" ER/Stand Crossover "
Jeanie Boulet generally didn't think of herself as a particularly lucky person in life but she did consider herself basically happy. She had a bad marriage and a deadly infectious disease. She tried not to let that get her down. It had been hard at first. Particularly considering the nature of her illness, she had a hard time keeping her smile in place on a day to day basis. She had come to a realization a year or so earlier though. Life is short, and in her case, probably shorter than average. If I'm not getting as much time as everyone else, she told herself, I might as well be happy.
Still, as she looked down the hallway of the ER littered with dead patients, she found it rather difficult to look on the bright side, but she decided to try. On the one hand, the superflu epidemic was killing everyone. On the other hand, she felt fine. Now that's irony for you, she thought as she tidied up the chart area. The woman that's HIV positive survives while all the healthy people drop dead. It was almost laughable.
Of course she wasn't the only one who was not catching the newest plague. Carter and Kerry weren't sick. Neither were Lucy or Randi. Everyone else though, they were either dead or dying. The patients had pretty much stopped coming and the remaining soldiers were all very sick. It would not be long before they had to make a decision on what to do, which was likely why both Carter and Lucy were deep in discussion. It looked like an argument. She walked over to them. " What's going on?"
" We need to get out of here." Carter said easily. He was looking a little scruffy from not shaving, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but the truth was, he looked better than before. Doug Ross had sedated him and he'd slept for almost 24 hours. It had made a difference. He seemed back on track. If he didn't seem completely fine, Jeanie thought that was rather understandable. She didn't feel completely fine with the situation either. She wondered idly how Doug was doing. Probably not well, she thought with a sigh.
Lucy nodded at that. She gestured to a row of soldiers lying on gurneys. " Some of them are still well enough to...you know...shoot. Captain Walker told the ones that are still ok to shoot *us* if we leave. " She shook her head. " That guy is psycho."
That, Jeannie thought, was a pretty accurate assessment of the soon to be dead army captain. Unfortunately for everyone, the captain was having a slow progression of the disease. She didn't doubt that he could and would shoot all of them. Considering how few people were actually surviving the plague, the death of an immune person was a tragedy beyond repair. " There's food in the cafeteria, " she said quietly. " I think we should just wait this man out. You know he's going to die. He's been sick for three days...three days that we could see the symptoms. What's the longest anyone has lived with this? Seven, eight days? And he's not going to be physically capable of much soon. Let's just wait him out."
Carter nodded. " We shouldn't be stupid though. Randi suggested, and I agree, that we should get some handguns from the soldiers. The dead soldiers, obviously. We need to protect ourselves. Randi is *discretely* checking the bodies for weapons."
" That's a good idea." Jeanie agreed. " So what are you arguing about? "
" I don't think giving Dr. Weaver a gun is such a great idea." Lucy said quickly. Her face reddened but she seemed determined to make the point. " I know you two have known her longer than I have, but just look at how she's acting. She may not be consciously suicidal but she's not rational right now. I can't believe you think its a good idea to give her a loaded handgun."
Carter's face took on a look of exasperation. He was exhausted, Jeanie could see that, and frustrated. " Lucy, " he said softly, " I don't think we should just hand Dr. Weaver a gun. I do agree with you that she's not rational right now. She needs to get more than an hour or two of sleep. The problem is that we have no way of stopping her from getting a gun. She may already have a gun. There's certainly enough of them floating around the ER that she could have picked one up. My point is this. We need to treat her carefully, but we also need to make sure we *all* get out of here alive. If anyone is in danger right now its her. What you're suggesting is not going to help."
Jeanie held up her hand. " What is Lucy suggesting? She didn't like the discussion they were having, but she could see the necessity of it. Kerry wasn't right in the head, as Jeanie's father used to say. She'd gotten the notion of going down with the hospital stuck in her thoughts and was obsessing on it. Plus, she hadn't slept or eaten in days and Jeanie knew that could make anyone irrational. Unfortunately, she also could see Carter's point. John often didn't like to listen to Lucy though, and it was possible she had a good idea.
" I think we should sedate her." Lucy said. " I can get her to drink some juice. We can put some Haldol or Valium in the juice. She'll get some rest. We could get an IV going to replace some fluids and she'll be a lot better. Letting her run around like some half crazed zombie is not the right thing to do. What do you think Jeanie?"
" She's got a point, Carter." Before she could keep going though, there was a crash. All three people turned around. Captain Walker stood there, beside an overturned crash cart.
" I know you sons of bitches have a vaccine." Walker rasped out. He waved his M-16 at them. He coughed. " I want it! I want it now!"
Randi lifted the handgun from the dead soldier's holster. It was a Colt .45, and it was loaded. Too big for her, she decided, but Carter might like it. She'd hoped to find a few 9mm guns but all of the Guardsmen were carrying the older issue weapons. Cut backs strike again, she thought mirthlessly. She preferred a smaller gun. Not that she had that much experience shooting, but there had been a few occasions in her past where a gun had been useful. Generally all she did was wave them around while asking for all the money. She had put that sort of behavior behind her, but she could see where having a little knowledge was going to come in handy. She knew for example that the kick from a .45 would tear up her hand.
She also knew that out of the people still alive in the ER, she was probably the one with the most realistic view of what happened and what was going to happen. Carter and Lucy, she almost chuckled, were just starting to get the idea that things were not going to get better despite all of their attempts. Jeanie Boulet was different in that respect. Jeanie seemed to get the point that things were different. The world was a much different place than what it had been ten days earlier. Jeanie was keeping herself together. Then there was Dr. Weaver, who also seemed to understand how things were different but was definitely not keeping herself together. Not quite the nutcase that Lucy thought she was, but Randi agreed that the older woman could use some mood altering meds, if only because she just wasn't looking good. The last thing Randi wanted to see was anyone die needlessly and Weaver was a person she genuinely liked. She also genuinely liked Carter, Lucy and Jeanie which was why she had stuck around when it would have been simply easier to leave. It was also why she was rooting around an exam room full of corpses looking for guns she didn't want.
There was a noise behind her. She spun around, the gun out. She hadn't seen anyone moving when she entered, but that didn't mean that some feverish soldier wasn't ready to kill her.
" Randi, why are you pointing a gun at me?" Randi lowered the gun, as Weaver slowly pulled herself upright. The older woman was bleeding from a large cut on the right side of her head. She looked at Randi quizzically. " Is that even loaded?"
" I don't know... What happened to you?" Randi was surprised to say the least. No one in the room looked well enough, or alive enough, to have attacked the woman.
Weaver shrugged as if nothing was wrong. " I think that bastard Walker hit me with my crutch. You know, a .45 is too big for your hand. You should try something like this." She pulled out a gleaming 9mm Glock semiautomatic from her lab coat.
Oh that's just great, Randi thought as Weaver pointed the gun at her. " Where did you get that?"
Weaver twirled it, and then pointed towards the heap of bodies stacked in the corner. Randi noticed suddenly that there was an unpleasant odor emanating from the corner. Bodies and ninety degree heat didn't go well together. " I got it from one of the dead gangbangers over there. Could you help me find my crutch?"
I'd be happy to help any non-rational person pointing a gun at me, Randi thought. She started to look around, hoping that the woman would just collapse while they looked. Instead, she heard a crash out in the hallway. " What was that?"
" I'll go check it out. You keep looking for my crutch." With that, Weaver limped badly out the door. Now, Randi thought to herself, do I run out and tackle her? Or do I assume that she's going to fall on her face?
The sound of gun shots drove any more consideration out of her head.
" Now you're gonna give me the damn vaccine." Walker snarled. He raised the gun. " I know you have it."
The three all raised up their hands. " We don't have a vaccine." Lucy said worriedly. Jeanie could have slapped her right then. Of course we have a vaccine you nitwit, she thought, its called 100mgs of morphine and it'd sure cure this idiot in a hurry. Saying no was exactly the wrong way to handle him, but as he lowered the weapon towards Lucy, Jeanie couldn't think of anything else to do.
He fired. A bright red splotch exploded on Lucy's shoulder even as Carter pulled her down. Walker started to aim the gun again when Jeanie heard more shots. She waited for the bullets to strike, but instead five holes seemed to punch through Walker's chest. He fell to the floor, face down. Jeanie looked up. Kerry was standing in the middle of the hallway, holding a gun.
Kerry stepped forward, lurching steps without her crutch, and Jeanie saw the blood on her forehead. She limped up to the now dead captain. " Is he dead? Are you all ok? Lucy, did he shoot you?"
" Just a flesh wound." Carter said nervously as he grabbed some gauze pads off of a rack and pressed them to Lucy. " Right Lucy? You're ok?"
" I'm fine..." She didn't sound fine but then, Jeanie reasoned, she'd just been shot and Kerry was still casually waving a gun at them all. " Just grazed me, Dr. Weaver, I'll be fine."
" Good." Kerry looked down at the cooling corpse. " Those shots are so close together, I could cover them with the palm of my hand. I wonder if I could do that again." She lowered the gun and fired off five more rounds into the captain's head. It splattered into streaks of gore on the tile. She frowned, and dropped the clip from the gun with expert ease and replaced it with a fresh one. " The head's not a good target." She aimed at his lower back and fired five more shots. " That's better." She reached over to the counter and grabbed a small stack of charts. " I'm going to go finish these up in the lounge."
" Kerry..." Jeannie didn't quite know what to say. " Your head... You're bleeding. Would you like me to take a look at that?"
" Oh no, I'm fine. " She turned and limped into the lounge. All three of the remaining people let out their breaths.
" And that is why I don't think she should have a gun." Lucy said after a long moment. Jeannie couldn't help it, she started to laugh. It wasn't funny, not at all, and yet in some bizarre way it was. After a moment, Carter joined her and even Lucy managed a chuckle. The dim hallway was filled, if just for a moment, with the sound of laughter.
??
Jeanie Boulet generally didn't think of herself as a particularly lucky person in life but she did consider herself basically happy. She had a bad marriage and a deadly infectious disease. She tried not to let that get her down. It had been hard at first. Particularly considering the nature of her illness, she had a hard time keeping her smile in place on a day to day basis. She had come to a realization a year or so earlier though. Life is short, and in her case, probably shorter than average. If I'm not getting as much time as everyone else, she told herself, I might as well be happy.
Still, as she looked down the hallway of the ER littered with dead patients, she found it rather difficult to look on the bright side, but she decided to try. On the one hand, the superflu epidemic was killing everyone. On the other hand, she felt fine. Now that's irony for you, she thought as she tidied up the chart area. The woman that's HIV positive survives while all the healthy people drop dead. It was almost laughable.
Of course she wasn't the only one who was not catching the newest plague. Carter and Kerry weren't sick. Neither were Lucy or Randi. Everyone else though, they were either dead or dying. The patients had pretty much stopped coming and the remaining soldiers were all very sick. It would not be long before they had to make a decision on what to do, which was likely why both Carter and Lucy were deep in discussion. It looked like an argument. She walked over to them. " What's going on?"
" We need to get out of here." Carter said easily. He was looking a little scruffy from not shaving, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but the truth was, he looked better than before. Doug Ross had sedated him and he'd slept for almost 24 hours. It had made a difference. He seemed back on track. If he didn't seem completely fine, Jeanie thought that was rather understandable. She didn't feel completely fine with the situation either. She wondered idly how Doug was doing. Probably not well, she thought with a sigh.
Lucy nodded at that. She gestured to a row of soldiers lying on gurneys. " Some of them are still well enough to...you know...shoot. Captain Walker told the ones that are still ok to shoot *us* if we leave. " She shook her head. " That guy is psycho."
That, Jeannie thought, was a pretty accurate assessment of the soon to be dead army captain. Unfortunately for everyone, the captain was having a slow progression of the disease. She didn't doubt that he could and would shoot all of them. Considering how few people were actually surviving the plague, the death of an immune person was a tragedy beyond repair. " There's food in the cafeteria, " she said quietly. " I think we should just wait this man out. You know he's going to die. He's been sick for three days...three days that we could see the symptoms. What's the longest anyone has lived with this? Seven, eight days? And he's not going to be physically capable of much soon. Let's just wait him out."
Carter nodded. " We shouldn't be stupid though. Randi suggested, and I agree, that we should get some handguns from the soldiers. The dead soldiers, obviously. We need to protect ourselves. Randi is *discretely* checking the bodies for weapons."
" That's a good idea." Jeanie agreed. " So what are you arguing about? "
" I don't think giving Dr. Weaver a gun is such a great idea." Lucy said quickly. Her face reddened but she seemed determined to make the point. " I know you two have known her longer than I have, but just look at how she's acting. She may not be consciously suicidal but she's not rational right now. I can't believe you think its a good idea to give her a loaded handgun."
Carter's face took on a look of exasperation. He was exhausted, Jeanie could see that, and frustrated. " Lucy, " he said softly, " I don't think we should just hand Dr. Weaver a gun. I do agree with you that she's not rational right now. She needs to get more than an hour or two of sleep. The problem is that we have no way of stopping her from getting a gun. She may already have a gun. There's certainly enough of them floating around the ER that she could have picked one up. My point is this. We need to treat her carefully, but we also need to make sure we *all* get out of here alive. If anyone is in danger right now its her. What you're suggesting is not going to help."
Jeanie held up her hand. " What is Lucy suggesting? She didn't like the discussion they were having, but she could see the necessity of it. Kerry wasn't right in the head, as Jeanie's father used to say. She'd gotten the notion of going down with the hospital stuck in her thoughts and was obsessing on it. Plus, she hadn't slept or eaten in days and Jeanie knew that could make anyone irrational. Unfortunately, she also could see Carter's point. John often didn't like to listen to Lucy though, and it was possible she had a good idea.
" I think we should sedate her." Lucy said. " I can get her to drink some juice. We can put some Haldol or Valium in the juice. She'll get some rest. We could get an IV going to replace some fluids and she'll be a lot better. Letting her run around like some half crazed zombie is not the right thing to do. What do you think Jeanie?"
" She's got a point, Carter." Before she could keep going though, there was a crash. All three people turned around. Captain Walker stood there, beside an overturned crash cart.
" I know you sons of bitches have a vaccine." Walker rasped out. He waved his M-16 at them. He coughed. " I want it! I want it now!"
Randi lifted the handgun from the dead soldier's holster. It was a Colt .45, and it was loaded. Too big for her, she decided, but Carter might like it. She'd hoped to find a few 9mm guns but all of the Guardsmen were carrying the older issue weapons. Cut backs strike again, she thought mirthlessly. She preferred a smaller gun. Not that she had that much experience shooting, but there had been a few occasions in her past where a gun had been useful. Generally all she did was wave them around while asking for all the money. She had put that sort of behavior behind her, but she could see where having a little knowledge was going to come in handy. She knew for example that the kick from a .45 would tear up her hand.
She also knew that out of the people still alive in the ER, she was probably the one with the most realistic view of what happened and what was going to happen. Carter and Lucy, she almost chuckled, were just starting to get the idea that things were not going to get better despite all of their attempts. Jeanie Boulet was different in that respect. Jeanie seemed to get the point that things were different. The world was a much different place than what it had been ten days earlier. Jeanie was keeping herself together. Then there was Dr. Weaver, who also seemed to understand how things were different but was definitely not keeping herself together. Not quite the nutcase that Lucy thought she was, but Randi agreed that the older woman could use some mood altering meds, if only because she just wasn't looking good. The last thing Randi wanted to see was anyone die needlessly and Weaver was a person she genuinely liked. She also genuinely liked Carter, Lucy and Jeanie which was why she had stuck around when it would have been simply easier to leave. It was also why she was rooting around an exam room full of corpses looking for guns she didn't want.
There was a noise behind her. She spun around, the gun out. She hadn't seen anyone moving when she entered, but that didn't mean that some feverish soldier wasn't ready to kill her.
" Randi, why are you pointing a gun at me?" Randi lowered the gun, as Weaver slowly pulled herself upright. The older woman was bleeding from a large cut on the right side of her head. She looked at Randi quizzically. " Is that even loaded?"
" I don't know... What happened to you?" Randi was surprised to say the least. No one in the room looked well enough, or alive enough, to have attacked the woman.
Weaver shrugged as if nothing was wrong. " I think that bastard Walker hit me with my crutch. You know, a .45 is too big for your hand. You should try something like this." She pulled out a gleaming 9mm Glock semiautomatic from her lab coat.
Oh that's just great, Randi thought as Weaver pointed the gun at her. " Where did you get that?"
Weaver twirled it, and then pointed towards the heap of bodies stacked in the corner. Randi noticed suddenly that there was an unpleasant odor emanating from the corner. Bodies and ninety degree heat didn't go well together. " I got it from one of the dead gangbangers over there. Could you help me find my crutch?"
I'd be happy to help any non-rational person pointing a gun at me, Randi thought. She started to look around, hoping that the woman would just collapse while they looked. Instead, she heard a crash out in the hallway. " What was that?"
" I'll go check it out. You keep looking for my crutch." With that, Weaver limped badly out the door. Now, Randi thought to herself, do I run out and tackle her? Or do I assume that she's going to fall on her face?
The sound of gun shots drove any more consideration out of her head.
" Now you're gonna give me the damn vaccine." Walker snarled. He raised the gun. " I know you have it."
The three all raised up their hands. " We don't have a vaccine." Lucy said worriedly. Jeanie could have slapped her right then. Of course we have a vaccine you nitwit, she thought, its called 100mgs of morphine and it'd sure cure this idiot in a hurry. Saying no was exactly the wrong way to handle him, but as he lowered the weapon towards Lucy, Jeanie couldn't think of anything else to do.
He fired. A bright red splotch exploded on Lucy's shoulder even as Carter pulled her down. Walker started to aim the gun again when Jeanie heard more shots. She waited for the bullets to strike, but instead five holes seemed to punch through Walker's chest. He fell to the floor, face down. Jeanie looked up. Kerry was standing in the middle of the hallway, holding a gun.
Kerry stepped forward, lurching steps without her crutch, and Jeanie saw the blood on her forehead. She limped up to the now dead captain. " Is he dead? Are you all ok? Lucy, did he shoot you?"
" Just a flesh wound." Carter said nervously as he grabbed some gauze pads off of a rack and pressed them to Lucy. " Right Lucy? You're ok?"
" I'm fine..." She didn't sound fine but then, Jeanie reasoned, she'd just been shot and Kerry was still casually waving a gun at them all. " Just grazed me, Dr. Weaver, I'll be fine."
" Good." Kerry looked down at the cooling corpse. " Those shots are so close together, I could cover them with the palm of my hand. I wonder if I could do that again." She lowered the gun and fired off five more rounds into the captain's head. It splattered into streaks of gore on the tile. She frowned, and dropped the clip from the gun with expert ease and replaced it with a fresh one. " The head's not a good target." She aimed at his lower back and fired five more shots. " That's better." She reached over to the counter and grabbed a small stack of charts. " I'm going to go finish these up in the lounge."
" Kerry..." Jeannie didn't quite know what to say. " Your head... You're bleeding. Would you like me to take a look at that?"
" Oh no, I'm fine. " She turned and limped into the lounge. All three of the remaining people let out their breaths.
" And that is why I don't think she should have a gun." Lucy said after a long moment. Jeannie couldn't help it, she started to laugh. It wasn't funny, not at all, and yet in some bizarre way it was. After a moment, Carter joined her and even Lucy managed a chuckle. The dim hallway was filled, if just for a moment, with the sound of laughter.
??