Losing eyeballs (private)

Sophia had kept her hand pressed against Roy's eye for the past half hour. Joan had decided it would be better to just call an ambulance instead of trying to heal his eye out on the Field of Mars. Sophia had been instructed to continue holding her hand on his eye, since it was the only thing that was keeping him from bleeding out even more than he already had. Joan had only taken over a few times, to do some real healing magic stuff, but other than that, Sophia found herself in the awkward position of holding Roy's eyeball in place. Well maybe not in place, but it still felt gross. She was not a big fan of blood, she dealt with it when she had to, but it wasn't a strong point for her at all.

Joan had managed to get Roy into the emergency unit. She was focused on trying to save his eyes. Joan didn't like to have to give people bad news, but it was purely part of the job. Personally she would do anything she could within her scope of knowledge and anyone else's to make sure that boy could see out of both eyes. It was hard to assess the damage right away. At this point she got a nurse to come in and switch places with Sophia so she wouldn't have to hold Roy's eye anymore.

"Thank you for your help, we're going to try our best to do what we can for Roy." Joan was trying to recount the events that she was told that happened. It didn't make sense. She hadn't encountered anything like this. She wasn't sure anyone had before. Joan had Roy lay down on the hospital bed as she began to look at the eye herself.

When she opened the lid only thing you could see was blood. There was nothing she could do at the moment. She needed to get the swelling down before she could get a good glimpse at his eye. "I'm going to have to put you on an antibiotic. Intravenous, it'll take a bit, but we need to get the swelling down in your eye before I can even assess what's going on." Joan explained.

She wasn't having a lot of hope. In her mind, with the amount of bleeding there was he was probably going to lose his eye or at least his sight. "I'm going to be honest with you here. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure you have both eyes. I will work very hard on this, but I could never promise you I can. I'm hoping at worst you'll only have to lose your sight in that eye."

Roy kept his head relaxed, waiting, and allowing whoever needed to adjust it to do so. Some philosopher's he'd studied had talked about the fight being the easiest part of living. He was starting to think they might just have some validity. There was nothing more embarrassing than being beaten, then having to be coddled by a doctor, nurse, and Centurion. Regardless of petty emotions, he was grateful for all of their help. He probably would have done something stupid. He'd been fully ready to cauterize his own eye.

"At worst? So, that means I might be able to keep my at full strength? At least a chance?" He asked. He knew he was stretching, but he really wanted to keep both of his eyes. Anywhere else, it would have been a battle scar, something to feel proud of. Instead, it was an eye wound. Something that might need to be hidden and ashamed of forever. The thought of it alone was enough to tick Roy off. He'd kept his fighting stance strong. What happened?

He wanted to glance at Sophia, to finally thank her, at least show her his sincere gratitude. But he was being tended to, he just had to wait a little bit longer. He wanted to do it the right way.

Sophia let out a small sigh, as a nurse took over for her. Her hands were covered in blood, and her shirt was pretty much soaked right through with the stuff also. A second nurse helped her off the bed, and showed her the way over to a sink. She couldn't hold back the small grimace her face made at the sight of all the blood. The only thing that was keeping her sane, was that she's actually seen much more blood than this before. Sophia quickly rinsed the stuff off her hands, before making her way to the waiting room. She would be stuck her until a family member or his centurion got here, and then she would be stuck here until either her brother or mother could come and get her, since she didn't have a car. And really, she just wasn't up to walking the 2miles it would take to get back to New Rome.

For the moment Joan put pressure and bandaged up Roy's eye until the swelling could come down. She had her nurse fetch her the intravenous and she looked to Roy."This is going to be a small prick, but I doubt that's the most painful thing you've felt today." She said cracking a small joke as she poked it in. They didn't have time to give him any pills for the antibiotics. The intravenous would hopefully work at this point.

"I'm hoping that's the worst case scenario." Joan corrected him. She didn't like to give false hope to people, but this situation wasn't very black and white. "You do at least have a chance. How big of a chance, I don't know right now. I wont know until I can see your eye better to assess the damage done to your actual eyeball itself." She said with a small sigh. Joan knew it was tough to lose something like that.

"Did you want me to call one of your sisters to get here? I know you might feel some animosity towards that option, but I think it'd help if you had family here. At least one family member." She said. After a few minutes and getting Roy's response she walked over to Sophia, "Is there someone I can call for you to get a ride? Unless you'd like to stay here and support your friend." She said with a small smile.

"I appreciate everything you've done, but I'm going to heal the same way no matter how empty this room is." Roy told the girl, Joan, was the name he'd thought he heard. He wondered who was going to scold him first. Cora, for not being careful, or Caelia for not following orders. "Caelia has a Cohort to run, and Marina is just too busy to be around. I don't want to bother them, they'll come by when they're ready, and-" Then Roy realized while he was telling the nurse to not call his family, he was forgetting one strictly important detail. His eye rolled, and he hated that he recognized it wasn't only one eye.

"...And, my mom is your boss." Roy finally popped the cork. It wasn't like he could ask her "Hey, don't tell my mom I'm here, by the way." Well, at least he wasn't acting like a brat to Joan, at least he'd get brownie points for that. "Hey, can you tell Sophia I said thanks for the hand? I forgot to do it myself." He asked of her.

After cleaning herself up a bit, and making herself somewhat comfortable on a chair in the emergency waiting room. She gave Joan a small smile, when the older girl walked over to her. She was stuck here until someone in Roy's family or someone from his Cohort showed up. Sophia had just met Roy today, she didn't think it would be appropriate for her to stick around longer than her duties called her too. "I'll stay until someone shows up for him. Then could you call my brother, Ian for me?" Sophia asked. She received a soft nod from Joan, and watched as the medic walked back into the emergency room.

After being left alone again, she stared up at the ceiling. There was no one else in the room aside from a receptionist. Sophia kind of wished she had asked for pain relievers or something along those lines. She didn't understand why the cut on her face hurt so much, she'd been stabbed before and it hurt less.

"I'm aware that you're going to heal the same way no matter who is and isn't here, just it's nice to have the familiar company I've found." She said with a light shrug of her shoulders. When Roy made the connection she nodded. "Yes, your mother is my boss. Took me under her wing, taught me the ins an outs. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell her just yet. I will call for one of your sisters for the time being. Yes, I will let Sophia know." With that Joan walked off leaving a nurse with Roy for the time being.

When she walked out to Sophia she nodded. "I understand. I'm calling for one of his sisters right now. Once one of them arrives I'll call for your brother Ian." Joan said with a smile and as she walked away she stopped and turned. "Roy wanted to thank you for the hand." With that she walked off to go use a phone to call for one of Roy's sisters. She was only able to get a hold of Marina for the time being.

She returned to where Roy was, he was getting closer to being done with the antibiotics. She began to go through his chart and making it with what was going on before putting it back. "Your sister Marina is coming down for the time being. She says she can stay with you for a little while. Said she could stay until Caelia finishes with her centurion duties."

"Yeah, nothing better than forcing people to waste precious time out of their days, I guess." Roy said, hollowly. It wasn't that he hated the idea of his sisters showing up, but New Rome wasn't based around him. Sophia had duties, Marina had duties, and especially Caelia had duties. Cora even had important duties. It wasn't like they were all relaxing on a Sunday holiday and had nothing to do. Rome kept moving no matter what, and that meant anything that needed to be done, needed to be done no matter what. Roy hated that he would be the cause of stress and a bad week for most of his family, it was the icing on the cake.

That wasn't to say he was enraged at Joan. He realized she was trying to help, but her help was only hurting everyone involved more. He wasn't useful to anyone in a hospital bed, and that was a plain fact. Cora was too sweet of a mother to ever say anything like that, but Roy wasn't stupid. He'd grown up actively participating in the political world of New Rome, and in that world, all there was, ironically, was honesty once you got passed the deceit. This was something else entirely.

"Tell him I said, anytime." Sophia answered, before Joan walked away. Part of her felt that she was supposed to do more in this situation, but it's not like she could've followed them into the ER. She was stuck waiting for one of his sisters to arrive, so she could leave. Till then, she figured she might as well get ahead of herself a bit, and work on the report she was going to have to write up on all of this fun shadow monster thingy stuff that had just happened to them. Unfortunately she left all of her stuff at The Field of Mars. She glanced over at the receptionist, she probably had a notebook or a piece of paper she could use. Making up her mind, she got up and walked over to the lady.

For some reason, it took way more effort to get a piece of paper and a pen from the lady. Apparently the receptionist really liked her paper and pens, who knows, but after having to swear on Styx to bring the pen back, Sophia sat down at her chair again and got to work.

Joan looked at him and sighed. "I do my job. Regardless I would have had to call someone from your family to let them know what happened. It is protocol. If they want to take time out of their day to come and visit, then they can do so. That is them deciding if they want to 'waste' their precious time. I'd be grateful if I were you. Not saying you aren't, but I know a lot of people in here who have no one to call upon. They'd kill for the chance to have just someone." She said the last part with a bit of a somber tone. Joan herself had been in the hospital a few times. Her father passed away while she was in the midst of medical school and there were a few times she had to have her own surgery and she would have done anything to have her father in those moments.

"By the way, Sophia said anytime."