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The patient lashes out against the swarm of medical professionals attempting to hold him down. For the most part his limbs stay pinned down but he manages to get one leg free and kicks, making Lydia stumble and sending Carter crashing into the equipment behind him with a pained yelp.
“Jesus Christ!” somebody shouts.
“Hold him still!” Mark demands.
It takes two more attempts but they get the terrified and angry patient still enough that Mark is finally about to administer the tranquilizer, and after a moment the room becomes significantly less chaotic. Carol breaks away as Mark and some of the other nurses get back to work in their treatment and heads towards Carter.
He's slumped up against the wall, fortunately conscious but clearly dazed, nose bleeding so heavily the front of his shirt is soaked in it already, and his eye is quickly darkening with a bruise.
“Carter? Are you still with us?” she asks, kneeling down beside him.
“Ow,” he groans in reply. His eyes are squeezed tightly shut, likely against the pain in his face, possibly against the bright lights of the trauma room, though some tears still slip through.
“Hey, I need you to open your eyes for me.” She keeps her voice low and gentle, though still loud enough to hear.
There's a moment before he responds. “Don’ think I can,” he admits, words slurring slightly.
“Is he alright?” Mark calls over to her, though he doesn't look up from his patient.
“Definitely concussed, though it seems mild. Possible broken nose,” she answers clinically.
“Okay, take him to an open exam room and check him over. I'll be there as soon as I'm done here.”
“‘m fine,” Carter insists. He tries to force his eyes open.
“Your responses are delayed, your words are slurred, and your nose is practically gushing blood. I wouldn't exactly call that ‘fine’. Wait here.” Carol pats his shoulder and steps halfway out of the trauma room, calling down towards the admit desk. “Jerry, are any of the exam rooms open?”
“Yeah, two's free! Everything alright?” Jerry calls back.
“Staff injury. Hey, Malik.” She gestures to the nearby nurse, ignoring the desk clerk's moderately excited question of ‘Ooh, who's the victim?’, and steps back into the trauma room. “Help me get him to exam two.”
Malik laughs lightly when he sees Carter, earning him a glare from his boss. “Congrats, Carter. Welcome to the club!”
“Wha’?” He's still trying to pry his eyes open.
“Don't listen to him. Think you can walk?” Carol asks.
“Uh, prob'ly.”
They grab an arm each and haul Carter onto his feet. Malik then hooks his arm around the med student's shoulders and half supports, half drags him to the exam room. As they pass through the hall, they're met by comments from other staff, a mixture of sympathy, worry, and- much to her chagrin- excitement. Each comment is met with a confused ‘Huh?’ or ‘What?’ from Carter.
“Geez, what happened to him?”
“Oof, poor baby.”
“Ha! That's gonna be quite the shiner!”
“Tell me the full story later, I've got a b-”
They're cut off by their rushed arrival into the room. Malik lets go of Carter by the exam bed, who sits down heavily on it, and makes his retreat before Carol can give him a scolding for his earlier comment.
With the door closed and only the two of them left, she gets to work on treating her patient. She shuts the blinds to try to dim the light in the room a bit, hands him some tissue to stem the flow of his now sluggishly bleeding nose. “Can you open your eyes now?”
He opens them as she asks, though still squints a bit in pain. She has him follow her finger up and down, side to side a few times, then quickly checks his pupils with a penlight.
“Equal and reactive, good. What day is it?”
“Uh, Monday, November 7th, 1994,” he answers dutifully. His words are less slurred now but still muffled due to his bloody nose.
“And your full name?”
“John Carter.”
“Full name.” She doesn't really need to know, but she's a little curious about his middle name and has decided now's the least embarrassing time to indulge her curiosity.
He huffs. “John Truman Carter the third.”
“Wait, seriously?” she chuckles.
“Yes,” he grumbles.
Carol stops her laughter with a deep breath. “Okay, okay. Do you remember what happened?”
“Got hit in the face by a patient while trying to restrain him.”
“‘Kicked’ is a more accurate term.”
“Kicking is a type of hitting,” Carter argues, annoyance seeping into his voice.
She grins. “I'll give you that one. Is your nose still bleeding?”
He lowers the now largely bloodied tissues. “No, I think it stopped.”
“I think you're right, but let me see anyway.” She gently places her hands on his cheeks, feels around his nose and the bruising eye socket with her thumbs. He winces slightly at the touch but doesn't back away. “Well, nothing seems to be broken.”
He blinks away the pain that must've caused. “Great.”
“Last question. How are you feeling?”
The glare John gives her would be a lot more effective if he weren't clearly worn out. Right now, the look is more reminiscent of a grumpy toddler. “My head hurts.”
“I bet. We'll get you some Tylenol soon.” Carol turns away while she grabs some supplies to clean the blood off his face so he doesn't see her fighting off laughter. “The good news is, you only have a mild concussion. The better news is, you've earned yourself a minimum three days off with no consequences.”
She turns back around, supplies in hand, only to see Carter looking… disappointed. Shoulders slumped, a frown curling down the corners of his mouth. It blends in with the expressions of pain, tiredness and irritability almost to the point of imperceptibility, but still clearly there to Carol's observant eyes. He's a third year med student, she reminds herself, one with a teacher who seems at times almost adverse to teaching him. Of course he's disappointed over missed educational opportunities.
“Okay, maybe that's not the best news,” she acknowledges for his sake.
She's almost finished wiping the blood off his face- his shirt is a complete lost cause, though he's already stated he has an extra in his locker so neither of them are worried about that- when Carter asks, “What's the bad news?”
“What do you mean?”
“You mentioned good news and better news. What about the bad news?”
“Ah. The bad news is, some of our lovely coworkers are going to be rather nosy and annoying about this.”
He scoffs. “Is that all? They're like that, anyway.”
She chuckles softly. “Yeah, I suppose some of them are. …Especially Jerry and Lydia.”
That gets a weak but genuine laugh out of him. “Is that what all those comments were about? In the hall on the way over?”
“Yep.”
“I think someone mentioned a bet?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Carol isn't above participating in a betting pool, but much like she avoids betting on anything patient related, she avoids betting on her coworkers getting injured. That's just asking for something to happen, plus it just seems crude. So she doesn't really know much about this particular bet. “Why?”
Carter shrugs. “Kinda wanna know who won.”
There's a knock on the door as Carol is disposing of the bloodied rags and Mark steps in following it. “Hey, how we doing?”
“Mild concussion, just like I thought. Headache, a little confusion, grogginess-”
“Can I get some Tylenol now? …Please?” Carter gripes, only barely tacking on ‘please’ at the end.
“-irritability.”
“Think I'd be irritated too if I was kicked in the face mid-shift,” Mark admits. “Alright, I don't think observation is necessary, so we can get him that Tylenol and send him home. Just make sure he doesn't drive. I'm sure you've already told him he needs to take at least three days off before coming back in, so if you'll excuse me I, uh, have a bet to collect.”
He keeps his voice low on the last sentence so Carter, preoccupied with his headache, doesn't hear. Carol has to bite her lip to once again keep from laughing. She'll tell him later, when he's more likely to remember it.
“Okay, you've been given the all clear,” she says once she has her face under control again. “But no driving. Is there anyone you can call to take you home?”
“No.” There's a beat. “A taxi.”
She frowns. She doesn't like the idea of leaving him to his own devices like that. His concussion may be mild, but that doesn't mean he should be navigating things on his own, especially so soon after the injury. And given how clumsy Carter can be on the best of days, she isn't sure she trusts him not to trip and hurt himself worse.
She checks her watch. Three P.M. She gets off at six. Maybe she can do something about it. “If you're willing to wait, I can give you a ride home after my shift ends,” she offers.
He blinks. “Really?”
“Sure. You're in the same building as Lydia now, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Good, I already know how to get there.” She completely ignores how surprised he is, not wanting to think about how much of that surprise is the work of the concussion and how much is genuine surprise over the kindness. She has a feeling she already knows. “In the meantime, how about we get you set up in the staff lounge? Should be relatively quiet this time of day, maybe you can take a nap.”
Carter squeezes his eyes shut again for a second before forcibly blinking them back open. “Okay, yeah. A nap sounds good.”
They walk to the lounge, Carter able to stay entirely on his own two feet without support this time, while Carol wards off curious nurses with a threatening glare. They get there fortunately uninterrupted, and she makes him change his shirt and finally take the Tylenol he'd nearly been begging for before he lays down on the couch and immediately falls asleep.
“Goodnight, Carter,” she says quietly. She turns off the lights and closes the door behind her as she leaves the room.
Peter Benton is standing by the admit desk as she approaches.
“Haleh, where's Carter?” he asks.
The nurse in question doesn't even look up from what she's doing, annoyed with him for some transgression or another. “He's down for the count.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“He's concussed,” Carol answers for her. “Mild, but he'll need to take a few days off to recover. Hit by a patient.”
“I thought he was kicked in the face,” Jerry says.
“Same difference.”
“That doesn't answer my question,” Peter says, a look on his face that Carol isn't sure she's ever seen on him before. “Where is he?”
“Staff lounge.”
He takes off. She looks at Haleh who just shakes her head, then rushes after him.
“Peter, he's sleeping! Let him rest!” she insists after briefly running to catch up with him. Damn tall people.
“I just wanna see him,” he says, voice as reassuring as he can make it, which isn't much. Still, he stops in front of the still closed lounge door, not opening it, just looking through the small window at the still sleeping form of John Carter.
So that's it, Carol thinks. He was worried. Actually worried. She smiles, just a little bit.
“Like I said, mild concussion. Mark cleared him, I'll be giving him a ride home once my shift is over.
“Good, good.” Peter sighs and turns away from the door. The look she now recognizes as concern fades back into his usual stoic focus. “Hell of a time for him to get injured, I was going to have him scrub in on my next surgery.”
He marches off, and Carol laughs.