The Boulder and the Bird
Who: Mac and Edie When: June 18th (backdated) Where: hospital
It was a day after Mac had found Clara and come back to Normalville and Mac was under strict orders to take it easy and give himself time to recover. Mac, however, did not take orders well outside of the army. In fact, the only person he tended to listen to was Simon, and even then it wasn't a given.
So after a full day of bed rest, despite feeling pretty fucking godawful, he decided he was out of there. Ever since getting shot he hated hospitals - and if he was going to spend the next few days puking it was going to be in the privacy of his own home. Well… Simon's home.
Simon was in Clara's room, holding vigil over his daughter, he hadn't seen the nurse in about an hour or so, and the kid occupying the other side of his room had been passed out since their conversation the night before. It was the perfect time for a get away, and he stood up, already in his jeans and tugging his shirt back on.
Fitted in a baggy set of yellow scrubs, Edie Williams walked into the hospital room as Mac was dressing. Her head, blonde hair tied into a double french braid, was tilted downwards as she read the information on the clipboard in her hand. Nurse Schmidt told her about Colin McGregor, the newest patient along with a young girl - Simon's daughter Edie was told - and wanted her to check on how he was doing with radiation sickness.
Her head flicked up to examine the patient and there was... Mac.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in disbelief. It wasn't said with malice, just surprised embarrassment. After the first and last time she had met the man, she didn't really know what else to say.
Mac glanced up, taking in the sight of the girl he'd had the near miss with several days before. "I'm leaving. What are you doing here?"
"I work here," she responded, placing her hands on her hips. If she had thought about the instinctive action she would have realized her mother had done it all the time when she was getting peeved. "Leaving to where? Why are you here in the first place? What did you do with - " she glanced down at the clipboard, "Colin McGregor?" The man had only given her the name "Mac" when they were drinking in the bar and she really did not think then nor now that it was a nickname.
Mac gave a snort of a laugh, clearly amused that she thought he'd done something to poor Colin. "You're looking at him," he told her. Simon must have given the nurse his full name.
The blonde opened her mouth with the intention of some sassy retort, but then realized what he said meant. "You're not leaving here!" she growled, hurrying over to the bed side. She stood over him - a rare occasion when she could tower over someone - and pressed her knuckles further into her hips. "You need some rest. Come one, get back in bed."
Mac did not appear intimidated. "I'm going home," he said firmly. "I'll rest there."
"No," she replied firmly, calmly. "You will rest here." Edie had plenty of patients like Mac who behaved in the exact same way when she nursed in Louisville. And, of course, Edie couldn't disagree with the man. Even though she supported hospitals and medical practice, she herself would always rather get better at home than in a foreign, often unwelcoming, environment.
As if the matter was settled, she reached over to the wall and grabbed the sphygmomanometer that hung there. "I'm going to take your blood pressure. Have a seat and can I have your arm please?"
Mac gazed at her a moment before taking a seat on the edge of the bed and holding out his arm to her. It was by no means settled, but he figured he'd play nice. For the moment.
Edie wrapped the rubber cuff around Mac's bicep, her thoughts stumbling back to their night together as her fingers brushed against his muscles. It only got her angry and she snapped backed into reality and started gruffly pumping air into the cuff. Once it was tight around his arm - and it wastight - she snagged his wrist in between her fingers as she started to count.
Mac didn't even flinch, silently waiting for her finish.
She did not forget her purpose, however bitter she was about that night in the bar, and she dutifully calculated his blood pressure. 120/80. "Perfect," she told him and let the air out of the cuff. As she was unvelcroing the cuff, she asked, "How's your stomach?
He shrugged. "I haven't felt the need to ralph up my guts in the past few hours, so guess it's better."
Edie looked at him skeptically and then frowned. "That's not a good enough reason for me to release you, you know." She was worried about him; she wouldn't wish radiation poisoning on anyone, not after what she had researched. "Though the vomiting may have ceased you have roughly another ten to fourteen days where you'll feel ill and tired. And I want to keep you here because your immune system is depressed meaning the risk for infection is much higher. So get back in bed, give me your shirt." She extended an open palm.
"Not this time," Mac replied with a smirk. "Thanks for the physical, sweetheart, but I'm not sticking around."
Edie tightened her jaw, resisting the urge to smack him. "Be warned, there's also temporary male sterility, not like that would be an issue with you." The blonde meant it of course as a jib on his unwillingness to have sex, but if she knew about it it could have been a remark about his sexual orientation.
Mac's expression turned into a frown at the comment. "I'm not planning to have any anklebiters in the near future anyway."
Her eyes lingered on the downwards curve of his mouth, suddenly disappointed in herself for being so childish about the whole thing. Her mother would have reprimanded her behavior just like she did when Edie was in 9th grade and stopped talking to their neighbor's son Billy after she tried to kiss him and he turned his head away.
"I'm sorry," she apologized and deflated her stance. She took a seat next to Mac on the bedside. "Friends?"
The girl had started noticing her constant need for acceptance when she was out of high school. She tried to ignore it and usually did a good job denying the character flaw, chalking it up to just her friendly personality and outgoing nature. But is was much more than that. Edie couldn't understand when someone didn't want her or wouldn't pay attention to her. To her it meant there was something wrong with her and she had to be better, smarter, prettier until they did want her. And it wasn't limited to males, but anyone, manifesting itself differently for each person.
Mac turned his head to look at her, lips quirking. She was really, truly, a piece of work. "Depends. Are you going to let me out of here? Friends don't keep other friends prisoner."
Edie pursed her lips in obvious disapproval. The radiation poisoning really was not something to mess around with, and the girl did not know Mac well enough to know if he understood that at all. "One condition," she said, holding up a finger. "You let me stop by every day - everyday - to check in on you. Blood pressure, temperature, blood work, everything I would do here."
Mac crossed his arms, looking fairly surly at the suggestion. He had no doubt in his mind that if he wanted to get up and leave, Edie wouldn't be able to do a damn thing to stop him. "Fine," he said.
A smile broke open on the blonde's face, teeth and all. "Thank you," she said. "Otherwise, I would just be sick with worry." And she meant it. She hopped up from the bed and traveled over to the next one that held the sleeping boy. She placed a delicate hand on his forehead and after a moment moved it to his cheek. The action was done with such obvious tenderness, it was easy to see why she became a nurse in the first place. "Now that we're friends," she said, glancing one last time at the boy before heading back to Mac. "You can tell me why exactly we got that drunk that night." She smiled, laughter brightening her eyes.
Mac shrugged, the start of a grin on his face. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Yeah it did, didn't it?" she laughed. "And you would think I would have learned my lesson, but I know that I'll be back out there doing it again sometime." It was true, you couldn't stop Edie from drinking. It was like taking grass away from a cow. "You - " she said, suddenly serious, "on the other hand, have to refrain for at least another two weeks."
"Or I'll turn into a mutant?" Mac said.
"Yes," Edie nodded flatly. "And you definitely won't be as cool as Spiderman. You'll be like that big, goofy green one. What's his name?" she asked, her eyebrows falling in on themselves as she tried to remember. She never had been a comic book person.
Mac laughed. "The Hulk."
"Yes! That's his name," Edie said, ready to go into a ramble. "And you'll stomp around all over town like a gigantic piece of broccoli with feet. Of course, you will only be able to say things like 'Mac Smash' and 'Mac Skip' and 'Mac Stupid' and we all know how you like to talk so that would certainly be a travesty. You won't be able to fit in your bar and you would have to drink the town's entire supply of alcohol to get drunk once. And then I would have to hunt you down for being a big green waste." During the run-on sentence she animated the words, acting out the bulky gait of the Mac Hulk and lowering her voice when she spoke as the creature.
Mac watched her stomp around with an amused grin on his face. "It wouldn't be much different from now, actually," he pointed out.
"Hey now," Edie warned, adding effect with a hard glare. But her face immediately lightened as she stuck out her tongue. It was childish, yes, but also done to show there were no hard feelings between the two of them.
Mac stood. "All right. I need out of here before I go insane. Thanks for the nursing."
"Thank you for letting me nurse," she replied and then smiled. "See you soon. And God help me if I get over there and you're not resting."
"Yeah, yeah, I know." He lifted his hand in a wave and disappeared out the door, avoiding taking a final glance at his sleeping roommate before heading out.