Molly Toombs
Saturday had been an interesting night for both parties working at St. Luke's hospital. Molly Toombs had gone after Dr. René Jacobs to report a phone call and found him in a very compromising position that Molly recognized the truth of through a veil of dense remaining ignorance. She knew a little, patches of information here and there, pockets that drilled deeper in a few sparse areas, but mostly all was shallow and superficial based on hunches and a couple (dozen) of books.
She was away longer than she needed to be. She came back to work looking distant, distracted. When she'd seen Dr. Jacobs next that afternoon as he was on his way out, she'd stared at him hard before realizing that the nurse standing across from her was staring right back. She'd blinked, cleared her throat, and the rest of the night she made a point to play it as cool as possible.
On Sunday, Molly worked and for a change the good doctor wasn't there. Aside from a particularly rough vehicle accident and the most impressive broken ankle Molly had ever seen, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
She came to work Monday at 10:00 a.m., and within the first two hours of her shift she had found herself rounding a corner to find Jacobs talking with one of her residents. The sight of him had her pausing, sneaker squeaking short and quiet on the tile. He looked good-- not in that the sight of him took her breath away, but in that he looked utterly healthy. The color was back in his face and skin, the bruising absent from his neck. Nothing about him looked hollowed in any way, not like before. He was doing great.
No I.V. drip would bounce him back that quickly. She knew better.
They worked trauma together that day, so Molly was near the doctor's proximity frequently as the morning bled into day into night. Throughout the time, Molly was acting specifically outside of her norm in that rather than trying to avoid him and making contact as minimal as possible, he kept finding her keeping a watch on him. She seemed to have reason or excuse to be in his vicinity more often. Not to any extent that patients were necessarily neglected, but her eyes are on him often enough that Jacobs is bound to notice.
Bound to suspect.
And, inevitably, bound to call out.
René Jacobs
Working in such close quarters as the two of them have to work together on Monday means that they have some difficulty ignoring the fact that Dr. Jacobs is not any happier to see Molly than Molly is to see him. If anything he's even less pleased to have to work with her because of what transpired in the exam room Saturday afternoon.
Of course he also does not have the blood-let miserable cast to his skin that he had had that afternoon. The rest of that shift had gone without incident if only because he still felt and looked unwell and unlike usual he was not bustling from one end of the department to the other making sure that everything was running smoothly. If something happened that a resident could not handle on his own he would get up and he would deal with it. But he was not in his fighting form that day and everybody knew it.
He's fine today. He must have just been sick on Saturday. The poor man works himself too hard. If he works hard then he can put his past behind him. It's obvious that that's what he's doing but Molly now knows that there are things in his present he can't quite convert to a past status. Something attacked him. It bit his neck and drained him so badly that he went into shock. He could have died.
Molly has never been bitten by a vampire before. She does not know the sensation that comes over a person in such throes. When she asked one of her friends to describe it to her he did not say outright that he felt violated and ashamed. Asking Nate to talk about being bitten got about the same heated response out of him as would have been provoked by Molly asking him to describe a time he was a victim of another act of random violence.
And yet Jacobs had just picked himself up and patched himself up and gone on with his life.
So: Molly tries the entire shift to get close to him. Jacobs spends the entire shift focusing on their work and saying as little to her as possible. Being even more terse with her than usual. He does notice. He does suspect.
Cut to four o'clock in the afternoon. She has two more hours left in her swing shift. He is actually leaving on time for once. Trauma bay is somewhat empty now. As Molly is stripping down a gurney to prepare the room for the next emergency she hears footfalls behind her. The curtain rattles all the way open and before she can turn around all the way he's speaking.
"What time will you leave today?"
He does not sound happy. Not even a little.
Molly Toombs
The kind of worker that moved diligent and practiced with most of the tasks that she was familiar with, Molly had a set way for stripping gurneys that she'd found worked well for her. She'd pop up corners, whip it around so that the sheet could twist into a sort of pouch to trap the places that the patient may have sweated, bled, pissed, or vomited onto. This would be tossed into the appropriate bin, and she'd move on to replacing what was removed.
She had two gurneys to do. One finished, the second one halfway done when the rattle of rings on metal alerted her that the curtain was being whisked back. Molly didn't straighten or stiffen to alert-- it wasn't that surprising at all to have someone wanting to talk to her. Communication was key in environments like this.
Jacobs would find her stretched across the gurney to tuck sheet corners in. She glanced back over her shoulder, down her flank to see who was there. It was only when she spied Dr. Jacobs looking and sounding precisely as displeased as he had been through the day that she blinked, paused, but then smoothly continued her work as though she couldn't imagine any reason why she might be in hot water with him.
"My shift ends at six." She usually made her way out about fifteen to twenty minutes after her shift ended, taking time to ensure loose ends were wrapped up and patient transfers were absolutely smooth and checking bus schedules if she didn't feel like walking. He may be familiar with this by now, after a few weeks of working with her, or he may not. She didn't outright state it either way.
Sheets tucked effectively, she smoothed her palms on the sides of her shirt and looked over to the doctor. Eyebrows went up, and her expression was blank with a purpose. "Why do you ask?"
René Jacobs
"I ask--"
And this is good, isn't it. Because he isn't making a request. She can tell in his tone that Dr. Jacobs is not used to either having to ask for anything or having someone argue with him when he does make a request. He has been here less than three weeks and already he has moved through the department like a force of nature ensuring that people will either comply with him or get out of his way when he moves.
It isn't that he's rude. He can be rude. But he thinks faster than he can control what comes out of his mouth and he does not care if what comes out of his mouth in the heat of a busy day offends the person to whom he is speaking. Most of the time when he does speak it does nothing but support the hypothesis that what social skill he has comes from his brains and his appearance combining forces.
The hospital administration will one day agree that they were fucking blessed the day his application came in from Chicago. Molly has worked all of the shifts with all of the attending physicians now and even Diaz has broken a sweat in situations where Jacobs has maintained his cool. Diaz is a seasoned trauma physician and he does not rattle easy. But Jacobs seems to have descended from Mount Olympus to grace the mortals with his fucking presence.
No wonder Molly hates him.
"--because I am going to my office for a few hours, and when you're finished for the day, you and I need to talk. Not here."
Molly Toombs
Where they stand, there is no privacy. Not anything safe or guaranteed. The curtains sectioning off areas of the emergency wing offered no sound buffer, and there was plenty of foot traffic. Other nurses would be aware of this conversation. They would gossip, word would travel. Molly Toombs is in trouble. The new doctor wants to see her after work. In his office.
He wants to talk.
Alone.
That lucky bitch.
The seasoned young nurse (What are you, twenty? Twenty-one?) looked blankly at the stereotypically handsome man as he informed her they needed to speak someplace that was 'not here'. She presumed he meant not at the hospital.
She also presumed to know what he wanted to talk about.
But she did nothing but bat an eyelash or two blandly at him before asking, simply, casually: "Should I report to your office at the end of my shift, then?"
René Jacobs
"No."
And nothing he can say at this point will undo the damage that wagging tongues are already bound to cause. If he had wanted to speak to her in his office they could at least make out as if this were a work matter. That he was making one last stab at conflict resolution before one of them had to transfer to another department.
If either of them transfer it sure as shit isn't going to be Jacobs. His specialty is trauma medicine and after the incident last week where he caught an abdominal aortic aneurysm that was much more pervasive than the X-ray showed he's proved his mettle to the administration. That admission saved the hospital several hundred thousand dollars in malpractice suits and court fees.
Molly has no idea that when it comes up later he will actually tell the other physicians and the board that a nurse reminded him that an abdominal CT would visualize an occult aneurysm. She will find out after the fact. Someone will commend her during her annual review. But right now standing here she has no idea that he recognizes her intelligence or her value as a nurse.
All she can tell is that he's fed up with the work environment and she can surmise that it's only gotten worse because of what she now knows about him.
"Meet me at Next Door Lounge when you are through. The walls here have ears."
That's all he has to say about that. Either she'll meet him at the bar during happy hour when it will be crowded and no one will be paying attention or she will blow him off. Either way he tells her where he wants to meet her when and then he turns and walks away.
Molly Toombs
She hates him.
She fucking hates him.
Molly Toombs stood staring after the doctor when he shifted backward, away from the curtain, and walked away after half-inviting (but mostly ordering, to be guided by tone) her to meet him at a bar after work. Not in his office-- the walls have ears. She had stared after him, jaw slightly slack but not hanging open, face stuck with something between disbelief and anger. When she got into motion again about three seconds later, it was with an iron snap of her expression to stern, cold seething and a rough and angry finish to the job of making ready the gurney and transporting the used sheets away.
She hates him, but she's there at the Next Door Lounge before 7:00pm.
He wasn't difficult to spot in the sea of people. He was the pinpoint of the anger that carried her from the hospital directly to the bar. Her black coat was on overtop of the gray scrubs she'd worn to work that day. Her hair was down from the restrictive ponytail she opted for when working trauma, shaken out, and it made for an angry red mane around her face when she slid into the chair across the table from René Jacobs. She had unbuttoned her coat as she walked to the table, but left it on, clearly indicating her intention to make this as short as possible.
"You couldn't have just invited me here in your office? Are you trying to stir up the rumor mill? Have you ever worked with nurses, Dr. Jacobs?"
René Jacobs
By the time she arrives the physician has found a table small enough that no one will feel inclined to come over and attempt to talk to him but large enough that if Molly decides to do anything besides sit down across from him she'll have room. He's smoking a cigarette and reading a medical journal and has put a slim dent in the pint of beer at his elbow. If he stayed in his office until six o'clock he must have just gotten here before she did.
The sound of her voice has him sitting up straight and frowning through the smoke. He ashes the thing in the glass tray beside his pint glass and leaves it sitting there so he can pick up the beer.
Wedding bands have a tendency of drawing attention to themselves. It doesn't help that Jacobs is left-handed. These are the sort of minor details you pick up about a person when you have to work at their elbow for eight hours a day.
"No," he says. "No. And - yes. Yes, I do believe a side effect of working in hospitals ever since coming to this country means I have had to work with a nurse here and there."
He indicates the chair across from him.
"Nobody is going to stir up anything. Sit down, if you would, please."
Molly Toombs
The man was visible through a cloud of cigarette smoke, but Molly didn't wrinkle her nose or appear disgusted by the smell that enveloped the table. She just glared moodily at the man where he sat and watched him straighten up and frown right back at him.
They'd both be surprised to learn what the other looked liked smiling, thus far.
He gestured for her to sit, and Molly did without pause. She'd intended to anyways. She had a look about her of a woman ready to give him an earful, and if that wedding band on his finger ever had actually meant anything it was a look that he had to be at least somewhat acquainted with. Her tote bag that she utilized in lieu of a purse was left on the floor, tucked near against the legs of her chair. She put her arms on the table and leaned on them, but did not lean in or forward necessarily. She wasn't trying to intimidate or start to harass just yet. Molly's anger was a gradual and cool thing, like an inevitable avalanche. It would come when it was ready, and when it did it was often crushing.
"Like hell it won't stir anything up."
Her tone was a cold snap-- the first crack of the ice shelf.
"What am I here for?"
René Jacobs
It isn't hard to imagine what would cause this man to actually lose his temper or respond to other people's loss of temper. It's just that in all the situations Molly has seen him in so far he has responded to whatever crisis erupted without emotion. He might have snapped at someone who was not keeping their shit together. But dealing with violence psychotics and uncooperative alcoholics and screaming overdoses doesn't flap him. He sure as hell doesn't stumble when baffling medical cases or barely-breathing trauma patients roll in during the course of his shift.
So Molly's agitation doesn't even touch him. He called her young once. A 40-year-old man calling her out on her youth can't do anything to help cool her heels but that is who she is dealing with.
They wouldn't be here if he were just a 40-year-old man though. He also happens to be a 40-year-old man who she caught replacing his blood volume in an exam room after being attacked by a vampire. They're in a whole other world right now.
"I didn't think my office was a suitable place to ask you why you reacted as you did when you walked in on me the other day." He picks up his cigarette and takes a killing drag before finding his pack and preparing another one. "You really are terrible at bluffing, you know."
Molly Toombs
She frowned to watch him as he spoke, snubbing out one cigarette in an ashtray on the table only to pull another from the pack. Her nose wrinkled in distaste at him, and when he accused her of bluffing if he were to glance back up across the table he would find her eyes sharp and clear upon him. Tone still cool, she pulled her elbows closer together and held the backs of them with either hand. Still leaned forward on the table, not opening her body language at all.
"I'm a night nurse, not a mobster. I've never claimed to be good at bluffing."
She scoffed, lightly, before continuing.
"You'll have to be more specific. I'm not really sure what motivation exactly you're looking for."
René Jacobs
Oh so she wants to play that game.
Alright. They can play that game.
"What did you think happened," he asks, "when you saw I had a bruise on my neck?"
Molly Toombs
As determined as she was to play it cool, Molly couldn't help but break that cold-snap stare she had on the doctor so that she could glance about the bar around them. Nobody was paying much mind to them. Hospital staff weren't an uncommon sight here, and nobody cared about the dim dull conversation that they were probably having about work.
For the time being, anyways, it was safe.
So she looked at him flatly and said simply: "Well, it wasn't the bruises on your neck alone, of course. It was the bruises combined with the fact that you were nearly going into shock, and that you were replacing liquids intravenously. The bruises, combined with the fact that you were replacing blood in secret in the sick room all drew me to the conclusion.
"You were bitten. And if that was something out of the ordinary for you, then you'd sure as shit not have come into work the next day and treated yourself. I've seen victims-- that's not how you looked. You look like someone in...." She paused here, frowning. "...Conjunction. Or league.
"With them."
She paused, and scowled heavily. A touch of color was blooming on the apples of her cheeks under the splash of freckles. "I'm not going to outright say it."
René Jacobs
Okay. So she's not going to say the V word when they're out in public and who knows who could be listening in on them. It doesn't appear to rustle Jacobs' feathers that she doesn't want to sling it around like it doesn't mean anything but she has to start getting an idea of what his patients experience when they're alone in a room with them and he can see through whatever they're refusing to disclose or he refuses to buy whatever line they just threw out. Emergency room patients don't come in thinking they're going to play games with their care team but they are also ignorant of their own bodies and have ulterior motives even in the midst of crushing chest pain or mysterious bleeding.
Molly isn't a patient. Still: he's reading her like she is one. Like she has some sign or symptom that he's trying to elucidate so that he can go on about his day without worrying that someone is going to die.
"And what is your relationship with Them, if you don't mind me asking?"
There's that superficial European politeness. He doesn't actually care if she minds him asking.
Molly Toombs
Molly's answer was a short, harsh laugh. It wasn't the sort that had her throwing her head back, nor was it very loud. It was just mean sounding, really is all. She tossled her hair with her right hand, hooking her fingers and moving them from forehead to the peak of her skull as she went along.
"Like I'm just going to tell you." She shook her head, feigning disappointment in him, and sat back upright in her chair. Her shoulders hitched down and back one at a time so she could shrug her coat off while still seated. She twisted around to hang it over the back of her chair, then looked back to the doctor and sounded a little impatient but mostly resigned when she asked:
"If this is going to go like this, I think I'm going to need a drink."
With that said, she pushed her chair back and started to rise.
If not otherwise stopped, she'd head toward the bar and be back in whatever time it would take her to get her order.
René Jacobs
It just so happens that Jacobs neither stops her from getting up to go to the bar nor seems surprised that she wants to procure one at this exact moment. That was the whole point of coming to a bar. They serve alcohol. Alcohol is an excellent lubrication for conversations such as this one.
Jacobs has a tab open. The bartender correctly assumes that she's with the guy at the table over there. She does ask for Molly's ID just because she's so young and sitting with the older gentleman she must be assuming that they're related somehow. They look nothing alike but that doesn't mean anything.
Once she's returned to the table with her beer Jacobs takes a final drag off his second cigarette and stamps it out. Must be he's done charring his lungs for now. He doesn't even cough or give any other indication that this lifelong habit is slowly killing him. Molly's friend smokes like a chimney and is half this guy's age and he can barely walk up a flight of stairs without barking up a lung.
So she's back. And the last thing she said was she's not going to just tell him.
"You're not going to tell me because you have no relationship with Them and you are, ah, bluffing again as you did so well last time," he asks, "or you're not going to tell me because you think I have a sinister motive in asking?" Before she can answer he laughs. "Miss Toombs, you either think you know something but actually know nothing, or you know more than you're letting on and you're just... terrible at lying. It does neither of us any good for you to continue on as you were today. We might as well just..."
A vague gesture with his hand.
"Cards on the table. Huh? No more of this."
Molly Toombs
Molly was absent for a couple of minutes before she returned. When she came back it was with a dark stout in a pint glass. Her mood didn't seem to have lifted any while she was away, taking her break from the doctor's presence. The bartender asked for her I.D., but not for any form of payment nor did he ask for her to open a tab. She'd seen his eyes flick to the man and table she'd come from, watched the assumption happen, and did nothing to correct it. If the man was going to summon her to a bar within earshot of the flapping mouths she worked with, then the least he could do was pay for her drink.
Once back at the table she sat, but was more settled this time than before. She leaned back in her chair instead of forward onto the table. Her legs crossed at the knee, right over left, so that her hovering foot could sway and bounce lazily at its own whim. Her left arm hooked over the back of her chair, rested on the padding that her coat provided against the hard wooden piece of furniture. Her right arm and hand were left free to manage the glass of beer.
It was already put into action once she'd settled in and he'd started talking again. While she listened to him, she took a long drink from the glass. She had to lick the foam from the beer's head away from her upper lip when she set the glass back down.
The bland and bothered stare she fixed on the man was accompanied by quiet for a few solid seconds before she looked away, down to her beer glass, and fiddled with the flimsy cardboard coaster that it was set on. Sliding it here and there, adjusting aimlessly, as she answered.
"How about we suffice to say that I don't trust you. I don't want to put my cards on the table without seeing any of yours first." She stopped sliding the glass around and looked up at him again.
"I have no fucking idea what your motive is other than watching your own ass. I get that. But I don't know if you work for Them or if you're becoming one of Them or if you're just enthralled by Them or what.
"So how about you show me yours before I show you mine, huh? I'm pretty sure you already have the upper ground, it's seldom that I ever get that advantage."
René Jacobs
At least he doesn't laugh at her for bemoaning the fact that she doesn't have as stacked a deck as she originally let on. Maybe he feels a sliver of sympathy for her. Like as not he just doesn't laugh often. That harsh noise he made a few minutes ago was the closest he's come to laughing and it didn't show teeth or reach his eyes. It was a sardonic noise.
"That is surprising," he says. And that is sarcasm. "Would you even know what to do with it if I did tell you my relationship to Them? What does it mean to you, to be enthralled by Them?"
Molly Toombs
To have this conversation with Molly was to witness conflicting messages between words, tone, and body language all the three. She sat relaxed into her chair, lounged in a way that was almost specifically designed to show the curve of leg and hip while seated when leaned just so. It was a woman trying to portray one's self as confident through awareness and assertion of her appearance. Even if she was wearing scrubs with her hair a waved red mess hanging to her shoulders.
When she spoke, her tone was cool and calm, but with anger rumbling ever-pressing under the surface. If she were to become a mother or instructor or leader of any sort, it would be a tone that put those she was responsible for in line for concern of what came next.
But the content of her words, what she actually told him, was conflicting to the point of being almost jarring against the other two. She was so blatantly speaking of her uncertainties that they just couldn't be sincere. She had to be screwing with him.
"Well, honestly, I'd just use any further knowledge about you to just keep you from impacting me as much as possible." Her eyes narrowed at him, a little, a flashing sign of distrust, before they relaxed and she took the glass up in her fingertips once more. "I've been in the emergency wing for nearly two years now. You just got here, and just by being here you're dragging this supernatural shit into where I work. I do not want those lines crossing.
"It makes me uncomfortable with you at my back. I don't trust you guys."
Now she was lumping him in with them.
She took a deep drink of her beer to yield the floor to him.
René Jacobs
"Ah, but you didn't answer my question."
In a way she did. She told him what it would mean for her and her career if it turned out that he was actually enthralled to a vampire. He hasn't confirmed it yet and she knows from experience that he could just pull some fabrication out of thin air and pass that off as truth. If anyone else had walked in on him yesterday he would have had to play along with being admitted for how awful he looked. It could have been a perforated ulcer or an aneurysm that caused him to lose so much blood so quickly.
"And you are making an assumption about what happened that has no basis in reality. You see a man sick in your ER and you think, Oh, I know what I'll do, seeing the shape that he is in. I'll harangue him. Where is your compassion, huh?"
Molly Toombs
"I saw a doctor pumping himself up with fluids by drip in the sick room. And then he followed up by swearing me to secrecy and going so far as to block the fucking door until he got my word. Even though we both know that nobody I could have told anything would have believed me or done anything anyways."
She snapped at him, now, expression hardening into a harsh scowl. Her tone wasn't as calm as she wanted it to be, and her body language grew more stiff, less languid. The pint glass was set back down on its coaster, but her fingers stayed wrapped soundly around the glass. Her glare was accusing, but so were her words.
"I don't like being toyed with, and that's all that They do. Whatever it is that's got you in alliance with them, it's got you accustomed to what it is they do. And it's got you able to be right as rain within the next 48 hours, too. I don't know how you did that, but it makes you more than what you're playing to be.
"I don't quite know what you're trying to hear me say, Jacobs. I'd rather we just wrap this up." And at the pace at which she was drinking her beer, she hopes that it will be quick.
René Jacobs
"How are you with kids? Working with them, I mean."
Oh this is going to be good.
"I have done nothing to you, Miss Toombs, other than have the audacity to work in the same department as you. One of Them is hunting outside the hospital, did you know this? No, of course you didn't. I'm telling you now though: I do not know who this creature is. He came up out of the shadows and once he grabbed me, he lost control of himself. If I had not fought back, I would have gone to the morgue downstairs instead of the exam room where you found me, you understand?"
Perhaps she doesn't. It doesn't matter to him whether she understands or not. That's not what he's trying to have happen.
"I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not here because I am a puppet for Them. I'm here because this is what I do. This is my work. And it's much easier to replace a nurse than it is to replace a doctor, so if working with me in the adult ER is making you this paranoid, perhaps you would like a transfer to the pediatric unit, huh? Then you will not have to see me again."
Molly Toombs
The look that the man received from across the table was skeptical at best. She looked as though he was feeding her a story of woe and she was refusing to hear a word of it. As though she didn't hear the threat of his putting in to have her transferred or even outright fired if she didn't stop brushing him the wrong way and leave his business alone. She just frowned and held her beer glass in front of her, not setting it on the table but keeping it in the air, at the ready. She progressively looked more and more like she wanted less and less of this conversation to be going on.
What's more, she seemed to be realizing that she didn't actually have to stay for it. She was uncrossing her legs and planting her feet on the floor, looking like she was getting ready to say her goodbyes and be on her way.
It was when he started warning of a vampire that was hunting around the hospital at night that Molly paused. She blinked once, her expression faltered, and she looked at him more carefully. He can see the thought process on her face, registering the risk of walking herself home every night. It's doubtful that he knew (unless he bothered to seek the information out, one supposes) that Molly walked home alone most nights. She was already doing the math and figuring the risk of finding herself in the same situation that the doctor had a few nights ago.
The thought chills her. Worries her. It clenches her chest and makes her not necessarily want to even walk home from this bar alone. He sees this in how she straightens her spine and how that flushed red of anger had faded from her cheeks all at once.
For a moment or two, she says nothing. She considers him, then takes a drink that brings her glass quickly down to one-quarter full. She tongued the foam from her lip again, then heaved a breath. "What faith do I have that you and yours aren't going to be causing me trouble? You all don't seem the sort to just let someone walk away after they've figured you out."
René Jacobs
His beer is still idling at half full. Once he's finished with laying down his proposed plan of attack it becomes fairly obvious that she stopped listening to him once he got to the part where there's a vampire stalking people in the parking garage at night.
This is a valid concern. Molly has already found herself in the crosshairs of one undead creature's attention in the last year. Her friend developed an unrequited vendetta against this same creature for doing to him what the individual attacking hospital personnel is doing now. She knows enough by now that she can recognize she understands far less than she did before she cracked open her first book.
If she doesn't then she is in the company of someone who can practically smell the newness and the naivety on her. A healthy dose of paranoia isn't at all uncalled for.
Jacobs picks up his pack of cigarettes again.
"Perhaps if you get all of your information about Them from the television." A pause to plant a filter between his lips and light the thing. Drop the pack and the lighter back on the table and blow out the first breath. "Miss Toombs, I do not care what you think you know, because you appear to know next to nothing."
He laughs at the thought that he might have considered her a threat when he was in shock. The woman had seen him at his most vulnerable and had not pressed him for information. That ought to have been a clue that she wasn't actively working with hunters.
"The entire time I've been here you've behaved towards me in some way or another that was hostile, eh? So be it. We do not have to get along. But I will make sure you're transferred to another department if you can't put this behind you, you understand?"
Sigh.
"And for whatever it's worth, my... associate... is looking into the situation with the, ah. The attacker. He'll be gone soon enough."
Molly Toombs
The way that the woman looked at him while he retrieved another cigarette and spoke to how very little she knew could best be described as glowering. She'd drank almost a pint of beer within ten minutes of sitting down. Thankfully, given that her hand and arm relaxed, she appeared to be letting up on the pace. She might even just abandon what was left. She didn't pay for it, after all, and the rest of the stout was sitting heavily in her stomach.
The terms were set, and Molly understood them well. He could tell, if he watched her, that she was processing what he was saying while he spoke. She didn't give him the blank angry stare of someone who was just waiting for the other party to stop talking so they could have their turn.
This was evidenced further by the fact that she remained silent for a time after he finished talking. He had the opportunity to light his next cigarette and pull a good first drag from it as well. Finally, she took her hand from her glass and pushed her chair back to stand.
"Fine, then. I'll try to be less... of a dick." She frowned. That didn't come out right. As she stood up, she retrieved her coat from the back of the chair. "I've just never had a good track record in affairs like this." Molly heard her own phrasing, and just sighed at herself-- exhausted more than embarrassed. She was going to get plenty of side-eye from the other nurses in the next few days and have to hear about her scandal (the wounded soldier and now the hot doctor) in the whispers at the edges of rooms and on the other sides of curtains.
She next chose to take the rest of the pint and lift it in René's direction, as though toasting to or with him. "Here's hoping that I don't get as ruined as you looked trying to get home tonight." And she finished her glass to drink to it.
René Jacobs
If she looks around now she can see that several of the staff from other parts of the hospital have congregated here at the end of their shift. Most of them are transporters or environmental services staff but more than a few nurses from the ICU are here. She doesn't have much time before the noon-to-eight crew start rolling in.
Luckily no one else from the ED is here. The ones who got off at four o'clock have already blown through and had their happy hour drinks and gone home to cook dinner and see their spouses and kids. Still. Jacobs makes nothing of the gossip and the potential for gossip because that band around his finger is not just there for decoration. The rumors about his status as a widower are not coming from nowhere. He man wears a beleaguered expression as his default not simply because he thinks himself to be surrounded by morons but because when he goes home at night he does go home to an empty house. Like as not he's going to go back to work after this. Try to keep himself busy with his research or his followup care.
And yet here's Molly. She probably hasn't eaten since lunch and just slammed down a pint of beer and now she thinks she's going to walk out of here after making a joke about how she's going to get wrecked by a vampire walking home.
Another sigh.
"I'll drive you home," he says. She can try to protest but he's already standing. He plucks up his coat from the back of the chair and stuffs into the pocket his cigarettes and lighter. "Don't make that face, you think I stayed at Mercy almost twenty years because I got into the habit of killing the nurses in my department?"
Molly Toombs
She had made exactly that face, too. He had stood up as well after sighing and stating (not asking, again) that he would drive her home. She'd wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brow and looked almost insulted-- like he thought she was an idiot and it would be that easy to dispose of her.
But he did have a point. And a glance around confirmed that there were other people from the hospital there. If she didn't come back to work the next day, then there would be more than a few people who would suspect him. Half of their goddamn department was aware of his summoning her to a bar after work by now. He'd be the first person that anyone would speak with to ask where she had been. She was seen with him last.
So Molly simply huffed and pulled her coat on. The buttons were done up smoothly, and the tote bag straps were slung over her shoulder again.
"Fine. I'm just about ten blocks from here, anyways."
If he was going to get any sort of a 'thank you' at all, it wouldn't come until they were in front of the Brookstone apartment building.
René Jacobs
Jacobs stands still long enough for her to mull through his utter lack of alibi and acquiesce to his statement of intent and when he responds it isn't with words so much as a low inarticulate noise and pulling on his coat. He has to stop by the bar to close out his tab. He leaves an ashtray half-full of filters and a pint glass with half a beer in his wake. The medical journal doesn't come with him either.
Though she is in a hurry and not at all pleased about having to spend more time in the man's presence Jacobs doesn't look impatient when he has to wait for the bartender to pull himself away from a conversation to see what he wants. Once he's expressed that he wants to close out his tab it's a quick interaction. The doctor signs the merchant copy of the receipt quickly and does not pocket his copy.
"Let's go," he says. His accent doing to that short sentence things that the rest of Molly's coworkers would find positively adorable. Molly is not her coworkers. Everything he does annoys the hell out of her. He had figured that out before she walked in on him in the exam room.
Outside the hospital he carries himself with the same self-assurance and poise as he always does but without the white lab coat and the blaring fluorescent lights he does not have the energy of one who is rushing so as to be ten places at once. He walks at a more leisurely pace and isn't hard to imagine him being so caught up in his own thoughts that he could not notice an attacker. Even so the man has a sharpness to his attention as all they do is walk across a bar parking lot to get to his car. It's just as possible that those who are in league with Them are only human after all. Weak by comparison and easily overtaken.
He wasn't exaggerating. Today he looks hale and healthy. In the prime of his fucking life. If he had not fought off the leech he would have succumbed to blood loss. If they aren't destined to be enemies the possibility of their being allies still exists but it's a special kind of Hell, allying yourself with a person you hate.
All the way to the car he's silent. The vehicle makes noise before he does. He unlocks the doors with the key fob and the lights on a 2009 Volkswagen Passat flash like to make sure Molly knows where she's going. He goes around to the driver's side door and lingers outside the vehicle until she's inside with her door locked before getting in himself.
Nothing remarkable about the interior. It smells faintly of cigarette smoke but is otherwise clean. He starts the engine and buckles his seatbelt and it's entirely possible they'll make it all the way to Brookstone Apartments without Jacobs having uttered another word.
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