Jaguar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kittydesade) wrote2007-02-09 10:38 pm
kittydesade) wrote2007-02-09 10:38 pm
Entry tags:
[Fic] Rear Windshield
Title: Rear Windshield
Fandom: Kingdom Hospital
Prompt: Rain
Characters: Stegman, Paul
Word Count: 550
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Stegman's going slightly mad.
It was raining the first time he experienced what a more professional head doctor of a different kind might have called a psychotic break. The wounds inflicted by the sound of the water drops, like crashing glass on the pavement outside. His car was slowly being demolished by fiends from the outside. The rain was just one more aggravation on top of everything else.
Stegman put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a knife, a scalpel with a dull and rusty edge. Not rust but blood, clotted with blood and hair at the end. Ridiculous. He would never have let his instruments fall into such an appalling condition.
He dropped it back into his pocket without thinking about it, though, and didn't notice when it made no drag or impact on the cloth.
The hospital was reflected in the glass of his rear windshield (which was the only intact glass left in his car) but what he failed to notice was that the ambulance in the reflection wasn't the one that should have been parked in the hospital bay. It hadn't been parked in the hospital bay in nearly seventy years.
The rain went away but the visions didn't. The elevator went down two floors too far, sliding back at the hands of a smiling, pasty faced boy with pointed teeth. Although the pasty faced boy with pointed teeth was preferable to having the hounds of hell chasing him after that rat-trap crumbling cement building they called a hospital. No rats at Boston General but the ones that served their time in the labs.
It was raining again when he huddled in the doorway and insisted he was a good person. A nice person. And didn't he try to help people? He did, he did. He did his best to make people better, take the disease out of their heads. He was a good doctor. A good person, a good man. No matter what those spiteful, jealous hags said. The hangers on, the people who wanted to tear him down just because he was from a good hospital with a good reputation. Not some back-country hick town. Not some back-country hick doctor.
"Not some back-country hick crazy."
The boy with the dark eyes smiled and tipped his cap for him, how kind. So nice to see young people with some respect these days.
He nodded back politely to the young man, having forgotten already what he had said. Bad case of water on the brain. No, knee, wasn't it? Water on the knee. Or the brain. He had forgotten that already. Liquid between the brain and the skull, pressing down. Just a temporary problem. Subdural hematoma. Easy to fix.
Stegman contemplated trepanning as a form of enlightenment before he realized the rain would leak in that way and put even more pressure on his brain. That would never do. Never do. He shook his head as he made his way past the old ambulance that had never seen the twenty first century, into the hospital. In one night, he had lost whatever chances he had had. His mind, cracked, like an egg, like a windshield on a car. Everything he had kept with him, the last things he had kept with him, gone. Washed away by the rain.
Fandom: Kingdom Hospital
Prompt: Rain
Characters: Stegman, Paul
Word Count: 550
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Stegman's going slightly mad.
It was raining the first time he experienced what a more professional head doctor of a different kind might have called a psychotic break. The wounds inflicted by the sound of the water drops, like crashing glass on the pavement outside. His car was slowly being demolished by fiends from the outside. The rain was just one more aggravation on top of everything else.
Stegman put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a knife, a scalpel with a dull and rusty edge. Not rust but blood, clotted with blood and hair at the end. Ridiculous. He would never have let his instruments fall into such an appalling condition.
He dropped it back into his pocket without thinking about it, though, and didn't notice when it made no drag or impact on the cloth.
The hospital was reflected in the glass of his rear windshield (which was the only intact glass left in his car) but what he failed to notice was that the ambulance in the reflection wasn't the one that should have been parked in the hospital bay. It hadn't been parked in the hospital bay in nearly seventy years.
The rain went away but the visions didn't. The elevator went down two floors too far, sliding back at the hands of a smiling, pasty faced boy with pointed teeth. Although the pasty faced boy with pointed teeth was preferable to having the hounds of hell chasing him after that rat-trap crumbling cement building they called a hospital. No rats at Boston General but the ones that served their time in the labs.
It was raining again when he huddled in the doorway and insisted he was a good person. A nice person. And didn't he try to help people? He did, he did. He did his best to make people better, take the disease out of their heads. He was a good doctor. A good person, a good man. No matter what those spiteful, jealous hags said. The hangers on, the people who wanted to tear him down just because he was from a good hospital with a good reputation. Not some back-country hick town. Not some back-country hick doctor.
"Not some back-country hick crazy."
The boy with the dark eyes smiled and tipped his cap for him, how kind. So nice to see young people with some respect these days.
He nodded back politely to the young man, having forgotten already what he had said. Bad case of water on the brain. No, knee, wasn't it? Water on the knee. Or the brain. He had forgotten that already. Liquid between the brain and the skull, pressing down. Just a temporary problem. Subdural hematoma. Easy to fix.
Stegman contemplated trepanning as a form of enlightenment before he realized the rain would leak in that way and put even more pressure on his brain. That would never do. Never do. He shook his head as he made his way past the old ambulance that had never seen the twenty first century, into the hospital. In one night, he had lost whatever chances he had had. His mind, cracked, like an egg, like a windshield on a car. Everything he had kept with him, the last things he had kept with him, gone. Washed away by the rain.