preston rawlings . {viola} (theviola) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-20 00:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | ballerina, viola |
Who: Poor injured Poe and Uncle Preston
What: Transfer to the hospital.
Where: The hospital nearest Hamartia.
When: After this mess.
Warnings: Some mature topics under discussion, as apparently this is the best time to grill Preston about his preferences.
The ambulance had come, and Poe was well enough to want the ground to open up and suck him in. He felt so stupid, having gotten beaten up enough to need to be taken out of the building in a stretcher, and he closed his eyes and tried not to look as uncomfortable as he felt as he lied to the paramedics about the fight. Because fighting three boys and losing was ok, but running from three boys and getting kicked to pieces so wasn’t. He draped an arm over his eyes, blocking everything out like a small child who hides beneath blankets., and he scrunched his eyes together when they shone a light on him and tugged up his shirt, baring a stomach and midriff that was more dark black and red than anything else.
It was quick, then, them taking him down the stairs and through the darkness, and sliding the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, and the dampness on his face wasn’t tears, because he wasn’t afraid, really he wasn’t.
Preston was afraid. He was really damned afraid. He knew himself well enough to know that all that fear wasn’t necessarily just for Poe, and all that care he took with keeping his life in safe separate compartments wasn’t helping him right at the moment. He wanted to ease Poe’s fear but he was afraid of compounding it by adding his own to the boy’s, and that wouldn’t be any help at all. Preston responded in kind to the paramedic’s questions, and it could probably be forgiven that he did not look back for Matty as everyone and everything entered the back of the ambulance and the doors slammed. “I’m still here,” he said, under the conversation of amongst the strained paramedics.
Poe didn’t say anything when Preston spoke, but he reached out and found his fingers and squeezed them too tightly to hide the fact that he was pretty terrified, even if the soft crying sounds hadn’t given it away first. He didn’t want to die, not really. Maybe it was romantic in books and ballets, but not in real life. The paramedics poked and prodded, and it seemed way too fast for them to be at the hospital, but it was the one around the corner from Hamartia, and so he guessed it was a pretty short drive with the ambulance sirens blaring.
The ER was dark, with only the emergency lights lighting the place up, and with too many people to walk. The paramedics yelled at people to get out of the way, and it just made Poe more nervous, and he lost his grip on Preston’s hand somewhere along the way, which didn’t help. And then they were transferring him from the stretcher to the bed, and he could hear the doctor talking to Preston outside the room.
Preston’s fingers were strong in Poe’s even if the man himself didn’t feel anything like. He didn’t like being intercepted and drawn aside from the moving stretcher and he looked after it even after the doctor interposed his body between Preston and the door, asking for civil but definite explanations. Preston, as always, pulled himself together immediately, responses too low to be easily heard. Poe had been attacked; they didn’t know who was responsible. It looked like they’d kicked him, would they...? Yes, they were related, and his brother was Poe’s father. He would try to locate him, but the blackout...
When the doctor came back into the room it was with a nurse, and they were shining a light and the man was pressing his fingers against Poe’s battered stomach. When the touch resulted in Poe doubling over and coughing up blood, the doctor shot Preston a worried look, ordering blood work and a CT Scan, and then ducking out of the room as he went to formally put in the order.
Poe, who was sitting comfortably in the hospital bed after the nurse had helped him, looked at Preston in the low-light. “Am I going to die, do you think?” he asked, sounding as scared as he felt.
Preston moved rapidly around the bed and settled on his heels there, looking calm even though he was all at edge--long habit. He turned his head when Poe spoke, interrupting long thoughts trying to take the Latin out of some of the terms they were using to figure out what, precisely was going on. “No,” Preston said, managing to sound so much more confident than he was. “You’re not going to die.”
“Does Shiloh hate me?” Poe asked a second later, no obvious segue, and only trusting eyes looking up at Preston in the near darkness.
Real surprise and confidence he didn’t have to fake, Preston replied rapidly with, “Of course not!” He tipped his head down. “Why would you think that?”
“We never do very good when we talk,” Poe admitted. “He didn’t want to be a dad very much, I don’t think. He said he liked being traveling and not having responsibilities and stuff. I’m not a responsibility, though. I get by on my own fine,” he argued, despite the fact that he was in a hospital bed very much wanting to hold his uncle’s hand.
Preston, like Shiloh, didn’t have especially physical affection in his family. He wasn’t so chill in his own relationships, fortunately. He put a hand on Poe’s shoulder, the way he had in Matty’s apartment when Poe had begun to cough. “Shiloh wants to be your father. You need to give him a chance at it, Poe.”
The nurse came with her needles, and Poe closed his eyes tight and scrunched up his nose as she stuck him with the sharp end. “And Blake?” he asked, figuring it was a good time to ask just then.
“Blake doesn’t mean you any harm,” Preston said, walking that line with care. He dipped his head down to catch Poe’s eyes and keep them while the nurse came with her needles.
“And?” Poe asked watching as she took one tube, then another, then another.
“Look at me, Poe.” Preston focused close on Poe’s face to try to keep his attention. “What is it about Blake that really worries you?”
Poe did look at him, then. “He just never told me you dated. That’s all. I know what he’s like. He’s told me how he thinks about being open and doing things with a lot of people and stuff.”
“Yes. Blake likes being open.” Preston smiled. It wasn’t a smile of secrets, just a smile, and it was obvious that even if he and Blake weren’t together, he didn’t bear the man any real ill will.
“And you think that’s ok?” Poe asked with a small hiss as the nurse pulled the needle from his arm and bandaged it a second later.
“You know me, Poe,” Preston said, shrugging, unable to lie even when it probably would have been a better idea to do so. “I don’t like being open about anything. But I’m not Blake and he’s certainly not me.”
That really didn’t help very much, but Poe didn’t say as much, and then the orderly was there to roll him to get his CT Scan, and they asked Preston to stay behind.
The trip to radiology was dark, and Poe closed his eyes halfway there, not wanting to imagine the shadows he was seeing in the corners anymore. The CT Scan itself was uncomfortable, with jostling onto the table and then lying flat and still, which hurt, and by the time they were rolling him back, he had curled up on his side in the huge hospital bed and closed his eyes. somewhere between dozing and awake.
The doctor had beat Poe back to the room with the results of the scan, since Poe had to wait for an orderly to roll him back, and he was showing Preston something on the lit x-ray panels on the room’s wall. He was explaining spleen damage and saying they needed to get any blood out of the abdomen, and Poe listened in growing panic, starting to develop a plan of escape as he lay there with his eyes closed.
Preston wasn’t as easily fooled, and he put an arm over the doctor’s shoulders to pull him into the corner of the room for the rest of the diagnosis. There was a little sound that resolved itself finally into “when?” from Preston, and after a little while the doctor went away. Preston pushed a hand over his forehead, and then he walked back to the bed to sit next to Poe. He sat there for a second until finally he said, “Good news.”
Poe was looking over the side of the bed when Preston returned, considering the distance to the ground. “Mind if I go to the bathroom before you tell me?” he asked.
“Nice try. You’re not going to die; as long as you stay here long enough for them to fix it.” No restraining hands, but Preston was watching.
Poe suspected he was caught, but he didn’t exactly think Preston could run as fast as him if he tried to run for it, even with the pain. Preston was kind of older. “I’m just going to the bathroom,” he assured the other man, swinging his legs off the bed with a gasp and an arm to his stomach.
Preston was not, apparently, as old as he looked. He moved around the edge of the bed with surprising quickness and had a hand for Poe’s shoulder again. “Then you can wait for the nurse.”
“It’s going to hurt,” Poe said in a desperate sort of whisper, fingers clutching Preston’s sleeves, as if that would sway Preston and automatically tell him that he could go home immediately.
“Not for long, if at all. It’s not the dark ages, Poe. They have all kinds of things to make it so you can’t feel it. Running is going to hurt a lot more. I’m going to be right here.” He sat down next to him this time and the hand on his shoulder turned reassuring.
Poe sighed, defeated. “It might be ok if we leave anyway,” he said, one last ditch effort as he looked over at Preston hopefully. “What was the worst you were ever beat up?” he asked.
“I’m not going to risk your life on ‘it might be okay.’” Preston flinched at the next question, and his chin turned a little away. “Oh, Poe, you can’t really want to hear that.”
“I do,” Poe assured. “Um, I didn’t know this kind of thing happened. I want to know what to expect.”
“You don’t need to expect what happened to me. I was a kid and it was... a rough neighborhood. You didn’t even know these boys. It was probably an isolated incident.” It had taken Preston a long time to stop seeing enemies everywhere he went, and he didn’t think it would be any different with Poe, but he wanted to keep it from happening anyway.
The nurse came, and Poe went quiet as she laid out needles and supplies on the metal tray beside the bed, and when she left he reached out to touch one very long syringe, before looking back at Preston. “What did they do?” he insisted.
Preston had to take quite a bit of energy to hide his own reaction to that big long needle. Nobody liked the idea of anybody sticking that kind of thing in them. He nudged at Poe, finally, turning to help him. “Lie down, now.” More nudging, gentle but urgent. Preston sighed. “They did a lot of things. Some of them just to... I don’t know. Try to make me sorry, I guess. They viewed it as an act against them. I’m not sure why.”
The confession, vague as it was, served the purpose of making Poe fixate more on it than on the needle and his pain, and though he cried out and winced as he rested back against the pillow, his attention stayed firmly fixed on Preston’s face. “Like what things?”
Preston looked at the ceiling and swallowed. “Like what happened to you, only not so bad, just more often. There were only so many places I could be between school and home.” This was going to scare the boy. He should lie to him.
“They were boys you knew?” Poe asked, as if the idea of friends doing that to Preston was even worse than total strangers, like what had happened to him.
“From my school.” He offered his hand as the doctor came in.
Poe whimpered, and it was a girly and undignified sound, and he thought he was really doing a bad job at being all grown up and manly. The doctor, and the nurse that followed, injected something into his IV and stood there discussing the x-rays for long enough that Poe stopped worrying about anything at all, his inhibitions lowered by the drug they’d administered. “Is Blake good in bed?” he asked Preston (too loudly).
Preston turned an interesting color, but he didn’t let go of Poe’s hand. “I think it might be better to talk about that another time, Poe.”
“But I want to know,” Poe said, not catching Preston’s coloring or the way the doctor reassured Preston that it was the drug, and that it was normal. “He kisses really good,” he added, his own cheeks going a little pink with the admission. “I’ve never, you know,” he said, and then covered his mouth immediately. “You can’t tell him,” he said between his fingers.
Preston privately thought that Blake undoubtedly already knew this. Preston looked at the ceiling for an entirely different reason this time, but he brought his gaze back down because if Poe was thinking about this, then he wasn’t thinking about that big needle, and neither was Preston. Mostly Preston was thinking that he didn’t want Blake anywhere near an increasingly innocent Poe, but he could hardly say that. “I won’t tell him.”
“You didn’t answer,” Poe reminded him with the point of an unsteady finger and eyes that were getting heavier, a heaviness which he was fighting.
“He has a lot of practice. It will be fine. Stop worrying.” That was the best Preston could come up with, and he sincerely hoped the nurses thought he was talking about the doctor.
“Does he, you know, catch or pitch?” Poe asked, unappeased, and the nurse giggled and then coughed to cover the sound.
Preston suddenly found the room to be entirely too close. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s not here,” Poe said, eyes closing for just a second and then opening again.
“He will be later after the phone lines go up.” Or Preston would die trying. Because he was so not going to answer these questions.
Poe pouted.
Preston proved to be immune, since the time he started babbling his sex history in a room full of strangers would be the last.
Unfortunately, Poe didn’t have it in him to press further. His head lolled to the side, and the nurse and doctor stepped forward, the nurse giving Preston a reassuring smile. “We’ve heard people say all kinds of things,” she assured him, reaching for the needle and giving it to the doctor after he’d prepped the area for numbing.
The whole process took less than five minutes, and Poe’s eyelids only fluttered open for the numbing injection. “I want him to spend the night,” the doctor told Preston. “These injuries can sometimes hemorrhage unexpectedly.”
Preston nodded, too embarrassed to look the nurse in the eye and more relieved the doctors were taking this seriously than angry at cost or trouble. “I’ll stay, and call his father.”