A/N: This chapter takes place 4 days after chapter 27. It starts out in the
hospital, in Nigel's room. Jordan's been back to work occasionally, and now
she, Garret, or Renee try to visit him at least once a day...
********** CHAPTER 29 **********
~~Nigel~~ I have to admit, staring at the ceiling for a week can get on your nerves. I'd memorized every line in the paint, and I could match the shade of white to one of those paint sampler things you get from the hardware store if you wanted me to. Sure, the boredom was interrupted by hourly visits from an attending nurse...and lunchtime was a moment to be remembered, disgusting green jello and all.
As I glanced around at the few small flower arrangements and the balloons that had been left for me over the past few days, I noticed a small stuffed bulldog lying on the table top that hadn't been there before. I slowly reached for it, and I had almost grabbed it when I heard the overly cheery voice of Jordan in the doorway.
She was clinging onto a brown paper sack and grinning eagerly as she bounded over to my bedside and sat in the nearest chair.
"Guess what I brought you." She waved the bag in the air next to the bed.
"If you mention anything that has to do with jello, I'll kill you." I could barely even look at the pastey green goo in it's little plastic cup, let alone keep any of it down.
Jordan smiled again, and produced a thermos and a mug from the bag. "I figured you were missing drinking the good stuff...so I made you some at work and brought it here."
"What is it?" I raised my head slightly to look at her.
"Tea." She then looked at me, lying flat on my back. "You're not going to be able to drink this lying down like that."
I laughed. "Where'd you get tea from?"
"Your bottom left hand drawer of your desk. Bug let me in on where you keep your stash." She paused for a minute. "Are you able to sit up to do anything?"
"I can sit up with a nurses help...I normally do when I eat."
Jordan pushed the call button that I had on my bed and smiled. "Then we'll just have to get someone in here to help you out, now won't we."
I nodded, then inhaled the fragrant smell of the tea as I laid my head back on the pillow. Luckily, we didn't have to wait very long for a nurse to enter the room and inquire about why we'd paged for one.
"I was wondering if you could help sit him up, because I brought him some tea...and he can't drink lying down." Jordan smiled sweetly at the nurse.
"Sure thing honey, let me just get him all situated." The nurse moved to my side and made sure I was lying straight, and that my brace was on correctly. After making sure of all that, she lifted the back end of my bed and made it so I was sitting up at a better angle for eating and drinking. "That alright?"
"Yeah, that's perfect." I nodded, happy to have the rest of the room to stare at instead of the ceiling.
The nurse walked out, and Jordan rolled my little tray table over my lap and set the mug of tea down on it. "There. NOW you can have some."
Eagerly taking the mug in both hands, I sipped it slowly, extremely happy to be tasting something other than weak hospital decaf or cranberry juice. After I set the mug back down, I sighed. "Thanks Jordan."
She leaned over and gave me a soft hug with one arm. "You're welcome Nige." She sat back down, then gently ran her fingers over the multitude of stitches in my shoulder. "These are looking pretty red...you've gotta make sure they don't get infected."
The feeling of her cold fingertips on the hot skin around the cuts made me shiver slightly, and I quickly took another drink of the tea to stop it. "The docs wash them out everyday...they're fine." I glanced around the room and sighed. "Have they told YOU anything about me yet?"
She shook her head. "They haven't said anything to anybody. Not me, not Garret, not even Renee...and she's been almost ready to slap lawsuits on them for not informing us of your condition. They keep saying something about giving information to the relatives only."
I nodded. "Which would mean my father, which doesn't matter anyways. He doesn't care what happens to me."
Jordan nodded in agreement. "You're right." She was about to say something else when the doctor who had been in charge of my case walked in the room.
"Good afternoon Nigel, Jordan." He smiled down at the both of us. "How are you feeling today? You have any movement in your legs or toes today?"
I shook my head. "Not yet, but they're not as numb feeling as they were yesterday."
He smiled. "That's normally a good sign. The brace is helping."
"Do you have any other information about me?" I looked up at him eagerly. "Like, when can I get out of here?"
"You're not going to be able to leave for a while, I'm afraid...and I know how boring it is for you to sit in here all by yourself." The doctor looked towards the doorway. "If it's alright with you, I was wondering if we could put someone in the bed on the other side of the room from you."
"Who is it?" Jordan looked towards the doorway as well.
"I believe he's a...17 year old male who was involved in an automobile accident."
"Why isn't he in a pediatrics unit?" I looked over at Jordan. Children 18 and under were normally put into the pediatrics unit so they could be with children their own age and not feel so out of place.
"He lost his left leg slightly above the knee, and he has a hairline pelvis fracture that's made it so he needs to be confined to his bed." The doctor shook his head. "It's tragic, really...according to witness reports, he hit a speedbump at a bad angle going way too fast, and he ended up wrapping his car around a telephone pole. Killed the passenger instantly."
Jordan shook her head. "Who was in the car with him?"
"His girlfriend of three years. At least that's what his parents told me." He paused for a moment. "But, the reason I want to bring him in here is because he needs to be somewhere quiet, and right now you're about the quietest patient we've got. Everybody else in osteology is moaning and complaining about the pain that they're in, but you're a trooper."
"Sounds like I'm the odd one out, huh?" I smiled up at him.
"So, you alright with bringing him in here?"
"Yeah. That's fine. You need me to do anything?"
"Probably just stay like you are for a while, at least until visiting hours are over. His parents are here, and I'm sorry to say that they're not accepting his injuries too well...we're going to try and shoo them out right when time is up, for your sake."
I shook my head. "Let them stay. It'll give me something to watch."
The doctor smiled, then turned and walked towards the entrance to the room. "I'll go bring him down."
Jordan smiled at him as he left, then she turned back to me. "So...this mean that I'm not entertaining enough for you?"
"No, Love, it means that you need to give me more tea." I pushed the mug towards her, and she obliged by filling it up. As she was doing so, I heard the muffled sounds of her pager coming from her purse. "You might want to look at that."
"Yeah, I know." She set the tea back in front of me, then sighed as she dug her pager out of her purse. "Great. Just what I need to come back to work for."
"What is it?"
"Multiple gunshot victims from a drive-by. The shooter had good aim, unfortunately. I've gotta get back...Garret's calling everybody in." Jordan leaned over and gave me another hug. "I'll stop by tomorrow, alright?"
"Okay. Thanks for the tea, Jordan."
"Bye Nige." She walked out of the room and left me by myself, and I waited for the doctor to bring the kid down.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I heard was slightly raised voices arguing about something. Groggily opening an eye and looking across the room, I noticed that there was a group of people huddled around the bed, and two of them were arguing which each other. I sat silent and watched as they became more and more angry, and I began to feel sorry for the boy, who was lying there watching them fight.
I debated on whether or not to say something, and I was about to ask them to quiet down, but the nurse that walked in did it for me.
After reprimanding the parents for being so loud, she promptly kicked everyone out of the room, claiming that visiting hours were over and it was time for both of us to get some rest. I was thankful for their lack of protest, and after some teary goodbyes, they finally left the room, leaving it in silence.
I looked over at the boy who was staring up at the ceiling blankly. I almost laughed, for I could see myself doing the same thing on a daily basis. Deciding to start some conversation, I spoke towards his side of the room.
"Careful, you might memorize the patterns too fast and be bored for the next week."
He looked over at me. "What did you say?"
"I said, you might memorize the patterns in the ceiling to fast and you'll be bored out of your mind for the next week." I laughed. "I've done it myself."
"How long have you been in here?"
"About a week. Although, I wasn't fully awake for about half of it." I looked over at the doorway.
"Why are you here?" He followed my gaze to the doorway, where I was flagging down a passing nurse.
"Can I help you sir?" The R.N. moved to my bedside after smiling at the boy.
"Can you move me over next to him so we can talk without shouting across the room?" I pointed at the boy. "Please?"
"Of course." She gently wheeled my bed over next to the boy's, then asked if I needed anything else. Upon my head shake, she exited the room.
"Much better. So you asked why I was here?" I looked over at the boy again.
"Yeah. What happened to you?" I could tell he was looking at his own leg and then at me.
"I got shot and a bullet hit my spine. I can't move anything from the waist down. You?" I acted as if I didn't notice that the sheet above his missing leg rested on the bed and not where a leg should be. I wanted him to think that I didn't even notice what was wrong with him.
"I was in a car accident...I lost my leg and broke my hip...at least that's what the doctor's said happened."
"Oh. I didn't even notice your leg." I smiled at him. "By the way, my name's Nigel." I held a hand out towards him, IV's trailing out of my arm.
"I'm Ryan." He shook my hand weakly, as I could tell he was in some pain in doing so. "So you can't walk? Does it hurt?"
"Well, I can't feel much...and it doesn't hurt because the hospital's got me on such a painkiller schedule to keep the swelling in my spinal cord down. How about yours?"
"I...can't feel anything in that leg...it's pretty weird. It's so different not even having anything there...it's really freaky. And my hips are pretty sore, probably because they're broken. Why'd you get shot?" He smiled weakly at me, and I could tell he was tired but he didn't want to stop talking.
"I was trying to bust some guys that killed this kid a long time ago...you see, I work for the coroner's office, and I got a case of a dead little kid that was found in an alley, and I finally figured out who killed him. Then I went to catch him, and the guy shot me."
"Did you pass out?"
"Yeah...I had a pretty bad seizure too. I had a reaction to one of the medications that they gave me."
I saw his face fall, and then I saw his eye's well up with tears. "You said you work for the coroner?"
I nodded, knowing exactly what he was getting at.
"Would you be able to tell me how somebody died?"
I nodded again. "If the autopsy has been completed already." Looking into his eyes, I swallowed hard. "What's her name?"
Fighting back tears, he attempted not to break into sobs as he spoke. "Heather. Heather Rice."
"Can you hand me that phone?" I motioned for the phone on the other side of the bed. Sure, I probably shouldn't be doing this for the kid, but I knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep if he didn't know. I took the phone from him and nodded. "Now get me an outside line."
He pressed the buttons needed, and then I told him the phone number to the Morgue's front desk. Upon hearing Emmy's voice on the line, I asked if I could talk to Jordan.
Luckily, she'd just gotten out of autopsy, so I could.
"Hey Jordan"
"Hi Nige! What's up?"
I glanced over Ryan, who was pleading with me with his eyes. I nodded.
"I was wondering if you guys had gotten the body of a..." I paused, then mouthed him to tell me her age. "...Of a seventeen year old female that was killed in a car crash."
"Hold on, let me check." I heard her rummage through several papers, and then she came back on the line. "Yeah, we did. Already been processed."
"Alright. Can you tell me what the cause of death was?" I noticed that Ryan was holding back tears as I spoke, so I turned my gaze up to the ceiling.
"Why do you want to know...and how did you even know about the body Nigel?"
I shook my head to myself. "Think Jordan."
A brief pause, and then I heard her sigh in realization. "I technically shouldn't release that to you."
"Since when has that stopped you before, Jordan, seriously."
"Alright alright. She died of...cerebral and internal hemorrhage due to massive head and chest trauma. Several ribs punctured her lungs, stomach, and heart...x-rays show massive amounts of blood loss through all internal organs. It wasn't pretty, Nigel. She drowned on her own blood."
I had to fight the gag reflex that I felt coming on, and I breathed in deeply to stop myself from freaking out. "So...instantly right?"
"No...she had massive respiratory failure and had to choke to death..."
I cut her off before she could go any farther. "Thanks Jordan. Instantly, that's what I thought." I then hung up the phone and passed it back to Ryan, who hung it up.
"So?" He looked over at me.
"One of her ribs pierced her heart. She died instantly." I placed a hand on his arm and sighed. "She didn't even know what happened."
He nodded, then yawned one of the hugest yawns I'd seen in a while. "I guess...that's good..."
I smiled. "Get some sleep man. You're gonna need it to be able to memorize the ceiling tomorrow."
I didn't know if he heard me or not, because he was already asleep by the time I had paged for a nurse to come move my bed back across the room and get him a blanket. After she had dimmed the lights, I checked the clock on the wall.
4 A.M.
4 hours until my morning round of jello. Wonderful.
TBC....
**thanks for reading! and remember, reviews and comments are always appreciated. the big chapter 30 is coming up too, so lots of feedback means a LONG chapter!**
********** CHAPTER 29 **********
~~Nigel~~ I have to admit, staring at the ceiling for a week can get on your nerves. I'd memorized every line in the paint, and I could match the shade of white to one of those paint sampler things you get from the hardware store if you wanted me to. Sure, the boredom was interrupted by hourly visits from an attending nurse...and lunchtime was a moment to be remembered, disgusting green jello and all.
As I glanced around at the few small flower arrangements and the balloons that had been left for me over the past few days, I noticed a small stuffed bulldog lying on the table top that hadn't been there before. I slowly reached for it, and I had almost grabbed it when I heard the overly cheery voice of Jordan in the doorway.
She was clinging onto a brown paper sack and grinning eagerly as she bounded over to my bedside and sat in the nearest chair.
"Guess what I brought you." She waved the bag in the air next to the bed.
"If you mention anything that has to do with jello, I'll kill you." I could barely even look at the pastey green goo in it's little plastic cup, let alone keep any of it down.
Jordan smiled again, and produced a thermos and a mug from the bag. "I figured you were missing drinking the good stuff...so I made you some at work and brought it here."
"What is it?" I raised my head slightly to look at her.
"Tea." She then looked at me, lying flat on my back. "You're not going to be able to drink this lying down like that."
I laughed. "Where'd you get tea from?"
"Your bottom left hand drawer of your desk. Bug let me in on where you keep your stash." She paused for a minute. "Are you able to sit up to do anything?"
"I can sit up with a nurses help...I normally do when I eat."
Jordan pushed the call button that I had on my bed and smiled. "Then we'll just have to get someone in here to help you out, now won't we."
I nodded, then inhaled the fragrant smell of the tea as I laid my head back on the pillow. Luckily, we didn't have to wait very long for a nurse to enter the room and inquire about why we'd paged for one.
"I was wondering if you could help sit him up, because I brought him some tea...and he can't drink lying down." Jordan smiled sweetly at the nurse.
"Sure thing honey, let me just get him all situated." The nurse moved to my side and made sure I was lying straight, and that my brace was on correctly. After making sure of all that, she lifted the back end of my bed and made it so I was sitting up at a better angle for eating and drinking. "That alright?"
"Yeah, that's perfect." I nodded, happy to have the rest of the room to stare at instead of the ceiling.
The nurse walked out, and Jordan rolled my little tray table over my lap and set the mug of tea down on it. "There. NOW you can have some."
Eagerly taking the mug in both hands, I sipped it slowly, extremely happy to be tasting something other than weak hospital decaf or cranberry juice. After I set the mug back down, I sighed. "Thanks Jordan."
She leaned over and gave me a soft hug with one arm. "You're welcome Nige." She sat back down, then gently ran her fingers over the multitude of stitches in my shoulder. "These are looking pretty red...you've gotta make sure they don't get infected."
The feeling of her cold fingertips on the hot skin around the cuts made me shiver slightly, and I quickly took another drink of the tea to stop it. "The docs wash them out everyday...they're fine." I glanced around the room and sighed. "Have they told YOU anything about me yet?"
She shook her head. "They haven't said anything to anybody. Not me, not Garret, not even Renee...and she's been almost ready to slap lawsuits on them for not informing us of your condition. They keep saying something about giving information to the relatives only."
I nodded. "Which would mean my father, which doesn't matter anyways. He doesn't care what happens to me."
Jordan nodded in agreement. "You're right." She was about to say something else when the doctor who had been in charge of my case walked in the room.
"Good afternoon Nigel, Jordan." He smiled down at the both of us. "How are you feeling today? You have any movement in your legs or toes today?"
I shook my head. "Not yet, but they're not as numb feeling as they were yesterday."
He smiled. "That's normally a good sign. The brace is helping."
"Do you have any other information about me?" I looked up at him eagerly. "Like, when can I get out of here?"
"You're not going to be able to leave for a while, I'm afraid...and I know how boring it is for you to sit in here all by yourself." The doctor looked towards the doorway. "If it's alright with you, I was wondering if we could put someone in the bed on the other side of the room from you."
"Who is it?" Jordan looked towards the doorway as well.
"I believe he's a...17 year old male who was involved in an automobile accident."
"Why isn't he in a pediatrics unit?" I looked over at Jordan. Children 18 and under were normally put into the pediatrics unit so they could be with children their own age and not feel so out of place.
"He lost his left leg slightly above the knee, and he has a hairline pelvis fracture that's made it so he needs to be confined to his bed." The doctor shook his head. "It's tragic, really...according to witness reports, he hit a speedbump at a bad angle going way too fast, and he ended up wrapping his car around a telephone pole. Killed the passenger instantly."
Jordan shook her head. "Who was in the car with him?"
"His girlfriend of three years. At least that's what his parents told me." He paused for a moment. "But, the reason I want to bring him in here is because he needs to be somewhere quiet, and right now you're about the quietest patient we've got. Everybody else in osteology is moaning and complaining about the pain that they're in, but you're a trooper."
"Sounds like I'm the odd one out, huh?" I smiled up at him.
"So, you alright with bringing him in here?"
"Yeah. That's fine. You need me to do anything?"
"Probably just stay like you are for a while, at least until visiting hours are over. His parents are here, and I'm sorry to say that they're not accepting his injuries too well...we're going to try and shoo them out right when time is up, for your sake."
I shook my head. "Let them stay. It'll give me something to watch."
The doctor smiled, then turned and walked towards the entrance to the room. "I'll go bring him down."
Jordan smiled at him as he left, then she turned back to me. "So...this mean that I'm not entertaining enough for you?"
"No, Love, it means that you need to give me more tea." I pushed the mug towards her, and she obliged by filling it up. As she was doing so, I heard the muffled sounds of her pager coming from her purse. "You might want to look at that."
"Yeah, I know." She set the tea back in front of me, then sighed as she dug her pager out of her purse. "Great. Just what I need to come back to work for."
"What is it?"
"Multiple gunshot victims from a drive-by. The shooter had good aim, unfortunately. I've gotta get back...Garret's calling everybody in." Jordan leaned over and gave me another hug. "I'll stop by tomorrow, alright?"
"Okay. Thanks for the tea, Jordan."
"Bye Nige." She walked out of the room and left me by myself, and I waited for the doctor to bring the kid down.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I heard was slightly raised voices arguing about something. Groggily opening an eye and looking across the room, I noticed that there was a group of people huddled around the bed, and two of them were arguing which each other. I sat silent and watched as they became more and more angry, and I began to feel sorry for the boy, who was lying there watching them fight.
I debated on whether or not to say something, and I was about to ask them to quiet down, but the nurse that walked in did it for me.
After reprimanding the parents for being so loud, she promptly kicked everyone out of the room, claiming that visiting hours were over and it was time for both of us to get some rest. I was thankful for their lack of protest, and after some teary goodbyes, they finally left the room, leaving it in silence.
I looked over at the boy who was staring up at the ceiling blankly. I almost laughed, for I could see myself doing the same thing on a daily basis. Deciding to start some conversation, I spoke towards his side of the room.
"Careful, you might memorize the patterns too fast and be bored for the next week."
He looked over at me. "What did you say?"
"I said, you might memorize the patterns in the ceiling to fast and you'll be bored out of your mind for the next week." I laughed. "I've done it myself."
"How long have you been in here?"
"About a week. Although, I wasn't fully awake for about half of it." I looked over at the doorway.
"Why are you here?" He followed my gaze to the doorway, where I was flagging down a passing nurse.
"Can I help you sir?" The R.N. moved to my bedside after smiling at the boy.
"Can you move me over next to him so we can talk without shouting across the room?" I pointed at the boy. "Please?"
"Of course." She gently wheeled my bed over next to the boy's, then asked if I needed anything else. Upon my head shake, she exited the room.
"Much better. So you asked why I was here?" I looked over at the boy again.
"Yeah. What happened to you?" I could tell he was looking at his own leg and then at me.
"I got shot and a bullet hit my spine. I can't move anything from the waist down. You?" I acted as if I didn't notice that the sheet above his missing leg rested on the bed and not where a leg should be. I wanted him to think that I didn't even notice what was wrong with him.
"I was in a car accident...I lost my leg and broke my hip...at least that's what the doctor's said happened."
"Oh. I didn't even notice your leg." I smiled at him. "By the way, my name's Nigel." I held a hand out towards him, IV's trailing out of my arm.
"I'm Ryan." He shook my hand weakly, as I could tell he was in some pain in doing so. "So you can't walk? Does it hurt?"
"Well, I can't feel much...and it doesn't hurt because the hospital's got me on such a painkiller schedule to keep the swelling in my spinal cord down. How about yours?"
"I...can't feel anything in that leg...it's pretty weird. It's so different not even having anything there...it's really freaky. And my hips are pretty sore, probably because they're broken. Why'd you get shot?" He smiled weakly at me, and I could tell he was tired but he didn't want to stop talking.
"I was trying to bust some guys that killed this kid a long time ago...you see, I work for the coroner's office, and I got a case of a dead little kid that was found in an alley, and I finally figured out who killed him. Then I went to catch him, and the guy shot me."
"Did you pass out?"
"Yeah...I had a pretty bad seizure too. I had a reaction to one of the medications that they gave me."
I saw his face fall, and then I saw his eye's well up with tears. "You said you work for the coroner?"
I nodded, knowing exactly what he was getting at.
"Would you be able to tell me how somebody died?"
I nodded again. "If the autopsy has been completed already." Looking into his eyes, I swallowed hard. "What's her name?"
Fighting back tears, he attempted not to break into sobs as he spoke. "Heather. Heather Rice."
"Can you hand me that phone?" I motioned for the phone on the other side of the bed. Sure, I probably shouldn't be doing this for the kid, but I knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep if he didn't know. I took the phone from him and nodded. "Now get me an outside line."
He pressed the buttons needed, and then I told him the phone number to the Morgue's front desk. Upon hearing Emmy's voice on the line, I asked if I could talk to Jordan.
Luckily, she'd just gotten out of autopsy, so I could.
"Hey Jordan"
"Hi Nige! What's up?"
I glanced over Ryan, who was pleading with me with his eyes. I nodded.
"I was wondering if you guys had gotten the body of a..." I paused, then mouthed him to tell me her age. "...Of a seventeen year old female that was killed in a car crash."
"Hold on, let me check." I heard her rummage through several papers, and then she came back on the line. "Yeah, we did. Already been processed."
"Alright. Can you tell me what the cause of death was?" I noticed that Ryan was holding back tears as I spoke, so I turned my gaze up to the ceiling.
"Why do you want to know...and how did you even know about the body Nigel?"
I shook my head to myself. "Think Jordan."
A brief pause, and then I heard her sigh in realization. "I technically shouldn't release that to you."
"Since when has that stopped you before, Jordan, seriously."
"Alright alright. She died of...cerebral and internal hemorrhage due to massive head and chest trauma. Several ribs punctured her lungs, stomach, and heart...x-rays show massive amounts of blood loss through all internal organs. It wasn't pretty, Nigel. She drowned on her own blood."
I had to fight the gag reflex that I felt coming on, and I breathed in deeply to stop myself from freaking out. "So...instantly right?"
"No...she had massive respiratory failure and had to choke to death..."
I cut her off before she could go any farther. "Thanks Jordan. Instantly, that's what I thought." I then hung up the phone and passed it back to Ryan, who hung it up.
"So?" He looked over at me.
"One of her ribs pierced her heart. She died instantly." I placed a hand on his arm and sighed. "She didn't even know what happened."
He nodded, then yawned one of the hugest yawns I'd seen in a while. "I guess...that's good..."
I smiled. "Get some sleep man. You're gonna need it to be able to memorize the ceiling tomorrow."
I didn't know if he heard me or not, because he was already asleep by the time I had paged for a nurse to come move my bed back across the room and get him a blanket. After she had dimmed the lights, I checked the clock on the wall.
4 A.M.
4 hours until my morning round of jello. Wonderful.
TBC....
**thanks for reading! and remember, reviews and comments are always appreciated. the big chapter 30 is coming up too, so lots of feedback means a LONG chapter!**