FERN:

...Oh, um, hey. I guess we've never been formally introduced, mister...?

BLOODSTAIN:

Ain't no mister! Ain't no missus or mauvlerm neither. Just a bloodstain. Bloodstain's fine, or Bloodstain Bloodstain if ya wanna be all formal-like, but this ain't no funeral yet!

FERN:

Oh gosh, sorry! I'm, um, not really familiar with talking bloodstains where I'm from.

BLOODSTAIN:

Shucks, that's alright! Yer sure nicer about it than my ol' man!

FERN:

Huh...well, you can call me Fern. I feel like I owe you a proper thanks for saving my skin back there.

BLOODSTAIN:

Naw, I oughta thank ya fer yer own show a' kindness! Goes a long way 'round these parts, y'know!

FERN:

Yeah, looks like it. Is the hospital always such a wreck?

BLOODSTAIN:

Wreck? Looks fine to me! They even let me bring my cobwebs from home! Gittin' some phat beats offa this here teleclicker, too! The staff just ain't come around so much, lately. Can't blame 'em a'course, lotta weirdo stuff goin' around all the sudden. I been in n' outta here for my bum leg since the blue-phase scrablatcher insurgence, but I ain't never seen phenoms this sour, lest ya' count back when some fool breached the seething with an uncalibrated sloam nozzle. Funny at first, but nobody was laughin' once the cones started germinatin' outta shift. Well, 'cept the cones I guess, but what AIN'T a joke to them seethe-slickers, y'knowuddamean, dawg?

FERN:

Er...sorry, I still don't know what most of that stuff means. I'm apparently from the "grey zone," and everyone keeps saying it like it means I'm an idiot.

BLOODSTAIN:

Aw, shucks! Everybody's someone's dummy! Take any a' these highfalutin' doctors a layer or two outside their native range n' they may as well be flobnats at a vuze opera.

If ya' ask me, you clot-walkers keep it together purdy well fer matter-locked ephemeroids ridin' those big stuff-wads through the realized idea o' nothingness.

FERN:

Thanks. I think I actually understood most of what you just meant. I got your letter, by the way, how did your, uh, "date" go? Some kind of...skeleton?

BLOODSTAIN:

Shucks, it went amazin'! Thought it wasn't goin' so great at first, but it turns out I made it all the way to the friend zone on the first try! Talk about a home run! And they said I was gettin' too old fer the game! ...This ain't gettin' too heavy for ya, is it?

FERN:

Uhh, no?

BLOODSTAIN:

We're meetin' up fer some parcheesi next spiralatin', and she might even bring the hubby! Cross yer fingers for me, I never done no three way game night, these cats're wild!

FERN:

...yeah okay maybe this is starting to get weird.

Back to the Hospital...you said there was "weirdo stuff" going around? What kind of "weirdo stuff?"

BLOODSTAIN:

Oh, you know, folks gettin' sick, but it ain't usual-sick, ya know? I mean, shucks, the range is one funky whack place as it is, if you'll pardon the cuss, but this ain't been the typical, healthy level o' strangeness. Things are progressin' even less predictably than they ought, n' reactin' even worse to the usual medicatin's, too. Weren't never perfect, but it's almost like...

...Almost like the fundamental ideas a' sickness n' health are breakin' down on us. Used to be the only dependable, objective conceptual algorithms around here, but ya smell like ya been in that upchuck feller's room...same thing makin' that kid sicker usedta be all that kept 'im stabilized.

Then ya got that zonkers outbreak in the morgue...worked out in the end, sure, I'm happy fer' all them lil' vessel folks, but that still ain't normal, predictable abnormality, ya dig? Embalmin fluid ain't 'sposeda make a biovessel degrade faster...and degradin' faster sure ain't 'sposeda make a vessel get back up and keep growin'.

FERN:

So...you're saying the Hospital was always a screwed-up place, but it's suddenly some "different" kind of screwed up?

BLOODSTAIN:

Bingo was his name-o!

FERN:

Sounds like what a few things have been trying to tell me. I don't know whether it's kind of comforting or even more disheartening. Is anybody, like, fixing it?

BLOODSTAIN:

Us patients can't rightfully say. Wouldn't expect any a' them doctors to let on that somethin's too wrong, if they even understand it themselves.

I hear tell they been chargin' the unexistalizer...if that's the case, some poor sucker's got somethin powerful nasty. Nasty enough to put their whole core concept down 'fore it spreads. Better them than us, I reckon...

FERN:

Yeah...I...I think...I think that might be for my son...

BLOODSTAIN:

Ssssshhhhhhhhhhhortbread, me n' my big mouth...

FERN:

No, it's okay, if it's that bad...I mean...if he's suffering...if there's nothing else they can do...

...I still have to be there when they do it. He isn't even a year old. He can't die sick and scared in some other world without his mother...

BLOODSTAIN:

...Fern, why dont you just have a sit for a spell.