Tumbling Down: Angst, NC-17, Parts 12-13
Part Twelve
Vlad just woke up-
…coma, permanent damage to the brain…
He doesn’t remember you, Sergei. He doesn’t remember anyone. He can barely remember who he is…
Slava! Slava, why did you let this happen? Why?!
…contusions, fractures; loss of basic motor functions…
-250 aboard, no survivors yet reported-
We just won. It’s not fair. He didn’t deserve this! It’s not fair! It’s not fair itsnotfairitsnotfair-
Who are you..?
I didn’t like hospitals.
I thought of this as I stared at the white tile above my head, bemused as to why it wasn’t the pale blue that characterized the ceiling of my room. Instead of the comforting tinge of sapphire it was hard, cold white; the kind of white that came with places sterile and constantly cleaned.
The scent of bleach and disinfectant invaded my senses.
I jerked upright with a gasp-and yelped, clutching my arm at the sharp sting of pain the abrupt action produced. I looked down to see a syringe inserted into the skin of my inner elbow. It was attached to an IV drip, and the significance of that fact had me slumping back, taking in my surroundings dazedly.
I was in a hospital room. A private one; with one bed and a bathroom and television set. There was a window half-open, the curtains pulled back to let in fresh air and light, but I was too far away to see outside. At some point during my lapse of consciousness I had been changed out of my clothing-I tried not to dwell too much on that-and was now dressed in a pair of disposable patient’s scrubs beneath the stark white sheets. The door to my room was open, and there was a young woman carrying a clipboard and wearing all-aqua clothing walking by.
“Nurse,” I croaked, waving my non-needled arm weakly in a bid to catch her attention. I didn’t know if she actually was a nurse or not, but she stopped and peered into my room, blinking.
“Sir?”
“I-” I paused, trying to think of the right words. I have no idea where the hell I am or what the heck happened, please tell me, might not have gone over too well. With a long career of injuries and friends with injuries and friends with concussions, I was absurdly wary of any and all hospital staff. There was just something about people who may or may not know more than you do about your own body that put me on edge.
But I wasn’t even given a chance to accumulate my thoughts, as the nurse-or-not-nurse glanced at the file stuck in a bin on the door. She nodded in a far more decisive manner than I thought she had a right to.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Fedorov; I’ll send Doctor Paian right down.”
And with that she was gone, a flash of sickly blue-green material the last I saw. I cursed and struggled into a sitting position.
What happened? I remember pain in my abdomen…the golf tournament… I called Nikky-
Nikky! I felt a pang of guilt at having forgotten about him in my disorientation. Where is Nikky? How much time has passed-does he know where I am..?
My rambling thoughts were cut short as a tall man with black hair and wearing the official white jacket that signified doctor status strode into the room. He had a pair of half-rim glasses perched on his nose, and had to peer through them in such a way he appeared to be looking down at you. He had a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Mr. Fedorov? I’m Erik Paian; I’m the doctor that will be handling your case. How are you feeling?”
He pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and I ran a hand through my hair, tugging absently at the tangles.
“Confused,” I admitted. Paian smiled thinly.
“I suppose that would make sense. Well, let me tell you what I know. Yesterday evening, you collapsed in a pharmacy downtown and the store owner called for an ambulance. You were brought here with disturbingly low blood sugar levels and hooked up with an intravenous drip, and seemed to be in quite a bit of pain. May I ask a few questions?”
“Sure, go ahead,” I said distractedly, my head spinning. He looked down at his clipboard, tapping the side with his pen.
“Have you been experiencing frequent stomach pains recently?”
I squirmed. “A little.” When he raised an eyebrow I sighed. “Yes.”
“Any vomiting, or abdominal pain that has kept you up at night?” he asked, penning a mark on his paper.
Every time I wake up from a dream where Nik really was dead, doctor.
“Yes.”
Paian made another little note. “What about your appetite, how has it been recently? You seem a little underweight for a man of your size.”
And here I thought only coaches and trainers were the ones who obsessed over weight, I thought bemusedly to myself.
“I haven’t been eating right lately,” I admitted. He scribbled again. I was beginning to get curious about that scribbling.
He sat back, finishing his writing with a little flourish and looking up at me.
“Mr. Fedorov, will you consent to an esophagogastroduodenoscopy?
I paled.
“A what?” I managed weakly.
He opened his mouth to reply when a relieved shout made us both jerk, and suddenly a dark head of hair was pressed beneath my chin and arms were wrapped tightly around my waist.
“Sergei, are you alright? Rusty and Rick and I came we found the hospital name when your phone broke I was so worried-”
Dr. Paian cast an irritated look at the babbling young Ukrainian in my lap.
“I thought I had sent you home,” he muttered. I gave him a confused glance, even as I brought my arms-or, one arm, since I didn’t like the feel of the IV moving beneath my skin-around Nikolai, rubbing his back comfortingly.
“He’s been here all night,” the doctor said exasperatedly. “I wanted your two other friends to take him home, but he wouldn’t budge.”
Nikolai raised his head to look at me, and I saw the dark circles beneath his eyes that belied his relieved expression. I smiled at him, ignoring Paian’s mutters about ‘he’s distracting the nurses by just sitting there…’
“Hey,” I said softly. The gentle smile I got in return was absolutely beautiful.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Mr. Fedorov,” Doctor Paian emphasized, drawing both our attentions back to him. “An EGD will help figure out what is causing you pain. It’s a little optic fiber system that we’ll put down your throat and look through the vid-screen to see what’s going on down there.
“I believe you have an ulcer,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
I gaped.
“An ulcer?”
Paian looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t drink, Mr. Fedorov, do you?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “I-I can’t have an ulcer!”
“Actually, you can,” he corrected, pushing his glasses further up his nose from where they had slipped down. “And in all likelihood, you do.”
As I opened and closed my mouth wordlessly, the first pleased expression I’d seen since I’d met him crossed Paian’s face.
“When can we schedule the EGD?”
--
Part Thirteen
“An ulcer?”
I closed my eyes. “Stop snickering, Igor.”
The man on the other end of the line, who I regarded as an invaluable source of wisdom and one of my closest friends, giggled. Giggled. Igor Larionov giggled.
“It’s not funny!”
“Sorry, Sergei,” he gasped. “It’s just-I thought ulcers were for old people. You know, the kind that have spent too many years in the bottom of a bottle. Not-not-”
He dissolved into a fit of snickering again. I called him a few choice phrases that may or may not have compared him to a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, but it only served to make him laugh harder. I waited irritably until he composed himself, tapping my fingers on the edge of the bed.
The good doctor had kept me overnight at the hospital so that they could monitor me, and keep track of me before the esophogowhatever. He seemed to take great delight in talking me through the procedure with vivid detailing; and I was not looking forward to having him stick something down my throat.
I’d shooed Nikky away around nine, demanding that he go home and get some sleep and food before coming back. He was dead-tired and agreed reluctantly-and only after I’d wheedled that I wanted him there while the EGD was going on. That part was true enough-just the thought of having something stretching from outside my mouth all the way into my stomach made me shudder. Having Nik there would be calming.
“How do you think you got it?” Igor asked once he had regained control of myself. I made a face, even though he couldn’t see it.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I have one yet. All those symptoms-I thought they were because of my worry over Nikky.”
“It’s been that bad?” he asked quietly.
I sighed.
“It’s not-bad. It’s not bad. I’ll never regret Nikky being here, but…I worry. I worry about him a lot. It’s been more than two months and I still have nightmares that I’ll wake up and he’ll be gone.”
I still have nightmares of him, eyes closed and peaceful, flames and twisted metal twining around his body slowly crushing him-while I can only stand and scream…
“You should talk to him,” Igor urged. “Tell him what’s going on. All he’s seeing is you self-destructing, Sergei; not the reasons why. I’m sure he’s frightened.”
“I don’t want to make him worry even more,” I replied. “He already thinks he’s the cause for all this; and he’s not, Igor. He’s not.”
“Sergei…”
“Mr. Fedorov!”
I looked up to see Dr. Paian cheerfully wheeling a complex-looking machine into the room. Nikolai was right behind him, watching the doctor doubtfully and eyeing the machine with even more suspicion. I bid Igor goodbye and hung up the phone, and Nik came to my side.
“You’re not really going to let him operate on you, are you?” he muttered in Russian, as he took my hand in his own. I smiled at him.
“It’s not an operation. He’s just going to take a look inside and see what’s the matter. No cutting or stitching.” Thank god.
Nikky sniffed and sat back grudgingly. He watched warily as the doctor had me lay on my side, head supported by the pillow, and stuck something vaguely resembling a mouth guard between my teeth. I couldn’t close my mouth, and the sensation was more than a little discomfiting. Paian sprayed my throat with some numbing fluid that made my tongue feel uncomfortably fat, and as he readied the little optic cable a fit of panic overtook me.
Christ, he’s going to stick that down my throat? All the way down to my stomach? What happens if something goes wrong? If I choke-shit, I’m going to choke-he’s going put it in my throat…
A gentle squeeze of my hand grabbed my attention. I raised wide eyes to meet Nikky’s, distantly aware of my breath coming faster, more erratic. He raised my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles gently, holding my one hand between his two. Dr. Paian raised an eyebrow but said nothing; and I could have cared less either way, the tension in my shoulders slowly easing as Nik rubbed my hand against his cheek. I twitched my fingers, cupping his chin in my hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I managed a weak smile around the mouthpiece, and then the cable was sliding across my tongue. I laid my arm across my side, Nikky’s hand still clenched in my own, shuddering at the feel of the foreign device. When it got to the back of my throat I gagged, digging my fingers into Nikky’s hand.
But for all of his seemingly sadistic tendencies, Paian was at least skilled at his job, and he maneuvered the little optics system quickly and carefully through my digestive tract. The feeling was uncomfortable, and bizarre, and I didn’t like it one bit. I closed my eyes and tried to focus only on the soft rub of Nikolai’s thumb against the back of my hand, blocking out the hum of the machine and Paian’s distracted mutters to himself.
The procedure couldn’t have taken more than an hour, and I was more than happy to get the thing out of my body. Paian gave me a little cup of water and went off to either make some small child cry or analyze his findings, giving me and Nikolai a few moments of privacy. We didn’t talk, however. We just sat there; I leaned against his shoulder and he rested his cheek on my head, silently supporting each other as we awaited my results.
“Helicobacter pylori!” Paian declared as he reentered the room, making the both of us jump. I glared at him suspiciously, and he only held up under my gaze for a few seconds before coughing and translating to English.
“Gastric ulcer,” he explained demurely. “In your stomach. Given your lifestyle-” he sniffed, as if he doubted ‘life’ had any place in referencing hockey, “-I’m sure you take plenty of NSAIDs? Aspirin and ibuprofen, yes? No doubt they helped contribute.”
“I’m well aware of my unhealthy living, doctor,” I said blandly. “How do I get rid of it?”
Paian made a face at me, as if I were spoiling his fun. He scribbled on a pad of prescription paper and tore it off, handing it to me.
“I’m putting you on amoxicillin, metronidazole and pantoprazole to clear out the infection. Your symptoms should start going away eventually. In the meantime, try not to eat foods that might upset your stomach. Now please remove yourself from my hospital, and on your way out schedule an appointment for two months, hm?”
More than happy to comply, I dragged a scowling Nikky out of the room, and out of the building. The air was fresh and crisp and I sighed, breathing in deeply; trying to banish the stale, sterile hospital-air that had infested my lungs. Nikolai came up to my side and slid his hand into mine, bumping me with his shoulder.
“C’mon. Let’s go home.”
My body was battered and my mind was tired, but my heart felt like it could burst and I grinned foolishly at Nik, only able to manage a small nod.
Our home.
-
Vlad just woke up-
…coma, permanent damage to the brain…
He doesn’t remember you, Sergei. He doesn’t remember anyone. He can barely remember who he is…
Slava! Slava, why did you let this happen? Why?!
…contusions, fractures; loss of basic motor functions…
-250 aboard, no survivors yet reported-
We just won. It’s not fair. He didn’t deserve this! It’s not fair! It’s not fair itsnotfairitsnotfair-
Who are you..?
I didn’t like hospitals.
I thought of this as I stared at the white tile above my head, bemused as to why it wasn’t the pale blue that characterized the ceiling of my room. Instead of the comforting tinge of sapphire it was hard, cold white; the kind of white that came with places sterile and constantly cleaned.
The scent of bleach and disinfectant invaded my senses.
I jerked upright with a gasp-and yelped, clutching my arm at the sharp sting of pain the abrupt action produced. I looked down to see a syringe inserted into the skin of my inner elbow. It was attached to an IV drip, and the significance of that fact had me slumping back, taking in my surroundings dazedly.
I was in a hospital room. A private one; with one bed and a bathroom and television set. There was a window half-open, the curtains pulled back to let in fresh air and light, but I was too far away to see outside. At some point during my lapse of consciousness I had been changed out of my clothing-I tried not to dwell too much on that-and was now dressed in a pair of disposable patient’s scrubs beneath the stark white sheets. The door to my room was open, and there was a young woman carrying a clipboard and wearing all-aqua clothing walking by.
“Nurse,” I croaked, waving my non-needled arm weakly in a bid to catch her attention. I didn’t know if she actually was a nurse or not, but she stopped and peered into my room, blinking.
“Sir?”
“I-” I paused, trying to think of the right words. I have no idea where the hell I am or what the heck happened, please tell me, might not have gone over too well. With a long career of injuries and friends with injuries and friends with concussions, I was absurdly wary of any and all hospital staff. There was just something about people who may or may not know more than you do about your own body that put me on edge.
But I wasn’t even given a chance to accumulate my thoughts, as the nurse-or-not-nurse glanced at the file stuck in a bin on the door. She nodded in a far more decisive manner than I thought she had a right to.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Fedorov; I’ll send Doctor Paian right down.”
And with that she was gone, a flash of sickly blue-green material the last I saw. I cursed and struggled into a sitting position.
What happened? I remember pain in my abdomen…the golf tournament… I called Nikky-
Nikky! I felt a pang of guilt at having forgotten about him in my disorientation. Where is Nikky? How much time has passed-does he know where I am..?
My rambling thoughts were cut short as a tall man with black hair and wearing the official white jacket that signified doctor status strode into the room. He had a pair of half-rim glasses perched on his nose, and had to peer through them in such a way he appeared to be looking down at you. He had a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Mr. Fedorov? I’m Erik Paian; I’m the doctor that will be handling your case. How are you feeling?”
He pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and I ran a hand through my hair, tugging absently at the tangles.
“Confused,” I admitted. Paian smiled thinly.
“I suppose that would make sense. Well, let me tell you what I know. Yesterday evening, you collapsed in a pharmacy downtown and the store owner called for an ambulance. You were brought here with disturbingly low blood sugar levels and hooked up with an intravenous drip, and seemed to be in quite a bit of pain. May I ask a few questions?”
“Sure, go ahead,” I said distractedly, my head spinning. He looked down at his clipboard, tapping the side with his pen.
“Have you been experiencing frequent stomach pains recently?”
I squirmed. “A little.” When he raised an eyebrow I sighed. “Yes.”
“Any vomiting, or abdominal pain that has kept you up at night?” he asked, penning a mark on his paper.
Every time I wake up from a dream where Nik really was dead, doctor.
“Yes.”
Paian made another little note. “What about your appetite, how has it been recently? You seem a little underweight for a man of your size.”
And here I thought only coaches and trainers were the ones who obsessed over weight, I thought bemusedly to myself.
“I haven’t been eating right lately,” I admitted. He scribbled again. I was beginning to get curious about that scribbling.
He sat back, finishing his writing with a little flourish and looking up at me.
“Mr. Fedorov, will you consent to an esophagogastroduodenoscopy?
I paled.
“A what?” I managed weakly.
He opened his mouth to reply when a relieved shout made us both jerk, and suddenly a dark head of hair was pressed beneath my chin and arms were wrapped tightly around my waist.
“Sergei, are you alright? Rusty and Rick and I came we found the hospital name when your phone broke I was so worried-”
Dr. Paian cast an irritated look at the babbling young Ukrainian in my lap.
“I thought I had sent you home,” he muttered. I gave him a confused glance, even as I brought my arms-or, one arm, since I didn’t like the feel of the IV moving beneath my skin-around Nikolai, rubbing his back comfortingly.
“He’s been here all night,” the doctor said exasperatedly. “I wanted your two other friends to take him home, but he wouldn’t budge.”
Nikolai raised his head to look at me, and I saw the dark circles beneath his eyes that belied his relieved expression. I smiled at him, ignoring Paian’s mutters about ‘he’s distracting the nurses by just sitting there…’
“Hey,” I said softly. The gentle smile I got in return was absolutely beautiful.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Mr. Fedorov,” Doctor Paian emphasized, drawing both our attentions back to him. “An EGD will help figure out what is causing you pain. It’s a little optic fiber system that we’ll put down your throat and look through the vid-screen to see what’s going on down there.
“I believe you have an ulcer,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
I gaped.
“An ulcer?”
Paian looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t drink, Mr. Fedorov, do you?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “I-I can’t have an ulcer!”
“Actually, you can,” he corrected, pushing his glasses further up his nose from where they had slipped down. “And in all likelihood, you do.”
As I opened and closed my mouth wordlessly, the first pleased expression I’d seen since I’d met him crossed Paian’s face.
“When can we schedule the EGD?”
--
Part Thirteen
“An ulcer?”
I closed my eyes. “Stop snickering, Igor.”
The man on the other end of the line, who I regarded as an invaluable source of wisdom and one of my closest friends, giggled. Giggled. Igor Larionov giggled.
“It’s not funny!”
“Sorry, Sergei,” he gasped. “It’s just-I thought ulcers were for old people. You know, the kind that have spent too many years in the bottom of a bottle. Not-not-”
He dissolved into a fit of snickering again. I called him a few choice phrases that may or may not have compared him to a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, but it only served to make him laugh harder. I waited irritably until he composed himself, tapping my fingers on the edge of the bed.
The good doctor had kept me overnight at the hospital so that they could monitor me, and keep track of me before the esophogowhatever. He seemed to take great delight in talking me through the procedure with vivid detailing; and I was not looking forward to having him stick something down my throat.
I’d shooed Nikky away around nine, demanding that he go home and get some sleep and food before coming back. He was dead-tired and agreed reluctantly-and only after I’d wheedled that I wanted him there while the EGD was going on. That part was true enough-just the thought of having something stretching from outside my mouth all the way into my stomach made me shudder. Having Nik there would be calming.
“How do you think you got it?” Igor asked once he had regained control of myself. I made a face, even though he couldn’t see it.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I have one yet. All those symptoms-I thought they were because of my worry over Nikky.”
“It’s been that bad?” he asked quietly.
I sighed.
“It’s not-bad. It’s not bad. I’ll never regret Nikky being here, but…I worry. I worry about him a lot. It’s been more than two months and I still have nightmares that I’ll wake up and he’ll be gone.”
I still have nightmares of him, eyes closed and peaceful, flames and twisted metal twining around his body slowly crushing him-while I can only stand and scream…
“You should talk to him,” Igor urged. “Tell him what’s going on. All he’s seeing is you self-destructing, Sergei; not the reasons why. I’m sure he’s frightened.”
“I don’t want to make him worry even more,” I replied. “He already thinks he’s the cause for all this; and he’s not, Igor. He’s not.”
“Sergei…”
“Mr. Fedorov!”
I looked up to see Dr. Paian cheerfully wheeling a complex-looking machine into the room. Nikolai was right behind him, watching the doctor doubtfully and eyeing the machine with even more suspicion. I bid Igor goodbye and hung up the phone, and Nik came to my side.
“You’re not really going to let him operate on you, are you?” he muttered in Russian, as he took my hand in his own. I smiled at him.
“It’s not an operation. He’s just going to take a look inside and see what’s the matter. No cutting or stitching.” Thank god.
Nikky sniffed and sat back grudgingly. He watched warily as the doctor had me lay on my side, head supported by the pillow, and stuck something vaguely resembling a mouth guard between my teeth. I couldn’t close my mouth, and the sensation was more than a little discomfiting. Paian sprayed my throat with some numbing fluid that made my tongue feel uncomfortably fat, and as he readied the little optic cable a fit of panic overtook me.
Christ, he’s going to stick that down my throat? All the way down to my stomach? What happens if something goes wrong? If I choke-shit, I’m going to choke-he’s going put it in my throat…
A gentle squeeze of my hand grabbed my attention. I raised wide eyes to meet Nikky’s, distantly aware of my breath coming faster, more erratic. He raised my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles gently, holding my one hand between his two. Dr. Paian raised an eyebrow but said nothing; and I could have cared less either way, the tension in my shoulders slowly easing as Nik rubbed my hand against his cheek. I twitched my fingers, cupping his chin in my hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I managed a weak smile around the mouthpiece, and then the cable was sliding across my tongue. I laid my arm across my side, Nikky’s hand still clenched in my own, shuddering at the feel of the foreign device. When it got to the back of my throat I gagged, digging my fingers into Nikky’s hand.
But for all of his seemingly sadistic tendencies, Paian was at least skilled at his job, and he maneuvered the little optics system quickly and carefully through my digestive tract. The feeling was uncomfortable, and bizarre, and I didn’t like it one bit. I closed my eyes and tried to focus only on the soft rub of Nikolai’s thumb against the back of my hand, blocking out the hum of the machine and Paian’s distracted mutters to himself.
The procedure couldn’t have taken more than an hour, and I was more than happy to get the thing out of my body. Paian gave me a little cup of water and went off to either make some small child cry or analyze his findings, giving me and Nikolai a few moments of privacy. We didn’t talk, however. We just sat there; I leaned against his shoulder and he rested his cheek on my head, silently supporting each other as we awaited my results.
“Helicobacter pylori!” Paian declared as he reentered the room, making the both of us jump. I glared at him suspiciously, and he only held up under my gaze for a few seconds before coughing and translating to English.
“Gastric ulcer,” he explained demurely. “In your stomach. Given your lifestyle-” he sniffed, as if he doubted ‘life’ had any place in referencing hockey, “-I’m sure you take plenty of NSAIDs? Aspirin and ibuprofen, yes? No doubt they helped contribute.”
“I’m well aware of my unhealthy living, doctor,” I said blandly. “How do I get rid of it?”
Paian made a face at me, as if I were spoiling his fun. He scribbled on a pad of prescription paper and tore it off, handing it to me.
“I’m putting you on amoxicillin, metronidazole and pantoprazole to clear out the infection. Your symptoms should start going away eventually. In the meantime, try not to eat foods that might upset your stomach. Now please remove yourself from my hospital, and on your way out schedule an appointment for two months, hm?”
More than happy to comply, I dragged a scowling Nikky out of the room, and out of the building. The air was fresh and crisp and I sighed, breathing in deeply; trying to banish the stale, sterile hospital-air that had infested my lungs. Nikolai came up to my side and slid his hand into mine, bumping me with his shoulder.
“C’mon. Let’s go home.”
My body was battered and my mind was tired, but my heart felt like it could burst and I grinned foolishly at Nik, only able to manage a small nod.
Our home.
-