A Hard Night's Rest [For Daaharu]

"Appreciate it."

She leaned back and eased into the pillow as she waited, idly whistling. Thinking. Was Lorenza having the same problems? She seemed so peaceful an hour or so ago - as peaceful as someone like her could ever be, anyway. Carmen imagined her being more angered if she lost, distraught. It was her first defeat...ever. That was a tough pill to swallow, and it was one Carmen had learned to take, first when Lorenza gave it to her, then when she fell short at the Olympics. Even as a wrestler, she'd experienced it, and found it to be palatable. Defeats made victory all the sweeter.

Before she could dwell on it too long, the night shift nurse came in. She lacked Reiko's schoolgirl cuteness, but she wasn't bad to look at. She seemed more mature, more in control, and she had some decent definition going on. Carmen was tempted to give her the same treatment...

...until she got a good look at those eyes. Really all of her, but especially those eyes. As a boxer, Carmen had picked up a good eye for body language, but something about her whole demeanor seemed...off. She couldn't put a finger on it. Maybe it was nothing. But it was unnerving. Just a little.

"Hm?" She snapped to attention at the question. "No, no, just...restless, I guess. Gears are still turning from the match, hard to turn off."

The way Carmen was looking at her, Nadya got the sense that the boxer was trying to figure her out on a psychological level. This woman was a little smarter than most of the other patients that came through this hospital, it seemed. Few of the others had any inkling of what was in store for them before it happened.

Nadya wasnâ€t even certain that she was going to try something with this Carmen, however. She didnâ€t bother going after every patient. She focused on the wrestlers—the AFW girls. Evidently, Carmen was one of them, but there were some wrestlers whom Nadya still rejected, for some reason or another. Sometimes, there was a better option available to her. Tonight, there were only two patients in this wing of the hospital—both of them boxers, as a matter of fact, and who had just fought a brutal match against each other—but Nadya had not yet seen the other one. It was already so late, she likely only had time for one of them.

“Oh, yes,” Nadya said with a nod, her harsh eyes scanning Carmen slowly. The woman seemed to have taken quite a beating. She had to be very weak right now. “I understand. I fight, too, you know.” She put the pills in one of Carmenâ€s hands and the cup of water in the other. “Take these. I will be back.” She held up a finger. “One minute.”

Nadya exited the room and walked across the hall. Silently, she opened the door to the room of the other boxer. Lorenza. She peered inside. The Mexicanâ€s eyes were closed, and her chest was rising and falling slowly.

She was attractive, too. But given the choice between the two…Nadya would rather go after Carmen.

She turned around and headed back into the Puerto Rican boxerâ€s room. Meanwhile, Lorenza lazily opened one eye. The soft sound of the door opening had roused her from her fitful sleep. The nurse hadnâ€t closed it all the way again, either—that would bug Lorenza. She sighed, knowing there was very little she could do, then turned over onto her side and closed her eyes again.

The nurse seemed to be giving her a look over, too, but they weren't the same eyes that Reiko had given her. Her eyes seemed more serious and scrutinizing, She was probably just taking note of her injuries, being a genuine nurse. Whatever the case, Carmen got the impression she wasn't up for the same sort of games Reiko had been, even if she had the body for them.

She raised an eyebrow when the nurse mentioned she was a fighter. It was surprising, but not too surprising. The AFW alone hosted hundreds of fighters, more than a few of them part-time, and Carmen knew nursing gimmicks weren't uncommon. This girl was no Angela, but Carmen wouldn't have kicked her out of bed, all the same.

Carmen popped the pills and gulped them down, letting the ice water slosh down her throat. Just what she needed. Soon she'd be fast asleep and putting this crazy day behind her, ready to start a brand new one.

"Thanks, thanks." She gave a little wave to the nurse as she came back in. "You said you fought, right?" She sat up in the bed, figuring she might as well burn off what energy she had left while the pills went to work. "Where at? Friction?"

Nadya reentered Carmenâ€s room just as the boxer was swallowing the pills. Nadya nodded, satisfied that the patient had taken the drugs. While it would have been easy for Nadya to slip flunitrazepam or another drug from that same pharmacological family in with the other pills in order to render Carmen helpless, the Russian nurse hadnâ€t done it. It wasnâ€t her style, and besides, she took great pride in her abilities as a nurse. She was a good nurse, when she intended to be. The fact that she consciously broke her oath to do no harm almost every day she was on the job did nothing to tarnish her nursing reputation, in Nadyaâ€s mind.

Carmen asked her about where she fought. Nadya pursed her lips and nodded when Carmen mentioned the name of AFWâ€s premier division. “Yes, yes. Just once, right now. But I meet very many of the wrestlers from AFW here.” As she spoke, the gears were turning in Nadyaâ€s mind; she kept some of her…tools right here in this room. She would get them soon…

That would explain why Carmen didn't recognize her right off the bat. Being a Tension wrestler, Carmen paid more attention to that faction than anything else, watching pretty much every match and scouting out future opponents. Not that there was anything wrong with Friction, but Tension fit her stride better, and it helped draw attention to female boxing. If a woman could do well against men, take them head on and go blow for blow, people would start to see the potential her sport offered, that woman's boxing had every bit of the energy that men's had.

"Good luck with your career - sure a lovely lady like you can go far." She brushed a few hairs from her face and smiled. No reason not to be friendly. Even if her vibes were weird, it wasn't like she'd done any thing wrong. "Carmen Rodriguez. What's left of her, anyway." She extended her hand. "Didn't catch your name."

Nadya smirked as Carmen wished her luck with her wrestling career. To be frank, Nadya didnâ€t care whether she succeeded or not in AFW. So long as she had her job at this hospital and a limitless supply of attractive women to prey upon, she had everything she truly desired. “Thank you,” Nadya said, putting on as gracious an air as she could manage. “Thank you.” When Carmen extended a hand to her, Nadya would extend her own hand and grab the boxerâ€s in a powerful grip, squeezing it and pumping it up and down a few times before letting go.

“My name is Nadya Zolnerowich,” Nadya said, when Carmen asked for her name. “Nice to meet you. So, you had fight tonight, yes? How vas that?” Nadya was more than happy to engage Carmen in a little small talk while she waited for the right moment to pounce. She looked around, making a mental checklist of where things were hidden in the room. She figured she didnâ€t need much, though—the woman was mutilated, completely broken down, it seemed, by whatever sort of fight she had been in. She would be easy prey.

Carmen winced as she poured on the pressure, and if there was any doubt in her mind about the nurse being a wrestler, her grip would have erased it. The girl had strength. Surprising power for someone her size. In her weakened state, it took everything Carmen had just to keep her hand from being crushed, and she brought her hand in fast when it was let go.

She narrowed her eyes, knowing a sign of aggression when she saw one, but softening back up after a moment - just a little show of force between two wrestlers. They weren't likely to be fighting anytime soon, so she didn't get the reason for it, but whatever.

"Nadya...Zol...nero...wich." She tried pronouncing it with her accent and did a decent job of not totally butchering it. "And yeah, had a fight. I won." True. Didn't really answer Nadya's question, but true. She couldn't even say it like she meant it. She closed her eyes and sighed. "That's what it's going to say in the record, anyway."

The handshake had been almost painful for Carmen. Nadya could tell this easily enough just by watching the boxerâ€s body language after she had let go. That was good. Nadya liked to make that sort of intimidating first impression. She was aggressive. She was made of aggression. Made for power, made for dominance.

Not just in the ring, the way these fighters were, but outside of it, as well.

When Carmen repeated her name, Nadya would nod with each syllable. The Hispanic boxerâ€s pronunciation was correct, more or less. Not that it would matter in a few minutes. Nadya didnâ€t do this job because she wanted to make new friends. She couldnâ€t care less whether or not the boxer remembered how to pronounce “Zolnerowich.”

Then, Carmen described her fight. She did it in very simple terms, simply explaining how she had won—or, at least, how she had been given the victory by AFW officials. “Oh, yes? You won? Sort of?” Nadya asked, pacing a few steps towards the wall opposite the door. She kept her eyes on Carmen, though. “Against girl across hall, yes? She looks bad as you do.”

Carmen snorted at that last comment, as she started to feel a little drowsy - the drugs were doing their thing, no doubt. "Nice way of putting it. But yeah. that's Lorenza, that's the girl I fought. We go back, trying to settle a score. Didn't really feel settled, though."

She watched Nadya walk around, a little curious on what she was doing. She wasn't as playful as Reiko, but she didn't seem totally serious, either. Maybe just making small talk, but that was odd thing to do at half past one. And those eyes, they still bugged her. Not to mention her bear-grip of a handshake.

"Zolnerowich." She repeated the name as she laid back, staring up at the ceiling and counting tiles. "Guessing you're a long way from home, too. How you get all the way out her from wherever you come from?"

Nadya nodded as the increasingly drowsy Carmen explained a little of whom the other fighter was and how they had come to be fighting each other on this particular night. Nadya didnâ€t know the specifics of the fight, but as far as she could tell both Carmen and the other woman—Lorenza, her name was—had done quite a number on each other. They had injuries that would take weeks to fully heal. Severe cuts and bruises all over their faces. Not the usual result of a wrestling match, Nadya noted.

Nadyaâ€s gaze was beginning to drift towards the cabinets in which she had stashed the…tools of her trade. But the second repetition of her name by the Hispanic boxer caused her to once again focus her attention on the patient. “Hmm?” Nadya grunted, before hearing Carmenâ€s question. She would nod slowly, then respond: “Actually, I am not too far from home. At least if you talk about distance…the, uh, culture is very different,” Nadya explained, a little awkwardly. She pulled one hand into a fist and placed it against her own chest. “I am from Vladivostok. Eastern Russia. Not too far from here. But Japan is very strange, though it is very close.”