Crestwood Center Mental Health Clinic - 2:00pm

The dead may linger, but one should not forget the living. They are the ones who form the patterns and sympathetic connections, and from them come the restless shades. None are more prone to suffering than the mentally ill.

Crestwood held some extreme cases. Abuse, Schizophrenia, Addiction. Some of the admitted patients had spent over half their lives in clinics and hospitals trying to cope with a darkness inside them. And Truce has the unglamorous job of meeting their needs on a regular basis.

The internship is on the bottom rung. Rehabilitation Specialist they call it, but it's really just a babysitter. Observe, examine, administer, make a check mark on a list. Sometimes it got real bad, when a patient became violent or unruly. Assisting in physically restraining that individual means jumping in and holding onto an arm or a leg that is trying to kick or punch him.

Some are just vegetables.

Truce sits in on Tammy, a middle-aged woman in a catatonic state. Left to herself she would become dehydrated and starve, form sores and ulcers, and perhaps become even more withdrawn. There are many disorders of consciousness where the mind or body or both are unresponsive. They are easily misdiagnosed for their similarities and for how little is understood about what causes them.

Truce finishes changing her catheter's drainage bag and removes her IV. He and another assistant get her into a wheelchair. It's time for Tammy to go for a ride. Truce pushes the wheelchair and talks to her. He tells her about Chelsea, when she was alive and as if she were still alive. He tells her a little about himself also. He doesn't want to reveal too much, but he wants to give her something to think about, a story to keep her mind occupied if she can even hear him at all.

He stops now and then to visit with the other patients which mostly consisted of staring blankly while he catches up with another employee. And then they're on the move again.

"She's been pretty moody lately. See, I'm moving in with some roommates into a really nice place, or at least that's the plan. She never used to get so defensive with strangers, but I guess there are sides to people you never get to see until...well until things happen to them to change them. You get what I mean?" he asks, not expecting a response.

"Well I'm hoping I'll still have time to spend with her. Things are getting so busy for me. My roommates probably have their own plans so I have to be attentive with them too. I know I'm trying to carry too much responsibility but it just has to be done."

It's a vague distant explanation, just words, auditory stimuli. Calling out to the mind.

  Aura Perception
Date Action Roll Result
2015-01-28 22:08:46 Truce rolls 2 to cast Aura Perception [Gno+Mind] (10 Again) 7, 10, 3 1 success
He can see her gray aura, shifting between a mottled orange, or was it brown? No real changes it seemed. Sometimes he hoped he would see some change in her. Perhaps he could do something for her and for the others once he better understood the Mind Arcanum. The psychic patterns still eluded him. Their chaotic unstable minds seem the source of such internal torment. All he can do is hope for them and work to fulfill his role as caretaker.

He can't imagine what depths of the mind these patients must struggle within. That they must both endure the Lie and remain shackled to a prison within themselves, one might even welcome Death as the alternative. And one day they may pass on, but most likely remain as ephemeral entities who never knew a normal life and would continue to suffer an abnormal death. They were symptoms of a larger disease. But that remains beyond Truce for the moment. For now he would provide some simple comfort to these living people and learn what he can.

-1 Mana for Improvised Casting