Churchill Hospital

The Churchill Hospital is a teaching hospital managed by the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The original hospital on the site was built in 1940 with the intention of providing medical aid to people suffering orthopaedic injuries as a result of air raids during the Second World War. This proved unnecessary, and the building was leased to the United States Army medical services, who were relocating from Basingstoke. The new American hospital was named after Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and was opened by the Duchess of Kent on 27 January 1942.  The US Army left the hospital at the end of the war and it was taken over by the local council and reopened as a conventional hospital in January 1946.

[Continued from Christ Church] After disappointingly uneventful searches of the grounds, the first week of classes took all of Merric's time and attention. It's not until Tuesday that Merric is able to get some kind of a breather. Enough to continue the investigation. He checks his notebook to find his notes from his meeting with his advisor and found the name of the who he was looking for, Daxon. He finds his way to Churchill Hospital in an effort to find Daxon.  He finds the closest front desk worker and asks, "Excuse me, is Daxon Caudill in today?"

The receptionist glances up at Merric and then back at her computer. "Do you have an appointment?" She asks.

I expected that   "Not formally. I'm here on behalf of Stephanie Cragg for joint research. My name is Merric Grimm." Hopefully, this gets me in.

"One moment please." The receptionist picks up the phone and calls Daxon's office.

Daxon sees his 10am client out and turns back towards his desk to complete his session notes when the phone rings. He ponders letting the machine get it, but a cool tickle down his spine makes him change his mind. "This is Daxon Caudill, how many I be of assistance?"

"Hello Mr Caudill," the receptionist replies. "I have a Merric Grimm here to see you on behalf of Stephanie Cragg for joint research. Should I send him up?"

Oh good, seems like he's here. Hopefully, this works out better than running around with the bottle.

Daxon curses silently as the receptionist drops the professor's name. This is going to get weird.   While taking his cell out of his pocket, he says,  "Hold him for ten minutes if you can, then send him up. I have to get down some session notes while they're fresh." He texts the professor:  MG?

A few moments later, the message is marked read. Daxon sees Professor Cragg typing and then her response pops up. I know that you value brevity, Daxon, but you'll have to be a little more specific.

Well I don't know how to spell his name, Professor, but a guy with those initials just name-dropped you to get an appointment with me. Merrick? Merik? Marric? Something Grimm.

Yes, he needs help finding a cadaver.

Oh fun.   Daxon puts his phone away and races through writing down some notes on the poor fellow who thinks he keeps drinking because his mother hates him. He leaves his office door open for his impending guest.

After waiting in the lobby for about ten minutes the receptionist gestures to Merric that he can go up to Daxon's office. Following the receptionist's directions he makes his way to Daxon's office which is already ajar. He knocks as he enters, "Hello, Mr. Caudill? Sorry for the short notice, but it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Merric Grimm, a medical student here at Oxford."  Merric approaches Daxon to shake his hand as he greets him. He then takes a seat. "Professor Cragg told me that I should talk to you.  Did she mention me at all, or inform you about anything?"

"Hi," the rumpled fellow of medium height and sandy blond hair replies. "Call me Daxon, please." He glances around his tiny office sheepishly and takes a stack of papers out of a chair so Merric can sit. "Yes, she told me you were looking for something on ice, and ahh... not scotch?"

He gives a slight chuckle at the remark, "Yes, something like that. I'm looking into recent incidences around campus, and it would benefit the investigation greatly if you could help me gain access to where the 'iced' things are kept. "

Daxon bumps the door shut with one foot before replying softly, "The professor sent you, so I'm guessing you think there's some spooky element to the incidents?"

Merric grins at the excitement of having a secret talk about an investigation, "Yeah, you could say that." Holding back his desire to get into the details and intricacies of what's going on, he tempers his response with caution, "I'm not sure of how much you know of the situation, and to be honest I'm not sure how much I can disclose about it. But, the situation is quite spooky, and if I can come in contact with the body I can hopefully unveil most of the spookiness." Taking a breath to mentally review his response to make sure it was professional enough, he chimes up, "So will you be able to help?"

"Probably. I have to identify overdose victims every once in a while, so it wouldn't be terribly strange for me to be down there. But I have a task of my own that you might be able to help me with, since we both appear to at least be spooky-adjacent." Daxon grins a little sheepishly and shrugs.

Leaning forward in interest, "Oh? What kind of task do you need help with?"

As he leans forward to hear what this man has to say his curiosity and paranoia take him for a moment and he begins to stare at Daxon, a little too noticeably, searching for recognizable magic emanating from the man to see what  he truly is. More disappointment follows as all he can tell is that the man talking in front of him is not dead, ' at least he's not a vampire; I think?'   He then realizes that Daxon seems to have noticed his stare, ' shit, I think I just made this awkward ' . He nervously looks away for a moment before looking back to Daxon to hear his request, hoping he wouldn't mention what just happened.

Daxon's face falls into stillness as he allows the uncomfortable silence to carry on... and on... and on. Finally, he breaks it with another question, "Grimm like the writers of fairy stories? You could just ask, you know. Professor Cragg never introduces boring people to each other."

Feeling more awkward now that it's been acknowledged, shit . He gives an awkward chuckle at Daxon's response, "Hehe, yeah. Exactly like those writers." He pauses for a moment, "I'm sorry that I made this awkward. My curiosity got the better of me. I'm guessing by my association with Professor Cragg, you can guess that we're of similar ilk. Are you also awakened?"

Awakened... That's new. Daxon smiles to try and ease the tension. "No, I don't think that's something anyone has ever called me. If you're Awakened, I guess you would call us children of the sleepers' nightmares. You didn't bring a cat with you, did you?"

Merric looks a little puzzled, but he gives a slight chuckle at the cleverness of the response, ' nightmare child, that sounds ominous.'  His mind returns to the conversation, "I'm sorry, did you say cat? I mean, I like cats, I really do. But I didn't think I needed one for the hospital?" A brief pause as his mind scrambles to understand, "Wait, is bringing a cat part of the task you mentioned? Are you going to do something to it?" Merric's imagination wanders as he imagines the worse of what this nightmare child could want with a cat.

"Not exactly. It's just weird that I'm seeing them wherever I go lately." He stands up and waves for Merric to follow along. "I'm headed down to the locker," he calls out when they're in the common area. "Worried about a client." Then he whispers to Merric on the way to the lift, "What's the name we're looking for?"

"Yeah, that is strange."  Merric follows Daxon's lead. Merric leans over and whispers, "Matthew, Matthew Wiggins."

The pair ride the lift down to the lower level where the morgue is situated. Daxon gives the attendant a small smile, shows his hospital ID and says, "I'm here to ID one Matthew Wiggins. One of my patients. No family to speak of."

"Of course, Mr Caudill," the attendant replies, typing the name into his computer. "Right this way please." Daxon and Merric are guided down tiled a tiled corridor to one of many rooms lined with the small metal hatches of morgue cold storage compartments. "Here we are, number thirteen," the attendant declares before grasping the handle and pulling the door open. There's a metallic clunk, followed by a soft hiss and the slab of the drawer rolls out to reveal the pallid corpse of Matthew Wiggins.

"Thank you very much. Can you give us some privacy for the identification, please? Oh - and I forgot to ask earlier - is there any paperwork yet on cause of death?"

"I'll see what I can turn up," the attendant assures Daxon as he heads back down the corridor to his computer.

"Alright, Grimm, you're up. We've only got a few minutes."

Merric, internally excited from having gotten so far in his investigation replies back to Daxon, "That should be enough."  Merric closes his eyes and holds his hands, palm facing downward, over the body. He begins chanting in a foreign tongue as his Nimbus around him manifests and the growing pressure from it is felt by those nearby after every word spoken. The small skull on his bracelet dangles down hovering over the body, as the spell continues the skull begins to emit a black mist that rolls down onto the body completely engulfing it in darkness. He opens his eyes revealing his sclera and iris pitch black, as the connection between him and the body is established. His gaze now sees what happened to poor Matthew.

Merric sees Matthew dancing with another student - an attractive girl in her 20s with tan skin and dark hair. She opens her mouth to reveal a vampire's fangs and begins to drink from Matthew's neck. Less than a second later, he collapses dead in her arms. Surprise and panic flash across the girl's face.

Merric returns to reality in a jolt. His eyes return to normal and the mist around Matthew's corpse dissipates into the air. He quickly takes his notebook out of his jacket pocket and begins to take notes on what he saw. A woman, tan skin, dark hair, vampire, shocked at the death?, accident?   He rapidly jots down his thoughts and all he could see about the situation. He flips to the next page of his book and begins to quickly sketch out the vampire woman's face to the best of his abilities. Remembering the lessons from earlier in his life on how to sketch the defining features of people and creatures that struggle to show up on camera in an effort to catalog them. He lifts his pencil from the page and looks back at it and seems satisfied. He closes his book and puts it back in his jacket pocket. He looks back to Daxon, "I think we're done here. I learned more than I thought I would."

Daxon closes the drawer gently, and walks back towards the entrance, still processing what he just saw. He almost passes the attendant, then pauses to ask, "Anything in the system yet?"

The attendant looks up at Daxon and blinks at him in a moment of confusion. It lasts for less then a second, before the expression is washed away by the same helpful smile that he'd worn just moments before. "I'll see what I can turn up," the man assures Daxon.

Daxon reaches back and grabs Merric by the arm, pulling him towards the lift. "Email those records to Thomas Anderson, why don't you?"  he calls back over his shoulder as he taps the call button.

A little shocked by the grab, That's a little forceful, seems like he's in a rush to get out of here.  Feeling Daxon's urgency he follows along without much resistance. 

"I'll see what I can turn up," the attendant calls after Daxon as he flees towards the lift with Merric in tow.  The stainless steel doors slide open with a melodic chime.

As Merric steps into the elevator with Daxon, he breaks the awkward silence after the door closes, "So uhh, nightmare child, care to explain what happened there? You got kind of forceful and it seemed like you were in a rush, really more like fleeing."

Daxon shivers a little at the attendant's third time repeating himself, then chuckles a little at the 'nightmare child' moniker. Then he says,  "Something uncanny has affected that attendant. Remember when I asked him by the body to check the system? Since then he's been stuck somehow, repeating himself. Three different times he said, exactly the same way, ' I'll see what I can turn up.'"   Daxon's mimicry isn't exact, but hopefully close enough to convey the unnerving similiarity of the three utterances. "It's creeping me out something serious."

Merric pulls out his notebook again and quickly jots down, uncanny, repetition three times.  He closes his book and as he puts it back in his pocket he comments, "Hmm, I wasn't really paying attention to it. But that does seem strange. Any idea what this  uncanny  thing is? "

"No idea. Since the professor sent you to me, I have to guess that you're the scholar of the uncanny between us. I'm just a poor Lost circus performer..."  Daxon grins as the lift opens back on his floor.

Merric takes the classic posture of thinking with his hand to his chin as he thinks about what they just saw. Under his breath, he thinks out loud, "Hm, a glitch in reality. It didn't appear to be a form of paradox. Programming maybe?" He comes to a theory and turns to Daxon with his revelation, "My guess is it was some form of compulsion. As if his response was programmed and the program started to loop." He takes another moment of thought as they continue down the hall, "Compulsion doesn't really narrow down the culprit though. All manner of supernatural can compel or mind control in some form or another. Even other mages could." Back under his breath as he talks to himself,  "Maybe I should talk to one who's skilled with the Mind." He quickly jots down in his book a reminder. He closes the book as they arrive back at the office,  "What for certain is something strange is happening around this body and we better be cautious since we are now affiliated. We should stay in touch in case something happens."

Daxon nods and reaches into his pocket to draw out a simple hospital business card listing Daxon Caudill  as an Addiction Specialist and a phone number. "That's my mobile. Text me your name and I'll add you. Now move along before the programmer shows up and tried to debug US..." He gives Merric a nod and a wan smile before heading back to work.

He puts Daxon's contact information and sends a quick text to him to register his number. He leaves the hospital waving bye to the secretary that helped him out. He heads over to his dorm as quickly as possible. (Continued in Christ Church College)