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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