Archive of Our Own

Mike is sleep-deprived, twenty-eight, and halfway convinced that his Bubbe is right about his constant night shifts turning him into a moody vampire. 

He’s been awake for something like twenty-three hours at this point and he’s pretty sure he can hear his own blood whooshing around in his body; it isn’t a good sound. The most sleep he’s gotten in days was forty-five minutes in an on-call room, his short coat smells like BO and he’s afraid to take it off lest he be rank enough to rival a Garbage Pail Kid, and he lives in constant fear of his pager going off again. He keeps checking it, certain that he’s missed a page. He’s pretty sure he’s having ghost page hallucinations at this point. 

He takes another sip of his thermos of iced coffee currently sweating onto his thigh. The Pittsburgh summer humidity has followed him inside despite the air-conditioning and somewhere behind the reception desk, a fax machine is whining, a dot-matrix printer chatters intermittently, and somebody has a radio playing quietly enough that Mike can just make out the Pirates game through the static. He thinks he’s losing his mind, piece by overstimulated piece. He’s surrounded by boring magazines with curling corners, a beige telephone bolted to the wall, clipboards, carbon-copy forms, and a TV mounted so high in one corner, that half the screen is just green glare. From what he can puzzle out, it’s some soap that Bubbe would probably adore if she was here. 

But Mike is a big boy now, he’s old enough to get fitted for his latest pair of legs by his lonesome. 

Him being a double-amputee wasn’t caused by an accident or anything, he didn’t lose his legs to anything cool or remotely interesting — it was bilateral tibial hemimelia, his tibias didn’t form right and his fibulae were more or less useless. As a baby and then a toddler: he was casted, recasted, revised, reconstructed, and operated on again and again and again, until finally, at age three — his surgeons finally reached the miserable conclusion that the repeated surgeries and vascular problems had turned both his tiny legs necrotic, and what little remained below his knees then became the foundation for the prostheses he has worn ever since. He doesn’t remember having flesh legs, he doesn’t miss ‘em. 

He’s had all manner of legs over the years: wood, fiberglass, leather, metal, resin and polycarb. He’s been strapped, buckled, braced and tied into every sort of configuration. But they’ve all gotten him from Point A to Point B, and then up enough Pittsburgh hills to make him question the existence of a benevolent God, despite being a perfectly respectable Reform Jew who will nevertheless be at Temple during the High Holy Days if his call schedule permits it — Bubbe, don’t hit me with your slipper again, I’m going, I’m going. 

Mike takes another slurp of his thermos and lets his eyes drift to the redhead parked next to him. He’s what Bubbe would call sheyn vold — pretty as gold, with curls like copper that gleam like a fresh penny in the sunshine, a pair of freckled plush lips and a round little belly that Bubbe would pinch, baykhel. He’s sitting in a hospital-issue manual chair, with a big VA spray-painted on the back. His right pant leg is rolled up and predictably empty below the knee and Mike can see a thick beige dressing peeking out the end. He’s also sporting a fresh piece of hospital jewelry around his left wrist and he looks absolutely miserable about it.

Mike can’t help but want to fuss. He blames Bubbe. Bubbe has apparently ruined him for the concept of seeing somebody look miserable and simply walking away. She’d called it menschlichkeit when he was little, which had sounded a lot more noble than you’re not allowed to ignore someone who looks like they’re about to keel over and die in front of you, Mischa, for shame. It had become ingrained somewhere deep in his bones and the Hippocratic Oath only cemented it further, like the cementoblastoma in his lower jaw. Also, much like Bubbe, Mike is a terrible oversharer. 

“VA?” He asks, wrinkling his nose. The redhead just looks up slowly, looking vaguely nauseated — Mike considers himself an expert in nausea and the hotdogs at PNC, which no Bubbe, of course he doesn’t eat, and that shrimp cocktail was mock. Mike gestures vaguely at the back of his chair. “Why're you here? I figured they made legs for you guys in-house.”

“They sent me here to talk about it, I guess.” The guy’s raspy Boston accent has Mike eyeing the room for a trash can; they’re gonna need it soon. The redhead’s eyes are moving like he’s got the spins. His lips are almost colorless and his freckles stand out in three distinct shades across his cheeks and nose: little rusty brown ones over a scattering of lighter copper freckles, with a handful so pale they are almost lost against his skin. Mike also considers himself an expert at cinnamon sprinkling on pastries. 

“Name's Mike,” He says, offering his hand, because that's what you do. 

The redhead looks at it for a second, then reaches out too. His palm is clammy and his grip is weak for someone with biceps that big. “‘m Jack.”

“You about to toss your cookies, Jack?”

“Nah.” Jack wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, trembling. It does not inspire the confidence in Mike, that Jack isn’t going to ralph and add to the smell on his short coat. “It's just… painkillers.”

Mike winces, ah geez, “You're taking painkillers?”

“Got off 'em, cold turkey, yesterday, when I got out of the hospital.” Oh, the small gags between every couple of syllables do not bode well. 

“Without tapering? That was stupid as fuck, Jack.”

“‘m nah smart.”

Mike leans closer and yup, Jack reeks like he just got out of a hospital bed, one that he was marinating in for far too long. He puts the back of his hand against Jack's forehead. Decorously, he knows he should probably ask permission. He does not — decorum can go fuck itself. “You're hot enough to fry an egg on.” Jack just stares at him, with the illustrious composure of the septic. Mike rolls his eyes and squeezes the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to take out a couple blackheads, “You have a fever, soldier.”

“Oh.” Oh?!

“When did it start looking bad? Did they tell you the wound was infected?” 

Jack looks away, fingers digging into the shitty rests of his chair. “They said they weren't sure.”

Oh, they weren’t sure. Well, then yeah, why not discharge him? He can die at home! Mike closes his eyes for half a second — of course, of fucking course. “Did they culture it?”

“I dunno.” Do ya know anything, Jack? Is the desire to stay alive not a factory setting? 

“Did they draw blood? Did they give you antibiotics?”

Jack shakes his head, shrugs and Mike takes a long, slow, deep breath. There are several things he could say. None of them would be particularly professional. So he settles for, “Okay, you're not getting fitted for a leg today, Jack. I’m sorry, but I can't in good conscience let you sit here for hours, not get measured because your leg looks fucked, but have them explain sockets and suspension systems to you, and then send you home with a fever and a potentially infected surgical wound. I’m a doctor, I can’t.”

Jack just looks increasingly distressed, and more nauseated. Mike thinks it’s a bad day for this guy all around. “But I need the leg, man. Fuck, Mike I need to start the process or whatever. I can’t stay like this.”

Mike chooses to ignore the slight there and just picks up his thermos to drain the rest of it in one swallow. “Later. Right now, I'm taking you to the ER.” 

The ED’s like a revolving door, Mike never gets to leave. “Can I push?” Jack just stares at him, again, those big pretty eyes turned fever-bright, before he nods. Mike starts pushing Jack toward the exit and thinking about antibiotics, blood cultures, inflammatory markers, imaging, a surgical consultation, and whatever the fuck that dressing is hiding. He’s very worried the VA botched something. He really, really hopes the VA hasn't, but it’s the VA. The wound is covered too thoroughly for him to tell from here, and that's what bothers him most. If it were simply an ugly postoperative wound, fine. But Jack looks wrong. He's febrile, he's tachycardic, and if Mike's clinical instincts are worth anything more than a quart of milk, he needs to be on sepsis protocol. 

“Why are you doing this, man?” Jack’s voice sounds small. “Why do you even give a shit?”

Mike doesn’t have a good answer. “The bullshit oath they make us say in med school, I guess? I don’t know, Jackass, just let me help.”

“Hey,” Jack giggles out of nowhere, tilts his head, and smiles at him, as big and bright as the sun, “Thas’ what my Sergeant used to call me.”

Oy, at least he only has to deal with a couple of hours of Jack at most.