FIC: The Good Samaritan - Part 2
Title: The Good Samaritan
Author: Trisha
Beta: kazlynh
Rating: NC17 in places
Artwork: Myself and the incredibly talented _tayler
Summary: Follow on from 'The Bourne Supremacy'
Feedback:Yes please
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
David always left the lights on in the apartment, it made him feel like he was coming home to something, made the emptiness somehow a little more bearable.
He helped the young man as far as the bathroom door, opening it and turning on the lights.
“The bathroom is through here. Do you think you can support yourself whilst I get a few things, or do you want me to come and help you?”
“I- I can do it.”
David nodded. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”
The bathroom door was slightly ajar when David returned and he was almost certain that the homeless man would be gone, so he was surprised to find him still there.
He looked up at David as he entered the room. “I’m too tired to leave,” the soft voice told him, as though reading his thoughts. He was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and David guessed that the journey here had sapped the last of his strength.
David gave him a nod as he put his medical bag and a few other things down on the counter top. He had slipped on an old kitchen apron over his clothes, and wore surgical gloves. He opened a plastic garbage sack and placed it on the floor. “For me to help you I need to see how badly you’re injured,” he explained, “And for me to do that you’ll need to undress, do you understand?”
He got a nod, but the young man’s gaze had become fixed on the floor.
“If we put your clothes into the plastic sack I can wash them for you.”
The floor got itself another nod but then the man spoke, his heavily accented voice little more than a whisper. “I-I have… things.”
“Things?”
His hand searched shakily for the pocket of the filthy army surplus parka he was wearing, and David took his meaning.
“I’ll empty the pockets carefully, I promise you, before I wash anything. And I’ll keep safe anything I find.”
The hand dropped down again, and this time the eyes came up slowly to meet his before he got his nod.
David all but undressed the young man, who remained seated on the closed lid of the toilet. He wore layers of ill fitting clothing, but they were barely adequate to keep him warm. Most of the items were so threadbare that David doubted they’d survive the wash. Almost all the clothes were wet from the snow and he was shivering with cold, even in David’s more than comfortably warm bathroom.
What bothered David even more was the condition of the man. Even for a vagrant he must have been living in grim circumstances. It was clear that he’d lost a great deal of body weight. He remained large framed and broad shouldered, but he was on his way to being distressingly thin.
The beating he’d taken today showed up an angry red that was already beginning to turn into dark, purple bruising, but the man had older bruises in a rainbow of shades, all over his body, and there were wounds that ranged from minor yet painful looking abrasions to some more nasty looking injuries that were in various stages of healing. There were scars too; one on his upper arm was clearly a surgical scar that David estimated to be less than a year old.
“Would you object to taking a bath?” David asked him. “It will help warm you through, ease the pain a little, and I can clean up some of these cuts and bruises.”
He was expecting an absolute no, he knew from hostels he had visited how hard it could be for the workers in those places to talk many of their itinerant clientele into taking baths and showers. So he was surprised to see that the young man was nodding even before he got all the words out.
“I w-would like to take a bath,” he said slowly.
“Let me go and run it for you.”
David wrapped an old bath sheet around the shivering younger man before crossing to the bath tub and beginning to fill it. Once the taps were running he retrieved a thermometer from his medical bag and turned his attention back to his patient who had pulled the towel tight around him, like a blanket.
“Can I take your temperature?”
The eye that wasn’t cut and almost swollen closed, looked up at him from beneath the dirty matted hair and David got a real look at the young man’s face as he slipped the thermometer beneath his tongue. That undamaged eye was large and quite beautiful, not dark brown as he’d thought but closer to hazel, with long dark lashes and dramatic brows. The flesh beneath was tinged blue, clearly showing the extent of his exhaustion, and possibly more than that; he had the pallor, gaunt face, and slightly sunken eyes of someone who was ill, or recovering from an illness. You couldn’t hide the beauty of that face though, not beneath a plethora of cuts and bruises, or the heavy beard and an acre of grime.
David was distracted by the sight of yet another line of blood streaking a path through the dirt, down beside his ear and into his beard, to stain the towel covering his shoulder.
~~~~~~~~~~
The old man helped him lower himself into the bathtub; otherwise he would probably have fallen in. The water felt so hot against the ice of his skin that it wrung a gasp from him, but he laid back anyway, gratefully immersing everything but his head. The parts of him that didn’t ache began to sting on contact with the water, but he was past caring. It felt so blessedly warm.
He could lie here forever in this heat… Perhaps if the old man went away he could find the courage to simply let his head slip under the water and bring things to an end. He was tired, so very tired. He needed to rest, get his strength back and then move on, but what he needed to do and what he seemed capable of doing appeared worlds apart just now.
Those bastards tonight had heard rumours that he had been F.S. B; had sought him out so they could prove how tough they were. There should not have been any rumours. His existence should not be reduced to this. If he could rest then perhaps the headaches would go, perhaps he’d be able to pull together the gaps in his memory…
So many gaps…
He realised he’d been rubbing at his head near the site of the headaches, and moved his hand away, surprised when he opened his eyes to find blood on his fingertips.
“You seem to have a head wound that’s bleeding quite a bit,” his Samaritan rescuer told him. He had forgotten the man was standing beside the bath. “Why don’t I wash your hair and take a look at it?”
He gazed up at the man, who seemed to be somewhere in his sixties. He could sense no threat from him; see nothing to be wary of behind the concerned blue eyes. Perhaps the man was genuine, or more likely expected payment in kind.
He had done worse… much worse.
He gave the waiting man a nod.
~~~~~~~~
“I don’t have very much that will fit you…” David told his reluctant guest, coming back into the bathroom with a pair of blue boxers and an old grey T-shirt. “These should be fine to sleep in though.”
He handed them over to the towel-wrapped young man. “The boxers are new, a gift from my wife’s sister, who clearly has me confused with a much slimmer man,” he patted his paunch and laughed.
He didn’t get a laugh back, didn’t actually expect any reply at all, but to his surprise he got a response. “Where is your wife?”
David froze for a moment, and then shook his head, pulling himself together. “She died, almost two years ago now. Bowel cancer,” he added, still oddly uncomfortable with saying the words.
There was no reaction as the man began to slip on the clothes David had handed him.
“I have a varied collection of equipment from the last time I offered my medical skills to the hostel down town. I thought I might have steri-strips for the head wound, though they wouldn’t have been suitable for the cut near your eye, but I’m afraid I don’t. Oddly enough I do have sutures, but no lidocaine, I’m sorry.”
“It-it does not matter,” the soft, accented voice told him.
David nodded, “If you’re sure, I really have no desire to add to what you’ve already been through today, but they need stitching. There’s a bed made up in the spare room, and there’s an angle lamp in there that I can use. The better the light the…”
He stopped talking when he saw that the young man’s energy had run out whilst he was putting on the boxers. He went over and helped him to slip the T-shirt over his battered torso. “A last effort to the bedroom and then you can lie down, get some rest. Are you up to it, if I help you?”
“I… Da… Yes.”
It was a stumbling walk to the bedroom, and David suspected his guest had called up his last reserves of strength to make it. His limp had become so pronounced that he was barely taking any weight on his right leg at all.
David hadn’t wanted to take too many liberties when he was washing the man, but the problem seemed to be with his right ankle. Orthopaedics weren’t David’s field. If the opportunity presented itself he would try and talk the young man into letting someone take a look at it. Perhaps Arthur Kramer, he was very good.
David helped the man to lie back on the bed, disturbed at seeing the pain etched on his face and hearing the groan of discomfort that escaped him. Even back at the alley he’d done all he could to mask what he was feeling.
“Almost done,” David quietly reassured him, unfolding the comforter over him.
The scalp wound wasn’t too severe but like all head wounds it bled a lot. David cut away some of the hair around the wound then flushed it as clean as possible with antiseptic solution before stitching it. It took six, each one borne in total silence and without so much as a flinch.
“That should be fine,” David told him when he’d finished. “I noticed the scar you already have nearby. It’s surgical isn’t it?”
His patient frowned a little, the open hazel eye boring into him, but surprisingly he answered. “An auto accident.”
“Was it a skull fracture?”
“Da.”
“Is that when you injured your arm, I noticed that has a surgical scar too?”
“They told me it was trapped. I don’t remember that, just… Bits and pieces are all I remember.”
David turned his attention to the other cut, beside the eye that was swollen closed. “I fear these may cause you a little more discomfort than the scalp wound, I’m sorry. They need to be a little more delicate if we’re to avoid a nasty scar,” he explained as he set to work.
“How did you injure your ankle?” he asked, by way of a distraction.
“I-I don’t… In the accident maybe?”
David frowned as he concentrated, “You don’t remember?”
The young man shifted slightly. “You ask too many questions.”
“I thought that talking might distract you a little. This can’t be very pleasant. Plus my own professional curiosity compels me to ask.”
David began another stitch. “You could turn the tables, ask me questions.”
“What is it that you want?” he was asked, after a lengthy silence.
David didn’t understand, “Want?”
“From me. Why are you helping me?”
“Because you need it,” he frowned. “I’m not looking for payment, don’t let that worry you, please. At some point in our lives we all need help for some reason or other, so you do what you can.”
“You have belief then, religion?”
“Anyone who can watch their wife, or any loved one, go through what mine did and keep their faith is a far better person than I am I’m afraid.”
The image of Margaret in her final weeks insinuated itself into David’s mind, forcing him to silence, to concentrate on what he was doing, distract himself. It took a few moments before he could find his voice again and be assured he could keep it steady.
“Almost finished, this is the last one. The stitches will need to come out in five days, until then you need to keep them clean and dry so they don’t get infected,” he explained as he cut the final thread and sat back to examine his handiwork, happy with the neat job. “One more thing and then I’ll leave you in peace to get some sleep.”
“What more do you do?” The soft voice with it’s more pronounced accent and slightly confused English were clear indications of his patient’s exhaustion.
“Anti-tetanus shot, nothing to worry about.” David doubted he heard a word, let alone felt the shot, before he drifted into sleep.
As he cleaned up the room as he felt his own tiredness sweep over him. He took a final look at the young man before turning off the light and closing the bedroom door, wondering, not for the first time this evening, if he’d done a good thing or a momentously stupid one in bringing him here.
~~~~~~
To be continued...
Author: Trisha
Beta: kazlynh
Rating: NC17 in places
Artwork: Myself and the incredibly talented _tayler
Summary: Follow on from 'The Bourne Supremacy'
Feedback:Yes please
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
David always left the lights on in the apartment, it made him feel like he was coming home to something, made the emptiness somehow a little more bearable.
He helped the young man as far as the bathroom door, opening it and turning on the lights.
“The bathroom is through here. Do you think you can support yourself whilst I get a few things, or do you want me to come and help you?”
“I- I can do it.”
David nodded. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”
The bathroom door was slightly ajar when David returned and he was almost certain that the homeless man would be gone, so he was surprised to find him still there.
He looked up at David as he entered the room. “I’m too tired to leave,” the soft voice told him, as though reading his thoughts. He was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and David guessed that the journey here had sapped the last of his strength.
David gave him a nod as he put his medical bag and a few other things down on the counter top. He had slipped on an old kitchen apron over his clothes, and wore surgical gloves. He opened a plastic garbage sack and placed it on the floor. “For me to help you I need to see how badly you’re injured,” he explained, “And for me to do that you’ll need to undress, do you understand?”
He got a nod, but the young man’s gaze had become fixed on the floor.
“If we put your clothes into the plastic sack I can wash them for you.”
The floor got itself another nod but then the man spoke, his heavily accented voice little more than a whisper. “I-I have… things.”
“Things?”
His hand searched shakily for the pocket of the filthy army surplus parka he was wearing, and David took his meaning.
“I’ll empty the pockets carefully, I promise you, before I wash anything. And I’ll keep safe anything I find.”
The hand dropped down again, and this time the eyes came up slowly to meet his before he got his nod.
David all but undressed the young man, who remained seated on the closed lid of the toilet. He wore layers of ill fitting clothing, but they were barely adequate to keep him warm. Most of the items were so threadbare that David doubted they’d survive the wash. Almost all the clothes were wet from the snow and he was shivering with cold, even in David’s more than comfortably warm bathroom.
What bothered David even more was the condition of the man. Even for a vagrant he must have been living in grim circumstances. It was clear that he’d lost a great deal of body weight. He remained large framed and broad shouldered, but he was on his way to being distressingly thin.
The beating he’d taken today showed up an angry red that was already beginning to turn into dark, purple bruising, but the man had older bruises in a rainbow of shades, all over his body, and there were wounds that ranged from minor yet painful looking abrasions to some more nasty looking injuries that were in various stages of healing. There were scars too; one on his upper arm was clearly a surgical scar that David estimated to be less than a year old.
“Would you object to taking a bath?” David asked him. “It will help warm you through, ease the pain a little, and I can clean up some of these cuts and bruises.”
He was expecting an absolute no, he knew from hostels he had visited how hard it could be for the workers in those places to talk many of their itinerant clientele into taking baths and showers. So he was surprised to see that the young man was nodding even before he got all the words out.
“I w-would like to take a bath,” he said slowly.
“Let me go and run it for you.”
David wrapped an old bath sheet around the shivering younger man before crossing to the bath tub and beginning to fill it. Once the taps were running he retrieved a thermometer from his medical bag and turned his attention back to his patient who had pulled the towel tight around him, like a blanket.
“Can I take your temperature?”
The eye that wasn’t cut and almost swollen closed, looked up at him from beneath the dirty matted hair and David got a real look at the young man’s face as he slipped the thermometer beneath his tongue. That undamaged eye was large and quite beautiful, not dark brown as he’d thought but closer to hazel, with long dark lashes and dramatic brows. The flesh beneath was tinged blue, clearly showing the extent of his exhaustion, and possibly more than that; he had the pallor, gaunt face, and slightly sunken eyes of someone who was ill, or recovering from an illness. You couldn’t hide the beauty of that face though, not beneath a plethora of cuts and bruises, or the heavy beard and an acre of grime.
David was distracted by the sight of yet another line of blood streaking a path through the dirt, down beside his ear and into his beard, to stain the towel covering his shoulder.
~~~~~~~~~~
The old man helped him lower himself into the bathtub; otherwise he would probably have fallen in. The water felt so hot against the ice of his skin that it wrung a gasp from him, but he laid back anyway, gratefully immersing everything but his head. The parts of him that didn’t ache began to sting on contact with the water, but he was past caring. It felt so blessedly warm.
He could lie here forever in this heat… Perhaps if the old man went away he could find the courage to simply let his head slip under the water and bring things to an end. He was tired, so very tired. He needed to rest, get his strength back and then move on, but what he needed to do and what he seemed capable of doing appeared worlds apart just now.
Those bastards tonight had heard rumours that he had been F.S. B; had sought him out so they could prove how tough they were. There should not have been any rumours. His existence should not be reduced to this. If he could rest then perhaps the headaches would go, perhaps he’d be able to pull together the gaps in his memory…
So many gaps…
He realised he’d been rubbing at his head near the site of the headaches, and moved his hand away, surprised when he opened his eyes to find blood on his fingertips.
“You seem to have a head wound that’s bleeding quite a bit,” his Samaritan rescuer told him. He had forgotten the man was standing beside the bath. “Why don’t I wash your hair and take a look at it?”
He gazed up at the man, who seemed to be somewhere in his sixties. He could sense no threat from him; see nothing to be wary of behind the concerned blue eyes. Perhaps the man was genuine, or more likely expected payment in kind.
He had done worse… much worse.
He gave the waiting man a nod.
~~~~~~~~
“I don’t have very much that will fit you…” David told his reluctant guest, coming back into the bathroom with a pair of blue boxers and an old grey T-shirt. “These should be fine to sleep in though.”
He handed them over to the towel-wrapped young man. “The boxers are new, a gift from my wife’s sister, who clearly has me confused with a much slimmer man,” he patted his paunch and laughed.
He didn’t get a laugh back, didn’t actually expect any reply at all, but to his surprise he got a response. “Where is your wife?”
David froze for a moment, and then shook his head, pulling himself together. “She died, almost two years ago now. Bowel cancer,” he added, still oddly uncomfortable with saying the words.
There was no reaction as the man began to slip on the clothes David had handed him.
“I have a varied collection of equipment from the last time I offered my medical skills to the hostel down town. I thought I might have steri-strips for the head wound, though they wouldn’t have been suitable for the cut near your eye, but I’m afraid I don’t. Oddly enough I do have sutures, but no lidocaine, I’m sorry.”
“It-it does not matter,” the soft, accented voice told him.
David nodded, “If you’re sure, I really have no desire to add to what you’ve already been through today, but they need stitching. There’s a bed made up in the spare room, and there’s an angle lamp in there that I can use. The better the light the…”
He stopped talking when he saw that the young man’s energy had run out whilst he was putting on the boxers. He went over and helped him to slip the T-shirt over his battered torso. “A last effort to the bedroom and then you can lie down, get some rest. Are you up to it, if I help you?”
“I… Da… Yes.”
It was a stumbling walk to the bedroom, and David suspected his guest had called up his last reserves of strength to make it. His limp had become so pronounced that he was barely taking any weight on his right leg at all.
David hadn’t wanted to take too many liberties when he was washing the man, but the problem seemed to be with his right ankle. Orthopaedics weren’t David’s field. If the opportunity presented itself he would try and talk the young man into letting someone take a look at it. Perhaps Arthur Kramer, he was very good.
David helped the man to lie back on the bed, disturbed at seeing the pain etched on his face and hearing the groan of discomfort that escaped him. Even back at the alley he’d done all he could to mask what he was feeling.
“Almost done,” David quietly reassured him, unfolding the comforter over him.
The scalp wound wasn’t too severe but like all head wounds it bled a lot. David cut away some of the hair around the wound then flushed it as clean as possible with antiseptic solution before stitching it. It took six, each one borne in total silence and without so much as a flinch.
“That should be fine,” David told him when he’d finished. “I noticed the scar you already have nearby. It’s surgical isn’t it?”
His patient frowned a little, the open hazel eye boring into him, but surprisingly he answered. “An auto accident.”
“Was it a skull fracture?”
“Da.”
“Is that when you injured your arm, I noticed that has a surgical scar too?”
“They told me it was trapped. I don’t remember that, just… Bits and pieces are all I remember.”
David turned his attention to the other cut, beside the eye that was swollen closed. “I fear these may cause you a little more discomfort than the scalp wound, I’m sorry. They need to be a little more delicate if we’re to avoid a nasty scar,” he explained as he set to work.
“How did you injure your ankle?” he asked, by way of a distraction.
“I-I don’t… In the accident maybe?”
David frowned as he concentrated, “You don’t remember?”
The young man shifted slightly. “You ask too many questions.”
“I thought that talking might distract you a little. This can’t be very pleasant. Plus my own professional curiosity compels me to ask.”
David began another stitch. “You could turn the tables, ask me questions.”
“What is it that you want?” he was asked, after a lengthy silence.
David didn’t understand, “Want?”
“From me. Why are you helping me?”
“Because you need it,” he frowned. “I’m not looking for payment, don’t let that worry you, please. At some point in our lives we all need help for some reason or other, so you do what you can.”
“You have belief then, religion?”
“Anyone who can watch their wife, or any loved one, go through what mine did and keep their faith is a far better person than I am I’m afraid.”
The image of Margaret in her final weeks insinuated itself into David’s mind, forcing him to silence, to concentrate on what he was doing, distract himself. It took a few moments before he could find his voice again and be assured he could keep it steady.
“Almost finished, this is the last one. The stitches will need to come out in five days, until then you need to keep them clean and dry so they don’t get infected,” he explained as he cut the final thread and sat back to examine his handiwork, happy with the neat job. “One more thing and then I’ll leave you in peace to get some sleep.”
“What more do you do?” The soft voice with it’s more pronounced accent and slightly confused English were clear indications of his patient’s exhaustion.
“Anti-tetanus shot, nothing to worry about.” David doubted he heard a word, let alone felt the shot, before he drifted into sleep.
As he cleaned up the room as he felt his own tiredness sweep over him. He took a final look at the young man before turning off the light and closing the bedroom door, wondering, not for the first time this evening, if he’d done a good thing or a momentously stupid one in bringing him here.
~~~~~~
To be continued...