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I.
Later, Cassie McKay would wish, more than anything she’d wished for in her life, that the first sensation she remembered feeling that night was pain. Blinding, Earth-shattering pain; red and burning at the edges, as red as the blood that poured out of her onto the pavement. Anything would be better than the warm, comforting buzz in her bones she felt at this moment, coming sluggishly awake in the speeding ambulance.
The pen light being shined in her eyes almost immediately by the paramedic flash banged her retinas, and she jerked away, groaning.
“Ma’am – Doctor, you need to stay still!” barked the younger Medic, pressing down on her shoulder not unkindly, but urgently. As the situation demanded.
She barely heard him. The fuzz in her brain wouldn’t let up. She twisted and tried to curl into herself, finally seeing the tourniquet on her upper thigh. The blood.
It came back to her in parts. The street team. A young unhoused man she’d never seen before rushing her, grabbing for her bag. Her foolish attempt to run. The other doctor who came out with her too far away, far too far.. ‘GET THE DRUGS’. So loud. So incredibly loud, and too close to her now. Footsteps, several sets of them.
Then the catastrophic way she tripped over uneven pavement.
Gunshots.
Gunshots.
Blood.
She breathed in deep, so sudden that it was like she was coming up from ten feet underwater, and tried to jerk her leg clean out from under the gurney straps. Fuck! She couldn’t feel it. Why couldn’t she feel it? What did they do what did they do what did they-
_______________
The ambulance bay doors opened like a crash of thunder, the chaos that followed ripping the last hours of an already overrun dayshift apart at the seams.
“Hey! You guys know her! Someone get her to calm down! Now!”
one of the paramedics barked, fighting to keep pressure on McKay’s thigh, the tourniquet slightly loosened by her thrashing. Dangerous. Just enough that splattering of blood made it onto the floor as they rushed to Trauma One. Robby, Perlah, Mohan and Langdon were hot on their heels.
“Dana! Keep the interns and med students out of here! Cassie, MCKAY -” he leaned down, trying to get a soothing hand on her, but she was buck-wild, thrashing and absolutely ignorant to the damage she was causing herself.
“McKay I’m so sorry,” he said as calmly as he could, knowing he couldn’t be heard, saying it mostly for himself, and for what he was about to ask of his team, “Perlah, Princess, Mohan. Wrap the blanket tight for transfer. When she’s on the bed, I need you to hold her down.”
“Can’t we just give-” began Samira, protesting the violence of the idea, but it was only then she heard what her colleague was mumbling over and over again as she tried to break free from the grasp of her own personal hell,
“No meds. No meds. No more. No more. No more meds, no no-”
Oh. Oh fuck.
“We’ve got her! Cassie, we’ve got you,” She switched gears instantly. Helping the nurses wrap the grey wool blanket tight, counting out the transfer.
She leaned in close, putting her face in front of McKay’s, “we’ve got to hold you down, if you can hear us, I’m sorry Cass. I’m so sorry.”
And every available hand did just that, finally keeping McKay still enough that Robby could assess.
It wasn’t as bad as it could be.
But it wasn’t good.
He re-tightened the tourniquet quickly, stopping the sluggish flow of blood, quickly checking his watch and noting the time with a felt pen on the device itself and out loud to the room. His eyes roamed quickly to assess for other injuries, noting the unnatural angle of the foot on the same leg as the gunshot wound. Great. So maybe it was a little bit worse than he thought. But her foot wasn’t even a top five concern.
McKay had to be in a world of agony by now as whatever the paramedics gave her for the pain wore off. And if she wasn’t, she would be soon.
As it stood, her mumbling was quieting from exhaustion and she was no longer thrashing, too weak to fight off the hands pressing down on all available sides of her. But there was a feral, animalistic fear in her eyes that had the room uneasy, the oxygen they were all breathing laden with electricity. Hooked up to the monitors now, McKay’s heart rate was sky high and climbing. They had to take the tourniquet off as soon as Garcia came down, if the surgeon was going to have any chance of determining what was needed before they got her off the floor to the OR.
There was no other choice but to give her something. This wasn’t sustainable. The nurses arms and Samira’s were tiring. And could be better put to use placing IVs. Assessing. Preparing her for transport.
“McKay,” Langdon bent down to get to her level, perhaps the only one in the room who had fully picked up on what was going on, his heart breaking behind the urgency of it all, “we need to give you something for the pain. We need to do it now.”
McKay broke loose from Princess with her right arm and grabbed Langdon’s wrist, hard.
“They gave me Fent,” she gasped through a wince. Her teeth grit. “Don't give me anymore. Please don’t give me anymore. Nine-” a loud gasp of pain cut herself off. She was fading now as the team surrounding her began to work at cleaning her wound under Garcia’s command, “nine years ago it almost killed me. Please. Please.”
And then Garcia’s gloved finger probed into the inside of the gaping hole in her thigh. She passed out.
II.
She woke up in stages. Lost. Undeniably drugged.
It was that final point that had her panicking and pulling at the IV in her arm.
“Hey, Cassie, Cassie, stop,” Victoria Javadi rushed forward out of her chair and held McKay’s hand in her own, discreetly pressing the pager button before beginning to stroke over the older woman’s wrist with her slender fingers, trying to sooth her.
“Victoria,” she rasped once her pulse lowered, the monitors blessedly quieting down, “what -”
Javadi quickly stepped backward and pulled the visitor chair closer so she could plop herself down right beside her mentor, continuing to stroke her hand and wrist, absentmindedly as she quickly but delicately spoke,
“It was my turn to sit with you, you’ve been out for a full day now. 20 hours.” Victoria’s lip trembled and she bit it, frustrated at herself for failing to keep it together, but nevertheless pressing forward, “you were shot while working with the street team. Do you remember?”
Cassie, tearing up as well simply from watching the younger woman try not to cry, jerkily nodded, “yeah,” she coughed to clear the lump in her throat, “yeah I remember. But I’m ok, baby. I promise.”
Victoria laughed wetly, “you’re not seriously trying to comfort me right now.”
“What can I say, I’m predictable,” McKay smiled, wincing as she shifted slightly in the bed without realizing. Unbidden, her eyes drifted to her own bedside, where the IV bags were hung and the monitors continually beeped.
She looked behind Victoria to see Robby and Langdon enter. And tried to will herself to stay calm.
“Please tell me there aren’t any opioids in there.” She bit out, voice low.
Robby hung his head slightly, silently signaling for Langdon to take control. And he did, coming towards the bed as gentle and cowed as Victoria had ever seen him. She stood and asked nervously, smiling reflexively - an annoying habit of hers, she knew - even though absolutely nothing was good or funny, “should- should I go?”
“Yes,” said Langdon and Robby, at the same time that McKay said, “No. Stay.”
She nodded, and stayed.
“We’re tapering you off what was given to you to facilitate a safe surgery. That’s all.” Langdon stated firmly, his tone soft, like he was talking to a horse that might just bolt.
“When that bag right there,” he pointed, “is empty, all the pain meds will have run dry. I promise. I need you to look at me and say clearly that you don’t want anything stronger than non-opioids if you mean it, Cassie. You’ve got a broken medial metatarsal bone in your right foot, and a complex gunshot wound on the same leg that needed extensive surgery. Whatever your answer, this is not a moral failing on your part. It’s not.”
McKay sighed heavily and sat up as calmly as she’d been since waking in the ambulance almost a full day before.
“I don’t want any more hard drugs, I’m sorry. I just can’t. I won’t.”
She didn’t realize she was squeezing Victoria’s hand. Hard. Victoria squeezed back, still not fully sure what was going on. But she had an idea. She was a former child-genius after all. Her still wet eyes trailed along the sharp lines of McKay’s set jaw.
“Okay.” Said Langdon with finality, jotting something down in her chart.
“If you change your mind…” Robby began from behind the scene, but trailed off as he received three varying looks that urged him, however gently, to stop.
“Okay.” He said instead, echoing Langdon.
“I’ll page pain management, Dr. McKay,” he continued, “this is going to be hard. You know that.”
Langdon followed the chief attending out with a nod of concern mixed with respect. McKay said to herself, low enough that Javadi barely heard, “maybe it’s what I deserve.”
III.
“Mom!” Harrison yelled, excitement and fear mixed into one loud sound as he barrelled into the room, Chad close behind.
“Don’t jump on the bed bud. Stop. Be careful.” His father urged, briefly grabbing him by the shoulder to slow him down. “Be careful,” he repeated, looking down at McKay with a kind of pity that she hated, “mom’s hurt.”
“I’m fine,” she reflexively replied as Harrison scootched up next to her on the bed and put his head on her shoulder.
“Well don’t lie to him!” Chad retorted, barely trying to hide the frustration brewing from the depths of his own worry and concern.
“What do you mean, lying, are you -” started Harrison frantically. She shot her ex a hateful look, soothing her son, running her free hand through his slightly too-long hair.
“Chad, leave it. Harrison, do you want to hang out with Victoria? We’ll need her - or someone’s - help getting you off the bed in a little bit so I can rest.”
“Tori! Yeah!” The young boy cheered for his babysitter, as Chad barely repressed rolling his eyes.
“I’ll get her, but Harrison is staying with us for a while, I’m taking him home tonight.”
“Obviously,” McKay hissed, “look at me! And the paramedics gave me -” here she mouthed so Harrison wouldn’t hear - ‘pain meds’ “without my consent, so I’ve got that to deal with too, lucky me right?”
Chad gulped, shaken “I- I had no idea, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I’m aware. Now please go.”
‘I need someone in the room with me who actually cares. Who’s going to stay. I need Victoria.’ she thought, but didn’t say. She lied to herself, claiming she didn’t know where these thoughts were coming from at all.
IV. Two weeks later
“I’m staying with you,” protested Victoria, “you don’t need a freaking night nurse.”
“Vic,” Cassie stood shakily on her crutches, the sweat running down her forehead and sticking to her bangs a regular sight by now as she fought through the beginning stages of recovery, and her first terrible physio appointments, with hardly anything more than fucking Tylenol in her blood,
“You have no idea what you’re offering.”
“Don’t I?” retorted Javadi, throwing her hands up in frustration as she moved forward to help Cassie maneuver around a nursing cart.
“You’re going to get sick of me, of this!” McKay replied, “you’ve hardly gone home as it is. I have no idea how you’re getting through your shifts.”
Victoria suddenly looked guilty, “I called out of two of them this week,” she half-whispered, apologetically, “I didn’t want you to know.”
McKay’s eyebrows rose in disbelief, pulling herself out of the young student doctor’s grasp.
“Are you stupid?” She snapped, and immediately regretted it. “No. I’m sorry. Or maybe I’m not. Because you can’t be doing this. You aren’t responsible for me.”
“Well maybe I want to be!” Javadi replied hotly, far too loudly. A passing surgical ward nurse closed the wall curtain to give them some privacy. “You really scared me,” Victoria whimpered as the fight left her as quick as it came, sitting down heavily on the hospital bed, “I don’t think I trust anyone else…to make sure you’re ok.”
McKay’s heart broke, but also stuttered in a way that felt like a sort of regrowth.
“Okay,” she murmured, shifting onto one crutch and holding her other arm out wide for Victoria to stumble forward into an awkward, urgent hug, “okay baby. Okay.” She sat them both back onto the bed before they fell.
“Can I ask you something, without you thinking I’m being nosy? Because it’s really not my business,” began Victoria after a long moment of toying with McKay’s chain around her neck.
“The opioid thing?” led McKay, expecting this eventually. Though it didn’t mean she wasn’t also dreading it. Victoria had seen her writhing in pain, and waking up fitfully far too often those first ten days to not have questions. She saw the anguish in the girl’s face even through her own mask of pain, even as she whined and whimpered and cursed as Victoria dutifully held cold compresses against her reddened face. She wondered time and time again why the girl was doing all of this for her, what she’d done to deserve the attention of an angel like Victoria. Cassie was only just now coming out of the woods, but rehab to maintain mobility was killing her. Maybe killing them both, in different ways. She only hoped and prayed that her mentee wasn’t sticking by her just out of a sense of duty. Though she hated herself a little bit for hoping that. She shouldn’t want anything else.
“Yeah,” Victoria breathed out, leaning back to look her full in the face, dropping her necklace. “Why are you torturing yourself? I hate seeing you in pain. And I heard what you said that first day…you don’t deserve this. You don’t.”
McKay didn’t say anything for a moment. She felt her heart rate quickening, her face flushing from either shame or fear. Would this one last thing be a bridge too far? Would Victoria finally realize she was made of baggage, not flesh and bone?
“Cassie. Tell me you know you don’t deserve this, please.” Victoria begged.
“I’m an addict,” the older woman said in response (abruptly, like ripping off a bandaid so she couldn’t chicken out) “and I know. I know being in real physical pain, that being injured is different. I needed the pain meds, Vic. But I couldn’t take them. When I woke up feeling numbed out in the back of that ambulance I thought for a second that I’d relapsed. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because I’m not trying to scare you away…but I understand why you’d want to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Victoria whispered, grabbing her hand to hold.
“Ok. But I’m warning you. There’s more. Last chance to back away and go spend time with people your own age. Or normal people, at least.”
“Who do you think I am? And since when do you care about ‘normal’?” Victoria retorted, not unkindly. The softness in her eyes broke the older woman’s resolve.
Cassie sighed, “Yeah, okay.”
“Tell me, stop holding onto it all on your own.”
“Nine years ago Chad found me on the bathroom floor overdosing. We were already separated, he was supposed to be dropping off Harrison,” McKay, for what felt like the first time in years (because it was) started to cry, chest heaving.
“He couldn’t wake me up. Harrison was only three years old,” she choked out, everything spilling over now, panic closing in as she began to speak faster, as fast as her stuttering breath,
“I lost Harrison for years, years. And I almost lost my dad, if I died it would have killed him.
I thought I was dying in the back of that ambulance, I hadn’t felt that kind of – that kind of peace in so long, there was no pain. I thought,” she gasped, “I thought there was no pain because I was gone.”
Victoria couldn’t take it anymore, letting out a sobbing gasp of her own and pulling Cassie into her chest, repeating over and over “No. No. No.”
“Cassandra McKay you’re not going anywhere do you fucking hear me? No.” Breathing in auburn hair, trying to inhale every particle of Cassie into her nose.
“Did you- just - curse?” She stuttered into Victoria’s shirt, causing Victoria to laugh-hiccup and gently push her back slightly so she could look into her eyes.
“Why do you keep focusing on the wrong things?” She asked, sounding exasperated and fond beyond her twenty-one years, “I cursed because I love you, idiot.”
Cassie’s world ground to a halt, her mind, the pain, all of it going silent for the first time since she got shot.
“No,” she muttered, and then a bit louder, laughing sardonically, “no you don’t.”
Victoria simply looked at her wide-eyed for a moment, appalled.
“If you weren’t injured I’d yell at you. You have to have known. I haven’t slept on your couch and made breakfast with you at least once a week for months just because I babysit Harrison. I know my way out the door if I want to go. But I want you. You don’t have to say anything right now, but say ok. Tell me you hear me.”
“Ok,” Cassie breathed out, a little shell shocked.
“Good.” And then, “I’m taking you home.”
V. Epilogue/And One Week More
Cassie woke up in bed to Victoria wrapped around her like a squid, yet still somehow managing to avoid further hurting her foot or thigh. She smiled, running her hand through long black hair until Victoria giggled sleepily and burrowed ever closer, lips against Cassie’s neck.
Cassie froze. They hadn’t kissed. Nor had Cassie acknowledged Victoria’s confession that last day in the hospital. Not yet.
She just couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Or to be okay with it. Not when she was relying on Victoria so much. She felt like an invalid. Like she was a burden to the woman in her arms.
But Victoria couldn’t sleep without her these last couple of nights. First Cassie had a nightmare, waking up screaming so loud that she’d thought Cassie had fallen to the floor. Victoria had almost hurt herself running in from her spot on the couch to check on her.
And then Victoria had one of her own three days ago. She wouldn’t talk about it. But Cassie had an inkling of what Victoria’s bad dream had shown. It was clear in the way she looked haunted as she left for her shift. Like, after cuddling for the first time that night, she didn’t want to let Cassie go.
Echoes in her mind, perhaps, of cheated death. Death and a bathroom floor.
“I love you too,” McKay murmured into the sleeping girl’s hair.
Before falling back asleep, she swore she heard the tiniest, “I know.”