Chapter Text
Jack's night has actually been going pretty alright. Knock on some serious wood, yeah yeah he knows. He’s been at this for a long time, he knows the rules of the hospital, especially at night.
But it’s true. It's been steady enough to keep him up and not too bored out of his mind but Pittsburg has decided to let all the truly crazy people stay in for the night. So they’ve had a few coughs, a heart attack, a kid who fell out of a bunkbed and hit her head, a 3 year old with croup that could be heard before he even made it back from triage, an OD on some tylenol, and a few drunks. Not even a foreign body in the rectum tonight! Although he wouldn’t actually particularly mind getting one of those just so they could keep up on the tradition of betting on what said foreign body is.
Okay so maybe he’s getting a little bored. Sue him! His residents and students have been extraordinarily on top of the patient load tonight. He barely had to do anything except supervise and offer very minor corrections on pediatic dosing. So yes he’s secretly hoping to get his hands moving a little. Whatever man, it’s not like people don’t know he's an adrenaline junky already.
Jack moves over to the charge nurse desk where a few nurses and techs are clustered around each other laughing about something. Lena looks up and waves him closer with a smile. He leans over the group's shoulders to look at what they're laughing about and see’s…
“What the fuck is that?” He asks in pure bafflement, sending the group into more laughter.
“Bernard.” Wes, one of the techs answers unhelpfully. He hands the monstrosity over to Jack.
It’s one of those glove dolls he was seeing all over tiktok a few months ago but someone, Wes he assumed, (the kid had a well known artistic streak) had drawn on some low hanging jeans, a shirt and a truly ugly cartoon face onto the poor glove and someone had shoved… something vaguely finger shaped in its little arms, also blue, and looking absolutely not HR approved. When he squeezed the body of the doll the arms and subsecentially, the uhh, added part fell forward to be sticking straight out from the crotch area.
The group fell into more laughter, a few of them gasping around tears. Yeah it was definitely getting late. Or early, he supposes.
“You have serious issues man” Jack said with a laugh handing the cursed thing back over to its creator.
“Dude I didn’t even mean for it to come out like that, I swear!” Wes said in a wheeze. Jack laughed at him again.
Before Jack was able to question the kid further the ambulance phone rang. The group sobered a little bit and Lena walked over to get report from whatever agency would be pulling in. Jack walked behind her to read the report she was writing out over her shoulder. Another tech, Brynn, slides up next to him to read too so that she could get an idea of what room she should prep for the arrival.
Adult male, aprox mid 40s
GSW to RUE, no radial pulse
Tourniquet applied, sluggish bleeding.
VS
HR 132
RR 24
SpO2 98
BP 86/58
4 nasal versed
16G LAC
GCS 14
ETA 10 min
“Don’t love that pressure. We sound shocky.” Jack says, leaning back as Lena hangs up and turns to him nodding.
“Yep, I'm going to page out a T1, get everyone down here. Brynni, can you go-”
“Yeah I’m setting up trauma 3, you good with that?” Brynn states more than asks, already walking away. Lena and Jack both shoot her a thumbs up.
“It says pulseless extremity, is that before they put the tourniquet on?” Jack asks.
“That’s what they said.” Lena tells him, a little distracted as she pulls up the paging system. “Wes, you good to chart this one? Brynni beat you to bedside. And I need one of you trauma nurses to pick it up too, decide amongst yourselves, but quickly please.”
Wes groans dramatically as he walks over to the bay, Mateo and Noelle are playing rock, paper, scissors to see who's taking this one. Jack walks back over to his physician team.
“Alright Night Crawlers, Who’s taking this with me? I need someone to take head and primary assessment, I’ll do secondary and we’ll let whoever comes down from trauma surg lead.”
“Im in.” Parker says with a sigh, she takes her jacket off and heads off towards the gathering crowd. Jack pats her on the shoulder as she passes and follows her over. Noelle seems to have lost the game because she comes over to join as well.
Jack grabs a lead vest, velcroing it around his torso and neck. He claps once to get the group's attention.
“Right, everyone know who everyone is? Any questions on roles? Nursing team, who's doing what?” He loudly asks.
“Im exposing the patient and will start placing monitors.” Noelle calls out while pulling her gloves on. “Brynni will get a second IV after monitors are on.”
“Perfect, Brynn you got the IO nearby just in case?” Jack follows up.
“Already got it and an extra tourniquet. Warding off the bad juju and all that.” She tells him with a smile.
“Wonderful. You’re both the best, if you ever switch to days consider yourselves dead to me, yeah? Great, I'm on secondary, Dr. Ellis is on head and primary survey, Wes is charting, aaand Dr. Vlamkis, welcome down, ready to boss us all around?”
The tall trauma surgeon smirks at him, her grey eyes tired but sharp. “Good morning Dr. Abbott, I didn’t think you were into that.”
“Oh Apo, only if it's you.” He flirts back easily. “Okay they should be pulling in any minute now, everyone got the story?” Everyone nods. “Perfect. Let's go, team!”
“They’re backing in now!” Lena yells across the floor. She probably woke a few people up but hey they’re an ER not a hotel, they can get over it.
Lena stops the EMS team and directs them over to the correct bay. As they roll the stretcher past him to the bed in the center of the room, Jack catches a glimpse of long dark hair, a bloody mess of an arm, and filthy cargo shorts. He can hear the guy groaning in pain so at least he’s still semi-conscious. His team and the EMTs transfer the patient over eliciting another groan of pain. And the paramedic starts giving report as Noelle starts cutting the guy's clothes off. Parker starts her exam getting up in the man's face telling him to open his eyes. He moans again as Parker presumably shines her penlight in his eyes, while Jack scans his body checking for other immediately life threatening injuries. His gaze follows up the mans tattooed torso, (Do those tattoos feel familiar? Has this guy been here before?) up to his face, and suddenly, Jack is making direct eye contact with his younger brother.
“Pope?” Craig asks.
Fuck.