Quarantined

[Rhurek Thane]

Tatooine. Of all the planets to be stranded on. It had to be Tatooine. Dr. Rhurek Thane was en route to a speech he was being blackmailed to do. But that was another story for another thread. Somehow, his transport ship was faulty and he had to make a pit stop to get it fixed. Looks like he was going to have to miss the lecture he was supposed to give. Looks like he had paid the maintenance worker at the dock just enough credits to ensure the ship wouldn't get him there, but also not blow up on him either. What could he say? Thane was a gambler. One of his many very flawed personality flaws.

Upon leaving the docking bay his transport ship was being repaired at in Mos Eisley, Thane eyed the artistic styling of the local graffiti artists. Crude sayings and quotes were painted around the walls with signatures sounding like they could be non other than their street names. The riff-raff were the same wherever you went. One quote said, "Now entering the most retched hive of scum and villiany" and another said, "The farthest planet from a bright center to the universe". It was all very comforting.

Not wanting to put more stress on his leg than needed, he found himself at the local cantina. A familiar group of Bith were playing an equally familiar tune. Suddenly he was craving Ackbar fishsticks, The thump of his flame cane stopped at the bar where he took the seat of another patron who was returning to his spot. "Sorry, I left my handicap sticker in my other pants. Cripples still get special parking on this planet right?" Thane asked the suddenly threatening looking man while not trying to hide his cane. He may need it for defense after all. It was also a nice prop to get people to feel bad for him.

The angry man grabbed Thane by his shirt collar, but then Thane noticed his eyes trail off as if something was wrong. The man's eyeballs rolled back as his body fell to the floor in a thud. He was shaking violently. "Aww, crap." Thane said to himself under his breath. "Anyone in here a doctor?"

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Tatooine. The first place Irajah had ever been for any length of time off of her homeworld and it was here. Frelling Tatooine. There were moments where she almost considered going back.

Almost.

And then she'd shudder to herself, pull the long sleeves of her shirt down over her bruised wrists and leave the tiny, dusty room she rented for a pittance and try to get out around living people in any way she could. It didn't matter that they were as miserable as she was. They were alive. Any time she started to feel sorry for herself. Or the nightmares got too bad. Or even worse thoughts started to creep in, then she would head out in to the hot, dry, desert night and just make sure she was around people.

Not that the people here wanted to be around her for the most part. But still. Just the living, breathing press of bodies at the cantina, even if they were unruly, smelly and foul tempered was better than the silence back in her room. The silence was deafening-

*THUD*

::sigh::

This kind of thing happened here at least once a night. She was used to turning around at the sound of one patron knocking out another. Sometimes someone asked for a medic. Sometimes not. But this time her eyebrows crawled up her face because this time was different. First, the big burly one was at the feet of the relatively frail human wielding a.... flame printed cane. Huh. That was new. And second he was convulsing.

Irajah weaved between the patrons, kneeling quickly beside the downed man. Checking his head for injuries with practiced ease (he wasn't convulsing hard), she held his neck with one hand. Reaching in to the pocket of her jumper, she took out a small light and shining it back and forth between his eyes in a quick motion, one two, frowning.

"Unresponsive," she muttered. "And he's burning up." She looked up at [member="Thane"] standing over the two of them, holding his cane. "What happened?"

 

[Rhurek Thane]

Thane turned his attention anywhere away from the man who was drawing attention from every head in the establishment. "Water." He nodded to the bar keep. Whom gave him a funny stare. "Right, desert planet. Gotcha, I don't want to get shived over what probably goes for currency around here." From his peripheral, he noticed a young woman acting doctorly with the man on the floor. Fine with him, last thing he cared to do was work, especially if he wasn't getting paid for it.

"What happened?" The female surely seemed like she knew what she was doing. He also got the strangest feeling about her. She reminded him of someone. Young. Caring. Smart. Yet there was a darkness about her. Thane had once been a Jedi. But that was a long time ago. But he could sense the Force about her. She intrigued him.

"How should I know? You're the doctor." He shrugged her off and made to turn for the exit. As he stood, his wallet fell from his jacket. It had probably been jostled loose when the man grabbed his shirt. Open and exposed lay his hospital ID and badge revealing his name and the fact that he was indeed actually a doctor. And a universe renowned one at that.

Rolling his eyes, he conceded. "Fine. There's nothing to diagnose. He's unresponsive because he's drunk. He's burning up because it's eleventy degrees in here. Everyone is burning up. All in all, a very boring case to figure out." He rubbed his leg grumpily, obviously in pain. He reached for a small vial in his pocket. "Could you please hand me my wallet...my leg, it hur...." Thane's eyes narrowed as his voice trailed off. The convulsing man had ceased convulsing, and his shirt had lifted from the flailing. Using his cane to get a better look, he lifted the man's shirt to reveal a brownish rash spreading across his abdomen. "Cool." He said studying the rash.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah's eyes went from the spilled hospital ID to Thane's face and back again. It took her only a moment to recognize the name. Even on a backwater like her homeworld, she knew who he was. He was a leader in diagnostic medicine and infectious disease. She of course didn't know him personally, and she wouldn't be known to him at all. The one thing that hadn't reached her was his reputation as an jerk, so she just gave him a baffled look at first before turning back to the man on the floor.

"His pupils are unresponsive, not under responsive and sluggish," she replied immediately, snapping back at his assertions about his condition. His arrogance clearly annoyed her. "and he only walked in a ten minutes ago sober. Nothing they serve here would get a guy this big that drunk, that fast. It's hot in here, but he's not sweating, and his skin's dry not clammy so it's not heat stroke. And-"

She paused, silent as he used his cane to lift up his shirt.

"Balls" she muttered, looking up at him from her spot on the floor.

The bartender looked over the bar at the two of them, then shook his head and went back to wiping down glasses with a rag that was clearly already dirty.

Irajah leaned over, getting a closer look at the rash.

"What the hell is that?" She murmured, more to herself than anything else. Other than the 'Cool', she couldn't tell if Doctor Thane were actually going to Doctor or not. "It looks like blood vessels breaking under the skin, beneath the rash but....."

She paused, frowning. This was a human. But the blood pooling beneath the skin looked brown.

[member="Thane"]

 

[Rhurek Thane]

"I don't know." Thane responded quietly. His brow was furled in deep thought.

Moments later, after the commotion had settled down, everyone had gone about their drinks and their merry little lives. Thane, Ira, and the patient had been moved to a lesser used corner of the bar. At this point, Thane had a full blown interest in this guy. And not just because he tried to punch him out. No, he was sick, and Thane feared he'd get worse unless they figured out what was causing it. They had to get ahead of whatever was threatening this guy's life.

Thane had swyped a marker from behind the counter that they used to write the daily specials. He was now using it to write on their walls. It's not like they weren't used to graffiti around here. On the wall he had written out several symptoms, and those symptoms included: brown blood, mental status change (from raging out on him just for taking his chair), dizziness, fatigue, exercise intolerance (after all he was a large man), and hair loss at an early age. Above all of that however, Thane had a piece of paper he wrote on and stuck it in an envelope and sealed it shut. "Don't worry about the envelope, it's just a minor prediction." He placed it in his pocket.

"Okay...so, what makes a guys blood turn brown?" He turned from the symptoms and looked at Ira. "And what brings such a tortured fragile soul like yourself to a place like this? Did you steal someone's ship? Escape from jail? Kill someone for asking too many personal questions?"

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah had watched the whole set up unfold, participating as needed of course, mostly bemused, carried along more like a child's ballon at first. She'd only given him a little bit of side eye over writing on the bar wall, but when the bartender himself didn't complain she had just kind of shrugged and gone with it.

"You forgot 'fever'," she interjected at one point as he was working on his list, but otherwise, her attention was honestly more on the insensate man rather than on the inscrutable one. They'd made him as comfortable as possible but she was frowning, obviously more than a little worried.

"The closest medical center is in Mos Espa," she muttered, more to herself than anything else. The folks here mostly made due with bacta patches and whatever alcohol they could drink. They figured whatever alcohol couldn't kill, well, it wasn't worth killing. Irajah wasn't particularly amused. She'd intended to move there when she'd earned the money she'd needed, and eventually off planet, but that was still weeks away. And she had no idea how they'd get him there. He needed a lab work up, not an arm chair diagnosis. She'd never seen anything like this before.


It wasn't until he started asking incongruously inappropriate questions that she looked up at him again, her mouth opening and closing once and blinking at him.

Fortunately, having something at stake made her snarky instead of defensive.

"I enslaved an entire enclave of Sith using only a hydrospanner and now they want their hydrospanner back," she replied evenly and matter of factly, hazel eyes staring him down. "And I'm thinking there's something wrong with his kidneys. Not filtering properly."

She paused, reading over his list for the first time. "Mental status change? Exercise Intolerance? Hair loss?" She gave him an incredulous look. "This a friend of yours and you're not telling me? Except for the first one, why do you think those are symptoms and not just..... the patient."

[member="Thane"]

 

[Rhurek Thane]

"I didn't forget fever, you just didn't give me enough time to write it, yet." He said childishly, turning to add the symptom to his shrine of cheap marker scented ailments. His eyes squinted as he studied the list. Truth be told, he knew nothing of this planet, nor how far how Mos Espa's medical center was from this back planet port. He looked at her briefly and nodded. "You're right. Unless he gets proper medical treatment, I have a feeling he won't last long. Like, I wouldn't advise him to buy any green bananas."

When she opted to play his game, he cracked a rare, but amused smile. She was spunky. He liked her. What was his deal? Why did he always like the broken ones that seemed like they had something to hide? Why did they call them 'credits' when they were actually your own hard earned currency? Why did his ADD kick in at the most inopportune moments? "I'll call your sass, and raise you some sarcasm. You're miserable like me. You may not have killed anyone, or done anything illegal. But you are broken, aren't you?" He asked her, his eyes piercing her own, studying her for any tells.

He broke off as soon as he caught her attention. It was habit to talk about two things at once, three if they were using metaphors or euphemisms. "You say kidneys, I say his blood is oxygen deprived. I'm thinking methemoglobinemia. He could have contacted it from the drinking water here, dehydration, or worse, he could be septic. It explains everything. If he didn't get drunk that fast, then here's no way someone would would rage out over something so trivial. His spare tire yet large arms tell me he used to work out but hasn't been lately. And the loose hairs around his collar tell me he's been losing his hair faster than those pesky buggers can regrow." Just then another commotion was heard from across the cantina. Sometime else had just collapsed, overturning a table in the process and was convulsing on the floor.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

"You," she said, her tone incredulous, "want to know. About *me*. Right now." She stopped, squinting up at him. At first it had been just a little weird. Now it was actually bizarre. They didn't have time for this.

But she didn't correct him either. She didn't say that she wasn't miserable. That she wasn't broken.

And while neither of them could know it yet, he was about to get a front row seat in how.

Fortunately for her, there was a bit of a distraction as another patron fell over. Several people moved away so quickly they pushed others over in their haste. Nothing like home, she thought bitterly, remembering her encounter with that strange zabrak outside of town.

Irajah looked up at [member="Thane"] and said softly, "You may want to rethink your 'It explains everything,' stance."

"Come on, help me," she said, struggling to stand while pulling the unconscious hulk up. She paused, looking up at him. Then she looked at his cane, sighed. "Never mind. I'm going to see if I can flag down a speeder. Get these men to the medical center. It's obviously something infectious. If we're lucky, it's something in the food," she said quietly. "Hope you didn't eat anything, Doctor Thane." After all, she'd seen his badge. "We're going to have to check everyone here and send them along before-"

She had been walking toward the door as she spoke, looking over her shoulder at him. So she didn't see the Storm Trooper until she walked SMACK into his chestplate. She bounced back hard, catching herself on a table and wincing in pain.

"Securing the room sir," came the tinny voice from inside the helmet. The sound of booted feet came from more than one location and the crowd in the bar moved around, shifting like nervous sheep.

She had been calm up until now, though it had been a partially manufactured calm.

"What's going on? Excuse me? We need to leave. I have sick men here I need to-"

"No one is leaving this building ma'am. The town is under official Quarantine until further notice." The Stormtrooper interrupted her sharply, raising his weapon ever so slightly. It wasn't a threat per se. But it was the implication of one.

Irajah blinked, the air sucked out of her lungs at the word Quarantine. No. Her chest was tight as she breathed the words, "These aren't the only two."

It wasn't a question.

"I am not authorized to speak with you further ma'am. But no one is permitted to leave. For any reason."

At that moment, their original patient started to seize again.

 

[Rhurek Thane]

Thane just watched the original patient seize again.

"Aren't you going to help him?" A bystander asked.

"Help him seize?" Thane responded dumbly.

Obviously frustrated, the bystander rephrased the question, "No, I mean, are you going to try to hold him down?"

"I knew what you meant." Thane rattled a few pills in a bottle, dispensed one, and popped it into his mouth swallowing. "Not unless I want a finger bitten off."

There was nothing there they could use to help the sick victims. And overhearing that they were quarantined, he knew the only way to save any of these lives was to get his hands on medicine, and fast.

He limped with the assistance of his cane over to Ira, by which he still didn't know her name. But her name wasn't going to help cure these people, and he probably wouldn't remember it anyway, so he just let it go for now. "Okay, two patients, similar symptoms. Seeing as they aren't even the same species, we can rule out genetics. It may be environmental. And no, I haven't eaten anything here, thankfully." He paused to look around and told an Ithorian to tell the cook to shut down the grill. "By the way," he began to converse with Ven again, "you can think I'm wrong, but that's no reason to quit thinking. I need ideas, I don't care how dumb they sound." He said pacing, for once it seemed like the limp wasn't affecting him like it usually did. It was the puzzle. His mind was off it. Pausung in front of her he added, "Don't worry, we can talk about you later." Even though he was the one to bring it up.

Just then he remembered he had quite an extensive collection of small transportable medical equipment and medicine on board his small ship. After all, it did belong to the space floating hospital. It may not be the best but it was better than what they had now. "I have supplies on my ship, we just need to get there. ...we could bribe the stormtrooper. I have the credits, you have the legs." At the very least, maybe someone could fetch them for him. After all, he was a cripple.

"And either the Ackbar fishsticks are really bad here, or we just gained a third victim." There laying on the floor not too far behind them was one more to add to the growing list of patients needing medical care.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

"I am not going to flash my legs at the storm troopers," she hissed at him. It wasn't righteous indignation though. There was something else there, just beneath the surface. The fact that her legs were covered in deep bruises that never healed from a sickness she would never recover from, rather than from the fact that she had another issue with distracting the Stormtroopers that way. It was subtle and most people would miss it and just assume it was prudishness. He wasn't most people.

She still hadn't offered her name. It hadn't really occurred to her. She had spent too much time working in an emergency room- and that wasn't a place where casual introductions were done during a crisis. And this definitely fit. It would likely remain that way for now.

But he was right about other things. She wasn't thinking. And it was because there was only one thing screaming over and over again in her head. She'd been doing her best to ignore it. Confirmation bias was a queen and she knew it. But-

"It's a pathogen," she said quietly. "It's not environmental, or genetic, or in the food. At the rate it's spreading and if there are people outside the cantina it's airborn. Because there isn't a single water supply for the town. Everyone has their own small moisture 'vaporators, so if it's in the water, it means it's in the air."

She looked up at him, and this time, there was an actual haunted look there. It wasn't the same as what happened on her homeworld, but it was close enough. And it was too soon.

"If I'm right, and I'm not saying that I am, but if I'm right. If it's airborn, that means a virus," she said quietly, low enough that no one but [member="Thane"] could hear her. "And that might mean that the Stormtroopers are just here to make sure they have an accurate body count."

 

[Rhurek Thane]

His head cocked to the side as his eyes squinted at her reluctance to show off what her mama gave her. There was more to it, and Thane was not the type to let it go. He wasn't a fictional ice queen. However, he decided to let her think and work it out in her head. The best ideas came from arguing with yourself.

"If it is viral," he interjected, "that would mean an infection, which would explain the fever." His mood dampened as he rubbed his leg, "The problem lies in this. Viruses are like lazy workers who get hired for a business within a Union. Once employed, they become protected by the union, and no matter how badly you want to get rid of the lazy worker virus, you can't touch them. They just do what they want and go where they want until they eventually burn themselves out or kill the entire union." He glanced back at Ven. "It's a metaphor, get used to it." He started to limp toward the alien that had collapsed and started searching him for any bruising. When he find them, they appeared more deep purple under the green skinned alien. The only problem was their blood was blue in nature.

He returned to Ven just as perplexed as he had been. "For those that know me, I'm not a big fan of throwing sharp objects at a wall and seeing what sticks, but we are very limited in what we have to use here. I have broadspectrum antibiotics in my ship. If they work, I may be able to get more shipped in. You just have to get to my ship first." He told her, implicating that he wanted her to retrieve the medicine. He was curious as to how resourceful she was, especially now that they were under guard.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah just looked at him for a long moment.

"So, let me get this straight," she said, her voice quiet, pitched so only he could hear her.

"You agree that it might be a virus. But you want me to sneak out of here, around Stormtroopers who probably won't hesitate to shoot me, and get antibiotics from your ship, that treat bacterial infections but don't treat viral infections, for patients that may already have liver and/or kidney involvement, even though giving them not only unnecessary but frankly worthless antibiotics would very likely box their kidneys and we have absolutely no access to a dialysis machine here so doing that would only accelerate their dying?"

She paused just long enough to breath in, but not long enough for him to respond.

"ARE YOU INSANE?"

That last part was louder than she'd intended and she piped down a moment later, glancing around to see if anyone was paying undue attention to them. She repeated herself, in a hissing undertone.

"Are you insane? We can't do that! All it would do is prove that it's a virus with kidney involvement! And maybe kill the patients!"

She of course didn't understand that this was kind of the way Dr. [member="Thane"] worked.

 

[Rhurek Thane]

Normally, doctors wouldn't put up with such juvenile outbursts, but fortunately for her, Thane was anything but a normal doctor. Though he wouldn't show it, he respected her for her standing up to him.

Unfortunately for her, Thane didn't care what people thought, so his own tone raised, though his was deeper and carried further. "You're right, we shouldn't do anything that could be considered insane to save lives, we should just settle on being sane and let them die!"

He turned and took one step before realizing five more patrons where now laying on the floor of the cantina. People were now staring thanks to his outburst, sprouted expressions indicated they may have overheard him, and panic was now not only a possibility, but a likelihood.

He turned back to [member="Irajah Ven"] pointing his cane in the direction of the newest victims, but now his tone was lowered, "This virus will most likely take way more victims unless we get ahead of it, and the only way to do that is to narrow it down. Symptoms are clues. The more we have, the easier it will be to diagnose. And as you can see, we ARE limited on meds and equipment. We need to use what we have, and right now all we have is what's on my ship." He glanced around at the three stormtroopers assigned to this establishment. And the writer uses that term loosely.

"Gather whatever you can get your hands on that you think may be useful." He handed over an access keycard. "This will get you access to my entire ship. Just...don't enter my personal quarters." He gave her an odd look, trying to figure out if he could trust her. "Go, I'll create a distraction. Don't worry if they shoot, word is they can't hit anything." Before she could argue, he turned and limped toward two of the armed white armored men.

 

[Kuzo]

"This is going to end badly," she muttered. But she looked down at the first patient. He was barely concious, eyes fluttering as if fighting to wake up, but she knew that wasn't it at all. It was just his body fighting a far different battle, against fever and whatever was causing this.

She didn't even know his name.

"We're gonna take care of you big guy," she whispered, more to herself than to him.

Slipping the keycard in to her back pocket, she scuttled along the side of the bar, keeping an eye on [member="Thane"] and the Stormtroopers, waiting until he did something stupid (which seemed the only possible thing in this case) to slip behind the bar and head out back through the kitchen.

 

[Rhurek Thane]

Thane casually approached the two white armored troopers like they had been old friends. "Hey, don't I recognize you from somewhere?" He started off with one. "You look familiar. Ever been vacationing on Hoth? Spelunking on Endor? Catching a tan and soaking up some sun on Alderaan?" Knowing their history, he knew this might cause a reaction. "No? You're probably right. I mean, you guys all look the same." Limping to the next, he tried provoking him. "How's your mom? I think I treated her once. I got her to undress. I gave her three excellent reasons to, and at least one of them were medical."

Nothing. These guys were like statutes. What was it going to take?" Knocking on his helmet with his cane, he started to get under their skin. "Hello? Anyone in there?" He started trying to look through their darkened eye holes. One of the troopers shoved him, and the other one decked him on the right side of his face which sent him to the floor. This caught the attention of the third who decided to help out. If [member="Irajah Ven"] were going to sneak out, now would be her time.

Thane cradled the side of his face with his hand, and as he pulled away, he saw red. He smirked. "Is that why you guys can't hit anything? It's a gun, not a bat. Didn't they teach you anything in stormtrooper school?"

The third approached and all three were surrounding him, and they all had their backs turned toward the kitchen. Thane would be fine, because he had plans to shut up once Ven was out of sight. "You guys hit like Ewoks...." The next thing he saw was all white, as a white armored fist connected with his left eye.

 

[Kuzo]

As satisfying as watching [member="Thane"] get decked by Stormtroopers might have been to someone else, Irajah didn't stick around. She ducked behind the bar as soon as armored fists started flying. She got a bit of side eye from the bartender, but otherwise managed to slip out the back without a problem. They hadn't finished setting up a full cordon yet and for that she was grateful. She paused for a moment by the dumpsters, waiting till the coast was clear before scurrying off in to the night.

It wasn't hard to find the doctor's ship. It was the only one that didn't look ready to shake apart in this hellhole little town. She used the keycard to let herself in. Lucky for Thane, she wasn't even a little tempted to go poking through his personal effects. She hurried to the supply cabinets after finding a rucksack. Hazel eyes scanned the supplies quickly before starting to sweep some of almost everything in to the sack. Antibiotics, yes, but also fever reducers, anti-fungals, anti-convulsants, anti-inflammatories, cooling packs, a hand held scanner- anything she thought might be of use. Sure, he wanted more symptoms. She also wanted to treat the patients. And with the nearest medical center in Mos Espa, the supplies here were the best she had to work with. She had no qualms about raiding his personal store. He was a doctor. Maybe an... unorthodox one. But the supplies were here, and they needed them.

On her way back to the cantina she paused, frowning as she looked at the silhouette of a moisture 'vaporator where it was outlined against the light of the moon.

What if.....

She slipped back in the same way she'd left. Of course, a certain someone was going to need a different sort of medical attention now.

"Hutts alive, what did you let them do to you?" She murmured to Thane as she settled the rucksack next to him.