Marion's Office - first floor of The Colony

[Archie]

Part of Archie was certainly functioning on auto pilot now, pushing as much as the panic and confusion as he could into the back of his mind where it could be ignored for the moment and later pulled out, examined and dissertated as he tried to find some kind of understanding in all the words, the cryptic comments and the sickly stench of blood that threatened to make him gag, possibly even to the point of throwing up – and wouldn’t that go down well. It was another reminder of the way in which he was glad he had chosen his current field of work instead of the doctor idea; Archie just had to keep reminding himself that not every day and job would be like this one.

The gloves were accepted quickly and with a quiet word, so as not to interrupt Marion explaining everything, Archie almost painfully glad to see someone who had some clear idea of what they were doing instead of just poking at the wounds as he himself had been attempting in the hope that his actions wouldn’t turn out to have been making the whole thing worse. The gloves themselves were also a welcome

He swallowed again, throat almost painfully dry as he crouched there and expectedly snapped on his gloves. In the small corner of his mind that wasn’t running without thinking and as a result was in full panic mode, Archie wondered if he was getting a cold, if it was going to spread to Owen and make everything worse.

[Owen]

The arrival of a new and unfamiliar face would have put Owen on edge if he wasn’t feeling so lethargic, all but slouched back into the stained cushions of the couch as his injuries were looked over. Marion’s voice drew his gaze in her direction, her attention to his hair unnoticed and unfelt as he swallowed against the foul-tasting dryness in his throat. Taking in the lawyer’s words and allowing himself a moment to process them, he thought over the situation and all its threads in those moments where his brain calculated the meaning behind Marion’s statement.

Could he trust her? When had he not been able to trust her, lawyer or not? She had never given him a reason to doubt or distrust her, and so, with that knowledge firmly in mind, pushing clearly through all the jumbled fears and flashed memories of the attack, he nodded his head, not wanting to waste precious energy by voicing words that could be communicated just as well through the simple up and down motion of his head.

Of course, the fact that the simple nod made him dizzy didn’t really help, and he closed his eyes in a wince as he willed the light-headedness away to the best of his waning abilities. Marion had asked him to trust her. She had told him he would be fine. Owen had to believe that. He had to try, at the very least.

[Nate]

Acknowledging everything Marion had said with a calm nod, silently grateful when the lawyer’s new assistant took the gloves and put them on, Nate wasted little time in assessing the physical side of the situation. Whatever Owen, as he had been introduced, was making of the situation mentally, was beyond his capabilities to handle, professionally, and given that he was human and had never been anything but, he was far from able to assess how the wounded man might be taking what had happened. He was in shock, that much was obvious, but all in all, it could have been worse. Some people in shock convulsed or lashed out, and at least Owen wasn’t doing that; wasn’t making his injuries any worse.

“These are deep, but they could be worse,” he said, to no one in particular, but it was perhaps obvious they should have been directed at Marion, the only other in-the-know person in the room. “So long as they’re kept clean, there won’t be any kind of infection. Not that there should be, anyway…” Trailing off, Nate’s pale eyes travelled to the youngest man in the room, and he had to wonder, how much had he been told? Just how new was he? Assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that neither the assistant nor the patient knew about werewolves at all, at this point, he kept his attention focused, once again, on the wounds, judging them all and offering the young man the correct cleaning materials he would need to clear the torn flesh where it might seem dirty to some degree. “Just keep them clean, and use these to stem any bleeding that hasn’t slowed.” He wouldn’t close the wounds until one particular person had seen them.

Which reminded him; “Have you called him?” Marion, naturally, would know who he meant. He could guess that she had, given what she had said, but he didn’t want to leap to too many conclusions only to be wrong in the long run.

[Marion]

Marion nodded to Nate. "He knows, he's coming." Owen was definitely well and truly into shock now, so she removed her hand and stood up slowly, absently pulling her hair back. "Nate, you should meet this young man - he called you - Archie, my new assistant." She put her hand on Archie's shoulder. "I hope he'll remain so after today, that is."

She watched Owen and looked at her phone anxiously. It remained dark, and while she knew Cole would have recieved the text, she was beginning to get worried - even angry. She couldn't be the one to tell Owen what he was, nor could she help Archie. Marion's nickname was given to her fairly - and having her teeth into this problem, she wanted it fixed. She didn't have the right to explain to Owen what was going on, and she had to ask Cole's permission to explain to Archie. She was asking a great deal of two men, and it was beginning to give her a headache. Marion was far from perfect, and her patience was wearing thin.

Wait... "Archie - I need you to go out to the entrance and wipe up any blood on the glass. It needs to be spotless out there, and quickly. Can you - will you do that? Please?"

[Archie]

It wasn’t as though the requests were getting more and more bizarre, but they were bordering more and more on something illegal. Delaying in reporting an accident was one thing but cleaning up after the blood and destroying any evidence was quite another and Archie wasn’t quite sure what to make of everything. It was hard to think, even harder to understand without any facts and although he felt he should be able to make some kind of sense from the jumble of hints as to what was really going on here it was as though he was lost in a maze.

His eyes met Marion’s briefly, gaze focusing as he gave a brief nod. Archie had made the choice at the start to trust in his new boss and so far Owen wasn’t dead, which he was counting on to mean he had made the right choice. He wasn’t about to change his mind, even if it mean cleaning the blood off the glass. Archie valued honesty, determination and loyalty – at the moment understanding would have to come behind all those.

The heat was starting to get to him however as he carefully placed the cleaning material he had been using on Owen back down and climbed to his feet. Offering Nate a slight – if somewhat uncertain – smile, Archie stepped back to allow the doctor better access to his patient, slipping off his coat as he moved through the office to collect cleaning material of a different kind.

Continued in: Parking Lot

[Marion]

Watching Archie as he left, she called to him quietly - "Its not a crime scene, Archie. I promise you that." The young man was intelligent, and had been very quiet so far. She needed to give him more information. Her phone chirped and she stood, moving quickly to the opposite side of the room. "Marion speaking."

Cole's voice came over the line - saying everything she expected. Confirmation of he and a few pack members on the way. A tiny part of her wanted to argue that she knew what to do, but it was fairly unimportant. It was simply her nature to be in control and know what was going on - and while she did know what was going on here and what was necessary - it was a tip of the ice berg to what Cole knew. So she bit back any retort, listened, and shut the phone again when he hung up.

She moved back to Nate and Owen - the latter was nearly out of it completely, and for that she was grateful. He'd be with it again shortly, his color was improving, so the lycanthropy was taking hold. The important thing then was to do exactly as Cole said - keep him calm, both to keep his current injuries from getting worse, and to prevent a change so early on. She shuddered inwardly at that thought. Neither she nor Nate were werewolves, and in a minute, that would be painfully obvious.

"He's coming as fast as he can." She knelt near Nate. "If I'm any judge, its going to get busy in here pretty quickly. Do you need anything?"

[Nate]

Nate hadn't watched Archie leave the room, too busy doing what he did best, a statement that would have sounded arrogant or conceited to anyone listening in to his thoughts, but he liked to think he'd been chosen by the pack's Alphas for a reason. But he wasn't the type to let anything of the sort go to his head, more likely to doubt such confidence and analyse it in order to see where he could potentially go wrong in any situation. Arrogance could kill, after all, and he was well aware of that. He’d treated enough emergency patients who had overestimated their limits to know by now the damage it could cause.

Nodding at Marion's words, he got a clear look at some of the smaller tears in Owen's flesh, pulling in a deep breath. It had been obvious from the get go that the other man was infected, but what was hanging in the balance was whether or not he would overcome the shock and pain; many victims of a werewolf attack died as a result of their injuries, or just from the terror involved. Hopefully Owen wouldn't meet that sort of end, and would go on to life a well-adjusted, much longer life.

"Not right now," he said to Marion, meeting her gaze fully for a few moments, assuring her that he wasn't simply placating her. "They'll be here soon, and then we can move to a better location. Ideally, he should be lying down, but it's..." Pausing, he looked at the lawyer again, and then back at the wounds, focusing on his work. "The situation is improving." And she would know what he meant; understood that he'd seen the evidence of healing.

[Marion]

Marion turned her attention back to Owen after putting a hand on Nate's shoulder briefly. The injured man's color was improving rapidly, and she knew that the shock would begin to wear off. A werewolf didn't stay in shock long - and Owen's injuries, while bad, were beginning to knit themselves - something she was never able to be absolutely indifferent to. It was too much of a miracle.

She saw Nate working on the wounds and wondered if he should give Owen something to calm him - part of her wanted to ask him to - it would make the possibility of a change less likely - but then again, Owen was about to have his reality shifted pretty heavily. He should probably stay fairly with it. And again, mostly her wish to be in control. Nate's hands flew with determination and skill, and Marion moved to the door - watching for Archie's return.

"Will he regain consciousness soon? Or do you think Cole will get here first?" She prayed that the latter would be true. Marion was good at talking, but she'd run out of ways to dance around the truth with Owen, and he was not a stupid man. She couldn't keep this up for too much longer, and her head was beginning to ache.

[Nate]

Of course, there were different kinds of shock, and Nate had no doubt that Owen would be suffering another sort for quite some time, after he returned to his senses. The man wasn’t quite unconscious, rather on the brink, not enough for the physician to panic and attempt to rouse him, but enough to keep him on his guard; he didn’t want Owen passing out completely, if he could help it, and talking would, hopefully, help keep him from letting go of awareness completely.

As it was, Nate knew that Owen didn’t have the physical strength to change, and the lycanthropy wouldn’t take hold until the next full moon. Until then, they needed to prioritise, keep the injured man’s other concerns in focus; he needed to be ‘educated’ in the ways of the werewolf, which was where Cole and his pack would come in. Hopefully they were already on their way, and could overcome the evening traffic of Los Angeles easily enough. Depending on which of their number was at the wheel, Nate was confident that they would arrive before too long.

“He’s on the verge; in and out.” Nate glanced momentarily to Marion. “How much does your assistant know?”

[Marion]

Marion realized she was chewing on her lip rather painfully as she looked out the window. She stopped and let out a huff of air. "He's brand new. I literally hired him today."

She turned and walked back to Owen and Nate, her movements without her usual grace. "I hate waiting." Trying to keep from pacing, she watched Nate as he worked. She knew he was good, now his hands were nearly mesmerizing as he moved so surely.

"Please give me something to do - coffee? tea? Even if its just to boil water and get towels, Nate - I feel useless." And that's my friend on my couch, bleeding and having his life about to change.

[Nate]

There was still a lot left for Nate to do, when it came to his patient, the one currently in and out of consciousness on the sofa, and there was only so much he would be able to do here in Marion’s office. The supplies he was in desperate need of did not reside in his emergency kit or Marion’s first aid box, but in his storage closet at the Hyperion. Some time ago, Cole had deemed it necessary that Nate have his own space, where vital equipment might be kept, so it wouldn’t have to be borrowed in hasty bits and pieces over the future. One trip had seen Nate and several of the pack’s werewolves acquiring what would likely be needed in the days ahead; that had been an awkward excursion, one that the doctor remembered with startling clarity.

“Okay. Well I can’t fix him up with fluids here, I’ll have to do that when we get him settled in at the hotel. Maybe some water, in case he wakes up? He needs to stay hydrated as best as possible.” Owen had lost a lot of blood, after all, and that wouldn’t help with the shock.

[Marion]

"Of course." Marion stood and glanced out at the entrance to her office. Hopefully Archie was coping okay. She moved quickly to her small kitchen area and grabbed a mug, bypassing the thinner glasses. The thicker rim would be easier to guide to Owen's mouth, and the thickness would be easier for him to grab. If he woke up enough to, something solid would be good to hold.

She returned to Nate and dragged a chair over to where he worked. Offering it to the doctor was a token - she knew Nate would decline, and when he did she simply sat in it herself, taking Owen's hand in hers and holding it gently, stroking the knuckles of his hand comfortingly. Anything to let him know he wasn't alone.

"I hope Cole is close..."

[Owen]

Owen might not have been unconscious, but he was as close as he could be, really, without actually crossing that fine line. Taking anything in at this point was far too difficult, sounds seemed muffled and thick, swirling together and droning, the light in the room hurt his eyes, making things spin and swim into one another like some bizarre, living watercolour. It wasn’t unlike a trip, albeit a bad one, and had Owen been capable, he might have laughed, as delirious as that might have made him seem. It wouldn’t have been unfitting. Had he not been drifting between oblivion and the overly groggy, bogged down awareness, the shock might have taken him to those levels well enough on its own.

There was a beneficial side to the grogginess, of course. The pain was duller now, too much really for his battered body to register in its exhausted state. Moving would reignite the unwelcome sensations, he was sure, but the numbness was appreciated for now, somewhere in the rear regions of his mind where things were still ticking over and registering, regardless of their true importance.

Not seeing or hearing Nate’s declination of the object offered to him, Owen felt his head drop back the last inch to the rear of the sofa; how had he even managed to hold it up in this condition? Right at that moment, he neither knew nor cared.

[Marion]

Marion saw Owen's head fall, and looking to Nate for approval, even though he'd already given it when he asked, Marion put her hand behind Owen's head and lifted it gently. "Owen - come on, I know you're in there. You need a drink. I'll give you the water, but you've got to swallow for me." She lifted the mug gently to his lips and tilted it just enough to wet his lips.

She wasn't going to tip it any farther until he opened his mouth in response - then she could be sure he'd not choke on the liquid. His body didn't need any more shocks.

The door to the office opened and Marion looked up, praying to see Cole, but was relieved still to see Archie come in. His shoulder set and his step told her observant brain that he'd done as she'd asked, but the pallor of his skin and the shadows under his eyes also said that he was uncomfortable - something she did not blame him for. Marion read people for a living, persuaded and argued. This was not an argument she'd wanted to force into him so early on. She met his eyes, and gave him a grateful smile. She hoped that he would give her a chance to explain.

Turning her attention back to Owen, she watched his mouth as she wet it again, watching Nate out of the corner of her eye.

[Archie]

Continued from: Parking Lot

He was so far out of his dept that it wasn’t funny. Nothing about the situation he had found himself thrown into had been funny in any way, shape or form, but he felt as though he was floundering through the rapidly rising water as best he could, the currents all attempting to pull him this way and that, without Archie knowing which way he was supposed to go and which he was supposed to fight against. Since he had first stepped into Marion’s office earlier the same evening – had it really only been such a short time? – It seemed as though the world had twisted on its axis’s, and the constants that the young man clung to had moved.

Archie was feeling terrible. He didn’t know if it was the shock of seeing a man as injured as Owen was or if it was making the choice to deliberately clean up after the attack; Archie had always cleaned up after other people with a quiet, intense flair, but this was something quite new. Whatever the reason, he probably looked almost as bad as he felt and that really was saying something. Throwing up was starting to look more and more tempting but that would also mean diverting attention away from the man on the sofa and he wasn’t willing to do that.

At Marion’s smile, he gave her one of his own, albeit one that was shaky and unsure. Slowly, he moved towards them, focusing on breathing steadily while at the same time ready to do anything that was needed to help. It was all he really knew how to do.