Chapter Text
Broken Up For Good?!: The A-Squad exploded onto the scene in 2012 after victoriously stopping a Kaiju attack. They had an amazing run, scoring victory after victory. But rumor has it that they’ve hit some troubling times with a fight between the leaders of A-Squad and Co-Pilots of Iron Bulwark. Now the duo has broken up with harsh words being traded. Turn to page 5 for more details from an inside source…
- (Clipping from the cover of Seventeen Magazine, March 2016 publication.)
To wake to a room and see her new decorations up and around brings a spark of joy to Yelena this morning. She takes nearly a minute sitting in her bed to admire the change.
Kate throws her looks between fond and amused as she goes through her daily routine. “You like it?” Kate asks once Yelena finally stops and gets started herself, heading to the bathroom to get ready.
“I do.” Yelena says. The last time she'd taken any amount of time to decorate was… a long time ago. Seeing it now is like a bridge connecting those nice parts of her life to now. The room is better with both of their influences in it.
“We should totally get more. Like look,” Kate says from the doorway of the bathroom, and when Yelena pokes her head out of the bathroom to look, Kate’s pointing to a still mostly empty shelf. “Next time you should go nuts and buy a ton of things to put up.” Kate says, disappearing back into their room to continue her own daily routine.
Yelena hums, carefully applying blue eyeliner. She pokes her head around the doorway again to look at Kate's who's hopping around trying to get a sock on while standing. “I want you to join me next time. We’ll pick out things together.”
Kate stills and looks up to her quickly, reminding Yelena of an eager puppy, being asked to go on its second ever walk. “Yeah?”
“Of course.” She says, going back to the delicate application of make-up. The chaos of trying to find decorations to both their taste should be fun enough to stand on its own, Yelena thinks. But it'd be even better to look at something and know they see each other in it. Plus it may go a long way into tying the room together.
Kate leaves the room already five minutes late to her solo training with Barton, a feat Yelena doesn't know how she accomplishes just about every time, even when she gets up earlier to ‘give herself time’ she somehow manages to be late.
But for Yelena her solo training is just with the AI recordings, a teacher who doesn't care if she's not on time, or if she scrolls through her phone, or if she paces the room up and down half paying attention, or if she performs a completely different task, or even if she interrupts.
Like right now, the AI teacher is going through a self-guided course for calibrating the Drivesuit. “AI?”
The recording pauses. “Yes, Ranger Belova?”
Always with the formalities. It's like the system resets every now and then and goes back to calling her by her rank, instead of by just her surname as she requests.
“Bring up everything you have on Kate Bishop.” She says.
The AI whirls in place before a set of documents spreads out in front of her. The same stuff she's seen since Kate first became her drift partner: academy scores, combat recordings, remarks from training staff and teachers on behavior and intelligence.
But this time, she found Natasha’s codes for backdoors to the system. There are many, but she starts in the most obvious place based on the memory Kate showed her last night in the drift. “Override: Fury, NVVZL9506.”
About a dozen more files join the spread, and she looks them over before selecting the first new one.
Record: Bishop, Katherine Elizabeth
Hazard Oversight: Medium (source, documents AA-12-17-24 through F27-05-21-25)
Alias: Hawkeye
Occupation: Jaeger Pilot (Dark Talon)
Co-Pilot: Белова, Елена.
Notes: Tentative start date 07-14-25
Hazard Oversight, medium? They've miscalculated, which is laughable. She's nearly tempted to see what they may say about herself — a particular vanity and ego stroking she's indulged in in the past, but hasn't since her return. She attempts to access the files and gets a red, glaring access denied. Interesting. Must be one of Fury’s other override codes. Whatever Kate did with Barton over Christmas left some sort of impression with both Fury and the WCO enough to have a risk assessment completed.
But before breaking out more override codes, she looks over the rest of the files: some detailing her mentorship under Barton, some of Fury’s personal notes on her Jaeger Pilot training, and some of Dottie’s notes as their handler. It comprises a pretty good, but short picture. It also doesn't look like it's nearly as thick with information as there was in Fury's physical file in Kate’s memories. He could've stuffed blank pages in to intimidate her, she guesses. Though that seems unlikely. Her hour ticks over and she takes pictures of the documents on her phone to review in more depth later.
For now, she heads to breakfast, mulling the information over. The A-Squad was personally overseen by Fury and the WCO. If Kate Bishop were screened and on the short list to join without Yelena one of the Commanders had to sign off on it. No way Barton had that amount of sway. He would have enough to get her on Yelena’s Co-Pilot list. But to promise a position on the team? A favor from mom, perhaps? In exchange for what?
These are more things to add to the ever evolving mystery of Wilson Fisk and the WCO. But one of these threads will lead them to their mystery WCO leak. She mentally lists the threads she has right now:
- Wilson Fisk’s Secret Kaiju.
- WCO member threatening Fury with something.
- A commander who is in either WCO and/or Fisk’s back pocket.
- Eleanor Bishop and Bishop Security still linked in all of this, which could mean that Kate is somehow part of it (if only in a way she doesn't know about).
- And all to obtain a goal that she doesn't quite get the full picture of, but ostensibly it's linked to the Red Room’s mind control.
What a headache this stupid stuff is. She wishes the people in charge of the world’s safety had no greater ambition than keeping the world safe.
She finishes her contemplative breakfast and the co-pilot training begins again as it always does.
However, later in the day there's a change in their drifting session and safety course, and she knows exactly what that means. Safety drifting course. There are just a few emergency situations to train for while drifting specifically and they're each tedious.
She pushes these thoughts (and all the others) aside so she can focus on sparring with Kate.
The Jaeger Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is progressing nicely. Right now they're practicing another new move, this one is another close body juke that gets them to duck under a Wiwaxian’s reach and past its defenses.
She watches Kate roll her shoulders loosely — warned up and cocky smirk in place as she ushers Yelena on. “Think you're going to win this one?”
“Obviously.” She says, mirroring Kate’s confidence. The back and forth is quick — Kate does a quick jab that Yelena executes the dodge against: curling her upper body down and sideways and sliding closer to Kate’s body. From here a series of quick punches can be thrown to her upper body.
They separate and they trade places. This they only do a couple of times until the movement feels familiar, then they abandon traditional training to go into sparring.
She finds herself (increasingly more often) impressed with how quickly Kate picks up these moves.
Right now Yelena charges forward with a wide swing, teeth bared from the effort.
Kate shifts down and sideways, her movements graceful and easy. She gets a good hit to her stomach and Yelena can feel more than see the smug smirk on Kate’s face as she takes a long step back outside Yelena’s reach.
Sure enough, when they both reset stances, Kate’s got that confident grin on her face, the kind that's nearly tempting to remove by any means she can think of.
Yelena once again closes the distance, taking in Kate’s stance for any weakness she can immediately take advantage of. She steps in and kicks, keeping her arms close to her body.
Kate pulls back in a fluid motion, dodging once again. She's light on her feet, and Yelena decides to follow after her.
The flow of their bodies together is even better than it was in their first drift compatibility session, that spark being carefully built on.
“So!” Kate says, as she ducks back to avoid a quick jab from Yelena. “I've been thinking about our little rat. Or snake?”
“Snake, I think.” Yelena says, stepping wide into Kate’s space so she can throw an elbow. “What're you thinking?”
Kate counters the elbow with a redirect, and Yelena has to move into a roll to avoid being tripped. “Well!” Kate says, working to keep her breathing even. “If we can't get information from Fury maybe we can do some digging into the commanders ourselves.”
Yelena pops back up to her feet, and to her pleasure Kate’s moving thoughtlessly in sync with her, keeping pace with Yelena and throwing a high kick toward her head. Yelena has to duck to avoid it. She's spent so much time of this spar on her back foot, she's got to change it up. “Stalking or digital?”
The kick is beautifully executed from start to finish, and Kate has to perform a little spin to keep her footing and position. Yelena uses the moment as Kate’s foot touches down to go for a shove, hands connecting with Kate’s torso.
Kate flounders a bit, trying to keep her balance. She stumbles back and Yelena thinks of a few moves that would be a good closing of the spar: uppercut to Kate’s jaw, trip to floor her, dart behind and put her into a headlock for a tap out. Instead she slides up for another shove.
“All digital digging is stalking!” Kate huffs, mostly from the strenuousness of the workout. “But digital first. I know enough about —” And here Kate tries for a sucker punch to switch the dynamic of their fight, Yelena barely manages to dodge. “— cyber security that I think I can get into their personal devices remotely.”
“Okay, do that.” Yelena says, grabbing Kate’s wrist and attempting to twist Kate around to wrench her arm behind her back. “Their phones especially.”
Kate’s good, and Yelena feels a surge of pride that Kate does a good duck and spin to regain control of her arm. “Anyone you want to start with?”
They separate, breathing heavy. It was a good dance they just had. “Hill.” She says, the closest to Fury out of the four commanders. If they can rule her out as the one who's turned on him then there's also a good chance that Fury is using her assistance to try to regain control, so it'll be good to keep tabs on her.
“Roger that.” Kate says, and they simultaneously break away and cool down.
Here, as they prepare to continue on to classes, Yelena sees the change in schedule once again. The drifting session to take place during their safety course.
“Sync-pi—?” Kate says.
“Yes, our safety drifting.” Yelena explains, and they head back to their room together to freshen up.
“Oh, okay. Those sound like a lot.”
And they are, precisely, a lot. It'll be good for Kate to go through these, and it's been a long time for Yelena since she's had practice of these too. So, she reasons to herself, it'll be good.
It'll be fine.
All the rest of their classes and a quick break for lunch pass by in a bit of a blur, Yelena's mind keeps getting caught on their sync-pi session. Who is she kidding, this will suck so bad.
They arrive to the session and are handed packets of information right off the bat.
“So, this is a safety drifting session. I trust you've both seen the change and are mentally ready to drift.” Dottie says, more than asks, but all the same they don't continue until they both affirm that they have. Dottie continues, “Well it's early, technically, but where you're both at in drifting we should've done this a little sooner.”
Kate finishes skimming the safety sheet, “Okay, so the itinerary’s been saying ‘sync-pi’, which, I see now means —”
Yelena confirms right with her, “Unconscious pilot. Yes. We had one unfortunate incident where someone had blood drawn, and the memory of it made the co-pilot faint. So now we do it as SOP.”
Dottie nods. “Yep. The idea is to do this in three parts. First two are standard faints from reflex syncope. This will last under thirty seconds. The third is for if — god forbid — the pilot is out-out. So for this you'll each be put under for longer so you can learn to power down while in an altered state of consciousness.”
“Oh boy,” Kate mutters.
Yelena opens her mouth to respond, but Dottie has found what they're looking for, and continues to speak: “I looked through the process and verified your medical charts are good for this process but please review it and sign off on it anyway, just in case.”
They're each handed another small packet of paper. Honestly, Yelena’s seen just about every version of this, having helped create the escapes for sync-pi. Well, they came from the Red Room first. Semantics.
But still she skims for changes, and the usual things are found: altered consciousness levels and symptoms of each, sodium nitroprusside and potential side effects, physostigmine and how long it takes to activate in the bloodstream, blah blah blah, whatever. It all looks the same to her.
She watches as Kate more studiously takes in the information, her lips pursing a few times before she lowers it and looks at Yelena.
Yelena raises one brow and tips her head. Up to you, is what she really means with the gesture.
Kate nods. “Okay,” She says, and signs the release form.
Yelena does the same.
“Great, looks good. The doctors will fill you in once you're suited up.” Dottie says and leaves the cockpit to go to the control room.
“This will suck so bad.” Yelena huffs.
Kate’s expression shutters from nervous to blank.
“Oh, I just meant,” Yelena mentally winces. “If you're fainting you like, go all limp and someone catches you. Very dramatic. But it feels weird in the drift from both ends. Just something to get used to.” Yelena says, and hopes she helps.
Clearly she doesn't because Kate blanches. Then she shakes out her shoulders and swivels her head in a sort of trying to loosen up gesture, the very same she does just before they start sparring. She shakes her hands and blows out a few quick breaths.
This has not done wonders for the assistants helping her put on the Drivesuit. But Kate certainly seems calmer.
“You want me to go first?” Yelena offers.
“Uh — for what? Which part is ‘first’?” Kate asks, putting her helmet on, so she's muffled very briefly.
“I remain the conscious one.” Yelena says.
Kate thinks about it, and Yelena watches her. First her head tilts and her brows furrow, and then she squints. Yelena has no doubt if she weren't having the leg pieces installed right now she'd do a little pace as a show of nerves.
“I don't think I want to be unconscious first.” Kate says finally.
“Okay.” Yelena says. “Have you ever done, like, hallucinogens? Ah, 'shrooms or something?”
“No. But NyQuil gives me crazy dreams. Does that count?” Kate asks.
Yelena shakes her head. “No, you'll need to have been awake. Well at its worst, if a co-pilot is really out, it's like you've taken shrooms or something similar.”
“This is.” Kate takes in a quick breath. “This is so not helping.”
She laughs a little and claps Kate on the small pauldron at her shoulder. “It won't be that bad. You'll just feel weird. Okay?”
They're approached by the doctors in their medical team, who fill them in on what to expect: a dose of sodium nitroprusside based on their weight, a list of symptoms to expect. The usual stuff.
They hook up to the Pons System. There's a nervous air from Kate, and so the first memory that pushes through is one of hers.
Kate’s sitting in a nearly empty locker room. She's twelve and all long limbs — not nearly as tall as she will be, but taller than Yelena ever was. A bow in her hands and a quiver in her back, she looks a bit like a dork. She's nervous because she's the closing shot for her school team. The rest of them are out there, counting on her. And she'd — well, the crowds and everything, it was almost too much. No, it was too much.
She’d come in here to calm down, but the spiraling thoughts had made her feel worse and now she feels on the verge of tears. She's being ridiculous, she knows but she just can't help it.
The sound of the locker room door opening makes Kate’s head shoot up and over: she should still have plenty of time. Thankfully it's just her mom.
“Hey,” She sniffles.
“Oh honey,” Mom says, immediately knowing Kate’s not doing well. She crosses the room, heels clacking and echoing as she goes. Her hands cup her daughter’s cheek. “Do you want to leave?”
“No.” Kate says firmly. She can't, not with her team counting on her.
“Good.” Eleanor says. She tips Kate’s head up to look at her. Eleanor's so much younger than she is today, but even then just four years a widow and it's taken its toll: wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a certain hardness that's crystallized from something brittle. At Kate’s look, Eleanor continues. “You're always going to be scared, sweetie. But we don't back down.”
Kate nods, and Mom nods with her, a kind and reassuringly gentle smile on her face. Kate repeats: “We don't back down.”
“Right. We fake the confidence if we have to, but we don't back down.” Mom repeats, firmly.
In the drift, Kate’s mood lifts, a mantra that's gotten her through so much in her life.
The memory fades and goes into one of Yelena’s.
She's sitting in a field, yellowing grass all around her. She knows she's pretty well hidden, but it doesn't take long for Natasha to find her anyway.
“Hey,” Natasha says, plopping down on the grass next to her. Her legs are spread in a ‘v’ and she leans back on her hands.
“Hi.” She says finally.
“So that was something.” Natasha says.
“It really was.” Yelena says.
The silence that passes is somewhat uncomfortable, if mostly thoughtful.
Natasha breaks the silence, losing the weirdest game of chicken she's ever played. “You don't have to come.”
“No, I want to.” Yelena insists.
Natasha gives a loud guffaw. “No you don't. And you don't have to, really! You can stay here, relax, you know. Live.”
She gives Natasha her best, most unimpressed look. “With Melina and Alexei? Are you kidding? No, you said —”
“We stick together from now on, yeah.” Natasha says, or sighs really.
Yelena bristles. “Do you not want me to?”
“I do! It's just… I mean we'll be digging up Red Room files, working with the US government. You know, shit like that.” Natasha says, and her tone tells Yelena exactly what her sister thinks of all that: disgusting and horrible.
“Right, exactly. You're not doing this alone. Besides, you will not remember anything in your old lady brain. You'll need me.” Yelena says, displaying far more confidence than she feels.
“I always need my sister.” Natasha says.
And warmth blooms in her chest over it and settles something that felt unmoored. “Yep, you'd never be able to get those Jaegers to move if you're the only one there.”
Natasha rolls her eyes and jabs her shoulder. “Alright, okay. If you're going to be a brat the whole time I'm going to make them kick you out.”
“Hah! So funny!” She says, jabbing her sister in return.
The memory fades and the drift sync stabilizes.
As soon as the AI announces they're stable, the doctor approaches Yelena with a needle. She watches him jab it in and release the medicine.
The effect is pretty quick as her blood pressure drops. First the dizziness hits and the shortness of breath. Her steps become uncoordinated and beneath them the Jaeger treadmill shudders and stops as their movement is no longer in sync.
“Holy shit!” She thinks Kate thinks, but it could've easily been her, either way the thought is presented and she finds she vaguely agrees.
Her vision tunnels and dims and at some point she's stopped walking. She's going to faint. Later she might reflect on the way Kate’s awake and functioning brain seemed to prolong the experience, drawing out the sensation of losing consciousness. Some part of her is connected to Kate and it bounces between states. It's like she's dreaming, and then she's watching herself faint: body going limp and the doctor gently lowering her body to the floor.
Her thoughts become untethered, except for one: Kate Bishop still attached to her. The panic from Kate is a distant thing that makes her want to reach out and grab her hand. Instead all she can do is linger in this halfway state, unable to do more than exist just like this.
And then she blinks as she's roused by the doctor.
She feels grumpy and groggy as she puts herself upright. A headache has formed in her head and her fingers touch the hard plastic of the helmet, only now realizing she'd raised her hand to rub her temple.
Next to her Kate’s done the same gesture.
“Jesus,” is all Kate says. Or maybe she does, she still feels a little disconnected from herself.
She's handed an orange juice and a granola bar with instructions to drink the juice first. After the juice she feels much, much better.
She sighs and can see the readouts on her heart rate have evened back out. The doctor checks her telemetry readings and says into his comm that she's good. Next to her the same thing is happening to Kate.
Once the headache clears she becomes aware she's drifting with Kate still.
“You okay?” She thinks.
“That was so weird,” Kate thinks, and then a rush of thoughts come all at once: a cute, Labrador puppy fills the drift as Kate attempts to cheer herself up, but at the same time she's thinking of the way she felt like she was being sucked in to something, mentally, like she needed forty coffees to feel awake. But once it was done it was like a rush in a different direction — a nearly manic cheeriness at being awake and aware.
“Yes, it's weird, isn't it?” Yelena says.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Kate says.
Drifting with Widows in combat scenarios has made Yelena realize that each person who went unconscious presents the awake drifter with a unique set of sensations.
One time Sonya was knocked out by a panicked and lucky security guard, and Yelena felt like she entered a daydream; every action carried a surreal feeling, even the feeling of being stabbed had deliriously made her laugh. The closest she ever got to the same sensation was being awake three days in a row.
Now, once her blood pressure adjusts and she's ready for Kate, she first shares a look at Kate. Kate chews nervously on her lip.
“It's okay. Have you ever fainted?” Yelena hadn't thought to ask before.
“No, and I'm not — I'm not scared, I'm just thinking about it too much.” Kate thinks in return.
“That's okay, you did great for your first time. Earlier.” She thinks.
In the drift Kate feels better with the compliment, which is chased by self-deprecating amusement — likely she picked up all the little secondary emotions Yelena felt with her thoughts, playing into Kate’s love of validation, and also her desire to do a good job. “Okay, I don't need to get an ‘A’ in fainting class,”
“No? I thought you had to get summa cum laude in drifting thoughts, in general.” Yelena jokes.
“Rude!” Kate laughs.
And Yelena joins her.
“Ready?” Dottie asks.
She looks at Kate again.
Kate nods, and then says “Yes.” Into the comm.
She watches the doctor approach Kate with the needle, and (a completely baseless) fear grips her for a half second, along with a (pointless) surge of desire to protect her. (What is she thinking?)
In the drift Kate feels amused anyway.
In the field there was never a sign someone is going to get knocked out, not like this. Kate’s heart rate kicks up a notch when the doctor approaches, and her thoughts do a brief spin of panic.
Once the medicine is dispensed, there's a fair few seconds for Kate to think “That wasn't so bad!”
Which doesn't last very long because Yelena begins to feel the pulling sensation of the faint. Usually there isn't enough time to think anything more beyond ‘Oh no,’ which is about how far Kate gets.
All the while Yelena feels the way it fills the drift with a kind of static — buzzing thoughts that never finish forming or rise out coherently into a picture.
A sort of tingling sensation takes her, a feeling like she's just started winding down from being drunk: the floor sailing beneath her and every time she blinks the room spins. The feelings she has are slippery too, mood swinging from mindfully calm to dread and then to distantly sleepy.
Her world becomes unfocused and her thoughts bounce around half-formed. In the drift the static is nearly overwhelming, like it'll consume her too.
Then Kate’s rousing. She looks clammy and pale, though Yelena imagines she didn't look much better herself.
Even though it was for maybe fifteen seconds, it was long enough that Yelena’s still disoriented a bit.
Kate’s thoughts begin to form again, slowly. First a very emphatic “Fuck.” Is thought.
As the orange juice and granola bar do their work, the next thought is “Worst nap ever, what the hell.”
“Right? And you don't even feel good after.”
“And you don't even feel good after!” Kate repeats, exclaiming in loud agreement, startling the doctor reading her telemetry charts. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
They're disconnected completely from the drift right now, and it's really for the doctors to make sure there's no side effects to the sodium nitroprusside on them — or worse, like a hidden heart condition makes itself known. So, they're disconnected and sat down while Dottie walks back in to give their spiel on the next portion of training.
The thing is, in training the command center has access to all the buttons the co-pilot does, so they can jump in and deactivate settings and shut the cockpit down to keep the neural load from becoming overwhelming for the conscious pilot.
In the field it's completely up to the co-pilot to navigate and shut things down. The cockpit is a closed system — so the command center can only attempt to help guide the co-pilot through being in an altered state of consciousness to shut down the Jaeger.
If it's a faint, the co-pilot should be up in under thirty seconds — but, again, in the field there's simply no way to know; especially if a firm blow to the Jaeger’s head knocks them out. It could be a faint, it could be something much worse.
Dottie explains, the first response is to try to rouse the pilot by speaking, spiking adrenaline, and transmitting thoughts to them in the drift. Yelena's heard thinking of falling works pretty well too, but she's never been in a position to try that one before.
It's when the pilot is really unconscious that the escapes are trickier — powering down the Jaeger alone, making sure the Drivesuit life support has activated for both pilots, and disconnecting from the drift, all while having an altered state of consciousness and doing it before the neural load becomes too taxing.
These are things Dottie explains to them, and they will do both today — first trying to rouse the sync-pi, and then second trying to shut down the cockpit and end drifting.
“Whenever you're ready.” Dottie says at the end.
Yelena herself is as ready as she'll ever be for things like this.
Together they get the Spinal Clamps attached, and hook up to the cockpit and while they do the doctors explain once again what's going to happen — like they maybe stupidly forgot in the last twenty minutes.
They connect to the drift and Kate’s still nervous about passing out. The drift sync is stabilizing faster since they were ghost drifting, and she's vaguely aware that they’ll be stable within seconds.
“It's okay,” She thinks. “Remember, breathe.”
She feels in the drift more than sees Kate nodding, and it's really not like she offered much in terms of reassurance, but Kate does feel better all the same.
“You did this as a trainer?” Kate asks, thinking back to Yelena’s earlier thoughts.
She hums. “Yes, for a short while this was part of regular training. But it was found to be more effective to learn this with your co-pilot.”
“That makes sense!” Kate says.
The doctor approaches her again once again the medicine goes in.
It doesn't take long for the effects to take place, the tunneling vision and the shortness of breath.
But, something's wrong, is about as far as she gets to think before a tingling sensation grows from the tips of her fingers and toes to her hands and feet and then quickly into her arms and legs.
Her heart flutters and weakness takes her. She blinks and she's sunk to her knees. The doctor is holding her upright.
A kind of panic enters her mind, distant and vague. They're still drifting, Kate’s thoughts rapid zaps and nearly impossible for Yelena to pick apart and make sense of — they bleed into the rest of the sensations in her body.
Her hand comes up to point to the disconnect button, just out of reach, but the gesture is wide and hard to interpret, she can't even get her fingers to bend so she can point.
The doctor lowers her, he must because her view changes to the ceiling of the cockpit, and he's saying — something, but a ringing is in her ears, a kind of annoying and long tone.
She's going to faint.
It takes a lot of effort, but she turns her head to look at Kate, whose hands scrabble at the helmet of her Drivesuit. They have to disconnect, is what she thinks she says, but can't be sure, the breathing’s become too hard as her chest painfully tightens, never mind the speaking.
Kate kicks out of the treadmill, and she can see a flurry of action making its way to her — blurry blobs though they all may be: the medical team, assistants, Dottie.
But she finishes passing out.