Brave - 8.31.2013 [Gray]

Gray

Downtown.

The hustle of Denver is perhaps a little less than one might expect
from the boundaries of American Culture. Nights chew the air all the
same, smoke, smog and the chatter of a thousand lives in a thousand
thousand ways. Bodies move in and out of routine and concern, with the
dulled gray senses of civilization. People brush shoulders, pass each
other in the street, knock back a few brews. Earn the world on the
backs of long hours at the office. It is a routine. It is a service
paid to a very long and very old tradition.

Conformity.

Then you have those moments. Those places, where conformity cannot
live. Where it falls to pieces and leaves behind a rawness the world
cannot handle. That's why they lock it behind large buildings,
surround those buildings with signs and signals and pay homage at a
distance. It's where respect lives and where no shy amount of fear
clings to the exterior. You didn't go there unless necessary. You
didn't go there because it wasn't part of the routine.

You didn't go there because it's where Death hung out for coffee,
waiting to be activated.

The Hospital. St. Lukes. White walls, the smell of disinfectant. The
chime of voices calling over the PA system. The Waiting room with it's
Emergency doors, letting through the various bodies who ran afoul of
something unpleasant on their way to conformity. The Nurse at the desk
is perhaps a little bleary eyed, waiting for the replacement or
working a shift too long to be anything but difficult. A Coffee,
Cigarettes and Redbull sips sort of shift.

The Waiting room is mercifully thinned. A few couples, a few singles,
a few of the elderly. Midnight threatening. A half hour off, the yawn
of the dead putting children and parents to their pillows somewhere
out there in the world.

The Emergency room door hasn't clapped open in a while. So we're about due:

The sliding doors chime open, the rush of Paramedic talk, dominating
the air as the stretcher comes in. Blood. On the hands, on the shirts
and on the body beneath the straps of the gurney, coughing and
spitting and chewing on a throat tube. Convulsions wrack the length of
the board as the body on it trembles, shakes and twitches. The
paramedics are trying to keep him stable. Trying to keep him still.

The bullet wounds are soaking through the gauze they've got pressed to
his stomach.

The stretcher goes wheeling into the opening, drawing the eyes and
attention of the few in the waiting room, another pair of individuals,
a head wound and a helper to see him to a seat, wander in after,
watching the spectacle. Behind them...

...He is draped in a long wool coat, the elbows patched a bright
orange, the hem lipped his knees. He wore a wifebeater, hardly crisp
in it's whiteness, a blood spray cradling his rib-cage, long since
soaked in. His face is dominated by a beard both thick and unrepentant
in it's growth, wisps and natted tendrils reaching down past his
chest. His hair is short, trimmed to a thinness bot uniform and
functional. His eyes track the gurney, follow it through the doors.

It is a moment of him standing in the midst of the hall, mahogany skin
capturing and trapping the light, refusing it's reflect and making him
seem a statue. Still, regarding the emergency doors as the noise is
cut off by their slow swing closed.

Then, not a glance in any other direction, he is moving toward those
doors, intent on pushing through.


Molly Toombs

As one can imagine, Saturday nights in the Emergency Room of a hospital situated downtown in a city are busy places to be.  Molly's shift had started at noon earlier today and she was slotted to be off the clock at midnight, relieved by another nurse who would come to do her half of a twenty-four hour day work cycle.  The traffic coming through had been typical through most of the day-- a few broken bones, a plethora of stitches.  A myriad of unexplained 'splitting headaches' that couldn't be relieved with any over-the-counter pain killers, some terrible coughs that wracked tired bodies from a bad lung virus that was going around a couple downtown offices.

But then the sun faded the Day to Dusk, and more people began to pour in.

The bruised, the battered, the couples still fighting even as they came through the emergency room doors for whatever injury they had caused themselves or their children.

Dusk bled out into Night, and the grim cases began to appear.

The teens convulsing from overdoses, the gashed arms and hands from knife fights.

The man coming through on the gurney, the one that convulsed and gagged and fought as his body struggled against the bullets in his gut?  He was the third gunshot wound tonight.  Anyone could tell you that violence had skyrocketed in the past month and a half-- it was an often visited topic on the news channel that ran all through the night on the small waiting room monitors.

Molly wasn't one of the nurses who greeted the paramedics.  She had been busy with a woman well into labor, and was just returning from the maternity ward where she had left the woman with the appropriate staff.  The scrubs here weren't required to be uniform, so the nurses ran the spectrum of colors and patterns.  They flocked to the gurney to help it through the doors, with one behind the admission's desk.  For one reason or another, she didn't stop the bearded man from going through the swinging double doors that separated the waiting room from the medical rooms (you know, curtains blocking areas into room-like squares).  Perhaps she was preoccupied on the phone calling up the O.R., perhaps something was knocked over during the rush to help the paramedics with the dying man that had just come in.

Whatever the reason, this peculiar man made his way through the double doors and into the alley of temporary rooms for people to be treated in, or housed in until another room in a more appropriate wing of the hospital was prepared.

He wouldn't get too far, though.  At the first intersection of 'hallways', he was intercepted by Molly who came up from his left.  She was a woman of average height, with a softer, curvier build that was downplayed by the uniform cut of the dark violet scrubs she was wearing.  Her face was freckled, her eyes a clear blue, but her eyebrows were penciled and her hair was dyed darker than what clearly ought to be naturally red.  She looked tired, but that was the uniform expression of all nurses here tonight.  Her hair was clipped back, half up.

"Sir, you can't be back here."  She didn't make any effort to sound polite or gentle.  That sort of tone was reserved for those who looked genuinely lost (the elderly, the handicapped, the young).  Adults did not get the same, for they were plenty capable of knowing better.  "You need to return to the waiting room."

Gray

"No."

It is direct, blunt and strangely relaxed, as if Molly's demands were out of synch with the norm. As if the expectation were an allowance for his presence. The Hospital lights overhead gnawed on the eyes, carving out clarity and delivering a shirk of the head or a tilt to one side. Away from the revelatory quality of those fluorescent glares.

The gurney continues ahead, the man attempting to sidestep Molly and follow it's path with his eyes. The clarion of shouts and beeps and PA announcements are as background noise in the hallway airs. He remains out of place. Apart from the crashing extremes that exist here.

"That's one of my crew." Before or halfway through Molly's repetition of orders because she was used to telling people what was going to happen behind the emergency doors. Those dull black eyes, absorbing of light rather than reflective. He meets Mollys gaze. Doesn't shy and tucks both hands into the pockets of the wool jacket.

"You wanna keep an eye on me, fine you stay on my heels. You wanna call a badge, you can do that too and we'll have a nice loud and angry time right here in your neat quiet halls. Either way I'm staying by my boy until I know."

He would shoulder, push and nudge the far smaller Molly aside, gait a ponderous fluidity like that of a toppling tree or errant wave; relentless and eventual in the gurney's wake.

Molly Toombs

He told her no, but the nurse with the freckles didn't seem surprised at all.  She was used to telling people how things were going and what they needed to do back behind these doors, but that didn't mean she was accustomed to being obeyed.  At least not the first time she asked.  She's had her share of bruises and bumps and bites from struggling E.R. patients.  Once or twice an addict has pushed her into the cabinets or a wall because she would call them out on their pill seeking tendencies and refuse to budge or see 'their side of it, have a heart'.

So, when this man explains that the person on the gurney is one of his crew and that he was going to stay beside him come hell or high water, and when he attempted to find his way past her again, she would reach out and grab him (unless he pulled or wrenched away suddenly) by his forearm.

Her grasp wasn't much stronger than would be expected, she was an average sized woman who didn't appear to have a strong habit of athleticism or weight lifting.  It was a little surprising how quickly and without hesitation she reached to lay hands on the man.  Not to attack, not to bully, but to stop.  She looked like she had no patience left, and like he-- the man with the beard tending to a friend-- was nothing more than a blip on the radar of her exhausting evening.

She looked a little on the pale end-- not in the sense that she spent too much time inside or was sick necessarily, but just that she hadn't slept well in the past day or two.  Her eyelids were heavier than usual, and though no shadows discolored the space below her eyes just yet, it couldn't be too far off from happening if you were to judge the rest of her tense body language and absolute lack of patience or empathy in this evening.

"Oh, I will call the officer here, and your loud angry discussion will happen outside.  Or you can go back to the waiting room yourself, and I will come to tell you how he's doing and when he's been moved to a room.  It's your choice."

Gray

The hand comes out to grasp his arm and there is a ludicrous moment of immobility that will collect under Molly's restraint.

The man moves and she comes with him, a brief tug sending him forward with the easy stride of determination. There is something off about the strength behind it. Not so much in the disregard for her resistance but that arm beneath her own is not ferociously broad. Not enough to warrant such a negligent dismissal of her effort.

Five steps. Five steps Molly is dragged, forced to walk or hurled along with his limb clutched for support. Five steps and his attention is on the gurney, vanishing into a room or behind some curtain. The man in it is screaming around a bloody tongue, gurgled and diffuse.

Five steps and he halts. Doesn't stop but halts as if remembering. He turns to look down at the shapely night nurse with a grimness and vague sliver of...shock? Surprise? Irritability.

"You pushing the wrong line tonight girl." Slow. His words are chosen, not simply delivered, each one a handed plate of clarity within a tone both blunt and unsuited for lies. 

He glances down at her badge, a flitting squint at the name before meeting her gaze again.

"Toombs." Spoken like a title. Like something to commit to memory. The lips inside that beard make an appearance, flexing around a tightness that grinds his molars.

"Let go of the ar-" Another scream from inside the room. Something half articulate. Half terrified. The words are garbled by the door but something in them has the man's head whipping around. Tension in the arm again. Relentless stirrings of marching forward though he seems on some cusp, not yet in motion.

Molly Toombs

Her eyes round with surprise, those exhaustion-heavy lids perking up for the moment when the man continues walking and pulls her along with.  She knew she wasn't a great example of physically strong, but she also knew that she was an adult woman who had played sports through high school and college, and that wasn't that long ago at all.  The other night she'd thrown her body against a door and jammed it closed to keep a younger, more fit woman out of the way.  She'd kept pace with a long-legged man while they bolted full-tilt through a tight space.  All of this without getting winded or spraining an ankle, thank you very much.

She didn't think she could physically detain the man, he was larger than her after all, but she didn't think that he could virtually ignore her and pull her along in the manner that he was.  Her fingers tightened around his forearm, and she half-marched half-stumbled along after him those five steps before he stopped, because the gurney had gone into a room and the light wooden door had smacked shut behind.

He growled a warning at her, and called her by the name on her badge-- M. Toombs (RN).

Molly did release his arm, but only after the scream of pain and the madness that it's guiding hand toward death's door would bring you to cut from the room, even through the closed door.  The bearded man snapped his head around, looked restless and alert and wound up.  He wanted to go to where the screaming, garbled words had come from.  Molly had a fleeting suspicion that this man's intention was not to provide comfort to this dying man, but rather to silence him.  Something in the way that he had reacted to what he had heard.  It was how men reacted when they heard a concept, an idea, or an admission-- not how they responded to worrisome sounds, such as the howls of wolves or the flurry of gunshots.

Typically such a suspicion would be dismissed, but Molly wasn't quite the same person she was three weeks ago.  She'd learned much, seen things she oughtn't, and come to accept new realities as exactly such-- reality.

Last night, though...  Last night topped the cake.  What she had seen
(skin stretched like tanning leather / bones littered and cracked / blood draining into ancient vases and bowls / a magic man, bullet hole steaming in his head)

was enough to lose sleep over, to lose the ability to presume best intentions in defiant strangers.

"Look here," she hissed at him.  Her tone of voice had changed some, and now spoke Molly as she was, not Molly as she was at Work.  The worn-but-professional tone that she would normally speak to patients and their family with was gone, and now she spoke as though she had just encountered this man elsewhere, a bar or on the street, and she was telling him off there instead.

"Whoever you think you are doesn't matter, not for this."  There was a phone on the wall, plain and made of beige plastic, and about four to her left (his right, between him and the door behind which a man was trying to die).  Here eyes hopped to it, and she moved the three steps it took for her to reach it.  Unless stopped, she takes the phone off the hook and puts her fingers on the buttons, pausing only to look at the man with her eyebrows raised, waiting for his reaction.  Last chance, she was clearly indicating.

Gray

There is a sharp tang of something in the air, clogging the disinfectant sting (stringent, narrow and sour). The copperish taste of blood haunting the back of the throat and painting the tongue. The tall dark man is paying strong attentions to the faux wooden door with the patients and doctors behind it. 

There is a tense moment, Molly releasing his arm in favour of a phone and a threat. He doesn't follow her. Doesn't register while the screams dribble away.

There is a crash. A bludgeoning holler from several ofthe medical personnel, pregnant with irritation and the earnestness of duty. He remains frozen, still. Immobile enough to be mistaken for a carving. 

The screams die. The medical staff erupt in a flurry and someone comes storming out demanding a defib. It's enough to bring his hand up, pointing at Molly.

"Done."

It is. He seems to shrink or at least retract from whatever potential violence or hostility might well have erupted with the stand-off. His hands move from the pockets of the jacket, fists formed around the tension that hung in the Air. He breathes outward and the sound escapes with a brunt delivery that makes the sound all the more noticeable. 

And he steps back, away from the forward momentum of the last minute, pulling the tension out of the air and along in his wake. His features recast that solemn state he seemed to carry when first entering the hospital doors. His hands flex out of their bound threat and he turns enough to regard Molly .

"Brave little thing."  Statement. Made with a flicker of a huff before he turns to the doors they came through, a hand held out to push the doors clear for him to pass through again.

Molly Toombs

The stand-off would have been a tense one if this tall dark man with the long scraggly beard were focused at all on Molly and her challenge to his threat to press through regardless of what she did.  The tension that ran the lines of his body had her worried that he may actually hold true to his warning, and that she would need to physically bar the door from that impressively (abnormally/unnaturally) strong man while crying for help detaining him.

But the yelling from the room that housed the man with a belly full of bullets went quiet, and the door burst open while someone made a scrambling dash for the nearest defib.  Molly glanced back over her shoulder at the commotion and scowled at what she was seeing.  She couldn't help but feel that moment of muted resentment for her coworkers, couldn't help but find someone in that room incompetent for not having that defib unit in there as soon as they wheeled the man in.

In that same moment, though, the electric buzz of challenge and potential eruption diffused from the shared space between Molly and the stranger.  The lines that made up his body relaxed, tension bleeding free, and he lifted a hand to point at her and declare that he was done.  She watched him cautiously, frowning, while he walked back up the hallway to the double doors he had come through.  Along the way he called her a 'brave little thing', then the doors swung open and he exited through the barrier between treatment and waiting for it.

Molly had hung the phone back up before he was completely gone, and stood now with her arms folded over her chest, just under her bust, and scowled after the man thoughtfully.

He'd declared that the person in the room was one of his own, someone he had to be there for.  Yet, as soon as it seemed that this member of his 'crew', in his words, gasped their final agonized breaths he simply stopped caring.  He didn't rush to see his friend for a last time, or to talk with the staff about what had happened, why he wound up full of bullets, who should be prosecuted for such a crime...  None of that.  Seemingly satisfied that the bullets did their job, the man retreated.

Molly's suspicions were piqued, but she couldn't do anything about it.  She still had thirty minutes left of her shift (so said the brief glance to the watch on her wrist, anyways), so even if she did have some idiotic desire to tail the man, to play hero and go after him and badger him for information about what the hell just happened, she simply could not.  So she walked to the double doors, glanced through the glass panes in them to see if the man went for the door or would hover in the waiting room.

She would have only just enough time to find out which option he took before someone from behind her barked:  Molly!  What the hell are you doing?  We're dying back here, come help already!

And she would be drawn back into the hectic mayhem of a Saturday night in the E.R. for another thirty minutes.

------------------

Around 12:35pm, Molly exited the sliding doors for the emergency room's front entrance.  She had a bottled coffee drink in her hand, pulled from a stash in the break room fridge, and a tote bag at her hip whose straps cut diagonal across her chest and back respectively.  She smiled genuinely for the security officer who had resumed his post at the door some twenty minutes ago, back from whatever it was he had to be doing, and patted him on the arm as she passed, wishing him a good rest of the night, and him wishing her the same.

Outside, on the sidewalk in front of the hospital dressed still in her scrubs and sneakers, Molly pulled her elbows close to her sides and back, rolled her shoulders back as well, and arched her back to stretch without raising her arms full-on over her head.  It was about a ten block walk back home, all a part of her routine (she didn't own a car, you see, didn't understand the point if she lived as close as she did to everything she needed).

So she'd get stepping, walking up the sidewalk, along the curved driveway that would lead her to the main street sidewalk, but take her out of the light of the overhead lamps for a solid three hundred yards worth of travel.

That, the dark, made her more nervous than ever these days.  She masked her nerves by busying herself with shaking and opening the coffee drink as she went, trying not to look like she was half-expecting someone--something to catch up to her in the night.

Gray

That really would have made the most sense for this part of the story. A dark night, just past the witching hour, the threat of rain and a young thing wandering home alone. 

Ten blocks wasn't far to walk.

But it was an eternity to run.

It really would have been appropriate except Molly doesn't make it immediately to the sidewalk. Or a least, not without the familiar presence of the tall dark fellow sitting on one of the concrete bumpers bordering the parking lot and the pedestrian sidewalk.

There is a cigarette in one hand, unlit and regarded with the same casual nature one attributes an accident. He is curious and unfathomably distant in his wondering. The street lamp overhead is a brilliant orange, carving up strange citrus shadows of the very still fellow and his preoccupying cigarette.

That is until Molly emerges into the moment. Perhaps not close (because young things at this time of night don't approach abnormal black men in search of a confrontation) but he seems capable of picking her out. His voice carries-

"Was a good boy, Leshawn. Shoulda let me see him."

The cigarette is placed with delicate care on the concrete bumper, his head tilting down to watch the effort as if ensuring no harm should come to the smoke stick.

"Ain't had no family left." The eyes lift to regard her, distant or close it didn't matter. He stared with his whole body, slanted toward her. 

"That's on you." He points, as if tapping some blackboard. 

Molly Toombs

Well, Molly was going to start walking home.  She didn't get the chance to make it out of the safe glow of the street lamp (well, technically, parking lot lamp, but it all served the same purpose didn't it?).  The same man that held her suspicions and had gotten her on edge earlier, less than an hour ago, was still out in front of the hospital.  He was sitting on the curb, contemplating an unlit cigarette.  Waiting for her?  Maybe.

She'd stopped on the sidewalk when he addressed her, away from the front of the sliding glass doors, out of view of the security guard who was more concerned about watching the waiting room anyways.  There was about eight to ten feet of distance between herself and the unfamiliar, but instantly recognized black man.  He pointed at her, said it was on her that the man in that emergency room died without seeing the last person he would have wanted to see, because apparently he didn't have any family left.

Molly's posture was casual, surprisingly so, for a worn thin nurse who was getting harassed the instant she stepped out the door to go home.
(Oh, but harass is such a strong word.)

She shook the coffee drink to mix it, pulled the plastic seal from the lid and tossed it in the garbage can that was set up in the wood chips that served as 'landscape' for the front of the hospital, peppered with flower bushes and shrubs in uniform distances and lines.

"Yeah.  You seem real torn up over it."  Her answer is dry, and her eyes are steady on him, waiting for his reply, watching to see how he reacts to being met with cool sarcasm and challenge rather than nerves or being outright ignored in favor of escaping to go home.  The tin lid was screwed off her beverage, and she took a first sip while waiting to see what this man's next move was.

Gray

"Don't know shit, girl.".

Sarcasm meets blunt. He delivers it with a sundry dismissal of her humour. He keeps that finger levelled at her, charged with a quiet solidity. Venomless yet adamant.

"But then that's you. Hours on, blood in gallons and concern all worn out on the first ten strangers coming to you with paper cuts."

The sneer seems hidden in the bristles, black beard clenching under the grim flex of a stiff jawline. It doesn't last long, a blink in time before he settles in place, once more still, hand falling away to grasp the cigarette between two careful fingers.

"Leshawn died screaming. Fear and shit in his guts. You know why?"

It sounds rhetorical until a moment passes and he's still staring at her expectantly.

Molly Toombs

There wasn't humor in her voice, sarcastic though her remarks may be.  Let's be clear on that point, if nothing more.  The woman who worked the swing shift at the E.R., who had learned within the last two weeks that vampires were real and all of the ones she spoke to warned of even more terrifying things in the shadows to be aware of.  The woman who had been held at gunpoint and nearly taken away into an alley to satiate the powertrip thrills of a thug with a weapon, only to be saved by a monster virtually carved from rock for how big and broad and dense his body was.  The woman who last night had seen a torture chamber of countless years of work and death, who had watched inanimate objects come to life and attack at the whim of a Middle Eastern man sitting cross-legged on the floor.

This woman didn't have a lick of humor left in her bones.  Not tonight.

He told her she didn't know shit, and she closed her eyes, lifted her eyebrows, and bobbed her head a little bit while she concluded her sip and took the drink away from her face.  The bobbing head was one of agreement.  He was probably right, after all.

When he asked if she knew why, she again refused to let that cool and borderline impatient demeanor or approach to this moderate confrontation waver.

"I would imagine it was the bullet wounds.  But as for why he got shot?  I don't know.  I'll bet you do, though, and something tells me that while you're willing to tell me what happened, you won't be telling the officer who's gonna be writing a report on this."

Gray

"That was your chance."

Something in his voice fell away. It didn't die, merely went back to sleep with the strange conclusion to a brief conversation. The cigarette clutched between his fingers is held out toward her, palm up and and rolled about on the tip of a thumb; an offer.

"Police do right by those in better parts of town. Tend to be misapprehending-" the word is pronounced outside of the ghetto brogue, as if borrowed from a more educated mouth -"-about our reasons no matter what they are." He murmurs, a grunt of exertion or a lost tidbit to that sentence comes with him climbing to his feet.

"I'll do right by Leshawn." Something there. Whatever went to sleep a moment ago, yawning in his tone for a moment.

"Taking you home." Because there wasn't a security guard on the route. Because she was tired enough to walk that length at this time of night. Because there wasn't a choice in the statement.

Molly Toombs

The cigarette was regarded for a minute.  It was looked at in the way that someone who hasn't smoked cigarettes before considers starting a new habit.  She knew the terrible things they did to your insides, that her lungs would hate her and punish her for the habit if she allowed it to form tonight.  But she also knew that nicotine apparently helped to soothe nerves, to bring you back to calm, and she needed that more badly than anything else in the last couple of days.  Trying something new might be a better option than falling upon liquor to help instead.

A few seconds ticked by on the clock, and with a reluctant hand Molly accepted the offered cigarette.  He said he was going to do right by Leshawn, and then advised that he was going to take her home.  Lola didn't carry a lighter, so she just held the cigarette for now and turned while the man rose up to his feet and walked to step out of the gutter and join her on the sidewalk.

"Why, in God's name," the woman started, but her body language suggested that she would physically contradict what she was about to say anyways, "would I want a stranger to walk me home?  You could be that murderer in the shadows, for all I know."

But she was turning to put her shoulder to his, and beginning to walk up the sidewalk, out of the orange fishbowl glow of the street lamp, into the shadows and along that long stretch of entrance driveway to get out to the street again.  His tone insisted that he would go, and she didn't have the energy or patience to fight him on it here and now in front of the hospital.  She didn't want to cause a ruckus, didn't want to have to witness an altercation between Jerry the security guard and this unknown element shoehorning his way into her evening.  So, instead, she relented and walked.  She could try and shake him after several blocks, when he's had enough time to get bored of her, before he could even guess at where her final destination lay.

"Do you got a light?"  And while he was searching for matches or a lighter or whatever else, assuming he complied with her request for help lighting the cigarette, she added:  "And a name?"

Gray

"Because brave means stupid in my language."

A lighter is produced when she asks, though he takes his time plucking it from his pocket. A cheap black kerchief comes out alongside it, folded neatly into the thin line that made it a bandanna on the brow. Dark stains gave it a wetness that he rubbed between his fingers on putting the fabric back into his jacket pocket.

"...and it's after midnight in the middle of a city. You people don't got good deeds where you come from? Or am I just too much a nigga to be a boy scout?"

He chaps the air with a soft huff, the warmth of the night a soft thing on the skin. He doesn't seem to mind the jacket. Or  allowing her to set the pace. She brushes a shoulder and he inches aside, offering her room to walk without crowding.

"Gray." A name. Something dull and vague, jaws flexing around some hidden tension that gave his beard a life of it's own; tendrils fingering the air. 

Molly Toombs

"Well, Gray, I'd take the chance to argue that the brave thing would be trusting a stranger to walk a woman to her home."

The lighter was accepted with a nod of her head, and she thumbed at it for a moment, having her first-time-off-the-high-dive moment with the flame and tobacco in hand.  He asked about good deeds, and his word choice was met with an exasperated roll of eyes in his direction, for her to look at him in a moderately annoyed fashion before putting the cigarette between her lips.  The lighter torched, the end was lit, and she took a drag.

She coughed, of course, but it was a small and contained thing, under her breath and with her face turned away from the man who called himself Gray, directing it into her other shoulder.  With that passed, she spoke once more.

"It's after midnight in the middle of a city.  Walking alone with a man you met forty minutes ago."  The cigarette was scowled at for half a second, then situated between her fingers so she could keep it held while untwisting the lid of her 'coffee' and taking a drink.  "But here we are regardless, so I suppose that argument goes out the window."  Another drag, this one more controlled, a bit easier.

"I'm Molly, if you don't want to keep calling me by my last name."

Gray

"Picky and brave."

He shrugs out of the moment, shedding the thin layer of humour that came on with that statement in favour of continuing their walk in silence for a time. This gives Molly a chance to acquaint herself with the wonders of nicotine as a coping mechanism, the cough, resultant return for a second inhale and lingering stink of the Belmont clouding the air for that minute.

"Molly." Spoken with that same independence of conversation he seemed fond of with names. Memorized or imprinted or confirmed in his first impression.

"Why you in the fixing game girl?" Apparently 'Molly' didn't quite cut it. His gaze shifts off to one side or another as they are walking, sparking off movements in the street or nearby windows and doors. 

Molly Toombs

He wanted to know why she was a nurse, and the question caught her a little off-guard.  People asked you what you did for a living all of the time, and tended to just accept 'nurse' as a satisfactory answer before moving on with their day.  It wasn't typical for people to ask why, though, so she had reason to pause before answering with a fairly simple, dismissive response.

"Because it's something that's easy for me to understand.  Medicine's something that just... clicked, I guess, academically.  I didn't have any other great dreams for a career, so I figured I may as well cash in on something I know I can do."

They made their way through the patch of shadows that swallowed the driveway into the hospital.  This brought them to a main road that the hospital sat on, with its four lanes of traffic and cement median in the center of the road.  Without skipping a beat, as is the way someone walks a path that they've traveled so many times before, she turned them right.  She was quiet while she walked, something was clearly on her mind, bothering her.  Truth be told, there were a plethora of things that crowded the space of her mind, eating and smoldering and waiting to be resolved.  At this moment, though, with this Gray man at her side, the troubles that concerned him directly were at the forefront, needing to be addressed.

It was easy to tell that Molly wasn't the sort to hold her tongue out of courtesy alone, so it wasn't much of a surprise when she cut the quiet between them again to glance over and up at the taller man, cigarette all but forgotten in her right hand because smoking wasn't her habit, and therefore wasn't a motion that happened thoughtlessly.  While focused on other things, the tobacco was forgotten.

"If your friend in there is so near and dear to you, why did you just walk out the second his heart stopped?"

Gray

"Still brave."

He didn't seem to answer her remarks about being a nurse. Not immediately, skipping instead to her remarks about Leshawn.

"Bullet and a friendly face. You expect anything more 'n that where we come from, you dead before a decade. Anyone can be blood where I come from girl and all brothers go out the same way. Timer on their chest and a coffin for a closet."

He keeps Molly's pace with an easy stride, dipping around street lamps and mail boxes. Newspaper dispensers and the occasional fire hydrant without effort all the while throwing his attentions into the night.

"Every man knows you less than shit if you a rat, whether you under the light, in cuffs or holding bullets. Man can't hold his own secrets he needs someone round to keep him respectful. Leshawn did well by that. Boys'll be proud."

A pause. Long enough almost for Molly to chime in again but not quite.

"Takes a special kinda brave to go digging up the shit others drop when they killing each other. Academic or not."

Molly Toombs

They come to a pause at a stoplight, and Molly nudges the button to cross before looking at the cigarette, thoughtfully, and taking another drag.  This one would be the final.  She'd have an expression of moderate distaste and disappointment on her face while regarding the little white stick and blowing its smoke out into the air.  She listened while Gray said what he would say, and frowned just a little at his comment about digging shit up.

"Well," she said slowly at first, like she was testing her weight on a sheet of ice before deciding it was safe to step out onto it.  "It seems the thing to talk about.  I mean, it's all I know of you, and we've got a ways left to walk."

Her expression turned moderately apologetic, for she knew what a shame it was to waste a cigarette, and she bent down to snub out the third-spent cigarette on the sidewalk.  She'd hold on to it still, though, and wait for them to pass a garbage can so she could throw it away respectfully rather than just leaving it on the ground.  "I'm probably not gonna stop wondering about it.  I mean, this is a man's life that was lost tonight.  He'll be in the papers tomorrow morning.  This is Denver, not Detroit.  Even with the recent wave of insanity we've been dealing with here, this stuff still hits the papers.  It's not so commonplace that it's overlooked.

"But you can stop answering.  Or you can stop walking with me.  You're just twisting your own arm to be a Boy Scout here, Gray."

Gray

"S'all you need. Plenty brave already gettin' in strangers faced over a dead man."

He watches her carefully diffuse the cigarette, first outing it when they pause and then waiting for a trash can. When he spies her about to throw it out he lifts a hand out toward her for it. Than promptly flicks it into an alcove with a deadbolt door, where weather and rain won't reach it.

"Homeless got stress too. Be kind."

Then onward.

"Papers are far removed. Talk about Leshawn from the outside. Got a rap and three years in the clank. Ain't no paper gonna martyr that boy no matter the dirt of this city versus Detroit, New York or any other. Dead man's still that no matter the ground he's in." Something lost there. Either he isn't eloquent enough to project the emotion behind it or too internalized in the moment to let Molly in on the discord. It sounds vaguely humourous.

"I don't wanna answer you'll know it by the crickets, girl." His gaze sharpens and his pace slows, eyes regarding the bud glow or a cigarette in an alley, the sound of a few voices reaching out, laughter and murmurs. It isn't until they are a small ways past the alley across the street that he returns to his usual state.

"Boy scout's more than just good deeds. It's survival. Knowing the best method and the best route in your walk. Straight on or twisting, whatever gets you there quick."

He glances down at her finally, the first on this walk of theirs. 

"Your place. It near a train?" 

Molly Toombs

His hand was held out for the cigarette when they managed to pass by a garbage can, and rather than throwing it away Molly acquiesced and placed the partially-smoked thing in his hand.  Her eyes followed, curious, as he lifted his arm and flicked it away into some alcove along the street.  He commented that it was for the homeless, and she shrugged one shoulder in response.  That made sense enough, so she felt no need to comment.  She just adjusted the straps of the tote bag on her shoulder, untwisted the cap on her coffee drink, and took another swig.

Their conversation pressed on, and Molly decided to let the budding debate over the relevance of a dead man lie still, as it should.  He said that the boy had done time, that he was known for being a criminal, and no newspaper would martyr him for his death regardless of the city that dead occurred in.  She was going to argue that she didn't say he would be made out to be a victim, only that his death would hit the papers.  She figured it would be a story to confirm that the rate of violence in the city only continued to swell by the week, and it would become a goading article aimed at the city's police force and politicians, challenging them to reign their city in.

Quiet took over them again, and Gray's shape tensed some and steps slowed when they passed in front of an alleyway.  He was on edge, distrusting of the laughter and words being shared in that alley, marked by the small red glow of a smoker within.  The people inside that space cared not for the two that passed before, so the parties did not meet and the Undead and Living continued on their way together.

"Unfortunately, not really."  He wanted to know if she lived near a train, and her answer was a negative.  She pointed to the north, though they were walking to the west right now.

"Amtrak station's up that way, if that's where you need to be."

And that was all she said for the moment.  It seemed she was finally taking a hint and finished antagonizing the man walking her home over whatever his involvement was in the loss of his friend.

Gray

"Easiest route."

By way of response. His gaze continues to travel their surroundings, without much pause or glance in her direction and it would appear that that is the extent of their relationship for the next few blocks. He entertains no small talk and expresses no distinction about who they are and what each other's story pertain to, beyond what's already been said and that seems to be enough for both. Alternative motives, briefly come together. He maintains her pace along the sidewalk, catches each curb with a simultaneous ease and keeps that buffer of several inches between their shoulders, all the while inspecting several minor disturbances (sudden noises, overhead conversations coming from open windows, the occasional passerby that gives them an eyeful as much as they receive it) that flit in and out of their vicinity.

It isn't until the one block mark comes that the dark skinned 'gentleman' seems to animate more. A tension flexing fingers into fists and curling back out again slowly. Their surroundings and the time, make for a fairly sparse witness account and his swift glances cast up and down all streets at the next intersection leave him with firm-faced edginess, that projects rather than internalizes. The air seems almost brittle at his shoulders, though his face has yet to bristle or shift from it's current mask of deadpan stoicism. Before she has a chance to take notice, comment on or possibly react to the strange and sudden alteration of the mood, he plucks his jacket open and aside and removes the length of a baseball bat, glancing down at her with a firming sort of stare. Eye contact.

"This ain't for you. One block left, yeah?" He doesn't wait for confirmation beyond a possible head nod. "Good, 'cause I'm that way." And he nods toward the direction the Train Station she'd indicated was; a sharp lit side-street, with interval spotlights that make the darkness between that much more prominent. "Molly Toombs." Spoken with that same memorizing quality. Tombstones and Epitaphs. Or Wedding Days and Graduations. Take your pick.

"I'll remember that. You need anything 'fore I go?"

An honest question, even if the details and specifics of this little jaunt suddenly suggest she was less a good deed on his list and more a body for him to orbit. Ulterior motives and damnation.

Molly Toombs

Quiet overcame them, and the curious couple walked through it for the next several blocks with no attempt to fend it off.

Certainly they were an odd sight to anyone on the outside looking in.  Often times a pair will not walk together with no attempts to break the ice and fill the silence between them unless they were in a relationship.  Yet, these two walked with a good, comfortable distance between one another-- Molly on the inner-most side of the sidewalk, Gray closer to the curb.  Maybe they were fighting?  The man did look surly and protective, how he kept glancing at every sound and looking up most of the alleys and into the parking lots that they would pass.  The woman just looked tired, and after a minute of walking in silence she found herself staring into the middle distance in front of her and slipping back into a review of recent events that have shaken her world.

This might be why, when they round the last corner and Gray becomes tense, Molly responds to it strongly.  Tension ran through Gray, caused his hands to flex into fists and made him look around more frequently.  She picked up on this and began watching him cautiously, her comfortable gait slowing but not stopping.  She didn't like how he kept scanning the sidewalk-- she assumed it was for pedestrians.  They were quite alone in this moment, although it was no sure thing that this would be the case for very long.

Then Gray reached into his coat and removes a baseball bat.  Molly's adrenaline spiked and she looked at him with wide eyes, turned her body so that she was facing him directly rather than giving him her left side.  She was reaching into her tote bag, probably for pepper spray, when he clarified that the bat wasn't for her and parted ways abruptly.  She stared, hand in her tote, as he walked a couple yards away.

When he stopped and turned to clarify her name, commit it to memory, and ask if she needed anything else, the woman looked dumbfounded, but only a little.  She was expecting an assault and gotten herself worked up, ready for fight-or-flight, and now she was left standing, looking stupid and feeling ashamed because while Gray wasn't very aware of this her fingers were touching the handle of a little snub-nosed pistol, specifically made for purse carrying.

"Uh.  No.  Thanks for the walk home, Gray, I appreciate it."

Then, after a moment's consideration, she added:
"Happy hunting."  Because what else was he going to do with that bat?  She assumed seek vengeance on whoever it was that put bullets in his friend's belly that night.

She'd snatch her hand out of her tote bag, away from the tiny cannon that lay in a stitched-on pocket inside, and jam that hand into the pocket of her scrub pants instead.  Head ducked down, she would turn and finish the last block's worth of walking to get home on her own.  Astoundingly, she'd make it to the door undisturbed.