#dr. carter.

[fallenangelwings]

Stabbed in every universe | @exussus for Carter

Of all the places demons could have chosen to retreat, a hospital was devastatingly smart. There was no easy way to extricate them without dozens of eyes, ears, and cameras watching. That did not mean the Seraph could not see their true faces, corrupted by the very dimension they'd crawled from. He stalked through the bustling ER department like the ancient predator he was, searching for the demon who had disappeared inside, while the boys were chasing the rest that had run for the lobby. Castiel's eyes raked over the space and found the demon's face in the body of a man in mechanic coveralls at the end of a hallway. Their gazes met, and the demon lunged for a tall young doctor walking past, clapping a hand over his mouth and dragging him through an open door that slammed shut behind them.

Corvid wings fanned wide on the underside of reality, and carried him into that room in half a second. The demon had backed himself and the young man against the wall, and had a knife pressed to his throat. "Fly outta here, or I'll kill him." Castiel studied the doctor, brown eyes wide with fear, and then the demon. "You will not. He's the only leverage you have." There was a slight pause, and an acknowledging tilt of the mechanic's head. "True. So, how about I keep you busy." With that, the blade was pulled from the doctor's throat and plunged to the hilt in his abdomen. The demon vanished from the spot, and the angel vanished with him with the sound of enormous wings taking off in flight, leaving Carter alone in the dark room at the end of the department, far from the door and any promise of help.

[nichtschaden]

Hospitals work great until they don't | @exussus for Carter

It'd been a day from hell. The ER was packed, and blood results were trickling in at best, sometimes crawling back to the residents depending on the complexity ordered. Benton had vanished at one point and reappeared with papers in hand, wearing that face that spelled trouble. But when Carter was sent to 'raise hell' in hematology, the lab was empty save for Dr. Finitzer. A resident in his 30s, from what John knew, and one of the few people who could physically look down at him. At the sound of the door opening, the Germans shoulders cranked higher from where he stood, back to the door, bent over a machine.

"Benton, I'm going as FAST as I FUCKING-!" The tirade was cut short when ice blue eyes found not the surgical resident, but John, and the anger fractured and bled away. "Dr. Carter, I'm sorry." Fritz scrubbed a hand over his face and finished typing in results to send to the ER below. "Everyone's home sick, or out of the state. I'm the only one here. Can they spare you to help me, because I'm ready to be taken out back and shot." It wasn't fun to be guilted over the people waiting in the ER, when he was already doing the best he could.

[aliarsgod]

Unlucky | @cart4r

It was four in the morning when paramedics brought in a hypothermic man with head trauma to the unfortunate doctor and his skeleton crew. Everyone else? Either off the clock or indisposed. "Body temp 68.7 degrees," Doris Pickman wheeled the gurney where directed, "blunt force trauma to the head, guy's so cold and stiff I couldn't even get a needle in him. It's a warm it and call it, if I ever saw one. I couldn't get a reading on much else, every electronic on the bus quit working after we loaded him in. My partner's working on it, now."

The man was tall, even taller than Carter. Deathly pale, frigid to the touch, and as promised, resistant to every scrap of metal that tried to pierce his skin. He bore an uncanny and striking resemblance to Dr. Fritz Finitzer in hematology, enough to cause alarm were it not for the longer hair. Unless it had grown in the seven hours since Carter saw him last, this was not the same man. Bad luck seemed to have followed him from the ambulance to the trauma room, because every monitor ceased to function almost the moment it was brought within reach of the corpse. Strange thing was, it almost felt like a pulse was there. Glacial, but present. Breath sounds so few and far between it was easy to think they had been imagined after a long night and an even longer shift.

Nurses had filtered out to continue to do the jobs of two or even three. The room was quiet and still when Carter made the mistake of touching him again, and almost faster than the eye could see, a pale hand flashed out to cinch around his throat. Ice blue eyes snapped open and focused on his, and although they didn't thaw in the slightest, the pressure around his neck eased enough for Carter to breathe. The stranger did not let go, gaze hard as it slowly raked over their surroundings, and the opposite hand pushed him upright on the gurney. Like the electronics, energy seemed to drain from Carter's body the more alert the stranger became, siphoning what was left after a long and grueling shift. "... Where am I?"

[nichtsehen]

@exussus for Carter

The hunter's face was the picture of unimpressed when a towering man blocked the doorway and their only exit, ordering them to sit down and get their 'animal scratches' stitched. How much was that gonna cost, huh? Money they didn't have. Bern was stone-faced until Benton turned to berate the younger man for not controlling his patient, and something in his cowed expression exposed a raw nerve, and they found themselves in the surgeon's face.

"Hey, don't you fuckin' take it out on him because you're pissed at me! Get outta here!" Benton's face didn't change much, save to crane his neck down at the tiny patient and raise his eyebrows a hair. Eye contact was maintained for a moment longer before he took a step back and turned. "Finish my charts when you're done." With that, the door closed, and the pair was left alone. Bern was still angry, but far more compliant than they had been, and they sat still for Carter.

"... Shit parents, shit relatives, or foster care?" Brown eyes met brown. "I know that 'neglected from birth' look. Too damn well, I see it in the mirror." They also knew that desperation to be good enough. To be accepted. And how fucking easy it was for others to abuse it, whether they meant to or not.

[nichtschaden]

There's better ways to meet your coworkers | @exussus for Carter

It was the coldest day of the year so far, well below freezing, and it had brought its fair share of hypothermic patients to the ER. The young doctor was flagged down by the head of hematology, and she was dragging along a towering man he'd seen in passing a few times before. Dark-haired with aviator glasses, and unsteady on his feet.

"Carter! Can you please do something with this idiot," despite the enormous size difference, she had no problem manhandling her charge closer, "who decided to walk here this morning, because his car wouldn't start? This is Dr. Fritz Finitzer. Fritz? This is Dr. John Carter, and you, and your hypothermia, are going to do whatever he says."

"I'm fine," he muttered in a light German accent, but she paid him no mind. "If he gives you any trouble, just call my extension and put it on speaker." With that, she slapped the doctor hard on the back and swept back toward the elevator. Fritz hated that her retreating form wouldn't sit still enough in his wavering vision to properly glare at. "Look, I can jus-" he grimaced at the slur of his own words, "sit. And go back up later. You've got real patients to worry about." He regretted now that they hadn't met in person yet, because he would have remembered those big brown eyes for sure.