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Carter was in the last rig to arrive back at County, with an eight-year-old who was having a bad asthma attack triggered by the heat and the panicked press of the crowd trying to get out of the arena. He got her stabilised with the essentials—a pulse oximeter, an albuterol nebulizer, and Haleh—before he hurried to check on some of the more critical victims he'd sent ahead.
The guy in Trauma One looked bad. One pupil blown, minimal response to external pressure, an anterior depressed skull fracture so severe that it made Carter suck his teeth when he looked at the X-rays. Neuro was on the way for a consult, but Carter was already fairly sure of what they'd say. So was everyone else who stood, subdued, around the still figure lying on the gurney.
When the human brain encountered a direct, determined kick from a thoroughbred horse, there wasn't a lot of scope for a positive outcome.
The energy in Trauma Two was more focused, maybe because Benton was the one running it. Carter stood in the doorway and listened as Benton gave the med students their orders in the same intense tones that Carter still heard, sometimes, in his dreams. Urging more speed, more precision, more thinking further than three steps ahead: more.
"Okay, people, let's get moving, upstairs! Singh, Zhao, you're both going to be scrubbing in on this one. Let's see if this time you can handle a small bowel perforation like actual professionals?" The gurney was wheeled quickly out, a flurry of yes sirs and blue-gowned activity heading upstairs to the OR, but Benton paused briefly to strip off his gloves and give Carter one of those keen looks of his—another feature, sometimes, in another type of dream.
"Carter, why are you covered in hay?"
Carter looked down at his paramedic jacket, which was definitely going to be washed on the hottest machine setting possible tonight. "This isn't hay. It's straw."
Benton rolled his eyes. "An answer like that, you sure you didn't actually go to law school instead of med school?"
"Oh, my grandparents would have been a lot more agreeable if I had," Carter said. A lawyer grandson they could have understood; a physician grandson made no sense at all. "Paramedic ride-along today. We got called to an MCI following a fire at an equestrian arena during a meet. We—"
But Benton was already heading for the elevators. "Maybe one day you'll manage a ride-along without mass casualties being involved," he called over his shoulder, and was gone.
Carter sighed.
The last half of Carter's shift was blessedly much quieter. One quick run out to Michigan Avenue to pick up someone who'd dropped, unconscious and vomiting, on the sidewalk in front of a department store; another to a car crash in the south Loop where all parties involved refused medical care; following up on the eight-year-old asthmatic, who'd been admitted to paeds for overnight observation. Otherwise, a lull. It meant Carter had plenty of time to sit in the canteen and drink shitty coffee and catch up on charting.
Well, not catch up on it. Put a dent in it? That had to count for something.
Carter was in line waiting to pay for his latest refill and a Zagnut bar when he realised that Benton was standing behind him. He had a heaped plate of the tomato pasta bake on his tray—something which Carter knew was a sure sign of a long day for someone who was generally fastidious about his ratio of carbohydrate to protein consumption.
It was also a sign that Benton probably wasn't in the mood for small talk, but when had that ever stopped Carter? "How did the small bowel perf go? Did your med students acquit themselves professionally?"
Benton let out a sigh that came up right from his toes. "When we opened him up we saw that not only was the laceration bigger than we thought, but he also had a blow-out rupture of the proximal jejunum, a torn mesentery, and an unstable rectus sheet haematoma, plus he was throwing clots as fast as we could find them. Some kind of previously undiagnosed thrombophilia."
Carter winced as he handed over his cash at the register and pocketed his change. Not a fun afternoon for Benton's students. Less fun for the patient, of course. Never a good idea to stand behind a terrified horse. "Did he make it?"
Benton shot him a withering look. "Of course he did, Carter. I was there."
Benton didn't ask if he could sit at Carter's table, but did so regardless, even though there were many other tables around and he seemed in no mood for further conversation. Carter shrugged and picked up the next file on the stack. Benton was halfway through his plate of food when Chuny came in to grab a sandwich.
"Hey Carter," she said, grinning, "I heard all about your heroics today! Who knew you were the Zorro of County General, huh?"
Carter felt his cheeks heat. "I wouldn't say that."
"Oh, you didn't have to! Reilly told me all about it." Chuny drew out her vowels in a way that said she was enjoying this way too much. "He said someone in the crowd got photos, too, so who knows, you might be front page on tomorrow's Trib!"
Carter put his head in his hands.
Even once Chuny left, her cackle lingering on the air behind her, it turned out that it wasn't safe to lift his head and get back to his charting. Benton was now looking at him quizzically. "Zorro?"
"Not..." Carter flapped a hand in a way that he hoped conveyed no mask, no hat, no cape, no sword. "It was a fast moving fire, there were horses in a corral, they were panicking, someone had to get in there and get them out safely."
Benton's eyebrows rose. "So you..."
Carter shrugged, diffident now in a way he hadn't been then. There was never any time for doubt when you were in the thick of it. "I know my way around horses, that's all."
"Oh, that's right," Benton said, in a tone of voice that Carter had heard many times over the years, but that still made his hackles rise a bit. The tone that meant, dismissive, poor little rich boy. "Your Icelandic pony."
Carter felt himself flush again, less pleasantly this time. "That was just when I was a kid. I grew up."
"Hmm," was all Benton said, before he turned his attention back to his meal.
By the time Carter's shift was over, it was raining. Nothing torrential, just a steady patter that would undoubtedly have him soaked in the few minutes it would take him to get on the El. It didn't look like the rain would ease up any time soon, but Carter found himself standing under the ambulance bay awning and looking out at it rather than just cutting his losses and leaving. Maybe it was a function of how tired he was. It had been a long twelve hours, and it was already getting dark, and out-of-practice muscles in his back and legs were groaning with what he'd asked of them today. He couldn't stay, but he didn't know if he had the energy to go.
"You're not going to ride a horse home?" Benton's voice from behind him, unexpected, was enough to have Carter jump. He turned to see that Benton had an umbrella in one hand, like a sensible grown adult. Carter kept buying umbrellas, but they had an average life expectancy of about three days in his ownership, perpetually blown inside-out by rogue gusts of wind or left behind on the back seats of cabs.
"Not tonight," Carter said, tugging his beanie down more securely.
"Too tall for an Icelandic pony these days, anyway," Benton said, and it was so rare for him to make anything remotely like a joke that Carter was jolted into an instinctively earnest response before he realised what he was doing.
"I outgrew Marigold when I was eleven," he said. "My parents sold her off. She's probably dead now."
Out of the corner of his eye, Carter could see Benton scrutinising him the way he might a diseased gallbladder. He folded his arms, willed his cheeks not to flush again.
"Sucks for Marigold," was all Benton said, after a pause.
"She had a good life," Carter said. She'd been a good pony. He'd spoiled her—sneaked her treats, spent extra time on her grooming—as much out of gratitude as out of affection. In the first few strange years after Bobby's death, she'd felt like the only being he could confide in; had spent whole summer afternoons out in the stables with her, his tear-streaked face pressed into her warm neck. He swallowed. "And my parents did get me another horse." Just in case Benton thought his parents had been neglectful in that.
"Oh, well then." Benton's tone was dry, but Carter had the feeling he was being laughed at. He didn't know why.
They ended up walking to the El station together in silence. Rush hour was past and the platform was mostly deserted, the sky overhead deepening into what passed for night in the city. They waited together at one end of it, Benton holding half of his umbrella over Carter's head without bothering to ask if Carter wanted it or not.
Carter couldn't remember the last time he'd stood so close to Benton. He felt antsy. He wished his train would show up.
"What was your horse called?" Benton asked suddenly, after a southbound train had rattled through non-stop on the opposite side of the station.
"My horse? Oh, the one after Marigold?"
Benton nodded.
"Marigold." When Benton looked puzzled, he said, "All my horses were called Marigold, or some version of it. Dad did the registrations and he always said there was no point giving yourself too many names to keep track of."
"Sure," Benton said flatly.
The tracks began to rattle and shriek. Carter craned his head to look for the approaching train and see what line it was. "Yours, I think."
It was. Benton folded up his umbrella, shaking the worst of the water off it. As the train shuddered to a stop next to them and the doors opened, Benton turned to Carter and looked him in the eye and said, "You did a professional job today, John."
Then he was gone before Carter could think of anything to say in response, and it was still raining and Carter's legs still ached and he was still tired, and he'd be back on shift in less than twelve hours, and he was standing on an El platform grinning at nothing—and okay, he thought. Okay. Something to work with; something to work for.