Slowly pulled from sleep by the sounds of clacking keys, Reid cracked his eyes open, finding his glasses still on. He attempted to focus on the sound, Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin on a continuous loop thanks to Morgan's working of the CD player and Hotch's indifference to turning it off… He really did wish he had a different CD, but he was also unwilling to hurt Garcia's feelings over misguided good intentions.
Affiliating his surgery with a death march was not the ideal calming, sage music his doctor had probably wished for.
Reid spotted Hotch, typing away on a laptop that he seldom used. On his lap were two files open, each with pictures detailing a different crime believed to be perpetrated by the same unsub. "…Mm what time is it?" He stretched slowly, carefully.
Hotch looked up from the files, straightening them as he closed them back up. "It's about 4. Are you up to trying to eat?"
Reid slowly shook his head, "Not even slightly." He licked his dry lips, "Wouldn't mind some water though…"
Hotch stood up, approached a basin and glass, filling the one with the contents of the other. He handed it off to Reid who brought it slowly but directly to his lips, he suddenly empathized quite well with sloths. That groggy, tired, sand-bag feeling of muscle relaxers constantly adding that extra bit of challenge to hand-eye coordination. He took three large gulps before Hotch's steady hand tipped the glass back lower.
"You're going to want to pace yourself, or you'll regret it later." He warned in a gentle tone.
Reid just looked at him for a moment, his eyes then found the most interesting of his four bed corners to be the left rear, the exact opposite to where Hotch stood. "So, they filled you in, right?"
He looks at the younger agent, a few moments later it clicks for him to understand just what he was or was not filled in about. "About the details of your surgery?"
"That, and the blood work, recovery process, all the nitty-gritty. I know you asked if they weren't forth-right. So," Reid's eyes went from that interesting corner to Hotch's eyes with a stark need for knowledge, "what did they say?"
Hotch set the glass down on the rolling tray-frame, he went back to his chair, moved the files and pulled it away from the window and closer to Reid's side. He suspected he'd need to sit for this lengthy conversation.
"I'm sure they can explain it better than I can…"
"And I'm sure they'll try to sugar coat it and glaze over things that I'm too out of it to catch. You won't, you don't believe in side-stepping important points."
That got him an exasperated sigh, "You shouldn't push yourself too hard, yet, Reid. You did just get out of major surgery."
"So I don't have the right to know how major so I can compensate and plan my recovery schedule accordingly…?" Reid offered, it wasn't heated, it was even and calculating. He was measuring Hotch's reactions and the older man knew damn well why.
"I didn't say that, but if you start getting too worked up about it, I'm not going to tell you more until you're capable of handling it." He gave Reid a once-over glance, "And I will be watching for signs that you're losing it."
Reid smiled at that, the uneven grin of someone about to get their way even if they probably shouldn't. Not like he felt he was pulling one over on Hotch, Hotch was too smart for that and Reid would never take that away from the man even if he wasn't also a resident genius.
"You went into surgery to excise the damaged tissue, from the endoscopy they knew of three and knew there was a potential of more. There were seven spots total. The largest was 2 inches inside your duodenum, it had smaller areas of dead tissue apparently following that blood vessel, so they opted to take out 6 inches of your duodenum instead of trying to clean out and suture the largest patches. They did suture your stomach where the second largest patch was." He paused, locking eyes with Reid, giving the young man time to process the information.
"…How bad is the damage in my stomach?"
"From ulcers or from the necrosis? They were able to remove all of the dead tissue, there were still a few shallow ulcers they didn't want to remove, namely so you still have some surface area in your digestive tract. You're going to be here for a week at minimum on that." He gestures to the two IVs, one bag, as Reid identified the cocktail of three drugs.
"Rabeprazole, Metronidazole, and Levofloxacin… do they think I'm allergic to penicillin?"
"They have 'drug allergy' listed for opiates, so they're probably being careful to prevent any complications."
"Yeah… allergic…" Reid mentions nervously, tasting the word on his mouth. It was very metallic and bitter, he assumed the metallic taste was due to the Metronidazole, that or his throat was hoarse enough to bleed. Reid put a hand to his mouth, suddenly feeling nauceous.
"Reid…?"
Scratch that, nausea was what happens when you felt like you'd emit, actually vomiting brought it to a different level.
His cheeks flushed scarlet despite paling before he emptied the mostly-water, and oh look, there was blood… guess it wasn't a side-effect.
"Hold on, I'll get a nurse, and a towel." Hotch reached behind Reid's bed to hit the call button then took three large steps to the opposite side of the room, grabbing a towel left behind by nurses making rounds and who had wiped Reid down while he slept. They had left an extra in case he got a sheen of sweat between the scheduled rotations. "I warned you about the water…"
Reid didn't even groan in protest, he was just too mortified at the fact that he had thrown up in front of his boss and the man who claimed to love him, god he felt so small.
"Hey, it's alright, Reid… really. I've seen worse, I've had worse ON me…" he raised his hand, "I have a kid, remember? Believe me, diaper duty is much worse than that, so don't…"
Reid started to hurk again.
"Hold on, I'll get a-" he managed to thrust a basket under Reid's mouth just in time for round two of the emission.
"Ow… ow…" Reid curled inward, wrapping hands around his stomach, "Oh god this really hurts… ow…"
Two nurses came in, just in time to see Reid collapse forward despite the choice fluids covering him, pulling inward was more comfortable than not being covered in puke, and since he already had it on him anyway, he opted to be more comfortable in the situation.
"Oh goodness, I'll get a change of clothes, give him something." The one said to the other, the younger nurse nodded, grabbed at his chart, looked at his regiment and opted to fiddle with line two. She injected an additional boost of something, and then pushed Reid's shoulders back gently onto the bed. His eyes were tight in a wince but started to relax into a more natural closed expression.
"He wound up drinking half a glass of water too fast, about half an hour ago." Hotch informed. The woman nodded.
"Yep, that would do it. Poor dear. We're going to give him some electrolytes to keep him hydrated. This might become a bit of a tradition." Hotch nodded once to acknowledge the woman.
"Is there anything I can do to help…?"
"We've got this, there's a washroom just outside, it looks like he got you a bit." The other nurse handed him a small towel. Hotch excused himself, not because he cared that there was puke on him, but because he thought Reid deserved some privacy and modesty while he was changed even if he was unconscious, or more likely faking it. It was cute how embarrassed a grown man could get over something so inconsequential. And Hotch had meant it fully, he has had far worse over much larger parts of his body and had to endure the rest of diaper-duty before he could fix it.
He recalls just how much fun Jack-Jack had with the fire-hose if one wasn't fast enough with the wash-clothe shield, but he learned quick, damn it. Armani suits were expensive to dry-clean.
Hotch returned shortly after the first nurse left with a bundled up wad of hospital-gown and towels. Standing beside Reid, he brushed his bangs back from his soaked brow.
"I need to check his temperature, this doesn't look good." The remaining nurse mentioned, she pulled a cart over from the corner and took out the built in thermometer attachment, sticking it into his ear. After a few moments it beeped to signal it was finished taking the reading. Reid visibly tensed at the sound. "100… not good. Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step outside for a little bit."
"Of course… what's going on?"
The nurse hit the call button in rapid succession four times. Hotch leered from just outside the door, looking through the tinted window to see movement over Reid's bedside as IV bags were changed out, added, and ice packs were placed to Reid's head. When a small armada of people left, Hotch ventured back inward only to spot a figure in his chair.
The man smiled at the agent, "Howdy."
"…Hello." Hotch said out of politeness, unsure of just what the greeting was about.
"I'm going to sit in here for a while with Spencer here to make sure his fever doesn't spike again, please ignore me." He smiled, obviously a friendly, down-right bubbly person. Hotch doubted very much he could just 'forget he was there' and 'ignore him'. He picked up his files that had been moved to the window sill and began flipping through them while standing.
"So you bring your work with ya, huh?"
Hotch knew he was in the right profession. He just knew that man wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut for long durations. Long, apparently, was defined as 32 seconds.
He let out a breath, he hoped Reid would somehow sleep through this, because he doubted he'd be up for this sort of company.
"When I have to." He went back to reading, "He's asleep, right?"
The man nodded, "Out like a light."
"Let's keep it that way." He brought a finger to his mouth suggestively. The nurse made a zipper-closing motion over his mouth, took off the zipper handle and put it in his pocket.
"Okay, gotcha, I'll be quiet."
Hotch sorely doubted it, and like clockwork, 32 seconds after his last statement, "So whatcha reading?"
He let out a slightly more audible groan, he was sorely tempted to ACTUALLY tell the man and shock him into a stupor, he figured that stupor would last for 2 minutes but decided against testing that. "It's classified."
He had rarely been so happy to receive a call from Morgan as the man shot out an ETA of twenty minutes, bringing Prentiss along for the ride. Rossi having convinced Garcia to stay behind to help out on sorting through the cases for another hour before they'd make an appearance themselves.
TBC.