Recovery Period

Chapter 3

"I gotta go home. Thanks for my foot stuff," she muttered, almost on her feet before Dr. Casey could stop her.

"Woah, woah. Where do you think you're going? You take one step on that foot and it's going to open right back up," the doctor told her, pushing her directly back down onto the bed. Nico pushed back against the woman's hands, whining out of frustration as she tried, and failed, to get up. "Nico, you need stitches. It won't heal right without them. You need to stay here and let us help you."

Nico looked up with a defiant expression and shrugged the doctor's hands off. "I don't need to do anything except get out of here!" Nico snapped. She tried again to stand, but Dr. Casey was right in front of her, almost nose-to-nose. This motion caught them both by surprise.

Dr. Casey suddenly felt a pang of anxiety: she was crossing a line here. Nico's bratty reponse to her fear was causing too many pieces of the pattern to fall into place for Dr. Casey to ignore. Whether this woman knew it or not, she was unsure, but the rabbit indicated that maybe she was self-informed about the headspace she was in.

"Nico, you are going to stay in this bed. I'm going to get you a warm blanket to help you feel a little more calm and then we're going to talk about what needs to happen next," the older woman's voice was calm, but left no room to discuss. "And..." Dr. Casey replied, rolling down towards Nico's feet and pulling a tablet mounted to yet another moveable arm out from under the bed where it had been stored. "We have pretty much every streaming service ever," she said to Nico, logging into the device before turning it to face her patient.

Nico's brain was running on overdrive. She was terrified of the procedures she was going to have to endure. She was struggling to understand how this doctor was making her feel and she wanted more than anything to go back in time to before she decided that chocolate milk was the thing to make. "You're so stupid. You should have used a plastic cup," she hissed to herself, burying her face in Mol's fur.

Dr. Casey heard every word and her heart melted while her hands were busy getting a warm blanket from underneath Nico's bed to cover her with. Poor thing thought it was her fault just because she dropped a glass and cut her foot open. She couldn't wait another second, her hand landed squarely on the young woman's outer leg after she spread the cotton blanket over her, folding it down for Mol. "You aren't stupid, Nico. Accidents happen, see this little scar?" she asked, pulling up the long sleeve of her lab coat to show a slightly darker scar on the inside of her forearm. "I did that taking a pan of cookies out of the oven. As if I don't cook in that oven all the time or the racks moved! But it was just an accident, right?"

Nico nodded mutely, slowly lower Mol until he was against her chest and not hiding her face. Her vice grip was snaked across his pear-shaped tummy and the doctor casually nudged the tablet to get Nico to notice it. When she finally did, her grip on Mol loosened and she made to sit up, only to be pushed back down by Dr. Casey's gentle palm on her chest. She whined initially, kicking her half-booted feet a bit, until the tablet was moved to be in front of her face and tilted down so she could see it and lay down.

Dr. Casey could feel the tug in her chest. She was doing it: moving into a place of control to look after a vulnerable person. She felt her body language changing to mirror Nico's, even her voice and speech pattern changed. When was the last time she showed an adult, a patient, her burn scar to assure them that accidents aren't an indication of intelligence? Literally never.

"Okay kiddo," she started, pausing for a second too long after hearing the dominant tone plainly now. "Uh, Nico. I'm going to go see some other patients. A nurse is going to come in and give you the IV to get you rehydrated and then I'll be back to give you the anesthetic and the stitches. If you need me or the nurse, you can just push that red button right by your head." She pointed at the dime-sized button at the top right of the bed's metal rail.