Chapter Text
Helena meets Kaine Ferron the same way she meets most people she knows. In the hospital.
He comes in midway through an endless overnight shift, the knuckles on his right hand split nearly to the bone and a nasty laceration at his temple.
Before that, she’d been having the kind of night she often struggles with. When things in the emergency room are quiet. Calm. Children with high fevers, old men with chest pains. The kind of ailments that are urgent, but not life threatening. The kind she can prescribe NSAIDs or antacids for, a bit of observation, and that’s that. No blood, no rush, nothing she can sink her hands into or quiet her mind with.
The guilt of it gnaws at her. The truth of her disappointment every time the doors swoosh open and another non-emergency walks through. She shouldn’t wish for tragedies just to keep the tedium at bay. She should be grateful for clean scrubs. A night with no souls hanging in the balance, a night with no lives lost.
And yet, there’s no denying the relief she feels when she pulls back the procedure room curtain to find her next patient openly bleeding from several places.
“Mr. Ferron?” she asks, glancing at his chart. There’s almost nothing there. His name–Kaine Ferron. His age–twenty-nine, same as her. Everything else has been left blank. Surgical history, current medications, allergies. Everything.
He sits up straighter on the examination table when she looks at him, his features carefully arranged to hide his pain. It’s a good mask, but by now Helena’s an expert at spotting the little tells. Narrowed eyes, lightly tensed muscles, dilated pupils.
Ferron's are so large his eyes look nearly black, the surrounding gray eaten almost entirely away.
Helena gestures to his poorly bandaged hand. “Did you have trouble with the paperwork? One of the nurses could have helped you.”
Ferron’s lips tic slightly, like he’s working hard to tamp down on a grin. “No, that was intentional. I figured you wouldn’t need my entire personal history just to do a few stitches.”
“You'll be lucky if it’s just a few,” Helena retorts, gesturing to his head. “That looks deep.”
She sanitizes her hands as she approaches him. “May I?”
He nods and she continues with her examination, his skin warm under the pads of her fingers, the brow bone neatly intact.
She’s developed a gentle touch with time, but he still hisses as she feels along the length of the laceration. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I can,” he says lightly.
Helena pulls back to look at him more fully, mouth thinning. “But you won't.”
Ferron offers what could be interpreted as an apologetic shrug.
“I've heard it all, you know. Nothing you say could shock me.” He merely looks at her and she continues, “Any information you can provide will be helpful for my assessment. Were you in a car accident? You could have internal injuries.”
“I wasn't in a car accident.”
Helena waits for more, then sighs when she realizes it isn't coming. “Did you lose consciousness? Any vomiting? Dizziness? Blurred vision?”
“None.”
“Alright then.”
She hooks her foot around a stool and slides it under herself. The gauze he's used to wrap his hand is soaked through. She peels the layers away in slow, careful motions, but they still stick a bit to the split skin.
Ferron’s throat works as he swallows another hiss.
“Did they give you anything for the pain?” she asks, noting his pale skin, the light sheen of sweat dotting along his brow.
“Turned it down,” he answers.
“Why would you do that?” Her voice is too sharp and she works to adjust it. “Do you have any specific concerns about pain management? I’d be happy to address them.”
He seems to spy her frown, the poorly concealed tension in her brow. He grins like he's amused by it.
“Nothing specific comes to mind.”
“Some Tylenol then? Or ibuprofen if you prefer. Trust me, something will be better than nothing.”
“I trust you,” he replies, lips quirking once more. “I just don’t want it.”
Helena blinks. “And you understand your decision goes against my professional recommendation?”
He nods. “I do.”
Looking up at him from the stool, it occurs to Helena for the first time that he's tall. Broad and blood splattered. Dark haired, with strands of grey already coming through at the temples.
“Alright then,” she says, standing up. “Wait here, I’ll be back with a suture kit.”
- - -
Ferron has gone a shade paler by the time Helena returns to the procedure room. He sways a bit when she sets the materials on a sterile tray, then shakes his head as if to clear it.
“I assume you don't want any local anesthetic?”
“Correct.”
Helena swallows down a sigh, busies herself with rearranging the instruments on the tray. And then, because she sometimes can't help herself, she looks at him and asks, “Is it an ego thing?”
Ferron barks a laugh. “You’re not letting this go, are you?”
“I like to understand things,” Helena replies. “My father used to say I was like a dog with a bone.”
“Used to?”
“He died two years ago,” she says, a practiced neutrality ingrained in the words. “Car accident.”
“Were you close?”
Helena's heart constricts by a fraction. “We were.”
Ferron doesn't apologize or offer platitudes. He merely hums then says, “Is this a ploy to get me to tell you the truth?”
Helena latches onto the levity like it’s a lifeline. “Is it working?”
His jaw tenses as he looks at her, an unreadable expression on his face. His pupils have constricted slightly, letting more of that pale grey shine through.
“I can't afford it,” he says after a while.
His voice doesn’t waver. He doesn’t duck his head or divert his eyes, but Helena can tell it takes something from him to admit this to her.
Of course, it isn’t the first time she’s heard a patient say something like that. In fact, it happens so often she could scream. Not at them, of course, but the systems–medical, governmental, all of it–that make it so money plays any role in the already fragile balancing act that is medical care.
Still, it surprises her a little coming from Ferron. There's something about him, the way he moves, his straight backed posture and finely tailored shirt, that reminds her of Luc, her best friend from medical school. And Luc's family has more money than makes sense.
When she looks closer, though, she sees a certain weariness in his eyes, the thread at his collar just starting to come apart.
All her years of medical training and so much of what Helena does comes down to instinct. Too many chest compressions versus not enough, what to say to a bereaved family member, how to comfort an injured child. It’s something nearly all of her attendings have tried to train out of her. Defer to your knowledge, Helena. Find the answers in the science.
She knows they’re right more often than not. Medical care requires a certain degree of detachment, a surgical analysis she possesses at least ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent, though…moments like this, when it’s within her control to make a different choice, to disavow suffering for the sake of suffering…how could she be expected to do anything but exactly that?
“You know,” she says carefully. “Supplies go missing all the time in the ER. With so many patients coming through, it's difficult to keep track of everything.”
Ferron looks at her oddly. Even with the blood and the bruises and the harsh haze of the hospital lighting, he's almost painfully beautiful. Otherworldly, like he doesn't quite belong to this plane of existence, let alone in her hospital.
“Doctor–”
“Marino,” Helena supplies. “Have I not said that yet?”
“Too busy scolding me about paperwork and pain management, I imagine.”
A flush threatens to rise up her neck. Helena refuses it down on principle, holding his gaze as steadily as he is holding hers.
“Dr. Marino,” he continues soberly, “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t let you do that. You could lose your job.”
Helena shrugs. “Haven't lost it yet, have I?”
He winces as he momentarily forgets about his split temple and attempts to frown.
“What if we reframe the discussion?” Helena suggests.
“Meaning…”
“What if instead of viewing it as something I’d be doing for you, we frame it as something you’d be doing for me?”
“For you,” he repeats, losing his face’s battle with restraint and openly frowning at her now.
“I can’t in good conscience treat you without pain management and I can’t in good conscience let you leave untreated. So this is my problem, you see. Not yours.”
Ferron thinks for a long while, the fingers on his unhurt hand tapping away at his leg before he stills them into submission. “Alright, Dr. Marino,” he finally says. “We’ll do it your way. Who am I to deny a woman what she wants?”
There’s no fighting the flush creeping up Helena’s neck this time. The best she can do is ignore it outright as she claps her hands together.
“Excellent,” she says, letting her voice carry across the curtain. “Stay right there, Mr. Ferron, it seems I’ve forgotten a piece from my suture kit.”
- - -
Ferron is the picture of a perfect patient from there, his jaw angled toward her face as she stitches first his temple and then his hand. Helena feels his eyes on her like a weight the entire time, but it’s easy enough to ignore with her preferred kind of work in her hands, the forceps like an extension of herself as she winds the needle neatly through the skin.
She loses herself in it the way she always does, the world fading to a needlepoint and the length of an open wound, her mind quieting for the first time in hours.
“There,” she says, tying off the final stitch. “These should dissolve in two to four weeks. Come back in if you see any sign of infection–inflammation, increased pain, fever. Scarring should be minimal if you stay out of the sun.”
Ferron peers at his knitted knuckles. With the adrenaline finally wearing off, his eyes have a slightly dazed look about them. He’s steady enough on his feet when he steps down from the table, though.
It’s the first time Helena’s seen him standing. She has to crane her neck to look into his newly knitted face.
“Will you come back if you see signs of infection?” she can’t help but ask.
He smirks. Not a small quirk of the lips or a thing he clamps down, but a wide, open smirk. “Probably not.”
Helena frowns. “Even if it’s–”
“For you?” Ferron finishes for her. He’s halfway through the door when he stops to look at her one more time. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you, Marino? You can’t always get what you want.”