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Fate/In Glory Of (Worm)

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Parodos 04.02
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    • [X] About her health


    Several possibilities floated through Taylor's head.

    Did her dad know she had powers?

    Probably not.

    Was it about Nikki?

    Also probably not. She had been visiting yesterday and he didn't sound even vaguely negative about it when he told her.

    There was the giant purple elephant in the room, outside of the giant. The fact that she was back in the hospital in less than two months. That seemed to be the likely culprit.

    He was still trying to parse what he was going to say and… Taylor couldn't help but preempt him. She had a feeling that if she didn't, it wouldn't make this whole situation more or less weird. But it would get this over quicker.

    "Did… do… is there something wrong with me?"

    Her dad stared at her. He looked uncomfortable.

    "There are some concerns."

    Of course there are. Of fucking course there are.

    "What are they?"

    "They ran a CT scan." Taylor saw her dad's expression flicker. "There were some abnormal findings from it." A hand squeeze. "Nothing immediately concerning."

    "But…?"

    "We need to do follow-ups. Just to make sure."

    Taylor stared.

    "Did I have a stroke?"

    "No. It wasn't an aneurysm either. At least not likely."

    "W-What do they think?"

    He didn't respond, his lips in a horizontal line.

    "Dad?"

    "That you fell and hit your head." The words come out in a rush. "I… you woke up for a little while yesterday."

    "Yeah."

    "They ran some tests." He sighed. "They want to run more tests."

    "Okay…?" Taylor wasn't getting at what he was saying.

    "We have a couple of options."

    Taylor's brow furrowed. We have options?

    "I talked to Miss Anders, did you know she's part of the board at Medhall?" His expression didn't match what he said next. "She offered Medhall for testing."

    "Isn't Medhall a private hospital?"

    "Yes."

    Taylor stopped herself from saying the next obvious thing; how are we going to pay for it?

    "They offered." It obviously rankled her dad's pride and to a degree, it made Taylor question the offer and the implication. Only the rich or medical tourists got in. They weren't poor. Lower middle class, maybe, but not a complete charity case. It was times like this that made her painfully aware how many newer things they had bought when her mom had been alive.

    "Ah."

    "Yeah."

    "...isn't that rarer than Panacea's wait list?" Her dad shrugged.

    "Maybe."

    She snorted. "Maybe we should try it. Or the lottery."

    It was something of a bit of uniquely Brockton Bay black humour; Panacea could heal anything not brain related but the cure-all was only human. There was only so much she could see and do. There was no way she was going to put the hospitals out of work anytime soon. Plus it meant the other medical institutions focused on neurological stuff more-so in the past few years.

    "About that…"

    Taylor's eyes widened.

    "Did we win the lottery?"

    "No." A part of her that hadn't even fully internalized the question died on the branch, so to speak. "But, there are some things they found that might interest Panacea." An unhappy smile from him. "You might get put on priority for the wait list."

    Taylor looked down at herself and then back at her dad. She didn't think she was dying? "Isn't that for critical patients?"

    "There are oddities that they picked up that they can't make heads of tails on right now." Her dad was staring slightly over her shoulder. "One of the doctors mentioned she might find it interesting enough to take a look between the monotony of curing terminal cancer patients."

    "Oh."

    It was quiet for half a minute before her dad jerked himself back from whatever thoughts were going through his head.

    "When did you get a cellphone?"

    "Uhh…" Not what she was expecting. "...three weeks ago I think?"

    "How did you get a cellphone?" He leaned over and fished it out of a bag sitting next to some of Taylor's stuff. "This isn't cheap."

    "Nikki gave it to me."

    "Really?"

    "Yeah."

    Her dad made a noise somewhere between an unhappy dog and a disappointed bear.

    "That was about my reaction, yeah. She mostly sends funny bird pictures to me."

    Her dad stared at her, not quite believing her.

    She gave a small shoulder roll that approximated a shrug before gesturing to the phone in question. "You can check."

    He sighed before putting the phone down.

    Unsaid was why she hadn't mentioned it to her dad.

    An unspoken weight that hung over them.

    Sometimes the weight lessened with time before it was always there and always came back into sharp contrast when pointed out.

    Yet her mind went back to what put her in the hospital.

    She had pushed herself too far.

    There had been backlash.

    As far as she knew she might actually have done some permanent damage to herself.

    She couldn't even tell them why; I sent my power to attack the Simurgh and then something bad happened and I might have a head injury and why no officer, I swear the Ziz wing just showed up on its own and yes I like three square meals a day but am not a fan of a padded cell in a containment zone.

    Taylor shivered at the thought.


    They talked some more.

    Her dad didn't want to bring it up so quickly but wanted to give her some input.

    It essentially boiled down to three options.

    Do what their health insurance covered, which, thankfully they had hit their deductible after the hospitalization in January. The problem is the coverage was kind of bad, but she could still see a specialist.

    Go to Medhall. Their health insurance definitely didn't cover it, but Miss Anders had told dad that "it would be fine." Which meant something and it made her worry. How much would they owe Joanna's family?

    Or be put on a wait-list for Panacea. That was a complete crapshoot as far as Taylor was concerned. What did priority on a non-critical list even mean? There was some overlap- they'd still see a specialist but it probably wouldn't be covered by their health insurance- turns out you need a completely different set of doctors when you got healthcare from a cape. Not that her dad said in so many words, but she was pretty sure none of them were covered as in-network. Parahuman healing seemed like an out-of-network type thing.

    She decided to tell her dad that she would like…

    [] ...to stay with the current hospital for future tests.
    [] ...to take up Miss Alyssa's offer for Medhall.
    [] ...to be put on the Panacea waitlist.


    Author's note: Here's a new chapter!

    Amusingly, I just realized that Taylor's current health stuff is probably fine because they definitely maxed out the health insurance for the year already. Also the idea that Panacea being out-of-network is just so… american.

    There are upsides and downsides for every option.

    Thank you all for the votes! I think I breached the mid-50s for votes this time around! Please keep it up!
     
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