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arch_calzenFandom: Cabin Pressure
Character(s), Pairing(s): Douglas, Martin, various minor OMCs
Rating: possibly a T, idk
Genre: Hurt/Comfort. Initially gen, but can be counted as mild D/M
Word count: 2,761
Summary: OP requested an artfill for a Martin in a shock-blanket being led to an ambulance by Douglas after kidnapping. The artfill is in the post above, but after it I exploded with a regular fill, so here it is.
Five days and seven hours since Martin didn’t show up at the airfield, when they were supposed to fly to Frankfurt. Of course, Douglas would be able to perform a single-pilot flight if it were a cargo one, but it was not, so they had to cancel it. The client was not impressed.
Carolyn was even less impressed, so very less that at the end of the fuss with papers and the client Douglas was tempted to simply bolt out of their office, forcing himself to stride out calmly instead. Even so, somewhere during said fuss he appeared to have volunteered to check on the younger man, who was not answering his mobile phone ever since.
Five days and two hours since he pulled over near Martin’s house and interrogated the first student he stumbled upon, who made wide eyes, shook his disheveled head and told him that Martin hadn’t returned since the day before that day.
A quick calculation. Roughly seven days and two hours since Martin disappeared from everyone’s peripheral vision, and nobody seemed to mind.
Douglas clenches his fists. Nobody but the wrong people.
Five days, one hour and about forty minutes since they raised alarm. By that time Martin had been gone for two full days.
Douglas grits his teeth. On the bench opposite him, police officer – Hemdall or something, he didn’t bother to memorize – loads his gun and glances at him with obvious concern; Douglas knows they don’t want a civilian there, but he also knows Jeremy Marsh, who happens to be their department’s chief and Douglas’ classmate, so he wormed his way here and is not going to be bothered by anyone. He has more important things to be bothered by, so go to hell, thank you.
Their van turns yet another corner. The ride seems endless.
Seven whole days since Martin was missing, and only one hour and a half since Jes called him to say they had found the place.
In an unconscious gesture, Douglas raises a hand to rub small circles into his zooming temple. He forbids himself to fall apart, his sheer will pushes him forward, was pushing him forward all this time and will continue to push him forward until they are safe.
Douglas blinks at the sudden slip, but is unable to deny it. Technically, only Martin is endangered, but Douglas knows as surely as he knows that summer follows spring, that if something – he doesn’t have the braveness to name this ‘something’ – happens to Martin, it will irreparably affect all of them.
Until Martin is safe and sound, they all are in danger. Douglas himself is in danger. And he is fairly sure he doesn’t tremendously enjoy the feeling. And that is why he is here, in this police van, nearing their dreaded destination with each second.
Douglas shifts his hand to rub his tired eyes. He didn’t get an awful lot of sleep since it became obvious that something was really, really wrong. His exhausted body screams for rest, distressed mind begs for a break from heavy thoughts, but he can’t sleep no matter how many pills he takes. The last time he dozed off for a couple of hours was two – or three? – nights ago, and he hazards a guess that he will be denied sleep until the very culmination of this sick story, whichever way it ends. Douglas is too much of a chicken to dwell upon the worse variant out of the two most obvious – and its consequences.
Forty minutes since the briefing ended – which included an impromptu part for the civilian; civilians are not supposed to go on operations, so the instructions were far less smooth – and they ‘entrucked’ in two vans and a car and are now on their way to some industrial area on Fitton’s outskirts.
And the ride still seems endless. Too many thoughts to plague one’s mind, and too much time already spent on being plagued by them; his mind feels like a stuck record, repeating the same part again and again in a never-ending cycle.
Jes told him in several curt sentences what they knew, which was not much. A part of a massive ring; mostly drug-smuggling, but people are known to sink into that ring and to never resurface; it swallows everything and everyone that happens to draw its attention; sometimes people get solved into slavery, sometimes they are found cast ashore weeks later, swollen and blueish; sometimes they are never found. It is obvious that Martin is useless to them: he is not likely to become a dealer, doesn’t have rich or powerful family to provide ransom of any sort, doesn’t work for the government to carry any valuable secrets. Like many of the unlucky victims from before, he just happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time. And now the greedy, hungry beast of the ring threatens to swallow him.
The group that has Martin consists of about seven or eight men, they occupy an old factory building on the edge of the region; luckily, a stray passer-by noticed the light and thought it suspicious enough to notify the police.
And there they are.
Douglas stifles a groan, Hemdall glances at him again. He can guess what he looks like, it’s quite easy to imagine, really; he is simply too old to feel so worried for such a prolonged period of time without it affecting his appearance. Douglas gauges how many years it is going to cost him and sighs: it is not the age when ten years or so can be easily flung aside in a careless ‘whatever, still many to go!’; the worse outcome, he fears, would cost him much more than he has to spare.
Though, granted, it is not his biggest fear.
Someone talks to Hemdall through the transmitter; he voices his acknowledgement and glances around the van, other agents looking up at him with an air of a hunting pack eyeing the master as he walks in the kennels to take them out to the forest. Their gazes are eager with bottled up nervousness born out of the long wait; Douglas’ is guarded and heavy with weary anxiety and anger; a gaze of a bear waiting to learn the location of the wolf pack which drove him out of his home.
“Three minutes,” Hemdall announces, and Douglas lets his head hang limply as the others voice and nod their understanding. He has three minutes until the wait ends. He is not sure what will happen afterwards, and uses the remaining time to even out his breathing, muscles shifting beneath the tight vest. He knows they will not let him literally fight the criminals, but his body instinctively prepares itself for the attack.
Three minutes sharp later, the van stops and Douglas climbs out of it after the agents. They are still quite far from the building, but are obviously going to have to cover the distance by foot. A shiver of anticipation runs down his spine, and he narrows his eyes in the direction of the factory, trying to make out its shape in the slowly gathering dusk of an early winter evening, even though he knows the action to be futile. A gust of icy wind grabs at the flaps of Douglas’ coat, but he doesn’t notice. In his inner vision, Douglas sees his goal. Everything else can bugger off.
* * *
The operation itself is a blur to Douglas – a hasty, hazy blur of numerous footsteps, shouts, barked commands, military slang he doesn’t understand, rough shoves he can’t make himself care about; then come the shots, an acrid smell of gunpowder – he has no gun, he’s told Jes it would make no sense to give him one; he’s here to save, not to kill, but if anything, he’ll prefer to kill with bare hands – twisted, distorted faces, sounds of landed punches and hits when combat occurs; the battle goes right here, right under Douglas’ nose, he steps in blood as the fight has already gone from that place and hears bits of concrete being shot off the walls as the fight engulfs a corridor he’s just left.
They descend slowly down the building, enter the numerous levels of its basement. There are thirteen agents against eight criminals, but the latter have the advantage of the building being familiar to them: twice or thrice – he cannot be sure – Douglas almost stumbles over a lying body, but he is unable to stop and check even if the man still lives; a passing thought wonders if they have called the ambulance beforehand, but he always forgets about the agents as soon as they disappear from his vision – none of them is Martin, therefore none of them can make him stop.
Suddenly, after an eternity, something tugs at him – a fleeting feeling, nothing more – and he turns sharply, running down another corridor. It is one of the lower floors of the basement, one of those which the criminals occupied, and Douglas senses he is close to his goal.
He turns again once, twice, leaving the dying down fight behind, finds a door at the end of the corridor – it is locked, but the door itself is old and decrepit, so he almost barrels through it at full speed, his shoulder meeting little resistance; then he halts and covers his nose and mouth with his sleeve and finally pulls out his flashlight and waves it around, willing the thick concrete dust to lie down and let him bloody see.
And then, he hears a cough.
It is small, forced and barely audible, but it is unmistakably a cough.
Douglas rushes towards the sound and kneels down near a limp form, which turns out to be Martin.
He forgets how to breathe.
He knows he has just heard Martin cough, but reptile brain still makes him fear the man is – beyond reach.
Martin lies curled up on his side, facing towards the wall and away from the door, stripped from the waist up – and it is bloody winter. He isn’t even bound or chained – the man’s own body confines him in the room. He smells of sweat, blood, filth and urine, but he is still alive, and it’s all that matters right now.
“Martin,” Douglas breathes out, and it is not even a call, it is just – that. A shiver runs through the younger man’s body, though he doubts it can be counted for a response.
Immediately, Douglas drops the flashlight and shrugs off his long coat, throwing it over Martin and pulling him up into a sitting position. Martin’s head lolls unsteadily; in the reflected light Douglas makes out a split and swollen lip and a bruised jaw, and he wraps the coat around the thin form, unable to make himself know about other injuries that might be there.
Martin seemingly struggles to regain consciousness, but Douglas’ primary concern is to get him out of the building, so he doesn’t have time to spare and wait for him to come back. Douglas picks up the flashlight, holding it with his teeth, then gently slides one arm around the man’s shoulder, the other under his knees and stands up with a grunt, turning around and leaving the blasted room.
He strides quickly down the corridors, following the sounds produced by the agents that now seem to look for them. He encounters the first one within a minute and spits out the flashlight, barking at the younger man to lead the way, and do it quickly.
Three minutes later, they reach the ground floor, policemen swarming around, busy with the tied up criminals. Douglas feels a passing desire to rip out their throats, but his instinct to protect easily overrides the instinct to avenge. Douglas is maybe ten seconds away from the entrance – he already sees ambulance’s lights reflecting on the floor through the open doors – when he feels Martin move against his chest.
He stops dead in his tracks, straining his hearing.
“Douglas,” a faint whisper.
Douglas sighs deeply, unconsciously clutching the prone form a bit tighter to his chest.
“You idiot,” he finally manages.
Martin lifts his head slowly, glancing around. His movements are ragged and unsteady, and the strain is obvious.
“Ah. Again,” he says several seconds later, resting his head back on Douglas’ shoulder. The older man tenses.
“What – again?”
“Dreaming,” Martin says as if it is something obvious, and Douglas freezes, the bits of a tiny puzzle falling into place. Martin thinks this is a dream. The casual tone of voice suggests he’s had this dream before. Douglas’ heart clenches in pain and sympathy.
“No,” he says, “this is real. I swear.”
Martin lifts his head again, his eyes searching out Douglas’ questioningly, and Douglas tries to put all his sincerity in the gaze, noting with an inward wince the poor state of the younger man, bloodshot eyes, dark bags under them, pale, almost transparent skin, cheekbones sharper than usual, chapped lips.
Seven days. Dehydration. Douglas wonders why he can’t make a single step when the medics are mere feet away. But this – whatever is happening – is gravely important, so he waits.
Eventually, Martin seems to find something he was searching for, but he still looks like he needs a final confirmation. “Put me down.”
This is a bad idea on so many levels. “Martin, I-”
“Put me down. Please,” inhale, exhale. “I need to… walk out on my own.”
And suddenly, Douglas understands. So he slowly shifts his right arm down until Martin’s still socked feet touch the cold ground and supports him with his left arm while he struggles to regain balance. Martin sways and looks like he will drop any moment, so Douglas immediately snakes an arm around his chest and waits.
After a minute, Martin takes a small step forward and stumbles immediately; Douglas supports him, holding him up. The second step is better than the first. The third is better than the second. With each step Martin’s gait slowly gains confidence, as if the movement gives him strength. He stares fixedly forward and his eyes remain dull; almost absently he makes his way towards the exit. Douglas watches him intently, and his gaze promises a slow and violent death to anyone who dares inflict any more pain on this man. He can easily confess to himself that he is scared; earlier it was the fear of coming too late, now it is the fear of losing Martin again, when he has finally found him.
They near the exit, and the medics notice them at once, running up to the two, and Douglas forces himself to let go of the man and allow the medics to do their job.
Another blur of faces, commands and slang – medical this time – throws Douglas out of reality for an unknown period of time, and the next thing he is aware of is Martin sitting on a pulled out trolley, in a blanket wrapped over Douglas’ coat; and he looks almost as white as snow slowly covering his hair, but he is undeniably alive, and Douglas finally breathes a sigh of relief.
He nears the medic treating Martin; she notices him immediately and turns around to face him.
“Friend, family?” she asks practically.
“Friend,” he answers. “How is he?”
The woman looks him up and down, reluctant to answer. “Ah, blast your medical secrecy,” he snaps. “I am more of a family to him than his blood relatives.”
An understanding of some sort – the nature of it is unknown to Douglas – flickers in her eyes, and the medic shrugs before answering.
“Shock, obviously. Severe dehydration, possible hypothermia, several hemorrhagic sites, mild concussion. We have found no imminent danger, but still would like him to stay overnight at the hospital to monitor for infections and inner damage. And we are departing in a minute, so you might want to assist him in getting into the car.”
Douglas helps Martin to get in and sit down on a bench – the younger man is far too still, which is explainable and understandable but no less uncomfortable to watch – and finds Hemdall quickly to hand the vest over to him and tell him to pass a few words to Jeremy. After that, he returns and takes his seat near Martin.
The cold and long-time exhaustion finally catch up with Douglas as Martin rests his head on his shoulder and dozes off immediately, and he barely manages to type a message to Carolyn before he is finally, finally allowed to sleep.
Character(s), Pairing(s): Douglas, Martin, various minor OMCs
Rating: possibly a T, idk
Genre: Hurt/Comfort. Initially gen, but can be counted as mild D/M
Word count: 2,761
Summary: OP requested an artfill for a Martin in a shock-blanket being led to an ambulance by Douglas after kidnapping. The artfill is in the post above, but after it I exploded with a regular fill, so here it is.
Five days and seven hours since Martin didn’t show up at the airfield, when they were supposed to fly to Frankfurt. Of course, Douglas would be able to perform a single-pilot flight if it were a cargo one, but it was not, so they had to cancel it. The client was not impressed.
Carolyn was even less impressed, so very less that at the end of the fuss with papers and the client Douglas was tempted to simply bolt out of their office, forcing himself to stride out calmly instead. Even so, somewhere during said fuss he appeared to have volunteered to check on the younger man, who was not answering his mobile phone ever since.
Five days and two hours since he pulled over near Martin’s house and interrogated the first student he stumbled upon, who made wide eyes, shook his disheveled head and told him that Martin hadn’t returned since the day before that day.
A quick calculation. Roughly seven days and two hours since Martin disappeared from everyone’s peripheral vision, and nobody seemed to mind.
Douglas clenches his fists. Nobody but the wrong people.
Five days, one hour and about forty minutes since they raised alarm. By that time Martin had been gone for two full days.
Douglas grits his teeth. On the bench opposite him, police officer – Hemdall or something, he didn’t bother to memorize – loads his gun and glances at him with obvious concern; Douglas knows they don’t want a civilian there, but he also knows Jeremy Marsh, who happens to be their department’s chief and Douglas’ classmate, so he wormed his way here and is not going to be bothered by anyone. He has more important things to be bothered by, so go to hell, thank you.
Their van turns yet another corner. The ride seems endless.
Seven whole days since Martin was missing, and only one hour and a half since Jes called him to say they had found the place.
In an unconscious gesture, Douglas raises a hand to rub small circles into his zooming temple. He forbids himself to fall apart, his sheer will pushes him forward, was pushing him forward all this time and will continue to push him forward until they are safe.
Douglas blinks at the sudden slip, but is unable to deny it. Technically, only Martin is endangered, but Douglas knows as surely as he knows that summer follows spring, that if something – he doesn’t have the braveness to name this ‘something’ – happens to Martin, it will irreparably affect all of them.
Until Martin is safe and sound, they all are in danger. Douglas himself is in danger. And he is fairly sure he doesn’t tremendously enjoy the feeling. And that is why he is here, in this police van, nearing their dreaded destination with each second.
Douglas shifts his hand to rub his tired eyes. He didn’t get an awful lot of sleep since it became obvious that something was really, really wrong. His exhausted body screams for rest, distressed mind begs for a break from heavy thoughts, but he can’t sleep no matter how many pills he takes. The last time he dozed off for a couple of hours was two – or three? – nights ago, and he hazards a guess that he will be denied sleep until the very culmination of this sick story, whichever way it ends. Douglas is too much of a chicken to dwell upon the worse variant out of the two most obvious – and its consequences.
Forty minutes since the briefing ended – which included an impromptu part for the civilian; civilians are not supposed to go on operations, so the instructions were far less smooth – and they ‘entrucked’ in two vans and a car and are now on their way to some industrial area on Fitton’s outskirts.
And the ride still seems endless. Too many thoughts to plague one’s mind, and too much time already spent on being plagued by them; his mind feels like a stuck record, repeating the same part again and again in a never-ending cycle.
Jes told him in several curt sentences what they knew, which was not much. A part of a massive ring; mostly drug-smuggling, but people are known to sink into that ring and to never resurface; it swallows everything and everyone that happens to draw its attention; sometimes people get solved into slavery, sometimes they are found cast ashore weeks later, swollen and blueish; sometimes they are never found. It is obvious that Martin is useless to them: he is not likely to become a dealer, doesn’t have rich or powerful family to provide ransom of any sort, doesn’t work for the government to carry any valuable secrets. Like many of the unlucky victims from before, he just happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time. And now the greedy, hungry beast of the ring threatens to swallow him.
The group that has Martin consists of about seven or eight men, they occupy an old factory building on the edge of the region; luckily, a stray passer-by noticed the light and thought it suspicious enough to notify the police.
And there they are.
Douglas stifles a groan, Hemdall glances at him again. He can guess what he looks like, it’s quite easy to imagine, really; he is simply too old to feel so worried for such a prolonged period of time without it affecting his appearance. Douglas gauges how many years it is going to cost him and sighs: it is not the age when ten years or so can be easily flung aside in a careless ‘whatever, still many to go!’; the worse outcome, he fears, would cost him much more than he has to spare.
Though, granted, it is not his biggest fear.
Someone talks to Hemdall through the transmitter; he voices his acknowledgement and glances around the van, other agents looking up at him with an air of a hunting pack eyeing the master as he walks in the kennels to take them out to the forest. Their gazes are eager with bottled up nervousness born out of the long wait; Douglas’ is guarded and heavy with weary anxiety and anger; a gaze of a bear waiting to learn the location of the wolf pack which drove him out of his home.
“Three minutes,” Hemdall announces, and Douglas lets his head hang limply as the others voice and nod their understanding. He has three minutes until the wait ends. He is not sure what will happen afterwards, and uses the remaining time to even out his breathing, muscles shifting beneath the tight vest. He knows they will not let him literally fight the criminals, but his body instinctively prepares itself for the attack.
Three minutes sharp later, the van stops and Douglas climbs out of it after the agents. They are still quite far from the building, but are obviously going to have to cover the distance by foot. A shiver of anticipation runs down his spine, and he narrows his eyes in the direction of the factory, trying to make out its shape in the slowly gathering dusk of an early winter evening, even though he knows the action to be futile. A gust of icy wind grabs at the flaps of Douglas’ coat, but he doesn’t notice. In his inner vision, Douglas sees his goal. Everything else can bugger off.
* * *
The operation itself is a blur to Douglas – a hasty, hazy blur of numerous footsteps, shouts, barked commands, military slang he doesn’t understand, rough shoves he can’t make himself care about; then come the shots, an acrid smell of gunpowder – he has no gun, he’s told Jes it would make no sense to give him one; he’s here to save, not to kill, but if anything, he’ll prefer to kill with bare hands – twisted, distorted faces, sounds of landed punches and hits when combat occurs; the battle goes right here, right under Douglas’ nose, he steps in blood as the fight has already gone from that place and hears bits of concrete being shot off the walls as the fight engulfs a corridor he’s just left.
They descend slowly down the building, enter the numerous levels of its basement. There are thirteen agents against eight criminals, but the latter have the advantage of the building being familiar to them: twice or thrice – he cannot be sure – Douglas almost stumbles over a lying body, but he is unable to stop and check even if the man still lives; a passing thought wonders if they have called the ambulance beforehand, but he always forgets about the agents as soon as they disappear from his vision – none of them is Martin, therefore none of them can make him stop.
Suddenly, after an eternity, something tugs at him – a fleeting feeling, nothing more – and he turns sharply, running down another corridor. It is one of the lower floors of the basement, one of those which the criminals occupied, and Douglas senses he is close to his goal.
He turns again once, twice, leaving the dying down fight behind, finds a door at the end of the corridor – it is locked, but the door itself is old and decrepit, so he almost barrels through it at full speed, his shoulder meeting little resistance; then he halts and covers his nose and mouth with his sleeve and finally pulls out his flashlight and waves it around, willing the thick concrete dust to lie down and let him bloody see.
And then, he hears a cough.
It is small, forced and barely audible, but it is unmistakably a cough.
Douglas rushes towards the sound and kneels down near a limp form, which turns out to be Martin.
He forgets how to breathe.
He knows he has just heard Martin cough, but reptile brain still makes him fear the man is – beyond reach.
Martin lies curled up on his side, facing towards the wall and away from the door, stripped from the waist up – and it is bloody winter. He isn’t even bound or chained – the man’s own body confines him in the room. He smells of sweat, blood, filth and urine, but he is still alive, and it’s all that matters right now.
“Martin,” Douglas breathes out, and it is not even a call, it is just – that. A shiver runs through the younger man’s body, though he doubts it can be counted for a response.
Immediately, Douglas drops the flashlight and shrugs off his long coat, throwing it over Martin and pulling him up into a sitting position. Martin’s head lolls unsteadily; in the reflected light Douglas makes out a split and swollen lip and a bruised jaw, and he wraps the coat around the thin form, unable to make himself know about other injuries that might be there.
Martin seemingly struggles to regain consciousness, but Douglas’ primary concern is to get him out of the building, so he doesn’t have time to spare and wait for him to come back. Douglas picks up the flashlight, holding it with his teeth, then gently slides one arm around the man’s shoulder, the other under his knees and stands up with a grunt, turning around and leaving the blasted room.
He strides quickly down the corridors, following the sounds produced by the agents that now seem to look for them. He encounters the first one within a minute and spits out the flashlight, barking at the younger man to lead the way, and do it quickly.
Three minutes later, they reach the ground floor, policemen swarming around, busy with the tied up criminals. Douglas feels a passing desire to rip out their throats, but his instinct to protect easily overrides the instinct to avenge. Douglas is maybe ten seconds away from the entrance – he already sees ambulance’s lights reflecting on the floor through the open doors – when he feels Martin move against his chest.
He stops dead in his tracks, straining his hearing.
“Douglas,” a faint whisper.
Douglas sighs deeply, unconsciously clutching the prone form a bit tighter to his chest.
“You idiot,” he finally manages.
Martin lifts his head slowly, glancing around. His movements are ragged and unsteady, and the strain is obvious.
“Ah. Again,” he says several seconds later, resting his head back on Douglas’ shoulder. The older man tenses.
“What – again?”
“Dreaming,” Martin says as if it is something obvious, and Douglas freezes, the bits of a tiny puzzle falling into place. Martin thinks this is a dream. The casual tone of voice suggests he’s had this dream before. Douglas’ heart clenches in pain and sympathy.
“No,” he says, “this is real. I swear.”
Martin lifts his head again, his eyes searching out Douglas’ questioningly, and Douglas tries to put all his sincerity in the gaze, noting with an inward wince the poor state of the younger man, bloodshot eyes, dark bags under them, pale, almost transparent skin, cheekbones sharper than usual, chapped lips.
Seven days. Dehydration. Douglas wonders why he can’t make a single step when the medics are mere feet away. But this – whatever is happening – is gravely important, so he waits.
Eventually, Martin seems to find something he was searching for, but he still looks like he needs a final confirmation. “Put me down.”
This is a bad idea on so many levels. “Martin, I-”
“Put me down. Please,” inhale, exhale. “I need to… walk out on my own.”
And suddenly, Douglas understands. So he slowly shifts his right arm down until Martin’s still socked feet touch the cold ground and supports him with his left arm while he struggles to regain balance. Martin sways and looks like he will drop any moment, so Douglas immediately snakes an arm around his chest and waits.
After a minute, Martin takes a small step forward and stumbles immediately; Douglas supports him, holding him up. The second step is better than the first. The third is better than the second. With each step Martin’s gait slowly gains confidence, as if the movement gives him strength. He stares fixedly forward and his eyes remain dull; almost absently he makes his way towards the exit. Douglas watches him intently, and his gaze promises a slow and violent death to anyone who dares inflict any more pain on this man. He can easily confess to himself that he is scared; earlier it was the fear of coming too late, now it is the fear of losing Martin again, when he has finally found him.
They near the exit, and the medics notice them at once, running up to the two, and Douglas forces himself to let go of the man and allow the medics to do their job.
Another blur of faces, commands and slang – medical this time – throws Douglas out of reality for an unknown period of time, and the next thing he is aware of is Martin sitting on a pulled out trolley, in a blanket wrapped over Douglas’ coat; and he looks almost as white as snow slowly covering his hair, but he is undeniably alive, and Douglas finally breathes a sigh of relief.
He nears the medic treating Martin; she notices him immediately and turns around to face him.
“Friend, family?” she asks practically.
“Friend,” he answers. “How is he?”
The woman looks him up and down, reluctant to answer. “Ah, blast your medical secrecy,” he snaps. “I am more of a family to him than his blood relatives.”
An understanding of some sort – the nature of it is unknown to Douglas – flickers in her eyes, and the medic shrugs before answering.
“Shock, obviously. Severe dehydration, possible hypothermia, several hemorrhagic sites, mild concussion. We have found no imminent danger, but still would like him to stay overnight at the hospital to monitor for infections and inner damage. And we are departing in a minute, so you might want to assist him in getting into the car.”
Douglas helps Martin to get in and sit down on a bench – the younger man is far too still, which is explainable and understandable but no less uncomfortable to watch – and finds Hemdall quickly to hand the vest over to him and tell him to pass a few words to Jeremy. After that, he returns and takes his seat near Martin.
The cold and long-time exhaustion finally catch up with Douglas as Martin rests his head on his shoulder and dozes off immediately, and he barely manages to type a message to Carolyn before he is finally, finally allowed to sleep.
