Six Days After Christmas
Part 6
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The Dynamic Duo they were not.
Seth liked Lindsay,
really he did. But from the minute he walked into the hospital and
saw her standing there completely unscathed by tonight's violence,
a mean little voice had been whispering in his head.
Why is she fine? Why is Ryan so badly hurt while she's perfectly healthy?
He stood rigid against the elevator wall, watching the numbers slowly climb.
"I'm sorry," Lindsay told Seth quietly, and he wondered if she could sense the hostility that he was trying so hard to conceal.
It's too late for sorry, Ryan's in the fucking ICU.
"Yeah, this is all your fault because I just know you called ahead and arranged for a mugging." Seth forced himself to smile at her. "Look. Ryan gets off on rescuing people. It's his thing. I've tried to convince him to pick up a new hobby, I don't know botany, but he doesn't listen. Just keeps jumping into the frying pan."
Lindsay didn't crack a smile.
"We should have left the beach earlier. I should have paid more attention to what time it was."
Fuck yeah you should have. Thanks so much for watching out for Ryan for us. You did a bang up job.
"But Ryan, he just has this way, I don't know, of making you feel like nothing bad could ever happen if you're with him. And we just having such a good time talking and things were fine, until…"
"We're here." Seth rudely interrupted her.
I don't want to hear about your happy night.
The elevator opened.
He'd never been in an ICU unit before. Was it like a club? Did he need an ID to get in?
Where was his license in case they asked him for it?
Seth patted his back pocket for his wallet, relieved when he made contact with it.
There was a small counter, kind of like the check-in at a doctor's office. But no one was manning it and Seth highly doubted that there was a bell to ring for service. He and Lindsay just stood there, waiting for someone to stumble upon them. Behind the counter, nurses in scrubs were working, typing into computers, and exchanging folders. No one paid much attention to the teenagers.
With the early hour, the hospital was dead quiet. Seth could hear beeps coming from various directions. He started to count them. When he reached seventy-eight, a woman came around the corner and asked them, "Can I help you?"
Yes, actually. You could tell us that there has been a colossal mistake and that Ryan Atwood is actually somewhere else instead of this extremely uncomfortable place that is sending my various neuroses into overdrive.
Lindsay kept quiet, forcing Seth to take charge.
He didn't want to screw with being kept from seeing Ryan by some beaurocratic bullshit.
"Yeah, please. We're here to see my brother, Ryan Atwood."
Seth pointed to Lindsay, "This is ah, my twin." Lindsay blinked at him. He put his arm around her. "Yes, my twin and Ryan's sister, both of our sister...actually, obviously. So, we're both related to Ryan and we're both eighteen by the way, in case you were wondering. Clearly old enough to be here."
The woman looked at him skeptically. "You're twins?"
"Yes," Seth faked confidence. "Fraternal. The lack of similarity is a very touchy subject so if we could just move on," he emphasized the word very, as if he was letting the woman in on a conspiracy.
The nurse gave Seth a small laugh. "Sweetie, take it down a notch. You don't need to lie your way into Intensive Care. What do you think this is, a nightclub?"
Seth considered the question with a tilt of his head and a squint of his eyes.
"So, let's cut to the chase." The woman pointed first at Seth. "I'm guessing… good friend?" Then to Lindsay, "And…girlfriend?"
"Um, close," Seth nodded. "Impressive powers of observation and skills of deduction. But I am in fact the foster brother and she's related to me but that's way too complicated to go into, and I can't imagine why I would bother or why you would want me to, so could we please just see Ryan?"
The nurse's face softened with Seth's manic ramblings. "I'm Linda. I'm one of the nurses assigned to Ryan. You said he's your foster brother? Where are your parents?"
"They're uh, on their way up," Seth answered. "We were hoping for a little time with Ryan before things get crowded."
"Things aren't going to get crowded," Linda, informed him. "In fact things are going to stay very quiet and calm and there is never going to be more than two people at a time with Ryan because what he needs most is sleep. And we have five other patients on the floor right now, and they need sleep."
Seth wanted to remind her that Ryan was sedated but it didn't seem worth the effort.
"Can we see Ryan?" Lindsay finally spoke. "Please?"
"Let's get you signed in," Linda answered.
She went over the rules, most of which Seth classified in his head as 'worthy to be followed' or 'in need of bending'. Lindsay listened quietly, nodded every now and then. Seth tried to concentrate but nothing this lady said was going to take on any importance until he saw Ryan.
Finally she led them down a hallway. The rooms were bigger than Seth would have guessed and amazingly exposed, with doors wide open, blinds on windows pulled up. Family members of various patients glanced at the three of them as they passed by the individual rooms.
Evidently people in ICU had no need for privacy.
They stopped walking outside of a room and Seth looked at the wall. Someone had scribbled on a small piece of paper, ATWOOD, R. in black magic marker and placed it on the nameplate.
Jesus and Moses, this is fucking real. This is really happening to Ryan.
Seth allowed himself to slowly turn his head, peek through the window.
Sure enough, there was Ryan, lying in a hospital bed.
Lots of white.
White sheets, white tubes, white pillows, white blankets.
For some strange reason, all Seth could think about was Ryan's constant wifebeaters. For a pale Caucasian boy, Ryan looked pretty damn good in white.
More white, a small lamp glowing soft light, over the head of the bed. Stupid ass place to put a light if you wanted someone to get some sleep.
Ryan's head was turned slightly, facing in the direction of the window. Seth took a deep breath, focused in on it.
Oh God, someone had cut Ryan's hair, taken a big chunk out of the side, a large white bandage where blonde should be.
Ryan was so not gonna' like that.
When he woke up.
He was going to wake up, the doctor said so.
Lindsay reached for Seth's hand, put hers in his, looked up at him with tears in her eyes.
He didn't hate her anymore and he was ashamed of himself for doing so at all.
Look at what those assholes had done to Ryan.
What would they have done to Lindsay, given enough time? Nothing physically happening to Ryan's body right now would compare to what his foster brother would have gone through, if Lindsay had been hurt, or raped or worse.
'Come on kids,' Seth addressed his neuroses; 'we're going to take a little stroll into the land of actual crisis.'
He could do this.
"Remember, Ryan is sedated," Linda reminded them. "He won't be able to respond to you."
With his free hand, Seth brushed his fingers through his hair. Offered, "Yeah, that's not going to be much different from our current level of interaction."
The nurse walked ahead of them, started toying with buttons on one of the machines surrounding Ryan.
Seth steered Lindsay to Ryan's bedside.
Ryan had appeared healthier through the window, less affected by violence.
But in here, close up, well, the white on white boy look really wasn't working for him tonight.
Ryan looked like he was dying.
The right side of his head was bruising, purple and crimson where the gun had hit and the bandage was failing to hide the damage. Dried blood still speckled here and there in the remaining hair. His left cheek was bruised as well.
It appeared as if someone had dragged Ryan across a road using his face as a sled.
Seth had seen Ryan bruised and bloody before. But usually there was a snarky smile or a regretful, grim frown on his face along with the injuries.
Nothing this time, in fact, despite the discoloration, Ryan looked astonishingly peaceful, as if he was just sleeping.
The breathing tube that Seth had been dreading to see, stuck out of Ryan's mouth, but it seemed natural in this setting, almost an extension of his body. The machine attached to the tube stood to the side, hissing and clicking rhythmically. It was like one of those annoying metronome things, that Seth had used to practice the piano years ago. Keeping a rhythm, setting an order and interval to Ryan's breathing.
Like Ryan was practicing with oxygen for the first time.
Several IV bags hung on a stand near the head of his bed, tubing draped across Ryan's body. Very irritating. When Ryan woke up, he'd want that crap off right away, he'd want unrestricted movement back.
Other sounds competed with the ventilator. A video display showed a steady, rapid set of blips. They chirped away like nervous ticks of a clock. Seth's eyes followed the thin, gray wires that extended from the cardiac video monitor as they disappeared under the neck of Ryan's hospital gown.
More tubing. Talk about overkill.
A thick plastic tube, with a small amount of dark red fluid, snaked along the side of the bed and emptied in to a container hanging on the bed rail.
Blood.
From Ryan's chest.
Huh.
That's never a good sign.
Ah, and yet another plastic tube.
Ryan was the Mayor of Plastic Tubing Village.
This one containing a pale yellow fluid and was secured to another receptacle at the end of the bed.
Lovely.
Seth didn't need or want to guess what orifice that particular tube called home.
And finally, a blue clothespin, or what looked like a clothespin with a small red light, was attached to Ryan's finger.
Kind of a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Clothespin.
At least it wasn't a tube.
All in all, the noise level was much louder than Seth would have imagined, considering how sick everyone was supposed to be in this place. It was all a little unnerving, at least to him, the awake person.
But, what most upset Seth was to see that Ryan's wrists were wrapped and secured to the bedrails. Were they scared of Ryan? That he might wake up and lash out and beat the hell out of someone? What had the police told them?
Seth bet the guy who cut Ryan's hair was responsible for the restraints.
He was fairly sure he was going to vomit.
Or cry.
Or both.
Seth tentatively reached out and gently traced the wrapping that tied down Ryan's right wrist, followed the cloth from the wrist to the railing.
"When you wake up Ryan," he promised his friend, "These will be the first to go."
Lindsay turned her head into Seth's chest, crying softly.
He had forgotten she was in the room.
He had to get out of this place.
"I'm sorry," she apologized.
"Shhhh," Seth soothed her, hugged her closer, rubbed her back, watched over her shoulder, at Ryan breathing in and out.
"This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault."
End of part 6