The Nurse Thing - 10.25.2013 and 10.26.2013 [Nate]

Nathan Marszalek

A slow night on a swing shift is a bad sign. Coming in to find the medical beds half empty and the trauma bay serving one person who is stable and not going anywhere until the psych ward can come down and collect him doesn't bode well for the rest of the night. When Molly got here nothing much was happening other than the 08:00-20:00 RN for whom she was taking over was in a foul fucking mood and wanted to get out of here early because the roads were bad and she had to go pick up her husband from the airport.

Eventually that ray of sunshine gets out of there. A couple of drunks and homeless men come in. They get their frequent fliers, the drug-seekers. One woman comes in with mystery neuro symptoms and another guy comes in with what turns out to be a gallstone that will come close to breaking the hospital's record.

But the charge nurse, a woman maybe five years older than Molly who constantly chews nicotine gum and swears like a sailor and wears her hair like she was alive enough in the 1980s to still have a fondness for the huge hairsprayed look, doesn't rush in to write any more names on the trauma bay's dry erase board until close to two in the morning. She wears an expression somewhere between grim and annoyed and barks out details as she writes the next patient's details on the board.

"Wake up, boys and girls, we got an MVC incoming," she announces. The physician who has been sitting at the long table in the center of the room since coming back from his nth cigarette of the night looks up from where he was catching up on his paperwork. The dry erase marker squeak-squeak-squeaks. "Tractor trailer versus SUV, highway collision, SUV driver is going to the morgue. Passenger's coming in with flail chest and lower extremity numbness, GCS of twelve, pulse and BP suck. Wagon was three minutes out a minute ago."

The charge nurse slams down the dry erase marker and leaves this behind in red block print as everybody within earshot comes closer to see what they can do to get in the way.

MARSZALEK N | 26 M | MVC - GCS 12, (?) SPINE INJURY, FLAIL CHEST

Their trauma doc is not exactly a newbie but he's young enough that the charge nurse has drawn a series of boxes for his staff to check off on the board when they've completed the tasks - lab draws, X-ray, surgical consult.

The doc scrubs his hands up to the elbows while he waits.


Molly Toombs

Slow nights are the bane of Molly's existence.

On slow nights she didn't have things to busy herself with, and that meant that she had to interact with the people she worked with.  The day-shift woman that she was taking over for was alright, Molly supposed.  She liked to complain a lot, but at least she treated Molly like anybody else.  This woman wasn't involved in the social circle of other nurses that work emergency room and trauma cases-- the social circle that thought Molly to be a bossy, bitchy thing.  It used to bother Molly, when she was a young woman, to overhear the complaining and the stories with her name scattered all throughout the conversation in break rooms and at lunch tables.  It didn't take long for her to grow callouses against it, though, and soon she found herself flying solo on a social level but feeling relatively okay with it.

Tonight she wished that she smoked.  Then she would have a reason to go outside, breathe some crisp autumn air, and get away.  Instead she found herself gravitating toward the white board when the charge nurse started to announce an ambulance that was coming in-- right at the tail end of Molly's shift no less-- carrying a motor vehicle crash victim.  It's when the nurse scrawls the last name onto the board that Molly stands up straight, comes closer, pays much more rapt attention.

A name like that is unmistakable.  He wasn't exactly a 'Smith', after all.

Molly doesn't outright say that she knows the guy who is coming in, but if anyone cared to pay close attention to how straight her back got, how her shoulders pulled back and chin lifted and pupils tightened, they could probably piece it together.  Toombs was the stone-faced nurse, after all.  She was the hardass, the one who came to work and got shit done and would throw you to the dogs if you couldn't be bothered to do your job appropriately.  She didn't get emotional over work-- she was often the one left to handle the heartbreaking cases that would drift through their doors, often involving children or the elderly.

If the charge nurse bothers to stop her and ask her if she's comfortable with this, Molly will assure in a level voice that she absolutely is.

When the ambulance does arrive, Molly's there to greet it.  The doctor puts her in charge of keeping breath in the man's body, and this is precisely what she does.  Wherever the stretcher lands within the trauma bay, Molly is there by Nate's side, plastic tubes and sterile wrappers all in hands and being handled, prepared to be used.  Nate's somewhere between consciousness and a fuzz of colors that barely passes for it.  It's likely that he doesn't recognize Molly's face, even when it's right over his.  Her hair's pinned back with bobby-pins, her scrubs are navy blue, and her expression is severe, creased between the brows but with concentration rather than concern.

It's a surreal contrast to the gentle, sweet tone to her voice when she speaks to him.


"Nate.  Nate, this is going to help you breathe, you need to let me do this so you can breathe."  And with that said, she'll go ahead with slipping a tube past his teeth and down his throat.  She's fast and precise, doesn't struggle with accomplishing the task at all-- so long as he doesn't fight her, at least.  Once the job is done (which will be done even if someone has to hold his arms to make it happen) she's squeezing the sack that pushes air down into his lungs for him.


Nathan Marszalek

The charge nurse is a woman named Marcy and though she moves through the hospital like a goddamned hurricane she has the eye of one. A calm in the midst of all this wind and rain and when she slammed down the marker like to tell the triage chart that was what was up, boom, Marcy turned and saw the young nurse everybody hated at first for how smart and capable she was and she saw that look on her face and the steel gone into her posture and she recognized it.

And she did ask. She asked if Molly was alright and Molly said yeah, just and Marcy asked if she was staying. Absolutely she was.

"Alright," she says and clamps Molly's shoulder in her hand. "Don't be a fuckin' hero though - if you need to tap out, we paged Susanne already."

So the trauma resident, Henderson, finished scrubbing himself up and put on his gown and gloves and they had about 90 seconds at that point. Ninety seconds and then no more time for anything but muscle memory and subconscious application of all their combined centuries of education and experience. As soon as the ambulance bay doors blew open and brought with them the stretcher they could not miss a step or they would lose their patient. Victim is as good a word for him as patient but 'victim' would imply there was nothing to be done for him. A patient you work. A victim you shuffle off on the social worker and put out of mind as quick as you can.

Two Colorado State EMTs steer the stretcher. Atop the stretcher is an orange backboard. Atop the orange backboard is the six-foot-tall mess the city firefighters cut out of a car ten minutes ago. If it weren't for the fact that they've got a cervical collar around his neck and nylon straps securing him to the board he would be sitting up because he feels like he's drowning flat on his back. But he can't articulate that he feels like he's drowning. When they talk to him like they're talking to him now he moans and if the moans are words they strapped a non-rebreather mask to his face to get more oxygen into his system and the words turn to steam on the inside of the plastic. His features are half-obscured by dark red blood - nobody bothered mentioning the scalp laceration that poured blood down his face for the twenty minutes it took the firefighters to get to the scene and secure it and extricate him because that's the least of their worries right now. Even if he doesn't go into respiratory arrest he might never walk again. The medics taped bulky dressing over his broken ribs to keep them from moving but there's only so much that could do with all the jostling he's endured.

Everyone in the corridor knows when the young man's lung collapses. He coughs a violent pointless cough and tears the non-rebreather off his face and starts fighting the medic who tries to put it back on his face. He can't fight very hard - his blood pressure is dropping and he doesn't know where he is and it's effort enough to gulp for air when he's flat on his back. They follow Marcy's instructions to wheel him into the curtained-off section where the team will keep him from dying and they throw on the brakes and then the two medics and the firefighter and the burliest patient care technician in the department each take a corner of the backboard and count to three and move the board from the ambulance stretcher onto the hospital gurney. The three get the fuck out of there.

Nate's left lung makes no sound when Molly puts her stethoscope to its lower lobe. The upper lobe crackles. At least it's not filling with blood. He's normally pale for as little affinity as his skin has for sunlight but right now he's gone bloodless and a blue tinge rides his lips and nail beds.

As the patient care tech throws on a blood pressure cuff and clips a pulse oximeter to the patient's finger and Henderson collects the radiography technician a crowd of people who would jump in if there was room for them gathers outside the curtain and Molly appears at his side. She can tell just by looking at him that Nate doesn't know what's going on. His eyes keep sliding shut and soon the machine shows his vitals. "Shitty" is not the proper medical term but it will do - his pulse is racing and his blood pressure is sinking.

When she says his name Nate's eyes flutter open and he stops fighting her because he loses consciousness. Later on the bystanders will commend the young RN for how quickly she got the double-lumen endotracheal tube in place. Less than thirty seconds passed between her uttering his name and the first assisted ventilation. A minute later his blood pressure stopped its free-fall and his pulse decided to come back down.

"Jesus," says the burly PCT, a guy named Dashawn, younger than their patient and studying to become a nurse practitioner. He's been working here for two years now and Molly knows he only takes the Lord's name in vain when he's impressed. With the IV set he draws blood to send up to the lab while Molly works and while the X-ray processes Henderson rushes back over to put in a chest tube.

"Good job on that ET insert, Toombs," Henderson says with only a glance at the monitor. A jab of local anesthetic is all Nate gets before a scalpel slices open a hole between his ribs. Underneath all the other noise the barely-conscious whimpering noise he makes is almost lost. Molly is the only one who hears it. Henderson notices him jerk and says, "God d--Mark!"

The tall attending with graying black curls and chest hair that won't stay beneath the V-neck of his scrubs, Marco Diaz, has been standing at the foot of the stretcher the entire time not lifting a finger because the rest of them have it under control and he kind of likes watching Henderson shit himself when something pops out of the textbook and into the trauma bay.

"What?" he asks.
"He felt that."
"Yeah, no shit."
"I want to sedate him."
"With what?" Henderson doesn't know the answer. "You give narcotics to a flail chest you'd better have the crash cart ready."

The answer occurs to the resident around the time Molly may be ready to throw it out. She's seen this before:

"Intercostal block," Henderson says.
"You just gonna leave that incision open while we wait for the anesthesiologist, or you gonna finish tubing him?"

Henderson glances over at the tray Molly brought over before she took up her place at Nate's head and goes back to work.

"Keep an eye on him, Toombs," Diaz says.

All Molly can do is keep squeezing the football-shaped bag every five seconds while the radiography technician wheels her machine in place and takes a series of shots to see what his skeleton is actually doing. Dashawn hangs fluids from the IV stand and puts a line in his elbow. It only takes sixty seconds for the X-rays to show up on the technician's screen mounted over the table in the center of the room. That's about how long it takes Henderson to thread a chest tube into the space between Nate's ribs and lung and attach it to a drainage canister. He's still securing it by the time they show up on the screen so Diaz wanders over to read them.

"C-spine's okay," the X-ray tech says.
"Get him out of the collar," Diaz says. "Don't unstrap him yet. And somebody call upstairs, Henny wants an intercostal block."

The X-ray tech taps the keyboard. Taps it again. Their voices drop but Molly can hear him whistle.

Easy to lose track of time when there isn't much of it to begin with. Nate starts to regain consciousness as his blood pressure stabilizes and Dashawn takes the collar off his neck and of course he starts fighting. Tries to speak even though he's got a tube down his throat and won't open his eyes. Susanne, usually stationed over on the pediatric wing and freshly dragged in by the siren scream of her on-call beeper, appears at Molly's side.


"I know, sweetie, I know," she says and holds Nate's arms down by the wrists until Dashawn can take her place. He's too weak to buck her off and the backboard straps keep him from gaining leverage. To Molly: "You okay to keep bagging or you want me to take over? Marcy says the surgeon's on his way down."


Molly Toombs

There's a whirl of activity, as is the case whenever someone with multiple injuries that need attending comes in-- and that was how it tended to go in auto crashes.  Human bodies simply weren't built to withstand impact at such velocities, seatbelt or no.  She knew that Nate had been in an SUV and that it had taken on a semi truck, so frankly she figured he was lucky just to be alive, even if it was barely.  Without her pushing air into his lungs for him he would've lost his breath, his blood pressure would've bottomed out, he would have lapsed into shock and then--...

...Thankfully this isn't the case.  Here at St. Luke's they do a good job, and since it hasn't been busy tonight they're far from short handed.  Bodies crowd the stretcher to take care of Nate, but when they realize that it's hindering progress then some step back.  Molly does not-- will not.  As the attending physicians around her work to save his goddamn life, to keep his ribs from ruining his lung further, to keep his lung from filling up and drowning him.  Nate had seen Molly's face, but only long enough to lose the ability to see and recognize and understand.  Despite the small mercy of unconsciousness he still feels it when he's cut into, though, and whimpers a low pathetic noise that only reaches Molly's ears for her proximity to his head.

She's about to half-snap the suggestion at the doctors, but Diaz beats her to it, tells her to keep an eye on him.  Sure enough, that's precisely what she does.

Tests are run, blood is drawn, and the minutes swirl amid one another like water circling a drain.  As Dashawn removes the collar from Nate's neck the journalist wakes and tries to talk, gags on the tube down his throat, but not as severely as she's seen happen before.  Susanne, a woman that Molly recognizes as having a fairly sweet temper and disposition, arrives and offers to take over bagging.  Molly nods to her and says:  "Take the bag, I'll keep the mask."  Most hands and forearms would be tired from repeatedly squeezing the bag, but E.R. nurses are accustomed to this.  It isn't for the sake of fatigue that Molly relinquishes the bulb, but so that she can instead hold the mask in place on Nate's face with both hands.  Fingers lay over his cheeks and along his jawline, and she speaks to Nate again as he tries to talk, tries to struggle but is to weak to accomplish much.

"Nate, shhh, listen.  You can't breathe on your own.  This needs to stay, but I'll fix it soon, shhh."

Then she looks up to Susanne and tells her simply:  "We'll use a nasotracheal instead-- he's hasn't got any obstructions.  It'll be better.  Can you one-man it for me?"

And so that's how it works out.  Molly seizes what supplies she needs, and briskly, then returns to where Susanne kept Nate breathing and Dashawn kept him from pulling out his tubes and cords and harming himself further.  It was just as Molly finished replacing the tube down his throat with a less obtrusive one down his nasal cavity.  It's only when she's finishing this up that the anesthesiologist (fucking finally) shows up to give Nate the block that he needs.

It's around the time that the anesthesiologist is finishing his job that they're told an operating room is open for him and it's time for him to be moved.  Molly's diligent about staying on the case and making sure that Nate makes it intact to the room.  She'll follow along the stretcher until she's not needed anymore.

When she comes back through to the emergency room, Marcy greets her with a touch to the back of her upper arm to catch her attention and double-checks to make sure she's okay.  The Nurse who Knows Too Much reassured the woman that she would be fine, but it was a damn blessing that this was the end of her shift.


And all the while, Nate fought for life in the OR.


Nathan Marszalek

In comes Susanne who has a soothing sweet voice and cool dry palms and Dashawn does not have to exert effort to keep Nate's wrists pinned. The young man starts making noises high up in his throat, up-up past his vocal cords and tongue, he smokes so much his gag reflex is weakened.

This is unpleasant they all know this is unpleasant but there's nothing they can do. Dashawn lets the women talk. Susanne lets Molly talk.

Molly soothes Nate and he hears her. Makes another anxious terrified noise he won't remember making in the light of day but he hears her. Couldn't tell the medics what his name was earlier but he still opened his eyes to the sound of it. He doesn't cough or retch when she threads the ET tube out of his mouth. That's a bad fucking sign, proof he needs the intubation. Proof further when he starts to gasp for air and the pulse oximeter on his finger shows his blood oxygen dropping and his blood pressure reconsidering. His pulse picks up speed. But Molly keeps talking to him and keeps a hand on his forehead to keep his throat open and calm him at the same time and in a few seconds he has his breath back again.

Her intubation technique was perfect. Everyone watching could learn something from her and even Susanne seems wide-eyed at how smooth and swift she reacted when the semi-conscious patient stopped tolerating the endotracheal tube. How she maintains positive pressure ventilation even as the anesthesiologist swoops in to deaden the nerves responsible for pain reception in his ribs.

This is why anesthesiologists are the cockiest of all specialties second only to surgeons as a whole: the patient was agitated and agonized when he arrived. Adequately ventilated but suffering. Once he can't feel his broken ribs anymore he relaxes enough that air goes into his contused lung without Molly having to clench the bag with both hands. After the intercostal block a couple of PCTs and another nurse come downstairs to collect him and since she's done a job of it so far Molly can travel into the elevator and up to the surgical floor pushing air into Nate's deflated lung before a scrubbed-in and up-all-night OR nurse takes over for her.

Nate was in the trauma bay less than ten minutes. He spends the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon in surgery. Three ribs comprised the flail chest segment. Two vertebrae in his lumbar spine compressed and fractured. Stitches go into his scalp.

He lives through it.

---

And Marcy was the one who collected his things from the medics. They cut off his clothes and did not rifle through the SUV to find remains of the life lost in it but he is a man and men carry their lives in their pockets.

Molly leaves before Marcy does and when she comes back down from the OR, collects her jacket, starts out of the ED, Marcy flags her down. Checks on her. They have to take care of each other.

"Do you need this?" Marcy asks of the keys they collected off of him. The wallet is staying with him for it has his identification and his health insurance card and everything else. The cell phone is covered under warranty and it's fucked anyway.

If she wants the keys, no one knows the nature of their relationship. Lucifer was home by herself all night. She's four months old, maybe five. She needs to eat and frequently and she's scared to be alone in the dark when no one else is home. The neighbors can hear her crying when they pass through the halls but what the fuck are they supposed to do about it. She's not their cat.

---

She knows his name and his medical record number. It takes no time at all to find N. Marszalek has been set up in the ICU. That it took the surgeon three hours to wire his ribs back together and another six to decompress the fractured vertebrae in his lumbar spine. They're going to step him down to the surgical orthopedics ward in a few days so long as he does not develop pneumonia or throw a clot on the ICU. Her badge and her name get her in outside of posted visiting hours even if she isn't wearing her scrubs.

It also gets her access to his records, if not today then later. Even if she doesn't snoop the identity of the driver makes the local news anyway: Shannon Everett. 28 years old. Associate creative director for an ad agency downtown, known for her involvement and patronage in the arts. Killed when a tractor trailer cut her off on the highway. The passenger, name withheld to protect his privacy, is still in critical condition.

They cleaned him up so his hair was no longer half-dyed rust-red and they wiped his face free from it and he's resting with the bed angled high so he can sit up, so he can breathe. His gown is on backwards so the nurses can check his incisions easier. They went in through his belly to get at his spine.


He wears a nasal cannula instead of a mask or a tube down his throat though he still has a tube in his chest. He's pale. He looks like he's asleep when she first passes by but then Molly sees the patient-controlled analgesia pump at the bedside. Nate's bruised eyes are closed. That doesn't mean anything.


Molly Toombs

Molly had made a point of understanding how long surgery would take, and as it turns out it was plenty of time for her to go home, sleep, and come back.

Marcy had asked if she needed his keys.  The woman knew that Molly knew who Nate was.  At no point was it announced or indicated that there was 'a thing' between the two of them.  Molly didn't fawn or get wet in the eyes or choked up with emotion.  That steel that went through her had remained from the time that the name Marszalek was scrawled on the whiteboard, and it remained until she had her jacket in her arms and was making her way out the door.  This was where Marcy caught her, and when Molly turned around to meet the call of her surname ("Hey, Toombs, a minute.") her expression was a little bit caught in the headlights.  She'd been four steps ahead of where she was now, and mentally was calculating how much time she would be dedicating to sleep.

Molly might not have let on that she and Nate were lovers, but they were close enough for her to accept the offered keys.

Lucifer wouldn't get to see her Man tonight, for reasons outside of anyone's control, but Molly would at least make sure she is fed, watered, and gets a solid block of attention and loving before she has to leave again.

It's almost 5 a.m. before Molly is finally climbing into bed.

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

The following (or same, if you look at it that way) evening, after the sun has set and Nate's surgery has finally concluded and he's been moved into ICU and has had some time for the anesthetic that put him unconscious to wear off, Molly returns.  She's dressed in a pair of black leggings, a snug white undershirt that hugs her hips and covers most of her rear, and a loose navy blue sweater overtop of it.  Her dark hair was washed since last night and left down, and she had a white knit beanie set over the top of it.

Visiting hours were over, but Molly worked here and always stayed in line and never caused trouble or drama and was damn good at her job.  She'd used that reputation and her badge to let herself get this far, and had a tote bag that was bulky enough to be misconstrued as an overnight bag.  Nate's eyes are bruised, possibly to the point that they're stuck closed for the sake of ease for now.  She isn't working, but when Molly enters the room and drops her bag onto the waiting couch up against the window, she goes to his bed and glances over his vitals, what the machines he's hooked up to tell her, what they've got in his drip.  She'll inspect what she can without actually touching him or moving his sheets or gown.

If he stirs through this process she'll speak up and check sooner.  If not, she holds off until she's done taking an inventory on his well being before speaking to him directly.  When she does, her voice is not much unlike how it had been down in the trauma bay (although he won't remember that, really).  It's clear, but gentle, soft, summoning.


"Hey, Nate...  You're level, buddy.  That's the good news."


Nathan Marszalek

The kinetics of the crash went something like this:

SUV weighing 2,700 kilograms and traveling 60 miles per hour overtaken and passed by a tractor trailer weighing 36,000 kilograms and traveling 70 miles per hour. Truck neither signaled he was switching back into the right lane nor calculated the proper clearance distance necessary. Back end of the trailer collided with the driver's side door. Driver lost control of the SUV. Driver lost control of the tractor trailer. Tractor trailer slowed and finally came to a complete stop on the side of the interstate.

Driver of the SUV, unrestrained, died of immediate and massive internal bleeding when her car collided with the guardrail because she collided with the steering column. Her sternum snapped away from her ribs and the jagged ends punctured every soft organ they were supposed to protect. If she was not dead when the vehicle ricocheted away from it and clipped the rear end of the trailer a second time before flipping over and coming to a stop in the passing lane, she at least wasn't aware of what was going on. They found her on the floor partly between the backseat and partly between the two front bucket seats.

The passenger of the SUV wore his seatbelt. He also caught the impact from the side door colliding with the guardrail with his ribs. The discs between two of the vertebrae in his lower spine ruptured and the vertebrae themselves cracked under the pressure when the vehicle flipped over. His brain knocked around the inside of his skull enough to leave him with a mild concussion but not to cause any neurological damage. Any hundred of flying metal or glass things could have been the thing that lacerated his scalp. His chest and arms and face have several small cuts from broken glass spraying him.

He's lucky to still be alive but to look at him one would think he would argue to the contrary. The bruising under his eyes is the fault of the concussion. Bright-red pronouncement of burst blood vessels not yet gone purple but he can still open them. Now that Molly knows the difference between Nate's I'm-dying-of-shock pallor and his normal skin tone she can say with some degree of certainty that this gray tone he wears now is the fault of the morphine.

His vitals look good. His pulse pings on the monitor every time his heart beats. Once per second. He breathes through his lips once every five seconds. His oxygen saturation is 99%. His blood pressure was 122 over 74 nine minutes ago. They don't have him on a cardiac monitor because he's 26 years old so she can't find signs of a normal sinus rhythm anywhere.

Her eyes find a swatch of dressing taped down over the right side of his ribcage and another one over his navel. The sheet and blanket are pulled up to his waist. It's warm enough in here that he can sleep with his chest half bare. Or maybe he's doped up enough that he doesn't feel it. They secured a hospital bracelet to his right wrist and kept the IV port in the arm that Dashawn picked downstairs. He's made out fairly well as far as holes go. No one had to cath him.

The rustling of the duffel bag as she sets it down has Nate wincing and opening his eyes. The whites of them are still white. He winces again once they're open and then sees who it is in the room with him and opens his mouth to speak but can't find the words. Frowns as he tries to sort out what she's doing here. And Molly can see the light when it dawns on him that her voice was the one with him downstairs early this morning.

When Nate coughs it's a dry pained cough. His throat is sore and his chest hurts but at least his brain and his lungs are communicating again. It's normal to cough when one of your lungs has recently performed an impersonation of an airless balloon and been blown back up again.

"Molly," he says. His voice is thick with medication and hoarse from having so many plastic things crammed down between 2am and 9am but he sounds so relieved to see her one would expect saltwater to follow his words. They don't.

He's level. That's the good news. He winces again and nods. Coughs.


"Bad news is they won't let me get up so I have to piss in a jug, but the orderly they get to help me aim is kinda cute, so I can't complain." Cough, cough. Wince. "Lucy's gonna be pissed."


Molly Toombs

There's some inkling of recognition that dawns upon him when he opens his eyes and stares blearily at Molly while she goes over his monitors.  It's curious to witness someone wearing casual street clothes reading these things, and furthermore understanding them with the same bare calm that she does it with.  He remembers that it was her voice, specifically because she called him by his first name, because he recognizes how she sounds.

While he spoke, voice rough and dense, Molly just smiled at him and pulled a chair over to the side of his bed to sit down.

"Well you pulverized your spine, and then the surgeons had to put it back together.  Of course you're not standing up."

When she settles in the chair, it's facing the side of his bed, near to his hip.  She crosses her legs right over left at the knee, and resists the urge to check his dressings by folding her hands into her lap.  The other nurses here did just fine at their jobs.  Molly was simply of the opinion that not everyone here was particularly skilled at what they do.  It was just like any other job that way-- so long as you stayed treading water you would probably hold your job for about a year while your higher-ups search for an excuse to put on the paperwork when they fire you.  Molly Toombs resisted critiquing the other nurse's work for the sake of respecting Nate's space.  She was here as his friend, not to treat him like a patient.

"Maybe.  I stopped by your place to change her food and water and give her some loving before going home."


There's a pause, a beat, and she asks him cautiously.  "How long have you been awake?"  The question is somewhere between baited and loaded.


Nathan Marszalek

He pulverized his spine. That may have something to do with the fact that he needs a PCT to help him do anything right now. Molly knows if he were suffering irreparable nerve damage that he'd have to wear a bag on his hip for the rest of his life. He's got that going for him. That doesn't mean he has sensation in his legs or back or that he can move his legs. He's in pain even with the amount of morphine they've deigned to let him pump into his own body. Molly can see it in his eyes and hear it in the way he does not complain.

All she would find beneath the dressings are proof of the surgeons' scalpels having been there before her. Maybe proof that no infection has started festering. That's what the bags hung from his IV stand are for. They've got him on enough antibiotics that about the only thing that can get him at this point is a flesh-eating bacteria.

That used to be a science-fiction fear but this is the modern age. There's more that can kill a person now than there ever was before. The two of them realize that more than anyone else in the hospital does but this wasn't a vampire that almost killed Nate last night.

And Molly tells him he stopped in to take care of the cat and she can see three or four different emotions and reactions hit his face all at once. Surprise colors all of it but then she sees gratitude and confusion and pain all at once. No anxiety or fear or real grief. He didn't know how she would have gotten his keys but he's happy for her to have and she's the one who had to feed the cat because Shannon is dead but Molly doesn't know Shannon has a copy of his key.

Had.
How long has he been awake.


"I don't know," he says. Closes his eyes again. "People keep telling me things and I keep forgetting times. It's still today, isn't it."


Molly Toombs

He looks surprised, confused, and grateful all wrapped together when she reports that she went to his home while he was in the hospital and made sure his pet was okay.

Molly and Nate weren't close friends by any means.  They were still learning about each other-- what their temperaments and personalities are like, what their interests are, what their goals were and where these were driving them.  Molly's been to Nate's house once before.  Nate, to Molly's the same number of times.  Socially speaking they're at a 'dating' phase.  They'll see one another occasionally and they'll put on small acts -- stand straighter and hide old back injuries and wear a nicotine patch so you don't smell like smoke, dress attractively and speak intelligently and be mindful of manners.  They weren't even to the point of aimless conversational texting or inviting each other out to social events yet.

But there was something very important that they shared.  That was the knowledge of vampires, and everything else that exists beneath.  The supernatural wasn't a new concept to Nate, he's been hearing the dead for a while now.  But now there was another person, another human being with a pulse and a brain, that could confirm these things were real.  They were alone amid a sea of people who would never believe them, who refused to see and accept what lay in the shadows of the world and underneath the rocks of the cities.  They had to look out for each other.

Or this is how Molly saw it, at least.

"Well," she starts, and moves the sleeve of her sweater to check a thin-strapped watch at her list.  "Yeah, it's definitely today."  Legs uncrossed and she placed her hands on her knees to keep them from fussing busily by adjusting sheets and making sure his probably-numb feet are doing okay.  Asking her not to do that is like asking a professional cook to just watch something burn away on the stove-- she'll do it, but there'll be a nagging in the memory of her muscles none the less.


"You know you were in an auto accident, right?"


Nathan Marszalek

At the question Nate frowns so hard his response would have been a grimace were he to have bared his teeth. It passes quickly and then he draws a slow breath. The amount of medication in his system would make anything quicker difficult and the jolt of Molly's inquiry is not near as bad as it could have been.

"We were coming back from an interview," he says. "The sister of a guy who turned up dead last month. I'd interviewed her before when he was still alive. She called Shannon and asked if we would consider going out there again. The sister didn't have a service for him. He just wanted his body cremated. The ashes are sitting on her bookshelf in the living room now. We didn't leave until almost one o'clock because she kept wanting to talk about him and I wanted to hear about him. She was just... crying, at the end. I don't know what to do when people start crying. It's never the right thing. Like, when do you stop hugging someone? She didn't want to let go of me."

And he coughs for the dryness in his throat. Hasn't opened his eyes again. Maybe this is easier with them shut. All he can see are the things he remembers instead of the half-dark of the room around him and the strangers moving past in the corridor and whatever expression Molly wears on her face, whatever he could make of it through the drug-haze that keeps him out of misery's way.

Maybe it's for her sake. So she can't see the center of him as he tells her how he knows he was in a car crash last night.


"The truck came up behind us way too fast and I told her... I remember this, I told her he was coming up way too fast, and she... she didn't mean anything by it. She said I was just being paranoid... I think she was going to bust my balls about it but then there was this noise and she screamed and I don't really remember a lot else. I know she didn't make it."


Molly Toombs

The grimace that the man gives her doesn't cause Molly to pause, but she does look at him with a minor crease of sympathy between her eyebrows.  His eyes close and he starts to tell her a story-- what had happened.  He was out with this Shannon girl, the driver, the one who is gone now.  They were doing an interview and driving back home and the truck came up too fast and and and...

His eyes stay closed, and she has to guess that it's because it's a terrible memory to recall.  She has no idea how close he was with Shannon, but losing a friend is hard regardless.  He might be trying to hide tears too for all she knows.

I know she didn't make it.

At this point he can hear the E.R. nurse that pumped air into his lungs for him sigh, the noise barely-there but unmistakable.  He'll hear the chair when she shifts her weight and leans forward.  He'll feel her hand land on his shoulder and she'll give a few up-and-down rubs from the cap of his shoulder down his upper arm and back up again before she settles at his shoulder again (unless he shrugs her off or otherwise indicates that he's uncomfortable).  This is how she's been comforting patients and their families since she began working here at St. Lukes.  The touch was unobtrusive, couldn't be construed as anything but bracing comfort, it was perfectly platonic and safe.  The fact that her hand lingers, though, rests at his shoulder is what takes it outside of a part of the job and makes it genuine.

It's a long minute before she says anything.  "I'm sorry."
Of course she is.  That's all anyone will say about the occurrence for weeks to come.

Then:

"Is there anyone I should call for you?  To let them know where you are?"


Nathan Marszalek

At the scraping of the chair Nate opens his eyes. He does not have the reluctant sluggishness of a man who was asleep and happily so before she came in. For all she knows he was asleep. For all she knows he was lain just as he is now with his body gone numb south of his thighs and his ribs burning a dull fire underneath the fuzzy senselessness of the morphine.

His chest barely moves as he breathes. It takes no effort and he is not upset talking about the crash. If he is upset he will wait until he is alone to let himself admit this. He is his own judge and his own jury and he has been his own everything else for longer than Molly has known him. For a moment at the coffeehouse and for a moment in his apartment she could convince herself, looking back or in the moment, that he had been looking for something other than himself what with everything his life had become since this summer.

And her own was no less insane. She told him everything that night they investigated the apartment upstairs. He remembers the furniture store story and the story of Flood cornering her on the street and Kragen being Kragen. He remembers how she grabbed onto his side when the lights blew out and the doors slammed shut and they got the hell out of there before a vengeful spirit could find and latch onto the beacon Nate served as in its darkness.

This is not a good place to be if one can hear dead people. Maybe that is why Nate wasn't asleep when she came to see him after visiting hours. Hard to sleep when those who never walked out of the ICU take up a space in the chair where your family and friends ought to sit and they scream at you.

Molly might meet his coworkers or his friends if she comes during daylight hours. He has no emergency contact listed in St. Luke's computer system because he was not conscious when they brought him in. If he had died last night the medical examiner would have had to call his mother and stepfather in Nebraska. That is not Molly's job. This is not her job. She is here as a friend and she puts her hand on his shoulder as he talks about what happened and he turns his head to look over at her. His dark eyes find her face and they search it and she doesn't take her hand back.

She's sorry.
He doesn't react.

What triggers a reaction is her hand lingering even after she apologizes and asking after his family. They had never had any occasion to discuss each others' lives before now and now he's doped up and it takes a lot for him to feel anything physical. Emotional is almost as difficult to force through. He flinches when her question makes him take a deeper breath and then he reaches up to rest his hand over hers.


"Nah," he says and looks away from her. Stares up at the ceiling without closing his eyes. They hood but don't shut all the way. "Nah, they don't need to know right now."


Molly Toombs

Not once in their conversations have they spoken about their families.  Molly wasn't aware of the fact that Nate's parents were divorced, how old he was when they separated, if it was a messy split or if it was at least amicable.  She didn't know if she visited his family on holidays, or if he even spoke with them anymore.  If he had siblings, if his folks were alive... She knows that just as well as Nate knows that Molly's parents are still married and raising two teenage sons-- her little brothers-- in a coastal town in Oregon.

She asked if there was anyone she should call.  Nate didn't say there was nobody, but rather that they didn't need to know just yet.  His eyes went hooded and he stared at the ceiling, and a hand that doesn't have lines sticking out of it slides up to rest on top of her own.

This gesture is small, smaller than her reaching out to offer comfort in the first place.  None the less, it twinges something sympathetic within the young woman and her chest tightens with sympathy that catches her off guard.  He isn't watching her face, but this reads clearly over rounded features and freckles.  Her jaw tightens with restraint, she wants to lean down and hug him and make it better and--

Holy shit, Moll, is this why you became a nurse?
No.  No.  You just plain care about him.

She settles for gripping his shoulder just a little and then relaxing.  Her posture shifts so she's leaned forward more, nearer to the bed.  Not leaning on it exactly yet, but more comfortable with her torso stretched over her lap rather than sitting up straight.

If he allows it, time will pass quietly like this.  She doesn't know what to say exactly, she didn't really have anything to talk about.  And she knew that Nate would need his rest.  It doesn't occur to her that a hospital is a terrible place for him to rest, especially the ICU, primarily because she doesn't know that he can see the dead.  Not the undead, no no.  The ones that don't have bodies anymore, that linger around as forces instead.  Like what lives in the apartment above her, quietly biding its time no doubt before chasing the new couple out.

When that silence does break eventually, it's Molly again.  Her brain has been ticking away, and she'd been waffling on whether or not to speak up before deciding to go ahead because just sitting on words tends to lead people in dull, tiny circles.  "Nate."  She'll wait for some sort of confirmation that he's heard her before continuing.  "I want to help you with this."

She could mean help him through the ordeal emotionally.
She could mean that she wants to help him with recovering in general.
She could mean that she wants to take care of his mail, catsit Lucifer until he was well enough to come home.


She didn't clarify which.


Nathan Marszalek

Nate allows the hand on his shoulder the same as he would have allowed Molly to put down the rail and lean over and put her arm around him. He cannot lean forward to help her and as she looks at him she can see the intelligence curiosity normally present in his brown eyes has been smeared over by drugs. The sense of staved-off anxiety, that lingering conditioning from the Marine Corps that she knows exists now that she knows he was in fact in the service, has gone altogether.

He cannot lean over because his ribs are broken and his back is broken. He cannot look at her as he looks at her in the daylight because morphine has oozed over him.

No way to call back to how he would react in a different situation because this is the situation they're in. She knows him to be reserved even if she does not know his capacity for lying yet. She knows he is funny in a quiet self-depreciating way. He has an expressive face even though he tends not to use it. He seems tired most of the time.

16-hour days and graduate coursework and a crash course in vampiric mythlore are enough to make anyone look tired but he looked tired the first day she met him. That was long after the night Flood fed from him. Flood, who pressed her for details as to whether she knew a Denver Post reporter, who told her he could not tolerate the thought of another having influence over her.

Their silence merges and he is comfortable like this. She can see he is comforted by this. His eyes stay on the ceiling and not much tension clung to him at the outset but it was there after talking about the crash and the death not even 24 hours gone. They sit and they don't say anything and her hand doesn't leave his shoulder and his hand is cool but not bloodless against hers and one of the breaths he lets go trims the last of the stitches between his brow.

Something catches his attention but he doesn't jerk with it. She can see his eyes leave the ceiling and lock on the dead space between his hospital bed and the wall where sits no equipment or people who care about him. No people at all. Just nothing. In time his eyes convince the rest of his head to roll that way and his respirations and pulse do not change. He is not asleep but he is not looking at her. He's attending to something else.

Nate.

He draws a breath deep before he turns his head away from the wall to aim his eyes back at her. His eyebrows lift and he looks so much younger than the 26 Marcy scrawled on the board last night, the 26 printed on his ID bracelet. He always looks younger than 26 but never more than when he's in the dark and cannot move and is numb everywhere but his hands.

Then she tells him she wants to help him with this and for the first time since they rushed him to the surgical floor Nate looks scared. It isn't the 'this' that scares him but the thought of help.

He swallows dust from his throat and says, "Okay." Thinks about it. "Wait..."

Something burbles up out of the depths but he's too drugged and in too much pain to even hint at laughter but he keeps his eyes on her face as he speaks. Doesn't take his hand off hers.


"This is driving you nuts, isn't it. Not doing the nurse thing."


Molly Toombs

They're the only two in the room as far as Molly can tell.  She doesn't have anyone there to pay attention to but the man in the hospital bed with his gown on backwards and her own self.  So, of course, she noticed when he turns his head from where it had been resting for the past three minutes or so and moves his eyes to stare up at empty space to the left of his bed (Molly was on his right).  She picks up on this, and observes it happening.  She watches his eyes to see that they're open and focused.  Watches his expression to see what it has to tell her.  A glance is cast back toward the equipment that tells her how he's doing (stable) before she decides to speak his name and pull his attention back.

Before calling his name, though, she was processing memories with what she was seeing now.  She remembered when she called him for help checking out the uncomfortable scraping noises in the empty apartment upstairs.  Remembered that he saw something she didn't, was reacting to things she couldn't sense.  She remembered that he didn't let her pry into it that night, so she'd left it alone.  Molly knows that ghosts are real because she's been in the apartment upstairs and already knows that vampires and mages (because wizards are silly) exist, so it only stands to reason that ghosts would too.  This was the ICU, innumerable people have died in this room before Nate laid down in this bed.

He saw things she couldn't see.

Though this is an epiphany, she masks it pretty well.  When he looks back at her and appears a little scared with the idea of her helping him, but agrees anyways.  Then, after studying her face (a smooth and pleasant mask to cover anxiety and worry and stress and everything else that these two feel because of who and what they know) he calls her out on what's had her very aware of what she's doing with her hands in order to keep them restrained.

He doesn't have the strength to laugh, but Molly manages a chuckle and her face cracks into an honest grin.  "Oh my god, it is.  Don't tell your cute attendant I said so, but I'm pretty sure I could have done most of your dressings and hook-ups better than this."  There's a pause, and then she hurries to clarify.  "Don't worry, you're perfectly fine, they didn't do a shit job."  Molly was just aware of her abilities.

But then the tone swings on its head, and Molly's leaning a little closer still.  Her left hand was the one on his shoulder because it didn't have to cross in front of her body to reach.  Her right arm now hooked on edge of his bed so she could prop her chin on the heel of her hand.  She looks casual, like she's having a conversation with a good friend who just went through hell and back.  But what she actually does is lock her bright blue eyes onto his and ask him quietly, but openly:


"Should I be worried about whoever you're staring at on the other side of the bed?"


Nathan Marszalek

Her epiphany occurs in front of someone who couldn't recognize it for what it was in his current state anyway. Between her presence and her voice and her hand on his shoulder Nate is distracted. When his eyes land on her face he cannot parse out the connections she's made on her own. It's possible he'd forgotten about what happened that night or that it had slipped his recollection with everything else passed since then.

It's an inadvertent attempt to steer her away from the moment in which he lies. He knows somewhere deep down because this has been a weirdness of his his entire life that he does look weird when he zones out in the middle of an otherwise enthralling conversation to focus on a blank spot int he world. Molly could not sort this out about him until just now.

So he jokes about her having to sit still while he has all of these things to adjust and prod and she's game for a time. At the request not to tell the attendant she could have set him up better the edges of Nate's teeth flash and his eyes close. Morphine amusement. When Nate normally laughs he's all teeth and dimples.

Whoever cleaned him up earlier combed his hair back off his forehead. She doesn't have to contend with his unruly mop on top of everything else when trying to get an honest read on his expression today.

A shadow passes by the doorway but they both see it. It's the night nurse checking in on him. She doesn't come in to bother him since Molly is right at his side and leaned over like she is. At the pressure and the question Nate's eyes open again and he lifts his eyebrows. Her tone is conspiratorial. His reflex is to huff out laughter. He turns his head away from her to cough instead.


"Nah," he says before he can put the brakes on to lie. Looks at the wall and then looks back to her. Squeezes her hand like she heard or saw whatever was there too. Like she's the one who needs reassurance now.  "He was just confused. He's gone now."


Molly Toombs

The night nurse isn't anyone that Molly knows personally.  The hospital is a big place, there are plenty of people working there who don't know one another's faces.  That coupled with the fact that Molly's back is toward the door and that she's in street clothes tonight means that the nurse who pauses to glance in on him has no idea that Molly's an employee, that she could (and would, mind you) seize a crash cart if things suddenly went downhill and use it appropriately to top it all off.  To meet her at a bar or a coffee shop you wouldn't guess it, but Molly's a stone faced life saving machine in the moments where such skills come into use.

Regardless to all of that, the nurse is content because Nate seems comfortable enough and he's got someone there with him.  A friend, girlfriend maybe, who knows.  They're just fine.  The nurse passes by.

Nate seemed amused that Molly was calling him out on what he sees.  If this had happened without the morphine, without his bones being crushed and snapped and wired back together again, he probably would have lied and covered for himself.  He has before, after all.  Tonight, though, as the clock ticks its way toward midnight, he squeezes her hand reassuringly, not unlike how he'd let her latch onto his side when they were investigating her neighboring apartment.  He says that the person, a 'he', was just confused and now he's gone.  Molly glances to the spot that he'd been looking before, already knowing that she wouldn't be able to tell if this unknown was actually gone or not.

She'll take his word for it, and lets the topic slide.  All she wanted was a confirmation of her suspicions, and he'd delivered it though he may not remember this tomorrow.  Again, she's comfortable to let them lapse into silence, and this time that silence will span a full twenty minutes.  Nate can rest in this time, take the company that Molly provides and not be pressured to talk, to recall, to think.  Just be happy to have a warm body in the room that he can almost trust.

The quiet is broken because Nate had started to drift off to sleep.  Molly moved what weight of hers she had resting on the edge of his bed and took her hand from his shoulder, guided his loose arm back to his side so it would be more comfortable.  She'd stand, check his vitals and where his liquids are at once more, then explain:

"You need your sleep more than anything else at this point, so take it.  I'll check on Lucifer before I head back home myself, and then I'll see you tomorrow if you're okay with that?"


What she doesn't tell him is that she knows that there is a vampire of some note (or notoriety) that he is important to.  She wants to check on him to be sure that this person isn't hovering in his room trying to 'save him' in their own way.  This is a habit she's going to get into until he's able to go home.

Loose Tongues - 10.12.2013 [Nate]

Molly Toombs

It's been close to a month, and Nate hasn't heard much from Molly Toombs the E.R. nurse at all.

She'd texted him occasionally, called him once after the time he came over to check out the haunted apartment above her head to express that the sounds still occurred from time to time, but someone else moved in and things seemed to have quieted down for the time being.  But then, somewhere in mid-September, she stops reaching out.  He may have his own things going on too, and when October hits Nate might start to question whether Molly Toombs walked among the living still or not.

It's confirmed one day, around 11:00am, when Molly calls him.  The line rings a couple times, but it answered before it has a chance to go to voicemail.

"Nate!  Hey, long time," she greeted casually.  It's abrupt, that he got this phone call right out of nowhere, though, and she cuts to the chase relatively quickly.

"Look, I have work tonight and some errands to run beforehand, and I'll bet you have your own thing going on too.  So I'll be quick:  We should meet up, catch up, you know?

"But not at my place.  And probably not around a lot of people.  ....And definitely during the daytime.  Can we make this happen?"

Nate Marszalek

When he picks up she can hear the frenetic chatter of a newsroom in the middle of the day. Phones are ringing and someone is shouting at someone else and about four televisions are tuned to four different stations and Nate clears his throat out of habit or maybe just to assure himself that he still has a voice in the midst of all of that and then she has him:

"This is Marszalek."

Should have looked at the caller ID more closely than he did. Her voice has gone distant from him and she can hear a background-volume yawn as he takes the phone away from his head to glance the screen for her not introducing herself. Says her name like he's surprised to hear from her. She has work tonight and errands. So on and so forth.

By the time she gets through her list of conditions the background noises have receded. A heavy metal door whines as he pushes through it. Dead silence in the background and he sounds like he's standing at the bottom of a well.

"What happened?"

At least daytime means she's still human. Or... nah man that doesn't mean shit she could be worse off than they are by now.

Molly Toombs

The bustling noises in the background told Molly that she caught him at work.  She didn't have much trouble separating the noise pollution from his voice, though, and did a fine job of shutting it out so that she could hear herself talk and make sure her sentences were coming across okay.

He picked up on the underlying current of what she was trying to say.  Her tone wasn't forcibly sunshiny, it was casual instead.  But, still, the cue of 'definitely during the daytime' was impossible to miss and Nathan had the presence of mind to take the conversation elsewhere.  By the time she'd finished speaking there was a whining hinge of a heavy door and the background noise was gone.

There wasn't much happening on Molly's end of the line.  Nate might've heard the rustling noise of paper scraping across paper as she turned a page in a book, but other than that all was quiet.  That was the beauty of living alone in your apartment.

What happened? he asked.

"Nothing worth discussing on the phone.  We can talk about it over drinks instead-- that sounds more appropriate."  Her tone is more significant.  It was pretty clear that she was concerned that whatever it was she wanted to talk about was best kept away from technology and things that could be tapped, recorded, traced.  Normally she wouldn't be so paranoid, but she knew of Kragen and his expertise-- who was to say that accessing phone histories and conversation logs was outside of his grasp too?

"Are you free Saturday?"

Nate Marszalek

She cannot see the reporter standing with his back to the joint of two ugly yellow concrete walls and an eye on the bulletproof-glass portal that peers from the stairwell into the elevator vestibule. Cannot see how he flaps his tie up and down against his midsection and tongues the back of an incisor as he runs through the conditions and the possible topics she could want to discuss.

No reason to ask why they can't discuss it right this second. Their lives were complicated even before they met and now that she's started researching and he's started digging eyes are on them. Ears. Bugs. For all they know someone is listening in right now. A record will exist of her calling him around 11:00am this day and the days are shortening.

Nate sighs and she can hear him sigh. Footfalls on the concrete. He's descending.

"I am now." He's never going to quit smoking at this rate. "There's a Chinese restaurant on Twelfth, between Elizabeth and Clayton. North side of the street. Meet me outside and we'll go somewhere else."

All those years of aiming a camera at Marine troops engaged in urban warfare is starting to pay off. If he can't get himself and one other person from a public place to a secure location in broad daylight without tipping off someone who wants to kill him then he probably deserves to die.

Either she agrees or she counters his offer but either way: he goes outside to smoke a cigarette and the call ends.

---

Saturday arrives. He's there before she is, wearing sunglasses despite the lack of sun and dragging on a Marlboro Light while he loiters outside. He's actually run a comb through his hair today. Must be part of the disguise. Ignore the fact that his hair has the disposition of a state hospital inmate and does whatever it wants even with the fine-toothed attempt at order. The rest of his outfit consists of thick jeans and a maroon henley and black leather boots to match the jacket and when Molly joins Nate he coughs and puts the cigarette into the butt stand outside the restaurant.

When last they properly saw each other he was sat on her couch and reassuring her after the encounter with the apartment upstairs. Handing her a small load of bullshit about how old buildings are drafty and there wasn't anything there and denying that he'd heard anything in the kitchen when he'd clearly heard something she hadn't heard and it had startled him. By now she's come to the conclusion that the damned place was haunted and she doesn't have to reach very far to speculate that Nathan can sense the dead but they've got enough on their plate now without tackling the fact that the reporter may or may not be a medium on top of being a pain right in a certain undead man's ass.

"Our options are my place or a bar," he says before she has a chance to greet him. "You didn't specify how many drinks this called for."

Molly Toombs

Molly was compliant.  She didn't have any better ideas, and his was as good as any.

"I'll see you then."

There's a pause, like she's going to say something else, but she changes her mind (a quiet sigh) before disconnecting the call.

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

It's Saturday, and the weather is just as cool and wet as it has been the last couple of days.  Molly is dressed in a pair of black leggings, brown boots that climb up her calves, and a red peacoat that she has buttoned up.  There's no earmuffs or scarf or gloves, though-- it wasn't quite that cold yet.  Her dyed-dark hair was pinned back and her make-up was the same as usual-- eyebrow pencil, mascara, blush, the end.  Nathan had been there long enough to start working on a cigarette, and he snubbed it out in the stand provided just outside of the Chinese restaurant that he'd told her to meet him in front of.

She looked healthy enough, in a glance over her as she approached.  She hasn't lost weight, her skin was just as bright as it had been previously.  She didn't have unreasonable circles under her eyes, she didn't move lethargically or cover her neck.  As far as he is able to tell, she hasn't fallen victim to anyone yet.

When she reaches listening-distance, before she can greet him, he counters by expressing what their options are.  She raised her darkened eyebrows at him, but her expression switched easily enough to a smile (small, with closed lips, but genuine at least) and a hand slipped out of her pocket to pat his upper arm a few times before returning to the warm safety of her coat.

"Your place," she answers, and something about the underlying tone hinted at a duh!.

"There's just fewer ears that way, I figure.  It doesn't have to be nighttime to be listened in on."

Nate Marszalek

The darkness of his sunglasses conceals the path his eyes take as she approaches him but that doesn't mean Molly cannot feel the weight of it on her face and then on her neck before he kills the cigarette. For all he knows she will be the next person to fall off the radar or start behaving in a manner that causes him to start asking questions.

One day he's going to stop asking questions. He'll either have fallen into the same inescapable hole that has swallowed up the rest of them or he'll be a body instead of a person.

Her hand finds his arm solid underneath the suppleness of the leather but it has absorbed the damp chill of the day. At the touch Nate peels himself off the brick wall and pushes his hands into his pockets. Suppresses a smile at the ya think? implication beneath her words and jerks his chin towards the northwest intersection. They're heading that way.

"True," he says.

So they start walking. They have to truck several blocks on foot but Molly prefers to travel on foot and pedestrian traffic gives them a cloak against anyone who might be watching them. Nate walks close to her and glances around more often than he keeps his eyes aimed forward. On the way they may speak of inconsequential things. Work. Work gives them plenty enough to talk about for as much intersection occurs between her profession and his.

His apartment building sits back from the street but it looms several stories up. Front door serves as an airlock for two locked doors standing between themselves and the lobby and he takes her into the elevator instead of up the stairs. They travel nine stories before reaching his door and Molly can hear the codependent cries of a growing kitten as the key engages with the lock.

"Alright, you maniac," he says to the ginger kitten as she charges at his ankles. Crouches down to scoop her into his arms and she lays against his shoulder to peer out at the wild world beyond the front door. No notion of what she's missing but she starts to purr as soon as she's settled. "Say hi to Molly, you little shit."

The kitten keeps purring. He shuts the door behind them. The door opens into a kitchen and the kitchen looks out into the living room. An island and no carpet. The place looks like a bachelor lives here but at least it's clean. Books and electronic equipment overrunning the furniture but stools flank the island countertop. A few dishes in the sink but he grabs two clean ones out of the cupboard and finds a bottle of whiskey all with his one free hand.

"So..."

Molly Toombs

Oh the walk across several blocks, Molly and Nate did a fine job of looking normal, blending in, and vanishing amid a crowd of other humans out and about during the lunch rush of a weekend day.  They talk about work and other common things.  Nate's eyes keep looking this way and that, more than where he's headed, but Molly's eyes stay forward or up on the side of Nate's face from time to time as they speak.

Soon enough they're at his apartment, having ridden the elevator up, and moving inside.

The kitten that charges Nate's ankles and gets scooped up to his shoulder delights Molly, of course.  Who doesn't love kittens, after all?  He told the 'little shit' to say hi to her, and the kitten purred happily.  Molly smiled, the expression bright on her face, and reached out to scratch at the top of the little animal's head with one fingernail.  Then that moment passed and they both moved inside of the apartment so the door could close behind him.

The place looked about what Molly would expect from a single man living alone.  A little cluttered, maybe, in that things like electronics and books crowded most available surfaces.  There were stools at the kitchen counter, though, and Nate was already in the kitchen getting glasses to drink from.  So Molly shrugged her peacoat off, revealing a loose-fitting white T-shirt underneath with a big black sugar skull design on the front.  The coat was set wherever seemed best, and she sat down on one of the stools.

If the kitten had been relinquished, you know that she scooped it up against her full (but typically well-covered) bust and gave it ample scritchies and cuddles.  Even while she answered the 'so' with something dark, blunt, and straight-forward.

"Whatever digging you're doing into this Flood guy?  It needs to stop-- pronto.  He knows that you're sniffing around and he's not happy with it."

Nate Marszalek

It didn't take much coaxing for Nate to give up the tiny ball of fluff. She's nearly four months old by now and Molly can tell that she's healthy and happy if a bit skinny. In amongst the single male paraphernalia are plastic jingly balls and stuffed mice and other random toys meant to keep Lucifer occupied when he's at work. A thick graduate-level textbook sits on the island beside piles of printed-out articles and errant highlighters.

As Nate fixes glasses of Jameson the kitten chews on Molly's hair and finds her chest much more comfortable than Nate's. He's still wearing his jacket and doesn't take off his sunglasses until Molly starts in with the purpose of their clandestine talk. The earpieces click against the countertop before he starts to pour golden-warm fluid into two small juice glasses.

"Yeah, well," he says, "maybe he should've thought about that before he grabbed me by the hair and bit my neck. If anyone should be not happy it's me."

Clunk, says the improvised highball glass as he sets it down in front of her.

Molly Toombs

The little ginger kitten chewed at hair that used to be ginger enough to match, but hasn't been for a long time now (Molly's been coloring her hair dark since her second year of college).  Molly was content to let this happen, because the little bundle was warm and cute.  So, when the glass was set down in front of her, Molly situated herself so she could support the kitten on top of the shelf that her chest created with one hand and reach for the whiskey with the other.

Nate expressed that Flood should've thought about that before he bit the reporter.

Molly answers this with the sharpest look that he's seen from her to date.

Her eyes were the sort of blue that was identifiable as such, but failed to strike or impress heavily.  They're clear and cool now, though, as she casts him that look.  It's a warning-- a clear don't fuck around with this if he's ever seen one before.  The grim line that her mouth pulls into for that moment only supports the meaning behind the gaze.

"What do you think you'll accomplish though?"  She lifted the glass, tipped the edge of it in his direction in a gesture of thanks, then took a small drink.  A second was allowed to pass, to take the burning from her throat along with it, before she continued.  "You dig and find some stuff about him-- maybe where he's from, who his parents are, a birth record or copy of some business certificate or who knows what...  ...but then what?"

The bottom of the glass clinked lightly onto the counter top, but her fingers stayed about it.  "They have their ways, Nate, and I'm worried he's going to feel so inclined to find one to remove you from the picture entirely.  I don't want to see that happen."

Nate Marszalek

He has turned on no lights since they walked in but the place is not dark. Big south-facing windows let in all of the daylight the outside world has to offer. Not much but enough for the nurse to form a general impression of her host's health. Sleep deprivation as prevalent now as it was when they met but the shadows beneath his dark eyes are etched into his bones now and he moves the way victims move through recurring nightmares. Slow and without hope or escape.

No despair in him though. He's just tired and resigned to being tired. He was a Marine for longer than he was a crime reporter.

The sight of that stupid cat tucked into the nearest stable nook in Molly's lap has him smiling a genuine tooth-baring smile for the first time that she can recall in recent memory. When she lifts her glass to give a silent toast he mirrors the gesture and takes a stiffer swallow than she did. If anything has changed in him lately it is the frequency with which he drinks and the heft with which he does it.

For what it's worth Nate does not have a litigator's heart. Wherever his passion lies is a quiet place where it whiles away its hours without disturbing other people and as Molly speaks he leans against the opposite counter and holds onto his glass. At least his eyes stay on her. He listens.

And then something shifts in him. His expression and posture remain the same but:

"How does he know what I've been doing?"

Molly Toombs

Nate looked worse for wear than Molly did.  The worst he'd seen her was the night he'd come over to help investigate the strange noises in the apartment over hers.  She looked like she wasn't getting enough sleep then.  She was more pallid than usual, and it made her freckles stand more prominent on her cheeks at the time.  She moved reluctantly, not unlike how he did now, and seemed to have things plaguing her mind at any given moment.  Now, though, in the time that's passed since they last saw each other face to face, she was looking better.  She'd found a rhythm to her daily routine once more, was eating regular and healthy, and had even gotten into the habit of jogging (though she wouldn't work out heavily enough to lose the padding that provided her with those womanly curves-- she'd rather have a bit of a belly than lose the right to be called 'voluptuous').

There was also a fire to her now.  A sense of purpose that Nate could pick up on, though what that purpose was, it's difficult to pin down exactly.  He can hear it, though, in the firm conviction that she spoke with when she warned him to back off of Flood's case.

He asked how Flood could know what he's been doing.  Molly frowned a little and shook her head, a clear indication that she didn't have the answer he was looking for before she even opened her mouth to speak.

"They have their ways," she said again.  "There's more to this... world... all of this new than just simple biology.  They do more than drink blood and use it to sustain themselves-- it's not just a biological process.  There's magic too."  She took another drink, then set her glass down so she could tug her hair away from the kitten's mouth and tuck it back behind her ears, then dedicate both hands to a full-body series of gentle scratches and rubs of ears and paws.  Molly didn't have any pets at home, and she didn't have friends whose houses she visited often.  Getting the opportunity to play with a housepet was seldom, so she took advantage of the chance while it was there.

"I know you'll rationalize, think I've gone off the deep end, or that they've 'gotten' me or brainwashed me or something.  But I've seen it.

"They say they can wipe your memory if they want to.  Or they can force you to say yes and volunteer for shit that you wouldn't have normally-- they can make you walk your ass quietly into that good night, and all you'd be able to do is scream inside your own head.

"I don't know how he knows what you've been doing.  But he does.  And I got put under his thumb for talking to you about him in the first place.  So I should let you know now, I very much need you not to go talking about our conversation today, okay?"

Nate Marszalek

Tiny baby claws knead happy-harmless into the fabric covering Molly's thighs and if she looks down at the kitten she can see her eyes are threaded shut with the attention from a soft person. The kitten is safe and welcome here and her ass-tearing towards the door is evidence enough that she loves her person and cheers at his return home but if Molly got the impression that the kitten seeks more attention than Nate freely gives she would not be wrong.

Nate and full-grown cats have similar dispositions. This cat is still growing and gives him a reason to come home at night. She'll starve or spend the night crying alone in the dark if he doesn't get his ass home after class or in the midst of his marathon article-writing sessions at the office. That night Lux brought him back hypovolemic and shivering she had hidden away from the monster-woman until the door had shut and then she'd found his sternum.

She's a good cat but she can't keep her person from doing stupid shit.

Stood against the counter as he is Nate has his arms out at acute angles so he looks as if he's propping himself up. He is not leaning though. Looks as if he's leaning but standing like this helps him stretch out his back without drawing attention to the fact that it's tightening up on him. He'd told Molly about a roadside bomb taking him out of service two years ago but that information was buried the moment they walked over the threshold of the apartment upstairs from her.

Feels like a lifetime ago that that happened and for as much fear as she'd felt that night Molly looks hale and young and free for all that she's come back with since then. They are the same age and they both look their age but they stand on opposite shores.

At mention of magic Nathan raises his eyebrows but that is the only indication that he doubts this. Nothing stains his eyes and the muscles around them do not move and his mouth is still. Supposedly lifted eyebrows mean to indicate that the person is absorbing the information and not pushing it away. Frowns are defensive. That Nate doubts instead of deflecting means his mind is open but if he threw himself at this new world the way that Molly does he'd be dead by now. Molly has an adventurer's spirit. She seeks something she can never find. Truth and Nate are bedfellows but something holds him back.

"Okay," is all he has to say to her request. He takes another stiff drink of the Jameson and flinches against it. There's that frown now. He rubs one side of his face with his ringless left hand and blows out a hot breath as he stares at her. "Molly, I talked to one person about what's going on. The guy who was there the night this guy--Flood? The night Flood attacked me. I didn't use your name. I didn't even mean to bring it up, I'd met up with him at a bar one afternoon after Flood attacked me and hadn't seen him around for a while so I thought--"

He's not saying this to cover his own ass. He's saying this to try to make sense of things that don't make sense aloud.

"He told me he quit drinking, is why I hadn't--" He slams down the rest of his drink and confers with the empty glass in silence before looking back over at her. "I don't think you've gone off anything. Alright? I believe you."

Molly Toombs

He agrees to comply with her request for silence.

Good, is what her face says.

He then goes off explaining where he's pretty sure this information leak came from.  There was a man there at the park the night that Nate had his blood taken away, and Nate had touched base with him.  He hadn't seen him around for a while, and that he quit drinking, and--  well, it seems that he may be connected to the vampire that's been half-courting, half-laying claim to Molly from the shadows and occasional drop-ins.  That would explain it.  He hadn't mentioned Molly's name, but if he'd mentioned her at all-- by age, appearance, style, profession...  Anything like that could've been traced to her, and Flood could've made an assumption that turned out correct.

She wasn't going to put him at fault for this slip necessarily.  How was he to know?  And, at the end of the day, no harm came from it.  Just a tight moment in a chair at a ritzy club that you had to dress nicely for.  Then that passed, water under the bridge, thank goodness.  Well, for the time being anyways.

He said that he believed her when she said magic was real too, and she nodded her contentment with this.  The kitten kneaded at her thighs through the leggings she wore, and Molly didn't mind-- the pinpricks of little needle claws weren't that bad with so little pressure.  Her hand stopped scratching and rubbing and petted the kitten's back absently now.  She took another drink of her whiskey and sucked the flavor from her teeth.

"Good, I hoped you would.  Means you believe me when I tell you I'm sincerely worried that you're going to end up with a vampire in your bedroom while you're asleep, and that'll be the end of you.  All because you're snooping and got caught on to."

There's weight to her gaze, to the cant of her eyebrows, when she looks at him.  The expression isn't pleading-- she isn't like a mother begging her son not to go off to the military, not to put himself in harm's way.  She's invested in his well-being, but not portraying this in any overly emotional manner.

"So, will you stop?  Following his trail?  He's onto you, man, it's not smart."

Nate Marszalek

If Molly's fear for his life matters to him Nate's expression does not betray this. He keeps standing in the same position he has been in since the conversation started and he keeps his hand around the now-empty whiskey glass and he looks across the kitchen at her. His breathing doesn't change and nothing comes across his gaze. All Molly has to gauge his thoughts is the fact that he looks as if he's holding back the first words that come to his mind.

He doesn't have a lot of conversational tells but the fact that he doesn't respond right away is as much of one as Molly is going to get.

The kitten stops plucking at Molly's leggings and turns around on her lap and curls up in a tight ball. Her tiny chest rises and falls and she tucks her tail in around herself. Oblivious to the conversation and the threat looming out there in the night that has not fallen yet.

"Let him be onto me, then," Nate says. His affect is as flat as it ever is, no fire in his voice, and he takes his hand off the countertop. "What's the worst I can possibly do? It's not like I can call the police. They'd haul me off to the psych ward."

Molly Toombs

Molly's mouth twists into an expression that is tight and sour alike.  She looks like she wants to snap something at him, the brief flash in her eyes suggests the same.  But, just as he had done, she bit on the first words that tried to leap from her mouth and reconsidered them instead.  Swallowed them back, deciding that they would be counterproductive, and took another drink of whiskey-- this one deeper.

The glass was abandoned for the moment after that, and both hands rested gently over the purring, tightly-curled kitten's body.

"Nate, that's not the point."

She leaves a few seconds of quiet there, and in that time stares at him hard and seriously.  It's curious, it seems like Nate is dealing with a side of Molly that hadn't been visible before.  Sure, they didn't know each other that well.  They were just familiar on a very specific and exclusive ground of circumstances.  He didn't know how she reacted when faced with conflict-- she could be moody and violent for all he had to go off of.  Thankfully that didn't seem to be the case, as she hadn't tossed anything or made any threats yet.  Hell, her voice hadn't even raised.

However, there was definitely a firmness to her that came only when someone was incredibly convicted to a cause or concept.

"The point, I think, is his sense of privacy.  And perceived status.  And I think he worries what you'll find out, and that it may be shared with the wrong people in his or any other circle.  And I'm not worried about the worst you could do.  I'm worried about what he will do, and not even the worst of it."

Nate Marszalek

"Yeah, you know..."

But he doesn't know. Of the two of them she holds the greatest amount of understanding of what it is they're up against and she gained this information in the first place because of how Flood matches her up against someone out of his past. Nothing personal in it but the fact that Nate knows nothing and can find nothing grinds his gears.

It's a quiet grinding. Even as the conversation veers towards a more heated clime Nate does not puff up or wall himself off. He does not blurt out the first thought that forms in his mind. Might be now that Molly starts to get the idea that Nate doesn't particularly enjoy confrontation.

"... my sense of privacy used to entail being able to walk down the street without worrying about losing half a gallon of blood because some thing might decide I look like a snack."

This isn't an argument he's going to win. Nate pinches the bridge of his nose like to stave off a headache and sighs and lets go.

"Okay."

Molly Toombs

At first it seemed like he was going to keep arguing his justification.  For a second, while he was expressing that he used to be able to walk down the street without worrying about losing out on his blood supply, Molly had sat straighter on the stool.  She was readying herself to argue back.  She wouldn't yell, she wasn't about to stand up and get in his face, or slap her hands on the counter and get emotional.  She would start growing red about the neck and cheeks if she were getting to that point -- a trait of her Emerald Isle heritage that tended to betray her emotions no matter how she may try and keep them away from her expressions.

She wouldn't back down if he didn't first.  This was the whole purpose of her coming here, seeking him out.  She didn't want to see him getting killed or altered in some way because of what he knew.  Furthermore, she didn't want this to come back around on her.  She was the one, after all, that had helped goad him into believing that vampires were real.  She'd helped him remember and think more on the man who had bitten him in the park and left him weak and woozy and sick.  Certainly, if he'd gotten too far in his snooping and prodding around, this would come back down on Molly's head.

And that couldn't happen.

She still had much to learn.

But, it didn't need to come to that.  He relented with an 'okay', and Molly relaxed once more.  Hands worked to scratch along the spine of the little orange kitten curled up on her lap, and she took one last drink to finish off her whiskey before pushing the glass away, toward the middle of the counter between herself and Nate.  She wouldn't be asking for second-- drinking too much in the middle of the day always lead to sick stomachs and headaches later on in the day.

"Good," she'd said, shoulders rounded in a show of relief.  "....How much have you found out, anyway?  I'm curious to know."

Devilish.  She's scolded him for digging then encouraged him to share what he's found.

Nate Marszalek

When the empty glass comes to the countertop Nate doesn't refill it with whiskey. He doesn't refill his own either. His eyes have not gone glassy from inebriation but his skin has acquired a hue of health ordinarily gone from him. Doesn't look any more spry than he did when Molly first arrived at his place. Their conversation has him speaking less than she's heard him speak in the past.

He rinses the glasses and fills both with water from the tap and gives Molly's back to her. He drinks deep from his glass and then considers her. If Molly feels as if the man is examining her no one would blame her. For all they've been discussing this afternoon this is the first time he seems wary of her.

"I'm a crime reporter," he says, "not an investigative journalist. I haven't actually found out much of anything."

Molly Toombs

Nate's examining her again, much like he had done when she'd initially approached him out in front of that Chinese restaurant.  That was a brief, cursory overview though.  This was more in depth.

He was justified.  Molly had shown up after being absent for close to a month, and she was (in a way) rallying for and defending the privacy of a vampire that had accosted her friend in a park and left him severely hindered, sick, and endangered.  The last couple of times that they'd spoken on the matter she was defensive against this new, big dark unknown.  Now she was intrigued by it, enthralled with it, combing for information and even going so far as to ask after whatever Nate himself may have found.  She was being suspicious, and he was right to stare at her the way he was.

Still, though, the results are the same.  She's healthy, with a flush of life to her cheeks and a bright light to her eyes.  She has no marks on her neck, no bruises on her arms or collarbone.  Her hair is washed and the roots have been dyed back to dark recently.  She has plenty of energy, she wasn't dragging or lethargic.  If the Undead found influence over her, it wasn't through any aggressive or obvious means.

He says that he hasn't found much of anything, and Molly looks like she isn't sure if she should be disappointed or relieved.  More than likely, she's walking a line between the two reactions.

"That's probably for the better," she said, tone matching her expression.  He'd refilled her glass with water, and she accepted it with a nod of thanks and drank half.  Then the kitten was scooped up from her lap, its curled-up weight cupped in both hands.  She stood up from the stool, and though she was planning on putting the kitten down on the floor she paused and instead sought out some furniture to let the little bundle of fuzz nestle into instead.

"I've got work later today, so I should probably get going.  Not much time to just hang out and shoot the breeze, you know?  But thank you for the drink.  And I'm sorry I've been out of touch for so long... It's just... precarious, I guess, keeping that balance between this world and that one."

Nate Marszalek

For a moment it looks as if he's holding his breath like to make sure she's going to accept what he'd just said. Could be her imagination. Secondhand paranoia. His posture doesn't change and no hidden tension leaves his features but that sense of normalcy returned after suspended animation is not just something she's conjuring. He picks up the water glass and slams it back with more force and purpose than that with which he'd treated his alcohol.

When Molly stands the kitten makes a small disgruntled noise but doesn't fight the displacement until they're at the couch. The couch is cold and will not pet her. She writhes away from the cushion like she was dropped from a height and not gently set there and finds her way back onto the floor. There's plenty of stuff to bat around down there. A jingly ball skitters underneath the couch and the kitten follows it.

This would be an opportune moment for him to reassure her. They have this in common. He hears dead people and has kept that to himself for however many years and one would think he would want to reach out to someone who can understand what it is to have to feign adhesion to a world without dark things slinking about in shadows and long-forgotten dust-choked books.

It would be and it is. But Nate doesn't take it.

"You don't have to apologize," he says. He draws a breath to mentally prepare himself to walk across the room and pulls it off despite the size of his shot and his previous lack of success with drinking great quantities of alcohol. "I know you're busy. Thanks for stopping by."

Molly Toombs

Molly paused near the sofa that she'd deposited the kitten on, watching the little animal squirm and writhe its way displeased onto the floor.  A smile curved on her apple-cheeked face to watch Lucifer the Kitten spring to life upon finding the ground and chase a ball underneath the couch.

"Heh," she said, and turned to glance back to Nate while he walked to the door.  She took up her coat and donned it once more, fingers working familiar over the buttons to secure the garment closed.  "Your cat's awfully cute," she advised him as a side note, and walked to meet him by the front of his apartment, where he hovered by the door to see her off.

He said she didn't have to apologize, and that he understood she was busy.  Hell, he even thanked her for stopping by.  If they'd been spending more time together, if that gap in contact hadn't occurred, she would probably hug her farewell.  But the ground they were building had come loose underneath them-- Nate had been working his way toward the rabbit hole, and Molly was already one leg into it.  He wasn't sure he could trust her anymore, and he was justified in this shake of faith.

So, she doesn't hug.  Instead she pats his arm and is on her way.

"We'll be in touch.  Bye, Nate."