TW for hospital setting, mentions of blood, broken bone, scans, surgery
The hospital was bustling with activity when they arrived a few minutes later. It was much bigger than Ames' Memorial, which was the only other hospital Skye had for reference, and it looked much more similar to the kind of hospital you saw in movies and tv. White walls, sterile surfaces, bright lights, doctors and nurses hurrying from place to place. Skye's head hurt from all the brightness and the busyness, and she found herself curling hard into May's side as they found a place to sit in the waiting room. She had never been one to be afraid of getting lost or separated from adults, but suddenly she was feeling much smaller and more fearful than her usual self, and May didn't seem to mind that Skye was practically clinging to her like a baby koala.
Izzy was apparently friends with the person running the desk in the ER, because she chatted with the woman for a few minutes before beckoning to May, Skye, and Bobbi.
"Cynthia says you all can come back now. They don't have many patients in the ER right now, so someone should be able to take care of you in a jiff. Somebody will be by soon to give you an update on your little one, too."
"Thanks, Izzy," May said quietly, guiding Skye and Bobbi towards the big swinging door that led to the rest of the hospital.
"Happy to help," Izzy smiled. "I'm heading back to the station to get a jump on paperwork and to check in on Johnson's processing. Keep me posted, will you?"
"We will."
Things were a little calmer, a little quieter behind the double doors. Nurses and doctors were still moving around quickly, but there wasn't as much idle activity, and it felt less like a swarming beehive and more just like a busy office, which Skye appreciated. A nurse instructed Bobbi and Skye to both take a seat on adjacent beds in triage. Bobbi tried to protest, saying that there wasn't anything wrong with her, but the nurse explained that they just needed to do a quick check on her to make sure that was the case.
"It won't take long, especially if everything's all right. We just want to be on the safe side."
Bobbi conceded then, and plunked down on the bed, still looking a little put out. Skye didn't move towards her own bed until May pulled her over to it and indicated that she needed to sit. It was hard to clamber up with only one good arm, and Skye winced a little as her bad arm was jostled during the climb.
"Does it hurt a lot?" May asked gently.
"No," Skye lied reflexively. She cringed at how fast the lie had jumped out of her mouth. "Some," she amended.
"What about other pain?" the nurse asked as she began inspecting Skye from top to bottom. She had Skye follow a light with her eyes, poked and prodded at all her sore places. "Does it hurt anywhere else?"
"Not really," Skye said with a shrug of the shoulder not attached to a broken arm. "The cuts stopped hurting a while ago, and I don't think I hurt anything else when I fell out of the window. Just bruised, maybe."
The nurse's face folded into a frown, and Skye watched as she made a note on her chart. "I'll be back in a minute."
"What happened with the window, Skye?" May asked, once they were alone again. "You fell? Where?"
"The first place Cal stuck us, it had these windows up near the ceiling. Jemma figured out that we could pull the wood parts away from the window frame to make the window big enough to crawl through, and I knocked out the glass. She went through first, and kind of jumped down without too much trouble. I was going through when Cal came in and tried to pull me back, so I fell out the other side and didn't land right."
"That's why there was all that glass outside?" Bobbi asked. "Near the front?"
Skye nodded. "We might have made it out except Cal used the van to block us in, and then he had the gun, so we… we couldn't…" The words gummed up in her throat, and her eyes burned again. She blinked hard. She didn't want to cry anymore.
"That sounds really frightening," May murmured. "I can't believe how brave you both were."
"We weren't brave, we were stupid. I was stupid. Jemma was just trying to keep me safe."
"You were brave," insisted May. "An adult put you in a terrifying situation, one you never should have had to be in, and you managed to come out of it alive. That's brave."
"I don't feel alive. I feel… nothing feels real. And we don't know if Jemma's…" A hard lump formed, one she couldn't swallow down. She ducked her head, ashamed. "It's all my fault. I never should have listened to Raina, or gone with Cal, or been looking for him in the first place. I was trying to keep you all safe but I… I messed up, and now Jemma's hurt, and maybe going to die, and it's all my fault. I'm… I'm so sorry." Her voice cracked on the words, and she felt her eyes pool. A few silent tears dripped down her face, leaving tiny dark circles on the fabric of her t-shirt.
"I know, Skye. I know, love. It's okay," May soothed, rubbing small circles on her back as she sniffled. "You have nothing to be sorry for. What happened wasn't your fault. I don't know all the details right now, but I do know it wasn't your fault. You aren't responsible for the actions of a grown man, ever. And as for Jemma… well, we just have to believe that she's going to be okay. She's in good hands, and she's strong. We can't worry about what might happen until we know more."
A few minutes trickled by with no one saying much of anything, until there was a slight commotion on the other side of the curtain that separated Skye and Bobbi's beds from the rest of the ER. Skye stiffened at the movement, expecting to see the nurse returning, but instead she was met with the much more comforting arrival of Phil and, right on his heels, Miss Hand.
"Skye, Bobbi, oh thank god," Phil said, his words coming in a rush. He stopped short when he got a good look at Skye, sitting hunched on the bed with her cardboard-splinted arm cradled in a blood-soaked t-shirt. "Skye, is that—"
"It's not my blood," she said flatly, not able to meet Phil's anxious eyes.
"How's Jemma?" asked Phil in a soft voice, mercifully not pressing Skye further about the state of her clothes. May had given him and Miss Hand a little information over the phone, so Skye guessed that he probably had little trouble putting two and two together.
"We don't know yet," answered May. "They're supposed to send someone over to us with an update soon."
"Okay." Phil nodded a few times, like he was trying to convince himself that it really was okay. "And you two… have they sent someone to look at you?"
"There was a nurse here a little bit ago," Bobbi told him. "I'm fine. I'm not hurt. She said she'd come back to finish up with Skye in a minute."
"That's probably not a good sign," murmured Skye. "If she has to go and come back…"
"At least she thinks you're stable enough that she can step away for a little while," Bobbi shrugged. "The last time I was here the nurses were all over me pretty much all the time."
"I… I don't even know what to say," Phil said, almost in a daze. "I'm so glad we found you, that you're safe, but I'm… god, Skye, you had us so worried. We had no idea where you were, what had happened to you. If it hadn't been for the clues you left us—"
"Those were Jemma's idea," Skye whispered, the sharpness of guilt and worry swelling in her throat again. "She saved us. Me."
"And I don't understand," Phil continued, rambling a little now, "how… I mean, why… what happened? What made you think you had to go sneaking off to meet with… That's so dangerous, Skye. You're so much smarter than that. I know you are. And Bobbi, chasing them down like that, all by yourself…"
Skye was pretty sure he didn't mean to make her feel worse than she already did – he was talking fast and his voice was nervous, like the words were flying out of his mouth before he had time to pick them. She knew what that felt like, to say things that you didn't really mean because the feelings churning around in your brain were too strong to leave any space for a filter. But still, her shoulders grew heavy with shame as he spoke. She was supposed to be smart enough not to do something like what she had done, but she wasn't. Not really. And it was dangerous – so dangerous that they were all in the hospital now, police had been called, Phil and May and Bobbi had been worried sick. She had done it to protect them, but she could see now that even in doing so, she had still hurt them. She had tried her hardest and still failed to do the thing she had set out to do.
"Phil," came Miss Hand's voice. She spoke quietly, but firmly, and her tone was strong enough to pull Skye's attention out of her own head and back to the rest of the world. "Now probably isn't the best time to go into all of the details. The police will want to speak with Skye, and probably you too, Bobbi, about what happened. Better if we don't make them recount the whole story more times than necessary, at least right now."
"You're right," nodded Phil weakly. "I'm sorry. I'm not thinking clearly. Skye, I'm not mad at you. I want to make sure you hear me say that. I'm not mad, not one bit. I'm just glad you're safe. I was so afraid, we all were."
The curtain rustled again, and this time it was the nurse on the other side, reappearing and accompanied by another woman, this one in a white coat, which Skye knew from listening to Jemma talk at length about the medical field meant she was a doctor.
"You're Jemma Simmons' parents?" the doctor asked.
"Foster parents," May nodded.
"And social worker," chimed in Miss Hand.
"I'm Doctor Addai, I'm the doctor in charge of your foster daughter's care," the doctor said. Even though her words were short and direct, they weren't unkind. Still, her starched professionalism made Skye feel nervous. "Jemma was struck by a bullet in the upper right quadrant of her abdomen, and we weren't able to locate an exit wound. Our initial CT scan showed that, while the entry wound was shallow, the bullet had lodged itself internally, very close to the liver."
Skye's head was swimming, trying and failing to latch onto the swirling, slippery medical words Dr. Addai was pouring out into the world. If Jemma were here, she could translate for Skye, but Jemma wasn't here because Jemma was the one being talked about with elusive eel words that shot out of her brain like a bar of soap from her hand.
"Is she going to be okay?" Phil wanted to know.
"She's a lucky girl. The bullet's close to the liver, but it hasn't perforated it as far as we can tell, and it missed all her other major organs. Additionally, whoever applied pressure to the wound beforehand did a lot of good in preventing too much blood loss, which gave her a real fighting chance. We'll need to operate to remove the bullet, before it can shift and cause any further damage, and we'll also want to repair any lacerations on the liver caused by the bullet's proximity. There are always risks associated with surgery, but we're confident that we should be able to make the repair and removal without too much difficulty."
The feeling of collective relief sighed over the room, although no one was so foolishly optimistic to rejoice just yet. Jemma still had a bullet inside of her, after all. Still, the doctor sounded calm and spoke with conviction, and it was easy to believe her that things might turn out all right.
"Can we see her?" May asked. "Before the surgery?"
"There's room for one, if you come quickly," Dr. Addai nodded. "We don't want to delay the surgery too long, but we haven't put her under anesthetic yet, so she'll be able to see you. She's on medication for the pain, so I can't speak to her coherence, but I'm sure she'd appreciate a friendly face before the operation."
"You go," Phil urged softly, nodding towards May. He gave a weak chuckle. "I'm too much of a mess to do Jemma much good right now. She needs somebody steady. Tell her good luck from us."
"I will," May smiled sadly. She pulled herself away from Skye, taking her hand off Skye's back, and Skye felt her chest tighten up with sudden, inexplicable anxiety. May needed to go see Jemma. Jemma deserved to have somebody who could help her be brave before surgery, and there wasn't any reason why Skye should be so clingy. She was being a baby, and everybody had noticed.
"I'll be back soon," May promised. "Phil and Bobbi and Victoria are all here. They're not going anywhere, Skye. You'll be safe."
"If it would make you feel better, Skye, Melinda can stay here and I can go," Phil offered. Skye shook her head.
"No, it's okay," Skye said quickly. "I'm fine. Jemma… she needs somebody. She shouldn't have to be alone. Will… will you tell her I love her? It's three taps. And will you tell her that I'm sorry, too?"
"Skye, I'm sure Jemma doesn't need an apology—"
"Just tell her I'm sorry," Skye insisted, desperation climbing up in her ribs. "Please. She has to know."
"Okay," May assuaged, before Skye had a chance to work herself up into a state. "I'll tell her. I'll tap and I'll tell her. I'll make sure she knows." May gave Skye a quick squeeze on her good shoulder, did the same to Bobbi, and pecked Phil hastily on the cheek before ducking behind the curtain and disappearing after Dr. Addai.
"I wish I could see her," Skye whispered, more to the universe than to anyone in particular. Everything hurt up and down her body, but nothing hurt quite so much as her heart, which was stiff and swollen with worry for Jemma. Jemma who had done everything she could to keep Skye safe, Jemma who had tried to create a way for them to escape, Jemma who had taken a bullet because of a situation Skye had put them in. Skye hoped and prayed that the surgery would be as easy as the doctor had made it sound, because if it wasn't – if something went wrong or Jemma didn't make it out okay – Skye would never be able to live with herself.
"Me too," said Phil sadly, perching on the side of Skye's bed and resting a hand on her knee. "I wish we could all see her, but it's better if we let the doctors work. They'll take good care of her, and when they're done, we'll have our chance."
"They were able to fix my lung and my knee last time I was here," Bobbi reminded them. "If they could do that, I'm sure they can fix Jemma."
"I'm sorry to interrupt," the nurse cut in, not looking quite as apologetic as her words suggested, "but they're ready for you down in radiology. I need to take you for your x-ray so we can move forward in taking care of your arm." She brought forward a wheelchair and indicated that Skye should sit down. Skye didn't move.
"Come on, Skye," urged Phil. He stood up then and reached out to boost Skye off the bed. Skye shrunk back, tucking her throbbing arm tighter into her stomach. She pressed harder than she meant to, and one of the cuts on her stomach started stinging at the pressure. She let out an involuntary hiss of pain.
"No."
"Skye, you're hurting. They need to take an x-ray so that they can get you in a cast."
"What if May comes back while I'm gone?" It was sort of a childish reason to give, but it was the first one that flew off her tongue. At least that was easier to explain than the clammy, nauseous feeling that filled her at the idea of going off with a stranger, even if she was a nurse.
"Then she'll wait right here until you get back," smiled Phil. He turned to the nurse. "It doesn't take long to get an x-ray, does it?"
"Not too long," the nurse agreed. "There are other people waiting to use the machine, though, so we should go as soon as we can."
"It'll be okay, Skye. We'll all be here for you when you come back." Phil looked her hard in the eyes and nodded. The creases around his eyes and across his forehead seemed deeper than usual, maybe from the harsh lighting of the hospital emergency room, or maybe from the stress of the day. Still, there was a gentle sureness to him that Skye hadn't felt in a while. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed it, how much she'd been longing for an opportunity to trust someone.
"Okay."
The trip from the triage section of the ER to the x-ray room wasn't long, but it did involve several twisty turns down winding hallways that Skye probably wouldn't have been able to navigate herself if she'd needed to find her way back. She tried not to let that thought twist up her stomach too much and she forced her brain to try and focus on something else instead. She tried to read the words on the signs and doorways as she rolled past them, scrambling to string together r-a-d-i and c-a-r-d and all sorts of other letters onto the different -ologies. She wasn't especially successful, and there were a few they passed, like gators-ten-whatever and oto-larry-something that she probably wouldn't have been able to crack even if she could just stop and stare at the placards with the arrows pointing in a million different directions. It worked well enough as a distraction, though, and soon she was being pushed into a darkish room with a table in the middle and giant camera hanging from the ceiling.
"You can lie down here," the nurse instructed, helping Skye out of the chair. Skye did as she was told, and waited patiently as the nurse brought over a heavy apron to drape across most of her body. She took a couple deep breaths to try and slow her heart, which was picking up speed the longer she sat there. She didn't like the small room, didn't like how loud the sound of the door shutting behind them had been, didn't like how much time had elapsed since she'd left Phil and Bobbi and Miss Hand behind.
She winced a little when the apron fell over her stomach, brushing painfully over her cuts. The nurse frowned.
"Everything okay?"
"Fine," Skye muttered through gritted teeth. She didn't want to do anything to slow this process down. She just wanted to get it over with and get out of there.
"Does your stomach hurt when I press on it?" the nurse asked, prodding gently at Skye's apron-clad stomach. Skye intended to lie, but the sharp pain that flashed across her abdomen at the nurse's touch forced her to let out a yelp that would have made her lie pretty hard to believe. The nurse's frown deepened, and she pulled the apron back off of Skye.
"Can you lift up your shirt for me? Let me see your stomach?"
Skye thought about refusing, and she wondered briefly what the nurse would do if she said no. They were supposed to take the x-ray and go right back. Stopping to look at some superficial cuts on her stomach, which Skye was sure would heal on their own, was only going to get in the way of getting her back where she wanted to be.
"I can't take the x-ray until I've seen your stomach," the nurse told her firmly. "I don't want to give you an x-ray if there's something else wrong with you that needs more immediate attention." Resigned to the fact, Skye tugged up the hem of her shirt begrudgingly, revealing the red crisscrosses where the glass of the window frame had raked not once, but twice, across her belly. "I thought you said the blood on your shirt was from your friend."
"I guess a little bit of it was mine, too," Skye shrugged, staring stubbornly at the floor. "It's old, though. The glass cut me a long time ago. It's not bleeding anymore."
"That one is," the nurse pointed out, eyeing a cut that looked a little deeper than the others. "It looks like you reopened it at some point since then."
"It's fine," scowled Skye. "I've had plenty of cuts before. They always heal. I just want to do the x-ray and be done."
"What about these bruises here, did you get those recently? They look at least a week old—" Skye looked where the nurse was indicating and realized that she was looking at some of the faded brown mottling left over from her fight with Ward last week. It was seeming less and less likely that the nurse was going to let her out of here as quickly as she had originally promised. The room was too small, it had no windows besides the little glass shield that the person running the machine was supposed to stand behind, and the door was still shut. She wanted to leave. Her heart climbed into her throat.
"That's nothing," she snapped, turning away from the nurse and pulling her shirt back down. She was trying to keep her voice calm and steady, so her words would actually sound convincing, but she wasn't sure how successful she'd been. "It's old. I got in a fight at school last week. That's all. Can we just do the x-ray?"
"Fine," the nurse relented. "Lie back down. We'll do the x-ray."
Skye stretched back out across the table, and this time she forced herself to keep a straight face when the heavy apron draped across her stomach. She shot the nurse a defiant look, trying to signal to her that things were fine and she should back off a little. It was a look that worked on other kids sometimes, but Skye had yet to master the technique when it came to adults, as evidenced by the arched eyebrow that the nurse sent her way.
"Stay still please," instructed the x-ray technician over an intercom as he fired up the machine. The nurse slipped out of the room, leaving Skye alone with the technician, who she couldn't actually see from her vantage point on the table. After a minute, the technician came into view and helped Skye out of the apron and into a sitting position.
"Renee just went to go check with the doctor about something," he said kindly. "She'll be back in a minute."
It took longer than a minute, and longer than Skye or even the technician seemed to have been expecting. Skye wasn't sure what was so important that it was worth making her wait here in this tiny room, especially when the nurse herself had said there were other people waiting for their turn with the x-ray machine. As the minutes crawled by, she could feel her chest getting tighter, her fingers and arms buzzing with discomfort. Eventually, she couldn't stand it anymore.
"Do you think we could open the door?" she asked, her face burning with embarrassment.
"Are you planning on running out of it?" the technician asked good-naturedly. "Because if you are, then I'm going to have to say no."
"I just want it open," she said. "I won't go anywhere."
"Okay then," shrugged the technician. "I can't open it too wide, because we have to keep the hallways clear, but I can crack it, if that works for you."
"Thanks."
"So do you have an aversion to closed doors, or just looking for some fresh air?"
Skye swung her legs a little and watched as her battered, blood-spattered sneakers rocked from side to side, dangling a few inches off the ground. She shrugged one shoulder. "Open is better. Easier to… think. Leave, if you have to."
"I never thought about it that way," he smiled. "I guess I'm just so used to my door being closed all the time. But I can see how that might make a person feel a little stuck. If it's any consolation, most people don't spend more than a few minutes in here with me."
"How many minutes have I been here?"
"Seventeen. I guess you're just a lucky one. I'm Roy, by the way."
"Skye."
Before they could make any more small talk, the door opened and the nurse reentered, followed by another person in a white coat, another doctor – a tall, somewhat intimidating-looking man with hawkish features and a steely look in his eyes.
"Skye, this is Dr. Townsend, he's here to take a look at those stomach injuries," the nurse explained. Skye felt her face crumple into a scowl.
"You said I could go back after the x-ray."
"Nurse Owens just wants to make sure there's nothing anything else going on that we need to worry about," the doctor said. "Lift up your shirt, please."
It wasn't really a request, and Skye was too daunted by the doctor's size and serious tone to do anything but obey. The doctor examined her quickly, pressing in a few places on her abdomen and taking note of her sour expression every time his cold hands pressed too hard.
"Let's get her to CT," the doctor clipped, nodding over his shoulder to the nurse. "I want to check for any internal injuries before we cast that arm. We'll need to suture the big cut and start her on a round of antibiotics, too. There's no telling what she might have picked up in those cuts. How long on the x-ray, Roy?"
"Should be coming up in a minute."
"Great. We'll do the CT and hopefully time it just right to get the x-ray results."
Before Skye had a chance to so much as open her mouth to protest, she was being guided back into the wheelchair and whisked from the x-ray room, down the hall, to another windowless room, this one with a giant doughnut-looking machine. Skye had a sinking feeling that she was going to have to go into the doughnut, which might not ordinarily have bothered her, but it just meant one more thing keeping her from getting back to the people who made her feel safe. She was tired and sore and cranky and she'd had enough of the tight-chested, buzzing feeling that kept sneaking up on her.
"You're not claustrophobic, are you?" asked the doctor. The way he said it, Skye got the sense that it wouldn't have really mattered to him either way she answered, so she kept her mouth shut and shook her head. Anything to move the process along.
They directed her onto the bed in front of the doughnut, with specific instructions not to move while the machine was running. Once again the dark room and closed door made her heart feel like someone was squeezing it in a clenched fist, but she did her best to ignore it and her narrowing throat and stay perfectly still while the bed slid into the doughnut and the whole thing whirred around her. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to take slow, barely moving breaths, a mantra of almost done repeating in her brain until she was, in fact, done.
"Now are we going back?" she asked the nurse as she slid off the table and back into the wheelchair. "I need to see my… I want to see Phil."
"We're going back," the nurse told her as they pushed out of the CT room door and headed back down the hall. "We're going to put you in a room so we can start working on you, but we'll stop by triage and pick up your foster father."
In no time at all, they had returned to the ER. Bobbi was still sitting on the bed she'd been assigned, but she had moved to the edge, so her legs were dangling off the side now. She seemed relaxed, although Skye got the impression that she was ready to hop up and leave as soon as someone gave her an all-clear. Phil was sitting next to her, and he beamed as Skye came into view. Miss Hand stood off to the side, working on her phone, but she looked up and smiled when Skye arrived, too.
The nurse led them all away from the triage beds and down a short corridor lined with doors. They went into room number 4, which looked almost like a regular exam room at a normal doctor's office, with a table in the middle and a counter and sink along one wall.
"Someone will be in shortly to discuss the lab results and put on your cast," the nurse informed them. "I see you've already got your discharge papers," she added, nodding in Bobbi's direction.
"They said I was fine and free to go," Bobbi said.
"Glad to hear it. Well, sit tight and we'll do our best to get you all taken care of quickly."
Skye forced herself not to flinch as the door closed behind the nurse. She had to get over this door thing soon. There were too many doors in the world for her to be skittish every time one closed.
"How was it?" Phil wanted to know.
"Fine. They made me do an x-ray and a CT I think it's called. The one in the doughnut."
Miss Hand's eyebrows knit together. "Really? What for?"
"My stomach, I guess. The nurse got all bent out of shape when she saw I had cuts and stuff on there from the window."
"Did they say anything else to you?"
"No," Skye shook her head. "Not really. A doctor came in. I didn't really understand the stuff he said, but he was talking to the nurse more than me."
"How's your arm feeling?" asked Phil.
"It hurts," Skye shrugged. "How's Jemma?"
"Melinda hasn't come back yet," Phil told her. "So we don't have much of an update. But I'm hoping that's a good thing."
Miss Hand's phone buzzed in her hand, and she glanced down at it. "Izzy says the police are on their way to take statements from you two. I'm going to meet them out front. Bobbi, would you mind going first, since it looks like Skye might be tied up here a little while longer?"
"No, that's fine," Bobbi agreed. "I'll just go with you now. It's crowded in here. Make sure you pick a good color for your cast, okay, Skye?"
"Okay," she said, allowing a small smile to crease the corner of her mouth. That, at least, was something she could do.
Hi there :) I'm glad to see you all again for our next round of chapters! Slightly less intense now that they're away from Cal and getting patched up by the doctors... Hope you enjoy :)