Loki Laufeyson (ex_brother217) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-07-09 16:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, harry dresden |
Who: Dr. Fischer & Iris
What: Hospital admissions
Where: The hospital Toby works at
When: Recent
Warnings/Rating: Mentions of suicide, self-harm. Questionable medical practices. Nothing horrible, but my research was limited and I admit that.
The smell hit her first. Sharp antiseptic and bleach. The scent of old food and the undefinable but unmistakable odor of the sick and dying. She knew that smell intimately. She hated it.
The sounds registered next. Soft voices in the distance, a paging system. Someone crying down the hall. Closer, the rhythmic whoosh of a ventilator and the regular beep of a heart monitor.
Touch: sheets, a blanket heavy over her body. A piece of hair tickling her neck. The draft in the room that was barely warded off by the thin, rough gown she was wearing. Bare legs between the sheets. Everything aching. The pulling tape that anchored an IV in her arm, wires and tubes and the stick of monitoring electrodes on her chest and back.
And then taste. Vomit. Charcoal. The plastic of the tube that was down her throat.
Blurry, over-exposed sight after prying open gritty eyelids. Hospital room. Of course.
And then, finally, the kicking return of memory. Confirmation of what she already knew - confirmation of failure. The onset of panic.
She wasn’t supposed to be there. She wasn’t supposed to be alive. She was supposed to be nameless and gone and there wasn’t anyone left to claim her. She was no one, and no ones didn’t get hospital rooms and care. No.
Her breathing began to fight against the ventilator as the panic increased with the need to go, to escape, to do things right this time. Her hands refused to cooperate, her groggy fumbling uncoordinated, but enough to wrap the IV around her hand and pull, the first of the tethers to go. Pain flared from the wound it left, but she didn’t care. It brought tears to her eyes in reaction, though, and the panic only forced them into hitching little sobs that still struggled in counterpoint to the ventilator. She wrapped hands around that and started to pull, but the drag of it in her throat made her gag and panic more.
By that point, the nurses had been alerted that something was wrong, and there was a flurry of bodies entering her room. And then there were hands. And voices. Swearing and orders from above and someone closer, trying to talk softly to her, calling her miss, calling her sweetheart, girl, darling. She fought against all of it, desperation and lack of care making her stronger than she usually was, until more than one person had to hold her down, the sharp prick of a needle slicing through her panic, and then the quick, warm wash of grey and oblivion.
When his brothers had expressed concern that he was suicidal, perhaps more like their father than they wanted to believe, he had been inclined to agree for perhaps ten seconds. There were days, yes, when he simply wanted to give up, when he wanted to lay down, close his eyes, and let whatever happens happen, to give up the good fight. But then the thought of doing so made the bile rise in his throat, and as tempting as it might have been some days to simply give up, he knew that he never could. Never would. He was too much of a fighter, too stubborn to simply give up on a world that seemed to want to get him down. No, life wasn't always easy, but it was worth living.
In the years since he had started practicing in a hospital setting, Toby felt like he had seen it all. Self-harm, suicide attempts, suicide successes. And in some, he could see that it was more a cry for help, for attention, than for an actual end to their lives, but there were some that truly wanted the end to come. Those were the ones that scared him the most, the ones that fought against the help they were offered, who raced towards death with open arms, and he had to wonder what was wrong that they felt that was the only option left to them. The petite blonde in room 406 was one of the latter, one of the ones he worried about.
When she had finally woken, and then promptly fought to not only pull out her IV but also the ventilator tube, he had asked the question as to why she had not been properly monitored. The answers weren't the ones he wanted, but at least he could ensure that it wouldn't happen again. So after she had been sedated, heavily so for a woman of her size, the IV had been reinserted, a new site on the other arm to leave the wound on the original heal. The ventilator was checked, rechecked, and the heavy leather institutional restraints had been pulled out. He hated to use them, hated the situations that called for them, but if she didn't want to fight and allow them to help, then he would have to do the fighting for her. Her arms were restrained to the bed railings, a splint in place on the arm that held the IV, ankles similarly restrained to the foot of the bed. Constant monitoring. He would be alerted the moment it seemed she was rousing again.
The call came around 10am that morning that Jane Doe had woken up, and Toby wasted little time in making it way to her room. He was dressed as he normally was, white coat, dress shirt, dark charcoal trousers. He looked younger than his nearly 40 years, and his expression was carefully schooled; concerned, but not to the point where it seemed he pitied. "It's good to see you awake again," he said as he entered the room, chart in hand, a scratched note made before he looked up towards her. "I'm Dr. Fischer. I'll be overseeing your care for the moment."
The second time waking was less dramatic, her body weighed down by the heaviness of medication. It didn’t stop her from trying to move, attempting again to escape the bed, the room, the building, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that she wasn’t going anywhere. If the medication hadn’t been enough to keep her put, the restraints were. They rattled against the bed when she tried to pull on them, but she quickly stopped, the effort too much. Trapped, in exactly the way she didn’t want to be. She closed her eyes again, doing her best to not panic at the tube still down her throat, though her breath started coming faster again. Tears pushed from between her squeezed tight lashes, and when she startled and looked at the doctor that was suddenly in her room, he was a watery blur until she blinked away the tears, sending them spilling over her cheeks.
It didn’t take her long to assess and dismiss. Doctor, of course. Someone that wanted the exact opposite of what she craved - someone that wouldn’t just let her go. She turned her face away from him.
He saw the tears, the way she turned her face away from him, and the reaction didn't surprise him at all. It wasn't a position he would wish upon any, and even if she didn't believe him, he could understand what she was feeling. So Toby put down the chart on a chair near the door, closed the door until it was open only a crack, and then he pulled up the rolling stool to the side of her bed as he took a seat. "I'm sure you wish we'd just let you go, don't you?" he asked, and a tissue was in his hands as he leaned over, wiping the tears away from her cheeks. "I know that might feel like it's easier, but I really do want to help you." The tissue was tucked away, hands laced together, and he waited for her to look back towards him.
She let him touch her, let him wipe away the tears. She didn’t have much choice, other than moving her face away again like a child trying to avoid a washcloth at bathtime. She simply laid there, accepted what she couldn’t avoid in the moment. His voice was too sympathetic, and it drove into her like blades. It was sharp pain, but unavoidable. She continued to fight against the ventilator, choking on it when she tried to pull a breath that went against the tube that fed down her throat. She needed it out. If they were keeping her as part of the living world, she at least needed to breathe on her own. She finally turned red eyes toward him, staring at him for a too-long moment before she gestured to the tube with one restrained hand. Get it out, her eyes pleaded.
The gesture, the pleading with her eyes, the silent questions were understood by the doctor who was used to them. "Let me call a nurse in and we'll get that out, alright?" he asked, touching his fingers to one hand as he rose to his full height, a silent promise that he would return shortly. And then Toby left the room, gone for only a moment before a pair of nurses entered behind him, carrying with them the supplies needed to remove the ventilator tube. He stood back, letting them work, his gaze appraising as he watched. He was a doctor who would, against advice given at times, go out of his way to help his patients recover. Maybe it was the history of illness in his own family, seeing the way his mother had been cared for upon her admittance, but there was compassion in him that couldn't be faked.
She didn’t want more people in the room, wanted everyone to go away and let her be, but then the tube was gone and she could breathe on her own again. For however long they allowed that to last. If she had her way, she would stop sooner, rather than later. She gagged when it came up, but there was nothing in her stomach after it had been cleared of all the medication she’d put into it, and the gagging was only a quick dry heave before it was done. Her throat ached even with the tube gone, but she didn’t complain, didn’t say anything, only laid back against the pillow and turned her face away again, listening to the pair of retreating footsteps as the nurses left. She knew the doctor was still there, though. There with his soft eyes and young face and compassionate voice. There with everything she didn’t want. So she turned away and did her best to ignore him.
Once the nurses were gone, Toby closed the door again until it was only open a crack once more, and then he took his seat again on the small rolling stool he pulled up beside the bed. "You can ignore me all that you want," he started, keeping his voice quiet, lacking any accusation or anger. "But believe it or not, I'm on your side here." He got up for a moment, the sound of running water in the attached bathroom, and then he returned with one of the hospital mugs with the bendy straw, holding it out towards her. "Sip of water? I'm sure your throat's hurting after the ventilator. I've never been on one myself, but I can imagine."
She listened to the roll of the stool, the easy, soft sound of his voice, but a sharp, painful rasp of laugh pushed out of her abused throat at the thought of him being “on her side”. The rip of sound brought tears to her eyes again, and still restrained to the bed, she couldn’t brush them away, causing them to roll fat down her face again. Even with the grate of it rasping at her throat, she didn’t accept the water, turned away from it yet again before angling her gaze back toward him, watery and accusing.
"You don't believe me." He didn't take personal offense at the refusal of the water, setting it aside on the bedside table, a tissue grabbed to dry her face once more before he settled back, hands laced together between his knees. "I don't really expect you to. But I am here to help. You asked for the ventilator tube to be removed, and I did that, didn't I? You're not being punished by being here. We're just trying to help." Toby gave her a long look, his expression as neutral as possible. "And unfortunately, you'll be here for a while unless we make some progress. You've no identification, no family to take you home, and in your state, I'm under professional obligation to ensure you remain hospitalized so long as I feel you are a risk to yourself."
She only stared at him as he spoke, expression flat and resigned to her current situation. She had heard this sort of speech before, things being for her own good. Knowing what was best for her. Knowing better than she did. Of course. Because what would she know about her own life. Silence hung between them, her gaze unfaltering, once he was done with his pretty words, the ones that every doctor pulled out. Then she looked some more. And when it didn’t chase him away, the flatness of her stare, she forced a single word from her ravaged throat.
“No.”
He didn't flinch away from her stare, didn't change his expression from that carefully neutral look he had adopted, and when she said that single word, that refusal that could cover so many things, Toby simply arched a brow. "No? To what part of this? You'll have to be more specific than that, I fear." It was said simply, without pomp and circumstance, and there might have been a challenge in those words.
She watched him, watched the raise of that eyebrow, the ease with which he kept his calm expression. If he thought she was going to make this any easier on any of them, he was wrong. She had nothing left. She was nothing, any more. Why would she want to go back? Her next word was more forceful, even though it scraped along her throat with the struggle of the air.
“No.”
Toby was quiet at that, giving her a long look before he got to his feet and disappeared from the room for several minutes. When he returned, it was with a stack of files, a couple books, and without another word, he pulled up his stool to the rolling table at the foot of her bed, spread them out, and went to work. He was a patient, stubborn thing, not one to back down, and not one to give up on anyone, even if they wanted to give up on themselves.
She was glad when he left, resting back against the pillow and closing her eyes. The sedative that was in her system kept her from thinking too much, though the thoughts still circled through her mind. Everything that had brought her to this point, on constant repeat and rerun. Beyond the physical ache of her throat, the thoughts created a sharp lump there, nothing she could swallow past. It was almost too much, and then the Doctor returned. With stacks of things, things that looked like work, and he sat in her room and appeared to be there for the long haul. She simply stared at him for long, passing minutes, watching him work. She had no idea how to handle it, had never had any doctor just sit in a room with her like this. And (unfortunately), his presence didn’t stop the thoughts that were still on repeat in her mind. She wanted him to leave, wanted to lay there and will herself to die, but she couldn’t do that when he was so present, doing things that were so normal.
Closing her eyes again, she tried to think of nothing, to push herself somewhere other than a hospital room, but the sound of papers turning and pen on page kept drawing her back. Closed eyes or not, she could still picture him in that chair, and the frustration of it ushered back the tears. She turned her face away from him as much as she could, cried silently as possible for several minutes, and then in desperation, whispered. “Go away.”
There was several hours of paperwork for him to review, files to update, papers to read that he had been given by colleagues in the psychiatric field. In other words, hours of work to keep him busy while he sat at the table at the foot of her bed. He listened to the soft crying, and then the plea for him to leave.
Toby put down his pen at that, steadied her with a long look, hands folded atop the small, rolling table. "No."
And then he picked up his pen once more, and resumed his work.
Eyes still closed, her breath hitched painfully in her throat at his simple repetition of her earlier refusals. The crying came harder then, even though she tried to hide it. It was an ugly sound, full of physical and emotional pain, and it wouldn’t be kept in. She wanted it to end, wanted him to go away, but no matter how many times she tried to tell him in a broken, tear-filled voice, he wasn’t leaving. She had no other recourse, and it took ages for the crying to stop. When it did, it felt as if nothing had been accomplished, leaving her only that much more empty and now in pain from it. She simply laid there, staring away from him, at the wall.
It might have seemed heartless, this behavior of his, but he had his reasons, his goals. When the tears came, Toby paused in his work to keep an eye on her, rising only when she had gone quiet, her face reddened from the tears, to fetch a cold washcloth from the bathroom. Returning to her bedside, he gently wiped her face clean, ignoring any protests she might have voiced, smoothing her hair away from her face. "I'm not your enemy," he said quietly, pulling his chair back to the side of her bed, again offering her the water. "I've put up with worse from people related to me. I had to admit my mother when I was eighteen. I've dealt with hatred from people when I'm trying to help them. I'm quite used to it. But I don't give up. I guess you got unlucky enough for me to be on call when you came in, didn't you?"
She barely even responded when he wiped at her face, though the cool rasp of the washcloth was one thing that actually felt good in the moment. Not that she would admit that to him. She only laid there and let him do those little things that she refused to be comforted by. They brought her too much back to her own body, grounded her in the moment that she didn’t want to experience. The hand on her hair was too like a gesture Ian had done numerous times before, and she had to close her eyes and turn her face away again. “Please don’t.” she managed to whisper, expression squeezed into something sad and pained. “It’s too...” She trailed off and shook her head, eyes still closed and not looking at him. “I hate you. Please go away.”
The washcloth was laid over the railing of her bed, the mug of water once again set aside, and for a long moment, he didn't say anything. His attention was on her, intent, taking in the squeeze of her eyes, the softly spoken words, her repeated requests for him to leave. A lot of doctors might have done just that, packed up their papers and went off to wherever it is they went when they got tired of dealing with the patients. But Toby was different, and even though his brand of caring might have been more along the lines of 'tough love', it was, indeed, a form of caring.
He did get up, however, but it wasn't to leave. Instead, he went and picked up her file from where he had left it and pulled out his pen, flipping it open to scratch on the pages. "Since you've woken up," he started, gaze cast down to the paper, "and your condition has remained stable insofar as the damage you attempted to do to yourself, I'll be seeing to your transfer to the psychiatric ward immediately. I'll be able to keep a closer eye upon you there. But I have to tell you, miss," he concluded, closing the file and tucking it under one arm. "I don't give up on my patients. You may not like me, and that's fine. You're not required to. Patients don't enjoy the foul medicines that make them better, but you don't have to like the taste for it to do its job. Likewise with me. Do you have any questions for me?"
She opened her eyes after he stood, following his progress across the room, and watched as he sat back down near her again. The sight of her file, so small with the absence of any of her history, caught her attention for a long time as he spoke, as he called her “miss”, as he promised her that he wouldn’t give up. And of course she didn’t believe him. Not when everyone else she knew had given up on her and pushed her out of their lives. When he asked for her questions, she looked down for a long moment before finally lifting her chin again to look at him. Her voice hadn’t smoothed into anything less rough, still gravelly from abuse. “What are you going to do when your medicines don’t make me better?” she whispered.
Toby didn't answer initially, instead setting her file down as he pulled over a chair to the side of her bed, his expression serious, thoughtful. "Medications are useful in handling the symptoms. Anxiety, depression, chemical imbalances, the like. I believe that medications are very useful, but that's not the only thing I use to help. The medications aren't going to make you feel feel better, miss, but they can help you help yourself feel better. We can also talk. Explore exercises that help you manage your feelings, to understand where they're coming from and how you can cope with them. We can explore other activities that may get your mind off of things, exercise, art, things like that. But here's the thing I need you to understand." Toby reached out to take her hand in his own, large hands, a heavy scar eclipsing one hand around his thumb, still pink, fresh. "I'm not treating the symptoms. I'm not just treating an illness. I'm treating my patient. Mind. Body. Soul. Everything in between. Alright?"
Iris had heard this speech before too. The pie-in-the-sky hopefulness of a doctor that was starting off optimistic with a new patient. It made everyone feel good until nothing worked and it all fell back into over-medication and leaving her in a facility for years on end. She’d find a way to end it before that happened again.
She startled at the contact and stared at him for a long moment before shifting her gaze down to their hands. She couldn’t pull her own away, not when it was bound to the bedrail, and it looked too-small cradled in his. The scar caught her attention, and she didn’t say anything for too long as she looked at it, suddenly curious as to what had happened to him. She shook her head after that heavy pause, forcing herself to stop thinking about him as a person and keep thinking of him as the doctor that she hated, but she sighed. “May I have a pen? Paper? It will be easier to write than to tell you...”
"A pen and paper for what?" he asked, still holding her hand, blue eyes soft with concern. "I'm quite quick at writing if you just want to tell me. Though I would appreciate it if you could also tell me your name." The trouble with a patient who didn't have any identification on them is you also didn't have a history. Had something happened to them in the past? Was there significant medical history that they needed to know about? "I'll give you what you need if you answer a question for me. Alright?"
She eyed him warily. She wasn’t planning on giving him a name any time soon, but she can, and would, give him medical history. Some, at least. Just enough. A list of medication, to start with. She stared at him as she thought over his request, and she frowned. Her fingers curled around his, within the cradle of his hand, without her realizing it at first, taking comfort from the touch. When she noticed, she jerked her hand away as much as she could, looking down and balling it into a fist. “What question?”
When she pulled her hand away after that small curl of her fingers around his, Toby pulled back as well, not pressing the moment of contact, small as it was. Baby steps, cautious steps. He knew better than to move too quickly. "Just a name. Something I can call you other than 'miss' or 'Jane Doe', which is what your file currently reads. You can give me a false name if you'd rather. It's up to you." And as he spoke, he drew away, fishing in the pocket of his coat for the pad of lined paper he kept there, pulling it and a pen out to show to her. "Deal?"
She uncurled her hand and lifted her fingers toward the pen, frowning at him when he kept it and the paper out of reach. “Why can’t you just call me Jane?” It was better than any other name she might give him. Every other name was connected to a woman that no one wanted around. At least as Jane, none of them would have to know what was happening. She stretched her fingers toward the pen again and sighed, “Please?” she murmured grudgingly, looking at the writing implements.
"Because I want a name that means something to you. I've treated many women in my career who I was forced to call Jane Doe because we had no other names for them. A name, or no writing, and I'll send a nurse in to take down whatever it is you want to write down. That's the deal, miss." The pen was clicked, the ballpoint coming out, the fresh smell of ink coming into the air. "So?"
She was silent and sullen for long minutes, staring at the pen and trying to come up with a name. Something that wouldn’t lead back to her family. Something that she could respond to. The seconds ticked by as her mind raced, and finally, softly, she picked the first thing that popped into her head. “Lily.” Maybe it was ridiculous, one flower name to another, but it was at least something for him to write down in his stupid file. She reached out her fingers again, expectantly.
But the name wasn't written down in his stupid file, and he simply filed it away in the back of his own thoughts as he sat the pen and paper down atop her leg, then took his seat again beside her. "Lily, then," Toby said, repeating the name to hold onto it. "I'm going to release your arm, Lily, but you have to promise me that you won't attempt to do anything foolish when I do this. Can I trust you?" He met her gaze, held onto it, and he waited.
She waited for him to write it down, and narrowed her eyes at him when he didn’t. She gave his question more consideration that it was probably do, knowing that even one hand being free, with a pen at that, could cause a decent amount of damage before she was restrained again. But not enough. So though she looked at him for a very long time, she finally nodded.
When the paper was put on her leg and her hand released, she took the pen and started scrawling a messy list on the paper. It didn’t quite keep between the lines, and some of the letters were skewed from fingers slightly numb yet from everything she’d put in her body. The rest of it was her normal, untidy penmanship. She focused solely on the list, and it emerged quickly. It was hard to follow at first, long words and numbers, a list of just a few items, expanding more and more until it was an actual list. She paused at the end, double-checking things, changing some of the numbers, and then she handed it to him. “That’s where you start,” she finally whispered, and nodded at the list.
The list was set aside for the moment, sure fingers redoing the restraint that had wound around her wrist only moments prior, securing it before taking the pen and paper back to look it over. Absently, the pen was tucked away in the pocket of his coat, brow furrowed down as he read the list over, longer than it had any right to be. "Current medications?" he asked, looking back up towards her with an arched brow. "Or just a list of everything you've been on in the past?" He hoped it was the latter rather than the former, but he had a sinking suspicion in the pit of his stomach that this was a current list, and he had to wonder at the doctor that would have a single patient on so many medications.
She sighed at the re-fastening of the strap around her wrist, frowning down at it as she watched his fingers work, gentle but certain, making it all tight enough that she wouldn’t be able to wrench free of it, but nothing pinched too tight. She stared until a touch brushed the inside of her wrist, and then she looked away, her stomach rolling in reaction to the contact. No. She focused instead on the questions, her voice shaking as she whispered around the still-painful gravel of it. “Up until a few months ago. It was finally balanced.” She frowned down at herself. “Weigh less now, might need to alter a little, but it’s a good start if you’re planning to check me in.”
Toby didn't say anything for the longest time, staring at the list of anxiety, depression, anti-psychotics, and then the host of medications designed to help deal with the side effects of them. It was too much, a cocktail that was bound to explode, and it was with a look of faint disgust that he took the list, folded it in two, and tucked it into her file where he didn't have to look at it. "It was too much," he said after a moment, folding his hands together again to return his gaze back to her. "I'd rather start fresh, ground up, and see what we can do together. I'd rather not have my patients so drugged they can hardly tell up from down, or on so many medications they have their own private pharmacy in their bathroom." A small smile pulled at his lips, gentle in nature, and he gave her another nod of his head. "First things first. I'd like to get you out of those, but we're going to have to come to an agreement together before that happens. Are you willing to work with me, Lily?"
She watched look on his face, her own expression fixed and flat as he tucked the list away, and she shook her head at his analysis of it. She sighed. “You want me better, that’s the way to do it.” She glanced at the file. “Better enough to leave, you said.” She stared at him for a long moment and then offered another thought: “I’ll probably even tell you my real name once you get me back on my meds.” She eventually sighed again and looked down at the cuffs around her wrists. Her voice was even softer when she replied. “You haven’t sedated me enough to take me out of restraints.”
"Better enough that I believe you won't end up in the hospital again," he clarified, the words a little pointed, but he wasn't about to help her out and then let her go only to have the entire process repeated in a month. "But we'll get to that point when we do. And you are welcome to tell me your real name whenever you wish. Until then, I'll just call you Lily." Another smile, even though he knew that the hospital would be comparing her physical description to the list of missing persons that was constantly updated. If they could identify her before then, they would, but until then, it would remain like this.
He glanced towards the cuffs for a moment, reaching out to touch one of them, and then her hand, his head canted to the side. "No, we haven't. I'd like to think it doesn't have to be that way, but if it does, then that will be the way we move. I'd rather operate on trust with you. You trust me to help you, to do everything I can with your best interests in mind, and I will trust you not to do something that will set back your recovery. And if you can't trust me, Lily, then I'll refer you to one of my colleagues. It's important that we start out on the right foot, but I can't help you if you won't allow me to."
“I won’t end up in the hospital again.” The words were rough and so quiet that they were more for herself than for him. But there was an intensity to it that had been absent from her other words. She meant it truly, though not in the way he might have wanted. She knew how hospitals might check against missing persons, but she wasn’t missing. Being unwanted by anyone wasn’t the same as missing. It was, more accurately, the opposite of it. She wouldn’t be on anyone’s list.
She pulled at her cuffs for a moment, sighing at the way the held fast, and shook her head. “I want to die and I hate you. I’m going to hate anyone that keeps me here. I’ve had worse than you.” She’d known too many doctors. She could tell that he was at least one of the nice ones. And though that would likely work against her long-term goals, she couldn’t deal with someone new. Not yet. “No one’s going to help me. It’s better to not waste the resources and just let me go.”
Toby was quiet for a long while, resisting the urge to let out the sigh that pressed at his lips. For a moment, he thought there had been progress, even if it was slight. But there hadn't been. He knew what she meant when she said she wouldn't end up in the hospital again, that her next stop would likely be the county morgue if she had her way, and he was determined to prevent that from happening.
"Then the cuffs will stay on until we can move you to the psychiatric ward. You will be closely supervised and restricted until further notice." The tone of his voice had changed, if only slightly, a decision made that he hadn't wanted to make. "I'll have the papers signed shortly to process the transfer. In the meantime, catch up on your rest. If you need something, the call button's next to your left hand. A nurse will be in shortly to check up on you." He let out the sigh finally as he rose to his full height, gathering up her file and the other papers he had brought in with him, stacking them in a neat pile, hands running down the sides. "I'll be seeing you shortly, Lily," he said, quietly, and then he moved to leave.
She saw the shift, knew what it meant, that the gentleness would fade a bit, and she nodded. She expected no less. She watched him move around the room, and wondered how long it would take for him to give up on her. She hoped, for both their sakes, that it wasn’t very long. “I’m sorry," she said quietly before he was quite out the door. “I’m sorry I have to hate you. You... seem like a really nice person.”
Toby paused at the door, glancing back towards her for a moment. "You don't have to hate me, Lily. It's your choice to do so. But even if you hate me, even if you want to scream at me and tell me to leave, I want you to know that I'm not going to give up until you feel better. I promise you that." The words were soft, the look in his eyes warm, and then he took his leave. It was only moments later that a nurse replaced him, quiet and efficient, checking this and that as would be done every fifteen minutes for the following days.
Iris (now Lily) shook her head again, her expression sad. She didn’t want to make him angry. Or sad. Or however he reacted when he lost a patient. But she knew it was inevitable. So she looked down, away from that soft, warm look, and sighed. She let him leave without another word, and barely even looked at the nurse who came in. She simply laid back and did her best to disappear into the bleached whiteness of the bed.