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There was a distinctive smell in the air that told Frank he was no longer in the van or… wherever the hell he had been last. In the grey haze of waking up he couldn’t quite summon the memories into order. He had a vague recollection of stale coffee, cordite, and a really boring book he’d borrowed from Curtis, but there was no order to it all. More than likely the cordite was most recent.
God how he would have killed to be smelling gunpowder instead of the tang of antiseptic and stale sweat. Frank peeled open his eyes and confirmed his fears as he took in the yellowing paint of one of New York’s many fine medical institutions. The rest of his senses gradually kicked into gear, pushed along by the jump of his heart rate.
The last time that he’d been in a hospital he’d been chained to the bed like an animal. Instinctively Frank pulled his arms up to his chest. He would have tried to sit up but even the slight motion he’d managed had sent a dizzying wave of pain crashing over him. There was a dull edge to the pain, presumably due to whatever treatment he’d been given so far, which made it slipperier and harder to block out.
He felt resistance on one arm and tugged against it. Belatedly there came a twinge of pain and the recognition that it wasn’t a restraint. It was just an IV.
“Frank?” He jumped again at the new sound among the soft, semi-regular beeping of the monitor. This time he pushed himself to sit up even when his ribs screamed in protest. “Sh-sh-sh, it’s okay,” the voice continued. Karen’s voice, coming from a bundle of limbs and a jacket that shifted in his peripheral vision.
A yawn cracked her jaw but Karen still managed to get out a few more reassurances. Frank sank once more into the bed and made the slow effort to twist his head to the side. The pain from his ribs slowly ebbed once more into the grey-haze of the painkillers. The greater relief was to finally blink Karen’s face into focus ahead of him.
There was an array of coffee cups on the heater next to her along with a dead looking laptop and her purse. Still, Karen pushed past the obvious tiredness to edge her chair to the side of the bed. One hand emerged from under her makeshift blanket to quickly brush against his knuckles. Reassuring but too fleeting as Karen pulled back to fix her hair and give him another tired smile.
“The doctors said you’d be out for a while,” she said. Her voice dropped down low and conspiratorial. “Technically we’re way past visiting hours, but I think they’re too scared to try and kick out someone with a press badge. And I wasn’t going anywhere until you woke up.”
Frank blinked once, twice. “I can’t be in a hospital,” he said.
“You need to be in a hospital, Frank,” Karen replied. “Unless you’ve got a bag of O-negative back at your apartment.” He caught the way that she frowned, no doubt considering whether or not he might actually have a stash of universal donor blood on hand.
“Frank Castle can’t be in a hospital, Karen,” he tried again, lifting an eyebrow meaningfully. “Maybe you moved on past the whole Royal Hospitality thing, but not everyone’s been so charitable. Or believed the feds’ story.”
He wanted to get up, surveill the area around his room, get dressed, and get the hell back to his own place. He also very much wanted to chase down that grey haze and drift off until the ringing that he was starting to notice in his ears died back down. Instinct told him to be alert, and Frank was not going to ignore that.
The beeping behind him jumped up in tempo again. Frank turned to look down at the IV in his arm, intent on freeing himself from that one simple tether. He stilled when Karen reached out once more to tug his hand away from the cannula.
She was speaking. “... see? Right here,” Karen murmured. She wasn’t just stopping him but also pointing to the white ID band about his wrist. Frank had to squint to make out the text. “Frank Castle isn’t in the hospital. Pete Castiglione is.”
He stared at her for a long minute in disbelief. “I dig up people’s secrets for a living, even secrets set up by Homeland. Besides, it’s on your license,” Karen said.
The laugh that conjured up came out more like a choked grunt, but it was better than nothing. Frank still eyed the door with suspicion and checked once more that he could move all four limbs more or less without trouble. “When’re they letting me out?” he asked.
Karen lifted an eyebrow and sank back against the chair. She pulled the jacket once more over her shoulders, and Frank finally realized it was the one that he’d had in the van when the weather started to turn for the fall. “They needed you to be conscious first. And then they might consider letting you go under the supervision of a responsible adult,” Karen answered.
“Assuming there is one of those around,” Frank retorted.
She kicked the side of the bed with the toe of her sneaker. “Says the guy who’s more bruise than not. Who really should be sleeping,” she said emphatically.
“Nah.” He wasn’t sure that sleep was going to be able to come to him, not while he still had gaps in the path from before to now and while he was still uncertain about his cover sticking; but he trusted that Karen wouldn’t be steering him wrong right now.
In the morning he would ask her what she was doing here. Then he’d tell her to stay away, that she shouldn’t be getting wrapped up in his bullshit again.
He was aware that the monitor beeping behind him had slowed once more. And whatever cocktail that was in the IV really was making the haze at the corners of his eyes ever so enticing. There wasn’t another adrenaline spike coming. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Frank managed to get out.
“Then it’s a good thing you’ve already died a bunch. No one’ll be the wiser if you take just a minute to rest.”
“Mmm.”
“Night, Frank.”
He tried to reply, but he wasn’t quite certain that his lips followed suit.