Title: Bumps in the Road
Series: Bumps in the Road
Universe: Ulysses
Author: loozy
Characters: Don, Robin; Don/Robin
Rating: PG- 13/ K
Summary: To stop the drugs would be bad, too, because he has a feeling that his ribs, wrist and nose hurt like hell, not to mention his head.
Word Count: 298; 266; 265; 285; 221; 289; 300; 298; 299
Spoilers: none
Notes: Inspired by the challenge on hurt_don and beta'ed by the awesome valeriev84...
Prompt: # 161 Damages; # 63 Sweat; # 138 Reunion; # 53 Support; # 93 Kiss; # 62 Steam; # 48 Pill; # 13 Luck; # 147 Thaw
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters mentioned in this fic. Numb3rs and everybody associated with it belong to Cheryl Heuton & Nick Fallucci and CBS.
Feedback: Yes, please. I love every kind of review, even the bad ones, as long as they are helpful and constructive.
Bumps on the Road
Damages
He will later freely admit that he was not paying attention all that much to the road but the accident nevertheless was not really his mistake- rather a combination of an unfortunate set of circumstances.
The other car's driver will be too inebriated to say anything at first and then later try to pretend that he was not drunk but just really exhausted from a long hard day at the office. At least he does so until the investigating detective shows him the results of his blood level test and he was 1.4 above the allowed limit when he ran the red light.
Don could have dealt with this easily.
Tell the cops what happened. Get checked out by the paramedics. Ring Dad or Robin, preferably Robin because while she fusses, she does so less than Dad. Get lift home. Sleep off the headache from smashing his head against the airbag that inflated a second too late.
But no.
He does tell the cops what happened but then he is whisked away to the nearest hospital because he keeps spacing out on the EMTs. The head wound is still bleeding more than it should and his nose is broken and needs to be set. And it is also bleeding.
So is his wrist judging from the red on his while sleeve and when he looks down, he sees bone protruding through the flesh from when he smacked it against the window and for a second he thinks he might actually pass out, but fights the notion.
His ribs feel sore and bruised, probably from the wheel and the airbag.
Until the EMT touches his nose and he cannot help but welcome the beckoning darkness.
Anything is better than this combination of pain from various parts of his body.
Sweat
He is sweating when he rouses from his brief stint with unconsciousness and for a moment thinks he has a fever.
There is also pressure where pressure should not be, and he thinks it might be from broken ribs but it does not feel like broken ribs, more like a band across his shoulders.
Ah well.
He is still sweating, or believes himself to be doing so at least.
The EMT informs him that he is alright in that category, that they have checked his body temp and that it is not elevated any more than it should. If anything, it is slightly below average because of the blood loss his scalp laceration is causing him. He tells the guy that it is not very nice of his head to bleed like this. The EMT just curls his lips up in amusement and then asks him to hold his arm still so that he can finally insert an IV- line.
Before, apparently, he was moving around too much, which forced the medic to restrain him, hence the pressure along his shoulders. When the needle slides in, he decides that this is not a pleasant sensation whatsoever and politely asks the medic to take it out again. The medic just huffs and connects the line coming out of his arm with a bag hanging on a pole beside the gurney, and Don gets lost in the soothing drip- drip of the fluid filling the line and soon his body.
He dozes off again.
Or loses consciousness, he is not clear about that.
Maybe a bit of both.
Reunion
When he comes to in the emergency ward, the doctor leaning over him is the same one who dealt with him when he got stabbed and upon mumbling a drowsy greeting, all he gets is a wry grin and a comment about his injuries being not that dangerous but more numerous.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, perfectly content with letting the doctors and nurses handle him while he tries to avoid thinking about the pain searing up and down his body.
He will look like a bruised peach tomorrow, surely.
Robin will just love that look.
It is a good thing it is a Friday and they are both off for the weekend. He had originally planned to kidnap her to a romantic location but now one of their places will have to do.
The trip can wait.
He could not drive anyways, what with his head insisting on everything appearing double.
Vaguely he hears the doctor tell him that he will have to go into surgery for the wrist and that someone is there to see him and then Robin is standing beside his bed, looking beautiful and he has to tell her.
He loves when she blushes but because his vision is blurry he cannot really enjoy the moment and the painkillers they gave him are distracting him from reality. He would much rather drift off to a reality where he can Robin have escaped to a lovely island where they run around naked and a polar bear dances with a tiger. Charlie and Dad are there, too, playing bongos while...
Support
When he wakes up, Robin is sitting on a very uncomfortable looking chair, and he wonders for a moment if there is a manufacturer who makes chairs especially for hospitals that are so uncomfortable that it takes great strength of will to snooze in them.
Robin has more determination than he has ever seen in a woman, bar his mother, who fell asleep in a hospital chair beside him more than once, so he is not really surprised to see her there.
He is even less surprised to see her wake up scant moments after he did and to push a straw into his dry mouth before he even attempts to speak. It is a nice move of her because the last time he was in the hospital, they tried to feed him ice chips and he damn near choked on the things so plain water it is.
He loves her for doing this and is woozy enough still to tell her.
And then continues on to tell her that he just loves her, period, which makes her smile grow wider and wider the more times he says it, until she silences him with a kiss, leaning over him without putting any pressure on any injured part of him.
That is good.
Which he also tells her, then talks about his dream and he really would like to shut up but cannot.
To stop the drugs would be bad, too, because he has a feeling that his ribs, wrist and nose hurt like hell, not to mention his head.
Besides, Robin seems alright with him just rambling away.
And if it gets too much for her, she is always welcome to kiss him some more.
Kiss
She takes him home the next day after reassuring Alan that she is quite capable of taking care of him, thank you very much, and drives them off to the Valley, to her house, which he loves.
She has a big tub and on the way inside he asks her to run a bath for him.
The drugs are still making him incoherent, but he knows enough that he must smell very unappealing and if he is to stay with Robin for the next couple of days, that is a definite 'no'.
So she deposits him on the couch, careful to avoid the right side where his two broken ribs are, and he can hear her rummaging around while The Beatles' You've got to Hide your Love Away plays on the stereo.
He does not like that song at the moment, because he sure does not want to hide Robin away, and when she comes back into the living room, he tells her so. Without a sound she switches tracks, to If I fell which is so much more fitting.
Then he kisses her, because he fell for her, and he loves kissing her, and if he had not fallen, he could not be kissing her right now because they would not have gotten back together after the aborted first try.
Steam
The steam that has accumulated in the bathroom is making seeing a bit of a challenge, especially since he still has trouble focussing at times, though he would never admit that to either the doctor, Robin or Dad.
He cannot imagine whose reaction would be more severe, so he does not even try to find out.
The fine mist also makes everything seem unreal and when he sinks into the embrace of Robin's arms, keeping his wrist out of the water dutifully as she wraps it in a plastic bag and seals it tight, he remembers a book he once read when he was younger, The Mists of Avalon. He tells Robin this, and she retaliates by talking about Gorillas in the Mist and about that one summer she spend in Italy with her family and how her father would repeatedly jump into the pool beside her deck chair until the cover of her book and was doused in water and he started calling it Gorillas in the Sea.
He laughs at this and then falls silent as she softly starts massaging his scalp, avoiding the stitched wound, and shoulders, telling him about early morning spins on the Charles when the mist was rising from the water, and saunas to warm up in after training sessions.
He has stories about steam rooms, too, and he regales her with some of them, drifting off from time to time when her hands hit a spot that is particularly tense, and the feeling of unreality does not leave him.
Even later, when they are lying in bed together, he cannot shake this weird feeling.
It is just the drugs, Robin assures him, and he declares that he is not taking them anymore.
Pill
She does not argue with his sentiment, but just gives him an Ibuprofen in the morning which will dull the pain at least a little bit but not mess with his head. He asks her why the doctors gave him pills anyways when he has a heads injury at which she just shrugs, tells him that his father probably asked the doctor that, and then turns back to the Sunday paper and her cereal.
He lets the matter rest, as it does not really change anything now, swallows the pill with a glass of milk and then carefully munches away on the plain toast she has prepared for him.
Five minutes later, the toast and the pill make a reappearance that makes his throat burn and insides hurt.
Robin curses softly under her breath before dragging his sorry ass over to her couch, sponging his sweaty face and chest off and then tucking a blanket around him while she cleans up the kitchen. He is not cold, not really, but likes the feeling of being comforted and stares with disdain over at the painkillers she brought from the hospital.
He will not take those.
An Aspirin, maybe?
Surely Robin has some, and if not, he left his migraine pills here as a precaution after the last time he had an attack at her house and his pills were not with him.
He has also heard that sleep helps with pain, so he settles down to sleep a little bit, if only to escape the drumming of blood through his body, especially his wrist, and the muted light breaking the cover the curtains provide.
He does not have to take the pills if he does not want to.
He can outstubborn the pain anytime he wants.
At least he hopes so.
Luck
He is in luck again when Robin provides him with an Aspirin and tells him that they will try the migraine medication if he cannot stomach those either or if they are not really effective.
He has been lucky throughout the whole weekend, actually.
First he survived a collision with a car that was going especially quite quickly, he got through surgery and now he is here with Robin, just the two of them. Though it is not the ideal weekend that he had planned, it is rare enough that they get this much time alone, so he cherishes it nonetheless.
He tells her so in the afternoon when they have retreated to her bed for a nap and he forgets about his ribs and her warning comes too late when he rolls over to his side to face her.
He might have been lucky, but he sure is stupid, he grumbles to himself as his right side is set on fire and all he wants to do is scream or whimper pathetically. obin is less than sympathetic with him, clucking with her tongue like a disgruntled mother while he moans and groans.
And ice pack and a fresh tighter wrapping around his ribs later she informs him that she already called him in sick and when he attempts a half- assed protest, she looks at him dryly and asks how he would like to get to work? His car is at the shop and she also called in sick so he is not going anywhere unless he can find her car keys.
He tells her that she is a devious woman, at which she just smirks and then retorts that he should count his lucky stars by simply being alive at this point, because she certainly did.
Thaw
On Tuesday he tells her he wants to go back to work on Wednesday and while she takes his announcement in stride, the atmosphere cools down and he cannot help but feel uncomfortable.
Yes, he might not be ready, the rational side of his brain tells him, the side that at times sound too much like Charlie, and yes, he does not mind being with her, but he is getting antsy about sitting around on his behind when...
What is he actually worrying about?
Was he not the one to tell her and his family that he had seen, after the stabbing, that life was not all about work, and that he would be more relaxed, or at least would be shifting more responsibility over onto David's shoulders? And had David not led the team excellently when he had been indisposed?
So why is he worrying?
Pure habit, and maybe he should tell Robin that, only she is nowhere to be found, though the lack of her running shoes on the rack tells her where she might have gone.
So instead he sets to preparing a meal by himself as best as he can with a handicapped right side and left wrist and head that still threatens to explode when he makes an abrupt movement.
He hopes she appreciates the gesture as he sets the table and lays out the silverware, even bringing the candles out of their hiding place and dimming the light in the eating area.
It is just Thai noodle soup with fresh vegetables that she always has in a tupper container in her fridge, but the temperature has thawed when she comes down from her shower. It gets even milder when he tells her that a couple more days off have never done any harm.