Chapter Text
Rose adjusted her messenger bag as she stepped through the open doors of the veteran’s hospital. She smiled at the volunteer at the reception desk and gave her a cheery hello, to which the older woman smiled back. This was day number one of her new job. Well actually, day number three if she counted the orientation and paperwork days. But this was her first day on the floor. When her friend Sarah Jane had gotten her the job, Rose had not been sure about it. Watching comatose patients sleep was not the sort of job she had thought she'd have. She had been a shop girl for a while, but it was conflicting with school. Even though there was talk of promoting her to manager, that’s not what she wanted ultimately. She was in uni, doing well, almost done in fact, majoring in English literature with an art history minor. Her dream job would be teaching at a university, doing art restoration or being a curator of an art museum. But for now, she was just studying, reading and trying to get by.
This new job was perfect. The wages were great, and it was only for a few hours a night. "You can study, read, do whatever you want. All you have to do is be there if anything happens. You listen for alarms or for movement. And if it happens you alert a nurse. That's it," Sarah Jane had told her over lunch.
"That's it? How many hours?'
"They have six-hour shifts, four to five days a week. You work at night, six to midnight then go home to sleep and you will be ready for school the next day. It's the best job ever for a uni student!"
Rose had to agree. Because of her major she had a ton of reading to do weekly. Being in a quiet spot to read for six hours at a time sounded wonderful.
When the lift dinged, she got out on the fourth floor and went up to the nurse's station. The older, brown haired nurse looked up, her kind eyes finding Rose, and her face breaking into a huge smile. "Well hello there, Rose! I'm so glad you're here. Let me get Adam, our patient care technician. He'll be training you tonight. "
"Hi Sarah Jane, I thought you would be teaching me."
"No, Adam gets that distinction. But if you need anything, just ask me. I have to go give medications. Come with me," she beckoned.
Sarah Jane led Rose to what looked like a storage room. It held the automated medicine cabinets so the nurses could put in the patient's numbers and charge accordingly for things used, as well as a coffee maker and a table.
"This is our storage room. There is no food in here, but coffee is OK. We have a lounge down the hall for breaks and such.” She turned and looked behind Rose. “Oh, here’s Adam."
Rose turned to see a young man, about her age come in. He wore plain blue scrubs and a sour expression. "Sarah Jane, Mr. Taylor in 406 keeps pooping the bed. I just cleaned up after him for the second time this shift. Can't we diaper him?" Rose noticed an American accent on him. He wasn’t bad looking, but his face was screwed up in disgust, which, in her opinion, made him look like a brat.
Sara Jane sighed lightly, like a mother would to a recalcitrant child that she didn’t want to reprimand in public. "Adam, no we can't. I’ve told you. You need to stop in periodically and ask him if he needs the commode. He doesn't have accidents on purpose, but his meds make him have loose stools. As soon as he can get up safely to use the loo he will. But we must do our part. Did you clean him?"
Adam sighed dramatically. "Yes, but it was everywhere. I swear if I go home smelling like that man's poop-"
"That's enough, Adam," Sarah Jane chided. "That is your job. We'll talk about this later. But I want you to meet Rose, your new sitter. I'd like you to show her the job tonight."
Adam turned to Rose and slowly looked her up and down, his face hitching up into a sly smile. "Hello Rose," he said.
Rose stifled a laugh, only because she half expected a "How you doin'?”, Joey Tribiani from Friends style.
"Hello Adam," she answered as coolly as possible. I was clear that Adam thought very highly of himself, and the last thing she needed on the first day of a new job was to have to shut down misguided romantic advances from an overly confident boy.
"Come with me, I'll show you the ropes. I mean there’s nothing to it. All you have to do is sit there. We have four patients now but can have up to six. You literally will be doing nothing." He gave her an exhausted look and motioned her to follow. Rose couldn't help but see Sarah Jane's look of disdain. Though she had initially tried to cover it, it was not hard to see that Adam was not her favorite person. The followed him into the main hall.
While leading her, Adam gave a running commentary about the floor. "This is the lounge. You get half hour break at the three-hour mark and you can come in here. Before you go you need to contact the nurse’s station for someone to come in and cover. Are you a nursing student?"
"No, English Lit and Art History. I just need a job and Sarah Jane recommended this one. "
He nodded, sneaking another look at her. "Yeah, it pays well. I'm in school myself. I'm just getting contact hours and then I'll be in Physician Assistant school. I'm not going to bother with nursing or anything. And I don't want to wait to be a doctor. PA school is perfect for me. It won't be hard either. "
"You sound confident."
"Nothing is ever hard for me. I'm really smart," he answered.
Rose looked up at him, expecting to see humor in his eyes, but she didn't. He was telling the truth, or what he thought was the truth. At that moment, Rose realized that Adam was one to watch. He put himself up on a pedestal. He wouldn’t be someone she would talk to if she didn’t have to. She tucked that away to ask Sarah Jane later.
But something else was bugging her. “You’re American? Why are you here?”
“Oh, my dad is a government contractor. He’s working with the military on new surveillance. My mom and I moved out with him two years ago. I finished my university education here. I stayed because it looks got on a resume to have worked in a foreign country.”
“England is hardly foreign,” she countered flatly.
“If it’ll give me an advantage over some other yahoo, I’ll take it. But it’s not that I have to work too hard at being the best,” he answered, waving an arm as if shooing away anyone who was not at his level.
After showing her a few more things, like the break room, Adam led her to the room where she would be working. It was long but fairly narrow, with beds sticking out perpendicularly from the walls. The head of each bed was against the wall. There was a middle aisle that was about 2 meters wide. The beds looked identical, a figure in each one, and railings up each bed. As they walked in, a young dark-skinned woman stood up. She had been seated at the end of the room.
Adam motioned to her. "I asked Cindy to stay a little while longer while I oriented you. Thanks Cindy, you can clock out now." The young lady, no older than Rose, nodded but shot him a look as she passed. Rose wasn’t sure if it was because he had so patronizingly told her to go or if she just hated him in general. She left promptly and Adam didn’t seem to notice her look at him. But he did wait until she was down the hall a bit before speaking again. "She's a little simple, but it literally takes no effort to do this job. "
Rose looked away. Adam was working on all her nerves. His disrespect of everyone was going to run her patience thin in short order.
Adam led her down the center aisle. He introduced the patients blandly. He stopped at the first one. "This is Ruth. She had something heavy land on her head a few months ago. She's not going to recover, but when they took out all the tubes, she hung on. So here she is." Rose took a moment to look at her. She must have been beautiful in her former life. She had dark hair that turned into natural loose curls that, even though were on a pillow, laid like they had been arranged. Her face was slightly misshapen, but Rose could tell from the side that wasn’t damaged that she had beautiful features. She would have turned a few heads for sure.
She had a few personal effects on her bedside table, including a picture of a woman Rose assumed was her, standing with her arms around a very good-looking man. He was slightly older than her, and they were both in uniform. She could tell by the look in their eyes that they were both very happy to be together. She wondered where that man was now, and how devastated he was to have her there.
Adam proceeded to tell her about all the patients in turn until he got to the end of the row. There was a young cook from an aircraft carrier that had been involved in an explosion, and another twentyish girl who had nearly drowned after being knocked of the deck of a ship. All of them looked like they had been so vital in their lives before they ended up there. It was sad to see them in this state, especially after seeing their pictures and things next to them.
Adam stopped at the last bed and sidled up to the side of it. He indicated the man in the bed. "This is Mr. Smith, John. He's a mystery. He was a sniper and special ops when his helicopter went down. You can see his scars. He was the sole survivor. They were evacuating people at the time. It was a mess. But he was initially semi-conscious but stopped responding about a day in. His CT scans are all negative other than some mild changes that can be attributed to concussion. The doctors figured that he should have woken up by now, but here he is. He's been out for 3 or 4 months now."
Rose walked up to the bed and looked over the railing, taking him in. Unlike the others where she had merely surveyed them, something made her want to take a closer look at John. He had medium to dark hair, it was fuzzy on his head like he normally had it close cropped, but it hadn't been cut in a while. He had a full scruffy beard that extended a little beyond his chin. His features were striking in that he had a proud nose and big ears, but they suited him. She figured that he was most likely handsome before his accident, not that he wasn’t now. Upon closer inspection, he had a yellow feeding tube coming out of his nose and taped to his cheek. He also had some sort of fluids handing on an IV pole. The line to which seemed to go in just below his right collarbone.
As far as scarring, he had a long scar that led from his left ear and down his neck. Other than that, he had a few smaller scars that were from old facial wounds.
Adam was talking again. "This one you have to watch. I usually have the sitters like you sit near him. He has been known to wake and pull on things. He never gets fully conscious though. It's annoying more than anything. He has grabbed a few of the sitters but he lets go soon. If I didn't know better, he seems to be in a perpetual bad dream, he sighs and grumbles but then will settle. He's our only problem child in here though. Everyone in here is pretty well behaved. "
"Do you guys have to roll them or anything?" Rose asked, wondering how they could be lying flat for so long.
"No, the beds do that. They’re pneumatic. You will hear them from time to time. They adjust the patients to get the pressure off them. It sounds like a little groan. At first it made me think one of them was groaning. But nope, no one makes a sound. I mean most of them don't need anything at all. They get tube feedings and fluids. They all have diapers on and are cleaned periodically. You don't have to do anything. If you smell something bad, just ring the call button. They basically are here as vegetables. We would probably do better giving them Miracle Grow. Mr. Smith is the only one who has any movement at all. He turned to Mr. Smith. "You're ornery, aren't you Johnny Boy.?" He then poked the man on his inanimate arm.
Rose couldn't take it anymore. Adam was disrespectful to everyone. "You know they’re people, right? Maybe you shouldn't poke them. "
Adam stepped back and gave her a knowing look. "Everyone is like you at first. But you'll learn too. There are no changes, other than someone giving up the ghost or someone new showing up. "
Rose bit her lip to keep from lashing out. Adam was quickly getting to the top of her list. A list no one wanted to be on. But this was her first day. She couldn't kill him just yet. But the idea wasn't totally off the table.
"OK, so you just make yourself comfortable, I'll come in and tell you it's time to go when I come in and take their vital signs at the end of your shift. Just let us know if anything happens, other than that, go crazy. Oh, and no headphones or loud music. You can play some music but keep it low. That way you can listen for trouble."
He didn't even look back at her as he traveled to the door. "Have a good shift! He called over his shoulder, closing the door behind him, leaving Rose in a room full of inanimate bodies.
OoOoOo
The first thing Rose did was walk around each bed introducing herself to each patient. Next to each bed, as she had seen before, were personal effects. But this time around she took time to look at what each patient had out. Most were pictures of them with family, trinkets and flowers and what not. On the table next to Ruth, next to her pictures, was a bright pink brush. Rose picked it up and looked at the her. Then she reached out and began to brush her long hair. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. There wasn't any major change in the woman, but maybe a softening of her features. It was hard to tell, but it made Rose feel better. That only solidified the notion that these were people, people who used to be vital, and people who liked things. This patient obviously liked having her hair brushed.
Rose made her way from bed to bed, having one sided conversations with each person, remarking on pictures and such until she got to John Smith. His table had nothing on it. Rose opened the attached drawer and was not surprised to find nothing inside. She stood for a minute just taking him in. He was handsome. She wondered why he didn't have any things on this table.
She pulled a chair next to his bed and sat, using his table to set down her things. She had a paper due by the end of the week on “Tale of Two Cities”, but she hadn't had the time to read it. She opened her copy and started to read to herself, but then it occurred to her that no one was listening, and decided to read it aloud. That way she wouldn't get bored and fall asleep.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times-" she read aloud.
Rose read for quite some time. Between which the strolled around the room, took a short break, ate her dinner and then settled next to John. Something about him drew her to him. Everyone else's face in the room was blank. But his looked... sad. But also, it seemed to show other emotions too.
That and she could had sworn his eyes opened a few times when she was there reading. It was subtle, just a little stirring when she sat next to him. It wasn't the bed turning him. He was moving, but only slightly. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her, or maybe John just moved a lot. Whatever the case, Rose felt compelled to be near him.
Finally, at the end of her shift, Adam came in and took everyone's vital signs. Rose didn't like how he moved the patients. He wasn't being kind, but not quite rough. It was more like indifferent. He didn't talk to them, just took an arm and attached the cuff to each one. Rose waited until he got to John.
Adam went for John's arm but found it hard to lift. "C'mon," he muttered under his breath. Rose could see John's muscles tense in the arm Adam was trying to manhandle. It wasn't working. Adam blew out a frustrated breath. "He always does this to me. I swear he does it just to be difficult. It just pisses me off." He struggled again with the arm.
Rose stood and came to John's bedside. His face was tight, his sad expression gone. Instinctively she laid a hand on his chest. "John, you have to relax for Adam to take your vitals. It'll only be a minute. Then he'll leave you alone. "
"It won't work," Adam declared, but even as he said it, John's arm relaxed in his hands. "Wha?" Adam asked as he pushed the button on his machine for the cuff to inflate.
He turned to Rose, a conspiratorial smile on his face. "I need to keep you around, you make my job easier."
Rose didn't return his smile.
When Adam was almost done, another young lady came in to be the next shift of sitter. She smiled at Rose, took up a seat at the end of the room and took out a book. She didn't even look at the people in the beds.
Rose turned to John. "I'll see you tomorrow night, John Smith. She squeezed his toe through the blanket. And just for a second, though she'd never be able to prove it, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of a smile cross his face. But then it was gone.