Title : In The Beginning
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG, I guess.
Summary : Ryan runs into some trouble, as he tends to do in fanfic (happy people have no stories, right?)
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Josh Schwartz. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN : Written for finlee, who wanted, "Ryan helps an old lady - who turns out to be the most feared woman in Newport Beach (but is actually very nice-she just likes people to be uncomfortable around her)."
Many thanks to cheekymice for her help, and to Joey51 for beta'ing this.
Chapter Two
The two people talking loudly around him were giving him a headache.
"Kid?"
"Young man?"
"Ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to—"
Ryan tried to turn his head away from the noise, but he couldn't move.
He heard someone say, "Ow."
The voices stopped, and Ryan almost sighed in relief. His head was starting to pound and he really wanted to go back to sleep until it passed.
"No, no, stay awake," a male voice said, too close to him.
"I'm not awake," Ryan said, before realizing that perhaps talking was not the best way to convince anyone that he was asleep.
Great.
Way to play possum.
Ryan tried to roll over to his side, and felt hands holding him in place.
"Sorry," the man said when Ryan tried to struggle. "I can't let you move until the medics are here."
Ryan groaned but stopped trying to fight him—he didn't have a chance in hell of winning anyway.
"Open your eyes, kid."
Ryan did, and blinked until the blurry face peering down at him got, well, less blurry.
"What your name?" the man asked.
"Ryan Atwood."
Then, it finally dawned on him that the man was wearing a uniform.
Wonderful.
A cop.
Just what Ryan needed to make his bad day even worse.
"Good. Do you know where you are?" the cop asked.
Ryan frowned, his memories sluggishly coming back to the surface.
Ice cream.
He had gone out to buy ice cream.
And then, he had heard an altercation.
And, naturally, stupid, misguided fool that he was, he had rushed to help.
Great.
"Ryan? Do you know where you are?"
Near that store, Ryan tried to say, but what came out of his mouth was, "No."
Uh.
Interesting.
In a freaky and totally scary way.
He tried again, and heard himself saying, "I mean, no."
"It's okay," the cop said.
Ryan tried to glare at him—how could the man say that anything was okay? What was he, dumb?—but he didn't think his angry look was very effective, all things considered.
"Do you remember what happened?" the cop asked.
Ryan sighed.
What was it with the twenty questions anyway?
And what was the point if he couldn't even answer them correctly?
"Ryan?"
The way that cop was repeating his name over and over was annoying, so Ryan decided he'd better answer, and be done with it.
Perhaps, then, the cop would finally leave him the fuck alone.
He could remember a man hitting that old woman—and hadn't she looked vaguely familiar?—and he could also remember fighting with the guy, and being pushed back, but not much more.
"Ryan?"
"Yeah," Ryan snapped. "I don't remember, okay?"
"As I told you, he hit his head," a woman's voice threw in, from some distance.
Another man joined the discussion—just how many people were there anyway?—his voice weary. "Mrs. Thyls, please…"
Now that name definitely rang a bell. "The Scary Lady's here?" Ryan asked.
He heard a strangled noise coming from the cop, and closed his eyes.
He had meant to call her Mrs. Thyls, but for some reason, the words that had gone out of his mouth hadn't been the ones he had planned.
Weird and unfortunate.
Oops.
And the way his luck was going, the woman had certainly heard him.
Again with the oops.
Ryan groaned and opened his eyes again to glare at the cop, who seemed amused.
Fucker.
Ryan closed his eyes again.
The ambulance would be there soon, he assumed, and in the meantime, he didn't feel like looking at a cop who was having way too much fun at his expense.
………………………..
"Ryan?"
He sighed inwardly.
Here they came again.
They kept waking him up—to make sure they still could, they said, but it didn't make it any less frustrating when all he wanted to do was sleep.
"Can you hear me?"
Yes, he could hear her, even though his hearing was a little strange—sometimes, noises seemed very loud, and sometimes, they sounded far away, muffled by some kind of buzzing.
He remembered complaining about it, some time ago, to some guy who had told him it was normal and it would pass eventually.
"Ryan, it's time to wake up."
Ryan ignored the voice.
He was conformable, and he was still sleepy, and whoever the hell was trying to wake him up was just going to have to wait. A long, long time.
"Ryan, please, wake up, sweetheart."
Not even nice names would bring him out of his sleep.
He deserved to rest, damn it.
"I'm going to ask you to step out, Mrs. Cohen."
Mrs. Cohen?
Kirsten was here?
"But—"
"Just so I can check him over."
He felt a hand softly brushing his forehead. "I'll be right back."
Then there was some shuffling, and a door closing.
"Ryan?"
He reluctantly tried to pry his eyes open.
"Good, I know you can hear me. Come on, Ryan, you know the drill, you need to wake up all the way, now."
Ryan tried again, and this time he managed to kind-of open his eyes.
"Hey there." A nurse smiled down at him. All the nurses he had met so far had been smiling at him. It was almost freaky. "How do you feel?"
Peachy, Ryan tried to say, but what came out of his mouth sounded more like, "Urgh."
"Headache?" the nurse insisted.
Ryan pondered that a moment before whispering, "No." This time, at least, his answer was understandable.
Progress.
"Good," she said. "We gave you some pretty strong painkillers, I don't know if you remember."
Ryan didn't.
Nor did he care.
He felt loopy, and he liked it that way, and if only these people would let him sleep, life would be good.
"Well, I know you'll find it annoying, but we're going to keep waking you up form time to time," she said.
"Yay," Ryan said, biting his lip when he realized he had said it out loud. Shit, he hadn't meant to do that.
The nurse merely smiled, though.
"Was Kirsten here?" Ryan asked.
"Yes, I'll send her right back." The nurse patted his shoulder. "She was very worried about you."
Why? Ryan thought. The nurse was gone before he could ask, and then Kirsten was there, smiling at him—what was it with all the smiling?—hesitating a moment before taking his hand.
"Hey. How do you feel?"
"Kirsten?" he mumbled, surprised at how weak his voice sounded all of a sudden.
She nodded, her smile wavering a little.
Ryan felt his eyes closing on their own accord, and heard a whispered, "Rest, I'll stay here."
………………………..
When Ryan woke up again, there was a man he didn't know by his side and Kirsten was nowhere to be seen.
"Hi, Ryan, I'm doctor Mulan."
"Hey," Ryan said, wondering where Kirsten had gone.
Had he just imagined that she was here?
"Do you mind answering a few questions for me?"
"Was Kirsten here?" Ryan asked.
The doctor nodded reassuringly. "We asked her to wait outside for a little while," he said. "We'll send her back in as soon as we're finished."
"'kay," Ryan said.
Answering "a few questions" seemed to take an eternity. Ryan was exhausted when the doctor was finally done giving him the third degree, and he still had a few blanks—a few moments, in between bouts of consciousness, when he couldn't remember anything.
The ride to the hospital for example—he remembered the cop at the scene, and he remembered waking up in the ER, but nothing in between.
And he couldn't remember what had happened between the ER and the moment when he had awoken again in a room either. A nurse had told him that they had taken him upstairs to the scan, so they could make sure he hadn't injured himself too badly, but Ryan was drawing a blank whenever he tried to remember any of it.
The doctor didn't seem too concerned about the memory loss, which Ryan assumed was good. Besides, it wasn't like this was the first time he was knocked out in a fight and lost a few minutes of his life.
He didn't like it, and he didn't like the detached feeling he experienced sometimes—as if someone else took control of his body and Ryan was stuck with the observer role, and whether this was due to the concussion or to the painkillers, it sucked—but he could deal with it.
………………………..
True to his word, the doctor sent Kirsten back in as soon as he was finished, and Ryan decided that he liked the guy.
"How do you feel?" Kirsten asked as soon as she entered the room.
"Shitty," Ryan replied. He felt his cheeks burn at her smile. "Sorry," he added.
"It's okay."
"Why are you here?" Ryan asked.
"The hospital called us," Kirsten replied. "Told us you had been involved in a fight. Of course, I came."
"But Seth…" Ryan felt his eyes close, and Kirsten took his hand and squeezed it, just once.
"Sandy is with him," she said. "Sleep now. I'll be here when you wake up."
Ryan didn't have the energy to do anything else.
………………………..
Ryan spent the next day in the hospital, repeating to himself that it could have been worse.
At least nothing was broken.
At least he hadn't been arrested, and no one seemed to imply that he had done anything wrong.
At least he probably wouldn't stay here long.
At least they were giving him strong painkillers.
At least he hadn't said anything he didn't mean to say in the last two hours, and he hoped that meant that that particular side-effect of the concussion was over.
At least…
Well, that was about it, Ryan thought glumly.
And none of this made up for the general suckiness of the situation.
He hadn't even lasted a month here before landing in the hospital.
He was stuck on a hospital bed on a beautiful summer day.
Granted, Seth was going to be stuck inside the house for a few weeks, and that was much worse than what Ryan was suffering, but still…
It sucked.
Not that he shouldn't have expected something like that; Atwood luck and Seth's parting words the previous night—every sign had been pointing in this direction.
Of course, something like this was going to happen.
Ryan sighed and closed his eyes, hoping he'd be able to catch some sleep. Since he was condemned to spend time here, he might as well sleep it away.
He had sent Kirsten back to the house, so she could shower and eat something that didn't come out of a vending machine. It had taken some work to convince her that, yes, he felt more than able to spend a couple of hours by himself here, and that no, really, he didn't mind if she went home for a while. She had promised she'd come back as soon as possible, or at the very least send Sandy to keep him company.
She seemed reluctant to leave him, and he had refrained from pointing out that she had already done more for him that night than his own mother had ever done. He didn't like the slightly pitying expression on her face when he said things like that.
He still couldn't believe she had stayed there all night—he vaguely remembered waking up, early in the morning, with a splitting headache, and he had been alone in the room by then. He had barely had the time to feel slightly disappointed that she wasn't there, when she'd entered the room, taken one look at him, and asked, "Are you in pain?"
Naturally, at that point, his brain's newfound tendency to say things Ryan didn't mean had kicked in, and he'd heard himself say, "No."
"Ryan?" Kirsten had insisted.
"No," he'd said again, frowning as he mentally chanted, "Yes, yes, fuck, yes."
Thankfully, Kirsten had correctly interpreted his frown and had called a nurse anyway, then had held his hand until the nurse had given him a new dose of painkiller.
He had drifted back to sleep hearing her muttered reassurances, and feeling safer than he had in a long while—which, Ryan thought now, was more than a little irrational. He had been in Newport for all of three weeks, he barely knew the Cohens, and he still wasn't sure that this arrangement would last.
And Kirsten had left her broken-legged son to come sit with Ryan all night, even though a month ago, she didn't even know he existed.
What kind of people did that?
Ryan sighed and checked the clock, noting that it was almost time for another dose of painkillers—a good thing too, as he could feel the beginning of a headache building, slowly but steadily.
A brisk knock on the door interrupted his thoughts, and Ryan called, "Come in."
Then, he gulped and regretted not having pretended to sleep, because the scary lady was here, and she was looking more than a little stern.
TBC...