The nurse doesn't know the point of a siren if they never stop going off. Doesn't know the point of calling anything an emergency if everything is. She should have clocked out when the sun was still up, been able to go home when she wasn't feeling bone tired and worn out, but here she was, sneaking away when things finally quieted down just before fucking one a.m., and she still couldn't leave.

At least she had found a spot in that god forsaken hospital where no one could find her. Where she couldn't hear the beeping of patient's heart monitors, where she couldn't see anyone running around trying to save the next life, where no one needed her for just two seconds.

She tries to look for someone to blame. Her mom for leaving her behind for her fourth husband, her dad for dying on her right as she got her nursing degree and could finally take care of him properly, her shitty ex boyfriend for moving her out to New York City and then cheating on her a month later, leaving her with no money, and no car, and no way to get back home. But she doesn't have the energy to conjure up the righteous anger or grief. Truth is she can't change anything that already happened, and it was pointless to wish for it. Besides, the boyfriend and New York things were even partially her fault. She had picked him from a dating app, and it's not like he kidnapped her and took her across state lines.

"I need a new job," the nurse says as she sits out on the third floor fire escape for the fifth time that week. Between the Mean Girl nurses, the patients that spit at her like trapped snakes, and mandatory overtime, what she needs is a fucking break. She beats her head back against the rail of the landing slowly, methodically, hoping to beat some easier answer to her problems into her head.

"You okay up there?" A rough, war torn voice calls from the alley below her.

"Yup," she calls back down to him, her eyes still on the light polluted skies, popping her P. "Just wishing for some other life. No worries."

"Yeah, I been there, sweetheart. Hope you get that wish. One of us should," the stranger says.

The nurse looks down, intrigued by the sadness in his voice, but hes gone by the time she turns her head to look down through the metal slats. She rests her elbows up on her knees, putting her chin in her hands, wishing, not for the first time, that she could wrap her arms around her calves like smaller girls could. It always looked so comforting when they did it. The nurse had made her peace with most of the complications of living in a fat body, but that one still vexes her.

Her pager goes off before she even steals a full fifteen minutes. She doesn't remember when she last ate. The groan she lets out from her aching body bounces off walls of the alley before she ducks back into the hospital through the window.

Some days, Frank really wishes he wasn't Frank Castle. Wishes he wasn't the guy with violence in his veins and scrapes that never heal on his knuckles. But then he remembers trying to be Pete Castiglione, and how he fucked it up both times, and he stops wishing not to be Frank Castle. It'd be helpful not to have to dig bullets out of his own skin though.

That's what has him pacing in the alley behind this hospital. He's gotta figure out a halfway decent lie so no one calls the cops when they see his wound and figures out he's back in New York. But hell, he hasn't been back in a real hospital since the trial. God, sometimes he wishes the state of New York woulda killed him, even if they still don't have the death penalty. Wishes anyone of the fucks with a grudge against him had been able to put the nails in his coffin. Frank doesn't really know why he fights, just knows he can't help himself when he sees one.

In the end it's the nurse on the fire escape that makes up his mind. If she's having a hard night maybe they all are, and he can sneak out before anyone notices he's gone. Maybe no one will even notice one more tough with a bullet he can't reach lodged in 'im.

He lies to the lady at check in. Tells her he's got an open sore on his ass, tugs his flannel down so she doesn't see the blood on his jeans. She doesn't ask questions, figures that's someone else's problem. He tells her his name is John Page too. No, he doesn't have insurance ma'am. It all gets him in the door and in an exam bed. They even draw the curtain around him for "privacy". Small miracles. He can see the nurses station from his bed, though the fire escape girl isn't his nurse. He's got an old broad; a battle axe named Charlene with dark skin, long braids, and kind eyes. If he had to guess, Frank would bet she's been running this shift like the Navy for the past thirty years.

"Alright Mr. Page, turn around, let me see your ass," she commands after taking his blood pressure and listening to his heart.

"This is the part where I'm supposed to joke about letting me take you to dinner first, right?"

"Oh no honey, I decided you're fine enough not to need a dinner date," she replies drily, hands on her hips, waiting for him to turn around, barely suffering his foolishness.

"Kind a ya," Frank grins.

"I'm a modern woman. Pants off, Page."

Frank sighs and turns around, unbuckles his pants, pushes them off with his boxers until they're both around his ankles, and bends over the bed for her. "You know, Charlene, I think this could be love."

Charlene doesn't say anything smart back. She stares at the bullet wound in his ass. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't call the police right now?"

Frank pauses. "Paperwork seems like it'd be a real bitch?"

She snorts and shakes her head. "Pull your pants back up. I have to go get more supplies. This is what happens when you lie to the intake nurse. You wait." She's kind enough to wait for him to get his pants back around his waist before she opens the curtain and exits his fabric cube.

Frank sits on the bed and watches the other patients in the Emergency Room. He has to focus to drown out the noise, not let it bother him.

"Beds five and twelve are being turned over by the orderly now, the patients are up at discharge, I'm just waiting on sixteen to be done with the antibiotic bag, it shouldn't be more than twenty minutes." He hears the fire escape nurse before he sees her, swinging his head back to the nurses station he spots her giving her report to Charlene, forest green scrubs stained with rust she didn't manage to wipe off her ass.

"And what the Hell are you still doing here?"

"Melissa said if she can't go home, neither can anyone else." Frank notices two things. She's prettier up close, and she looks just as tired as she sounded. The bags under her eyes don't subtract from the prettiness though. She's got these bright eyes not even exhaustion can dull, wide hips that she's leaning back against the desk, and a soft, round face that makes her look more innocent than she probably is. Frank likes that.

The older nurse sucks her teeth. "I don't give a damn what Melissa says. You're dead on your feet. Make sure your reports are finished and clock out," The fire escape nurse opens her mouth to protest but the older nurse cuts her off. "I'll deal with that bitch, you go home before she sees you."

The younger nurse hesitates but nods. "I'd have rather worked the overtime for you, Charlene."

Charlene smiles and the hard exterior breaks. All the patience she didn't have for Frank, she does for this girl. "I know baby, and I'll remember that the next time the moon's full and we get slammed at 2 am and I'm dialing numbers to get people in."

Fire escape smiles back. "You do that. I'll keep my ringer on just for you."

Charlene actually gives his nurse a hug before they part, fire escape sitting at the computer to type something as Charlene moves back to Frank, forceps, gauze, needle, and stitches in hand.

"What's all 'at?" He asks, nodding to the needle.

"Lidocaine. Why, you want me charging you for the good stuff?" Charlene asks, eyebrows raised, challenging him. She knows he's not paying his tab, but it's no skin off Frank's nose. He doesn't need morphine slowing him down anyway, and he's had worse than this.

Charlenes quick. She's done digging the bullet out of Frank and stitching him closed before the fire escape nurse is done with her reports. 'In a hospital like this, bet she gets a lot of practice digging bullets outta scumbags,' Frank figures.

She frowns when she's done and stands. "Wait here, I forgot the tape."

Charlene ducks out of the curtain and Frank pulls up his pants, waiting a beat before he follows her out. No one on the other side of the curtain even looks his way. He spots fire escape nurse by her ponytail, her coat on and purse slung over her neck, and he waits until she's just around a corner before he follows her, keeping his distance.

A better man might feel some sort of guilt about stalking her, but Frank gave up that part of him a long time ago. He follows her onto the subway car. At two in the fuckin' morning. He wonders if she has a death wish or if she really is that tired. He pulls his hood up and his hat low and sits four seats down from her, on her side. No one bothers them, but it doesn't change that the car smells like piss. 'Price of being home,' he thinks.

She walks with her arms crossed over her chest when she gets off at her stop. She doesn't have her headphones in, which he thinks is a minor miracle, but her heads not swiveling enough for his liking. She keeps her head down, eyes on her feet. He ends up putting his hand on the shoulder of one guy, dressed just like him, he notices, and mean muggin' him until he crosses the street. Frank wonders why she didn't get a cab as she walks up to her building, a walk up with no door man. He bets she pays too much for this shit hole.

He watches her climb the stairs, waits to see if the light turns on in any of the apartments. When it doesn't he walks around the building, up the alley behind her apartment and finds her up on the fourth floor, window wide open (even though Frank can see his breath), light on as she strips her scrub top off to give way to the black compression top beneath it. She's got a fire escape of her own, he notices before he makes his way back to the subway, back to his own shit hole, the lidocaine starting to wear off.

Another rotten night. Another night when she should have been off at 3 pm but didn't clock out until much closer to 3 am. Another night where every fuckin' thing that could have gone wrong in that hospital did. The nurse toes her shoes off and kicks them next to the door frame before shutting and locking it, then leaning back and banging her head against it once. "I gotta get the fuck outta here."

"But you only just got here," a gravelly voice says in the dark.

The nurse straightens her back against the door and unlocks it again, ready to run before the intruder clicks on her lamp from his place sitting on her loveseat. The soft light illuminates his face, but the nurse doesn't recognize him, and wouldn't have even without all the bruises and the broken nose.

"Looks like neither of us got that wish sweetheart," he says, pulling his arm back to his body gently. His right hand holds himself over a rib on his left side. A gun sits on her coffee table, the vintage one she carried up three flights of stairs by herself because she found it on the street and spent an hour checking it for bugs. She isn't familiar with firearms, but she suspects it's unusual that it's in two pieces. She takes it as a peace offering.

He knows her, she figures. A patient? No, they'd just go back to the hospital. She frowns as she thinks about his words, his voice. She recognizes it, but from where?

"You're even prettier up close, anyone ever tell you that?"

"No. I heard I was a Monet once though."

"The fuck does that mean?" he asks, his brows furrowed in confusion.

"I'm cute from far away but up close I'm just a big mess. Like that painter's paintings."

The stranger's eyebrows raise. "Who told you that?"

She shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest, eyes running over him. "Girl in high school." Theres blood everywhere on him, but other than his nose she thinks nothing looks broken and figures some of that blood probably isn't his. She wonders how she's gonna get it out of her couch before she sees the blanket he laid down under him. 'Thank God for small miracles,' she thinks. She's finally heard enough of his voice to make a guess.

"Alley guy?" she asks. "From the other night?"

He grunts and tips forward a little, putting a leg out to rest his weight on one foot and steady himself. "S'me," he confirms.

"How did you find where I live?" She asks, continuing to assess his body for damage from her place in the doorway, one hand still on her door knob, ready to run. She knows she wouldn't get very far, fat girls aren't exactly known for their sprinting skills. But in his state she could out run him long enough, and she bets she knows her building better than he does if he came after her, allowing her the chance to hide.

"I followed you home the other night," the stranger says. He'd shrug if he could move his shoulders without wanting to scream.

She frowns. "I don't like that answer."

"Didn't think you would, sweetheart. Now would you please come fix me up?" he asks, moving his right hand from his rib to show her the gash in his side that wrapped from below his left pectoral to the middle of his armpit, ripping a two inch wide hole in the side of his torso.

"Is this how you normally go about procuring medical care? Stalking hospital employees until you find one you take a shine to?" the nurse asks, staying planted right where she is, wondering how she can get her shoes back on without him noticing.

"Normally I work on a referral system," he says. It sounds like a joke and it doesn't. "I followed you home to make sure you got here safely, that's all. You sounded like you had a hard day, that sort of thing can distract a person, you get distracted, you might miss something in the night and your day gets even worse," he explains. The nurse imagines it's harder to lie when you're in the kind of pain he's in.

"I see. You're just the Spider Man of Bushwick, that it?

"I work Hell's Kitchen too." She doesn't know if thats a joke. "Come on, you gonna ask questions all night or you gonna fix me up?"

"I'm a nurse's aide, I don't know how to help you."

"That's a fucking lie, but good on you for trying it." He sounds pained, she notices, but he's keeping it off his face well. He's hurting a lot more than he's letting on.

"How would you know?" She asks, offended.

"Only nurses sound as tired as you did on that fire escape. Now come on, before I bleed out on your floor and you got a new problem."

The nurse frowns but finally walks away from the door frame, ducking into her bathroom and bending over to grab her first aid supplies from beneath the sink. "You gonna leave me alone if I do?"

"No," he shoots back, leaning back against her couch again, legs spread wide, practically taking up the whole thing and he's not even horizontal on it. "But I'm too heavy for you to drag to the trash shoot without getting caught."

"I thought about that," she says, putting the gauze next to the peroxide on her bathroom counter. "I'd have to rent a hacksaw and take you out in pieces."

The stranger smiles. "Smart girl. Scatter me in the Hudson, it'll look like a mob hit."

The nurse comes back and puts her supplies on the coffee table before heading to her refrigerator, opening her freezer and pulling out a bottle of Stoli. "Haven't figured out how to get the blood out of the hardwood yet though. So I guess I'll have to fix you up," she says, walking back over and twisting off the cap.

"Vodka to disinfect the wound?" the stranger asks, eyeing the bottle.

"Nope," she says, handing the bottle over to him, puts the cap on the coffee table. "That's what the peroxide is for. Vodkas for the pain, I'm not in the habit of stealing painkillers from work."

The stranger takes a long pull from the frozen bottle, his fingers slipping in the frost on the glass. "Could I talk you into making that a habit?"

The nurse makes sure he sees her roll her eyes before turning back to the kitchen to wash her hands. She takes her time, doing a thorough job. Her apartment is as clean as she can get it but it's nowhere near sterile enough to be doing the fixing he needs. "I trust you can knock over a pharmacy on your way home."

The stranger smiles around the lip of the bottle. "The vodkas thoughtful, thank you."

The nurse comes back to him and sits in front of him on the coffee table, listening carefully to hear if there's any cracking under her weight. She doesn't hear any, but she figures it's an extra incentive for her to work fast. She really loves that coffee table. "That gash on your side the biggest danger?"

The stranger sits up and grabs the cap sitting next to her wide ass, twisting it back on the bottle before setting it next to him, cradling it against his side like the stuffies the nurse gives to pediatric patients at work sometimes. "Yeah. I think it's stopped bleeding."

The nurse picks out a pair of gloves from the box she stole from work and puts them on. "You better hope it did, I don't have any blood for you." She waves her hand upward. "Shirt off."

The stranger doesn't argue, just uses his left hand to tug the whole thing off.

The nurse leans forward, taking a piece of clean gauze and squirting peroxide on it from the bottle, she gently begins to dab around the outside of the wound, cleaning away the dried blood. It takes a while, and the peroxide stings like Hell, but the stranger's face doesn't give it away and the vodka starts to settle into his bloodstream comfortably before she's done.

"So," the nurse tries to make conversation while she works. "You gotta name?"

"John Smith-"

Her scoff cuts him off. "What're you afraid I'm gonna violate HIPAA? Run around telling the Daily Bugle I gave you stitches in my living room?"

The stranger levels her with an unamused stare. "I got enemies."

"Yeah, and? The sky is blue. You think they're not gonna be able to identify you by a description?"

He considers it, unscrewing the cap of the vodka bottle and taking another sip. "Frank Castle."

The nurse raises an eyebrow curiously but her eyes don't look up from his wound, intent and focused on her job. "Thought Frank Castle was a dead man."

"Guess that makes you the mortician then," he shoots back.

"Feel a little more like Dr. Frankenstein at the moment," she counters. Frank smirks. "Far be it from me to tell you how to live, but it seems like a bad idea to let those enemies of yours know you're alive after you went through all the trouble of dying."

"Dying is temporary. Enemies are forever."

Several sheets of gauze later, the wound is clean enough for the nurse to stitch. "You drunk enough for me to poke holes in you, Castle?"

Frank takes another deep pull from the bottle before nodding. "Go 'head."

The nurse, blessedly, works quickly. It takes nearly thirty stitches to close him up. She wraps him up with tape so it won't be exposed to the elements when he leaves her. "When you knock over that pharmacy later I'd appreciate it if you pick up antibiotics. Anything with the suffixes "Cin" or "Cillin" will do." She takes off her gloves, balling them together on top of the bloody gauze, and waves him toward her. "Lemme see your nose."

"Nah, I got my nose, it's not the first time it's been broken," Frank tries to wave her off.

"I don't doubt that at all, but I said c'mere, now let me see it." She waves him forward again, leaving her palm open for him.

He looks her over, wanting to challenge her, but the vodka takes over. He leans forward and puts his chin in her hand. "Yes Nurse Ratched."

She rolls her eyes as her fingers gently probe along the length of his nose, trying to determine whether she needs to pack it or if she can set it herself. "I'm assuming you know my name if you followed me home?" It's a question and it's not.

Frank hums softly, closing his eyes while her thick, soft fingers slide over the break in his nose, and says her name. She immediately forces his nose back into its proper place. "Fuck!" he yells and she smirks, standing up to throw his gore in the trash.

"You're welcome to the couch," she says as she puts some ice in a pack for him. He opens his mouth to protest and she continues before he can say a word. "If you refuse and get your ass kicked on the streets and rip out my stitches I'm not gonna fix 'em."

Frank thinks thats reasonable. "A'right."

She walks back over and hands him the ice pack. "You want a shower? A clean shirt?"

He looks up at her, eyes glassy from the vodka. "You goin' for sainthood sweetheart?"

She rolls her eyes and takes the bottle of Stoli from his hands, opening it and taking her own big pulls. She can't do it as straight faced as he can. She screws the cap back on and chucks what's left back in her freezer. "Am I gonna be seeing you again? Should I invest in more supplies?"

The alcohol loosens his tongue. He doesn't bother lying to either of them. "Yeah. Probably best if you pick up some things to dig bullets outta me too."

The nurse closes her eyes and leans her forehead against the freezer door. "That's safer and easier to do at a hospital," she points out.

"Yeah," Frank grins, leaning back on the couch, letting the alcohol take hold of his brain for a little while. "But you know, I think I'm starting to prefer a house call."