musesandlyrics | 8.6. Iron Man 2 quote
8.6. "Contrary to popular belief, I know exactly what I'm doing."
Iron Man 2
Co-written with bigbrothermojo
[Follows THIS, THIS and THIS]
With an armload of patient files piled in her arms, Bella headed back to her office in the Oncology Department at Miami City Hospital, hoping to get a bit of a lunch break before her clinic started at two pm. She had been in surgery all morning, followed by patient rounds in the ward and the ICU. She had been non-stop on the go since she stepped into the hospital early that morning, and she still couldn’t shake the lethargic feeling she had been harbouring over the past few days. She understood why that would have been the case after she sat up all night with Rick, but she had slept well last night and still felt like she wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders. She was contemplating starting to take some sort of multivitamin and maybe hitting a regular dose of wheatgrass shots, even if the crap tasted awful. Something needed to boot her up the ass and get her usual energy back. She nudged her office door open with her elbow, expecting it to be empty, but when she saw a body sitting on the side of her desk, legs swinging back and forth, she shrieked in surprise and, inevitably, dropped all the files on her foot that caused her to swear like a sailor and reach behind her to flick her office door closed in annoyance.
She turned a pissed off glare at her big brother, perched on the side of her desk. “What the freaking hell!” she cried, but she couldn’t maintain the anger for too long. With a grin, she limped over to her brother and threw her arms around him in a hug, not missing for a second that he was in a paramedics uniform. He was in Miami, in a paramedics uniform. Something was wrong with this picture. She smacked him in the arm and then held him by the shoulders to study him. “What are you doing here, Az? Shit, something hasn’t happened, has it? Are you okay? Lewis? Mom, Dad?” she said fretfully.
“Actually, I need a favour,” Aaron said sheepishly and just let her look him over. “Before you get all pissy and start tearing me a new one, I was going to surprise you well away from work. Tonight, I was going to come around and be all SURPRISE! But then they wanted me to start a day earlier, so I couldn’t really say no, only I went and had this awesome Pad Thai for lunch, only the awesome turned out to not be so awesome, if you get what I mean.”
Bella raised her eyebrows and then gave a small snort of amusement. “If you talk in a bit more detail and fill in some of those gaps, sure, I might get what you mean, buddy. Who is they, and what makes the Pad Thai less awesome?” She waved her hand a little, stepping back so she could pick up all the files, noting that her toe hurt like a bitch now. “Give me a bit more to work with and humour me. I’ve had a busy day and I’m tired. Are you saying you got a job here? Seriously?”
Aaron nodded and watched her pick up the files. “I’d help you, Bells, but seriously, it’s not a good idea for me to stand right now. I got a job. After I busted my leg, I started wondering if I wanted to stick around in New York for the rest of my life. Cool place, and home, all that, but nah. I wanted to try something new and it worked for you, so why not? Got a job with the Air Ambulance service here to work with the trauma unit. MT1? I hear it’s a pretty top notch unit, so all the better. Anyway, I was supposed to start tomorrow, but some dude called Moose called in sick. The Pad Thai? Totally gave me the runs like hell, and that’s not exactly conducive to sitting in a chopper for too long, if you get my drift. My guts feel like I’ve got the Energizer Bunny’s freaky offspring taken residence in there,” he explained, rubbing his stomach. “Can you give me something for it? Lomotil, maybe? And a shot of Prochlorperazine would be good, because I seriously feel like I’m gonna chuck all over the place. It’s not the impression I want to make on my first day. See? I wouldn’t normally crash on your work, but it’s important and I don’t know anyone else here. I wasn’t just going to hit a random doc up for some drugs, you know?”
Bella sighed and messed his hair up. “Give me a minute,” she told him and disappeared from her office. She went to the treatment room and brought back a small kidney dish in it with what he needed. She handed him a little container with a couple of pills in it and got him a cup of water from her cooler “By the way, where exactly did you get this Pad Thai? Just so I know to avoid the place like the plague. You got a job here and you didn’t even tell me? I know you and your surprises, but Jesus Christ, Az. You just up and shifted your life from home to here for a new job? How long has that been in the works for?” At the mention of MT1, it was impossible for her mind not to shift to Chris and Rick. The presence of her cell phone in her lab coat pocket was prominent. She knew there were a couple of missed calls from Rick there, but she just hadn’t had the time to respond. That was one thing she had been planning to do on her break, but now wayward big brother had rocked up sick, so she couldn’t just tell him to get lost. She was more than excited to see him. She pulled on some gloves and started to draw up the needle of anti-nausea medication. “Okay, you got me. I think it’s bloody brilliant that you’re coming to stay here. You’ll love it, and you didn’t visit nearly half as much as you should have. I’m going to force you to make up for that, you know. If these don’t work, you’re going to have to go home anyway. You can’t work if you’re feeling sick. Have you got a home here, even?”
“Apartment not too far from the hospital,” Aaron confirmed and swallowed the pills with a mouthful of water. He still had about twenty minutes left on his break, so hopefully they kicked in quickly. He had already visited her staff bathroom three times while he waited for her, to the point he was already getting sympathetic looks of the receptionist. He got paranoid that maybe the toilet doors weren’t so thick, but it wasn’t like he could help it. “It was pretty quick. A few weeks at the most. I paid some real estate dude to find me a place and I think I got the job because I could start quickly, so it worked out well. Not like I have a wife and kids to think about, and I was only renting back home. Mom and Dad told me they would miss me, of course, but they said now they have even double the reason for more vacations in Miami. Are you okay, Bells? You said you were tired and you look it, too.”
Bella waved her hand at him. “Stand up. This will work quicker in your butt. Don’t even bother complaining, either. It’ll be quicker to just drop your pants than get out of that uniform top.” She watched him pull a face but did as he was told. She swabbed the top of his butt cheek and quickly gave him an injection and then dropped the syringe into the dish. “Alright, done. You can put it away now. I don’t need to see any more of my big brother’s butt than necessary. I’m tired, but I’ve had a lot going on lately. Lost more patients than usual and seemed to have a higher level of patients needing surgery. I’ve had some come in with aggressive forms of cancer, and it’s been awhile since I took a vacation myself. I was thinking about a few weeks in September-October to go home, but I don’t think I’ll be able to...” She took a sick bag from her drawer and handed it to him. “Just in case.”
Aarron did his belt up again and adjusted his shirt in his pants so he could take the bag from her. “You need to keep your rest up too, you know. There are other oncologists. Why can’t you take your holiday?” he asked with a frown, likely ready to go straight to her superiors to argue the case if someone was telling her she couldn’t have it.
Bella sat down at her desk and pushed the files into a neater pile so they wouldn’t fall over again. “I have a new patient. He’s around my age, just a little older. He’s got renal cell carcinoma and it was aggressive enough for me to need to take the kidney that had the growth. He’s just started chemo a couple of days ago and... he’s not alone. His brother is here. His brother works in MT1, actually, but he’s he sort of guy that just has this confidence and maybe a sense of invincibility. The diagnosis has hit him hard, and he’s struggled to accept help. He made some bad choices and it affected his health. I don’t want to just piss off and hand him over to someone else in these early stages. Let’s just say he’s a flight risk, and I owe it to him and his brother to trust me to help him through the rough bumps of the first stages.”
Aaron sighed, sitting down in one of her consult chairs, watching her knowingly. “Is he terminal?” he asked. “Surely he would understand if you needed a break. Your health has that risk itself if you don’t take care of yourself too...” He paused, more questions on the end of his tongue, but he bit them back. There was just something about the way she was talking about him, but Aaron couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
“No... but it’s too soon to really know. I’ll have a better idea once I see how he responds to this first round of chemo. If no more tumours appear, it should be a positive prognosis. But like I said, it was aggressive. In just a few weeks, it went from a single tumour on the inside of the kidney, to being riddled with them, inside and out. I only knew this when I opened him up. Optimistically, the chemo should slow the progress right down. If it works...” Bella sook her head. “I’m okay. I’ve been good. Just tired, and I do rest. I’ll just take a few more days off here and there. But this is a case I need to see through. Just stop right there before you go and give me a disapproving eyeball look. I know what I’m doing.”
Aaron held up his hands. “I wasn’t! I wasn’t. I get it, alright. You know how I was with that nurse I fell for a few years ago. I’m not saying you’re going to go and fall for him, but I know what it is like to get caught up in a case and... stuff.” He was going to continue, maybe ask her a few more questions, because really, that was a big brother’s job to interrogate on some level, even if it was just about her healthy, but his stomach made a loud gurgling sound and after clutching the bag in his hand for a moment, he shook his head and bolted out of his seat. “Nope, bag ain’t gonna cut it. Sorry, sis!” He threw over his shoulder as the bolted from the room to the bathroom again, throwing another sorry at the receptionist as he passed.
Bella rubbed her head and watched him go. Seemed it was the season for brotherly issues. She slipped her cell phone from her pocket and held it for a moment, debating whether she should even actually call Rick back at all. Was it the right thing to do? After a moment, she swallowed and bit her lip before punching in a quick text message to him, telling him she would give him a call when she had a gap in her patient appointments. There was hesitation before she hit send, but she did and then put the phone done and covered it with her hands. If her brother could have a thing for one of his nurses, she could go just a step or two further... right?
Word Count | 2,151
Iron Man 2
Co-written with bigbrothermojo
[Follows THIS, THIS and THIS]
With an armload of patient files piled in her arms, Bella headed back to her office in the Oncology Department at Miami City Hospital, hoping to get a bit of a lunch break before her clinic started at two pm. She had been in surgery all morning, followed by patient rounds in the ward and the ICU. She had been non-stop on the go since she stepped into the hospital early that morning, and she still couldn’t shake the lethargic feeling she had been harbouring over the past few days. She understood why that would have been the case after she sat up all night with Rick, but she had slept well last night and still felt like she wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders. She was contemplating starting to take some sort of multivitamin and maybe hitting a regular dose of wheatgrass shots, even if the crap tasted awful. Something needed to boot her up the ass and get her usual energy back. She nudged her office door open with her elbow, expecting it to be empty, but when she saw a body sitting on the side of her desk, legs swinging back and forth, she shrieked in surprise and, inevitably, dropped all the files on her foot that caused her to swear like a sailor and reach behind her to flick her office door closed in annoyance.
She turned a pissed off glare at her big brother, perched on the side of her desk. “What the freaking hell!” she cried, but she couldn’t maintain the anger for too long. With a grin, she limped over to her brother and threw her arms around him in a hug, not missing for a second that he was in a paramedics uniform. He was in Miami, in a paramedics uniform. Something was wrong with this picture. She smacked him in the arm and then held him by the shoulders to study him. “What are you doing here, Az? Shit, something hasn’t happened, has it? Are you okay? Lewis? Mom, Dad?” she said fretfully.
“Actually, I need a favour,” Aaron said sheepishly and just let her look him over. “Before you get all pissy and start tearing me a new one, I was going to surprise you well away from work. Tonight, I was going to come around and be all SURPRISE! But then they wanted me to start a day earlier, so I couldn’t really say no, only I went and had this awesome Pad Thai for lunch, only the awesome turned out to not be so awesome, if you get what I mean.”
Bella raised her eyebrows and then gave a small snort of amusement. “If you talk in a bit more detail and fill in some of those gaps, sure, I might get what you mean, buddy. Who is they, and what makes the Pad Thai less awesome?” She waved her hand a little, stepping back so she could pick up all the files, noting that her toe hurt like a bitch now. “Give me a bit more to work with and humour me. I’ve had a busy day and I’m tired. Are you saying you got a job here? Seriously?”
Aaron nodded and watched her pick up the files. “I’d help you, Bells, but seriously, it’s not a good idea for me to stand right now. I got a job. After I busted my leg, I started wondering if I wanted to stick around in New York for the rest of my life. Cool place, and home, all that, but nah. I wanted to try something new and it worked for you, so why not? Got a job with the Air Ambulance service here to work with the trauma unit. MT1? I hear it’s a pretty top notch unit, so all the better. Anyway, I was supposed to start tomorrow, but some dude called Moose called in sick. The Pad Thai? Totally gave me the runs like hell, and that’s not exactly conducive to sitting in a chopper for too long, if you get my drift. My guts feel like I’ve got the Energizer Bunny’s freaky offspring taken residence in there,” he explained, rubbing his stomach. “Can you give me something for it? Lomotil, maybe? And a shot of Prochlorperazine would be good, because I seriously feel like I’m gonna chuck all over the place. It’s not the impression I want to make on my first day. See? I wouldn’t normally crash on your work, but it’s important and I don’t know anyone else here. I wasn’t just going to hit a random doc up for some drugs, you know?”
Bella sighed and messed his hair up. “Give me a minute,” she told him and disappeared from her office. She went to the treatment room and brought back a small kidney dish in it with what he needed. She handed him a little container with a couple of pills in it and got him a cup of water from her cooler “By the way, where exactly did you get this Pad Thai? Just so I know to avoid the place like the plague. You got a job here and you didn’t even tell me? I know you and your surprises, but Jesus Christ, Az. You just up and shifted your life from home to here for a new job? How long has that been in the works for?” At the mention of MT1, it was impossible for her mind not to shift to Chris and Rick. The presence of her cell phone in her lab coat pocket was prominent. She knew there were a couple of missed calls from Rick there, but she just hadn’t had the time to respond. That was one thing she had been planning to do on her break, but now wayward big brother had rocked up sick, so she couldn’t just tell him to get lost. She was more than excited to see him. She pulled on some gloves and started to draw up the needle of anti-nausea medication. “Okay, you got me. I think it’s bloody brilliant that you’re coming to stay here. You’ll love it, and you didn’t visit nearly half as much as you should have. I’m going to force you to make up for that, you know. If these don’t work, you’re going to have to go home anyway. You can’t work if you’re feeling sick. Have you got a home here, even?”
“Apartment not too far from the hospital,” Aaron confirmed and swallowed the pills with a mouthful of water. He still had about twenty minutes left on his break, so hopefully they kicked in quickly. He had already visited her staff bathroom three times while he waited for her, to the point he was already getting sympathetic looks of the receptionist. He got paranoid that maybe the toilet doors weren’t so thick, but it wasn’t like he could help it. “It was pretty quick. A few weeks at the most. I paid some real estate dude to find me a place and I think I got the job because I could start quickly, so it worked out well. Not like I have a wife and kids to think about, and I was only renting back home. Mom and Dad told me they would miss me, of course, but they said now they have even double the reason for more vacations in Miami. Are you okay, Bells? You said you were tired and you look it, too.”
Bella waved her hand at him. “Stand up. This will work quicker in your butt. Don’t even bother complaining, either. It’ll be quicker to just drop your pants than get out of that uniform top.” She watched him pull a face but did as he was told. She swabbed the top of his butt cheek and quickly gave him an injection and then dropped the syringe into the dish. “Alright, done. You can put it away now. I don’t need to see any more of my big brother’s butt than necessary. I’m tired, but I’ve had a lot going on lately. Lost more patients than usual and seemed to have a higher level of patients needing surgery. I’ve had some come in with aggressive forms of cancer, and it’s been awhile since I took a vacation myself. I was thinking about a few weeks in September-October to go home, but I don’t think I’ll be able to...” She took a sick bag from her drawer and handed it to him. “Just in case.”
Aarron did his belt up again and adjusted his shirt in his pants so he could take the bag from her. “You need to keep your rest up too, you know. There are other oncologists. Why can’t you take your holiday?” he asked with a frown, likely ready to go straight to her superiors to argue the case if someone was telling her she couldn’t have it.
Bella sat down at her desk and pushed the files into a neater pile so they wouldn’t fall over again. “I have a new patient. He’s around my age, just a little older. He’s got renal cell carcinoma and it was aggressive enough for me to need to take the kidney that had the growth. He’s just started chemo a couple of days ago and... he’s not alone. His brother is here. His brother works in MT1, actually, but he’s he sort of guy that just has this confidence and maybe a sense of invincibility. The diagnosis has hit him hard, and he’s struggled to accept help. He made some bad choices and it affected his health. I don’t want to just piss off and hand him over to someone else in these early stages. Let’s just say he’s a flight risk, and I owe it to him and his brother to trust me to help him through the rough bumps of the first stages.”
Aaron sighed, sitting down in one of her consult chairs, watching her knowingly. “Is he terminal?” he asked. “Surely he would understand if you needed a break. Your health has that risk itself if you don’t take care of yourself too...” He paused, more questions on the end of his tongue, but he bit them back. There was just something about the way she was talking about him, but Aaron couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
“No... but it’s too soon to really know. I’ll have a better idea once I see how he responds to this first round of chemo. If no more tumours appear, it should be a positive prognosis. But like I said, it was aggressive. In just a few weeks, it went from a single tumour on the inside of the kidney, to being riddled with them, inside and out. I only knew this when I opened him up. Optimistically, the chemo should slow the progress right down. If it works...” Bella sook her head. “I’m okay. I’ve been good. Just tired, and I do rest. I’ll just take a few more days off here and there. But this is a case I need to see through. Just stop right there before you go and give me a disapproving eyeball look. I know what I’m doing.”
Aaron held up his hands. “I wasn’t! I wasn’t. I get it, alright. You know how I was with that nurse I fell for a few years ago. I’m not saying you’re going to go and fall for him, but I know what it is like to get caught up in a case and... stuff.” He was going to continue, maybe ask her a few more questions, because really, that was a big brother’s job to interrogate on some level, even if it was just about her healthy, but his stomach made a loud gurgling sound and after clutching the bag in his hand for a moment, he shook his head and bolted out of his seat. “Nope, bag ain’t gonna cut it. Sorry, sis!” He threw over his shoulder as the bolted from the room to the bathroom again, throwing another sorry at the receptionist as he passed.
Bella rubbed her head and watched him go. Seemed it was the season for brotherly issues. She slipped her cell phone from her pocket and held it for a moment, debating whether she should even actually call Rick back at all. Was it the right thing to do? After a moment, she swallowed and bit her lip before punching in a quick text message to him, telling him she would give him a call when she had a gap in her patient appointments. There was hesitation before she hit send, but she did and then put the phone done and covered it with her hands. If her brother could have a thing for one of his nurses, she could go just a step or two further... right?
Word Count | 2,151