Chapter Text
Terrifyingly, when she arrived at the emergency room, Danny had no memory of the drive there. She was surprised she had received no tickets on the way, but she would never tempt fate by thinking about it at length. She cut off the engine, leapt out of the car, and bellowed.
"HELP! SOMEBODY, HELP."
A team of three nurses reached the car in seconds flat, instantly evaluating Laura's condition. Only when her ex was strapped to the stretcher and being wheeled inside did Danny allow herself to feel emotion. She slammed her fist into the hood of her car so hard she was surprised she didn't add new dents to its pockmarked surface. The fight left her as she crumpled against her vehicle, wringing her hands, with tears running down her cheeks. Before she quite collected her thoughts, she made a decision she'd later come to regret deeply. Danny Lawrence, knight in shining armor, was not brave enough to watch Laura fight this battle. In a split second, she was back in the front seat of her old jalopy. She almost pulled into a parking spot, but instead, she swerved off to the right and out of the parking lot. She was on her way to the hotel room which she still refused to call home, with the radio turned up as far as it would go.
That's gonna bruise tomorrow, Danny smiled to herself bitterly.
Early the next morning, a sleepless Danny wondered if she'd feel less tormented by this if she were the sort of person that would hold Laura's hand through all this. She wondered if she would have slept better in a reclining chair next to her girlfriend's--ex's bed. She closed her eyes and imagined holding Laura while she cried, instead of letting her own frustration at not being able to protect Laura fuel their arguments.
Danny wished so, so ardently that she could be that person. But wishes are empty things, wispy as clouds and lacking substance.
Laura's eyes opened to a glimpse of pure, sterile white light. How cliché. She strained to view anything beyond the blinding illumination. Indeed, she strained against quite a few things, as she immediately realized. Her wrists were secured by soft velcro cuffs to railings on either side of her. She wore only a hospital gown; she shivered with the cold brought on by the remnants of her fever. She felt the pressure of a thick IV needle in her thigh every time she tried to move, and the tight pinch of stitches all over her body. Holy Hufflepuff, how long have I been out? Tubes and drains entered and exited her body everywhere. She was most disgusted by the feeding tube in her nose, although she supposed it had been quite a long time since she'd last eaten. A cursory glance at the medicines attached to her IV drip yielded a bit more information. The bags read: Daptomycin injection USP (an antibiotic, she supposed), 0.9% Sodium Chloride Injection USP (just saline), and, interestingly enough, Valium injection USP. She proceeded to glance around the room. A note on her bedside table read in large, neat red letters, "I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I love you." Laura scowls at the memory of a tall redheaded woman, but soon the emotion dissipates. A chalkboard on the wall read "Welcome to Historic Silas Hospital!" in large, elaborate lettering. Underneath it, there were spaces for the day's staff, left blank. The date read: 1 October 2015.
Laura had no memory of anything since 17 September. This terrified her, but not as much as the prospect of being trapped in this room for the foreseeable future. Strangely, even the intense perplexity and fear were beginning to float away.
She blamed the Valium for the floatiness and the not being able to remember much, but she didn't hate it the way she expected to hate psychiatric medication. Valium stuffed the feelings down, slowed her thoughts, and kept her from acting. She didn't know it was there as a post-surgery sedative. Laura couldn't remember the last time she felt this calm. She almost wanted to cry, but this time from relief. If there was a sense of panic at having been "caught", it lay dormant underneath the overwhelming peace. She couldn't hold on to a thought for as long as she remembered being able to, but she didn't mind too much.
Suddenly, she remembered she was in restraints. She pulled at them gently first, testing them. With each successive try, she pulled harder and harder. Laura had no idea what she would do once she escaped the cuffs, but it seemed imperative that she do so now. She tried to extricate her wrists by bending her hands backward or reaching across to the opposite rail, but eventually she simply resorted to pulling. Her efforts did not go unnoticed by the charge nurse, a pale, slight blonde with smile lines who happened to be on rounds. She entered with a bright, nervous smile almost immediately.
"Hello, Miss Laura. I'm Lise. I will be your nurse all night. It's nice to see you awake. It will be time for your evening medications in a couple hours!"
Laura was dimly aware she was in Silas Hospital, a national psychiatric facility with surgical and medical beds. "Wait. How in hell or Hogwarts did I get here?"
"You were brought here, dear."
"Who? Who did that?" Laura asked, hazily aware that under normal circumstances she might be angry at them--both the nurse and whoever interrupted Laura's existence in the apartment to bring her here.
"I wasn't here when you arrived. But it says in your chart that--" Lise paused to check her tablet "--a friend brought you, someone named... Danny Lawrence? Do you know him?"
"Her," Laura sighed rather bitterly. "Yes, I do know her."
After an extended silence, Lise cleared her throat. "Well, ah, you've recovered quite nicely. You should be able to transfer to our acute adult wing in just a few days!"
"I want to go home, and I want these off," Laura lamented quietly, earning her an awkward smile from her nurse.
"Dear, it's going to be a little while before we can let you go home safely."
Laura pulled at her restraints with renewed effort, so furiously that her wrists were getting rubbed raw. Lise stepped closer to her bed and calmly told Laura to look her in the eye. Laura matched her nurse's gaze hesitantly, struggling a little less as she concentrated. She couldn't hate this woman. She was just doing her job.
Lise exhaled inaudibly. "I can take these off now that you're not picking at your injuries in your sleep anymore, but if you try anything, we're going to have to use restraints again." Whether chemical or physical.
Gloomily, Laura consented to receiving what little freedom she apparently could. Exhausted from the physical effort and the social interaction, she soon fell asleep. She never found out what her evening meds were, but her dreams were awfully vivid.