Disclaimer. I own nothing. Thought it was time fore some more Flatliners stuff. Takes place right after the movie. Things aren't all right yet……
Patient: Wright, Nelson C.
Admitted: September 2nd, 1990, 11:30 pm
Discharged September 4th, 1990, 11:00 pm
Reason For Admittance: MRI and CT scan, possibly brain hypoxia.
Initial
BP: 85/50 - LOW - Acute, mild/mod hypotension with poor CRT
HR: 50 - LOW - Acute, moderate bradycardia
BT: 94.0 - LOW - Acute, moderate hypothermia
PulseOx: 92: - LOW
Mucous membranes mildy cynanotic. Dehydration noted.
Notes: Patient brought in in semi-comatose state by classmates, Mannus, Rachel M. and LaBraccio, David S. Classmates informed doctors that patient had been in a car accident and had possibly been without oxygen due to facial obstruction for upwards of ten minutes. Patient had been unconscious and subsequently revived by classmates.
CT: negative for hypoxic damage
MRI: negative for hypoxic damage
Final
Initial
BP: 130/85 - NORMAL
HR: 70 - NORMAL
BT: 94.0 - 96.5 - LOW - mild hypothermia, variable
PulseOx: 96 - NORMAL
Notes: No hemorrhage or edema of white/gray matter noted. Cellular differentiation remained normal. Patient QAR, aware, responding. No appearance of brain damage. Fluids administered for dehydration and bed rest for 48 hours. Dismissed under care of classmates.
The single sheet of paper lay in his lap, the paper bright white with its bold black lettering, cold and unfeeling. It had begun raining, the raindrops colliding with millions of tiny tapping noises against the windshield, every time being smeared into nothingness by the cheap, squeaking wipers, like myriads of tiny tin soldiers hurling themselves in vain at the glass. It was one piece of paper, and it was telling him in cold, medical language that he was fine. Fine. Twelve minutes without oxygen, without life, and he was fine.
But he wasn't fine.
He would never be fine.
Rachel glanced over at the stoic, tense figure in the passenger seat, staring intently at his lap. The left side of his lips curled slightly in the characteristic Nelson dog-snarl.
"Hey."
He didn't respond except for a slight facial twitch. He kept looking at the paper, as if it was lying to him. As if when he turned it over, it would say something completely different on the back. It was hiding something. A stupid piece of paper, telling him that there was nothing to worry about, his head was as right as...well, as right as rain. He knew it was lying. If he kept looking at it, maybe the words would change. Maybe they would start telling the truth.
"Are you all right?"
"No." He said, his tired voice forcing its way out of his mouth sounding like a scratched-up record being played too slowly. He didn't feel like giving it the old "I'm just dandy" routine.
"Are you hungry? We can pick up some food if you want...Thai? Come on, you can be too tired for Thai. What about than kang talay stuff you like?
Nelson muttered darkly under his breath, and Rachel leaned over. Damn it, she was doing her best to be civil, and squashing down all of the curses and profanities she wanted to spew at him for being so stupid. She felt like she was trying to cheer up a sulking child. "What?"
"Kang talay. Talay is pronounced Tal-ie, not tal-aye. And Kang isn't 'kang' it's 'kuang'. " He said louder, a hint of annoyance coming through in his tone.
Rachel bit her tongue, barely avoiding a curt retort. Only Nelson would bother to correct pronunciation on a single Thai dish. She glanced over and caught him looking up from the paper at his knees at her. The snarl in his lips was gone. His eyes had lost their characteristic half-narrowed, sneering appearance. They were soft and tired. In fact, he looked exhausted even after two days of being in bed. Scraggly, pale Nelson. What a disaster. A few days ago he had been ranting and raving in the streets, to them about life and death, his face battered and bruised and eyes gleaming with a feral look that had frightened her to her very core. His eyes went back down to his knees. "Sorry."
"It's ok."
There was an awkward moment of silence as Rachel slowed the Subaru to a halt at a red light. "Do you just want to go back home?"
"Home? My apartment?"
"Yeah."
"No. I don't want to go there." He enunciated each word carefully and slowly, as if pronouncing a death sentence. She didn't blame him. Even with things semi-resolved now, being alone was probably not high on his list of priorities. Plus...his apartment was a pretty impersonal place. She had only been there a few times, but the high, vaulted ceilings, bare white walls, and sparse antique furniture always made her wonder how he could bear the loneliness and silence, broken only occasionally by the mechanical roar and clatter of the el-train outside.
"We can go to mine. My couch isn't the best, but it's comfortable."
"Wait, you're not going to sleep on the couch."
"I think you need the bed more than I do."
"No, no. I'll sleep on the couch."
"Are you being chivalrous or just difficult?" She let her frustration slip a little bit and Nelson instantly recoiled, out of submission or just indifferent avoidance, she wasn't sure
"Whatever you want." He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes wearily. "Whatever you want."
In truth, the very idea of him staying over at her apartment was not exactly what she wanted.
"I just don't want to encroach on Dave's territory." She heard him finish his thought snarkily under his breath, and lost her temper momentarily again. She was sick and tired of the way he had been manipulating her sympathies all the way home, vacillating between pitiable exhaustion and his usual cold, slow-burn nastiness.
"We slept together, all right? As in slept. That's it."
"I'm sure that's all it was."
"Oh God, come off it, Nelson. As if you ever had any claim to me."
Nelson exhaled loudly, but didn't respond. Rachel gritted her teeth and the Subaru lurched forwards with a cough as the light turned green. He was infuriating sometimes, one huge god damn thorn twisting in her side. During the first year, she had found his flirting charming, almost flattering. Second year, it had just been annoying. She realized more and more that his confidence was only conceit, his charm only the smugness of self-satisfaction. Third year, she had ignored it completely, increasing her disinterest proportionately with his frustration, sarcasm and occasionally lewd insinuations. She knew that now, after years of silent rejection, he intentionally played up his natural vanity and arrogance just to get a rise out of her, and it was incredibly irritating. Whatever. She could pronounce his damn Thai food any way she wanted. What a blustering peacock, even after twelve minutes at the brink of death. The thought of Nelson as a peacock, preening and admiring his feathers for hours on end, brought a smirk to her lips.
It wasn't until they made the final right turn into her apartment complex than he spoke again, quietly and begrudgingly. "Rachel?"
"What" She pulled quickly into a parking spot and turned the engine off, heaving up on the parking break. It protested mildly, but then settled in with the fact that it was going to have to hold the old car in place all night.
"When I said I was sorry on the phone, I meant it."
"It doesn't matter now, it's over."
"I wasn't just talking about the experiment."
But Rachel was already out of the car, trying to pretend she hadn't heard the second part. Nelson jerkily shoved open the side door and got out slowly, testing his balance. He had almost fallen twice on the way down the hospital parking lot, and was determined not to make such a fool of himself on the front steps of her apartment.
"I wasn't just talking about the experiment" he repeated as she walked to a door on the first floor and set about unlocking it. Still she didn't answer, pushing open the door with a creak of wood. She knew he was probing, for what, she wasn't sure. Probably sympathy.
"Hey, I bet twenty -four hours ago, you didn't think you'd be spending the night here, did you?" Her voice come sarcastically from the dark of the doorway, mimicking his comment of a few weeks ago. Nelson blinked owlishly as the lights came on. His glasses were somewhere in the small duffel bag of things that someone, he assumed Steckle since he was the only other person that had a key, had picked up for him, and it was still sitting in he trunk of the car. Walking carefully through the doorway, he immediately pointed his body towards the couch. Rachel quickly reached around him to close the door and then stood in his path, arms crossed.
"Bed."
Nelson raised his eyes skyward in an exaggerated motion, like he was trying to look into the top of his own skull. "Come on, leave me some dignity. I'm not stealing a bed from a woman."
Rachel cleared her throat pointedly.
"At least let me have a damn cigarette first."
"Dave may let you smoke in his house, but you're not smoking in mine. Besides, Randy didn't put them in the bag, I'm not driving you to a gas station...can you live? The hospital gave me some sedatives for you anyway."
"Sedatives? What kind of sedatives? What the hell for?"
"They said you were 'intractable' during the MRI. You're been on them all weekend. You didn't notice twice daily intramuscular injections? You've got to be kidding. Aripiprazole."
"Fine. You have more?"
"They gave me a few doses."
"Give me one."
"Nelson -"
"Give me one right fuckin now." his voice cracked angrily and the dog-snarl came back to his lips.
Rachel gave him a dirty look and walked over to the side of the bed where her purse lay, and she drew out a plastic bag with a few single-use syringes and a bottle.
"Dr. Mannus, will you handle the injection?" Nelson sat down on the side of the bed and muttered mockingly, savagely jerking up his shirt sleeve. Giving him tranks like he was some sort of unruly elephant. Christ. But right now sleep was his number one priority, and he didn't want to be aware of anything, not right now, not anymore. Rachel expertly drew up a little over a milliliter from the bottle and came back over to him, sitting down on the bed and stretching out his arm to expose the bicep. Nelson snorted briefly as the harsh sting of an intramuscular injection ran up and down his arm. But Rachel was quick and it soon subsided, and he barely even remembered the shot.
Within a few seconds, it began to hit him like a ton of bricks. Jesus. They made this stuff strong. His head swam slightly and all his muscles felt heavy, especially the injected arm.
"Bed." Rachel uttered the single word, recapping the needle and placing it carefully back in the bag, making note to put it in the sharps container the next time she was at the hospital for rounds. Bed. Hmm. He nodded in acceptance and turned towards the bedroom with Rachel holding her ground, watching him as if he was going to make a sudden dash for the couch at any moment. But he didn't. He only painfully pulled off his shirt and flopped down on her bed in only the loose cloth pants he had worn from the hospital, a quite unflattering dull yellow color, and pulled one of the quilts over himself in a slow, half-hearted motion, complete with feel-sorry-for-me grunts of unhappiness.
There he goes playing the pity card, like a little puppy that had messed on the floor and was looking for forgiveness even though it planned to do it again later anyway.
"You can take a shower in the morning if you want, it's down the hall on the left. if you promise not to use up all the hot water in Chicago." She said as she followed him in, taking off her earrings and laying them on the nightstand.
"Out, out damned spot..." his voice came out sounding muffled, his face pressed against the sheets.
"Very funny."
Nelson huffed a breath and rolled over onto his side. He wasn't smirking or sneering, as she had been expected. His face was tired, almost lifeless, as if the last ten minutes of bandying words had taken out whatever energy he had left. He wasn't faking it, that was for sure. Rachel sat gingerly on the bed and put one hand the his neck for a pulse count and the other to his forehead. Both were snatched away quickly. "Jesus, you're freezing! They let you out with a temp like this? Are you ok? Was it the Arip?"
She immediately began pulling more quilts on him and he shifted his body obligingly. "You know me" he coughed a bit , trying to pass it off. "I'm persuasive. This is all...going according...to plan."
"Oh ,please." Rachel got up briefly to lock the door and turn out the hall light. It was pushing midnight and she really wasn't in the mood to haul him back to the hospital. In fact, she was dead tired. All the wanted to do was crawl into bed - scratch that - crawl on to the couch and sleep. She came back to the bed and check his forehead again. Ugh. Brilliant. Could nothing go right today? She didn't even have water bottles, let alone a space heater.
"Ok. Listen to me carefully. I'm going to sleep in the bed."
"Heh...ok...so you're kicking me onto the couch because I'm cold?"
"No. You're staying in the bed. You need all the extra body heat you can get."
Nelson's jaw dropped slightly, but he caught himself. "No...no. You've got to be kidding."
"I'm not." Quite honestly, Rachel didn't care anymore. She was tired. She wanted the bed. And she wasn't about to leave him edging on hypothermia, since she was the one who signed him out. If he tried anything, she would beat the crap out of him. Not that he would, anyway. From the amazed and distinctly nervous look on his face (come to think of it, she had never seen him nervous. Nervousness was not a Nelson-ish trait) she could tell he would probably not even move a single muscle. Not giving him time enough to protest, she shrugged off her cardigan, pulled a long cotton sleepshirt off the hamper at the side of the bed, and whisked it on, deftly pulling off her blouse and skirt from underneath it. She may be sharing a bed with him but he sure as hell wasn't going to see her change, no matter how forgetfully unaware and doped up he would probably be soon. She felt like she was at girl scout camp, embarrassed to be seen naked in front of anyone. It didn't matter because he had turned over . Not bothering to turn off the dim bedroom light, she pushed aside the layers of quilts and slid into bed, nudging him with her leg and wincing at the chill of his skin. "Move over."
Nelson grunted reluctantly.
"Oh come on, move over."
"Fine" Nelson snapped darkly, and shoved himself over to the far side of the bed, as if he didn't want to be anywhere near her. Truth be told, he was beginning to shake a bit, not from the cold but from the fact that she was so incredibly close to him. This was going to be awkward. Very awkward. He had never felt so foolish...well, or quite so...hmmm...something else...
"No, not that far."
"What is this, a bedroom dictatorship? Jeez, I bet you damn well kicked Dave right over the side." He barked back at her, his own voice sounding tinny in his ears as the chemicals in his bloodstream fought to calm him back down.
"It's my bed, and you're going to sleep in it where I say. Move back over, just a little. There. Over, on your back."
"I don't like sleeping on my back."
Rachel reached over and grabbed him firmly by the shoulder, digging her nails in slightly to show she meant business. Nelson yelped in surprised and rolled over, only to find her pinning his shoulders down firmly and one leg across his knees. "Christ, Rachel, next time let me know and I'll bring some leather and handcuffs or something."
"You wish." she said levelly, not breaking her gaze.
"Yeah. Too bad. You could use the workout."
"What, as in sleeping with you?"
"Well...the sleeping would come afterwards." he tried to summon up a smirk to distract her from the fact that his whole body was beginning to quiver slightly. He wasn't about to give her the upper hand by knowing that she was getting to him. Well, getting to him was putting it mildly. The shivering intensified and he tried to pass it off by shifting his body, as if trying to get out from under her, still fighting the aripiprazole. But it was slowly winning. "You know you're curious."
"Are you kidding? I might catch something. Like a life-threatening case of snobbery."
She was giving him a look of death that somehow managed to be incredibly sexy... and he found himself wondering vaguely if she was this dominant with regards to...whoa, no, stop it, right now. He stared at the ceiling, trying to regain control over his body. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Just go to sleep. Pretend she's not there. His mental pep-talk almost worked, until he felt her body up against his side and a small arm go around his chest. He sucked in a breath and the shaking began anew, and this time it was too violent to be missed. Shit on a stick! Damn it! Damn it!
"Your'e shivering. You should put your shirt back on...I don't have anything you can borrow..."
"I'm fine." The words came out through gritted teeth. But his body was instinctively drifting off into sleep at the feel of the bed beneath him and hew wasn't quite aware of what was going on.
"Are you kidding? You're shaking like a leaf."
"It's not from the cold!" he blurted out finally, angry both at himself and at her for putting him in a situation where he felt the weaker of the two. Now he felt like a complete idiot, his attempts at snide remarks shattered.
"Then what is it?"
"You know what it is. Stop baiting me." His words had been reduced to soft, slurred grunts and sleep finally won its battle with conciousness.
Rachel sighed. Her body was also dragging her towards sleep, and she was definitely not up for the kind of conversation that was going to get started if she replied. Ignoring the new round of goosebumps that coursed along his skin, she moved her body closer against him, trying to cover as much surface area as possible to warm him up without blatantly crossing the thin line of propriety. The only place to put her head was in the crook of his shoulder, and he flinched as he felt her breath on his neck. She was asleep within a few minutes.
