Broken Glass
She'd hardly slept a wink all night. What little tortured sleep she did get had been filled with pitchforks and flaming torches storming the gates of Rampart Emergency, with hordes of angry punk rockers and snooty bank tellers and their gossip-mongering wives screaming for Kelly Brackett's blood. The third time Dix had awakened drenched in sweat and gasping for air was the last for the night. She gave up the ghost and staggered to the kitchen, where she could put on the first of several pots of coffee to wash the demons of the night away.
A couple hours later, with the newly risen sun warming her back, Nurse McCall marched into Rampart, looking for all the world as if nothing had ever been wrong. After all, if Kelly's home could be gutted and smashed, if his quiet neighbors could scrawl horrible, nasty things all over his walls, and he could still find it in himself to come and heal the strangers that landed in his lap, then by God Almighty, Dixie could most certainly do the same.
Her resolve lasted all of fifteen minutes, which was just long enough to change into her uniform proper, check in at base, and head upstairs to begin her morning checks.
She found Kel standing in the doorway of one of the young patients from Sunday's fire, the girl whose broken hand had gone unnoticed until his return. Dixie could just see inside the room, and could see the gentle rise and fall of the girl's chest. She seemed to be sleeping soundly, unfettered by her various injuries. The set of Kel's shoulders suggested, however, that not all was well.
"Good morning, Kel," Dix said quietly, not wanting to startle him.
At first, she thought she hadn't been heard. But then he lifted a weary hand and pushed the door open ever so slightly, leaving his hand up just high enough for Dix to tuck herself into the small space he'd created. She inched forward and ducked under his arm, and was pleasantly surprised when he dropped it on her shoulder. "Morning, Dix," he said. His voice seemed sleep rough, and she wondered if he'd slept at all since Saturday night.
She leaned heavily against him for just a moment, wanting to feel the warm, solid strength of his body against hers. But he seemed to cave a little under her weight. He was still warm, but instead of a broad pillar of flesh, he seemed to have large pieces missing, like he'd disintegrated under his lab coat. Dix pulled away and turned to look him in the face. "What's wrong, Kelly?"
He wouldn't meet her eyes, though she tried hard to keep her face aligned to his. "I'm alright, Dix."
Alright. She turned her attention to the girl in the bed behind her. "How's she doing?"
"Better. I'm supposed to talk to her parents today. I'd like to send her home."
Dix picked up the chart at the end of the bed, and frowned at the latest readings. "Somebody's already been through here this morning."
"I couldn't sleep."
She set the chart down and eyed Kel. He was looking at the floor, the wall, his hand, the light fixtures - anywhere but at Dixie. "I know you had a pile of paperwork on your desk you could have dealt with, Kel. You don't have to go doing nurses’ work."
Kel frowned slightly, and looked at her for the first time. "You don't know what I have on my desk." The look in his bloodshot eyes was hard. Glacial.
"Well, I don't know what's on there now, but I know what wasn't on there when I left last night."
She hadn't realized that the stiffness had drained from his body until it returned full force. He stood ramrod straight and stared at her with a fury that pinned her to the spot. "You'd better not be telling me what I think you're telling me."
Dix smiled at him, trying to draw on a sweetness she didn't feel. "Don't be angry, Kel. Some poor clerk was running around like a chicken without her head last night. I was just helping her out."
"Was she the one snooping around my desk last night?"
Dix's mouth dropped open. "Snooping? Snooping?"
"Yes, Dixie, snooping."
"Nobody was snooping, Kel! She had paperwork that needed to go to the department head, so I made sure the department head got it! That's it!" The sleeping girl began to moan and shift, and Dix headed for the door. "Come on, we're disturbing the patient."
"We aren't done talking about this, Dixie."
Dix drew up short at Kel's firm stance in the doorway. She stepped back and planted her own feet, and matched his glare with an icy wall of her own. "Dr. Brackett. We can discuss anything you'd like, any time you'd like, for as long as you'd like, but we are disturbing the patient."
They squared off, clearly at an impasse, until a whimper from the patient sliced through the tension. Kel backed out of the room with a grunt. Dix let the door swing shut between them, and took a minute to calm herself. It wouldn't do to walk in on some poor, sick, bedridden soul while she looked like she was keyed up for a fight. When she felt a little more composed, she went through the door, intending to check the elderly woman across the hall.
The moment she was in the hall proper, Kel stepped into her path. "I want an explanation, Dixie."
"Now? For what? I have work to do, Kel, and so do y-"
"Don't you take that tone with me, Nurse!"
Dix shut her mouth and stared at Kel. "I - I'm sorry, Dr. Brackett. I just..."
He softened a little. "I want to see you in my office, in twenty minutes."
"Am I in trouble?"
The tenderness was gone in an instant. "That's what we're gonna find out! Twenty minutes!" Then he brushed past her and stomped down the hall.
She watched him disappear into a patient's room, then continued her own work in dismayed silence. Upon waking in the middle of the night, she'd wanted very much to ask him what all had gone on the previous Saturday, had he been hurt, where had he holed up, how did Stanford fit into all of this. She'd wanted the reassurance that she wasn't on the verge of losing her dearest friend to some calamity from which he'd never recover. But after the cold fury in his eyes, and the glimpses of the deep, violent aggression he'd been trying to keep in check all week, she knew that she had no right to ask him for reassurances. But that didn't change how she felt, didn't change her worry or her desire for comfort. All it changed was the fact that she knew he was behaving like a cornered animal, and she hadn't done anything yet to soothe whatever it was that put him in that corner.
Dix lost track of time - she always did when she was scheduled to check the beds first thing in the morning - and she found herself hurrying down to Kel's office well after her allotted twenty minutes. She was vaguely irritated that he hadn't made clear whether or not his anger was actually work related, and slightly worried that, in fact, he would look for a way to make an example out of her for entering his office 'after hours'. She wouldn't have thought him capable of such triviality a week ago, but she was finding out the truth about a lot of things she wouldn't have thought about Kel Brackett a week ago.
She skidded to a halt in front of his door, smoothed down her uniform front, and tapped lightly at the door. At first, there was no answer, and she almost thought maybe an emergency had come and distracted him from his unruly anger.
But no such luck. "Well come on, I haven't got all day!"
Dix sighed and opened the door a crack, and found him hunched over his desk, flipping through the paperwork that had gotten her into hot water in the first place. "I'm sorry, I got stuck-"
"When I tell you I want to meet with you in twenty minutes, I mean twenty minutes, McCall. Get in here, now."
She gave up apologizing and squeezed into the door, slipping it shut behind her. She leaned against it and waited, not wanting to dare take a seat without an invitation.
"I want to know, what the hell gives you the right to come snooping in my office when I'm not here."
"I told you, Doctor, no one was snooping."
"Where's my apple?"
She stared at him in disbelief. "Is... is that why you're mad at me? Because you can't find the apple? You didn't even want it, Kel. And anyway, how do you know a custodian didn't take it?"
"Because the custodian didn't bring folders into my office, and because the custodian would have also taken out the trash, Dix."
She sighed and put her hands up. "I'm sorry about the apple, okay? Yes, I took it with me last night. I... it was upsetting, okay?"
"Why?"
"Because I'm worried about you!"
"Why?"
"Why?! What do you mean, why? You were MIA for hours on Sunday morning, and you've been off kilter ever since! You hardly eat, everything anyone says to you either makes you fly into a rage or look like you're gonna burst into tears!"
He turned away, pale and drawn. "I'm fine, Dix."
"You keep saying that, but you don't act like you're fine. You don't look fine."
"Well, I am," he said quietly. "Look, just... I'm sorry if I overreacted about the apple. Thank you for dealing with the invoices. Next time, could you just... leave my things be?"
She sighed. "Sure. You're right, I had no right to touch your things. I apologize." He smiled weakly at her. Maybe... maybe she could just ask... "Hey, listen. Do the two of you have a place to stay yet?"
She'd seen him angry before. She'd seen him sad before. And she'd seen his mood swing from one spectrum to the other - sometimes with startling speed. But she'd never seen Kel go from the depths of despair to raging mania in the literal blink of an eye. It was magnificent. He jumped out of his seat and swept pamphlets and loose papers over the edge of the desk, sending them fluttering to the floor. The color returned to his face in a flash, deep purples and reds. His whole body shook. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Dixie blinked. "Your house, Kel," she said. "I..."
"What about my house? What the hell do you know about my house?!"
She watched his fingers flex over and over again, scratching grooves into the soft wood on the heavy desk, and she knew asking after him had been a mistake. "Listen, Kel-"
"Oh, I'm listening. You'd better start talking, and fast, girl."
"Kel, take it ea-"
"Don't tell me to take it easy! What the hell are asking me? Do I have a place to stay? What the hell gave you the idea to even ask me such-"
Dixie threw her hands up in defeat. "Alright! I'm sorry! I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Kel, that's all!"
"I told you, stop snooping!"
"Please, Kelly, I'm not sn-"
"Bullshit!" He slammed both hands on his desk. "You're not snooping, but you're shoving food down my throat, you're taking shit off my desk, and now you're asking me shit you couldn't possibly know unless you drove your ass twenty fucking miles from here to look at my fucking house!"
All together, her actions sounded horrible to her ears. "I'm really not trying to pry, Kel," Dix said, fighting tears. "I'm just concerned about you."
"Well I didn't ask for your concern, Dix! You wanna help me? Huh? You wanna help me?"
"Yes!"
"Then mind your own business, and wait until I ask you for something before you start trying to fix me. You have hundreds of patients in this hospital you can spend your concern on, Dixie! Quit shoving it on me!"
She shook her head. "I can't do that, Kel. You need help."
"How dare you! Where the hell do you get off telling me that?"
"I'm your friend, Kel, I'm worried-"
"Just get out!"
She paused, shocked into silence. "You... what?"
"You heard me Dix! Get. Out!"
"Okay." She slipped quietly out of his office. Everyone in the admissions area was staring at her, or through her to Kel's door. She steadied herself for a moment, mortified for herself and her friend. Then she gave the admitting nurse a cold, hard look. "Is there some reason we aren't working?" The nurse shook her head and found something to do in a hurry. The patients and their waiting families went back to being concerned about their own pains. Dixie walked back to her station with her head held high, and tried not to dwell on Kel's angry words, or the niggling speck of truth behind them.
Dix avoided Kel for the rest of the morning. She had no desire to repeat their earlier argument, especially not for an audience. She didn't want to invite discussion as to whether or not she'd deserved his wrath - that was a question she wasn't ready to consider in the privacy of her own head, much less with outsiders who didn't always necessarily share her elevated opinion of Dr. Brackett (or her ability to ignore most of his bellowing).
She also spent the morning avoiding Joe Early's questioning eyes. He kept sidling up to Dixie, peppering her with innocent little questions designed (painfully obviously, she thought,) to diagnose her sullen temper. Usually, she'd have unloaded on Joe in a hot minute, eager for an ear. But she wasn't willing to risk another misunderstanding with Kel - she didn't want to be accused of dishing on top of the already half true prying charge.
At one point, her resolve to keep her discomfort to herself began to crumble, and she went to the break room in search of a friendly face. Instead, she found Joe on the wrong end of a nasty chewing out from Kelly. She scurried out, unseen, and determined that she was quite capable of carrying her load in silence, rather than running the risk of catching that kind of hell twice in the same day.
Her bedside manner began to suffer with the strain of trying to be professionally civil to Kelly while dodging Joe's increasingly nosy questions. Though she tried to be gentle and kind as always, she found herself biting off several sarcastic remarks, and having to apologize repeatedly when patients flinched under her hands. Finally, a young woman with blood spurting from one hand began screaming bloody murder because she was tired of Dix's growling and manhandling.
Defeated, Dix looked at Dr. Morton, and hoped like hell he could read minds. "Find out if Carol or Sally is busy," he said, and gave her a little nod.
"I'm sorry," she said to the patient, and ducked out of the room with a shaky sigh. She knew better than that - her problems were not the patients problems, and the last thing they needed in an emergency room was to have some medical staff take their bad days out on them.
She spotted Carol manning a call at the base station. She slid into Carol's space and took the notepad from the older woman's hands. "I need a big favor, Carol. Can you finish up with Dr. Morton in 4? I can handle the call for you."
Carol was a serious, quiet person who hardly cracked a smile during the best of times, and who was hard pressed to say anything that wasn't directly related to the job. Dix didn't expect more than a "yes ma'am" from her, and was surprised when Carol gave her a quick, tight hug. "No matter how bad the day gets, as long as you're alive, it can always get better," she said in Dix's ear. Then she hurried away to Room 4, without ever catching Dixie's eye.
Carol's notes were nearly indecipherable chicken scratch. Dix managed to glean that there were five patients coming in, all of them bleeding and in varying states of consciousness. The rest was a series of scribbles that would make any M.D. proud. "Rampart, do you read?"
Dix snorted. "Negative, Squad 95, please repeat."
There was a slight pause before the answer came.
"10-4, rampart. Sheriff's department notifies all patients are considered dangerous, and should be handled with extreme caution."
Well, that didn't help. "Uh, please clarify squad 95. Sheriff's department?"
The pause was much longer, as was the eventual clarification, but in the end, Dixie was crystal clear on the gravity of the situation. Five patients, torn and broken and mad as hell. Five patients who'd been turned away at Harbor due to their violence and Harbor's lack of beds. Five patients who were too busted and battered to be treated at the County Jail infirmary from which they were being transported.
Five victims of a jailhouse riot.
When it rains, it really pours. She set aside her exhaustion, and grabbed the phone to page for all available doctors. They had ten minutes on the outside to clear the halls of unnecessary personnel, empty the waiting room, assemble a battery of nurses, orderlies and guards, and to give the jail ward a heads up. Not impossible, but not exactly a cakewalk. Perhaps it was providence that Dix managed to piss off her patient right when she had - Carol was an experienced nurse, but her training was in a private hospital of the religious variety. She really hadn't had any exposure to this sort of madness. If she had, she'd have called for Dix right off, rather than trying to handle the call herself.
They hadn't quite emptied the waiting room when the ambulance doors open, and a cacophony of noise filled the air. Two of the five patients had arrived, screaming bloody murder, threatening to kill anyone who touched them, threatening to kill each other, threatening to sic their friends and families on anyone and everyone in their path. "Charming," Dixie said, and stood aside as a flock of nurses, orderlies and doctors descended on the raving pair. She couldn't tell by looking at them what all was wrong with them, but their blood stained prison garb told her enough - they were running on pure adrenaline at that point. Quiet would return soon enough, one way or another.
The handful of patients and family members who hadn't wanted to leave the waiting room rose in a panic and tried to claw their way out through the north and east facing doors that lead deeper into the hospital. Security had their hands more full of frightened civilians than the two screaming fools who were strapped to their gurneys and bleeding from dozens of cuts and scrapes.
The next pair were also audibly angry, though they weren't so coherent as the first two (not that the first two were very coherent beyond the fact they wanted to kill everything). One was moaning, droning on and on about pigs and their hammers. The paramedic traveling with this pair refused to leave this one alone, and as his stretcher rounded the corner, Dixie could see why - the man's head was actually caved in near one ear. She was surprised he was still breathing, much less talking. The other one was gasping for breath, and hissing about being jostled and bumped, though from Dix's vantage point, there was nothing to jostle him on, nothing that could have bumped every time he hissed. Though he too was strapped to his stretcher, he kept trying to move his hands up near his belly. She wondered if he had a gut wound, or busted ribs.
Dr. Brackett emerged from his office then. She wondered if he was responding directly to her page, or if he was making himself available to the general public. Hell, maybe he was just taking a bathroom break.
But no, he was stalking towards the examination rooms, with a determined look on his face. "What have we got, Dix?"
No trace of the morning's rage. She ignored her own nervousness at having to talk to him again - no time for personal affairs. "Four of five inmates from the County lockup. Broken bones on all of them, including a crushed skull, a shattered tibia and three cracked ribs - different patients on all of those, I believe - and multiple stab wounds with various instruments."
Kel shuddered, actually shuddered, and looked towards the ambulance entrance. Dix followed his gaze, and watched the dance of the ambulances as they switched out to allow the third, final transport to unload their patient.
She felt rather than saw Kel's withdrawal, and heard his voice rumbling as he checked in each of the four occupied examination rooms. Dix hustled over to Room 1, to verify its readiness for this fifth patient. Satisfied, she opened the door and beckoned to the ambulance attendants as they rounded the corner with their charge. The tiny room was soon crowded with people hustling to get the patient off the stretcher and onto the exam table, while dodging IV bags and large pieces of state of the art diagnostic equipment. It was a dance they all performed several times a day, though, and the transfer went smoothly. Dix checked the drip on the patient, and had to admit, she needed to reevaluate Carol's adaptability. She'd underestimated her.
Dix turned her attention to the patient and gasped. He was a huge man, well over six feet and broad shouldered, so that he took up most of the exam table's real estate. His silvery hair shone bright in the fluorescent light over the table. His bangs had grown since Dix had last seen him over a year ago - they fell into eyes that fluttered open now and again, pale blue eyes that seemed unable to focus on anything in the room. His prison shirt was dotted with blood stained punctures, and there was blood drying in the corners of his mouth - a gruesome sight on anyone, but positively horrifying on someone she knew. And she knew this man, not well, perhaps, but well enough to classify him as friend.
"Oh, God," she whispered, and looked up at the paramedics and orderly and ambulance attendants and nurses all gathered around. They looked curiously at her, wondering why the sight of a bloodied prisoner should be so shocking to their head nurse.
She shook herself, and waved the unnecessary personnel out of the room ahead of her. "Stay here, Sally. I need to take a min-"
She pulled up short as Dr. Brackett nearly bowled her over to get into the room. The door swung shut, tapping her back as it did so, but she knew, without a doubt, that he'd seen. She grabbed him by the arms and tried to push him back. "Let someone else handle it, Kel. Let someone else-" But he pulled free and pushed her roughly to one side, and stormed into the room.