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A/N Honestly this is really just a filler, a lot of gibberish medical talk, mostly focused on the patient but as a whole it's kinda important so I wouldn't recommend skipping it.
Collide
"Aaliyah," a voice called out to her and she spun around at the sound of the voice.
"Eleanor?" Allie croaked, surprised, "What are you doing here?" she asked as her mother walked toward her down the narrow corridor of the hospital, her Prada heels clicking on the hard tiles of the hospital floor as she approached.
"Well, I was just passing by," the woman in the Marc Jacob's suit and Gucci bag slung over one arm replied airily. She looked young, very much like Allie, but very different at the same time. The same raven brown hair, the same misty orb like blue eyes, the same porcelain complexion, but she had a different air to her, a certain sophistication and decorum, almost graceful, though not in Allie's eyes.
"Here?" Allie asked, shocked. There was just way to many people cropping up and jumping up at her face lately that she half expected to wake up any moment now. Her past just always seemed to have a way of coming back and biting her in the ass in ways that she never would have seen coming.
"I was visiting dear Carter, you remember him?"
"How could I not?" she said in an undertone, recalling the incident just hours before.
Her name flashed up in his brown eyes like a twin beacon of amazement as his did in her eyes. He said it too, her name as he used to, breathing out the two-syllabled word only he called her by, 'Liyah.'
Aaliyah didn't even realize that they stood there staring at each other for a good few seconds as her throat constricted and she lost the ability to talk even when her resident called out her name, "Montgomery," she called, "Your patient?"
"Montgomery!" he resident called out, snapping her out of the daze.
"I.. uh.." she stuttered.
"The patient, Montgomery," Barrish said prodding her along.
"Capricorn, still single, loves animals, good with people, likes to travel and cook, still crazy over the girl who broke his heart in high school," Carter stated charismatically staring straight at Aaliyah who was staring at him still as the other doctors in the room stood there, lost.
"Dr. Montgomery!" her resident called and Allie cleared her throat, looking down at the notes Paige had written down, "Carter O'Connell. Male. 29. Back for a second post op evaluation. Dr. Summers removed a brain tumor from the prefrontal cortex 6 months ago. No warning signs since the last check up except for a brief fainting spell yesterday. No allergies, no medications as of now,"
"Well, uhm.. It's nice to see you, Eleanor," Allie said with exaggerated civility, to the woman who haven't quiet earned the right to be called her mother, "But I have work, so.." she started saying, backing away from Eleanor, gesturing with the file she held in her hands.
"Aaliyah, I just want to talk to you,"
"There's nothing to talk about," Allie quipped quickly, she didn't want to stay in her presence any longer than she needed to, the air around her seemed toxic almost.
"On the contrary, I think there's a lot to talk about," Eleanor argued, more articulately than ever.
Allie exhaled, and stopped her attempts to walk away, "What exactly is the response you're fishing for here, Eleanor?" she started, "You want to hear me say that I understand? That I didn't care that you didn't care? That I forgive you for walking out of our lives and that it was no problem that you left dad to drink himself half to death?"
"Aaliyah, your father was not your responsibility," she replied gravely.
"No, but he was yours!" Allie snapped, taking a step forward at her.
"Aaliyah, I.."
"And you know what else was your responsibility too? Your daughter! You didn't care then, you don't care now either, you're just a selfish brat who does what's best for you, not giving a damn about the consequences of your actions and what they do to others, so no, there's nothing for us to talk about, Eleanor," she semi-ranted before turning around and stormed away, bumping into her stout resident.
"Watch where you're going, Montgomery!" she snapped at Allie when she bumped into the stern stout resident in the E.R. Allie muttered a quick sorry to her resident before handing her the file in her hands which she had gripped so tightly during the conversation with Eleanor that it now had creases on the otherwise smooth pages.
"Tests came back fine, for uh.. O'Connell," Allie explained, uncomfortably.
"Oxygen saturation in 94 percent," Barrish replied, handing the file back to her and Aaliyah took a look at the papers.
"Oxygen saturation is normal,"
"It's off by one point," the resident doctor stated.
"But, it's within range," Allie argued.
"Montgomery, you are the intern, I am the resident, you do as I say,"
"The guy had a brain tumor removed a few months ago, he's just looking to get a check up,"
"He fainted yesterday, or do you not remember that fact on the count of being too busy ogling the patient this morning?"
"It could be anything," Allie retorted, ignoring the part of her visible ogling of earlier the patient being obvious to everyone in the room, "Low blood pressure, low sugar," she went on on the other possibilities, "He's just back for a regular post op check up,"
"So check," Barrish snapped at her.
"If his sat percentage is off, that's a problem with his lungs, that doesn't have anything to do with his brain," Allie rationalized with her resident, using the medicine as her defense of not having to face any more ghosts of Christmas past for the day.
"Get the arterial blood gases done," she ordered, "If he's hypoxic, then, round up all the tests," this time, she walked away before Allie had a chance to argue further. She let out a sigh, between Bradin finding out about Cassidy, the bug she's down with, Eleanor's surprise visit and Carter, she was not liking the day. Maybe she should have taken Paige's advice after all, go home and rest.
She didn't have time to brood her fate however as the sound of the ambulance sliced through the flurried movements in the E.R. Being the only free doctor in the room, the paramedic pulled her to work.
She was definitely Not liking this day.
After dealing with the Caucasian woman who was screaming her head off, taking longer than she would usually have to deal with a regular patient with her writhing and screaming, Allie headed out to see the family member, the son.
"How is she?" he asked jumping to his feet with a sling bag over his shoulder. He looked to her in his mid teenage years, with his mused up brown curls on his head and the spurt of growth height wise as comparison to his young-ish looking face.
"She's fine, she's stable now," Allie explained, wanting to calm the obviously scared out of his mind kid, "Your mum had a small pulmonary embolism," she said, "A blood clot in her lungs," she added, explaining after the confused look in his face.
"But the pain was in her leg," he replied, while taking out a pen and a notebook from his bag and started scribbling down what Allie had just said.
"She had DVT, deep vein thrombosis, that's basically a bigger clot that was in her leg, I assume that a bigger piece of that broke off and traveled up to her vein and blocked the blood flow to her lungs, no blood flow, no oxygen," she explained and he was diligently writing it down in his neat scrawl in the notebook.
"Okay, but she's fine now?" he asked, looking up from the notebook for a moment.
"Uhm, Charlie, is your dad here? There are some things I want to talk to him about," Allie said, guarded, wanting to confirm her findings, no need to feed the kid more information than he can handle anyway.
"He's dead," he stated in a a-matter-of-fact-y tone, "Just talk to me, I take care of her,"
"Your mum had a blood alcohol level of .12 at 10.30 in the morning,"
"Oh, I gave it to her," he replied and Allie raised an eyebrow, "It cools her out," he explained, "She hears voices,"
"She's schizophrenic? Well, that explains the DVT, alcohol makes her pass out, she's immobile for hours,"
"She's not an alcoholic," he snapped, "I gave her exactly 2 ounces this morning and the last time she drank," Charlie flipped past the pages of his note book, "was last Monday, the same, 2 ounces of Vodka,"
"She only drinks when you give it to her?" Aaliyah asked skeptically, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice. She'd been there, the whole alcoholic parent was not unfamiliar ground, she felt sorry for the boy.
"It's not the alcohol!" he insisted.
"Charlie how old are you?"
"I'm 21," he said convincingly, but somehow, Aaliyah just didn't buy it, "And I know that it's not the alcohol, okay, I.." he started saying but then a nurse came out from behind the blinds, calling out.
"Doctor, I think you should come in here!" and Allie did just that to find the 39 year old woman vomiting a large mass of blood.
"What did you give her?!" she demanded as the patient continued to puke out blood like a gushing tap from her mouth.
"IV heparin like you ordered" the nurse said, panicked as Allie rushed forward, "Doctor, she's bleeding out!"
After the initial fright, she did manage to stabilize the patient and again, she went out to meet with Charlie again, tail between her legs and off her high horse, "What happened?" he asked anxiously leaping forward yet again.
"Your mother lost a lot of blood, but she's stable now,"
"But you said it was clots,"
"To be honest Charlie, I have no idea what's wrong with her right now," Allie said, defeated, "But uhm.. What I can do is run some tests, and then get back to you when I get the results, okay?"
Before the boy could reply however, her pager beeped erratically and Allie inwardly groaned before excusing herself.