Chapter Text
Disclaimer: The E! characters do not belong to me. They have been borrowed strictly for fun and not for fortune.
"Godzilla and The Smog Monster"
By Ross
Chapter One
A police squad car pulled up to Rampart General's Emergency entrance.
Its driver flicked its headlights and revolving overheads off, and then piled out to pull its left rear door open.
"Get the cuffs off 'im, will yah, Mike!" one of its two passengers requested, as he came backing out of the car. "I'm gonna go get us a gurney!"
"Forget the gurney, Nick!" Mike protested, sounding every bit as unhappy as he looked. "Let's just drag the druggie inside, drop 'im, an' go ba-" he stopped, right in mid-rant.
His 'Florence Nightingale' partner had already disappeared behind the hospital's sliding glass doors.
Mike pulled a key from his shirt pocket and reluctantly removed the handcuffs from their no-longer-rowdy prisoner's wrists. He gave the junkie, who was sprawled across their squad car's back seat, a disgusted sneer. "Lousy hypes!" he griped, sounding every bit as disgusted as he looked.
Nick returned, less than a minute later, with two orderlies and a gurney.
Their unconscious prisoner was pulled from the squad car, placed on the stretcher, and then wheeled inside.
Nick followed the gurney as it was guided off down a hall.
His peeved partner headed over to the ER's Admitting Desk.
"What d'yah got for us?" the pretty young thing behind the counter inquired of the police officer standing before her.
Mike gave the girl a once over and smiled. He liked what he saw. "Huh? Oh. Yeah. We found a junkie in an alley. Looks like he must a' fell and hit his head."
The pretty lady placed a form in her typewriter. "Name?"
"Alexander Michaelson," the cop told her with a grin. "But my friends just call me Mike."
The girl gave the flirting fellow an icy, un-amused, impatient glare.
The officer's grin vanished. "John Doe!" he smartly replied.
The look on the young woman's pretty face immediately switched from disappointed to disgusted. "Not another one! We've had five 'John Does' tonight already!"
Mike smiled sympathetically at the girl across the counter. "Sounds like you hate John Does about as much as I hate hypes."
Nick stood in the busy ER's main corridor, staring down at the body on the gurney beside him. The officer watched, with growing alarm, as the rhythmic rising and falling of their prisoner's chest suddenly became somewhat erratic. He latched onto the arm of a passing nurse. "Excuse me, but do you think you could take a look at this guy?"
The nurse exhaled an impatient gasp. "What's wrong with him?"
"I think he's dying!" Nick exclaimed, giving voice to his alarm. He read the nurse's nameplate: Rita Moore, LPN. "Look, Ms Moore, I ain't really sure what's wrong with him. We found him crawlin' around in an alley. He's got a lot a' needle marks on his arms, like a junkie has. Maybe he's OD'ed?"
The woman's face filled with disgust.
"We think he must a' hit his head on something," Nick quickly continued. "He's got a bloody nose and there's some kind a' fluid coming out of his left ear here...See?"
Rita obligingly glanced down at the gurney. She saw its occupant's blood-streaked face for the first time-and did a beautiful double-take.
"Something wrong?" Nick asked, noting that Rita suddenly looked a little rattled.
Ms. Moore couldn't seem to raise her gaze from their prisoner. "Huh? Uhhh...No. No-o. It's just...he looks an awful lot like a guy that works around here! What's his name?"
"He wouldn't tell us...and we couldn't find any I.D."
"The exam rooms are all full right now," the nurse numbly informed him. "But I'll see if I can find you a doctor..." The woman began backing down the hall, her eyes still riveted upon the familiar face of the fellow on the gurney. She bumped into another nurse. "Helen, you wanna see the winner of the John Gage look alike contest?" She pulled Helen up to the John Doe's stretcher. "The police just brought him in...found 'im crawlin' around in an alley...claim he's a junkie."
Helen's reaction to the young man on the gurney was identical to Rita's.
Ms. Moore looked smug. "Amazing, huh?"
Helen nodded numbly. "He could be his twin!"
Rita finally turned and hurried off down the hall, to see about fetching a doctor.
Helen stopped a passing orderly. "Ricky, who does this guy look like, to you?"
Ricky glanced down at the guy on the gurney. "One of the Fire Department paramedics?"
Helen nodded. "John Gage!"
"Right!" Ricky concurred, with a snap of his fingers. "John Gage!" He turned and called another orderly over. "Hey! Marty! Come here a sec'! You gotta see this!"
Nick stared at the gawking hospital staffers in complete and utter disbelief.
Mike came dodging his way down the corridor. "C'mon! Let's go! Our shift ended at midnight!"
"I'm not leaving here til I can get somebody to take a look at this guy!" his partner announced.
Mike was about to protest, when he noticed that a crowd was gathering around them. "What's goin' on?"
"Seems our John Doe strongly resembles someone who works around here." Nick gave the crowd of onlookers an angry glare. "And-whoever it is-he must be the only one who does!"
The huddled hospital people took the officer's hint and began to disperse.
Mike gave his fellow officer a rather angry glare of his own. "You won't keep Maggie waiting twenty minutes, to have a friendly little drink with your partner. But you'll keep her waiting half the night, for some lousy junkie?"
The guy on the gurney began choking just then, and saved his partner from having to respond.
Nick rolled their John Doe's head further to one side. "He stands about as much chance of dying in this corridor, as he did back in that alley!"
Mike glanced down at the gurney and saw that blood was, once again, streaming from the corner of their prisoner's mouth. "Next time, you'll just have to phone ahead-like the paramedics do. Then maybe they'll reserve a room for you..."
Ms. Moore had found every treatment room already occupied and every doctor extremely busy. Treatment Two's occupant had been sitting up, however. Now, anybody who could sit up while being treated might be able to wait...
Rita stepped back up to Exam Two and poked her head through the door. "Dr. Early, the police have a John Doe O.D. out in the hall who is hemorrhaging from his nose and mouth. He's also got cerebral-spinal fluid draining from his left ear."
Joe Early was in the process of stitching up a six-inch gash in a young teenaged girl's leg. He stopped, right in mid-stitch, and turned to the doorway. "What makes you think he's an O.D.?"
"The officer says there is evidence of needle tracks on his arms."
"Are there any obvious signs of head trauma?"
"He has a small cut on his left temple and there is some slight bleeding."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah. You wouldn't believe how much this guy looks like John Gage!"
The doctor arched an eyebrow, but then immediately dismissed the thought. "THEY say everybody has a double-somewhere in the world."
"Still, it's rather unnerving. Kind a' spooky, even..."
"Miss Moore, would it be asking too much for you to get me a set of vitals?"
"Yes, doctor! I mean, no, doctor! I'll get them right away!" The woman's head disappeared from the doorway.
The doctor sighed and went back to his sewing.
Joe tied off his last suture and turned to the nurse who'd been assisting him. "Bandage this for me, will you, Carol?"
The nurse nodded and reached for a sterile compress.
Early flashed his completely silent patient a warm smile. "Twenty-six stitches...and you haven't made a sound. You are a very brave young woman!"
The girl returned his smile. "Just a little road rash. No big deal."
"I'm recommending that you stay off your brother's motorcycle for the next few weeks, to give that leg of yours a chance to heal."
The girl moaned and groaned and suddenly looked as though she were about to cry.
Joe suppressed another smile and then turned to have a little talk with one of his patient's anxious parents.
Rita finished taking the guy on the gurney's vital signs. "This man needs a treatment room right no-ow!" she determined and hurried off down the hall.
Joe was still speaking to his 'road rash' patient's anxious mother, when an even more anxious Miss Moore suddenly came barging into the exam room and began blurting out her findings.
The condition of that John Doe O.D. the police had brought in was critical!
"Get him in here-STAT!" Early ordered, sounding somewhat anxious himself. He turned and helped the room's current occupant back into her wheelchair. "Remember, Pam...no more motorcycles for the next few weeks."
The girl blinked her tear-filled eyes and frowned. "Bummer!"
Joe rolled the wheelchair out of the way, as two orderlies suddenly burst into the exam room, guiding a gurney.
The body on the gurney was transferred to a treatment table and the empty stretcher was quickly wheeled from the room...along with the girl in the wheelchair.
Joe turned to the two nurses who were there and began barking out orders.
"What's this about somebody looking like John Gage?" Cheryl Norquist asked, as she came rushing into the room.
"Never mind tha-at!" Joe told her. "Get an IV and some oxygen going!"
Nurse Norquist just stood there-frozen in place. The woman was gazing down at their patient, wearing a look of absolute shock and disbelief. In fact, for a moment, it appeared as though she might pass out.
Early latched onto the woozy woman's elbow and steadied her, before following her gaze-to the body on the treatment table. Joe suddenly felt a bit stunned, himself.
Their patient's pallid face was streaked with mud and blood, but still and all, the guy could've been a dead ringer for-. The doctor stopped in mid-thought and stiffened.
Joe lifted the un-tucked tails of their patient's dirty, white dress shirt.
The young man was wearing an empty paramedic's assessment kit, and a solid silver belt buckle with J-O-H-N engraved upon it.
Early ripped J-O-H-N's shirt open and stared down at the surgical scar on his abdomen-the scar he had made when he removed the paramedic's ruptured spleen! The physician glanced up, his face filled with rage. "This is John Gage!" he bellowed. "What the hell's happened to him?"
TBC