Chapter Text
It was already shaping up to be a tough week for Josh Nichols before Oliver Wolf managed to make it even worse; he was running on just a few hours of sleep, having been up much later than he should have worrying about one of his upcoming surgeries. It was a relatively risky procedure, and as much as he knew he was capable of pulling it off, he already had a few patients in the past month with some kind of post-op complication and didn’t want any others to join them.
The one he was most concerned about at the moment was Hannah; her seizures seemed to have been cured, making the procedure technically a success, but she was struggling to recognize her sons. It was certainly an interesting case, but Josh figured that it would go away on its own; she just needed time to heal from the surgery, and as long as he continued to monitor her condition, he expected everything would end up fine. She had to end up fine. That was what Josh told himself, at least; he couldn’t deal with spending another week agonizing over his own mistakes again.
He used to do it more frequently; when he was fresh out of med school and starting his residency, he would stay up all night whenever a procedure had a complication, making sure he would never make the same error again. He had moved past doing that, accepting that practicing medicine meant things would go wrong from time to time. Still, it didn’t make it any easier when someone’s life was changed for the worse and he considered himself to be part of the reason that happened.
Josh was just happy that, for the most part, it had been an uneventful morning; he didn’t have any surgeries scheduled, so he arrived at work just a bit later than he typically did and took his time checking in with his interns and post-op patients. His afternoon was a bit more busy, but it wasn’t all that out of the ordinary, and he was looking forward to potentially getting home a bit early and ordering Chinese so he didn’t have to go through the effort of cooking after a day on the job.
That was, until he found Hannah missing when he came around to see her.
***
“Hey. Ava.”
“Dr. Nichols? Need something?”
Ava was Josh’s go-to nurse for questions like the one he needed to ask; she was aware of everything going on, and she also happened to be somewhat of a friend of his, at least while they were at work.
“Yeah. Hannah, my post-op epilepsy patient– she’s missing. I went to go check her room, she was gone,” Josh explained. “You seen her anywhere?”
Ava looked down at her computer, pulling up her file before looking back to Josh. “I haven’t seen her, but according to our system, she’s getting an MRI.”
“Who the hell took my patient?” Josh muttered under his breath, already on his way to radiology to sort out whatever mess had been caused.
The only people who he figured would want to run a test on his patient would have been his interns, but Josh knew they would never order tests without notifying him; they were a good group, in that regard. They understood the gravity of their position, the risks every choice they made had for the patient.
It was quite the surprise to Josh when he finally arrived and saw Carol standing there with a man Josh recognized as Wolf from the picture Carol had shown him a few weeks ago; he was better looking in person than he was on her phone screen, certainly. That was when it clicked for Josh; Wolf was a neurologist, and he had gotten word of a new neuro attending joining the team. This must have been who took his patient. Still, Wolf’s presence didn’t necessarily answer all of his questions he had about the situation, and it certainly didn’t calm any of his worry about Hannah.
“Pierce? Why is my patient getting an MRI?” Josh asked, interrupting whatever conversation Carol and Wolf were having.
“Nichols, this is Dr. Wolf, our new neuro attending,” Carol told him, confirming Josh’s suspicions, though he did pick up on the fact that she seemed to be evading the question he had asked her.
“Of course,” Josh hesitated, trying to come up with some kind of response that didn’t give too much away. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I haven’t heard about you,” Wolf responded; he seemed to be just as blunt in person as Carol had told him. Still, it was quite the odd response, and there was a part of Josh that had hoped maybe Wolf heard his name before.
“Nichols is our chair of neurosurgery,” Carol explained to Wolf, stopping Josh from making a bigger fool of himself than he already had. “He performed the procedure on Hannah.”
“Who hasn’t had a single seizure since I operated, so why are you–” Josh began, not wanting Wolf to think he was incompetent; it was highly likely that they would have to work together for however long Wolf worked at Bronx General, though from what Carol had said that didn’t seem like it would be very long at all.
“Yes, but you did turn her into the woman who snubs her kids,” Wolf interrupted.
“It’s expected post-op brain edema, she’ll be back to normal in a week,” Josh told him; it was the same thing he had been telling himself since all this started, over and over again through every sleepless night he had thinking about how much worse this could get. He didn’t need more people questioning his abilities. Josh was a competent neurosurgeon, and he knew that. Wolf wasn’t going to get under his skin.
But of course Oliver Wolf and his bluntness just had to call out every goddamn problem with that idea and hit Josh right where it hurt most with the truths he was scared to face.
“That’s unlikely, she has severe selective emotional detachment.”
“It wasn’t my job to make her a good mother” Josh told him, before Wolf could go any further in calling out what they all already knew was a mistake. “It was my job to cure her epilepsy, and I succeeded.”
Just at that moment, his pager went off, which Josh took as a welcome route out of the conversation, even though he hadn’t really gotten a clear answer on what Wolf was doing with Hannah.
“But by all means, keep wasting your time!” Josh told him and Carol, already heading out the door to go check on a concern about one of his post-op patients from his interns that actually did need his attention.
“Josh…” Carol called after him.
“And hospital resources!” Josh said, finally leaving the goddamn MRI room; he would get his answer eventually and figure out why Wolf was so intent on scrutinizing him later, but for now, he did have another patient to attend to.
It was when he made his way back that he found Ava still there waiting for him; it didn’t seem he had been gone that long even though the entire conversation he had just had with Wolf felt like it took an eternity.
“Back from the MRI so soon?” Ava asked upon seeing him.
“Sam paged me about a potential complication with Mr. Rosario’s procedure. Came back to check in before it can go south,” Josh explained.
“Is that really your reason? I know you think Sam’s plenty capable,” Ava told him; she had a way of knowing if he was lying, having worked alongside him for years.
“I’m trying to get an answer on what this new neuro attending wants with Hannah, the seizure patient,” Josh admitted. “He took her for an MRI, without my consent, may I add. And quite frankly, he’s rude. I have no idea how he got hired.”
“Rumor has it he’s the chief’s son,” Ava told him. “And if you look him up, you’ll see he’s gotten himself fired practically everywhere else in the city.”
“So he’s insane, and he’s made my patient his case. Great.” Josh muttered sarcastically.
Ava smiled at that. “Don’t be too harsh on him right away. If he does fix whatever’s going on with Hannah, it’ll be good to see you stop worrying. You’ve been on edge all week.”
“Nothing’s going on with Hannah,” Josh told her. “She’ll be back to normal in a week.”
“Are you saying that for my sake or yours?” Ava asked with that knowing smile of hers. “Go deal with whatever Sam needed you for. I’ll let you know any updates on Hannah’s case.”
And with that, she was off, and Josh was left with more questions than he started with.
***
The next few days came and went as they always did; Mr. Rosario’s case resolved itself in a matter of hours, and the one procedure he had been worried about went relatively smoothly with no major complications. The one open end, of course, was Hannah’s case. She wasn’t getting any better, but it seemed Wolf was determined to find the cause of the problem even if he had to go too far to get there.
Still, he couldn’t quite get the case out of his head, and as time passed he became more and more worried that maybe he really had messed up. That Wolf was right, about him turning Hannah into a different woman entirely, curing her seizures while also taking away so much of who she was in the process. He had no idea what went wrong; the procedure seemed to have gone well in the operating room, with no major mistakes he had noticed the day of. But now, he found himself alone in his office, eating a lunch consisting of just the protein bar he had left in his desk a few weeks ago, going down a rabbit hole of various situations where this case got even more complicated.
It was then that he heard a knock on the door, and Ava stuck her head in.
“I have an update on Hannah for you. I figured you’d want me to come tell you before someone else did.”
“What’s going on?” Josh asked, shoving the half-eaten protein bar into his desk drawer and adjusting some papers to make it appear he was actually doing his job.
“She had another seizure,” Ava began, but before she could finish, Josh was already on his way to figure out what happened himself.
“Wolf?” Josh asked, grabbing his coat and putting it on, attempting to appear at least somewhat professional even though he was barely resisting the urge to go give Wolf a piece of his very unprofessional mind.
Ava nodded. “He was doing some kind of test, last I heard. She’s back in her normal room, if you want to go check in on her.”
“I will. Thanks for the update,” Josh told her, halfway out the door and headed towards the elevator.
As he approached her room, Josh heard Wolf’s voice coming from inside; something about how he was going to fix all this, which Josh was believing less and less with each passing second. The door was open, but he knocked on the frame for courtesy’s sake. He had to handle this like he would any other conflict, despite the fact that Wolf was the most aggravating man he had ever met.
“Dr. Wolf? Can I have a word?” he asked, stepping out in the hallway for Wolf to join him.
Josh found himself pacing for a brief moment, not really knowing what he was going to say other than some kind of expression of disapproval. Still, he let the first thing he could think of slip from his mouth.
“Ok, what did you do to her?” Josh asked as soon as Wolf met him in the hallway, but Wolf seemed more confused than anything.
“Do to her?” he asked, as if Hannah didn’t just have a seizure. As if Josh was in the wrong for wanting to set things straight. “We were conducting an emotional response test.”
“She’s supposed to be avoiding stress!” Josh told him. “And you’re reminding her of when her seizures were at their worst?”
Wolf seemed offended at that, if anything. “I was trying to understand what damage you did to her brain–”
“What I did?” Josh interrupted; this was too much. Hannah wasn’t even Wolf’s patient at this point, and he needed to learn his place. Needed to learn that, when it came to his patients, Josh was the authority on them. Needed to learn that Josh was competent, that he did know exactly what he was doing.
“We’re so close to a breakthrough,” Wolf explained, though Josh didn’t believe that at all.
“Are you?” Josh asked. “She’s delusional, she lost her kids, and she had a seizure. You… you know what… you’re…” Josh sighed, trying to figure out what he could do. Wolf had overstepped, taken over his patient, and made her condition worse. He couldn’t allow him near Hannah anymore, not if he wanted to get a good night of sleep and put this case to rest; and, with Hannah as his patient, that was something he had the power to do. “You’re done. You’re off this case.”
“You cannot do that,” Wolf warned, as if he still had power here.
“I can, actually.” Josh told him. “And if you don’t like it, take it to the chief.”
With that, Josh walked off; if Wolf cared enough to defend his own insane practices, he could defend himself to the chief. Defend himself to his mother, who Josh knew wouldn’t take his side. Dr. Landon cared for rules, and in this situation, Josh was the one who had followed hospital policy. And as for Wolf, Josh hoped they never had to work together on a case again.
It was funny, that he had seen that picture on Carol’s phone and considered going on a date with the man. He supposed he dodged a bullet, because he could never see himself with someone like Wolf. Someone who didn’t care for rules and seemed to know nothing about authority. A man like that would be Josh’s worst nightmare.
He resigned himself to finishing that half-eaten protein bar and sending in one of the interns to check on Hannah; he was too exhausted and too frustrated to be a comforting presence, and he was still hungry. Though, as he expected, Hannah was there waiting for him.
“Find him?” she asked as he sat down in his chair.
Josh nodded. “Took him off the case. I can’t let him around my patients. He’s a risk to her safety.”
“You talk about him a lot, for someone you claim to hate so much,” Ava told him, with that annoying knowing smile of hers. “He your type?”
“What, no!” Josh told her, laughing a bit at the idea. “Carol may have tried to set me up with him once, but that does not mean I like him. Right now, in fact, he’s the bane of my existence. I’m one more incident away from going to the chief.”
“You took him off the case, Josh. Stop worrying about it, and get yourself a real lunch. I’ll buy you one myself if I have to,” Ava leaned against the doorway. “I know you hate the cafeteria food, but you have to eat something that counts as a meal. That thing has to be expired at this point.”
“You’re right. It’s disgusting, and I don’t know why I’m still eating it,” Josh admitted, throwing it across the room to the trashcan next to the door; he missed spectacularly, earning a quiet laugh from Ava before she picked it up for him.
“Come on, Nichols. Take your mind off the case for an hour.”
With that, he was up and out the door, and it seemed that maybe for a moment Wolf would cease to be a problem he had to deal with.
***
Somehow, Wolf had managed to get himself back on Hannah’s case; it wasn’t something Josh had expected, and he had complained at length to Ava about it while they were eating lunch together between his surgeries. He found that he couldn’t necessarily complain to Carol about Wolf since they were friends, and Ava didn’t mind listening to his tangents about how frustrating Wolf could be. Josh just was glad he had managed to avoid Wolf for the most part; he was worried he might snap at him again if they were in the same room.
It was a few days later, however, that Josh was forced to deal with the man again; according to Carol, he had some other idea, and he was certain it would work. Josh had to stop himself from making some snide comment about how Wolf had said that about all of his other ideas, and instead told her that he would be there to see how it went. He didn’t want to go, but he knew he had to, for Hannah’s sake. He couldn’t stand to see Wolf do another one of his experiments on her.
Whatever idea he was going to test Wolf set up in a big empty room, and Josh had found himself a spot perched on the table in the back, Wolf’s interns waiting nervously at the other end of the room as Hannah was brought in, seemingly also as anticipatory as Josh was.
“Those boys have been through enough. I’m not going to bring them in here to have her reject them again,” the social worker protested; she had a point, to Josh. Her kids didn’t need to be a part of this, watching their mother become someone else entirely.
“She won’t. Let’s just have a little… faith,” Wolf told her, and Josh kept his eyes on him; as much as he had lost all his faith in Wolf the second Hannah had another seizure, all he could do now was watch.
Josh’s resignation to simply observing was cut short when Wolf pulled out a blindfold of all things and tied it around Hannah’s eyes.
“What the hell is this?” Josh asked, not wanting Hannah to get hurt again. She had already been through enough. Her kids had been through enough. And, frankly, he had been through enough dealing with chasing Wolf around the hospital to stop him from making this worse.
“You’ll see. You can bring them in,” Wolf said, before focusing his attention on the patient in front of him. “It’s ok, Hannah.”
“Wolf, if this doesn’t work, they are going to live with their dad today,” Carol told Wolf as he stepped back, giving Hannah some space; Josh didn’t see that as a good sign if even she was warning him.
“I know.”
“It’s a risk.”
Josh watched as Hannah’s sons, Gus and Ellis, were brought into the room; they looked almost as nervous as Hannah did, and he couldn’t blame them. They had been through all these ups and downs, being told their mother would be cured and then losing her to whatever had happened during the surgery.
“Mom? Why are you wearing that?” the older boy asked; of course Wolf had told absolutely nobody about what he was going to do. Not even her own kids.
“Gus?” Hannah asked; it was a recognition. A recognition of her own kids. Still, it didn’t prove anything yet, and so Josh stayed quiet, just observing.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”
The younger boy, Ellis, then stepped forward. “Mom?”
“Ellis, get over here. Both of you, come over here,” Hannah said, tearing up as both her sons ran over to her; even Josh could admit, this was something. Whatever insane and out there idea Wolf had come up with, it worked. He had somehow pulled it off, and Josh could admire that, as much as he despised Wolf’s process. “These are my boys. These are my babies, I know it.”
Josh got up off the table, a million questions in his head. He had no idea what the source of the problem was, and Wolf had fixed it. He had figured it out. This man with no regard for rules, who had broken just about every hospital policy within his first week, had solved the case Josh had been stumped on.
“I gotta call my mom,” one of Wolf’s interns muttered; Josh would have too, if his own mother didn’t hate him. He supposed it wasn’t as bad of a fate as simply being forgotten, but there were times he wished her memory would be wiped clean so they could start over. So she could come to terms with who he was.
“I don’t understand,” the social worker interrupted, asking the question Josh had been about to pose himself. “What’s… changed?”
“Good question,” Wolf told her, immediately running to find the nearest chalkboard; there was that dedication that Josh had begun to realize he had quite a lot of.
“hink of the brain as an intricate network of connecting roads and highways. When we look at an object or a face, the messages travel down those roads to the temporal lobes where it’s identified. And then it takes an exit, and it goes down to the limbic system, and let’s think of that as home,” Wolf began, energetic in his explanation, as if this was all he had. Josh supposed it was; Wolf had dedicated the past week to Hannah’s case, for better or for worse, and this was his last shot. He leaned against the doorway, listening as Wolf continued making his case.
“Now, this is where we generate the appropriate emotional response to whatever it is that we’re looking at, but in Hannah’s case, that exit was damaged during the surgery, so she can’t get home.” That was it; what had gone wrong. The thing Josh had worried about day and night was right there in front of him the whole time; the pathways. It made sense, now.
“To cope with this disruption, her mind creates this elaborate delusion that her sons are imposters, but there are other routes that she can take to get home,” Wolf continued. “The part of the brain that connects from the auditory cortex to the amygdala was not damaged, so that’s why when Hannah hears Gus and Ellis, she identifies them as her sons and feels that connection, she loves them. She’s home.”
Wolf stood in front of the chalkboard, seemingly proud as ever of his diagnosis, which Josh had to admit he deserved. The man was a genius, in his own odd way, and as obnoxious as he seemed to be at times. Wolf glanced over at him, as if looking for approval, and Josh gave it to him in the form of a simple nod. Wolf had done good.
“Doctor, I appreciate all this, but I can’t agree to give her kids back if she’s going to be in a blindfold for the rest of her life,” the social worker told him.
“But you saw what I saw today,” Wolf told her; everything he had was defending Hannah, and Josh admired that. He was beginning to admire Wolf, despite his eccentricities. If anything, they made him more intriguing; how could he do so much wrong and still get so much right? “Hannah is a mother who loves her children unconditionally. Just give me a chance to prove that she can care for them. Give her a chance.”
***
“I’ve changed my mind about Wolf,” Josh told Ava when he ran into her at the nurse’s station a few days later; they hadn’t crossed paths much recently, what with Josh being stuck in surgery constantly. “He’s… strange. But he’s good.”
“What did he do now?” Ava asked with a slight laugh. “Ask you out?”
Josh shook his head. “Still don’t like him like that.”
“Figured I’d ask.” Ava smiled. “But what did he do, seriously?”
“He cured Hannah,” Josh explained. “Well, not cured. But he figured out what went wrong, during the procedure. She’s keeping her kids.”
“Didn’t think that would happen,” Ava told him. “I guess he’s some genius.”
“Wouldn’t call him a genius yet,” Josh said. “But I’ll give him a chance.”
“Good,” Ava started to gather her things, getting ready to head out for the day. “I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with a head of neuro and head of neurosurgery that couldn’t work together.”
“We wouldn’t be that bad,” Josh said with a smile.”
“You would be. Catch you later, Nichols.”
Josh smiled at that, planning to head out himself for the day; all he had left was to change out of his scrubs, and he would be good to go. He took a slight detour, wanting to pass by the room he had seen Wolf in last; he wasn’t quite sure why he cared so much, but he figured if Wolf was alone, maybe he would extend a quick thanks for doing so much for Hannah.
As he walked by, he found Wolf talking to his interns; something about sticking together and opening up, which Josh found sweet of him. The old neuro attending had practically left the interns to fend for themselves, and while Wolf wasn’t necessarily a perfect role model, at least they had someone.
And, as Josh was about to just ignore whatever was going on, he met Wolf’s eyes, a brown that he only now noticed brought a subtle warmth to the dim light of the room. Josh could talk to him later. Maybe they could grab lunch together at some point; he wanted to know Wolf’s process, figure out exactly how he had worked everything out. Josh wanted to learn, and most of all, he was curious about Wolf.
Josh had been curious about people before. But the people he was curious about were always different; there had been Nate, who was so different from himself that he just wondered what it was like to live so openly, emotionally, and creatively. And then there was Ray, who was perfect in every sense of the traditional life he had grown to know. But curiosity, he found, had only led to heartbreak. He just couldn’t be too curious, because he knew exactly where that would end.
Still, there was a voice at the back of his head; the voice telling him to give Wolf a chance. And he at least wanted to try to listen to it.