A/N: Nicolina, to answer your question, I'm a very geeky nursing student. I haven't even done clinicals yet, but I'm loser enough to sit around thinking about what it would be like, haha. If you happen to see anything I write is incorrect, please don't hesitate to correct me!
And in other news, my kitty Jackson is still hanging in there, not really better, not really worse. Tomorrow he's going to a specialist for a blood transfusion and bone marrow biopsy. We're hoping that the transfusion will help his anaemia (as I've learned that apparently you can't bolster erythrocyte count in cats by increase in iron like you can with humans, dammit). If it does, he might be able to get out of the woods! Please keep him in your thoughts! His appointment with the specialist is at 12:30 CST, so if everyone could just think about him at that time, that would be so wonderful!
---
It was obviously a slow day at the hospital, Lisa noticed as she walked into the waiting room. Only a couple of people were sitting in the uncomfortable-looking chairs and those people looked as though they might be hypochondriacs. After pausing for a moment to be sure no one needed to get to the counter before her, she walked across the tile and set her hands on the surface at the admitting nurse's eye level. Just by looking at her, Lisa could tell she was getting right towards the end of her twelve-hour shift and almost felt bad interrupting her game of computer Solitaire.
'Hello, welcome to Mercy Hospital. How may I help you?' asked the woman, not looking up as she stifled a yawn.
'I'm here to see Jackson Rippner,' she said in a small voice.
'Excuse me? Could you please repeat the name?'
'Rippner,' Lisa replied almost too strongly before continuing meekly. 'Jackson Rippner.'
'In that case, you'll need to sign these papers,' the nurse said, pulling a clipboard from a drawer near her knee. At Lisa's raised eyebrow, she continued. 'He's in special therapy after the surgery. And, of course, I'm sure you heard about how he got here. It was all over the news. The police have asked us to keep track of who goes in and out in case he, you know.'
Lisa nodded slowly. The woman had no idea how well she knew about how he got there. She looked down at the clipboard and skimmed it the information on the release forms, tapping the pen on the edge as she read. After signing the papers, she handed the clipboard back to the nurse.
'Okay, miss...' the woman's voice drifted of as she scanned the paper. 'Reisert. The doctor will be out in a moment to take you back.'
Lisa had barely taken three steps when she heard another voice. 'Miss Reisert, I'll take you back now.'
She turned and the doctor smiled at her warmly and walked over, her hand extended. The taller woman had slate-coloured eyes that hid behind rimless glasses; her wavy brown hair was mostly shot through with grey and tied back into a loose bun at the base of her neck. Lisa shook the woman's hand and returned her smile uncomfortably. The doctor turned looked at her clipboard before heading down a hallway that had a sign with 'Hyperbaric Therapy' and an arrow written on it. Lisa strode to catch up to her and the pair started walking down the tiled hallways, their heels tapping in synchrony. Besides the far-off beeping of monitoring equipment, the only sound in the quiet halls of the ICU was their footsteps for a few long moments.
'I'm Elisabeth Millwood, Mr Rippner's regular internist,' the doctor said finally as they turned down a different hallway, following the arrows. 'I'm sure you're aware of the extent his injuries.'
There was silence as Lisa considered what was the best thing to say in this instance. 'I am aware of his injuries but not the secondary conditions caused by them.'
'Ah,' Dr Millwood said, tapping her pen to her chin. 'Honestly, when he first arrived, I didn't think he was going to make it. Usually with multiple injuries such as his, the patient dies from the body's inability to cope with the immense amount of healing necessary.'
'He's a very strong person.'
Dr Millwood raised an eyebrow at the sympathy in her voice. 'He had a concussion, the pen-performed tracheotomy was extremely aggravated, the gunshot wound to the chest lead to a collapsed lung and the gunshot wound to the abdomen nicked his heart and lead to what we call a cardiac tamponade where the sac surrounding the heart fills with fluid, which in turn causes pressure that forces the heart to struggle to beat. Fortunately, the wound on his leg was easy to clean and was recent enough to be uninfected. It's definitely been the easiest thing to deal with.'
The doctor opened a windowless metal door and allowed Lisa to walk in before her. Dr Millwood spoke with the nurse sitting at the desk in the prepping room as Lisa looked around uncomfortably. After a few minutes, the doctor took her arm and they walked into a room filled with hyperbaric chambers and the hissing noise of hyperbaric machinery. Dr Millwood walked over to one of the chambers and looked in, taking notes on a clipboard she had pulled out of a container on the chamber. Lisa stood frozen about ten feet from the chamber until Dr Millwood looked up at her.
'It's all right,' she said with another smile. 'You can come over. The chamber's locked.'
After closing her eyes and mentally preparing herself, Lisa hesitantly walked over and peeked into a window. Jackson laid on a gurney, his eyes closed and his face relaxed under a see-through hood. He wore cotton scrubs pants, but his chest was exposed so that it could receive more oxygen. On the right side, facing her, there was an aggravated hole held closed by medical netting, and just up from it, on the upper part of his chest, there were stitches holding the gunshot wound closed. She craned her head to see his upper abdomen and saw that just below his sternum, there was an about six-inch-long, fresh incision sewn up. One hand flew up to her mouth and the other onto the window as she looked worriedly at the man, almost unconsciously feeling pity for him.
'Have you been to psychotherapy?' Dr Millwood suddenly asked. Lisa's face turned quickly to her, her lips drawn together tightly.
'Why would I need psychotherapy?' she asked harshly to the other woman, who was looking down at her clipboard and writing.
Dr Millwood looked up from the paper very seriously. 'You have signs of Stockholm syndrome, Miss Reisert. You know, it's not often that a victim of psycho-trauma comes to visit her—'
'Leese,' came Jackson's rough, breathy voice over the speakers in the room.
'Jackson,' she murmured as she turned back to look at him.
Her green eyes met his ice blue ones and his face broke into that captivating smile which she couldn't help but reciprocate. His gaze stayed on her until confusion melded into his face and he slowly turned his head back to looking at the top of the chamber as if trying to work out where he was. She could tell by his lethargic movements that he still wasn't in his right mind and was probably just happy to see a familiar face, even if the face was of the person who beat the bejeezus out of him. Her hands scrambled blindly to find the button to speak into the chamber, and after a few seconds, Dr Millwood's hand slipped over hers to press a button.
'Jackson,' she repeated over the speaker system. 'How are you?'
He gave her a dry look that answered her question before changing the subject. 'Conviction?'
Lisa swallowed, 'Extortion, assault and battery.'
Jackson nodded slightly.
'It's up to me whether or not assault and battery is brought against you.'
He frowned as she knit her eyebrows and started to cry. Although he'd seen her cry many times before, for whatever reason, this time actually made him feel a knot in his throat. It took a few moments to realise that she wasn't crying because of his former actions but in pity for him. He also realised that this had to be the pressure messing with his mind, because why would she even want to see his face? She opened her mouth to speak and her lips began moving, but her voice didn't come over the speaker. A moment passed and her face disappeared from the window.
'What are you doing?' Dr Millwood said, taking Lisa's hand off of the button and pulling the shorter woman towards her. 'Do you not realise what's going on here? It is only because of the trauma you went through with him—because of him—that you have any feeling at all towards him! You can't your emotions control you like this. Be more logical.'
'Emotions have taken me this far and I don't intend to stop using them now,' Lisa said sharply. 'I have control over this situation, and my decision in this instance is to drop my side of the charges.'
'He tried to kill your father and the Deputy Director of Homeland Security.'
'It would be an absolute waste to have him rot away in a prison cell!' replied Lisa loudly, pointing in at Jackson as she spoke. 'He is amazingly intelligent and could be used for much better purposes than the ones he's pursued in the past!'
She ripped her hand from Dr Millwood's and pressed the button on the chamber again. Looking into his once again emotionless face, she spoke.
'I'll come back again when more things are worked out.'
'Good-bye, Leese,' he said as she walked out of the room, leaving Dr Millwood and breezing by the nurse, who was now walking in to start the process of removing Jackson from the hyperbaric chamber.
---
'You visited him at the hospital.'
Setting down her fork and taking her time chewing, Lisa stared at her father from across the table. He sat with a utensil in each hand, his dinner untouched, his look unreadable. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, curling her toes on the floor as she swallowed. After taking a drink of her wine, she thought and spoke.
'What do you mean?'
'What do I mean?' he asked, raising his voice a bit with tension. 'When I called your cell phone yesterday, Cynthia answered and told me that you had stepped out to go visit a friend down near Coconut Grove.'
'Perhaps I have a friend in Coconut Grove.'
'I know that Jackson is being treated at Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove, Lisa.'
Biting her lip, she hastily covered her face with the wine glass again. She took a sip. 'What does it matter if I went to see him, Dad?'
Her father set down his utensils and pushed up his glasses. 'The DA was here the last night and he said that you hadn't pressed the assault and battery charges on Rippner. You have to realise that he's a very dangerous man, and you can't tempt him like this. He took you hostage, more or less, bruised you up by throwing you down the stairs...'
'Dad...'
'Lisa, you know I worry about you,' Joe sighed heavily before crossing his arms and leaning on the table. 'The DA also told me that you fought with Jackson's doctor about getting therapy. You have to realise that for all of us, it looks like you're having a case of Stockholm syndrome. This man tries to kill you, the Keefe family, me... and then you're wanting him excused of all charges? I don't understand what you're getting at here, honey.'
'I can't explain it,' she said quietly, looking at her father, who hand a hand over his mouth and chin. 'I know that I have control over this and what happens to him, and I just don't want that on my hands. I don't want to have someone knowing that for every moment that he's in jail, it's my fault he's there. That's how you create things like revenge and hate, and I don't want him to hate me.'
'I guess you wouldn't want someone that insane hating you.'
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 'I don't want him to hate me because...'
'I don't want you to get hurt,' her father said, concern written plainly on his face. 'Any feelings that you have for him... they aren't real, honey. He's not a normal person. He could lie to you through his tee—'
He stopped as she gripped her glass too tightly and it broke, the red wine spilling on the table and dripping off the side. 'Jackson never lies.'
There was very awkward silence between the two in which all that could be heard was the clock ticking and the rhythmic dripping of the wine onto the hardwood. Lisa took her hand and wrapped it in her napkin, the blood quickly making it through the cloth. When she started trying to pick up the glass, her father stood and came over to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her in close to him.
'I should hate him, I should hate him so much,' Lisa said, tears running down her face. 'But instead, I feel sorry for him. I hate to see him hurt so badly. And when I look into his eyes, I see a different person than everyone else does. The raw honesty in his look... God! I sound so stupid!'
'It's never been your way to be logical,' her father said, still holding her tightly. 'You just think with your heart, and most of the time, that's what ends up helping you the most.'
'My heart almost got you and the Keefe family killed.'
'Your heart lead you to attack your captor and save the day,' he said, pulling away to look into her face. 'Now come on, let's get your hand cleaned up and we'll talk.'
Her father disappeared from her field of vision and she heard him looking under the sink for the first-aid kit. As she blotted at her bleeding hand, she stared at the broken glass and her shattered reflection in it. The dripping slowed as her father's footsteps came back, and she looked up into his smiling face as he held up some gauze and athletic wrap with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He bent down on his knees and took her hand, dousing it in the hydrogen peroxide before dabbing at the cut with one of the squares of gauze.
'You know you can tell me anything, Leese,' he said, carefully cleaning the wound.
'Always,' she said, relaxing. 'When I first met Jackson, he was great. I was really comfortable around him, you know? Of course, that feeling evaporated once everything started happening, but then he cornered me in the bathroom.'
Her father raised his eyebrows at that, but said nothing as he put the other square of gauze on her palm and held it down.
'When we were in there, he found my scar. The way he brushed it, the tone in his voice when he asked me about it, even the pitied look that he gave me... it all felt real. It felt like he wanted to protect me,' she laughed a little. 'Of course, after he did that, he took me by the neck and shoved me into a wall, so...'
'He was probably trying to cover his moment of weakness with a big show of masculinity.'
Lisa chuckled a bit. 'I see those little things. His sympathy for me because of the scar, the moment of delay after I told him that he didn't have to do his job, and then the concern on his face after he pushed me down the stairs.'
'I think he's as conflicted as you are,' Joe said, wrapping the athletic tape around her hand. 'You need to be careful about this though, Leese. Don't be brash, okay? You're under a lot of stress now and I don't think you should make any really important decisions. You know I'd really appreciate it if you went to see a psychologist about this, but I won't force you.'
'I know, Dad,' she said, biting her lip. 'But you just need to trust me on this one.'
