ifeelwounded (ifeelwounded) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-10-04 09:49:00 |
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It was one of those shifts. Not the bad ones, when all Anna wanted to do was picture the beach house she used to own and go to her happy place, or the good ones when she felt like a superhero. This was the type that went on for what seemed like days and every time she got to the end of paperwork, expecting to see an hour having flown by, realizing it was eighteen minutes at most. She forgot entirely about lunch because she was too busy staring the clock down to make much use of it. She did her rounds and wondered if this was hell, and she kept hearing this voice at the back of her head saying to calm down. Pace herself. Picture that happy place. The strange part was how gentle and soothing the voice was, because Anna never had a soothing thought in her head since puberty. It started ever since she got to Vegas, and maybe that was just evidence she was losing it. She was still new enough not to have made any real friends yet, outside of a few conversations, and it was being in high school all over again. Only this time she wasn't anywhere near the clique. So Anna ate alone and worked hard. Reputation was everything. That remained true anywhere in the world. In this case she decided to eat part of her lunch while checking in on a patient. The patient was one she happened to get along with just fine; Anna was always more comfortable with patients than she was people. Casey Donovan wasn't just anyone too. She saw him on Broadway, back when she got invited into the chichi box seats, and may or may not have the Broadway Christmas album he recorded a song on. Luckily she remembered she was a doctor and not a debutante now, and focused on his recovery. Because of what appearances meant to her, Anna was well put together at all times. Blond hair pulled up in a tight bun, her make up present but not overbearing, and the white coat and scrubs seemed to work with her and not against her. No one said you had to look like a scrub while wearing them. "Afternoon Mr. Donovan." She had the newest clipboard of his readings and swung around to stand at the bottom of his bed. "How are you feeling today?" Casey had multiple fractures in his ribs, his wrist and his left leg was broken in more than three places, and he’d already had one surgery the very night he’d gotten into the accident. The worst was the road rash, it was starting to itch by now, and the bed was the most uncomfortable thing he’d ever had the displeasure to lie down in. Let alone attempt to sleep in. And he was in hospital. And his family was still going through so much and he was the oldest, it was his job to be the sane one this time around. They’d all had their sets of problems, but Louis laid heavy on his mind. He was supposed to be looking after him, not the other way around. He was half tempted to throw send their parents to Vegas and pack up his siblings and cart them all straight back to Scotland where they would all live happily ever after on the family estate while their ridiculous parents wandered around Vegas trying to figure where they went wrong. He was connected to the IV drip, and allowed a nice pump of morphine every now and again. It should have worried him, and truthfully it did. He could already feel his body reacting to it in a way that was all too familiar. But he was trusting his doctors. And he was in enough pain with the drugs, that he didn’t want to imagine without them. That coupled with the very likely loss of a dancing career that he was nowhere near ready to give up, Casey should have been fucking miserable. Though, all things considered - Casey was in high spirits. And while that may have been a direct result of the small pharmacy they were feeding him on a regular basis, he would take what he could get. After all, Louis had come, he’d talked to Sam and Neil. There were worse days to have. When the doctor came in he clicked off the soap opera he had been glued to since he’d woken up in a hospital bed. It wasn’t so much that he was embarrassed, he didn’t care a bit, it was that he knew the odds of successfully multitasking were not in his favor in his current condition and the soap opera would win in a competition with the doctor and he didn’t want to be rude. He smiled at her question, his voice groggy but cheerful, “Fucking terrible, but I think it’s a step up from yesterday which was bloody fucking terrible.” Drug use was always taken into account when they figured out pain medication, and the hospital had rules. Most of the time they were able to maintain it, and it just meant a little more attentiveness than usual to his drug intake. Anna heard only the last few seconds of the soap opera he was watching, and hoped her DVR was getting it down at home. It was one of her guilty pleasures, and usually met with laughter considering she was a doctor and her favorite medical dramas were horribly inaccurate. She smiled at him. "Hopefully we'll be getting you to just terrible soon, and up the sliding scale of awful until sore." Anna checked his IV and back to the chart. "The good news is your vital signs look great and you're recovering well from the surgery. It's going to be a long process, but you're on the right track." There were a lot of pitfalls that could happen along the way, so she wouldn't give him any guarantees. He was an overall healthy and fit man and that helped. She did on some level know he would be worried about his career and what it meant. It was too soon to tell if it would keep him retired, so she kept quiet on that. "We'll keep cleaning the skin abrasions from your accident and changing the bandages. What would you say is your itchiness on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being irritating but no big deal and 5 being impossible to stay comfortable?" Anna assumed with the drugs he was on he wouldn't be near a five yet, but it was important to note and decide if something else would be necessary to counter it. Luckily (for them) he wasn't able to move around and itch the way other patients might, with his other injuries. He smiled slightly and would have nodded in some kind of agreement if he felt confident enough about head movements at all. As of now he was on the fence about them. But he apparently wasn’t on his deathbed it just felt like that. He half wished one of his siblings was around to take notes but he assumed someone would write it all down for him. “There are worse places to be than on the proverbial right track I suppose,” he said a bit more sleepily than he intended. Something, something skin abrasions but then she was asking about the itching and he narrowed his eyes about. He knew he wasn’t thinking too clearly or smartly because his first instinct was to say ‘it’s none of your beeswax’ and that was just ridiculous. “It’s kicking me in the ass,” he blurted out. “I’m going a bit mad actually.” Usually only when he noticed it, then he couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was something easy to hone in on. Like now. “It was better before you brought it up.” It was all written down and Anna planned on briefing his siblings when they came in. It was just good manners and hospital etiquette to update the patient too. Sometimes they were out of it and forgot soon after, but they did it anyway. "Oh yes, much worse. You were very lucky, it was touch and go at first, but I doubt it feels that way right now." She knew when they came in with him there was a great deal more concern. That was life at a busy hospital though, they got used to emergencies. People were in and out frequently, and some never left. She nodded as if what he was saying made complete sense, and it did. "I'm sorry to say this will continue to be a problem while the skin heals. I will prescribe you something to try and take the edge off. Not thinking about it is a good route to go. " When he was free to scratch, that's when they'd have more of a problem keeping the impulse in control. If he did ever snap, Anna would take it with a calm reserve. He was injured and out of it. "All right, unless you have any questions, I can let you get back to the show. Was it General Hospital?" She couldn't resist asking. Casey didn’t feel lucky, that much was true, but he was alive. And he wasn’t going to pretend like he wasn’t. He nodded and tried to seem as attentive as possible. “It doesn’t feel that way, but I appreciate everyone has been doing.” He shook his head, “Nah, I don’t want anymore prescriptions. I’m ok. I can manage, I’m just complaining. Once all these bandages come off I can see about getting some ointment or some such, but for now lets just stick with what we’ve got.” He didn’t care if it was just some damn benadryl, he didn’t want much of anything else going for now. He’d have plenty of time to deal with easing up on the pain killers, he didn’t want to worry about anything else. “I mostly sleep through it.” He smiled and shook his head again, “Days of Our Lives, haven’t seen it in a few years, but everyone is right where I left them,” he said with a bit of a wry smile. Soap Operas never changed. “Except for the two that are back from the dead, and the three or four that were babies and are now adults. But for the most part. Salem hasn’t changed much.” "Complain away. It's basically the only benefit of being here. Outside of the excuse to watch soap operas all day." He was a survivor, that was for sure, but Anna kept that to herself. She suspected he knew that. They would cross the physical therapy road when they got there. "Amazing how quickly children grow from infancy to full grown unusually attractive adults." Only in the world of the soaps. And they were all related to one another in some way, often found out after some desperate doomed love affair. She found them hilarious. It was one of the few things she had in common with her mother, especially when she was ill. "That's it for now. Use the button to call the nurse if you need it. I'll check back in later." Anna blamed the lack of lunch on why she felt a little hazy. Enough to be silly and wave a hand at him. "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives." It might also be that she felt stranger lately. Like something was off, and not necessarily in a bad way. Mostly just different. It could be the giant life change, moving to Las Vegas. "Get some rest when you can, Mr. Donovan." He nodded, quite pleased with being given the go ahead to complain. He didn’t do it often, and he’d done it even less often lately - but he was rather glad that he got the opportunity here. “It’s movie magic,” he said with a chuckle. “Thanks for the update, you can replay it all again when my brother stops by,” he said with a sleepy grin - because of course he was getting tired again. "That's fine, I have it memorized." Anna smiled to him and saw that he was getting drowsy. Sleep was one of the best healers there was. She'd be ready with a more general update for the Donovans, since he was too drugged up to get some of the details. She might be able to sneak a quick protein break before checking on the others, so she went to the break room to do just that. |