Log:Hospital Nightmares

2015/07/07 Grimm Malcolm 1

Malcolm has been in the hospital for hours now. He looks scruffier than usual, with about two days' worth of beard and rumpled, grease-stained clothes. Then again, that's not entirely unusual considering he got a call from CBSU Hospital about three hours after he got home from spending his entire Independence Day weekend on duty.

Clad in the first pair of jeans and oily t-shirt he could find in the semi-darkness, Malcolm put his touring chopper through its paces by speeding across town to get to the hospital. The poor motorcycle was the only one not up on a lift for its monthly inspection and it was still as unprepared as Malcolm was for the call about Grimm in the dead of the night.

Gently Malcolm squeezes Grimm's left hand in both of his as he leans forward. Weary or not, the tall man feels like he should make sure Grimm knows he's here; he feels like he should be the first face Grimm sees when she wakes up.

The ICU isn't the best place for the weary to rest. Most of the other patients are woken up frequently just as they manage to rest so that they can be tested, prodded, examined, and monitored.

Gabrielle has been spared that because she hasn't woken up yet. She was wheeled in after surgery in the ER, hooked up to monitors and an IV with morphine, fluids and plasma to make up for what she lost. She's more pallid than usual, and isn't looking her best in a plain hospital gown. The room is saturated with the slow beeping of her heart monitor.

A nurse walks in and offers a sympathetic smile to Malcolm as she walks over to check on the readouts of the machines by Gabrielle. "Still with her, I see. Do you need anything?" Nurse Rachel asks. She's been in a few times this shift.

"Wild horses, ma'am," remarks Malcolm. He makes an air gesture that may indicate him fighting against being dragged away. Patting Grimm's hand with one of his own, Malcolm leans slowly back into his chair again. "I'm fine for now. Thanks though."

"Sure," Nurse Rachel smiles comfortingly. She reaches for a small box with a button attached to the IV feed and presses it. "She should be waking soon. I'm giving her some morphine to counteract the pain when she wakes up. If she experiences any excessive pain, she just needs to press the button to help." The nurse finishes writing up some things on a tablet for Grimm's chart, checks to make sure everything's still in place, and then walks out.

Gabrielle remains unconscious and breathingly slowly. It's a few minutes after the nurse leaves that Gabrielle's hand twitches once in Malcolm's grasp. She's not awake yet, but her brow creases and her head turns to her side, as one does when having a nightmare.

Malcolm may or may not have taking a brief nap during the interim between Rachel leaving and Grimm starting to stir. He blinks blearily at Gabrielle, head lifting from the railing along her bedside just enough for him to inspect her face. Gently he squeezes her hand again, eyes taking on a sympathetic cast.

"Gabrielle? It's Malcolm. It's okay. You're safe. You're with me. You just need to wake up, beautiful. Please?"

Grimm's hand twitches again and she gently tosses her head in the other direction, looking more disturbed by the nightmares plaguing her. In her mind, she's trapped and helpless back at the graveyard where Price and his fellow cultists took her to perform the ritual. She's terrified and powerless.

Only...the Gabrielle Grimm in the here and now is no longer quite so powerless. She's still a Conduit of the Dark and Qliphothic Realms. In reaction to the fear and perceived threat of the nightmare, something is channeled through her.

Malcolm hears scratching from underneath her hospital bed.

"Gabrielle?"

Malcolm's brows knit together at the sound of scratching from below the bed. He purses his lips as he flicks his gaze from Grimm to the bedside and back again. Gingerly, Malcolm squeezes her hand in his own as his metal cables emerge from under his loose, rumpled t-shirt. A few more cables extend from somewhere under the cuffs of his jeans, sweeping slowly under the hospital bed.

The scratching continues as Gabrielle dreams of drawing to scratch and claw her way free from the cultists as they drag her to the ritual circle. They begin to chant in a language she can't understand.

As Malcolm's cables sweep under the bed, they bump up against something underneath. And suddenly it feels like something has grabbed hold of the cable and starts to pull on it.

"Huh. Aren't you a fun-" Malcolm is cut off by something grabbing hold of one (or more!) of his cables. A moment or two later, his cable(s) get pulled upon and Malcolm opines, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Surely nothing bad can come of this.

Another cable is grabbed. And then another. The scratching as stopped at least. And then the pulling begins to become stronger.

"I'm sorry, baby, I need my hands for a minute," whispers Malcolm in a positively apologetic tone of voice. He releases Grimm's hand from his grasp and stands up as the pulling gets more insistent. Drawing in a breath, the tall man moves his chair out of the way with a spare cable before he plants his feet.

Flexing his muscles, Malcolm resists the tugging and pulling upon his cables mightily before he starts to exert still more strength to reverse that pull. Narrowing his eyes, Malcolm starts to flex his cables as well, biometallic tendrils starting to pull harder still as sweat breaks out across Malcolm's brow.

The tall man proves stronger than the thing going bump under Grimmm's bed. With a flex and a heave, he pulls the thing in the shadows into the light. Or as it proves to be, things. Plural. Wrapped around one biometallic cable is a black tentacle of shadow. Around two others, tiny black paws with opposible thumbs. That are attached to pudgy barrel shaped bodies. On the shoulders of the bodies are flat, wrinkly-faced heads with dog ears that point up as if they were cropped that way. These shadowy goblin-like creatures holding onto Malcolm's cables look like bipedal pugs with mange and sharp teeth.

They aren't just getting pulled from underneath the bed. They're being pulled up out of the shadow on the ground as if it were some portal.

"AAaaaaaaaaand I'm not getting any REM sleep any time soon," intones Malcolm as he finds himself with mangey, razor-toothed pugoboldlin rabbits tangled up on his cables. He narrows his eyes and points at the dark little things menacingly - it borders on a full-on FINGER WAG! - as he coldly intones, "Bad shadow things! Go back to your shadow homes!"

The shadow goblins' big bulging eyes bulge more at Malcolm's frightful scolding, their ears drooping down. "Reeeerawwwble," one screeches. They look familiar. Some of these little buggers were in the DEMON castle what was built on Grimm's back. One of them slinks back to the shadows with a backwards scooting motion and disappears back down into the ground under the bed. Even the tentacle goes rigid and slides back into the safety of the darkness it was dragged out of.

The last remaining goblin gives two a half-hearted tug on Malcolm's cable and makes no progress in budging the large man. It makes strange unhappy sounds under its breath and releases Malcolm, then turns around and trudges back down under the bed. It casts one last look up at Malcolm over its shoulder to gauge if there's any relenting in his stern gaze.

Malcolm is confused.

A goblin looks back at Malcolm. He narrows his eyes again and points again, black metal creeping over the whole of his pointing hand. Magnetic force ripples across the intervening space to nudge the goblin toward the shadow portal.

"Shadow home. Go on."

The shadow goblin squeals at the surprised nudge and scuttles back to its Shadow Home as it's prodded, disappearing into the shadow again.

Flexing both his blackened hand and a cloud of magnetic force and magnetite particles suspended over the portal, Malcolm seems vaguely impressed. Even Malcolm's not sure if he's impressed with himself, with his display of Magnetite Resonance, or with banishing the goblins.

Shifting his weight, Malcolm swings his magnetic field around to drag the chair back into place. As he sits down again, Malcolm's biometallic membrane sinks back into his flesh - with its disappearance, so too does that magnetic field disappear - and Malcolm gently wraps his hands around Grimm's hand again. Giving her a firm squeeze, Malcolm leans forward to plant a kiss on the back of her fingers.

"Gabrielle? Please, come back to me. Wake up for me, gorgeous."

Somewhere, subconsciously, Gabrielle hears and feels Malcolm and she struggles to wake from the nightmare she feels trapped in. The nightmare that feels so real it's like she doesn't even remember who she's become since then.

In the nightmare, she's held down on the ground over the ritual circle, staring up at her boyfriend as he raises the athame up. She's screaming for help, begging him to stop, asking why or how he could do this to her. They had been so close. This isn't the Jonathon she thought she knew. She watches in terror as the ritual blade comes down and the pain comes. Pain that resonates with the injury Jonathon caused her at the club.

Gabrielle's heart monitor starts to speed up the pace of its beeping as her terror culminates in the nightmare. When the blade sinks in, her hand suddenly grips Malcolm's from the perceived pain. It's clasping his as tightly as it can, but she's so very weak at the moment.

With a sharp inhale, Gabrielle eyes open, her mind disoriented as she wakes up scared and lost until she realizes Malcolm's there. "Mal...?" She says his name like it's a balm for her fears. Her voice is rough, parched, and groggy.

Malcolm holds onto Grimm as the monitors go from suck to blow, her fear climaxing in her dreamscape. He looks at her, eyes a bit bleary, as she awakes from the fever pitch of her nightmare. Squeezing her hand reassuringly, Malcolm replies, "I'm here, Gabrielle. Don't be afraid. I'm here."

A trio of cables snake out of his shirt to pour Grimm a glass of ice water and present it to her. Malcolm plants another kiss on the back of Grimm's trapped fingers, his steely eyes locked on her face.

Grimm is breathing rapidly from the fear and adrenaline, but she's calming down with Malcolm's reassurances and the kiss on the hand. "How long," she starts gravelly, "have you been here? Or me?" She manages a grateful, if pained, smile at the offering of water and tries to take it from his cables with a trembling hand. She barely has any strength in her to do it, but she manages to hold onto the glass, just barely, and bring it to her lips for a few careful sips. "Ahhh...thanks, Handsome."

Malcolm keeps his hands wrapped around one of Grimm's, his cables gently in the way to help keep the cup steady. His steely eyes keep fixed on her, an expression of concern etched into his tired features. Shrugging a little bit, Malcolm replies, "Better part of a day on both counts. They called a little while after I got off-duty."

Grimm benefits from the extra aid from his cable to keep the cup study, because she almost fumbles it. "I'm sorry, Handsome," she says softly, then offers a thankful smile. "So happy to see you."

"It's not your fault, beautiful," replies Malcolm, offering a warm smile of his own. He squeezes Grimm's hand again, cables collecting the cup as daintily as they can to return it to the bed-side rolling table.

Malcolm squeezes hand once more, still smiling warmly at her. He plants another kiss on the back of her fingers and closes his eyes for a moment. Bug eyed pugoblins haunt his blank mind's eye. Opening his eyes a little more quickly than he intended, Malcolm fixes his gaze on Grimm's as he lets out a little sigh.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there to protect you, Gabrielle. If you're up to it, maybe you can give me a description of the thug that did this to you. Or whatever you can remember about the club last night."

"Not your fault either, Handsome. Nothing to be sorry for," Gabrielle says softly, fingers clasping his hand after the kiss. At the question about the guy who did it to her, there's some fear that manifests in Gabrielle's expression and she turns her head away to hide it. "I know who it was. His name is Jonathon Price." After a pause, she adds unhappily, "He's my ex-boyfriend..."

Malcolm smiles at Grimm and holds her hands for long moments, squeezing tenderly as that fear materializes in her expression. He starts to say something, but pauses when Grimm cops to her relationship with Price. Blinking owlishly at Grimm, Malcolm is silent for long moments before he finally inquires, "Should I, uh..."

Yes, Malcolm? What should you do?

"Should I press you for more information, Gabrielle? Or just leave this sleeping dog lie for now?"

"If it'll help you get him, ask whatever you want." Gabrielle sounds like she has no love for Price. She sinks back into her hospital bed, her gaze half averted from Malcolm. "Sorry I never really talked about him before. I prefer not to think about it. But...he's here now. I guess I can't keep ignoring him..."

"I'm here for you, Gabrielle," replies Malcolm, voice quiet and affectionate. He squeezes Grimm's hand again as he watches her avert her eyes, head tilting slightly to one side as he considers her body language. "Let's leave this dog lie for the moment. You can tell me about it when you have your strength back."

Grimm looks back to Malcolm, surprised and relieved. She nods once and offers a thankful smile. "Thanks...for everything, Mal. I'll tell you everything once I'm back on my feet." Even just all this talking seems to have exerted her. She looks exhausted, but content from his affectionate words. "You look like you could use some rest," she makes the effort to offer a wry smile as she cracks a joke tiredly and gives his hand a soft squeeze.

"You just rest, Gabrielle. I'm here for you," replies Malcolm, smiling warmly at Grimm. He continues to hold her hand in both of his as he scoots his chair closer to the bed. Lazily he rests his head against the hospital bed's side rail and smiles up at Grimm. "You don't need to worry, beautiful. I'm here to protect you."

Grimm smiles gently at Malcolm. With her free hand, she reaches over to stroke Malcolm's head as he rests against the rail. "You're always so sweet to me, Handsome. And you're always watching out for me." She continues to affectionately stroke him as she starts to feel heavy-lidded. "Sometimes...maybe lots of times...I wonder how I got so lucky." Her voices starts to sleepily trail off as she muses happily. With Malcolm watching over her, she can rest easy. She's safe now. Exhaustion from the ordeal takes its toll and her eyes slide shut and her head slumps against her pillow as she falls asleep. She kept on stroking Malcolm's head slowly until sleep overtakes her. This time, which is a rare occasion, there are no nightmares.

Malcolm remains still and calm, resting his tired body against the side of Gabrielle's bed. He smiles sweetly up at her as she strokes his face, watching as she drifts slowly off to sleep. Giving her hand a final squeeze, Malcolm lets his own eyes close. Sleep may not come as swiftly to him, but he can at least rest his weary body a little bit, holding onto what's precious to him.

In the meantime, Malcolm's player calculates this level to have been completed at the A-Rank level. Presumably he has not managed SA-Class because he dodged the bonus content of Grimm's nightmares.