kore_logs | It scares the hell out of me...

Entry tags:

It scares the hell out of me...

Who: Meyer & Ned, possibly Bruce & Charlie later.
Where: Starting near the woods. A little too close to the woods.
When: Late evening, Day 81
What: Meyer got a little too close to an angry sabertooth tiger, and unfortunate mauling occurred. Ned is his rescuer.
Warnings: Tiger attacks, and all the blood and pain that they entail. Swearing. Angst.

Lying there, facedown in the dirt, unable or unwilling to move -- was he supposed to be playing dead? He couldn't remember. What had seemed very important at the time now seemed like nothing more than a hazy, half-formed thought. There was something you were supposed to do in a situation like this. There was a protocol, a way to survive being attacked by an animal, but Meyer didn't recall it.

He knew what to do when people attacked, knew that if you were outnumbered or overpowered to curl yourself into a tight ball and protect your head and neck, protect your vital organs. He'd managed to curl himself into a ball of sorts, protecting his face, but there was a screaming pain in his abdomen -- maybe his ribs, he didn't know -- that prevented him from curling himself up entirely.

Motionless, barely breathing -- was he not breathing on purpose, or was he losing the need to breathe? -- he wanted to reach for the gun that had been knocked out of his hand after firing one shot. The animal had been on him in seconds, knocking him to the ground, although from the noise it had made, the outraged and pained roar, he might have shot it. He hoped so.

Maybe someone would hear the shot. Maybe someone would come. Maybe he'd die here. That thought enraged him; he'd fought tooth and nail to live his whole life, and now this. He moved his head slightly, trying to see if the tiger was still there; it was. It was watching him from a slight distance, and for a moment he thought about going for his gun, about finishing off the animal completely -- if he was going to die, he could take the damn thing with him -- but he couldn't seem to get up the strength to do. There was blood, he realized, blood all across his back where the tiger's claws had gouged him, blood trickling down his sides and onto the dirt, but that, he thought grimly, wasn't his problem. No, it was the problem of whoever showed up and discovered this scene, once the tiger gave up its waiting game and ate him like he knew it intended to.

He let his eyes slip closed. He let his breathing grow stiller. He hoped he looked dead. He wondered if he might be.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ned is glad that Meyer manages such a complete answer to Bruce's question, since he wasn't there to witness the attack himself. When Meyer stops speaking he adds, "He was already on the ground when I showed up." In typical fashion Ned does not think about the help that he did provide - doesn't explain how he'd dived into danger and chased the tiger off - but lingers, with a nauseous feeling of guilt - on his own belatedness to the scene. He might not have been too late, but he had been late. And now here he is, standing there like a statue, useless, watching Bruce snipping away at Meyer's blood-soaked shirt.

That is just... an awful lot of blood. Ned has never been squeamish around gore, but it's different when it's someone he cares about, when that person is so obviously in a great deal of pain. That thought - that his panic springs from his concern for Meyer as a person - puts an idea into his head. If he can't be immediately useful to Bruce, maybe he can help in a different way.

That's what they do at hospitals, isn't it? Get a hold of the emergency contact. Ned lets out a steadying breath, turns his attention to his wrist communicator. He inputs the settings to contact Charlie privately, doesn't think twice about the wisdom of turning on the video settings. Ned doesn't worry about what a bloody mess he looks, or the fact that Meyer's occasional and muffled hisses of pain are audible in the background.

"Charlie," he says. The video feed is doubtless unsteady, no matter how still Ned tries to hold his wrist. "Listen, Meyer's hurt. Run in with a t-tiger. We're at the clinic. He's gonna be okay-" there's just a hint of uncertainty in his voice then, and he looks up at Bruce as he says it, expression twisted in pained uncertainty. Please, let it be true, he thinks. He looks back down at the video, says, "-look I better go the doc might need help."

With that he cuts the connection, only realizing a few seconds later that that might have been rude, that the whole message might have been ill-advised.

Oh, look, tigers are horrifically dangerous and can attack and hurt people. Go figure. His issues with his one-time pet tiger aside, he can focus on Meyer and getting him put back together again, so to speak. He carefully cuts away his shirt to get a better look at his wounds. Whatever Ned's doing over there doesn't really concern him.

"Okay, Ned? Get me some of the sterile saline from that cabinet over there and gauze, a lot of it. A lot of both."

Bruce is thinking he'll have to put in some stitches, but first he wants to clean the wounds out and make sure the bleeding's stopped, and he also wants to make sure Meyer isn't suffering internally.

"Meyer, I want you to tell me if you're feeling lightheaded or out of breath. If you've been vomiting or coughing up blood." He reaches around to his abdomen, palpating his stomach to see if it's rigid. "And if this hurts a lot."

He hears Ned calling Charlie, and immediately wants to tell Ned just how bad of an idea that might have been, but he can't seem to concentrate both on listening to what Ned's saying over the communicator and listen to Bruce's questions and answer them adequately, so he turns his attention back to Bruce, shaking his head slightly.

"No vomiting, no coughing up blood--" That's a relief, at least. He knows those are signs of something potentially worse than a couple broken ribs. "A little lightheaded and a little short of breath, I guess." He'd been lightheaded enough that walking steadily would have been difficult, even had he not been seriously injured, but he's sure the dizziness and shortness of breath has something to do with his injuries.

At the pressing on his abdomen, he winces a little. "It's not there, as much," he says, gesturing higher up, on his left side, the middle of his ribcage, "It's more here that hurts. That's why I think my ribs're broken." He has no idea how many ribs are broken, nor how severely, but he's absolutely certain that his back wounds are going to require stitches.

Ned goes to the cabinet in question, brings Bruce maybe a dozen boxes and packets of gauze, dumping them on a nearby counter where he can reach them. He sees the way Bruce is feeling for internal bleeding and hopes there isn't any, hopes that the visible damage is all there is. It's certainly enough. He catches another look at that cut across Meyer's collarbone, out of the corner of his eye, and feels a wave of nausea.

He goes for the saline next, getting an armful of the plastic bottles from the cabinet. Unfortunately, when his back was turned Bruce had moved and is closer than he'd expected. He turns and nearly collides with Bruce, reels out of the way at the last moment, dropping several of the bottles. He winces when they hit the floor, though they don't break. His heart is racing and there is a tight feeling in his chest as if it were being crushed between metal bands. Shaking badly, Ned bends and picks up the scattered saline bottles, deposits the lot next to the bandages.

"I'm-" he chokes out, glancing at Bruce, feeling wretched that he can't be more useful but knowing that he's going to cause more harm than good if he's in here when Bruce gets down to the delicate stuff. "I'll- I think I'm gonna-" he can't even get enough breath for a proper sentence, shakes his head and moves out of the immediate area, hovering near the door to the clinic but letting Bruce work in peace.

Edited 2013-06-16 20:04 (UTC)

Gonna... puke? Bruce is half listening for Ned being sick outside, but he thinks maybe Ned's in the clear now. He's glad he didn't have to say anything; Bruce can keep himself together well enough, but not if someone in the vicinity is about to anxiety hulk all over the place.

Anyway, back to the patient who thankfully probably isn't injured internally. If he was, Bruce probably would've had to call for Mina to help. Bruce can handle surgery on his own, but he's not a surgeon, and there's a difference.

"Okay then. Good news is that I think what you see here's what you got. I'm going to work on cleaning up these wounds, making sure the bleeding's stopped, and then start stitching. How're you on pain? You want something now or you want to hold out longer?"

"I think..."

He's past the point of even particularly noticing that Ned's stepped away. He's trying to concentrate on the one thing he can: Bruce's words. The injuries hurt, there's no doubting that, but it doesn't sound as though Bruce is overly worried. That's a good sign, he thinks, although he's not thinking entirely clearly at the moment, despite his pause for thought.

"What do you have for pain?"

If they don't have anything good, anything strong enough to knock out a significant amount of this pain, he'll hold out longer. He doesn't like the way drugs make him dopey and out of it, but that might be the only choice right now. The pain just seems to be getting steadily worse as the shock from the attack starts to wear off.

Bruce helps him figure out his pain management plan before he really gets to town cleaning the wounds out because that's not going to feel really good, not when he also needs to stop the bleeding before he can get to work on stitching him up. And it's not a pretty sight -- though not because Bruce is sloppy with the stitches, just to clarify. Meyer's back is a mess because of the tiger, and Bruce does his best to clean it up.

He covers up the stitches carefully when he's done, then loses the gloves and washes his hands, letting Meyer get his breath, before he comes back around. He pulls up a chair so he's closer to his eye level as he checks him over from the front again. His ribs are going to be really painful, but there's not much Bruce can do; they can try to manage some kind of brace, but with the injures to his back, that won't feel good either. For now, Meyer needs to lay here for a bit though.

"Okay, I'm done poking at you now. I think that's the most stitches I've done all at one time on one person, so that's something to take away from this." He has a glass of water with a straw, which he holds up. "You want some? How're you doing?"

"I'm..."

He licks his lips, trying to figure out how to phrase it. The drugs Bruce had given him for the pain are already starting to kick in, leaving him feeling distanced from what's going on around him, but that doesn't mean that the stitches hadn't hurt like hell.

He looks at the water thoughtfully, then nods, wanting to reach out for the glass, but finding that even movements like that hurt his ribs. "I'm not sure whether I should take it as a mark of pride or a mark of shame that I've got the most stitches you've ever done," he finally says, attempting to find humor where very little exists.

"I feel fine," he states, although from the look of him, that's far from the truth. He feels embarrassed, is what he feels, and while the drugs dull the pain, they don't dull the embarrassment. He's had stitches before, but never quite as extensively as this.

Bruce is ready to help position the straw in his mouth because that's just good bedside manners; don't worry about it.

"You should go for the pride angle. You saw the bad end of a tiger and came out with an impressive, but ultimately non-life-threatening batch of stitches. I could go into all the other outcomes we could've had here, if it'll make you feel better."

When he's done drinking, Bruce sets the glass aside and picks up his candy dish, shuffling the contents around. He has suckers, though they might be difficult to manage; maybe some good meltable chocolate?

"Avoid the major choking hazards, okay? And if you want to add a few more badass details to your story, I'll back you up."

Despite the pain, despite the fact that he feels like he wants to sleep for days and wake up with all of this behind him, his eyes light up when he sees the candy dish. So far, that's been about the only perk to this whole thing, and he reaches for a piece of chocolate, managing a slight smile.

"I shot it and didn't kill it. Not sure how 'badass' the story can be."

In truth, he thinks, it's Ned who should be telling the badass version of the story. Not because Ned had killed the tiger -- he hadn't, the damn thing was still out there somewhere, albeit with two gunshot wounds -- but because Ned had saved him. He hasn't fully processed that. Why would Ned save him, endangering himself in the process?

For now, though, there're others matters to attend to. "I know we don't have money here, but how can I pay you for all of this?" He gestures around the clinic; every time he's been stitched up before, back home, he's given the doctor cash and a stern warning not to talk to anyone about his injuries, but he's not sure how it works around here.

"I'm still impressed you walked away without dying or suffering severe injuries, but maybe I'm biased." He takes a sucker for himself and sets the bowl aside, leaning back in his seat. He's sure Meyer is tired and needs rest, but this chat is also helping Bruce to make sure that he's okay.

The offer to pay surprises him, enough that he takes the sucker out of his mouth.

"You don't owe me anything, except taking good care of those stitches and yourself while you heal up."

"I'd hate to see what you called serious injuries," he says, with a weak little smile. It sure had seemed like a lot of stitches, and Bruce had confirmed that it was. Still, he was damn glad he wasn't dead, too. It had seemed likely for a bit of time there. He's faced death before, and walked away unscathed, but the threat of a tiger isn't something he'd ever thought he'd have to contend with: it's man and not beast that scares him, more often than not.

"So what're my orders? Don't pull the stitches out, don't go get in another fight with a tiger...?"

True, true, Meyer isn't exactly skipping off to a picnic, but...

"I could list off everything bad you could've had. Severed spinal cord, which could lead to paralysis; internal bleeding. Things I couldn't easily treat." Though he could call in one of the angels, come to think of it. He'll file that away mentally, but not mention it now. Let people think they shouldn't go and severely injure themselves. Because obviously.

"Both of those are good. I recommend a lot of rest, definitely don't overtax yourself. Your stitches are sort of all over, and in twisty areas, so you shouldn't move around too much or you'll pop them. You should get someone to change your bandages, or I can come around and help you with it. I'll send some home with you, along with stuff for the pain. Do as best you can with that; it's not an unlimited supply. I'll check up on you to see how you're healing, and then when the time's right, I'll take your stitches out and we can talk care again."

That sounds like everything, but it's been a while since he gave this kind of talk.

"Do you have any questions for me?"

"I've got someone that can help me with the bandages."

Admittedly, that someone might complain about it, but he'll do it nonetheless. He tries to think of any questions, brain still fuzzy and slow, although he's starting to feel a little less baffled by the whole incident. It had occurred, it's over now -- except for the unsettling fact that the tiger's still out there, potentially threatening other residents -- and he's alive, albeit in pain. He has to focus on that for now; anything else just gets his brain whirring, makes him start worrying again.

"Yeah, just one question -- what kinda pain stuff are you going to give me?"

It's not like he's going to come right out and say it, but he's got a stash of something back home that can help with the pain, too, if he runs out of whatever it is Bruce can provide. It just depends on how good the stuff the doctor wants to give him is. If it's good enough, maybe he won't need to break into his stash just yet.

"I can give you codeine, which you can take in combination with ibuprofen, so like Advil, things like that, if you need the extra support."

That should be enough to ease the pain without being too much. Bruce was glad to get a supply of it in that pile o' stuff that fell a little while back. It still seems so odd to him to be doing, like, actual doctor work. It feels like an age since he tackled anything this serious. Ruby had some stitches on her finger, but nothing like this.

"Okay," he nods. He recognizes the name of the drug -- it's an opiate, and that suits him just fine. A few seconds later, he gives Bruce a rather weak smile, although considering what he's just gone through, it's probably the strongest smile he can muster. "Thanks for..."

He gestures to the stitches, not knowing exactly how to phrase it, but knowing that Bruce will understand what he means anyway. He's always been suspicious of doctors, but in this instance, he might have to reconsider his stance; Bruce has been nothing but helpful to him, even if getting the stitches hadn't exactly felt great.

"A near obscene amount of sutures and some drugs? You're welcome." He smiles and gets up to gather the things Meyer will need, putting them in a brown paper bag. He does get that, underneath there, there's some relief over the whole thing being relatively calm and easy, as easy as emergency care ever gets. He's just grateful he managed to ease whatever anxieties Meyer may or may not have about doctors; that's always a point of personal pride for Bruce.

"I'll pop back out and talk to Ned. You lay there and rest, okay? I don't want to move you yet."

He slips outside.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It scares the hell out of me...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject