Hell's Gate med bay, some one is propped up on pillows, from the wast up they are covered in bandages, not even their eye's are visible. There are a number of wires and tubes plugged into a whole pile of equipment, and several drips. This person are alone in the room, apart from the sounds of the equipment, all is quiet.
Dr Max Patel enters followed closely by Norm Spellman wheeling a trolley with a steaming bowl full of something, towels, and fresh bandages.
Max "Good morning Cleopatra!"
Trudy's voice is huskier than before, and muffled, but clearly in a good mood "That is so not funny, ouch."
Norm "Hey there."
Trudy lifts her hand, Norm takes it, and caresses it tenderly.
Trudy "Norm."
Max "You are officially one lucky lady, apart form the eye you're progressing nicely, I see no reason why most of those bandages can't come off for good by the end of the week. Need to keep using the cream for a couple of weeks more though."
Trudy "So how's my eye looking?"
Max "I'm no eye specialist, but it is improving. Wish I could tell you how much better it's going to get, just going to wait and see."
Trudy "Or not."
Max "Were you two expecting the pitter-patter of tiny feet?"
Trudy and Norm "What?" there is a happy note in Trudy's voice, but only surprise in Norm's. Norm looks at trudy with a mix of affection and pity.
Max "I'll take that as a '
no' then." pauses, " Trudy, you are,
with child."
Norm "Wow, I'm going to be a dad. Umm it is mine, right?" with a hint of sarcasm.
Trudy sits up an whacks Norm in arm, laughing "Yes it is! Oww, Cheeky."
Norm looking at the bandages covering Trudy's stomach "Your going to be the first human born on pandora."
Max "First human born outside their indigenous star system.
Trudy serious now "Fist human who's never seen earth."
All three take this on board for a moment.
Max "I'll leave you three alone, remember, wash, cream and bandage."
Max leaves. Norm starts removing the bandages from her hand and arm.
Norm "So how is it?"
Trudy "That pain killer's good stuff."
Norm "Don't go mad with it, it's pretty potent."
Trudy "I suppose we need to think about names."
Pause. More bandages.
Norm "How about Evi, means child in Na'vi."
Trudy "I had a pony called Evy, a mare with a real vicious streak. Didn't like her."
Norm "You never told me you had a pony"
Trudy "You never asked. I had 3, 'Jacob's Ladder', gelding, nice temperament, 'Lady Evangelene' (
Evy) and 'Painted Warrior' my favorite, 13'2 chestnut gelding, great all rounder, nice personality. Totally mental. And a horse called 'Shadowfax'. 17'1 gray mare, strong, very competent, nice horse (if a bit big for me), but I'd moved on to boys. And flying."
Norm "You never told me you where rich either."
Trudy "We're not. Not any more. We lost everyone. And everything." pause " Just me and my bro' now, and we're not exactly close"
Norm "Pistol whipping him probably didn't help any."
Trudy "We've given each other worse when we were kids, You know that scar on my thigh?
Norm "Mmm?"
Trudy "Mmm, bow and arrow, he was grounded for a
month. And a third cousin on mars." pause "People don't want to know you if they find out you
where rich but lost it all, so I don't advertise. The two of us joined the military, I had my pilots license already so I went Airforce, fancied myself as top gun, ended up in transport, and usually in trouble, [laugh] I knew all the guards in the pen by first name, and most of their birthdays too. Bro went for the army, too many action flicks as a kid. Ended up behind a desk in the stores for most of his time, won a couple of martial arts competitions while he was there."
Norm "Yeah?"
Trudy "Yeah, he had loads of trophies at home. Had to leave them behind."
Norm "He never left your bed side while you were unconscious."
Norm has finished unwrapping her arms, and is now unwrapping her face, the back of her head has lots of superficial burns, and a couple of nasty gashes, held shut with butterfly sutures, the hair is just starting to re-grow, her face has a line around it, she was burned up to the edge of an exopack face mask, but both eye's have pads taped over them, Norm removes them, two black eyes, her left eye is very swollen and has a gash that runs from her eyebrow (which is partly shaved off for the sutures to stick better), and half an inch into her cheek.
Trudy "So what about you?
Dad."
Norm "Dad, guess I'll have to get used to that,
Mom."
Norm unwraps Trudy's neck and shoulders,
Norm "There's not much to tell, dad worked in construction, ended up as site manager, and died suddenly when I was 19. We lived in a nice apartment, mom was a waitress in a small time dinner till I was 8. Then the owner died and unexpectedly left half of it to her. The other half went to his cat. He'd had some feud with the rest of his family and he didn't want them to get the place. I studied hard, got a phd in exobiology, managed to get a job in pandoran research, then was lucky enough to get on the Avatar program. Went to pandora, fell for this gorgeous woman, and had a kid. Will you marry me?"
Trudy "Not looking like an Egyptian mummy I won't."
Camera is careful not to show trudy, but we see norm removing bandages, then taking a flannel and washing her on the bed, lifting her arms and legs into shot.
Norm "Where should we take our honeymoon? Rome? Paris? Cairo?"
Trudy "I hear the Hallelujah Mountains are nice this time of year."
Washing.
Norm "We should be talking about names."
Trudy "Actually can we skip the baby names, for now. Just can't get my head around 'going to be a mom', just doesn't seem real."
Washing.
Trudy "I know we won, but that's all I've heard. Everything else has just been, 'medical'. What gossip have I missed?"
Norm "Tsu'tey is off life support, has been for about a week. No human would have survived, but it looks like he'll be released in a few days time. Na'vi really are as tough as old boots."
Trudy "
They have bones reinforced with naturally occurring carbon fiber, they are very hard to kill."
Norm with a broad smile "Yes
Colonel, did he always give the same lecture?"
Trudy "Word for word."
Norm "Mo'at's acting 'eyktan, it's within their tradition, olo'eyktan would lead war parties or hunts for weeks sometimes, Tsahìk would run things back at hometree, fighting off surprise attacks sometimes. Max is confident my avatar will be heeled in another week or so. Jake and Neytiri are thinking about having kids."
Trudy "What am I not being told about Jake. I'm told he's fine, then I over hear people are going to his funeral. Then they have been and it was very nice, now him and Neytiri are thinking about having kids. How dose that work? Did they make up the funeral as some bad joke to tease me?"
Norm "Jake is fine, His funeral
was nice, Jake thanked every one for coming
personally. Most of the Omatikaya came, all of the other clans sent as least a couple of representatives."
Trudy "Think I need to cut back on the pain killers."
Norm "No, it's not that, Eywa transfered his spirit, out of his human body into his avatar."
Trudy "I
do need to cut back on the pain killers."
Norm "The funeral was mostly to say good bye to his previous life, as a human, he no longer wants anything to do with. There's something that's haunting him, but he wont admit anything to me."
Washing
Norm "I wonder if he's said anything to Neytiri."
Washing.
Trudy "So, only
thinking about having kids?"
Norm laughs.
Washing.
Trudy "When they make an avatar, they blend human DNA with the Na'vi,
err...."
Norm "N V Transcriptase."
Trudy "So Jake's now a hybrid, can he have children?"
Norm finishes washing, drops the flannel into the bowl one last time, begins gently blotting Trudy dry with the towel.
Norm "Not sure, it's not
that much human DNA. But when I asked Max, he changed the subject."
Trudy "Could you remove the DNA in the lab?"
Norm "
I couldn't, I don't think Max could either."
Trudy "Any genetic engineers stay behind?"
Norm "Loise took an arrow in the fighting, to be honest that's no great loss. Carlo, Natasha and Xander went back to earth."
pause, more blotting
Norm "Bill,
he stayed, phd applied genetics, no hands on work since then though."
Trudy "Is Bill the avatar driver with the pilot license?"
Norm "Yep, he's been doing all the flying lately, been bugging me to see how you're getting on. Wants to get back to his field research, barely clocked an hour a day in his avatar lately," smiles "keeps saying he'll forget how to drive it."
Norm continues drying
Trudy "I'm glad I won't to be the only pilot on pandora."
Norm "There's a couple who are up for learning. At the moment we have one operational samson, that's it."
Trudy "Who's going to keep it flight worthy? Did
anyone from maintenance stay behind?"
Norm "You haven't heard!
Nine refused to leave, Stan said he'd take a Na'vi arrow before he went back to earth."
Trudy "Stan never did want to talk about life back home."
Norm finishes drying, scoops out some cream from the bowl, rubs his hands together a little to spread it. Places his hands on Trudy's back.
Trudy "That's cold."
Norm "Sorry."
Trudy "Don't be, cold's good."
Norm, rubs the cream in gently.
Norm "When they get the second Samson flying, it's coming on nicely. Was in bits all over the hangar, but it's mostly back together. Stan say's they going to take a look at completing the second dragon."
Norm rubbing the cream in gently.
Trudy "I used to fly C-21's, transport version. Never the gunships. Well, hover taxi round the base, but I wasn't cleared to fly them outside the fence."
Norm "No? How come?"
Trudy "Don't ask! Lets just say I spent a lot of time in the slammer."
More cream.
Norm "A couple of the guys are working on an exopack for the Na'vi so they can come inside, they call it an endopack. Neytiri and a few others are curious to see what the inside of Hell's Gate looks like, Bill suggested we could have a regular movie night, in the commissary."
Trudy "They'll be back wont they, the
earthlings."
Norm looks at her then looks away, "Mmm."
Trudy "We can't stay here."
Norm "They won't be back for a while."
Trudy "No, but sooner or later we will need to be some place else. I was told Quaritch smashed up the shack."
Norm "Yeah, badly damaged one of the link machines too. Only good for spare parts now."
Norm still applying the cream.
Norm "Relocating is something the construction guys are already looking at." pause "5 stayed, they were with the flight tech's when they said they wouldn't leave."
Trudy "So how many have stayed."
Norm "You know the chef in the commissary, the crazy frenchman, the one who named it '
Hell's Kitchen'?"
Trudy "Maurice, I bet he was first on the shuttle, he couldn't wait to leave."
Norm "He stayed."
Trudy looks at Norm in amazement, but the effect is slightly ruined by the bruising and swelling.
Norm "
All the avatar drivers stayed,
half the support team,
9 flight tech's,
5 from construction,
1 dumper driver,
1 dozer driver, 3 or 4 site maintenance crew, the stuck up air traffic controller, a couple from the offices. Your brother stayed and a couple others. And Jake, obviously. It's around 60 in total."
Trudy "I thought it would just be me & bro. Some of the avatar drivers. Maybe a couple of white coats. And Jake. 20, maybe 25 but no more."
Norm "Too many human survivors, around 60 more than venture stars cryo units could take."
Norm still applying the cream.
Norm, slightly disturbed, "
Too many human survivors. I never thought I'd have to say that."
Norm finishes applying the cream. Wipe his hands clean his hands clean on the only unused towel, and picks up a couple of pads and roll of bandage.
Trudy looks at the bandages, then at norm, sighs deeply, with a pained expression. She holds out both arms in front of her,
"And now my pharaoh impression."
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