Chapter Text
Geralt is just hanging his white coat in the small mahogany cabinet in his office when he gets the page.
9-1-1 Pediatrics main unit; the pager reads.
His heart races, for a moment he thinks it might be Ciri, but then the page would have included her room number. There is no room number so he has nothing to go off of. He shoves himself back in his jacket, he does technically still have ten minutes left on shift but he was hoping to sneak up to visit Ciri before he had to go home and feed Roach.
No such luck, he hops on the staff elevator and rides up to the peds floor, surprised to see a nurse nervously pacing just outside the doors. She perks up when the elevator dings ans the doors open to reveal Geralt, relief clear in her eyes but not enough to eclipse the worry beneath.
“Doctor Rivia, thank goodness! This way, please,” She beckons him to follow her at a brisk pace down an Eastern corridor that Geralt recognizes as the office branch of the peds floor. They pass Pavetta’s office as well as Jaskier’s, and move a bit further down the hall. Geralt can hear voices. He recognizes Lambert speaking before he can even see him.
“Do you know where you are?... Can you tell me your name?”
A lost child perhaps, who fell and hit their head? But why is Lambert dealing with it and not Jaskier?
The very alarming response of, “Shh, he’ll hear you! He’s listening. Always listening,” comes in the very adult voice of a male. He thinks he recognizes it, and upon turning into the open doorway of the staff bathroom his suspicions are confirmed when he lays eyes on an extremely terrified looking Jaskier, curled into a ball in the corner rocking himself back and forth on the tile floors, ehes wide and cheeks streaked by tears.
“What’s going on?” Geralt asks, looking at Lambert, who is crouching a few feet from the younger doctor.
“Not too sure, think it’s a panic attack but I thought you should look at him to be sure.” Lambert stands and slips from the room to make space for Geralt to enter.
Geralt crouches in his place, tilting his head to get a better look in Jaskier’s eyes as he does so, making sure his pupils are even. “How did this start?”
“Ah,” Lambert flushes, “He may have made a comment about my parents and I may have intimidated him. I didn’t touch him though! I swear! I just got in his personal space and told him to f*ck off, that’s it!”
“Lambert!” Geralt hisses, “You can’t threaten people!”
“I didn’t! Besides he started it, I was trying to apologize!”
Geralt sighs and turns back to Jaskier, “Was he given anything?”
“Yeah, lorazepam.”
“Jaskier,” Geralt calls softly, “Lambert didn’t mean to frighten you. Can you hear me?”
“Hear, hear. He can hear us. He’s angry. Angry with Jaskier, too noisy.”
“He’s not angry, Jaskier, you hit a sore spot and he reacted poorly. He didn’t mean to.”
Jaskier opens his mouth to respond but freezes, brows furrowing.
“Who are you?” Jaskier asks, head tilting. His pupils are wide with fear but there is curiosity there.
“It’s Geralt, Jaskier. You know me. We work together at the hospital.”
Jaskiers eyes widen and he digs his heels into the tile, attempting to scramble further back, “No!” he cries, “Not back there! Don’t take me back there, please! Bad Julian, sorry Julian, naughty, naughty, naughty, won’t be naughty, please!”
“What the f*ck is happening?” Lambert breathes, watching on in very confused horror.
“He’s in a dissociative state,” Geralt moves between Jaskier and the door in case he tries to bolt, “He thinks he’s somewhere else, he thinks we are other people. He mentioned to me…hm.” Geralt clicks his tongue, wondering if he should share details given to him with Lambert. “We had a patient yesterday…”
“The kid that didn’t make it? Didn’t his parents poison him?”
“Yeah, and Jaskier was the one to recognize the signs of abuse because he said the kid reminded him of himself. I wonder if he meant more than just for looks. Maybe talking about parents then an immediate startle triggered him.”
“Ah sh*t. I didn’t know! It’s not like I’d actually hurt the kid.”
“He doesn’t know that,” Geralt glares and… yeah, okay, so he’s got a point, so what? Shut up.
“So what do we do?”
“Wait for the lorazepam to kick in. Should only be another five minutes or so. Jaskier, we aren’t going to do anything you don’t want, okay?”
“Don’t want, don’t want.” He continues to repeat the words, slower and further apart for the next several minutes, eyelids growing heavy and body slowly going limp. Geralt and Lambert keep a close eye on him but don’t approach again, only mutter soft assurances of safety every now and again until Jaskier has calmed completely, head hanging back limply with the looseness induced by the sedatives.
“Jaskier?” Geralt calls softly when the man’s eyes flutter shut a moment too long and he thinks he’s maybe fallen asleep. Bright blues meet his gaze again and he smiles small and soft at him in a gesture of peace, “Hey. I’d like to take you somewhere you can lay down. Can I take you to lay down?”
Jaskier hums, “You have pretty hair.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Geralt chuckles, leaning to hoist Jaskier into his arms. He finds the man is quite light, not alarmingly so, just enough less than expected that Geralt can tell that he is underweight. He sags limp in Geralt’s arms, thankfully not thrashing or returning to his previous state of panic at being touched or lifted.
He takes Jaskier to an empty patient room one floor down, in the neuro wing just in case, and sets him on a bed. They get a lot of strange looks walking through the halls like that but Geralt doesn’t bother minding them. If anyone asks Geralt will tell them Jaskier exhausted himself with moving to a new hospital and trying to get the whole intern thing ready too quickly for a human body to handle. Perhaps he forgot to sleep and eat and passed out from low sugar, since enough people know he struggles to maintain his levels.
“Should I call for a psych eval?” Lambert asks, which makes Geralt glare at him.
“You give him a panic attack then accuse him of being crazy?”
“I didn’t- that’s not what I meant and you know it!”
“Just go, Lambert. I’ll stay with him, find someone to cover the peds unit for the overnight then go home.”
“But I-”
“Feel guilty later.”
Lambert looks away, shoulders hunched, “Fine,” he spits, turning on his heel and stalking from the room to go find Coën. Geralt sighs, turning his attention back to Jaskier. He takes a quick set of vitals, finding his blood pressure slightly raised, which is to be expected, and his O2 stat alarmingly low. With a furrowed brow he hits the nurse call button and opens a chart on the computer, starting up a profile for the young surgeon.
Keira comes in a moment later, “Doctor Rivia? This room isn’t supposed to have a patient in it.”
“Mm,” Geralt agrees, “This is doctor Pankratz from Peds, can you please get him started on 2 litres of oxygen?”
“Oh… Oh! Of course!” She leaves to gather her supplies, Geralt enters the information he knows about Jaskier into his chart, leaving birthdate and history blank for now and moving on to entering his stats while Keira returns and gets him hooked up to oxygen.
“Can we get a blood sugar read as well, Keira?”
“Of course doctor, just a moment.”
While she gets that ready Geralt uses a penlight to test the reactivity of Jaskier’s pupils.
“2.1.”
“That’s still quite low.”
“It is.”
Geralt’s face scrunches, “His pulse ox is 89, sugars low, pupils are fine, blood pressure is elevated…”
“What happened?” Keira asks.
“Panic attack, he’s been given lorazepam but the oxygen is alarming, even with hyperventilation it shouldn’t go that low.”
“Maybe his average is low?”
“For a male his height and weight and no other health conditions? It should stay firmly above 98.”
“Do you know he has no other health conditions? He has issues maintaining blood sugar levels does he not?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“The O.R. nurse, also Yennefer had Priscilla let all the nursing staff know to keep an eye on him and offer sugar pouches if he looks low.”
Geralt grumbles at that but doesn’t refute it, “Yes, but he said they couldn’t find any physical reason why his levels drop, so-” there’s a soft, tapping knock at the door, then it pushes open and Vesemir slips into the room followed by Coën. He sees Lambert lingering past them, but the door shuts and he doesn’t enter.
“I heard one of my staff had a bit of a meltdown?” Ves prompts and Geralt glares.
“He had a panic attack that sent him into a dissociative state, not a meltdown, that’s trivialising and infantilizing.”
Vesemir huffs a laugh, “So it is. Any up-,” his head tilts curiously when he gets a look over Jaskier, “Why is he hooked up to Oxygen?”
“O2 is 89.”
“Hm,” Vesemir looks thoughtful, “Any other symptoms?”
“Low blood sugar but it’s always low for him. Nothing else out of the ordinary, really. I’d like to observe him a while and ask some questions when he wakes up but he should be fine. Not for his overnight though.”
“No worries, I’ll take care of that,” Coën assures him, “Just page me if he gets bad, yeah?”
“Don’t trust me to treat a man on my own?” Geralt teases.
“Don’t trust your ugly mug to not give him another attack,” Coën shoots back, face stretched in a wide grin. Geralt snorts.
“Weren’t you just calling me handsome yesterday?”
“That was Gweld.”
“You agreed.”
“Oh f*ck off,” Coën chuckles, “Seriously call if you need more hands. I’m going to make Ciri my first stop in peds, so I’ve got to go finish up in the gen ward so I can head up.”
“Text me how she is, I’m going to stay in the room til he wakes up. Can be disorienting to have no one nearby after something like that.”
Coën nods, and slips out of the room leaving Geralt and Vesemir, the older doctor stay only a moment more, just long enough to mutter, “Call me if he gets worse,” before following after Coën out into the pale blue halls of the hospital.
Waiting for Jaskier to come back to is only slightly less boring than one might think, and only because Geralt is using that time to try and solve the puzzle of what the f*ck is wrong with him. His Oxygen goes up with the treatment very slowly, but stops at 93 and raises no higher which isn’t a critical problem but it certainly isn’t good and Geralt wonders if it is this low all the time how Jaskier doesn’t spend his days so tired he can barely function, since the low O2 paired with the low sugars certainly make for one exhausted body.
Geralt vaguely recalls the time he almost choked on a burger when he was 14, he couldn’t breathe for only a few minutes but he was tired for days after. It’s when he’s pondering this that Jaskier’s eyes flutter back open, roughly an hour after his initial page.
“Mph,” Jaskier licks his lips, “Wh’ happ’n?” His eyes are a little far away and hazy, which is to be expected as he still has sedatives in his system and he will likely be a little out of it for a couple of hours.
“Hey,” Geralt offers him a small smile, he’s been told his smile is creepy so he tries to keep it soft, “We think you had a panic attack. How do you feel?”
He shuffles on the bed, grimacing, “Sore. Hurts t’ breathe.” His hand lifts to trace the cannula in his nose, brows scrunching in confusion, “Wh’s for?”
“Oxygen, your O2 stat was low.”
Jaskier hums, “S’normal,” he lets his hand flop back down to the bed, “Dun go ‘bove 94.”
“So it’s normal for you to have low pulse ox?”
“Mhmm.”
Geralt notes that in his chart, might be useful to have at a later date if this happens again.
“We gave you lorazepam, have you had that before?”
Jaskier nods, slow and sleepy, “Got a pr’scipt’n. 1 milligram in ‘mergencies.”
“Do you take any other meds?”
“Mhmm, ‘Scalapram.”
“Escitalopram?”
“Thatta one.”
“Okay, what dose and what for?”
“20 mg daily f’r ‘nxiety. An’ take Adderal in the mornin’ f'r m'brain.”
Geralt notes it all in the chart, “Do you have panic attacks often?”
Jaskier hums again, “Couple times a week, yeah.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“S’not your fault. Usually get ‘em at night. Forgot to take my meds this mornin’ think, makes it worse. Shouldn’t’a been that bad.”
“It’s not your fault either. It’s Lambert’s fault.”
Jaskier frowns, pushing himself to sit, Geralt raises the bed to prop him up.
“Wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know. I provoked him.”
“That doesn’t excuse his behaviour.”
“Doesn’t ‘scuse mine neither.”
“Do you have a therapist Jaskier? You dissociated, you were saying some very alarming things.” Geralt changes the subject back to the matter at hand, because he is still a doctor and does need to talk to him about these things.
“Mhm, but only been seein’ her three months. Only been medicated for six.” Geralt can see the fog over Jaskier clearing very slowly, his gaze becoming slightly more focused and speech more clear as he wakes more, though the medication leaves him with a small, relaxed smile that is most certainly fabricated.
“As long as you’re seeing someone about this. You had us worried.”
Jaksier offers him a small smile, “Sorry. I can imagine what you heard.”
Geralt lowers his gaze, “You were mainly asking us to be quiet and begging not to be taken to a hospital.”
Jaskier huffs out a breathy, uncomfortable laugh, “Yeah, that sounds right. Listen, I uh, don’t know you well enough to explain all that so let’s just chalk it up to delusion and move on?”
“Sure,” Geralt agrees with a wry smile, “Only if you stay a while more for observation.”
“Can I see Lambert at least?”
“You want to see Lambert?” Geralt raises an incredulous brow.
“I do.”
“He’s sulking outside, I can get him.”
“Please. And can I have some water?”
Geralt nods and stands, moving to the door. “He wants to talk to you,” Geralt holds the door open for Lambert who looks at him with wide, surprised eyes, and nods, heading in with an uncharacteristic shyness while Geralt goes to fetch some water for the pediatric surgeon.
“Hey,” Lambert greets in a mumble, eyes locked firmly on the floor as he approaches the bed.
“Hi,” Jaskier greets in turn, “Listen, I… I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“You? I’m the one that f*ckin’- almost attacked you. I mean, I wasn’t- I wouldn’t! Wouldn’t hurt you, or anyone that didn’t f*ckin’ right deserve it. Shouldn't have let myself get so worked up.”
“No, I was doing it on purpose. Even the stuff with Coën was put on to f*ck with you. I knew what you’re like and I chose to go there.”
“That-” Lambert chuckles a bit, “Alright, that’s pretty f*ckin’ funny, I can appreciate the sh*t with Co to rile me up. I know it’s easy to do, I’m… hot-tempered, I get it. You just, the parent thing, I mean, you couldn’t have known, I just… It’s a bit of a sore spot and I reacted poorly.”
“You’re a state kid,” Jaskier says, and Lambert gapes at him.
“How’d you-”
“I knew. Coën told me. Not that I said what I did on purpose, at least not for that reason. I wasn’t trying to pick, it’s just… what people say I guess? I wasn’t thinking. If I had I would have clued in not to say something like that to a f*cking foster like an idiot asshole.”
Lambert sighs, looking confused, irritated and guilty. “I know that.”
“If it helps, my parents aren’t proud of me either.”
Lambert gazes at him in disbelief, “You’re the youngest surgical attending in the f*cking continent’s history. How can they not be proud?”
Jaskier shrugs, “Never been good enough for them. My first memory is my father telling me he ‘might love me one day if I can ever manage to become anything worthwhile’, when I was four.” He chuckles mirthlesslly, “What a joke that I became something and I’m still not enough just because- f*ck,” he scrubs at his eyes, tears rising in them now, the door opens soundlessly, unnoticed by the occupants, “My point is parental love is overrated and unconditional love doesn’t exist.”
“f*ckin’ right,” Lambert grins at the same time another voice says,
“That’s depressing.” Geralt closes the door behind himself and approaches with the water, handing it over.
“Not like you had parental love either, pretty boy,” Lambert reminds him.
“Vesemir loves us.”
“Yeah well he’s not my f*ckin’ father, is he?”
Geralt sighs, clearly used to this conversation but no less sad for the man he considers their father to be so obviously rejected by one of his chosen children. “What about Ciri then? We love her unconditionally.”
“Yeah? Would you still love her if she grew up and abused and murdered her partners?”
“She would never do that,” Geralt counters.
“And if she did?”
“Then I’d assume she had something deeply wrong mentally and get her to a professional because the Ciri I know would never willingly harm anyone.”
“It’s all f*cking sunshine and daisies in Geralt-land huh? Some people are just bastards-”
“I know that, Lambert!” Geralt glares, “I know they are, but not everyone.”
They stare at each other a moment more, eventually Jaskier shifts, sipping his water, “I appreciate your apology, Lambert,” he says softly, “I hope that we can work well together and possibly become friends in the future.”
Lambert’s eyes snap to him, staring a long while before red flushes bright along his ears and cheekbones, “Whatever, queer,” he snaps, and turns to stalk out. Jaskier laughs,
“Takes one to know one, babe!” Geralt chokes on his own spit at the remark, Lambert grins into the open air in front of him.
Yeah, he thinks, he probably could be friends with this snarky bastard.
