Walking on Thin Ice: Chapter 2

There was an awkward moment as Gemma smiled fondly on Mike with a floating look of rememberence and sadness on her face. Finally she jerked her hand away and stood, groping for a box of tissues somewhere behind her. Having successfully seized the box, she buried her face in it and let out a shaky breath.

"Thought I'd never cry again. Super freaky when you feel like you can't CRY..." She tried to lighten the dark mood.

Mike, interested in her dilemma, shifted towards her. "How long ago did you fiancèe die?"

Gemma's shoulders hunched up a bit but she looked him calmly in the eye. "About one year ago,"

"Ah," he nodded. He shifted again, feeling out of place and uncomfortable.

She glanced at her watch and squinted an eye. "Well, I'm glad to see you're doing better but I must be off, Mr. Palin. Maybe I'll see you at another crash site." She grinned wickedly, half-way out the door.

"I'm Michael, and I'm afraid you won't, I hope." He smiled and craned his neck to keep sight of her.

"Well, Michael, see you around." She waved once and turned, walking out the door with her eyes still red from her momentary loss of character.

Eric floated into the doorway seconds after Gemma had left, eyes following down the hall where she'd disappeared. He whistled softly and walked in, coffee in one of his bony hands. "Shit man, was she just in here talking to you? Day-um!"

Mike nodded, picking at the basket again. "She was in here, checking on me. That was the paramedic Terry was talking about."

Eric's face crumpled up in momentary confusion. "She was in here checking on you?"

"Yeah, apparently she does that to all her patients. Even left me this!" He held up the basket in semi-triumph, smiling at Eric's impressed expression.

He settled back in a chair and smiled boyishly on Mike, laying bored in the hospital bed. "I think it's time you got a girl, and why not her?"

Mike scoffed. "Please! I just met her!"

Eric shrugged. "What, you supposed to date all your childhood friends? I'm afraid you'd be rather homosexual by now, Mike."

He laughed, nodding. "True, but still...I don't think she'd like having a patient of her asking her out again."

"Again?" There was a questioning eyebrow on Eric's part.

Mike nodded. "Yeah, her fiancèe had been a patient before he died in a car crash, as the doctor told me."

Eric whistled with an underlying grin. "Jesus, Mikey, catching up on hospital gossip and you've been awake for no less than twenty minutes!"

Once again, Mike laughed and nodded. "I suppose I am. She was nice, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to ask her out."

His friend rolled his eyes. "Oh please! It's easy! 'Miss? I was wondering if you'd like to go somewhere with me on' insert date and possible time and give her your famous Palin grin!"

"What 'famous Palin grin?'" Michael protested, cheeks flaring up.

Eric rolled his eyes, agitated. "Once again, Palin! Oh please! Helen went on to all ends about those bloody dimples until my ears were bleeding!"

"Come off it, Idle, I may be a young man in showbiz, but that doesn't make my grin a famous one." Mike avidly protested.

Eric folded his arms. "Think that over again. You are on TV, you have dimples. You are young. You are now a bachelor. You now have a young, good looking paramedic visiting you in the hospital. Come off your pompous cloud and get back in the dating scene! Divorce hasn't slowed me down yet!" He grinned cheekily at Michael and his blushing cheeks.

Stubbornly, Mike folded his arms and scowled. "I'm no good at this sort of thing."

"I'll help you!" He started to stand up when Michael's good hand lurched across his chest and gripped Eric's wrist in a death grip.

"Sit down before I kill you." He commanded in a soft voice.

Eric sat down, mouth open in slight pain as Mike still held his wrist. "Christ Palin," he whined as Mike let go. "Tryin' to kill me?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "Yes, because I can kill you by squeezing your arm."

Eric pouted his lips pathetically. "I'm sensitive."

"More like skinny," remarked John upon returning to the room, bottled water and some other bottled drink under his arm.

Gil walked in with a smug grin. "Yeah, Idle, I think a strong wind could knock you over."

"Awww, shaddap!" He pouted again, rubbing his wrist.

Terry walked in and sat down sleepily in the nearest chair. "When you gonna be free?" He yawned. "I'll pick you up..."

"I'm out of here nine o' clock sharp tomorrow. Someone volunteer to save me?" He looked hopefully around the group. Terry was asleep, the others busy with their food stuffs.

Finally Graham raised a hand and looked very pleased with himself. "I'll rescue you, fair Mikela."

Mike, in a high falsetto, responded: "Oh thank you, brave sir! What be-eth your name, you handsome devil you?"

Graham snickered. "Chad Youbetcha,"

Eric snickered appreciatively and ended the ridiculous interaction with a dismissive snort.

In about ten minutes, the other Pythons grew bored with the small talk and began a small writing session. Visiting hours ended half an hour later, leaving Michael alone in the small room with nothing to occupy his mind but the television and hospital reports. Disliking television as his first option, he seized the hospital report and bill and grimaced.

"Twenty-two stitches, a broken wrist and radius, a few broken ribs, a near ruptured kidney that had been saved by some sort of drug that he needed medicine for in the future, a few severe bruises on his collar bone and side, and respitory/cardiac failure." Mike read aloud into the empty room.

He set the report down at sight of the bill. With a grimace he turned to his window. "Fun fun..."

He watched a few cars exit the parking lot, a few enter. This wasn't going to entertain him for long and he knew it. Soon enough something had to happen, it was London after all. Sure enough, an ambulance raced out of the driveway, skidding to the left and racing under his window. Twenty minutes of intense street-staring merited his witness of the return. The ambulance skidded to a stop outside the emergency ward doors, spilling out two young people, both women, both bleeding far too much to be healthy. Gemma leapt out of the back after the two collapsable gurneys, arms and shirt soaked with blood. She held a small toddler in her arms, it sobbed loudly and tried to escape her grip.

"Sweet Jesus!" Mike muttered under his breath. With some strain on his broken ribs, stretching the bones on his right side out, he managed to open the window.

Gemma stood up tall, a sort of Athena on the scene. "Puncture wounds on her throat and thigh, possible stabbing and mugging! I need AB blood and a defribulator, stat!"

Personnel scurried about like lab mice, hoarding things for their master, leaving them at her feet for her own purposes. The toddler was taken from her arms by a young paramedic, who held the child like it was a bomb about to go off. Gemma silently scolded him before setting to her grim task. Shortly after shocking the woman back into existence, they rolled both women inside and onto Mike's level. There were running doctors, nurses, and many painful cries in the halls as the patients whisked by. An hour later, Mike was still awake.

The telltale squeaking of Gemma's shoes echoed in the halls. She walked by Mike's open door and pushed open the surgery department's doors.

"Are they alright?" She asked the two doctors seated in the break room.

Jameison, spattered with blood, shook his head. "We lost the second one. She had suffered enormous amounts of internal bleeding. She bled herself out and we couldn't regain her. We also think she had an aneurysm, because her brain was gushing with it." He shuddered.

Gemma, still covered in the woman's blood, let out deep sigh. "God damnit."

"You did more than you could, Gemma. God took her, that's-" The other doctor, Harrison started.

"God is crap, you know that. We are doctors here, we know who we can save and who we can't. Besides, God didn't have a bloody reason to take Jonas from me." She spat contemptuosly.

Jameison sighed at Gemma's fiery disposition. Her auburn hair, nearly to her knees, spoke for itself. She often did enough with it to keep it out of her face, but even holiday parties she came off as a complete eccentric. Long hair, always side parted, always down in her spare time. Her bell bottoms were standard, as were her music related t-shirts, but the thing that baffled him the most was the color of her eyes. They were clearly blue, but there was something that made you look twice, and that something was the little green ring around her left pupil, just a bright strip in one of her eyes. You found yourself staring at it with an amazed look on your face, so incredibly stupid feeling that you forcably clamp your mouth shut and ignore her eyes altogether.

Mike had noticed her eyes, though he was far more interested in her laid back conversation and comfort level. She was obviously an extrovert, and obviously she knew how to live in a world as harsh as hers alone. He envied her and respected her from the get-go, liking her personality from day-er, minute one.

Gemma had only noticed a few things about Michael at the crash site. One, he was extremely tired and didn't feel too comfortable talking to her or Jeremy about whether or not he'd been drinking. Two, he had lovely hair! She had stared at first, at the shaggy style and the sideburns that he was sporting so well. Putting on her professional face, she had also noticed that he had a high threshold of pain.

Upon talking to him in his hospital room, she had scraped much further, and the same was with him. They felt so similar, but still very different. Independent and yet very dependent on one another even though they had only spoken twice. Looking into his blue green eyes gave her a sense of genuine conversation. The hope he had offered her with such a simple gesture as offering her his hand had been the closest thing to actual socializing since Jonas had passed. She ached to be part of the real world again, having shut herself up for so long.

Michael had inspired her to consider dragging out her old guitar and maybe play in a club tomorrow, before her shift. With dreamy eyes she turned and walked back out the surgery room's doors.

The light was still on in the first door in the hallway. Remembering this to be Michael's, she peered around the corner.

"Still awake?" She grinned pitifully, trying to hide her depression at losing a patient and her bloody scrubs.

Mike jumped and looked at her. "Oh! Yes, I can't sleep yet. Too much going on." He gestured towards his window where the ambulance was being cleaned of blood.

She stepped in, trying to see what he was looking at. "Yeah, this is the worst we've had in years, both women stabbed minimum of six times each..."

He gasped. "Really? Are they alright?"

She shook her head soberly. "No, we lost one. The other one's in stable but critical condition. I'm not sure what's going to happen to her."

"That's awful!" He exclaimed earnestly.

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"What about the baby, I saw-"

Gemma sighed. "His mother was the one that died. Her sister, the other woman, will probably take him in."

"Christ, that's terrible!"

She shrugged. "It is, but it's part of the job. When you work in a house of death you find yourself crying less for tragedy and more for triumph."

Mike furrowed a confused brow. "Cry for triumph?"

"Oh, you'll get it some day I suppose. Now, if I'm right, one thirty is not a real visiting hour." She was beginning to feel guilty just talking to this man that she felt so comfortable talking to. Jonas seemed to be looming in her mind, reproaching her.

Back into her hole she went, waving at the silent and down-trodden Michael Palin behind her.






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