This post has the following content warnings:
This post's authors also have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
Her fathers take her to the hospital the next morning, worried about how faint her pulse is and the fact that she hasn't woken up. (They let her keep Ms Weiner. They want her to have something comforting and familiar there, if when she wakes up).
A coma. She's in a coma. They suspect backlash is involved, but don't really have a way of telling, without an esper to help. Dave starts posting on esper sites, as many as he can find, with his best description of her backlash.
Ah, of course, [??¿¿]. (There was some other information there, but she's too tired and annoyed to try and figure it out.)
Epione's question... "I can - touch something, and then - see its past, when someone was touching it, and what they were feeling. I was - I used it on Ms Weiner -"
"...ah. So maybe it helped that when I repositioned you, you weren't holding her any more... Kevin, are her dads coming?"
She's awake and you can come in and see her.
Be right there.
They come in, trying to balance "hurrying to the side of their daughter they've been horribly worried about" and "avoid making noises that might startle the professional esper helping her" and doing a decent job.
Their daughter is: awake, being held by Epione under the hospital sheet, and crying! She sees them and sniffles.
"She said she was using her power on the stuffed animal," is that an animal, well, close enough, "and when we put it aside and she woke up again, she couldn't do that."
He catches the flicker of confusion as she hears Kevin's explanation, and decides to take point.
"Oh, Kanikins..." He kneels and gently strokes her hair. "I know it's confusing and scary. I promise to explain it all to you as soon as I can, but for now, you need to rest. And it's really, really important that you don't use your power, okay?"
-she gives a hesitant nod. She doesn't like not knowing what's going on, but - she trusts her fathers, and they look so worried about her, and she hates that.
He sighs in relief, then turns to Kevin. "Thanks, that's good to know. Do you or Epione need anything?"
"There's a lot of this. I don't think I can get it all today. Maybe not this week, and we don't have that much leave from the hospital."
"We can stay overnight, but we need to head back to Toronto when the Ablinger marble is open for business again in the morning," says Kevin.
...they look at each other worriedly.
Pete speaks up. "Epione, would you be willing to use your power? We can explain the backlash, now that Kani's awake..."
"I still won't get through all this tonight, but I can do that. Kani, do you think you could read and sign a confidentiality form about my backlash?"
She thinks for a bit and then nods.
(Presumably this will make sense at some point, but she's not holding her breath. At least it feels nice.)
It's full of very Scary and Official language, but she doesn't want to tell anyone about this woman's backlash anyways, so, whatever.
She disentangles an arm from Epione and signs the form.
"My backlash is that I lose distress tolerance," says Epione. "It gets very easy to set me off to the point of tears and I can't get myself back under control without a lot of help at that point. It's important that if I'm going to be backlashed around you, you're very sure to move slowly and carefully so I don't get pinched or elbowed or my hair pulled, that you never ever raise your voice or project negative emotions at me, and that anything even slightly frustrating or complicated goes through Kevin, ideally by text so I don't overhear. I'm in the middle of a podcast about whales, but if you'd rather a different topic or music instead, we can do that, but we should pick something now before I'm backlashed. There's not absolutely zero wiggle room in how much I can take when I'm backlashed but the amount of it I am willing to have in my life is fully taken up by my normal job at the hospital. Understand?"
Kani does her best to think through all the implications of this. (She tries not to think about what it reminds of her of, mostly-successfully.)
It sounds like she needs to - be really careful, move as little as possible, and communicate via text instead of by talking. None of that is hard for her, these days.
"I understand. Whales are fine."
She looks up at her fathers. "Do you have my phone? If we're doing this now" (which it sounded like Papa wanted, for some reason? She doesn't really know what Epione's power is, or why they want it, but whatever) "I should get into a position where I can use it without disturbing Epione beforehand, right?"
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
