Title: Unexpected Patient
Prompt: Outsider POV of anyone getting rescued by the turtles
Fandom: TMNT 2003
Word Count: 2855
Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl
Rating: T
Characters: OC (Samantha Craik, Peter Craik), Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, Casey Jones
Warning: NA
Summary: Samantha Craik did not expect for a stop at a corner store on her way home from her shift at the hospital to put her in life-threatening danger, but it did. She also didn't expect for the life-threatening danger to put a new patient in her lap, but, well, it was, apparently, a night of unexpected things.
Notes: Sam is a character I've had around in some form since I was 13, and Peter since my early 20s. I have fun sticking her in fics here and there. This isn't their first appearance in TMNT fics, as I lent the both of them out to some friends in the late 2000s for their Fast Forward fics. Unfortunately, those are long lost, which is a shame, really. Back up your favorite fics, y'all!
Unexpected Patient
Samantha Craik cursed in her head. She'd have cursed out loud, except she was positive that saying anything out loud right now was not a good idea. Normally this wouldn't have stopped the fiery red-head, but there were children in this store and the last thing she wanted was for anyone to get hurt on account of her temper. Her blood boiled as these punks pushed through the store, demanding money from people and stealing from the shelves. Stars, Peter was gonna kill her. She should have just gone on to the subway station after her shift at the hospital ended and made do with whatever food they had there instead of stopping for a quick snack.
One of the gang members brandished a knife at her. "Hey—gimmie your money."
Sam glared at him, but reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. He swiped it from her, opening it, and then frowning. "This is it?" he said.
"If you think I had money, do you think I'd be working at this hospital?" she shot back at him jabbing a finger towards the hospital's crest that was on her lab coat. "I'm barely out of residency! I've still got loans to pay off!"
"Tch." The punk looked at her disdainfully. "I'll make more money hocking this wallet then what you have in it."
"Well pardon me for being poor!"
The punk gestured with his knife. "Get over there with the others!"
Sam made her way over to the other customers, one of the punks taking a moment to look at her. Sam narrowed her eyes at him. Yeah, she recognized him. He was a Purple Dragon, and he'd been in and out of her ER a few times. Several of these guys had. And yet, here they were, doing the same crap that got them in her ER to begin with.
"Hey—you got that money yet?" the guy called out, clearly their leader.
"Yeah. Getting the last of it now," a green-haired punk called out.
The leader nodded and turned back to look at them. There weren't many people in the store. Sam hadn't expected there to be, not this late. There was the cashier, a teenager who looked far too stoned to properly see the danger everyone was in; a man who appeared to be in his late sixties, leaning heavily on a cane in a way that told Sam he probably was going to need a knee replacement soon; a young immigrant woman and her two children, none of which seemed to understand much English, but clearly understood the gestures with the guns and knives; and her, a thirty-year-old doctor, straight off of what was supposed to be a twelve hour shift that had turned into a fifteen hour one instead, because sometimes that's just how it was.
Maybe her mother was right, and she should see about transferring to one of the hospitals in the richer areas of the city.
"Hey!" a punk from outside came running in the door. "The nut with the hockey mask is coming! And you know what that means."
The leader cursed, and Sam found herself really hoping that the kids didn't understand English.
"I was hoping not to deal with any green freaks tonight. Alright—bag up what we've got and let's get out of here." He looked at the group. "And just for good measure—"
He leveled the gun at the old man, and Sam realized just what he was about to do. She moved, shoving his arm up. Was it the smartest thing she could have done? No. Was it what she did anyway? Yeah.
"Leave him alone, you fracking jerk!"
The shot missed, pinging on the light fixture instead, and the man growled and tried to shake her off. In for a penny, in for a pound, she figured. Sam threw herself into fighting him, something that she wasn't completely useless in. But she was no fighter, and it didn't take long for the punks to have her pinned to the ground, the gun on her.
"Let go of me you fricking punk!" she snarled, still fighting.
"Since you're so eager," the leader said, and she could see him aiming the gun at her out of the corner of her eye, "then you can be the example."
Oh yeah. If she made it through this, her husband was definitely going to kill her.
Still, she growled and struggled, not willing to just give up and give in.
And then the door slammed open, and something burst in.
"It's the freaks!" someone shouted, and the gun was suddenly off of her and fixated on something else, going off as a fight broke out.
Sam wasn't a stupid woman, and she knew an opportunity when she saw it. Despite the grip the man that was still holding her had on her long hair, Sam twisted in his grasp, kicked him right in his junk, and then twisted her head to bite the hand that still had her shoulder. The man let out a gasp, and Sam rolled, not getting to her feet, but scrambling back and away from things.
The woman with her children were cowering, and Sam looked them over, trying to find any sort of cultural distinguisher on them. She knew a few words in different languages, and she hoped she guessed the right one.
"Go!" she said, her accent terrible, and pointed towards the storeroom door. The woman's eyes lit up in understanding, and she grabbed her kids' hands, speaking rapidly to them and tugging them with her. They all moved like they had escaped violent situations before, but Sam didn't have time to spare more than an observation about that.
The stoned teenager must have had more sense than she thought, because he was gone, and the old man, seeing where the woman had gone, was already following along. Good. Then it was just her.
And then, suddenly she found herself being yanked backwards by her hair, a strong hand pulling her by her long braid. She had the presence of mind to try to twist around, her hair long enough to give her that freedom, but it didn't work, and she realized that the leader of the punks had her as he pulled her to him, wrapping an arm around her neck. She struggled, insults pouring from her lips as she did, but she stopped when the gun was put to her head once more.
"No one move, or the lady doctor here gets it," he said.
Sam twitched in his arms and growled. "Glad to know me saving your scummy life means something. Next time I'll give it the attention it's worth!"
"You," he said, "don't say nothing either."
Sam growled again but switched her attention to looking at who else the punk was addressing. Her eyes widened as she took in who—or what—was in front of her. Four green figures, turtles, all wielding some sort of weapons, and a tall, dark-haired man in a hockey mask with a hockey stick in his hands.
Somehow, he looked the most out of place out of all of them.
Sam had heard rumors of the turtle men before. She'd not put much stock into the stories at first. All sorts of crazies came into the ER, especially at night, and some strung out druggie or beat up punk talking about karate turtles just made her double check their toxicology report. You never knew when there was a bad batch on the street.
But the stories persisted, and she heard them from other places as well. She still hadn't quite put her faith in those stories. It all seemed like some sort of gimmick to her. But now that the proof was in front of her, well, she couldn't help but conclude that maybe she should have paid a bit more attention to those rumors.
"Let her go," the one with the blue mask said. "She's an innocent."
"If she hadn't of interfered, we'd have been gone before you four freaks got—wait, why are there only three of you," the leader snarled.
And that was when everything went even more wrong than it had so far.
The Dragon went to move his gun from her head to point at one of the turtle men. Sam took the opportunity to jerk her head forward to bite the arm that held her in place and reached back to grab him in a very personal way and twist. At the same time, something came flying out of the air and embedded itself in the Dragon's hand. A turtle-man leapt forward and tackled her down and out of the way. And at the same time, the gun went off.
The Dragon howled in pain, there was a shout of pain from the opposite direction, and someone screaming "Donnie!" A thud came from the direction of the Dragon, a clack from the direction of the turtle men, and the turtle man that had tackled her out of the way and had somehow kept from squishing her, came up on his feet, setting her on hers before he rushed over towards the turtle Sam could now see being supported by the man, his red mask tails streaking out behind him.
"What the he—" Sam said, mostly to herself as she took in the scenes in front of her.
The turtle with the blue mask stood over the downed Dragon. The man was clearly bleeding out, and Sam was more than a little certain that there was nothing do to save him. A turtle man with an orange mask was hurrying from the direction of the counter towards the other two turtles and the man. The man was lowering a purple-masked turtle to the ground, clearly supporting him.
Well, it seemed pretty clear what she needed to do.
Shaking off her shock and falling back into her professional mindset, Sam hurried forward.
"Move," she said bluntly, watching as they settled the purple-masked one—Donnie, she presumed—on the ground, the orange-masked one using his lap as a pillow for the other. She could hear the blue-masked one's footsteps behind her.
The red-masked one whirled on her, clearly upset, his strange, pronged weapons held in his hands. "Look, sister—" he started.
Sam was having none of it. "I said, move!" she snapped at him. "I'm a doctor, I can help! Unless you've got a better idea?"
"Let her see Don, Raph," Leo said. "She might can help him where we can't."
Raph seemed to want to resist for a moment, but he stepped back and Sam moved next to the injured turtle.
"It's not too bad," Donnie was saying through grit teeth. His hands were already at his thigh, trying to tie a tourniquet around it.
"I'll be the judge of that," she said, reaching into her scrub pockets and pulling out a pair of gloves. She pushed her long braid behind her shoulders, pulled the gloves on, and got to work.
"Donnie, right?" said as she worked.
"Y-yeah."
"Alright. And the rest of you?"
"I'm Mikey," the orange-masked one said.
"Leo," the blue-masked one offered.
"Raph," the one with the red mask said.
"Casey," the only other human said.
"Alright. I'm Dr. Samantha Craik. I work in the hospital down the road," she said. She looked up at Donnie. "I'm going to take good care of you, alright? But I'm gonna need some information. I'm not familiar with turtles, much less whatever you are."
Don chuckled a little, but then stopped when it hurt. "I'll see what I can do, Doc," he said, clearly trying to breathe through the pain.
Sam just nodded. "I'm assuming you don't want to go to the hospital?" she said.
"No." The answer came quick and sure from Leo, and Sam nodded.
"Alright. In that case, here's what I need."
The store had the most of the things she needed and Donnie's bag helpfully provided the rest. Donnie had gotten lucky. The bullet hadn't hit anything important, and it was fairly clean in-and-out wound. Ideally, she's have hopped him up on painkillers, taken some scans, put him on a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and gotten him some blood, but none of that was possible at the moment.
Instead, she snapped out orders to the other turtle-men, sterilized things as best she could, and got to work, cursing the Purple Dragons with every spare breath she had.
"Idiotic low-life—hold his leg still—punks who can't figure out that—keep that pressure!—that all they're gonna have is a short and—this is gonna hurt, Donnie—violent life where no one will ever want to remember them—you're doing good—and they'll either—almost done with this side—die young or rot in prison—"
"I kinda like you," Raph said to her.
"I'll add that to my resume," she shot back immediately, not even thinking about it. Mikey laughed, but it seemed to ease the turtles and their human friend a bit.
Finally, she sat back, putting things away and stripping off her gloves. "There," she said. She looked over at Leo, as he seemed the most responsible of the bunch. "He needs to stay off of it. I don't know if you have access to antibiotics, but those can't hurt. Keep it clean and wrapped. Those stitches will have to be taken out, so—"
"We can handle that," Leo said. "We've done it before."
"Although it's usually Donnie doing this kind of stuff," Mikey said.
"I'll… be able to do it… by then…" Donnie said, his face still pinched in pain.
Sam nodded. "Fine." She hesitated. "If you need anything, come find me. Something tells me you don't have a lot of medical access." She looked around and picked up a discarded piece of cardboard and pulled a pen out of her pocket. "Here. That's my number. Call me. Or come to the hospital and ask for me, or Peter Craik—my husband," she said at Leo's look.
He took the number and tucked it into his belt, even as Raph was kneeling in front of Donnie, shell to him as Mikey and Casey helped Don sit up. In the distance sirens sounded.
"We will," he said. "Thank you, Dr. Craik. But for now, we have to go. Raph?"
"Good to go," Raph said, standing up with Donnie clinging to his shell.
"See ya, doc!" Mikey said with a wave.
The four of them headed out the back, but Casey hesitated for a moment. "Ya good, Doc?"
Sam sighed. "Well, someone has to stay behind and explain this—and something tells me that you shouldn't be here anymore than them."
"Heh. Maybe," Casey said. "Seriously, though, thanks Doc." He headed out the back as well, following behind, leaving Sam standing in the middle of the store with a dead Purple Dragon and several that were tied up—although she had no idea when that had happened.
She sighed and sat down on the floor as the sirens got closer. This was going to be a mess.
Sam was right. It was a mess. She had to explain over and over again that some vigilantes had come in and saved them, that one had gotten wounded, and that she had done her best to treat him, as per her oath, but that, no, she didn't know what they looked like under their masks and that, no, she had no idea who they were or where they had gone. By the time it was all over with and the police accepted her statement, the sun was up, and her husband was waiting on her.
"Sam!" he said, rushing towards her. "Are you alright?"
"I'm tired, my hair is a mess, I had my life threatened, I had to do field medicine, and I've not slept in nearly twenty-four hours," she snapped. "What do you think?"
Peter just grinned at her. "I think that, if you're snapping like that at me, that you're probably alright. Let's get out of here."
The two left the police station, and headed home, Peter holding Sam's hand. They were quiet for a moment, and then, softly, Peter murmured to her.
"So, are you going to tell me what really happened?"
Sam didn't answer for a moment. "…when we get home," she said.
"Why didn't you tell the police?" he asked, not condemning, but clearly curious.
"Because sometimes, 'do no harm' is more than just the patient's body," Sam said irritably.
Peter laughed. "And that's why I love you," he said.
"Because I take my oath seriously?" Sam demanded, shooting him a look.
Peter grinned at her. "Because when you've decided something's your duty, nothing can stop you—especially if it's for the good of your patients."
Sam harumphed, but he wasn't wrong, she reflected. And as they walked down the street and down into the subway station she should have entered into last night, Sam wondered if she'd ever see those particular patients again.
After all, a good doctor always followed up.