just doing my thing

It was probably gonna make him late, but Bram had sat in his car in the hospital’s parking lot for a solid fifteen minutes before he’d managed to start it up. Driving drunk was the biggest hell no, but there were probably laws about getting behind the wheel when you were tired too. He peeled his eyes off of the car ahead of him, closed them and ground the heels of his palms against his lids. The last hour on shift it’d felt like he’d poured sand in them, the grittiness growing worse with each blink. A solid twelve hours face down on the crappy mattress he hadn’t bought a bed frame for yet and the feeling would melt away, maybe.

Who would’ve thought it’d been easier to get some rest when he’d been stuck babysitting hundreds of freshmen and sophomores? Then he’d been juggling classes, placements, hockey training and wrangling teenagers like they were wet cats who’d got all hyped up on catnip – and the weird dreams. Some nights it’d feel like he barely caught a couple of hours, but still, he’d roll out of bed at dawn to make sure he got in his time on the ice. Now he didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d actually managed to head out on the ice. He’d have said he was missing it, but he didn’t even have the energy to do that.

A glance at the clock on the dashboard as he started the car up had him cursing. By now Kitty was probably used to seeing him practically comatose (somehow she’d developed a talent for finding him at the worst possible moments), but he hated being late as much as he hated this exhaustion that dragged at him like wet clothes, weighing him down til just pulling the car out onto the road felt like a Herculean effort.

Bram cranked the window down, using the bite of late fall weather to wake him up. Christmas would be here soon and with the colder weather his workload at the hospital would probably sky rocket. Falls on the ice, sniffles and the flu, frostbite, it seemed like there were a thousand ways people could hurt themselves around here without anybody else’s involvement. At least he might see a little action with the falls, the endless tests and histories definitely hadn’t been giving him that sort of experience yet.

Trying to avoid being the cause of some of that action now, Bram just about kept himself to the speed limit on the way to the Grill. The last mile he was staring at the clock most of the time, watching it tick down towards the time Kitty had suggested. He slid in the door with five minutes to spare, following a waitress back to a booth. Sliding in, he glanced over the menu, but at this point it didn’t feel like he needed it, he’d been at Whitmore long enough to have remembered the whole thing. It wasn’t like he’d spent too much time cooking for himself since he’d left either, the tiny apartment wasn’t big on the facilities and most of the time the hospital vending machines and the cafeteria provided everything a hungry boy needed anyway.

The door had opened a half dozen times since arrived, but the moment Kitty slipped in, he saw her. A one eyed chick tended to draw the eye even when your brain was only running at about fifty percent speed. He was already slanting her a grin when she slid into the booth. ”Hey,” he murmured. It wasn’t like they’d caught up with the quick messages that were shot back and forth, it was pretty much just ‘the Grill’ and the time, one that was probably convenient for Kitty when it came to classes and stuff. Or not.

”Life’s definitely that, but at Whitmore? I wouldn’t know.” Bram snorted, shaking his head at her as he settled back. ”You’re not the only one who graduated. I cleared out in July. You’re looking at Doctor McCabe.” He clucked his tongue, smirking as he aimed his thumbs back at himself. ”I didn’t know you were out too. I figured you’d probably just headed home for the summer. I guess you’re sticking around Mystic Falls, huh?” There were plenty that didn’t. They graduated and immediately bolted for wherever they could get work. Bram frowned faintly, he wasn’t even sure what that would be for Kitty. Had she told him what she was studying? Practically every time they’d met he’d been so fuzzy it was a wonder he’d even remembered her name.

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Trying to tell his parents they hadn’t needed to come to graduation was like telling the sun not to rise in the morning. They’d booked their flight as soon as the date had been announced and had both been teared up when he’d looked out over the crowd to find them as he’d crossed the stage to get his diploma. After his mom had admitted there’d been a time when she didn’t think he’d ever do it – a reminder of the darkest days of his life when he’d been blind to any sort of future outside the pain and depression. Bram had felt his throat go thick as they’d pulled him into a hug. Back then he hadn’t thought he’d do it either. College had been so wrapped up in hockey the first time around, a path straight to the big time, when that path had dropped out from under him the whole thing had seemed like nothing more than torture.

The first few weeks at Whitmore had gone the same way. Kids around him were partying, throwing themselves into the whole experience without a thought for their safety. He’d been the old timer, quiet and serious until he’d let himself be pulled into it. Whitmore had been a fresh start and now he’d miss the place. No more being woken up in the middle of the night to help some drunk jackass into bed, no being a hardass about the rules or spending long hours in a classroom feeling like his brain was melting from trying to cram the name of every bone, nerve and muscle into his head. No more really easy days either though, there wasn’t any starting over from the top when someone’s heart stopped in the ER, the same way there would’ve been with the dummies they worked with in class.

A big step made up of all those small ones that suddenly felt huge as he admitted the change to Kitty. She had to have felt the same now she was out there too. Your college years were over, it was time to grow up, kinda. Bram grinned at her as she congratulated him, his head instantly bobbing in agreement. ”Definitely … soon as I get a weekend off. The schedule’s pretty brutal.” And arriving for a shift at hospital still smelling of last night’s party was the sort of move that got you fired before your career had really started. Heat rose in Bram’s cheeks, his hand smoothing over his chest like his ego would balloon out of it. ”Thanks. I’m pretty damn proud of it – strutting around in my white coat.” Not that they were unusual at the hospital. It still felt like he was strapping a superhero’s cape on when he slipped into it.

Whenever he’d pulled some kid out of trouble at Whitmore it’d felt a little like that too, but if he had been the superhero sort he wouldn’t have ended up shaking in fear sometimes, like that first time he’d met Kitty. He wasn’t gonna miss ending up in that state, the few times he might’ve partied disappearing into those black holes in his memory. Was it like a tree falling in the woods? You hadn’t really partied if you hadn’t blacked out drink and there’d been nobody there to tell you that you’d puked in their closet after.

”Sounds like a sweet deal. You get to stay right here, no commuting for work, no moving away from what you’re used to either. You working from home?” That would change things, he thought, his brows starting to knit a little. You could just roll over and work, nobody really cared if you were running five minutes late – nobody was gonna die if you got distracted by the doorbell ringing. There was a lot of pressure at the hospital to be present, to get ahead of all the shit that was going down. Pressure on a brain that had already folded on occasion seemed like a recipe for disaster.

His gaze snapped up from where he’d been staring down at the menu again, trying to remember the last time it’d gotten too much. Bram tried for a smile, got the corners of his mouth twitching faintly at least. ”Mostly,” he admitted, hesitating about going any further. He hadn’t opened up to anybody about the hospital about what had happened, what still happened from time to time – albeit without running around the campus without his shoes on – they’d have been trying to counsel him out of such a high stress speciality. ”It’s still happening from time to time. It’s gotta be the stress though, right? You have all this pressure with work and school and making sure everybody else is OK – something’s gotta give in the end. It’s probably gonna stop now that I’m out. You gonna miss dragging my ass out of wild situations?” Kitty had probably breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have to anymore. There were only so many times you could talk the crazy ones down before you worried about your own sanity.

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See, that right there was proof of how little experience he had with the whole partying thing. Sure, there’d been shit going on every single night at Whitmore, but he’d kind assumed that it was just because it was on campus. Like you didn’t have to worry about heading into Mystic Falls to find somewhere that was pumping music out at 1am on a Tuesday night – there probably wasn’t more than one of those – you could do it right there on campus where people weren’t gonna try too hard to get it shut down. Until he’d run into Kitty that first time he hadn’t known anything about her, but after all those encounters he was pretty sure she’d spent most of the years at Whitmore getting her practice in. They were flip sides of a coin, one he wanted to take a look at the other side of now, even if it meant stumbling through a shift. Bram guessed he could play it off as just the long hours on the job – as long as the scent of alcohol wasn’t wafting out of his pores.

”Right,” he murmured, studying her grin. ”Soon as I get my schedule for next week I’ll let you know when I’m free. You know you’re gonna have to lead, though, right?” Little Party Virgin boy was gonna stumbling after her like a Freshman in his first week on campus – lost, a little skittish, but filled with the fizz of anticipation. Exactly the same way he’d been the first time he’d walked into the hospital as a student and not a patient. He’d hoped to hell he wouldn’t be as bad on the other side of things.

In comparison to the insanity of the ER, sitting at home on a laptop for 8 hours a day would’ve seemed like a dream. Bram figured he probably could’ve tolerated it for a day or two, but eventually he’d have been twitching like a cat on a hot tin roof, desperate to move. He’d been that way for as long as he could remember, the light bounce of his good knee under the table subtly marking it out now. Driving his parents crazy to drive him to the rink, rushing out to the pond the minute it got cold enough, just wanting to be flying. ”Working in PJs for weeks on end? I think most people would call that living the dream. You don’t miss having people around the entire time?” His brows drew together faintly. It’d bothered him, his new apartment feeling quiet, vaguely creepy with it at times. In the dorms he was never alone for long, but now there was no one else there when he closed the door.

If he happened to stumble out into the street, sleep walking or whatever the fuck it was he’d been doing at Whitmore, there’d probably no one to track him down and bring him around. He could walk out into traffic, or, worse out into the woods. There was no way the things he thought he’d seen were just there. His knee picked up pace beneath the table, only stopping as Kitty asked if he’d tried making a record of it. Bram frowned, nodded and then shrugged. ”After the first couple of times yeah, but I dunno how much of a pattern would be there. That’s what shrinks work on, right? They look at how often you do this stuff, what happens, and then they tell you that you’re nuts.” He wasn’t, he’d swear blind to that. Something was going on though.

”So I can hear myself snore on video? I dunno,” he puffed. Bram dragged a hand down his face, the knot tightening in his stomach before it gave way with a little pop. His frown had stayed in place, now his gaze fixed on her. ”Do you know how to set that stuff up? I wanna get to the bottom of this. If it doesn’t stop I need to do something about it.” Maybe if he wasn’t so afraid of being called a nut job he’d have spoken to one of the docs at the hospital, but for now Kitty was the only one who knew about it. The only one he thought he could trust with all of this.

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Responsibility still hung around his shoulders for a cloak, but for the first time in a few years Bram felt like he could shrug it off for a while. He didn’t need to make sure he was sober while everybody around him threw themselves into the deep end at a party. There wasn’t someone paying him to be certain everyone got home safely at the end of their night – although that extra pay might’ve come in handy now with him having to pay for his own accommodation. That suddenly feeling of freedom left him almost giddy. Bram was sure it’d be worse once he was out with Kitty. She’d never seemed the sort to be tucked up in bed by 9. Picturing himself crawling in through his apartment door at 6am, Bram held up his hands and snorted. ”Long as you don’t have to actually drag me back there, I think I’ll be able to handle it.” As strong as she’d seemed back when she was trying to drag him away from trouble on campus, he couldn’t picture her actually dragging his dead weight up the stairs to his apartment.

”On the days you’re going out?” Bram asked, grinning at Kitty. The only time he’d ever spent more than a single day without leaving the house had been when he’d gone home to Alaska after he’d trashed his knee. He knew if he’d gone out, not only would he have got frustrated with the change in his mobility, but he’d feel people looking at him with pity. It had felt like he’d drown in it, so he might as well have been miserable on his own. ”I haven’t either, but if it’s anything like the hospital, you’re pretty spot on. I don’t think I could handle that either. I’ve always gotta be on the move.” Skating had given him that, the sense that he could fly carrying him through classes even hours afterwards. All that mattered was being out there, getting that thrill thrumming in his blood.

The rush of adrenalin that had hit every time he’d Kitty had found him before – and a dozen other times – wasn’t the same. It didn’t exhilarate him, it had just terrified him instead. Bram’s throat felt dry enough now that he started looking around for the waitress to order a drink. He’d always skittered away from what had happened before, practically sticking his fingers in his ears and singing lalala to drown out whatever was going on. It was a childish move, but the alternative still scared him. ”If there’s one there, I haven’t seen it. I mean what’s it gonna be, days where I had exams or I worked too hard?” No, it was something worse than that, he could taste the lingering fear, like pennies, on his tongue and this was weeks after his last episode.

Bram couldn’t imagine Kitty reacting the same way. She’d always seemed completely in control, ballsy and smarty – hell, she’d have made a great ER doc if she wasn’t into all that computer stuff. If she thought that a video might solve whatever was going on, he was gonna trust her. Leaning in to the edge of the table, Bram propped his forearms on it. ”You wanna come over later and do it? If you’re free. I kinda wanna get this over and done with, you know?” It had felt like it had gone on long enough. Maybe if this didn’t work out he could go to one of the senior docs at the hospital, ask if they’d take him for like a brain scan. If this was something physical maybe there’d be an easy fix for it. Seeing the waitress weaving her way back towards them, Bram gave the menu a nudge towards Kitty. ”Lemme get you lunch as a thanks for that? I feel like I should be paying you back somehow for this.” Lunch honestly seemed like a drop in the ocean compared to helping him feel entirely sane again.

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