[network] @crescent; to die historic on the furry road [open]

[lancingintherain]

[usually, the worst thing about waking up is remembering how hungry she is. But this morning, as Day 45 breaks cold and overcast as usual, the worst thing about waking up is remembering that last night, her friend got literally eaten by a monster.

She has to warn people. She couldn't save Mami, but maybe she can help others. So once she's mostly talked herself down from numb grief and fear, she turns on her tablet's video function. At first, it's aiming at a wooden tabletop, but she tilts it to show a drawing. For having been drawn last night in the dark in the hazy, panicky aftermath of mortal peril, it's pretty decent:



She clears her throat and starts to speak, her voice low and breaking despite her efforts to keep it steady.]

Four days ago, I was traveling with Alphonse Elric's group. We were attacked by this monster here. [a gray-furred, four-fingered hand moves into the video to tap at the top left of the picture with one sharp claw.] It was... well, if you've seen Alphonse, you know how tall he is. This one was taller. It had... light, instead of skin. Like what we see on the videos, sometimes. I'm not explaining it quite right, but... we got away.

[she swallows, then takes a shaky breath and points to the drawing on the right.]

Mami Tomoe and I—she's a young human girl; some of you have met her—we were on our own, yesterday. This monster attacked us last night. We—I tried to...

[she breaks off, planting her hand flat on the table to stop it from shaking. When she speaks again, her voice is hard.]

...It swallowed her. It ate her whole. That's what they do. Now we know.

[she points to the bottom drawing.]

It said things to me, before it—before it ate her. Spoke right into my head. "I want it"; "I am here"; I wrote down what I could remember. And there's something else. All of the other monsters I've seen have looked, well, they've looked human, or something like it. But this one... oh, it's easiest to just show it.

[the video swings dizzyingly as she picks up the tablet, and she taps on the screen to turn the camera. At once, the view of the tabletop and wall becomes a view of her very inhuman face, framed by her pale, tangled hair and large ears. Her eyes are tired, and her muzzle is streaked with dark, dried blood.]

...It looked like me. Like one of my people. But it... it ran on all fours, like an animal. ...I don't know what any of it means. But one thing's the same—and if anyone who's just arrived is watching this, you'd better listen. [her voice turns cold, and she looks straight into the camera.] If you see a monster, you run, got it? You run away as fast as you can, and get inside, and block the door. There's no fighting them. No fighting them at all.

[OOC: HOT GOLLY DAMN, there are enough threads here to feed a whole village of cute, thread-starved orphans. I'm capping the number of threads where it is. No more replies please, you beautiful people.]

Comments

[dr_unconscious]

[Clayton, ever the patient man, is unsurprisingly an excellent listener and an attentive audience. He leans forward with his arms on his knees, nodding along, looking appropriately curious then inspired when House solves the mystery for him (Wilson's disease--now there's something you don't hear about every day). It's a good story on its own, sure, if a little odd on the tangent, but more importantly just telling it seems to be putting House at ease. He would have listened even if House was just talking gibberish.]

[It also gives Clayton an interesting view into House's diagnostic process, or specifically, how he deals with problems, more or less unfiltered by his usual layers of sarcasm and bitter antagonizing. He could have very easily ratted out the kid's mom to save himself the effort of having to deal with the aftermath once his fun was over with, but he made the obvious choice not to. Being the bad guy because it's expected of him. Sounds familiar. Clayton can't help but smile, although it's rueful, a little knowingly snide. He's on to you, House.]

[That turns into something more genuinely amused when House turns around, back to Clayton's problem. He flashes his teeth in a wide, playful grin.]

Ain't it? Couldn't hardly believe it myself, 'til we stopped givin' him carbs 'n put 'em on anti-fungal meds an' he stopped gettin' smashed every meal. We're thinkin' the antibiotics he was takin' fer that staph infection gave the yeast room t' take over things in his gut. He was fine after that, far 's I know...

[Clayton pauses, absently threading his fingers.]

How 'bout you tell me another one? I'd talk about the fella who was tryin' t' hide his lady's jewelry, but that's gettin' more into the clinic side a things.

[rubikscomplex]

Ever had a guy stroke out on you after yelling at him? Reason #67 not to be on clinic duty. [House has an idea what Clayton is doing. There's a part of him that wants to resist, to avoid giving the other man insight and leverage, but he loves talking about medicine, his cases. The interesting ones, those are worth sharing. Still, better to pick one of the awkward ones, see how Clayton reacts.]

I tell you what happened... you play my game if you're going to stop... telling me about your cases. I give you symptoms. The facts we had as we went on. You tell me what you'd do... how you'd guess.

[It's a test, as well, to see just how useful Clayton is. The fact the guy managed to get to gut fermentation syndrome is impressive, but one instance of an odd disease does not an ideal diagnostician make. Not for House's team.]

[dr_unconscious]

Yeah, but you don't hardly gotta yell at 'em.

[Clayton chuckles through that same knowing grin. He's pretty sure he understands why House isn't fond of clinic duty, and it definitely isn't to do with unexpected patient deterioration. But he'll keep that to himself.]

[Time for the next round instead. Clayton shrugs and slowly shakes his head.] Only fair t' give it a shot, I suppose. Can't promise I'll be any good at it--my job's jus' t' patch folks up as they come in. I don't know what t' do with 'em, I send 'em off t' your team, y'know?

[Okay, so maybe he's underselling himself a little bit. He figures House's ego won't be offended by it.]

[rubikscomplex]

Oh, please. 'Just a simple ER doctor, huh?' One who sees things other people don't. [He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes again. Heart rate still elevated, still sweating, partial tinnitus. But it doesn't feel quite like he's about to have a heart attack anymore. He's coming down from it.] I have a team to stroke my ego, Epps. I don't need a referral to.

[His eyes open, focusing in on Clayton.]

Patient is a 21-year-old male. Asian. Patient was in the clinic due to excessive grinding of the teeth. He seemed like a nervous guy. Seeing as teeth grinding isn't a leading cause of stroke in 20-somethings, we thought there might be a little more to it. Stroke initially presented with a blown pupil, left eye. [House's voice becomes progressively stronger, more confident as he speaks.]

Guesses from the peanut gallery?

((ooc: And just so you don't have to go digging excessively to put medical clues together, friend, here is the guy's case.))

[dr_unconscious]

[Clayton huffs a laugh but doesn't argue. Hey, if House wants to pay him compliments, he won't deny him. Part of him wonders if House realized he did it. If he didn't, Clayton's too interested to watch him figure it out himself to interrupt.]

[Besides, there's a case to worry about. He leans forward, chin in hand, brows arcing high into his ragged hairline as House explains the situation to him. Clayton gives it a few moments afterwards to process.]

...An' he didn't go straight into a coma after it? [Not by the way House is describing things, like he's leading up to something else. There's clearly more to this than just the stroke. If not some kind of massive intracranial trauma--or imminent intracranial trauma--then it's probably localized. Clot in the optic nerve? Maybe...]

[...Too little information. After another decent pause, Clayton speaks up again.]

Assumin' y'all took an MRI. What'd that show up?

[rubikscomplex]

Nope. Totally conscious. Well, I mean as totally conscious as most people are after a stroke, [House shrugs.]

And the MRI showed nothing. Metal plate in the guy's jaw from reconstructive surgery months ago prevented it. Damn those reconstructive surgeons. We ran an angiogram, EMG, echocardiogram, and tox screen. No vasculitis, peripheral neuropathy, cardiac embolism, or drugs. I really thought we were gonna get lucky on that last one.

While we're having our fun, the kid's dealing with aphasia and we learn a little more about his medical history... from his dominatrix.

[He goes quiet for a moment and lets that sink in with a smirk at Clayton.]

Annette. Mm... I'd've let her whip me, too. Turned out our polite and quiet little Asian bro was into a total BDSM lifestyle.

[dr_unconscious]

[With the exception of chuckling and waving House off when he starts going on about Annette, Clayton patiently waits through his explanation. This is a lot of new information to sort through. No MRI makes things a lot more difficult, and the alternative tests run on him basically covered all the bases Clayton would have thought of at the time. Aphasia sounds like worsening damage from the stroke--or continued minor strokes, whichever way he looks at it doesn't seem good. The BDSM angle is...interesting, but not immediately informative. More of a personality angle than a diagnostic one; he was probably pretty tolerant of discomfort, so--]

[--actually. Hm.]

...Did he bring himself in fer the teeth grindin'?

[rubikscomplex]

Yep. It's been going on for six months. And this guy's tried everything to deal with it. And I mean everything. Except, y'know? Real medicine. He'd been to an acupucturist, a shen balancer, a homeopath, a chiropractor, and a naturopath. All that was missing was the partridge in the pear tree, really.

So that gave us about ten different possibilities. But let's hear yours.

[dr_unconscious]

[Clayton nods along, still deep in thought. Like House has pointed out, this is almost too much information now. A veritable cocktail of new and exciting drugs and alternative treatments could have been taken by this man before he finally showed up at the hospital. But at least one of those interactions ought to have been picked up by the other tests they did...all but that pesky MRI.]

[At a loss, Clayton once again finds himself approaching this case from a personality angle. The patient sounds like someone who doesn't trust doctors much, or doesn't put a lot of stock in them, if he was willing to go to every other type of medicine man in town before turning himself in to the ER. The fact that he would eventually resort to a hospital even after all of that mess just confirms Clayton's suspicions that whatever was going on with this teeth-grinding must have been very significant.]

[It also means that he hasn't been back to get that jaw plate checked on in half a year.]

...House, I got nothin'. [Clayton slumps backwards, baffled.] Did y'all at least take a look at his jaw while you had 'em? Sounds like it was causin' him a lot a trouble.

[rubikscomplex]

[House's small smirk grows into probably the most genuine smile Clayton's seen on his face, yet. He's impressed because it's a good point. One he and his team had missed.]

You know the problem with getting a bunch of specialists in a room together and not telling them to do something basic? They'll do every test under the sun except the basic ones. We scanned that kid every which way, but it took my intensivist finding drawers filled with Tic-Tacs in the guy's place for me to realize nobody had the bright idea to manually check his jaw after his initial admittance. He was minty fresh, then, and no signs of problems.

Cut to a few days later with multiple mini-strokes, a diagnosis of trauma-induced aneurysm after we found his Domme strangling him in his bed to get him off, a vascular surgery that found no problems or signs of an aneurysm, and every diagnostic test in the alphabet... I finally go down to meet the kid again, and what do you know? Smelled like old vomit in there.

What would you call that, doctor?

[Heart rate is down, other symptoms are abating. He really hates to admit it, but this has been helping him.]

[dr_unconscious]

[Clayton smiles back, even before House continues on with the story. He knows just from that one little genuine grin that he's figured it out--but more importantly, he knows he's impressed House. A little silly, wanting the resident grumpy doctor's approval, but Clayton is all about making headway with people. He's just glad House is capable. He knew he was.]

Oh...I'd call that an infection, I would. [He leans forward again, sounding almost giddy.] Osteomyelitis? How...that was causin' the strokes, weren't it? Spreadin' in his blood 'r somethin'?

[rubikscomplex]

Fulminating osteomyelitis. Yummy. Stuck a needle in the guy's jaw and nice, pretty pus got sucked out. Funny enough, he didn't seem to mind needle in the jaw thing. Wish I could get off on pain like that.

You got it, though. Infected tissue from the jaw breaks off, blocks blood flow to the brain, causes the strokes, and all of the other symptoms. Had the surgeon pull out his jawbone, and the guy was practically as a good as new after some recovery. I mean apart from being a perverted sexual deviant whose parents disowned him.

Can't have everything.

[dr_unconscious]

Naw.

[Sorry, Clayton's totally skipped over the little jabs at their story patient here. Infected tissue broke off and blocked blood flow to the brain? Incredible. Clayton is literally beside himself with amazement. He might be nerding out a little bit.]

Lord...don't think I woulda never figured that one out. Good thing he got himself fixed up in time.

[He leans back, looking satisfied with himself for a few long, pensive moments, just before he remembers what they were telling stories about to begin with. Clayton casts a quick look over House.]

...How're we feelin'?

[rubikscomplex]

I'm fine. [Said as if this has always been true as a glare reasserts itself on House's features.] Which means you can go away now. Lots of interesting re-reading to do with a fresh perspective. [Translation: 'Go away so I can pore over all the bullshittery I've been ignoring.']