A Season in Hell
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She was wearing a pair of too-large of scrub pants, a shocking surgical yellow. The nurse had not found a top, but Beckett unbuttoned a few buttons of her dark dress shirt, left it unkempt. It was stiff with blood, but it had dried, and she was able to use paper towels to clean the rust-stains off her stomach where it had soaked through.
She slowly unknotted the dark uniform necktie from her collar, tugged it out. Lacking anything better to do with it, she wadded it up small and threw it away in the trash can. The tie unspooled as it dropped, fluttering almost in slow motion, collapsing at the bottom.
Beckett splashed water over her face, rubbed off her mascara where it had smudged. She felt better just for that, the clean water and the scrubbed feeling, and though her hands remained clammy, she stood straighter as she waited in the hall outside the staff room. The nurse approached and introduced herself as Kate, and now there was the dissonance of following the woman back through the hall to the ICU cluster, Kate after Kate.
Castle didn't have a private room, not in the ICU, but tomorrow, the nurse assured her, he would be moved up to recovery. For now, Beckett waited for the nurse to come back through those doors and give her the okay to enter. The other Kate was sneaking Beckett inside past the other nightshift nurse, way past visiting hours.
She flinched when the door swung open. The nurse gestured her inside, went ahead of her down the center aisle. Beckett noted that the ICU cluster was spread out in a half-circle, roughly eight pods configured around the central nurses' station. She had counted five other clusters behind doors down the hall they'd walked from the staff break room, but the nurse had assured her that Castle was in a rather secluded section, only two others in his cluster.
Beckett saw the nurse take two long strides and veer to the left, and then she was pulling back a curtain half drawn around a bed.
And there was her partner.
Beckett stopped in her tracks, horrified by the sight of him, swollen and malformed, in traction to immobilize his spine, brace wrapped around his neck, his face discolored.
The nurse nodded towards the bed and Beckett went, dutifully, already regretting her presence here. When she got to his side, she reached out a tentative hand and traced the shadow of the IV line at the inside of his elbow.
"There was perforation to the dura matter of the spinal cord," the nurse began quietly, "but the surgeons got it repaired. They're keeping him in traction overnight to make sure it heals and his spinal fluid levels don't drop. He may complain of headaches tomorrow, and if he does, you let the nurse know - it means he has a puncture wound deeper than we expected."
Beckett nodded, swallowing thickly.
"They removed bullet fragments from his upper thoracic and lower cervical spaces, where they were infringing on nerve roots from the spinal column, but the main core of the bullet they left."
"They left?" she croaked.
"It's common," the nurse said placatingly. "You go digging around for a bullet, the damage you do can be far greater."
"It won't hurt him?"
"No, it's lodged just under the trapezius, which is here-" The nurse touched the back of Kate's neck and dragged her fingers out along her shoulder. "And there are some sensitive nerve roots there that shouldn't be damaged more than they are."
"But the bullet won't work its way into those nerves?"
"It shouldn't. But of course his specialists will want to keep an eye on it. If he has any pain or numbness in his hands or fingers, then be sure to bring that to the doctor's attention. He can have another surgery once he's stable enough."
"Okay," she whispered. Her fingers slid around his elbow and she pressed her thumb lightly against a discoloration where a bruise had formed. All these bruises, and she didn't know what from. Trauma.
"I've explained this to his mother and daughter, but I'm not sure how well they were listening."
Beckett's head jerked up. "Probably - not so well." It was on her now. "He goes up to recovery tomorrow morning and then what?"
"Pain management. The surgeon will come by and check his function, possible nerve damage. Monitoring of his spinal fluid to make sure we got everything."
"He's not on a - a vent? He'll wake and breathe and - and wake up?"
"No vent, and that's very good. He came naturally up from the anesthesia, but it takes a while to sleep off. He might be confused the first few times he wakes, and he probably won't remember it. As the anesthesia wears off, he'll grow more cogent. Until he's aware, the traction will keep him from moving and feeling the nerve endings."
"Is it bad? Nerve damage." He wouldn't remember... what? Anything?
"We don't know, Detective Beckett. We'll have to wait for him to tell us."
She nodded, fingers cupping the back of his elbow. "It doesn't hurt him? Lying on his back where he was shot?"
"No, he's propped up. Foam wedges, plus the traction," the nurse said, shifting around the side to indicate the small space between Castle's back and the bed. Beckett hadn't seen that before.
"Okay, good," she said, nodding. She had to remember all of this; she wished suddenly for her detective's notebook and a pen. "And thank you for telling me. I don't want to get you in trouble-"
"You're listed on his emergency contact," the nurse said. "It's in the chart. He signed a form who knows how long ago. You're not family, but sometimes it's not about blood."
Kate swallowed hard, forcing it down, everything, and she nodded again. She found herself staring at Castle in the bed, how bad he looked. How bad he looked.
"There's no chair," the nurse said quietly. "I'm sorry. Against the rules to have furniture around the pods. But he's in traction, Detective. Can't hurt him if you sit carefully."
On the bed.
Beckett turned to look at the nurse, and the other Kate nodded in helpfulness towards the mattress, and a conveniently blank space near Castle's calves.
"Okay," Beckett said. "Thank you."
And then she sat very gingerly on the bed, shaking all over again.
X
She wasn't sure she wouldn't hurt him.
She was pretty certain, in fact, that she could. Hurt him. Most assuredly.
She wondered how much she had already, how many times, how dark and hard a truth it'd been for him, and how he had carried it like a thorn, carried it until that moment in the cemetery with his blood draining out of him - and then he'd given it to her to carry.
It was heavy over her, a weight. She wasn't sure she could do this alone.
She pulled a knee up on the mattress, balancing herself with one toe on the floor, and she leaned in over his torso, her ribs tight. "Don't leave me alone," she whispered to him. Not even sure she ought to. She probably shouldn't. Alexis wasn't happy with her.
Well, of course she wasn't. She might lose her father. Oh, how tragic and terrible the world, how sickeningly familiar, a parent lost because of this case. Because of this case.
Kate bowed her head, pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Darkness flashed, lit up by the virulent orange and yellow pinwheels of pressure. Black made over by false flares. The night behind her eyes was lighted by the neon city inside her sorrow.
She lifted her head, jaw set. Pity was pathetic. And unhelpful. And taken for weakness.
Castle was deeply still. Asleep, she reminded herself. The nurse had said asleep. He might wake a few times and then be aware, but he was sleeping now.
She closed her hands in fists and crossed her arms, holding herself up, not willing to keep reaching for him.
Her determination lasted for the space of a beat on the monitor, and the she unfolded her arms and took his non-IV hand.
She really - she could really use a smile right now. Just one of those crooked, hair flopping over his forehead, kind of self-deprecating smiles. But wouldn't be smiling, not after all day surgery and bullet fragments and nerve root damage and bleeding I love you over her.
Kate let out a ragged breath and gritted her teeth, closing her eyes again. Better not to look.
Just don't look.
"And you too?"
Kate's eyes flashed open. She rose up on one knee and peered at his face - he was lying prone in the ICU bed, in traction and his neck in a brace so he couldn't move his head - but his eyes were open. Blank stare. Lashes gold in the faint nightlight coming through the curtain.
"Castle?" she said quietly. Not a whisper, because she was a little desperate to have him answer, but not calling his name either, not wanting to drag him into consciousness if he was in pain. "Castle."
A garbled noise came out of his chest and then a long, sighing exhalation. She shifted closer, putting a hand beside his elbow and hovering above him. In case he needed to see a familiar face.
His eyes were unfocused, rolling back. She reached out her free hand and lightly touched his swollen cheek with two fingers. "Castle?"
"Cut the grass," he mumbled.
Confusion. The nurse had warned her. But it still bit right through the thick-skin of her heart and sank its teeth deep. "It's okay, Castle," she murmured. "We'll cut the grass." She felt like stone.
His eyes sank to hers, his eyelids seemed to fall heavily, his face slack and yellow-white and swollen. She swallowed hard to keep it back, took her hand away from his cheek - though she couldn't help skimming the air above his torso, as if performing some kind of ritual for healing.
"Toast bread, Beckett."
Her gaze jerked back to his and one corner of his lips were curled up like a smile. Even though she knew better - she knew it was just word salad as his brain sloshed in the remainders of the anesthesia - her heart rose, lifting up into her throat.
"Yes, I'll do that," she said, smiling terribly through every breath. Smiling so hard her whole body ached. "Anything you need, Rick."
"Murmurs," he sighed and his eyes fluttered and came open. He blinked once, twice, and then his lids dropped hard and he was gone. Just like that.
Murmurs.
Well, okay, she could do that.
Kate leaned in over him once more, but it wasn't close enough - there was too much distance for everything to get lost. She had to ease her weight off the mattress and onto one foot, untuck her knee, and then stand by the head of his bed.
Once she was there, she gently touched his bangs that were falling into his eyes, pushed them back. When she leaned in this time, her nose accidentally brushed his cheek. Electric.
But it was close enough that her words might find him, even through the veil of darkness between them.
"I'll tell you exactly what you want to hear, Castle. The moment you wake for real."
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