Disclaimer: I own nothing.
xXx
The first thing that came to John's mind as he awoke was pain. Not exactly a great start to a day, he thought, as he opened his eyes to take in his surroundings.
Typical hospital room, he thought gloomily as he looked at the IV in his arm. Looking closer at the at the IV bag, he saw in small print, Balboa Naval Hospital.
Great, so I'm definitely not in Afghanistan anymore he thought with a scowl. He did a quick inventory of himself and found multiple wounds that were stitched up on his torso, legs, and arms. A long cut on his face that would surely scar over, along with tender areas all over his head told him that he had definitely suffered from a pretty decent concussion, which explained why he'd been flown back to the States.
Just as he was mulling over the idea of extracting his IV, a nurse walked in with a tray of bandages, and stopped, clearly surprised that he was awake
He looked at her with narrowed eyes when she stuck her head out the door, and called for a doctor. Then she set the tray down and proceeded to take his vitals.
"How are you feeling, Major Casey?" she asked with a tone devoid of every emotion. Typical bedside manner of your standard issue nurse, especially Navy nurse, John thought with a sneer.
"I'm fine. How long was I out?" Casey asked bluntly.
After the nurse finished taking his pulse she looked at him and said, "About two weeks, sir."
Casey grunted his acknowledgment, and allowed the woman to continue her work. After another minute, the door to his room opened once again, and a short Navy doctor wearing Commander bars walked in.
"Good morning, Major, I'm glad you're awake. My name is Commander Barnes, head of polytrauma at Balboa Naval Medical Center."
"What's my prognosis, sir?" Casey asked, again cutting directly to the point.
Doctor Barns picked up Casey's chart from the foot of his bed and began to summarize his condition.
"Thirty-seven year old white male, suffering multiple lacerations caused by shrapnel, four broken ribs caused by impact, and a traumatic brain injury with contusions on the frontal lobe, which corresponds with an occipital skull fracture. From what my records tell me, you were within the kill radius of a rocket propelled grenade, and were thrown back several meters where you impacted into the side of a building. Luckily, there's no extensive internal organ damage, although you were comatose for the past couple of weeks."
Casey mulled over this information, and wasn't pleased.
"What's my expected time to be able to return to full duty, sir?"
Casey had a good idea what the answer was, but wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak.
Doctor Barns sighed and placed his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat.
"Major, I'm afraid with your injuries you won't be returning to full duty for a considerable amount of time, if at all. In fact, we've already begun to draft papers for a medical discharge from the Corps. I'm very sorry, Major."
Casey scowled at the doctor, not wanting to believe what he just heard, but there was no point in arguing the issue with the man. A year ago, one of Casey's best men suffered a traumatic brain injury, and he was discharged fairly quickly. The Marine Corps wasn't a place for the sick, or wounded, especially when it came to head injuries.
"When will it be official, sir?" he asked. His normal tone was replaced with one that was slightly subdued, but still gruff.
"We'd like to begin physical rehabilitation in a few days if you're up to it. After a month of that, we'll cut you loose, and you'll begin drawing your veteran's benefits. I really do hate to do this Major, but due to the new information we've been reviewing about traumatic brain injuries, we would be placing you at more risk than necessary by allowing you to return to full duty. You've put a career in, so you'll be able to retire with a full pension, plus your disability rating."
Casey scowled, but ultimately nodded to the doctor, and asked the nurse to adjust his bed to where he could sit up.
"Well, Major, I'm going to check on you later. There'll be a civilian neurology intern assigned to you, so you'll have to undergo more examinations."
Great, I'm getting discharged and I have to let some greasy nerd practice on me, so he could tell all the floozies at the bar that he saved a Marine's life. God, I'm about to be sick.
"Yes, sir. I think I'd like to be alone for a while, if it's okay…"
The doctor nodded, and motioned for the nurse to follow him out.
As soon as the door shut, John leaned his face into the palms of his hands, and bit back a scream. He knew that this had always been a possibility, but he couldn't believe that after twenty years, his term in the military was over.
He had busted his ass as a youth in varsity athletics and academics to win an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, and endured four long, challenging years there playing football, excelling in academics, and busting his ass to get good remarks on his review boards. After that came the long and, at times, painful infantry training, to be followed up with more training once he was accepted into Force Recon.
After a year with the snake eaters, he was officially inducted into the NSA and had endured even more hardship, especially in becoming John Casey.
After all of those years of sacrifice and loyalty; he was being discarded as a cripple.
Laying his head back, he noticed that he was developing a massive headache. Ordinarily, he would just bite his lip and endure, but John Casey no longer had the motivation to endure. He was done.
Sighing, he reached over for the call button. After a few minutes of patiently waiting, the same miss efficient popped her head into the room with a raised eyebrow.
He looked at her, pointed to his head and said, "Morphine."
xXx
After several hours of riding out a very nice dose of morphine, Casey was starting to wonder when that nasty civilian intern was going to come. His lip curled at the thought that he would soon have to return to society as… one of them. The mere thought of the idea repulsed him so greatly, that he was fairly certain that he could probably vomit on command.
He was so distracted by his thoughts; he didn't notice his door open, and a shy looking brunette looking at him.
"What?" he barked. He had no patience for this.
The woman bit her lip and walked into the room.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Major Casey, but Doctor Barns wanted me to do a neurological evaluation of you."
Casey raised an eyebrow. This young girl was a doctor? She couldn't be over twenty-seven years old, so it was plausible but he doubted she had much experience in the realm of medicine. Although she was filled out rather nicely, and had very deep brown eyes. All in all, she was the typical young lady that Casey normally went after, although he was in no mood to do so right now.
"Name."
This caused the girl's eyebrows to shoot up in surprise, but she quickly replaced it with a smile and said, "Dr. Eleanor Bartowski, but you can call me Ellie."
Casey grunted again laying his head back.
"You're a civilian, why are you working at a naval hospital?" ignoring Ellie's attempt to be friendly. "So you get your rocks off trying to order around servicemen?" Casey admitted that was a harsh statement, but after being told he was as about as useful to the Corps as a dead fish he didn't care how harsh he was.
He slowly saw Dr. Bartowski's expression turn from timid but friendly, to very annoyed.
"I may be a civilian, Major Casey, but I took this job because not only do I specialize in neuroscience, I think that this is where I can do the most good," she stated coolly.
Casey raised his eyebrow again, glad that she finally was showing some backbone. He was about to shoot another snide remark back at her, but she beat him to the punch.
"And since I'm a Doctor, at a naval hospital I'm technically your superior since you are the patient."
Casey looked at her with a dumbfounded expression.
"Believe me, doctor, this is the last place I thought I'd find myself." His tone clearly showing the fatigue of a once career driven Marine recently informed his plans were going to be cut short.
Apparently this woman was able to pick up on emotions fairly easily, as her face softened.
"I'm sorry… I just don't like being snapped at, Major."
Casey shrugged.
"It's fine, doctor."
He then saw her grin a bit before she held out her hand and said: "Let's try this again. You can call me Ellie, Major."
He accepted her hand and shook it firmly, but not too firm.
"John," he said, with a slight smile. I guess there's no reason to take my frustration out on this young lady, especially since she's here to help.
She smiled at him. She obviously didn't like confrontation.
"Great, John. Okay, so my notes tell me that you've been comatose for several weeks. Your MRI last week showed that your contusions on your frontal lobe are healing nicely, let's just do a quick neurological examination and we'll go from there."
Casey grunted in agreement.
"Okay, look at the corner to the left; I'm just going to check your pupils real quick."
Casey did as instructed, and she leaned over him shining a penlight in his eyes. He had to admit that her perfume smelled good, like flowers.
Easy, Casey, he told himself. You were learning how to shoot a man a mile and a half away when she was a still in high school. That's if she didn't graduate early num nuts, his brain shot back at him.
"Okay, your pupils are dilating correctly; let's look at motor function now. Raise your arms, and keep me from pushing them down please."
He did so, with ease and she flashed him a pearly white smile.
"Great, now let's check your hands. I want you to touch your thumb to each of your fingers starting with your right hand please."
He did so without a problem, wondering if these tests really did show any problems in the brain.
"Okay, now the other hand please," she said with another smile. Casey could get used to this kind of attention.
He lifted his hand and touched his thumb to his pinky… or at least he thought that's what he was trying to do. The fuck? He missed his pinky completely. He tried again to no avail. He tried his other fingers, but he couldn't do it.
He looked at Ellie with concern, and saw the same emotion written across her face.
She scribbled a note down in his chart.
"Okay, this just means that there's some residual damage to the motor functions in your brain, but that's expected with an injury like yours."
Casey wasn't reassured by this. "So, will it get better?"
"I'm not going to lie to you, John; this isn't going to be something that's going to snap back into place overnight. It's going to take patience, and rest. We'll assign you some therapy, and see how it goes."
This was even more sobering to Casey, as he once thought of himself as an invincible force like any Marine would. Not someone who could break.
"What's the longest recovery time you've seen?"
She looked at him and momentarily chewed on the side of her mouth.
"To be honest, I'm still pretty new to the field. I finished up med school a shot time ago, but from what I studied, this is more of a crap shoot rather than an exact science."
She must have seen his face fall, because she was quick to say, "John, I'm going to do everything I can to get you better. I'm not going to say I know it's hard because I don't, but please trust me."
He looked into her eyes and saw she was telling the truth. This wasn't some doctor that was looking for a high salary… if she was, she would have interned at a civilian hospital, not at Balboa.
She placed her hand on his arm, before stepping back.
"Okay, I need to go get this data into the system. If you need anything, buzz the nurse and ask for me. I'm sure you're probably hungry, so I'll have some dinner brought up soon, okay?"
Casey nodded and gave her a small smile, which she returned.
As she moved to the door, he took a deep breath and said, "Thank you Doc… Ellie."
She looked back at him and grinned. "You're welcome, John."
xXx
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