Sunshine and Roses [Kyle Ehrlich]

[Frenchie Savage]

He’d been on his way home particularly late that evening; it was the opening night of Equus, a rather brilliantly-choreographed ballet interpretation of the deeply psychological drama of the same name, and as the leading character of Allen, Frenchie had been much held-over with the tasks of answering questions and posing for pictures and otherwise engaging in things that he didn’t really like to do. On the other hand, he had been elated with success of production, and had, upon hearing the much expected ringtone designated to his friend in America, been answered spilling with joy. This had changed within seconds though. Dino hadn’t called to congratulate him at all; he had been in tears, frightened and confused and in a great deal of pain, and bearing the sort of news that nobody ever wanted to hear about anybody, let alone about a good friend.

Frenchie had sat down where he had been standing –at the base of an age-old sycamore tree- numb with shock, and unable to do anything more brilliant than to listen to what his friend’s hysterics and to mumble the stupidest things in reply. It wasn’t for some time later that his mind cleared and he was able to counsel Dino more intelligently. It was difficult – Dins was scared well out of his wits, and Frenchie could only project so much reassurance when hardly knew what to do himself – and it took hours, and by the time it was over, Frenchie’s face was wet with quietly-shed tears. Without any real form of goodbye, Frenchie hung up the phone.

He folded it shut as tenderly as if it were a precious love note, and tucked it away into his pocket. Then he stared at the stars. Then he started to shake. He tore his hands across his tear-streaked face and through his hair, and sat sobbing silently beneath old sycamore for a very long time, wracking his mind for reasons –logical and spiritual alike- for what had happened, poring over every last detail of the past few hours’ conversation in hope of finding some enlightenment as to what he could have done and what he aught to do. The answer was, of course, very simple. I should have been there, he thought. He and Dino existed to keep each other out of trouble, and even if he hadn’t succeeded at that, he should have been there by his friends’ side afterwards –right now, that was- to support him. He felt as helpless as an infant, and that horrified him as much as the events that had transpired as a result.

It wasn’t long before he grew very restless indeed and stood up, putting his shoulder into the tree for a moment as he weighed the values of either running headlong through the woods until he was too tired to be upset or running to town to get pissed beyond caring. Really, all he wanted to do right now was bash his head against something—and he didn’t realize until it was much too late how stupid it was to actually do so. But it was at least a hundred times more pleasant as Frenchie had imagined it; a very dull and distant paint overwhelmed by a magnificent crashing sensation and the sudden presence of void. For a very brief and very blissful moment, Frenchie was aware of nothing, until the ringing in his head called him back to his place standing in front of a tree in the gardens.

Absently, he placed his fingers in the stream of blood that was making its way down his forehead, disrupting its flow as it dripped down his face to join his tears. For the moment, the situation overseas was forgotten, and Frenchie stared at the tree with an expression as shocked and offended as a posh girl who has just been slapped. He might even have gotten angry at it for having damaged him so, but just as Frenchie moved to retaliate against tree, it blurred away like a superhero on the move, and Frenchie found himself laying-face down mud. Carefully, head spinning, he pushed himself to hands and knees, rubbing gingerly at the wrong side of his head as he tried to figure out what had just happened to him. Within moments, it became very difficult indeed to hold himself up, even on all fours. Swaying with vertigo, he moved to put himself into a sitting position, but for some reason ended up doing some sort of weird diagonal aerial twist instead, landing on his shoulder and coming to rest with his back with his legs twisted awkwardly to his side.

At that point, Frenchie found that he was no longer so much interested in knowing what the hell was going on as he was with knowing where Dino was when he was supposed to be bailing Frenchie out of scary situations. The unfortunate bit was that he really didn’t want to know. He put his hands over his face and shut his eyes, and began slurring a mantra:
“He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay….”


Ooc- That was a mile-long slick of highly-ineloquent shit, and you have my apologies for it. I’ll do better next time, I promise!

[Kyle Ehrlich]

3 days, 22 hours, 16 minutes, 55 seconds since Kyle last slept.

Nights at Somnium tended to be quiet. Sure there was the occasional fight or alcohol induced illness, but over all most of the students and staff seemed to be perfectly content to visit the dream world rather than put themselves in real harmful situations. Kyle used the downtime to write his reports, update the supply inventory and catch up on reading. Tonight was a report night.

He was halfway through a thrilling case of the flu when his mind began to wander. He caught himself thinking about one of his other recent patients rather than the poor girl with the flu. He stopped typing altogether, allowing his thoughts to drift. A light smile began to cross his face.

“Sir? Some idiot is trying to bash his head in in the gardens.” Kyle looked up from his work, a puzzled look on his face. A student was standing in the infirmary doorway, looking a little nervous. “Sorry, what?” Kyle asked, not sure if he had heard the student correctly. When they repeated the statement again, Kyle blinked still a little confused. The student didn’t appear to be making the story up.

Kyle stood, pulling his lab coat on. He thanked the student, dismissing them and moved to a supply cabinet. “What is it with the students here…” he muttered, grabbing gauze, a cloth bandage, a bottle of antiseptic, a flashlight, a hand light, and gloves. He paused, thinking if he would need anything else. If the student was seriously injured, Kyle would need to bring him back to the infirmary before doing anything else.

Kyle rushed down to the gardens, scanning around for a student ramming his head into a tree or bench or fountain. The flashlight beam settled on Frenchie, sprawled near the base of a tree. Kyle approached him, lowering the flashlight slightly. The boy appeared to be bleeding, but it sounded like he was still able to talk, which was a good sign. Kyle knelt in the grass next to the boy, attempting to hear what he was saying.

Kyle snapped his fingers in front of the boy’s face, attempting to get his attention. “Open your eyes and stop muttering.” Kyle’s voice was a little harsher than he had intended it to be. “I’m here to help but I need you to concentrate.” The tone of his voice was not from anger. He was slipping into an analytical state of mind, pulling in as many details as he could so he could document the incident later.

Kyle needed to determine if the boy had a concussion and the fastest way to do that was to talk to him. He also needed to stop the bleeding, but that was a secondary concern. Most head wounds bled like crazy due to the amount of blood vessels contained in the human head, but they also tended to heal quickly once pressure was applied.

“Look at me.” Kyle put the flashlight down, directing the beam towards himself. “I need you to tell me what happened. Do you know where you are? Or who you are for that matter?” It was usually best to start with the basics when attempting to determine concussion symptoms. A patient may experience temporary memory loss due to the physical shock to the brain.


(( I’m really sorry it took me so long to reply to this. Real life has been killing me lately. ))

[Frenchie Savage]

Still rather lost as he was, Frenchie’s first reaction to the introduction of a stranger [granted it wasn’t really a stranger; Frenchie knew that he knew who the fellow was, but damn if he knew how he knew) involved looking at the shadow of the man for just a moment, before he found himself looking at the sky behind Allan instead. Frenchie really didn’t know what that guy was doing there, but he did here people talking in tones that he usually associated with being in trouble. Frenchie tried very hard to focus, with eyes closed and face contorted in concentration, so that maybe this voice that he was hearing would make some sense. He tried talking back –imploring the person beside him to speak either English or French- but his own words came out the same befuddled noises that were being spoken to him. Immediately he shut his mouth and slapped a hand over it. Frenchie glanced again at the man, and found him very much different- no longer a mere dark blob, but a horrifying crook-nosed man, lit up from below like a monster lurking above flames.

Frenchie felt his body darting –quite without his consent- out of the man’s reach as quickly and as fluidly as an eel on the run, and all at once Frenchie found himself up on his knees with a flick-knife ready. He held it skillfully between fingers and thumb, far enough from his body to hold his distance, but not so far as to limit his movements, the well-practiced poise and correctness making quite clear that, though he may be half-way down already and swaying with renewed vertigo, and though he clearly didn’t know what was happening to him, he did know what to do with the knife:

“Get close enough for me to cut you, guy…” Frenchie growled in perfectly feigned –if not genuine- viciousness, the sharpness of his tone covering even slurs as bad as his own, “And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”



Several moments later, it started to sink in to Frenchie’s mind how out-of-hand he was acting. This poor old creep had only been trying to help [hadn’t he?] and while it was true that Frenchie really, really didn’t want anybody’s help right now, he was also beginning to realize that threatening to shank somebody was not the appropriate way to decline another person’s assistance.

Frenchie sighed in loss and submission. He allowed the knife to slip from his again-shaking hand, making it perfectly clear that he had no intention to commit any more acts of violence, and then used that hand, in a considerably more clumsy manner than before, to fish his other knife out of his pocket, tossing that one into the pile as well. Then he sighed again, massaging his badly bloodied forehead [not seeming to notice the ‘badly bloodied’ bit] in distress. He wasn’t really sure what to do with himself. He knew he had to be stewing in shit by now, but aside from that, he really didn't have the faintest clue about anything.

Briefly thereafter, it occurred to Frenchie that, while walking away from it all was probably not a permanent solution, it would likely at least buy him time to figure out what the hell was going on, and if he was very lucky, decide what was going to do about all it, and he set about doing just that. In one quick, well-practiced movement, he was up on in his feet and turned around—then he was up against the sycamore, only just remembering that standing up quickly when one is already in a state of vertigo is not a very good idea. Fully-overwhelmed by the violent and highly unpleasant spinning going on in both his head and stomach, Frenchie once again felt himself slipping down the tree, skin scraping and clothes tearing against its’ bark, until once more, he found himself on his knees, this time hanging from the tree’s trunk in an effort to keep his face out of the dirt.

The notion of getting away from the situation quietly dismissed itself from Frenchie’s mind, and for the first time in several hours, the boy had just one thought running through his mind; He was an idiot, Frenchie thought, and at the moment he must really look like one, too.

Stricken by this sudden bit of easy, comprehensible humility, Frenchie found himself unable to resist uttering the simple phrase, ”--utain.”

Ooc- Quite forgiven, dearest; Life happens to the best of us.
Also, if it matters, “Putain”(Poo-tahn) is a nasty word for women of industry, which in context such as this runs along the same lines as “bollocks,” or “damnit,” excepting that it’s a bit stronger.