Challenge fic: Playing It Safe
Title: Playing It Safe (Highlander/Holby City)
Rating: 12, for language
Length: < 800 words
Summary: Task 1: talk down a patient holding Connie Beauchamp hostage. Task 2: deal with her idiotic ex-lover.
Disclaimer: Holby City is the property of the BBC. Highlander and associated characters are the property of Rysher Entertainment and Panzer Davies. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from this work.
Notes: No pairing (other than past Sam/Connie). Wholly unbetaed: the plotline hijacked my brain less than two days ago, following this programme.
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Shoving him up against the wall was such a predictable reaction, and not nearly as pleasurable as it might have been under other circumstances. Other circumstances meaning someone other than an over-reactive registrar with a serious lack of emotional control.
"What gave you the right -?"
"To what, Mr Strachan? Save the mother of your unborn child?"
"You know what I mean." The young man really needed to practice his snarling. It wasn't nearly effective enough. "You should have wrapped that situation up in half the time."
"Should I now? How, exactly?" He kept his voice deliberately mild. "There is a procedure for dealing with 'violent service users', you realise."
"Fuck procedure!" And now the boy was kicking the door behind him. Bad shot, or remembering who he was screaming at? "He shouldn't have been allowed to hold her hostage like that, not that long."
Clifford bowed his head in acknowledgment. "All true, yet he did - and both Mrs Beauchamp and her baby are perfectly fine."
"They could have been killed!"
"As. Could. I." With a great deal more fall-out, considering. Few escape plans allowed for revival before medical experts. Even a cut would have been difficult to hide, given Connie's eagle-eyed reputation. "What exactly would you have had me do, Mr Strachan? I'll already face a disciplinary inquiry over my so-called manhandling of an at-risk patient."
"Who was holding a scalpel to Connie's throat!"
"Yes, yes, I do remember that quite vividly, thank you."
"Don't patronise me."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Dan smirked, patting his suit down as Sam finally released his hold. Maybe he'd let the boy get away without a dry-cleaning bill. "Mr Strachan, the fact of the matter is that John Smith - are there people still called that, really? - John Smith should have been out cold for at least another hour. No one could have predicted that he'd jump out of bed less than half an hour after emergency surgery, unless the anaesthetist was remiss in his duties - and no, that is not your cue for revenge after the football match. Get over it. That man had mental health problems and a cocktail of drugs in his system just waiting to cause havoc."
Sam jabbed a finger at his face. It was quite comical really, but he allowed himself to appear more shocked than amused.
"You had an opening. Several openings. You didn't have to wait that long to stop him."
Time for a short lesson, in case this child had forgotten that Darwin ward was named after the man who made "survival of the fittest" famous.
"I did in order to learn how serious he was, what his next move might be, maybe even manipulate him. You do remember the fact that he threw the scalpel at me instead of slicing her throat?" And hadn't that been fun, ducking out of the way, when it would have been far more interesting to catch the makeshift weapon and give the man a taste of his own medicine - oh, ha ha. "Would you have preferred that I followed procedure to the letter and waited for security, then someone from the psychiatric department?"
"No! But you didn't have to lock the bloody doors. More of us could have snuck in and -"
"Knocked him out with a bedpan?"
Dan's tone of voice made it clear how much he thought of that little plan. Clifford had overruled Methos' better instincts by entering the recovery room in the first place, and once there the patient had been keen to exert any and all control he had over the situation. Heroics would have been ridiculous, but the intervention of an excitable father-to-be? Disastrous.
Sam eventually had the good grace to look away, his body language proof of exhaustion. Those adrenal glands needed a rest. His collar was also undone, but it seemed that this was Strachan's personal fashion statement.
"I suggest that you find Mrs Beauchamp, reassure yourself that she is hale and hardy, listen to her side of the story perhaps. She may even want to talk," Dan suggested wryly. "Or slap me, for interfering."
The registrar coughed, or was that laughed?
"Now, if you don't mind, I have my own patients to see to. Unless you'd like to try your hand at general surgery? We have an anal abscess at 2."
Strachan was suitably disoriented by that comment. "Uh no. I'll pass."
"Good boy," Dan nodded approvingly and straightened the other man's tie. "Run along now."
Sam was halfway down the hall before he thought to question the ease with which he'd been dismissed, but all that he would see if he turned around was Clifford ambling in the opposite direction, hands in the pockets of that well-tailored suit.
Rating: 12, for language
Length: < 800 words
Summary: Task 1: talk down a patient holding Connie Beauchamp hostage. Task 2: deal with her idiotic ex-lover.
Disclaimer: Holby City is the property of the BBC. Highlander and associated characters are the property of Rysher Entertainment and Panzer Davies. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from this work.
Notes: No pairing (other than past Sam/Connie). Wholly unbetaed: the plotline hijacked my brain less than two days ago, following this programme.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Shoving him up against the wall was such a predictable reaction, and not nearly as pleasurable as it might have been under other circumstances. Other circumstances meaning someone other than an over-reactive registrar with a serious lack of emotional control.
"What gave you the right -?"
"To what, Mr Strachan? Save the mother of your unborn child?"
"You know what I mean." The young man really needed to practice his snarling. It wasn't nearly effective enough. "You should have wrapped that situation up in half the time."
"Should I now? How, exactly?" He kept his voice deliberately mild. "There is a procedure for dealing with 'violent service users', you realise."
"Fuck procedure!" And now the boy was kicking the door behind him. Bad shot, or remembering who he was screaming at? "He shouldn't have been allowed to hold her hostage like that, not that long."
Clifford bowed his head in acknowledgment. "All true, yet he did - and both Mrs Beauchamp and her baby are perfectly fine."
"They could have been killed!"
"As. Could. I." With a great deal more fall-out, considering. Few escape plans allowed for revival before medical experts. Even a cut would have been difficult to hide, given Connie's eagle-eyed reputation. "What exactly would you have had me do, Mr Strachan? I'll already face a disciplinary inquiry over my so-called manhandling of an at-risk patient."
"Who was holding a scalpel to Connie's throat!"
"Yes, yes, I do remember that quite vividly, thank you."
"Don't patronise me."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Dan smirked, patting his suit down as Sam finally released his hold. Maybe he'd let the boy get away without a dry-cleaning bill. "Mr Strachan, the fact of the matter is that John Smith - are there people still called that, really? - John Smith should have been out cold for at least another hour. No one could have predicted that he'd jump out of bed less than half an hour after emergency surgery, unless the anaesthetist was remiss in his duties - and no, that is not your cue for revenge after the football match. Get over it. That man had mental health problems and a cocktail of drugs in his system just waiting to cause havoc."
Sam jabbed a finger at his face. It was quite comical really, but he allowed himself to appear more shocked than amused.
"You had an opening. Several openings. You didn't have to wait that long to stop him."
Time for a short lesson, in case this child had forgotten that Darwin ward was named after the man who made "survival of the fittest" famous.
"I did in order to learn how serious he was, what his next move might be, maybe even manipulate him. You do remember the fact that he threw the scalpel at me instead of slicing her throat?" And hadn't that been fun, ducking out of the way, when it would have been far more interesting to catch the makeshift weapon and give the man a taste of his own medicine - oh, ha ha. "Would you have preferred that I followed procedure to the letter and waited for security, then someone from the psychiatric department?"
"No! But you didn't have to lock the bloody doors. More of us could have snuck in and -"
"Knocked him out with a bedpan?"
Dan's tone of voice made it clear how much he thought of that little plan. Clifford had overruled Methos' better instincts by entering the recovery room in the first place, and once there the patient had been keen to exert any and all control he had over the situation. Heroics would have been ridiculous, but the intervention of an excitable father-to-be? Disastrous.
Sam eventually had the good grace to look away, his body language proof of exhaustion. Those adrenal glands needed a rest. His collar was also undone, but it seemed that this was Strachan's personal fashion statement.
"I suggest that you find Mrs Beauchamp, reassure yourself that she is hale and hardy, listen to her side of the story perhaps. She may even want to talk," Dan suggested wryly. "Or slap me, for interfering."
The registrar coughed, or was that laughed?
"Now, if you don't mind, I have my own patients to see to. Unless you'd like to try your hand at general surgery? We have an anal abscess at 2."
Strachan was suitably disoriented by that comment. "Uh no. I'll pass."
"Good boy," Dan nodded approvingly and straightened the other man's tie. "Run along now."
Sam was halfway down the hall before he thought to question the ease with which he'd been dismissed, but all that he would see if he turned around was Clifford ambling in the opposite direction, hands in the pockets of that well-tailored suit.