“Robby! Coroners on his way!” Dana hollered, bright red charge phone still pressed against her ear.
Robby held a single thumbs-up above his head as he led the way to the glass doors of the ambulance bay. “Coroner? For Louie?” Joy inquired out loud, seemingly to no one.
“No next of kin to take him, Coroner’s problem now.” Ogilvie cut in before Dennis could even open his mouth. Joy pursed her lips against her septum’s jewelry and huffed out a sigh before turning her attention back to the wailing ambulance incoming. A seizing man was pulled from the ambulance, followed by his sobbing wife who explained that he simply collapsed at their fourth of July barbeque.
“He’s been seizing this whole time?” Dennis asked the paramedic.
“No, it’s only been a few minutes but there’s been no response to thirty CCs of Midazolam,” She explained.
“Push five milligrams Diazepam, we need to stop the seizing so we can intubate,” Robby commanded, taking over for the paramedic holding the man’s head in place. “Sir? Sir, can you hear me?” Santos tried as she held the man’s eyelids open.
“Pupils are reactive, did he hit his head?” Santos questioned the distraught woman behind them.
“No! Nothing like that! He was just at the grill and he collapsed! Please, just make him stop!” She wailed. “We’re doing everything we can ma’am, does he have any allergies?” Dennis asks, holding the mans seizing arm.
“Just a small one, to pineapple, but he hasn’t had that since he was young”
“Does he take any prescription medication?” Ogilvie asks.
“Nothing recently, last time would’ve been two years ago when he got a tooth pulled.” She added.
“This barbeque, was it at your house? Are there any bee or wasp nests nearby?” Joy asks as Donnie prepares to administer the Diazepam into the mans arm.
“We’ve had issues in the past, but- but- I don’t know! Could a sting really cause this?” The woman cries. The man begins wheezing harshly, his throat beginning to close.
“Hold the Diazepam! Check for any stings,” Robby commands, moving to begin cutting the man’s shirt.
Ogilvie and Joy tag-team the man’s legs, checking all over for any noticeable stings. Santos is looking over the man’s hand when Dennis spots a large welt under his armpit. “Found it!” He calls.
“We need half a milligram Epinephrine! What could have caused this uhm, Joy,” Robby inquires as the drug is injected into the man’s arm.
Joy looks up towards Ogilvie, who raises his eyebrow but stays silent.
“Severe anaphylaxis caused by wasp venom, allergy was likely unknown leading to delayed medical attention and reasoning why an epi pen wasn’t used at the scene.” She supplied as Robby nods. The man slowly stopped seizing, Robby releases his head and begins shining a small flashlight into the man’s eyes.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me? You had an allergic reaction, You’re at Pittsburgh trauma medical center.” Robby explains calmly.
The mans mouth was open as he panted for air, his eyes darted around the room wildly. “Wuh, wh- “he whimpered as he tried to sit up. “My wife, Pen, where- “He began pulling at the various monitors attached to his chest.
“No, sir, we need you to- “Dennis tried before being lightly pushed out of the way by the man’s wife. “Pete! You were having a seizure! I- “She began fussing as she threw her arms around her husband, weeping now from joy. The team took a step back to allow the wife to hold her husband as he was now stabilizing.
“Good find,” Robby leans towards Whitaker as he balls up his gloves. A blush briefly flushes his face as Whitaker mutters a thanks by the time Robby was gone.
“We’ll need to keep an eye on you here for a few hours, and it may be a while with our servers down, Ogilvie here will grab some admission paperwork and hopefully we can get you two out of here in time for your barbeque.” Dennis explains.
Ogilvie manages to push his way to the nurse’s station where he takes one of the clipboards from the charting area, taking a paper from the shelf with a small bee decal next to it. Allergic reaction. Amusing. From his place he catches sight of Robby leaning against the station speaking to a rather squat man with a push-broom mustache. Curiosity got the best of him, and he felt himself inconspicuously leaning towards the two men to hear as much of their conversation as he could.
“Pulmonary hemorrhage I heard, not a good way to go.” The short man said as he flipped through Louie’s clipboard.
“It was hard, for all of us, he was close to everyone.” Robby sighs, running a hand through his hair.
“I’ll post the numbers for the grief counselor around once your systems are back up, and I’ll be in touch with Kiara if anyone has any other concerns. In the meantime, how are you holding up Robby?”
Robby shook his head and huffed out a half-laugh before suddenly directing the attention elsewhere. Elsewhere being Ogilvie.
“Ogilvie! I don’t think you’ve met my good friend, Kristopher Graves,” Robby turns to face him.
“The coroner?” Ogilvie asks as the shorter man extends his hand. “Precisely,” Graves assures.
“Kris, this here is one of our medical students, James Ogilvie. He observed Louie when Dr. Whitaker treated him for the fluid in Louies abdomen.” Robby explains. Graves holds onto Ogilvie’s hand for just a moment too long before letting go and smiling knowingly at Robby.
“And how are you holding up young man?” He asks.
“Good, I’m good. ‘is just a lot for a first day,” He motions to the general chaos happening all around them. The fax machine is once again beeping angrily at Princess, a whirlwind of clipboards goes in and out of the nurses station and every once in a while, the small bell at the edge of the stations desk gets rung.
Graves nods as he takes it all in. “Yes, I’ve heard all about the cyberattack,”
“Luckily for them, most things at the coroners office are still done on paper.” Robby chuckles. Graves waves him off with a good-natured smile. “We may be old farts, but we’ve never got such chaos going on,” he adds.
Ogilvie plasters a soft smile on his face as he wracks his brain for small talk topics. “So, you two go way back?” he offers.
Robby crosses his arms and smiles. “I started here around the same time Graves started over at the office,”
“And I’ve got to drop by here pretty often, lots of unidentified individuals come through here.” Graves explains.
Ogilvie nods as if he knew all too well, as if it weren’t his first day in the building. Among the multitudes of continuous noises around the department he could hardly notice the sound of footsteps approaching the small huddle. It took Robby’s acknowledgement for him to even realize that another person had entered the conversation.
“Ah, Robby, you remember my student intern, James I don’t think you’ve met [reader].” Graves introduced.
The person next to Graves’ features briefly lifted from their set state into a soft smile, revealing a soft blush carefully spread over their cheekbones. They were dressed in head-to-toe black and stood just slightly shorter than Graves.
“Nice to meet you, James.” They say as they offer their hand.
He paused momentarily before clasping their hand and shaking. “You can call me Ogilvie.” He says in what he hopes was in a nonchalant manner. They smile. “It was nice seeing you again Robby, and congratulations on quite the eventful first shift James. We’ve got the guys waiting in the van out back-“Graves tries to finish when the screeching of a cars tires makes itself known just outside of the ambulance bay.
Robby is immediately on the move, donning gloves before Ogilvie can even react. Dennis rushes to follow the attending out to the bay. “Ogilvie! With me!” He calls.
Theres a complete commotion outside in the ambulance bay. The air is even stickier and wet outside and it quickly trumps it in volume as two men begin yelling. The cars back door is thrown open and a woman is inside the car weeping. “You need to help him! He needs help, please!” She yells as Santos helps her out of the vehicle. The woman was completely coated in a layer of blood, some drying and crusting on her hands. In which she held a motorcycle helmet with a cracked visor.
“What happened?” Robby asks one of the men, whose eyes were blown wide in shock.
“There was an accident, I was filming him riding on the highway and he just- he-“ The man can’t even finish his sentence.
“He hit the guardrail,” The woman says.
“Where is he?” Dennis asks.
“Behind us,” The other man says, pointing across the street where sirens just entered hearing range.
“You beat them here? How?” Santos asks, offering to take the helmet from the woman.
“What are you guys? Cops?” The driver says just as the group of doctors turns their heads to the oncoming ambulance. Dana comes out of the glass doors to usher in the group of blood-soaked misfits out of the July heat. The sirens stop just as the ambulance crosses the bays borders. The first words that come out of the paramedics mouth as Robby opens the doors is “It’s bad.”
The gurney’s wheels touch the ground and Ogilvie knows. He’s never seen anything like this, not even in textbooks. You could see the impression of the guardrail in the mans abdomen still, the ribcage being almost completely caved in. The mans mangled spine was visible from where Ogilvie stood behind Robby, and his skull looked as if it had been crushed like a walnut. Robby swallowed hard. “Is there a heartbeat?” he asked grimly. Ogilvie could see his jaw tense as he got his answer.
“Briefly, on the way over, but we lost it.” The other paramedic responds instead.
“We just need you to call it.”
A firework goes off somewhere in the distance. Robby looks up at the monitor emitting a continuous ringing tone, and places his index and middle finger against the pulp that was the man’s jugular. After a breath and a glimpse at his watch.
“Time of death, 4:56 PM.”
The group collectively bows their head as one of the paramedics flips the switch on the monitor. Ogilvie glimpses upwards towards the glass doors of the department to see Dana and Princess huddled around the woman, now wailing while clutching the helmet. They unfolded a white sheet and gently draped it over his mangled form so as to not scare the patients inside and wheeled him inside. Once inside the department everyone all but dispersed, save for Joy, who would never admit it but lingered in Ogilvie’s shadow for just a touch longer than normal, like a child on the first day of school before the environment becomes familiar and less scary.
Robby was nowhere to be seen, Santos had already hoofed halfway through the er to the breakroom, to his left Dana, Princess and Kiara were trying to herd the group of bikers towards the family room before the total hysterics revealed themselves. Ogilvie’s lips suddenly felt very dry, his whole throat felt dry actually. He had no idea what features his face was contorting into and he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Leaving Joy behind, he began in quick strides towards the nearest restroom. He hadn’t even noticed it with all of the chaos of the day, but it felt like his bladder was going to burst.
Rounding a corner, he slammed the bathroom door shut behind him without even checking if there was anyone else in there with him. Inside a stall he dropped down to sit. He felt sweaty, so sweaty, there was too much moisture in the air, in the bathroom, on him. He wanted to just claw his scrubs straight off of his body, instead he let his head tilt and rest against the cool plastic of the stall walls. The image of the man- what was left of him that is- was still sitting behind his eyelids, waiting for him. A shaky breath in did nothing to help, except add more moisture into his already sweltering insides. He shut his eyes and tried to count his heart beats. Ogilvie was a medical professional, he wasn’t stupid and he knew the blatant symptoms of a panic attack. But what was there to do when there’s a group of people out there who just witnessed something no human should, because someone made an idiotic mistake that changed the entire trajectory of their lives and ended his? What was there to do when the only thing left of an entire grown man that isn’t squashed to a pulp is a helmet? A helmet with barely a scratch- so pristine beyond its visor that it had to be brand new, never worn.
Ogilvie was so, so sweaty but his mouth was so very dry. Leaning forward, he peered down to see only one set of feet shared this chamber of heat with him. He stood on lanky, shaking legs and stumbled like a newborn fawn to the sink. Cupping the warm running water in his hands, he sips sloppily. It’s relieving but not enough. Looking up from the water dribbling out of his long fingers he sees a mess.
“That was rough,” He breaks the ice.
He’s sweaty, shocker, his curls stick to his forehead in odd ways. His eyes look haunted and blown; his pink lips have a semi-circle of red in the center from where he’d been unknowingly biting at it. He breathes in, sucking up more wet air. A toilet flushes and breaks him out of his self-evaluation and he bolts. His long legs take him out of the bathroom before the stall door even swings open.
The ER is just as bright and noisy as he left it, swarming with people and paper and coughs and the beeping of that stupid fax machine. A familiar face emerges from the crowd, Ogilvie would know those sad sunken eyes anywhere. Dennis approached him in a way he could imagine approaching an agitated bull, with caution for any potential set-offs but with enough assurance to dull any confusion about his purpose in approaching him.
Ogilvie rocks on his heels and blinks back tears.
“Don’t go back out there.”
His gaze flickers downwards.
“Not yet anyways. I can see it got to you, walk it off and you can come back when your head is clear. Doctors orders,” Dennis chuckles as he fiddles with his badge.
This gets a huff of a laugh out of the taller blonde, but he can hardly talk through the lump in his throat.
“It doesn’t ever get easier, does it?”
Dennis shrugs too casually for what just happened. “You learn to accept it. Find balance.” He says words beyond his own wisdom.
“A great man told me that once.” That’s why.
Dennis rejoins the bustling crowd of scrubs and papers, leaving Ogilvie in the dust. He felt so useless just standing there. But if his mentor wanted him to ‘walk it off’ then walk it off he shall. But he needed some quiet, all the noise just reminded him of the scene.
His tired feet took him to an elevator, and before he could even think about it, he was riding up to the third floor, where the abandoned wing of the hospital was. At least, if the gossip he’d overheard between Perlah and Olive was true, that’s what he’d find. When he first stepped off of the elevator, he was sorely disappointed. It was quiet, yes, but not nearly abandoned. Ogilvie huffed a breath out of his nose and kept walking. Seeing empty rooms and empty beds was so unnatural after spending the day in the ER where patients would be seen sitting on the floor if they could be.
A fluorescent light above his head flickered erratically for a moment before fading out completely. The further down the never-ending hallway he went, more and more of these dead lights appeared until he finally found a hall shrouded completely in darkness, the only source of illumination being a single window in the center of the hall. The late afternoon sun cast the fluorescent white walls in an eerie shade of orange, and in the middle of the light was a familiar figure shrouded in black. Their clothing and drawn up hair stood out against the warm glow in such a way that the scene resembled a total eclipse. The hair framing their face curled sweetly against the side of their face, reminding Ogilvie of a crescent moon.
“[Reader]...?” The words breathed out of him before he could even think.
Their eyes lingered on the clipboard in front of them for just a second longer before their head turned to face him.
“James,” They smiled.
“I didn’t know ER residents came up here too,” Their voice matched the calm atmosphere of the dark hallway.
He shifted his weight from one aching foot to the other. “Ogilvie, and we usually don’t, Dr. Whitaker told me to take a walk,” He explained.
They half nodded, having witnessed the events in the bay. “I understand, it must be hard to come back to work after seeing something like that.” They offer, setting their pen in their lap.
Ogilvie pressed his lips together, a silent understanding that, it was, in fact hard to come back from that.
“Why are you up here?” He needed to change the topic.
“Mr. Graves needed to speak with the people who brought your patient in, we’ll likely be collecting him with Louie.” They start. “He sent me to take care of paperwork; I needed the quiet. And the light.” They say, motioning towards the window.
Ogilvie nodded, swallowing the lump developing in his throat. “Do you mind if I sit?” He asked, feeling the quake coming back to his knees.
They pressed their lips together in a welcoming smile, their eyebrow quirking just slightly upwards. The hand holding their pen waved to the open side of the bench. He dropped down onto the chilly bench. His hands immediately clasped together on top of his knees, needing somewhere to be. He could feel [reader]’s cool eyes linger on him. “How are you handling things Ogilvie?” His name flowed from their lips like water, much easier than his first name.
He really didn’t want to talk about what happened in the bay, didn’t want to acknowledge it’s place in reality quite yet. “Fine,” he says unconvincingly, refusing to meet their eye. They don’t say anything back, he knows they don’t believe him, so they leave the silence unfilled, waiting for him to correct himself.
His jaw tenses and he chews on the inside of his lips. “He wasn’t wearing a helmet.” He says, as if that explains anything. [Reader]’s eyebrow quirks up in interest, this was new information to them.
Ogilvie finally turns to meet their eyes. Their face is eerily unmoving, their pupils stay trained on Ogilvie, without a single quirk or twitch of muscle. “The helmet- it was new, he was covered in dirt,” under all of the blood “the helmet wasn’t, his head wouldn’t have looked like that if he was wearing it.” His knee began bouncing lightly as [reader] remained unmoving.
“And this is bothering you?”
“I just- I can’t figure out why,” he knew he was saying too much, he didn’t know [reader], they didn’t need to hear any of this. They we’re just here to do their job and he was dumping this on them, he was so bothered by this, and they were the one who was going to have to try to sew him back together, so they’d even have a chance of identifying him. [Reader]’s face remained unchanged, but they had noticeably leaned towards Ogilvie, as if looking at him closer could help them piece together what was happening in his mind. “You can’t control what brings people to you, all you can do is try Ogilvie, and when things like this happen you have to leave it up to us.” They said, he could see them calculating his reaction.
Ogilvie breathed in, as if their words gave him life again. His lip was between his teeth again.
“What’s going to happen to him?” He sounded like a little kid.
“And if you can’t figure out who he is?”
[Reader] leaned back into their own personal bubble again. The black pen, clearly from a funeral home, twiddled between two of their fingers. “Well,” they began.
“We don’ t know who he is yet, the people he came in with didn’t know his legal name.” They crossed their legs. “If we can identify him, and there is a next of kin, we’ll get in contact and hold him until a proper funeral is arranged and they decide what to do with him.”
“Then we’ll examine him here, determine a cause of death, and take him to the office. From there he’ll either be cremated or buried in a paupers grave.”
Ogilvie could feel his eyes getting wet. They could see it too. “You have more questions,” They said matter-of-factly. They uncrossed their legs and stood, Ogilvie’s head following them. “Help me find a vending machine and we can walk and talk,” They offered warmly.
Ogilvie nodded, mouth open just enough to taste their powdery scent. He stood above them and watched as they took in his height with a soft smile pulling at the corners of their lips. Leading them to the elevator, Ogilvie couldn’t help but notice how his typical stride was faster than the pace they walked at. His height contributed to the fact that he normally walked faster than most of his peers, and working in emergency medicine quickened his speed, but [reader]’s was more leisurely. Slowing down, he turned to them.
“How do you deal with stuff like this?” He asks as he pushes the elevators button.
[Reader] shrugs, “You find a way to balance your work and your life, a therapist also helps.” They say as the ride dings.
The door opens to the same chaotic scene Ogilvie was escaping from. The fax machine has eaten yet another piece of crumpled paper and was beeping angrily, somewhere out of sight a baby cries, the scent of firework ash lingers in the air. “Right this way,” Ogilvie steers the two in the direction of the breakroom.
Ogilvie quirks his mouth and sighs. “Sorry,” he says hesitantly. [Reader] shrugs again. The door opens. “For dumping all that on you,” Ogilvie says as he presses the ground floor button.
“I’m here to help.” [Reader] says as the lift takes them down.
Gurneys crowd the halls and there are distractions around every corner. A bright costume fox head hangs outside of one room, a woman is shouting at some poor soul outside of another and as the two dodge doctors and students and coughing patients they pass by a shuddered holding room designed for psych patients to be held in. The door to the room suddenly swings open, only missing the two because Ogilvie manages to catch the side of the door with his palm.
Robby emerges from behind the shuddered door, looking ruffled as he straightens the stethoscope around his neck.
“Ogilvie! Sorry, didn’t see you there.”
“All good, Dr. Robby,” Ogilive smiles, letting go of the door.
“Is Mr. Graves in there? Have you guys found the bikers family?” [Reader] asks, peering between Ogilvie and Robby to see into the room. Inside, Whitaker is hurriedly tucking his scrubs shirt into the front of his pants, looking just as rumpled as Robby did.
Ogilvie has also caught up to speed and darts his eyes back to Robby’s. “Oh! Whitaker got some of the biker's blood on him, I was just..bringing him some new scrubs, can’t get new ones without giving a pair back,” Robby smiles, avoiding the pairs eyes.
Somewhere from behind the nurse's station Dana yells “Incoming! Vehicle vs firework! Jesus Christ...”
“Gotta go!” Robby claps Ogilvie’s shoulder as he rushes past.
Whitaker emerges from the room and turns as he runs towards the incoming trauma “Scrubs, am I right!?”
I have this habit of not listening to songs in full so I just almost creamed my pants listening to patrick stumps lower register at the end of America's Suitehearts for the first time (I've listened to the song since it came out)
I wish there was tumblr for dudebros who know a lot about tools bc I desperately need help figuring out stuff with a screwdriver but I'm so anxious to go into home depot
Having a crush on my boyfriend is so silly sometimes cuz I'll think about him in his little star wars shirt and I'll think about their cute ass curly hair and I start frothing at the fucking mouth
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