Behind Closed Doors

'Personal Questions'

"We've got another one."

Piper hated the emergency room, especially at night. Very rarely were there good cases. Usually, she was stuck with drunken idiots who needed the poison pumped out of their veins, cuts and bruises, or, even better, the obsessive parents and their screaming, snotty child. On a good day, one of these cases might turn out to be more serious than it looked. Piper remembered one of her colleagues treating a man who had come in with what seemed like the common cold, only to discover he also had a tumour growing in his brain. As sick as it sounded, those were the exciting moments in medicine.

Grabbing the chart a nurse handed to her, she skimmed over the notes, and refrained from rolling her eyes. Perfect. Another waste of sperm who offered nothing to society, and would rather waste away her life injecting drugs into her body. How many had this been now? Six patients in the past four hours had been sent in, with symptoms of overdosing. Fortunately, this patient wasn't all too severe. She was lucky; all that was required was rest, she needed to drink, eat something, but then she could go. The girl was just taking up room, and someone who had actual purpose in life might appear and need her bed.

Several months back, when Piper started out as an intern, she wouldn't have thought like this. Being a doctor was everything; the adrenaline and rush to help people was everything she could ever want. Slowly, though, the months of constant work, the never ending beeping of pages, and the continuous cycle of treating the same patient after the next, managed to distort the young doctor slightly. Her fiancé had noticed; he claimed she smiles less, and whenever she did come home from work, which was rare in itself, work was all she talked about.

Reaching her patient's bed, she didn't even look at her as she examined the patient's chart.

"You're lucky. It's not common for people like you to enter the hospital, and come out still alive."

"Aren't you just a ray of sunshine kid?"

Piper glanced up. She was surprised to discover the girl, no a woman, was older than she thought. The black glasses shadowed her eyes somewhat, and Piper found her appearance quite startling. Pale skin, raven black hair, around 5"10. She was sitting upright and showed no symptoms of suffering an overdose of drugs. In fact, she was smiling at her, a funny glint in her eyes, brows raised. She looked well. Piper frowned at her, confused. "Uh, Miss... Alex...." She glanced at the chart, "...Vaus-ey...?"

"Vause." She chuckled. "I honestly don't feel all that safe around a doctor who can't read my own name"

"It's been a long day," Piper sighed.

"Ican tell. You look like like shit."

"Thanks."Piper lowered the chart. "Since you ODed, we need to keep you in for a few more hours..."

"ODed?" Alex frowned, the smile was gone. "I didn't OD. God no."

"Well, it says so on the chart."

"Then your chart is fucking wrong."

Piper rolled her eyes. "Who's the doctor here? Your chart clearly states that you ODed approximately around 17:34 today... or yesterday. In your own home. Although, frankly, I don't expect you to remember that do you?"

"Hang on a minute, kid." Alex straightened a little more, and there was an edge of confidence about her which almost made Piper shrink back. "I don't give a shit if you're the doctor or not. Big fucking woop for you, by the way. But you just have a chart...I know I didn't OD. Go get that chart checked on, because it's not right. Or, maybe, your brain is so fried from all the work you've been doing you just can't read anymore. You certainly proved that when trying to pronounce my flipping last name."