There was a fist-shaped smear of blood on her window, a long, dark shape lying on the grated fire escape against the brick backdrop of the building across the alley. She didn't have to think too hard about who it was. His fist came up again, paused desperately, hit the glass and then collapsed still by his side.

She fought back a short -very short- moment of panic. He'd made it up the fire escape. He'd probably make it a few seconds longer. She opened the sliding window and took him in.

His teeth were gritted tightly together, his body shaking like she'd just pulled him out of a frozen lake. His hands were covered in blood, and the dark fabric glistened with harsh red liquid from his chest to his knees. His eyes were screwed shut. She couldn't believe it when he forced out actual words. Hey Claire. Great morning, huh? But then his body went slack and she indulged a second moment of panic.

"Yeah, screw you too." She mumbled, pulling herself back into some semblance of nonchalance. All in a night's work now, though, and she resisted the urge to pull him through the window straight away. Instead, she took a pair of gloves from the box by the door and snapped them onto her hands, hoping he could somehow feel the grief he was giving her in the action.

She climbed out of the window onto the rickety escape. "You know they sent me home early tonight, right? And all the way home on the subway I thought, 'hey, wouldn't it be nice if after getting the shit kicked out of me by a DT's patient at work, I could come home to your sorry ass on my porch.'" There wasn't a lot of room on the fire escape and she straddled him out of necessity. "And had that not been utter sarcasm, I would have meant it in a completely different context…" She shook her head. In the dusky grey morning light the two of them must have looked half crazy from the street below, but Matt was the kind of person who could have crawled up the three flights of ladders with four fractured vertebrae and a concussion so she needed to get her assessment underway sooner rather than later.

She forced her hands under his back. She kept forgetting how heavy he was when he was unconscious. At least he was breathing, and she could feel his heart beating a little faster than usual under her hands. "Hey, you know, I like it when people listen to me gritch about my night." Her fingers traced each of his vertebrae independently, eliciting not so much as a soft whimper as her forearm pressed against his gunshot wound. "If you could wake up that would be even better." She sighed, hands on hips, planning her next move.

Satisfied that his head, neck and back were intact, she stood, feeling her own injuries -a couple of bruised ribs and a swollen left eye socket- for the first time since he'd arrived. That made her a little angry, but everything this morning could have been a lot worse and like it or not she'd somehow signed on for this. "Just the GSW then, you're making my morning easy." She said, trying to convince herself. "You promise not to bleed too much on my carpet, you might make it to my good list."

She went and got the blanket he'd bled on the last time. In the intervening week she'd washed it as well as she could, getting a strange look or two from the woman at the laundromat. Placing it on the floor by the window, she carefully dragged him over the threshold.

By the time he was inside, his blood covered her scrubs and forearms and she figured she looked like something out of a slasher film. She almost laughed at her decision to use the gloves. She moved a stand lamp over to her new work area, and got the medical kit she hadn't even put away from last time.

With trauma shears, she cut the dark fabric away from the wound expertly and peeled it back away from the wounds. The shirt was sodden with congealed blood and clung to his skin as though soaked with gelatin. The skin beneath was dark orange-red with drying blood. She pressed gently against the edges of the wounds. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and there was no indication of blood pooling beneath the wound either, which she appreciated. He moaned quietly. "Oh now you've decided to wake up… Just in time for the fun part, I have to warn you." She said, shaking her head, taking pity on him. "I'll try to make it quick." She felt him tense under her hands- he could hear and understand her at least, which was good.

His abdomen was suddenly ridged, his fingers clawing into the blanket, curling into fists. "Shh, shh, you're okay, you're doing great." She said calmly, putting a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to distract him. "You lost some blood but its not nearly as bad as last time, huh?"

"Fffffghaah" he said, "hhhaa" and she could tell the noises had been involuntary. He was forcing himself into control. His eyes rolled shut again but this time he din't go limp. "Do… it." He forced out. She nodded, knowing he couldn't see it.

"Okay." She dug prefilled saline syringes out of her bag and flushed the wound as well as she could. This was battlefield medicine, non-sterile, lifesaving only, not how she was used to practicing.

She'd never been taught internal sutures, and she knew she couldn't figure them out fast enough, and certainly not at this angle with the supplies she had. But the bleeding had stopped and she took that to mean the internal part of the wound had closed itself- at least temporarily. The wound went no further than muscle. She could continue to meet his request to remain outside the hospital for the time being.

She closed the exterior quickly, marveling at his ability to stay still for it. She covered the outside in an ABD pad and wrapped his torso with self-adhering tape. If her boss could see it she'd have been fired on the spot, but this was a very different world to the hospital she worked at. The improvisation, she felt, had been impressive at least.

"There, I'm done." She said, sitting back and watching his tightly controlled writhing fade somewhat.

"Thank… you." He said. She took a long, deep breath and watched his chest rise and fall a few times.

"Asshole." She said, a small smile of relief creeping onto her face.