Who:Corbinian Jack and Rorschach Mike What: Medical Care and Male Bonding Where: An Oracle Approved Emergency Room When: Not long after the Mask Killer events conclude Warnings: Epic bromance, Rory smiling.
Rorschach didn’t like hospitals. Hospitals asked questions. There was paperwork, nurses, doctors that zipped in and out. They talked, they traded information. Nothing was safe. You let out a breath, one word, and it traveled like an infection throughout the building. They wanted last names, and for so many years, he had none. Rorschach had but one name, one breath, and no one could hear it. But now there was Mike Caulfield, two names, an identity. It was something to feed them until Oracle turned him into a ghost hours later.
He and Corbinian stopped only once on their walk to the emergency room, a brief pitstop to put on their masks. Rorschach removed his face and gloves, stuffing them into the pockets of his jacket. Anything Corbinian needed to hide was enveloped by the dark material of his trench coat, balled up and held like a normal jacket would be. Now, Rorschach looked like something a doctor could communicate with. The fitted shirt he wore gave the bullet wound in his arm away, material frayed at the edges to reveal a gaping red hole in his flesh. Sweat had slicked his short hair into a helmet, and his face was beginning to discolor where the Mask Killer had hit him. This was a good mask, a good cover. Now he just had to let it breathe.
They entered the emergency room and were met fairly well. The nurse at the front desk quickly took down his information, sending him and Corbinian to sit and wait until there was room available. They only waited five minutes for a room, a small cubicle with a gauzy sheet surrounding a white cot. The pleasant-faced nurse that lead them there had said the doctor would be in shortly. Rorschach sat on the cot, looking down at his shoes as he held his left arm in his right hand, grip just above his elbow. Blocking out the pain had been easier before, when it was necessary. Now, as he sat in a sterile box, it began to creep into his mind unheeded.
He glanced briefly over at Corbinian, who had been given a chair beside his cot. Rorschach looked down again. “Didn’t have to come,” he grunted, though his tone wasn’t as convinced as his words were.
Jack had used a rag from his pocket to wipe the face paint off, and to clean off as much visible blood as he could. The holes in his shirt couldn't be helped, but he assumed he could explain them as a casualty of the trouble he'd gotten into with 'Mike,' and the excess blood as coming from his friend's wound.
It felt strange, sitting in a stark room at the hospital with his friend, a friend whose face he had seen on so few occaisons he could count them on one hand, even more so after everything they'd just been through. He looked up when Rorschach spoke, then shook his head. "Of course I did. I shot you. And I wasn't going to let you come here alone even if I hadn't."
The sound that came from Rorschach resembled a car engine sputtering. Shaking his head, he bobbed one of his feet absently in the air. “Accident,” he said simply. After a moment’s pause, he shook his head again. “Mugged.” He had to remember to pretend. It was so hard. “Jack Mike walking, pulled aside. Gunpoint. Give money. Fight. Shot.” He repeated it as if he weren’t exactly thinking, as if he were reading from a script. When finished, he nodded to himself, satisfied. “Good.”
"Accident," Jack said, slowly. "I suppose so." It had been. Did that mean he didn't feel guilt? Of course not. If he hadn't hesitated - but there was no winning with this, he would only chase himself in circles. "It'll do," Jack said. "It'll have to." The doctor came in then, an older gentleman with a brisk but friendly bedside manner who began studying the wound and asking Rorschach how he'd come by it.
Up until the doctor’s arrival, Rorschach had been able to at least project an aura of calm. But the moment the man reached for his arm, his discomfort showed. The fingers of his right hand gripped the edge of his cot with a death grip, the muscles in his arm locked tight. He looked up at the ceiling, wincing, as the doctor very carefully examined the wound in his arm. Just like before, he repeated his cover story, though his words were punctuated by hisses of pain and uncertainty. The doctor examined both the bullet wound and the bruising on Rorschach’s face before determining that stitches were necessary.
The doctor left briefly, leaving them with a nurse that gave Rorschach a hospital gown to wear during the procedure. After he changed, Rorschach sat upright in his cot with his left arm resting on a platform. The nurse cleaned and irrigated the area, all smiles and reassurances, in preparation for the doctor’s arrival. Rorschach looked to Jack with a grim expression, fingers tightening in the soft pad of his cot. The nurse injected the area with a anesthetic, little pinpricks around the perimeter of the wound.
Minutes later, the doctor arrived and took his seat beside the cot. Rorschach looked away from the drapes left over his arm, not wanting to watch the doctor hook his flesh with needles and pull it together. Though the area was fairly numb on the skin he could still feel in his muscles as the needle pulled and moved along the surface. Cringing, he looked away, focusing on Jack’s feet as he balled his fist in the cot. The doctor glanced up from his work, gaze briefly on Jack. “Mike, I need you to hold still for me.”
Jack watched the doctor and then the nurse poking and prodding and tending to the wound. It was all necessary, of course, but it wasn't easy to watch simply for the expression on Rorschach's face. Pain had become a strange thing for Jack, something he often fell back to and sought because of the things it did and didn't make him feel. But he didn't register it on the same way most people did anymore, and it felt a little foreign to see it so clearly stamped on Rorschach's face.
Jack had to do something to distract him, even if it was only for a moment. "How long did it take you to memorize those verses?" he asked. He knew Rorschach would know what he meant, and went on. "I've memorized a whole number of things, but never anything out of the bible."
Holding still was the last thing on Rorschach’s mind, and for a moment he considered just leaving. He didn’t like hospitals. But Corbinian’s question gave him pause, and he glanced at the other man with some semblance of interest. “Not verse,” he corrected him mildly. “Simple prayer. Memorize verse too.” He paused, looking down as he tried to count the years. “Six years,” he said finally. “To start.” The time put into it after that was timeless, ever extending. Warren had read the Bible when he wasn’t working or training, and Rorschach had been borne knowing it all as well as he knew his own face. “Simple when...context. Remember context, remember reason. Words come easily.”
"I'm the same way," Jack said. "Just not with anything religious, I guess. Unless you count... 'Abashed the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is, and saw virtue in her shape, how lovely.' I don't know if Milton counts, but if he does, there you are." It was as if the doctor wasn't even there, but he imagined the man was grateful for that, since at least Rorschach didn't look quite so tense. "Six years is a long time to sit with the bible."
Listening to Jack recite those few lines was a welcome distraction. Attention away from the needle in his arm, Rorschach gave a slight shrug with his right shoulder. “Could count,” he said simply. The tension in his body seemed to give the longer they spoke, his left arm held perfectly still for the doctor’s careful hands. “Could have been longer,” he replied bitterly to the comment, more under his breath than out loud. “All things end.”
"Would you have preferred to have sat with it longer, or were you glad to leave it behind you?" Jack didn't look to the doctor, because he wanted to be sure he kept Rorschach's attention and didn't remind him what was going on off to his left.
Temporarily, Rorschach wasn’t in a hospital. He wasn’t sure where he was, but he was fairly certain of where he wasn’t. The question gave him pause, a long look at the floor. A smile found his face, though it wasn’t joyful. It was a smile of bitter was-nots, of past wounds healed and past decisions stamped into flesh. Finally, his gaze found Jack’s face, and he let out the smallest semblance of a scoff. “Made leave. Guess.”
It was so strange to actually be able to see Rorschach express anything at all that the smile gave him pause. "Something happened," he said, watching him with a faint smile, maybe a little sad. "Were you too much for them?" Whomever 'they' were, the presence of some heretofore unknown force in Rorschach's life made him wonder at all the things he didn't know about him. Admittedly, Jack had never been an open book either, never one to bring his troubles to the doorstep of others, always submersing them until he was alone. He could be someone to lean on. Doing the reverse wasn't something he'd ever done.
That almost made him laugh. Almost. Luckily for the doctor, he kept it in, instead letting his bitter smile grow. “Understatement,” he said with a nod. “Too much, always too much.” He let out a short sigh, almost saying something incriminating before holding his tongue. Instead, he just looked at his friend critically, raising a brow. “You too much?”
Jack could believe that easily. He had a hard time imagining his friend fitting in anywhere that the bible would be studied seriously, school or seminary it might have been. “Me?” He paused, thinking over the meaning of that. “No, not particularly. Maybe lately, but not before.” It was all very cryptic, and he caught the doctor glancing up from his work to stare at them both, clearly trying to puzzle out what the hell they were talking about.
There was a small snort that could almost have been a laugh, though the nurse’s steadying hand on his shoulder made him still. “Surprise,” he said with a large exhale, kneading the fingers of his right hand into the material of his cot. “Unexpected.” Out of steam, he glanced over at the doctor briefly, expression guarded. When he saw the man returning to his work, he dragged his right hand down his face, scratching at the stubble on his jaw. He let out a sigh, one of boredom rather than fear or pain. He could still feel the pulling at his arm, but it wasn’t as bad now - it was dismissible.
The doctor put in the last stitch, tying it off and looking briefly over his work before applying the bandage. He cleaned away the supplies, told the pair of them that a nurse would be in shortly with the paperwork Rorschach needed to sign before his relief, then exited the room. “How does it feel?” Jack asked. He didn’t know how much blood his friend had lost, but clearly not enough to pose any great danger or the doctor would have noticed.
As the sterile drapes on his arm were taken away, bandages placed, Rorschach looked down at the site with a detached eye. At Corbinian’s question, he glanced his way, shrugging. “Fine,” he said, trying to lift his left arm. He got halfway to shoulder height before the limb began to shake and he had to drop it with a sigh of frustration. “Like new,” he muttered bitterly, glaring at the bandage around his upper arm.
The nurse came in with paperwork and a present - a splint. She showed both Rorschach and Jack how to put it on before letting Rorschach fill out the paperwork in terrible chickenscratch. Then he exchanged his hospital gown for his own bullet-punctured shirt. Before leaving, Rorschach was given a small kit with extra bandages and instructions on changing the bandages regularly for a draining wound. By the end of it, he was extremely anxious to get out, and broke out of the emergency room front doors at a slight run without really thinking of it.
Kit in hand, Rorschach turned back to glance at Jack as the other man passed through the doors. He hesitated, feeling the late night chill run down his spine. “Thank you,” he said abruptly.
"Any time," Jack said. It had been difficult to watch Rorschach's truncated range of movement, but he reminded himself that he should fully heal, even if it took a few weeks. It could have been worse, but guilt still gnawed at him. "Want an escort home?"
The question got a genuine laugh, the real deal. Chuckling, Rorschach shook his head, scratching at his stubbled jaw. “Live in Aubade. Safest area.” He raised a brow, tilting his head to the side. “You need escort more.”
Jack smiled. It was always strange to hear anything resembling humor from Rorschach. "Fair point. You won't mind if I call you unnecessarily in the next few days to make sure it's healing properly and you're not straining it? I think it's my job to worry because I know you won't."
Raising a brow, Rorschach reached for his jacket, pulling it out of the bundle in Jack’s arms. He very carefully ensured that anything incriminating remained hidden, slipping into his trench coat clumsily. Getting his left arm through the sleeve was a challenge, but life was full of them - it’d be less difficult if he didn’t have that damn splint. “Not mind,” he said simply, pulling the collar of his coat and laying it flat. “Will be fine. Trust.” He paused, glancing down at the ground. “Could visit. See for self.” He looked up with a hopeful half-smile.
Jack paused for a moment, then nodded. He'd had to think about it - to remember that he could, now, if he so chose, thanks to the little monitor around his ankle, hidden inside his boot. It was a bittersweet sort of freedom to posess, but at least he could say yes. "I'll stop by in the next couple of days, and I'll bring some real food."
This time, Rorschach’s smile was neither bitter nor forced. It was a strange expression to see on his face, a very genuine smile. But there it was, plain as day. He nodded, pulling his gloves from his pockets and slipping them on. “Good,” he said, taking a step backwards. “404. Come soon.” He thought back to the folded-up picture currently smoothed flat and attached to his refrigerator with the only magnet he owned, the smile growing almost fond. “Have something to show.” Without any explanation, he turned, walking off into the night. Despite everything that had happened in the hours prior, despite the throbbing in his arm, and despite the fact that they had all come near death, Rorschach couldn’t stop smiling. It was worrisome.