Minutes ticked on.  No more than three seconds passed without someone screaming or shouting orders or updates regarding a patient in crisis.

This place is hectic as fuck.

It would have been interesting to listen to, if I could make out more than half of it, and if the half I could hear wasn’t so horrible.

Yeeah, not exactly a pleasant audio backdrop.

The anxiety over my circumstances and not knowing what was going to happen was gradually overriden by a maddening boredom.   I couldn’t move, had nobody to talk to, didn’t know enough about my present situation to think up contingency plans.

Relatable. Waiting at hospitals tends to be pretty dull, whether you’re in the bed or a visitor.

I closed my eyes and used my power, because it let me be outside my own body in a way, because it was something to do.

Nice.

Boredom is usually one of the feelings people hate most. Most people will prefer mild pain over boredom, just because it’s some kind of stimulus. Taylor, fortunately, has remote access to a stimulus most people don’t.

“Okay,” I spoke, quiet, my thoughts going a mile a minute.

“The phone call, I can let you use my cell phone if you promise not to…” she trailed off, as if realizing the possibilities of what could happen if a villain had her phone number, contact info for her friends and family.

Aw. I like this nurse-in-training.

Yet she could hardly back out, not without potentially upsetting a bad guy.

Whoops.

I shook my head.  “No.  But it’s really good of you to offer.  Thank you,” I tried to put as much emphasis on the thanks as possible.  “With that kind of empathy, I’m sure you’ll become a great nurse.”

😀

Absolutely.

She gave me a funny look, then backed out through the curtain.  I could have called after her, asked for something for the pain, asked if maybe I could get some help, but I suspected she didn’t have the power to give me any of that.

Yeah, probably not.

Besides, she has other patients to visit.

I had no idea how long I’d be here, and I suspected it’d be worth more to have a potential friendly face around than go for the long shot and risk seeming manipulative or alienating her.  That, and I didn’t want to get her in trouble.

That’s another good point. You’ve pushed the boundaries a fair bit already, might want to take a break.

A darker thought struck me.

“Is that – would that be my one phone call?  These cuffs – am I being arrested?”

Right, that whole mess.

She shook her head, “I was just offering.  I don’t know if they’re arresting you.  Only thing they said was that I was supposed to fill in the charts for the patients on this end of the room that have the red tags.”

Fair enough.

She pointed to a set of plastic tags that were clipped to the curtain rod, so that one large tag hung down on either side of it.  Was it to designate the seriousness of my injuries?  No, they hadn’t even examined me.

…

Villain tag, eh?

I drew a connection to my line of thinking from earlier – was it because I was a villain?  Did I get a mere check-in from the nurse-in-training while the heroes got actual nurses and doctors?  I hadn’t seen anyone put the tags up, but then again, I hadn’t been looking at the curtain rod right after I was stuck here.

Taylor and I are on the same page here. I like when that happens, because I’m an idiot compared to Taylor sometimes, though it does leave me with the occasional paragraphs where I can’t really say much else than “yes, that’s what I just said”.

“Do you want to call your dad?  Or try calling your friend?” the nurse-in-training offered me.

Those do sound like decent options, though (on top of lingering awkwardness between them) calling Danny does present some of the same problems as coming home injured, mainly that he’s guaranteed to ask questions that would compromise Taylor’s identity as Skitter if answered honestly.

If she was offering for me to call Tattletale, that at least meant she hadn’t seen Tattletale’s body.  That was some relief.

Oh yeah, that’s a good point.

I still think she’s soggy toast, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to let Taylor have some hope for now. There’s been very little of that going around in this Arc, after all.

I wasn’t sure if I should take the offer.  If I called my dad, would they track the call?  Find out who I was?  Would they track down Tattletale, if she wasn’t dead or dying?

Oh yeah, I didn’t even think of that.

Although if they really wanted to find out your identity, there’s not much you could do to keep them from removing your mask. Granted, they’d still need to tie the face to a name.

Who else could I call?  Coil?  Way too many issues if they traced the call, and I wasn’t sure if Lisa had passed on word of our recent argument and/or breakup.

I seem to recall that being mentioned in passing. Must’ve been in Interlude 8 if I’m not making it up.

Grue, Regent, Bitch?  I wasn’t on their team anymore.

Doesn’t mean they’re not the ones most likely to know something about Tattle out of those you can contact.

Alright, let’s get back to the story!

I closed my eyes, tried to stop myself from imagining that they were talking about Tattletale, or my dad, or even Brian, though I was pretty sure Brian had made it out okay.

Well, at least we never heard “Grue down” from any of the armbands, but Taylor did spend a lot of time away from functioning armbands towards the end.

Even as I managed to dismiss those images from my mind, a voice in the back of my head noted that whoever was on the table was important to somebody.  So many beloved family members, friends, coworkers, gone from people’s lives.

Yep. This was not a good day.

Even by Endbringer attack standards. A good day was defined in 8.1 as a one-in-four death rate. The protectors of Brockton Bay lost over half in a single attack this time.