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When John wakes, he’s crying.
His eyes are open – it feels less like waking up than just coming back to himself, somehow. He is on the ground. He does not know how long he’s been there. He has a feeling he’s been there a while.
His head spins and pounds, a pain so intense that he finds himself vomiting before his brain even registers what’s happening. His stomach contracts over and over again, which only compounds the pain in his head. The pressure is terrible, overwhelming. He sobs as he throws up, the edges of his vision darkening.
When it’s over, he just lies there, breathing. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He’s all alone. He feels the cool surface of concrete under his cheek. His head. His head. It hurts so bad. He feels weak and dizzy. He lets out a stuttering breath, and it sounds like a whimper.
Beepbeep. Beepbeep. Beepbeep. Something buzzes near his leg.
It goes quiet, and John soon forgets about it. He lies there and he lies there, until eventually his stomach has settled enough that he can pull his knees up and under him. He sits up. The world around him spins uncomfortably. The acrid smell of his own vomit and bile, puddled around him, makes his stomach lurch.
Help, he thinks. I need help. There’s something wrong with him. He looks around and sees that he is in a stairwell. It’s cold and barren, peeling white paint on the walls, concrete steps, rusting iron hand rails. He doesn’t… he’s not sure…. Where is he?
John tries to remember how he got here. His head hurts so much. The fluorescent lights above flicker, and it feels like a jackhammer to the skull. It hurts to think. He can’t…. he can’t remember. His brain feels slow and foggy, his thoughts thick like sludge, like molasses.
This isn’t right. None of this…. None of this is right.
He pulls himself to his feet, clinging to the railing for dear life while he fights off his tunnelling vision. He throws up again, knees shaking.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, swallowing convulsively, fighting back nausea. Owwww, is all he can bear to think. He takes a deep breath, scrubs at his wet cheeks and his mouth with the back of his hand. He takes a step forward, and then another. Down the stairs, down the stairs. He staggers as his vision swoops.
Then, up ahead: a door. A way out. He stumbles towards it and pushes through.
He’s in a long hallway now, a little bit dimmer. He hears voices. People wearing all different colored scrubs walk by him, not paying him any notice.
Disoriented, he leans against a wall, trying to stay calm. He closes his eyes, battling another wave of dizziness.
Hospital, it occurs to him. I’m at a hospital.
“Carter, where the hell have you been? I’ve been paging you for twenty minutes.”
John opens his eyes, blinking. A familiar looking man with dark eyes is talking to him. Standing in front of him. Scowling.
He opens his mouth, but words don’t come out. He just blinks at him.
Paging me? Distantly, he remembers the buzzing in his pocket.
“Carter! Are you even listening to me? Where the fuck were you? We needed you in surgery.”
Surgery?
It dawns on him that he works at a hospital. Is he… is he supposed to be working right now?
He opens his mouth again. “I…. uh….”
The features of the man in front of him are blurry. He’s got blue scrubs on and a stethoscope around his neck. He knows this man. He’s sure of it. As sure as he is of anything. But… his name. God, what’s his name?
The tone of the man’s voice shifts. “Carter? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
He searches for words in his scrambled brain. It hurts. They don’t seem to want to come. He feels himself getting upset, now. Why won’t the words come? What’s wrong with him? He feels tears prickling behind his eyes.
“D-don’t….” he stutters, “Uhhh… I d-don’t f-feel s-so g-g-good.”
As if to prove his point, his stomach heaves again, and with a groan, John feels bile surging up his throat, bitter and hot. It sprays all over the floor, all over the man’s shoes.
“Jesus fuck!” the man yells.
John whimpers, clutching his stomach with one hand, holding his head with the other. Spots of lights dance across his vision. He sways.
Suddenly, hands are on his shoulders, holding him steady. He finds himself slumping forward, into the body holding him upright. His head dips forward onto the man’s shoulder. He desperately tries to keep himself upright, his fingers scrambling for purchase, digging into the arms of the man holding him up. He can’t see straight. Everything is blurry. His head hurts. It hurts bad. He’s so, so dizzy.
Distantly, he feels himself being lowered to the floor. Someone is speaking to him. Maybe multiple people? The voices are distorted, like they’re speaking to him from underwater. Or maybe he is the one underwater. His face does feel wet, after all.
And then there are hands on his cheeks, callused and warm. They tilt his chin up, lightly smacking him.
“Look at me, Carter, there you go. Tell me what’s wrong. Talk to me.”
John just stares at the man, who seems to have grown two heads in the time spent helping him to the ground. Out the corner of his eyes, a smaller, pink blurry figure hovers in the background. “Head hurts,” he manages to whisper. He closes his eyes.
Then there are hands moving through his hair, fast and frantic, fingers pressing into his skull. Suddenly there is a sharp, terrible, head-splitting pain. He cries out. The voice swears.
“Is that blood?!”
“Page Greene. Right now. Tell him something’s wrong with Carter.”
Someone peels open his eyelids and his vision is pierced by a terrible bright light. Hurts. Hurts. Hurts. He struggles to get away, but someone strong is holding him still. He cries out.
“Shhhh, it’s okay, it’s alright, man.”
Then, “Pupils unequal but reactive.”
A hand lightly slaps his cheek. “Carter. Carter. Do you know where you are?”
John blinks. Then blinks again. “Hospital?”
“What hospital?” the voice asks.
John thinks hard. He looks around. His surroundings seem familiar, but… he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the name. He shakes his head, feeling his heart beat faster. He doesn’t want to disappoint this man. He doesn’t like not knowing the answers to his questions. Anxiety pulses with every beat of his heart as he realizes that he does not know where he is. That he doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t even know what day it is.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he stutters out, feeling increasingly distraught.
There is a distant sigh. A curse. Then-
“That’s okay, man, that’s alright… Jesus. Don’t… don’t cry.” Someone is wiping at his cheeks. He didn’t even realize he was crying again.
“Peter, what the hell?” A new voice, a new face. Also familiar.
“Mark. I found him like this. He’s altered.”
“What’s going on?”
“Likely head injury. Vomited twice. Some bleeding. Pupils unequal and reactive. Tachycardic.”
“Head injury? What the hell happened?”
“I told you, I found him like this. He’s been MIA for nearly half an hour before I found him here, about to fall over. Now will someone get me a damn chair, or do I have to do everything myself?”
The words swirl around him, none of them making sense. They wash over him, waves crashing on the shore, then receding, like they were never there at all.
He wants to sleep. He wants to go home.
“I know, bud, I’m sorry. You can’t go home just yet.”
Then more hands are on him, all over him, moving him, lifting him. He’s airborne, and the world around him turns into a blur of color and light. His stomach lurches. The pain in his head intensifies.
Make it stop make it stop make it stop please make it stop –
He loses time. When he comes back, he’s in a wheelchair, being rolled down a hallway. Someone is talking to him, snapping fingers in front of his face.
“Stay awake, Carter,” a man is saying.
They pass people in the hallway, people he’s pretty sure he knows. They gawk at him and gasp.
“Carter?!”
“Poor baby.”
“Did someone do this to him??”
He feels uncomfortable, embarrassed. Afraid. Someone rubs his shoulders. Soft, soothing words are being whispered in his ear. He relaxes into the touch. He closes his eyes, because the lights are hurting his head.
He drifts.
He comes to as strong hands lift him under the armpits and move him onto a table. He struggles weakly as someone lays him back. Something is strapped over his legs, over his arms. It’s pulled tight. He cries out.
“Shhhh, Carter. It’s alright. It’s Mark. I need you to stay still for me, alright?”
Mark. He knows that name. A white face with glasses swims over him. Trust, his brain tells him.
“There we go. Good. You’re at CT. Do you understand? You hurt your head, and we need to take a picture of your brain.”
“My head hurts,” John hears himself say faintly.
The man frowns. “I know. I know, bud. I’m sorry. Do you understand where you are? What’s going to happen now?”
John looks around. “CT,” he whispers hoarsely, remembering the man’s words. “For my…. my head.”
“It’s going to take about ten minutes, alright? Just lie still and try to stay awake for me. I’m going to be in the other room while we do the scan, okay?”
He doesn’t fully understand the words that are being said to him, but he nods anyway.
They roll him into the scanner, and it’s dim inside. A loud whirring sound starts up around him. A voice sounds out over a speaker. Calm, encouraging. John’s heart beats fast. Awake. Stay awake. He tries. It hurts. He wants to go home. I hurt my head. I am at the hospital. It’s all so confusing. How did he hurt his head? How did he get here? He can’t remember. He can’t remember anything. Why is it so loud? Hurts.
Concussion. The word comes to him suddenly. I have a concussion. That explains it. His head hurts. He’s getting a head CT. He has a concussion.
“Just relax, bud, you’re doing great. You’re doing so great. You’re safe. You’re doing really well. Just a few more minutes.”
The voice over the speaker soothes him. He’s going to rest his eyes. Just for a couple minutes.
He wakes in fits and starts. Consciousness ebbs and flows. Hands squeezing his arms, rubbing his chest. Dim lights, hushed voices. “Arms up, bud.” His shirt being tugged over his head. Throwing up again. A woman with dark curls rubbing circles into his back. The sharp prick to the back of his hand. Something sticky being pressed to his chest. Beep. Beep. Beep. Something stinging the back of his head. Sweet, comforting words, whispered in his ear.
Familiar faces ask him questions. “What’s your name?” they ask him, and he tells them that it’s John. They smile at him. “Do you know what day it is, John?” they ask next. “Do you know my name?” Each time, he shakes his head. “That’s alright, sweetheart.” Fingers caress his hair.
He sleeps. He wakes. They ask him questions. His head hurts. He sleeps. He wakes. He talks to people. He forgets. He remembers. He forgets again. He sleeps. He wakes. Time stretches on, twisting and looping and distorting itself.
And then, some time later…
“Carter.”
John blinks awake, lucid and disoriented all at once. He’s tired. So tired. He looks up.
“Doctor Benton?”
A look of something like relief passes across his teacher’s face. The man nods.
John feels strange – loopy. He looks down at himself. He’s in a hospital gown. There is an IV in his hand. In his head, a distant ache. It takes him several long seconds to make sense of it all. He’s in a hospital bed. He can’t… he can’t remember anything.
“How did I get here?” John asks slowly, his tongue heavy. His words slur together. But Benton doesn’t seem to take notice.
The older man is quiet for a few seconds before he responds, voice tight. “You have a grade two concussion. I found you in the hallway yesterday afternoon, altered.”
It takes John several beats to make sense of these words. His heart clenches painfully, fear and alarm seeping through the numbness that seems to have enveloped his brain.
“I don’t remember,” he whispers, biting his lip to keep it from trembling. Keep it together, he tells himself.
Benton scowls and sinks into a chair next to John’s bed. “You’re lucky you didn’t have a brain bleed.”
John swallows, reaching a shaky, pulse-ox laden hand up to feel the back of his aching head. His fingers make contact with something spongy and soft. Bandages. “What… what happened to me?”
Benton looks away. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
John thinks back. The last thing he remembers? He remembers… he remembers…
“Mrs. Reynolds,” he says finally. “The elderly woman who was hit by a car.” John remembers the trauma case – blood, broken bones, internal bleeding. She was in rough shape when Benton took her up to the OR, leaving John behind. He remembers the elevator doors closing. And then… nothing.
Benton curses softly. There is a pause. John’s stomach twists.
“That was over a week ago, Carter.”
John blinks.
Oh.
Oh.
Tears smart in the inner corners of his eyes. He blinks furiously as the beeping of the heart monitor next to his bed speeds up. Keep it together, he tells himself.
“Are you sure?”
Benton sighs, head briefly dropping into his hands. “Yeah, man. That was last Tuesday. It’s Thursday.”
John doesn’t know what to say to that. They sit in silence for a full minute. “Am I going to be okay?” he asks finally, hating the timidity of his own question.
Something softens in Benton’s expression, just a little. “Yeah, man,” he says slowly, almost kindly. “You’re off work for a couple weeks. Your head is going to hurt like hell, and you might have trouble remembering things for a few days. But you’ll be fine.”
Relief floods John’s veins as Benton’s expression hardens once again. “You owe me new shoes, by the way. You puked all over mine.”
John’s eyes widen and he feels heat rush to his cheeks. No. No. He did not puke on Doctor Benton. Except the look on his teacher’s face suggests that he very much did.
He begins stuttering an apology when Benton cuts him off. “Relax, Carter. It’s fine. I’m just… I was just messing with you.”
John relaxes somewhat into the pillows. He notices, now, that the blankets tucked around him are not the standard hospital-issue fare. The one on top is a quilt he recognizes from the lounge. Something warms in his heart.
Over the next few minutes, John begins to feel the tug of sleep. It clouds his mind. His eyes flutter shut. Just before he drifts off, he hears a distant, familiar sigh, and feels the warm pressure of a comforting hand on the top of his head.
The next two days in the hospital pass by in a slow haze. He sleeps a lot. His first time out of bed, trying to get to the bathroom, he nearly falls on his face from the dizziness. He would have, too, if Benton hadn’t been there to catch him.
Haleh and Carol come by, sneaking him a milkshake from Doc Magoo’s. He sips on it happily as the cold treat soothes the pounding in his head. He lets the nurses fuss over him, lets them check the stitches on the back of his head, smoothing out his blankets, bringing him fresh socks. The attention fills him with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Benton sits in the corner as all this transpires, rolling his eyes. John swears, though, that he sees the man smiling to himself once or twice. But maybe that’s just John’s double vision.
They never do find out what exactly happened to him. Mark tells him that they figured out that he’d come down to the ER through the emergency staircase. But it’s unclear why he he’d been in there in the first place. Or how he got hurt.
Susan suggests that maybe he fell down the stairs. He doesn’t have any other injuries, though, so that theory is mostly dismissed. It’s posited that someone hit him over the head in the stairwell and left him there. But there’s no proof of that, either. And that suggestion fills John’s stomach with an uncomfortable, tense feeling, so he decides not to dwell too much on that particular possibility.
It will, it seems, remain a mystery.
John is discharged on Sunday morning, after nearly four days of close observation. He’s almost sad to go, knowing he has the next two weeks off. He’s going to miss his friends, his doting colleagues. Even Benton.
But that night, tucked into bed at Gamma’s house, going over the discharge instructions that Mark handed to him on his way out the door, John can’t help the wide grin that spreads across his face.
Scrawled in black pen at the bottom of the page is a phone number. And a note.
My personal number. Call me if you need anything. -P.B.
It occurs to John, as he drifts off to sleep, still clutching the papers, that this whole concussion disaster is not, all things considered, the worst thing that could have happened to him this year.