Title: Live Hard
Summary: He may not even be considered much of a person anymore but the moon does things that bring out what he used to be, there's a reason the doctor has him on a sedative and there's one unlucky nurse's name on the bottom of the incident report following the bite.
Rating: M
Warnings: Language, violence
Spoilers: There are a some but they are few and far between for the most part, this story works around the main storyline while incorporating it at key points
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf
A/N: This whole chapter takes place over the course of episode nine before the point of the events in the long term care facility with Stiles and Derek.
Day 43:
The moment she pulled into her driveway she dreaded to go inside and see the mess she knew instinctively that would be waiting for her after leaving the dog to his own devices without having been for a walk in over a day.
Sighing in relief that he had at least contained his bodily urges to the throw rug at the bottom of the stairs she set to work with a scrub brush and a bucket of ammonia water that made the entire house reek before she was even halfway finished.
She took him for a late walk, staying to Main Street and avoiding the woods like the plague, unable to even contemplate what level of bad luck she may sink into if she ventured in so late at night.
The smell of the chemical remained when she woke up after sleeping from ten to four, the sky outside was still dark with no threads of dawn weaving into the starless spread of 'too early to be awake' morning. She was still wearing hospital scrubs and her hair was a sweaty mess of old hairspray and the fibers of the couch pillow she had slept on.
Her shower was scalding but she braved the spray and spit water out after she caught herself yawning too widely every few moments, her body refusing to wake up properly after going through so much in such a short span of time.
If it hadn't been four in the morning she would have called everyone she knew and related her misadventures with the on the run, wanted for murder firm bottomed man, one Mister Derek Hale, but even though the news was exciting and thrilling no one wanted a phone call at that early unless someone had died.
Nobody cared if you had almost died because if you called at four in the morning and were alive they would kill you.
After coffee and blowing her hair dry she lit a cigarette and did some dishes until the sky lightened as five rolled around.
The dog got another walk, she got ready for work, and the blanketed dark sky turned the pink and orange jubilee of sunrise.
She sighed around a mouthful of waffle.
Life went on.
At seven the phone rang as she was wiping down her kitchen counter.
"Hello?" Her Caller ID said it was work calling.
"Lucette?"
She knew the voice and pushed in a kitchen chair.
"Hey, Trish?" She made it a question in case it wasn't who she thought it was calling.
"Yeah," there was a short pause as the other woman yelled something to someone in the background of the call.
Trish went on, "I know this is short notice but can you work the eight to eight night shift today?"
Confused the younger woman paused with a hand still on top of the chair she was pushing in, turning to look out her backdoor at the damp planks of her back patio.
"You do realize I'm actually supposed to be at work in less than an hour right?"
Trish made a sound like a sigh but over the phone the other woman couldn't be sure.
"Short notice, the night charge asked me to call and see if you could cover for the unit for her shift because she had a family emergency."
"You know you shouldn't be asking me this, right?"
She didn't work for the facility, she worked for her agency and technically there were was a policy protecting her from the backlash of refusing to take on an extra shift or a different one at the request of the facility, doing things like that was therefore not really something her agency recommended.
But if they needed her to change shifts, she would. Just the once, and only because they really needed it.
"I know. I know, I wouldn't call but the other charge nurse, Bette, can watch your nurses in the morning but she can't do a night shift because she has school. I'm in a jam here."
Lucette weighed her options and leaned into the pushed in chair mulling things over for a moment, "Okay, fine. Just tell my team I'm on call if they need me. I'll come in if they have a problem."
She didn't want to leave her team to deal with a charge nurse that may be a complete bitch; she'd rather they handled themselves.
"Thank you so, so, so much, hun," the older nurse expressed her gratitude, it sounded sincere.
"No, it's alright I owe you one for yesterday after all that drama," Lucette confirmed thinking about what had happened again in Peter Hale's room.
Trish shushed her, "You don't owe me; I'll totally owe you for this though. Lunch one day when we have off, in town. At a place with real waiters and fancy napkins folded into cute animal shapes."
The younger nurse smiled and pushed away from the chair to pour a cup of coffee and perch herself on the countertop.
"You tricky girl, trying to win me over with food and fancy napkins?" She punctuated the sentence by slurping her coffee loudly sure to be heard over the phone line.
"There's no 'try' about it," Trish's tone suggested pomp and ego.
Swallowing and laughing a little she answered, "Damn right, you had me at 'food.' I'll be in at eight tonight."
"Thanks again."
"No problem. Bye."
"See you later."
After ending the call she stared at the receiver in her lax grip. For an intermittent period of time she yelled at it loudly with sounds she ripped from her throat.
Her arm tightened, she forced it to relax and then took a calming breath that was supposed to help ease her stress.
It didn't. She placed the phone in its cradle charger mounted on the wall and looked around the kitchen.
In the end she went back to the first viable option she had come up with, the only viable option in fact since she couldn't break things she didn't own.
She took the glass braising pan from her oven that had cost thirty dollars and dropped it, simply and without flair, onto the kitchen floor and then she left room to change her clothes, glass crunching under the soles of her white leather orthopedic nursing shoes.
Flinging them into the bedroom wall, once, twice she felt no better.
Her gym clothes lay in a bag, forgotten for a week on the chair reserved for clothes she had folded but forgotten to put in their rightful drawer space.
When she tightened the pull string on her sweatpants she took notice of the dull ache in her hips that came when the air pressure changed to mean rain was coming. She slid her thumbs over the old scars and then tied a bow in the drawstring to keep her pants up.
The tank top was loose and stretched out, her zip-up too short for it to cover the white ribbed cotton but she didn't bother to care about length or color coordination, just put her hair in a braid and slipped into her sneakers.
She didn't bother with the leash, she knew the large animal that had watched her curiously since her lapse in sanity and destructive cooking wares kitchen incident wanted to run, she couldn't sprint for a long time but she was climbing up a wall inside the house she was likely to destroy unless she bid it adieu for a few hours.
People were just starting to get up and go about their business, cars drove by and people jogged passed her with smug smiles at being faster than a lowly walker until she started running and passed them just barely keeping from raising a finger as she did it.
She wasn't a show-off but she hated cocky condescending jogger people about as much a she hated people on bicycles that didn't stay on the shoulder of the road when she was driving.
After twenty minutes of her impression of a gazelle about to get it's ass eaten out by a lion she started to think she should stop before her heart exploded at the major arteries and take deeper breaths as the inside of her face started to feel sharp around the sinuses.
Her lungs were rubbing against the inside of her chest, pleural friction rub, she knew the feel, sharp inspiratory pain, textbook, really, she kept up but slowing to a run.
Her hip throbbed, it felt like it had expanded out of its socket, every smack of her shoe sent a shock up her leg, she'd have to limp home later, maybe drag herself by her arms if it was worse than she thought.
Her head felt like it was filled with glass and angry hornets, the bleariness in her eyes was starting run across her vision thickly.
Her throat felt like she'd open it and swallowed her hair dryer while it was on.
The park grounds weren't technically the woods, the trees were barely considered clustered. She slowed to a brisk jog and then with an irritated throat hurting grunt thought 'fuck it.'
If her bad luck wanted to get worse because she was running in the woods then it would, she wanted to run in the woods, so she did.
The wilderness path was a small foot wide four mile long grey gravel track that shifted under her heels with every heavy stomp displacing the little stones.
The dog kept up. At a signpost declaring a ranger station nearby she sat on the decorative log bench and wiggled her toes experimentally inside her shoes to make sure she still had them all.
Her shins and feet tingled something she knew meant her heart rate was too high, almost at its suggested maximum beats per minute number.
Brigadier sat and waited for her to catch her breath.
Slumping forward she wrestled in the gravel with the large animal. Finally sitting on the wiggling creature's back she declared, "Onward my faithful stead!" A finger poised in no particular direction of meaning as she shook out her clothing to remove wayward gravel bits.
The dog merely lay down and refused to accede with her order while every so often rocks tumbled along his coat and down back to the track.
Giving up she sprinted forward, almost tipping over from the throwing of all her body weight up and ahead, the toe of her following foot tapping the dog on top of the head and sparking his motivation to chase her and try to outrun her.
He did.
And within ten minutes of more paced sprints and slow ambling heart rate stabilizing strolls they had both lost interest in the activity. She adopted a limp the last mile of the trail and let herself fall onto a bench at the final wilderness station at the end of the trail.
There were a few joggers and the odd bicyclist that meandered through at odd intervals, she was happy it wasn't as uninhabited as she assumed it would be. It felt safer with people around while she rested.
The run back to town was worse despite it being more long walk punctuated by the every so often fifteen second sprint that eventually after the fourth made her vomit spewing the blackness of two cups of coffee intermingled with toast and waffle mush bits that left her mouth tasting foul and textured crunchy.
She felt better after she sniffed and spit the small mouthful that had gone through her nose; she could breathe easier without her stomach pressing up and making her lungs flair out too wide and rub against the inside of her diaphragm.
After that she stuck to walking or limping as her left hip joint protested movement in its inflamed and tender state.
The owner of the deli eyed her with a look reserved for unusual customers when she came in from across the street, he said nothing about the dog and she downed the water she bought on the spot at the counter and offered him the empty plastic container that he tossed it in the recycling bin behind the counter.
She decided that she was still thirsty and bought another, choosing to sip more thoughtfully than she had on her first bottle. Her total came up as two dollars and fifty cents.
"How many miles you do?"
Her appearance made it obvious what she'd been doing before she'd bought the water.
"Eight."
"Got me beat," the owner commented, tired and overworked from the morning breakfast rush.
"Trust me, it's overrated. Not worth it afterward."
It wasn't, she hurt everywhere. She doubted she could climb a set of stairs, at least not until she learned to walk on her hands.
She left and went home to clean up the mess she had made of her kitchen. It took her forty minutes until she was satisfied that she had gotten every last piece, it was dumb but she took a post run shower that was more thirty second rinse than thirty minute study in relaxation and hot water and walked barefoot across the linoleum, dragging her foot across a missed piece of thick glass and having to dig the painful shard out with nail clippers and a toothpick because she had misplaced her tweezers.
It was long and when she couldn't pull it out smoothly she sliced her already sore foot open with a box cutter, making the slice long so she could wiggle the glass splinter out from the gap in-between tissues rather than the tiny hole it had made as it dug it's way in.
Wrapping a dish towel over the sole of her foot and hopping through rooms into the bathroom she cleansed it by pouring alcohol over it in the tub and letting out a screech at the burn. After she bandaged it she wondered if her shoe would fit right when she slipped it on later since the bandage added some bulk to the bottom of her foot.
She'd rather a sore foot than the extra hour she would have spent in tears trying to yank the stupid thing out and risk breaking it into more pieces as she prodded and pulled with a nail clipper, but even after knowing she'd made the better choice she could have smacked herself because now she had a limp and a foot so sore it made her good steps dainty and bird-like.
Dry swallowing two aspirin and piling into bed with her equally drained dog she dozed wearily on and off for an hour and a half and finally napped for two more hours with her foot on a pillow. Sleeping on her back wasn't usually possible unless necessary, it was too uncomfortable, but her hips hurt too much to roll to either side and with her foot on a pillow sleeping prone felt equally awkward.
Her alarm rung and she got up to get her laundry together.
This time she went alone and did it without coming into contact with wanted men. The experience was dismal and it was only three in the afternoon when she left, basket on her hip and a jug of detergent heavy in her hand, forcing her steps to be normally spaced and evenly paced.
The prospect of everyone being awake by the time she got home lessened the sourness of her mood.
She tried to imagine the reactions, coming up after the ride home with a mix of awe and excitement and fear for her safety in her friend Molly's voice, lackluster delight in her father's, and the overwhelming enthusiasm and animation in her sister's.
She initiated the calls with a fresh cigarette in hand and dialed.
Her sister's knew it was her calling, "Luuuuucy, you got some splainin to dooooo."
"Oh so you looked up the joke," she replied wincing at the high pitch of her sister's voice.
"Dude I had no idea the old lady was named Ethel. You have to call me Ethel from now on," Stella sounded beyond words in her excitement.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you're not calling me Lucy."
"Please."
"No."
"Pleeeease," her sister begged
"Noooooo," she answered with all the finality of an older sibling.
"I'm gonna hang up on you."
"No, you can't important shit going down over here that I have to tell you about."
"I know dad told me you found a dead body." She sounded bored.
"Bigger than that."
"You found two dead bodies?"
"No, shut up."
"Then talk."
"So you know how I have to do laundry at the laundromat right?" Lucette plunked down onto her couch and made herself comfortable.
"Yeah, so."
"Okay so the first week I got here I had to go do laundry and when I was there, there was this really good-looking guy."
"Was he still in highschool?"
Lucette scowled at the phone. "Stop interrupting, and no, he was not still in highschool. Asshole."
"Errrrr, could you just finish the damn story. I'm getting bored."
"Then shut up and I will."
"Fine. Talk," the younger woman commanded.
"So good looking guy, great ass. I had to leave for a second to go put the dog back in the truck because he was being bad, and then I decide to have a smoke."
"And then…,"
"Guy comes out asks me for a smoke, so we smoke."
"Uh-huh. Did you get his number?"
"No, we didn't talk. Not really."
"And this is amazing because he was good-looking or something?"
Not that she had never called her sister before for such a reason in the past.
"No, now at the place I work I have this patient right."
"Wow, a nurse with a patient, ground breaking. Earth shattering. You. Blow. My. Mind," it didn't sound like she had blown her mind.
"Brat. So I had to go and run an errand and on my way back to the unit I can't open the door because I'm carrying stuff and someone opens the door, and then I almost get run over by a hospital bed and I drop stuff and someone picks them up for me and it's the good-looking laundry guy."
"Still not exciting."
"Getting close to the exciting part. My patient is his uncle. So going forward to the night before this I had to go in and make sure this one nurse is doing her job right and while all this time has gone by on the news they've been covering the dead bodies and stuff and guess who they think did it?"
"Goodlooking guy?"
"Yep."
"And?"
"He broke into the nursing home while I was there and I had to patch up this big ass hole in his chest and then I stabbed him with a syringe and made him leave."
"Seriously?"
"Uh-huh."
"Woah, man that's like insane. How was his chest, good-looking?"
"I know, but don't go telling everyone. You can tell dad but I'm not supposed to talk to anyone about it. Yes, I think his chest was good-looking but I was more concerned with, you know, the whole wanted killer thing."
"Okay, that makes sense. Do you want me to tell dad?"
"He won't care."
"If the good-looking crazy man had killed you he would care."
"But he didn't."
"Because you're totally kick ass and stabbed him."
"Why thank you."
"No problem, did they catch him?"
"No."
"No?" There was the concern she was looking for, more exclamation than question coloring the word.
"Yeah, no. They're still looking."
"Um bitch, you better lock your doors."
"Yeah because crazy man knows where I live," she rolled her eyes.
"You never know."
"Highly unlikely. He's on the run and shit and he saw my dog at the laundry mat, you'd have to be dumb to mess with a big ass dog."
"That's true. You tell Molly?"
"I've got to call her next; actually I should do that now. I love you."
"Love ya too."
"Bye."
"Bye."
Following the call she promptly dialed again and relayed in a strikingly similar manner to her best friend the same story she had told her sister, fortunately the story was told without as many interruptions as the previous call. When she finished soothing the worries of whether her house would be found and she'd be a. murdered, b. raped, c. tortured, d. kidnapped, e. mutilated, f. eaten, or g. any combination of them that her best friend nearly drove herself into panic with, she made the promise to show up back home for a celebratory girls night out in celebration of her not dying in some horrible way.
Another hour had gone by and she tried to find a new way to kill time.
The news, not for a first time, failed to hold her rapt attention despite the fact that she should have a vested interest in it.
The dishes were already done.
The muscles in her legs already sang out in desperate agony and cramps from her run.
The dog had been walked.
The obligatory informing of family and friends about how she had avoided being possibly murdered had been completed.
The urge to break things had passed.
Something she hadn't done sprang to mind but making the bed took less time than she had originally thought. She eyed her bed and mused on if she had the stamina to masturbate for three hours straight; she waved off the idea because her libido had been stunted by exhaustion and fear during the past few days.
She tried to remember when the last time she'd gotten off was, surprising herself that at least a week had gone by, such a thing happened rarely. She may be single but she wasn't menopausal and she had a rich fantasy life.
"I'm getting old, and I'm not as horny as I used to be, the world is ending," she explained to her dog. "Maybe I should let you go out and impregnate something, Brigs. Get it in while you're still young, I'd love to have a new puppy to replace you and then sell the rest."
She grinned at the animal. "Just kidding!" She yelled happily, ruffling his coat.
"I would never sell your puppies. If you could have any," she suddenly remembered that Brigadier was fixed.
"Cut nuts!" Her dog responded by barking enthusiastically at her exclamation.
"Well I guess that's good, I don't want to be a grandma, Brigs. Before you know it you'd be tanning and nailing skanky poodles and thinking of moving to Florida," she thought of how fatherhood had become for her own dad once she and her sister got old enough to take care of themselves.
Less midlife crisis and more reclaiming his lost youth.
"You'd be barking at every bitch in the barnyard, Brigs, if you had balls."
She picked up her wayward running shoe and let him use it as a chew toy as she pulled from the other end and amused herself by growling back at the large animal.
"If we were a superhero duo I'd call you Brigs the busted nut dog. Cause you have busted nuts. Get it?"
"What would my name be? Any suggestions? I don't know any puns that work with my name and a screwed up female reproductive system, give me some time to think up something suitable, okay?"
She relinquished the shoe and let him go to town on it with his teeth. He wouldn't chew it up too bad; she'd still be able to wear it again.
And then after eyeing her uniform on the chair she had laid it across after she'd decided on a run she found a task that needing completion.
Ironing wasn't the most enjoyable chore but it was something she could divert her attention to while at the very least she thought up something else to spend her three hours of free time doing, while she set up the board and waited for the iron to get hot she channel surfed idly.
It struck her as she tapped the iron to tell if it was hot that she had in fact forgotten something when she'd gone grocery shopping, starch. It didn't make a difference but she wrote a not to herself on the 'to-do' paper pad hanging on her refrigerator door.
The television caught her attention as mixed martial artists squared off half naked and sweaty on an alternative sports channel she'd stopped at to leave the room and write down the reminder about laundry starch.
Normally she didn't bother enough to become a regular watcher of the reality series and specials pertaining to the art of men beating each other bloody but there was something about it that enticed her to watch.
The men fighting were middleweights which in her own opinion put on the best show, the featherweights and lightweights weren't usual as visually appealing with their smaller frames and slimness, the bigger men of the heavy and welter weight divisions were either too close to being husky to catch her attention or only focused on floor work which was more wrestling and less fight and made her sigh in boredom.
The middleweights were muscled to perfection and stayed on their feet more than half the match to punch and kick and shove and throw their opponents down.
She said welcome back to her libido during the first two minutes of the fight.
Before the five minute round was over one man was bloody faced and the other swollen lipped. She finished ironing and unplugged the bulky appliance, letting it cool next to her uniform still lain across the board.
She rethought the idea of how long she could go stamina wise, but nixed the idea on the grounds that her legs still felt like someone had smacked them incessantly with a golf club.
Watching the fights for three hours was no arduous task, she settled in with snacks and a pillow and studied the sounds an abdomen made when struck by someone's fist or the reverberation of the floor inside the ring as someone was lifted and dropped onto it.
She got dressed for work transfixed at the way they cleaned up one man's bloody face and smeared petroleum jelly over his cut eyebrow. Turning off the television and fitting her bandaged foot in its shoe she bent patting her dog and told him not to make a mess on the rug again.
Grabbing her keys she left for work gingerly maneuvering her sore legs into the space below her seat, turning the radio up and rolling the windows down, her hair an immovable fixture even in the lashing wind as she pulled out from driveway and onto the road.
It was instinctive to drive around the lot before parking; she looked carefully at every black car, and then drove behind the building to see if anyone had parked behind a dumpster or something. There was no black Camaro. It soothed her nerves, even though she knew that if he did come back that he wouldn't be stupid enough to leave his car in plain sight.
Parking in the exact same spot she had when she had come out to find her tires slashed gave her the feel of saying 'go screw yourself, crazy psycho killer,' it was almost as good as keying his car would be, if the Sheriff actual let her do it.
Going inside she greeted her nursing team and asked if they had all finished their duties, there were a few minutes left in their shift and she called them all over for a quick post-conference and received their assessments.
"Any problems?" She turned up her head and glanced at each of the four in turn.
They had nothing to report besides the usual.
She made rounds at the beginning of her shift and the end of theirs to make sure they hadn't accidentally killed anyone.
Mrs. Jenson was awake, pleasant, and still very fat. She had received her insulin and was on her second chocolate pudding, she seem happy and content and didn't need any other care, going on at length to say that the only male team member Lucette was in charge of was rather handsome, he wasn't but neither was Mrs. Jensen.
Mr. Baegi needed suctioning and she donned gloves to go about the sterile procedure with precision and ease. She found a small problem with his electronic feeding pump and went about correcting it, explaining to the small old man that it was just because there was too much air in the line. He responded by informing her that too much air in the line gave him awful gas. She nodded sympathetically and left the room as his flatulence made itself known by sound and scent.
Mrs. Whit's oxygen was set at the level she told her team to keep it at, she administered a as needed nebulizer treatment of albuterol and left the room to let them woman breath it in for the twenty minutes it took to finish the dose.
Mrs. Doyle needed to have a pulse oximetry reading done; she came in at a fantastic ninety-eight percent after Lucette clipped the reader to her finger and waited for a few seconds. Her glucose read at a nice, stable one-seventeen.
Mr. Garsine smiled and whistled at her, full of energy and trying desperately to get her to play cards with him or at least she assumed that was what he was asking but since she couldn't speak Italian she found the language barrier overriding his energetic miming. He motioned for her to do a turn and spin for him; she scolded him but did it and received another whistle as she shook her hips on her way out.
Mrs. Marsdale was out for the night after her meds from the prior shift kicked in. She closed the door and made a point to tell the woman's aide to let her sleep.
Finally at the end of the hall she went in to see Mr. Hale. She surveyed his intravenous line and his tube feeding, his gastrostomy tube was the way it should be, there were no signs of a leak or a need for a replacement tube to be inserted.
She knew he'd received care but it wasn't as good as the type he would have gotten if she'd been there to do it. His hair looked greasy and he needed a shave, his brief was clean. She laid out his personal basin and care items without hesitation.
It took her some time to realize that she was supposed to be acting as a unit charge nurse instead of the leader of her team. She went in search of Jennifer.
The other nurse wasn't hard to find.
Standing at the medication cart the redhead seemed irritated or preoccupied.
"Hey, Jennifer can you do care on Mr. Hale, since you're free right now."
"His aide should be in soon. She must be late."
The flippant response coupled with the other nurse's lack of eye contact when she said it made her level of tolerance for nurses who found basic comfort care something reserved for aide come to its limits.
"He kind of needs it done now."
"I'm busy right now."
Lucette could have yanked the other woman's ponytail out of her head. She'd been an aide and knew what they thought of nurses that couldn't be bothered to do basic care. The response she threw back made the redhead look up with fury in her eyes.
"Do you not know how to do anything besides a med pass," she made her tone sickly sweet and condescending.
"Of course I know how." She gripped the pen she'd been tapping harshly and glared, her face going a shade darker.
"Well, never mind I'll just do it myself then," the brunette smiled and in passing told an aide to go and cover the desk for her while she did care on Mr. Hale.
The aide looked baffled, no doubt confused as to why she'd been promoted to secretary instead of being told to toilet someone.
Lucette knew the redhead had heard and she also knew that she was furious; all she could think was 'good.'
The room was as she had left it and she checked behind the curtains and every piece of furniture and then inside the wardrobe, satisfied when everything inch had received a looking over that she and Mr. Hale were the only ones in the room.
She ran the water until it got as hot as it could, it was never quite hot enough for a patient to enjoy and set the basin on the overbed table. Treating his limbs with care she removed his arms from the sleeves and tucked a towel around his bedding to keep it dry.
His chest was scared pink and marbled into burn patterns, wringing out the washcloth she swept it across his chest and then using a single use gauze wiped secretions from around his gastrostomy tubing and tossed the small square into the trash can she had pulled closer to the bed.
Patting him dry and removing the gown all the way she repeated the same gentle cleansing on each arm and tucked in the bedding to keep him warm when she had finished.
She massaged his calves and examined the color and texture of his skin, there were no sign of vascular issue, his toes and feet were warm.
It felt like a ritual, it reminded her of how queens would wash the feet of peasants once when there were still queens and peasants, as she applied lotion to her hands and went about the care regimen.
After putting a pair of socks in place she looked for a pair of suitable pajamas and maneuvered them over his feet and then rolled him to get them up past his thighs and over his hips.
The shirt was a great deal easier to get into place.
Washing the lotion from her hands and rinsing out the basin she came back to the bed, raising it with a remote she studied his face and found nothing in it belaying recognition or imploration.
The marbled effect of the scars suddenly looked sinister in the dim light, but the effect was lost as she shifted her eyes and all too suddenly Mr. Hale looked to be the same dejected and hopeless patient he had been when she'd come in.
In the small room the sound the can of shaving cream made when she pressed a finger into the depressible spot behind the nozzle was a harsh hiss, it sounded too loud, out of place and awkward.
His scar tissue made it so she only had to shave half of his face, as she did it she felt like she was completing every task in an odd trance, an effect of having done care so many times before.
She couldn't exactly brush his teeth since he was at risk for aspiration and NPO but she used the toothette to moisten his gums and tongue. Drool escaped the corner of his mouth and she wiped it away with the back of her ungloved hand unbothered by saliva or any body fluid anymore.
Cleaning people's teeth most days she had learned that no one had exactly the same mouth. She didn't think she'd ever seen canines like his before, perfect little points, textbook. Her dog didn't even have perfectly formed canines like that.
She grinned and pointed at her own and the fact that only one was actually pointed, and that it had only come because she'd chipped part of it on a rock when she was little, she told him the story, he listened, or didn't, she couldn't tell.
Once she had finished with his teeth she placed a comb in the basin and soaked it while placing a towel behind his head and neck over his pillow.
The brush was in her hand and poised when she felt her shoulder smack into the side rail while she maneuvered her arm into place to comb his hair.
She thought it was the side rail until something cupped her shoulder and clenched down, fingers and then nails, she felt his fingernails through the fabric of her uniform.
It surprised her but she remembered the stories of the other nurses who jumped and slipped and smacked their heads on furniture. She tried to relax her arm, but her grip went steely on the comb in her palm.
Her heart beat fast, faster than it had the last time she'd been in the room, with a man who was a probable maniac killer, she'd always felt her heartbeat more poignantly when she was anxious, fear made her aware of her heartbeat but panic made her unable to keep up with it, she'd felt fear the last time but now it was panic seeping out from her bones.
"Mr. Hale?"
His head turned his gaze no longer blank and unaware. He yanked and her shoulder felt like it had been hit with a hammer.
The rest was just too unbelievable for her too stop, disbelief and the want to see what he was going to do next as his mouth came down into the soft pit of her elbow, as teeth minced skin and blood bubbled from around the suction of his chapped lips.
Regaining the use of her brain as she realized he had bit her she yanked her body back and felt hot knives cut across her scapula and down her deltoid, driving deep into the muscle.
Wrenching her body to the foot of the bed she tore her arm from his hand and mouth.
It took her the span of a gasp and a gurgled expletive to study what was hanging off his chin from his teeth, a chunk taken right out of her.
He grinned at her all bloody mouth and inhuman teeth and waved with the hand splayed over the side rail. She could do nothing but stare at his hand, as inhuman as his mouth, larger and with nails so long they curved like something on a bird's claw might have.
Later she wouldn't remember pulling the emergency cord on the wall that relayed a signal to the light outside the door and turned it the red with the warning that someone had just fallen or was injured.
The door flew open so fast she had no time to turn her face. The force split her lip and cut open the space above her brow, her skull cracked off the floor.
An impression of radiating head pain was all she got before her vision cleared and then for only a brief moment before her hands tingled, fingers first, then palm and finally it felt like she had lost them somehow, her hearing was like someone kept lowering the volume of everything around her under finally it went mute.
It felt like she was opening her mouth, more like she couldn't hold it closed and then it was like she was missing half of her face, as if her jaw had evaporated.
Everything was heavy, but she felt motion. Moving, being moved. Her thoughts melted and she remembered nothing else when asked about what happened later.
Day 44:
It turned out her stroked out immobile docile patient had almost succeeded in ripping out her brachial artery, the fact that he bit her and had teeth confirmed and explained the mess of her arm neatly and nicely. The explanation about her shoulder and the state of disarray it was in was not as neatly explained.
The emergency department doctor explained to her that at times a person's fingers can stiffen themselves to the point where they are able to rend tissue apart, something about blunt force almost being able to just 'pop' the skin open, like a piece of fruit that hits the ground and splits open.
It wasn't as if she couldn't believe it, but she'd been there, had had it happen to her, watching it happen. She'd seen his hand and the way he looked with that happy bloody mouth.
Blood loss may have made her mind hazy but the image was there, scorched behind her eyes and maybe it was that the infusion of two units of AB positive hadn't exactly finished and been assimilated into her body well enough to make her mind sharp again, but she knew what his mouth and hand had looked like to her in those moments.
Vaguely she can remember later that a resident does the stitches in her shoulder, but she only needs them at the deepest part so it's a shoddy, incomplete botch job she decides after she checks it in a mirror when he leaves, the resident was nervous and she was impatient so it doesn't take her long to consider that maybe he's doing the best he can and even though she hasn't spoken a word she's still acting like a bitch.
Lucette remembers asking the nervous guy, hardly older than her but too skinny and too exotic in his small features if her infusion is done, because her head is still too heavy to turn where she wants it to.
When he tells her it is she asks for a robe because her uniform looks gruesome and they didn't bother to do more than cut it half open to get at her shoulder, it upsets her because it had been overpriced and now she only has her spare and she'll have to get another one, he all but runs to get the robe, in his drive to be fast about the task she wonders if the linen cart looks like a hurricane hit it.
The nurses will be pissed but she can't bring herself to care since she's not the one looking for it.
After she puts it on she informs the resident doctor that she wants a cigarette. He tells her that she really should stay in the bed and that she can't have a cigarette. Finding her bag she bluffs that unless he finds a wheelchair and brings her outside that she might not care that it's the emergency department and smoke right in her hospital bed using an emesis basin as an ashtray.
He relents and waves his arms and rushes off to find a wheelchair, if he had been a nurse he would have told her to go ahead and try to smoke in the ED and then taken her cigarettes away, it isn't as if she could have put up a fight for them.
It's dark outside; she asks what time it is. It's two in the morning. She puffs away quietly in the patient garden, offering the resident a smoke that he doesn't accept because he doesn't smoke. Suddenly the cigarette feels like a chore.
She's been back in her bed for less than an hour when a nurse bustles in and tinkers with the intravenous port in her arm informing her that she's got to set up a liter of normal saline and do a piggyback of antibiotics. The tired nurse asks her routine questions.
Is she allergic to penicillin? No.
Is she allergic to cephalosporins? No.
Is she pregnant? No.
Is she on a contraceptive pill? No.
And on until Lucette feels like the only word she has left in her vocabulary is 'no.'
The nurse does her job and leaves her alone in the small curtained off bed and Lucette sleeps until the beeping of the IV pump wakes her with its mechanical chime.
Pressing her call light she waits for someone to answer. When a different nurse comes back she asks what time it is and finds out she's only slept for an hour.
She asks if anyone's called down to the long term care facility yet. The nurse looks put out and shrugs as if to say 'how should I know,' Lucette picks up the bedside phone and dials the extension for the connected facility.
"Beacon Height's Long Term Care Facility, this is Angela."
It was the unit's nurse practitioner on the phone.
"It's Lucette."
"Hey, you're awake. How you feeling?"
"Awful, what's going on over there?"
"Good, good we had a doctor come down and check Mr. Hale out and we moved him to another room while we cleaned up, girl you are killing us over here, and we had to fill out two incident reports because of what happened."
"Two?"
"Well you know the first one, but then Jennifer clocked you in the face with the door and you banged your head on the floor."
"I can believe it. It feels like I got run over."
"What's the diagnosis?"
"Trauma, blood loss. They ruled out concussion. I just wanna go home and take a bath."
"When are they releasing you?"
"Eight."
"Yeesh, by the way I'm giving you the day off. I'll handle your team today, okay. Just go home and rest. You need a ride?"
The thought that she couldn't drive hit her, she groaned and wondered if she could wheelchair jockey it all the way home in a hospital robe and a torn up uniform.
"I thought so, I find someone to take you. Get some rest."
The charge nurse hung up as a nurse walking by her bed informed her that the phone was for use by the staff only.
Lucette flashed the obnoxious woman her uniform and hung up the phone, when she looked back to tell the woman she was a nurse too she had already passed and disappeared somewhere.
Her would be chauffeur woke her at six by tapping her blanket covered foot over and over until she kicked at the hand.
"Yo, kiddo."
Doctor Shrineburg smiled widely.
She sat up and frowned petulantly.
"Want to kick it?" He pointed a thumb in the direction of the exit.
"Can't, have to wait until eight."
His grin grew and he puffed up his shoulders and straightened his suit coat as if he was the biggest dog in the bone yard and quite pleased with himself.
"Darling please, I'm a doctor."
He found a wheelchair and helped her into it after disconnecting her IV and removing the port from her arm, he piled her lap full of her things, tucking a blanket he stole from the linen cart around her after placing the equally ill gotten robe around her shoulders and wheeled her out, stopping at the nurses' station to inform them that he was stealing a patient and signing her out.
The nurse at the desk sounded like one she'd talked to but Lucette just kept her eyes on her hands clutching her bag of possessions meagerly.
"But it's Doctor Howers' patient."
"And Doctor Howers' is a dumbass, tell him I said that. See ya later."
Her wheelchair moved and eventually they made it to the Doctors' parking lot.
"Swanky," she commented dryly on the location and the car.
"Thanks, my wife hates it. She wants me to be more economical but when I told her I'd sell her car and make her ride a scooter to work she gave up that fight pretty fast."
He handed her the seatbelt and made sure she was buckled before moving to the driver's side and started the car.
Not bothering to buckle his own seatbelt he took off.
"You missed a stop sign," she told him.
"There was nothing to stop for. What do you want to eat?"
"I'm too nauseous."
"Then I'll buy you a juice-box."
"I don't want a juice-box."
"You're getting a juice-box."
"I don't care."
"Orange or cranberry?"
"I'll vomit in your car."
The idea gave him pause as he parked at a gas station ready to run into the attached convenience store.
"I'll get you a seltzer."
"Cherry or raspberry flavored, no kiwi or strawberry."
He came back with an egg and bacon breakfast sandwich for himself and tossed a bottle of black cherry seltzer at her. She burped indiscriminately every few sips. She asked if this was what doctors did every day when they couldn't be found in the hospital.
"Sometime we go to the casino and play slots. Dr. Howers likes Texas hold em' but he's horrible and losses all his money, but he makes the most since he's a neurologist."
"Easy come, easy go."
Looking over at her with egg hanging off his lip he studied her face.
"I should have made you sit in the back; you look like a battered wife."
She pulled down the visor and examined herself in the vanity mirror, "Holy shit. Bitch really got me with that door good!"
Her lip was purple and black and four times its normal size on one side, her brow was red and swollen, tender and closed with a butterfly suture, she really needed two more to close it properly. The swollen brow made her eye hold the appearance of being only half open; she pressed at the swell with her fingertips and hissed.
It felt like she had a golf ball inserted above her eyeball.
"Who's a bitch?" He chewed and put the car in reverse.
"The med nurse."
"Big red?"
"Yeah," she nodded and played with the seal ring on her bottle.
"Makes sense."
The bottle paused on the way to her lips, looking over she caught the grin on the doctor's face.
"Why? Is she always a bitch?"
"No she just doesn't like you."
It was like he was telling her it was going to rain later.
"Why?"
"Because you're younger and better looking and make more money than her. Also you tried to steal her patient."
"Technically he's my patient."
"That's the type of attitude that got you hit with a door."
"…"
"And half your arm torn off."
If she hadn't 'stolen' the other nurse's patient she probably wouldn't be in her current situation, the point did seem to follow a logical thought pattern.
"It looked like he had claws."
"Freaky."
"Blood loss, hallucination."
"You could have like…died."
She smiled and took a sip of the carbonated beverage. "That would have been inefficient of the hospital; my dad would sue and buy a beach house in Florida."
"That's what I'd do."
"You're ridiculous."
"You want a prescription for painkillers?"
"Nah, I'm alright. I can't have booze then."
"You shouldn't be drinking booze when you're on an antibiotic, or have sex, you could get knocked up."
"I'm a nurse; I've memorized the drug handbook. I know."
"Just saying, there are a lot of babies out there because of penicillin."
"They should have a cool nickname."
"What like Generation X?"
"Maybe Generation contraceptive malfunction?"
"You're a contraceptive malfunction."
"I'm not, my sister is."
"My son is totally a contraceptive malfunction," he told her, shifting into third gear.
"Does he know?"
"Oh yeah, I told him 'you can fuck up, you're sister can't because she's the smart one, you are the nice one, don't fuck up and when me and your mother are dead you'll have a rich doctor sister to mooch off of,' and then he told me that his sister was dumb and that he promised not to knock anyone up or break into someone's house."
"You're a horrible dad."
"I try."
She belched.
"Hey, can you do me a favor?"
"Besides drive you home?"
"My dog needs to be walked."
"I don't do dogs."
"Please."
"Fine. I'll walk the damn dog."
"This is why all the nurses love you, you are so accommodating."
"The nurses all love me because I'm a very good gift giver," he looked over with a quick roguish smirk, that suggested exactly what types of gifts he liked to give.
"I hate gifts," she emphasized.
"Don't worry you're not exactly my type."
"Thank god."
"Though if you're looking to settle down I know this one coworker of mine who does dental cosmetic surgery who would love you, her name's Joy. I can set you two up if you like."
"No thanks."
"She's very attractive, lipstick not bull."
"I'm not a lesbian," she informed him once she realized what he was getting at.
"Really?"
"Do I seem like a lesbian?"
"A pretty one."
"Really?"
"You're very authoritative."
"And that equates to lesbian?"
"Not necessarily. Sorry if I offended you."
"You didn't."
"Good."
"Do I give off a lesbian vibe?" She was curious.
"Not specifically it's just I don't know, you remind me of the lesbian dental cosmetic surgeon. In your attitude, and you haven't mentioned a boyfriend which is pretty much what all the nurses talk about when they aren't doing work."
"Well shit."
"I mean, maybe it's just me associating that type of manner with lesbians since I've seen one like that. I don't think anyone else would think you're a lesbian."
"Well that's good to know."
"Again, sorry."
"It's cool. I thought you were just a sugar daddy type of doctor."
"Well you're right about that."
"What's your wife think?"
"She thinks that as long as I pay the bills and take care of my children and don't shirk responsibility that if she doesn't have to see and the kids don't have to know about it then it's fine. We've been married a long time, I love her but she got old, men don't age like woman do."
"I can understand that."
"It's a good piece of knowledge to have, when dealing with men. Do you have a boyfriend by the way?"
"No, never have."
"Really?"
"That's the response I usually get, but yeah. It's just that I'm picky, I don't settle."
"You're a smart kid."
"Thanks, wise old man."
"Hey! Be nice or I won't walk the dog."
"I'm still injured you know."
"Yeah, yeah."
She pointed at the next road to turn down and from there the conversation ebbed away, when he had parked in the driveway and she reached for the door handle she suddenly realized they had left the wheelchair in the parking lot.
When she mentioned it the doctor laughed and told her that he was wondering when she would notice.
She called him evil and he called her a spoil sport.
It was the most fun she'd had in a long while to watch him walk her large dog in his expensive suit and shiny buffed shoes. The fact that he stepped in dog excrement while she lounged in a state of luxury with a drink in hand on her front steps made it so much more enjoyable.
He handed her the leash after walking down the dirt road and back up to the house, he snatched away her drink and drained the small glass, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"That mongrel shits turds the size a human being does."
"He's a big boy. How's your shoe."
"You saw me step in it?"
"Yep."
"Well wiping it off with a stick made me feel like I was really roughing it, like a real manly man. A veritable lumberjack. Move over."
She moved and scratched her dog's ears. He was a happy animal, glad to see his owner home, he seemed preoccupied with the bandaging on her arm and nosed at it until she smacked him lightly and pushed his snout away from it.
The doctor sat down and sighed. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine."
"Well call if you have problems, if you have vision changes or head pain call nine one one. Promise?"
"I will. I promise not to seize or hemorrhage on the floor."
"Okay then. I'm gonna get going. You off tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
"I'll check in and make some excuse so you get Friday off too."
"That sounds fantastic."
"Take it easy, kid."
He got off the stoop and made his way to his expensive doctor car with his hands in his expensive doctor suit pockets and backed out with expensive doctor flair.
Lucette went inside with her dog and changed into her most ludicrous pair of patterned pajamas, a fleece number with Christmas motifs, and threw herself onto the couch and put on the alternative sports channel where half naked men kept fighting each other every hour of the day.
Her dreams after she fell asleep after midday were horrifying.
A mix of the inability to move her feet, sounds too brash and harsh and horrendously heartbreaking against a backdrop of too bright and then too dark. They melded into a collaboration of her running, not being able to run, pushing someone, pulling someone, being thrown forward, being pressed down by heavy things, her chest collapsing in on itself, the wet dankness of an environment she knew was ceaseless, people in montage patterns of ladders and shelves, trees and dirt, digital sounds and hard hospital mattresses, school buses and office desks, flares of color and a shot of adrenaline, agony so deep in her skin that she wanted to slip out of her flesh, let it slide off.
They were just feelings coalesced together in a kaleidoscope landscape.
She caught flashes of them that seemed to follow a progression of an event; dreams with small confusing plots made up of sandman dust and cast off mental reflections.
There was a part of the dream sequence where Jennifer stood over her and was administering a tube feeding into her but she could taste it, feel her stomach filling, liquid fire and flesh and hot hard tension inside of her. Retribution and rehabilitation, a dream language phrase that she wouldn't remember when she woke.
Jennifer was talking to her, combing her hair with long fingernails, talons like some giant bird and no mouth, Jennifer became no more person than a department store mannequin model would if it learned to talk.
She was being told something important, something that thrilled her deep in her bones. She was weak. Jennifer washed her in tepid water, her face a blank mismatch of shadows and her red hair dipping into the water and then slowly she sank into the wash basin, like smoke moving over water only not over but into.
And then she was looking out a window with blinds and a man in a leather jacket sat next to her and hummed a song she knew in the dream. Later it would remind her of how she had sat with Mr. Hale the first day she'd met him and in a much stranger way of his nephew.
It scared her and when she woke up on the couch she rubbed the heel of her hand over her sternum and felt like sobbing, the dream had made her wake up with emotional tabs she couldn't place, overload and she cried tiredly for only a moment until she'd woken up completely and had forgotten why the dream had caused such a fierce emotional schism to form.
Dream Jennifer had been creepy, there was something violently wrong with the dream she was already unable to remember the fine details of.
There was a feeling of malevolence she couldn't shake and her forehead crinkled in her consternation at the inability to focus on what she'd been dreaming about. She'd been angry, not enraged but angry and knowing she was going to get her way, and get her way good. The impression made her feel powerful; ready to do what needed to be done and do it the best it had ever been done.
She wanted to tackle something. Break something.
Dream Jennifer had been just a faceless red-haired thing that talked when she wasn't able to understand anything. It had been like dream Jennifer was sharper and kept fading, gradually, like she herself was becoming less able to fathom the other nurse, unable to focus on her.
It was all very strange and Lucette propped herself up and wondered why she couldn't just get a good sex dream every once in a while.
She found herself trying to hum the tune of the song she knew in the dream and gave up when she realized she had no idea what it was in real life.
The tune kept coming out wrong with every try at replication, the notion struck her as unreasonably sad and fragile.
A/N: Again Lucy and Ethel and the 'Lucy, you got some splainin to do,' are all from I Love Lucy, Albuterol is a respiratory medication that helps ease breathing, a pulse oximetry reading is a measure of the oxygen level in the blood, normal is ninety-eight or above for the most part, a gastrostomy is an opening made into the stomach for feeding purposes, NPO means nothing by mouth, a toothette is a little piece of foam on a lollipop stick used for mouth care, antibiotics lower the efficacy of birth control pills, Penicillins and Cephalosporins are antibiotics and if a person in allergic to Penicillins there's a ten percent chance that they are also sensitive to Cephalosporins.