Author's Note: None of it belongs to me.
Author's Note 2: This is not a story where everyone we think is dead will turn out to be alive. David Palmer, Michelle, Bill Buchanan, Renee, Curtis, sorry, none of them are coming back. I may not agree with decisions made in the show, but they are not alive and living under assumed names. And I will stop there before this turns into a Monty Python sketch…
Author's Note 3, on language: at least the first part of this story is set in Berlin, Germany. While English penetration is good, and probably especially among people like chief of emergency medicine at a major hospital, English is not the only language in the world. I will use German to start a conversation off, and you can assume that when two Germans are speaking to each other, they are speaking German.
Franz-Josef struggled to open his eyes. What had woken him up? It was dark, so clearly not the alarm, but it had been something – ach ja, his telephone buzzed again from the nightstand. Beside him, his wife buried her head further into her pillow, so used to his night-time calls that she never even actually woke up any more.
"Ja, hallo," he paused to clear his throat and regret the last cigarette of the night before, "Heimann hier. Was ist los?"
"Herr Doktor Heimann, hier ist Doktor Steffens. Your unbekannter is, well, he is having a bad night. I do not know what has disturbed him, but something has. He started screaming suddenly, not words I don't think, just screaming, and we found him crouchng in the corner between his bed and the wall. I'm not sure what to do."
"Have you managed to quiet him and get him back into bed?"
"No, we tried, but he fights like a tiger. We can handle him, but he won't get up or let go of the bottom of the bed."
"All right, try 2 mg Duraperidol intramuscular to sedate him, and I'll be in soon."
"Yes, Doktor, bis bald, danke!" They both hung up, and Heimann leaned over to his wife.
"Liebchen… Annike, I must go in. My new patient needs me." A sleepy "good luck" followed him into the bathroom.
The city streets had been fairly quiet, surprising for the center of Berlin even at 2 in the morning, and Franz-Josef's journey to Charite hospital took far less time than it might have a few hours later. Inside, he went directly to the ward where his unknown patient had been admitted.
"Doktor Steffens? Wo sind Sie?"
The night-shift doctor poked his head out from the curtained enclosure in the middle of the ward and spoke softly.
"Here I am. The Duraperidol helped, I've managed to get him back into bed, and clearly he has stopped yelling. But he is not well."
"Let me see." Franz-Josef set his jacket and briefcase aside as he stepped up to the bed. Their patient was lying flat, staring at the ceiling with a pinched, almost anguished look on his face, and still breathing heavily. A few drops of blood stained the sheets, and he realized that the IV line had been re-set in the patient's other arm. "The line came loose? He seems calm now, when did you give the Duraperidol?"
"Thirty-five minutes ago, Doktor. Shall I draw up another dose?"
"Not yet, we will see if he needs it or not. I will sit with him for a while if you like. Could you bring me an espresso, please?"
"Yes, Doktor." The younger doctor quickly retreated to the station outside the double doors of the ward, and Heimann hung his jacket over the back of the bedside chair before sitting down to watch his patient.
"So who are you, and how did you come here, my friend?" The unknown continued to stare at the ceiling, not even reacting to Franz-Josef's question. Occasionally the muscles of his face would contract or his eyes would move, but nothing else changed, even when Doktor Steffens came back quietly with Franz-Josef's espresso. Eventually Franz-Josef took the latest issue of the emergency medicine quarterly out of his briefcase to catch up on his reading in the dim bedside light while still keeping one eye on his mystery patient.
An hour later, he had finished the quarterly and moved on to reviewing the emergency room use statistics from the previous month, when he realized that his patient's breathing had sped up, although the man's eyes were squeezed shut. "Steffens?"
A minute later Steffens had returned to the bedside. "Yes, Herr Doktor Heimann?"
"You might want to – yes! Get another dose of the Duraperidol, 2 mg again I think!" Almost too fast to be seen, their patient had leapt off the bed, screaming hoarsely, and huddled next to the wall. His arms were clutched around his head and his entire body was squeezed into a tight ball. Soon, though, Steffens had returned and the intramuscular injection had calmed the patient enough for them to place him back into bed.
"I do not want to use restraints, and I do not want to continue to sedate him. Clearly something is upsetting him, but he cannot be allowed to upset the rest of the ward. I will stay with him, you go see if there is a private room we can move him to."
Soon they had rolled the unknown patient's bed to a private room, followed out the door of the semi-private ward by a few curses by the paitents woken by the stir.
"Can you turn the TV to the BBC? I think he is English-speaking, and it might help him if we keep it very quiet."
"Yes, Doktor." Steffens clicked through to the BBC and left the volume just above a murmur, then left the room.
The unknown patient continued to stare at the ceiling, expressionless but holding his body tight as though fighting the sedation, until his body finally appeared to relax into sleep just as the first hint of sunlight was beginning to break through the night. Franz-Josef updated the man's record and on his way to his office asked Steffens to move the patient back to the general ward, where it would be easier to monitor his condition, later in the morning.
On his way home that evening, he checked on the unknown patient. Heart rate low but more or less normal, respirations normal, urine output low and still dark, that was worrying, but the signs of obvious dehydration were lessening. There had been no more outbursts, the mystery man simply lying in bed unmoving without seeming to notice the bustle around him.
"Doktor Hartmann? I think this patient will do better, overnight, in a private room. He had two episodes last night, and he seemed to do better with the BBC left on very quietly. Please call me if anything about him changes, no matter the time."
"Yes, Herr Doktor Heimann. Schönes Abend!"
Author's Note 4: I did say it's a slow burn, didn't I? Oh dear oh dear. And yes, German culture really is formal, especially in a very heirarchical setting like a hospital. This may be a bit more formal than necessary, but how often does the chief of emergency medicine admit a patient and then show up at 2 in the morning to sit with them? If you're a lowly house doctor, you're probably going to be a bit cowed by the boss of bosses coming in.