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It's one of those days where Mark hears Carter before he sees him- the chief resident walks past the staff bathroom and there it is, the telltale sound of violent retching that so often points to the medical student’s presence. He lingers outside the door for only a moment, wincing, before making his way to admit and slinging his satchel onto the floor.
“Carter, I presume?” He gestures towards the bathroom door and Jerry nods.
“He’s been in there nearly twenty minutes.”
“What is it this time? Exam? Family gathering? Benton springing a surgery on him he hasn't had time to prepare for?”
The desk clerk shrugs. “No idea. You'll have to ask him when he comes out.”
Mark never gets the chance to, though- he's assessing a patient when the med student at last emerges through the swinging door, shaky, pale, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. Nor does Carter pause long enough for Mark to see any more of him than his unsteady steps down the corridor towards the elevator.
Poor kid.
The chief resident doesn't encounter him for the next few hours, though he overhears a few conversations between nurses about Carter looking ‘peaky’ amid motherly tuts and makes a note of it. Perhaps later, if he gets the chance, he'll pull Carter aside and see if he needs to chat about anything.
Except ‘later’ comes quickly, and as always, Mark is so busy he doesn't have time to follow through on his earlier plans. He hears further chatter about Carter- constantly excusing himself to the bathroom, shaking like a leaf- and with each new scrap of evidence collected, his hypothesis is confirmed.
Carter is incredibly nervous about something.
Four hours before the end of his shift, Mark is inspecting a particularly nasty head wound when Susan taps him on the shoulder.
“Mark?”
“M-hm?”
“Carter's been in the bathroom for a half an hour; I think he might have finally cracked.”
She gives him a sad sort of smile, but he senses the worry underneath it. It's the same concern that pulses in his own chest.
“I’ll go check on him. Mind taking over for me for a while?”
Susan sighs with relief, immediately stepping in. “Sure. See if you can talk to him, yeah? Seems like he's been in and out of there all day.”
Yeah, Mark thinks as he slips away, moving towards the corridor. Seems like.
When he reaches the bathroom door, all within is quiet. He's not sure whether that's a good sign or not. Rapping his knuckles a couple of times against it, leaning in close, he calls out,
“Carter? Hey, you alright in there, bud?”
Nothing.
“Carter?”
His brow furrows and he knocks again, but is still met with an uncomfortable silence.
“Is it okay if I come in?”
It's as if he hasn't spoken at all. Frowning even deeper, he pulls the door open a crack and peers inside.
Carter is in there- Susan was right about that- but he's not hovering over the toilet or trying desperately to clean himself up at the sink. Instead, he's sitting on the floor beside the toilet, long legs stretched out in front of him, chin tipped down to his chest. Asleep.
Mark blinks. “Carter?”
Gentle snores. A crumpled tissue sits in his left hand, once completely balled up but slowly blossoming open again without the input of his muscles to keep it closed.
Fast asleep. For some time.
Stepping carefully inside and letting the door close behind him, Mark crouches down in front of the med student. Between them, they take up almost the entirety of the tiny bathroom.
He places a hand on a slightly quivering shoulder. Squeezes.
“Carter?”
The addressee rears up, bleary, sniffling away sleep. His eyes are bloodshot and exhausted. His skin is chalky white, damp, small smatterings of petechiae across his upper cheeks from the continual strain of vomiting.
And before Carter even speaks, Mark knows that his earlier hypothesis was wrong.
“Doctor Greene?” His voice is a rasp. Raw. Weak.
God, how many times has he thrown up today?
“Hey, bud.” Mark says, smiling gently. He unintentionally adopts the same tone he uses when Rachel is sick, but he doesn't attempt to switch it up. “What's going on, huh?”
Carter inhales raggedly, lifting a hand to rake through his hair. It soon becomes a fist grasping weakly at the dark, sweat-soaked strands, and even sooner following that falls limp to the floor again. He has no energy at all.
“S-sick.” He just about manages. “Sorry.”
The latter word cracks slightly, like he's on the verge of tears, and Mark seeks to reassure him immediately, thumb rubbing across his shoulder.
“Hey, no need to apologise.” He soothes. “If anything, I should be the one apologising. I didn’t realise you were feeling so awful, I thought it was just nerves… Carter?”
The med student is asleep again, eyes drifting closed so soon after Mark started speaking that he would be affronted by it if it weren't so obviously against Carter’s will. He frowns, noticing even more the sunken shadows beneath Carter's eyes.
How dehydrated is he?
The question emerges, and Mark pounces on it like any good physician would. He takes one of Carter's hands in his and presses into the nailbed of his thumb, watching the blood return. Slower than usual cap refill. The skin on his hand looks more rubbery than usual, and when he pinches it between thumb and forefinger, it remains tented for longer than it ought to.
Very dehydrated, then. Explains the drowsiness.
He taps Carter on the knee and waits for the bleary-eyed return to consciousness that shortly follows. This time, though, the med student looks even more disoriented and distant than before.
“S-sorry.” He mumbles. Slurs. “Don’t think ‘m very well.”
Mark’s chest tightens. His touch lingers on Carter's knee, rubbing circles, attempting to reassure.
“No, I don't think you are either. What do you say we get you into bed, hm? Get you feeling better?”
Carter frowns. Blinks at him like he's just started speaking in a foreign tongue. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Do you think you can walk if I give you a little help?”
“Yeah?”
“You sure?”
“...Yeah?”
Mark chuckles despite himself, patting Carter on the knee again before rising. “Hang on then, let me get some help.”
It's Doug who happens to be walking past the bathroom when Mark pokes his head out, so it's Doug who happens to be recruited for the task. After a very quick explanation of what's going on to an understandably confused pediatrician (“Carter’s sick.” “Right.” “We need to get him into a bed.” “Right.”), the two of them help hoist Carter off the floor, slinging an arm each over their shoulders and propping him up between them.
“Alright, bud, baby steps. We got you.”
He walks like Bambi, blood pressure clearly tanking, but he somehow has strength enough to keep conscious as they manoeuvre him out of the bathroom and slowly down the hall. For a kid who's probably puked thirty times in the last eight hours, he's surprisingly… independent.
It should make Mark proud, or perhaps simply impressed, but instead it only makes him feel a fraction as a nauseous as Carter. Because what does it mean that he's so adept at carrying on when he's sick? How many times has he been left to walk alone from the bathroom to his bed, deeply dehydrated, dipping towards delirious?
Susan is the first to spot them, her eyes widening as she hurries over, concern as evident as their own.
“God, is he alright?”
“M’okay” Carter mumbles at the same time as Mark says, “He’s sick.”
Susan clicks her tongue, brow knitting in sisterly worry. Her eyes land on Carter’s.
“You're sick, huh?”
“A little.” He murmurs, blinking slowly and heavily.
Mark shifts so his weight is more evenly distributed. “A lot. I want to get him into a bed before he falls down.”
Encouraged by his urgency, Susan helps Mark and Doug usher Carter the rest of the way to an empty bed near admit. By the time they're easing him down onto it, others have approached, fussing and worrying too.
“God, what happened?” Carol.
“Oh, poor baby.” Haleh.
“You want me to get some fluids into him?” Lydia.
Mark lifts Carter's legs up onto the bed as Haleh shakes out the blanket to drape over him.
“He’s got a nasty case of the stomach flu, but he'll be alright with a little TLC. Lydia, fluids would be great- he's very dehydrated so give him a litre of NS and a shot of compazine for the nausea.”
Doug, just removing a thermometer from Carter's mouth that Mark didn't even see him insert, adds, “And throw in 1000mg acetaminophen. Poor guy’s got a fever of 101.5”.
By this point, Carter has already turned on his side and fallen asleep again, clearly too exhausted to feign wellness. Haleh strokes his hair. Lydia starts to prep an IV site. Everyone lingers, chatting guiltily among themselves as they do their utmost to assist him.
“I had no idea he was so sick. He seemed pale earlier, but he always gets a little shaken up over trauma cases like that one.”
“The third time he slipped out to go to the bathroom, I rolled my eyes because I thought he was just being dramatic. No wonder he didn't tell any of us.”
They mop his brow, adjust his blankets, place emesis basins strategically within reach, and hook him up to the monitors. They sigh deeply when the blood pressure cuff they wrap around his upper arm reveals his BP is far lower than it should be, when the cardiac monitor shows he's tachy from the stress.
“Poor boy.”
“You get some sleep, hon, we'll look after you.”
“Little stick, sweetheart, I'm just going to give you some medicine.”
He sleeps through it all, but Mark can't help hoping that perhaps at some point he will wake to realise that he's loved, and worth the effort of gentleness. That no matter how many times he might have pushed himself through the discomfort before, he doesn't need to do that with them- because, as evidenced by the horde of people around him taking the time to help him feel better, he's deeply cared about here.
For now, though, they turn down the lights and silence the monitors, and simply give him their attention.