The first day Natalie met Archimedes, she did several illegal things, including but not limited to kidnapping, running a stop sign, running a red light, and stealing confidential hospital documents. This perhaps was a valid enough reason for him to believe that she needed his supervision. Still, that wasn't the way she saw it. As far as she was concerned, he was a nuisance and the cause for her impromptu, deviant acts. Also the cause for her suddenly upside-down life, which stubbornly refused to return to normal, so long as he stuck around.

*

The boy was stark naked when he was found. It looked as if he had nearly drowned in the bay. He staggered clumsily out of the water, soaking and choking, but seemingly unashamed or unaware of his lack of clothing. The couple he took by surprise was, well, surprised to say the least. They delayed a while before realizing that aside from spluttering incomprehensible sentences through the water in his lungs, and being completely bare, and shaking, he seemed to have sustained a rather unpleasant injury to his stomach. He was clutching at his toned abdomen and blood seeped through his fingers, contrasting like paint on canvas.

The girl screamed inside her throat, and it came out like a disturbed groan as she fumbled for her cell phone. Her boyfriend dashed into the wet, almost inundated sand and caught the boy before he collapsed back into the rising tide. She called for an ambulance, nearly having to yell into her phone over the wind and waves.

"Greg, what's wrong with him?" she cried, flipping her phone shut and rushing over to assist him.

Greg gave a one-shouldered shrug, since his other one was weighed down by the boy, who was nearly unconscious, muttering half-phrases in Latin and occasionally whimpering in pain.

"We have to get him to the parking lot!" she said fretfully.

"He's really heavy, McKenzie. I don't think I can carry him."

McKenzie chewed her lower lip for a moment, and then quickly whipped off her purple windbreaker. She wrapped it around the boy's waist to preserve his modesty—and perhaps somewhat for her own sake—then hefted his feet, and consequentially his lower half entirely, from the ground. She inhaled sharply at the full realization of his weight, wondering how such a slender boy could be so incredibly dense. Greg led the way backwards up the shore, and nearly tripped as they came to the stairs.

"Careful!" McKenzie almost shouted, trying not to wobble from her own instability.

"Sorry," he responded automatically, shifting the boy in his arms and looking back over his shoulder as he once again attempted to climb.

Sirens could be heard wailing in the distance, as they stood in the almost empty parking lot, having laid the boy gently down on the ground of the grassy median.

The ambulance pulled up after a few minutes and the medics wasted no time in loading him into the back with a stretcher. McKenzie watched a little anxiously, standing off to the side while Greg conversed in a serious manner with a ginger-haired EMT. The ginger man was taking notes, sometimes looking up and running a hand habitually through his orange curls, which contrasted flamboyantly with his sea green scrubs.

Greg walked briskly back over to his girlfriend, looking tired, but nonchalant. It bugged her a little.

"I'm going to ride with him to the hospital, sweetie," he said, punctuating the sentence with a soft kiss on her forehead. "Will you meet me there?" He made to hand her his car keys. McKenzie just nodded and took them, trying to be as calm and cool as he was, but failing as she moved sluggishly towards the car. She waited for the ambulance to start off, lights flashing and sirens blaring, before she followed.

*

Dr. Stevenson was a resident at St. Mary's. She had been for a while, but was still fairly inexperienced. And she was used to conscious patients, patients who could tell her what was wrong. Therefore when the doors of the ambulance opened, she was entirely thrown off by the lack of crying or hyperventilating, or screaming wife who had accidentally hit her husband with a car and needed him tended to right now goddammit. There was no sound at all. The sirens went off and the world was muted.

The stretcher was brought out, bearing a young man with dark hair, followed by an older looking young man with sandy blond hair, who seemed to just be tagging along and watching with mild interest. The man on the stretcher was apparently suffering from a stab wound to his lower abdomen, was soaking wet, unconscious, and nude, save for a light, lavender jacket, tied about his hips. The boy was breathing at least; exhalations came out in hot puffs of vapor, visible against the cold air.

She followed the stretcher into the whitewashed hospital hall and then addressed the young man who had walked in beside her, the same young man who had been inside the ambulance—the uninjured one that is.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Stevenson." She held out her hand, and he shook it loosely. The man was obviously not a relative of any sort. He seemed worried for the younger one, but only in the detached way, relatable to watching a building explode from a great distance. He was sad and anxious, but not directly effected. The doctor decided to go for the more direct, but less sympathetic, all business approach. "Can you tell me what happened, sir?"

"I dunno," he stated, "He just popped outta nowhere, all wet and bloody, and then he passed out."

In that moment a mousy-haired, freckle-faced woman came running up behind him, huffing with the labor of her running—which she obviously didn't do often—and shoving her uncooperative glasses up the narrow bridge of her nose.

"Kenzie!" he said, giving her a one-armed hug.

She was panting as she asked, "Is he going to be okay?"

"I can't say yet. I haven't had a good look at him," Dr. Stevenson said, turning to watch the EMTs exit room 307 with an empty stretcher. The ginger boy nodded at her and smiled. She nodded back just before he disappeared out the doors.

"Are you relatives of his?" she asked somewhat distractedly, though she already knew the answer.

"Nope," the man said.

"Do you know of any we can call?"

"We don't know who he is," said the woman.

"I see." That may pose a problem, the doctor thought to herself grudgingly. "You don't have to stay—he's not your responsibility or anything—but if you do, I'm afraid you can't go in the room without his consent. You'll have to stay in the waiting area."

She ducked her head apologetically, before backing away a bit and then turning on her heel.

*

Greg and McKenzie did wait, but not for very long. After about fifteen minutes, a blue-clad nurse dashed from the boy's room, wide-eyed and looking absolutely alarmed. She spoke in a rushed whisper to Dr. Stevenson, who in turn, ran into the room with a similar, frenzied expression. Once inside, she checked his sutures briefly, before pressing a red call button with a little more force than was perhaps necessary, and then beginning CPR.

"C'mon, beat!" she told his heart angrily, pumping her arms up and down in measured pulsations. Her response was the deeply distressing sound of flat lining. She gave two rescue breaths before continuing her ministrations. What had happened? He had seemed as if he would easily recover, not go into some kind of unexpected cardiac arrest. The monotonous buzzing continued menacingly in the background. "Shit," she said, "Shitshitshit."

The terrified nurse came bursting in with two interns on her heels. One was rolling in a defibrillator on a cart. Without hesitation, she seized the two cold, metal handles and placed them together.

"Clear," one of the interns said, as the other pulled back the boy's hospital gown in time for the paddles to come down on his bare chest and side. His body jolted violently, but there was no other change.

"Again!" Stevenson said, wiping away the beads of sweat that had formed on her brow, with the back of her forearm.

"Clear."

She did it again. Still the goddamn flat line.

"Again!"

"Clear," the intern said, doubt lacing his tone.

Still no response.

"Fuck. Again."

"… Clear."

Nothing.

The doctor's hands were shaking a little and her eyes looked crazed. Her gray hairs had worked their way out of their neat bun and were falling in her eyes. She looked up. Both interns' eyes were downcast. Half of her wanted to tell them to grow up and deal with it; the other half wanted to cry.

Then, the nurse said shakily, but sternly, "Call it, Doctor."

The doctor sagged slightly in defeat and looked at her watch. "Time of death: 20:33." She set down the paddles and walked out, smoothing back her wild mane of salt and pepper hair as she did so.

"I'm sorry," she said to the couple as she passed them, "We did all that we could."

The girl seemed stunned into silence. Her boyfriend put a soothing arm around her.

"Anything we can do?" he asked, hesitantly.

"We still don't know who he is," she responded, "If you wouldn't mind talking to a few more people; just tell them where you found him. Give descriptions. We can take care of the rest."

"Sure, sure."

Then the woman spoke up, voice meek and uncertain, "What happened?"

"I couldn't tell you just yet. After an autopsy, maybe." And with that, Dr. Stevenson set off for an ink pad, to fingerprint their John Doe, and possibly identify him.

a/n: ohsnap thur it issss. yet another project when i know all you guys want to see is more hollywood. the chapter i'm working on is a lot longer than originally intended... so i'm sorry? anyways here's some straight fiction for you. i started it a while ago and decided i wanted to go ahead with it this morning. yayy supernatural weird shit that hasn't happened yet, but definitely will!

also, i know diddly squat about how hospitals work, so please excuse any errors on my part. natalie shows up in the next chapter. blah. i'll probably get tired of working on this story since it's third person and i like talking me, i, my. since i'm self-centered like that. we have no good food in my house. pity me for i shall starve.

hope you guys enjoy. :)