It wasn't that Drew hated hospitals, in fact he rather liked them. They were busy and bustling, and he spent enough time in them he understood that all the bodies and noises were part of large, organized mass of effort to make people healthy.
He just wasn't fond of spending time in them as a patient.
He looked around the triage area, not even able to see Dave as a curtain had them separated from each other. "Hey," he said in a voice slightly louder than conversational level.
"Hey yourself," he got back, Dave sounding surly.
"How much longer, do you think?" Drew asked, knowing full well that Dave wouldn't have any more idea than he did.
"Dunno. The doctor said they just wanted to keep an eye on us for a bit."
Drew sighed and Dave fell silent behind the curtain. That was the rub of it--there wasn't even anything wrong with them. They'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how one looked at it. Drew was looking at it from the perspective of a fireman just doing his job, clearing a warehouse that had gone up, and suddenly being confronted with large barrels with a hazardous material sign on them.
They hadn't known the barrels were there, nor what was in them. They'd evacuated, the chief had gone ballistic on the owners for improperly storing god knows what, and the whole team had been trooped down the hospital to get checked out.
"They didn't even blow," Drew said for the fourth time in three hours.
"Yeah, yeah. And we'll be let go as soon as the doctor's confirm we're fine."
Drew snorted. He was fine, and if he wasn't, sitting in an open triage unit wasn't going to help any. "What do you think of that Dr. Campbell?" he asked. "Kind of young, yeah?"
Dave growled. "I'm sure he knows exactly what he's doing. And he's probably your age--not exactly a spring chicken."
"Hey," Drew protested. "I'm not even thirty yet, old man."
"Forty ain't old, and shut up. The doctor is fine. We're fine. And any minute now, that kid of a doctor is going to show up and tell us we can leave."
)
