Fifteen minutes later Rowan had already determined that the anxious mother in the room with her seven year old son, Landon, had not abused him. He was usually happy for his empathy at work. While it didn't give him the ability to directly determine truth from lies, when you worked around people who lied you got used to seeing certain emotions associated with certain conditions. Not only did Landon's mother Emma not fit the profile, Landon himself didn't fit the portrait of an abused child.
Rowan completed his exam, hanging his stethoscope around his neck and crouching forward on the stool in the room, resting his arms on his knees. "So tell me Landon, what made you think it was a good idea to jump off the staircase?"
He arched his eyebrows, waiting for whatever explanation would come forth. Rowan had already ordered up rads for the little boy but no new cases had come in so he had a little time to spare.
"We're going on vacation in a plane," was Landon's explanation, as if that completely explained why a little boy would jump off half a flight of stairs onto a very poorly made pile of pillows below.
Rowan flicked a glance at mom, who was pinching the bridge of her nose in embarrassment. He hid a smile. "So you thought you could fly huh?"
Landon regarded him seriously, nodding.
"Maybe you think from now on you'll leave the flying for people in planes?"
Landon had the good grace to look guilty. He glanced down at his splinted wrist and nodded. When he looked back up at Rowan his big brown eyes with their long lashes were dewy with tears and his lower lip poked out just a tiny bit. "Do I still get to go on vacation?"
Rowan laughed softly this time. "Yeah. If you're worried I'm going to tell you to stay home, you can stop. You might not get to do everything you wanted to but you get to go."
He folded Landon's chart back onto his clipboard and smiled. "Where is vacation this year?"
Landon looked confused. "The Crabby-bean," he answered after a second.
Rowan nodded knowingly. "Ah. So maybe you can spend a little more time on the beach in a hammock and a little less time acting like a monkey in the jungle."
The look he got was similar... confusion. "A ham-egg?"
"Hammock," Rowan said slowly. "It's like a bed. Kind of. But it's made out of rope and you tie it between two trees and it swings back and forth."
And then your boyfriend joins you in swim trunks or maybe in the buff if you're lucky, and you sip on pina coladas and make out under the stars until you can't stand it anymore. Then you head back to your boat and...
..."get what I mean? It's a lot of fun."
Landon was shaking his head. Rowan, always up for a little fun, looked around the little room for some way to demonstrate. Spying several items that would work he held one finger up. "We'll make one."
With Landon's mind off his injury while he waited for radiology to call for him, he and Rowan got to work constructing a hammock while Emma looked on with amusement from her perch on the chair next to the exam table.
Making Rounds (private)
Rowan slid into the supplies room of the urgent care clinic attached to Nachton Hospital, where he worked. Slaved. Whatever. Just a minute or three. A breather. It was ridiculously busy tonight. There was an outbreak of influenza and he was pretty sure he'd seen every member of East Nachton Elementary's third grade class (Mrs Wilson was their teacher. She liked puppies and kittens but was allergic to mice and afraid of bees. Her favorite color was blue and she liked to water ski). He didn't mind. It made the time fly, which normally wasn't an issue for him but, well, he didn't usually have a lover waiting for him at home in the form of Evenhet's hot blond Head of Security. Not that Cris was pining away with nothing to do with Rowan at work; it sounded like he was plenty busy himself tonight, judging from their sporadic sent communications.
No, Rowan didn't usually mind. But it had been a little more hectic than usual so he felt justified in taking a fiver. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his scrub pants and shot off a quick text, "Crazy here. Miss you." Then he leaned back against the wall of the room and sighed, smiling at the sound of Cris's voice in his head in almost immediate response to his text. For five minutes they sent back and forth; Rowan told Cris about Mrs. Wilson's third grade class and Cris told him about his night so far. It was, maybe, sort of banal, but Rowan loved it.
Talking to Cris energized him, and good thing. Outside the doorway he recognized the voice of one of his nurses, Becky, asking if anyone had seen him. He listened quietly. Apparently she had a new case for him, a little boy with an injured wrist. Rowan knew why Becky was looking for him to take this one. He had already gotten a reputation for being unsympathetic to abusive parents. Not that this was that scenario, but this sort of injury in a child always raised a few mild alarms.
He waited until the voices were gone and then slipped back out of the supply room. He straightened his scrubs and headed casually down the hallway, not eager to have his mini-break location discovered. Rowan made his way to the room Becky had mentioned and pulled the chart from the wall, glancing at it briefly before knocking on the door of the exam room and opening it, poking his head in.
"Hello?"
Rowan Murphy
13 years ago
Rowan Murphy
13 years ago
"Viola! A hammock!"
Rowan and Landon looked proudly at their creation while Emma laughed. "I want a hammock!" Landon proclaimed.
Rowan handed him the sculpture. "Well, I think this is going to have to do for now. But in a couple of weeks you can try out the real thing."
They had obtained some clay from the storage room; it was used in small shallow trays to stopper the tiny glass tubes the nurses used to measure PTT/PT. Rowan had appropriated one tray to use to hold up his palm trees.
They weren't really palm trees but he felt clever for having made the jest. He'd used two tongue depressors jammed into the clay for tree trunks. Then he'd taken two exam gloves and slipped one down over each depressor (hence, the 'palm' part of the tree) and taped them on so they wouldn't slip. After that they'd found a length of gauze, which looked sufficiently open in structure to be a rope, and they cut it with some bandage scissors into a rough diamond shape.
In a phenomenal waste of supplies that would have had his boss crying, Rowan used a length of PDS suture (in his defense he used the 4-0, which no one ever really needed) to tie the gauze "hammock" to the trees. Landon had criticized Rowan's trees for being coconut-less, so they taped a few cotton balls onto the gloves to represent them. It looked pretty pathetic but that only made it funnier, in Rowan's opinion.
There was a knock at the door and Becky stuck her head in. "Landon? I'm here to take you to get your x-rays. What on Earth is that?"
She furrowed her brow at the sculpture. Rowan regarded her with brows raised, an innocent expression on his face. "It's the Crabby-bean," he said very seriously. "You couldn't tell?"
Becky clearly didn't know whether to agree, or become a critic herself. She just snorted in an unladylike manner that was pretty typical for her and shook her head. "Come on," she said kindly to the little boy and his mother. "I'll show you the way."
Landon looked reluctant to leave their masterpiece behind, but Rowan took it and set it on the counter. "Don't worry," he said, "Becky's going to bring you right back to this room once we're done taking pictures of your wrist. It'll be waiting here for you."
That seemed to reassure Landon, and he and his mother left with Becky to head to radiology while Rowan went to check in on another patient.
Rowan and Landon looked proudly at their creation while Emma laughed. "I want a hammock!" Landon proclaimed.
Rowan handed him the sculpture. "Well, I think this is going to have to do for now. But in a couple of weeks you can try out the real thing."
They had obtained some clay from the storage room; it was used in small shallow trays to stopper the tiny glass tubes the nurses used to measure PTT/PT. Rowan had appropriated one tray to use to hold up his palm trees.
They weren't really palm trees but he felt clever for having made the jest. He'd used two tongue depressors jammed into the clay for tree trunks. Then he'd taken two exam gloves and slipped one down over each depressor (hence, the 'palm' part of the tree) and taped them on so they wouldn't slip. After that they'd found a length of gauze, which looked sufficiently open in structure to be a rope, and they cut it with some bandage scissors into a rough diamond shape.
In a phenomenal waste of supplies that would have had his boss crying, Rowan used a length of PDS suture (in his defense he used the 4-0, which no one ever really needed) to tie the gauze "hammock" to the trees. Landon had criticized Rowan's trees for being coconut-less, so they taped a few cotton balls onto the gloves to represent them. It looked pretty pathetic but that only made it funnier, in Rowan's opinion.
There was a knock at the door and Becky stuck her head in. "Landon? I'm here to take you to get your x-rays. What on Earth is that?"
She furrowed her brow at the sculpture. Rowan regarded her with brows raised, an innocent expression on his face. "It's the Crabby-bean," he said very seriously. "You couldn't tell?"
Becky clearly didn't know whether to agree, or become a critic herself. She just snorted in an unladylike manner that was pretty typical for her and shook her head. "Come on," she said kindly to the little boy and his mother. "I'll show you the way."
Landon looked reluctant to leave their masterpiece behind, but Rowan took it and set it on the counter. "Don't worry," he said, "Becky's going to bring you right back to this room once we're done taking pictures of your wrist. It'll be waiting here for you."
That seemed to reassure Landon, and he and his mother left with Becky to head to radiology while Rowan went to check in on another patient.
Rowan Murphy
13 years ago
Rowan put the films up against the light box in the exam room. "That's your wrist," he explained to Landon. Well, technically it was his forearm, given that the broken bone was actually located there. "That's your radius, and your ulna." He indicated on his own wrist which was which. "See this little line here? That tells me you fractured your radius. That's why it hurts so much when you try to turn your arm over."
Rowan smiled at Becky as she returned with a tray of fiberglass splinting materials. He was glad she had called him in here, but the fracture in Landon's arm was definitely consistent with his jumping off the stairs and landing with an impact onto a pile of badly-placed pillows, rather than the spiral fracture he had expected to find with a case of abuse. Granted, it didn't always work out that way. Abusive parents didn't always cause spiral fractures in children and landing on pillows didn't always cause torus fractures. They were all clues that told a story though and in this case all the details added up.
"I'm going to put a splint on your arm," Rowan said, the words meant for Landon, but his eyes meeting Emma's. "You're going to be able to take it off to shower but I want you to wear it all the time aside from that for the next two weeks."
He waited for Landon's mother to nod before continuing. "After that two weeks, you can take it off twice a day and do some light exercises. Like this."
Rowan demonstrated, flexing his fingers gently, balling his hand into a loose fist, and wiggling each finger. "No more than that for another two weeks. After that, I'll see you again and we'll take another picture to make sure everything healed as it should. But I don't see any displacement or anything else to suggest there will be a problem."
He looked down sternly at Landon. "And no more flying."
Landon nodded. "I'll leave that to the people in the planes," he said.
The little boy asked question after question while Rowan made busy building a fiberglass splint that fit his arm exactly, with Becky's help. Rowan answered each one patiently and thoroughly. He never glossed over an answer in the assumption that the little boy was 'too young' to understand it or any such thing. He hated that; kids were brighter than most adults gave them credit for. Okay, so jumping off the staircase wasn't Landon's greatest idea but he'd learned his lesson! Rowan had faith in his continued learning curve.
When he'd finished he sent them both out the door with their hastily-constructed model and well-wishes for a good vacation. Then he looked down at his phone and grinned at the picture he'd taken of their island ham-egg. With a tap he sent it to Cris with the accompanying text, "See? I told you I was busy but at least they gave us time for arts and crafts!"
Slipping his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs he turned to meet the next nurse with a new case to find three of them converging upon him at once. Rowan waved his hands helplessly but they came at him anyway. Well. It was their job, after all.
He juggled three clipboards in his arms and listened to three different cases at once before determining which was the most urgent and heading that way, glad, very glad, for the light amused tenor that entered his head right then. Rowan briefly wondered what he'd done before there was a Cris to make his nights so much more tolerable. He would have to think of an appropriate way to express his gratitude... very soon.
For now, the famous Mrs. Wilson had finally made an appearance and Rowan was looking forward to finding out if she did, in fact, like to water ski.
((ooc: Rowan out))
Rowan smiled at Becky as she returned with a tray of fiberglass splinting materials. He was glad she had called him in here, but the fracture in Landon's arm was definitely consistent with his jumping off the stairs and landing with an impact onto a pile of badly-placed pillows, rather than the spiral fracture he had expected to find with a case of abuse. Granted, it didn't always work out that way. Abusive parents didn't always cause spiral fractures in children and landing on pillows didn't always cause torus fractures. They were all clues that told a story though and in this case all the details added up.
"I'm going to put a splint on your arm," Rowan said, the words meant for Landon, but his eyes meeting Emma's. "You're going to be able to take it off to shower but I want you to wear it all the time aside from that for the next two weeks."
He waited for Landon's mother to nod before continuing. "After that two weeks, you can take it off twice a day and do some light exercises. Like this."
Rowan demonstrated, flexing his fingers gently, balling his hand into a loose fist, and wiggling each finger. "No more than that for another two weeks. After that, I'll see you again and we'll take another picture to make sure everything healed as it should. But I don't see any displacement or anything else to suggest there will be a problem."
He looked down sternly at Landon. "And no more flying."
Landon nodded. "I'll leave that to the people in the planes," he said.
The little boy asked question after question while Rowan made busy building a fiberglass splint that fit his arm exactly, with Becky's help. Rowan answered each one patiently and thoroughly. He never glossed over an answer in the assumption that the little boy was 'too young' to understand it or any such thing. He hated that; kids were brighter than most adults gave them credit for. Okay, so jumping off the staircase wasn't Landon's greatest idea but he'd learned his lesson! Rowan had faith in his continued learning curve.
When he'd finished he sent them both out the door with their hastily-constructed model and well-wishes for a good vacation. Then he looked down at his phone and grinned at the picture he'd taken of their island ham-egg. With a tap he sent it to Cris with the accompanying text, "See? I told you I was busy but at least they gave us time for arts and crafts!"
Slipping his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs he turned to meet the next nurse with a new case to find three of them converging upon him at once. Rowan waved his hands helplessly but they came at him anyway. Well. It was their job, after all.
He juggled three clipboards in his arms and listened to three different cases at once before determining which was the most urgent and heading that way, glad, very glad, for the light amused tenor that entered his head right then. Rowan briefly wondered what he'd done before there was a Cris to make his nights so much more tolerable. He would have to think of an appropriate way to express his gratitude... very soon.
For now, the famous Mrs. Wilson had finally made an appearance and Rowan was looking forward to finding out if she did, in fact, like to water ski.
((ooc: Rowan out))