Who: October Fischer What: An attack & a change Where: The hospital October works out of. When: This morning. Warnings/Rating: Some vague descriptions of violence & injury
One of the things that October Fischer usually enjoyed about working in a hospital instead of a private clinic was the variety of patients he had a chance to encounter. Everyone had a different story, different needs in their treatment, and Toby enjoyed that variety, figuring out what helped each one best, and when someone left better off than they had been when they appeared, well, that made all the trouble worth it.
That morning, he had been called in for a psych evaluation on a patient who had be admitted to the emergency room. The erratic behaviour spoke of the possibility of the patient being on something, though the patient claimed that he was clean. Regardless, Toby was called in for an initial evaluation, and that was when everything fell apart. There were the basic questions, pen scratches on paper as he jotted down notes about the man's answers, his behaviour, taking note of every twitch and shift as he lay upon the hospital bed. If there had been any warning that the man was possibly violent, or had any violent tendencies, things might have taken another path, but no one had predicted that the patient would lash out as he did.
Toby didn't notice it until it was too late, the man already lunging before Toby took notice, giving him just enough time to shout for help before he and the man tumbled to the hard floor of the room. The clipboard he had had the man's file on clattered to the floor, pen rolling away, leaving Toby with just his wits to help him during the attack. He kicked, he pushed, adrenaline spiking as he fought against the man who was, by all means, stronger than he was. By the time security had arrived to pull the man off of Toby, he was breathing hard, his head spinning, and he watched as the patient was hauled off. Energy spent, Toby flopped back on the floor, trying to will his pounding heart to ease into something closer to a normal rhythm, batting off the feeling of hands trying to urge him up. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he tried to tell them, and he would have continued to insist as such if it hadn't been for one of the attending physicians drawing attention to Toby's bleeding right hand.
"Let's get you up and get that looked at," the doctor insisted, and while Toby wanted to insist otherwise, pain was starting to be felt, radiating through his hand in waves that made him nauseous. His knees were weak as they helped him up, got him to another room, and as he sat there on the bed, one of the doctors hunched over his arm, a surreal feeling came over him, a disconnection that he hadn't felt in some time. It wasn't him sitting there, precisely, but more him watching what was happening as an observer might. He felt no pain, no real sensation, even though he knew he should. That was his hand, that was his blood, and everything said he should have felt something, but there was nothing. He let out a sigh and turned his head away, eyes closing, a quiet thing as the doctor saw to his hand.
Toby wasn't sure how much time had passed before they were wrapping him his hand, splinting his hand and wrist carefully. A prescription for painkillers, instructions to come back later in the week to see the orthopedic surgeon, and Toby barely understood a word they were saying. "Can I call someone?" he asked, his voice sounding far away even to him, and then they were pressing his cell phone into his good hand, leaving him to his privacy in the small examination room.
For a moment, he considered calling Jan or March, but the pair were worried enough about him as it was. He could only imagine how they would react if he called them about this. So Toby did the next best thing and pressed in Winnie's number. Settling back against the raised back of the bed, Toby listened to the phone ring, waiting for her to answer, and it was in those scant few moments that he sat there that he realised the not-quite-familiar presence of the witch hunter was absent in his mind. He wasn't alone, no, there was someone else lurking there, someone quiet and strong, but hell if he had the energy to deal with that right then. "Please don't go to voice mail," he asked the phone, hoping those thoughts, that wish, would make their way to Winnie and she might pick up.