[Fin] Flesh Wound? Your Arm's off!

[TawnyAngel]

Today he felt... well less terrible than he had yesterday he supposed. Various painful bits were slightly less painful; apparently the damage to his stomach and intestines was apparently healing especially well and apparently this probably due to the course of drugs he'd still been on when they went off on the mission.

Yay for him.

As the nurse withdrew having finished changing his dressings Aulus reached across for his tablet to play a game or something. He paused with his hand above it however, a deep frown etched into his face. After a few moments of indecision he picked up his dex instead and took a picture of the right side of his head, shaved and with a line of staples still holding together a nasty gash. After a few more moments of indecision he tapped out a text to Tam and sent it off, closely followed by the picture.

The message read: 'I feel like a document'

As ways to start off contact again maybe it was a bit weird but... well it would do.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey was still rather 'out of it' most of the time, if she wasn't sleeping, but for increasing periods of time, she was more awake, and more aware of everything.
Most of the 'everything' happened to be pain, unfortunately, but at least pain meant this was the waking world, and not one of the strange places that she'd found her unconscious mind visiting.

Sluggishly, she tried to place the beeping sound she'd heard; it wasn't one of the machines attached to her... nor the normal noises of the infirmary around her bed...
No, that was her 'dex...
Her eyes left the blurry spot on the ceiling they'd taken an interest in, and gingerly, she moved her hand to pick up the device.

At first she wasn't sure what was meant by the odd message, nor, at first, could she even read who sent it.
Who was Abilns? Was that what it said?
She reached for her glasses, and, for a moment, was alarmed that nothing became less blurry...
It took a good few moments before she realised her eyes /had/ adjusted, and that some of the equipment aiding her breathing was making the glasses somewhat awkward to wear.

/Now/ she could see the message, and the image...
Her heart sank a little at the picture of the wound, but the accompanying message seemed to suggest that Aulus was, at least, 'okay enough' to joke with her.
She let out a soft piece of a chuckle, and instantly regretted the action from the pain in her chest.
Slowly, she sent a reply back.
'Those are fancy piercings; Jerome's gonna be impressed! <3'  

[TawnyAngel]

It took a while for a reply to come, so long in fact that Aulus had started to think that Tam might be asleep. Apparently not however, and she was well enough to type coherently and joke.

'Heh, yeah. Up for some company? As of yesterday am allowed out of bed if I promise to behave. If u want to rest though don't feel u have to say yes.'

He didn't want to bother her if she was tired but he did want to see her, just to really reassure himself that she was alright or at least was going to be eventually.  

[Gwennythe]

It wouldn't take quite as long for the next reply to come, but it still took a while.
Typing, was, apparently, fairly awkward for Tambrey at the moment.

'Company very welcome! Very bored very often! sad ' The reply would read as it came back...
She really didn't blame Rory for not visiting so often; it would have been boring while she wasn't awake, she was probably somewhat hard to look at (oh, heck, hopefully not /that/ bad; she hadn't seen herself yet, and hoped she wasn't about to scare Aulus), and he was, fairly obviously, incredibly busy... They'd have so many samples, so much genetic work to do now...
She /did/ rather want /someone/ she knew well to talk to, though; Kailee had popped in occasionally, which was nice, but it wasn't the same kind of understanding she had with her partner and friend, or, of course, with Rory.  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus read the message.

Right, okay. Good.

'Great, I'll come over.' Aulus looked at the thread of messages for a moment before adding another one; 'Please don't freak out btw. It's only a flesh wound.' It didn't feel funny as he sent it but he was trying and for now that was all he could do.

A couple of minutes later Aulus poked his head around the curtain that gave Tam's bed privacy from the rest of the ward. "Uh, hi there. How do you feel?"  

[Gwennythe]

'It's only a flesh wound'; Tambrey looked at the message and frowned a little...
Did he mean his head? There were staples... He couldn't mean that.
Her brain wasn't as fast as she'd have liked, and she didn't make any kind of connection before he poked his head around the curtain.

Tambrey looked... well, she always looked pale, but she looked -sick- for once. She actually looked like she was definitely supposed to be here.
Various lines and tubes kept her breathing easier, kept her blood flowing.
One leg was caught up in a restrictive kind of pin-device; keeping it completely still after surgery to her foot and ankle.

Still, the agent smiled as her partner appeared.
"Like Ella fell on me." She offered, and made a slight attempt to sit up a little better. "How are you? You're up." She said, hopefully, noting the fact he was upright; that was a good sign right?  

[TawnyAngel]

She looked awful but he'd expected that. Aulus gave a strained smile that failed to reach his eyes. "Well it's good to see you awake. I'm... yeah, I'm up. Not allowed to leave yet - and still attached to an IV - but I'm allowed to get up and walk around in here. Uh." It was never going to get easier to explain this to his friends so he might as well get it over with. "But.... Well, my right arm was... well, it was really bad and they couldn't restore the circulation so.... Yeah." Holding onto the IV stand Aulus stepped around the curtains, pausing there awkwardly. "It... could've been worse though. Least I'm left-handed."  

[Gwennythe]

She felt herself beginning to suspect something, a connection, back to the comment he'd made over the 'dex, as he began to explain something related to his arm...

'Flesh wound'; he mental processes /finally/ grasped the significance, and worked out the reference, just as Aulus stepped around the curtain.

Oh, good; she was dreaming again then.
Nope. There was that pain, still present; unless the pain had found some way to follow her into her dreams, she realised, she was definitely still awake.

At first, she wasn't sure -how- to react; how do you react to the loss of a limb? Her instinct was to ask if he was okay but that seemed... stupid; one of his arms was literally 'off'.
Her next feeling was guilt; some partner she was- they'd said they had each other's back, and yet here she was with every body part still attached while his arm was just... gone...
"Oh... I'm... I'm so sorry..." She managed to mumble, and, as if it was possible, appearing to go a little paler, sinking a little smaller.  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus cleared his throat and licked his dry lips, trying to think of something to say. "It's ah...." When further words failed he closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head, and then moved over to sit in the chair by Tam's bed. "Yeah. I... yeah. It could be worse though." Saying that didn't make him feel any better about it but he really, really didn't want to be pathetic about this and... yeah. He cleared his throat again and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand as tears prickled behind them, he was not going to collapse into a sobbing mess again. "We're all alive, right? All things considered.... Well I guess it's a good result, right?" he said tightly with another forced smile at Tam. He wanted to stop feeling like this, to stop being like this. It wasn't the end of the world, he could have a cool arm like that girl who'd once repaired his bike. It would be cool. Amazing. Marvel of technology. Maybe he could even ask Faleen if she'd work on it, he knew some of what she was capable of and also knew that he probably didn't know the half of it.  

[Gwennythe]

They were all alive.
She knew she'd known that- she'd been told a couple of times- but somehow, the news seemed new all over again.
Well, sure, it could be /worse/ but as far as she knew, Aulus was the only one currently missing an arm...

Cautiously, she decided to chance asking, as he came to sit by her.
"Does it... hurt?" She still felt guilty, very guilty, but like every problem she'd encountered, perhaps she could help by learning more about it... It was one of the few things she felt she -could- do.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Yeah... I guess." Aulus shrugged slightly, his gaze skittering away from Tam's as he spoke; meeting her eyes right now was just a bridge too far. "I mean, it does, but less than it did before..." Before they cut it off. "It kind of flares up sometimes," it felt like electric shocks were running through his arm when it did, "but that should go away apparently, or at least get a lot less frequent. I can kind of... kind of feel it though, all the time." If he didn't look at it he could almost pretend it was still there, probably one reason he still hadn't forced himself to do so. Knowing it was gone was one thing, manipulating it into a shirt was another but looking it it? He knew he'd have to sooner or later but for now he was going to stick with that 'later'.  

[Gwennythe]

"Phantom limb..." Tambrey muttered, almost without realising that she had done so.
She, at least, didn't seem to have any aversion to looking at where it should have been, but she still felt a pang of guilt for every second she lingered on it.
"... At least it's not hurting as much. Um.. Have you... have they," 'they', of course... she remembered that, basically, Team Rocket owned their employees, owned -them-, and thus, owned their... parts... "decided what to do about, um..." Well, she couldn't say 'it'; that didn't feel right, and 'your arm' felt a bit cruel... and she was getting a little lost trying to think of the best words...  

[TawnyAngel]

"Yea," Aulus replied a little unsteadily, "it's common apparently, a lot more than I thought it was... and yeah, kind of. I'll get a robotic replacement, a permanently attached one probably? I think they said that would be best, I wasn't... have to admit I wasn't really taking in everything they were saying but once I - " he cleared his throat hard and wiped his eyes again "- once I've healed up I'll have a titanium rod attached to the bone, probably, and that'll... I think that sort of comes out of," Aulus waved his hand vaguely, unable to bring himself to complete the sentence.

"Once the bone grows over that on the inside they can fix an arm onto it on the outside.... There might have been something about a chip going somewhere? I- I'm not really sure. I wasn't really... yeah, I already said that. But... yeah. So. It's not the end of the world." It really wasn't. A top quality properly integrated - was that the right word? - prosthetic could work as well as a natural arm, barring malfunctions of course.

"And... and I can get cool features put in it and stuff. It'll be cool," Aulus mumbled, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself of this; he was.  

[Gwennythe]

"Common." Tambrey nodded, agreeing with what he said about the phantom limb feeling.
She listened, slightly dazed, as he explained what was going to happen, and even managed a twitch of a smile as he said it was going to be 'cool'.
She nodded a little.

"Very cool." She pushed the guilt, and tiredness, and shock, down, keeping her emotions steady while Aulus was present; she wanted to be supportive, but she didn't want to gloss over the issue.
Turning to comic humour, she sought out a reference she was reasonably sure Aulus would get.
"We could call you Bucky."  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus made a little noise that was something a bit like a laugh, maybe the third cousin thrice removed of a laugh. "No way, I couldn't pull off all that eyeliner and the amount of leather is prohibitive. At least we don't live in the desert anymore though right? And what does that make you anyway? Pepper Pots maybe, or the Black Widow? No, wait, Neph's probably the Widow isn't she?" Talking about other things was good, even if they were tangentially related. He wanted to not think about any of it; how long it would take, the pain involved, the possibility of failure and the fact that a replacement was just that - a replacement. Was it stupid to feel like that? Probably, if it worked fine then what was the problem? It was stupid, sentimental, pathetic and he didn't want to be any of those things.