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 Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 7:25 pm
Kam wasn't going to lie - his shoulder hurt like a mother ******** b***h.
Delphine had found him quickly the night before, despite the fact that it had felt like forever while he was propped up against a back alley wall bleeding out onto the grime of the pavement. A few curses and swears later, and at least Delphine had gotten him to the hospital. He'd thank her later. Or something.
Now he was uncomfortable in crisp, white hospital sheets and one of those awful, flowery blue gowns that opened in the back. He had an IV pumping fluid into one arm but at least they'd stopped giving him blood by now. The doctor said he'd be out by the next day, just as long as the stitches seemed to be healing.
He had refused to tell anyone what happened - he couldn't explain some b***h stabbing him through the shoulder. He guessed DCH must have had their fair share of inexplicable injuries in the last few years, though, because he had barely been pressed at all. In fact, he was actually all by himself in his tiny room.
Which sucked.
Plus, he was freaking starving and wanted their damn lunch plates to come through already.
Why did hospitals suck so much?
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 9:20 pm
When Penny woke up the morning after her attack, she was tucked into her bed. Her stomach was thickly bandaged. She didn't remember Kam doing it. Her last memory was of her sitting on the couch, blindly reciting facts about the girl who attacked her, rattling off key points like she used to when she read the news on camera in college. Her two cats were curled in bed with her. Rosencrantz gave her a plaintive mew, snuggling up toward her chin. Penny reached up to scratch her under the chin, easing slowly out of bed.
It was her day off, and Penny was grateful for it. She had time to think up a good lie for her injuries. After eating a bagel and drinking a glass of orange juice, Penny decided to face the music and call Kam. She texted him first, but after thirty minutes without a response, she called. No answer. She called every ten minutes for the next forty, but Kam didn't pick up. It wasn't strange for him to ignore her calls sometimes. If it hadn't been for the rage in his voice the night before, Penny would have thought nothing of it -- but she knew Kam.
Penny sprang for cab fare and hitched a ride over to the shitty apartment Kam was crashing at for the time being. A massively tall, half-dressed boy answered. He smiled at her, and Penny knew instantly that this had to be Bo. She asked about Kam. Something flickered in his eye. "Kammy-boy is in the hospital, man," Bo said, fighting to smile despite the bad news. "Got jumped or something last night -- do you want pancakes?" It took all of her patience not to pop the kid in the jaw.
After pulling him for information, Penny grabbed another cab and made her way to the hospital. It was visiting hours, luckily, and after bitching at enough nurses to get her way, the petite producer was escorted up to Kam's room. She hovered in the doorway for a moment, stepping inside at the nurse's urging. The woman closed the door behind her, leaving Penny alone with her big Indian savior.
Her arm hung in a sling in front of her. A purse was slung over her other shoulder. She let it fall to the ground. "What the ******** did you do, Kam?" she said sharply, keeping her distance.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 9:55 pm
Kam had finally managed to track down a nurse and convince her to grab him a bowl of Jello, which had at least satiated the screaming beast in his stomach. It was awkward to eat though considering they had put his arm in a sling to keep him from aggravating the stitches. That meant he had to put way too much concentration into eating the wiggling green bites in his bowl, unable to hold it still while he attacked it with his free hand.
Just when he had gotten a scoop on his spoon, a loud 'thud' sounded from the doorway, followed by an accusatory question from a voice he knew was Penny instantly. That didn't stop him from being surprised though, and his entire body jerked when his head whipped to look at her. Not only did it pull on the stitches and make him groan out loud, but his Jello also plopped right back into his bowl.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it." He dropped the spoon down onto the bed tray dramatically in a '******** it' gesture, then turned to look back at Penny with a grumpy glance. He really wanted his freaking Jello.
"I knocked a b***h out, that's what." He wasn't going to come right out and tell her that he'd been stabbed clean through with the Captain's javelin, though. Penny had been stressed enough when he left her last that telling her straight up he'd almost bled to death in a back alley didn't seem like a good idea right now. He did, however, manage to let his anger go and look concerned for a few seconds as he gave her a quick once-over.
"You feeling okay, Pen?" Yeahp, he seemed to have forgotten who was in the hospital bed.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 10:06 pm
Her purse fell on its side at her feet. Penny barely noticed. She crossed the room quickly, moving to stand at Kam's bedside. Mint eyes fell to his sling. "I know I'm your role model and everything," she said, mock rolling her eyes, "but you're really starting to take that s**t too seriously." They had matching slings. It was funny, even if Penny was prepared to be ******** pissed.
She didn't give a ******** about his Jello rage.
Silvery curls bounced around her shoulders when she shook her head. "Don't ask me if I'm ******** okay, Kam. You're in the hospital bed, moron." She let her eyes roam to the various tubes and wires hooked up to her friend. It was unnatural. "Bo said you got jumped." One eyebrow raised up. "Did you?"
In her gut, Penny knew the truth. She swallowed against it. "Kam, dear, did you do something really <******** unbelievably stupid after you left my apartment?" There was a sickly sweetness in her voice. Beneath that, a quiet rage swelled.
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Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 12:27 am
His eyes shifted from her sling to his and, even though he knew he was treading a dangerously thin line with Penny, he couldn't help the small smirk. He probably would have laughed if not for the fact that laughing would cause more pain than he wanted to deal with.
With her right next to the bed, he felt kind of exposed. He didn't have layers of clothes to hide behind. Up close the extent of the damage was obvious - beneath the sling there was a giant bandage wrapped across his chest and shoulder to hold down pressure on the stitched wound. Even hours after the fact, there was a small ring of red dots bleeding through the inner layers that could just barely be seen.
"No, that's just what I told Bo." For what is was worth, he was being honest, even if the mention of Bo made him glance at the old circle clock on the wall. Just after breakfast, he was pretty sure Bo would be making waffles or pancakes or something else he would like to be eating. His stomach made a protest of his lack of food, growling loudly from beneath his robe and sheets. He answered with his own whiny moan and set his good hand over his stomach, pretending for the time that Penny wasn't about to flip her s**t on him.
He couldn't ignore her questions forever though.
"Yeah," he said finally, flopping his head back against the pillow of his raised bed rest. "She only got one good hit, okay? She's probably still face down in the dirt if a hobo hasn't cut her up to make stew out of her yet." He failed to mention that her one good hit was immensely more dangerous than his several had been combined. Then again, she probably didn't need him to tell her that since he was, uh, in a hospital bed.
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Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 6:13 am
Even as she held his gaze, Penny was more than aware of the large bandage covering Kam's shoulder. His words confirmed what she had thought. Somehow, Kam had managed to track down the one Nega in Destiny City that she had met. "You don't even know for sure it was her," she snapped. "And you prance off to risk your ******** neck, for what? For revenge?" One hand slapped on the metal railing at the side of his bed.
"It was my revenge to get, goddamnit. You didn't need to be a part of it, and you sure as s**t didn't need to go out and do something stupid enough to land you in this shitty ******** hospital." Her voice raised at the end. A nurse who was passing by the window stopped to frown at them before continuing on her way.
A storm of emotions welled in Penny. She had called Kam when she was too weak to care for herself, yes, but she didn't need him to run across town whiteknighting for her, especially when doing so put him in the ******** hospital. She was already injured -- now they both were. What did it accomplish? And truth be told, Penny had her own plans for Painite.
She frowned deeply at him. "I didn't ask you avenge me," she said coolly. "I can avenge my goddamn self!" It irked Penny to think that Kam had done what she had failed to do, even if he was worse for the wear because of it. She was an independent woman, the kind of took care of herself and others. She was at a complete loss to rationalize what Kam had done on her behalf.
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Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 7:37 pm
For what it was worth, Kam sat silently as Penny unloaded her ball of emotions on him. He poked at his Jello, moved it around a couple of times, and then finally looked up at her as she was winding down. If it had been anyone else, he would have been angry. He would have risen to meet her, yelled back, and gotten Penny kicked out for the scene. He didn't this time though, just because it was Penny.
"You're my partner, Pen." His face was a strange mix of emotions - that strange look men seemed to get when they were trying to express themselves but also fighting to maintain their manliness at the same time. The end result then was a long silence as he opened his mouth and shut it, pursed his lips and tilted his head - all signs of wanting to say something but not being able to find manly enough words.
"Look, I'm not just going to let people do that s**t to you and get away with it, whether you ask me to or not. We're a ******** team, and they'll deal with both of us." He was frowning then, frustrated by both her disappointment and his own inability to say what he wanted to. He finally just sighed and rolled his head to the side to look her in the eyes.
"I don't want to see you like that again, okay? That's harder for me than dealing with my own s**t." He fidgeted his hands, turning the small bowl of Jello bits in a semi-circle even as he forced himself to look at Penny. He was a big boy, he could ******** do this. "I wasn't going to be able to sleep knowing some b***h had done that."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 7:57 am
Her mouth opened and then closed. Goddamn Kam and his ******** openness in this moment. Penny wanted to be angry at him. She wanted to yell and employ her full arsenal of insults to hurl at him for being so stupid and reckless. The truth of the matter was that Penny needed Kam to be okay just as much as he needed her to be okay. She just also happened to be too manly to admit that easily.
Mint eyes moved to the IV in his arm. She stared at it for awhile, eyes blurring. Then her hand lashed out, slapping him in a sharp, quick burst on the upper forearm. "Next time, ******** wait for me, and we will stomp that t**t's a** together," she said.
Penny stepped away from his bed and began to move toward the door. Just as quickly as she had slapped his arm, she turned around, placed a hand on each one of his shoulders and gave him a partial hug, whispering, "Thank you, you idiot!" quietly in his ear.
Then the tiny ball of fury whisked out into the hallway and began loudly demanding that Kam be brought more food at every nurse within ear shot.
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 1:23 pm
Kam watched as Penny tried to say what she meant, growing more and more uneasy as each second passed and she said nothing. The silence was uncomfortable for him, mostly because it meant she had more time to think about how she was going to make him pay for running out and trying to take care of business on his own.
Then her hand shot out and struck him hard on the upper arm. He tensed at the surprise, though it really didn't do much to hurt him, especially not with pain killers already coursing through his system. As she started to speak, he glanced up at her, nodding slowly. He was unable to say anything to guarantee her he'd never do it again - probably because he knew he would, given the chance. But, he was also just too stunned into silence by what he thought was a fairly.. mild reaction.
As she leaned in to hug him, he brought up his one good arm and gave her a very slight pat on the back. Despite the fact that her thank you had an insult attached to the end, he was still smiling when she pulled away from him. "Not a problem," he said it, but she had already stomped out into the hallway.
He relaxed back into his bed as her comforting voice reached his ears, unable to help a little laugh as he heard her rounding up every nurse she could find.
At least he could ******** eat soon.
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