Molly Toombs
"Toombs, go find Dr. Jacobs."
The
orders were accepted reluctantly, with a held breath and a silent inward
groan. This came from the head nurse, dictated to Molly for the fact
that she and Dr. René Jacobs shared patients tonight. Again. Molly was
beginning to suspect this was intentional, or that the good doctor was
so ever-present in the emergency room and trauma wing that it was
impossible not to be there when he was. She would have tried to find an
excuse to dodge the duty, to say that the doctor was bound to be back
soon and that whatever it was it could wait, but this was a specialist
that they'd been trying to get a hold of so that a patient could move
and a bed could open.
Time was always of the essence in this line
of work, so Molly reluctantly made her move up the hall to the exam room
that was utilized by the staff as a resting place for the weary swing
and night shift staff. Her hair was back at the nape of her neck in a
chignon style, her arms were bare under her scrubs instead of covered
with thermal sleeves, and her stride was brisk and impatient.
She'd
knocked briskly when arriving at the door, the sound of her knuckles
sharp and quick, and without waiting pushed the door open a few inches
to announce through the opening:
"Dr. Huang's calling back." She
doesn't announce who for, but lets him twist in the wind to pull the
memory of the specialist's name and the patient that he was trying to
move on his own. She figured he may be laid back and dozing, but he was
competent enough to catch up on his own. "He's available for the next
five or ten minutes, so you'll want to give him a call back soon."
Let
it be known that she didn't bother to politely avert eyes from the
sliver of room visible through the gap in the door. Nobody had any
reason to be nude or otherwise compromised in there.
René Jacobs
Jacobs
wasn't supposed to be on the floor today. Saturday is a day that he
spends upstairs in the office he shares with the other research
physicians compiling data and chasing people down on the telephone. But
someone called in "influenza" and they had to drag him away from
whatever it is he was doing at the time.
Which was apparently looking like hell.
Not
the type of hell that comes from a vicious hangover or walking
pneumonia as tends to plague professionals but the type of hell that
looks like he's not going to make it through the shift. Supposedly he's
here already but Molly hasn't seen him yet. This is a rarity for her.
He's usually already swimming in test results and ambiguous symptoms by
the time she shows up.
Though the other nurses speculated on what
could be wrong with him Molly hasn't stuck around to help them figure it
out. It can't be anything too terrible or he'd be a patient.
Dr. Huang's calling back.
She's
probably expecting to hear the rustling of clothing on a gurney as he
rouses himself from a nap. Or maybe the shuffling of papers from work he
was trying to finish before hurling himself back out onto the floor.
That isn't what she hears.
Something clatters onto a metal table
and Jacobs swears in French. He is not nude but he is in a position that
would take some fucking explaining: he has an intravenous line stuck in
the back of his left hand and is holding a liter bag of saline solution
piggybacked by a bag of lactated Ringer's in his right. From where she
stands she can agree with the assessment that he looks like hell. His
normally dusky skin has gone ashen and he's both shivering and sweating.
"Fuck," he says. "Alright. I'll call him right now. Shut the door."
Molly Toombs
[Intelligence 3 + Occult 2: What in the Sam Hill? -- WP for brain wracking, read: I've got dirt on you now, fucker]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Medicine 3: Bonus Info!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
Having
expected to see a man laid on a gurney with a thin sheet pulled over
him, it goes without saying that Molly is stunned by what she witnesses
instead. It causes her to stop her second sentence halfway through, to
fail to express when he should call back. She trailed off with He's available for the next five or ten minutes, so you'll want--...
She
didn't throw the door wide open, but she did push it more so to get a
better look at him, to see what was going on. This while he was
swearing and saying he'd call. Her wide, bright blue eyes found the
sweat on his brow, the pallor of his skin, the condition of his dress
shirt (sweaty). She saw the shivering hunch to his shoulders, but they
weren't hunched enough to hide the bruising under the collar of his
shirt.
If he's looking up, he'll watch her face go pale, and that
tight sourpuss expression wipe away entirely for the first time ever in
directly interacting with him. She looked lit up for a second,
realization and recognition and Holy shit all over her freckled face before it clamped down like an iron and she moved.
Not out of the room, but in.
The
door closed behind her, and Molly stood with her back to the door, both
hands on the knob behind her. Her skin was quickly regaining its
color, for he was in no condition to cause her any harm. Before he
could rise up with a protest that she leave him, Molly spoke in a voice
that was low with words that were sharp and quickly spoken.
"Are you brain-damaged? Doing this here?"
René Jacobs
When
he told her to shut the door he clearly meant for her to get the fuck
out of the room and leave him alone until he was done with whatever it
is he thinks he's doing in here but Molly does as Molly always does.
What she wants.
And then he's closed in with her and he looks thoroughly miserable but his regard for her doesn't warm despite his condition.
"Ah,
Miss Toombs. So you've unearthed the greatest secret of my career. I
hold two degrees from the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna
despite living with traumatic brain injury. I shudder to think of what
the board will do when they find out."
Yet her tone isn't lost on
him. She can see despite the blur of shock that he's retained some
semblance of awareness of his surroundings. Hell, he's dressed for work.
He just also looks like he could drop dead if he overexerts himself
before he finishes letting the bags drain into his body.
"Where would you propose I do this? The car park?"
Molly Toombs
"Oh I don't know, maybe your fucking house."
She
didn't move from the door, but more seemed to be blocking it with her
body. The doorknob was still in her hands, trapped by her fingers at
the small of her back. Yet, something about the scenario made it seem
like she was holding the door not to trap the doctor, but rather to
prevent anyone from getting inside. It may be difficult to believe, but
in some way Molly was keen on protecting his privacy while this process
concluded.
It didn't take any of the venom from her voice or the
fierce accusation from her eyes, though. She was eyeballing him with
intent, looking at him hard and clear as though studying a patient.
Evaluating his symptoms, his skin, his marks, his condition overall.
"I
knew you were suspicious." She followed up with, seemingly out of
nowhere, but she's been brimming with some odd relish of victory and
couldn't be assed to keep it contained. The cat was well and beyond out
of the bag for him, after all. She wasn't sure how well he knew that
yet, though. "There had to be something. And go figure, it's something
like this. Nothing so mundane as simple felonies."
René Jacobs
As
Molly basks in the glow of having been right in her refusal to trust
the man he sits and stares at her with a blankness that is either total
lack of comprehension or a mask crafted specifically for situations like
this.
No one else could see anything was amiss about the man's
history or his current situation but now that she's stood here in front
of him and has pieced together that he not only was drained by a vampire
but has enough experience with the creatures to simply treat himself
for blood loss and move on with his day Molly can like as not see
everything in the past few weeks coming into sharper focus.
He was
married and his wife is recently deceased but he has no pictures of her
nor does he have pictures of his children. He makes reference to having
lived in Chicago but little is known of his life prior to his arriving
in the United States. If he has a birth certificate it is certainly from
Belgium. But nobody knows what year he was born or where he's currently
living or why he's in Denver other than the position opened up and he
wanted to leave Chicago anyway.
And now he's sitting here looking
at Molly without expression. Like he's just waiting for her to finish so
they can get this over with. He blinks slow and heavy but with his
blood volume reasserting itself he's breathing easier than he was when
she first walked in.
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he says.
Molly Toombs
Her
answer for him was a short, derisive snort. Her eyes flashed smug and
self-satisfied, but that was precisely where any sign of gloating
ended. She still seemed to be ready to bar the door and make excuses if
somebody tried to enter, and the expression on the rest of her face was
grim. Her jaw was tight and she was on edge. She didn't want to be
caught in any of this weirdness and risk her position at the hospital.
She could have chosen to simply walk away, but something in Molly drew
her to this stuff like a moth to a flame.
Which was why she now
stood in the recovery room with the doctor feeding fluids into his veins
through the back of his hand, stuck convincing herself she had to help
keep him from being discovered. Whatever vampire he was in cahorts
with, Molly didn't want to bring any of that here. The closest she had
come was calling upon Flood, but that was only to get help clearing a
rapidly-dying Ghoul out of a room.
"You're so full of shit."
There she was, cursing at him again. Seeing him virtually prone, sick
and sweating and discovered, uncovered, apparently flipped some switch
in the nurse that determined what was and was not appropriate. This
moment took him outside the realm of workplace respect and hurled him
into the dark murky mists of the supernatural things that she peered
upon curiously and learned more about as weeks went on.
"And you're lucky that it was me that found you, too. Not someone who'd try to get you to admit yourself."
René Jacobs
Now
Jacobs laughs. It is a hoarse and unhappy sound for how weak he still
is but it's clear even in this situation he thinks that he has some sort
of upper hand left. That since Molly cannot truly know anything about
him and is going based on observation and presumption that so long as he
keeps his cards tucked in he might make it out of here without
revealing anything to her that she hasn't decided for herself already.
That
laugh though. If he were ever captured by someone wishing to pry him
for information on the world he knows he would probably require quite a
bit of physical torture before he started to talk.
"Admit what?" he asks. "That I was sick to my stomach last night and I am not feeling so hydrated today?"
Five
to ten minutes, she'd said. He at least isn't lying about his medical
skill or his standards of professional conduct. Jacobs glances down at
the metal table where bits of packaging and capped sharps sit around his
watch and then rests the bags of fluids on his shoulder so he can
retrieve his phone with his right hand.
"Your little interrogation is going to have to wait, Miss Toombs. I need to call Doctor Huang."
Molly Toombs
A
stalemate was to be found between them-- Molly convinced of what she
was sure she knew, and Dr. Jacobs leaning heavily on the burden of
proof. If Molly had no evidence, nothing but observations and her own
suspicions, then she had nothing at all. Besides, what would she do?
Run to administration and report him? For what, exactly? What could
she even try to say to explain herself?
He could have rested on
that alone, and she would have kept her mouth shut. But he took it one
step further and played dumb, then shifted about what he was doing so
that he could reach and utilize his cell phone. Molly watched him with a
wrinkled up nose and moved her hands from the knob on the door so that
she could cross her arms over her chest instead.
"I meant admit
you into the hospital. Inpatient." She rolled her eyes at him, this
simply the cherry on top of the crossing of her arms. "'I'm not feeling
so hydrated', he says. Because I know when I'm feeling a little
parched I go straight for the fucking drip bags and not a glass of
water."
But, following that, she retreats to quiet to allow him to
make his call. She's still clearly waiting for him to wrap up before
leaving him, though.
René Jacobs
Fun with
language barriers. Admit has two meanings in English. When she corrects
him and tells him what she meant, mocks his rationale and hyperbolizes
the extent of his condition he snorts again. He has to know how poorly
he looks. Though his heart's workload is decreasing now that it actually
has something to pump he is still shivering. Molly can see sweat
snaking down his temples but he isn't in danger of falling over anymore.
He's got nearly half a liter of fluid back in him now.
He's still desperately pale but there's nothing he can do about that until his red blood count increases.
"I
do not need to be admitted," he says as he brings his cellphone to his
head. This coming from a man who routinely browbeats cocky young adults
who don't realize the imminence of their own mortality and reassures
geriatric patients who know all too well that every time they go to the
hospital they could never leave.
Then Huang picks up.
"Minh," he says. "Hi, thank you for returning my call. Yes, Miss Adiche, I have her--" Cough. "--her MRN here, hang on..."
And
he does. He has a notepad in the pocket of his button-down. The
conversation eats up nearly seven minutes and he does not exactly perk
up like a fresh-watered flower but she can see the shivering as it
abates. More than once he looks over at her like to assure himself that
she is in fact still standing there.
The last time he takes a releases a beleaguered breath before rolling his eyes away from her and sitting back in the chair.
"That would be agreeable, yes. Alright, yes, thank you very much. Bye."
He
sets down the phone and rubs his brow and closed eyes with the first
three fingers of his right hand before dropping them to look over at her
again.
Molly Toombs
Whatever participation is
needed from Molly for the conversation on the phone with the specialist
is provided. If the phone needs to be passed over to her, she accepts
it and plays as though there is no issue at hand while speaking with Dr.
Huang. As though she and René were in his office-- he at his desk and
her standing across from him.
She strayed from the door long
enough to locate a towel in some cupboard or another, and held it out to
him on her way back to the door. She'd stop to offer it to him, wait
for him to have it before continuing back to her post. This led to a
moment where she would be standing in front of him, offering this
bleached white hand towel, looking at him impatiently-- like she were
holding a mop for him to clean a spill he made.
This is how he finds her while he regards her. She does the same down at him.
As
the silence was left for her to break, Molly stated bluntly: "You can
keep playing dumb with me all you want, Dr. Jacobs, but I know what's
got you here like this." She gestured with her other hand toward his
neck and frowned at him, almost in disdain but not quite there yet. She
had thoughts in momentum in her mind, she was pulling from bits of
conversations that she's had in the past. She was figuring that there
was something of a chance that even here, weak as he was, he might be a
threat. She didn't trust how safe she was any longer, and that put her
on guard.
"You're in on.... this." She gestured vaugely, unable
to appropriately articulate what she meant to say for being accustomed
to being low on blood. "If you were a victim you wouldn't be here
calmly hooked up to the IV in the sick room." Her eyes flashed, and it
was hard to say if it was with disdain or intrigue.
René Jacobs
[can you do anything without passing out, jacobs? stamina.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
René Jacobs
Plenty
of people would argue that Molly has not been part of this world long
enough to know what lines to cross and which ones to step away from. She
has been reading so much for so many months that one of the few people
she can call friends in this city has had some of her knowledge runoff
saturate his own understanding of the situation. Ever since she met a
certain other tall dark stranger on the sidewalk last year her life has
been nigh unto devoted to exploring everything she doesn't understand.
Sat
in front of her is a virtual ambassador to the world she doesn't
understand. Though he continues to sit there blood-let and dark-eyed his
glower low-temperature but constant Molly lets him know that she knows.
His secret isn't that he's brain damaged. His secret is that he lives
the sort of life that means he doesn't fall apart when someone attacks
him.
Molly has heard a scant account of what a feeding is like.
She can see bruising on this man's body. He fought whoever turned him
into a meal and he isn't wearing a dead-eyed into-the-beyond stare like
many people who have recently come back from a traumatic experience do.
This isn't the first time this has happened to him.
Disdain or intrigue. Hard to tell the difference.
Jacobs
takes a deep steadying breath in through his nostrils and lets it go
again. He still has some time to sit here before he can safely stand and
even then it would not be medically sound. Like as not the only reason
he took the shift to begin with was he needed supplies. He had to get
himself out of bed and dressed. He still looks quite sharp considering
the fact that he looks like shit. He drove himself here and parked and
then walked in and past the nurse's station as if nothing happened.
This man is stronger both in mind and will than anyone Molly would identify as a victim. And she's alone in a room with him.
"I
don't know what you think you know," he says as he gets to his feet,
"but if I were you I would go back to work without saying another word."
Molly Toombs
By
no account should René be standing just yet. While he looked like a
bit more of his strength had finally started to come back to him, he
still ran the strong risk of growing faint and passing out if he tried
to keep his legs under him for too long. Despite that, he stood with
the drip going into the back of his hand and the bags of fluid carried
along with him.
There was warning in his words, caution braided
through when he told her not to breathe a word of this to anyone else
when she left. He looked as though he may be trying to usher her out,
or perhaps use his height to try and intimidate her. She still didn't
doubt that he might be able to use one last burst of strength to rush at
her. From her understanding, humans didn't exist knowingly amongst
vampires very often-- she and Nate were oddities in that regard. She
suspected the man was more, and that meant he could still have tricks up
his sleeve that could wreck her entire night.
And yet...
"Well duh. What the hell do you think would happen even if I did
try to say anything to anyone?" She looked at him skeptically, and
tossed the towel on the gurney near where he'd been sitting before.
Started to walk backward, though, when she approached the door. She
wasn't willing to give him her back.
"I know how things like this
go. I won't say a word, and in return for keeping my head down and
minding my business, I'll hope for something in return." Her expression
flickered for a second. She hadn't thought further than that. She
wanted a bartering chip, she understood that it could do her good. She
felt the flames of burned bridges at her back, so she tried this
instead.
"Not sure what yet. We'll call it good faith."
René Jacobs
Not
only should he not be standing but he should not be doing anything that
he is currently doing. Once he's stood and Molly has begun to realize
that the tall solid doctor is preparing himself for the possibility that
she is not what she appeared to be once either she can see that he's
not doing so hot.
Given how little she knows about the situation
it still strikes Jacobs as painfully funny that she makes the statements
that she does. That she asks him what he thinks would happen if she
tried to blow him in. Like that is indicative that she has some sort of
upper hand.
His color does nothing but sap as he walks across the
room to attempt to keep pace with her shuffling towards the door. As he
goes he realizes he can do nothing with a needle stuck in his hand. He
slides the wheel shut on the line's flow valve before he yanks the
needle out of the vein. He tosses the half-drained bag and the line and
the needle into the sink in the far corner of the room and uses his
right thumb to hold pressure on the hole left behind in his flesh.
Now she wants to fucking barter.
Jacobs
laughs a proper laugh now. Not a snort and not a sneer. Like he's
having some kind of hallucinatory nightmare and refuses to believe
anything he's hearing.
"Miss Toombs," he says, now near enough
that he could dart forward and slam the door shut on her if she tried to
run, "to whom do you think you could speak that would be enough of a
threat for me to agree to your amateur attempt at blackmail?"
Molly Toombs
Molly
watched as the man pulled the needle from his hand and tossed it as
well as the lines and bags that were attached back into the sink in the
room. He approached after her, back to the door, and laughed openly in
answer to her statement. He was near enough now that she had to tip her
chin back to keep looking up at him comfortably.
She was aware
that his arms were long enough that he had reach on her, that this
combined with the size of the sick room meant that she'd have to get
some kind of a spring on him if he had no plans of actually letting her
out of the room. There was a vibe about him, even with the sweat
beading its way out from under his hairline and his pallor so faint and
light, that kept Molly stiff and knotted in the lower parts of her
spine. She couldn't relax and get truly nearly as cocky as she was
sounding.
"Well," she started, and she sounded just a little
genuinely thoughtful to begin with-- as though she was musing aloud
rather than continuing her threat. "I'd just be proving you right about
that 'amateur' accusation if I gave you a headstart." By the end of
it, though, she's got her hands up in front of her, palms out, as though
to ward him off. She's stopped about a foot and a half away from the
door, so it would be easy to reach back for the knob from where she
stood if she chose. This was where she currently stood her ground.
"But
I do know this is the kind of information you want kept under wraps.
And a good deal has both parties walking away with something." Though
her body language suggested she was threatened, she still seemed to
grasp some illusion of cool control, for that's what her tone relayed.
"You know, honey versus vinegar and all."
René Jacobs
Jacobs
is breathing heavy now that he's on his feet and standing upright.
Asking more of his body than his body is willing or even really able to
provide. Though he isn't in such a dire situation that if he tries to
run or fend off another attacker he will go into cardiac arrest and
possibly die here on the floor he needs to rest. He needed to rest
before he answered the call that dragged him in here. It's possible for
him to see patients and to treat them but he needs to take it fucking
easy.
Standing in the middle of an exam room arguing with one of
the nurses about a situation that neither of them has come out and
stated in uncertain terms is the situation to which they're referring is
not taking it easy. It is not emotional upset that has him looking
faint. That faintness is encroaching upon his ability to appear as
coldly confident as he normally is.
She can tell he's breathing
heavily because he knows he's going to pass out and is trying every
trick in the book to stave it off. Keeping his posture loose and
breathing slowly in through his nose and not moving anything sudden or
sharp.
Now he puts his left hand bereft of watch but still
glinting with its wedding band against the door to make it clear to her
this isn't a good deal and they aren't walking away yet. He swallows
hard first.
"Jesus," he says, "you're so young. Huh? What are you, twenty? Twenty-one? You know nothing."
Molly Toombs
Oh,
how the nurses would gossip if anyone tried to walk into the room now.
What they would see as a romantic or amorous approach was actually
intended to be something less titillating. His arm reached past her so
he could plant his hand against the door, to indicate that she wasn't
going anyplace and this wasn't done.
Were it not for how
transparent his condition had made him, Molly would be a lot more
worried. She would have retaliated physically by now-- made an obvious
attempt to knee him in the groin and then hit him in the throat when he
dropped his hands. She would have screamed and fought and pitched a
fuss if that's what she thought it would take to save herself. But his
hand against the door, she could tell, was serving the purpose of
bracing him now more than it was to just hold the door closed.
His
words were spoken almost breathlessly. Being on his feet was wearing
on him, and he wouldn't be able to stay up for much longer. It is from
this that she chooses to keep the cool demeanor rather than making the
scene. It wouldn't be worth explaining the situation-- she could still
handle this, she was sure.
So Molly kept her eyes up on his face
and didn't bother to try and keep the crinkle of disdain from her nose
or between her eyebrows as she frowned at him. She didn't bother to
acknowledge his question about her age, let alone answer it.
"I know you're about five seconds from falling over. In my professional opinion, you should get back on that gurney."
René Jacobs
"Eh."
He
agrees with her. That noise is meant to be one of acquiescence and
compliance but so long as he still has breath in his lungs Jacobs is
going to be a smart-ass. It's in his genes. He doesn't know how else to
be. It's bad enough he was born handsome and stayed that way into
adulthood. On top of that he was intelligent and stubborn.
It's
hard to be both intelligent and stubborn when seconds from passing out.
The stubbornness negates the intelligence. And he looks over to the
gurney and laughs as he presses his back to the door.
"Where was your professional opinion ten seconds ago?"
Yep.
Not gonna make it. Jacobs lets himself slide down to the floor so that
he can at least retain consciousness rather than attempting to make the
trip and cracking his head on the tile floor.
Among the many
problems with this situation is the fact that he weighs 180 pounds at
minimum and he's now sitting in front of the goddamn door.
Molly Toombs
The
rest of René's body followed his hand to find the door. He was a
medical professional much like she was. He was bound to recognize the
symptoms within himself and know that unconsciousness wasn't far off if
he kept on his feet. So he sat, but chose to do so by moving his back
up against the door and sliding down to sit in front of it. The damn
thing swung inward to open, too, so Molly would have to move him to get
through.
He asked where her professional opinion was in the
moments gone past, but Molly didn't bother to answer. She just watched
him slide down onto the floor and threw her arms up and out in a gesture
of exasperation and disbelief. They fell soon enough so that one could
wrap about the top of her waist. Her other elbow propped on the
opposing wrist so she could cradle her chin, jaw, and mouth in the palm
of her hand and fingers while she regarded him. Smothering whatever
expression was on her mouth, and any words or outbursts that might have
followed soon after.
So, instead, she was quiet for a dozen seconds and evaluating him and the situation as a whole.
Then,
finally: "Alright, fine. I don't even know what I could ask from you
in the first place. I won't tell anyone-- wasn't going to anyways."
She'd had to move her hand away from her mouth to say this, and pointed
down at him with the free index finger with a lift to her eyebrows.
"So... ah, you can find a better place to sit than there."
René Jacobs
For
the seconds that she stands letting his blood pressure settle Jacobs
closes his eyes and breathes deep and slow so that the room will stop
spinning. It means he doesn't catch her studious expression. In the
silence he can hear her considering her options.
It's a wonder no
one has come after Molly to find out what's taking her so long to find
Jacobs. All of her patients are taken care of. They're either resting
while waiting for the transporters to come take them somewhere else or
they're waiting for the doctor to interpret some test or another.
Waiting for a prescription. Waiting to hear if they're being discharged
or admitted.
Saturday afternoons are usually slow. Nobody wants to
go to the emergency room on the weekend. A lot of orthopedic
emergencies happen on the weekends. Car crashes and overdoses and
suicide attempts. Trauma is hopping. They've had several stabbings and a
pedestrian versus vehicle already since Molly arrived. Stab Wound
Saturday, they'll be calling it by the end of the shift.
They've
been gone so long that people will assume they were having a tryst. No
one would be surprised. The other nurses have fantasized about it, after
all. Some of the residents too.
When she speaks again Jacobs
opens his eyes and feels no righteousness at hearing her admit that she
had no chips with which to bet in the first place. He could have kept
his ass in the chair. He is not a weak man though and he was cornered by
a young woman who had no idea what was she was getting herself into.
"Roll that chair over here," he says of the stool he abandoned.
If
she complies Jacobs moves the stool so that it is out of the way of the
door and climbs into it. Slides across the floor so that he can reach
the sink again. The needle at the end of the intravenous line isn't
sterile anymore so he rummages around for an alcohol swab. It appears as
though he's going to finish replacing his blood volume and then carry
on as if nothing happened.
"Go back to work, please, Miss Toombs."
Molly Toombs
Molly
Toombs had a deep vein of dislike for Dr. Rene Jacobs. He was in an
age bracket that set him at superior (far more than she realized just
yet, though), and he was a doctor on top of that which set him at a
point of superiority in the work place on a simple authoritative
structure. He was the one with the medical degree, he called the
shots. He wasn't administration, but he was as good as her boss.
Until
the day that Molly reached middle age and decided she wanted to relax
and have a family she wouldn't work directly for a doctor in private
practice. She grew bored too easily, and suburban life may kill her.
All the same, if you knew how to be a good nurse you knew how to work
with your doctors. That much had to be there if nothing else was.
It
was for this reason alone, perhaps, that Molly complies with his
demands. She hooked the rolling stool with her foot and ankle and sent
it rolling at a perfectly reasonable speed over to the doctor. Before
he could get himself up and start rolling toward the sink, though, Molly
had beaten him to it. She donned gloves and disposed of the old
needle, replaced it with a new one entirely. She wouldn't be damned
with just swabbing an old one off.
She wasn't going to coddle him
so far as to put the needle in for him, though. That would require
leaning closer than she wanted, and he was in this predicament, she
figured, due to circumstances largely brought about of his own doing.
He just seemed far too practiced for this otherwise.
"Sure thing, Dr. Jacobs."
And with that said, she'd leave him to fend for himself in the sick room.
No comments:
Post a Comment