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Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 18:16:43 +0900
From: "David Farnell"
OK, this is one for the more medically-minded folks out there. This happened to one of my agents recently, and I want to know what can be done to help him.
Let's say a DG agent is sitting in his cheap hotel room in Brownsville, TX, getting in a little light reading (_Le roi en jaun_, the only surviving original French version of _The King in Yellow_), when he hears a light knock at the door. He goes to open it…
(HERE COMES THE SICKENING PART)
He's found about 30 minutes later, crucified to the hotel room wall, his tongue cut out (it's found lying under the pillow), his eyelids sliced off (nowhere to be found), and his intestines pulled out through a little slit in his navel, twisted into an intricate pattern of knots that disturbingly seem to MEAN SOMETHING, but which also may just be some alien ballon-animal trick.
The poor bastard survived and is now in a hospital somewhere. I assume his tongue can be reattached, but will it regain full functionality? Since whatever it was kept the eyelids (maybe ate them), how's he going to deal with that? Can they be reconstructed from other parts, or is he going to go through life with a very surprised expression and a pair of auto-eyedroppers mounted on his eyebrows? I figured he'd lose several feet of intestine; is that likely? And what are the long-term effects?
Is this guy going to be able to return to life as an active agent of Delta Green and the FBI?
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 20:33:25 -0400
From: "R. Menzi"
The poor bastard survived and is now in a hospital somewhere. I assume his tongue can be reattached, but will it regain full functionality? Since whatever it was kept the eyelids (maybe ate them), how's he going to deal with that? Can they be reconstructed from other parts, or is he going to go through life with a very surprised expression and a pair of auto-eyedroppers mounted on his eyebrows? I figured he'd lose several feet of intestine; is that likely? And what are the long-term effects?
The tongue muscles might be reconected and they might be able to connect the arteries and veins, but the nerves are severed and he'll have no feeling in it and will have a really bad slur if he can relearn how to talk at all. His stomache may not make it and he may have to use those nasty colostomy bags (???) for the rest of his miserable life. (They may be called cathoders, but I think that's for urine.) Aside from the physical problems, he'd have some serious mental problems to keep him busy. I'd just make up a new character.
Is this guy going to be able to return to life as an active agent of Delta Green and the FBI?
I don't know why I have to ask this, but "Why on earth would he want to?"
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 12:44:08 -0700
From: Phil A Posehn
his tongue can be reattached, but will it regain full functionality? Since whatever it was kept the eyelids (maybe ate them), how's he going to deal with that? Can they be reconstructed from other parts
The first important question that the doctor is going to ask is: "Has the patient been circumsised?"
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 16:51:54 -0400
From: Graeme Price
The poor bastard survived and is now in a hospital somewhere. I assume his tongue can be reattached, but will it regain full functionality? Since whatever it was kept the eyelids (maybe ate them), how's he going to deal with that? Can they be reconstructed from other parts, or is he going to go through life with a very surprised expression and a pair of auto-eyedroppers mounted on his eyebrows? I figured he'd lose several feet of intestine; is that likely? And what are the long-term effects?
Is this guy going to be able to return to life as an active agent of Delta Green and the FBI?
Ouch! Well I'm no physician (I have a little medical knowledge though… and we all know that's a dangerous thing!) but the biggest problem is going to be with the tongue. Assuming that everything hit him in real time (no loops or time dilation events) then 30 minutes should be quick enough to allow the surgeons to reattach it OK (one good thing about hotel rooms - there's always plenty of ice around to preserve severed organs). That's the good news. The bad news (as I think Ricardo mentioned in an earlier reply) is that there will be a severe loss of function of the tongue (severed tendons and muscles mostly - the blood vessels shouldn't be too much of a problem for a vascular surgeon).
As for the gut, assuming that the surgical team can untie the knots (and reattach the various blood vessels and lymphoid tissues that may have been damaged in the tying process) there may be no reason why he would have to lose much (if any gut). I guess it would be treated much like a hernia. The eyelids should be treatable - Phil mentioned foreskins: this is not as gross as it sounds, the big problem with the skin grafts will be that there will be no eyelashes. The tear ducts may actually be intact still, so there should be no need for eyedrops (once the graft has healed). The crusifiction wounds shouldn't be any trouble to patch up.
So physically, the agent will be out for 6-10 weeks (minimum) and will be seeing a speech therapist for the next 10-15 years or more. All in all, it could have been much worse. But I do agree with Ricardo, why would he WANT to go back to work for DG? I think there comes a time when any agent who gets mangled badly (physically or mentally) enough should go onto the "retired" roster (note: this may not be his choice) and act as an occasional consultant.
In fact, just think of the kudos you would get when using this character as an instructor for a group of new agents: "Thow, I geth you guyths want to know juth how I lotht my eyebrowth and my thongue?".
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:23:20 +0900
From: "David Farnell"
In fact, just think of the kudos you would get when using this character as an instructor for a group of new agents: "Thow, I geth you guyths want to know juth how I lotht my eyebrowth and my thongue?".
Arigato, gentlemen. Yeah, I figured about as much. Actually, this was an NPC, but he was becoming the love-interest of one of the PCs, so it was rather important to her to know his eventual fate. (And to know what their next date will be like—brrr.) The perp in this case was a particularly sadistic, playful Byakhee, who managed, over the course of the adventure, to "count coup" against most of the characters, this one (Special Agent Jerry Smalls, formerly LINUS) most drastically. Good to know he won't need the eyedropper thingies.
I think it's safe to say that any SAN damage he took from reading The King in Yellow was, um, overwhelmed by subsequent events. ("He seems to be suffering from terrible ennui, doctor." "Gee, I wonder why.")
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 19:58:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chris Womack
Others have already weighed in with their opinions, but I thought I'd pass along a RL anecdote that might be of some limited interest to somebody pondering the fate of an agent who's had to have a big chunk of his bowels resected.
My wife and I have this cat who, when he was a kitten, came across a big ball of thread scraps from a cross-stitching project of my wife's. Stupid little bugger ate it, and the thread looped all through his intestines, quite literally tying them in knots. The veterinary surgeon had to remove over a foot and a half of the kitten's intestines (basically the bulk of his small intestine!) in the process of cutting all the string free. (There was even a loop of the string running all the way up the cat's esophagus, hooked under his tongue.)
The cat survived, not too much the worse for wear, although as you might imagine his digestive system hasn't been the same since. With that much of his intestine gone, he really doesn't digest food very efficiently at all; he's got a voracious appetite, has to eat a special diet (he's already succumbed to a rare form of crystal accretion in his bladder/urinary tract normally only seen in much older cats), and has gotten quite flabby as a result. I won't elaborate on the god-awful messes he leaves in his litterbox (suffice it to say nothing has time to, ah, re-solidify before evacuation).
So based solely on this experience, and with no actual medical knowledge to share, I'd say that an agent whose intestines were used to make a macrame sculpture needn't be forced into early retirement, but he *will* suffer adversely probably for the rest of his life, having special dietary requirements, possibly having difficulty keeping weight off (or on), and perhaps even being susceptible to calls of nature that would render him unable to perform effectively in the field.
Okay, I've followed this train of thought a little too far; I'm getting off now.
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 01:47:29 -0700
From: John Michael Alldredge
The poor bastard survived and is now in a hospital somewhere. I assume his tongue can be reattached, but will it regain full functionality? Since whatever it was kept the eyelids (maybe ate them), how's he going to deal with that? Can they be reconstructed from other parts, or is he going to go through life with a very surprised expression and a pair of auto-eyedroppers mounted on his eyebrows? I figured he'd lose several feet of intestine; is that likely? And what are the long-term effects?
Is this guy going to be able to return to life as an active agent of Delta Green and the FBI?
re: the tongue. 30 minutes is not so long for muscle tissue, particularly if the hotel room was air-conditioned. No problems there if the get him to a hospitalright away….
re: the eyelids. Trickier, but with skin grafts (probably from the fingertips) and a good reconstructive surgeon, the agent should be able to function and even look fairly normal after recuperation.
re: losing a few feet of gut. No problem. Happens all the time.
re: the question you haven't asked. Will he be able to resume the duties of a DG agent? That depends on what he saw and experienced in those 30 minutes. When he wakes up in the hospital, what will his state of MIND be… the psychotherapy could take much longer than the physical recuperation….