no. No!" she gasps out, blood dripping from her lips, the delicious taste having turned to ash and copper in her mouth. She knows she has to do something. Try and fix this, but right in this moment she's frozen, unable to will herself to move.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Wh- what's... wrong?" The sphinx slurs, punctuated by a gurgle at her neck.

"Just... just gonna have... a lie down..." she mumbles, slumping.

Her mind is barely hanging together. Trying to grasp it is like trying to grab smoke.

[Miriam Bell]

Something about the gurgling sound snaps Miriam out of her stupor and she rushes forward, trying to catch Chione and lower her onto the bed, frantically grabbing at the covers to find something to press against the wound. Her first couple attempts just end with her yanking at fabric that's held down by Chione lieing on top of it. Panicked she pulls and tears until she manages to get enough fabric free to try and press against the Sphinx's neck.

[Miriam Bell]

As she feels Chione fade away her own mind loses grip of carefully erected barriers. The gothic veneer she's projecting sloughs off the walls and the bed, leaving behind nothing but empty gouges in reality. Everything crumbles and the darkness that remains is just absolute. Emptiness. A void of utter stillness. Miriam's panicked noises fall from her lips but the air doesn't move. The absence is all-encompassing in her mind. Death. The feeling of thoughts, feelings, concepts, neurons firing, everything that makes a person disappearing, not into black but into nothing. No noise, no movement, just emptiness all around. A rising abyss that threatens to arrest her own thoughts, isolating her in her own little island amidst the dark. A lone drop bouncing on a surface that doesn't ripple in response.

Blood gathers on her lip where her teeth have sunk into her own flesh and the crimson droplet swells until it slips free.

Just a little. Just enough to stave off the still. To make her mind stir again.

The drop falls onto Chione's lip, sliding down into the corner of her mouth where it slowly drains into her mouth.

[Chione Muqaddam]

After the droplet passes the sphinx's lips, her thoughts seem to rebound a little. She's not conscious so they're still a bit fuzzy, but they're not actively dispersing.

[Miriam Bell]

Still pressing her hands against Chione's neck Miriam scrambles for where the bed-side table should be. The darkness isn't real, there's still a phone there somewhere and after some panicked fumbling she manages to knock it out of it's charging station. For a brief moment her panic reaches a new high, unsure where the phone might have fallen, but then her fingers close around it and she punches in 999 to call for an ambulance.

[Narrator]

It's a tense conversation, but the operator seems to understand the urgency mostly when Miriam mentions where she's calling from.

Miriam may not have had much experience with MGH, but with the ambulance inbound neither she nor Chione are showing any signs of changing back.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam stays where she is, trying to calm down a bit to add to the makeshift compression bandage and secure it some. When she hears the approaching sirens she carefully let's go to see if the bleeding will stay under control enough.

[Chione Muqaddam]

The bleeding seems to have been stanched. Chione couldn't even charitably be called "alright," but she doesn't seem liable to die before the ambulance arrives.

[Miriam Bell]

Once she can see the flashing lights outside, Miriam slips out the door to try and find a way outside that doesn't involve the front door. She'll follow the ambulance, but actually explaining to the paramedics what happened is definitely not something she feels up to right now.

[Narrator]

The ambulance rushes the sphinx to St. Peter's where she's quickly wheeled in.

Given it's an older hospital, it's not as easy for Miriam to slip in during the confusion, but she can pick up some of the bustle in the emergency room as Chione is treated.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam doesn't even try to follow them inside, especially looking the way she does right now. Instead she follows the outside wall and tries to stay close while sticking to the shadows and ducking beneath windows. She fishes out a cigarette that she lights with shaky fingers as her mind tries to sort through the mess of thoughts in an attempt to keep track of what's happening inside.

[Rashida Muqaddam]

It's quite obvious that none of them have ever had to deal with a sphinx before, which has the emergency room in somewhat of disarray. They haven't lost her yet, though.

Soon though Miriam has to duck behind a bush as a limo pulls up, a rather severe looking woman getting out, and heading inside with some urgency.

[Miriam Bell]

That must be Chione's mother. Miriam tries to narrow her focus on the woman's thoughts. Easier to stick to one person's thoughts when they're likely to be asking the right questions to begin with.

[Rashida Muqaddam]

If Chione's mind was one Miriam could get lost in, Dame Rashida's seems actively predatory. Tendrils of something like smoke lash out as Miriam reaches out, burning like embers as they brush against Miriam's thoughts and try to drag her in.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam instinctively recoils. She's still reeling and probably under the influence and the last thing she needs right now is to get lost in somebody's thoughts. Of course that anxiety is like trying to hold still a limb that fell asleep and she finds her thoughts slipping, latching on to other minds in the hospital as she tries to get a hold of herself.

[Rashida Muqaddam]

Through the eyes of others, Miriam can see Dame Rashida direct a steely glare in her general direction, the tendrils curling towards her before one of the attendants catches the woman's attention. The tendrils snap back into Dame Rashida's mind as she has a harsh discussion with the attendant.

[Miriam Bell]

Taking a drag of her cigarette to try and anchor herself in the physical sensation Miriam seeks out the attendant's mind and their conversation.

[Rashida Muqaddam]

"...you will approve the transfer, or the lot of you will be looking for new employment by the time the sun's up. Am I clear?"

There's a sudden gut-flutter of fear in the attendant.

"Crystal, Dame Rashida."

"And if any of you breathes a word from this, you can expect to be in touch with my solicitor."

[Miriam Bell]

Transfer? Solicitor?

Miriam tries to cling to that flutter of fear as a beacon, to try and find if she can discern just why they're so terrified of this woman. Maybe even where they're planning to transfer Chione. It's 'just' a neck-wound, right? Strange physical appearance or not? Is the drug a problem? Should she be worried about what happened to her?

[Narrator]

This isn't the first time Dame Rashida has visited this hospital, from what Miriam can gather. She's demanded that her daughter be transferred to Broomfield which has specialists to help her. An airlift is apparently inbound.

Which is curious, because St. Peter's doesn't have a helipad.

[Miriam Bell]

"What the bloody hell is going on here?" she mutters to herself, taking a last drag from her cigarette and stomping it out on the ground. Pulling out her phone she calls for a taxi. Broomfield's not that far away and she might not lose that much time versus a helicopter if she has even just a bit of a headstart.

[Narrator]

It had taken some mild nudging to get the cabbie to ignore her odd appearance, but Miriam soon arrived at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford.

The helipad was easy enough to locate, but Miriam has been waiting for quite some time, and no helicopter seems to be inbound.

[Miriam Bell]

"Fuck... of course she was lieing." she mutters and pulls out her phone to search the web on any info about Dame Rashida. If Chione mentioned who did this to her she might find herself on the receiving end of the woman's attention and she'd gotten enough of a glimpse of her mind that the idea terrifies her. She's not really sure what she's going to do even if she does find where Chione was taken, but she can't just... walk away.

[Narrator]

From what Miriam can find, Dame Rashida is the daughter and heir of deceased shipping magnate Faroukh Muqaddam. He was an Egyptian emigre, and though he was successful his daughter was the first to be Western educated, and turned the business into a real powerhouse. After his passing, she took a considerable interest in charity and social works, and was awarded her MBE roughly a decade ago. She's not entirely accepted in old money circles in England, but she does seem to be extremely connected. Miriam can find photos of her at events with prominent British celebrities, up to and including members of the royal family.

[Miriam Bell]

"Bloody hell... what are the odds she's not vengeful about her daughter getting hurt..." she mutters. If Chione talks she's probably completely buggered. How many people saw them leave the bar together? Go into her room? Or maybe she'll blame her daughter. If Chione has gotten herself in trouble before she might not take the full blame for this after all... She probably should, but she might yet avoid the influential magnate's wrath. Maybe...