dr. rupert fitzgerald carlisle shield ⛰ [kili] (nadad) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2017-09-21 17:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, r * laura, r: rupert shield |
WHO: Rupert Shield
WHEN: September 21
WHERE: the hospital
SUMMARY: In honor of the anniversary of The Hobbit's publication, Rupert gets a memory.
WARNINGS: Just a bit about a sick patient, and Kili's own injuries, but nothing graphic and no one dies :D
It hadn’t taken long for Rupert to settle back into a routine at the hospital. The familiarity of it all was welcome after months of not working at all, completely wasting his education (and his money). He wasn’t thrilled by the limitations placed upon him, both by the government and by the residency program itself, but that was what he got for coming to America, wasn’t it? Bureacracy and bullshit. On the other hand, he did get to see his sister every day, and Nina was living in Dunhaven as well. He could suffer through a few more years of the exact same things he’d already learned if it meant he got to stay near them. (When had he become so bloody cheesy? he thought. Had he always been like that?) At least he got to actually spend time in the hospital. There were a lot of frustrating aspects to his residency -- one of them was that he was the only one repeating this nonsense, but at least he knew it meant he would sail through -- but being able to actually help children again was a delight. He’d always had a knack for connecting with children in particular. His father would have likely said it was his immaturity, but whatever it was, Rupert welcomed it. He’d rather be seen as immature and be able to make a sick child smile than lose the innate optimism for life that he carried with him. There was one case in particular that was getting to him, though. He was usually good at locking away feelings of despair when he was within the hospital walls, choosing instead to not let the patients and their families know unless it was absolutely necessary, but this time. This time, he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling he had. He’d seen sepsis before, of course, but this wasn’t just familiarity. He bent over his patient’s pale, sleeping body, and almost instantly, he saw a hazy figure leaning over him instead. The table was hard and uncomfortable under Kili’s back, but it had nothing on the poison burning its way through his leg and body. He was dying, he knew that. He’d known that the moment he’d been shot, only he hadn’t told anyone. He knew that if he’d told someone, Thorin would leave him behind, and he was not going to be left behind. But left behind he was, nearing collapse on the pier in Laketown. Everything after that was a blur, and very little seemed real. He remembered searing pain, his companions holding him down, and a language he couldn’t understand. He remembered seeing Tauriel’s face looking down at him, a light glowing from behind, giving her a halo around her head, but it couldn’t be. She wasn’t there. When he opened his eyes again, she was still there. “You cannot be her.” The medicine he’d been given was working its way through his system, purging his body of the poison, but the side effect was that he still didn’t feel like himself. She was looking down at him, though. Tauriel. Her long red hair was pulled back, that much he could see. If it was only a vision, then it was a very good one. He’d wanted to see her, one last time. Her hand was cool to the touch as he reached for her fingers, or maybe that was his fever. “Do you think she could have loved me?” Rupert was jolted back -- to reality? He didn’t know what to call it -- by the sound of a door opening, and he stepped back from the bed. He needed more sleep, to be sure, if he was having daydreams that vivid. His hand still tingled. On his way out the door, he pulled his phone from his pocket to send off a quick text to Margaret. You’ll never guess what just happened, I think I’m losing my head in here, send pizza asap. |