Page 12 of What We Break
"He's nice," Marcus observes. "The butterfly people sent him to help."
"The butterfly people have good taste."
An hour later, Reid's back with his fourth patient of the night — a woman who thinks the hospital is a spaceship and keeps asking when we're going to reach Mars.
What onearthare these people taking? Younger me would have headed right down to the festival to get me some. Current me doesn't think it looks like a good time.
"How's Marcus doing?" Reid asks as they wheel the woman past. He gives a little salute to the ceiling as he walks.
"His wings have almost sprouted."
"Progress." Reid gives me a quick smile before disappearing into bay two. Between his unit and the four other crews we've seen tonight, we're filling up fast with patients.
Most of them are tripping, but there are a few with injuries from actually tripping — the literal, face-meets-pavement kind. I've been running from room to room, cleaning gravel and other stuff out of knees, elbows, and hands. It's one of the busiest nights I've had in this ER, though not the busiest I've ever had. No, that night — after a bomb in a crowded market in Spain — was the worst. Twelve hours straight, blood on every surface, and the sound of it. The screaming. I still hear it sometimes, in that half-second between sleep and awake.
I'll take this kind of busy any day of the week.
The calm lasts exactly twenty minutes.
I’m in Bay 5, trying to get a temperature on a guy who was foundscreaming at a fire hydrant. He’s been muttering about "frequencies" since he got here, but he seemed harmless enough.
"I just need to put this in your ear for one second," I say, holding up the digital thermometer.
The man’s eyes snap open. They’re wide, terrified, and fixed on the device in my hand. "No! I know what that is! You're one of them!"
"It's just a thermometer, sir. I promise it won't?—"
"Get back!" He lunges, his hand shooting out to grab my wrist. His grip is surprisingly strong, his fingernails digging into my skin. "I won't let you plant the tracker! I won't let you take me back to the mothership!"
I gasp, dropping the thermometer as I try to yank my arm back, but he’s twisting my wrist, pulling me off balance toward the bed. "Sir, let go?—"
"Hey!"
The voice is a bark—sharp, commanding, and completely stripped of humor.
Suddenly, Reid is there, moving with that jarring speed I saw earlier. He doesn't shove the patient, but he applies a very specific, very firm pressure that makes the man’s grip on me loosen instantly.
Reid steps between us, using his body as a shield. He’s not smiling now. His back is to me, broad and tense, effectively cutting off the patient’s line of sight.
"We don't grab the nurses," Reid says. His voice is low, calm, and has a steel edge to it that makes the hair on my arms stand up. "You want to talk about frequencies? We can talk. But you keep your hands to yourself. Understood?"
The patient blinks, shrinking back against the pillows, seemingly breaking out of his loop. "She... she had a probe. A neural probe."
The tension in Reid’s shoulders drops instantly. The steel vanishes, replaced by the humor. He looks over his shoulder at me, checking to make sure I'm okay. His eyes drop to my wrist, then back to my face.
"You alright?" he asks quietly.
"I'm fine," I rub my wrist. "He just caught me off guard."
Reid turns back to the patient, a grin spreading across his face. "Buddy, look at her. Does she look like a Grey to you? She’s way too cute to be an extraterrestrial."
The patient frowns, looking at me suspiciously. "She had a device."
Reid stoops down and picks up the thermometer from the floor. "This?" He spins it in his fingers. "This is old tech. Earth stuff. If we were going to probe you, we wouldn't use the ear. Everyone knows the neural interface is in the rectum."
I choke on a laugh. "Reid."
"What?" He looks innocent. "Just explaining the anatomy." He hands the thermometer back to me, his fingers brushing mine—warm and steady. "Besides, standard protocol says we have to buy you dinner before any probing happens. Isn't that right, Nurse Mitchell?"
