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Questions/Question 192

Is it cool to say a sympathetic/too busy for this shit Patho-Gen nurse allows an Augmented into the palliative care ward - mostly so they have more than a few minutes to linger there and chat with anyone lucid enough to talk (or if even the medical staff would talk to him)... Jayce would be asking when they patients have last been able to speak to their families, and if he can relay any messages.

Oh yes, it'd definitely be possible for an Augmented to be allowed to linger there if they weren't the troublemaking sort (characters who are more known for being violent would have a harder time getting this far). But someone like Jayce, especially as he's a Golem-type, is practically overlooked. (The staff might casually order him to fetch supplies while he's there... but he'd also be left to himself.)

Arcane radiation poisoning isn't catching, so the patients here are occasionally allowed visitors. The restrictions in play are for their benefit, given the frailty of their condition; they are at much greater risk of falling to unrelated infections, as their bodies increasingly lose the means to fight anything off.

But many here either don't have family, or haven't seen them in a while- or aren't lucid enough to remember much of anything. At the offer to relay messages to the outside, some of the patients will scoff, and dismiss him. What do they have to update anyone on? That they're still dying? That it can't come soon enough, because the poor wretch next to them keeps them up all night talking to themself, muttering about things that make no sense. Their family is useless, never visits enough anyway, not that they want them to, and so on. (Underneath it all, they're afraid. They still refuse to pass anything on.)

Others will accept, leaving Jayce with names and addresses and short messages. It's mostly instructions on how to look after a business, reminders over pets and children, or requests for specific books on a family member's next visit. Boredom is the most common complaint amongst the still lucid. In all cases, they don't seem to view Jayce as a person himself, either using or dismissing him as a machine who'd been told to perform these tasks. The usual treatment.

The medical staff are tired. It's just been one thing after another, with arcane radiation taking its gradual toll, plus a good portion of their staff going blind, plus all the injuries from the tree incident.... They doubt they'll be permitted any leave in the foreseeable future, and while they largely don't resent it, seeing firsthand how necessary their presence is, there is a palpable fatigue in the staff.

They know less than most when it comes to what Patho-Gen is doing with the reclaimed Augmented; these are primarily doctors and nurses, and only secondarily Patho-Gen employees. But some of their team has been called in to support with whatever's going on with this 'adjustment' business, leaving them additionally short-staffed. They're a bit grumbly at that, but assume there must be good reason for it.