Okay. Let's get this thing going.
Cooper woke up early the next morning. A smile crept onto his face when his vision cleared enough to make out the weird form of his actual best friend crawled up across three chairs.
He turned his eyes to look at the big bad bandage wrapped around his right hand rested on top of a fluff pillow. The reason it was a bandage and not a cast was that the nurses needed to take a look at the wound twice a day, and then report to some doctor of it looked bad.
The nurse had been by when Duncan had been out looking for spare chairs to turn into a makeshift bunk yesterday.
The whole visit had been anything but comfortable, that was for sure.
It didn't feel just as bad now, but that could always have something with the cooling liquid pouring into a vein in his left arm, through a cannula. They could have added some strong painkillers to the bag of antibiotics.
The bag hung the wrong way for him to read any notes written down with sharpie on the front of it.
He let his head drop down against the pillow again. He was drained. It was like someone had taken all of his muscles and replaced them with silty sand. Like it took ten times the normal effort to keep his head up, or move a leg or something. He was drained. Exhausted.
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He hadn't been awake long when a nurse came over to him with a trolley. He hadn't seen her around earlier. She looked local, but when she opened her mouth she spoke with a thick Boston accent.
"Hey, how are you feeling today?"
He shrugged, and almost felt like he would get winded by the minimal task. "Tired."
"How's your pain?"
He spent a second trying to figure out of what he should give as an answer. "It's there…"
"Is it bad?" she pressed further as she reached up to twist the IV bag so that she could easier read it.
"Not bad…" Coop shrugged his left shoulder, "Just painful. In general."
She smiled, "Painful in general…"
Coop nodded.
"I don't know if the nurses or doctors told you yesterday, but we'll have to check your wounds twice a day. Is it okay if I go ahead and unwrap your hand to take a look at it now? Or do you need something more for the pain?"
"Nah… We're good…" Coop tried to issue a smile. He really felt like shit. What had felt like 5 different flus yesterday had to be 7 or 8 right now. It was probably just because his abused body had settled down. Like the soreness after a heavy workout was always worst the second or third day.
"Are you sure?"
Coop nodded, "Best to just get done with it…"
She nodded and started to head around the bed to be on the right side of him. "If it hurts too much we can pause and I can administer something a bit stronger. It will knock you out though."
"Nah…" Coop shook his head and looked up at the nures, "It hurt a lot yesterday when the evening nurse checked on it, but nothing I can't handle…"
She rolled her eyes, "You special forces guys are all the same, right?"
"Who told you we were special forces…?" Coop frowned, "There's a better chance we're just a couple of regular grunts…"
"It's practically written all over you…" she smirked, and cast a glance over at Duncan who was still out cold on top of the three chairs acting like an emergency bed, "Both of you…"
"Him? Nah… He could never be anything that cool…" Coop joked, "Just look at him… He's about as harmless as a 2 week old kitten…"
"Hmm… Somehow I don't believe you…" she chuckled and pointed at Coop's hand, "Would you be able to hold that up for me, or do I need to ask someone else to come and support it for you?"
While not having to deal with it himself would have been a lot easier, he needed the small 'wins'. Like being able to get through this without needing two nurses to help him.
"You just need me to hold it up like this, right?" he asked as he demonstrated it with his left arm. She nodded. "I can do that…"
"Okay…"
Cooper nodded and used his left hand to gently guide his right arm into position.
He tried to ignore the pain, but couldn't help but let it bleed out across his features.
"Are you good there soldier?" the nurse asked, worried dark eyes meeting his, "Do you want me to go get someone to help after all? Or maybe taking me up on that offer of something stronger would be a good choice?"
Coop shook his head, "No, it's fine…"
"Okay, if you say so…" she nodded and removed the pins that secured the bandage, "You can call it quits whenever you feel like it…"
Coop nodded, and attempted another smile, "Well, I ain't no quitter…"
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He really wished he was a quitter. He would easily have admitted that much, if he hadn't been too busy gritting his teeth.
"You good champ?" the nurse asked as she stopped in her tracks to take a look at Cooper.
He nodded, speaking didn't feel safe right now.
"Need to quit?"
He shook his head.
"Need a pause then?"
He shook his head again, figuring that he would just have to force a couple of words past his lips anyway, "No. Just get the bandage off."
"Okay, then maybe a pause then?"
He nodded, "Maybe."
The nurse kept on peeling away the layers of the bandage as gently as humanly possible. It still wasn't gentle enough to not cause Cooper pain, but it could be debated whether it was act of removing the bandage, or holding his arm in that position, or just his hand being in the condition it was in that caused him all that pain.
He kept on wordlessly begging the pain to stop, but there was no mercy headed his way.
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The final layer of the bandage was peeled back and revealed his heavily bruised and swollen hand. Then she removed the splint stabilizing his thumb. She did it as gently as she could, but Coop still winced as pain shot through his thumb and wrist. She apologized. He tried to brush it away like it was nothing.
"There…" the nurse smiled gently at him, "You've deserved a little pause now, don't you think? Just a second more."
She took one of those absorbent squares from the trolley and shook it out over the pillow he had his hand rested on earlier. "Now, do you need help lower your arm onto that?"
Coop shook his head, "No… Think it's best if I do that myself. I know which parts of my hand really DON'T want any pressure at all…"
The nurse nodded and watched as Cooper ran his good hand up the outside of his forearm with a feather light touch, before he reached the outer side of his palm and started to guide the mangled hand towards the pillow.
She watched him let out a relieved breath when his arm finally rested against the pillow and he hadn't jarred anything.
"Do you need a little time before I clean it for you?"
Cooper nodded, before gritting out an answer, "A minute or two would be wonderful…"
"Okay…" she nodded again, "We've got fresh coffee over at the nurses station, do you want me to bring a cup back for you? You'll have to wait with drinking it until I'm done with you though…"
He hadn't been hungry yesterday when he was awake, and he wasn't now either. But a good cup of coffee sounded like it could do him good.
"Is it strong?"
"Well, most of us live by the belief that a strong cup of coffee might be enough, but a cup of weak coffee is sure to be enough…" the nurse grinned, "Yeah, it's usually strong. Do you want a cup?"
"That'd be great miss…" Coop winked.
"Okay, you think your buddy there want a cup too?"
"Yeah, he's also a member of the caffeine-holics." Coop grinned.
"Cream? Sugar?"
"No, just black…"
"Both?"
Coop nodded.
"Okay, I'll be back soon…"
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He peeked down at his hand. The wound was a little bit longer than he remembered from out in the desert. But it looked clean and was stitched up as neatly as he guessed the original wound could ever be stitched up.
His whole hand was still puffy, swollen and colorful. The color wasn't just bruising, it was also redness from the infection.
Even though it didn't look near as bad and threatening as when he had seen it out in the desert, it still looked awful.
His eyes fell on his wrist. It was shapeless, it didn't remind him of a wrist, it looked more like a multicolored fleshy log.
The curious part of his brain wanted him to move it, test it. But every other part of him overruled it, and called it the worst idea in the history of his bad ideas. All those parts were probably right, and there was no way he would actually test it. He didn't like pain. (Contrary to whatever popular beliefs might be…)
He looked over at his fingers. They were sizably bigger than the ones on his left hand. Quite swollen.
But they were nothing compared to his thumb. His thumb, and that side of his wrist, was comically swollen.
He looked back up as he heard determined footsteps approaching. It was the nurse.
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"Feeling better?"
"A little…" Cooper nodded as the nurse set down two cups of coffee on the nightstand, before she stepped over to the trolley and donned a new pair of gloves.
"So, may I continue?"
Cooper nodded and was about to guide his hand back up to the previous position when the nurse stopped him.
"No, just let it rest there…" she said, holding a hand out like she was telling a dog or something to stay.
"Okay?"
"Yeah, think it'll be easier for both of us." She said as she poured some liquid from a bottle into a dish. She prepared some more stuff before she rolled the trolley past the still sleeping Duncan.
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The soaked cotton ball sweeping across his skin wasn't exactly soothing. But since he guessed it was a necessity, he did his best to hold his discomfort to himself.
Plus, he had a thing against looking like a sissy in front of women.
"Are you doing alright?"
"Yep." The sharp inhale that followed couldn't be stopped.
"You sure?"
Cooper nodded, "It's fine."
"You can always give me a head's up if you'd like to not be awake for this…" she said removing the cotton ball she held with some forceps from his hand to change it for a new one.
"Nah…" Cooper closed his eyes, and his brows knitted together, "Just get done with it. It won't take that long, am I right? I can take it."
She nodded and grabbed the next cotton ball with the forceps. "All things considered, your hand is looking great."
"I thought it looked like someone had slammed down with it with a baseball bat."
"I said all things considered, didn't I?" the nurse chuckled.
"Touché…" Coop nodded.
"But it's actually looking better now…"
"You've seen it before?"
"I was there in the operating room, for hours…" she spared a look up at Cooper's eyes, "We all thought you would die…"
"Well… It didn't stick…" Coop flashed a sideways grin.
"If you're trying to be funny, you're failing miserably." The nurse shook her head, "By all 'rules' of what a human can go through, you should be dead right now. That's nothing to laugh about. It's serious."
Cooper's smile disappeared, and he bit down on his lower lip, "Well…"
"Well what?" her face gentled a little.
He wanted to say that it was a way to get through life. A way to keep himself from breaking down crying when life really slapped him around. But he knew not everyone understood that kind of 'humor'.
"Well, I didn't really…" Coop shrugged, "I didn't really think it through…"
She smirked, "Okay, well… Actually, it could be a little funny… If you hadn't scared all of us in there…"
Coop smirked, "So am I forgiven?"
"As long as you can forgive me for continuing to clean that hand of yours, then yeah."
"Okay, yeah. Deal." Coop nodded, "But hey, one more thing. That guy…"
He tipped his head towards Duncan, "He doesn't need to know how close I was… Okay?"
"I won't tell him…" she nodded, "But you ought to…"
"Nah…" Coop shook his head, "Best if he doesn't know…"
She let out a sigh, then looked down at his hand again, "Ready?"
He nodded and pressed his lips hard together.
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Some minutes later, they were all done. Cooper's hand was in a new and neat boxing glove of a bandage. He once again had it rested on top of the pillow on his chest.
He took a swig of his coffee, looked at Duncan and wondered if he should wake him up, or let him come to on his own.
Okay. Stalling. Stalling. Stalling.
Anyone feel like I'm stalling?
Anyone excited for Jack, Box and Pete to finally getting to the hospital to check on Coop? And meet Duncan…