Words people don't hear often: Grif was right [open]

[iamresponding]

Who| Open to Rich and anyone who might happen to swing by Medbay
What| Rich being not-dead! Visitors welcome! New characters can possibly meet him during their own Medbay stays
Where| Medbay, on the main floor instead of a private room
When| The day after Galactus plot, and after Rich's message on the network, but before Rocket shows up
Warnings/Notes| N/A

Rich felt like death warmed over. Because really, he kind of was death warmed over. After his lungs had kicked out an embolism when he was in the healing tanks, he'd apparently had a pretty close call on the operating table.

But then they got him breathing again, back into a tank, and the riskiest part of the twenty-four hours had safely passed on by. Now they'd gotten him into a normal bed on the Medbay floor and he was mostly out of the woods. Mostly.

Still feeling it, though. You didn't get an arm shoved through your chest without feeling pretty miserable the day after. Luckily, they had some real good pain meds in the glorious robot future. The part that was the most miserable was mostly just that he was so short of breath.

He was at least used to this. For someone who had invulnerability back home, he'd found himself in a Medbay bed being tended by medicos more than once. War was hell, after all.

At least this time nobody's gotta grow me a new leg.

Also: pudding. The Medbay had good pudding. He could barely tell it was made from soy. Their combat support hospitals during the Annihilation war never had pudding, just the usual protein paste and dehydrated carb rations. He was pretty much demolishing a new cup of it every other hour. Anyone that visited him would probably find him mid-pudding cup. Always chocolate.

Comments

[headinjuries]

Sam had been waiting for the okay to drop in; he figured watching Rich sleep would be kind of creepy, and arguing with doctors about getting in before he was up didn't sound like a good time anyway, but if he was doing well enough to be talking on the omnicoms, that had to mean it was safe to pop in.

So there was a head peeking in from the edge of the doorway, and once he saw that Rich was indeed awake, the rest of him followed, slipping into the room and taking a seat on the end of the bed.

"So I dunno if they're letting you have solid food or if you're on the pudding diet, but every time I get stuck in the hospital I'm begging for something from the outside world by the end of day one. I brought you stuff."

And he tipped over the bag he was holding, making it rain candy bars into Rich's lap.

Fun-sized, of course.

[sir_vancelot]

"You're an idiot, Rider."

Not the first time he's probably heard those words from Vance, either. Who was standing in the doorway, headpiece pushed back so that no part of his face was obscured. "I mean, I wouldn't have done differently, but it still needs to be said."

[whyarewehere]

Grif was right about something, and the sheer force of his rightness made the world a brighter place. Someone had to acknowledge that he was correct and somehow, the omnicomms were just not adequate to collect on that acknowledgement.

It wasn't that he actually wanted to go check on Rich and see if he was okay. That would be stupid. Grif wasn't the kind of person to start giving a shit about what happened to somebody just because he'd dragged their bleeding almost-carcass back to medical, or because they were a nice person in general, or any of that garbage.

Grif plunked himself down in the visitor's chair with his own pudding cup. He'd pinched it off a cart while no one was looking on the way in.

"I was right!" he began as he mangled the foil tab and started working to tear the cup open with his nails.

Translation: Hi Rich, how are you?

[deafleppard]

"Yeah, that's right. Show that pudding who's boss, and also how awesome it is to have thumbs." But mostly the boss part.

Gwen had heard that Rich was okay and able to take visitors, so she went over to the Medbay just to see how he was doing. An appetite was good, and it was proof to her that he had avoid becoming a zombie. But everything always had to involve zombies, somehow.