2010-05-20: Pill Popping Power

Starring:

Hallis_V5icon.pngPeter_V5icon.png

Guest Starring:

Mitsy

Date: May 20, 2010

Summary:

Congestion wreaks havoc on emergency vehicles trying to respond, it's lucky they have a secret weapon.


"Pill Popping Power"

Greenwich Village - Tenement House

«"911, please state the nature of your emergency…"»

«"My friend is unconscious, she won't wake up! Someone help, please…"»

«"Calm down ma'am, where are you?"»

Hallis glances around the barren room, it's a junk heap. The wallpaper on the walls is yellowed and peeling, the furniture leaves much more to be desired. The entire place smells like sweat and filth. In her defense, the young blonde hadn't known that her friend had sunk to these levels. "I'm in one of the tenement houses, in the Village. I found her like this.. she's not waking up!" She rattles off the address and then tries to pat the other blonde's cheek. Mitsy was never really a close friend but when she'd called Hallis knew something was off.

"Mits.. come on, wake up Mits… The ambulance is coming…"

The notice comes over the radio of the nearest ambulance within moments of the call being made, details on the location, and the area. Unfortunately, this is New York City, and traffic never plays favorites.

"We're gonna be a few minutes," the driver says over the sirens, trying to swirve his way through the traffic. "How come people always get hurt when there's no good back roads?" This often seems to be the case.

Sitting up in his seat as much as he can, Peter glances over the edge of the window. The ambulance is barely at a crawl, inching ahead as taxi cabs and other vehicles try to move aside. Some don't even seem to hear, or care. "What was the address again?" he asks, reaching to grab onto his medical bag.

The driver repeats the address and the apartment number, and then asks, "You're going ahead again, aren't you?"

"You even had to ask?" Peter says, as he opens the door and slips out onto the street. "Get out of this as quick as you can," he adds, before weaving through the traffic— until he disappears.

It isn't nearly enough time between the end of the call and the quick knock on the door, but most paramedics don't have time on their side as much as this one does. The siren can't even be heard yet. "You called for a paramedic?" Yes, he's finally learned how to knock. Daphne and Nathan would be so proud.

Glancing at the phone, Hallis cries out a quick thank you to the operator and rushes toward the door as she disconnects the line. The door is opened post haste and the socialite points to the body on the couch. "It's my friend Misty, she's not waking up… I think she took too much coke." Or whatever the brunette is into these days, who knows what it could be with her crowd.

Hallis doesn't look the greatest either, her right eye is overshadowed, obviously trying to hide the faded bruise that rings it. Her pupils are huge, too big for this amount of light and she seems rather overtired. "You can help her, right? Wake her up? I don't even know what she's doing living like this… I.."

sniffle choke

"We kind of fell out of close contact for a while. I don't know why she called me…" Possibly because Hallis was always the one that would come. The rest are usually too busy with parties, boyfriends, social obligations.

"The ambulance is stuck in traffic, but will be here as soon as it can," Peter says, a cursery glance at the woman answering the door, looking worried at her condition as well, before he moves on to the one. "Coke? I'll do what I can, and as soon as my partner gets here, we'll get her to the hospital," he says, bending down to check her eyes, opening up his bag to get things ready.

If he doesn't have to use any more abilities, he won't— too much of a risk. People are saved every day, by normal means.

"It's a good thing she did, and a good thing you called," he says, checking vitals and then switching his radio on. To listen in. If he reports he's already there— his partner would know he teleported.

"I think it was coke, she used to do it a lot… we all did." Leaving Mitsy in the paramedic's more than capable hands, she wanders to the bathroom. There's no switch to flick, a pull string in the middle of the room lights up a bare bulb attached to the ceiling. Cockroaches scuttle away from the light, likely burning their tiny little retinas.

"Oh Mitsy…" Hallis whispers to herself, the bathroom is disgusting. How could the other woman not afford a maid, or a better place? Placing a few fingers on the mirror, she swings the door open to reveal exactly why Misty has been unable to afford a better place. It's full of pharmaceuticals of every variety. Some legal, some far from it.

"Hey Mister? You might want to take a look at this…"

Still in traffic. Peter manages to move her a bit, after checking most of her vitals, so that she won't accidentally choke on her own vomit, as he leaves her alone for a moment to— these conditions. He knows people live like this, but he's still surprised to see it. "How many of these do you think she took?" That changes treatment quite a bit. Drugs have reactions to other drugs, there's…

He looks over the labels, but can tell already it won't be easy to know which ones she took in this case, or how many. And the siren's still aren't heard in the distance. How many blocks away was he when he jumped out?

"Did she give you any indication that she may have done this to herself, intentionally? When she called you?" he asks, as he moves back over to her. "Do me a favor and grab a pencil and paper and write down the names of all the drugs on the labels." It's to keep her busy, while he checks to see if he needs to take drastic measures to stabilize the girl's body chemistry…

"She just said she needed help!" Hallis says desperately, her chin trembling as she glances at the myriad of bottles and baggies in the cabinet. Then a sudden inspiration hits her. She's seen movies. Looking toward the toilet, Hallis tries to quell the bile rising in her throat as she looks at the tank.

Slowly, she pivots toward it and grips the porcelain top and carefully lifts it. Sure enough, there's a few more ziploc baggies floating inside the water. "Ew… gross!" Dipping her hand into the freezing water, she pulls out a few bags, most of them containing a yellowish powder.

"Hey Mister Paramedic Guy? We might want to check for burn spoons and needles…" She comes out into the living room and drops the wet bags of heroine on the floor.

"Son of a bitch," Peter says outloud at the new revelation, but he doesn't move away from the girl as he grips her head on either side with his hands. It could look like he's trying to keep her steady, or is examining her face, but instead he's using one of his abilities to look at her from a completely different perspective— a chemical perspective. It happens slowly. If he didn't have time, he couldn't do this—

It's not a purge, like what Lena could do, but a chemical rebalancing, finding what parts of her are wrong and turning them back. Every paramedic in the world would desire to be able to do this.

It saves lives, when medicine might make it worse, and time may not be on their side.

With a gasping breath, it sounds like he's finally settling from running miles or something, and he lets go of her.

"I think she'll be okay. She may not have taken as much as you thought." She did. But now she won't have to suffer through it nearly as much.

The once quite unresponsive brunette groans softly and tries to open her eyes, succeeding only in fluttering her eyelashes a little before she turns her head and begins heaving. At first it's just horrid retching sounds but soon she spits on the floor, thankfully there's nothing more than spit.

"EWWW!!" Hallis cries out as she jumps away from the paramedic and his charge. "Oh god! I can't stay here for this!!" Her hands fly up in a surrender motion and they begin waving like jazz hands or spirit fingers. It would be comical if it weren't for the pathetic creature on the floor trying to get up from whatever stupor she was previously in.

"Why isn't your buddy here yet? How did you get here so fast when he's not here yet?!" The blonde celebutante isn't even making sense in her own head. She really just wants to escape the situation, it shows. "How long does it take?!"

"The traffic was pretty bad," Peter says, reaching to take the girl's hair as she tries to purge the rest of her body the old fashioned way. There's sweat on his forehead as he does this. Now he pulls his radio out and speaks into it, "«I'm here. How much longer are you going to be?»" Nevermind he's been here a while…

"«I'm still about a block away. Even if people were trying to pull aside for me, there's almost no where to pull over too— all the side streets are full of parked cars. How's the patient?»"

"«Stable. I'll take care of her until you make it the rest of the way.»"

It's the truth. But he doesn't say he's already been there a few minutes… If the grand scheme of things, no one will likely notice. People tend to think everything happens too fast or too slow, depending on what's happening.

"Your friend will be fine, she will just be a little out of it for a while. Are you okay? You— " he gestures at her face, the bruising.

Hallis turns herface away when Peter points out the bruise and flushes with embarrassment. "That's from work.. it's fine. Someone got a little over zealous during a scene and well.." She brushes a hand through her hair and tries to pull some of it forward to hide the eye in question.

Glancing over to Mitsy, she frowns a little and then looks up again. "Are you sure she's going to be fine? I mean.. is she going to go to jail or something? She's going to get in trouble for all this stuff isn't she?" Hallis looks at all the pills and baggies that have been collected so far. Some of the bottles don't even have the semi-conscious woman's name on them. Hallis really should have had a flush party before calling the paramedics.

Someone getting overzealous at work catches his attention at first. If Peter could watch Afterlife without thinking of how much one of the stars hates him because of what he did to her— rightfully so— he might have seen her on the show. If he read tabloids often, he might have recognized her more quickly. Now that he has the chance, he kind of does, from the covers, mostly.

"We'll have to report it, and likely she'll get some charges. Probably will have to go into a detox program, to get her off of the drugs." There's some sympathy in his voice. "But if she called you, then she probably needs help, and they can make sure she gets it, before she nearly kills herself again." Cause that's how it was looking, if he hadn't been the one who got the call.

Heaving a deep breath, Hallis crouches down beside Mitsy and brushes back some of the sweat soaked hair. Oddly enough, she doesn't seem as disgusted by it as she normally would be. "She won't like jail… Isn't there something we can do to keep her out of it?" From Mitsy's face to Peter's, Hallis' blue eyes flit, looking somewhat wide and questioning. "Like, if someone who's never been to jail before vouched for her or something?"

The young socialite has been down that road. Even though hers was a much greater offense, the few weeks she spent incarcerated gives her a certain expertise. "I mean… she's got more drugs here than just possession… Even if she was planning to do them all herself."

Of all the things that he thought he would have to do— Peter never expected to be so affected by the eyes of a battered socialite who has experience in jail. Unfortunately, so does he. According to public record, he had a problem with depression and suicide, and possibly even drug rehab, as some people speculated when he kept vanishing from the public eye for months. A brother with problems looked better for his brother's career than one who was crazy, or super powered.

"I could get fired for what you're implying," he says, looking between the two of them. One messed up girl, one girl with experience being messed up. "Take the hard stuff and put it into a bag. Leave some of the lesser prescriptions. Whatever they find in her blood and those should be enough to get her into rehab and some help, without hard time in jail. You'll have to help her too. Bail her out, maybe get her out of these conditions. This is more than just a hobby right now, for her." From the look of the apartment, it's a lifestyle.

"I was… just… " Hallis begins, trying to backtrack the question she didn't ask. She did imply though, there's no denying it. "I could flush it down the toilet.. or throw it in the garbage." Though who knows what kind of ecological damage that could do. Sewer rats on heroine isn't something most people think about.

She doesn't know what the paramedic is planning, really it's not something she's too worried about right now. And so, doing as she's told, she begins rushing around the bleak apartment tossing everything that looks too illegal into a plastic sack. She leaves everything that she knows from experience will only get Mitsy into a little trouble.

When she finally returns to Peter, she's got a shopping bag almost loaded with pill bottles, baggies, paraphernalia, and other sundries. "I left behind the stuff like weed… but I put her needles, knives, and spoons in there." Then she looks from the bag to the paramedic and then to toward the window where the blare of a siren is finally beginning to be heard. "I can stuff it down the garbage shute? I mean, in this building they wouldn't be able to pin it on anyone…"

That wasn't Peter's plan, to just shove it down the garbage shute, because there's a chance a kid could find the needles or the drugs, or anyone could and get it back on the street. So instead he stands up and takes the bag from her hands with a, "I'll take care of it," and steps out of the room. Down deeper into the apartment. He tries not to use his abilities in front of people, which is why he left the room.

However, if she follows for a curious peek, she'll catch something more than curious.

As soon as he's out of sight, he, quite literally, vanishes in thin air. Just a pop of a disappearance. He's simply no longer there. And he's no longer there for a few seconds, enough time to open a drawer on the other side of town, stuff the bag in, look at his reflection in the sectioned mirror above his dresser, and then pop back into sight again and turn around.

The first thing he sees upon turning around are the wide eyes of Hallis Van Cortlandt. She's been exposed to all manner of freaky powers; fire from hands, crazy strength, dirt moving, emotional manipulation, flying… only to name a few. It never ceases to amaze her how she's practically the only person on the planet that isn't special. Maybe she is and she just takes it for granted, after all, she considers herself exceptional, maybe that's a power in itself.

"You're one of them! That's how you got here so fast!" The exclamation is beyond obvious right now, but fear isn't one of the motivations behind it. Stepping closer, she cranes her head to the side and then circles the man curiously. "You just… pop in and out of places? Like.. some kind of … popping power?" Teleportation, it's not a word in her vocabulary.

How often has it been that Peter finds himself turning around after using an ability, and finding the people he was trying to hide his abilities from watching? Once is often enough. "Not— quite, but— I can teleport, yeah." One of many abilities, but the one that gets him from place to place quickly. Fear isn't a motivator, which causes him relief. The last year rounded up so many of the people like him that people who aren't no doubt noticed. And this is New York. It seems half the people in the city are special.

"You know other people who can do things?" he asks, reflecting back her own curiousity, but then he looks through the door to the rest of the apartment, and can hear that siren getting closer, "If you can keep my secret, I'll keep your friend's."

Nodding quickly, Hallis is still staring at him curiously. "Yeah, I think I'm the only one in New York that can't do anything freaky or out of the ordinary… practically everyone I know can do something." She backs off then, and turns toward the door, giving him a quick nod over her shoulder. "Don't worry, I can keep a secret like that, it's the good ones that I can't keep." Whatever that means.

She strides down the hallway, her blonde hair bouncing with every step. She feels better. More confident now. Mitsy's not going to be in jail, rehab most definitely, but not jail. More importantly, Mitsy is going to owe Hallis. A lot. "Hey Mister," the young blonde says as she crouches down beside her friend again. "There's some Chinese philosophy about if you save a life it becomes yours, right? How many do you think you own now?"

The whole damn world. Peter could answer that question with that, but he doesn't. Because he doesn't believe he's saved the world, even if everyone says he has a few times. Tried and true, he's given it everything he can, but he knows how close he's been to destroying it. "I'm a paramedic. It's my job to try to save people's lives," he says as he follows behind her, looking past her shoulder toward the girl still on the floor. Most of the drugs should be out of her system by the time she gets to the hospital, so whatever she took…

"Your friend's life is in yours now too," he says, offering a hand on her upper arm. Such a touch might be inappropriate, but he's a toucher. "My name's Peter, by the way," he offers, just as the siren stops. The ambulance is here.

"Hi Peter, I'm Hallis," is the answer to the greeting. She doesn't seem at all disturbed by the hand on her arm at all, in fact, she places her own over it and gives him a bittersweet smile before patting it cordially and looking back down at the brunette. "That's Mitsy…" Mitsy the former arch nemesis, now she's just Mitsy.

"Thanks for this, I wouldn't have told anyone about you anyway. Except maybe my therapist, you know how that goes, right?" He probably doesn't, he doesn't seem the type to need a therapist. He seems grounded and decent, like a good person. He's a paramedic, they have to be good. At least on the outside.

"Yeah, I know how that goes," Peter says with a smile, letting his hand drop away as a knock is heard on the door. Moving away from her, he opens it to let in a second male paramedic in a uniform.

"Petrelli, if I didn't know better, I'd think you had flying shoes, or something," the man says as he glances around at the apartment, then at the two women. There's a raised eyebrow of questions.

"Just regular Nikes," Peter starts with, even raising one of his feet up to show. "But we're going to have to report to the police. It's that her," he points towards Mitsy. "Illegal substances in the house, and likely drug induced state." Though a lot less drug induced than before…

Peter Petrelli.

"Hey… she's on Afterlife, that nighttime soap." There's a sudden pause, "Not that I watch it, my wife does." Uh-huh.

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