WHO: Hunter & Marcus. WHEN: January 11th, late night. WHERE: The hospital. WHAT: Hunter's mild concussion wins her an overnight stay at the hospital for observation, while Marcus is working. WARNINGS: TBD, presumably language!
Hunter felt like her head had, at least partially, been crushed inside of something. Some sort of super powered vice, maybe, or a compactor. She didn't want to admit how bad it felt, but it felt like there was a jackhammer working right at the base of her skull somewhere. Her headache seemed to reach everywhere, stemming from behind her eyes, and radiating through her whole head. She felt dizzy, even just trying to sit up too quickly from the stiff hospital mattress, and her stomach churned almost constantly. She hated the feeling of nausea, more than anything, but these symptoms weren't unfamiliar to her. She hadn't had a concussion in years, not since she had last played high school basketball and smashed her head off the gym floor.. and this particular concussion felt like a real doozy so far. It made focusing her mind, which already felt sluggish and strange, into a challenge.
Her mood, however, was the real challenge. She had little else to do except sit and stew, get angrier and angrier, since arriving at the hospital. She hadn't exactly been acting like the ideal patient during the last few hours of her stay. She still had to stay until the next day, when she'd (hopefully) be cleared to sign out.
Generally, getting injured didn't bother her. She had a hard head. She rarely went to a hospital if she didn't absolutely have to. She'd spent too much time in them, after she'd busted her leg a couple of years ago. She didn't like them, they smelled both sterile and disgusting at the same time. She was accustomed to pain, to pushing herself through it, to being the tough one. When she had come to, she had taken their stitches and sutures in stride, she let them examine her, test her, she had taken the painkillers, let them look into her pupils with their little flashlight, poke at her with their little medical instruments. She followed their moving fingers in front of her face, let them test her reflexes, and answered how many fingers they were holding up.
They deemed her okay, seemingly. It wasn't until the doctor told her that she needed to stay overnight, for precaution and observation, that she turned from cooperative to sour.
She hated overnight stays in the hospital. It was just a damn fight, she'd fought girls tougher than Casper a hundred times. She insisted that her face being all busted up, bruised and contused like an overripe piece of fruit, probably looked worse than it really was. Or so she reasoned. She was fine, she'd been concussed plenty of times before.. but, according to the doctor, the history of sports related head injuries was all the more reason for her to stay for observation that night.
Her prior history of concussions, paired with just how viciously (according to witnesses at the market anyway) Casper had brought her head repeatedly into the floor, made the doctor firm on the overnight stay. If she left, it was against his wishes and recommendations. He wanted Hunter to sit tight, rest, and wait for word from him in the morning.
Too bad that the blonde was far from exactly a patient sort of patient.
The part nagging at Hunter the most was that she recollected almost nothing about the actual scuffle with Casper at the market. Though she had been mostly filled in on the secondhand details since arriving at the hospital. Crows Landing was good for that, gossip and rumors whenever something big happened. The young nurse who set her broken nose earlier that day had told her exactly her version of what she heard happened, how Hunter had been unconscious a couple hours before she came around, what people claimed they saw. Hunter remembered she'd been yelling, then she'd picked up the cart, and then it came to blows, Casper had grabbed her by her hair, but then.. in what felt like a split second, it was over. She didn't even really feel the pain before she was suddenly at the hospital.
One minute in the cereal aisle, the next at the ER, all seemingly in an instant. That bitch had knocked her out. She had been hauling her fist back, laying into the other girl's face for all that she was worth.. then, the next thing she knew, nurses were leaning over her and stitching her forehead up. She didn't remember the details of what the goth did to her, but she was the only one hospitalized and so it was clear that she had to have lost. Even without the details of what people told her happened, she had deduced that much on her own. She lost a fight, to Casper, in front of a crowd no less. That wouldn't fly with an ego as big as the one Hunter had. She wanted to get out, and get revenge, period. For not only Bella, but now herself as well. No matter how bad her headache was, or how bruised her face was, or any other factor. Wringing Casper's neck was becoming an absolute necessity, top priority.
One look in the hospital room's bathroom mirror had been enough to disgust the blonde. Both of her eyes were black, nose broken, staring back at her from behind various bruises and cuts. Her cheekbone was fractured, she wasn't sure which side, because it felt like both. She had been in more than a handful of fights in her time, but normally, she was never on the receiving end of a beating so severe. She had beaten girls almost this black and blue in the past.. but they weren't supposed to be able to do it back. She was supposed to emerge the victor, not the victim. How the fuck did she let Samantha York one-up her, lay the smackdown on her? She must have been a fool to let her guard down for even a split second, and then the slimy bitch got her one lucky shot in. That had to be it. There was no other explanation for losing to Casper, other than that the bitch played cheap.
Late that night, after the doctors and nurses were mostly done with her, the hospital was quiet and she was left to her own devices. To relax and rest. The tv was on in the background, and she'd been lucky enough to acquire a semi-private room with a tv right on the wall and a curtain to separate her from her roommate, but she paid no mind to what was happening on the screen. She'd tried to watch an episode of Friends earlier, but trying to follow the story of the episode made her head hurt. More than her stomach hurt trying to eat the damn hospital food, which she detested. Hospital food was like if slop and sawdust had an unappetizing baby. She was tired, but restless, unable to actually get to sleep even though it was past midnight. They'd brought her into the ER that afternoon sometime, so how long had she been trapped at the hospital now? Five hours, six?
It felt a lot longer than that, a lifetime maybe. She hated the sitting still, especially. Ignoring the television, her brain (despite the fact that keeping her thoughts straight was a challenge) was running wild with possibilities of what she could do to make her mortal enemy pay. Hunter was more positive than ever that Casper was behind the poisoning of her dog, after a violent reaction like the one Hunter had sussed out of her. Casper could deny it all she wanted, it only convinced Hunter more. She didn't even have the patience to try proving it at this point. She knew, and she was sure Casper knew, and she'd make the goth pay one way or another.
Wrapped up in her hazy plans of vengeance, Hunter barely noticed the hulking mass of nurse standing in her doorway, until she looked up and saw him there. She certainly looked worse for wear than the last time they'd seen each other, probably in passing at the Key, but Hunter tried a grin despite the pain in her face, and she squinted easily at Marcus with the one blue eye that wasn't swollen shut on her.
She didn't even ask him 'what the flying fuck' he wanted, like she'd been asking most of the other nurses who had checked up on her so far that night. Indeed, she'd been a real pill to deal with for the early evening staff. But whether or not it was because she was all out of bitchiness after such a long day of mouthing off, or just because it was Marcus of whom she'd always been fond enough, she gave him a much warmer welcome than any other nurse so far. "Come to spring me from this joint?" she asked weakly, trying to cock an eyebrow on her swollen face. "Hide me in the laundry cart or something, c'mon boss. I'll make it worth your while."