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Huh? Okay...

[ And so, he scoots over without question. He's taking up one side of the bed now, and there's plenty of room for the other.

He looks to see what Kido will do now that he moved. ]

[ Maybe it's obvious but Kido goes ahead and sits next to him with the kitten in her arms.

It's exposure therapy. ]

[ The kitten hisses in Terry's direction while trying to back away from him, despite how Terry isn't doing anything. Terry is about to sigh until the mother cat comes over because she's fiercely protective of her babies, especially when she hears them hissing. so she immediately sprints and jumps onto the bed to bite Terry's arm.

... ]

At least it's not my face.

[ He pries the mother cat off his arm by grabbing her by the scruff and lets her dangle in the air. That arm sure is bleeding, but does Terry care? Not really. At the very least, it doesn't hurt. He only looks a bit exasperated. ]

Can you get the ointment and bandages? First drawer.

[ Oh, fuck. ]

Sorry! I didn't think—

[ Aaaaa.

Exposure therapy failed and that was definitely Kido's fault for not thinking about the other cats. She lets the kitten go so it can hiss at Terry in a corner, and gets up off the bed so she can see if there's a towel or something in the bathroom to wipe off the blood first. ]

I can dress it, but- should I call a nurse? Do you have to get a rabies shot?? Have the cats been tested for rabies???

[ AFTER HOURS IS A TERRIBLE TIME FOR A CRISIS BTW ]

[ There are multiple towels, all white and clean! She's free to takes however many as she wants. ]

It's okay, Kido... The doctor wouldn't let them stay without getting a rabies shot first, so they got them. I don't think I'll get rabies. I'll let the nurse know when she drops by again.

[ Speaking of which, the nurse comes in with a fresh roll of bandages and gauzes and witnesses the scene before her. If Kido remembers, she's one of the nurses who came by his room earlier.

"Nowell-kun, I'm here to change your bandages... looks like you need more of them too." ]

Oh, right. Uh... Kido can wait in the bathroom or something.

[ Not really out of embarrassment, but he'd rather her not look at the wound because it's pretty gross. ]

Edited 2019-07-29 17:30 (UTC)

[ Terry...... There is probably an entire lobby outside Kido could sit and wait at, why would she wait in the bathroom.

But she also feels bad about all this, since the bite was her fault, so she peeks her head out of the bathroom to ask ]

Is there anything I can help with? You're probably short-staffed overnight...

[ Which is how it was when she was with her mother in the hospital, but thankfully there's not as much work to do in the evening and at night once all the doctors are home and the patients are allowed to rest. ]

[ "It's fine, dear. Nowell-kun here is the one who needs most of the attention anyway."

Behind the drawn curtain, Terry is getting his bandages changed. It doesn't take all that long, the nurse mutters something about how this is the strange wound she's ever seen in her career, and gathers her things and leaves.

The curtain is out of the way like before and Terry doesn't look any different, aside from the bandages wrapped around his arm now. ]

Okaaay, we're done. You can come out now.

[ Kido, hearing about the strange wound: oh my god the doctors don't know what to do, Terry's going to die

Kido washes and dries her hands again before exiting the bathroom, glancing down at Terry's arm before looking up at his face. His stupidly happy face, as if he hadn't just gotten bitten by a cat and had to suffer through a dressing change. ]

...Everything's okay now? How often do you need it changed?

Yup! Everything is fine. I need to have it changed every several hours.

[ If he doesn't, it'll start being noticeable and blood will stain his hospital clothes. They're all under his clothes, so it's fine. Nothing to see. Easily out of sight, out of mind.

The mom cat is back in the corner with all her babies. Looks like Terry let go of her at one point from being dangled in the air for so long with his IV arm. ]

That sounds like a pain...

[ Being bothered every few hours, there's no privacy at all, at least for Kido who's fine spending time alone if it's her own personal quiet time. ]

Anyways, I'm sorry about the cat. Maybe it's the smell of medicine that's making them hate you...

[ She understands. Medicine is bitter and gross. ]

It's fine. It's just something they have to do, so... I should work on getting out of here as fast as I can then. And it's not like you knew about the cat.

[ kitties why... ]

Wanna sit on the bed again?

[ Terry's been telling her this entire time that the cats have been bitey and scratchy at him, so she can't really accept the excuse he offers for her.

But alright, fine, what she can do is keep the cats on one side of the room and Terry on the other with herself in the middle as a buffer, so she goes ahead and sits on the bed next to him, pulling out a music player and earbuds and handing half to him.

According to the wiki, she listens to English rock bands and likes Oasis and Radiohead which I've never heard before and can't play anything out loud rn but I just think it's funny she listens to things in English and doesn't understand a word of Terry's emergency app recordings. ]

[ Terry's pretty happy that Kido decided to sit next to him again and looks over at the music player she pulls out. So he scoots closer to her, takes the other half and puts it in his ear.

Tbh I only heard one song from Radiohead, so I'm just gonna base it off that... if Kido understood all the recordings, Terry would probably be nervous. lmao

He quietly taps his knees to the rhythm. He hasn't heard any of these songs before, but he likes the beat that the songs have, and honestly, that's enough for him. He's also surprised that they're in English, so it kinda feels nice to actually hear something in that language. It feels like it's been forever... ]

Nice choice in songs.

[ Kido apparently likes music for the instruments and not the actual vocals so everything works out, and foreign languages are less distracting anyways, when she just wants to sit and lose herself in the music and not get caught up in want the song means. ]

Thanks. It's just stuff I had on here before... We can also listen to the music you had on your phone too, if you prefer.

That's fine. These are nice too. I think I like these a little more right now.

[ Since his playlist is either mostly loud or mostly soft to the point you want to fall asleep, he thinks what he's listening to right now is a good balance between the two. ]

The lyrics sound pretty deep though. Sounds more poetic, but I guess that's what songs are--musical poems.

[ It just hits him that Kido probably likes the music more than the lyrics, how some are pretty sparse but it's nice to listen to... also for the fact that she doesn't seem to understand English very well. ]

Instrumentals are good too, but sometimes they make me sleepy.

[ A more jarring playlist would be good for keeping people awake, but rock music does the trick too. She doesn't really get what he means by musical poems- obviously, since she can't understand the lyrics- so she'll just take his word for it. ]

Instrumentals are nice, but I like almost any type of music. It's getting pretty late already, though, so it's probably better to listen to something that'll help you fall asleep.

Oh, is it...?

[ He covers his mouth as he yawns. ]

Wow, I really am losing track of time the longer I stay here... can't wait to go outside after I'm all better.

[ He wants to stretch his feet! Climb trees! Run around! But all those must wait. Terry looks around. Hm. He did say that Kido would be staying overnight, but he never really thought where she would be sleeping.

...

There's an empty bed next to his, despite this being a multiple person room since he's pretty much the only patient in here. Maybe she could use that one... he also thought about sleeping bags, but he doesn't have one, and she probably doesn't either. He's definitely not going to make her sleep on a chair or the floor...

While he's thinking, the next track plays. It's soothing with infrequent lyrics, sparsely said across the 6 minute track. The melody makes him want to conk out to sleep, but he glances over at Kido. ]

Are you gonna stay here? Like I said, you don't have to if you don't want to. And if you are, maybe you can take the next bed over. Not gonna let you sleep on the chair or anything...

[ If Terry tries to climb a tree immediately after being discharged from the hospital, Kido will end him.

It's hard to keep her eyes open too, but Kido sits up a little to look at the other bed; hospital beds aren't ever very comfortable, and she's a light sleeper so the nurses coming in to change Terry's bandages will probably wake her up once or twice overnight. But she also doesn't want to walk around by herself late at night either, especially with the number of birds and cats going around carrying knives. ]

Yeah, I can stay. I'll have to leave early in the morning, so I probably won't be there to say bye if you're still asleep when I do. But I'll be back... sometime... maybe.

[ Just whenever. Some time before the cats run out of food. ]

I'll miss you.

[ :<

Terry's also a light sleeper normally, unless he's super tired or just nearly died the moment before. The painkillers will probably help him sleep better this time around, even if the nurses come to change his bandages. Just going to sleep through that process. Yup. He covers his mouth again when a yawn comes once more and takes out the earbud. His endurance is chipping away faster, now that he's more relaxed and vulnerable and rests the side of his head on Kido's shoulder. ]

You smell nice, Kido... better than apple pie...

[ Or maybe she will end him now. She can feel her face heating up and a very strong urge to punch because that's how she deals with things she doesn't know how to deal with, but she has to think about not making more work for that poor nurse. Also Terry's health, she guesses. So she just sort of screams internally while sitting as still as she can so she doesn't jostle him, mumbling something about smelling like cat food, probably, even though she washed her hands after feeding the cats. Maybe she smells like cats. Maybe she smells like custard mochi. Maybe she smells like artificial strawberry because that's what the kids' shampoo smells like and she uses it too, who knows what Terry is talking about or if he's just delirious with a fever or whatever!!!!! ]

[ It's his usual state of affairs when his endurance is dangerously low in a more relaxed setting and he just starts blabbing even more deliriously than usual. He nuzzles against her shoulder after closing his eyes, letting the comfort of sleep gradually overtake him.

It reminds him when he used Kido's jacket like a blanket back in the dungeon when he was badly coughing out blood. His keen sense of smell really backfires sometimes... and it leads him to say some really weird things, but even then, the warmth from the jacket was nice. Kido is warm too.

He eventually falls asleep, and it seems unlikely that he'll wake up easily like he usually does. Meanwhile, one of the kittens escaped mommy's hold and it trots on the floor and looks at both Terry and Kido. It doesn't even meow. It just stares and stares... then it just gives a slight judgmental look and trots off back to its mommy. ]

[ Don't give her that look, kitty, oh my god. If Kido wasn't mortified before, she sure is now, stuck between whether to get up and risk waking Terry up just because a cat looked at her for too long, or staying where she is and just... dealing...

She sighs and lets her head fall back to rest on the headboard, and makes a compromise with herself. She'll stay until the nurse comes by next and she'll have to move so the nurse can do her work, and then she can go to the other bed for the rest of the night. Until then, she puts her earbuds back in and plugs it into their phone instead, finding one of the softer songs to play on loop before closing her eyes.

Like this, it's easy to pretend everything is okay. She doesn't have to think about Terry almost being gone for good. She doesn't have to think about everything going on back home. She doesn't have to think about what she's doing here, of how lost she always is and how uncertain she always is when she doesn't have her siblings with her to lean on. She can just close her eyes and lean on Terry and lose herself in the music until she drifts off to sleep. ]

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