<span class="fixed-color" style="color:#bfbfbf">The wail of sirens outside blended into the general cacophony of the hospital. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was one of the largest hospitals in California and the highest ranking in Los Angeles itself. It was also the busiest. To some, the noise indicator and the flashing lights as another pair of ambulances pulled up to the entrance of the ER was either someone's favorite karaoke song complete with strobe lights or the screech of a mother-in-law having a hot flash. It was also a sign that at least someone's shift had just been extended for another few hours – or a fresh start to the beginning of the night nurse's shift who, until that point, had been idly typing up charts for the residents overseeing triage that night.<br/>
<br/>
Her name tag read <b>Mary </b>in bold and was pinned to her ample bosom proudly. Mary had been on the night shift for the last ten years, a triage nurse for the last eight, and a nurse for more than twenty. She had long since thrown sympathy out the window in favor for a cage of ice that she placed around her heart, and that protected by the healthy amount of weight she had put on and rolled up into a pair of light green scrubs over the years. She bragged to the younger, newer nurses that made their rounds – came and went – that she had earned each and every wrinkle on her face through every hour she had spent working at that hospital. She claimed that nothing in the world could surprise her anymore. Not the man who staggered in through the sliding doors clutching his stubble of a hand or the woman who hemorrhaged blood on the floor because the bag of heroine she had shoved up her vagina had broken inside her uterus. It was why her red-lipped mouth remained a thin line across her face when the quartet of EMTs rushed in two new bodies to be added to the list of those waiting on the harried staff to hurry up with their <i>code blues </i>so that they could address their upset stomachs or their fevers that the hypochondriacs had themselves convinced was the yellow fever. Or Ebola.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
The sight of two young men on stretchers with no apparent loss of limb did nothing to stir her sympathy. Instead, she barked her demand for their respective charts. The mustache man who gripped the side rail as its primary guide glanced solemnly down at the unconscious kid plugged into a make shift IV, then handed over what information had been retrieved from a driver's license pulled out of his wallet. The second kid was lucid and practically sitting up on his own stretcher, though his jeans had been cut open and his bare leg packed and wrapped with gauze from an injury sustained during the accident they had been pulled out from. His neck was also in a brace, and other than a scrape across his cheek, his injuries appeared to be superficial. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“<i>Michael Emerson?</i>” Mary's voice sounded like gravel across a chalk board. The only redeeming quality being the flat tone, devoid of inflection. When the young man confirmed, she passed his chart off to a waiting nurse in the same color of scrubs. This one, however, was no more than thirty and had her mousy brown hair tied up in a bun on the back of her head. She barely glanced up from the paperwork on the clipboard handed to her.<br/>
<br/>
“<i>This way. Room 303,</i>” she said absently as she led the young man named Michael back into one of the makeshift rooms, their doors and only means of privacy a curtain that did nothing to muffle the varying whimpers, wails, grunts of pain, and occasional scream that pierced the air. The only thing the curtains did deflect was the imagery behind them; that was left up to the imagination to conceive.<br/>
<br/>
The second young man, whose head was bandaged with blood smudged gauze right above his close-lidded eye she didn't bother to call out to. Her manicured nails tapped at the keyboard with his ID stretched out in front of her. Mary's eyes narrowed briefly on his date of birth as she entered his record into their system and <i>tutted </i>something under her breath while a second nurse appeared from the wings to lead him back. Young and blonde with a fringe of bangs over her blue eyes, she actually looked sympathetic as she peered down at Daxon Ripley.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Her name was Zoey, and she was the nurse that was there when he finally woke. She was also the nurse that took his vitals, brought him one of those juice boxes you don't actually see except in kindergarten and daycare, then helped him into a wheelchair so that he could have a CT taken of his head as well as x-rays. She made sure that he knew she was a recent graduate out of nursing school with a teasing smile whens he pricked his skin with the needle used to draw out a vial of blood, then used a cookie as a way to apologize afterwards. She flirted with him, but also maintained an air of professionalism, which left the question of whether or not she meant anything by the occasional wink or playful commentary. She would also be the only company he had – and that was sparse enough as it was. Since he wasn't in critical condition, his emergency room stay stretched into hours before an actual doctor bothered to grace him with their presence.<br/>
<br/>
~~~<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Dr. Ian W. Callaghan, MD didn't sweep into Daxon Ripley's room until the clock on the wall read approximately 3:04 a.m. The crown of his dark head greeted the young man first as he ducked around the thin veil of privacy they had against the rest of the world. His head remained bowed for the first few minutes as he flipped through the pages of dictation on the clipboard; those scribbled words jotted down by the line of faces he had been introduced to during his stay there, including the doctor himself. The navy of his scrubs marked him as an attending rather than one of the residents that scurried between patients, harried in their attempts to keep the head count low. The cursive across the breast of his white jacket distinguished him further as a professional. At the beginning of the night, no doubt the jacket had been immaculate across his broad shoulders, whereas now it was strewn open and as rumpled as the scrubs he wore underneath. Dark circles smudged the undersides of his eyes and the whiskey-stained gaze that finally lifted up to meet the young man on the hospital cot were bloodshot. They worked better than any time clock could, punching his time along with the day's growth of stubble on a strong jaw at sixteen hours and counting.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“Your CT came back negative, which is why you weren't rushed off immediately because of a potential brain bleed. There's a chance that you might have a minor concussion, but from what I'm seeing here, there's nothing that you need to worry too much about,” he began right off the bat. Whether exhaustion or poor bedside manner, the good doctor didn't bother with introductions, instead choosing to dive right into the information in front of him. “However...”<br/>
<br/>
He flipped now to another page. From the angle, Daxon might have been able to get a glimpse of the x-rays that were taken earlier. “You have bruising on your clavicle. Minor. Expect to be sore for a few weeks or so. There are some fractures on your rib cage, so I'll be wrapping you up for those. What I'm really concerned about is your left tibia. It looks like a severe fracture. I'd like to take a better look at that. No internal bleeding. Nothing serious.”<br/>
<br/>
His voice strung the words together with staunch professionalism that was edged with the strain of the evening and an old brogue that had wheedled out of the foundation to barely manifest itself through the years the thirty three year old had spent living in the United States, though the last five of them were spent overseas in the hands of Doctors Without Borders. Before that was a dark space of time with CONFIDENTIAL scrawled across the empty space in his resume. <br/>
<br/>
“Other than that, I'd like to keep you over night for observation just in case that head injury proves to be more than what your scans show,” he finished, setting the chart down. The young man now had his full attention. Moving closer, Dr. Callaghan leaned in for a closer, visual inspection of Daxon. And for the first time since he had entered the enclosure, the full intensity of the other man's stare lifted up from where they probed for any visual signs of the aforementioned injuries to meet his paler gaze.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
“Do you have any questions for me?”</span>