InsaneJournal

Who: Shane and Boyd (Complete log)
What: A hospital visit.
Where: The hospital?
When: After this.
Warnings: Drug mentions, but pretty clean.



Shane tracked Boyd down after she hung up the phone and didn't pick up when he called back. It hadn't sounded like it had the first time, when he called and someone obviously took the phone from her, but there was no way to really know. So he ran the phone number online and tracked it down. Lucky thing that she'd used a landline, easily tracked to one of the local public hospitals. He'd considered going straight to St. Caedwalla, so it was a relief to see that she wasn't in the one hospital in town that was Family run. A public hospital would be easier to get into and out of without anyone noticing, and reduce the risk of slipping in.

He waited until it was early in the morning instead of the middle of the night to go to the hospital. He went in with purpose, walked like he knew exactly where he was going, and made his way into the hospital. He wasn't sure where she would be, but in the hours between Boyd hanging up and his arrival at the hospital he'd put together a slapdash but passable fake ID in case anyone stopped him.

He'd been planning on getting halfway in and then asking for directions, but that proved unnecessary. After sweet talking his way past the one nurse who stopped him (blue eyes and a dazzling smile--she didn't even ask for the ID) he came around the corner to see Boyd's hospital bed rolling down the hallway with a orderly. They turned in the opposite direction, heading down the hallway, following the arrow on the floor that pointed to CCU.

Shane gave them a few seconds and then followed. It was simple enough to keep a few people between them. The halls were getting busier now, about 6:30 in the morning, and there was enough covering noise and other presences to keep him from being conspicuous. It was miraculous what people let you get away with if you just looked like you knew where you were going.

He watched the orderly wheel her bed in, then waited ten minutes. The nurse re-appeared, heading back the other way. He waited until she'd passed, feigning interest with the sun rising through a window, and then slipped inside.

It took surreptitiously checking a few rooms before he found Boyd. When he did, he checked up and down the hall before going in, and he shut the door behind.

She was curled up on the bed facing the window, her red hair garishly bright against the white hospital sheets. Her eyes were closed, her cheek pillowed on her hand, but she wasn't asleep. She was thinking about the conversation she'd had recently with the woman from Bellum; the woman whose name she didn't know; the woman who Shane was in love with. She wondered if she was like James, the stripper, and she wished she knew more about her, even though she hated the thought of Shane with anyone else.

She heard the footsteps, heard the door closing, and she assumed it was Rick come to talk to her. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears falling onto her cheeks, and she feigned sleep. She wasn't sure if she could talk to him right now, even though she knew she needed to.

He stood on the opposite side of her bed for a moment, watching her hold very still and very tense under the sheets. He walked around the bed and knelt down so that he would be at her eye level. He was biting his lip, probably without realizing he was doing it, and looked at her.

He'd missed looking at her.

He brushed a tear away with his thumb, then dropped his hand. "Hi."

She dragged her eyes open as soon as he spoke, and she panicked. "You can't be here," she said, sitting up and scooting toward the headboard, her gaze immediately going to the closed door. If Vaughn knew, if Vaughn saw, if Vaughn, if Vaughn, if Vaughn.

Her system was completely clean of drugs, which meant she was hyper-aware, hyper-reactive, tense, on edge, and exceptionally anxious. Her eyes weren't calm and sedate, like he was accustomed to seeing. She climbed off the bed in a flash, checked the windows, the door, the bathroom in a frenetic flurry of movement, taking the IV pole with her as she moved. He could see the bruises on her arm from where he crouched, needle marks haphazard and unskilled.

The second she got up he could see what a mess she was. Needle marks on her arms flashed past as she darted around the hospital room and he got up to follow. "Boyd." He blocked her path to keep her from running around any more. "Boyd, sit down, you're going to hurt yourself. No one knows that I'm here. I promise you that." He wasn't used to seeing her like this, moving fast, panicking so visibly. It was different, and it worried him. He'd known practically since they met that she was on drugs nigh-constantly, and not seeing that glazed look in her eye was very new. Positive, but unfamiliar.

She noticed the marks on his face when he stopped in front of her, and it was the only thing that actually stilled her, those marks. She touched the one on the side of his face with tentative, tentative fingers, then she stretched on tiptoe to trace the one at his temple. By the time her heels had touched the floor again, her expression had turned angry. "Who done this?" she demanded, her bruised arm directly in front of his face as her touch lingered on his skin.

"Vaughn?" she asked, her jaw tightening.

"No," he assured her, holding her gaze. "If I tell you who, will you sit down?"

Her eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms.

He sighed. Well, at least she wasn't rushing around anymore. "It was when--" the door was shut, wasn't it? He looked behind him to verify that it was. "It was when I was a wolf. Ella, one of the people who was there, she makes these vines when she's frightened, thorny ones." His speech slowed a little. The next part was more difficult to articulate, considering how much he wanted to pretend it had never happened. "When I bit Cole, she was scared, and the vines came up. They cut me, and it was enough to get me to change back. So I owe her my thanks, really."

The name was familiar; it was the one she kept hearing associated with Daniel. It didn't lessen her anger in the slightest bit. However the mention of him becoming a wolf, that did give her pause, and she sat back on the edge of the hospital bed, looking small and pale, and she hugged her stomach. "You tell me the whole tale, and you tell me right this second," she told him. She knew this is what Vlad and Rosalie had mentioned, but she still didn't know the details - Shane had never turned into a wolf anytime other than that one time, not to her knowledge. She looked up at him, and she looked scared and tired. "Go on."

Shane was of the opinion that the hearing more bad news from his end wasn't exactly the best thing for her, but at least she'd finally sat down. If it would placate her, he'd tell her.

"I don't know why it happened, exactly. I was upset at the time, which I think had something to do with it." She knew him, so she had to know what 'upset' meant, how badly he must have wanted to hurt something if it had meant turning into a wolf, for fuck's sake. He had no intention of telling her that it was because of her, because of what she'd told him that day. Like she needed that sort of guilt after everything else. "There were a few people in the hallway and in the apartments around mine that heard me and thought they should see if anything was wrong. I knew who they were. I was still...myself, but I was a wolf also. There were four of them to start with, and they all came into my space all at once. I was frightened. And then Ella's vines came up, which didn't help. James was there, she ran off right away, which is what they all really should have done. They all left, and I tried to do something about it, change back, couldn't figure out how. And then Rosalie ran back in before Cole or Ella could stop her. Cole got in front of her, so it ended up...being him."

The whole event seemed to have an overtone of fear, unusual for him. His speech was a little halting as he worked around the parts of it that bothered him most, tried to tell the truth but not give Boyd even more to worry about.

"How are you doing?" He hadn't come here to talk about himself, or about what the past month had been like for him. He wanted to know what had happened to her.

What had happened to her was something she didn't much want to talk about, and she shook off his question and patted the hospital bed beside her.

He settled in next to her, awaiting some sort of response. It didn't seem like she was going to answer the question, and that worried him more than it would have if she'd just lied.

She leaned against his side, but she didn't touch beyond that. Her head was on his shoulder, her dark red hair cascading over his arm, and she closed her eyes. "Why were you mad?" she asked, though she wasn't sure she really wanted to know. It was probably because of her, she decided, even before he answered. Because she'd hurt him. He'd hurt himself, others, gotten the whole building after him - all because of her. She wondered if he'd met the woman then, whoever she was, the one who had acknowledged that Boyd had hurt him. He'd probably talked to her about it, talked to her about Boyd and all the things Boyd had done wrong (which in Boyd's currently clear mind was quite a lot of things).

She nosed at the side of his neck just once, then she crawled over him and back to her pillow, where she curled up on her side silently, waiting for his response.

Her closeness after what felt like an interminable absence almost overwhelmed her question entirely. The quick nose against his neck made his breath catch, and he turned and watched her curl into the bed.

"I wasn't mad," he said. He paused, then slid further onto the bed, sitting cross-legged and facing her. "It was Vaughn, wasn't it?" Then, "Why'd you hang up on me earlier?" He had little doubt now that had been what had happened.

"Vaughn didn't do nothin' to me," she said, sticking to the literal truth of it, unwilling to completely go against Vaughn's edict, still worried about the man at her side, the woman in the waiting area, and Daniel back in Bellum. She grabbed the white hospital blanket, and she tugged it up over her body, covering her arms and everything up to her chin. She didn't know if he understood why she was there, if he knew anything beside the drugs. "It was just some drugs," she said, an easy fib, not mention what else Trenton had done to her, not wanting him to think less of her than he already did. She knew the building's thoughts about her, knew the thoughts of his new girlfriend too - she didn't want to add to that.

"The nurse took the phone away," she said. Another lie.

He leaned forward a little. There was a stretch of quiet where he said nothing at all. "How about the truth?" he tried, softly. 'Just some drugs' wasn't nearly adequate if what Daniel had told him was true, and there was no way he was going to believe Vaughn had nothing to do with her dramatic move to cut off most of the people in her life.

He grew still, watching her. "...I know you didn't mean the things you said," he said, a statement, not a question, and the hope in that was to tenuous, too invested in her response, for him to possibly be in love with anyone else.

She watched him lean forward, and she didn't pull back, though she wanted to. In the end, she reached out one uncertain hand, and she touched his arm, first with just her fingertips, then with her whole hand. Now that she wasn't worried about Vaughn at the door or the scratches on his face, he seemed very present in the room, very male, and it was dark and quiet enough that he was all she focused on. Her hand shook a little as she pressed it to the fabric of his sleeve, and it was obvious that she was testing to see how it made her feel.

To say Boyd was resilient would be an understatement. It wasn't the first time someone had sex with her without her consent, and she was completely convinced she deserved anything that came her way with regards to sex. The building had worn her down on that front, as had Daniel's and Rosalie's opinions (which were a very large factor) about her sexuality. It all resulted in an honest belief that her behavior led to what happened with Trenton and that it was her fault completely.

"It don't matter any more, does it?" she asked, pulling her hand back. "What's her name?"

Lord only knew what he would do if he knew what she was thinking. He did know, however, that that careful probing with her trembling fingers confirmed everything that he'd feared, and it was a long time before he could answer her second question. When she pulled her hand back, he caught it with his, lightly. "It does."

He thought about when Boyd had hung up the phone, the things Deirdre had said she'd told her. "Deirdre. She lives on the penthouse floor. I've never met her in person, and we've only spoken maybe three times on the forums." His preoccupation with what had happened to Boyd faded briefly, and something clicked. "We barely know each other." What did she think, anyway?

She looked at his hand in hers, and she was quiet, quiet, so quiet. "But she said..."

He didn't like the sound of that. Not at all. "What did she say?" His brow was furrowed, and he was genuinely confused. Had Deirdre lied? Over-represented how well they knew each other, maybe out of anger when Boyd attacked her?

She shook her head, because it really didn't matter. He deserved better, and she knew it. Instead of replying, she tugged on his fingers, tugged just a little bit. He was warm, and she just wanted to curl up against his back. Vaughn didn't have to know, Deirdre didn't have to know, no one had to know.

He wasn't crazy about the lack of response, either, and he watched her for a moment before finally laying down beside her.

"Boyd," he said, tone as measured as he could keep it, "You know that I don't want anyone else, don't you? Even when you said the things you said, I didn't want anyone else. I'm never going to."

She curled against his back, her arms hugging her stomach, so he wasn't holding her at all, but she was still getting the warmth from his back and feeling him close. "You deserve better than me," she said softly. It wasn't said in a self-pitying way. It was just the truth, just the facts. "You won't tell anyone you were here?" she asked, because she didn't want to not see him, didn't want him to not be around, but-

"You deserve someone who ain't done all the things the building gets on me about. They're true, Shane. I know you tend to think I can't do no wrong, but that ain't so. You deserve someone better than me, someone who won't keep you in the thick of all this mess. Someone who can help you, instead of getting you so angry you turn and bite things."

He rolled over so that he could look at her. He wasn't going to talk to the wall--he wanted to be able to look her in the eye.

"I don't understand why you don't see that you're the one who deserves better," he said. "I do nothing but worry you sick. I don't care what the people in the building say. I don't care if it's true. I'd be a mess without you. And if you really think you don't help me, then you really don't know yourself at all."

He lifted his head, kissed her on the forehead. He would have liked to seek more, but he thought of her shaking hands, and he didn't.

She didn't shy away from the kiss, just as she didn't shy away when he rolled toward her. She closed her eyes, and she sighed deeply. "You don't understand," she said quietly. "I slept with someone else," she admitted, even quieter. "I don't- I don't deserve to-" she just shook her head, didn't finish her sentence. "This woman, she nice?"

He let that sink in. She'd slept with someone else. Who? The guy Vaughn had said she was dating? Like he could really believe anything that Vaughn said. Vlad, maybe? No, not likely, he was too wrapped up in his Mina. Who then? Who could it have been, and why?

Then again, how had she ended up here? He didn't know what had happened to her since she'd cut herself off. It could have been anything.

He didn't answer the question, and he didn't ask her who it had been. "Do you still want to be with me?"

She ducked her head under his chin, unable to look into his eyes. "That don't matter."

He nudged her chin up with his hand, lightly. "Yeah. It does."

"It might not matter to you what people say, but I don't want them gettin' on you cause of me," she argued. "I went to someone's apartment, did drugs, and I had sex with them. You think that ain't gonna be all over the forums and on everyone's tongues? What, with me endin' up here? And they're gonna say things, and you're gonna get riled, and it's just gonna be worse for you. And that don't even take Vaughn into account, and what all she can do."

Shane stilled.

"Is that how it went?" He wasn't going to push her, but it certainly sounded like the authorities investigating had a strong reason to believe that it hadn't been as consensual as she was framing it.

"I went into someone's apartment, and I asked them for drugs, Shane," she said, climbing off the bed and walking to the window quickly, her IV pulling out as she moved. She winced a little and rubbed her hand, but she didn't stop or look back at him. "Ya know, I spent an awful long time tellin' Daniel I was in love with him, and he never believed me, cause I just wanted sex, he said. Rose, she thought the same thing. Everyone thinks the same thing, Shane. That don't just happen. It's my doin.' I'm too affectionate, I think's how it was phrased once, and that means sex for a man. Anything I got was comin' my way, and don't you even try arguin' against it, cause you're all kinds of biased when it comes to me," she said.

The machine behind her began beeping, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before the nurse came to check.

He got up, and he followed her. He didn't care if the nurse walked in--what he'd just heard, if he'd heard it right, was not only maddening and insane, it made his blood boil. "You didn't ask for anything," he said. "You asked someone for drugs because you were desperate, and they took advantage of you. That's not bias, that's someone using you, violating you." And you weren't there, went the chorus again. He was visibly frustrated, of course, but what showed on the surface was just the tip of the iceberg. If she had any idea how he really felt about this, he had no chance at all of getting his next question answered. Blind fury, a fantasy of tearing the man responsible apart and putting him back together to tear into him again with claws and teeth and--

"Who was it?"

She wasn't silly enough to answer that question. She knew that Shane would paint her as the victim, no matter what she said. But the people who were unbiased, she believed them. She'd been trying to defend herself all this time against what they all said, but in the stark and clear light of sobriety, she thought maybe they were right. She knew Rose and Daniel cared about her, and if even they thought-

She shook her head. "Shane, darlin,' you're soft on me. You don't see it like it is," she said honestly, turning and looking at him, eyes too old and too tired; tired of it all - of what people said, of trying so hard just to get torn down again, of failing at all of it. She cared too much about what they all said, what they all felt about her, she knew. She couldn't help it, didn't know how to be any different, and it had just gotten to the point where no one believing anything she said was too much for her to handle.

The nurse came in the room, and she cleared her throat from the door. "He's just leavin,'" Boyd said, and she turned to look back out the window, biting her lip to keep from crying before he'd gone. "I got the drugs from someone outside Bellum," she added. A lie. She was racking them up during this conversation.

He stood between Boyd and the nurse, feeling very much adrift, forced to leave the conversation even though that was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to sit with her and convince her that she was wrong, spend hours if he had to, make her see that what had happened to her wasn't right.

He didn't have that kind of time. So he held her, briefly, tightly, from behind as she looked out the window, and then let her go.

"I don't believe you." His voice sounded strangled. "But I love you."

He pushed past the nurse and into the hall, walking back to the front doors with his hands stuffed low into his pockets, conjuring up images of the three men he'd killed as a reminder of why he couldn't. No matter how much he wanted to.