It was a shit day for Grey/Sloan and Miranda Bailey can attest to that. She stands, deliberated and broken before the eighteenth and final flatline from the wreck on the 85 this morning. She's not a trauma specialist. She can handle trauma but when it happens like this, in a constant wave, it can be hard to catch one's breath. All eighteen souls involved in the collision were harvested by the angel of death and these halls reek of darkness. The cold is enough to keep the eyes open because even in this big building with high end top of the class technology the winter storm pulls so much energy from their generator's breath can be seen coming through the surgical face masks they're only required to wear in the OR once again.
She pulls it off in a gruff and her eyes go to the opening door. There's Parker, she thinks, the ultimate minion of the one who holds open the veil from this life to the next. She's seen him after all four of her personal patients and knows he's been in all fourteen other ORs as well. In his red and black suit, he comes to fetch the things no one else can remove from this silver glint of a cage. His face hidden behind the dark plastic, his breath echoed through the material as it's filtered and cleaned through the pipes attached to his back. His hands are tightly bound by the latex gloves he has tripple layered over each long and curious hand.
He's grown to love the things they cast away. A young boy is on the table this time. No older than seven. He does as he always will and makes his way to the patient first. Offers his respects in a sign of the hands and then whispers to himself that familiar phrase, "May you find journey in the cosmos, my friend."
The little ones bother him the most. With their big sunk in eyes, paling skin, and frail little bones. So much wasted story there. It hurts but he's here to do a job so he spins on his heel to open his bag and make his way to the discarded table where materials manifest both prior too and during surgery. He picks up the seryinges first.
Miranda, in her state, does something she never does and approaches the garbage man. In silence they stand together as he examines the tools one at a time and tests their contanimity. Dropping the ones too radioactive into his special silver bag.
Finally she speaks, "It's believed this boy and two others from the crash were victims of sex slavery. Abducted at least a year ago somewhere in New York and found here of all places. This was Anthony Hemlock, his favorite color was purple, his best friend was a owl his parents kept as a pet named Leroy-" She pauses to laugh a little, "and his favorite day of the week is Wednesday because he was born on a wednesday. So his mama told me when she showed up around noon today. The boys were infected with a serious contagious virus and there was no hope."
Parker picks up a toy action figure of a character from a Dr. Strange novel, "Spider Man; No Way Home."
"That is the only possession he had." She says so sadly.
He tests it on the long wireless wand thermoradio and waits to watch the numbers. Bright blue lights that read 281. It's got to go.
"That's too bad." Says Miranda, "She would have wanted to keep that."
He plucks from his belt band a special thin ribbon tag of bright purple found among the other three colors he lives his life by and slowly wraps the figure until only the face remains. Once it's bound in the length of the ribbon, he slides it into the silver bag and seals the light away forever.
After a shower and disposing his hazmat garments he's putting on the hospital clothes they leave him for when a day's duty is done. Once he's clean he can leave through the front door like everyone else, but he still likes to avoid people. None of them have ever made the connection and he hopes it stays that way. Today, for reasons beyond him, hunger gets the best of him. So, feeling pretty invisible after a day to darken all doorways he makes his way upstairs to the break room.
In here he's as safe as it gets. Egotystical surgeons and walnut brained, exhausted interns are too preoccupied to worry about him and who he is. The vending machine takes ten bucks from him and he's filling a foam cup with coffee. The drop door opens with a bag of chex mix and an apple. A small table can occupy him and his journals. So, he's writing and holding a pen for show as the silk spews from his lips from the whispers.
The door opens and he goes silent. He's almost terrified someone saw but then he hears her voice and all his worry flees.
"Parker!" It's Tori.
He's turning in a smile, "What are you doing in here, you know you can't be up here and you know you shouldn't see me while I'm at work unless it's behind glass."
She ignores him and pulls him into a hug. He's in his hospital clothes so she knows he's clean. She whispers, "He's cancer free!"
"Aiden?" Asks Parker.
She nods and tears fall from her eyes. He squeezes her tightly and her wild Tasmanian mane of hair gets all in his face. He spins her and she laughs, "That's wonderful, baby girl. I'm so happy for you."
They pull apart and sit down at the table as she begins talking about what Dr. Karev had to say about the situation. She explained that she could take her son home tomorrow if she wanted but since Cameron was still in ICU she was probably just going to keep staying at the hospital.
The door opens again and in comes a slew of surgeons including Dr. Jo Karev, the woman who operated on Aiden. This woman was looking directly at him. Like she was terrified but determined. Suddenly, Parker got the sense to leave.
"What are you waiting for?" Owen Hunt asks her as she stops staring and turns her attention to him with a disoriented, 'huh?' on her face.
Dr. Robbins, Dr. Altman, and Dr. Avery fill the room with their loud opinions surrounding today's massacre. All of them so very distraught. All of them swimming in the chill of loss. All of them almost capable of actually eating the food they'd left for themselves in the fridge but no one's eating. They're all just saying things and trying to make sense of the death. So much death.
"Are you afraid?" Whispers Owen.
Another round of people come into the room. Dr. Sheppard and Dr. Bailey enter in holding a discussion about the latest news article regarding a name Parker finds familiar. Olive Moseby's podcasts are brutal and arrogant and almost alpha male status in media and to hear people talk about her means there's a possibility they're also talking about P. Parker and how atrocious his first novel was.
He knows it wasn't atrocious but people feed into things when they're being fed by someone else's confident hand pretty well.
"No. I'm not afraid." Jo scoffs, "He's the garbage man but he's clean. I'm not afraid. I've just. No one's ever. I don't know."
Owen laughs, "No better time than the present."
She nods and works up her nerve. Then she's walking towards him. She recognizes his friend and smiles as she says so kindly, "Ms. Rodgers. You know you can't be in the break room."
"I told you, starlight." Whispers Parker.
Tori stands, "I'm sorry. I'll be going. I was just sharing good news."
"Yes." Says Jo, "Your success story today goes deeper than you know Ms. Rodgers. We needed some good to happen today."
Jo hugs Tori and Tori goes to leave. Jo turns her attention to Parker, "You're Mr. Bryson, correct?"
He nods and stands certain he's done something wrong or they're going to shoo him away for being the garbage man, but this doesn't happen. Instead, she tells him, "The chief of surgery would like to see you before you leave today. She says you, having the hardest job of all of us today, deserve some good too."
He frowns, "Medusa wants to see the minion of death and it's a good thing? That sounds kind of scary."
The other people in the room who were suddenly tuning in to the conversation could almost laugh at his remark, but the day is so dark they do not dare. Meredith Grey has summoned the man in the hazmat suit. Now everyone knows his name and he can walk out with Tori into the hallway to escape the labyrinth of their stares.
