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"Mr. Thomas, I'm going to have to ask you to calm down, or else I can't treat you," Carter spoke loudly and slowly, both hands held up in surrender.
He has 5mg of Haldol in his coat pocket if he needs it, but Mr. Thomas is just scared. He's altered and diaphoretic with a 7cm scalp lac bleeding down his face—Carter'd be freaking out too.
The large man sits back down on the bed and starts taking heaving breaths, and Carter starts to close in. "Good, that's good, Mr. Thomas."
He inches his hand towards the lidocaine on the suture tray. "Once I get your head stitched up, you'll feel a lot better…"
He's just a few inches away when there's a fist in his gut and the wind gets knocked out of him.
"Stay away from me!" Mr. Thomas roars, knocking Carter across the room, before he flees.
Carter's lying flat on his back, gasping for air; his head is killing him. He just needs to rest his eyes for a few minutes. Then he'll get up and find Mr. Thomas.
Just a few…
Minutes…
Peter was livid.
Carter has been MIA for at least an hour, and he wasn't responding to any of his pages. He storms through the ER, checking each room.
He bursts into the suture room and sees nothing out of the ordinary. A drunk sleeping it off with a banana bag and a vacant bed set up for sutures.
Odd; the tray shouldn't be unwrapped unless there's a patient. He sweeps his eyes across the room again and catches a glint on the floor.
He turns on the overhead lights and blanches.
Carter is passed out on the floor, a sickening pool of blood underneath him.
Peter drops to his knees at his side and gives him a sternal rub. "Carter! C'mon, man, you with me?" He shouts, panicked.
Pitifully, Carter groans and curls in on himself, eyes starting to blink open— thank God.
"We've gotta get you fixed up, man, what happened? What hurts?"
Big, wet eyes blink up at him—there's no recognition there.
He snaps his fingers in front of his face. "Hey! Carter!"
The kid scrunches his nose and winces at the sound; at least he can hear.
Peter runs his hands along Carter's abdomen and legs and finds nothing alarming, but when he pulls open his button-down to examine, Carter gasps and squirms underneath him.
"Hurts," he whines when Peter presses down on his stomach. It's bright red and warm to the touch, blunt trauma.
"Okay, it's okay," he shushes, "let's get you into a bed, and we'll run some tests: an ultrasound and an abdominal series," he starts talking through the steps, assuring himself that Carter is going to be fine.
"What the hell happened—Carter??" Mark pushes into the suture room, shouting for a gurney.
"He wasn't responding to my pages, and I came down to find him like this, alone," Peter grits, meaner than he should. Mark was the chief resident; he was supposed to keep the students safe.
"He was just supposed to be doing sutures, Peter. I didn't think that anything would happen," he speaks clearly, annoyingly calm.
"But you weren't watching him. And he got hurt."
"He's your student, Peter, even if you sequester him in the ER. Don't pin this on me." Mark's eyes are steely and unrelenting until Peter looks away.
He stews on that comment as they hoist Carter onto the gurney and wheel him into Trauma 1.
Carol, Lydia, and Haleh work in lock step, pulling labs, cutting clothes, and hanging fluids. Peter stands off to the side, frozen, as they flit around and prod his student. Mark calls out the imaging orders, ultrasound shows no signs of internal bleeding, but the head and abdominal CT will clear him fully.
He glances at Peter, gaze softer than before, and ushers everyone out, saying they'll know more when CT can take him. He leaves Peter with a suture kit.
"Take care of him, Peter," he says, gently.
Peter hesitates, alone with his student who hasn't said a word this whole time.
He clears his throat gently and wheels the stool over to the head of the bed, ready to drown himself in the meditative act of suturing.
He knows a skin stapler would be faster and just as sufficient, but he can't bring himself to do something so callous, so violent, to the boy lying still and pale before him.
He pulls on a pair of gloves and smoothes the hair off of Carter's forehead. The boy stirs and scrunches his nose.
"Hey, Carter, you're alright," he murmurs.
"B-Bobby…"
Strange.
"What's that?"
Carter chokes out a sob, "Hurts, Bobby…"
His heart leaps into his throat, but he has to focus on sewing him up right now.
"I know it hurts, bud, but I've got a syringe of lidocaine with your name on it that'll make the pain go away," he rumbles, "small pinch and a little burning."
He numbs both sides of the laceration, clenching his jaw at the answering whimpers.
He finds himself humming softly under his breath while he sutures the wound closed carefully, making sure each stitch is even and perfect. It's a hymn, something his mother would sing to him when he had nightmares.
Soft snores start emanating from Carter. He fell asleep. Peter smiles softly at the sight, smiles at the fact that Carter felt safe enough in his care to doze off.
Once the wound has been tended, an orderly comes to transfer him to CT.
Peter decides he's ignored the rest of the hospital for long enough and that he should get back to the surgical suite. Reluctantly, he goes.
An hour or so passes, and he's just scrubbed out of a hernia repair when his pager goes off.
It's the ER.
Carter.
He flies down the stairs and towards Trauma 1 when Mark stops him.
"Peter," he cautions, "CT is clear, looks like he just got knocked around a bit by an unruly patient. He's concussed, a bit altered."
There's static in his ears.
"We moved him into Exam 2 for some privacy, but I want to warn you that he's not acting like himself," Mark hesitates.
He swallows roughly. "How do you mean?"
"Don't freak out."
That definitely makes Peter want to freak out.
"He's… young."
Peter's brow furrows.
"He's 24, Mark."
He looks around furtively before lowering his voice, "He thinks he's a kid, Peter."
The static grows louder, and Peter bursts into Exam 2.
Carter is sitting up in his bed, clutching a teddy bear to his chest, pressed as far back into the bed as he can. He looks so small.
His eyes dart to the man in the doorway, and they widen, not in fear, but in curiosity.
"You fixed my head," he says, shyly, "thank you."
Peter smiles, softly. "Yeah, I did, Carter."
His nose scrunches up at the name.
"Why are you calling me that?"
His throat tightens. "What would you like me to call you?"
"My name's John, but I don't like it very much. My brother, Bobby, calls me Johnny. He says it's so that we can rhyme," he has this big childlike grin on his face.
Peter's blood runs cold. Brother. Bobby. 'My brother, Bobby, died of leukemia when I was 11.'
He clears his throat, "Bobby sounds pretty smart, huh?"
"He's the best! He lets me play Tarzan with him, even though he always makes me play cheetah and pushes me out of the tree because the cheetah is the bad guy. But he always lets me sleep in his bed with him after Father finishes with me in the study. He doesn't even complain when I cry! Mother says that boys aren't supposed to cry, that they have to be big and strong and quiet. Bobby says she’s stupid," the boy rambles, thoughts flying in all directions as the words just spill out.
Peter feels like he's gotten whiplash.
"That sounds like a lot for a kid to handle, Johnny," he tries, the name foreign on his tongue.
He shrugs, the motion clumsy in his body, much larger and lankier than he's used to. "It's okay. Bobby says that he'll always be there to protect me."
"How old are you, Johnny?" He's not sure he wants the answer.
"Nine. Bobby's eleven."
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose.
"Do you know who I am?"
"A doctor?"
He smiles a little, charmed despite himself, "Yeah. I am a doctor."
"Father says I have to be careful around doctors."
"Why's that, Johnny?"
"He says they'll try and ask me questions I'm not allowed to answer and plant ideas in my head."
Peter doesn't want to ask. But he has to. "What kind of questions?"
Johnny hesitates for the first time. Worrying the ear of the bear between his fingers. "Um… like asking what I do at home," he hedges.
"But it sounds like you have a lot of fun at home with Bobby?"
"Not with Bobby…"
"Johnny, what does your father do in the study?"
He whimpers, "I'm not 'sposed to tell…"
He really shouldn't be doing this. He really shouldn't push—Carter isn't in his right mind.
He does anyway.
"Does your father hurt you, Johnny?"
Tears spring to his eyes, and Carter curls in on himself, breathing harshly. "He says it's my fault. That he wouldn't have to do this if I would just behave. If I would just stop talking and crying and squirming against him like that, then he wouldn't have to—" he cuts himself off with a thick sob, and Peter's heart breaks.
"Okay, Johnny, okay, you don't have to tell me any more," he soothes, "I'm so sorry." He has his hands out, in view to try and stay as non-threatening as possible.
To his surprise, Carter bolts out of the bed and crashes into him, clinging to Peter desperately as he sobs.
"I don't wanna go back, Mr. Doctor, please don't make me go back," he cries into Peter's shirt.
"Peter, Johnny. Call me Peter," he murmurs into the boy's hair as he rubs his back, "you don't have to go back. He can't hurt you anymore, son."
Carter shudders at the name, breath starting to even out. He starts to sag against Peter as he starts to fade, the adrenaline rush taking it all out of him.
Peter walks them backwards towards the chair in the corner, pulling Carter into it with him, lying sideways across his lap like a child.
"I wanna see Bobby, Peter," the boy whines sleepily as he nuzzles into the side of his throat.
Peter takes a shaky inhale, "You will, Johnny. Just close your eyes, when you wake up, Bobby will be right here," he lies, voice cracking at the end.
Carter does, falling asleep as trustingly and carefree as only a child can.
Peter spends the next hour spiraling.
Hoping that Carter will be back to himself when he wakes. Catastrophizing what'll happen if he's not. Mind conjuring all sorts of nightmares that Carter might've experienced—his own father had betrayed the most foundational trust you can have.
Peter's had him all wrong. Carter wasn't some spoiled, filthy-rich brat. He was soft, and he was kind, and he was so bright despite what he went through.
Carter is a shining star, and Peter is so lucky his scumbag of a sperm-donor didn't snuff him out.
Nothing ever will, not if Peter has something to say about it.
He lets the boy sleep, safe in his arms, and thinks of all the ways he can be a safe space for him, the ways he can earn his trust and prove his worth.
With the way Carter looks at him, maybe he already has.