Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital was in ruins. No, it was more like the once vibrant hospital was dead. The windows that were left intact were blown out, looking like empty sockets staring out at a ruined landscape. The walls that remained standing were damaged and resembled something out of a war movie. Devastation was everywhere, and as Wilson wandered in and around parts of what was once a thriving hospital, his expression grew darker by every minute that passed. He was older now, and it showed in the gray hairs at his temples, and the slower, shuffling movement that had become his walk. This was never supposed to be how things ended; he and his colleagues and friends (or friend) were supposed to grow old and go into retirement together. Now that was never going to happen.
He'd heard the grim details numbering the injured and the dead. No one he spoke to wanted to admit the truth, but when he finally learned it, it galled him. The person responsible for planting the bombs that destroyed the hospital and took so many lives was a relative of one of his patients who hadn't made it despite his best efforts. It was his fault the hospital was gone, taking with it colleagues and friends alike. At first, Wilson thought that maybe if he'd just been there, he could have defused the situation by reaching out to the killer before he became a killer, and no amount of talking with professionals and law enforcement officers could change his mind.
This was his fault; he destroyed the hospital and killed and injured those people as surely as he would have if it had been him behind the plot. Those were the thoughts that followed him as he made his way slowly through the ruin of the hospital.
As he traveled through the rooms he once knew, rooms that used to be full of life and laughter and yes, yelling and arguing, he caught snippets of the people who worked on those rooms. Everything was singed and burned by the resulting fires, but he could still recognize bits and pieces of things: a melted, twisted necklace that belonged to Lisa Cuddy (what was she doing there after she resigned?); a halfway melted ID badge belonging to Eric Foreman; a twisted up pen that Robert Chase used to write with; and a pair of shoes that somehow escaped unscathed that looked vaguely like something Chris Taub would wear. And finally, in the last room that Wilson visited, he saw things that gave a finality to the terrible event: what remained of a melted Rubik's cube and a badly burned cane. That meant his friend was gone, and for real this time. There was no coming back from this.
He'd been keeping it together up till then, and the sight of the cube and the cane was enough to cause a shift. The increasingly dark expression that had been on his face broke into one of outright rage and grief brought on by the hellhole he was now witnessing.
What was the point now? The hospital was gone; the only friend he had was dead. There was nothing left, no reason to keep going. The unfairness of it all ate at him like- well, like a cancer. He'd survived his own cancer, but it seemed like the universe was still giving him the big middle finger, taking everything and everyone he cared about in some kind of sick exchange for his health.
Oh, there were other hospitals, other oncology departments desperate for skilled, experienced doctors, but he wanted none of that anymore. The world as he knew it was over, and there was no place for him in it anymore. He could take the easy escape, and for a moment, he thought about it and wished he could join those who'd died, but that was the problem: it was too easy.
Someone had to pay for the carnage, the devastation, and the ruin. Someone had to offer penance. Someone had to go on living although the entire world as he knew it had gone to hell. And since everyone else was gone, that someone was him.
cw: suicidal ideation
He'd heard the grim details numbering the injured and the dead. No one he spoke to wanted to admit the truth, but when he finally learned it, it galled him. The person responsible for planting the bombs that destroyed the hospital and took so many lives was a relative of one of his patients who hadn't made it despite his best efforts. It was his fault the hospital was gone, taking with it colleagues and friends alike. At first, Wilson thought that maybe if he'd just been there, he could have defused the situation by reaching out to the killer before he became a killer, and no amount of talking with professionals and law enforcement officers could change his mind.
This was his fault; he destroyed the hospital and killed and injured those people as surely as he would have if it had been him behind the plot. Those were the thoughts that followed him as he made his way slowly through the ruin of the hospital.
As he traveled through the rooms he once knew, rooms that used to be full of life and laughter and yes, yelling and arguing, he caught snippets of the people who worked on those rooms. Everything was singed and burned by the resulting fires, but he could still recognize bits and pieces of things: a melted, twisted necklace that belonged to Lisa Cuddy (what was she doing there after she resigned?); a halfway melted ID badge belonging to Eric Foreman; a twisted up pen that Robert Chase used to write with; and a pair of shoes that somehow escaped unscathed that looked vaguely like something Chris Taub would wear. And finally, in the last room that Wilson visited, he saw things that gave a finality to the terrible event: what remained of a melted Rubik's cube and a badly burned cane. That meant his friend was gone, and for real this time. There was no coming back from this.
He'd been keeping it together up till then, and the sight of the cube and the cane was enough to cause a shift. The increasingly dark expression that had been on his face broke into one of outright rage and grief brought on by the hellhole he was now witnessing.
What was the point now? The hospital was gone; the only friend he had was dead. There was nothing left, no reason to keep going. The unfairness of it all ate at him like- well, like a cancer. He'd survived his own cancer, but it seemed like the universe was still giving him the big middle finger, taking everything and everyone he cared about in some kind of sick exchange for his health.
Oh, there were other hospitals, other oncology departments desperate for skilled, experienced doctors, but he wanted none of that anymore. The world as he knew it was over, and there was no place for him in it anymore. He could take the easy escape, and for a moment, he thought about it and wished he could join those who'd died, but that was the problem: it was too easy.
Someone had to pay for the carnage, the devastation, and the ruin. Someone had to offer penance. Someone had to go on living although the entire world as he knew it had gone to hell. And since everyone else was gone, that someone was him.