blunt force trauma to the heart || [OPEN]

He came into the light of the ward and Nora felt herself smile slightly. Adam McGinn. His hand was outstretched in front of her, holding the vile that she had requested. For a second, her hands wouldn’t move to grab it, but then she regained control and clumsily dropped her pen and took what he was offering her, “Good evening. Why am I not entirely surprised that it’s you?” She asked, putting the vile into the test-tube holder in front of her as she spun her chair around. She knew to look for the damage that he had done and began carefully examining him.

“You know they can treat these injuries in the infirmary at Dauntless, Mr. McGinn?” She smiled slightly as she looked him up and down. She, of course, understood the reason that he often made an appearance in the Erudite Sector. And even acknowledging the fact brought a blush to her cheeks - Nora was not very comfortable with the idea of someone coming all the way just to see her, however the company was nice. A slight change of pace for the both of them when it came right down to it and Nora was happy to see him. When he appeared battered and beaten at her doorstep, she would clean him up while they caught up. It had become a sort of ritual for the both of them over the years. Whether in passing or in close contact, Nora and Adam somehow always ended up in this place. A sort of friendship between the pair of them - or at least a mutual understanding. Because even though they had chosen different paths and factions, they were bound together by their births in Candor and their childhood...however traumatizing it might have been for Nora.

Carefully she touched his hand and brought it closer to the light so she could examine it, “Who was it this time? Another i-i-” Nora realized she was stuttering and moved his hand a little closer as she noted the dislocation of his second and third metacarpals, “Another initiate?” Her grey eyes flitted up to his eye - which would undoubtedly need to be mended as well. Of course, she could have him out of here in a few minutes if she really focused, but the blonde needed a break from the paperwork. She let go of his hand and closed the file that was on the table, staring at Abigail’s name for a bit too long before she motioned toward the examination table. Nora stood up from her desk and walked in that direction as she gathered a few supplies, “Catch me up since last time, Mr. McGinn. How is Dauntless besides brutality and blood?”

Nora watched as the rambunctious gentleman pointed at her head and expressed her mental superiority to him. The blonde had a hard time keeping a straight face during his amusing flattery - Adam had never been particularly eloquent, but since he had gone Dauntless, there was more of a refined manner of his speech. He didn’t resort back to petty insults, but instead used his words in a different way entirely, “Women’s intuition is something that psychologists made up, Mr. McGinn. Personal empathy at it’s roots, if you’re curious.” He moved his eyebrows in an upward direction when he mentioned that she had perhaps been hoping to see him and she suppressed a small laugh - hope wasn’t exactly the way that she would put it, Nora liked to consider herself above such silly emotional ties to the gentleman...but she was pleasantly surprised that he was here. He took off the gauze pad and Nora bit down on her lip - yes certainly stitches or something of the sort.

As they moved toward the examination table and Adam sat down, she saw that he deliberately winked at her with his words. Immediately her cheeks stung with more blush and she was certain that she was bright red at this point, “They’re trained in combat wounds - which, judging by the gash on your eyebrow - is exactly what we’ve got here,” Of course, she already knew that it was from a fight; she had known Adam long enough to understand his way of life, “Surprised that the D-d-d-” Her fingertips were running over the skin above his eyebrow, pulling his forehead back slightly so she could see how deep the gash was, “Dauntless even converse at all. Here I thought they just grunted at one another and clubbed each other until kingdom come.” Of course, she was joking. She had the utmost respect for the other factions, despite the fact that she didn’t entirely understand their fixation on beating each other up every chance they got.

Taking a step back as she listened to him carry on about his standards, she filled a small bowl with water and then grabbed a small sponge from the table. First things first she needed to sanitize the wounds. Then - judging by the clotting of his forehead wound - she was going to have to break the skin again in order to sew him up with minimal scaring. She dropped a few splashes of the sanitization serum into the bowl and the liquid turned a bright blue in response, “Diablo. Devil? What an odd name to choose. I suppose, however, your faction has reputation to uphold. Sit.” She instructed as she brought the bowl back over to him and dipped the sponge into the solution, “Reminds me of a Candor who couldn’t wait to get himself into trouble all the time,” Grey eyes lifted from the bowl as she looked up at him, locking eyes for but a moment before she raised the sponge to his face. She listened to him talk about their newest initiates and couldn’t get the girl’s face out of her head - her pale body and twisted limbs, cuts and bruises, contusions, the way her eyes stared into space as she lay dead on the table. Sometimes she thought the Dauntless pushed them too hard, “Better be careful, they might put you out of a job, Mr. McGinn.”

He asked about Erudite and she smiled - of course he thought her life to be ‘boring.’ it was typical of the way they saw each other. Just as she failed to understand the draw of Dauntless, he failed to see the allure of Erudite, “Examinations, paperwork, working on a faster acting simulation serum. They have me perfecting a few other serums as well.” She smiled as she lifted his brow with her fingertips and dabbed along the edges of the wound with her sponge as she cleaned him. Their faces were close as she concentrated on his first injury, “Did you know anything about the girl that didn’t make the jump?” She inquired as casually as she could...which for Nora was about as casual as running into a brick wall.

Nor. She liked it when he called her that. She also liked how blissfully unaware Adam was of the psychological world. Sometimes it was nice to be around someone who wasn’t a complete know-it-all. Nora had always been book smart, but Adam was a different type of smart entirely: He was street smart. Part of the reason he had ended up in Dauntless, no doubt. Her fingertips moved over the edges of the wound, wiping off more of the dried blood as she progressed, biting down ever so slightly on the corner of her lip in concentration. She treated countless patients a day, but none of them with injuries to the extent that she had seen on Adam. He was constantly coming in with some horrifying battle wound that she stitched up for him.

She laughed when he mentioned that he could have gotten the cut in the parlor, she had nearly forgotten he was a dauntless tattooer, “I sincerely doubt you fell down and hit your eyebrow upwards at 57 degree angle, Mr. McGinn.” Of course he was teasing, but the only way in which she knew how to tease back was to use her intelligence as a sort of joke around him, “That kind of injury could only be the direct result of an uppercut to your face,” That also meant that Diablo was at least as tall as Adam, but she didn’t feel the need to exhaust him with her deductive reasoning. He knew that she was intelligent and she knew that he was courageous, she felt no need in rubbing in their differences when they shared a common bond in their birth-faction, “How many tattoos have you accumulated these days?”

Knives and guns. Nora really didn’t understand them. Sure, they were necessary...but she just didn’t get it. She lived in a world where she could talk and reason her way out of anything and everything, the Dauntless always seemed to revert to force and violence. A tingle went up her spine and she knew to drop the subject in her head - it was already making her uncomfortable, “What do they call you in Dauntless, Mr. McGinn?” She had never know him as anything other than Mr. McGinn or Adam, and she had never bothered to ask until this moment when she realized that they were allowed to take completely different personas when they went into Dauntless.

“She was one of ours, yes.” Abigail Calderone’s parents were very upset about the whole thing. And - being that she worked in Medical with Abby’s father - the man had made a special request that Nora look into her death. As her superior, she had little to no choice in the matter and that was the reason she had found herself in the Dauntless compound this morning, checking out the body of a girl that should have never died in the first place. He correctly identified her file on the desk and Nora turned to look at it and then turned back at him, raising both of her eyebrows, “Someone’s curiosity is going to get them in trouble,” She breathed, but smiled at him just the same. It wasn’t a secret that she was investigating, “Yes, That’s Abigail’s file. Her parents are very upset.” She told it like it was, no flowering, no glossing over it. The Doctor and Mrs. Calderone didn’t think their daughter should have been anywhere near Dauntless, “They’re claiming Abby would have never shown aptitude for Dauntless. But it was her choice, regardless. They're still claiming foul-play,” She had finished cleaning the wound and examined it. Yes - she was going to have to open it up again and stitch it for minimal scaring. Picking up a small scalpel she looked at him apologetically.

For a moment, Nora took a step back and pressed her fingertips to her lips, trying her hardest not to laugh. Of course, to anyone except an Erudite, this would have sounded like a plausible angle of the hit, but she knew better. It was just a bit too high for the injury that he had sustained, “You would have to be about an inch and a half shorter, but yes,” the blonde giggled as she shook her head and then returned to cleaning his wound.

As soon as she saw him pulling up the edges of his shirt, she felt her cheeks sting with a blush. Nora had never been comfortable around people of the opposite sex...or with any type of sexuality in general. Undoubtedly, she felt herself attracted to males, but she wasn’t quite comfortable with the whole thing...as Adam surely knew. Her bright eyes stared down for a quick moment, watching the muscles of his stomach move along with every breath that he took. Quickly she made herself think of the muscles of the stomach, counting them in her head so she wouldn’t look like such a fool: Rectus abdominis, external abdominal oblique, internal abdonimal oblique, how much did he work out outside of his little fighting ring? Nora! She scolded herself and immediately shook away her thoughts. Immediately she brought her eyes back up to meet his and forced a smile onto her lips, “Careful. Surely you can count them for yourself. I’m hardly a qualified tattoo-appreciator,” (although there was a small part of her that would admit that Adam’s tattoos were fascinating) She breathed and bit down on her lip as she ran the surgical knife down the length of the cut, opening it back up and exposing fresh blood to the surface.

Now that it had been reopened, she had to work quickly to sew it back together. Her fingertips reached the needle and the surgical thread and she began moving to stitch his eyebrow back into one coherent piece. She was so used to calling him Mr. McGinn - the way that she referred to most of her patients that hearing him call himself Ghost was such a strange moment for her. Busily working on stitching his skin back together she nodded slightly, “A little frightening, isn’t it? Everyone goes home beaten and bruised and says a Ghost beat them to a pulp?” She smiled ever so slightly, eyes never leaving the stitches that she was putting in, “I think I’ll stick to Mr. McGinn.” The stitches were coming along nicely, his eyebrow nearly looking back together. With the advanced healing serum, he would be back together and rearing to go in no time.

Her fingertips stopped putting in stitches at about the eighth one, and she carefully knotted the string and clipped it off at the end. She remained close to him as she spoke, though, almost fearing that someone was going to hear them talking about Abigail and raise more questions, “I certainly don’t believe that she was pushed; the wounds look just the same as any other fall and there’s no bruising to suggest that she was grabbed or pushed prior to her fall. They called me in to examine the body this morning,” Taking a step back, she eyed him carefully, making sure that everything matched up, “Do you not believe it?” She asked, cocking her head slightly to the side. This had been the first time that they were claiming the changed tests had ended in death, but she had been seeing a influx of factionless initiates for the past two years.

He was all sewed up, his eyebrow now ready to be completely healed. Reaching over, she poured a bit of pain reliving serum into a cup and handed it toward him. It would ease the pain and quicken the healing - a concoction that she had been working on herself. Humming absentmindedly to herself, she sat down on the examination bench as well, right next to Adam as she looked out over the empty hospital before her. Sometimes it got lonely in the late nights - McGinn was a nice change of pace for the young doctor; he reminded her of another life that she had lived, but most importantly, he always seemed to want to keep her busy. She swung her blue-pump-clad feet back and forth as she sat there, kind of enjoying the silence between them.

“Maybe you could at least buy me d-d-d-” She had been about to say that he should buy her drinks or something of the sort before asking her to do something so preposterous like counting his tattoos, but she simply couldn’t get the words out and thusly gave up on the whole prospect. Rolling her eyes, she tried not to get too embarrassed about the subject matter, or the fact that she couldn’t even get her words to come out of her mouth. There was still a part of her that was the self-conscious Candor that censored herself so much she felt as if she couldn’t speak at all...at least, that was the way she felt sometimes.

He had a point, generally speaking, she was quite formal. She did so out of habit, always calling the rest of the Erudite Sector by their last names and proper titles. That was the life in the Medical Ward - there was a certain professionalism that accompanied her job, “Adam.” The name sounded foreign on her tongue - He tried to get her to use it every time he came into the Erudite sector, but she normally refused. Tonight, however, there was no one else around. She didn’t have to be the prim and proper doctor that she normally was - this was more of a house-call for her anyway, “I would say you can call me Nora, but you seem to have no problem doing so, Adam.” She laughed ever so slightly and thought about pushing him with her shoulder, but froze her body, instead.

She folded her arms over her chest as they sat there, enjoying the fact that she had someone to talk to and wasn’t alone tonight. Sometimes being alone with her thoughts - especially with the ones about Abigail Calderone - made for one antsy Nora, “But they’re making a choice based on the power of suggestion - isn’t that what it is?” Nora suddenly furrowed her brow as she thought of it. By telling these children that they could be Dauntless when they were meant for Amity or Candor was setting them up for failure. Every child wasn’t to believe that they will add up to their greatest potential, and if the test was indeed rigged, then they were being set up against the odds, “A bunch of factionless, that’s what they get.” She realized that he had a very valid point. Sometimes she was glad that she had Adam - he saw things in a different way than she did, "A bunch of factionless."

“Because, if it tasted like orange juice we would have thousands of citizens addicted to pain killers and drugs.” She muttered, trying her hardest not to laugh. Adam always had the strangest ideas about what was supposed to be in life. She found his outlook on life so different than those presented in Erudite and she was intrigued by it. Neither of them were the children they had been in Candor, but neither of them were quite the adults they were supposed to be in their respective Factions. After all, how often could someone say that they took time out of their schedule to deal with a perpetually injured Dauntless who came to visit them at the late evening hours. A tiny hint of blush rushed to Nora’s cheeks.

Forty tattoos? It was no wonder that he hardly even batted an eyelash with all these injuries. She had heard that tattoos were excruciatingly painful. Then, as if he had read her mind, he offered to take her for drinks and nudged her shoulder. Nor wanted to say yes...in fact, there was a large part of her that practically demanded that she say yes, but the analytical half of her brain outweighed her fleeting fancies, “I’m not sure the rest of the Factions would be too pleased at a Dauntless and Erudite going out for drinks.” The logistics of the suggestion were unfortunately too difficult. There would be the problem of where they would go, what people would say about them, the lawful implications...in reality, they weren’t really supposed to interact with other Factions. It was an unspoken law. Once Erudite, always Erudite.

He seemed to be considering her statement as they sat there, both staring into the darkness that surrounded them in the hospital. Nora’s thoughts were a million miles a second, trying to consider the implications of her own statement., “You see? People are very open to suggestion. Erudite, Dauntless, Candor-” She shook her head. If her test had told her to stay Candor she probably wouldn’t have made it to see her twentieth birthday. There was a slight shudder at the thought. Adam rehashed her own thoughts that had been swirling around in her head. What would someone want with a bunch of Factionless, “I don’t know.” It was the honest truth - Nora had no idea what anyone would want with Factionless...nor why they were trying to create so many. So many failures in their factions...The young doctor was getting herself involved in something vastly larger than herself...and vastly more political than she had ever wanted to be involved with, “The Factionless are a financial burden on the City...so why would someone want to create an influx? People failing initiation tests...” She had to work through it analytically, but it seemed as if she was getting no where.

Waving her hand ever so slightly as if to dismiss the thoughts, Nora leaned back slightly on the examination table, looking up at the lamp that hung from the ceiling. It was the only light in the dark room - probably the only light in the entire hospital. She was the only one she knew that worked this late, “Adam-” Looking back at him, she began smiling ever so slightly. There was something about Mr. McGinn that made her stomach feel bubbly...and that was a new feeling for Nora.

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tag; Adam T. McGinn

notes; --