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.
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