Carole Klein
One of the last jokes Nate made about the length of his stay in the hospital had to do with whether he needed to submit a change of address card so the post office could just start sending all of his mail to the hospital room where he's spent the last three weeks fighting off an infection that is trying its damnedest to consume his left eye.
Even though it's against HIPAA to check a patient's chart when he is not under a clinician's direct care Molly has been at this hospital long enough that she can talk to the nurses and doctors responsible for him and they will tell her what is going on with him. That they don't give too many shits if she wants to check it herself.
They're having trouble managing the infection. Last week they thought the growth had slowed after two rounds of intravitreal injections on top of the intravenous antifungal medication but it isn't clearing up. All they've managed to do is keep it from spreading and even that isn't something they can boast anymore. The ophthalmologist doesn't particularly want to put the guy through a vitrectomy so soon after a globe rupture repair but if they don't do something the infection is going to break through the drugs and he's going to lose the eye.
If nothing has given by Monday they're wheeling him into the OR again.
Nothing they can do over the weekend but try to keep him comfortable.
---
When Molly stops by on Friday she can hear a husky yet feminine voice before she steps in. The scene that greets her is not Nate sitting up talking to another nurse as she tends to his heplock or gets him out of bed to walk around. He's reclined without being completely supine and his right eye is shut. His gauze-bandaged arms are draped over his lap and the tone gone out of them for his being asleep.
A woman is sitting in the chair beside his bed. Dusk falls fast this time of year and the overhead light is off because he's supposed to be resting and the woman has turned on the smaller lamp at the head of the bed.
They have unwrapped the gauze from around Nate's head so his eye is exposed to the air now. Suffice to say it isn't a pleasant sight. The skin around his eye socket is red and swollen and the upper eyelid glistens with what Molly can hope is ointment. This woman must have a strong stomach if she can sit here and read aloud like there's nothing wrong with him.
"'And then I settled into the most natural thing for a man with no real talents.'"
She was reading from a hardcover book rested on her lap. What Molly can see of her in the few seconds that pass between her overtaking the doorway and the woman noticing her is that she is tall and healthy with a heart-shaped face and a pixie haircut dyed blond. She wears dark bluejeans and a white long-sleeved scoop-neck shirt tucked in. Black boots that come up past her calves. Her winter coat is draped over the back of her chair and a purse rests on the floor by her feet.
With her head ducked Molly cannot see her face. As hard to tell her age as it is to tell Nate's.
Asleep as he is the man looks younger for his vulnerability. His cheeks are flushed with fever and his overgrown hair is damp with sweat. Saline has returned to the regimen of IV bags hung on the metal pole. According to the pulse oximeter his saturation levels are fine but his pulse is on the high end of normal even though he's asleep.
"'Journalism,'" she concludes. Then snorts. "Oh my god that's rude. I'm so glad you're asleep."
Molly Toombs
Being a woman of few friends, Molly visited Nate frequently and kept up on his medical charts. Technically she shouldn't know the details of his medical well-being, but she had a reputation of competence and overall professionalism in her workplace. She wasn't well liked by her peers, but her superiors at least could rely on her and consider her an asset. They showed more empathy when she explained that Nate was a good friend and (mercifully) her doctor was humored by the unspoken implication that the E.R. nurse wanted to follow up on the work of the nurses that cared for him.
She was well aware of the fact that his infection wasn't going away. She also knew that they planned on outright removing the eye if the infection hadn't budged come Monday. What she wasn't certain of was whether Nate knew this was the plan or not-- she hoped that the doctors were being open with him, but hadn't confirmed for sure.
This evening Molly wasn't working, so when she appeared in Nate's doorway she was dressed in street clothes instead of her scrubs: boot-cut jeans, brown sneakers, a simple white T-shirt, and a heavy wool cardigan with plenty of color and horizontal pattern happening. Her hair was worn down and simple. She looked like she hadn't made as much effort on her appearance today as she did on others. That probably had something to do with laundry needing to be done and a puppy that was still being progressively trained.
Typically she would just stroll in if she caught Nate asleep, check his chart and leave to visit another time. Sometimes she'd leave a note on his cellphone for him to find later (one instance she'd taken a picture of herself making an outrageous face as evidence of her checking in). Tonight, though, the woman in the chair gave her pause. Nate had visitors from time to time, no doubt, but Molly hadn't encountered any of them before. The woman in the chair was unfamiliar and reading to him. She wasn't his sister, Molly knew.
Curious and far from shy, the thought to just come back later didn't stick in her mind. Instead, Molly continued her way quiet and soft-stepped into the room. She was holding two cups that looked like they came from a coffee shop, judging by the sleeves around them and the lids on top.
"I didn't realize he'd be getting visitors besides me tonight," is what the red-haired woman said to break the quiet and announce her presence. "Hope I'm not interrupting?"
Carole Klein
At the new voice the woman does not startle. If she has been here any length of time she has to have grown used to people showing up in the doorway unannounced. She looks up and her eyes go right to Molly's.
Besides the pale skin and hair the woman bears no physical resemblance to Nate that could mistake her for his sister. Molly has seen pictures of Nate's sister. Knows she is a student at UC Berkeley and studies international relations with the intent to work for the government. Unlike her brother she has no interest in joining the military to fulfill her civic duty. Hannah got the same blond hair and brown eyes that Nathan did but she sleeps well at night and her skin takes to the sun.
This woman would look different if she were in her police uniform. Molly may have seen her in the ER before dropping off a mental health arrest or escorting the medics with a violent patient. Recognition does not register on her open face. She looks pleased to see another person in the room who is not wearing scrubs.
Molly comes bearing coffee and hopes she isn't interrupting. The woman smiles a friendly smile that reaches her blue eyes.
"Not at all," she says and glances away long enough to slip a flap of the book jacket between the pages to mark her place. "I don't know how long he's been asleep, but he was kind out of it when I got here. You must be Molly."
She sets the book down on the bedside table and clarifies before Molly can ask:
"He... was asking about you earlier. I'm Carole. Hi."
Molly Toombs
The woman looked up, and Molly blinked once in question while caught in a momentary limbo of recognizing the face but not knowing where from. The fact that she was in jeans and a shirt rather than a police uniform was what was throwing her off, but when Carole offered a polite smile and started to talk it clicked. She's seen the woman more than just once before bringing patients in through the E.R. doors.
When Carole had accurately guessed who she was, Molly looked surprised and glanced briefly to Nate, then back to the pretty blonde woman when she clarified why she knew her name. Molly relaxed and finally returned the smile.
"That's me. Nice to meet you, Carole." Her arm moved like she was going to shake hands, but remembered half a second too late that she had a cup of hot drink in either hand. She glanced down at Nate, asleep in the bed, and canted a smirk. "Well, he's clearly out like a light. Do you like cream or black?" She lifted the cups one at a time to indicate which was which, and held them both forward to offer the choice to the short-haired woman that had been reading to the unconscious mutual friend of theirs.
"I've seen you down in the E.R. a few times before. I didn't know you were friends with Nate?"
Carole Klein
"Oh, gosh."
This about the coffee apparently. A major decision when she's just meeting someone for the first time and has to take whichever was about to go to the man lying in the hospital bed. She has no idea how he would take his coffee if he were awake.
Molly knows Nate drinks his iced coffee black and he started drinking alcohol with some regularity after Flood attacked him in the park. That he smokes like a chimney and went through a phase where he put on a nicotine patch if he was going to be seeing Molly. They have one applied to his upper arm because he can't exactly go outside once an hour to smoke a cigarette in his current state.
He really must not feel well. Or else he just sleeps like a fucking rock. Carole is making no attempt to keep her voice hushed and Nate is breathing the deep and slow respirations of one well and truly out despite the conversation going on around him.
"I haven't taken my training wheels off yet. Cream would be great, thank you."
So Carole reaches out to accept the paper cup and though she does not make an overt attempt to avoid their fingers brushing, when they do Molly can feel the coolness of her hand and the callouses on the pads of them. Carole has short and unpolished fingernails. They are the stripped sort of bare like they're used to being painted.
Molly didn't know she was friends with Nate. Carole's eyes are on hers when she hears this and Molly can see a brief uncertainty frolic across them.
"We... actually just met the day before this happened," she says. Her head bobbing towards the mess lain in the bed. "And then my partner and I were the first ones on-scene. It was..."
She blows on the lip of her cup before she takes a sip.
"This is good. Thank you."
Molly Toombs
The comment about still needing training wheels was met with an understanding grin, and Molly extended the left hand instead of the right. She was going to give Nate black coffee and tell him to deal with it being hot and drink the cream and sugar coffee herself, but she could stomach the flavor of stark black roast if her options were narrowed. She was more invested in making a good impression on Nate's friend than she was with getting her favorite kind of coffee.
Fingers brushed briefly when the cup changed hands. Molly kept her fingernails at a medium length, as they were helpful for peeling packages and wrappers away from one-time-use instruments down on the work floor. They were also bare free of paint. She didn't grimace or make a fuss over the momentary contact, and instead glanced briefly down to Nate when Carole explained that she was on the scene of Nate's attack.
Molly's expression pressed into one of concern more than anything, and both hands wrapped around her own coffee cup like she planned to warm her fingers on it, though they weren't very cold from the outdoors anymore. She'd purchased the coffee at the cafe downstairs.
"That poor asshole has cost the government so much money on medical bills. I'm surprised they haven't started leasing his body for military experiments or something by now." The frown she cast down at the man was affectionate and worried, but didn't sing any strong songs of romance.
When thanked for the coffee, Molly looked back to the woman, and this time left her eyes on the off-duty officer's face with less distraction. Like she was actually taking her in this time. She found herself surprised by how authentically beautiful the woman was-- kind of like how she was taken aback by how somebody as Hollywood gorgeous as Lux was roaming the streets of Denver. The surprise glowed dim and short like a very weak lightbulb on Molly's face before switching off and being replaced by a smile instead.
"Of course." The smile turned to something just a touch more teasing now, and the tone of her voice shifted along with it. She was testing social waters, so she was reserved in whatever jesting she may be sharing just yet. "So he must've laid the charms on pretty thick if you're reading to him after one meeting."
Carole Klein
The crack about Nate costing the government money has the other woman looking at him with no small amount of concern. Three weeks isn't a long time to know someone even if it feels longer for his being bedridden and injured the entire time.
He must've laid the charms on pretty thick if she's reading to him after one meeting.
When Carole laughs it's a throaty and unembarrassed sound. Standing up as she is now she is naturally tall. The soles of her boots only add another inch or so onto her height. With proper high heels on she would stand as tall as Nate does.
"Dude," she says. Takes another slug of her coffee and tucks her free hand into the hip pocket of her jeans. "I came in like a week later to see how he was doing and I don't know what happened. I ended up staying for like an hour. So technically it's been..."
Carole pulls a face that clearly announces its oh god surprise at how many times she's actually come to visit this poor asshole outside of work.
"... a lot of meetings." Another slug of coffee. "He was kind of delirious earlier. I figured if I was here anyway I might as well."
Molly Toombs
The explanation of how Carole had come to know Nate was heard quietly. Molly nodded her head appropriately to show she was listening and understanding alike, and brought her own cup of coffee up to her mouth to take a small sip. She turned her body at the waist to face Nate a little more directly when it was explained that he was delirious earlier, and the smile had slipped some from as pleasant as it had been before. Now it was distracted, an expression left on the face by muscle memory and not much else. Her eyes were showing that concern again.
Molly was a nurse, and though Carole may not have put that together from Molly's earlier mention of how she recognized the short-haired woman, she understood that the delirium could be a sign that the infection was flaring up again.
As Carole expressed that there have actually been a lot of meetings, Molly distractedly approached Nate's bedside and touched the inside of her wrist to his forehead to feel his temperature, to feel for sweat and clamminess as well. As she did this, she checked the machines he was hooked to. This was her habit when checking on him in a hospital bed, it had simply been delayed by greeting the pretty stranger first.
"Well, he'll come back to his senses sooner than later, and then it'll occur to him that he managed to hook your interests." She said this facing the monitor, speaking while reading which caused her tone to be a little faraway. "Then he'll realize how lucky he is and start combing his hair."
Carole Klein
As Molly goes about checking on Nate the off-duty cop stands back and just watches the nurse work. Though she is here with clear interest in the man who is a few years older than her it hasn't clouded her judgment yet. Everyone at the station may make fun of her for just about falling over herself when Marszalek showed up but their teasing is partly self-serving.
Goading one of their own into dating a reporter is like having a mole across enemy lines. It's just good strategy. Plus Carole is young and attractive and this is bothersome to the married-with-kids crew that she works with.
Stood closer to the bed now Molly can see how little Nate's eye has improved. His hair and forehead are tacky with old sweat and when she lays her wrist against his forehead she can feel how warm he is. Fevers have a therapeutic purpose but they are pushing fluids through his IV to keep him from getting dehydrated. They have to replace the IV needle every 96 hours to keep him from catching MRSA on top of everything else and after jumping back and forth between his elbows all this time they've moved the IV to the back of his right hand. Liberal amounts of tape hold it in place. He looks exhausted even as he's asleep.
Nate gasps in a breath and jerks with the contact. He sleeps deep but comes up fast. Like he might have to fight something off. Both eyes fly open and she can see the left is completely bloodshot. The only sign of its still existing underneath all of that is the milky blue-white haze of the infection visible where the brown of his iris ought to be. Neither eye focuses on her but his good right one has to do all of the work now. Molly can see he isn't truly awake. They've probably got him on an anxiolytic if they haven't actually started giving him pain medication again. Between that and the fact that he is in worse shape now than he was when they wheeled him in strapped to a backboard almost three months ago Molly knows it's not exactly a mystery why his level of consciousness isn't anything to brag about.
He mumbles an incoherent slurry of words before turning his head away from the door and dropping back off.
Carole laughs a quieter laugh as she stands at the foot of the bed and listens to Molly's prediction. As she answers she glimpses the other woman's face if she can't get a lock on her eyes.
"Oh, it always looks like this? I thought that was just because he was sick. Thanks for the warning."
Before too deep a silence can descend upon the room, Carole goes on:
"I was thinking about heading out and getting something to eat. You want to come, or are you gonna stay with him?"
Molly Toombs
The gasp and sudden opening of eyes had Molly stilling, stiffening in the spine and looking sharply down at Nate. While his damaged eye was opened, Molly fixated on it to gauge its condition. It wasn't doing well at all. A quick sweep of the undamaged eye had her recognizing that his pupils were out of focus. He wasn't actually awake. When his eyes fluttered closed again and his head turned away from the door, Molly frowned and brushed his hair back away from his forehead and eyes. Carole could see the concern on her face. She was worried he was going to have to lose the eye.
"Yeah, he thinks he has this noir detective thing going on."
Her voice is affectionate and distracted alike, even when continuing her thread of conversation about the state of Nate's hair. Her hand left Nate's head and hair and wrapped around her coffee cup instead, and she took a step back to frown thoughtfully down at her friend.
Then came the offer: I was thinking of getting something to eat, would you like to come?
Molly's attention snap-hopped back over to Carole, and she appeared to be taken aback-- surprised by the invitation. Like she wasn't sure why she would be offered to accompany the woman out for a bite to eat when they'd only just met. Not offended by the concept, perhaps instead a little caught off guard and maybe a touch flattered as well. When she got over the initial surprise and had a second to think on the offer, Molly nodded and slipped a free hand into the pocket of the heavy cardigan she was wearing today in replacement of a coat.
"Dinner sounds like a good idea, actually, thank you." She took another step back from Nate's bed, then pulled her cell phone from her pocket and started tapping at the screen of her phone with her thumb, like she was going to be sending a text.
"I'll just leave him the picture I was gonna share as a text for when he wakes up." Molly turned toward the door, but would wait for Carole to start walking first, giving up the lead to the off-duty officer. "I've been keeping his cat while he's all laid up, and my puppy's been having a field day over her 'new best friend'. There are enough pictures for a Buzzfeed article here."
Carole Klein
Nate cracked a joke about letting the surgeon just take the damn thing weeks ago when Molly came in to visit him one of the first times. He hadn't known how bad things could possibly get but she hadn't had to lean too far to see where he was coming from. He hates hospitals. Most people hate hospitals but Nate finds himself distracted in them even when he's just passing through as a visitor. Spending six days on the ICU last year was a special kind of hell that he didn't even really talk about even after Molly realized what was going on.
Now the sentiment isn't a joke. If he's going to lose the damned thing anyway Nate would rather they just take it out now and let him move on with his life. The doctors are more stubborn than he is though. And now he isn't awake or lucid enough to articulate that it isn't a fucking joke. He's had enough of this shit.
For having as big a secret as he does though Nate is not in general a difficult person to read. When she looks back at her Molly can see a similar earnestness in Carole. No deviousness or ulterior motive exists in the invitation. They were both here to support Nate and there's nothing they can do for him right now. The best they can hope for is that he will know on some level that they were there and find comfort in it.
When Molly accepts Carole steps back from the bed and gathers up her coat and purse. She has not known him long enough to feel physical affection towards him. To want to brush his hair back from his face or touch his hand or do anything else that might imprint upon him the fact that he was not alone this entire time. As Molly works she slips into her coat and then she leads the way outside.
Another of those laughs that works as a sign that the woman is not self-conscious. Quiet only because they're in a place where people are sick and recovering from surgery and she doesn't want to be That Guy.
"He has a cat?" she asks. Suspended disbelief as she stares at Molly like her eyes would offer proof of her fucking with her. If Molly starts to turn the phone her way to offer up photographic evidence Carole laughs again and puts a hand on her wrist and says: "Naw, let me see more of the puppy. You've seen one cat, you've seen them all."
---
The weather is blistering in its coldness and Carole concedes they could easily walk the two blocks to the Vietnamese bistro south of the hospital but they're not going to be of any use to anyone if they freeze to death trying to prove how tough they are. So she leads her into the parking garage to collect her Chevy Silverado.
"Sorry," she says about the distance Molly has to haul herself to get into the passenger side of the vehicle. "Born and raised out here, you get a truck when you graduate high school."
Once they're there the server gives them a table near one of the huge windows looking out onto the street and Carole expresses fear over the offerings on the cocktail menu. Because the server is patiently waiting for them to order something she asks for an Uptown which the menu proclaims is infused chamomile whiskey and sweet vermouth with a cherry.
"I feel way too grownup now," she says in a stage whisper after the server walks away. "Somebody told me this place had fish tacos, I was like Yes! I don't have to pretend I'm classy!"
Now she looks around at the cosmopolitan decor and listens to the smooth jazz playing over the bar speakers and pulls a face that announces she's made a huge mistake.
Molly Toombs
As they walked, Molly fiddled with the phone to show a picture between Nate's room and the parking garage that she was being led to. Carole said she'd seen plenty of cats but was all for the pictures of the puppy, so Molly explained: "The best one is of both of them," and handed the phone over to show a picture off.
The shot is taken from the phone, at an angle that made it apparent that the landscape was Molly's bed and her legs. Laying flank-to-flank between what must be Molly's denim-clad shins are an orange kitten and a brown puppy. The puppy has its maw stretched open like it's yawning, but its jaws are around the kitten's head. The kitten appears sleepily oblivious. All hell probably broke loose 1.5 seconds after the digital camera shutter snapped. Molly could confirm that that's precisely what happened, and show the scratch on her shin where the cat launched herself away from the bed, only to be chased by the puppy.
"That's the picture I was gonna show Nate. I figured he'd get a laugh out of it."
When he was conscious enough, he might just. Provided he isn't too hung up over the potential loss of his eye and misery of existing in a hospital to chuckle.
---------------
At the restaurant, neither Molly nor Carole seem dressed for the atmosphere that they'd walked into. There might have been a moment of hesitation between the pair, where they thought about going somewhere more casual, but an attentive server approached them quickly and they passively agreed to sit and allowed themselves to be led to a table that looked out onto the street. Molly kept her cardigan on, but rolled the sleeves up past her wrists and forearms and picked up a menu to survey as well.
Molly had just ordered water, for the time being at least. She liked to figure out what she was eating before pairing a drink with it.
The nurse laughed pleasantly at the whisper across the table. She'd been pleasant the short drive over and even went so far as holding the door open for the taller woman to walk through ahead of her.
"I spied a table in the back where the couple's dressed in jeans and hoodies. I think we'll be alright with whatever level of class we're subscribing ourselves to anymore." Molly folded her own menu closed and glanced around at the decor, twisted and peered back at the bar as well. As she did this, she asked openly: "It looks alright though, huh? If the food's as good as I'm guessing it will be, you could drag Nate here next. Help him get his mind off the fact that he's probably going to need to start investing in a glass eye."
Carole Klein
Most women would have bailed out long before now.
Carole can now claim to have already seen him at a pretty low point in his life but Molly would probably be hard-pressed to say that she'd ever seen him anyplace else. They met in a bar in the middle of the afternoon and he'd looked rumpled even then. Back before an internationally-wanted terrorist strolled into their conversation and an undead denizen of the night began to take an almost Oedipal interest in her. He has been dealing with restless spirits flocking to him since he was a child. They were friends for several months before Molly realized this.
Mention of his previous military experience coupled with the prospects of him having to spend the rest of his life with a glass eye is a sign of how Molly's sense of humor meshes with Nate's. Carole has known him three weeks and with the exception of the first night of that acquaintance he has been confined to the hospital.
If she honestly knew what she was dealing with she might turn tail and go back to the market to see who else is out there. She might. Or she might be waiting for someone to come along who's the same kind of fucked up as she is. Has to be some reason why she's been keeping him company even though they just met.
"I could," she says. Musing. "It's a good thing you're a nurse, huh? This kind of thing doesn't squick you out." A beat. Deer-in-the-headlights. Like she's just realized she's out to dinner with the guy's close friend and she wants to make a good impression. "I mean, I'm not... we haven't really talked about it. He could totally pull off a glass eye."
Here comes the server with their drinks.
"Thank you," Carole says. "I need to wash the taste of foot out of my mouth."
The server is probably in her thirties and appears bemused by the two of them. Uncertain of the energy at the table and Carole's brazen openness with expressing how out of her element she is. Used to dealing with yuppies who don't make eye contact or talk to her like a human, like as not. She relaxes a bit when Molly orders. Molly has that effect on people.
Carole has ordered the pho rather than springing for the fish tacos. It's a matter of price and her not recognizing what the fuck this place is even putting in the tacos. After the server has taken down their orders and left Carole takes a demure yet bracing swig of her drink and looked back across the table.
"So Nate says you're from Oregon?" A beat. "Well, no, he says you're from Oregon and that's unfortunate because both your NBA teams suck. I told him the Trail Blazers aren't that bad and he said they lost to Dallas in the first round of the playoffs in 2011 so I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I asked him what that had to do with you being from Oregon and the entire conversation started all over again."
She laughs and swirls her cherry around in her drink.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't make fun of him when he's not here to defend himself." She clears her throat. "You're from Oregon?"
Molly Toombs
Molly's relationship with Nate was a curious thing, that started out one way and took a hard left turn down a different path entirely. They'd met initially by chance in a bar, and Molly put on her charms and Nate had started wearing smoking cessation patches so he wouldn't smell like a chimney when he met her. On their next 'date', though, Molly had started talking about vampires and it was revealed that Nate had encounters with them as well. At that point he stopped being a casual dating prospect and got categorized as 'Ally I Must Have' instead, whether he liked it or not.
Since then, their conversations and adventures have circled around death and What Comes Next. She holds him dear, but more like how survivors latch on to one another than romantic prospects do. The fact that he's been in her hospital more than he hasn't been over the past two months was worth worrying about, but their shared dark sense of humor helped. It was better than self-pity, so Molly encouraged the jokes instead.
The drinks arrived and Carole made a comment about washing the taste of foot out of her mouth after her initial statement about the perks of being a nurse, and Molly just grinned and laughed. She ordered the pho as well, because in her opinion that ought to be the go-to at a Vietnamese joint anyways. To go with it, she requested a whiskey old fashioned and settled back with her glass of water in the meantime.
"Well, I'm not offering to help keep the socket clean, so I've got nothing to really be squicked out about in the first place. He'll still get cuffed if he tries playing pranks with that glass eye, though." And, to go along with that train of thought and how Nate would look with a glass eye, Molly appeared thoughtful and then shrugged. "Well, it would make for a great conversation starter. And if he was feeling adventurous he could put a smiley face eye in there instead of a brown one."
The 'So, you're from Oregon?' bit that led into a conversation about the NBA was met with an apologetic expression, and Molly spread her hands out helplessly in front of her. "For having gone through school on an athletic scholarship, I don't ever really watch sports." The apologetic look turned to an apologetic smile that just faded into a simple smile on its own soon enough. Molly had shown up that evening expecting to have Nate for company, and though she clearly wanted to see him (otherwise she wouldn't have come, right?), she was pleased to get out of the hospital and her apartment both and meet someone new.
It was especially refreshing that this new person seemed genuinely easy to get along with. Molly liked her right off the bat.
When the server returned with her drink, Molly accepted it graciously and neverminded whatever bemused or 'knowing' looks that he might have delivered along with the alcohol. She was focused on Carole instead.
"Yeah, I am. Just a little coastal place called Florence-- which is actually what I wound up naming my puppy, but not for that reason. I was naming her after Florence Nightengale. I came out here for school, due to the aforementioned scholarship.
"What about you, Carole? You said you grew up here, right? Like, in town, or from Boulder or someplace close?"
Carole Klein
Carole outright laughs when Molly jokes about a possible future where Nathan has to learn to live with a glass eye but suppresses one when Molly tells her she's from a town in Oregon called Florence. She doesn't interrupt until the question comes back her way. It's a long time for suspension of laughter but she manages. There must be numerous instances during the course of her day working for the city police that she ends up having to not laugh at what's going on in front of her.
"I swear to God," she says, "I'm from Florence, Colorado." Yeah. That happened. "It's like a hundred miles south of here, out by Pueblo. Our claim to fame is it used to be a railroad depot for the coal towns but then they found oil and the population exploded. We got a whole three thousand-something people living there now."
She looks like she finds this coincidence fascinating. This is the closest she's looked at Molly since their paths first crossed in their mutual acquaintance's hospital room.
It's not very likely that the reporter told Carole about how he had invited Molly out for coffee once months ago in the hopes of getting to know her better and maybe making a move afterwards. They could have done all sorts of things with the afternoon but they had ended up reeling from the conversation and parting ways then.
Nate's problem stems from the fact that he's a decent enough person that he doesn't use words like 'friend zone' and 'booty call' with anything other than ironic amusement. He doesn't think he can feed women good deeds like coins and have sexual favors come out of them. Even though he isn't getting anything out of his relationship with Molly besides companionship he values her and appreciates that she's around.
They don't make a greeting card for that and he isn't the type who enjoys discussing his feelings. If she doesn't know that now she may never because for being an honest enough sort he keeps a lot of shit to himself.
"This is the furthest I've ever been from home, actually. Colorado seems like such a big state and there's so much to do here but... I don't know. Sometimes I feel like such a hick."
Molly Toombs
Once, Molly may have categorized Nate as a 'Prospect'. She had categories that people fit into, for the most part, but she didn't let that category trap or define the person entirely. Anyone she dated was a 'Prospect'-- someone whose phone number she kept, who she made a point to stay in at least semi-regular touch with so that they could strike up another date sometime. 'Jacky', or Harald (although she only thought of him as 'Jacky' or 'Jack') was a Prospect. She'd had one very successful date with him, two if you included when they met and had a long conversation until closing at the book shop. She didn't know that tomorrow night he'd text her for date two-or-three-depending-on-who-you-asked.
Nate didn't so much graduate from the category of 'Prospect' when she learned that he knew about Vampires as well as he did get violently heaved into his own independent being in her life all together. Theirs wasn't a romance, but they didn't know enough about each other on casual human-to-human levels to be called 'good friends' either. Molly honestly couldn't think of it in better terms than 'Survivors'. Except it wasn't a category that he fell into, it was one that carried the both of them together.
Here and now with Carole, she didn't have a category yet either. She was interested in this woman past the point of 'a friend of a friend'-- she was drawn enough to come out to dinner with her on the same afternoon as meeting her, and laughed at the humor in the fact that this was how their evening wound up. An officer and an emergency room nurse, both off duty, having pho and drinks after having met in a mutual friend's hospital room while he himself was unconscious and losing an eye.
"No shit?" Molly's eyes widened when Carole revealed she was from a town called Florence as well. She didn't seem to stop to think that cursing would be out of polite boundaries, they were both adults and shared a 'clientele', neither of them were strangers to harsh language. This was followed closely by a laugh. "Well, the world just gets smaller and smaller."
That's a lie, Molly. It keeps getting bigger-- no, deeper. Deeper and darker than just bigger.
"Well, you don't really look the sort to be crushing beer cans in the bed of your truck and starting fights because your team lost at the bar. I wouldn't use the word 'hick' to describe you."
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And the rest of the dinner would go as such. Their pho would arrive and Molly would start to talk about how Anthony Bordain called it the best food on the planet, and they would find mutual conversational trends from there. Maybe they'd talk about what sport Molly played to pay her way through college (it was volleyball), or the crazy weather trends happening lately, or what it was that brought Carole into the city and out of the sticks. Molly would order one other drink (because fuck it, she didn't drive anyways), and by the time the meal was done Molly paid for what she'd consumed and accompanied Carole back out of the restaurant.
As they went, Molly was asking and reaching into her pocket:
"Carole, is it alright if I get your number? We could bring Nate a party next time and both show up when he's awake."
Carole Klein
If they had had a similar conversation with Nate present Molly would have been able to see the subconscious lines of demarcation forming themselves. Carole trying to keep herself constrained so if Nathan did laugh at her truck or her never having left Colorado or her discomfort ordering a cocktail when she really wanted to order a Bud Light it would have been because she delivered the information in a self-depreciating fashion. Same as she offered it to Molly.
Carole is in a difficult position now because truth be told the doctors are worried about Nathan's infection spreading to the bones of his face and the lining of his brain. That he could lose his eye is the best case scenario in their world but they are not telling Nathan this. That he could lose the eye isn't even really in Carole's bag of knowledge but for the fact that Nate has joked about it once already and Molly has mentioned it once. She didn't sign up for this.
All she was doing was showing up to check on the guy so the homicide detectives could close out the case and she ended up developing a crush on him. That isn't exactly professional but all the reasons Molly has to look at him as nothing more than an ally are occluded in Carole's world. She knows nothing about ghosts or vampires or wizards.
Their dinner goes far better than Molly's first meal with Nate had gone. No one strange shows up and distracts either of them. One of them will not end up encountering him again while the other goes off to investigate his origins. Pho most definitely is the best food on the planet and it makes for an excellent backdrop while Carole asks about Molly's college career or tells her how she ended up going to college at DU and dated a cop her junior year, actually, and that's how she got interested in the police force as a profession. The guy ended up transferring to Arizona to work on a DEA task force and they remain friends but they kind of never made sense together romantically anyway.
Carole hadn't finished her Uptown before ordering a bottle of Bud Light. Fuck it. It's tasty enough but she wants what she's used to and she's only 23. 23-year-olds can pack it away without remorse.
On the way back to the truck Carole stopped short with Molly's question and didn't skip a beat before agreeing. She preemptively reached for her own phone. That's how kids do it these days. You call me so I can store you.
"It's 555-4195," she says. A slight drawl to her speech that wasn't there two drinks ago. Nate gets the same rural laziness to his speech when he's doped up on morphine or diazepam. Then a thought has her laughing and bumping the other woman with her shoulder. "Dude, can you even imagine how confused he'd be if we both showed up at the same time? We should totally do it."
Molly Toombs
Phone numbers were exchanged and an agreement was made to visit Nate together within the next couple of days. They would shake out firmer details than that later. She was about to walk away, but Carole had stopped to ask where she parked. Molly explained that she didn't own a car and lived downtown, so she just walked and took the bus.
"It's freezing out, get in the truck Molly."
So, rather than walking home through the cold, Molly was given another ride in the police officer's truck and dropped off outside of The Brookstone-- the five story apartment building she lived in. Molly had thanked her for the night, in a way: "That was a better evening than I planned on having. Thanks for letting me join ya for dinner tonight."
Later tonight, while Molly was better bundled for the cold and had Florence out for a walk to stretch her legs (the poor thing was in a black dog sweater and a harness both), she would find her thoughts trailing back to dinner and the woman she shared it with. She wanted to visit Nate and talk with him about this new woman that was trailing along after him. She was intrigued and refreshed to have met someone nice and alive for the first time in so long.
The next night she'd get a text from Jacky to clear her head of short pixie cut blond hair and draw her thoughts back to bushy eyebrows and a weak chin.
By Sunday night she'd be having tightly wound and somehow significant dreams about Jacky, and he'd begin plaguing her thoughts come the start of the work week.
But, that would be another hurdle to pass when the time was right. For now, Molly was happy as she carried the puppy with the chilled and uncomfortable paws the last block and a half home.
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