Alec comes to on the thin hard cot in the doctors' lounge with sand in his eyes and an iron claw about his heart. He's not even sure he's awake — his dreams, like his waking hours, resound with rib-heaving coughs, with wet desperate gurgles, with the frigid, robotic breaths of ventilators; and after yesterday he doesn't want to do this anymore, he wants to run, past the ICU, past the nurses' station, past the fucking gift shop, out the Infirmary, through the park, over the A1, screaming all the way, until he stops short at the Firth and can rip off his stethoscope and hurl it into the wind-churned waters and maybe himself in after it.
"I think you'll be going nowhere for the morning," says a familiar voice from the doorway; the rich smell of fresh, hot cullen skink curls into Alec's nostrils, and embarrassing tears rise to wash the sand away: he need not sink for good, only for a little while.
tw COVID-19
rib-heaving coughs, with wet desperate gurgles, with the frigid, robotic breaths of ventilators; and after yesterday he doesn't want to do this anymore, he wants to run, past the ICU, past the nurses' station, past the fucking gift shop, out the Infirmary, through the park, over the A1, screaming all the way, until he stops short at the Firth and can rip off his stethoscope and hurl it into the wind-churned waters and maybe himself in after it.
"I think you'll be going nowhere for the morning," says a familiar voice from the doorway; the rich smell of fresh, hot cullen skink curls into Alec's nostrils, and embarrassing tears rise to wash the sand away: he need not sink for good, only for a little while.