Chapter Text
The thumping bass line buzzes in Carter's ears, the smile on his face wide and uninhibited. He's drunk, giddily drunk, and the feeling of stray hands on his chest, his back, his arms as he wanders through the strobe-lit club is electric. For once, these hands are here to caress. He does not need to cannulate them. He does not need to hold them, thumb gently stroking while he delivers bad news. He does not need to check their pulses or capillary refill. All he needs to do is relax into them, move with them, bring one to his lips and another to his hips.
Carter is alive tonight.
He's off work, of course, and isn't due to return until the day after tomorrow, which means the hangover he'll surely sustain from this boozy evening doesn't pose a threat to his career. When he wakes up the next morning, he can spend it violently heaving into a toilet bowl with nobody to hurry him along. Ha! It sure is a sorry thing to look forward to, but it beats puking his guts up in the hospital bathrooms.
“Hey, pretty boy.”
He turns his head, following the sound of the voice and inhaling sharply when the skin of his neck is unexpectedly snagged in the teeth of a stranger. The woman’s breath is hot, and the words in Carter's ear make him shiver, eyes heavy-lidded.
“Let me buy you a drink.”
Carter smiles dopily, letting her take his hand and following the stranger through the thronging crowds. Within a few moments, she's pressing a glass into his hand, curling his fingers around it and urging him to drink. He's inebriated enough that the task is easily completed and he tosses the alcohol back, wincing a little at the taste. It's stronger than he's used to. His father would be mortified if he knew how much his son prefers fruity drinks to straight whisky.
The lights in the club grow more intense, flickering and distorting before his eyes, almost kaleidoscopic at points. He leans against the bar, eyes pinned to the ceiling, and watches the movements. The pattern in the kaleidoscope whirls round and round. He used to have one when he was a kid- a kaleidoscope. It was bought from the duty-free section of Geneva Airport after a skiing trip, a gift from his gamma because she saw how intently he'd been eyeing it. Where did it go? Gamma would know, probably.
One of those hands from earlier- the one belonging to the same soul as the teeth, and the hot breath on his neck- takes his, and he's tugged away from the bar and back through the crowd. His legs feel heavy, a little clumsier than they ought to be. He's queasy.
When he slurs out these concerns to the woman, though, she doesn't seem to hear him.
“Head lac in curtain two for you, Dr Greene.”
Mark sighs and swivels round on the stool at the admit desk, setting the chart he's currently holding aside. “Alright, tell ‘em I'll be there in five. Thanks, Jer.”
Jerry nods, moving away, and Mark rests his head in his hands for a brief moment. He's been on for fourteen hours straight, and he's exhausted. Stitching a head lac is the last thing he needs right now- it's the sort of thing he can do on autopilot, which is not going to keep him awake. Hell, he'd never ask for a trauma case, but if one were to come through the doors right now, he wouldn't complain. It would keep him from dozing off mid-suture at least.
The ER phone rings as if on cue, and Carol picks it up.
“County General, ER… yes, I read you…” Mark glances over, eyebrows raised, waiting for the call to play out.
Carol's face suddenly drops. Mark's heart does too.
“You're sure? He- do you have ID confirming…? How bad is it?...” She looks like she wants to throw up, eyes fluttering closed as she continues to nod. “Right… okay, I'll- I'll let them know… You take care of him for now, okay?... Thanks.”
She sets the phone down, and immediately turns to Mark.
“It's Carter.”
His heart sinks even further. “What happened?”
He comes in looking like death warmed over. His skin is a chalky white, eyelids heavy, bloodless lips murmuring incoherently as he weakly fights against the paramedics’ restraints. His shirt- a similar one to those he wears beneath his lab coat, except now with the top buttons undone- is rumpled and streaked with a mixture of blood and vomit.
Mark, as the attending, does what he has to do. He pushes back the visceral reaction bubbling inside of him and marches to the side of the gurney, listening intently to the handover.
“Found unresponsive outside a nightclub, on his own, personal effects still inside. Bradycardic at 40bpm, BP 100 over 70. He came round after a few minutes, altered mental status, vomiting, diaphoretic and agitated.”
On the gurney, Carter turns his head, nostrils flaring. Mark hears him whimper and is grateful when Carol kneels down beside him, murmuring reassurances that Mark can't make out.
“Do we know what he's ingested?”
“We initially suspected alcohol poisoning- he's definitely been drinking- but the heart rate suggests another drug is involved.”
Mark nods, turning to the rest of the team- Carol, Haleh, Dr Lewis, Lydia, and Doug. “Get a CBC, Chem 7, lytes and a tox screen, and we need to speed it along. Carol, get me an IV set up and prepare for a central line if necessary- we don't know what’s in his system, and if he starts seizing we won't have easy access to his arms. Haleh, focus on keeping him calm. Doug, Susan, let's start the exam proper, hm?”
Both other doctors seem as shell-shocked as he is, but they nod, settling into the natural rhythm of triage. Mark retrieves his flashlight from his pocket, moving over to the head of the gurney and lifting both Carter’s eyelids in turn, checking his pupils.
“Carter? Hey, buddy, can you follow the light for me?”
The response is minimal. His pupils trail slowly after the light at first, but quickly dart over to the other side of the room. His eyes are… hazy.
He doesn't know what's going on.
“Pupils are equal but sluggish. Carter?” He takes one of the intern’s hands in his, trying not to wince at how clammy it feels. “Squeeze my hand, bud. Give it a good squeeze.”
Nothing.
Mark runs through the options in his head. The effects of medication or some sort of spinal injury they're missing? He presses his thumbnail into the skin between Carter's thumb and forefinger, barely concealing his sigh of relief when the young doctor twitches away from his grasp.
Not a nerve issue, then. Just the drugs.
“Carter, can you tell me what you've taken?”
The question feels wrong given its recipient, but for the time being neither he nor the others can think about that. About the inconsistency between the diligent intern they see every day and the evidence they have here, of narcotics and bad decisions and everything they never expected of Carter.
Mark must ask, because it's important to know. Of course, though, Carter's far too incapacitated by whatever he has taken to answer. His lips simply move wordlessly and bloodlessly, limbs heavy, eyes constantly roving.
“Alright… looks like we're going to have to wait for the tox screen.”
Susan frowns, glancing up from the foot of the bed where she's performing a Babinski test . “We have time for that? If he's overdosing he might only be a few minutes away from arresting.”
She's right, and Mark knows it. He glances over at Doug, whose expression is uncharacteristically sober. He's already got the samples ready for the lab.
“Run those down quick, yeah? And don't leave them alone until you have that screen back. Tell the techs it's Carter, they won't hesitate.”
Doug nods- in most scenarios, he'd mouth off about this not being in his job description, but with Carter, all roles have suddenly become more fluid. The nurses are helping to perform vital tests. The doctors are preparing labs. Everyone is doing what they can to comfort him.
As the pediatric resident hurries off down the hall, Mark turns his attention back to the intern on the trauma table. His eyelids remain heavy, breaths shallow and too slow, but Mark could swear there's a silent plea deep within those muddy irises. A cry for help. The scream of a drowning man whose waterlogged lungs keep him from being heard.
“Do you want me to call Benton down?” Carol asks, and for the first time Mark remembers that the surgeon is on shift. His heart sinks.
“Yes. He'll- he'll want to be here.”
For what? The rescue mission? To witness the fruits of his labour rot on a gurney for seemingly no reason at all?
Carol nods and moves to the phone. Mark keeps his eyes fixed on the instruments nearby as she starts to speak, the glinting curve of a laryngoscope’s blade like a scythe on a tray to his right. He's never wanted to use the thing less. Not on Carter. Never on Carter.
“Yes, I need to speak to Dr Benton. It's urgent… How long will he be?... No, it can't wait. Tell him his intern is in the ER. It's serious. He ought to come down right away.”
“Why would he do this?” Susan asks from somewhere in front of Mark. “He knows how dangerous these drugs can be, it just- it doesn't make any sense. He's... he knows better.”
Haleh moves past the head of the gurney to grab some more supplies, brushing a hand reassuringly through Carter's hair on the way.
“Sometimes there isn't an easy answer to that kind of question.”
That may be true, but Mark's gut is twisting with something akin to fatherly concern. The pieces of this puzzle don't fit together. And the look in Carter's eyes sends them all scattering across the table.
He clears his throat and lifts his eyes, meeting Susan's gaze.
“He's gonna need an EKG. Can you pass me the trauma shears?”
She nods, retrieving them and placing them, handle first, into his waiting palm. He curls his fingers around the instrument, adjusts his grip so he's holding it properly.
“Carter?” He calls gently. “I’m sorry, bud, but we've got to get this shirt off you.”
It's a manoeuvre he's enacted so many times without thinking, the blades of the shears sliding through fabric before he sets them down and reveals the heaving canvas of a torso. Sometimes, when the patient has been stabbed, he'll be met with a burbling knife wound and a steady stream of red. When there's been a car accident, that canvas is occasionally daubed with the recognizable streak of a seatbelt right across the chest.
But this time…
“Oh my God.”
Susan utters the words before they even get the chance to form in Mark’s mind, vacuumed clean of thoughts as it has been by the state of Carter's torso.
There are developing bruises all across his chest accompanied by a few angry-looking scratch marks, though the redness stretches so far that it's clear he's been more than simply manhandled. His shoulders bear the most scratches, like somebody was gripping him by them, trying to keep him in place.
The worst part, however, is his neck. The shape of the bruise that encircles it is impossible to mistake.
Two human hands. Their thumbs pressed hard against his trachea.
Somebody choked him.
Mark swallows back a surge of nausea so strong his foot twitches in the direction of the sink, but the weight of the situation glues him where he stands. Instead, he carefully removes Carter's shirt fully, wincing when this only reveals further bruising around his wrists.
He was pinned down too.
When he glances upwards to gauge the reaction of his colleagues, it's clear that nobody has missed the gravity of this revelation. Carol's brow is pinched in that way that means she's barely holding back tears. Susan is standing stock still, one hand over her mouth.
Haleh, eyes wide and watery, is already sitting right by Carter’s side, stroking his hair attentively and speaking to him in a wavering voice.
“Shh, it's alright, baby. We're gonna take care of you, I promise. You're safe here. Nobody's gonna hurt you here, honey.”
Mark looks down at the young intern's face and once again sees the silent plea in his eyes. His lips, still moving in wordless delirium, have been rendered completely ineffective by the drugs. Of course they have. That was the intention.
“Okay, Carter.” he murmurs, tone low and soothing. “Okay. We've got you now. We've got you.”
He attempts to place a calming hand on Carter's shoulder, the way he's done so many times before, but the moment his fingertips graze skin, all hell breaks loose. Carter jerks, so desperate to get away from the touch that his back slams against the gurney railing, and this sensation, of course, only makes him panic further. He whimpers again, the sound raw and terrified. He fights to get up. He forces his numb, uncooperative limbs into action and tries with all his might to flee.
Malik, Haleh, Susan, and Carol keep him from succeeding. As he thrashes in their grip, disoriented and desperate, Mark just about manages to grab a syringe and draw up some Lorazepam with shaking hands.
“Drawing up a mg of Ativan.” He announces. “Just try to keep him steady for a second.”
The moment the words leave his mouth, it dawns on him just how terrified Carter must be.
Try to keep him steady.
Did they hold him down like this too?
He blinks back the rising emotion and slips in between Haleh and Carol, needle poised. Carter's chest is rising and falling so rapidly that the nurses are tossed about like waves on an ocean trying to keep him still, but Mark finds an opening on his side that isn't so tumultuous. He slips the needle in and depresses the plunger.
“Alright, bud. Shh, it's okay. It's Mark. You're in the ER. You're safe, Carter. You're safe.”
The jerks begin to grow more infrequent, his movements clumsier until his arms sink back to his sides and he lays there, chest rising and falling rapidly, twitching and shaking. Without the violent thumping and clang of metal, the sound of Carter's helpless whining is easier to hear. Mark wishes it weren't.
He dumps the syringe into a sharps bin and looks over to Carol.
“We need some soft restraints.” He mouths. She nods.
Susan, now sitting where Haleh was, asks quietly for the tissues. Mark half thinks she needs them to wipe away the evidence of her own emotion, but as Haleh hands them over:
“He's crying.”
Mark moves up to the head of the gurney again, heart breaking because yes, Susan's right, there are silent tears escaping the corners of his eyes and slipping down his cheeks. His blinks, slowed by this barrage of drugs, cannot hope to dispel them properly.
Susan dabs gently at the moisture, movements as cautious as if she were treating a wild animal poised to bolt at any moment.
“I'm so sorry this happened to you.” She whispers. “I'm so sorry, sweetheart.”
His breath hitches, but his eyes remain as vacant as ever.
Benton arrives in that way he always does- a human whirlwind, donning gloves and barrelling towards the doors of the trauma room. Mark, positioned outside them for just this reason, barely manages to keep him from charging forward into the chaos. Thankfully, though, his outstretched arm is enough for Peter to stumble to a halt, even if he seems pissed at the interruption.
“C’mon, man, I've got to-”
“Peter.”
“You call me down here and now you won't let me-”
“Peter.”
The authority in Mark's voice clearly catches the surgeon off guard. His darting gaze settles, brow furrowing. Mark can almost hear the babbling current of his consciousness trickle down into one, all-important question.
What is so serious about this that Benton, a man who's seen people utterly mangled beyond recognition, is being held up outside for an explanation?
Mark doesn't let him wonder for long.
“When the paramedics brought him in, all we knew was that he was overdosing on something.”
Benton half-laughs, though there's no humour in it. “Carter wouldn't do that.” Immediate. Sure.
And it breaks Mark's heart to nod.
“We… we don't think he took these drugs willingly. There's evidence he was assaulted.”
For the briefest of moments, Benton looks confused, lips unconsciously repeating that final word like he can't quite parse the meaning. Then, the realisation. The one that each nurse and doctor within the room went through the minute they saw those bruises. For Peter, the expression of grief is quickly suppressed. His nostrils flare with anger, but he merely drags a hand down his face and gestures impatiently towards the doors.
“Are you going to let me in or not?”
Mark steps aside, then follows Benton in.
The scene is as unbelievable as he left it, an image suspended in time. Discarded instrument trays, the remnants of Carter's stained shirt littering the floor. A nurse standing vigil.
And Carter, right in the center of it all, bruised and maybe broken.
He doesn't look in Peter’s direction, even when the surgeon wanders to the head of the gurney, instead continuing to gaze distantly at the corner of the room, blinking slowly like his eyelids are made of lead. There's a faint smudge of charcoal on his upper lip, below the NG tube that extends from his left nostril, and Mark can't help recalling the cross he'd be anointed with on Ash Wednesdays as a kid at the navy base. The way the priest would smear it on his forehead and pray aloud for his repentance, just as he did for every member of the congregation. Even back then, he'd felt there was some injustice involved here.
What was he even repenting for? What mortal sin had he committed, with his pockets full of loose change for the gumball machine in the mall, his eyes still gleaming with the innocence of youth?
He feels this now as he looks at Carter. He feels it acutely.
What did Carter do to deserve this?
“It's… it's okay, man.” Benton says with forced neutrality, hands on the railing but no further. “We're gonna… it's… it's gonna be okay.”
Mark has never seen him rendered speechless before. He opens his mouth to say something more, but then it seems he sees the total lack of awareness in his student’s eyes and realises the futility of verbal communication.
He steps back from the gurney and crosses his arms, fixing his gaze instead on Mark.
“As soon as you get that tox screen back he needs to go up to ICU.”
“I know.”
“Keep an eye on his resp rate, his heart. If he starts bradying down or getting tachy, then-”
“I know.”
Benton sucks in a sharp breath, nodding. “And don't… don't leave him alone in here, right? Make sure there's always somebody with him.”
Mark gives a quiet affirmative, watching Peter as he turns to go. He sees the jumpiness in the surgeon’s every muscle, the physician's desire to cure that which cannot be.
“Peter?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll page you when I find out more.”
Benton nods, and leaves far more subdued than when he arrived. Mark catches the slight twitch of his lip, like he's barely keeping himself together, but doesn't mention it, instead turning right back to Carter.
He's not there, not really. His eyes are open but they don't latch onto anything at all; his throat bobs with languid swallows but his lips don't move with speech. It's hard to tell how much of it is from the drugs- whatever he ingested plus the Ativan they had to give him- and how much is a dissociative state brought on by what happened to him.
What happened to him?
The phrase repeats itself in Mark’s mind, this time as a question, because really, deep down, they don't know what happened to Carter. They don't know the drugs in his system yet, nor whether he took anything to have a little fun or was slipped them unawares.
Does it matter? Yes and no. Maybe. No. Definitely not.
Definitely.
He blinks, rephrasing slightly- does it matter now?
This one's easier to answer- not right now. All that matters at this moment is making Carter better, physically if not mentally. Patching up what's broken on the outside before they can start to unpack the viscera within.
The door opens, and Doug marches inside, eyes fixed on the sheet of paper he holds in his hand.
“Tox screen’s back, it shows that he…”
His words trail off when he glances upwards, and Mark is reminded that Doug wasn't in the room when they discovered the bruises. He exhales heavily, running a hand through his hair.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.” Mark says dumbly, because what else is there to say? “What… what were the results?”
“Um, right, the, uh, the tox screen. Positive for GHB and ecstasy. Damn high levels too.”
“Can I see?”
Doug nods, handing over the slip of paper, gaze landing on Carter for a moment before he averts it. Carter's far too out of it to notice, but Mark feels a twinge of discomfort.
“Don't… don't do that, Doug.”
The resident frowns. “Do what?”
“Avoid looking at him like that. It won't help any of us, least of all him. Something terrible happened tonight- I know that. You know that. But the last thing we want to do right now is make him feel like any of this is his fault.”
He speaks quietly, gently, and though Doug seems to bristle at the unsaid accusation, he lets his eyes fall on Carter again, expression softening. Then he nods.
There's silence for a few seconds, interrupted only by the slow beeping of the monitor and subdued breaths. At last, Doug looks back at Mark.
“Did you need me to do anything?”
“Right now? Just carry on treating your patients. I've got this.”
Doug obeys, and Mark finds himself the sole physician in the room. The only other person present aside from Carter is Haleh, who has remained at their patient’s side since he came in. For now, she seems to possess the only touch he can tolerate.
Mark looks down at the tox screen results, unable to stop the whoosh of air from escaping his lips at the numbers.
“Bad?” Haleh half-whispers, still stroking Carter’s hair.
The chief resident sighs, voice equally low as he responds. “Whoever did this wanted to be sure he wouldn't remember their face… As soon as Susan gets ahold of an ICU bed, we’ll send him up.”
“And will he be okay?”
“Medically? He'll need to be monitored closely to make sure he maintains his airway, but he'll sleep the effects of the drugs off and the physical damage will heal. But psychologically?”
He doesn't finish this line of thought, because despite how sick he might be, Carter is still in the room. Speculating on his future mental state within earshot would, at the very least, be cruel. Besides, it's not like he even needs to say it aloud.
Haleh shakes her head sadly, gaze softening even further as she studies Carter’s face, the dried tear tracks on his cheeks and the continued vacancy in his expression.
“You’re gonna be just fine, Carter.” she soothes. “You just rest now, okay?”
He still doesn't close his eyes.
The ICU takes him without question, and Mark doesn't have to fight as much as he expected to get him a private room. He finds out later that Peter paid them a visit before he did to make sure the transfer was as smooth as possible.
He walks down the sterile hallways towards the room, brow furrowed intensely, feeling utterly out of place. The ICU isn't his territory. It's an abstract concept he sends patients to when there's nothing more he can do for them, except now it's real, and he must face the fact that there is a world beyond the immediate patching-up the ER provides. A world of constantly whirring machinery and sobbing relatives and endless waiting.
When he finally reaches the room, it isn't a surprise that he's not Carter's only visitor. The others have been flitting in and out when they can to check on him over the past few hours, all of them hoping beyond reason that they'd find him awake.
Peter, though, is the only one who's stayed consistently.
He sits now at Carter's bedside with his arms crossed, reclining slightly in the chair like he's still desperate to convey his indifference to the whole situation. It doesn't work. The tension in his jaw is too apparent, his eyes too focused on the man in the bed.
Upon hearing footsteps, his gaze drifts briefly to their source, then back again. He clears his throat.
“He's stable, low-grade fever but it's probably stress-induced. They're keeping him on high flow O2 as a precaution and some light sedation. I told them to get rid of those”- he gestures towards the soft restraints around Carter's wrists with a disdainful flick- “but they refused. Said until we can ascertain his mental state when he wakes up, they have to stay on. Like Carter would do anything to hurt anybody.”
Mark moves to the other side of the room, leaning against the wall because he can't bring himself to sit. “In his right mind, sure, but if he's scared?” Benton clicks his tongue, so Mark continues. “Peter, I put a hand on his arm when he was downstairs and he freaked out. Given the circumstances, it's not surprising, but we have to see it as a possibility.”
“And you think restricting his movement isn't going to make him panic even more when he wakes up?” Peter shoots back.
Mark searches for a counterargument, but when he looks down at Carter, currently sleeping, blissfully unaware that he's tied down to the bed he's in, his resolve shatters.
“Yeah… you're right.”
He moves to Carter's left wrist while Peter, catching up on the plan within a second, moves to his right. The padded material has been fastened too tight, and Mark has to tug on it gently to even get the loop to loosen.
“Alright, bud.” He murmurs, well aware that Carter isn't conscious to hear him. “Just gonna take these off for you, okay?”
He slips the restraint free, immediately wincing when he realises it was pressing against the bruises on Carter's wrist. If he woke with them on, the pain alone might have sent him into an immediate fight or flight response, with every movement only exacerbating the torture. It's a good thing Peter is as protective as he is.
It only takes a few moments after the restraints are removed for Carter to reposition himself, curling on his side and inhaling deeply like he's simply resettling in sleep. He looks peaceful, and it breaks Mark’s heart to know that this won't last. When they eventually choose to lower the sedation, he will awake to a completely different world, and none of them, as much as they like to think they know Carter, can really predict how he'll react.
And for now, there's nothing left to do but wait and see.