just_muse_me | 29.9. Life has a tendency to come back and bite you in the ass
Co-written with geniuscowboy
[Follows THIS]
Chris had a huge bacon and egg roll sitting in front of him that was so full he had to shove his finger into the side of it to stop the bacon falling off. Beside that was two cans of Red Bull and the morning's paper he had been reading on the so far slow morning in MT1. There had been one car accident right off the bad that went to Bravo, leaving Alpha with not much to do but follow ups or sitting around with their fingers in their noses... for want of a better metaphor. Chris decided breakfast was in order, and when he tried to find Serena but couldn't, went and got his own with a waffle and coffee for her, which was also now sitting beside him, and cold to boot. He was the only one in the break room, so he had no idea where anyone else was, and at that moment, he didn't care. His stomach was growling hungrily as a result of a night of intense first date sex. They had gone for a walk on the beach near his home after the dinner, and there might have been a round of quick beach sex before they got back to his apartment, and just picked right up where they left off. It was enough to give anyone a healthy appetite.
He just had his mouth wrapped around the first large mouthful of greasy bacon breakfast roll when his pager went off. "Ohgmanff," he complained with a full mouth, and heard another pager buzzing up the hall just beyond the break room's glass doors. He still had the roll in his hand, oil dripping down his wrist as he fumbled to unclip his pager and chew the mouthful quickly. They had incoming. Of course they did, right when he was about to work on his second breakfast. No way were Cheerios enough that morning as they ran out the door. A stage collapse at an all-night rock concert. Four casualties, five minutes out. Hell, if Chris tried to shove his roll down his throat that quick, he would be paying for it all morning.
Serena hadn't been hiding. Not really. She'd just taken the chance with the quiet morning to try and catch Aimee to recap on the first date and amazing sex that had followed. And also to debrief with her friend about Dave telling her about the cancer. It was still making it that much worse for Serena to keep the secret from Chris, but she knew it had to be Dave to tell him - again. She was just making her way back towards the break room when her pager had gone off and she'd quickly about turned and headed to the doors. She was already in a pair of gloves by the time Chris came up beside her. She shot him a lopsided smile before pointing to the corner of her mouth to indicate he still had some evidence of breakfast there. She would have licked it off him, but that was hardly appropriate with Kleebus already pushing the doors to the ambulance open. "Twenty-eight-year-old male presenting with concussion, major bruising, lacerations and broken arm and possible cracked ribs..."
Serena had been listening, she really had been. Up until the point she'd come up beside the patient and felt all the blood rush out of her face and turn cold. "Jeff? Oh my god..." Jeff Kane, her ex. Her one and only ex that had ever really meant anything to her. He was a Chicago native and she'd met him while studying medicine in Chicago. A face she honestly hadn't thought she'd see again, let alone looking like he'd gone a few rounds with a blender. She reached out to check over the cuts on his face. "Jeff, can you hear me?"
There was a moan from Jeff, and he turned his head towards the voice, a sleepy smile appearing on his lips. "Hey, Serena... S'heaven, right?"
Chris had quickly wiped at his mouth before plucking some gloves from the dispenser on the wall. He hadn't said anything to Serena. It was too fucking hard to come up with witty banter when he was hungry and his brain was filled with images of beach sex in his head. Every time he glanced at her, the image of her on the sand underneath him just hit him all over again. If he opened his mouth to talk, it would be near impossible to resist making sexual quips or flirting with her. He tugged his gloves on, pushing them out smooth between his fingers and took the clipboard from Kleebus. "Looking good there, Kleebus. Is that a new hairstyle?" he joked, flashing the ambo an amused smirk. Ever since he had heard about the supposed crush, which he didn't buy at all, he had been playing it up for his own amusement. He never actually expected Kleebus to beam at him and confirm with an affirmative to the question. "You gotta give me the name of your stylist, buddy," he added, trying not to laugh as they veered into the exam room. It was just simultaneous to the apparent familiarity between Serena and the patient.
Chris just frowned a little, his nose scrunching up in confusion as he shot Serena a questioning look. But he was already at the side of the ambulance gurney. "On my count. One, two, three." There was a flurry of activity once the guy was on the table and Chris started peeling the blood soaked shirt away from the guy's torso. "Those mosh pits can be hell, right, Jeff?" he joked.
Serena wasn't going to open her mouth to Chris but for other reasons. She just held her arms out for the nurse to slip her gown on and looked over Jeff as she catalogued the visible injuries. While Jeff was actually awake she wasn't going to introduce him as an ex. And she couldn't exactly introduce Chris as her current exclusive since no one else in the room knew about them. "Always were a bad dancer, weren't you?" she murmured to Jeff as she gently turned his head and looked at the nasty cut that had blood soaking his hair and side of his neck. "Doesn't look like there's any glass in there. I think, um, there was something about a fallen light fitting..." She gave her own head a shake to try and clear the confusion as she just focused on the medicine. Jeff still looked good. He was taller than Chris, and a little on the lanky side. He wasn't anywhere near as much of a daredevil either, but he was the reason Serena had developed such a taste for live music. "Jeff, this is Dr C. Best there is. You're in good hands, promise."
There was a snigger from Jeff and if he'd been aware enough to make any sort of mental notes he would have made one to get the name of that ambo. He had some good shit for pain. "Like your hands. Still 'member them... Nearly died. Did die. There was all this black. Think my whole life flashed before my eyes. You were there. You weren't, though," Jeff said as he looked up at Dr C. "Still the best concert I've ever been to."
Chris was connecting the dots swiftly like any observant person would. He raised an eyebrow at Serena right before the nurse handed him his glasses and he slipped them on. This time, he was sure he could conclude the patient wasn't hallucinating. "This one going to pull a scalpel on us too, S? Better keep Tuck out of the way," he said sarcastically, a hint of bite in his tone. "Should I leave? Give you two some space?" He didn't wait to see any reaction on Serena's face before he was leaning down to examine the large gash on the guy's torso from up near his armpit almost down to in line with his bellybutton. The blood was oozing from it and he held his hand out. "Can I have some gauze, please? We got glass here. I don't know if there is more than I can see. We need some suction and a suture tray."
Jeff was clearly oblivious to the bite behind Chris' comment, and Serena wished she was too. Like she didn't feel guilty enough about Crazy Knife Guy. "No, he's just an ex." Serena tried to say it quietly, and was still grateful that Kathy wasn't in the room. "My ex, okay? We dated when I was in college. He's never had homicidal tendencies."
"I did want to kill Jar Jar Binks," Jeff interjected.
"Not helping," Serena told him as she moved from his head injury to help Dr C with the suction. She'd never seen so much blood come out of Jeff before, but then the most she'd seen him hurt in their time together had been a paper cut. They hadn't even had a puke test. She wanted to tell Chris that, but it wasn't as if it was technically relevant information. There was a noise as a piece of glass must have gone up the tube, and Serena paused in the suction to take a closer look inside the cut. "Looks like there's some smaller pieces deeper inside the laceration. We're going to have to clear it all out before we even think about stitching him up."
Chris pursed his lips and then gestured to the nurse nearby to bring him over a stool. He sat down and unfolded a fresh kit at the bedside with some steralised tweezers in it. "Were you with anyone at the concert, dude?" he asked, evidently choosing to pointedly ignore the ex factor right now. If the dude started talking about his sex life with Serena, Chris might have been forced to stab himself in the eyeball with the tweezers. "What about pain? Any discomfort in the back or neck?" He mopped up more of the blood with a thick gauze and then handed it to the nurse to get rid of, promptly having it replaced with clean stuff. He did the best to staunch the blood flow as he started to fish pieces of the glass out of the wound with the tweezers. He glanced at Serena. "He wanted to kill Jar Jar Binks," he repeated, the sarcasm clear around the edges of the words.
"Have you seen Phantom Menace?" she asked Chris with an arch of her eyebrow. Then she fell silent, only speaking when she needed something from the nurses. She left Chris to deal with the wound to Jeff's side and started to examine his head again. She had been wrong, there were specks of glass lost in his hair and she needed to get them out to suture that wound.
"Friends. No one special. Had pain, drugs help. Mostly I just feel a little stiff, but I did have a light fall on me, right?" Jeff said through clenched teeth. He was a little more awake now as he watched Dr C work on his wound. It was disgusting and fascinating all at once. "That's a lot of red. Like, a lot. I didn't realise a body could hold so much blood? Did you? Serena, have you seen all this blood? Can't believe this is how you get to see me again. Always figured if we managed to cross paths I'd be a lot less covered in blood."
Chris had to wonder what Kleebus had given Jeff in the ambulance. He was quite chilled considering the head injury and all the blood. He held his hand out to the nurse again. "Give me the board," he requested and then started to read it with a soft murmur of thanks. Some morphine, but nothing else. "He's not drugged enough to be this chilled. I want a CT booked and have an OR on standby in case we get any more bleeding out." He gestured to Serena with the tweezers before he went back to plucking the glass shards from the abdomen. "Check his head and nose for any bleeding, the neck for dislocation, and the skull for any fractures. Maybe he's just blinded by your smashing beauty and sexual appeal."
"'Smashing'? Channelling Dr Proctor, are we?" Serena asked him before she did as Chris instructed. He was still the Chief Resident and they were still here to save a life. She hadn't even considered Jeff's chilled state as a symptom. She needed to pull her head out so she could remain professional. She just couldn't fight the shock of having her ex and her boyfriend in the same room. There was also the fact that seeing Chris a little jealous was kind of hot. She looked down at Jeff and tried to ignore the way he seemed to be making eyes at her. "There's a little bleeding out of the nose... Sure you don't want to accompany him to the CT? Maybe I should just step back. Conflict of interest?" she asked, semi-hopeful he'd at least back her on that point.
Chris gestured again without looking up as he spotted a large shard of glass. The only thing was, it was just the tip or what could ultimately be a huge piece of glass lodged in vital organs. "I think this might have nicked his kidney. Need the ultrasound, please." The machine started to buzz and Chris looked up with a shake of his head. "His BP is dropping. I need you to suture that head wound. The CT will have to wait until we get this glass out or he'll bleed out when we move him. Just monitor for any furture neurological symptoms. Can someone page Proctor?" He accepted more gauze from the nurse and then managed a brief glance at Serena again. "Why? Are you still sleeping with him?" he asked calmly. "Conflict of interest more important than a pair of surgeons hands in a trauma?"
"No, but I know him," Serena replied weakly before she immediately started to suture the head wound. Truth was she was getting to be pretty efficient with a needle and thread. She'd learned from the best after all, and now the best wasn't looking so hot in green. "He doesn't seem to be so alert and awake now, and if he was anymore chill I'm pretty sure we'd be listening to some snoring right now. Jeff? Jeff, are you still with us?" She didn't get an answer and she shot Chris a concerned look. "I'm not going anywhere." The words had more than one meaning, and Serena just hoped Chris got it. She suddenly realised how hard it was to think of codes that could fit in with a trauma situation.
[Follows THIS]
Chris had a huge bacon and egg roll sitting in front of him that was so full he had to shove his finger into the side of it to stop the bacon falling off. Beside that was two cans of Red Bull and the morning's paper he had been reading on the so far slow morning in MT1. There had been one car accident right off the bad that went to Bravo, leaving Alpha with not much to do but follow ups or sitting around with their fingers in their noses... for want of a better metaphor. Chris decided breakfast was in order, and when he tried to find Serena but couldn't, went and got his own with a waffle and coffee for her, which was also now sitting beside him, and cold to boot. He was the only one in the break room, so he had no idea where anyone else was, and at that moment, he didn't care. His stomach was growling hungrily as a result of a night of intense first date sex. They had gone for a walk on the beach near his home after the dinner, and there might have been a round of quick beach sex before they got back to his apartment, and just picked right up where they left off. It was enough to give anyone a healthy appetite.
He just had his mouth wrapped around the first large mouthful of greasy bacon breakfast roll when his pager went off. "Ohgmanff," he complained with a full mouth, and heard another pager buzzing up the hall just beyond the break room's glass doors. He still had the roll in his hand, oil dripping down his wrist as he fumbled to unclip his pager and chew the mouthful quickly. They had incoming. Of course they did, right when he was about to work on his second breakfast. No way were Cheerios enough that morning as they ran out the door. A stage collapse at an all-night rock concert. Four casualties, five minutes out. Hell, if Chris tried to shove his roll down his throat that quick, he would be paying for it all morning.
Serena hadn't been hiding. Not really. She'd just taken the chance with the quiet morning to try and catch Aimee to recap on the first date and amazing sex that had followed. And also to debrief with her friend about Dave telling her about the cancer. It was still making it that much worse for Serena to keep the secret from Chris, but she knew it had to be Dave to tell him - again. She was just making her way back towards the break room when her pager had gone off and she'd quickly about turned and headed to the doors. She was already in a pair of gloves by the time Chris came up beside her. She shot him a lopsided smile before pointing to the corner of her mouth to indicate he still had some evidence of breakfast there. She would have licked it off him, but that was hardly appropriate with Kleebus already pushing the doors to the ambulance open. "Twenty-eight-year-old male presenting with concussion, major bruising, lacerations and broken arm and possible cracked ribs..."
Serena had been listening, she really had been. Up until the point she'd come up beside the patient and felt all the blood rush out of her face and turn cold. "Jeff? Oh my god..." Jeff Kane, her ex. Her one and only ex that had ever really meant anything to her. He was a Chicago native and she'd met him while studying medicine in Chicago. A face she honestly hadn't thought she'd see again, let alone looking like he'd gone a few rounds with a blender. She reached out to check over the cuts on his face. "Jeff, can you hear me?"
There was a moan from Jeff, and he turned his head towards the voice, a sleepy smile appearing on his lips. "Hey, Serena... S'heaven, right?"
Chris had quickly wiped at his mouth before plucking some gloves from the dispenser on the wall. He hadn't said anything to Serena. It was too fucking hard to come up with witty banter when he was hungry and his brain was filled with images of beach sex in his head. Every time he glanced at her, the image of her on the sand underneath him just hit him all over again. If he opened his mouth to talk, it would be near impossible to resist making sexual quips or flirting with her. He tugged his gloves on, pushing them out smooth between his fingers and took the clipboard from Kleebus. "Looking good there, Kleebus. Is that a new hairstyle?" he joked, flashing the ambo an amused smirk. Ever since he had heard about the supposed crush, which he didn't buy at all, he had been playing it up for his own amusement. He never actually expected Kleebus to beam at him and confirm with an affirmative to the question. "You gotta give me the name of your stylist, buddy," he added, trying not to laugh as they veered into the exam room. It was just simultaneous to the apparent familiarity between Serena and the patient.
Chris just frowned a little, his nose scrunching up in confusion as he shot Serena a questioning look. But he was already at the side of the ambulance gurney. "On my count. One, two, three." There was a flurry of activity once the guy was on the table and Chris started peeling the blood soaked shirt away from the guy's torso. "Those mosh pits can be hell, right, Jeff?" he joked.
Serena wasn't going to open her mouth to Chris but for other reasons. She just held her arms out for the nurse to slip her gown on and looked over Jeff as she catalogued the visible injuries. While Jeff was actually awake she wasn't going to introduce him as an ex. And she couldn't exactly introduce Chris as her current exclusive since no one else in the room knew about them. "Always were a bad dancer, weren't you?" she murmured to Jeff as she gently turned his head and looked at the nasty cut that had blood soaking his hair and side of his neck. "Doesn't look like there's any glass in there. I think, um, there was something about a fallen light fitting..." She gave her own head a shake to try and clear the confusion as she just focused on the medicine. Jeff still looked good. He was taller than Chris, and a little on the lanky side. He wasn't anywhere near as much of a daredevil either, but he was the reason Serena had developed such a taste for live music. "Jeff, this is Dr C. Best there is. You're in good hands, promise."
There was a snigger from Jeff and if he'd been aware enough to make any sort of mental notes he would have made one to get the name of that ambo. He had some good shit for pain. "Like your hands. Still 'member them... Nearly died. Did die. There was all this black. Think my whole life flashed before my eyes. You were there. You weren't, though," Jeff said as he looked up at Dr C. "Still the best concert I've ever been to."
Chris was connecting the dots swiftly like any observant person would. He raised an eyebrow at Serena right before the nurse handed him his glasses and he slipped them on. This time, he was sure he could conclude the patient wasn't hallucinating. "This one going to pull a scalpel on us too, S? Better keep Tuck out of the way," he said sarcastically, a hint of bite in his tone. "Should I leave? Give you two some space?" He didn't wait to see any reaction on Serena's face before he was leaning down to examine the large gash on the guy's torso from up near his armpit almost down to in line with his bellybutton. The blood was oozing from it and he held his hand out. "Can I have some gauze, please? We got glass here. I don't know if there is more than I can see. We need some suction and a suture tray."
Jeff was clearly oblivious to the bite behind Chris' comment, and Serena wished she was too. Like she didn't feel guilty enough about Crazy Knife Guy. "No, he's just an ex." Serena tried to say it quietly, and was still grateful that Kathy wasn't in the room. "My ex, okay? We dated when I was in college. He's never had homicidal tendencies."
"I did want to kill Jar Jar Binks," Jeff interjected.
"Not helping," Serena told him as she moved from his head injury to help Dr C with the suction. She'd never seen so much blood come out of Jeff before, but then the most she'd seen him hurt in their time together had been a paper cut. They hadn't even had a puke test. She wanted to tell Chris that, but it wasn't as if it was technically relevant information. There was a noise as a piece of glass must have gone up the tube, and Serena paused in the suction to take a closer look inside the cut. "Looks like there's some smaller pieces deeper inside the laceration. We're going to have to clear it all out before we even think about stitching him up."
Chris pursed his lips and then gestured to the nurse nearby to bring him over a stool. He sat down and unfolded a fresh kit at the bedside with some steralised tweezers in it. "Were you with anyone at the concert, dude?" he asked, evidently choosing to pointedly ignore the ex factor right now. If the dude started talking about his sex life with Serena, Chris might have been forced to stab himself in the eyeball with the tweezers. "What about pain? Any discomfort in the back or neck?" He mopped up more of the blood with a thick gauze and then handed it to the nurse to get rid of, promptly having it replaced with clean stuff. He did the best to staunch the blood flow as he started to fish pieces of the glass out of the wound with the tweezers. He glanced at Serena. "He wanted to kill Jar Jar Binks," he repeated, the sarcasm clear around the edges of the words.
"Have you seen Phantom Menace?" she asked Chris with an arch of her eyebrow. Then she fell silent, only speaking when she needed something from the nurses. She left Chris to deal with the wound to Jeff's side and started to examine his head again. She had been wrong, there were specks of glass lost in his hair and she needed to get them out to suture that wound.
"Friends. No one special. Had pain, drugs help. Mostly I just feel a little stiff, but I did have a light fall on me, right?" Jeff said through clenched teeth. He was a little more awake now as he watched Dr C work on his wound. It was disgusting and fascinating all at once. "That's a lot of red. Like, a lot. I didn't realise a body could hold so much blood? Did you? Serena, have you seen all this blood? Can't believe this is how you get to see me again. Always figured if we managed to cross paths I'd be a lot less covered in blood."
Chris had to wonder what Kleebus had given Jeff in the ambulance. He was quite chilled considering the head injury and all the blood. He held his hand out to the nurse again. "Give me the board," he requested and then started to read it with a soft murmur of thanks. Some morphine, but nothing else. "He's not drugged enough to be this chilled. I want a CT booked and have an OR on standby in case we get any more bleeding out." He gestured to Serena with the tweezers before he went back to plucking the glass shards from the abdomen. "Check his head and nose for any bleeding, the neck for dislocation, and the skull for any fractures. Maybe he's just blinded by your smashing beauty and sexual appeal."
"'Smashing'? Channelling Dr Proctor, are we?" Serena asked him before she did as Chris instructed. He was still the Chief Resident and they were still here to save a life. She hadn't even considered Jeff's chilled state as a symptom. She needed to pull her head out so she could remain professional. She just couldn't fight the shock of having her ex and her boyfriend in the same room. There was also the fact that seeing Chris a little jealous was kind of hot. She looked down at Jeff and tried to ignore the way he seemed to be making eyes at her. "There's a little bleeding out of the nose... Sure you don't want to accompany him to the CT? Maybe I should just step back. Conflict of interest?" she asked, semi-hopeful he'd at least back her on that point.
Chris gestured again without looking up as he spotted a large shard of glass. The only thing was, it was just the tip or what could ultimately be a huge piece of glass lodged in vital organs. "I think this might have nicked his kidney. Need the ultrasound, please." The machine started to buzz and Chris looked up with a shake of his head. "His BP is dropping. I need you to suture that head wound. The CT will have to wait until we get this glass out or he'll bleed out when we move him. Just monitor for any furture neurological symptoms. Can someone page Proctor?" He accepted more gauze from the nurse and then managed a brief glance at Serena again. "Why? Are you still sleeping with him?" he asked calmly. "Conflict of interest more important than a pair of surgeons hands in a trauma?"
"No, but I know him," Serena replied weakly before she immediately started to suture the head wound. Truth was she was getting to be pretty efficient with a needle and thread. She'd learned from the best after all, and now the best wasn't looking so hot in green. "He doesn't seem to be so alert and awake now, and if he was anymore chill I'm pretty sure we'd be listening to some snoring right now. Jeff? Jeff, are you still with us?" She didn't get an answer and she shot Chris a concerned look. "I'm not going anywhere." The words had more than one meaning, and Serena just hoped Chris got it. She suddenly realised how hard it was to think of codes that could fit in with a trauma situation.