The Luckiest Girl In The World

Goddamn, this girl apologized like breathing. "Just warnin' you, Kathy. You're doin' fine." He could do distracting chatter. "I've been around the block a few times. Joined the army when I wasn't much older'n you, went special forces. Then, uh. Kinda kept going."

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It was a long-standing habit, sadly. Acknowledging everything was her fault was the first step to controlling it.

After an agonizing few minutes, the body armor came off and Kathy dropped it to the floor where it fell with a wet squelch. Beneath that was just a simple t-shirt, reeking of sweat and blood. That, at least, Kathy could cut right off of him, using a small pair of surgical scissors. Once the t-shirt was off, she tossed the scissors into the hotpot full of boiling Dasani and picked up a small towel so she could wipe him down.

"Doing fine requires a warning now?" She really appreciated the chatter. It helped her not panic over how much blood was, well, everywhere.

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"It does when what you're doin' fine at is kitchen table bullet wound surgery," Eliot said. "Or, I guess hotel room bullet wound surgery." He'd actually seen worse. He was pretty sure she didn't need to hear about caves in Afghanistan, though.

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AHAHAHAHA NO. Well, not now, at least. Maybe next week, after she'd had a chance to calm down. Get some distance. Think of it as a delightful story to share: No shit there I was, doing emergency surgery in a hotel...

Yeah, okay, it was probably never going to be a delightful story.

"I should have bought tarps," she said, tossing one blood-soaked dishtowel onto the table and grabbing for another. "A whole slew of tarps. This carpet's never gonna be the same again and the mattress and bedding's even worse."

Would she have really wrestled Gorgon up to lay a tarp down under him? Probably not, but it made for idle bitching while she worked to reveal the wound itself. "You, uhh, didn't seem particularly surprised that I called you," she noted.

Gorgon hissed and winced as she worked around his wounded shoulder, his would ugly and raw and seeping. There was a nasty, tattered hole, with darkness below. "And here, this is what it looks like." She held the phone over the hole, uncertain what Eliot could make of it.

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"Wouldn't be if even if you had tarps," Eliot pointed out. "He was bleedin' while you were out." He leaned in again, examining the bullet wound. "[handwavy gun type], huh." He shook his head. Freaking guns. "I've seen worse." That wasn't saying much, considering the sorts of things Eliot had seen and done. "I'm serious, Kathy, this ain't bad. You get that bleedin' stopped and make sure it doesn't start again, and your friend'll be fine."

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Kathy nodded. "And you're sure it's okay to leave the bullet in?" she asked. "There might be someone coming tomorrow, but I'm not sure who or when or what they'll be doing. I just wanna make sure that closing the wound with it still in there isn't going to...I don't know, splinter bone or press on a tendon or..." She groped for other phrases she'd heard in movies and TV shows for decades.

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Eliot didn't quite manage to keep the relief entirely out of his voice. "Yes, I'm 100% sure. An untrained hand goin' in after it is as likely to damage those things as a bullet is, just sittin' there. Now, you said you had suture kits, right?"

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"Then I'm leaving it in," Kathy said, not even trying to sound unrelieved. "Too much could go wrong. I'm just gonna stitch him up and call it good, then see if I can get him to wake up again."

She reached for the boxes of sutures and held it up, streaking red across the front. "I do. They came with the needles and everything. Are they sterile in the box or should I slather them with iodine and throw them into the boiling water?"

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"Check the package," Eliot said. "They should be, but it'll tell you on there. So long as it's still sealed, then, you're good to go."

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Kathy flipped the box over and scanned the lines of text. "Sterilized," she reported. "But I should wash my hands before I do anything else. Have you seen enough? Because once I prop the phone up, I don't want to have to pick it up again if I don't have to."

Phones were serious germ vectors and the whole point of not touching the bullet was to keep from slathering infection all inside Gorgon's shoulder. No reason to find other ways to do that instead.

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Ideally, Eliot would have liked to get as close to her angle on the bullet wound as possible while she stitched, but there was only so much you could do with a cellphone camera in a hotel room. "Yeah, we're good. Go scrub in."

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Good timing, Dragon called right before she started washing up. A quick click over to assure him that everything was fine so far and to catch him up on where they were, and then she was clicking back and setting the phone down. Scrubbing in was a multi-step process. First, she grabbed the bar of antibacterial soap and spent nearly a minute lathering that onto her hands and rinsing it off with water so hot it made her wince.

She did that several times, until the last of the bubbles were pure white and not at all stained pink.

Then she poured isopropol on, waiting a few moments for that to dry, then followed it up with iodine. If that didn't kill everything, they were doomed from the start. Finally, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened up the suture kit.

"Ready," she announced, moving over to where she had the best view of Gorgon's shoulder. She squashed down another flare of nerves. "Where do I start?"

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"Alright," Eliot said. "Here's what you're going to do." And he carefully detailed what he thought was the best route to take for the stitches, how to place them and the basic stitching technique.

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You know what this would be a great time for? Notes. Definitely a great time to take notes. Guess what Kathy couldn't do?

Take notes.

"Okay," she said, trying to inhale confidence and exhale doubt or whatever those motivational speakers always suggested. "I'm just--just gonna start. Here? You said here, right?"

Yes, Kathy, he'd said there.

And, wow, nothing in her whole life had prepared her for the feeling of piercing someone's skin with a needle. GOOD TO KNOW.

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"Remember to breathe, Kathy," Eliot advised. "You're doin' fine."

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Poor Kathy was doing so well, wasn't she? How steady could she keep her hand when the person who she was stitching up decided to pick this particular time to furrow his brow and hiss between his teeth, then?

Not that Gorgon was aiming to make this difficult on her, really, but there had been a lot of jostling a few minutes ago, and now there were people talking. Like, overall, this whole scenario was kind of going out of its way to drag him kicking and screaming back to the land of the living.

"Fuuuuck..."

Or mumbling and slurring a bit. That too.

Edited Date: 2015-03-07 07:29 pm (UTC)

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"Oh shit!" Kathy was torn between being thrilled that Gorgon had returned to consciousness and being far less than thrilled with his time. "Shit shit shit shit shit!"

See? She could swear. Like when she was less than a third of the way done sewing someone's flesh closed when he woke up.

"Gorgon! How are you--whoa whoa. You should, umm, really stay still for the next few minutes okay? I'm almost done."

Sliiiight exaggeration there.

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This was exactly why Eliot told her to get something for the patient to bite down on.

"That place have a mini-bar? Offer him some whiskey."

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"Is that a-- who's... whiskey?"

He was slowly coming back to his senses, here. Whiskey was sounding pretty damn good, though.

"God, I could go for whiskey."

Even if everything was swimming, a bit. That hadn't actually been a nice, refreshing nap. Shockingly.

"... Done?"

This was going to suck a lot, wasn't it?

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Soooo much. So very super much.

"This is no not the kind of place that has a mini-bar, Mr. Spencer," Kathy said quickly. "It barely qualifies for a kitchenette and bathroom. And drugstores don't carry alcohol."

She hadn't anticipated needing a bar and surgical theater when she'd rented her room, okay?

"Just...steady, Gorgon, easy. Do you remember what happened? With, umm, Painkiller?"

Seriously, Fernando?

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The hell was up with the names? Kathy sounded like she was talking to people in one of Hardison's goofy superhero movies.

"She's tryin' to stitch you up, man," Eliot called to the patient. "You're gonna just have to grin and bear it."

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"I'm going to fucking find fucking Fernando and rearrange his fucking face," Gorgon growled, because apparently yes, he was awake enough to remember that much.

And then he took a moment to look down at his shoulder, bloody mess that it was, complete with Kathy, partway through pulling a passable Frankenstein job on the wound, and he swore a few more times.

"Who the hell is that?"

Look, talking to Mystery Voice there was the best distraction he had on hand without a swig of something hard right then.

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It was better than Frankenstein, omg!

"That's one of my...contacts, from back on the island." She figured he might take it better than if she said teachers. Mostly because Gorgon had no idea the kind of class Eliot and Parker taught. "I needed to know what to do for a gunshot wound if the hospital was off limits--" and yes, she was shooting him a quick frown for that "--and Mr. Spencer was the first person I thought of."

Because, again, the class he taught with Parker.

"It was before I had the Mighty Dragon's number. Umm, he'll be calling later, by the way. And hopefully bringing a friend that'll make all this kinda moot."

But since it was hopefully and later, Gorgon was just going to have to deal.

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"All I seen is the wound itself, man. So don't worry about identity issues."

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