snowblindrpg | [log] Digging Up Bones [closed]

[It's been a day, and House already feels like maybe he should just chance it on a reset. Will is about the only thing stopping him.

His foot is in agony from whatever the hell Beckett's sludge did to it--he hasn't even looked at that--his body aches, and his hand... he can't move his right hand anymore without wanting to scream. Why the hell couldn't it have fried his nerve endings, too? At least then it wouldn't hurt so much. The Vicodin takes the edge off, but House is well aware it's not going to be enough for what's coming. He hasn't tried to peel the yellow glove on his hand off, yet. He knows what he's going to see beneath, and just getting it off... It's going to be hell when some of his skin is going to go with it. Maybe a lot of his skin.

The doctor hasn't moved much from his position against the door, which means anyone trying to open it is going to need to get him to move first. No anomalies, please.]

Rhys had only hiked about half a day's worth of travel to get from the bunker to the shed, but it was still enough to wind him a little, make his normally stoic persona wear around the edges.

He's sick and he hurts. The trip back from the high school had been harder than planned, and now he's still on his feet, still going, because other people are worse off and if he doesn't keep going, he's going to sit and do nothing and feel like shit while his shoulder festers. That's not where he wants to be right now.

Finding the door barricaded is a little irritating, and Rhys has to shift a great deal of his gear in order to pound on the door and get it to open.

"Knock Knock. Candygram."

There's a long pause before the door cracks open and House peers out to make sure it's not another anomaly.

"Any chance you can do a Philly cheese steak sandwhich-gram, instead?" House drags himself to the side to let Rhys in. "Pretty sure my sweet tooth fell out between someone or other punching me." There have been a lot of punches.

Rhys looks tired, but otherwise intact and coherent, and when House cracks the door, he shifts his bags back to their original carrying position.

"I have roast beef and swiss, actually. It's not a Reuben, but I did manage to get horseradish and mustard for it." And if House doesn't want it, Rhys will eat it because he's healing and that always takes more calories. He gives a wan smile, and shuffles in for a chance to put down his load and take a break.

Will, if he's there, will get a brief, reserved smile of greeting. Not intimate, but not unfriendly, before Rhys pushes up his cap a bit and peers around the room.

"Homey."

It would be more fun if House were actually hungry. "I'll pass for now. Horseradish'd kill the homey atmosphere." He pauses, eyeing Rhys as the darkness closes around them when the door is shut. They have their tablet lights, but that's it. The shack doesn't have any windows. "Are you staying the night or hoping to move on somewhere else?"

IT's not ideal by any means, and it shows on Rhys's face before he shrugs.

Then winces, and reaches up to start tugging his coat off.

"I'm trying to get in touch with Angel to have a look at my shoulder. The Anomaly version of her has a wicked touch." There's bedsheet strips tied over his right upper arm, bundling the wound up in extra layers as he pulls off his clothes layers to reveal the dressing.

"But I have a clean sharp knife, and plenty of extra cloth. Some vodka for sterilizing. Basics, at least."

Which he'll use on House first, and hope for more later for himself. He's still hoping to avoid having to cut the crystals out.

"I've got plenty of hand sanitizer, as scalpen and all sorts of fun medical supplies." Some days he is actually a doctor and his focus on supplies has always been to medical uses first.

"Lemme look at your shoulder first. I'm gonna be useless after we deal with my hand." Because he's going to take enough Vicodin to ensure he's useless and not screaming in agony.

"Ah, good." Rhys won't hide his relief, and he gives a crooked smile. "I wasn't looking forward to trying to do things with an X-Acto knife and needlenose pliers if I could help it, but at least I've got them on hand." He puts the rest of his bags down out of the way, and continues to strip.

"I also have a couple of candles, but only a little time left on them." He takes a deep breath, and starts to unwrap the bandages over his shoulder once his shirt is off. The scars on his chest from being stabbed have closed nicely, still shiny and pink but clean, but his shoulder itself, along the outer edge of his right arm, is covered with tape and maxi pads. Makeshift, but he's determined to keep it clean. Especially given he spent the night in the Bunker.

"I'm going to guess you have at least some painkillers, because from what Gabriel told me, you're going to need them."

House turns his tablet light toward Rhys as he undresses to get a look at him. His gaze catches on the 'bandages' covering over the other man's shoulder and arm. "Looks like you're gonna need 'em, too." While not overly inclined to share, House is aware of necessity. He pulls out what remains of the partly-used bottle of Gabriel's pills. House still has a full one in reserve. He's only been taking one a day, broken into halves, so he has a good supply left. Well, he'd been taking just one a day. This injury may change things. Already has changed them.

"Here. Take half of one of those before you peel that off and show me what I'm dealing with."

Rhys hesitates for a second, not convinced of his need for painkillers, until he simply realizes that he's been in pain since Angelnomaly touched him and he'd like a break from it.

It's only a fraction of what would get him in any sort of trouble, and after a moment he nods and stops stripping to accept the granule of medicine.

Some days, being a martyr doesn't pay and if anyone has meds to spare, it would be House. He chases the pill with a sip from his water bottle (an empty plastic juice bottle), and then commences pulling off the taped-on bandages.

"It's shallow, but there's a lot of it and there's...well. Crystals. I've just been cleaning it and then keeping it covered." The tape comes away easily enough, revealing...

Exactly what Rhys said. The flesh looks angry though not infected yet, but there's a patch of amethyst-like crystals embedded in the skin as though nesting in a geode. Tiny sweeps of the crystals spin out in an almost star pattern, glittering in the thin light, contrasted starkly by the black lines of his now-ruined tattoo.

He uses his good hand to wordlessly put his own tablet light on, adding a little more to the dim room.

House takes it in before offering his assessment. "Cool! But gross. You got a sleeping bag? This'll be easier for me with you lying down. And with a nurse holding the light."

That's directed over at Will. Whether or not he decides to join the proceedings, House moves on, rustling in his pack for hand sanitizer, his scalpel, and fresh strips of gauze. He also pulls out a belt.

"How are you with pain? 'Cause you can bite into this if you're gonna need it."

"I can deal with pain. If it gets these fucking things out, I'll take it."

Rhys quietly retrieves a few more strips of cotton sheet, before putting down his yoga mat and sleeping bag. It's not the same as a tattoo, even the worst tattoos over bone and muscle, but he's already working on getting his mind into the place it needs to be for him to deal with the pain.

This is where his years of discipline and magical training will help, but he's going to take the belt anyway. His tail twitches unhappily, before he stills it and deliberately stuffs it under his leg, where it can't lash out and slap House or Will at a bad time.

He gives House a wan smile, at that. "Reflexes are reflexes. The damn thing has a mind of its own sometimes." He knows the doctor will appreciate the little bit of detail on the novel piece of anatomy. Also, not getting smacked in the head with a three-foot long cord of muscle and bone.

House nods briefly to Will when the other man brings the light over. He does appreciate the tidbit about Rhys' tail. At this point, he'd have expected the other man to have figured out its control. He just quirks a brow at it, more concerned with psyching himself up for this, as well. One-handed surgery is going to be a bitch and a half.

The scalpel and his tweezers, along with a suture needle that already, mercifully, has line attached to it, are doused with hand sanitizer and that's followed by House's good hand after he sets the tools on some clean gauze. Finally, He spreads some of the sanitizer across one of the areas with a small crystal.

"This is probably gonna sting like hell. Stop me if it gets to be too much." Because he doesn't usually operate on conscious patients. He's going to use the tweezers first to try to gently extract the small piece of crystal. If it looks like the skin is sticking around it, he'll use the scalpel to try to cut around just where the crystal enters.

Rhys has excellent control over his tail, it's just when he's not concentrating on it, it tends to do its own things, like tails do. Maybe part of it is that it's not his muscles, not completely. Maybe it's just unconscious. Either way, under stress it tells more about his state of mind than he would ever admit.

Rhys takes a few slow, deep breaths as House stops poking, only twitching a little at the first poke of the knife and tweezers. The crystals aren't just clustered on the wound, but actually grown into the skin, and there's no choice but to cut them out the hard way.

It's definitely going to sting. Rhys gives another wan smile.

"You're good to go. I'll make sure not to move."

House realizes, tugging gently at the crystals that this is not going to go well. He stares down at Rhys' chest, then glances at his own injured hand clutched close to his body. The reasonable voice inside his head that went to medical school is piping up hellishly loud and clear and it sounds like Cuddy.

"Get up. This isn't gonna work. I'll clean everything off with more sanitizer, but I can't do this. You need someone with two hands." Goddamn it... "That chick Diana might be closest. Or Watson." Strange isn't going to be any help with his hands.

A terrible sort of relief floods through Rhys when House backs off, before the pain can even get intolerable. He lets his breath out slowly before he starts to sit up, reaching for the dressings to cover the wound back over.

He's hoping Watson or someone else can get it out, because otherwise the next stop is infection and no matter how healthy he is now, that's not going to last with a bunch of crystals keeping his open wound from closing. For now, though, he's okay...he'll just have to keep telling himself that and get to someone else who's good with a knife ASAP.

"I need to talk to Angel and see if she can tell us anything more about this shit. Besides the fact that it's an alien mineral. But after that, might have to bite the belt and do it the hard way anyway, if it can't be...I don't know, dissolved somehow." Which doesn't tell them much of anything about it at all. He grimaces, and glances down at the wound again.

"Just give me a minute to get bundled back up, and I'll see what I can do for you. I've done lots of debriding before so...we'll see how far we get." Especially since House hadn't torn up his arm. There was pain, but he could deal, and the Vicodin would start settling him into a nice quiet mindset any time now.

"Before you do anything, just stay there. I'm gonna clean everything."

He uses hand sanitizer squirted on gauze to spread across the wounds, moving as carefully as he can around the crystals. A part of him wonders if these things are poisonous. He remembers talking to Angel about her eridium and how it was absolutely toxic.

"Make sure you find someone quickly to get those things out if Angelcakes doesn't have any other information. She injects this crap into herself and it's supposed to be toxic to people who aren't sirens."

"Right, gotcha."

Rhys is almost tempted to tell him to save the sanitizer, but he had said there was plenty and Rhys is sure that staving off infection now is better than dying from it later. He settles back down to let House work, only wincing slightly at the touch of alcohol on open wounds.

"I know. I'm already pushing it with the two days that's passed, but all of us scattered like this makes it hard, and not much to do about that." It's an old lament, and Rhys doesn't even shrug- mainly because House is still cleaning his shoulder.

"The Anomaly-version of Angel said that it was only dangerous in liquid form, the stuff she was dripping, and I did get sick for a few hours from being close to that, but it faded by the next day. I felt sick and cold, mostly." He's very aware of his symptoms when he gets them: even without his powers, which never worked on himself anyway. His health is the most important thing he has here and in general, he's been doing good keeping it up.

"I'm thinking either I can head to the shower, then back to the Bunker, or just go straight for the bunker if I'm still doing well enough, and hopefully catch a few people who could help out, save myself some running."

House mostly just grunts in reply to Rhys' rambling. He's having to focus to avoid scraping too harshly over Rhys' wounds when his hand is trembling slightly. "Tell me about getting close to her. You didn't go unconscious like normal anomalies?"

Much like House and Will hadn't gone unconscious near Gabriel, or even when the anomaly had jumped its way into Will's head.

Rhys stops talking after a moment to let House work, reining in his nerves Though Rhys is good at not showing pain, having his arm cleaned isn't fun and it's more helpful for him to be still.

"No, I was actually able to run, even after she touched me. If she'd knocked me out, she might have left me, but she was pretty pissed." He considers for a second. "When the thing in the slywalk grabbed me, I don't remember anything after it touched me, so this was different.

I did get a nosebleed, though, and static. And she only brushed my arm, when this happened." He nods toward his arm, fiddling with a strip of sheet as he waits.

"Why was she pissed?" He can think of plenty of reasons why he'd be pissed being a monster, but probably best to hear if there was some sort of reason and avoid that in the future. House doesn't want to find himself filled with crystals, either.

As he asks the question, he finishes up and sits back on his heels, letting out a shuddering breath, steeling himself as he waits for the other man to wrap his shoulder back up.

"She saw that I was trying to keep a distance from her instead of hugging her like I usually do, I guess. She believes that she's fine, that there's nothing dangerous about her, because I guess she's still got Angel's mind, or a version of it. But there was that slag shit all over the place and...well, an anomaly is an anomaly."

He felt bad. She hadn't really wanted to be a horror, had she? And he couldn't even comfort her. He'd hated to run, even if there was no doubt in his mind she would have killed him if he hadn't.

And now he was paying for his sentimentality, but it was just as well. He finishes wrapping his wound in strips from the sheet, including what clean fabric remained from his original outer wrapping, and then shifts to let House have the yoga mat.

"I'll wash up, and then see what we can do for you."

"Still a moron. Good to know." House snorts lightly and moves to sit on the mat rather than lying down. He uncurls his right arm and takes a deep breath as he holds out his hand for inspection. The rubber is streaky, partially melted, particularly around the palm, and sporting multiple small chunks of wood embedded in it.

"I poured as much sanitizer over this thing as I could without wasting it." The glove is only on up to his wrist. He'd been putting the things on in haste and hadn't pulled up his sleeve. Small mercies. There's intact material there. "You're gonna need to cut it off. And gimme that belt to bite on." House would like to believe he's not much of a screamer... but he can be vocal when he's in pain.

Rhys gives a wince and sucks air through his teeth, cutting off a swear, but it's sympathy rather than revulsion. It's not going to be fun, but he's not going to back down from it: it has to be done, and he wastes no time in handing over the belt because House is going to want it no matter how gentle his erstwhile surgeon tries to be.

After a moment of thought, he pulls free one more strip of the thin cotton of the sheet and wraps it over his mouth and nose, making sure that he doesn't breathe on anything that's been cleaned up. His hands follow with a healthy dollop of the sanitizer, making sure to spread it thoroughly.

"Okay. If it gets to be too much, say so and we'll take a break and let you rest, but I'll power through as much as I can." Bedside manner, without over-chatting. Rhys shifts around his tools until they're in comfortable reach, and settles into place to start working.

It's a big thing that House is even trusting him to do this, Rhys is pretty sure. He'll even stay calm if House starts griping at his technique.

House folds the belt in half and bites down almost immediately once it's in his hand, so griping is one thing Rhys will not have to deal with. He just looks at Rhys, then turns his gaze to Will for a long moment before closing his eyes. Rhys gets his trust with a caveat here. Will is there as a witness and intervening agent, so it's not exactly a one-on-one fall back into the guys' arms moment. Still, he does believe Rhys can do what he said he came to do. It's just a matter of enduring it.

The doctor will be able to keep quiet for a good portion of it, just his breath hitching as splinters are removed from his hand. When Rhys gets to the point of having to cut and peel the glove away, that's when the tears and small noises of pain come. House has a high pain tolerance level, but he's not actually made of iron. He does try to stay still as Rhys works, though.

Will's presence is both helpful and a barb to Rhys, even as he's trying to concentrate on the task at hand. He sees the look, the trust that House does have in the strange young man, and it brings him a twinge of hurt from the past months. Rhys won't let it get in his way, but it makes him grateful for the need to concentrate on his hands instead of his emotions.

Splinters come out, and so do pieces of the melted glove, slowly clearing the wound with calm experience. Even pieces of flesh mangled and hanging by a thread get excised carefully. Skilled enough to get the job done, no matter what he credentials might be, and after a few minutes it's done almost in a mechanical trance.

It's a little while, once House starts to really show signs of stress, that Rhys stops for a minute, and carefully works his arms and stretches out his hands. "Just a second and I'll get back to it. You holding up alright?"

It's probably a stupid question, but he's only got a little more to go and they can both use the breather.

House is biting hard into the leather of the belt, eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving. The look he shoots Rhys for that question is equal parts angry and agonized as he cracks open red-rimmed eyes. He isn't actually blaming the other man for the pain. That's something that was going to happen with anyone. Rhys just presents a convenient focus for it, particularly when he's going to ask what House takes to be stupid questions.

He pulls the belt out of his mouth with a shaking hand. "Oh, yeah. Never better. Any other questions before this thing goes back in my mouth, doc?"

Under the circumstances, Rhys's response is mild, though he does raise his eyebrows. He hadn't expected a cheerful answer, but he did still want to check in with House's state of mind and general endurance.

"You haven't punched me in the face yet, or stabbed me, so I was kinda taking that as 'okay' as possible under the circumstances." He can't manage a smile in this situation, it's a little too brutal, but he does give House a small nod, indicating that he's still good to go. And that he hasn't taken any particular offense.

Rhys picks up the scalpel again, surveying what's left to be done, and sighs quietly, but settles back in for more work. "If you want to punch me after, though, I'll give you a free pass on it."

"Don't be an idiot," House growls before sticking the belt back in his mouth. The last bit is almost the worst. It's not even the break, it's the disinfectant. House outright screams, the sound muffled by the belt, when there's the final wash of chemicals before his hand is being wrapped up. He's limp by the time Rhys finished with the dressings, everything except his jaw. House continues to clamp down on the belt, breathing in small, choked gasps. The doctor had broken into a cold sweat at some point during the excitement, and lies on Rhys' mat, panting.

It's done. There should probably be more fanfare than there is. But there isn't. It's just three men in a little shack where people were probably brutally murdered, dismembered, and hung up on giant butchers' hooks. House curls over onto his side away from Ryhs and Will and just cries silently.

He'll be able to talk in a bit, but not just now. Just now, he needs to let the Vicodin settle more in his system or he's liable to go for more and that would be a bad idea. Except... for one thing.

House lets the belt fall from his mouth and offers two words to Rhys, thick and quiet. "Thank you."

Rhys just snorts, and gives House a second before going back to work.

Once again, for the five millionth time here, he's relieved not to have his empathic abilities, because this is already hard enough without them. He's gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw aches by the time he's done, and for a minute, just falls back and breathes. The wound is clean and wrapped and it's the best House is going to get here, but dammit, Rhys thinks he did a good job under the circumstances.

When the other man curls up and turns away, Rhys rests a hand on his shoulder for just a moment, as quietly reassuring as he can be because dammit, in spite of everything he does still give a shit. Seeing House in pain like this, seeing anyone in pain like this...

Rhys is still a healer at heart and always will be. And that pained, exhausted thanks means a lot to him, even if he won't make a big deal out of it.

While House learns to breathe again, tries to work through the pain, Rhys sets to cleaning up and setting out other things. There's still care to be managed, shock and strain to be treated, and Rhys predicts it's going to be a long night.

[log] Digging Up Bones [closed]

cw: reference to skin peeling off; severe burns; gangrene; drugs; suicidal ideations

cw: Continued cws from above through whole thread, also infection, foreign objects in wounds

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cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds

cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds

cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds, surgery

cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds, surgery

cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds, surgery

cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds, surgery

cw: open wounds, stuff in wounds, surgery

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narrating past some of the grossness (cw: medical distress, loss of skin)

Good with me! (cw: medical distress, loss of skin)

(cw: medical distress, loss of skin)

cw: medical distress, loss of skin

cw: medical distress, loss of skin, mention of dismemberment

cw: medical distress, loss of skin