It's Just One of Those Things
The ED was busy. Well, the ED was always busy—it was an ED, after all, and EDs tended to be crawling with snot-nosed children, broken bones, and drug addicts, each and every day. It smelled constantly like something went bad, whether that was from a drunk homeless man looking for access to opioids lingering a little too close to the back, or from vomit that was spewed on the floor from a bout of the latest flu that was wrecking its way through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. It was loud, the fluorescent lights bright overhead, and it was a constant revolving door of not-so-friendly faces that constantly grimaced with sickness and pain and a distinct pleading nonverbal (though, sometimes verbal) wail of ‘please, make it stop, make it go away.’
Claire Temple, RN, hated the ED. It was a place that she thought she’d be out of, once she was no longer a starry-eyed young new hire who got handed all of the broken ankles from soccer practice gone wrong and strange objects shoved up all manner of orifices that resided in pants. And she’d rather be anywhere else—in the cardiology wing, in the ICU, in the pediatrics unit, even—but no, here she was, on a bright, pleasant Saturday afternoon, working in the ED.
The nurse, clad in usual blue scrubs, her magnetic name tag clipped professionally to her chest, bypassed a straggler IV pole with nobody attached to it, raised her brow, and then spotted a particularly adamant patient who had ripped out his tubing and was content to leave—luckily, her bigger, stronger coworker took care of him, gently coaxing him back to his bed and telling him that if they didn’t get his salts up, he might have to be actually admitted. Some people, she thought, were just completely resistant to receiving proper medical care.
The chorus of O2 Monitors and IV pole chirping and some random baby wailing in the background was like white noise, to Claire, having been experienced enough in her field to be able to tune everything out, when she needed to—her HOKAs made gentle steps on the industrial white flooring tiles as she made her way down the hall, bypassing men at desks and a woman in a floral headscarf and white coat scolding a man about ‘proper bedside manner’ to finally arrive at the room that she’d been searching for.
She knocked gently on the wall, before pulling open the curtain that gave the patient inside some sliver of privacy and dignity, protecting them from the outside world in the most flimsy way possible.
“Hello, I’m Claire Temple, I’ll be your nurse today,” she introduced herself smoothly, barely glancing at what appeared to be two men in the room—one in the bed, laying there with dark glasses on his face, the other sitting next to him looking like a kicked puppy—before she was already moving to pull at the latex-free gloves hung on a rack in the corner of the room so that she could slide them over her fingers and get to work on examining what she was informed a ‘nasty-looking broken nose and what seemed to be mid-stage healing of a black eye’ on this particular patient.
“Can I get your name?”
“Matt Murdock.”
“Thank you.”
Flexing her fingers inside of the glove, armed with antiseptic and cotton balls that the PA that had handled all of the initial overview of the case had delivered into the room before she’d gotten there, Claire moved slowly to the side of the bed.
It wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone in crummy shape—after all, she was a nurse, and it was part of her job description to see people brought in sick and banged up into the emergency room, day in, day out; that was what a hospital was for, to aid the ill and injured. But, she could say that it never got easier, eeking answers to hard questions out of someone who was all-too-unwilling to give them to her.
“How did this happen?” Claire asked, sitting down on the little stool next to the bed so that she could get a more solid foundation for trust—it was hard to get someone to open up to her, when she was lording over them with all of her stature, and they were sitting, or laying, in a humiliating position in the cheap, uncomfortable, stagnant smelling emergency room bed (even if they did have blankets wrapped around them, straight out of the warming-cabinet, designed to make them feel more at ease), “you look pretty banged up—like someone punched you right in the face. Your x-ray came back and thankfully you have a nondisplaced nasal fracture, so it could be worse. I’m sure the ENT already came by to tell you that, though. Needless to say, whoever got you, got you good. What happened?”
Claire gently dabbed a cotton ball into antiseptic, and rolled it around in her fingers for a moment. She lifted her head up to properly take a look at the two men in the room, then—the period of silence was enough for her to soak in their appearances and body language.
The patient, Matt Murdock, in the bed, was a brunette—white, with a sort of long-cropped head of hair, bushy eyebrows, stubble around his mouth, wearing a grey sweatsuit that was speckled at the front with dried, crusted blood. She could see the remnants of a hospital gown laying on the floor in the corner of the room; so, he didn’t like to be exposed, she could gather, it may have made him feel too vulnerable to be hanging around in a gown so thin. Then again, she supposed, it wasn’t very dignified to meet a bunch of doctors and nurses wearing a piece of paper with one’s ass exposed, so she could understand the desire to change back into his clothes, even though they were soiled.
The most interesting feature on Murdock, however, was his red-tinted circular glasses that rested atop his face, perched on his nose despite its broken status, that were far too dark for the quality of light that was currently being afforded in the room they were in; it was curious, and Claire wished that the nurse before her shift had actually bothered to tell her about the patient’s medical history. She found herself weary of migraines, or if he’d been rocked in the head hard enough, she needed to alert someone that he was experiencing light sensitivity, a concussion symptom.
The man sitting next to the bed was a homelier looking individual—with a mop of shaggy brown hair that made him look like he had the same blind hairdresser as Doctor Spencer Reid from season one, episode twenty of Criminal Minds. He was pudgy, with a double chin, and tired-seeming, albeit worried, bluish-greyish-hazel sort of eyes that she wasn’t able to place. His hair and brows were a dusty sort of blond, and there were a couple of speckles of blood on his jeans, presumably from when his friend(?) bled onto him. His foot was tapping anxiously, and he was nibbling at the side of his bottom lip, staring at Murdock in the bed, refusing to meet her gaze.
She’d seen her fair share of nervous individuals in the ER, especially people worried that their family member or friend or spouse or lover wasn’t going to be okay, so Claire could’ve written it off as mere anxiousness—that is, until the two of them spoke—
“He fell down the stairs.”
“I got mugged.”
—at the same time.
She paused—the hair on the back of the chubby man’s neck stood up, and he glanced up at her, quick and simple, barely enough time for her to gauge his facial expression. Murdock swallowed, in the bed, and turned his head to face her, though he wasn’t quite… looking at her, if she had to guess. Merely somewhere behind her.
“I fell down the stairs a couple days ago, which gave me the black eye,” Murdock was quick to fix what appeared to be an unintentional fumble, “and then, curse my luck, I got mugged on the way to work. Foggy called me once I didn’t show, we own a firm together, see, we’re lawyers, and then I had him come get me out of some alleyway because they took my cane and I couldn’t get anywhere.”
Claire raised her eyebrows gently, before a little ‘oh’ sounded off in her mind. Before she could think to say anything, Murdock continued.
“I’m blind,” he concluded, flashing her a little smile.
It was an adorable smile, she had to admit. And the ease with which he told her this little story almost had her initial worry with the mismatched excuses soothed—but, she was no fool. Up to seventy percent of disabled people experienced some form of abuse—whether it be physical, sexual, verbal, or psychological—in their lifetime, and she was now dealing with a battered disabled man laying in her hospital bed, and a very nervous, skeptical ‘partner in law’ who’d been jumpy since the get-go.
Her eyes narrowed, but just a fraction—a mere fraction, of their original size.
“So, Matt,” Claire broke the ice, again, finally, “this might sting a little, and it's going to be a little cold. I’m going to clean your face off, to get rid of the blood, okay?”
“Okay.”
She gently, gingerly dabbed the cotton ball at the man’s face—ignoring the way he flinched slightly. It was painful, she knew, to get sore and tender bloody skin cleaned like this, with a harsh alcoholic liquid. It was an understandable response, but there was some empathetic, skeptical part of her that was now questioning whether it was a response from the cotton solution, or a response from… something else.
She wiped off his skin, reddening the cotton ball between her gloved fingers, before moving onto another. And another, and another, until he was clean—then, she set the cut on the bridge of his nose with two Steri Strips and disposed of everything else in the hazardous waste bin.
“Everything you need to know will be on your discharge papers, which I have right here, for you, but they can be provided to you in an accessible format,” Claire told Murdock, then, reaching under the tray that she’d come in with that held her supplies to find a thick stack of (useless) papers that detailed steps to recovery from a broken nose, pulling them out from under the tray and setting them, gently, in the nervous man’s lap, who took them with trembling hands and tucked them into his jacket, “standard recovery time is three to six weeks, I recommend ice, rest, and elevation while sleeping. I’ll get you prescribed something for the pain—”
“I don't need the accessible discharge papers. Or the prescription,” the man on the bed told her, then, gently reaching up to prod at his broken face, “I don’t take drugs. I can’t.”
“Addict?” Claire asked, in a gentler tone than she’d been using before, “there are services we have, as extensions of Metro General, to help—”
Murdock laughed.
“No, no, not an addict,” he reassured, holding his hand up, “Catholic.”
“Ah,” Claire nodded gently.
“She just nodded,” the man beside her murmured, fiddling with his thumbs in his lap.
“Thanks, Foggy. And—Claire? I have my discharge papers, can I go now?”
Claire was silent for a moment. She understood the eagerness to leave the ED, it was the ED, after all—but, she knew that many abuse victims also wanted to be out of the spotlight as soon as possible due to embarrassment, shame, and whatever other wrong feelings they had floating around inside of their messed-with heads.
But was Matt Murdock being abused? He certainly didn't act like an abused man, smiling and making quips and asserting confidently that he didn’t want drugs. And the man he’d come in with—Foggy—hadn't been speaking for him this entire time. It was usual for abusers to maintain a level of control, not to grant their abused agency to speak for themselves in the presence of a medical professional, one of few people who actually had the power to do something about their situation.
“It might be best for you to stay a while longer to... be asked a couple more questions,” Claire concluded, then, vaguely.
“Alright, well, I suppose I'll just get comfortable, I guess,” Murdock shrugged gently, giving her another reassuring smile.
Claire smiled back reflexively—and Foggy made sure to note ‘she's smiling.’
She didn't get a chance to speak again before two men in turtleneck sweaters knocked on the side of the wall next to the room before peeking their heads into it—gentle, German-looking men with glasses and blond hair.
“Can we speak to you outside, Ms. Temple?”
“Oh, uh, sure,” the nurse pushed herself up from her seat next to the bed, before she glanced back towards the pair, “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Following the two men outside of the curtained room, which really was just… standing twenty feet away, with a curtain in front of them, Claire ushered them gently a ways down the corridor, so that they were out of earshot, and could speak freely.
“How can I help you?” she crossed her arms over her chest in a relaxatory manner, not a frustrating or accusatory one, merely a place to rest her arms because she was tired, and had been awake since three AM, and surely needed a break, to go home and rest—or, maybe, sleep in one of the blanket warmers that residents found themselves curled up in to take a ten minute sleep before they were ready to go bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on their next fifty-hour shift.
“My name is Doctor Marković,” the first man spoke, gently pushing his glasses up on his long, thin nose—she was wrong, then, about the German-ness, was Claire’s first thought, upon hearing the man speak. An accent, yes, but a Serbian one; not a German one.
“Claire Temple,” she introduced, back.
“This is David Cranmer, he was the one who brought this case to my attention—”
“Case?”
“Well, yes. You see, David is a social worker who was called in to take a look at your patient over there in room one-oh-five.”
Matt Murdock.
“Teresa brought the issue to my attention,” David spoke up, then, a distinctly southern American drawl lulling his voice into something rich and soothing and just a little bit stupid, if Claire had to be honest—a voice that was low and murky, and could get lost amidst the bustle of New York if David wasn’t careful, “has she told you—”
“I literally just got here,” Claire held her hands up as if to deflect blame. A man in a white coat walked by her holding a tan paper bag, the crinkling sound of it only adding to the background of the hospital noise.
“I just met the patient not more than twenty minutes ago, shift change just happened—he’s my first patient,” Claire explained, “...what’s going on?”
“Teresa Mays reported a case of abuse of a disabled individual, and as such we are legally required to meet with the suspected victim before he’s discharged,” Doctor Marković explained cooly—Claire nodded.
“I just gave him his papers, you better get in there if you want to catch him before he goes,” she sighed, “but I don’t really know if a broken nose constitutes suspicions of abuse—”
“In the report it was stated that the patient had several lacerations, all in multiple stages of healing, across his body. Scars, as well, deep ones, and in addition, his x-ray revealed that he has several undocumented healed hairline fractures in his face, ones that only happen with blunt force trauma, as I’m sure you’re aware,” the psychiatrist outlined, steepling his manicured hands contemplatively in front of his black suit jacket, his lips downturning into a gentle frown, “the most likely cause of such repeated injury, to an individual who cannot see, is repeated physical abuse.”
“...shit.”
Claire looked at the ceiling—something swelling inside of her. Anger, she was able to discern, as she peered at the fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead of the stale environment in the Metro General emergency department. Anger that someone was hitting this poor man to the point where he’d had several (undocumented) healed fractures in his face that were undoubtedly from being hit in the face with something. Fists, a blunt object, plates, even. It was a little more than just blind-guy-clumsiness—and Claire knew that the statistics were not in favor of this being benign. This, compiled with the evidence… entirely confirmed, at least in her mind, her earlier suspicions.
“Yeah,” Claire sighed, briefly closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and then she recollected herself, bringing her gaze back down, “I’ll notify the attending and in the meantime you two can divide and conquer on talking to Matt and his—”
She hesitated a moment.
“...friend,” she concluded lamely.
She realized, a moment later, that she’d never asked who the man was, who was spending time by her patient’s side—tapping his foot anxiously, worrying at his lip. Maybe, was he worried about Murdock, or was he worried that someone would catch on? Was the chubby man with the bad haircut abusing his blind friend? Boyfriend? Coworker? To be honest, he really didn’t look like the type, all gentle angles and sad-puppy-dog-eyes, but Claire knew better than to assume someone wasn’t capable of heinous things just because they seemed meek. Sometimes, those were the people one had to look out for the most—because those types of guys turned out to be serial killers, sometimes.
Or maybe she just watched too much true crime. But still, the point still stood.
The attending physician was busy—though, not too busy to hear about a potential abuse case—and by the time Claire returned, she noted that the social worker had brought Foggy outside to speak with him, and the man had his hands in his pockets, shoulders tense, as they spoke.
“---he’s just a clumsy sort of guy, you know? It’s… it’s just one of those things.”
“It goes beyond clumsy when a man has multiple bone fractures in his skull, Mr. Nelson, I hope you’ll forgive my bluntness, but it’s quite troubling, as a social worker, to see something like that on a disabled patient’s chart. Now, I’m just trying to figure out what happened, here, and if there is anything that you know about Matt’s activities or whereabouts that could lead to such injuries?”
“...he boxes?” Nelson, name reassigned in Claire’s mind, supplied, ghostly brows furrowing together in an almost offertory way—like he had really no better explanation for the injuries, or perhaps that he wasn’t willing to divulge a better explanation for personal reasons.
“Does he now?” the social worker urged gently.
Nelson physically winced.
And if Murdock, in the psychiatrist’s presence, let out a tiny ‘God damn it, Foggy’ beneath his breath, Claire wasn’t around to hear it.
“He—well, he—yeah. Yeah, Matt boxes,” Nelson pressed on, then, more confidently, as if he was deciding on a story and sticking with it—abusers were always good at looking concerned for their victims while they spun their tales, weren’t they?---“he’s a boxer, and he gets all banged up because he’s actually been fighting in the ring, recently—”
Claire raised her eyebrow, briefly catching the social worker’s gaze—their eyes non verbally told one another what the other was thinking, both ideas extracted out of the same vein:
This guy was so full of shit.
Claire felt anger surge anew, and she gently bypassed the curtain (now halfway open) to step into Murdock’s room, leaving the social worker to his own devices.
“---met Foggy when I started law school—”
“---and how long ago was that?”
She caught the tail end of what she supposed was a conversation about the patient’s personal history with the man outside being talked to by the social worker, David, and before she could speak, her attending was fluttering into the room, white coat heralding respect and dignity as all eyes (except Murdock’s) turned to attention at the physician’s presence.
“Mr. Murdock, my name is Doctor Amina Campbell, and I was wondering if there was some way to talk to you—”
“Sorry I’m late, Matt!”
A blonde woman practically burst into the room, then, a bird-like small frame and big blue eyes complimenting her feminine, yet projected, voice quite well—she tucked her hair, which was a few strands out of place, behind her ear, and in her opposite hand she heralded a white cane.
“Hey, Karen. Did you find it?” Murdock pushed himself up in the bed, sitting at attention, eyebrows raising with piqued interest. Claire stepped aside, leaning against the little counter that resided in the corner of the room, deciding to take a reprieve and merely watch the interaction.
“I couldn’t figure out how to fold it up,” the blonde admitted, “and none of the taxis wanted to stop for me, because they didn’t want the big pole in their car, I figure, but—anyway, I got it. I found it. It was in the alley behind Fogwell’s, just like you said it might be.”
“Is it broken?” Murdock asked, holding his hand out expectantly—Karen immediately gave him back his cane, and the man folded it up with ease, before setting it beside him, thumb brushing over the side of it almost fondly.
“Ma’am—” the psychiatrist was intent on continuing the session with the patient, but Matt Murdock interrupted with a surprising, curious question.
“Don’t think this is going to stop me from stepping into the ring on Tuesday, Karen,” Murdock warned, though his tone was almost playful, “a mugging can’t stop me from doing what I love.”
Karen blinked. Slowly, long lashes batting, almost, like a barn owl looking down at a curious farmer who’d come to investigate the ‘hoo’ noise that he’d been hearing at night for the last two weeks. She parted her lips, as if to speak, and then the words seemed to die on her tongue. But, a moment later, she seemed to get the gist, and sat down gently at the foot of Murdock’s hospital bed.
“It’s not?” she asked, and Murdock smiled—almost like he looked relieved. Was he happy she didn’t immediately scold him? Or was it something else? Claire could only really come to the conclusion that the patient was happy she didn’t scold him, for…
For saying that he was still going to be stepping into the ring.
Claire’s own mouth parted, and she glanced back towards the curtain. The man, Foggy Nelson, outside, being questioned by the social worker? There was no chance Murdock had heard what he’d said, and their stories just so happened to coincide. Nelson had appeared as though he had made the story about boxing up, but now that the nurse was looking back on the bits and pieces of the conversation she’d heard, it seemed as though maybe he hadn’t been so much as making things up, but rather deciding whether or not to tell the truth in fear of whatever stigma it may create around his friend.
“Certainly not,” Murdock replied, raising his fists (scabbed, battered fists) in what appeared to be jest, “boxing is a part of my life I’m not willing to give up over a little injury.”
“Boxing?” Claire heard her attending say, moving to the side of the bed, “are you a boxer, Mr. Murdock?”
“In my spare time, between being a defense attorney and going to church,” Murdock joked with a smile.
Truly, he was at ease, Claire could tell—he was telling the truth, if her experience as a nurse (what with drug addicts lying constantly to get a fix, children lying about what hurts so they can be ‘bribed’ with candy in order to give the real answer, domestic violence victims lying about what had happened to give them such a gnarly bruise on the side of their face) was in any way reliable. Her heart rate, if she had to guess, slowed down, and her shoulders relaxed slightly, mulling over the story.
Matt Murdock, a boxer; vaguely, she once remembered hearing about ‘boxing’ and the name ‘Murdock,’ but she wasn’t sure where that fit into her analysis of this patient. It was either too old, or too much hearsay sort of info, to be pertinent to her evaluation of this man.
“---can’t I come back inside?”
“Just give me a minute, Mr. Nelson—”
David Cranmer appeared, once more, at the mouth of the room, glancing between all of the faces that were to see, crammed into the little fifteen-by-fifteen foot space that was the ED bed, and he pulled the curtain closed behind him.
“Mr. Murdock is a boxer,” came Doctor Marković’s distinctive accent, softly, gently, as he leaned back in the seat that he’d pulled up next to the bed, hands steepled beneath his chin like he’d been doing earlier, in the hallway.
David Cranmer, Doctor Marković, Doctor Campbell, and Claire herself all had the same expression plastered across their faces, at this point. One that was merely—’ah.’
“Mr. Murdock,” Doctor Campbell brought up gently, “Can I ask where you got the scars across your torso? Surely, boxing does not involve knives.”
Murdock leaned his head back a little, nodding, wetting his lips as he comprehended the question.
“My ex-girlfriend.”
“Ex-girlfriend?” Claire piped up, then—was she wrong, then, about being wrong, and there really was something going on—
“I haven’t seen her in years,” Murdock replied swiftly, his hand coming to rest on his chest, tracing out the bumps above his pectorals, “she left me these as a parting gift, though.”
“Oh my God, Matt—” Karen seemed shocked by the information, reaching to place a hand on Murdock’s forearm, “I had no idea, I’m so sorry—”
“It’s alright, Karen,” Murdock’s tone shifted, more gentler—reassuring—as his own hand found its way to the top of Karen’s, and he brought his gaze down to stare unfocusedly in her general direction, “we can talk about this later.”
“Okay,” Karen rubbed Murdock’s hand a bit with hers, and sighed, again tucking her hair behind her ear—the psychiatrist would note that it was a nervous tick, one that many, many women possessed.
Foggy Nelson peeked his way into the room, then—against the orders of the social worker—raising his brows at the congregation inside of Murdock’s room. Claire watched him slowly enter, shove his hands into his pockets, and stand off to the side.
Claire rested her fingers on her chin, looking down at the ground, the industrial tiling cold and unwelcoming, weird little specks living in it that the designers, for whatever damn reason, thought were a good choice to put in there. Her mind was racing, every manner of flitting thoughts going back and forth; if the collective care team believed Murdock’s stories, corroborated by Nelson’s story, seemingly genuine, then they could either be sending the man home to go rest, or send him back into the arms of an abuser to get beat up more, or even killed. However, if they didn’t choose to believe the man, and decided to press the issue, they could cause him to retreat into himself and bury himself further in lies, and his abuser, who may or may not be in the room at the moment, could blame Murdock for the healthcare professionals finding out—thus enticing the abuser to restrict further access to medical care for Murdock in the future. It was a dicey game of cat-and-mouse, knowing when to press, when abuse was suspected, and knowing when not to press.
Murdock wasn’t psychologically damaged, nor was he incapable of caring for himself, and he did not exhibit timid, scared behavior—he hadn’t hinted to being in any immediate danger, and had seemed honest when he’d said that his healed scars (they looked old, in her opinion, at least six to eighteen months old, after which there was really no way to tell) were from past skirmishes with an (assumed) abuser. There was no confirmation, verbal or otherwise, that the healthcare professionals could use as a formal cry for help—a formal justification for both admission into the hospital, and launching an investigation of disability abuse. Effectively, their hands were tied.
“Is there any reason why I can’t go home yet?” Murdock asked, then, breaking the momentary silence between the little party in his room, “do you need to run more tests?”
“...if you would like to be discharged, Mr. Murdock, you’re free to go, I see Mr. Nelson has your papers, but—” Doctor Campbell, Claire thought, was well on her way to breaching the subject with grace, extending a non-verbal and implied olive branch that Murdock would hopefully pick up on, as a metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel in his supposed situation, but Murdock was quick to shut any further attempts at questioning his situation down.
“I’d like to be discharged, please, doctor,” the blind man replied definitively, “I have to go to work, after all. Medical bills aren’t cheap.”
“Oh, hell no, you’re not going into the office today, buddy,” this time it was Nelson’s turn to speak up unabashedly, “I’m taking you right back to your apartment and I’m going to make sure you get some rest. I swear to God, you’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”
And with the outburst, Claire wondered for what seemed like the trillionth time, whether or not Nelson was the one doing the assault—or if, maybe, (hopefully), she was all wrong, again.
“You shouldn’t swear to God, Foggy,” Murdock replied, gently; and the way Nelson waved the man off with a ‘yeah, yeah, Matthew 5:34, I know,’ it wasn’t the first time this specific interaction had happened between them. And it was tender, Claire realized, as Karen allowed Nelson the space to cross the room and gently nudge the side of Murdock’s arm with his fingers. Barely a brush—Murdock grabbed onto the man’s arm, standing up, expertly unfolding his cane with one hand. It clicked to life, and immediately Karen hopped off the bed as well, gently resting a hand on Murdock’s shoulder.
“Thank you all for your concern,” Murdock stated, in an almost corporate sort of manner, reaching up with his hand to adjust his sweatshirt, which was still speckled in blood, and then he gripped his cane comfortably. The little tap-tap-tap of the pencil tip against the tile as Murdock’s cane faithfully alerted him to all feet, chairs, and walls that were in his way (even though it seemed as though he didn’t really need it, because Nelson was guiding him every step of the way) was the only sound that filled the room other than the chirping of hospital equipment and footsteps.
“Mr. Murdock—”
“Thank you, really, thank you, don’t worry, I’ll keep him out of the ring,” came Karen’s palliative tone as she dragged behind Murdock, stopping to hold her hands out towards the little legion of medical professionals that had just been entirely blown off in the most spectacular manner as though she was warding off a pride of lions that wanted to eat her whole. She gave an apologetic smile, before finally disappearing into the curtain, the sound of her little heels clicking across the floor accompanying Murdock’s tapping cane.
Doctor Marković took off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose, a heaviness clearly crushing his shoulders.
“I’ll keep an eye out for any future hospitalizations,” Claire provided, then, in an attempt to soothe the uneasiness that was clearly curling in all of their guts—whether or not the man was hurting because of someone else was on the forefront of every single one of their minds, and yet, legally, they could do nothing. It was what it was, Claire supposed, and the only way they could help him now was to keep an eagle’s eye on any paper trail of ED visits he might have in the future.
“Thank you, Claire,” Doctor Campbell replied, then, nodding gently, smoothing down the front of her coat, heading to the exit.
Claire’s pager went off—she clapped her hands and pushed herself off of the counter she’d been leaning on—before glancing down at the little chirping device.
“Well, that’s me. Hopefully I don’t see you around anymore,” Claire told David and Doctor Marković; truly, she would rather not have any suspicions of abuse floating around in her ED.
She exited the room, once again greeted with the rustle and bustle of the ED, a microcosm of New York itself—only to be immediately stopped by one of her coworkers.
“Girl, you busy?” she asked, raising her brows, resting a hand on her hip.
“Always,” Claire replied—it was meant to be a joke, but after her earlier case, the tone didn’t quite make it there, “nothing severe, though. What’s up?”
“Stab wound, white male, early forties, bleeding the hell out. Need all the hands we can spare.”
Immediately, Claire’s earlier case was forgotten.
“Let’s go,” she decided—within a few minutes, she was huddled around a man on a gurney in the waiting room with a trauma team, red blood staining streetwear and the white blanket that the man had been given while he was being rushed to Metro General.
“Oh, shit,” came a small voice bypassing the scene, and Claire glanced to the side to see Nelson, Murdock, and Karen making their way to the exit at the front of the hospital.
Though her patient in critical condition on the gurney really couldn’t afford it, Claire stole a worried glance to watch the blind man be led out by the others—and even though later (when Claire was done with her grueling shift and sat down on her couch to enjoy some tea) she would find herself wondering about his situation even off the clock, in the present moment she forgot about him entirely, worry washed away by the growing river of blood beginning to dot across the ED corridor.