Work Text:
They’ve been here for hours. Only Tasha could turn a simple recreational gymnastics class into a call that went a lot like – “Hi Jamie, um, so, can you meet me at the hospital? I’m in an ambulance.”
Some twelve-year-old in a short white coat – a resident, intern, something like that, toddler with most of an MD – ordered films and promptly disappeared when they verified that no important things like vertebrae were damaged in the “little fall” in which Tasha somehow knocked herself out.
Then a nurse arrives and applies a painkiller to the IV.
They’ve been here for hours. Only Tasha could turn a simple recreational gymnastics class into a call that went a lot like – “Hi Jamie, um, so, can you meet me at the hospital? I’m in an ambulance.”
Some twelve-year-old in a short white coat – a resident, intern, something like that, toddler with most of an MD – ordered films and promptly disappeared when they verified that no important things like vertebrae were damaged in the “little fall” in which Tasha somehow knocked herself out.
Then a nurse arrives and applies a painkiller to the IV. If it was anyone else, that should mean the afternoon is going to be filled with the very boring activity of sitting with an unconscious Tasha while they wait out the results from CT.
James is not that lucky.
“Jamie?”
“Hmm?”
“M’gonna hurl.”
All that is good and right in the universe hates them both, because that revelation precedes the projectile ejection of everything in her system by roughly zero seconds. James lunges for the call button to summon help while he grabs her shoulders and hoists her upright and sideways in an attempt to keep her airway clear. Old habits have him gripping the base of her skull to keep her spinal column as aligned as he can – clear films be damned. He’s running through concussion assessment protocol on autopilot.
A flurry of scrub wearing people show up, but he holds his position, telling them she’s status post fall, with LOC, nausea escalating to vomiting after meds given. He wasn’t aware that he was tracking what and how much until he hears his voice reporting 10mg of morphine per IV. He’s asked if she was lucid prior, and her verifies that she was.
Someone asks if he’s medical. He grunts that he is. He’s not in the mood to explain that there’s nothing quite like the sort of hands on training you get in a hell full of sand and blood. Technically speaking, he wasn’t a medic. Practically speaking, he acted as one often enough.
Tasha whimpers something unintelligible, and a wet gurgle is promptly followed by bile tinted reddish with blood. She’s still conscious, but she’s definitely not coherent.
That earns her a fast trip to CT part deux and a whole lot of monitor wires slapped onto her chest. He’s not permitted in radiology, which leaves him in the hallway watching a whole lot of nothing while Tasha’s being run through the scanner a second time. With contrast this go ‘round, if the grumbling attending who lumbered into the room with the response team is anything to go by. Somewhere nearby, a resident is surely cowering as they wait for the ass chewing that’s coming their way soon.
When the gurney is rolled back out of the CT suite, Tasha’s curled into a tiny ball with both hands over her head. She looks like a child, a terrified one. He only just barely stops himself from grabbing her off the stupid thing.
Instead, he asks the nearest nurse what happened.
“She’s just a little scared,” the woman tells him. She’s probably the kind of person who suggests injections might sting a touch or that patients will feel a bit of pressure prior to an IV start. James decides to hate her on principle.
He follows the gurney back to the little room they were in before, and pulls a chair back to the side of it as the masses leave. It’s clear that the frantic activity level was a bit of an overreaction, and that they’re going to resume good old-fashioned watch and wait from here. Though this time that watching includes a beeping monitor that’s tracking her heart rate and oxygenation.
He tries to remember if she’s reacted this way to opiates before. He doesn’t remember that being one of her poisons of choice, though he knows she’s dabbled in nearly anything she could get her hands on over the years.
The results of the first and second scans bring verification that the exorcist impression wasn’t medication related. She definitely has a concussion. Between that and the bloody vomit, they’re probably at least staying the rest of the day.
Confirmation comes with a transfer to something called the ER Observation Unit. By the time that transfer actually happens, though, Tasha’s back to being both coherent and bored. Nothing good comes of a bored Tasha.
In particular, nothing good comes of a bored Tasha in a room with what looks like an inverted IV pole in some kind of ceiling track. He’s sure it has a purpose. He’s also sure that if he turns his back on her for more than a minute, his whirlwind of a baby sister is going to come up with a purpose all on her own, head injury be damned.