Chapter Text
Carol feels the sweat bead at the back of her neck and swipes at it with her hand. It's only 8 am, but County already feels like a sauna.
She bends her knees and winces. At five five months along, she's really starting to feel it these days. But she can't afford to show it. Not yet, not when she's planning to make it at least three more months, and not when she's under the watchful eye of a dozen medical providers who all have an opinion on how she should be caring for her health. And today, she's not in the moood for lectures.
"Carol?" Dr. Weaver's voice pierces through the muggy waiting room area, and Carol winces. "Did maintenance call back yet?"
Carol shakes her head. "They said the HVAC company guy would call when he was on his way. They're hoping to make it here by 11, but they said no promises. Power surge took out half the AC units in the neighborhood last night."
Dr. Weaver eyes her up and down, and Carol resists the urge to roll her eyes. "You sure you shouldn't be home today?"
"It's barely any cooler there," Carol replies with a shrug. "My window unit can barely keep up."
Dr. Weaver sighs and glances to the rapidly building throng of people in chairs. "I'm calling operations again. If this isn't resolved soon, we're about to start creating patients instead of treating them."
Then she pivots, and motions toward curtains. "Lucy, come with me to check on our ice pack situation. We may have to call in a favor with Mercy, but they're not much better off since their generator blew…."
Her voice fades into the din of activity, and Carol sinks to her chair, letting her head fall into her hands. Just a minute to catch her breath, and then she'd get up.
A rustle startles her eyes open, and she sees a hand pushing a ice pack across the desk toward her. When she lifts her head, her eyes track from the hand to the wrist all the way up to Carter's face.
"Come on. Doctor's orders." He's wearing a green scrub top instead of his usual dress shirt, and his collar's already darkened with sweat.
Carol rolls her eyes. "Carter, don't you try and pull rank with me. I'm not in the mood."
"I'm not!" He raises his hand in mock surrender. "You just looked a little…wilted."
"We're supposed to save those for the patients—"
"And I'm not letting you become one of mine," he says, insistently. "Besides. It's not just for you."
He gestures towards her rounded belly. Carol levels a glare his way, then sighs. The well-intentioned ice pack's condensing all over the desk, water catching the edges of the stack of papers. And it does look heavenly.
So she takes it and slips it to the back of her neck, and instantly moans the second the cold hits her skin.
Carter smiles. "See? Feels pretty good, doesn't it?"
"God, yes."
Satisfied, Carter turns back to the rows of exam beds. Carol closes her eyes, reveling in the cold—and then the trauma doors burst open, and the day begins.
All morning, the ER is chaos.
Multiple cases of heatstroke from workers at a construction site. Four dehydrated kids who all came from the same neighborhood soccer game. An elderly man who a heart attack because he wasn't able to leave his un-air-conditioned apartment and go to a cooling center. A diabetic who spiked their blood sugar because they'd been outside for too long at a local park.
On, and on, and on, one trauma after another. The heat only intensified as the day wore on. The air grew thick and heavy with the smell of sweat. Security had been called to break up three fights in chairs, and all morning, Dr. Weaver was fending off angry patients who wanted to know why they hadn't been seen yet.
By noon, even the most patient among the staff were stretched thin. Orders were snapped. Tones were tense. One paramedic walked through the doors and promptly collapsed, and Mark dragged him into the lounge to try and cool him off.
The traumas pile up. Kids with broken bones, gashed foreheads. A wounded security guard came in who was wounded during a morning bank robbery, followed by one of the suspected robbery perpetrators who had taken a couple bullets as he tried to escape.
By 1 pm , Carol is about to personally hunt down and find the AC repairman herself. She slaps the now-tepid ice pack to the back of her neck and punches in the numbers on the phone, but stops short as she sees a man approaching her in a grey jumpsuit.
"Are you the AC guy? The company said he was supposed to be here an hour ago."
The man's eyes flick to Carol, then behind her, and he scans the room, taking in the noisy din of children screaming in chairs. But then he nods. "Yes. That's me."
Carol groans with relief. "You're a lifesaver. Let me call maintenance—"
"Could you take me?"
"What?"
"To the main system."
Carol frowns. "I can, but don't you want maintenance—"
"I'm in a hurry, ma'am—what's your name?"
"Carol."
"Carol," he repeats back. "Carol, I'm in a bit of a hurry, and it'd be a big help if you'd point me in the right direction."
The request feels…strange. But Carol's hot, and she's desperate, and she's ready to do anything to get a bit of relief. So she passes the supply orders she's working on off to Randi and heaves her aching body off the desk chair, leading the man down the hallway and towards the closet where she knows the first floor AC is located.
They go down the hallway, weaving through throngs of people, past Trauma One and Trauma Two, when the man suddenly stops short, and Carol does too.
The man pauses, eyes caught on the doctors at work on the young gunshot victim from the robbery attempt.
"Sir? It's just this way." Carol moves into his line of sight. The man's breathing heavily, and he's sweating, and none of that would be unique except for the way his gaze is locked on the total stranger being poked and prodded and patched up by Mark, Carter, and a cluster of nurses.
"Is that kid…he gonna be okay?"
Carol frowns. "I'm sure they're doing the best they can."
The man swallows, eyes darting from the kid to Carol and back. Then, in a split second, pulls out a gun and points it right at Carol's chest.
"You're gonna help me make sure," he says, voice trembling, eyes wild.
Carol's heart's stuck in her throat. She can't speak. She can't move. There was a guard, where did the guard go, why did the guard leave, wait, this is the kid who robbed—this guy's got a gun—
Just then, Carter bursts out of the trauma room. "Carol, can you—whoa, whoa, whoa." He freezes, hands up, door of the trauma room half open, and suddenly the whole room's staring at Carol, at this man, and so are the people staring in the hallway. A dozen patients are frozen in horror, and out of the corner of her eye, Carol can see Dr. Weaver close by the phone on the wall. Somewhere, someone gasps, and another person screams.
"Shut up!" The man whirls so his back's to the wall. "Nobody make a move, or it's the end of Carol right here."
"Hey, man, let's take it easy–" Mark tries to interject, but the man fires a deafening round into the nearby wall, then whips the barrel back to point at Carol.
"I said shut up." He's got the gun pointed right at her, and Carol feels her hands fly to her stomach, a mother's reflex, to protect her babies at any cost, and Mark immediately goes silent. "All of you, out here, now.
The doctors acquiesce and file out of the room, leaving nothing but a broken body and blaring machines.
"Here's what I want," the man says, voice shaking. "You're gonna make sure my friend here gets patched up. And you're gonna give us what we need, and you'll let us leave I've got three bullets left in here, and it's up to all of you where they end up. Okay?"
Carol nods, though she's not sure it's a question that she alone can answer. She doesn't know the patient's condition. She doesn't know if he even can be saved. On the back of her neck, she can feel a small bead of sweat travel from her hairline, to her shoulders, to the middle of her back, and she trains all her attention there.
Absently, she remembers another situation like this a few years ago—a convenience store, a young man, and a tragic end.
Focus, Carol. Don't panic. Think. There's a way out of this.
But she doesn't have time to think, because she's snapped back to attention by a slight wave of Carter's hand. But he's not waving at her—he's waving at their captor, who whirls his head in his direction.
"Permission to…talk?" Carter's voice is soft, amiable, and for a second Carol's reverted six years back to Carter as a young med student. Pliable. Affable. Likeable. The kind of voice he uses when he wants something. She knows it well, and she knows what he's doing.
The man doesn't fire, but he doesn't shout either. Just nods his head.
"Sir, we need to get back in there to work on your friend and make sure he's okay."
The man nods. "Fine. But just one of you. Plus Carol."
Mark speaks up again. "Sir, the best way to make sure–"
"Shut up. Carol, pick one."
"Pick what?"
"Pick a doctor, and we'll go in."
Carol's head spins. Pick? It has to be a doctor, or else the kid might be good as dead anyways. Mark's the senior doctor and the best they've got, but this guy seems to hate him for no reason. Carter's a resident, and he's a kid. She can't just pick someone to join this mess with her, this mess that's mostly her fault because how could she not see something was wrong, something was off, she didn't check, and now–
"I'll go, Carol." It's Carter who speaks up, voice still soft.
"Carter, I can't—"
An alarm in the trauma room begins beeping, and the man with the gun's gaze begins to flick wildly. "Carol, now."
Carol opens her mouth to try and reason, try to get out of this, when another bigger, louder alarm begins to blare.
Lockdown. In the mess, Dr. Weaver had activated the building's lockdown, and Carol wonders if that's better or worse, and the man with the gun is shouting, hurry up, choose, his friend's gonna die, and Carol locks eyes with Carter, and sees he's as scared as she is, but he nods, and she knows what she's got to do.
"Carter. I choose Carter."
"Whatever," the man shouts. "Get in and help him!"
Carter backs in and Carol follows, and so does the gunman, and they enter into the belly of the beast.