Chapter One Hundred
Blood Spills Thicker
Her eyes alight, Bonnie's gaze shot between the rabbit and the fox, with Nick's vain attempt at striking humor into the situation being a dying echo that bounced off the disinfected walls. "You... you mean he'll be staying close by, like, living next door, and you'll call him when you need him?"
"Ehh, no, Mum, Nick will be staying... He will be staying with me."
Again, the doe's eyes moved between the rabbit and the fox, slower this time, her brow raised with uncertainty. "You do realize, Judy," she said, her voice low, "what you'll be getting this fox, this male fox to do?"
"Mom, I—"
"It's not just as easy as that. I know you're young and I know you trust this fox, but... you can't have him help you shower or bathe yourself. You can't have him 'coming in' the showers with you. You can't have him 'seeing you', while he helps you to get dressed!"
"Dirty fox gonna run his paws all over you!" Billy added, his carefully considered contributions as helpful as ever.
"Mom! Mom, it's okay, it really is. Nick... it's, we..."
"Well, out with it," Bonnie somehow demanded with a scowl.
"Well, Nick and I, like you said, we trust each other a lot… But, you see... the thing is, there's— which is to say we're..." Her nervously high-pitched voice dropping to a harsh mutter, Judy turned to the fox. "Nick... Nick, help me out here."
"We've known eachother a long time; more than a year, in fact. We... we've done a lot that's made us cl— closer, and... ehm..." Pausing, the fox took a long moment to collect his thoughts and pick his words in delicacy and tactic. Whether this day or the next, whether sooner or later, this talk, this revelation, was destined to come. He pushed out his hot breath, and with it, pushed out his worry and his anxieties. If it was the time for this talk to happen, he wasn't going to face it stuttering and anxious.
"Judy and I... over the past year, we've spent a lot of time with each other, practically every day. Both at work and just socially. The two of us have grown closer and stronger with every day that's gone past. With some people, after a few weeks cooped-up with one another, you start to feel like you've had enough of them, like you need a change of scenery. But... the more time I spent with Hopps, the more and more I wanted to see her. And despite all I thought I was to her, and against all I thought I deserved from her… I… I started to... to feel. Just... to fell that... well, that I lo—"
"You have to remember all the cases we've worked on together," Judy cut in, her voice overly up-beat and bright, and without realization to what she had given interruption to. "After the academy, since the academy, Nick and I have worked together on every one of our cases: parking duty, paperwork, everything. He was a close friend to me, the only true friend I've ever felt I've had in the city. So it just came naturally that I wanted to... get close to him. I mean, like, spend time with him, after work, with, what with—"
"And we've gotten close, Mrs Hopps," Nick included, calmly overlapping the rabbit's rambling. Lowering himself evenly, the fox sat down in the chair beside Judy's bed. "Just a few days ago now. Just a few, amazing days— I... reached a point where I realized I couldn't hide, couldn't fight how I felt about Judy anymore. It's... well, it isn't exactly easy to say this, but... But at the same time, it's the easiest thing to say in the world. I love Judy. I love her and adore her and would do anything to keep her from harm."
"Judy," Bonnie started, her voice distant to begin with, but finding its momentum soon enough, "that's... awful, that's absurd! I've never heard something so outlandish in all my... you mean to say you have shared... intimacy... with a fox?"
"Mo—"
"What about size for one thing! Have you any idea how much he can hurt you? How much damage he can do to you!?"
"Hey," the fox snapped and rose from his seat, "I wouldn't do a thing to hu—"
"And as for you, fox... how dare you. How dare you 'push' yourself upon my daughter."
"Mh... but Mother!"
"Your momma's right, sis," Billy cut in. "You don't want to be getting screwed around by a fox, they're enough trouble just to be friends with. Remember Gideon? Remember the nasty little scheme him and me used to play at 'fore you straightened me out?"
"Gideon is... he's nothing like—"
"Enough about Gideon," Bonnie huffed, her ears drooping in tints of pink as her paws crossed her chest, "he's nothing to do with this."
"So what're you saying, Mom," Judy snapped, her good paw turning to a fist. "You're saying I'm just... 'not allowed' to be with the mammle I love? For something as stupid as the fact he's a fox?"
"How old is he, anyway? If nothing else, he's got to be at least twice the age of you, my little Judy."
"Mrs," Nick evenly returned and sat again, "I am thirty-three, and Judy is twenty-five. It's hardly twice the age."
"Eight years? Eight years between you?"
"The fox a fuckin' kiddy fid'ler!" Billy jeered with wrinkled lips of increasing violence.
"I'm not a kid!" Judy cried out at the buck's mocking words, then wincing to a grimace as her eyes shut tight and her lips pulled cramped over her teeth, a patch of bright crimson quickly blossoming on the bandage around her head.
"Judy!" The fox rose and moved to the rabbit's side, putting a paw to her back with attempts to help her and sooth her down to lying on her back.
"Paws off, fox!" Billy warned and quickly stepped too close to Nick's comfort.
"Seriously!?" Nick shot, his expression a mix of disbelief and revulsion. "Billy, I'm just trying—"
"I said paws off!" The buck grabbed onto the fox's forearm and pulled roughly. Nick reacted without thinking, his temper spent with his arm circling around the doe's in a swift movement, while he freed his own paw and grabbed the buck's own, thus, twisting his wrist harshly until Billy dropped down onto one knee.
In any other place, with any other person, that move would've been followed by a knee to the rabbit's face to put the sucker's lights out, and Nick came to regret his discrimination just a half-second later, when the buck's fist came up between the fox's legs.
The blow missed its target, up to a point, but it still knocked Nick off enough for the buck to use his knelt position to throw himself onto the fox, pushing him up against the hard wall behind and knocking the wind from him, as Billy's paw raised to strike.
The bed sheets moved. With a cry of fury, the white-clad figure of Judy Hopps kicked itself from the bed, her face contorting as her body screamed out in agony, while her fisted paw swung with all the built-up irritation, frustration, pain and worry in collision to the buck's snout.
Billy recoiled and fell back into the door, his nostrils leaking blood and his eyes spinning from the force of the blow. But it was Judy who was left hissing and whimpering, her eyes shut tight and body crumpled upon the spotless floor. Nick pulled himself off the wall, dropping down onto his paws and knees, as he tried to force his lungs to breathe again. He turned to the rabbits, with a look past Billy, and to Bonnie who was motionless and speechless.
"Nh... nhr, geh thh..." He took a sharp breath which hissed, but the small whines of the crumpled figure pushed on his resolve. "Nurse! Now!" Nick didn't care what the motherly doe thought of the rising volume of his voice, he didn't care about her 'approval' or permission to date Judy, he didn't even care that the tips of his jowls were showing. All he wanted... was for Judy to stop crying. Bonnie hurried from the room, the fox turning back down to the figure before him.
"Jh— J-Judy, speak to me, sweetheart, speak to me."
"Fh, fh— fox, you... you don't speak to Mh... Ma like that." The fox turned upon the buck stood above him, his paw covering his bloody nose, still swaying from the force and shock of Judy's impact. The fox tore himself from Judy's side, strode a wide step towards the rabbit, twisted his hips, turned his shoulders and threw out a hook to the rabbit's lower jaw, without any doubt inside his mind.
Dizzily, the buck raised a paw to defend himself, but his block missed by inches and Nick's paw cracked down upon the ridge of Billy's jaw, sending the buck spinning and collapsing to the floor without a sound.
"Huhh, thh—" Hearing Judy's pain-etched words, the fox span back upon the rabbit, kneeling down beside her. "Nice shh— Nice shot."
"That was a very stupid thing you did, Judy," he told her, his breath shaking. "Awesome, too. You always were an avenging angel."
"Nouuuuut... n-not the place, N-Nick." The fox's expression softened at the rabbit's words, her speech barely managing to gasp from her, while her tiny paws twitched and formed fists. Her expression winced and tightened as she tried to control the pain.
The door sprang open, and Nurse Flo burst in, her breaths deep and huffing as she moved over to the hurt doe. "Quickly, you three," she instructed to the three nurses following her in close proximity. "Remember, spinal damage and a skull fracture. So be very gentle." She knelt down beside the doe, the fox backing off from the clear urgency of her movements. She put her paw out and pressed it upon the side of the rabbit's head. "Please, Judy... try not to move. I have her head. On three."
Two of the other staff taking her by her body, the third turned a couple of screws on the medical bed and lowered it down, so it was just a few inches off the floor. "Three." Moving perfectly in sync, Flo and the other nurses raised the rabbit gently from the cold hardness of the floor and onto the softness of the mattress. "Evens, go tell Doctor Dasse what's happened. Quickly. Nicholas, what happened?"
"Eh— she and Billy… We told Bonnie Judy and I are dating, Billy star—"
"I mean how did she fall!" Flo snapped, her chest heaving with a clear and thunderous voice. "Did she land on her head?"
"Her side, I think. On her arm and her shoulder first, and then rolled onto her back."
"Good," Flo sighed, "good. We'll put her through another CT, just to be safe. And get her a bed with guardrails." She sighed again in longness, as she tried to calm the urgency from the blood pumping around her veins. "What happened to the buck?" she asked, nodding to the unconscious figure on the floor."
"Judy punched him out cold," Nick lied through the partial truth.
"Good. No need to check for head injuries. Even if he's brain dead, we won't know the difference." Nick just nodded, too distracted to even notice the slither of humor. The other three nurses gathered around the bed and took an edge, each kneeling down and standing together to slowly lift the bed back to its former height. Two of them held it, while the third tightened the screws, before, the three off them left the room. All that now remained was the fox, the hare and the two rabbits — one of which, Flo moved towards.
"Now, Judy," she soothed, her voice calm but clear, "I have given you the maximum dosage of antipyretic analgesics already. But I can give you some morphine and that'll help cut the pain. It's derived from opium and has a depressive effect on mental functions. But is the strongest narcotic I am at liberty to give you. Would you like some?"
"Ph, pwh—" At the nodding of Judy's head that held the tightly shut eyes, Flo stood and paced to a cabinet. She opened it up and took out a capsule which she loaded into a syringe. She moved back to the rabbit lying in the bed, stepping over the unconscious one on the floor without a moment's glance. Loading the capsule, she moved towards the rabbit and raised the hem of the short, loose sleeve of Judy's white gown.
Her good paw reaching out to the fox, Nick knelt down beside the bed and linked the paws of his fingers in with hers. As the needle point went in, the fox saw the pained twitching of every muscle upon the rabbit's face. And it damn near broke his heart. Slowly, the volume of Judy's panting whimpers reduced, and her heaving, sharp little breaths slowed and deepened. Her tightly wincing expression relaxed a little, and her paws lost their strength around the fox's fingers.
"Hey," Nick said, a faltering smile on his lips, "think you could get me a shot or two of that?"
"It's highly addictive, Mister Wilde."
"What?"
"It's derived from opium," she stated calmly, not taking her eyes off Judy, "and severely damaging to the body if handled incorrectly. I've only given her antipyretic analgesics so far, which are non-addictive. Morphine is a narcotic analgesic, and the only reason I gave some to Judy was because it's the only thing I could give her without using a general anesthetic." Tilting her head, the hare raised the syringe, pulled off the needle and removed the capsule. "Don't worry, I will be sure her exposure is very carefully controlled."
"Gh," Nick muttered, "why do you have to be so damn clinical about it all…"
At this, she did pause. Glancing down to her feet, the hare managed to force some amusement from herself. "I'm sorry," she said gently as she looked up to gaze the fox in the eyes, "but this is my life. This is what I deal with all day every day. I sympathize with you, Mister Wilde, I truly do. But to minimize Judy's suffering, and to maximize her chances of a full recovery, I am bound to keep a clear head."
After holding the hare's cobalt gaze a second longer, Nick's face lowered. "Sure. Yeah. Where's Bonnie, anyway?"
"I told her to wait outside. And next I'll tell her to wait downstairs in the waiting room."
"And... me?"
Flo tilted her head. "You were telling me what caused this?"
"Erm... Judy and I, we're... we're together, a couple. Bonnie and... her son, they only just found out about it. Bonnie shouted something, Billy shouted, Judy shouted."
"She overexerted."
"You could say that. Next thing, she was wincing and bleeding through her bandages, so I went over to help her. Then came Billy trying to shove me off her. Next thing I knew, Judy had leapt out of bed and punched him right in the nose."
Flo raised a brow and watched the figure of the rabbit silently, observing her as she softly moaned in her sleep, her muscles twitching with pangs of discomfort; the aftermath of the sudden exertion they had faced. "I like Judy," Flo said from out the blue.
"You... do?"
"Before the attack, I'd say she must've been in the best physical condition I've ever seen in a rabbit. Someone who takes care of themselves, I respect that, a lot. And now, against the injuries which could've killed her, she throws herself from bed and punches another person out cold."
Nick cleared his throat guiltily, unthinkingly touching a paw upon the knuckles of his paw, which had smashed against the buck's jaw just moments ago.
"She seems a very interesting person. And now, I hear, she's dating a fox too. Curious. Curious indeed." Flo turned to the fox at hearing a sound of soft whimpering, which didn't come from neither unconscious buck nor asleep doe. She noticed Nick's paw that was raised to his face, his lowered brows and his grit teeth. All these were symptoms of his attempts of holding his emotional disbalance at bay.
"Nick..." His ear twitching, the fox looked back down towards the hare... "Wait here, I can't give you narcotics, but you can have gas and air to breathe on."
Author's notes:
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Grooms decision thus chosen blind.
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