Sam opened her eyes to a grey ceiling and a bright white light. She snapped her eyes closed as the piercing sensation sent knives into her brain.
"Hey," she heard a gentle female voice to her right and she turned her head in that direction and attempted to open her eyes again. "You've got a tube in your throat because you were having some difficulty breathing. Want me to take it out?"
Sam nodded quickly and turned her head back to the ceiling.
"Okay, I want you to cough on three, you got it?"
She fought the urge to roll her eyes and nodded instead.
As the tube was pulled from her throat, Sam coughed and gagged slightly. What a horrible feeling.
"My name is Abby, can you tell me your name?"
"Sam, Sam Taggert." She looked around and saw that there was another nurse standing at the foot of the bed, flicking through a chart. "Where am I?"
"You're in County General," said Abby and Sam cringed slightly.
She lifted her hand off the bed and saw Abby's eyes turn towards it, then look back to her face with a questioning look in her eyes.
"Samantha Taggert, the new ER nurse," she smiled slightly when she saw Abby's lips form an 'O'.
"We thought you'd changed your mind, Weaver was having kittens... I think she might let you off seeing as you have a pretty good excuse for being late." Abby grinned.
Sam laughed slightly but stopped when her ribs began to burn. She reached her hand up and pressed it tightly to her chest.
"Ah, yeah, you have some bruised ribs. The way you fell, and then the impact of Luka landing on top of you, sort of... bruised them."
Sam looked at Abby questioningly at the mention of the name 'Luka'.
"Luka?" She cocked her head to the side, still clutching her chest as her eyelids became heavy, trying to pull her into sleep.
"Yeah?" She heard a familiar gravelly, heavily accented voice coming from the doorway but her foggy brain refused to acknowledge who the voice belonged to. "Abby, they need you in trauma one," he said and nodded in the direction of trauma one.
"Okay," Abby turned to Sam and smiled. "I'll be back later to check in on you."
Sam nodded and watched Abby walk away. She heard the doors swing shut, and she closed her eyes as her eyes' tiredness finally won out.
Luka stood at the foot of her bed and studied her sleeping form. She now had a patch of gauze at the left hand side of her forehead from where she had hit her head as she fell, her lips were still swollen, her eyes tinted dark with bruises, her right cheek swollen and he could see the edge of a bandage peak over the top of the gown she had been put in.
He looked down at her chart and shook his head slightly. Bruises covered most of her body, and he noticed that someone - most likely Abby - had noted that some looked old, too old to have been from the crash. Her hip bone was seriously bruised, her ribs too. She had stopped breathing in the ambulance and they had had to intubate her.
He reached up and ran his hand across his neck, which had sustained more burns as a result of his heroism and he tensed slightly when he pressed a little too heavily onto it. He couldn't move his head about too much without pulling at the tight, charred skin. He then reached up and touched lightly the lump on the right hand side of his forehead where he had hit it off of the concrete when he had pushed the woman out of the way of the El. His shoulder still ached from when he fell on the ice but he had taken a shot of vicodin to ease it slightly. He rolled it back and forwards and felt the muscles twinge slightly but it was bearable. When he had woken up in the ambulance as it screamed through the streets of Chicago he was told he had been lucky.
He didn't know if he would call it luck.
The images he had seen would no doubt haunt his dreams for months to come.
The rush had died down slightly, he was told, and Kerry had ordered him to go home when she realised that he had been involved in the crash. He had told her he had to go and see if one of his patients had been brought to County when he heard the shouts from Carter to "Get Abby!" When he opened the swing door to exam three and he saw Abby talking to The Nurse he had felt a strange sense of relief.
And then something else entirely when he heard her say his name.
He shook his head and tried futily to rid those thoughts from his head.
He hadn't really had a chance to talk to Abby but he knew that he would see her later that night.
"Hey," he looked up to The Nurse and smiled at her slightly, his smile genuine when he heard her voice break the silence. "What are you doing here?"
He pointed to his face, his neck and then his shoulder and shrugged with his right arm.
She smiled at him and pointed to all of her own injuries and Luka smiled when she was still pointing a minute later.
"From what I hear, I caused more damage to you than the fire did," he smiled sheepishly and heard her laughing. It was a sound that sent shivers down his spine.
"Aaah!" She groaned. "Don't make me laugh," she panted and he looked at her sheepishly, bting his bottom lip.
He placed her chart on the end of her bed and moved up to her side.
"Sorry," he said as he reached her side and began fiddling with the machines, reading her vitals. He saw her head tilt towards him and felt her eyes travel up and down his body again.
"I hope you know what you're doing," she spoke with a half serious, half mocking tone and a smile.
"I work here, so I hope I know what I'm doing."
Sam felt her breathe catch in her throat as she heard his words.
Shiiiiit.
She tried to form a coherent sentence and looked up at him again, her eyes once again taking in his handsome form.
"Uuuh," she muttered and saw him smile slightly and saw that he was watching her from the corner of his eye with a smile tugging at his lips. She looked away and cleared her throat. "Me too."
She saw his head snap around and his amused half smile was replaced with a look of sheer panic as his eyes flailed between her and the swing door that looked across the hall to the trauma room.
He tried to stop his jaw from dropping and he instinctively looked towards trauma one and saw Abby rushing around with an ET tube in her hand. He gulped slightly and then looked back to The Nurse and smiled tightly.
"Doctor Luka Kovac," he held his hand out towards her and saw her eyes move down towards his arms to it.
"Nurse Sam Taggert, started this morning," she replied and he tried to ignore the tingling sensation that made its way up his arm at the touch of her hand.
Oh, this was not good.
TBC