Bulletproof (3/52)
Title: Bulletproof
Author: blasthisass
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Summary: AU- when Luke is shot by Colonel Mayer, his condition quickly deteriorates. In order to save his life, Bob calls in a young, hotshot doctor from Texas, brilliant and already making a name for himself.
Disclaimers: All characters and such property of ATWT, CBS and anyone else who can legally take credit for them. If they were mine, I would take infinitely better care of them.
Title from the song by La Roux. There is dialogue from both the time in which the story takes place as well as the LuRe storyline.
A/N: This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
Comments much appreciated . . . I love them like Reid loves Luke.
Previous parts: prologue | 1 | 2
***
“Dr. Hughes?”
Bob glanced up from the chart he was writing on and smiled at the new-hire nurse. “Yes, Gretchen?”
“There’s a rather rude man in the waiting area looking for you,” she informed him before scurrying away, as though he’d come looking for her, demanding why it was taking her so long to deliver the message.
Bob frowned, before replacing the chart at the end of the patient’s bed and emerging into the hallway. He was fairly certain he knew who the rude man could be without a formal introduction. On his way to the waiting area he passed Luke’s room. After hesitating for a moment, he glanced at Lily through the open blinds of Luke’s room and decided to poke his head in.
“Lily?”
She started, almost leaping out of her seat at his presence. “Bob! Is everything all right? Luke! Is Luke-”
“Everything’s fine, everything normal,” Bob reassured her, allowing himself to smile lightly. “I believe that Dr. Oliver has arrived. I’m going to go meet him, if you’d like to come along.”
Lily nodded and, after giving her son’s lifeless hand a motherly squeeze, followed Bob out into the hallway. They rounded the corner and spotted Reid standing around, reading a bulletin board with a disgusted look on his face. Bob was almost surprised to see him standing there, despite the fact that he’d been sure that the rude man that Gretchen had referred to was indeed Dr. Oliver. He just hadn’t been expecting him to look even younger than in his pictures. The scowl, however, was unmistakable and apparently transposed perfectly from paper to face.
“Dr. Oliver,” Bob started, planting a smile of welcome and relief on his face as he approached the younger gentleman. Reid turned to glance at him and, after a brief moment of recognition, his face adjusted itself back into a perpetually dissatisfied expression. “So glad that you-”
“Yes, yes,” Reid interrupted, glancing quickly between Bob and Lily before focusing on the doctor. “You’re super excited to have me here so that I can save the life of your acquaintance’s teenage son, yada, yada, yada.” His fingers twitched nervously around the leather handle of his briefcase. “So, let’s cut to the chase. Where is this patient who is in such dire need of my medical expertise?”
Lily’s eyes widened at this brusque demeanor. “Excuse me, but who do you think you are?”
Reid finally got a proper look at her, but didn’t really entertain any sort of sympathetic thoughts on her topic. This was not the time. “You’re the mother?”
She nodded. “Lily Snyder. And you-”
“Mrs. Snyder, you asked me who I think I am? I am a neurosurgeon. I-that means I operate on brains, okay?”
Bob opened his mouth to run interference, but Lily interrupted him, her eyes blazing and blood boiling from an earlier argument with Holden. “I know what a neurosurgeon is!”
Reid smirked. “Then perhaps you are also competent enough to understand the gravity of your son’s situation?”
She flushed, casting her eyes to the ground, though her hand curled into a fist at the insolence of the young doctor. “I’ve been informed.”
“So, why the hell are you risking your son’s life with meaningless chitchat?” Reid demanded. Lily balked at this accusation and both Reid and Bob noticed it. Reid raised an eyebrow, surprised by the sensitivity of that was displayed by the woman. Yes, her son was in the ICU, but Reid had never seen quite such a reaction. Bob, however, stepped in before another word could be said.
“I’ll show you to the patient, then, Dr. Oliver,” he said, taking the physician lightly by the arm and leading him away from Lily. He flashed her a glance of apology before they disappeared through the swinging double doors, leaving Lily wondering, what with the second accusation in regards to her negligence, whether or not Luke’s current state was her fault after all.
***
Reid flicked the metal cover back over the patient information listed in Luke Snyder’s chart, shaking his head and fingering the bridge of his nose. It seemed that Bob Hughes also had difficulties conveying the seriousness of the situation.
He glanced at the boy, Luke Snyder, lying practically lifeless in the hospital bed. There was almost something angelic about him, the way his hair-Reid shook his head. Not at all the time to be waxing poetry or anything else completely out of character like that, especially about a kid twelve years younger than him. He was being ridiculous. The fingers of his left hand twitched and he clenched them together before turning around. He nodded at Bob, taking the consent form from him and exiting the room.
Lily leapt up from her seat and Holden stopped pacing. Reid grimaced as they both rushed toward him like a stampede of bulls down the streets of Pamplona. “Well, doctor?” Holden inquired. “What do you think?”
“What do I think? What do I think?” Reid mused, stroking his chink thoughtfully. “I hope you’re asking about your son, Mr. Snyder, and not asking me to praise this ridiculously want-to-be-elitist town of yours, as you were earlier.”
Holden frowned. “Okay, so you don’t like it here. What does that mean for Luke?”
“It means . . . Let’s do this now and get it over with.”
“You want to operate on Luke today?” Lily exclaimed.
“I want to be drinking a beer back in Texas, but I’m prepared to operate,” Reid answered, shrugging his shoulders and desperately resisting the urge to speak as slowly as possible. “And you said time is of the essence and I asked you not to waste any of mine.”
Lily’s mouth dropped open in complete disbelief, as though she couldn’t even begin to fathom how anyone had even allowed Reid Oliver to become a doctor. “How can you be so cold? And how can you operate today? You just got in, you must be exhausted and do you even know anyone here?”
“Look, I’m not crazy about operating with a new staff in a backwards operating room, but a brain is a brain. And you’ve made it very clear to me that I am the only one capable of performing this surgery. So unless you want your son dead, you really shouldn’t be fighting me on this.”
“Dr. Oliver, I really don’t think that’s what the patient’s family needs to hear right now,” Bob reprimanded him. Not that Dr. Oliver wasn’t right, of course. There wasn’t any need to sugarcoat the situation, but it was one thing to tell the family the straight truth and another to put it in the harshest possible terms.
Reid turned on him, raising an eyebrow. “Really, Dr. Hughes? You don’t think the family needs to hear that their son will die if they continue dragging their feet?”
“My hospital, my rules.”
Reid rolled his eyes. “You called me in for a reason, Dr. Hughes. So, are we doing this or has this been a complete waste of time?”
Lily groaned, covering her face with her hands and pacing back and forth. She stopped back in front of Bob. She didn’t even look at Reid, but instead looked straight at Bob, as though the younger doctor didn’t even matter. “What do you think?”
Bob shook his head, glancing at the stern-faced physician he’d called in to perform the surgery. “I’ve already told you what I think. If you want Luke to live, this surgery needs to happen. The sooner the better.”
Holden nodded, looking at Lily for the first time before taking the consent forms from Reid and scribbling his signature on the papers.
“Good of you momentarily press pause on your idiocy,” Reid muttered under his breath, taking the clipboard back. “Book the OR, doctor,” he told Bob, who, despite being displeased at being ordered about by his consulting doctor, nodded in agreement. The two doctors disappeared, Reid back into Luke’s room and Bob to assemble a team, leaving Lily and Holden alone in the hallway.
“Oh, Holden, tell me everything’s gong to be all right,” Lily murmured.
Holden shook his head, gazing off into the distance before looking at her. “No . . . No, I can’t do that.”
***
Reid scrubbed furiously at the molecules of dirt under his neatly trimmed fingernails, trying to rid himself of any sort of parasites that could eagerly jump from him into his patient. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he mentally looked over the pre-surgical scans, deciding on the necessary course of action, which parts of the brain he ought to attack first, which would be practical.
If he took the time to think about it, the difficulty of the surgery lies simply in the extent of the brain exposure, in the extent of the invasiveness of the procedure. If anyone had mentioned to him, while he was in medical school, that he had ever encountered such a medical malady, he would have laughed it off as impossible. And it was. It seemed utterly unheard of, but there it was.
He flexed his shoulders, easing out the creases in his borrowed scrubs and his operation gown without the use of his hands. This was the only situation that he felt comfortable being without his hands: the moment between his scrubbing down and that in which he picked up a scalpel and dove head on into his work.
He turned his back to the door to the OR and was about to nudge it open when he spotted Bob Hughes easing himself into the room, followed by the man that Reid could only assume was the hospital’s Chief of Neurology.
“Problem, Dr. Hughes?” he inquired, itching for the doctor to leave so that he could get into the operating room.
“None at all,” Bob smiled. “My chief of neurology and I were hoping to observe the operation. That is, of course, if you’ve no objections.”
Reid pursed his lips, smiling to himself. There was a part of him that just wanted privacy to focus fully on the task at hand, especially one that would require as much conversation as that before him. Then again, the pleasure of having a willing audience fed into his ego quite nicely.
“As long as it’s clear that I’m in charge of the OR. No backseat driving,” he answered, shrugging and casting a stern glance at the two doctors.
Alex Martins grinned. He hadn’t believed Bob when he’d been adamant about the eccentricity of Dr. Reid Oliver and how that he was seeing it in action, however mildly, he couldn’t help but be impressed.
He held up his hands as though Reid was holding him at gunpoint, but his face remained perfectly calm. “Of course, doctor.”
Reid nodded and disappeared into the OR. He cast his gaze around the room, eyebrow raised. He wondered at its composition was an expression of minimalism or just the hospital’s inability to advance with the times. It had everything he needed, so he couldn’t exactly complain, but he could judge to his heart’s content.
Reid’s long fingers curled around a scalpel as he gave the scans one more once-over before looking over at Luke Snyder. He ran his tongue over the bottoms of his teeth and, gazing at the eighteen-year-old’s angelic composition and he suddenly had the immense desire to succeed completely.
“Right. He’s fully under? Vitals are good? Then let’s do this.”
Chapter 4-->
Author: blasthisass
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Summary: AU- when Luke is shot by Colonel Mayer, his condition quickly deteriorates. In order to save his life, Bob calls in a young, hotshot doctor from Texas, brilliant and already making a name for himself.
Disclaimers: All characters and such property of ATWT, CBS and anyone else who can legally take credit for them. If they were mine, I would take infinitely better care of them.
Title from the song by La Roux. There is dialogue from both the time in which the story takes place as well as the LuRe storyline.
A/N: This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
Comments much appreciated . . . I love them like Reid loves Luke.
Previous parts: prologue | 1 | 2
***
“Dr. Hughes?”
Bob glanced up from the chart he was writing on and smiled at the new-hire nurse. “Yes, Gretchen?”
“There’s a rather rude man in the waiting area looking for you,” she informed him before scurrying away, as though he’d come looking for her, demanding why it was taking her so long to deliver the message.
Bob frowned, before replacing the chart at the end of the patient’s bed and emerging into the hallway. He was fairly certain he knew who the rude man could be without a formal introduction. On his way to the waiting area he passed Luke’s room. After hesitating for a moment, he glanced at Lily through the open blinds of Luke’s room and decided to poke his head in.
“Lily?”
She started, almost leaping out of her seat at his presence. “Bob! Is everything all right? Luke! Is Luke-”
“Everything’s fine, everything normal,” Bob reassured her, allowing himself to smile lightly. “I believe that Dr. Oliver has arrived. I’m going to go meet him, if you’d like to come along.”
Lily nodded and, after giving her son’s lifeless hand a motherly squeeze, followed Bob out into the hallway. They rounded the corner and spotted Reid standing around, reading a bulletin board with a disgusted look on his face. Bob was almost surprised to see him standing there, despite the fact that he’d been sure that the rude man that Gretchen had referred to was indeed Dr. Oliver. He just hadn’t been expecting him to look even younger than in his pictures. The scowl, however, was unmistakable and apparently transposed perfectly from paper to face.
“Dr. Oliver,” Bob started, planting a smile of welcome and relief on his face as he approached the younger gentleman. Reid turned to glance at him and, after a brief moment of recognition, his face adjusted itself back into a perpetually dissatisfied expression. “So glad that you-”
“Yes, yes,” Reid interrupted, glancing quickly between Bob and Lily before focusing on the doctor. “You’re super excited to have me here so that I can save the life of your acquaintance’s teenage son, yada, yada, yada.” His fingers twitched nervously around the leather handle of his briefcase. “So, let’s cut to the chase. Where is this patient who is in such dire need of my medical expertise?”
Lily’s eyes widened at this brusque demeanor. “Excuse me, but who do you think you are?”
Reid finally got a proper look at her, but didn’t really entertain any sort of sympathetic thoughts on her topic. This was not the time. “You’re the mother?”
She nodded. “Lily Snyder. And you-”
“Mrs. Snyder, you asked me who I think I am? I am a neurosurgeon. I-that means I operate on brains, okay?”
Bob opened his mouth to run interference, but Lily interrupted him, her eyes blazing and blood boiling from an earlier argument with Holden. “I know what a neurosurgeon is!”
Reid smirked. “Then perhaps you are also competent enough to understand the gravity of your son’s situation?”
She flushed, casting her eyes to the ground, though her hand curled into a fist at the insolence of the young doctor. “I’ve been informed.”
“So, why the hell are you risking your son’s life with meaningless chitchat?” Reid demanded. Lily balked at this accusation and both Reid and Bob noticed it. Reid raised an eyebrow, surprised by the sensitivity of that was displayed by the woman. Yes, her son was in the ICU, but Reid had never seen quite such a reaction. Bob, however, stepped in before another word could be said.
“I’ll show you to the patient, then, Dr. Oliver,” he said, taking the physician lightly by the arm and leading him away from Lily. He flashed her a glance of apology before they disappeared through the swinging double doors, leaving Lily wondering, what with the second accusation in regards to her negligence, whether or not Luke’s current state was her fault after all.
***
Reid flicked the metal cover back over the patient information listed in Luke Snyder’s chart, shaking his head and fingering the bridge of his nose. It seemed that Bob Hughes also had difficulties conveying the seriousness of the situation.
He glanced at the boy, Luke Snyder, lying practically lifeless in the hospital bed. There was almost something angelic about him, the way his hair-Reid shook his head. Not at all the time to be waxing poetry or anything else completely out of character like that, especially about a kid twelve years younger than him. He was being ridiculous. The fingers of his left hand twitched and he clenched them together before turning around. He nodded at Bob, taking the consent form from him and exiting the room.
Lily leapt up from her seat and Holden stopped pacing. Reid grimaced as they both rushed toward him like a stampede of bulls down the streets of Pamplona. “Well, doctor?” Holden inquired. “What do you think?”
“What do I think? What do I think?” Reid mused, stroking his chink thoughtfully. “I hope you’re asking about your son, Mr. Snyder, and not asking me to praise this ridiculously want-to-be-elitist town of yours, as you were earlier.”
Holden frowned. “Okay, so you don’t like it here. What does that mean for Luke?”
“It means . . . Let’s do this now and get it over with.”
“You want to operate on Luke today?” Lily exclaimed.
“I want to be drinking a beer back in Texas, but I’m prepared to operate,” Reid answered, shrugging his shoulders and desperately resisting the urge to speak as slowly as possible. “And you said time is of the essence and I asked you not to waste any of mine.”
Lily’s mouth dropped open in complete disbelief, as though she couldn’t even begin to fathom how anyone had even allowed Reid Oliver to become a doctor. “How can you be so cold? And how can you operate today? You just got in, you must be exhausted and do you even know anyone here?”
“Look, I’m not crazy about operating with a new staff in a backwards operating room, but a brain is a brain. And you’ve made it very clear to me that I am the only one capable of performing this surgery. So unless you want your son dead, you really shouldn’t be fighting me on this.”
“Dr. Oliver, I really don’t think that’s what the patient’s family needs to hear right now,” Bob reprimanded him. Not that Dr. Oliver wasn’t right, of course. There wasn’t any need to sugarcoat the situation, but it was one thing to tell the family the straight truth and another to put it in the harshest possible terms.
Reid turned on him, raising an eyebrow. “Really, Dr. Hughes? You don’t think the family needs to hear that their son will die if they continue dragging their feet?”
“My hospital, my rules.”
Reid rolled his eyes. “You called me in for a reason, Dr. Hughes. So, are we doing this or has this been a complete waste of time?”
Lily groaned, covering her face with her hands and pacing back and forth. She stopped back in front of Bob. She didn’t even look at Reid, but instead looked straight at Bob, as though the younger doctor didn’t even matter. “What do you think?”
Bob shook his head, glancing at the stern-faced physician he’d called in to perform the surgery. “I’ve already told you what I think. If you want Luke to live, this surgery needs to happen. The sooner the better.”
Holden nodded, looking at Lily for the first time before taking the consent forms from Reid and scribbling his signature on the papers.
“Good of you momentarily press pause on your idiocy,” Reid muttered under his breath, taking the clipboard back. “Book the OR, doctor,” he told Bob, who, despite being displeased at being ordered about by his consulting doctor, nodded in agreement. The two doctors disappeared, Reid back into Luke’s room and Bob to assemble a team, leaving Lily and Holden alone in the hallway.
“Oh, Holden, tell me everything’s gong to be all right,” Lily murmured.
Holden shook his head, gazing off into the distance before looking at her. “No . . . No, I can’t do that.”
***
Reid scrubbed furiously at the molecules of dirt under his neatly trimmed fingernails, trying to rid himself of any sort of parasites that could eagerly jump from him into his patient. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he mentally looked over the pre-surgical scans, deciding on the necessary course of action, which parts of the brain he ought to attack first, which would be practical.
If he took the time to think about it, the difficulty of the surgery lies simply in the extent of the brain exposure, in the extent of the invasiveness of the procedure. If anyone had mentioned to him, while he was in medical school, that he had ever encountered such a medical malady, he would have laughed it off as impossible. And it was. It seemed utterly unheard of, but there it was.
He flexed his shoulders, easing out the creases in his borrowed scrubs and his operation gown without the use of his hands. This was the only situation that he felt comfortable being without his hands: the moment between his scrubbing down and that in which he picked up a scalpel and dove head on into his work.
He turned his back to the door to the OR and was about to nudge it open when he spotted Bob Hughes easing himself into the room, followed by the man that Reid could only assume was the hospital’s Chief of Neurology.
“Problem, Dr. Hughes?” he inquired, itching for the doctor to leave so that he could get into the operating room.
“None at all,” Bob smiled. “My chief of neurology and I were hoping to observe the operation. That is, of course, if you’ve no objections.”
Reid pursed his lips, smiling to himself. There was a part of him that just wanted privacy to focus fully on the task at hand, especially one that would require as much conversation as that before him. Then again, the pleasure of having a willing audience fed into his ego quite nicely.
“As long as it’s clear that I’m in charge of the OR. No backseat driving,” he answered, shrugging and casting a stern glance at the two doctors.
Alex Martins grinned. He hadn’t believed Bob when he’d been adamant about the eccentricity of Dr. Reid Oliver and how that he was seeing it in action, however mildly, he couldn’t help but be impressed.
He held up his hands as though Reid was holding him at gunpoint, but his face remained perfectly calm. “Of course, doctor.”
Reid nodded and disappeared into the OR. He cast his gaze around the room, eyebrow raised. He wondered at its composition was an expression of minimalism or just the hospital’s inability to advance with the times. It had everything he needed, so he couldn’t exactly complain, but he could judge to his heart’s content.
Reid’s long fingers curled around a scalpel as he gave the scans one more once-over before looking over at Luke Snyder. He ran his tongue over the bottoms of his teeth and, gazing at the eighteen-year-old’s angelic composition and he suddenly had the immense desire to succeed completely.
“Right. He’s fully under? Vitals are good? Then let’s do this.”
Chapter 4-->