Chapter 14
"Do you think whoever came up with the design for hospital gowns hated sick people?" Skye said as she looked critically at the gown they had changed Agent Hand into. It fit, it went below her knees and somehow they were actually able to tie the back so there weren't the usual extremely awkward gaps but still… Take away the clothes, take away the glasses finally so they wouldn't get broken, the water they had bathed her face in had removed her lipstick and other makeup, Jemma had even removed the polish on her nails before hooking her to the monitors to better track her oxygen levels. Take away all of that and then add the gown, those cooling blankets and the equipment she was attached to, and Agent Hand looked frighteningly vulnerable and small. Was there some sort of virus that could actually make you shrink because she could swear Agent Hand had lost a few inches somehow. But surely a fever couldn't really make a person shrink. Agent Hand would have to have all of her clothes altered and that would be really annoying for her. No, Skye shook her head, pushing away those thoughts. Definitely nutty, and she didn't need to let her mind wander to nutty areas right now. "Is the fever down any more?' She asked as she heard the thermometer beep.
"105.5." Jemma frowned slightly. She wouldn't feel completely safe until they had Agent Hand's temperature down to something under 103. But it was coming down, she forced herself to remember, it might be slow, but it was coming down.
"How high did it hit before we got there?" Skye asked.
"106.7."
"So, it's down over a degree in what, maybe 40 minutes or an hour? That's a good sign right?"
"It's the best sort of sign. I'm going to wait a bit longer and see try to give her something through the IV that might help bring it down faster, though." Jemma smiled slightly as she looked over Agent Hand and then checked the readings on the monitors. She was still tachycardiac, but that probably wouldn't resolve until they got the fever down to something much closer to normal body temperature. Her O2 saturation levels were good, and it looked like the midazolam was doing what she had hoped, relaxing her enough for a natural and hopefully healing sleep.
"So, what do we do until you can give her something else?" Skye asked just as somewhere below there was a loud boom that made the room shake, and the lights flicker and then cut out for a moment before coming back on alarmingly dim.
"What was that?" Jemma asked as she looked at Skye. "That sounded like an explosion!"
"I think that was an explosion." Skye whispered. Something had blown up? Was the building under attack? And if it was, what in the world were they going to do? Agent Hand was just starting to stabilize. Being in the middle of a new disaster…. They were supposed to be taking care of her, not getting into a new disaster!
"Explosion. Smoke. Block the bottom of the door." Jemma forced herself to think, to recall her fire safety lessons from when she was a small girl. Of course once she had met up with Fitz, those lessons had changed to why they shouldn't cause fires trying to do experiments, but… "We can't let smoke get in here." If it did, the damage it could do, it would trigger pneumonia for sure.
"Right." Skye grabbed a spare blanket and stuffed it around the bottom of the door. And then she grabbed the edge of a small table and started to drag it in front of the door to secure it.
"You don't think…" Could they be under attack? Jemma had failed all of her field tests, but she reached out and picked up the pair of scissors they had used to cut Agent Hand's clothes away. If they were being attacked, she wanted something to at least try to defend the sick, sleeping agent.
"I hope not, but I'm going to make sure that no one can get in here until AC lets us know it's safe. Jemma, that medicine you gave Agent Hand, if it's safe, you might want to give her a little more. She doesn't need to wake up in the middle of this." Her waking up in the middle of this, that would be a disaster for sure. Jemma had been worried about a seizure being triggered. Well, this seemed like what would trigger one if anything did. "Come on, AC. Please, please take care of this and come to tell us it's safe." She whispered as she got the table in front of the door and looked around, trying to find anything else that might be useful to protect them. What had happened downstairs?