[FIN] Recovery

[BlackFireKitsune]

Seraphine looked a little unusual - in attire, in appearance, and even in the setting. She hadn't been to a hospital in months, if not several years, either because of her health or someone else's. It was for someone else that she was at the hospital in Camphoreon on this occasion, wearing a somewhat more modest dress than she usually chose and her complexion a little paler than usual.

The danger had passed though, they said, and her father was recovering. He would need to watch his blood pressure, however, and a bunch of other things and recommendations that really weren't all that important to the brunette right now. The whole thing had been rather frightening, but now that she knew for sure everything was alright she was endeavoring to forget about it. It was hard to do so while standing in that room, however, so the teen found herself idly wandering through the halls and passing other recovery rooms.  

[Suudonym]

For Luke, it was essentially an average day - or at least, what he had recently come to know as an average day. The period of time immediately following his awakening from surgery had been both incredibly stressful and vastly relieving. He didn't really like all this being connected to various monitors and intravenous drips, and he didn't really like the long bandage across his chest, but at least he was alive - and capable of a full recovery, if his surgeon was to be believed. For now, though, he was to spend the better part of January resting, several days of which required him to remain in the hospital's care until it was clear no malignant symptoms were developing. And that was incredibly boring, especially given that the room he'd been relegated to had no window. He compromised by requesting the occasional passing staff to leave the door open on their way out, but the majority of his time was filled with reading. There was a distressingly nostalgic feeling to laying in a clinic with a book in his hands, but it surely was more interesting than idly watching people walk past.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

It was definitely not an average day for Sera.

She hadn't seen Luke since going to the garden with him and walking around, but he seemed mostly fine, apart from needing to stop for a bit once. He hadn't looked too bad, though; honestly he looked perfectly fine, or he did to her anyway. No passing out or spontaneous fits or bleeding or broken bones or anything like that.

So it was a complete surprise to her as she was passing rooms and one of the occupants had a familiar head of red hair that immediately arrested her attention. She froze mid-step, back tracked, and lingered uncertainly, and more than a little confused, in the doorway. "...Luke?"  

[Suudonym]

It wasn't unsurprising to hear his name from the doorway - the nurses often announced their presence some way or another, though they usually called him by his last name - but the individual that accompanied that voice gave him pause, if not a little more pause than if normally might have thanks to the painkillers. "Sera," he said in evident surprise, tilting the book in his slightly so that it rested against him. "What are you doing here…?" Were he a little more aware of himself, he might have started investing some brainpower into coming up with an explanation.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

It was obvious that he was just as surprised to see her there, but at least she wasn't the one stuck in a bed with a million and one things stuck in her. She moved into the room only so far as to no longer be in the hall or the doorway anymore, but lingered near the latter still. Idly she noted the book he lowered, figuring that since he didn't tell his friends (or at the very least, he didn't tell her that he'd be in here, if he even knew beforehand) reading stuff would be the next most interesting thing. Depending on what he was reading, though.

At his question, she opened her mouth to respond, closed it, and glanced down at the floor near her feet, then at a tile a few feet off to one side. "My father," she started quietly as she crossed her arms lightly over her stomach, "had a, um... A heart attack, I guess." Lame finish complete, she allowed herself a few final moments of not meeting his gaze before she indeed looked up to do just that, seeing as it was her turn to ask him the same question. "What are you doing here..?"  

[Suudonym]

He wasn't really conscious of subtleties like body language, but he easily understood the reluctance in her voice. The words she said were painfully familiar, and it certainly wasn't difficult to understand that reluctance. "Is he all right?"

Incidentally, the same question would for once beget the same answer - and even a similar response, as Luke's gaze wandered from the door and towards his idle hands. "Oh, uh… Same for me, actually. Kind of." Fingers pulled listlessly at the page to which the book was open. There wasn't really any lying his way out of things this time, especially given how largely incoherent his thoughts were. It was a feat enough just to come up with the correct answer and voice it properly.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Well, since hanging out with Luke, bedridden as he was, was much more interesting and much less scary and nervewracking than hanging out in the room where her father was, Sera moved further into his room. She halted uncertainly near his bed, her arms still folded loosely with her hands cupping her elbows, not sure if she should sit or continue to stand. "Yeah, he's fine. Just recovering and stuff.."

She gave Luke a confused frown then, preferring to talk about him as opposed to her father. "You had one too? But I thought.. you had to be old to have heart attacks." A short pause. "Y'know... like, old old. In your 40's or 50's old," the brunette clarified, the frown still evident on her face. "Why would you have one?"  

[Suudonym]

"That's good, at least," he said with a vague motion of a nod. From his recently expanded understanding, heart attacks were fairly recoverable so long as they weren't terribly severe. Of course, he also had a recently expanded understanding of how stressful and frightening heart attacks were. If Seraphine's father was already improving, that was all well and good, but it would have been infinitely better had her family not been subjected to it in the first place.

"Well, not really…" Man, he knew he knew these explanations (way better than he would have liked, even), but it sure was difficult to summon the words. He continued somewhat haltingly, "Uh, well, it's more common in older people because of coronary heart disease, which is plaque in the arteries, which takes a long time to build up to the point that it can do damage." Was he still making sense? He sort of felt like he was rambling. Hopefully there was sense being made even if he was rambling. "Difference is I don't have coronary heart disease, just a messed up heart. Or, not anymore, I guess, if this surgery did what they say it did."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Seraphine nodded to his first statement - it was good, yes, but really she didn't want to linger on it anymore, so she chose to keep her response nonverbal.

Suddenly he was saying a lot of words though, and he didn't really sound like himself. Probably a little loopy from pain killers, she figured, since she also figured pain killers probably did that a little bit. Or so she heard they did. The brunette frowned at all of his words, especially the words she didn't know. Of those there were many. And wasn't plaque for teeth...? How the hell would it get in your arteries? Bodies were weird and kind of gross, but she didn't dwell on it, instead offering with a frown, "I guess that makes sense," even though it was still really confusing. "So I guess my father just... Stuff's been building up? I guess..." And Luke's heart was just messed up. It was still rather unsettling to know that such a thing that could take a while to happen, could also happen quite suddenly in someone with a different condition of the same thing. "Well," she started uncertainly, "I hope it fixes what they said it would. It'd suck if you had anymore." But he wouldn't, right? Her dad wouldn't either, surely, since they said he was better now.  

[Suudonym]

A nod in reply. That was the simplified explanation that he should have tried to reach first, before stumbling over the vocabulary. "Yeah," he agreed. "It's a pain. Wouldn't recommend it." He sighed, diverting his attention from just how much a pain it literally was before those thoughts dredged up the sensation of the incision on his torso. "Would have been easier to die as a kid," he said absentmindedly. "Skip all this." His tone was much more of annoyance than any kind of sincere despair, and it was a simple conclusion that much of his conversation at the moment was resulting from various drugs.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"It sounds like it," she said as she made a face, then sat down in one of the chairs with a sigh. "Looks like it too." Especially because of surgery. To fix his heart, they'd have to cut his chest open, wouldn't they? Eugh, he was definitely on pain killers then - so she disregarded his last statements as such. He was usually more articulate than this, or at least, he sounded more confident and sure of whatever he was talking about. Right now he just sounded... kind of confused? Or something. Maybe. She wasn't too sure. She couldn't really blame him though; she'd probably just as out of it as he was if she just got cut open and hopped up on whatever strong pain killers they had.

She leaned back more comfortably into the chair before she asked, "How long do you have to stay here for?"  

[Suudonym]

Fortunately for Seraphine there were three barriers saving her from having to avoid looking at the bruised incision - the sheet of the bed, the fabric of his shirt, and the protective bandage. Fortunate for Luke as well; it wasn't exactly attractive to look at for anyone. "Um, a while. A few more days, I guess. It'll more or less be out of one bed and into another, though." At least he sure felt like it would be now. The notion of getting up and walking anywhere just sounded horrifically foreign at the moment.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

If Seraphine had been thinking about it, she would have been glad someone had been tasteful enough to cover up such things as cut-open chests post-surgery, just so she wouldn't have to look at it. But she wasn't, so she didn't.

"Mmn," Sera replied, simply making a noise in response. She didn't really see any appeal in staying in a hospital for a few days, completely bedridden. She'd much rather be at ho-- well, at home, yes, but even their dingy little apartment would be better than a hospital. Maybe. ...actually she wasn't sure. "Well I guess you could always just relax and read," she gestured towards his previous reading material, "or watch TV or something. Either way it sounds awfully boring."  

[Suudonym]

"Yeah it is," he replied, laughing slightly. He lifted the book slightly to indicate it, "Honestly I've been reading this page for the past half an hour and I still couldn't tell you what it's about." Concentrating on any one thing for any length of time was an astounding challenge. "It'll be nice to be out of here, that's for sure. There's not even a window in here…" He trailed off mid-sentence into more of a murmur as conversation shifted in the direction of personal qualm. But really, though, not even a window? Wasn't sunlight some kind of incredibly essential thing to human health and happiness? Jeez.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

At Luke's confession about reading that page for so long and still not knowing what it was about, she allowed herself a soft laugh. It felt nice to laugh today. Especially today. "That's pretty sad," she admitted with another laugh. "Maybe you should do something else." She leaned her head back onto the back of the chair and lazily glanced around to see if he had a TV in there or not. It would be cool if he did.

However, when he pointed out the lack of a window, she frowned and raised her head again. "...seriously? I would've thought everyone would get windows... Father has a window in his room." Huh. That wasn't cool, and made it even more boring. Laaame.