Rating: Pg
Pairing: Team
Prompt/Prompter: Visiting Hours
Notes: The prompt was meant to be from an outsider's point of view.


Visiting Hours


"Maria?" Jenny, the newest nurse and Maria's, unfortunate, responsibility for the next few weeks until she's settled, came back to the nurses station with a bewildered expression.

Maria would have felt irritated that the girl didn't even make it twenty minutes into her shift without coming back with a question if it weren't for the fact that bewildered expressions had been the order of the day for their floor ever since the triple GSW was moved to their floor for recovery from the ICU early that morning.

The guy was cute, if you were into the bad boy types and had been around long enough to see past the temporary effects that kind of trauma had on a body. He hadn't been awake much but seemed to be one of the rare types who hated hospitals but respected them enough, and knew enough, to follow directions and not make so much fuss they had to restrain him.

Though the sheer volume of scars on the guy suggested this wasn't his first stay in the hospital.

Really it was his visitors that kept causing the confusion. His brother who seemed way too broody and twitchy. The sister in law who seemed far too polished (and seemed to shower more affection on her patient than the brother). The best friend who seemed a little young and geeky for a thrity seven year old guy with more scars than Maria normally saw in two weeks and the best friend's girl who alternated between looking like a little girl who was scared to see her big brother badly hurt and a pure and simple nutcase.

And they'd been drifting in and out all day like they had nothing better to do than watch Mark Baker sleep.

"What is it Jenny?" Maria asked, looking back down to her form, readying herself to tell the girl that strange visitors were just part of the territory.

"The visitors for Mark Baker won't leave." She shuffled nervously. "And I think the blonde one wants to kill me."

Maria glanced to the clock and sighed, visiting hours ended five minutes ago. Why was she not surprised?

She beckoned Jenny with a finger, walking the girl across the floor to the door of the room. "Go in there, finish your nightly rounds, and while your in there try to process what you feel. Don't try to kick them out and call security if they let the blonde one do anything rash."

Jenny looked toward the room, hint of an idea on her face.

At the end of the night, before Maria left, she found Jenny and asked the question she always asked any new kid she was watching out for. "What did you learn tonight?"

Jenny looked down the hall, toward the room, a tired sort of smile crossing the girl's face.

"Visiting hours don't apply to some people."