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neworleansspecial · 1 year

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The Patient (Space Outlaw AU)

Summary: Crockett wakes up in the hold of a spaceship belonging to six fugitives, who abducted him because one of them needs medical attention.

Warnings: Blood/Injury, Medical, Threats, Mild Violence, Kidnapping

WC: 4.1k | AO3

“Shut up, he’s awake.”

The voice is feminine and humanoid, with a familiarly soft intonation behind the words. Still, Crockett knows he’s been spotted as awakening already, so he sees no point in pretending otherwise. His vision swims and sparkles when his eyes first open. Slowly, the kaleidoscopic view sharpens into a young woman’s face.

“And? He’s a witness and we’ll kill him when we’re done no matter what.”

This second voice is also feminine and humanoid, but with a different accent and a crisp sense of finality, proving his life as inconsequential to her as her words would seem to imply. Crockett can’t see this speaker, so he instead continues to focus on the first.

“Glad you’re awake, Doctor,” she says, fussing with a blanket draped over his midsection, too small to be of much actual use. “I’m sorry about the… well. I suggested we just hire a doctor, but what do I know? Sexton, by the way.”

Sexton extends her hand for Crockett to shake. “Marcel,” he replies. “You suggested hiring someone, but I don’t recall any paperwork, so I take it this is an emergency?”

“You’re surprisingly calm,” the second voice says.

When it does, Sexton’s head whips around, and Crockett follows her gaze to another woman, this one with no engine grease on her coat or dirt beneath her nails. “Would you prefer it if we had to Yeller another doctor because they weren’t?”

“No.” She comes forward into the light now, and crouches in front of Crockett. Sexton is seated, shooter idle in her hands but armed, and appears less of a threat than the other woman. “We don’t have the time. It’s just weird.”

Inch by inch, she takes in Crockett’s entire body. Every speck of dirt and dust caked into his shoes, the trail of dried blood down his face from the abduction he doesn’t remember, and each individual eyelash is studied with a surgical precision.

“What did you do before medicine?

Crockett smiles at her. “Used to just study it. Then I got a license to practice.”

She doesn’t find this amusing, and stands up to better kick him in the ribs. Without waiting for the pain to subside, she grabs one of his arms to pull him upright. Sexton takes the other and, between the two of them, they find themselves able to prop Crockett up in a standing position and mostly drag him away from what he determines must be the hold of whatever ship they’re in. There’s no point in struggling, but he chooses to go limp and force them to exert the energy to carry a rag doll of a man to the poor bastard Crockett is presumably here to treat.

"I'll let you lovely ladies know I'm no use to you dead," he drawls out. "Whatever's wrong with your friend, it's bad enough that you kidnapped someone."

"Threatening us?" The second speaker asks. "Hear that, April?"

Crockett recognizes the name together. April Sexton has a bounty on her head so high he could afford to stop working overtime. Last he checked, it was all sorts of things- treason, arson, murder, reckless endangerment, desertion, etcetera.

"120 is no small sum," he adds.

Sexton almost doesn't acknowledge it. "Small for this crew."

Finally, the second woman meets Crockett's eyes. "Ava Bekker. It's your pleasure to meet me. I've been on so many wanted posters I should start collecting royalties. And if anything, and I mean anything, happens to Connor, it's your ass on the line."

“Connor would be the patient, then?”

Bekker doesn’t respond to him. Her bounty is even higher, and he’s heard of her. Most people have these days, even if her face is harder to come by. His attention skitters down to the utility belt around her hips. Maybe he’ll have the opportunity to take something from it later, just as a last resort because this has been nothing but ugly thus far, and he has no confidence it’ll improve.

She drops him outside a door with a keypad, leaving April to barely keep him from collapsing completely. If he were a patient at his own hospital, he’d be running a gamut of tests for all the potential injuries. The head wound alone is enough to worry. He can’t allow it to make him a liability to these mercs, however, so he struggles to support his own body weight with the help of the wall. Bekker keys in the code too fast for him to memorize.

“He’s in here.”

Crockett is ushered forward between the two women to see the patient. Connor is a lean built man, Earth-Moon pale with blood loss on the sheets around him, and dark hair that looks like it’s been long weeks in need of a trim. The blood doesn’t look all fresh; mostly it has gone maroon pitched closer to brown and crackling on the sheets under him, turning redder and glossier the closer it gets to the actual injury on the lower right quadrant of his abdomen. No part of him is dry, though, as the places the blood doesn’t reach have turned tacky with sweat.

“How long has he been bleeding?” Crockett asks. “And why is he like this? Let- We’ll need to get him off this mess. Get him cleaned up, and then I can look at it better. Is he hurt anywhere else?”

He reaches for Connor, but Bekker grabs his arm before he makes contact. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to check on him, ma’am, like you asked. Can we get him clean, please?”

Sexton ducks out of the room to yell down the hallway while Bekker picks Connor up. She’s much gentler with him than she had been with Crockett, but still more or less fails to keep his limbs from hitting the door frame as she drags him into a small ensuite. He groans when she plops him into the bathtub.

“He got stabbed a couple days ago. He said he was fine at first, but then he wasn’t getting up, and he’s feverish.”

“Hmm.” Crockett adjusts Connor’s position to something more comfortable before Bekker throws a washcloth at him, presumably with which to clean Connor up. “Humanoid…?”

“In a sense. He got a little freaky’d in the tube.”

Crockett glances up at her. “Do you have alcohol? The higher content, the better. What does that mean? I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”

A plastic bottle hits the back of his head and makes bile rise in his throat. Fireworks dazzle his vision again. He fumbles blindly for it until he’s able to identify the label. Isopropyl. He rinses his hands to the best of his ability before he soaks the washcloth to clean Connor up.

“He’s a Rhodes, if that means anything to you. Couple minor mutations, but human for what it’s worth.” The door opens and shuts loudly from the main room. “That’ll be April changing the sheets. Done yet?”

“Nearly. Does he have…” Crockett gestures vaguely with one hand as he checks Connor for any other injuries in need of attending. “Surely he owns a pair of pants.”

She pauses for a moment. “Are you distracted, Doctor?”

It isn’t nudity interrupting his focus, but something in the razor sharp edge of her voice makes it clear he has to impress that fact upon her. His life depends on it. “Not at all, but the wound is above the waist, and I try to respect my patients’ privacy.” He holds out the washcloth and Bekker replaces it with a clean one for him to resoak. “I’ll need supplies. Gloves Antibac. And he’s going to want painkillers when he starts coming around, I guarantee it. And this probably needs stitches.”

“Kit’s by the bed.”

He shortly finishes up cleaning away the blood he can and inspects the wound closer under the bathroom fluorescents. There’s no obvious foreign contaminants when he tugs lightly at the undamaged skin a few inches away, and the tissue looks swollen and irritated, but not necrotic. It’s most likely an infection, which he might treat with intravenous medication at his hospital, but will be unable to here. He finishes his brief examination and gets out of the way for Bekker to lift Connor from the tub, bringing him to the doorway back to the main room so Sexton can help get him onto the bed. The sheets have been remade with crisp hospital corners.

“How many others are on board?” he asks.

“Three,” Sexton tells him. “Reese, Choi, and Captain Lanik.”

Bekker snorts. “Captain.”

Crockett retrieves the kit from bin next to the bed frame and thankfully finds individually wrapped gloves. It must be his personal emergency kit, not a ship first-aid supply. “The injury, he was stabbed?”

“Yep.” She reaches into her utility belt and opens a pouch to produce a knife, which she waves in front of his face. “Three inch laceration, about two inches in depth.” It still smells like blood. “Took it at a fifty degree angle into the abdomen. It looked like a light switch.”

The image paints behind Crockett’s eyes vividly. “I see.” This prompts her to put the knife away, giving him the opportunity to dig through the kit for the needle and thread. Both are kept in sealed sterile packages like the gloves. He takes an alcohol wipe to give the area one last sterilization before stitching.

He has stitched up hundreds of patients with various species and planets of origins, and his hands have been steady for every knot of his career up until this point. Now, he notices a slight tremor when he pinches together the edges of the wound.

“Steady now,” Bekker says behind him.

While Crockett hears Sexton say something in response, he isn’t actually listening. The cut takes nearly a dozen tiny, precise knots to sew shut. He finds no sharps container, so he returns the needle to the remains of its packaging for now and gets a packet of antibac. He cracks the seal above the stitches and allows the serum to drip like honey along the row. It forms a greasy film, which Crockett then covers with a bandage square taped in place.

“That’ll need to be attended to frequently. He needs more care than I can give him here- antibiotics, for one, and I’d want scans to make sure-”

“That won’t be necessary at this time,” Bekker corrects.

At that he nods. “Next best thing is to keep me alive. If you had the know-how on your crew, I wouldn’t be here. So let’s play nice, if we can.”

“I like nice,” she says. “I can be real nice, right April?”

Sexton offers Crockett a hand to his feet. He discards his gloves and takes it, but still requires a fair amount of support to stay standing. Bekker walks out of the room a step behind them, hand poised at her belt.

“You should meet Captain Lanik.”

“Jimmyyyy!” Bekker calls in a sing-song voice behind them. “Wanna meet the doctor?”

Her antics make Sexton shake her head, but there’s a quirk of a smile on her lips as they traverse to what Crockett can only assume to be the navigation room. Unlike Connor’s sickbed, this room has no keypad, and the door is kept half-open with the creep of rust along its tract to prove that it hasn’t moved in some time. He touches it as they squeeze through.

Another dark haired man, shorter than Connor, sits atop a powered-down map table. Half of a granola bar hangs from his lips, forgotten, though not for the distraction of their entrance; he had glanced up, seen Sexton, and returned his attention to the tablet in his hand.

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.”

Jimmy Lanik takes the bar from his mouth and sets it on his knee. “Ava. Doctor, report?”

“I’m sorry?” Crockett says.

For the first time since they walked in, Lanik looks at him. In his life, Crockett has treated his fair share of mercs and criminals too, and some of them have this look in their eyes. Rather, it’s a lack thereof, where even when overheads shine sharp reflective bars off their eyes, there’s no real light behind them. It’s just blank. Lanik’s eyes aren’t like that, but there’s still something cold nestled there. A man with nothing to lose is dangerous, but a man with something poses a far bigger threat.

“Report. Surely you have to inform your colleagues on the status of your patients at shift change?”

A scoff escapes Crockett before he can help it. “Well, uh, he had a days-old likely infected wound upon presentation. We cleaned him up and changed his bedding. He received eleven stitches, antibac, and a bandage. I would’ve liked to do more, but the resources are limited.”

“Sure. He’s stable?”

Crockett nods.

“Excellent. What does he need?”

“I’d like an IV,” Crockett starts, counting off on his fingers. “He’s more than likely dehydrated, and the fever says infection, so fluids and a broad spectrum antibiotic. April Sexton and Ava Bekker are on this ship, so I have to assume there’s narcotics on board, which he could benefit from when he starts coming around.”

Bekker turns to him. “Care to elaborate?”

“No.” He steps back as far as Sexton’s hold on him allows. “I don’t have anything else to say on the matter.”

“Ave,” Lanik warns. “Don’t. Would you and Sarah go on the supply run?”

“I’d rather shoot myself in the stomach than leave him unattended.”

Crockett notes that neither Sexton nor Lanik correct the fact that even if she were to leave with Sarah--Reese, he has to assume, who was wanted for eighteen murders the last time he checked--there would still be three conscious members of the crew present. In lieu of a correction, Sexton stands up straighter and nudges Crockett to lean against a stack of crates. “I’ll take Choi, it’s really no problem.”

Another bite of his granola bar later, Lanik nods. “Good idea. I’ll set the course and we’ll land on the start of the next cycle. Dismissed.”

“You don’t decide when I’m dismissed,” Bekker snaps.

She still walks out right after Sexton, leaving Crockett and Lanik alone together. Lanik points at a chair opposite him. The plastic is hard, unyielding beneath Crockett when he sits. They sit in silence for several long minutes, during most of which Lanik doesn't even look at him. Once again, he becomes engrossed in his tablet, pausing occasionally to frown at something or curse under his breath. When the mood strikes him, which is twice during that time, he glances up at Crockett, appears satisfied by what he sees, and returns to the task at hand.

"You've got three people on this ship with tags on their head," Crockett finally says. "I get the sense maybe you all do."

Lanik smiles with a closed mouth as he types something on his tablet. "Not much worth doing without one."

"What's your claim to fame, Jimmy Lanik?"

"On the books, or off?"

Crockett gestures for him to go ahead. "Not like I can check what you say."

"On the books, I'm wanted for…" he pauses and looks at the ceiling as thinks, "forty-two counts of murder, thirteen counts of aggravated assault, five counts of unlawful imprisonment, seven counts of unlawful possession of a weapon, hundreds of stolen property charges, and-" he stops himself there. "They've got me for other stuff too, things I didn't do."

"Like?"

When Lanik looks Crockett in the eyes again, he can feel his heart start to pound. Even before hearing the list, he could sense that this was a man who wouldn't hesitate to make the decisions he felt necessary, regardless of potential consequences for Crockett.

"I didn't do it, so it doesn't matter." He finally climbs off the map table to approach the navigation console. A flick of his wrist pulls up the holograph projection control panel, and the slew of brightly colored buttons that glitch into place respond to the slightest movements of his fingers. Crockett always kind of imagined space craft to be navigated like old school planes, with switches and levers and a steering mechanism of some kind, but this appears to him much more similar to the act of playing a piano. Lanik operates the ship precisely and with an intense focus that Crockett presumes to be impenetrable until he continues. "Off the books, it's about Connor. There was an altercation, and we all happened to be there. I only knew him, at that point. We all made it out together on my ship, and we've stayed like this since. There's nowhere else for us." He frowns at the controls. "I know you can't with Ava, but be honest with me. Is Connor going to be okay?"

Crockett nods. "I'm hopeful. He'd have a better chance at a hospital, but I get it, that's not an option. The stuff Miss Sexton is getting should help."

"She'd have a field day, hearing you call her that." Seemingly finished with setting the course, Jimmy closes the controls and returns to the map table and his tablet. "She and Ethan will get painkillers, too. We don't keep narcotics or opiates on this ship typically, but this is an exception to the rule. I'll have those, no one else, so when Connor needs them, you ask me. Clear?"

"Crystal, Captain Lanik," Crockett replies.

Lanik makes a face. "Jimmy, if you don't mind, Doctor."

"Crockett."

"Doctor," Jimmy insists, and doesn't say anything else as he buries himself back in whatever his tablet has to offer.

Left to his own devices for the time being, Crockett looks around the navigation room with a more critical eye. He knows better than to move from the chair Jimmy ordered him to, but he can see the signs of a well-loved and well-used ship everywhere. Scuff marks litter the floor, some kicking up onto the mismatched replacement sheets covering the hardware of the computer system. A burned splotch of blaster fire colors the clearly broken edge of a small wooden table, which has two wooden chairs at it in the corner. Pasted up around it are old fashioned paper prints, glossy white but torn and frayed at the edges, of wanted posters. He recognizes Bekker, Sexton, Jimmy, and Connor. The other two belong to Sarah Reese and Ethan Choi, which must round out the crew of this craft.

"I apologize for the method of abduction."

He turns back to Jimmy, who is unsurprisingly still not looking at him.

"Not for the act itself, that's justifiable. But I know they hurt you more than they needed to, and I apologize. Are you in need of any medical care? I don't know what we can do, but if there's something you'd like us to get for you, I'll look into it."

"I wouldn't mind a shower and some clean clothes, if it's not a trouble. Maybe something to eat or drink?"

Jimmy considers this for a moment. "Fine. I'll escort you to the showers. You can walk?"

"With help."

He gets up and comes to help Crockett stand as well. The pace he takes is slower than Sexton and Bekker's, allowing Crockett to take his own steps even though each one is a struggle. In contrast to the private ensuite Connor has, the showers Jimmy leads them to consist of an open tiled room with four shower heads on one side, the floor angling toward a drain, and two benches bolted to the ground with towel-laden hooks and small lockers on the walls around them.

"I'll find you a towel and something to wear," Jimmy says. "Can you do this yourself?"

All things considered, the room seems spotless. There aren't stains anywhere he can observe, and the a faint whisper of disinfectant stings his nose on every inhale. He could sit under one of the showerheads.

"Yeah."

"Excellent. Soap is in the top right locker, use a new bar. Ten minutes."

He leaves and locks the door from the outside with a click. Crockett can hardly blame him, and decides that he may as well go ahead and shower since his chances of escaping at the moment are next to zero. He carefully makes his way to the bench to undress, and then to the lockers to get soap from the indicated one in the corner. A small stack of travel-sized bar soaps, like one might find at a hotel, take up most of the space, though there'd also a handful of small bottles that he assumes to be shampoo and/or conditioner. The labels are in a language he doesn't speak. Not willing to press his luck when he'd only been offered soap, he takes a bar and goes to the showerheads, turning one on to a quickly steaming spray before he sits on the tile.

Crockett typically has a good sense of time, but he doesn't want to risk being unfinished when Jimmy returns, so he makes the shower efficient despite the relief the warm water brings to his tense muscles. He starts off scrubbing the blood from his hair and skin, careful around bruises and scrapes and the head injury, then follows with the soap once the water runs clear toward the drain. It's less than a minute after he finishes rinsing that a loud knock comes from the door.

"I'm opening the door."

The lock clicks open and Jimmy enters, letting cold air in with him. He approaches from behind, reaching over Crockett’s shoulder to stop the water before draping the towel around him. He hands Crockett a neatly folded stack of clothes.

"I'll be by the benches."

Crockett hears him walk away and tucks the clothes under one arm as he uses the fixture to pull himself upright. He struggles to keep his balance and hold onto his clothes as he dries off, but asks for no help and Jimmy doesn't offer. It takes a minute, but eventually he's as dry as he can manage, and clothed in a too-tight shirt and a pair of lounge pants that hover above his ankles by a few inches.

He moves to face Jimmy, who has leaned against the wall and is studiously reading his tablet once more. Crockett clears his throat, earning a quick glance and a nod.

"Better?"

"Much, thank you."

"I'll take you back down to the hold. Someone'll bring you rations. Maybe me, maybe not."

The door to the hold is only a little ways away from the showers, and takes a matter of seconds to reach even at Crockett’s supported pace. They descend the ramp down and make their way to a dimly lit corner where Crockett must have initially woken up on the floor, judging by the blood he left behind. Someone has placed a thermal blanket nearby, as well as a small pillow and a bottle of water.

Jimmy lets go of Crockett only to walk up to the pipe against the wall, reaching into his pocket with the jangling rattle of silver cuffs. He secures one of them around the pipe with practiced ease. "Come here and give me your nondominant arm."

"What?" Instinctively, Crockett takes a step back and glances toward the door of the hold. "Come on, man, I haven't caused any problems. I haven't hurt anybody, or tried do anything-"

"Doctor, I'll repeat myself once today, and I won't do it again. Okay?" He lifts the empty cuff. "I view every issue as resolvable in one of two ways. Either you do what I ask you to, because I don't ask for no reason, or I can help you comply at your own risk. Would you like my help?"

Crockett swallows. "No."

He holds out his left hand to Jimmy and allows himself to be cuffed. The metal is tightened slowly, secured to keep him from slipping away, but not so much so as to dig into his wrist. The chain gives him a few inches of movement, and the smooth pipe allows him to stand, sit, or lay next to it.

Jimmy takes his leave, returning to the door and most likely back to the navigation room, but pauses at the doorway. Blue light silhouettes him as he stays like an empty shadowed statue with his muscles held in high tension.

"We're not what they say we are. Monsters, I mean."

"Do you hear yourself? Look at me."

He doesn't answer for a long stretch. Eventually, he advises, "Don't piss off Ava if you want to stay alive. She has a temper."

Jimmy shuts the door behind him when he goes, leaving Crockett to the dim emergency bulbs lighting the cargo hold.

#yes I know this is insane #chicago med fic #chicago med #crockett marcel #ava bekker #april sexton #connor rhodes #jimmy lanik

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neworleansspecial · 2 years

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Solstice: Last Resort (1/6)

Summary: Sarah and Crockett are held hostage together. They stay together. (for @crockettmarcel)

Day: 5 | WC: 1.2k | AO3 | Prompt: Blood Loss

Crockett has been planning this for weeks. It feels like weeks, anyways, but without any windows, calendars, or clocks to keep track of the passage of time, he can’t be certain of anything. It’s only by the length of his beard that he knows he’s been here at least two or three months. Sarah, currently huddled up in the corner with her teeth chattering, told him she thought it had been a month or so since her own abduction. She, like Crockett, was taken from Chicago, which tells Crockett that they’re probably not all that far from the city.

“Kett?”

He curls his fingers tighter around the makeshift weapon in his hand, tucking it into his palm before turning to Sarah. "Yeah, sugar?"

"I'm cold."

"I know." They haven't been eating much at all, but Sarah got herself into enough trouble with their captors to be put on food restriction earlier this week. Crockett joined her on day three when he was caught sharing. "We'll be warmer soon."

She nods miserably and puts her head down on her knees, too tired to ask what he means by that. Crockett smiles at the mop of tangled curls shining dully in the low light and silently promises her an escape. They're almost free. He'll get them out of here.

He waits by the locked door. Neither of them get food today, but it feels about time for one of their captors to check in on them. That's how they describe it. Crockett prefers the term torment. That would be a much more accurate way to describe the obsessive and borderline clinical examinations that coincide with visits from either of the two men responsible for this.

Crockett passes the small weapon back and forth between his hands as he waits. It had been a tongue-depressor or something originally, maybe a similar piece of wood, before he painstakingly filed it against the rough hinges of the door into a deadly point. He’s determined to get both himself and Sarah out of here before they’re too weak to try and escape. She’s already toeing that line far closer than he would prefer.

“Sarah,” he says.

She lifts her head up again. Her teeth are chattering. “Yeah?”

“I want you to keep your eyes closed until I tell you it’s safe.” The large slam that always precedes a visit, presumably a door at the end of the hallway their room opens up to, rings out. “Can you do that for me?”

“Crockett…”

“Please.”

With seconds to spare, she does so. He slides his weapon up, holding it securely in his fist. Crockett knows he’ll have to be fast and accurate for this to work. This can’t just be enough to hurt someone, it has to be deadly on the first try. The door swings open heavily.

Crockett doesn’t close his eyes. He looks into those of the man who’s been keeping them here. They’re blue, like the pale smear of the sky the last time Crockett was outside, and they go wide the moment his weapon sinks three inches deep into their captor’s throat. An awful gurgling sound accompanies the foam of blood that begins to spill from his lips. Clumsy hands manage to grab hold of the wood and pull it out, sending a spray of blood directly into Crockett’s own face. It was stupid to do that, but leaving it in would not have been enough to save his life.

Once the body stops twitching, and the room is silent save for the harsh counts of Crockett’s breathing, he takes a deep breath. He crouches down and starts with the puffy winter jacket, a bright blue color beneath the fresh blood stains. It’s easy to unzip and work off the man’s body. The pockets are empty. He curses, but still folds the coat over his arm. A flashlight is clipped onto one of the belt loops, so Crockett takes that, too. He manages to procure a pocket knife, a pack of gum, and a set of keys as well.

He brings his loot over to Sarah and drapes the coat over her shoulders. “Hey, sugar, I need you to open your eyes for me.”

She blinks at him. For a moment, her eyes flitter over to the body by the open door, but then they return to his face. He grabs one of her wrists and more or less puts her arm through one of the coat sleeves himself before she catches up and puts it the rest of the way on. Crockett allows himself a moment to skim his fingers over the logo on the breast pocket. The coat looks familiar, although he can’t figure out why.

“Come on, up,” he urges. “We ought to get going now.”

She nods and allows him to help her to her feet. She takes the knife and the gum, which is fair, and he leads the two of them out. There are several other doors in the hallway. Part of Crockett, the part that was a doctor and hadn’t been tortured yet, wants to check behind each one. Still, it is only a part of him, and more important than making sure no one else is trapped is getting himself and Sarah as far from this place as possible.

The heavy metal door at the end of the hallway makes its usual noise when it thuds closed behind them as they run up a flight of concrete stairs. The floor at the top of them is at least ten degrees warmer than their prison had been. Crockett takes inventory of the sight before them, almost domestic in the photos on the wall and four coffee mugs by the sink. No one else is here. He refuses to wait around for company, however, and grabs Sarah’s arm.

“Come on.”

“Wait.”

She tugs away from him and starts rifling through the drawers in the kitchen. As she does, he goes to the shoe rack by the door. A pair of heavy work boots, only a size too small, are better than nothing as he laces bare feet into them. The only other pair of shoes on the rack are house shoes, slippers, but they’re much close to Sarah’s size, and better than going barefoot in the winter.

“Let’s go,” he says.

He turns to offer her the shoes to see her coming toward him with a piece of plain white bread sticking out of her mouth. She offers him another piece, which he can’t stuff into his own fast enough as she puts on the house shoes. Finally. He gets the front door unlocked and opened only for his heart to sink.

There’s no car in the driveway, just a pair of tracks that indicate at least three inches of snowfall since its departure. Outside of that, there’s at least five inches accumulated on the ground, and snowflakes are still falling to decorate Sarah’s hair in the faint gold glow of the porch light behind them. In every direction, there’s nothing but gnarled husks of leafless trees and more pillowy snow that looks too pretty for its deadliness.

“Sarah.”

It’s too cold outside, they’re too weak, help is too far. They won’t make it. They’ll die.

But he looks at her, with her wide dark eyes, and the bite of pink at the tip of her nose, and he can’t imagine things will be better if they wait. So, instead of telling her any of the reasons they might fail, he wraps his arm around her waist.

“Keep your hands in your pockets so they stay warm,” he tells her, “and I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”

#whumptober2022 #no.5 #blood loss #chicago med #fic #blood #violence #sockett #sarah reese #crockett marcel #emwrite #emwt22

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