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Stevie can admit that coming in to work today hadn’t been her best idea.
But her stubbornness had dictated it and it hadn’t even felt like a full cold. Just a headache that a few paracetamol had taken the edge off, a bone deep fatigue and a bit of a soreness in her throat.
Of course, she should have known that the fatigue wouldn’t have been improved by dragging herself to work.
She’d almost been alright for a while, the adrenaline of resus keeping her going, but in the last hour or so the headache has grown to a steady pulsing thump behind her eyes making thoughts just a little harder.
Putting down the phone to theatre, she takes a breath and forces herself to keep going; there’s a patient who needs her and there’s only a few hours left on her shift anyway. She can make it.
“Rida, how are the sats looking?” she asks, voice lurching slightly as she turns and everything goes a little fuzzy around her.
She grips the bedrail in what she hopes is an inconspicuous way as Rida reels off, “Bp ninety over sixty. Heartrate one-twenty.”
Not perfect, but not too dangerous for someone who’s on their way to theatre. That’s a relief, she can give her attention to the dizziness that isn’t really getting any better, even when she blinks a few times to try and clear it.
Focusing on the awareness that she needs to not be in resus right now (in fact she needs to be anywhere except resus right now), she orders, “Okay, let’s prep to move, well done everybody.”
Then she makes her escape.
It seems to be a very long journey to the staffroom, feeling somewhat like she’s trying to move her limbs through water as she attempts to walk with enough purpose to avoid being dragged into another medical situation while not crashing headlong into anyone.
When she does eventually make it to the mercifully empty staffroom, she leans against the table, grateful for the weight it takes off her legs.
Except the way she hangs her head seems to be the final straw as her vision tunnels and she’s left with only a very vague awareness of someone calling her name as her legs buckle beneath her.
Dylan looks up when he notices a slight stumble in the way Stevie speaks.
Rida answers her but she’s frowning in a way that tells him she’s noticed something is off too.
Then Stevie is gone, disappearing through the doors like she can’t get out of here quickly enough and yet moving in a way that’s almost… cautious?
“I’m just going to-” he motions after her then down at the patient who’s resting as comfortably as somebody who’s about to go for emergency surgery can- “are you all good here?”
Rida nods easily, encouraging, “Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”
With her few seconds of head start – even though she’s moving slower than her usual full-pelt – he’s a little way behind her when she hurries into the staffroom.
Even though it’s very clear that she’s not alright from how she’s leant over the table in that exhausted, almost defeated, sort of way, he still begins to ask, “Stevie, are you-“ cutting himself off when she suddenly crumples, very narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the edge as she goes down.
“Stevie!”
Automatically, he lurches forwards to catch her before she can hit the floor, ending with him knelt on the floor and her sort of draped over his knees.
“Stevie!” he calls urgently, receiving no reply and so moving to very gently shake her shoulder, repeating, “Stevie!”
She stirs at that, groaning slightly and wincing like she’s in pain.
Resting a hand against her forehead, he finds it too warm and she groans again, trying to brush his hand away, though doesn’t make any attempt to get up as he’d half expected her to.
“’M fine,” she insists groggily before he can even ask and he scoffs.
“Sure you are mate. People who are fine are known for randomly collapsing.”
She forces her eyes open at that, half glaring up at him for a moment before she appears to surrender and closes them again. “Just got a virus, I’ll be fine.”
He’s getting a sense of déjà vu. What is it with consultants and finding themselves on the floor and yet insisting that they’re fine and normal?
“I’m sure you would have been fine a lot quicker if you’d rested today instead of coming in.”
His legs are starting to hurt, his heals digging into him with the extra weight across his knees but he reasons that it can’t be comfortable for her either as she squints up at him again and points out, “We’re understaffed.”
“We’re always understaffed,” he rebuffs, “stop trying to put everything onto yourself.”
But she doesn’t react to his more serious tone, just grumbles, “Hypocrite,” beginning to struggle upright and squeezing her eyes closed as she does so.
He lets out a dry laugh as he aids in her shuffle to lean up against the table leg. “Maybe.”
Sensing movement behind him, he twists to find Rida now stood in the doorway, looking down at them in concern.
“Stevie? What happened?”
“Nothing, I’m fine,” she waves off quickly and he rolls his eyes.
“She collapsed,” he corrects.
“I did not.”
He stars down at her, amazed and somewhat despairing (yet not entirely surprised) by her attitude. “Your stubbornness to deny reality is impressive, Stevie, if baffling, but I quite literally witnessed it with my own eyes. You dropped like a sack of potatoes.”
And of course, there’s also evidence in the carefully supportive grip he still has on her arm, not quite willing to let her go entirely in case she were to fall again.
Her indignancy seems to have taken it out of her and she lets her eyes slip closed once more, slightly more relaxed this time, as she snips, “Don’t mention potatoes to me, Englishman, it’s a sore sport.”
“Okay,” he agrees in amused despair, turning back to Rida who’s observing the scene with an expression that’s an impressive fusion of concern and laughter, “momentary loss of consciousness. She has a temperature and I suspect dehydration.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Stevie deadpans, attack taken out of her voice by the way her eyes are still closed.
Though, the fact that she doesn’t try to contradict him means that he’s more spot on than he would like and while he doesn’t think it’s anything more serious than a virus that’s been pushed too far, he still wants to get her to a cubicle.
“I would be more worried if you couldn’t.”
Of course, that means he now has to work out where the nearest free cubicle is and how he can get to it without walking past absolutely everyone.
Rida, ever efficient, disappears and reappears only moments later with a wheelchair, announcing, “Cubicle one is free.”
He helps her up, knowing better than to point out that the way she’s pulling weakly at the table isn’t doing nearly as much to get her off the floor than he is, and eases her back into the wheelchair.
Settling down, she tenses, squeezing her eyes closed like she’s trying not to pass out again.
“Are you going to be sick?” Rida asks.
“No, no. It’s not nausea. It’s…” she trails off like she still doesn’t quite want to admit that anything is actually wrong.
He walks a little in front to the side of the wheelchair as Rida pushes it, blocking her from most of the ED. He’s done that ride of shame across the ED before; he knows Stevie won’t appreciate it any more than he had.
Stevie shuffles herself across onto the bed, allowing Rida to take some bloods with only a resigned eyeroll.
She tucks her knees up to herself as Rida leaves them, half curled up on the pillow as the reality of I collapsed at work and now people are having to look after me even though I don’t let anyone look after me begins to set in.
A vague frown pinches at her eyebrows and he stands, fists on his hips and head tilted to look down at her as he asks, “Do you have a headache?”
Eying him like she still can’t decide whether to lie she eventually, if somewhat reluctantly, admits, “Yes.”
“Have you had any painkillers?”
“Paracetamol, before I started though,” Rida returns then and she groans somewhat dramatically at the bag of fluids in her hand, “oh come on, you’re not going to make me sit through an entire bag are you?”
He gestures, “Well, where else are you going? You can’t drive home like this,” then, seeing her about to protest, he corrects, “you shouldn’t drive home like this. Just rest please, if that’s possible for you to do?”
Her answering glare has an air to it like she knows she’s being a little ridiculous but as she settles back resignedly against the pillow, she still retorts grumpily, “It’s not. I have a terrible patient routine and it will begin as soon as I can open my eyes without feeling like there’s a pickaxe being driven into them.”
Rida, who’s doing an excellent impression of not being wildly amused by the entire situation, asks, “Paracetamol?”
“Yes. Thanks Rida.”
With one last look of withering warning (which she rolls her eyes at, of course) he leaves, getting called into a situation in resus that means when he returns armed with a blanket that she will no doubt refuse just out of principle, he finds her already asleep, face scrunched in some discomfort.
Standing for just a moment to make sure she’s not pranking him (he wouldn’t put it past her), he unfolds the blanket and lays it carefully over her, making sure the curtains are tucked around to give her a little privacy.
Though there’s a thermometer metres away, there’s something instinctual that tells Rida to put her hand to Stevie’s forehead as she stirs, even daring to smooth her hair away from her face and feeling very much like she’s only just got away with it when Stevie squints up at her.
She looks, in a word, awful. Pale, dark circles not quite hidden by her remaining makeup and a lethargy that’s just so un-Stevie.
Still, she greets lightly, “Hey, welcome back. You had me worried for a minute there, thought you were gonna collapse in the middle of resus.”
Stevie winces, looking distinctly uncomfortable as her hand flies to her canula. “And here, I made it all the way to the staffroom,” she croaks and Rida chuckles, gently batting away her hand and disconnecting the now empty fluid bag. “What time is it?”
“Uhhh, just after seven,” she checks, reaching out to help her shuffle a little further up the pillow, “Dylan asked me to tell you that everything indicates just a viral infection so he’s taking you home as soon as his shift is over and he’s given the security officers strict instructions to not let you into the building for at least three days.”
“Urgh,” is as much of a noise of disgust as she can muster and Rida bites back a laugh.
“You still have an hour. Sleep again if you can.”
“No, no you’re grand,” she waves her off, looking very much like she’s about to try and stand up, “I’m taking up a cubicle here.”
She raises an eyebrow, “Do you think you can actually stand up long enough to get to the staffroom right now? Because I’m not pushing you.”
“Rida.” She tries so hard to glare, to put her usual sternness into her no-nonsense expression.
But Rida is very nearly immune to that glare most of the time anyway so a time when she’s mostly definitely in the right and Stevie is her patient not her senior, she just gives her own no-nonsense expression right back. “Stevie. Come on, don’t make me give you the difficult patient treatment.”
(Besides, she’s more likely to be affected by Dylan’s look of disappointment if she lets Stevie go wandering off.)
“Urgh,” she groans again, thumping her head back onto the pillow in irritated resignment, “who promoted you?”
Stevie had thought that she would feel a little more alive after sleeping but no, her body seems to have taken that as an invitation to crash out completely and she wakes to the soreness in her throat having increased to a painful grating every time she swallows and a cotton wool-stuffed feeling in her head.
But she can’t quite drift off again, not in the bustle of the ED. Even in the most out of the way cubicle that she suspects Dylan (or possibly Rida) picked on purpose.
Dylan, when he eventually reappears in his own clothes, takes one look at her and says, “Come on,” an irritating concern too clear in his tone for her comfort.
“Not the wheelchair,” she groans.
“It’s either I quickly wheelchair you out, or you walk out incredibly slowly,” he reasons and she can’t fault that logic as much as she desperately wants to.
The world spinning around her as she moves only reinforces its need, as much as she refuses to admit it to him, so she just keeps her head down in an effort to not meet anyone’s eye.
She’s sure everyone has heard what’s happened by now, that’s the nature of the ED. But she doesn’t particularly enjoy being the talk of the ED. Especially not for this, this shattering of the illusion that nothing can phase her.
The melodramatic part of her wonders if this is how Jesus had felt, being forced to parade his own cross through the crowds in the town.
They do make it to the carpark eventually of course, and there’s something about being in a car that lulls her into a dazed half-sleep – she’d always been one to sleep in the car when she was a child, waking when they’d arrived home but pretending to still be asleep so her dad would carry her up to bed.
She stirs when they pull up outside her house, embarrassedly pushing her hair out of her face as she drags herself out of the car and towards her front door.
Dylan stays at her side as she digs in her bag for her keys, only now noticing the bag for life in his hand.
“When did you go to the shop?”
He looks vaguely amused as he answers, “You were asleep.”
“Great,” she grouches, “so glad to know how easy I would be to kidnap.”
The idea that she’d been so dead to the world that he could stop the car and go to the shop without her even stirring is mortifying and she gets the distinct urge to ask him to leave her alone but she gets the feeling he would point blank refuse.
“I think I’m more likely to bribe someone into staying away rather than kidnap them,” he muses dryly as he watches her struggle with the keys and their sudden inability to fit into the lock, knowing better than to offer to help.
“Oh, great,” she laments as she finally triumphs over the door and pushes it open with possibly a little more agitation than necessary, “I look forward to that pay out.”
Her journey up the stairs is almost painfully slow with her centre of gravity feeling entirely off and a large part of her resents Dylan being here to witness her struggle, the fact that he’s respecting her stubbornness to struggle alone (and possibly a very internal relief that he would be there to catch her if she did fall) the only reason she holds back a few sharp comments about his hovering.
After winning another fight with another set of keys, she heads straight to her bedroom, dumping her scrubs in an unceremonious pile on the floor at the end of her bed and pulling on the first pyjamas she finds.
Then she crawls into bed, pulling the mercifully cool duvet over herself with a quiet groan.
She doesn’t give much thought to Dylan being somewhere in the flat, beyond a vague awareness that he’s probably in the kitchen.
Sleep is just beginning to pull her down when she senses a presence and cracks open an eye to find Dylan there, placing a few things on her bedside table.
“Paracetamol, something for your throat, water, biscuits, laptop. And there’s soup in the fridge, when you’re feeling up to it-“ he makes it way to the other side of the room, laying the discarded scrubs over a chair then pulling the curtains mostly closed, covering the room in a peaceful darkness- “I’m going to stick around for a short while. Mostly because I advise rest but don’t expect you to take that advice.”
After taking a drink of water, gratefully feeling the momentary reprieve on her throat, she buries her way back into the duvet, insisting vaguely, “The terrible patient routine begins any minute.”
Dryly, he agrees, “I’m sure.”
“Dylan?“ she calls after him and he leans back through the doorway as she musters up the most genuine smile she can, “thanks.”
He gives her a sort of nod back, like his help had been a forgone conclusion. And maybe it had.
“You’re most welcome.”