An hour later, Beckett is cleared to leave, provided she's under supervision. "Are you sure?" Castle asks the tired-looking man who is currently absent-mindedly toying with his stethoscope. It's not that he doesn't trust doctors, really; usually he thinks of himself as a very trusting person, but this man looks like he's been working longer shifts than Beckett."I mean…" Castle trails off and then shrugs, vaguely gesturing. She's clearly still off, all tousled hair and bleary eyes and slurry, run-together phrasing.
"She'll be fine, Mr. Castle," the doctor says. Castle is usually so good with names, but he can't remember this one for the life of him, his head still spinning with images of suspects crashing into Beckett in a dark stairwell. "Just keep an eye on her."
"Well," Castle says skeptically when the doctor leaves the room, "let's get you dressed and out of here."
"They cut my clothes off when I got here," she says, clearly still both drugged and affronted. "It's Ryan and Esposito's fault. They made me take an ambulance, even though I was fine. And the EMTs kept talking about my spleen, and then I got here and the doctors were just so excited about possibly ruptured organs and I was all strapped down and they just took scissors and snip snip even though my shirt was brand new and really cute too."
"I like you on morphine," Castle says affectionately. "You're different. You really just don't hold back."
"Find me some damn clothes, Castle."
"Yes, dear." He slips out of the room before she can respond.
The nurse manning the front desk is on the phone, looking angry and bored. Castle waits for five minutes before he resorts to drumming his fingers impatiently on the counter, but she neither speaks into the phone nor looks at him.
"Hey," Castle starts in his most charming voice, "do you have any scrubs for my –"
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh," she hisses sharply, pointing at the phone.
"Right. Will you be –"
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh," she hisses again.
"Well, fine then," he says, and heads off in search of someone who won't snarl at him. Unfortunately, the hallways are creepily quiet, and the one nurse he does see looks distressed and has spatters of blood all over her shirt. Surely, Castle decides, they will sell something at this place somewhere that does not have to be taken from hissing or blood-spattered people.
On his way to the gift shop he texts Gina, feeling like a coward. Beckett's hurt. Has to stay at Casa de Castle. Rain check on the sleepover tonight?
His phone rings in response almost immediately. He cringes as he answers it.
"You have got to be shitting me," Gina says, without so much as a how-are-you or a I-hope-Beckett's-okay. "That woman must have somewhere to stay that is not your apartment."
"Hey! She could be dying! You don't know." He tries desperately not to whine. He is a grown man. He does not need to whine.
"Oh, please, you would have called me sobbing and I would have had to sit there at the hospital, holding your hand, while you fretted and pined over your muse."
It is possible that Gina knows him a little too well, he thinks. "Would not," he denies, totally ineffectually.
Luckily, or not, Gina's not even listening to him. "I'm going to guess she sprained her wrist and you're worried she'll have to open a jar or cook her breakfast or shampoo her hair all by herself."
"She broke her leg!" He's definitely whining now, but at least it's a somewhat assertive whine. A manly whine. "She was doing her job and some asshole plows her down a flight of stairs and she's just out from under anesthesia and on morphine and what, you think I'm going to let her stay with Lanie or Esposito where she'll be sleeping on a couch and crutching up and down sets of stairs while she's totally out of it?"
"Rick." Gina says, stopping his tirade, but then she is silent.
Patterson told him, after he broke up with Gina the first time, that his problem was that he spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking like a killer, thinking like a victim, thinking like a cop, thinking like himself, but he really never tried to think of things from his lovers' perspectives. So he takes a minute, and he steps back from the situation, and he comes to the realization that Lanie and Beckett had had immediately. He's having another woman sleep in his house. A beautiful woman. The woman to whom he is dedicating a series of books.
"I'm an ass, aren't I?" he sighs.
"Yes." Gina says.
"I probably should have thought a little."
"You would have done the same thing."
Castle cocks his head. "Probably," he replies, figuring that honesty is his best way out of this mess.
"Well, Rick, I'm at a loss. Should I say call me tomorrow? Call me when she's out of your house? Don't bother to call me? I'm just not really sure where to go with this."
"Look, Gina, can I please call you tomorrow? We can get some lunch, talk, you know."
She laughs. "Fine. Don't make me regret it." And then she hangs up.
"Well, that was awkward," Castle mutters to himself, reminding himself that he should really try to learn to think a little more often. He shakes off his uncharacteristic self-consciousness quickly, though, because Beckett is waiting for several floors above.
Ten minutes later, she's sitting up in the hospital bed, a small pile of clothes heaped in her lap, staring at him with a wrinkled nose. "How many millions of dollars do you have, and this is what you find?" she asks. Short navy sweat shorts, with "Bellevue" in big block letters across the ass, a tiny, spaghetti-strap tank top, this time with the "Bellevue" tastefully scrawled across the bottom, and an oversized hoodie, obviously with a block script advertising Bellevue across the chest.
"Well that's not fair," Castle says. "I didn't want to leave you for too long. Do you know how much of this hospital is used as a psychiatric facility? God only knows how quickly the crazies would find you."
"It never takes them very long," she says, looking at him meaningfully.
"Hey," he protests, but then, noting how she sways ever so slightly, changes gears. "Are you sleepy? Woozy? Can I help you slide into some completely tasteful and beautifully crafted apparel?"
"Out, Castle," she replies, pointing an arm at the door.
"Fine. But if your shirt is off and you feel yourself starting to black out, just call my name. Or throw something at the door. Or, you know, don't say anything at all and I can burst in here heroically and save you."
"Watch it, Castle, I have a…" she pauses, tilting her head. "I don't, actually. Ryan didn't leave my gun for me?"
"Believe it or not, Beckett, you are the only person in the NYPD, or actually in all of NY in general, who has ever voluntarily handed me a gun."
"Are you telling me there are people out there who have involuntarily handed you a gun?"
"This is neither the time nor the place," Castle says, in what he hopes is a firm yet playful voice. "Tomorrow, after we have eaten pints of ice cream and watched Casablanca and braided each other's hair and played guitar hero – this is what you do at Casa de Castle on a sick day or a snow day or really any day when work is unpalatable – I shall regale you with a tale of wild escapades and semi-illicitly-acquired weapons."
"I'm tingling with anticipation."
"You don't look it. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Ryan took your gun to keep it safe from both me and the other psychotics in the hospital." He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. "But don't worry," he adds, lowering his voice several octaves, "I'll protect you."
Beckett just rolls her eyes, looking tired and pale, and he reminds himself that she really does need to get home and sleep, and now isn't really the time for witty repartee, and, God, he really talks a lot when he possibly should be busier making sure Beckett doesn't pass out. Aside from the guilt that he would definitely feel, Lanie would kill him, probably with an unnecessary degree of mess.
"Change your clothes," he says, softly. "I'll be right outside if you need me."
He sees her smiling at him, just a little, as he steps outside the room and slowly shuts the door.