(mini-event) IS THE DOCTOR IN?

[vestigemods]

IS THE DOCTOR IN?

OCTOBER 8TH

► SEMANTIC OVERVIEW

This mini-event takes place in the hospital (town location 5), also featured in the dreamscape of the latest Test Drive Meme. The hospital supposedly has three floors + a basement:
FLOOR-BY-FLOOR OVERVIEW (DROP-DOWN)


• 03 - This uppermost floor appears to be a regular modern hospital wing untouched by apocalyptic disaster, with various tidy patient rooms + an empty nurse's stand. Further down the hallways sit various offices. At a glance, it's difficult to tell from this floor that the hospital is run-down at all... Aside from the way the stairs have crumbled away, at least.
  
• 02 - Good question. you can't even fucking find the second floor. The elevator doesn't stop there, and there's no door on the wall in the stairwell where a second floor entry should be. What a shame - the signs say that's where you'd find the cafeteria.
  
  
• 01 - Basically what you see in the header pic: a very run-down hospital floor, consisting of messy/dirty patient rooms, abandoned nurse's stations, and a check-in/check-out desk (with the corresponding front door, currently jammed but not locked). This floor also has a trio of operating rooms, but these seem to be locked up tight... A fact which some might consider a blessing in disguise.
  
• B1 - Primarily of interest is the morgue / autopsy room (powered + in functional condition), but this floor also contains locker rooms, a laundry room, a break room, and a handful of other rooms with locked doors and covered windows that Trace doesn't want to make shit up for just yet. Each end of the hospital has an emergency exit door, unlocked from both the inside and outside.
Aside from 02, all floors can reach one another via the stairs (aside from the gap near the top) and the elevator (once someone has brought it up to 03 the first time, it continues to run as normal).

Exit/entrances include the main entrance (floor 01, unlocked but jammed and needs to be opened via strength) and the emergency exits (floor B1, unlocked and unimpeded).

FLOOR 3 ► LEAVING SO SOON? YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DISCHARGED

WAKING UP

You wake in a clean white bed to the overly-hygienic scent of fake wildflowers and the morning sun filtering in through the windows. You're in a hospital room, a visiting chair at bedside, a television hanging on the adjacent wall. Perhaps you're in a private room and can wake at your own leisure. Perhaps your room is shared, and someone else is waking up in their own bed on the opposite side of the cloth divider.

You have no memory of how you arrived here in this room, nor are you entirely sure where this is. For most, a glance out the window is all it takes to get some semblance of a clue - the town's skyline stretches out before you, landmarks recognizable but unfamiliar from what appears to be your third-floor height.

At the end of the bed, you might just find your file. At least, it seems like your file - it lists your name, one or more injuries you don't recall ever having (or perhaps injuries you suddenly have but don't recall ever receiving), and a brief but alarming summary of the cause of the injuries. That's the worst part, the summary. It's almost always something you don't want to hear - you're careful and the injury was borne of recklessness, you value your mother most of all and were stabbed by her hand, or any number of possibilities all written down in carefully clinical terms. If you've woken up alone in a shared room, you might also find a loved one's file attached to the adjacent bed, similarly concerning in content and with no loved one in sight to reassure you that the tale the document tells is a lie.

Outside of your room is a hall with many other such rooms, their occupants stirring now just as you are. A nurse's station sits nearby, thoroughly abandoned. Just beyond that is the doors to the elevator and the stairwell.

But leaving this place isn't quite so easy.

Calling the elevator earns a polite ding! before the elevator doors open to reveal an empty shaft, cables extending downward to indicate that the actual elevator lingers far below. The stairs aren't much better - you have six, maybe seven stairs attached to the stairwell landing before a section seems to have crumbled away, picking up again against the opposite side of the stairwell a good fifteen feet farther down.

Those who can fly or even hover may have no trouble at all. For everyone else? Perhaps you can set to work on figuring out a way to climb down... Or maybe, with luck, someone who woke up in the basement might elevator their way up to your rescue.

THE HALLWAYS

Or, rather than beating your head against the metaphorical wall that is finding a way down from the third floor, perhaps you decide to explore the hallways. Maybe you think there might be another way out! (Hospitals don't just have one stairwell right? That's a fire hazard.) Or maybe you just want to know what else exists on this floor, for the sake of scavenging or even for your own curiosity.

The hallways are, for their part, all very much the same - but those who may have experienced this place in a dream will at once notice the differences. These hallways are well-lit, the room doors are largely unlocked (mostly rooms like the ones you woke up in, with the occasional supply closet), and no matter how far you walk there's no strange sense of distortion driving you to turn back.

At the furthest reach of the hallway in each direction (the points of the H that makes up the hospital's shape), you'll find a host of small offices. Most are unlocked, and the filing cabinets within contain a number of patient files... Some of which you may even recognize, the information within matching that which you gleaned from one of the spirits last month, were you the sort to try to chat. Many of them, it seems, were once patients here, though this is hardly the morgue and none of these files list any sort of cause of death. This is true of each of the third-floor wings except the northwestern-most branch - there, the offices have long since been emptied, cabinets empty of files, desks void of any long-abandoned signs of life. A single locked door sits at the end of the hall, shades drawn across the small door-window. A dim light glows inside.

FLOOR 1 ► THAT'S A YIKES FROM ME

WAKING UP (CW: NEEDLES IN ¶2)

Those who woke on the third floor woke somewhere clean, somewhere adjacent to peaceful. Those who wake on the first floor, however, have no such experience. Though you wake in a hospital room, arguably even on what was once a hospital bed, that's where the resemblances end.

In sharp contrast with those awakening almost pleasantly two stories up, you wake exhausted and sore in the joints, as if gripped by the early signs of some sort of flu. And that's those who are lucky. Many wake into a world made hazy by anesthesia which has only just begun to wear off, or perhaps even still linked to an IV filled with a questionable unknown substance. Yikes. Might want to hurry up and deal with that.

The condition of the room itself is far different than those upstairs, too. It's dusty, even smelling of mildew - or perhaps that's just the bed on which you've awoken. The room looks almost ransacked, cabinets half-open, medical supplies and utensils strewn about the unwashed floor. Rust dots any metal surface in sight, and no wonder, considering the various points of visible water damage along the ceiling and walls. If the lights in your room function at all, it's just one flickering fluorescent... Otherwise, the only light washes in through the dirty window and (much dimmer) from the dim and similarly-unsteady fluorescents lining the hallway outside the door to your room.

It's hardly a place that anyone would wish to stay in for long. In fact, you may be on your way out the door before you notice even the half of the health code violations in your immediate vicinity - but one item might catch your eye before you go. A file, dusty but conspicuously undamaged in contrast with the rest of the room. Perhaps it's on the countertop nearby, or on the floor next to an upturned medical station nearby. Some may not have files at all, a mercy considering what's inside: Uncensored procedural pictures of some sort of invasive surgery you don't recall ever having. No, wait - the memory is filtering back to you, extremely hazy but present, as if you woke briefly during that procedure before falling unconscious again. A search of your own body shows no sign whatsoever that such a surgery ever occurred. Was it real, or are you imagining it?

Either way, it's time to get the hell out of here.

THE HALLWAYS?

The hallway outside of your room is in similar ruin, covered in dust and dirt and mold, furniture upturned, wallpaper peeling and in some places even ripped away. A nurse's station sits abandoned, leaving you and (by the sounds of it) any number of others to wake up in alarm and distress and sort through your surroundings alone. Or... not quite alone, I suppose. You do have each other.

Follow the hallway in one direction and you'll find the main hospital entrance. The front door itself seems to be unlocked, but the automatic-opening mechanism isn't really functioning and it's... a little bit jammed into place. Might need a bit more arm strength (or a helpful co-abductee) to get that open. Otherwise, the area has an intake desk in predictably poor shape, next to which sits a stairwell and elevator. The elevator sits on your floor, waiting to take you either up or down... And believe it or not, it's the better choice, what with the stairwell missing about fifteen feet of stairs just below the third floor. You might also notice that neither the stairs nor the elevator seem to stop on the second floor. Huh. I wonder what's up with that?

Venture further into the array of first-floor hallways and you'll honestly just find more of the same thing you awoke to but often in even worse shape, walls crumbling away between rooms, floors stained with dried blood. Down one branch of the hospital's H sits a trio of operating rooms, but the doors are locked, the rooms inside entirely dark.

BASEMENT ► DOES IT HELP IF WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD?

THE FRIDGE

Here, you wake in the dark and the cold.

The dark is absolute, and unless your eyes are especially keen, you'll need to use your hands to get a bearing on your surroundings - and once you do, well. The news isn't great. You've awoken in what feels like a coffin-sized metal container, cold against the inexplicably bare skin of your back. If such a thing exists in your world, you might recognize that the container is chilled artificially.

Maybe you're trapped altogether, with no choice but to shout and bang on the walls and hope someone outside is close enough to hear - because unlike in the warped version of this very building that some walked in a dream, each and every one of these cells has been diligently sealed. But drawing attention may not be so easy... As you begin to bang and shout, you'll hear similar banging from your left and your right, from above and below you, the room outside your cell filled with a cacophony of fist-against-metal with nothing but your muffled shouting to guide whoever is nearby to the correct cell.

With luck, a rescuer (whoever that may be) drags the floor of your cell out into the open air of a dingy run-down morgue. You were trapped in cold storage, and here in the light you find that you've been dressed down to nothing but a flimsy backless hospital gown, a tag tied to your toe. Upon closer inspection, the toe tag lists your name, where you're from, and... a cause of death? Since when were you dead? Or perhaps you already knew you were dead and the cause of death isn't quite what you recall. Either way, the contents of your toe tag are disconcerting at best, abjectly alarming at worst.

Around you, the other locked fridge cells have gone quiet. It's almost as if their residents were raising a fuss specifically to keep your rescuer from finding you, giving up once their cause proves fruitless. Opening these cells will find corpses in varying stages of decomposition... Certainly in no state to make such a ruckus.

But on to more practical matters: Your clothes and belongings can be found in the laundry room next door. Let's see if you can make it that far without showing a friend or stranger the entirety of your bare ass.

THE TABLE (CW: MEDICAL/SURGICAL GORE)

Or perhaps you don't wake in cold storage. Perhaps you wake on the autopsy table itself, one of three or four spaced evenly under the flickering fluorescents of the hospital morgue. A thin layer of paper covers your otherwise nude body, and beside the table, a tray of autopsy tools (some bloody, some supposedly clean) on a rusty cart within arm's reach.

An eight-inch-long rectangle has been cut from the front of your paper gown, and you're quick to see why: Some of you have a 6-inch-long, clumsily-stitched surgical slice down the center of your chest, almost as if an autopsy was attempted but quickly patched up before it could be finished. The rest of you aren't fortunate enough to have the stitches - your surgical slice is still open and bleeding mildly. Whether stitched or unstitched, the wound isn't any kind of life-threatening, having missed all vital organs and arteries... Not that it's terribly pleasant regardless.

If you (or a helpful friend or stranger) want to patch that shit up, there are plenty of supplies to bandage the area for now, or even a needle and surgical thread to stitch that up properly. Shame there's no anesthetic.

Once you've achieved enough relative chill to actually care about your prevailing near-nudity, your clothes and belongings can also be found in the laundry room next door. Maybe try not to bleed on them?

MOD NOTES

• This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to October's Is The Doctor In? mini-event on the 8th. Go ahead and utilize vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make - characters inside the hospital are welcome to find their phone on their person, at bedside, or somewhere nearby.
  
• You're welcome to have your characters visit and explore the hospital on any other day henceforth, since this is now an unlocked location and will be added to the Locations page, but this is the only day on which people will be waking up here. Please utilize the October Catch-All for all non-event hospital threads!
  
• Characters who don't wake up here can still get involved if they have some reason to come join the fun. Maybe someone from inside texts them for help, or maybe they're walking down the street and see movements in the window of a building they know is supposed to be locked. Go ahead and wing it re: why they're there, honestly.
  
• Most of the accessibility obstacles are meant to induce drama, not limit threading capability - as such, feel free to (for example) assume that someone has already brought the elevator up to 03 or pried the front doors open on 01 if you don't want to fuck with those obstacles in your own threads!
  
• A few bits of exploratory intrigue have been peppered through these prompts. One of them is specifically what I was referring to when I mentioned 'exploratory subplots' back in the August Bulletin. If your character would poke around in suspicious places, by all means, hit me up on the questions top-level for more info!
  
• Being ambiguous about this since the prompt itself was under a CW, but if you opted into the 'questionable unknown substance' aspect of Floor 1's waking-up options and actually want something to come of it (as opposed to it just being some sort of alarming fake-out), hit me up and I'll toss you some side effects.
  
• If you want to have your character wake up via the fridge prompt in B1 but either don't want to fuck with a rescuer or want them to be able to get out and help someone on the table, feel free to say that the morgue fridge cell doors open on their own after a while, averaging on an hour but I'm not picky.
  
• Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
  
  

Comments

[bearhole]

[ Huh, he really isn't wearing anything much, is he? When Sigrun had woken up in a hospital bed upstairs, her clothes had been neatly folded nearby, waiting for her. She figures the same thing is the case here, so she starts opening up nearby drawers.

Nope, corpse. Next drawer.

Oh, whoops, another corpse. Okay... Maybe the drawers don't have Vivi's clothes.

She is still listening, she promises. She's just going to keep searching the room looking for clothes. ]

Hm? What technicians?

[toosmall]

[Vivi watches her opening the drawers and oh that. That looked like a dead person.

It's scary how that doesn't bother him as much as it did one time. It's still sad that someone is dead though.]

They're the ones that brought us here. I don't know where they are though... hiding somewhere watching probably.

[Vivi starts to help poking around, but doesn't see his clothes or anything useable around. He'll peek outside the door and sees something familiar in the room across the way.

Don't mind him if he just wanders off to go check it out.]

My hat!

[It had fallen over into the floor, his clothes and things are folded neatly nearby. It's some kind of laundry room.]

[bearhole]

[ He seems to have found his clothes, so Sigrun heads over to the laundry room, standing outside the open door with her back against the wall, looking the opposite direction, allowing Vivi the privacy to get dressed.

She frowns, crossing her arm. She doesn't like being so ill prepared, not knowing what's going on. Feeling so helpless. ]

Brought us here how? That's the part I don't get. And where is here?

[toosmall]

[Vivi looks over to see Sigrun has followed and has kindly given in his dignity in not watching him change into his things. He'll pull his pants on before shucking the tiny hospital gown. His jacket is pulled on next, shoes, gloves and last his hat.

Ah. Much better. He feels more himself now.]

I don't know how, I'm sorry.

[Standing up he'll grab his staff and comes over to stand beside Sigrun.]

The paper said this was Earth? Some where on Earth, uhh... and there's this magic barrier that keeps us from leaving.

[bearhole]

[ The more Vivi speaks, the more concerned Sigrun gets. Not just the part about the magic barrier keeping them trapped-- sure, that's worrying as all get out, there's no denying that-- but more so the part where he makes it sound like being somewhere other than Earth is a real, legitimate possibility. ]

Where did you say you were from again?

[ She's been assuming he was Norwegian since there was no language barrier between them, but... Maybe she's wrong? ]

[toosmall]

[Surprise everyone understands everyone now! The Techs sure are great like that. Vivi honestly would have been more shocked about being on a new world or some place he didn't know if he hadn't experienced so many strange things and places with his friends back home.

A new world didn't seem so weird now.]

Hm? Oh, I'm from Gaia. Where are you from, Sigrun?

[bearhole]

[ Is that a place? Sure, why not? There are plenty of places Sigrun hasn't heard of. Definitely not a place in Norway, though. ]

I'm from Dalsnes originally. In Norway. [ A brief pause, then the addition: ] ...On Earth.

[ Because apparently that's a clarification that needs to be made???

Anyway, Vivi's dressed now, so Sigrun pushes off the wall and looks down the hallway left and right. The stairs-- the way she'd come from-- are to the left. She doesn't know what's to the right, and she isn't sure she cares to find out. ]

We should probably try to get out of here.

[toosmall]

[Vivi doesn't know what a Dalsnes is or a Norway, but there's a lot he doesn't know. When Sigrun clarifies and says that's on Earth he'll give a little start with an "oh!".]

So you're from here?

[Not here here, but. Here.]

Y-Yeah, this place is really creepy. Thank goodness it's not dark, that would be really scary!

[bearhole]

Well, not here. Earth is a big place, always has been, even back in the Old World.

[ One might argue it was an even bigger place in the Old World.

But he raises a good point about it not being dark. ]

That's the part I don't get. No one's here but us... Why are all the lights on? It doesn't make sense.

[toosmall]

[He's not sure what an old world his, but it makes sense that she could be from Earth, but know nothing of this.

It must be a big world after all.]

I dunno... at least there's two of us though. That way we can watch each other's backs.

[Cause that's what friends are for!]

We should start looking for a way out.

[bearhole]

[ That's what squad mates are for. Sigrun isn't so sure she wants to jump straight to "friend" level with someone she's only just met-- who isn't even from Earth?? Somehow???

But he's not wrong. They should find the exit. Luckily, Sigrun came here from an upper floor so she knows where the stairs are to get out of the basement. ]

Here, this way.

[ As they walk, she's going to try to get more information on who exactly Vivi is and why he knows so much. ]

So, Vivi. How long were you in that drawer before I came and found you?

[toosmall]

[Squad mates. Friend. Sounds sort of same hat.

Vivi is more than happy to follow her, Sigrun does seem to know where she's going.]

Oh... um... I-I don't know. Not too long I don't think? I just woke up in that dark small place and got really scared.

[bearhole]

I don't blame you. [ She says casually, but with an undertone of, "I, of course, wouldn't have been scared." Whether that's entirely true or not is another matter.

She leads them down the hall to the stairwell and back up to the first floor. It was abandoned when she last passed through this area, but she peeks her head out cautiously all the same, just in case something snuck up behind her. ]

...Coast is clear.

[toosmall]

[A lot of people are much braver than him, he's okay with that. Like if his friend Zidane were here he wouldn't be scared either! It's nice having someone around who he can rely on to be level headed.]

... it's so empty in this big place, I wonder why?

[He'll say more hushed, even though Sigrun did say it was clear.]

It can't just be only two of us.

[bearhole]

[ Sigrun's expression is flat, showing neither agreement or disagreement as she steps out into the abandoned corridor. Just to be safe, she withdraws her knife from her boot once more. ]

I don't know what things are like in Gaia, but I'm pretty used to places being empty like this.

[ Most of her adult life has been spent patrolling and exploring empty, abandoned places. Well, abandoned except for the things Sigrun had to kill. ]

[toosmall]

[When she pulls out her knife he'll hold his staff up as if expecting something to attack, but oh. Oh there's nothing. Yet.]

Huh? Did something bad happen?

[Sure he'd been to some abandoned or ruined places, but a lot of the time him and his pals were coming into things when there were bad guys to fight. The places had been filled with life before then. It's sad how many places would need to rebuild, how many people had died from senseless violence.]

[bearhole]

[ For a second, Sigrun hesitates, looking down at Vivi with some confusion on her face. He doesn't know? How could he not-- Oh, but he said he wasn't from Earth. He's one of those superterrestrials they used to talk about in myths or something. Of course he wouldn't know.

Her face sets into something serious, and she keeps walking forward, head on a swivel, intent on checking their surroundings with every step. ]

Yeah. Something bad happened. A long time ago. There's not many of us left, now.

[toosmall]

[It seems like no matter the place there is always suffering. Always death.

It's sad really.]

I'm sorry...

[And what else can he say? Really he's not sure, so he doesn't try. Instead he'll try to be as helpful as possible, peering into and rooms if doors open. There's really not much.

Just more of the same. Weird contraptions and bright lights that honestly are starting to hurt his eyes.]

D-Do you think we'll ever find a way out?

[bearhole]

[ Sigrun nods, attention still focused on her surroundings. There has to be a door to the outside. There just has to be. ]

We'll find it. And if we can't find a way out, then we'll make one.

[ These rooms have windows. And now that they're on the first floor, it's easy enough to shatter the glass and climb out. Or, so Sigrun assumes. ]

[toosmall]

[Sigrun has the right idea, Vivi has even taken notice of the windows, in lieu of any doors going outside.

He's just way too short to even consider looking out of any.]

I'll help if I can. I don't think my magic is strong enough to make a hole in the wall... but I could try?

[Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.]

Um, can you see out of the windows? What's out there?

[bearhole]

[ Hang out with Sigrun much longer, "disaster waiting to happen" is all you're going to get, buddy. ]

Unless the windows are made of something special, then they're just glass. And glass is always smashable, if you use the right kind of force.

[ They come up on a room-- some kind of administrative office. There's a desk, some chairs, filing cabinets that have been pulled open and haphazardly emptied, and... yes. A large glass window. Sigrun walks over to it, peering out. ]

It's... a town. I don't see any people, but it can't have been abandoned for long; the road and everything look pretty well maintained.

[ There's a latch on the window, slightly rusted, but Sigrun forces it open, and the window swings on a hinge for a few inches, stopped only by a small arm that keeps it from opening any further. She frowns. ]

You think your magic can break this little arm? Or even better, the whole window?

[toosmall]

[Can his magic do that?

Vivi can hear Zidane's voice in his head asking him why can when he can just do! Right! He can do this!]

Mm... maybe?

[Vivi be more confident!]

Y-Yeah, but stand back, behind me.

[Just in case things get whacky. Vivi waits till Sigrun is out of the danger zone, some where behind him, and holds up his staff with both hands focusing as he casts his magic. The little mage then points his staff towards the window and an impressively large ball of fire hurtles at it. Probably bigger than the needed, but eh.

The glass definitely shatters, some of it may even melt, but the window frame and that offending arm that kept it from opening all the way are no longer an issue. The wall around the window is singed badly too.

He's not paying for damages, Techs!]

Oh! Oh I did it!

[He sounds surprised, pleasantly so.]

[bearhole]

[ Sigrun steps out of the way obediently, curious to see Vivi's magic in action. The process looks a bit different than any mage she's ever worked with, but the result is exactly what she was hoping for. A wide grin breaks out across her face, and she nudges Vivi on the shoulder in a celebratory gesture. ]

You did do it! I knew you could!

[ She didn't. She had no way of knowing whether Vivi was the kind of mage to accomplish this sort of task, but she was glad that he turned out to be fit for the job.

Stepping up to the window, she inspects the edges, knocking out some of the more jagged shards of glass still poking up from the sides and the bottom rim. That done, she shrugs out of her thick jacket and drapes it over the opening so that they can climb out without hurting themselves. ]

Alright, you first. Come on, I'll give you a boost.

[toosmall]

[Whether she knew or not, it's nice to have someone believe in him. Even after the fact. Vivi chuckles a little, pleased he's been helpful.]

Now we can get out.

[And Sigrun is already on it, making the window a bit more safe for climbing out of. Coming on over he'll try and reach up as best he can, but yeah, he's gonna definitely need a boost. Or just. Sigrun picking him up.]

Do you think anyone else could be out there too?