The Beginning of the End (Zombie RP) discussion

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"Suture him up, and wheel him out to the recovery room. Let me know when he wakes up from the anesthesia," Emma directed at the surgical technologist that had been assisting her as she washed up after the successful operation. She removed her gloves and tossed them into a specific bin at the edge of the room and picked up the folder containing Officer Lang's medical report. Emma walked out of the room that had a slight smell of blood, and into the waiting area where family members of the police officer would be. The double glass doors slid behind her as she passed through them and was met only by one man.

Officer Attican had been seated on the bench placed by the wall and got up from his contemplative state as soon as he saw her enter the room. Emma removed the medical mask from her face, releasing each loop of string around her ears before she began speaking to him. She tried to look around once more to find a wife, or a mother of some sort that was blood related to Officer Lang but all she saw were the empty white halls of the hospital.

She smiled at Attican, returning her gaze back to him, "The surgery went well, he will heal but I need to inform you that he must not go back to any high level of activity until five months after this." She opened the folder she held in her hands and showed him the report, as he was scanning the document she looked over at his chest, wondering how to wound had healed from the time that he was last here. She lingered her gaze there for a moment and shot back up to meet his eyes, she couldn’t hide her curiosity. "How are you feeling? I hope that the wound hasn't caused you further pain, although it should have healed completely by now," she added, knowing that his recovery time was over now.

If there was anything Atty hated, it was this—sitting back and waiting. There was nothing worse than the feeling of being utterly useless. Not a single damned thing—literally, there was not one thing Atty could now do to help Jackson. There had been something Atty could do. Be Faster. Stronger. Better... Had Attican been any or all of those, he could have prevented Jack from landing in the same boat Atty had found himself a number of times now.

Jaw tightening, Atty closed his eyes as he leaned over in his chair, elbows pushing into his knees while his hands went to cradle his face. Another downfall to waiting alone? Thoughts. Atty was left with nothing but his own thoughts, and that was about as bad as it could get for a man like him. Thankfully, he’d become rather good at letting his mind go blank, of taking refuge in a void spot in his mind.

He’ll be okay. Jack had to be. No he won’t. Because of you. His teeth pressed harder together. They were sneaky bastards, thoughts such as those, always trying to worm their way into the poor guy’s head. It was sad, really, that someone with such a good heart and intents was prone to such a criticizing self image. Never good enough. He was never good enough, a fact he’d known since he was sixteen. No matter what he did, there would always be drawback, there would always been pain given to those who didn’t deserve it.

Another sound besides the clock’s constant ticking drew his attention, causing him to seat up and look to the glass doors as they opened and closed after a familiar face walked through them, the doctor’s eyes to a file for a moment before she started to eye the room. Atty was quick to get to his feet, knowing that this had to be about Jack. There was no family for the injured officer, just Atty. Jack was young and lost, family a thing he had never really had much of, and Atty was trying to help the kid by being that family, by being that rock Jackson needed. This is always what happens whenever you try to help someone. There are casualties, injuries.

The words he needed to say, the question he needed to ask, Atty couldn’t seem to get from his lips even as he stood before Doctor Tullen, knowing she’d have the answer he sought. That was the reason he couldn’t ask, though, because if he did, he’d have the answer...whether it was good or bad. He couldn’t cling to hope if the truth was laid out for him. So he stood quiet, waiting...partially hoping she’d simply never tell him of Jack’s state. Always and forever would he have hope, then.

But alas, Dr. Tullen spoke of Jackson’s condition. Atty thanked God, though, as soon as the words left her lips. “The surgery went well,” she told him. His eyes closed, and he took a deep breath, not able to stop the edges of his lips from corking up in relief. Returning his gaze to her, Attican listened to the doctor talk about how there was a recovery period and all that junk, as if that were a bad thing. It was a fantastic thing! It meant Jack was alive. The kid was alive.

He took a moment to run his hand through his hair, smile sticking to his face, though his mouth still lacking words to spit out. There was too much relief thumpin’ about that head of his. The doctor, however, wasn’t at a lack for words, curiosity being her muse, it seemed. His wound? Oh right, his chest. After the first ten near fatal wounds, one starts to loss track.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he told, not being all that honest. That whole ‘required recovery period’ needed to let things heal up? Yeah, he wasn’t too fond of them. As soon as he could move around without cringing, Atty had started back up his work...which meant he ripped his stitches a number of times, and the wound started back up bleeding pretty often. It had just last week, actually, but it was better for the most part. There was no serious risk or anything like that anymore. So yeah, he was fine—or in his eyes. “Healed up perfect, no lingering pain or anything.” Liar. “Will Jackson’s be the same once healed, ya know, back good as new?”

Emma acknowledged his quick response and if she had known any better then she would have believed him. Inexperianced medical doctors believe the words of their patients, however she didnt take eight years of medical school to undermine the body's healing process. The fact that even when wounds appear to be healed on the outside, the tissue and muscles within the body take a much longer time to fully repair. There was another undermining factor that didn’t lead her to believe that he had taken his full time to recover. He was a police officer, a young one, if anyone could call anywhere around thirty young. But he wouldn't sit still in his home watching tv or behind a desk while his comrades handled the bad guys.

Emma's experiance with crime was what she saw after all the shots had been fired. She handled blood, needles and scapels, not guns, bombs and daggers. But more than once had she seen this particular officer in the emergency room and several more for check ups. She had overheard a couple of nurses talking about him, whether it be his handsomely good looks or his stoic behavior. Both of which she couldn't deny that he possessed but her work here was strictly a doctor and patient relationship, nothing more or less.

"Yes," she replied to his question, "he will heal perfectly fine, he will just need to stay in the hospital for a week before he can be discharged. He will start on a liquid diet for the remainder of the day but should have no problem eating solids by tomorrow morning. I am sure he will be happy about that. Do you intend to wait for him until he wakes up?"

Emma began walking past Attican and away from the emergency room, she knew he would follow her, there was no reason to be there any longer. Attican would be able to see his friend once he awoke from the anesthesia and in the mean time Emma would be able to finish up the paperwork and change out of her surgery scrubs.

Emma stopped at the nurse's reception desk at the end of the wall and walked behind it to access some files on the computer, she was looking for one in particular. "Since you are here already, did you want to go ahead and do the check up your were schedule for next week?" She asked him purely out of convenience, she didn't know how busy an officer's life was on duty but at the moment he was here and she had free time before her next appointment.

Rest, yeah of course, Attican would make damn sure Jackson followed doctor’s orders to the ‘T’. He may not be able to do it himself, but there was no way he would let someone he was out to protect do the same. Even if it meant strappin’ the boy to a bed, Attican would keep Jackson safe and sound at home after his discharge from the hospital.

Doctor Tullen followed up Jack’s recommended recovery with the question of if Atty intended to stay until the boy woke up. Just as he opened his mouth to answer, the doctor walked passed him, moving down the hall. “Nothin’ else to do,” he muttered to himself as he turned to watch her back as she continued. Did she think he would follow after her like a puppy? Stick to her heels and answer her question as if she hadn’t just walked from him.

Glancing around the empty room, knowing well that he had no idea what room Jack would end up with, he came to the sad conclusion that yes, he would be the pretty doctor’s puppy for now and tag to her heels. Was t her smarts, he wondered, or her looks that made her know that men would follow after her if she left them standing there after walking away mid conversation? In any case, it didn’t matter; Doctor Tullen knew others would bend around her.

Or, ya know, she just knew that he needed her in order to get more information about Jackson.

He caught up with her as she rounded the desk of the nurse’s station. Looking at a few files, the doctor looked to him and asked if him that since he was already there if he wanted to do the check up he missed last week. Nose crinkling, Atty looked from Tullen, not at all wanting to get a checkup out of the way that he hadn’t really planned on going to in the first place. He was healed as far as the department was concerned, documentations and all from the last pretty face who’d looked him over. Something told him that if this doctor got a glimpse at his not so healed wound she would make sure to let the department know.

“I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time, Doctor, than to do some unnecessary checkup.”

((Sorry if it sucks a bit XD))

The nurse who managed the desk Emma was currently at came back from her break. That was her cue to step aside so that she may swivel into her chair. It was partly true, there were somethings Emma could get done, whether it was paperwork, or make a phone call to her parents although she doubted they would pick up seeing as they were out of the country vacationing. But, she was a doctor, it was her job to care for her own patients and seeing that she was the doctor at hand during Officer Attican's surgery, she felt that it was necessary to see how much the wound had healed and to what extent.

"I cannot force you to get an examination Officer, but I highly recommend it," Emma said, returning back to Attican's side. Somehow she felt like she had to address the man before her as Officer, whether his name followed it or not. It was customary to do so with both men and women that possessed titles to their name. He would refer to her as a Doctor and she him, an Officer. Part of Emma imagined what it would be like if they dropped the titles and hovered over a first name bases. Another foolish part of her once lingered over the scenario of having dinner with him, but yet that had come when she was eating alone in the hospital cafeteria and had seen him come in to speak to one of his other colleagues who had been here.

"I will let you think about it," Emma said, directing the words at Attican. "You can wait in room 145 on the third floor, I will be up there in a second, Officer Jackson should be there soon as well." She smiled at him as a goodbye, a see you soon gesture and turned to walk away. She needed to change out of the surgical scrubs she was wearing, normally she wore her everyday clothing to work, only needing to change her outfit when a surgery was in order.

Andddd….deflected. Of course the doctor had other things she could and probably should be doing, but instead she was trying to inch the officer into getting his examination. Something was telling Atty that the pretty face didn’t believe his words when he’d said he was in top condition. He left out a breath as he put his hands in his dark jacket’s pockets, fingers starting to fidget with the lent tucked deep into the corner of the pockets. On the plus side, she was right; the Doctor couldn’t force him into doing anything. But she could make him feel a bit guilty for declining something that they both knew he probably needed.

His gaze had drifted to the desk, not wanting to met Dr. Tullen’s gaze, knowing that it may jar his very firm stance of not wanting to bother with a check-up. But when she began to speak once more, telling him she’d give him time to make a decision. Good., more time to find a way out of it. He flashed her a smile when she told him what room Jackson would be brought to. Giving her a faint ‘thank-you’ as she began to walk away with a smile as her goodbye.

For a moment, Atty stayed still, eyes on Tullen’s back as she went further down the hall before turning down another and out of sight. Another second or two passed before Atty started to walk the hall as well, knowing his way around a bit too well in certain areas. Finding a stairwell, he went up two flights to reach the third, and form there it was as simple as looking at the numbers on doors. It didn’t take long to find room 145. Pushing open the door that was ajar already, a small chuckle left his throat as he got a good look at the room.

It wasn’t one patients were sent to for recovery—and if anyone knew what one of those things looked like, it was Attican. No, it was made up of a lot of stainless steel, white walls and floors, and one of those uncomfortable wanna be bed/chair things patients were sat on, a layer of plastic between them and the cushion that was replaced after each visitor. This was an examination room.

Bet she thought she was funny, didn’t see? With the shake of his head, Atty went on in. Avoiding this very persistent doctor’s attempts to get him in for his check up was turning out to be less of an option than Atty had thought. Instead of sitting on the thing in the middle of the room, Atty went t the back of the small room and leaned his back to it. He’d been sitting all night in that waiting room, no desire to sit anymore—then again, when did he ever desire it? Sitting still was defiantly a bane of his.

A few minutes lapsed, and soon someone came through the door. Atty was expecting to see Doctor Tullen, possibly having thrown on her white coat and switched scrubs, but that was not what he was met with. Well, no...yeah, he was greeted by the Doctor, but seems he was right when asking if she had something else she had to do, and that was get off work and go on a date—or something like that because she was looking eight levels of attractive.

Pants that were as tight as they were black stretched from just above her hips to her ankles, where they were met by a pair of small heels. A blouse nearing the same shade draped loosely over her shoulders, flowing as she continued to walk fully into the room. Her hair was no longer drawn back into a ponytail, rather she’d taken it down, allowing the brown locks to fall just passed her shoulders, framing around her high cheekbones and making them even more pronounced.

It was funny how someone’s profession caused them to see them different. Before, Atty had seen the doctor for her mind and skill, but out of her white coat, her title strayed from her and brought a whole new image of her into the officer’s mind. Now denying her advances to get that check up was defiantly going to fall through.

Emma walked back to her office, taking the elevator down to the first floor. To the side of her office door hung a small plaque that had her name inserted in a few years back. Doctor Emma Tullen. MD. She pulled down the silver lever and entered into her small but useful office. The hospital prioritized in the health care of its patients, and not the vanity of its doctors, as it should be. The room held one white table with two chairs strategically placed in front of it. They were there for those that needed private consultation with her or when she was informing patients of the upcoming medical treatment. She moved past her desk, toward the large window that was behind the chair and pulled at the proper strings to close the blinds. Emma opened the grey closet to her side and found several clothes that she had hung here. A pair of clean dark blue scrubs, as well as the outfit that she had wore this morning when she had come into work.

Emma changed quickly, placing the used scrubs in a bin that a janitor would come by at the end of the day to pick up. She tossed her lab coat on the back of her desk chair and took the id badge with her picture and name on it and placed it over her head. The badge was attached to a black simple lanyard and the plastic cover with her information hung just below her chest. She walked over to a small mirror on the other side of the wall, and examined her face. Her hair was still tied up in a ponytail, but that was no longer necessary so she pulled at the band, taking a few strands of loose her with it in the process of tugging it off. Her hair fell down to her shoulders, a poof had been created from where the hair had been bunched up. Emma fixed that quickly by running her fingers through her hair, and then gave one last look at her clothes. She stopped suddenly, crossing her arms over her chest and found herself to be acting rather foolish. The man isn't here to see you Emma, it doesn't matter what you look like now. Emma thought to herself, pausing and finally sighing as she left her office.

Her short black heels clacked on the tile floor as she approached the door to the room she had instructed Attican to go. She breathed out slowly before turning the door to open it, calming herself and regaining complete composure as she had done so many times in her life when it deemed necessary. She didn't know if Attican would even be here or would he have recognized her decoy of sending him to get examined instead of going to the recorvery wing.

To Emma's surprise she saw him standing against the back wall arms folded over his broad chest. He offered her a short quick smile, was it more of a smirk? Emma couldn't tell so she decided to act coy about the situation and closed the door behind her. "As a doctor, I feel that there are times that I have to step in and decide what is best for my patients. And at this moment, I feel that you need someone to force you into taking a re-examination for your healing wound," as she spoke she had moved to the small counter next to the examination table and pulled out a couple of tools she would be using. As she finished her sentence she turned around and walked toward Attican, stopping at the edge of the table, leaving an agreeable amount of space between them.

She was hoping he wouldn't put up a fight. In fact, he had evey right to refuse, his body belonged to him, not to the hospital and certainly not to her. She paused, of course not to her...she digressed from explaining herself to her own thoughts. Still, why had she led him here, asking him to accept the examination. Was she looking for an opporttunity to speak with him, to possibly get to know him better. If Emma was truthful to herself, even though being honest with herself wasn’t always her best assest, then yes, she did want to talk to him. She did want to find some excuse, as crazy as it may sound to spend even just an extra moment of her time in his company.

((bit short...but hopefully it makes up for it XD))

It would have been pretty easy to lace in some sexual comments, especially since there was literally a style of bedroom roleplay where the couple plays ‘doctor’ with one another. Was it bad that was the first comment that crossed his mind was something like, If you wanted to play doctor with me that badly, all you had to do was ask.? Nah, he was a man, and there was a drop dead sexy woman wanting to take off some of his clothes to examine him—yeah, no, it was near expected that his mind would drift there.

But he was, typically, respectful to women, so saying something like that to a smart and beautiful face? It wasn’t in the cards—well, not unless she wanted him to one day. She just wants to check your wound because she’s not stupid. She knows it’s not all healed up. He let her words fizzle, not responding to it directly considering she was already going to get what she wanted, to get her reevaluation of his injury. “Do you often lure men to room 146 under false pretenses?” he asked, deciding a bit of teasing humor was acceptable. After all, she had, in fact, done just that. She’d lured him to that room with a lie. And for what reason? To get him to strip a bit for her.

Pushing from the wall, Atty went ahead and pulled his jacket from him, putting it on one of the chairs meant for family to sit in during the exams if they wanted to come in with the examinee. Letting his fingers go to the buttons on his gray button down, stained with a bit of dirty and blood from a solid day’s work—the blood may or may not be his, he began to walk slowly to the patient’s seat in the center of the room. Considering he was in no more pain than he was used to, he figured I was probably mostly from Jackson’s injuries. His muscles tense, jaw tightening as that thought crossed his mind. He had the kids blood on him because he let Jack down. He’s fine now. He’ll recover, and you won’t make that mistake again.

With all the buttons undone and him having reached the center of the room. “Or am I a special case?”

She watched him as Attican made up his mind to comply with her request. His slow adavance toward her somehow had her grounded to where she stood. Any moment she felt like she would back up but her legs stopped themselves from moving. She couldn't turn her eyes away when he pulled his jacket off, his muscles moving underneathe the clothing in order to manuever out of them. She had witnessed this several, no, a few hundred times of patients coming in and removing their clothes for an examination. Emma would be able to hold herself down without so much as a flutter of her heart teasing her. But somehow, Attican's sly comment of luring her in here for her own personal gains caught her off guard.

She had done just that, even though the truth of it was that she was looking out for his own health as well. What good would it do for a police officer to not be in tiptop condition and suffer from his injuries to hold him back? "I didn't lure you here out of my own personal gain, this is strictly for your own benefit as well as for the benefit of the police department. You are only a spacial case because you are stubborn and refuse the help," Emma had finished saying, trying immensely hard to not look down at the man's chest. He hadn't fully taken off his button down shirt, he left it open, exposing the wound but he would have to lower his left sleeve off of his shoulder more in order for her to get a good look. She bit back a smile, wondering what it would feel like to be the one to pull down his shirt, striping it away from his shoulders.

She gulped and regained her thoughts, promising herself not to let her mind wander any longer. Her title was all about being professional but why hadn't she moved when he had drawn near. She looked up at him, he was several inches taller than her, not by much now due to her heels but with this she was able to notice his eyes better than any time before. They hid a sense of diviousness, she wondered if this was part of his charm that he would use on other women. But as she looked into his eyes longer she also saw regret, and pain, those emotions hidden so carefully by his outward behavior.

This realization snapped her out of her locked state and she stepped back from Attican, leaving room for him to hop onto the patient's table. She began washing her hands at the sink in the corner of the room, she didn't want to get the wound infected by cross contamination. She put on some gloves before returning back to Attican's side, he sat atop of the table and in the time she had turned away he had fully takem ofg his shirt. Emma took notice of the scars that covered parts of his athletically built body, she had seen them before, at the time of his operation but she had been too focused on keeping Attican alive to think of much else.

She reached the table and examined his stitches quickly, most of them had been torn and dried crusts of blood kept the others intact. "This won't do," she said outloud, "I will have to go back and take these out and stitch them again. Or instead of stitching it back up I can put a wrap around your body to prevent and debri from infecting the wound and allow it to heal naturally. Which would you prefer," she said to him, her body leaning rather close to his as she continued to inspect the stitches.

Did she mean to be careful with her words? Ensuring she not tell a lie while making it seem she had not done what she was being accused of by adding in the added on ‘personal gain’ tidbit? Or had the doctor accidentally slipped up, mistakenly letting out more than she meant to when saying ‘her own personal gain’? The latter would be more flattering to the officer, of course, offering a bit of a babbling side to the doctor that showed off some flaws that’d make her all the more interesting and easier related to, while the prior shined a light on a bit more cunning and very...black-widow like appeal, if that could make any sense at all.

In either case, the sprinkled in words, they had Atty wondering—wanting to know more, more about the woman who he’d only really ever seen as a doctor. It was hard to every look passed the loose scrubs and white coats—not as far as the eye meant. Attican had always seen her as physically attractive, but something about the medical get up always kept him at bay. It was the smarts thing, he was sure. She was a woman of knowledge, a woman to be respected, a woman who he’d never really gotten to see as anything more than, well, a doctor. A higher up. An untouchable, so too speak.

Doctor Tullen...wait, what was her first name? Had she said it before? Why was he wondering about that now? What, was it because she was out of her medical get-up and carefully moving his shirt aside with her fingers to expose more of his chest to her? Yeah, that could very well be the reason. The untouchable was seeming very touchable.

For a moment, his eyes stayed on her gloved fingers as she held the fabric of his shirt back, wondering if just how it’d feel if her hand was not covered in latex and she wasn’t being so careful not to touch him. Behave. His gaze went to her eyes as she spoke. The answer he preferred started to come up, but he stopped it, knowing the doctor would disapprove. How it is. It’ll heal eventually. But, for some reason, he wanted to comply to the woman, to let her get what she wanted, to let her help him.

“Stitches, staples, glue, anything but bandages,” he told her honestly. Bandages were too much upkeep for the man. Before each shower, he’d have to take it off, then get a new one back on right after—and if he wasn’t doing anything currently, doubtful he ever would. “I was fine with it as is,” he went to say, not able to help himself any longer, one corner of his lips tugging up, “so know, I’m only letting you fix me up because seem to care about how pretty and fast my injuries heal up.”

Attican's words made her lip curve upward slightly, pushing back a smile. He was full of charm, that she couldn't deny, she wondered if this was part of his normal personality or in some fortune coincidence, he was only treating her especially this way. "Then staples it is," Emma replied, turning around to go and get the tool that would allow her to perform such a procedure. She wouldn't need to put him under any anesthetic, nor would she put a numbing cream on the specific area. She reserved such treatment for children and more sensitive areas such as the head but she could tell that Officer Attican wouldn't mind the slight sting as he so easily withheld that he was in any discomfort at all after the surgery about a couple of months ago.

"Thank you for your complacency, if I may so call it that, but I am a doctor, in which I do get some sort of satisfaction when my patients are healed and well taken care of. I intend to do that for you today." She missed any part of where that could have been taken differently and proceeded with pulling down Attican's sleeve once again to disinfect the area, take out the stitches and start stapling the skin together to close off the wound. She finished her work quickly and effectively, making sure that she did not falter in her steps with each staple that went into his skin. Whether it hurt him or not, she could not tell, she was more focused on finishing up the exam and keeping her nerves cool around Attican.

When he had previously spoken about her being so adament to take care of him and look after his injuries, it was all true. In fact, she cared for everyone who came into her care, she formed bonds with her patients, even if it didn't show or was returned, she couldn't see anyone in pain. She had first started her pursuit in this career field for the passion of science but now, her determination thrived on the well-being of her patients. Attican was no different, the moment she had seen him being rolled into the back of ambulance she took it upon herself to see him to safety and take care of him, no matter what the cost.

"You can put your clothes back on, that's all I needed to do. That wasn't so bad, it's better to just listen to your doctor then risk further injury," she turned back at him and smiled as she properly disposed of the wipes and cleaned the tools. "Emma, your patient, Officer Jack, is waking up now, " a nurse, a little younger than Emma was but one that she was very familiar with cracked open the door and told Emma. The nurse looked over at Attican who was seated on the chair and blushed slightly and retreated back out of the room. Emma turned to look at Attican fully aware that in this situation, with his sharp jaw line, his deep mysterious eyes and with his shirt partially open, any person would blush at the sight. "Looks like we finished just in time, I'll walk you to his room that he is in, and don't worry I won't be leading you anywhere else but to Officer Jack," Emma finished saying adding a bit of a tease to her words and, waited for Attican to be fully dressed and ready to head out the door.

Ah, so this wasn’t about him. Of course it wasn’t—she was a doctor, a professional, who’s main goal in life was to heal all those her hands touched. He was a patient of Tullen’s, and he was not recovering enough for the doctor’s liking. It was a bit of a surprise to Atty when he felt a bit of disappointment seep in, an emotion he was quick to push down. It was an emotion he did not want to deal with, as were most.

Now physical pain? That was something Atty could handle like a champ. The bite of the staples was nothing more than a twinge of pain for Atty, something he’d learned to ignore, to push to the back of his mind as if it weren’t even there. Then again, no matter the level of pain, Attican was pretty skilled in ignoring any and all of it with regards to himself.

Both the brief disappointment and the sting of staples were shaken off, yet there was something managing to get his heart rate off and nerves sending off sparks. The doctor—no, the woman...the beautiful woman who was helping him, taking care of him. She was still getting to him, even after she clarified this was only to see what she started through. Nothing personal.

Maybe that’s what allowed Atty to feel at ease enough to feel such a spark, to allow him to feel attracted to the doctor, to be drawn to her. Maybe it was the fact that she’d straight up said that there was nothing more than professionalism between them that made Atty able to feel ‘safe’ to liking her. If there was no future, there was no future pain, loss of love, chance of getting too close to someone. Messed up, yeah, sure, but in a screwed up way, it was understandable.

Atty wasn’t much one for letting someone help him, always trying to avoid being a burden, but he was still human. Humans, no matter what, will always feel ‘special’ or ‘cared for’ when someone helps them—a few of them having that feeling being so deep that it’s not even noticed. Attican was no different. He could hate being helped all he wanted, but he would always feel grateful to those who forced their care upon him, even if he never showed his gratitude.

“You can put your clothes back on, that's all I needed to do. That wasn't so bad, it's better to just listen to your doctor then risk further injury.” It wasn’t everyday a woman told him he could put his clothes back on. If his clothes had gotten off in the first place, usually the girl with him would make sure they stayed as such. A halfcocked smile drew to his face. He was starting to like her. The unattainable are always the most desired, aren’t they? Sadly.

Before he could respond, a nurse walked in with news on Jackson. Everything was dropped, all thoughts, all cares, everything, the officer’s feet hitting the floor as his fingers started to do up the buttons on his shirt. His primary, his only, reason for being in the hospital was waking up. Being there and seeing how Jack was was the only thing that mattered to him now. He didn’t even notice the nurse blush after catching a glimpse of him before he’d gotten to his buttons. It wasn’t something he usually did notice. Not too self aware, the poor boy.

“Yeah, sounds great,” he said, voice distant once more, the formal side of the two’s relationship sprouting back up like weeds on the side of the road. She was no longer a pretty woman helping him. She was, once more, a doctor who was about to take her to one of his good friends...who was only here because of Atty. Guilt. Shake it off.

She started to lead him from the room, guiding him, hopefully, to the place she’d actually said that she was taking him. With his wound all ‘fixed up’, he doubted the doctor had anywhere else to trick him into going to. It didn’t take too long to reach a room, Tullen swinging it open and Atty following through.

There on a bed, still knocked pretty out from being under in the OR, was the kid that Atty was supposed to be looking out for. A deep breath flooded into Attican’s lungs. Jack was alive, something he could now truly allow himself to believe. Seeing is believing, after all. “Damn, dumb kid,” he said under his breath. With the shake of his head, he continued as he walked closer to the bed’s edge. “You ran right in the middle of a storm of bullets and fire.” Stopping short a foot or two, Atty’s fists tightened at his sides. He looked to Tullen. “Thank you, for saving him.”

The room was well kept, the hospital bed was close to the large window that showed a rather pleasant view of the now night sky, at the bottom of it was a large couch that was attached to the wall. It wasn't the comfiest piece of furniture but it made due when family came to visit. In Officer Jack's case however, it looked like Attican was the only family that would be visiting him today. A smile appeared on Emma's face as she saw the relief wash over Attican when he saw Jack in one piece and doing well after the surgery.

She wasn't fully aware of what policeman had to do in their job. From what she experienced however, from the many police officers who had come in and the majority of the time out of the hospital, their job heavily consisted being in the line of fire. This was no different, and a sense of pity filled her as she wished that men and women who worked to protect the city didn't have to risk their lives. But, she knew that without them, everyone would have to fend for themselves in a world where everyone could be your enemy. Emma closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that a world of peace was something far-fetched and that she should stop wishing.

"I'm sure that Officer Jack wouldn't be here alive, if it weren't for you being with him at that moment as well as taking him to the hospital," Emma tried to console Attican but she didn't want to overstep her boundaries so she stopped with that sentence. But, she believed that if Jack had come in a few hours later, than she wouldn't have been able to save him. She remembered the ambulance pulling up as soon as dusk fell, if she calculated just right, the twenty minutes it took to get to the time of injury to the operation room was just enough to make sure his blood hadn't clogged up any important arteries.
She looked over at the screen that showed the patient's vitals and noted that everything was looking well. "He will wake up soon if you'd like to stay with him for the time being," Emma proceeded to tell Attican all of necessary steps that needed to be taken from this point on. As she was doing so two nurses came into the room, they were there to perform another check up, these would be frequent in order to make sure that his condition remained stable and until Jack was fully awake. "Let's leave the room for now so that they may perform their work," Emma gave Attican a reassuring smile, assuring him that he was in good hands.

Emma closed the door softly behind them as they walked out of the recovery room. "Right now is a critical stage, he looks like he will wake up soon but we have to make sure his condition is well looked after until that time. Well, Officer, it was a pleasure talking to you, if you have any further questions you can contact the nurse to ring me up. I have another appointment that I need to head downstairs for, it is a woman that is having back pain." Emma scolded herself inside, feeling rather silly for explaining her reasons for leaving to him. She was a doctor, she was free to come and go as she pleased, she didn't have to give Attican valid proof that she needed to go and couldn't stay longer. She checked her watch on her wrist, noticing the time and suddenly splurted out some words that she wished that she took back right when she said them. "I will be off my work shift in thirty minutes if you want to grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria on the first floor. You may want to eat something, it looks like you haven't had anything since you brought him in earlier." Emma wanted to hit her lips a couple of times, what was she doing, asking him out on a dinner date in a moment like this. No, she reminded herself, she wasn't asking him out, she was advising him to eat for the sake of good health. Come on Emma, who are you kidding, you are obviously attracted to the man.

Emma swallowed, punching the button of the elevator to go down so she could escape this reality. The doors slid open as it reached their floor and her heels clacked into the cube, turning around to wave goodbye to Attican. But when she turned around, Attican wasn't at the entrance to the elevator but rather he had stepped in with her and was standing beside her. The doors closed and she reacted by clicking the button to head down to the main floor. She pressed her lips together, wondering if she should make more small talk, maybe a slight tease or should she throw out more medical information. It was a short ride down and the doors slid open again, but when they did something caught Emma's attention that was more important than anything else in the moment.

Right at the front of the hospital's lobby she saw a man holding a woman, both of them covered in stained blood. She saw the look of distress before they even said anything and she rushed to their side, shouting order to the receptionist to call up the staff in her department. As soon as she reached the man she saw that she needed to first take care of the woman in his arms first before she took care of him. Priorities, who was injured the most, who could you save and what needed to be done in order to help those in need. "I'm going to need a room open for operation, bullet wounds to the shoulder, and hip," Emma looked closely at the open wounds, blood covering her hands and her blouse, she knew what needed to be done and she would take care of it, this woman would survive.

She was wrong; had it not for him, Jack wouldn’t have been put in the situation that got him hurt in the first place—or at least that’s what Attican would always believe. It was a critical flaw, to always believe what happened to those around him was his fault even if it was not. A form of self hate that went deeper than just a few layers of skin, something that couldn’t be brushed off and moved on from. Maybe intense therapy could help ‘cure’ such a thing, but there was nothing to cure in his eyes because, well, he didn’t believe he was just looking down on himself. He truly believed most things that went awry were his fault.

He did not correct the doctor, however. She was trying to be nice, she was trying to make him better—like she had done earlier, even if this time it was her attempting make him feel better emotionally rather than physically. The need to help others was buried deep within her, wasn’t it? An attractive quality, one that Atty posed himself, but unlike him, the doctor fixed people while he broke them.

Like usually, he went to distractions to draw himself from his thoughts, focusing intently on what Tullen was saying. She broke down what needed to be done to ensure Jack healed up nice and well. Each step she was giving would be followed to a ‘T’. Jack would get back to 100 percent, even if Atty had to force to boy to do what the doctor said.

Atty gave a nod to the doctor when she told him he could stick around until Jack woke up, thankful she was okay with letting him stay even though he knew it would be ‘best’ for him to be out of the way until Jack was in better shape.

As she spoke, a pair of nurses entered the room and started to check on Jack. Tullen pulled Attican and herself from the room, reminding Atty again that the next while was critical, that they were not out of the woods just yet. She was setting him up for the possibility that Jack took a turn for the worst. Because no matter how perfect any operation went, there was always a chance for something to just...not work. Anything could happen, still, and it was in a doctor’s handbook, Atty was sure, for them to always mention that after any sort of medical attention is given. This was the medical folk to set in some mental prepwork for if things did go off the hinges.

Then the doctor told him she had to go, that she had another patient to attend to. In honesty, Atty wouldn’t have guest the doctor had to attend to a patient. She wasn’t even in her pretty white coat. She probably just didn’t want to be rude and say she had to leave for a date, even elaborating on the patient: a woman with back pains. He gave the doctor another nod and a brief smile to sorta say ‘good bye’, but instead of letting that be her parting words, Tullen began telling Atty how she was off in a half an hour and how he could join her in the cafeteria for a bite if he wanted.

It was an automatic, but partly confused smile that tugged to the man’s lips as his brow raised. Wait, so she really wasn’t going anywhere all dressed up and pretty like? She literally did just walk around the hospital like that when not in scrubs during surgery? Then how the hell did she not already have several dates for the cafe? But it wasn’t a date, was it? No. It wasn’t. It was another ploy of the doctor’s, another way to draw Atty into doing what he needed to help him get into a better standing with regards to his condition.

She’d make a great mother, the way she guided a grown man along into doing things he normally wouldn’t think much about. If she could do that with Atty, she could easily get children to do whatever she wanted. But what did it matter if she’d make a good mother? It—it didn’t, not to him at least. Nope. Because, ya know, that’d mean that he was thinking about her as a mother, which would mean he was thinking about her with kids...and anyone only ever thought about that if they were thinking about someone having their kids. And that was not happening. Okay, so for a brief moment, maybe it had. But that was because of that innate animal side of humans to seek out suitable mates to carry their offspring. It was because of biology, and only biology.

He hadn’t gotten the chance to respond before the elevator opened up and Tullen stepped in, perhaps because he’d been caught off guard a bit. So, what did he do? He acted without thinking. He stepped in with her. Why? Who the fuck knew. Maybe because she was already wrapping him around her little finger without even doing anything? She was leaving little bread crumbs for him to follow, and he was doing it. Yeah sure she was only leaving them so he’d follow her into a world of better health and taking care of himself, but still, she was leading him along, and he was following.

It was quiet in the elevator, however. He hadn’t gotten a word to come from his mouth. He looked to her for a long moment before looking to the elevator doors again. “So in thirty minutes, you’ll be done with the woman with back pains, and back to making sure I take proper care of myself?” he smiled a bit as he looked back to her. “You weren’t kidding when you said you take serious pride in healing your patients.”

The doors opened as he finished speaking, and the look that flashed onto the doctor’s face caused his smile to fade and follow her eyes through the elevator entrance. Coming into the ER through the glass, slide doors was a man carrying a limp woman, both coated in blood. This was why he was a police officer, because bad shit happened to people like this every damned day.

His heart dropped, and everything began to slow—but as it slowed it also seemed to speed up. It was one of those weird things that adrenaline would do to someone. It’d distort the scene happen around them so much so that nothing made sense...and yet everything did. He was kicked into gear, as he always was at the sight of blood, rushing over towards the two just as the doctor had. He stepped outside to glance around and make sure there were no others in need of help. He came back in, the girl already being put on a gurney and rolled down the hall.

“Is there anyone else?” he began to ask the guy. With the shake of his head, the guy gave his answer to Attican. “What happened?”

“You can ask your questions later, officer,” the familiar voice of one of the nurses who’d been around when Atty would come in to question people. The nurse tried to get the man to sit down in a wheel chair, but he declined, attention seeming distant at best. He was worried about the girl, not himself, a feeling Atty was all too used to. The nurse resorted to guided the man down the hall, letting him walk.

A few things were already at work in Attican’s mind. One being that the man didn’t so much as limp despite having been shot. He was either used to pain or had a natural tolerance for pain. If it was the prior, then he must have some sort of job that involved getting hurt, similar to Attican. But Atty knew that the man’s face wasn’t that of an officer in his city. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be from out of the city. Or military, perhaps? Had the build for it either. If it was the latter, it didn’t much matter.

But what also had the officer’s attention was the fact that the man and woman had made it out of whatever they’d gotten into alive and there was no one else that needed attending to, or no bodies to account for. Usually, there was a body left behind if anyone walked away from a gun fight. If that was the case, why hadn’t the guy said anything? Attican’s gut tightened. Something felt off, but his attention was taken from that as soon as another nurse told him Jackson was awake.

Everything else went out the window. The only important thing for him being his friend who was waking up at the moment. Besides it would be an hour or two before he even got to question the guy, much less the girl. He had time to kill.

Emma quickly changed into new clean scrubs, cleansed her hands thoroughly and put on gloves to enter the emergency room. She knew that she had left Attican back in the lobby without so much of a glance goodbye but he wasn't what she needed to focus on right now. The others were waiting for her to start the surgery, X-rays had already been performed, there weren't any broken bones, which was a good sign. The real assessment began when Emma started opening the wounds and extracting the bullets out. In cases like these, Emma never knew what the reason for the injuries were, she was there to save the patient, and not investigate.

From what Emma could see however was that the unnamed patient was in her mid twenties, and strangely, bore a number of scars on her body. Emma was more focused on the open wounds rather than the already closed and healed ones. If she could really say healed, some of the scars looked as if they had barely scabbed or healed over time without the proper care as well as some of the others were just small circles. Could it be that this girl had suffered through more bullet wounds. If so, she might be in the police force, maybe military but if that wasn't thr case, maybe she was in a bad situation and in need of help. Emma made a mental note to ask the patient about it later, if it turned out to be nothing then fine but doctors weren’t meant to get into the personal lives of their patients, that created complications and privacy issues. But, it was never in Emma's nature to turn a blind eye from someone who was in possible danger.

As Emma worked on taking out the bullets she continued to maintain an eye on the woman's vitals. Everything was steady, the bullets were coming out nicely and surprisingly none of the bullets had hit a major organ. Now, Emma wasn't a detective by any means nor did she fill her brain with useful information about guns and crime but something was off. The woman had been shot more than once, there was a highly unlikely possibility that the person who was trying to harm her would miss their target. Everyone knew where a heart was in thr human body, even a stomach wound would have done major damage. But all the places that the gun had fired at were at places that wouldn’t have outstanding harmful effects to the body. Sure, anywhere that a person was shot at would cause substantial amount of pain and blood loss but Emma wondered if the person who had fired these shots at the girl in front of her, really knew what they were doing or she just found herself fortunate.

Emma had taken the time to look at the man who had carried the girl in. He had been injured as well, not nearly as bad but she doubted that he was the one who had caused the woman harm, especially since he had brought her to the hospital. Emma had instructed another nurse to look for a doctor to help the man out while Emma focused all her attention on the woman who was more injured.

Finally, Emma pulled out the last bullet and set it on the silver tray right next to her. She cleaned up the wound, asked for a status report from the assistants in the room with her and then finished up, double checking everything to make sure she hadn't missed a tear or additional injury. Emma instructed for the others to finish the stitches in order to close up the wound so that Dr. Tullen could go out and inform the man who she had seen earlier that the surgery had been a success.

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Will knew that people would ask questions but there wasn’t an easier way to handle this. Medical attention was more important to him than a few questions he would have to face. Besides, he had done it before, faking his responses, formulatting all his answers to fit into one perfect lie.

As soon as he saw MacKenzie being wheeled off for surgery, a quick wave of relief passed through him. She was in good hands, she wouldn't die, Will knew that for sure but she would be on her way to recovery in a matter of hours.

Will noticed the man in front of him staring at him with caution as well as concern. A nurse came over and saved Will from answering the man's questions of wondering how the injuries had occured. "I am not sure, I couldn't see their faces," Will replied shortly before a wheelchair was brought to him. The nurse urged him to sit, even though it was unnecessary, Will knew that it was protocol and they wanted to make sure he didn't damage his leg any further before they could heal him.

He sat down on the wheel chair and heard a doctor from behind tell the man who had questioned Will that further investigation could be done after the patient was taken care of. So, that man was a cop no doubt, that was unfortunate, Will just had to run into a cop on his way into the hospital. There were a lot of people Will tried to avoid in life, cops were especially one of them. He was happy to be wheeled away from the man but knew that he would be there waiting for Will to answer everything he knew.

Will's wound was cleaned and taken care of properly, and he had a choice between waiting in a recovery room or in the hall of the. surgery room. Will chose the second option but all the while he was asked for the medical information from not only him but Enzi as well. He made a fake name for himself and lied that he didn't know Enzi's name, age or contact information. It was best for their identities to be kept a secret, and Will had made sure before they entered the hospital that he had hid the gun safely for future use.

The doctor that Will had seen earlier with Enzi came out of the room, a pleasant smile on her face. "We finished taking the bullets out, she will recover, the surgery was a success," she said, words that were comforting to hear. Will understood that the doctor wanted for them to stay at the hospital in order to give Enzi her proper aftercare but that wouldn't be possible. Will knew that once he walked out of this area, that cop would be there waiting to uncover everything. "Thank you Doctor," Will replied with sincere gratitude and now that the coast was clear, he made his way to the room that Enzi would be sent to afterwards.

Thankfully, no one was waiting for him in the room and Will sat on a single chair by an empty space where the bed would come rolling in and be placed at. Will clasped his hands together and thought carefully, their predicament was a tight one. It would be hard to talk his way out of this one, there obviously had to be the person who shot the gun that they would be asking for. They would ask what happened, why it happened and who did it. They had to get out of here, as soon as Enzi came in, Will had to escape this hospital with her and even before he had come into this room, he had already put that plan in motion.

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Emma walked alongside the hospital bed that the unnamed female patient layed in. Her bag of IVs connected to the moveable bed allowed for easy transportation and finally they all made it to the room that she was to stay in for the time being. The man in the room got up from his chair as soon as the door opened, his face when he saw the girl resembled emotions too deep to come from a stranger who had come across an injured woman.

The two assistants moved the bed into place as Emma hooked up the necessary equipment to make sure everything was functioning properly. "So, I take it that you are going to be claimed as the temporary guardian of this girl," Emma said as soon as she finished checking the monitors and IV tube. The man nodded in reply and sputtered out that he would only be here for a short time. He seemed tired and a bit overwhelmed, the stutter in his voice helped Emma calm down and think that this man was just trying to be a good citizen. Emma walked over to the other side of the bed and checked a wire at the bottom of the bed, he back faced the other man who had given his name as Jeffrey. "It's a good thing you brought her to this hospital, I hope you are doing well, do you feel pain in your leg still," she asked, getting up to turn around and face him.

Before she could turn around however an arm wrapped around her neck, her body pressed up against another behind her. She felt the grip tighten around her, it was getting harder to catch her breath. Emma tried to squirm, she tried to call for help but it was too late, she could feel her mind growing clouded, her strength beginning to fail her. Was she about to be killed? What had she done wrong? These last two thoughts raced to her head, the final thoughts she had before fall unconscious on the hospital room floor.

The time passed fast, at first, after Atty had came into his friend’s recovery room. It was typical of time to do such a thing, hasten its pace when one finds himself in the presences of happiness. Then as soon as happiness subsides, or in this case, Jackson fell back to sleep, the minute hand of the clock seemed to slack from its dance around its endless cycle, entering a near standstill. Each tick felt like an hour, and each hour felt like an eternity.

Despite time only easing passed once Jack returned to his rest, Attican remained in the dimly lit room. It was his responsibility, was it not? To watch over Jack, to make sure that nothing else went wrong. Maybe had he done a better job in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. So here he was again, wasn’t he? Right back in the grasp of his thoughts while in a setting of but only himself to distract him, an unreliable distraction at best.

But there was something that seemed to be drawing the man’s attention away from the darker depths of his own mind. A very determined and crafty woman’s face kept popping up. She had a way of getting under a man’s skin, didn’t she, Dr. Tullen? He wondered if that was something she used commonly to get the men she took on as patients to follow the protocols she sat for them to help them heal. Odds were she did. But the real question was did she realize she was even doing such a thing in the first place, using herself as an incentive to follow her protocols.

Now, Atty knew very well that the good doctor wasn’t actually using herself as an incentive, making herself nothing more than a prize men got for following her orders. No, no, it was nothing like that. It was something else, something far more controlling and dominate than straight up physical incentive. It was as if Atty wanted to give the doctor the satisfaction she got from healing those she has a hand in helping, as if he wanted to make her happy. Maybe it was just him, though. It could be due to that need of his to try and make others happy. Maybe Tullen was no different.

Or maybe it was something about her…

Upon hearing a commotion in the hall, footsteps sprinting past and a buzz of voices, all holding alarm and urgency within them, had Atty on his feet and headed out of Jackson’s room. Just outside of the door, he looked in the direction of those who’d ran past. Hearing another set, he looked in the other direction. A security guard was hustling along as well, running past Atty.

Something was going on, and the officer couldn’t sit back. It wasn’t in him to do such a thing. That’d require far too much restraint. Headstrong was a word commonly used to describe the man. There was simply no fighting it. Jogging down the hall, he eventually reached a gathering of medical personal, all huddled outside of a room. He pushed his way through them until he managed to get through the door.

At first the hand of the security guard stopped him from getting in, but he was quick to flash his badge, an action that was near innate to him. The guard let him pass; it took only a moment for Atty’s eyes to find none other than the good ol’ Doctor Tullen sitting on the edge of a patient bed, another doctor checking her vitals and examining her.

There was an emptiness in her expression, one Attican had come to know as shock, and he saw it often in the faces of bystanders after something came out of no where and hit them. It was as if the wind had gotten knocked out of them, as if their feet were snatched from beneath them, as if their entire world was shaken and possibly even shattered. And he hated it, he hated seeing that expression daunting the faces of innocents. He hated seeing the caring doctor who’d wanted to do nothing but help others in such a state.
There had been only a moment’s pause, a moment for him to register that something had happened, only a single moment for him to be right in front of her, knelt a bit before her. She was shaking, he could see it now, her eyes blankly locked to the tile of the floor. “Hey,” he said quietly, his hands going to either side of her face. She was jolted from her trance like state, eyes blinking a few times as her gaze came to meet his while he tilted her cradled face up to look to him. “It’s okay,” he promised. “You’re safe. Everything is okay.”

Calming the victims of any situation was required for a good chunk of a cops job, so he was just acting out of reflex, right? Calming the victim to get a better scape on what happened so he could help solve and fix things. That’s all this was, right? Just another case. Except...he wasn’t trying to calm the doctor to get stable enough to talk. Figuring out what’d happened was important, no doubt, but the only thing that the man wanted to do at that moment was help her, was to help the sweet doctor to feel safe, to feel sound, to know that nothing else was going to happen to her.

But, to make her feel truly safe, he did need to figure out what’d happened. “What happened?”

The whole world felt dizzy to Emma, she could hear muffled sounds, a female's voice but the words weren’t sounding right. The sound felt distant and Emma's body was drained, it felt like she had been taking a long nap and felt croggy and unstable. "Doctor, oh my goodness, Doctor, what happened," a voice called out again, this time Emma could hear a bit clearer. She had heard one question, but she didn't even know the answer. A dull pain started to appear around her neck and Emma touched it with her hand, the feeling and memories coming back to her.

Emma heard another voice, different than the female, it belonged to another doctor that worked in the hospital. His voice snapped her out of her train of thought and she nodded when he asked if she could get up off of the floor. He helped her up, she was thankful and of he hadn't have been supporting her, Emma was sure that her legs wouldn’t have supported her. As she reached the now empty hospital bed, she could feel her strength coming back to her but she knew she had to be cautious. The doctor started working quickly, looking over her as he made sure that she didn't have any cuts or bruises. Emma started to hear more people outside of the hall, murmuring, the air was starting to become stuffy and Emma closed her eyes to compose herself.

She felt the doctors light touch on her neck, and then he mentioned the possibility of her carotid artery having been compressed in order to restrict blood flow, causing her to faint. The memory rushed back into her head, she had been choked, by someone that had put her in a rear armhold. She wanted to suspect the man that had been in the room with her at the time, it had to be. Fear crippled Emma's body and mind as she was suddenly aware of the danger she had just gone through. In a moment, she could have died, and she hadn't been aware, she didn't know how to respond.

Her body responded for her, she began to shake and tears started to form in the ducts of her eyes, ready to brim over. Then, warm hands cupped her face, urgently but with care and she fell into them, leaning her head into the right hand. Attican looked down at her, his face a welcoming relief to her uncontrollable state. He had never saved her, nor did they share any mutual relationship further than patient and doctor. But his voice guided Emma back to a calm state, but it was mainly because he kept telling her that she was safe now. No one had said such a thing to her, and that was the only thing that she wanted right now.

She wanted to continue to hear him talk, it was a focus point that helped her find a firm ground to speak the words she needed to say. But she knew they needed answers, she was the only victim here, atleast she hoped she was and that no one else was hurt. Dismay tried to creep its way into Emma's mind but she somehow pushed it away and with a shaky voice she responded to Attican. "I'm not sure," Emma looked around the room and continued,"I was checking on the female patient when I suddenly felt someone put their arm around my neck. I started to lose my breath."

Emma couldn't say anything more, and the look in Attican's eyes reassured her that she didn't need to force herself anymore. She wanted to lay down, he head was still heavy and finally the doctor next to her finished his assesment. "I am not going to draw any blood from you, that will make your body weaker but we should check that tomorrow. "For now, I think you should go home, get risk and I will prescribe you a cream to help alleviate the pain you might be feeling around your neck. It will soothe the muscles and the pills will stop the inflammation that the bothered artery is causing." Emma nodded, she steadied her breath and wondered why this was all happening to her.

"Attican," Emma looked up at the direction of the male voice that had just called out to the man beside her, "I came in as soon as I got the call. It looks like it is more than just two patients that decided not to pay the bill this time, eh." The man was a police officer, he dressed in full uniform and from the sound of it, he was a deputy from the same police branch.

A male nurse walked in and went straight to the doctor beside Emma who was hotting down his findings. "Doctor Nolen, we ran the blood samples we had recieved on both of them, and we found something quite strange from both." Emma's head still felt heavy, she tried to pay attention, she wanted to hear and understand but the more she focused on them, the more tired she grew.

Emma reached for her ID badge that hung on a lanyard around her neck, she usually did this as a habit that calmed her nerves but it wasn't around her neck anymore. She looked around for it but it wasn't there, that's when it dawned on her that the lab coat she had been wearing was gone as well. She thought for a moment, wondering if she had even put those things on in the first place before entering the room but she was sure she had. "My ID badge, my coat, has anyone seen it," she asked as loud as she could, trying to project her voice but not sure if she had succeeded. It was a possibility that it had been removed by a nurse or a doctor a put away safely but she wanted to know.

It was common for a victim to not know the full spec of what happened considering generally they were nothing more than a bystander, who got roped into a spider’s web. It was cruel and oddly fascinating how the world seemed to be made up of weavers and thread. Some people weaved together pieces of Fate’s fabric while others acted as the thread they used. In truth, everyone acted as each, a weaver and a piece of thread. It was impossible to never make an impact on someone’s life through a direct action taken, or so Atty believed, therefore it was impossible never to weave a piece of Fate’s fabric. Whether a person likes what they’ve created or not in said tapestry is another thing all together.

In this case, Tullen was the thread of someone else’s loom, someone else’s story. She’d been tangled and tied up, then left behind whenever the weaver realized she was not of use to his fabric anymore. Atty had seen far too many pieces of thread ruined in his day, but thankfully the doctor hadn’t been ruined—not yet. She was still together, still in one piece, still able to be untangled, and more importantly, she was still able to be kept from being tossed aside. She was still able to be protected and kept safe.

And he’d do just that.

As she began to speak again and look around the room, Atty let his hands lower from her face to allow her to look more freely.

She’d been...she’d been attacked? Someone had actually choked the kind doctor out? Who’d do such a thing?

Gears began to turn, the detective side of his mind starting to go to work.

She’d said she was checking on the female patient, so Tullen was looking over the gun shot victim that’d come in with the guy Atty had interacted with when it happened? It had to be the guy she’d been with. But why? Why’d he put the doctor down?

Because the guy needed to get himself and the girl out of the hospital. There was clearly more to the duo’s story than just some robbing or random attack. The guy had brought the girl in for medical attention, very well knowing that there was a risk involved, the risk of getting caught for whatever they’d been involved with. So why risk such a thing? Clearly the girl meant something to the guy, enough to face that risk. Or...or the guy had known very well that he’d be able to get them both out of the hospital. Or maybe it was both.

So why just choke the doctor? Why not kill her? After all, she’d seen the girl’s face more clearly than anyone. Tullen was huge loose end. Why not tie it? Because the guy was grateful, maybe? Grateful that the doctor had saved the girl’s life? Or maybe the guy just wasn’t cold blooded? Maybe he wasn’t a killer? But if he wasn’t, then what was he that made him have to run? A fugitive, maybe? That’d make enough sense. They were being hunted, which explained the bullets, but they weren’t killers.

Or maybe they were. There was not enough for Atty to form anything more than a bubble of possibilities. No matter the truth, though, the guy had put his hands on the doctor, evaded police questioning, and was now a personal target of Attican’s.

There was no more the doctor could tell Atty—not right now, at least. She needed to have time to process, to recover a bit. Letting her relax would better allow for details to come back to her. Plus...it’d allow for her to simply feel better, and Atty wanted that. He wanted her to feel safe again, to not have to relive what’d happened to her until she could handle it a bit better. It wasn’t good to pick at new wounds, after all.

The other doctor examining Tullen began to explain why he wasn’t going to draw blood and so forth, but all Atty heard was the underlining fact the doctor was failing to directly say: she’s okay. Physically, the doctor was okay; maybe she’d have some swelling around her neck and pain swallowing, but beyond that, Tullen was not hurt...physically. That was a weight off his shoulders.

“Attican.” Hearing his name, Atty looked over his shoulder to see a fellow officer, who was actually on duty, enter the room. The guy said he’d come as soon as he got the call, stating what should have been the obvious, and went on to tag on an attempt at humor. It wasn’t funny, not at the moment at least. Perhaps Atty would have gotten a laugh out of the kick in saying the patients were after more than just getting out of their medical bills, bu considering how much of an impacted it had on someone Atty found himself feeling responsible for, witty little comments like that weren’t funny.

So the man let it roll off his shoulder, not even offering a response, though he didn’t have to considering someone else took front stage. A nurse announced to one of the doctors that the blood analyzes were...odd.

What’d he mean by strange? And the better question, why was he coming to tell Doctor Nolan of this in the middle of the mess that’d just happened? It hardly seemed like the proper place or time, but regardless of the nurse’s lack of timing or reasoning, it still brought up questions, the main being: what the hell made their blood strange?

His eyes drew back to Tullen when she came to the realization that she’d lost her ID badge and medical coat. Maybe that’d help explain why the people’s blood had something funky going on! Her badge could have granted them accesses to the majority of the hospital, including the lab. Maybe the samples were contaminated by the patients in order to keep them from being identified? That seemed like a far jump, though, because there had to be more of their blood where the samples came from...unless biohazard had already taken care of it. But that’d be rather quick.

In any case, the ID would have helped them escape.

“Whoever attacked you could have taken it,” Atty suggested to the doctor. The little room was feeling very crowded. A nurse, two doctors, and two officers all jammed in, not too mention the curious onlookers trying careful not to stumble through the doors as they tried to listen in. Looking to the officer, Atty said, “Myles, go with him and hear what he has to say about the patient’s blood Doctor Tullen was treating.” The officer gave a nod, and motioned for the nurse to follow him from the room. Atty’s attention moved back to Tullen. “Don’t worry about your badge. We’ll have it deactivated.” He offered a small smile, though it held little grit when it came to anything happy. More of a smile made to offer reassurance, possibly ease the nerves the doctor may have still kinked. “In fact, I’d like for you not to worry about anything, because there isn’t anything to worry about. You’re safe now, and whoever did this won’t get close to you again.”

It was a promise, one he didn’t make lightly.

A bit of relief washed over Emma as she heard that her card would be deactivated soon. If it was just the case of her misplacing the item, that would be fortunate but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Emma knew however that deactiviting the card key would take the expertise of a programmer.

There was usually always one at the hospital, in case complications with the computers or any other piece of technology started acting up. But, during the night hours, the specialist maintained an on call status, available but only after calling him. This process would take him some time to get to the hospital in order to perform his role.

Words couldn’t describe how thankful Emma felt toward Attican as he spoke to her. There was a hint of worry that those who had harmed her would come find her again. They had run away, and Emma thought that there was a possibility that they were in some kind of mess. She had planned to ask the girl but she wasn’t even offered the opportunity to do so.

Now she was at risk, she had seen both of their faces, and was still alive. Maybe the person who had done this to her actually wanted her dead. They might have miscalculted, thinking that Emma's unconscious state was actually her dead lifeless body. Emma wanted to shudder at the thought, but once those people realized that she was still breathing, would they come back?

It was a slight paranoia, and she tried to remind herself that someone couldn’t have been that foolish. She had been breathing after her fall, and when she awoke she was by the wall, further away from where she had last stood before the attack. They would have noticed but a hundred questions still raced through her mind.

She was finally gaining a bit of composure and she moved her feet around a bit to make sure she had a grip on her sensorimotor skills. Emma knew it was time to get up, she would take her fellow doctor's advice and head home, and get some rest. "Thank you Doctor, Attican and staff, I think it would be best for me to head home now." Emma tried to speak with a sense that she had everything under control now.

She demonstrated it by standing up from the hospital bed and smiled before she continued on her way. Don't trip Emma, don't falter, show how poised you are, just like we've practiced for so many years now. Ever since she was little she had to take care of herself, she had to be able to stand up to the challenge. She couldn't let anyone see when she was weak, that was Dr.Tullen, everyone had said, able to bounce back from anything.

Her only downfall had been that surgery last year that had torn her up. The one she had failed at, but she was determined not to show that again. She could make it to her office, get her car keys and drive home. It would be no big deal, however her right hand started to shake a little and Emma quickly tucked it away into the pocket of her pants. Atleast she hoped she could make it, there was always the option of sleeping in her office.

Did she just smile? Fake, completely so. It was a front, something Atty was used to putting up himself. Smile for the crowd, walk it off, and wait till you’re alone to let things finally settle in and start to worm at your soul. That’s what the doctor was setting herself up to do; she was going to head home where she could face the truth of what’d happened to her this night alone, face it all by herself so no one could see her break.

One thing she wasn’t even considering was the fact that being alone right after something like this happened was not an option, not a safe one at least. If whoever the guy who attacked her decided to come back to finish off the face who’d seen him closest, then she’d be completely at his mercy. Not only was she in danger by being alone, but she was also risking a whole horde of emotional wreckage coming down on her with no shoulder to lean on.

Maybe he wasn’t close enough to the doctor to offer the latter, but Atty’d be damned if he didn’t ensure she was safe. Looking to the other officer, Atty said, “Keep me updated on this one.” When the officer gave a nod, Attican walked around him and followed the doctor out of the room. She was walking just fine, probably still in shock...or maybe she was fine? Some people could just shake stuff off. Maybe she was one of the lucky ones with that ability.

“Doctor Tullen,” he called out to her, waiting for her to stop and turn back to look at him. “We don’t know anything about the guy who attacked you...so...I’m not sure you’ll be safe at home alone.”

((short, but screw it. I got a reply in!))

Everything was successful so far, Emma had reached the door, nodded at a couple of nurses to acknowledge their presence and onlooking eyes. But, nonetheless, she was standing tall wasn’t she, there was no sign of worry or confusion in her face. Emma knew what everyone must be thinking, 'poor, defenseless doctor, I feel sorry for her.' Yes, Emma could hear it all in her head, their stares said it all but she wouldn't succumb to it, she wouldn't give them the benefit of being a bystander to this sudden danger that occured in the hospital.

If Emma was scared, which she was, she would deny it. If she was startled by sudden noises, she would fake her reaction to not look foolish. These were only two of the many things she did to maintain the image, in order to look after herself.

Emma blinked a couple of times, making sure she had heard the right voice of Attican calling out to her. She looked back at him, hoping that there wouldn't be anymore questioning from the officer about what just happened. But even if he did ask, she couldn’t blame him, he was merely doing his job, a duty he had to perform in order to solve the case. But the questions didn't come, the straight forward cold attitude that she might have accepted in this situation was absent. In its place came a caring gesture of concern, but somehow Emma took no offense to the words as she might have from anyone else.

"Umm, right, I am not sure what I can do at this point. I think it would be best to leave the hospital, in case they come back, but I would like to be home." She didn't know what Attican was implying, could he bring her back to the police station, surely she would be the safest there. Emma didn't like that idea though, she would feel too out of place and unable to relax but in order to get home she would need some help. She had to admit some kind of defeat, she didn’t want to risk being behind the wheel of a vehicle and causing further trouble due to her unbalanced state of mind.

"Attican, I mean Officer Attican, I have a favor to ask, although you can turn it down. I do understand you are busy and..." Emma stopped herself from explaining her actions, if she let herself continue she would be standing here all night. "Would you mind dropping me off at my house? I regret to admit that I do not trust myself driving in my state of mind."

Emma had cut to the chase, there was no point in prolonging the inevitable question she had planned on asking. But just like that, one of Emma's many walls fell down at her feet. That was the wall titled 'pride' and as much as she wanted to grab the stones to rebuild it back up again, she knew she needed help. She could have always called a taxi, but that would mean relying on a stranger to take her home. She had enough of dealing with strangers for one day, especially when she felt slightly paranoid now but wasn't Attican a stranger.

No, Emma reminded and convinced herself, he wasn't a stranger. She had saved his life, he was a cop in the police department, trustworthy and she had seen him often since the time of their first meeting that day in the midst of the hostage case at the bank. Emma blew out a long held breath she didn't realize she had been holding, hoping that she was making the right choice.

((Conversation always makes my posts so sadly short… You can take them to the parkinglot and to his car, then we can do a post or two in the car, then start up at her house? We can do the car posts in her house thread, though.))

It showed when she spoke; she was still in shock, operating on autopilot. Umms, uhs, and stumbling over words, all signs of the brain trying kicking on in short bursts when autopilot didn’t have a fully worked out reaction for a situation and interaction. The odds of the guy coming back to the hospital to get rid of eye witnesses, it was a low chance, or o the officer believed. There would be too many eyes in the building for the next several hours. No, if he had made it back to the hospital to clean up house, he’d be waiting outside to catch up with the witnesses as they veered away from prying eyes.

As soon as the Doctor were to leave the hospital, that’s when her life would be at rise once more. She needed someone to keep an eye out for her, and it was already decided in his mind that that someone would be him. She’d been dedicated to trying to make sure he stay well, it was only fair that he do the same for her. She was a good person, and Attican would protect her. She deserved safety.

“Of course,” he said to her asking if he’d give her a ride home. He began to walk the hall once more, gently placing his hand on the small of her back as she turned to walk with him to help get her into motion. He let his hand fall back to his side once she was in stride with him. “And you don’t have to tack only any tags to my name. Just Attican, or Atty, Doctor Tullen. You have, after all, seen me without half my clothes on. You’ve earned the right to a first name basis.” Light hearted, idle conversation was one of the best ways to distract someone, to help them settle down. That was his current goal as the two made their way through the hospital. Though his mind was far from settled; each sense of his was on high alert, keeping attention to every detail. If there was anything that stood out, he’d see it. But from the looks of it, he was right. The hospital itself was a safe zone. The parking lot would be the primary spot to keep an eye out.

There was a comfortable feeling about dropping formalities between them. She wouldn't have to stumble over her words to act proper, but with the titles, she felt like they were able to maintain a relationship of a doctor and an officer speaking to each other. Doctor Tullen seeing Officer Attican with his shirt off was merely a doctor and patient relationship that held no other feelings. Now, Emma seeing Attican with his shirt off, seemed like it made things more personal, mixed with feelings of interest somewhere in the middle. But, she wasn’t in the mood to tease, instead she gave him a small smile and they continued to walk together toward the parking lot.

"You can call me by my first name, Emma, and leave the doctor part out since we will be leaving the hospital. Thank you, by the way, for taking me. I didn’t want to take you away from other duties." Emma stopped herself from speaking more, she was sure that if she did then she would convince herself that he was busy and she was imposing an unnecessary request upon him.

The door to the elevator pinged open and Emma let Attican lead the way to the parking lot where his car was. She knew her way down there but not the exact location of Attican's car. On the way down she thought of the other name that he said that she could call him as, Atty. It was the least formal way of addressing him, and almost had a slight endearing tone, no matter which way she rehearsed saying it in her head. She imagined yelling it out of concern, then trying to whisper it, then trying to say it with anger. People would think she was rather strange thinking of this but it helped her to get things off of her mind. Especially in a time like this she preffered pondering over nicknames, nice ones that she never had, rather than worry over possibly having been choked to death.

One of her thoughts suddenly escaped and her mouth opened, softly and quietly saying the word, "Atty." Emma shot right up to look at Attican who was standing right beside her at the entrance to the larking lot and he looked down at the mention of his name. That wasn’t supposed to have happened, she didn't mean to slip those words out of her brain. But, what would be the excuse...she definately wouldn't tell him the actual truth. So, she just had to address it casually, "Ahh, is your car to the left or to the right." Nice save Emma, that cleared your name from looking like a fool.

((You can reply here or at the thread to Emma's house, I do not mind, eaither way, she will tell him the directions to her house, so that part is a given.))

Her feet pounded the tarmac, her arms swung, her hands balled into fists, earbuds were snugly placed in her ears, a fine sheen of sweat covered her body. The city was busy, people coming and going, Reagan weaved in and out of bodies as she made her way down city blocks, jogging. She was on her way to work, and jogging there was going to become a habit of hers, one of many she was sure. The young woman had stopped by the hospital the day before and dropped off her scrubs, and other necessities that she would need at work. The only items she had on her right then were her phone and earbuds, everything else was in her new locker at the hospital, where she would be spending her time fulfilling her residency at Seattle General. Reagan's heart pumped harder, and not from the exercise, it was more from nerves. Would she be good enough? How much would she screw up? Would the hospital offer her a full-time position after she was done? Would she be the same person after all of it? Reagan tried to mentally shake off the overwhelming thoughts flying through her head, none of it would help her on her first day.

She rounded the corner and slowed down as she faced the hospital, taking each earbud out of her ears, and tucking them into her shirt, Reagan walked towards the double, glass doors. Other traffic passed by her, not giving her a second glance, that was just fine with her. She wasn't interested in gaining unwarranted attention, if someone paid attention to her, well she hoped that it would be when she was doing something impressive. Not when she was walking in all sweaty, hair probably a wreck, and breathing heavily. Reagan took the path to where the residents locker rooms were, carefully avoiding running nurses, doctors, and sometimes a wheelchair.

Upon entering the locker room Reagan went straight to her locker, completely ignoring anyone else that may have been there as well. She wasn't ready to face anyone else, let alone introduce herself to the people she would be spending the next few years with, perhaps longer. Her fingers, shaking slightly, put in the numbers to her combination on her locker, she removed a fresh pair of scrubs, delicates, as well as soap. She slipped off her Nike Air's, and went for the showers, shedding her clothes as she went, by the time she got into a stall she was unclothed, her clothes left right outside her shower, and her clean ones on a bench nearby. She turned on the hot full blast, letting the water pelt against her skin, scalding her, in a clean, exalting way. She loved being clean, and could take hour long showers when she had the time to waste.

After a good lather and rinse, the dark haired female stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel firmly around herself. She brushed past someone, murmuring an apology, she grabbed her clothes and began dressing, abandoning the towel on the bench, and grabbing her dirty clothes to put back into her locker. She finished getting ready, pulling the drawstrings on her pants tight, she tied them and bounced some on the heels of her feet. This was going to be a good day, it was, no matter what. Or so she told herself, even though her stomach felt like it was on the floor, Reagan willed herself to calm down. She grabbed her ID badge, clipping it to her top, and took a deep breath before heading to the nurses station in the Emergency wing. That was where she was told to report to, that was where all the new residents would be reporting to. Her ponytail was still damp, she had no makeup on, and felt self-conscious, still she walked on, ending up in front of the nurses station, awaiting her first order.

(anyone?)