Title: Live Hard
Summary: He may not even be considered much of a person anymore but the moon does things that bring out what he used to be, there's a reason the doctor has him on a sedative and there's one unlucky nurse's name on the bottom of the incident report following the bite.
Rating: M
Warnings: Language, violence
Spoilers: There are some but they are few and far between for the most part, this story works around the main storyline while incorporating it at key points
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf
A/N: This chapter happens between and during episodes eight and nine. Note that by episode nine I mean a little bit before the car chase and a lot before the lacrosse game and the events with Derek and Stiles at the nursing home.
Day 33:
"Excuse me, Miss Bramble? I'm Sherriff Stilinski, I know you gave your statement to the officer but would you mind if we talked for a moment?" He led her away from the police car where she had been left waiting after the evidence technician had swabbed her dog's mouth.
He guided her with a hand on her shoulder towards the make-shift tarp covered crime scene command post, or whatever it may have been called otherwise.
"Sure." She answered belatedly realizing she was already inside the tent. He offered her a seat in a folding chair a few inches away from a tear in the tarp that poured water in a small, smooth stream.
"I just wanted to make sure we have all your information and know where to connect you if we have any more questions."
Lucette nodded ascent and watched her dog settle himself under the table and away from the dripping holes in the tarp above.
"You're staying in the house at the edge of the park grounds? The Gulsa's property?" He looked over the notes he had received from Detective Mills.
"Yes. I'm renting for the next nine months," she nodded.
"You're here for a family visit?" He questioned her with half a head tilt and a pinched expression that only curved half of his face, like he had a cigar in his mouth or was doing an especially bad Clint Eastwood impression.
"Work. I'm a travel nurse; I'm working over at the long term care facility." She answered gesturing vaguely in the direction of the road as if the facility was right behind her.
"A nurse, huh? My son's best friend's mother is a nurse, over at the hospital."
"Well, I guess there are a lot of us out there."
"I'm going to give you a ride back to your house, but if I can make a suggestion?"
"Sure."
He didn't continue until he had shown her out of the bustling command post and into the passenger seat of his police cruiser after securing her dog in the back.
"I wouldn't go out alone, even with your dog with you," he looked in the rearview at Brigadier. Lucette watched the gloomy scenery pass with mild interest for a moment before turning back to look at the Sheriff.
"There have been a lot of wild animal attacks lately and now this. For your safety stay to your property, no walks in the woods."
"I will," she promised, lying and trying hard to keep from rolling her eyes at the idea of him believing she was sincere about what she had just told him. She was safe enough.
"Good," he did the imaginary cigar chewing cheek sucking thing again with his mouth as he glanced at her sideways and nodded to himself before glancing back at the road and rain splattered windshield.
"And lock your doors, windows too. Keep a well lit perimeter." He added each point after a moment of conscious thought; he didn't glance at her though.
"Make sure I've loaded the revolver," she ventured with humor seeping into her tone.
That made him slow the car down unconscious of the loss of speed and actually look at her and then down at her waistband. She knew her holster was showing.
"It is illegal to carry firearms in state parks," he told her slowing down even more before realizing what the car was doing and then hitting the gas to speed back up smoothly.
"But you know that." He made a point to look hard at the holster and then blatantly ignore its presence, like the odor of flatulence in a crowded elevator.
She watched his hands clench the steering wheel on and off as his knuckles blanched and then returned to their normal coloring over and over again as they drove past the storefronts on Main Street.
"The concealed carry laws for the state in incorporated areas are limited to police and business owners or people who have to carry large sums of money. I know. Though this isn't a town that's considered 'incorporated' is it?" She teased after rattling off the more important facts about the state's gun laws.
"No, not with a population less than two-hundred thousand people, but a permit from the sheriff's department is required." He raised his eyebrows and gave her another glance from the corner of his eye.
"And how would one go about getting a permit?" She quipped.
"Licensed firearm, good standing within the community, good cause for having to carry a concealed weapon, and all current gun safety certifications," he quoted the requirements off from a mental checklist it seemed.
She nodded, slowly; at first just letting her chin drop to her chest and then for real in a smooth jerk, once, twice, perhaps a little over eager that she was getting her way.
"I'd still suggest not walking your dog in the woods when there's no one around. Despite whatever safety measures you've taken."
It was like listening to a dad talk to their kid, not like her dad talking to her but a normal kid's dad, a dad who didn't tan and have a little black book. A small town laid back, overprotective type of dad. It was nice to talk to someone like that.
"Thank you, Sheriff." When she meant it she said it.
"I assume you are up to date with your registration and licensing and gun safety courses?"
"Of course," she smiled brightly, proud of her thoroughness in such matters.
"Then I don't see a reason to write a citation."
"I appreciate it." She scrunched her nose up in a way that even to her seemed to suggest she was a child who'd been caught doing something they shouldn't be but instead of being punished had their parents laugh at her.
They pulled into her driveway, her dog rose up on all four in the backseat and rubbed his snout against the fogged window eager to escape and run into the non-rainy domicile.
Sheriff Stilinski turned as much as his seatbelt would allow and looked at her very seriously, one hand still on the wheel and the other itching to just point or fidget in some other way.
"Listen, if you know how to use it and you're not obvious about it carry it with you."
She raised her eyebrow, both of them because she had never quite gotten the hang of being able to raise them separately.
"Isn't that the last thing you should be advising me?"
"As the sheriff? Yes. As a father and a member of the community? No. But as a sheriff I suppose it's okay to allow someone to conceal and carry a firearm if a permit has been filed and is just waiting to be put in the system, after all nurses work late shifts and are pillars of good standing in the community."
"That is so true," she intoned widening her eyes comically as if someone was just finally pointing out the fact for the first time and she'd never realized before.
"Thanks for the ride, and…the advice," she told him unlatching her seatbelt and sliding it off her. As she got out and opened the back door to let out her dog the Sheriff leaned his head back into the backseat.
"Be safe, Miss Bramble. We should get in touch with you within the week for a follow-up; just let the desk clerk know what time is best to have a unit come by when they call."
He looked genuinely concerned. It was nice to see from someone.
"I will, have a good day Sheriff," she told him quietly, meekly as she lost herself to her own thoughts.
"You too."
Day 34:
"So guess who found a dead body in the woods?"
"You?"
"Uh-huh."
"How'd you find it?"
"When I was walking the dog."
"What'd it look like?"
"Busted up."
"Pretty cool."
"The police think it's a crazy psycho killer."
"Lock your door."
"Duh."
"Okay. Be safe. Don't kennel the dog at night."
"Dad, I haven't put him in a kennel for years now."
"Just making sure."
"I know, listen Stella's staying at my place while I'm gone."
"I know, she told me."
"Just making sure, in case she forgot."
"Uh-huh."
"Alright, I'll call you when I remember. I've got work in about four hours."
"Okey dokey."
"Bye."
"Bye bye."
Terse, laconic, short, brief, abbreviated, as always all of the above, she thought to herself about her father and her's phone correspondence. She glanced at the call timer on the phone, catching it before the display went black.
Two minutes and fourteen seconds, that had to be a new personal best.
"Here. Hang that up," she told Brigadier as she put the phone on the kitchen table and ambled her way out of the room and up the stairs in a dramatic fashion that her dog watched with rabid interest.
She snorted to herself at the idea that he was probably waiting for her to do a trick. Peeking into her office room she found that she had yet to receive the promised fax from her agency rep associate who was much more fun to talk about men with than Molly, mostly because her best friend didn't particularly find her conversational lewdness endearing.
Sighing, she wished she had more friends. Her boredom was reaching a mind melting level that left her eyes rolling in her skull with every few steps at things that weren't worth the effort it took to go through the complicated ocular rotations.
"Brigs, what should we do tonight? Work was horrendous, absolutely lackluster in every single way. Go make me a bath...," she stopped to think for a moment before adding, "And a sandwich."
From the bottom of the stairs he stared waiting for a treat or her to do something to entertain him.
She sat on a step and let her chin press against her fist, "Not feelin' it, huh?" She asked in reference to the command to go set up a bath for her and the sandwich request.
Eagerly her dog climbed the stairs to where she sat and put his head in her lap, nuzzling her hip. She looked at the spot the gap between jeans and shirt bared and studied the pinker, shinier line of raised tissue in a long streak, the twin to the one she had on the left.
"Listen, I'm going to tell you something very important, Brigs." When he looked up she pulled on his face and leaned down close enough to kiss the animal.
"Don't. Climb. Big. Ass. Trees."
After a moment she considered the statement and added, "Okay you can climb big ass trees, just don't fall out of said big ass trees. You get me?" She gave him a mock serious bug eyed look.
He licked her nose and mouth, tongue rolling out of his mouth and remaining hanging out of his lower jaw after the display of affection.
"I was being serious," she scowled. "People were not meant to climb trees. Maybe dogs are. Who knows? Be safe wear a harness."
She considered how tired she was, coupled with the state of nothing going on she was getting loopy from the lack of rest and inability to go to sleep at the moment from being so keyed up from work and thus everything seemed colorless and indescribably drab.
For a lengthy stretch of time she merely sat on the stairs, leaving them only to procure an ashtray and her pack of cigarettes from her office and thought up in great detail how one would teach a dog to climb trees, and how to engineer a tree climbing dog harness and other useless tedious mental work outs pertaining to the subject of animal ingenuity and adaptability.
Finally she realized what she was doing. She'd just sat and thought about trees and dogs for such a ridiculous amount of time she was disgusted with herself for not finding a better way to waste time.
She gave up on the idea of her dog getting a bath ready for her, instead she let the water run and turned on the television to wait for the tub to fill after slinking down the stairs in a similarly dramatic fashion that she had used to climb them, like she was on her way into a ballroom instead of her living room.
For the past few days she'd tried to avoid watching the news, it aggravated her that it took them so long to finish a story, detail wise not actual time wise. She got sick of watching the same clips and reels every day. She figured that by now they'd at least have more than five minutes of a story.
She caught the tail end of the latest report on the police situation and then the weather.
There was now officially an arrest warrant out for 'could be psycho killer' Mr. Tight Ass, Derek Hale. They said he was wanted on suspicion of murder and kidnapping. She could officially now tell Molly that she had ogled a wanted man. It made her giggle.
The shock value alone would make it worth mentioning the next time she talked to her friend on the phone.
She avoided the urge to call her, she wouldn't be much fun on the phone anyway when all she wanted to do was take a bath and go to bed. Turning on the over tub light and leaving the brighter ones over the sink off she shrugged out of her clothes and left the pile on the floor.
Placing her ashtray and cigarettes on the tiles next to the tub she remembered that she had forgotten to turn the television off and that she didn't particularly want to have to listen to it while she soaked and smoked trying to relax.
The naked stroll through her living room searching for the remote gave her the idea to climb up the stairs in the same dramatic fashion she had already done, she wondered if it would feel more glamorous to do it without clothes.
In sudden elation she heard the distinctive sign of something screeching upstairs, her fax machine. Now at least she had an excuse to slink up the stairs.
Giving up on the search for the remote she pressed the button on the television that did the same thing and ascended the staircase, she decided, pausing at the top that it did indeed feel more glamorous when done without clothes on.
It suddenly struck her as very strange to be standing in her home office sans clothing; still she shrugged off the feeling of misplaced behavioral understanding and watched her fax machine work until finally after what seemed like ten minutes it stopped.
She wondered if time seemed to move faster or slower while naked. She filed the thought away for future pondering.
Reading the handwritten first page agency representative/drag queen Mike had faxed over she chuckled and showed it to her dog, who had followed her faithfully up the stairs yet again.
Reading it out loud she looked for a reaction from the large animal, "'to my favorite bitch on this green earth, please find the requested documents minus the boring pages and edited for only the juicy bits of inf.'"
She paused and squinted at the confusing abbreviation.
"What the hell does that mean? Oh info! Dumbass forgot the 'O,'" she lost her place and found it again after turning the page around again for a quick look. "Juicy bits of info blah blah, okay here we go: 'Six incidents, plus the one from the hospital admission before transfer. Enjoy. Pink party is December twenty-second. Show up or I will shank you and then scalp you and make myself a new wig from your gorgeous locks. Miss you, Mike.'"
Frowning she watched her dog stare at the note and then at her as she turned the paper around for his view.
"That's what it says. I'm not joking; he really wrote that he would scalp me. Maybe I need less friends, huh? Since they are so mean to me."
She collected the print outs and put them in a neat stack on top of a few folders on the desk.
On her way down the stairs she had outgrown the urge do anything but descend normally.
Pondering what else she had to do before settling into her bath she decided a drink and background noise was needed.
Tuning through the music channels on the television without the remote was tedious.
"Did you know, Brigs, what the difference between regular jazz and bebop jazz is?"
At his stare she answered herself.
"Bebop jazz does not have the drummer merely as a timekeeper for the rhythm instead the drummer improvises with the rest of the band. I also think it sounds better. Now I need a drink, because unlike Molly I don't need complex mixing instructions to enjoy one."
She returned to the tub with her drink and clunked down into the water with a wince at the brief scald of it on her feet and thighs.
Sighing heavily she tied her hair up and let her chin touch the water until it hurt.
"Oh, yeah. I know how to have a good time," she said more to herself than to the animal who had chosen to fall asleep on the throw rug at the foot of the stairs than watch her take a bath.
Taking a sip from her glass she let her foot splash up from the water and then fall back in.
"I don't know why you're taking a nap; I'm a gorgeous naked woman in a bathtub you should be drooling more than usual." She laughed at her own joke and sunk further into the water closing her eyes.
"Maybe you're bashful, because you're too much of a ham for the ladies to like boy dogs, Brigs. I saw you trying to woo that Labrador a few walks back."
Again she amused herself in the absence of an answer by lighting a cigarette and relishing the idea that she had the incident reports to look over.
Day 37:
She had a thing about grocery shopping.
Mostly it was a thing that involved no list, no specified price limit, and no reservations about picking up things that were never going to be used.
Mostly the thing was that she was a horrible grocery shopper.
A meander down the health and wellness isle convinced her that she was better off hoarding medical supplies from central supply for what the grocery store charged for first aid materials and also that she should quit her job and make a new line of feminine hygiene products because whoever already had was making a killing, twelve dollars for a box of tampons was, to her, ludicrous.
Over the course of an hour and a half she managed to fill her cart with foodstuffs, toiletries, and additions to her cleaning product collection.
On the stroll through frozen foods she wondered if she had forgotten anything important and caught sight of a woman telling what she assumed to be a small child to stop complaining.
It probably wouldn't have forced her to take a second look if the woman hadn't been grocery shopping in her scrubs. Dark navy with a white underlay long sleeve, the type the nurses at the hospital had to wear. She glanced at the woman as she passed and saw that she was not in fact reprimanding a child but her teenage son.
With a silent laugh Lucette came to think of the two age groups as strikingly similar upon further thought.
At the check-out the woman and her son came to stand on line behind her while the cashier rang up the same customer that had been there when she'd stepped onto the short line.
"Excuse me," came from behind her.
Lucette turned and wondered if she had dropped something, she looked at the ground to see.
"Do you work at the nursing home?"
The question made her tilt her head in confusion. "Yes, I do," instinctively she looked down to see if she was wearing her uniform, she knew she wasn't but it was a habit to look at her clothes whenever someone asked if she was a nurse.
"Sorry, it's just I thought you looked familiar. You were carrying gloves the other day and you passed me at the desk."
"Really? That's so funny."
They both laughed and chatted, her son behind her looking impatient and bored, cutting in at least twice to ask his mother an inane question.
As if just remembering the woman leaned over her cart and extended a hand, "Melissa."
She shook, "Lucette."
It was her turn on be rung up. She piled her cart collection onto the rolling belt and the conversation lapsed into silence until she had put up all her items and rolled her cart in front of her to make room in the small aisle space.
"So they had you running errands the other day huh?"
"Yeah, well they like to put us new recruits through the gauntlet," she joked.
"You just start there?"
She helped the cashier bag and started to load up her cart again.
"Yeah, agency job. Nine month assignment, maybe longer if they need me to stick around."
"Oh, good stuff. What agency?" The older woman looked genuinely curious.
"Blue Cap."
"Do they do travel nursing?"
The woman put a foot on the lower rung of her cart and cocked a hip and accidentally smacked her son as she reached to scratch her neck. She uttered a 'sorry, honey,' in his direction without turning her head all the way and then directed her attention back to Lucette.
"They have a branch for it."
"I was thinking of doing that after this one leaves the nest one day," she jerked her thumb behind her at her son who was examining the gum selection.
"The agency usually sends someone out to the hospitals every few months. I'll keep a look out for them for you. You work in…," She made a mental note of the woman and to jot it down in her notebook later for reference when she saw an agency representative in the hospital.
"Emergency Department."
"Okay, if I see one I'll tell them to look for Melissa in the Emergency Department."
The woman smiled at her warmly, "Hey, maybe we'll see each other around one day."
"For sure." Lucette agreed putting more bags into her cart.
"Well come over and chat sometime alright?"
"Alright I will," she nodded as she slid her debit card through the reader and entered her pin. As she started to push her cart away down the small space between the two check-out stations she gave another quick smile to the woman and forced herself not to give one to her teenage son in the sports jersey.
It would probably make her seem like a creepy pervert she rationalized.
"Okay. Good. It was nice to meet you."
"You too." She called back as she went forward to the automatic doors and the parking lot.
After packing her truck up with groceries and returning her cart she found the ride home to be more exciting than the one to the store for the simple reason of the documents waiting for her to get her hands on.
She spent the rest of her day off in her upstairs office room and went through all of her reports she had to send through to the agency based on her team's performance and other necessary duties of her charge nurse position.
On the floor next to her chair Brigs tried to nap but with her horrible sing along to the oldies station classics of songs made popular by men with names like Dean or Frank he had long since given up the notion of falling asleep at her feet.
She couldn't blame him since even to her the warbling wailing that came from her mouth was especially horrible and cracked on certain notes, but still, she tried.
Keeping the best for last she amused herself by occupying her time with doing her nails a color of blue that matched the trim on her uniform dress even though technically it was against policy to wear nail polish any color that wasn't clear.
She bargained with herself that since you couldn't toss a shoe without hitting a set of acrylic dragon lady nails on the unit that nail polish wasn't too bad a sin to commit.
Gingerly she took books of the shelves and arranged them for reference when she got around to peeking at the faxed over reports that she shouldn't really have in the first place, at least not for the reasons she truly had versus the ones she had given over the phone.
Finally the last task on her list besides the obvious one of assuaging her own curiosity was tackled as soon as her nails dried to a suitable amount.
The cleaning kit was compact and done up in a leather box and a red velvet interior. It had come with the firearm in the will her grandmother had made up and it made her smug to know the old woman trusted her eldest granddaughter more with a gun than her youngest.
Not that her sister was particularly fond of gun but that was besides the point, she wasn't herself an enthusiast but it made her feel safe to have one. It hadn't reached the level where she considered it a hobby but her affection for the item was at enough of a level to give it a regular cleaning every month or so.
When she finished she slipped it back into its holster and placed it on the corner of her desk and meandered over to the piles of books she had left on the floor with her folder of reference papers in hand, she sat on the dog mattress and earned a curious stare from the animal still dozing lazily by her chair, not willing to move and fight her for the bit of cushioning.
The incident reports were more accidental injury than anything else just like Trish the charge nurse had told her, but the accompanying details of the investigation for the causes of the incidents were much more interesting.
The problem lay in the lab reports, she double checked and triple checked and it confirmed that the problem wasn't an innate one that had to do with the print-out, because everything else was normal, the only thing odd on every single one was the one value.
It took her an hour and three cups of coffee to reference her psychiatric drug book to make sure the number she remembered in her head was the acceptable range of the medication and then calculate over the amount of weeks what his levels should be, based on the initial assessments made by his doctor and the pharmacy technicians.
Her memory was right, the values weren't.
For the past six years the discrepancies had been present except for the very beginning of the treatment and one emergency admission one year ago following an incident where he had lunged and a nurse broke her wrist after falling and lacerated her scalp on a piece of furniture on the way down.
The beginning of the treatment and the emergency admission which hadn't been in the nursing home but in the attached hospital
They had started with a deaconate dose of fifty milligrams of Haldol and for the following three weeks his plasma held a consistent level of it, the same thing happened after the emergency admission for a diagnosis of 'acute psychosis.'
The report went on to clarify that the incident was a direct result of the low concentration of the prescribed antipsychotic and in response they doubled the deaconate dose to one hundred milligrams.
There were no more incidents after they prescribed the new dose. However, despite his levels staying consistent to the average absorption rate for the first month after the new dose the drug concentration in his plasma kept dropping.
So either Mr. Hale had an extremely adaptive liver able to change its metabolic rate when it encountered a drug that slowed all body processes down because it did just that to his nervous system or someone wasn't giving him the drug.
Since all his other levels were normal he was getting everything but the antipsychotic sedative, his antipsychotic sedative which was scheduled for administration at twenty-two hundred hours every day as denoted by the abbreviation 'qd'.
Ten o'clock at night for the past six years.
Six years in which he had the single same night nurse who was apparently unaware of what the blood levels of Haldol were supposed to be, or was too lazy to check them. In either case then her patient would have to have the liver function of Superman and a highly resistant nervous system even after having a traumatic brain injury.
Or that very same nurse had been giving him all his other meds and holding his Haldol, but they had no surplus on the unit so it was going somewhere.
The question that came to mind on that point was what purpose someone had for holding and hoarding that much Haldol.
She gave the night nurse the benefit of the doubt but quickly decided that she would stay over into the next shift she worked to watch to see if the medication was given and to check the medication administration record before reporting her suspicions.
It seemed that all of a sudden the lie she had made to get the incident reports was turning a shade more truthful the more she read the documents and her own notes on the patient.
The phone rang and she scrambled across the floor to answer.
"Hello?"
"Hello, I'm calling for Miss Bramble."
"This is she."
"Hello, Miss Bramble this is the Beacon Hill's Sheriff's Department, I'm calling to confirm a meeting with you during the next week. Is there a particular day and time you'd like an officer to come by and conduct the follow-up interview?"
"Uh, yeah. Just give me a second to check my work schedule."
Raising up and looking at her desk calendar upside down she saw that she was off the following Wednesday. She told the police secretary that anytime after noon would be fine.
"How does two sound?"
"That sounds perfect."
"Thank you, Miss Bramble. If you have any questions please call otherwise have a nice day."
"Thanks, you too. Goodbye."
She hung up and put the phone back on the desk and returned to her scattered papers wondering what the hell was going on.
Day 41:
She stayed over into the next shift and made it seem as if she were stuck completing her nurse's note for Peter Hale while also arranging her assessment reports for the past few days. While she had planned to do her reconnaissance of Peter Hale's night nurse on her first day back from being off things hadn't gone as planned.
The first day there had been an emergency admission that she needed to take over as a favor to Trish and then she had the next two days off and she couldn't exactly show up at eight at night on her night off without it looking suspicious and blowing her hopes of catching the night nurse do something she shouldn't be doing.
Then there had been a staff meeting that had ended with everyone going out to eat and she had already told them she would join them before she realized she was supposed to be spying on Jennifer the night nurse.
Now was her chance.
She waited until nine-thirty when the redhead moved to the medication cart to prepare for the med pass.
She was covertly trying to watch the woman out of the corner of her eye from the nurse's station when someone pushed her chair hard and sent her rolling across the tiles, her papers scattering to the floor.
"Shit! Sorry, didn't mean to push you that hard."
It was Samantha the nurse's aide that smiled sheepishly and bent to pick up the scattered papers.
"No, it's alright. I'm just distracted I guess, perfect victim for a prank. I deserve it for spacing."
From her crouch the girl crinkled her eyes and gave her a pitying look. "Aren't you off anyway?"
Lucette waved off the remark with a lie she had ready for use, "Technically yes, but not really. I have all this paperwork to finish."
"Where's mother hen?"
The girl asked referring to the charge nurse on staff after Trish went home.
"She didn't have time to eat before she came here; she had to drop the kids off or something. I told her to go to the hospital cafeteria to get something and I'd cover."
That wasn't a lie.
"You are amazing."
"I try," she mumbled distractedly as she caught a glimpse of red hair that disappeared either into Peter Hale's room or his neighbor's.
Samantha placed the collected papers onto her lap and smiled as she looked for something to do, inevitably having a free moment until a task presented itself. Lucette scrambled to follow Jennifer into the room but she needed an excuse to keep Sam occupied.
"Oh, shoot! I think I lost my keys. If someone looks for me I'm in two-eighteen, that's the only place they could be."
She left without waiting for a response and adopted a brisk pace down the hall.
As she entered the room, she tried to appear nonchalant about her sudden appearance in the doorframe. There was a medication cup on the overbed table and she couldn't tell if it was empty or not.
"Have you given him his meds yet?"
At her question the redhead turned from her spot next to the bed and dropped the hand she'd been holding back onto the bed, startled.
A moment passed, it seemed filled with a type of tension Lucette couldn't quite describe or understand, nervous energy, maybe, or something more sinister.
"Just finished," was the tight response she received, the redhead's lips were a thin line on her face.
"I'm Lucette, his morning nurse."
"I know. Aren't you off now?"
The tone almost made her take a step back in offense but she kept her emotions on a tight leash. "I had some stuff to finish up. You're Jennifer, right?"
With a curt nod the woman started to clean up the garbage left over from the medication administration, "Did you need something?"
Jennifer asked keeping her eyes anywhere but on the other woman.
"No, but hey I know you have other patients and since I'm still here and his meds are done I can take over for you," the woman met her eyes and opened her mouth to say something, no doubt telling her it wouldn't be necessary but Lucette continued too quickly to let her get a word of response in.
"Just because I'm technically his one-to-one when I'm here, so I'd rather be here than at the nurse's station. You know?"
All she got in returned was a forced smile and a laconic 'Fine,' as the woman swept from the room with little preamble.
Leaning her head out the door she watched the woman all but stomp away. She adopted the shocked looked of someone who had just overheard someone yell really loudly at someone else at the redhead's behavior, the whole exchange had felt weird.
Pressing the intercom button on the wall and ringing the nurse's station the charge nurse she had sent to the cafeteria answered.
"Hey, I'm going to be here for a little bit longer so I figured I'd do my one-to-one duties while I do my reports. That alright with you?"
"Yeah, that's fine. Want me to have Sam bring you your stuff? She needs something to do. I'll just send her."
"Thanks."
"No problem."
The aide came in within the following five minutes and left without much conversation beyond that she had to go to a linen change down the hall and to 'have fun' with her reports.
Lucette made a show of grumbling and rolling her eyes. The moment the only sounds to be heard in the hall were the odd cough or snort from across the hall or the blare of the news at nine from the patient rooms she walked over to the bed where Mr. Hale lay awake and staring unseeingly up at the ceiling, his hand limp on the bed still where Jennifer had left it.
She told him she was just going to check his injection site as she lifted the covers from his leg and studied the area where the intramuscular deaconate injection of Haldol should have been given, there should have been some redness to give away the location if the shot had been given.
There wasn't one, on either leg.
Her suspicions were founded, she had to check the MAR again to be sure, but if Haldol was still on the sheet of prescribed meds then Jennifer the LPN had some explain to do to the board of directors and an investigation committee.
She rifled through her papers until she found the one she had hidden in a paper clipped file of team evaluations in case anyone had felt the urge to look through them when she had left them at the nurse's station.
The paper was a blank complaint report. She tried not to seem so pleased about filling it out but it was difficult to keep the grin from her lips as she put pen to paper.
By eleven she had finished it and slipped it back into its hiding spot among other unrelated papers. Getting up and giving a goodbye to her patient she put the chair back in place and turned to find the door closed where it should have been open.
The idea that Sam had closed it without her noticing made her smile softly at the girl's thoughtfulness of making sure she had quiet to work in, no doubt having seen her working hard on writing her 'reports.'
It would have never crossed her mind to look over her shoulder, until she caught a whiff of something that shouldn't be in the room seeing as the last cigarette she had smoked had been before her shower and before she left for her shift at seven in the morning.
Old smoke.
She hadn't even heard him come in, hadn't heard him close the door, hadn't even known he'd been sitting on the other side of the bed in the chair behind the half pulled privacy curtain not more than ten feet away.
The pile of papers she was holding would have fallen if her hands hadn't tightened in a white knuckled death grip.
"What are you doing here?"
He stood from the chair and advanced on her and it occurred to her that the blood on his shirt implicated that he was injured or someone else was.
"Making sure he's alright."
There was a police alert that had gone around about him and what to do if he showed up at the facility that she received a memo about during the staff meeting the day before, she had laughed off the idea and now she couldn't remember a thing on the 'what do side' side of the memo had said.
Time to improvise.
"Is that your blood?" She pointed.
He nodded.
"Are you injured?"
His teeth gleamed as he clenched them moving towards her again.
"Stop moving and I'll help. Keep moving and I'll run out the door."
He made no move to sit but stopped his advance, took a small step back even if she hadn't imaged it, it at least looked like he had moved. His hands clenched into fists and his face paled visibly in the dim light.
"I haven't killed anyone."
"That's great, but please, just sit down."
"If you really want to help you're going to need more supplies."
It hadn't occurred to her that she was actually going to be helping him. She had said it automatically as a method to keep him thinking of other things besides possibly killing her, if he really was a crazy psycho killer.
When she didn't answer he went on.
"Go get them, don't let anyone know I'm here." His eyes shifted towards the bed at his uncle after he said it, a warning maybe, or a bluff. She couldn't decide which but she understood the implications of what could happen if she did go and tell someone and he was still in the room.
Crazy psycho killers killed family members all the time, it was practically a requirement.
She nodded and left the room.
From down at the nurse's station the charge nurse asked if she was going home. She came up with the only reason why she would still have to stick around.
"I'm too keyed up still, too far past my bedtime to be sleepy anymore. I'm gonna restock the rooms, that okay with you?"
"Yeah, thanks."
She grabbed the nearest supply cart and made her way to the supply room, grabbing items at random and placing them on top of the other supplies.
The fact that she said she was restocking led her to actually have to do it to all the rooms before Peter Hale's, she did it as fast as she could and ignored any patient that woke up and blearily asked her what she was doing.
Finally she all but flew into the room, dragging the cart with her. Her panic hormones surged, fight or flight response almost took over but she let the urge pass without unthoughtful action as she pushed the cart into the circle the tracks on the ceiling for the privacy curtains made around the bed.
He watched her.
"Duck under the curtain."
He did and she pulled both ends closed so anyone walking by wouldn't see him. If someone were to look they'd assume she was doing a change of Mr. Hale's incontinence brief.
"Is that everything you need?"
She looked at the cart and nodded.
"You didn't tell anyone."
It sounded more like a statement than a question.
"I didn't want to find out what would happen if I did."
His grin was small and pained, "Smart."
"You going to kill me?"
"I haven't killed anyone in my life. But, no. Wasn't planning on it."
"Would you have killed him if I had called the police like I should still do?"
"No."
They lapsed into silence.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm hurt. I can't go to a hospital and this place isn't that hard to get into in the middle of the night."
"You've done it before?"
"I like to visit him when I have spare time, not always during visiting hours."
He suddenly seemed irritated with her questions and gripped the chair's arms with unnecessary force that blanched not only his finger but his hands too.
"We done with the third degree or do you have more questions?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"Whatever you can," he reached for the hem of his bloody shirt and lifted it high enough for her to see the wound.
Large and unsightly, not bleeding too profusely, but still gruesome. Too large for a bullet wound but she couldn't think of what else could have done it. The smell reached her, after it wafted through the air.
It had to be infected to smell like that, it took days for a wound to infect like that. She hated to think of how long he'd had it.
She pulled the cart over and yanked on a pair gloves from her pocket. After a moment she thought to drag over the other chair.
He was silent as she cleaned it with sterile water and then an obscene amount of alcohol swabs that were too tiny to do much good unless she used the whole box, which she almost had to.
She didn't ask how he got the wound and he didn't offer an explanation.
While she worked she expected him to at least say something, but there was nothing except the off and on stoic grimace he gave at the sting the alcohol caused or if she pressed to hard.
She placed an abdominal dressing in place after using a liberal amount of vitamin A and D ointment and wrapped gauze around his torso to keep it in place.
"You have an infection."
"Fix it."
She left to steal the extra blister pack of amoxicillin from the drug cart upon seeing the charge nurse's absence at the nurse's station and the hallway empty of aides. When she returned he had let his shirt slide back into place, the bulky dressing visible through the fabric.
"Are you allergic to penicillin?"
"No."
She handed him the small blister pack.
"Twice a day, for the next two weeks, as I nurse I am legally bound to tell you that you should seek professional medical help as soon as possible."
He smiled like something was funny but his laugh was dry and humorless.
"Aren't you supposed to be a nurse or something?"
Her eyes narrowed at the offhand insult to her level of competence.
"I am, but a doctor should be the one prescribing meds, if I did this in any other situation I'd probably lose my license, but the fact that you're a wanted criminal I can claim I did it under duress."
"I never threatened you."
"Irrelevant."
She waved a hand is dismissal of the fact.
He stood from the chair.
She back out of the curtain.
He came out of the curtain.
She had the room's wardrobe at her back.
He walked forward.
She thought very hard very fast.
He cornered her against the wardrobe.
She stabbed him above the dressing with the syringe she hadn't needed to use on a previous patient during the last shift's med pass.
He looked down but didn't move.
She felt her nails dig into the palm of her other hand tight enough to hurt even through the panic.
"That's a syringe filled with rapid acting insulin for the diabetic patient next door. The needle on this is the right length for her because she's three-hundred and fifty pounds but on you it's too long," she licked her lips and tried to swallow but her throat and mouth had gone dry. Fight or flight response again.
He stood still.
"Right now it's just about in your liver. If I were to press down on the plunger within five minutes your blood sugar would drop to about seven and in an effort to prevent brain death your body would send all available remaining glucose to your brain, sending you into multiple organ failure."
She let the information sink in and then went on.
"This is called insulin shock, most likely you will develop a cardiac dysrhythmia and then you will go into V Tach, and unless someone calls a code you'll die, or suffer from brain death as your body uses up the last of its energy sources."
He glared at her and the sound of his nails against the wardrobe were deafening in the silence of the room.
"I want you to listen carefully, if you try to pull away before I say I will inject you, if you touch the hand holding the syringe I will inject you, if you try to cause me physical harm I will inject you. If I tell you to pull away and you decide to trick me and lunge when you think I'm off balance you should know that there are other places on your body that I can inject insulin into and you can guard your abdomen all you want but you can't guard the eight other spots at the same time."
He seemed to measure his odds in the moments after she told him.
"If you did that I'd inject you and not call a code. Do you understand?
He nodded but said nothing.
"First I'm going to pat down your pockets. To make sure you don't have any weapons and then I'm going to lift up the bottom of your shirt and make sure there's nothing in your waistband."
She did as she told him she would her mind running as fast as her blood was.
He seemed amused by the whole thing as she fumbled to lift the back of his shirt and splayed her fingertips against his lower back finding nothing there like a gun or a knife, just the heat of his skin under her gloved fingertips.
His amusement most likely due to the fact that she was short and had to bend her knees to do it without being forced to lean forward or break eye contact.
"Slowly step back and go around to the door."
He stepped back and removed himself from the syringe. She brandished it like a knife and stalked to his back.
"I am going to call the police," she informed him. His shoulders stiffened and for a second her heart skipped thinking he would spin and lunge at her.
"First you are going to leave. Out the door, down the stairs, out the door to the parking lot. No one is in the hallway. You go first, if you try something I will inject you. Go now," she commanded.
He obeyed.
She followed him out the stairway door, when she stood a stair above him he turned and studied her for a long moment.
"Thank you," he told her popping a pill from the blister pack and swallowing it dry. She watched his throat bob and was struck by the idea that if he was a psycho killer that it was good she hadn't mentioned him as Mr. Nice Ass to Molly otherwise future conversations regarding him would have been extremely awkward.
"If it turns out your innocent, I'm sorry about this, really," she meant it because he was good looking more than the fact that he would be a human being accused of crimes he hadn't committed.
"But I have patients and right now you're a threat to their safety. If you really are a crazy psycho killer then, thanks for not doing something stupid like trying to kill me or your uncle because I really like having him as a patient," she rambled adding when she suddenly remembered, "And not killing me because I like not dying in a horrible way like the utility guy at the campgrounds and having someone find my mutilated body like I found the utility guy's."
She shut up when she realized her supposed to be quick add-on turned into another rambling bout of inane nervous chattering.
He looked at her hand then, the one not holding the syringe. The one she had clenched tight enough to leave tiny crescents from her nails in the palm with while he'd backed her into the wardrobe.
His body was half in and half out of the stairway door.
"You were lying about the syringe. It's not insulin."
He stated. Not a question.
It wasn't an insulin syringe, heparin, pretty harmless since it was a small dose.
Fight or flight. She threw herself forward, dropping the syringe and used all her weight to push him out the door and then reach and slam it shut.
"And this door locks from the inside crazy psycho killer suspect." There was an inhuman growl and then the door jolted as soon as she finished saying it.
She sat on the carpeted space in front of the door willing her heart not to explode. Adrenaline streamlined to her limbs as she tore up the stairs and yelled down the hall for someone to call the police.
Day 42:
The ensuing controlled chaos over the following hours was expected.
As it turned out she was not the one to alert the authorities, Jennifer had called, of all people. She had seen his distinctive car in the back of the parking lot and called the police suspecting he was in the facility. But by the time she had walked back inside the building Derek Hale was already leaving from the emergency exit in the stairwell.
Lucette decided to shred the complaint she'd written out when she got home as a professional courtesy.
The Sheriff recognized her while a different detective, one who looked more like her original mental image of a detective prior to her meeting with the portly Detective Mills, questioned her and took her statement.
"Miss Bramble?"
"Sheriff Stilinski."
He gave her a brief once over, more speculative than one belaying sexual interest in her and considered her for a moment tilting his head from side to side as if measuring his response before he said it.
"Well, you did say you were a nurse."
She laughed, tired and affirming the humor in the light joke.
The suited detective regained her attention looking waspish and irritated; she wouldn't have been surprised if he'd snapped at her to get her attention.
After the questions, she excused herself under the pretense of checking on Mr. Hale to see if he was asleep yet. It was one in the morning and she was supposed to start her shift at eight and now that she planned on shredding the complaint against Jennifer the whole venture seemed meaningless in retrospect.
As she took off in the direction of the room she realized that she in fact had no interest in going back into the room. She waved off the idea and turned on her heel almost running down the redhead in the process.
"You're clumsy when you're tired, go home get some sleep," the lower licensed nurse told her without any actual concern in her voice for said clumsy woman.
Lucette righted herself much as Jennifer did in an odd mirror of movement that was involuntary after the almost collision.
In the process the redhead displaced a piece of paper from her pocket and as she brushed by seemed to not notice its absence.
Picking it up and jogging a few steps to catch up with the redhead, Lucette bumped her hip against hers and a single dose 'Epi-Pen' fell to the floor.
Jennifer stopped mid step and looked down at the item that had fallen from her uniform pocket and rolled a few inches before stopping.
Bending to scoop up the item Lucette saw the bleed of permanent marker cross-outs through the folded piece of paper the other nurse had also dropped that she had caught up with her to return.
She handed her the items with a mumbled apology. "You dropped this. Sorry I didn't mean to bump into you…again," she rubbed the back of her neck and tried to ease the ache from it.
Holding up the returned medication pen, the redhead looked oddly wide-eyed for a moment. It caught Lucette off guard.
"I'm allergic to peanuts."
"Oh, well. Good to have it, just in case right," the brunette offered lamely unsure of why the other woman felt the need to explain.
"Thanks."
"See you, tomorrow."
They parted and Lucette found herself suddenly accosted by the charge nurse.
"Are you alright?"
Reeling she wondered if she looked like she wasn't.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I guess. Should I not feel fine? I don't know. The whole thing has me a little freaked out," Lucette admitted.
With a pursed mouth and a worn out expression the older woman informed her that she'd have to fill out an incident report before she left to go home.
She followed the other nurse to the smaller conference room with a groan and filled out the necessary paperwork until three in the morning, when she returned the forms to the charge nurse the detective told her that he needed to go over some more things with her.
By four-thirty in the morning she was running on coffee fumes and stood outside to chain smoke three cigarettes before having to go in and talk to the agency rep for her company that had just arrived and fill out more useless papers.
By six in the morning she was stretched out in the visitors lounge catching an hour of sleep on the orders of the nurse practitioner who caught one look at her and all but shoved her into the empty room before having the alarm on her cellphone go off waking her up to realize that she felt worse than when she had closed her eyes.
By seven fifteen in the morning she had collected her things and made her way to the car to run home, shower, and change into her spare uniform.
By seven twenty she cried in frustration and jumped up and down three times pleading up to the sky, 'why me, not now,' at the sight of the two slashed tires making her truck tilt unevenly to the right.
By seven twenty-five she had a witness to her desperation.
"I'll call you a tow, and give you a ride home."
She turned and face the Sheriff with a look of a woman walking to her own execution and trudged passed with a hand waving in the direction of her vehicle.
"No point my shift starts in twenty minutes, I'll borrow a set of scrubs and shower here. I really should have kept my big mouth shut after I pushed him out the door."
Catching up with her the Sheriff turned her with a firm hand and told her he could tell her boss they needed her for more questions so she'd have time to run home and get some sleep and come into work later.
She thanked him but refused with a red blotchy wet cheeked expression of absolute exhaustion.
"Fucking asshole, if you catch him you better let me key his fucking car. I swear!" Coughing wetly she bit her lip and pouted like a child.
They walked back inside and after a lukewarm shower in the employee locker room she dressed stiffly and in a sleep-deprived haze.
Trish who had just come on shift look her over and pointed her in the direction of the visitor's lounge with an unspoken command and the affirmation that she would wake her at one and buy her lunch.
Lucette sniffled, her face still feeling congested from her angry crying spell. She professed a weak declaration of love and thanks to the morning charge nurse and teetered off to the small couch in the lounge to fall into blissful oblivious sleep.
The television woke her up at eleven when someone turned it on without realizing that she was sleeping and cranked the volume up to a level that could blow up someone's brain.
Still tried and grumpy at being woken in such an unwelcomed fashion made her send a glare in the direction of the aide responsible.
"Sorry, shit, Lucette. You looked like one of the resident docs without your uniform. I should have remembered you were the one taking a nap. Sorry, my bad."
The aide lowered the volume and went to leave; Lucette stopped them with a mumbled response that she didn't even understand herself.
The news was on and she found herself tracking the movement of the waving reporter's arms blearily coming out of her post-nap daze.
A state wide man-hunt was underway for Derek Hale after he was found inside the highschool late that night, and a local teacher was under protective custody following the event.
There was no mention of the nursing home break-in but she surmised that the police were under pressure not to release that bit of information in order to avoid public panic at the notion that even medical facilities had lackluster security measures in place.
"It's crazy huh?"
Lucette realized the aide had not been told about what had occurred on the previous shift, probably no one knew besides Trish and herself.
Shaking her head to clear her mind she replied, "Yeah, wild. For sure."
"I mean, like really, just wow! Who would have guessed he'd be a killer. I guess you never know what goes on behind a pretty face."
She rolled her eyes when the aide looked away to stare at the screen.
"I guess even guys with great asses are capable of savage murder sprees."
The aide laughed and Lucette grimaced, flopping back into the couch her knees pointed up at the ceiling arms pillowing her head.
"I think I'm going to get up."
The aide looked shocked at the off handed remark.
"You can't."
Opening her eyes Lucette gave her a stern look as if to say, 'just watch me.'
"No, I mean Trish said that if we see you on the unit before one she was going to skin us. So just stay in here okay. Pretend to sleep, shit I'm sorry I woke you. Don't tell Trish."
Smiling at the idea Lucette yawned and told the aide she would promise to stay in the room if she brought her a pillow from the linen rack on the unit.
The aide brought back two and a blanket. For good measure the aide taped a sign up to cover the glass window on the door that said: Meeting in progress. DO NOT DISTURB. –Unit Management.
Lucette felt like she would have wept in gratitude if she hadn't still been so tired.
A/N: Yes the woman and the son in the grocery store are Scott and his mother, Melissa. The info on California gun laws is correct to my knowledge but if it isn't let me know. The reference about Dean and Frank is obviously Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. The info on insulin is true, heparin is an anticoagulant. Deaconate injections are injections that are administered into large muscles to be absorbed more slowly over a longer period of time than an intravenous injection. The note that falls out of Jennifer's pocket is a copy of the one Derek has and leaves on the chemistry teacher's desk. Derek's wound is the one he received before the start of night school the reason he still has it is because I figure it's hard to heal right away from being skewered on someone's arm and then having to run from the cops day and night.