Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Chapter One: My Serendipity

By RumCove

Disclaimer: Scrubs original characters belong to Bill Lawrence and NBC/ABC/Doozer Productions etc. Or Hulu? Basically, not owned by me. I own my OCs.

- - - - - *Cox – Present day – Sacred Heart* - - - - -

I can tell today is going to be an absolute shitshow. I’ve had a terrifically unsatisfactory week – hell, scratch that, I’ve had a terrifically unsatisfactory decade – and I can just damn well tell that today’s going to be the goddamn crowning glory of the whole thing. It’s been abnormally cold this winter and I can feel the chill constantly, like it somehow sinks into me in the brief periods I’m outside and takes residence in my bones and muscles, like all the soft tissue has been soaked through with ice water. It can only get worse in January, now Christmas is over and I’ve had to go through that particular hell on Earth with a teenager and a pre-teen. Ten going on forty - and the absolute horror of explaining to a child why ‘actually, no, sweetheart, you cannahwt have plastic surgery as an additional gift and there’s damn well nothing wrong with your nose, I don’t care what Chelsea has or has not had done with the elective surgery that her parents-of-the-year have allowed’.

It was also after Christmas, as obviously my custody agreement for them decided that the day itself fell on Jordan’s schedule. She did invite me over, but the idea of spending it with her, our kids and her current boyfriend who is only just a decade older than Jack was a new and disturbing low. I just got drunk instead, which is also a low, but not new or particularly disturbing to me anymore.

I grunt at Carla. She glances at me. “What?”

“’S cold.”

“I kinda like it. We got snow at Christmas; the kids were so excited. It was like an old movie.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Gandhi broke into a rendition of ‘Baby it’s cold outside’. Stop being so damn Hallmark.”

She shrugs “Sorry for experiencing joy, I know that bothers you.”

“Doesn’t this freakish weather suggest global warming or something like that? Or climate change? You know that’s a bad thing, right Carla?”

“What, so we’re all going to be wiped out from extreme weather, like that movie with Dennis Quaid?”

“We can only hope.” I pull a face.

“Perry, I’d tell you to stop being miserable all the time, but I think it’s habit as much as anything else now. Why are you waiting around here anyway?”

I sigh. “We’ve got an incoming patient from Saint Anne’s. You know that place is an absolute dumpster fire, they’re understaffed and appa-har-ently over-budgeted, as they’ve sent the patient with a locum. The last time one of these jackasses showed up they refused to come out of the goddamn ambulance to even help admit the poor bastard they were accompanying. Apparently not their responsibility, like they hadn’t taken the goddamn Hippocratic oath. Actually, do locums take that? Or do they just swear allegiance to whatever hell they’re manufactured in?”

To my surprise, Carla looks annoyed. “You’re the one who always claims not to care, shouldn’t that back up your whole ‘the world doesn’t care about you and then you die’ narrative?”

“I don’t care about the processes, I care about the damn patients, you know that. What crawled up your ass?”

“I just don’t think all locums are all bad, is all.”

“Oh great, have you made a new friend recently?” I drawl. “Oh God, you aren’t going to try to throw another dinner party in their honor, are you? That last one was a disaster.”

“It was a disaster because someone showed up drunk as a rat and tried to pick a fight with my husband, fell over a coffee table and then nearly cried when he remembered he was Perry Cox.”

“I wasn’t that bad.” I was actually, I’m not really sure why I brought it up.

“You were. And, no, I haven’t made a new friend, I just don’t think locums are necessarily uncaring psychopaths like you present them as. I think you’re just jealous because they get paid more than you.”

“Of course they get paid more than me, they get paid more than the yearly gross national income of some small countries. That doesn’t bother you?”

“They do have to get moved around and have no stability or social life or-“

“Oh, wah, Carla. Neither do I.”

“Well, maybe you should become a locum and then you’d have an excuse for that,” she snipes back. Then smirks. “But actually, locums have to work with a bunch of different people and departments. You know you’d never manage that without actually punching someone.”

“Maybe that’d be a new people management strategy?”

A load of residents just ran off towards the ED intake of the ambulance bay. I glance after them, boredly. Carla frowns: “Shouldn’t you go with them?”

“They need to get experience.” I shrug. “They’ll probably just piss themselves. The patient’s not in a critical condition, so them being useless shouldn’t cause a problem. Then I can tear them a new one, which you know is currently my only outlet in life.”

“None of them are standing out?”

The question bothers me and I give her a tired look. “None of them ever stand out to me, Carla. You know that.”

There’s an unspoken ‘any more’ there that neither of us want to acknowledge. I quickly shut that thought down, not wanting to follow that train of thought and the inevitable messy consequences. I’ve not been blackout drunk for a few weeks now and I want to keep it that way.

My pager starts beeping and I drag it out of my belt, glaring at the screen. “Ohmigahwd, they’re crashing. What the hell, Saint Anne’s said they were stable and in no danger.”

“Well, you said the residents could handle it-“

“I said the residents could handle it if the patient wasn’t in a critical condition, this one’s flat lining.”

I glower towards the direction of the ambulance bay. I’m going to have to run now and I’m resenting the interruption to my planned activity of leaning against the nurse’s station and bitching. I’ve already done my cardio and weight lifting for the day, goddamn it.

“You don’t need to go to each emergency personally, you know? Just because you’re the senior attending-“

“Like hell I don’t.”

I’ve already started in a sort of running lope towards where the residents all charged off a few minutes earlier, then need to screech to a halt when they reappear, flocked around a gurney and generally looking like they’re all quite tempted to run off. I growl at them, trying to figure out which of these assholes has shown the leadership stones to have taken charge. I abruptly realise that the residents have all played their usual card of being piss-poor at actually doing anything and are swarming anxiously around the locum, who has apparently taken charge in the absence of any other bastard doing anything.

I snap something at the closest moron to me to get him out the way and grab the ventilator that the locum’s been trying to use between CPR attempts. I could instruct them, but there’s no damn time, I’ve barely had time to even look at the locum, just registering that he’s some guy with graying dark hair and black framed glasses and is presumably feeling just slightly stressed at being surrounded by a gaggle of idiots doing nothing helpful. I’m focused on the patient, checking the BVM is flush with his face and timing the ventilations every 6 seconds as the locum continues manual chest compressions, no longer having to try to simultaneously ventilate.

“Get the defib, genius” I snarl at the closest resident, who scurries off. I furiously add “Why the hell am I having to ask this? Any moron on the street would know to get a defib.”

The residents all look shame-facedly at their feet and I give up on them, muttering something about their medical qualifications being a waste of time and money and continuing ventilation, settling into a pattern with the locum. It’s weird how medical situations can create an unspoken bond like this. I don’t know this guy from Adam, but he’s clearly competent and knows what he’s doing. There’s an immediate trust and teamwork, a shared goal of keeping this poor sap alive, allowing him to keep a perfect rhythm of CPR and me to time each ventilation based on his pace to keep us on 10 per minute.

“I’ve got the defib, sir.”

A resident who – as of yet – has not shown sufficient personality to earn a nickname appears, dragging the wheeled defib along behind him. To my mild annoyance, he’s addressing the locum and has brought it to him. I bite back the urge to snap that I’m his boss, then jump back when the locum tersely announces “clear”.

The first shock jolts the patient, his feet and hands jerking off the gurney entirely. The drone of the flatline continues, with the locum shoving the defib at the resident (who has now been awarded the nickname of Defib Guy for this being the one interesting thing he’s ever done) and muttering “charge” before resuming CPR.

I’ve only heard him say two words, but there’s a crawling feeling of recognition in my gut that I want to ignore. The feeling’s so acute that I miss a ventilation breath, muttering “sorry” to no one in particular and then listening to the whine of the defib recharging and trying not to think.

If I don’t look, if I don’t think, if I don’t acknowledge it – maybe it’ll be true? I know I’ll damn well curse it if I do anything.

But… but I don’t imagine shit like this. I don’t daydream, I’m not like that, I’m not like…. like him. But those two words… hell, even how he smells, now I’m thinking about it…

“Clear!”

I jump back as the defib shocks another current through the patient, with no apparent response, apart from the locum muttering “dammit” to himself before resuming CPR.

It should be easy enough to look up and check – hell, not even check, to look up and confirm – but I don’t have the balls to do it. There’s still a horrible gnawing feeling that I’ll somehow negate it. He’s directly opposite me, nearly close enough to bump into, close enough to smell his cologne. But I just stare at his hands – and dammit, I recognise those hands – as they continue chest compressions and focus on the ventilator.

The cologne is different. But there’s the underlying smell of him and whichever shower products he’s using now. They’re different, but still very him. He used to smell of something cheap, something you’d buy in Walmart for 3 dollars that claimed to be unisex and was laden with some sort of sickly-sweet fruit scent – something that I definitely never buy and smell when I’ve hit rock bottom. It actually works pretty well as a drain unclogger.

Now he smells of something expensive, something you’d buy in a department store which would suspiciously have no price label. Orange and something, some kind of wood, something smoky and warm. Still unisex and a bit girly, but in a totally different price range from that other crap and weirdly sophisticated.

At his third “clear”, I - 1. manage not to not jerk back like it’s me he’s defibrillating and - 2. lose any doubt it’s him. It’s damn well him, clear as day, even if I still haven’t had the kahunas to actually look him in the face. Particularly when the patient finally responds to the CPR and the heart monitor starts to blip back to life. He makes a weird noise of celebration, a combination of a “yeah” and “hah”, exhaled in an exhausted huff through his nose, resulting in a vaguely positive sound that only he could make.

I glance up at him, registering that yeah, it is him, he’s briefly grinning before he locks eyes with me and the grin falls off abruptly.

“Hey Newbie.”

- - - - - *JD – Present day – Sacred Heart* - - - - -

Look, I’m not going to pretend that at one point this was something I didn’t daydream about.

I might even say incessantly daydreamed about.

But in those daydreams, I… well, I wasn’t exhausted, I wasn’t powered by coffee and anxiety and I hadn’t lost my contacts two days earlier and not had time to buy any more. In those daydreams my hair looked magnificent and I was exuding confidence and cool. I was maybe strolling alongside a patient who I had made an enormous medical breakthrough with, possibly even discussing my upcoming lecture tour. Or I’d cured cancer. I’d nonchalantly say, with vague surprise, “oh, hey Perry, forgot you worked here”.

I was generally not running on fumes, not needing to both dye and style my hair, not looking haggard and had not just completed a gruelling run of CPR that started halfway across the city in an ambulance and finally ended in a corridor at Sacred Heart. I think my deodorant has been nullified.

I suppose at least the guy survived; it would be even worse if there was a corpse between us right now.

Also, the last few months have made any daydreams like that kinda laughable.

I stare at him a moment longer - he looks pretty much the same, it’s been ten years, that’s not fair, I definitely look different - then shove the defib paddles at the resident who handed them to me. He’s looking unnecessarily pleased with himself.

“What are you smirking about?” I snap, the annoyance from the pretty much constant CPR attempts for 20 minutes, the lack of support at Sacred Heart (before him) and the general situation getting the better of me. “It should have been prepped on arrival. You risked this man’s life by being so disorganised.”

I immediately feel like a massive asshole for snapping like that. It’s the tiredness and the shock, not that it’s much of an excuse.

“We were told he was stable, Newbie.”

The residents are all clustered around us, staring at me like I’m some sort of teaching aide. I manage to stop myself from daydreaming a scene of ‘former resident’ and me in a petri dish, them all staring at me with pen lights.

“Standard operating procedure,” I mutter, apparently addressing the residents. “You should be prepared for all eventualities when receiving a transfer.”

Without the impetus of doing CPR, I feel horribly exposed. I knew I shouldn’t have taken this patient, but there wasn’t anyone else to cover it. I thought the likelihood of – well, of this – happening was pretty low. I underestimated how much of a control freak he is.

I proffer the transfer paperwork at no one in particular. “He needs to go to the ED and then the ICU, come on, take him. Otherwise, I’ve just spent a half hour trying to keep him alive for no reason.”

The residents all keep staring at me like I’m some sort of fascinating tropical disease. I kinda expect him to ask them why the hell they’re all gawping uselessly, but he ends up just taking the paperwork from me and then – surprisingly gently – telling one of the residents to move the patient down to the ED. The rest continue to stare at me as Mr Denvers is finally wheeled away, before one haltingly asks:

“Do you know Doctor Cox, sir?”

The ‘sir’ is a bit of a kick, to be honest, I know I’m older than them, but it’s practically making me feel like a senior citizen. I frown slightly, trying to point out to myself that they’re only calling me that since I didn’t introduce myself. I was kinda busy when I arrived.

“Ohmigod, Bambi!”

I’m (sort of) rescued from the situation by Carla running over and hugging me. It feels a bit performative, since she only saw me two nights ago, but I presume she picked up on the awkward energy and thought she’d break it in her usual Carla style. I give her a slightly stilted hug back before she releases me, but keeps one arm over my shoulders.

“JD was a resident here a few years ago.”

I see the residents all process that they’ve now heard me being referred to by three names, none of which sound like a professional MD, and bite back the urge to introduce myself properly. As I’m never planning on seeing any of them again, it seems pointless to do the whole ‘I’m Doctor Dorian’ spiel. Unfortunately, Carla has me in some sort of death grip, so I can’t just turn on my heel to go track down the ambulance that brought me over here.

“And you know Doctor Cox?”

“He was my attending. Carla, you’re choking me.”

Carla doesn’t release her grip and I pull a face as the residents all stare at me. He’s being uncharacteristically silent and I don’t particularly want to look at him to see why. The petri dish imagery comes back to me, now with agar with Carla’s face on it holding me in place as I struggle and scream to escape.

I try to give the residents a grin, but my face feels like it’s had about 10 shots of Botox and I’m pretty sure I just grimace at them. “Nice job there.”

It wasn’t a nice job, it was terrible, they were useless. I didn’t sound remotely enthusiastic about that, so I’m pretty sure they know I don’t mean it.

I shove at Carla’s hand, abruptly irritated. I don’t need to try and make everyone here like me anymore. I got over that mentally torturous shit years ago and apparently a few minutes back here has made me revert to that bullshit all over again. Who cares if a bunch of residents think I’m weird? They’ll have one hell of a lot of neuroses and plain craziness amongst them, statistically speaking one of the surgical residents is probably a serial killer.

Or The Todd.

Carla doesn’t let go and I twist my body to dislodge her. “I’ve got to get back to the ambulance, Carla, it’s my ride back.”

I walk away hurriedly, trying not to be too obvious about running away. I feel a sinking depression when I hear footsteps behind me, the tread heavy and deliberate despite the fast pace. That’s not Carla and none of the residents would run after me.

“Hey, Newbie, you forgot your paperwork.”

“I didn’t forget anything,” I retort, then flinch. That was a bit too close to the bone.

“Well, I assume that there’s three copies of this so you can take at least one back to your lord and master, Satan, to get paid a small fortune for a job barely done.”

I roll my eyes, snatch the papers from him and shove them into the inside pocket of my lab coat.

“Good Lord, Newbie, are you wearing a suit under there?”

It’s not a suit, I’m wearing pants, a shirt, a tie and a vest, a suit would imply I’m wearing a jacket. I consider responding regarding his woeful fashion choices (“I didn’t realise a baseball shirt, sneakers and scrubs pants was an outfit there, Perry, it looks like you fell into a thrift store reject bin and had a fight with the clothes. Your socks are different lengths, by the way, if your pants were long enough they’d at least hide that”), but know engaging him in conversation is a terrible idea. I need to leave.

“I need to spend the small fortune on something.”

I corner rapidly, hoping he’ll give up, but he abruptly slams a hand into the wall in front of me, forcing me to stop so I don’t walk straight into his forearm. I stare at his arm a moment, then give him an irritated glance. He’s not much taller than me, he shouldn’t be able to tower like that.

“Why’d you leave?”

I blink. Closer up I notice he does look different. His hair’s pretty much gone completely gray now, but because it was always some shade of light reddish color it’s not that different from before. Some of the lines around his eyes look deeper set. He’s frowning at me.

“Stop gawping at me, Newbie, and answer the question.”

Seriously? He’s seriously asking that?

“Got tired of no one using my name. This last half hour’s been like a flashback.”

I duck under his arm, intentionally straightening up too soon to knock his arm, twisting a shoulder to throw his weight in an apparently innocent way. He grunts and seems to take this to mean I want him to continue to follow me. As we’re close to the ambulance bay, I don’t need to deal with this much longer.

“Newbie…“

“I don’t actually use the money to buy fancy clothes-“

“Newbie.”

“I convert it to gold and sleep on it like a hoard. Like a dragon-“God, I wish I was a dragon “-or Scrooge McDuck.”

I don’t know why I’m prattling like this, apart from it either delaying or flat out avoiding talking to him about anything meaningful. I hurry out to the ambulance bay, the cold of the biting wind immediately flaying any exposed skin, looking for my getaway vehicle.

The ambulance bay is conspicuously empty.

“Ah, crap.”

- - - - - *Cox – Present day – Sacred Heart* - - - - -

Newbie’s staring forlornly at the place the ambulance he arrived in was presumably parked. His glasses steamed up pretty much immediately on leaving the warmth of the hospital, which briefly made him look comically angry. He’s taken them off and is trying to wipe off the condensation on his lab coat sleeve, which doesn’t seem to be working.

He looks a bit more like him without them. His hair’s longer than it used to be and he seems to have moved away from his old electrocuted pineapple style. I’d always assumed that he had straight hair, but it’s actually slightly wavy, falling haphazardly around his ears and a few strands falling over his forehead like cowlicks. The nearly black of it is shot through with gray, mainly around his temples, but with a few streaks throughout.

He's shivering, the freezing air already cutting through the thin lab coat and the ridiculous formalwear he’s inexplicably wearing. I guess he’s glad of that, if he’d been wearing scrubs then he’d likely already have frozen to death.

“It’s gone, Newbie.”

“I did notice.”

He stares a moment longer, then turns ninety degrees on his heel, muttering “shit” under his breath and starting to walk through the parking lot towards the front of the hospital.

“Hey, Newbie-“ I jog after him. “You can just grab a taxi.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“It’s freezing, call one from reception.”

He turns back and gives me a slightly desperate look. It throws me unexpectedly, the brief look of vulnerability before he manages to get his face back under control. He doesn’t want to be here – hell, he’s desperate to get away.

“C’mon, let’s go back inside,” I murmur to him. Considering how he’s been acting, I half expect him to snap back at me, but apparently the cold has chilled the sass out of him and he follows me back into Sacred Heart. The warmth is a relief, but the light feels intense after being outside in the dark. Newbie blinks repeatedly, still absently rubbing at the lenses of his glasses with his lab coat and apparently not planning on putting them back on.

I’m in the unfamiliar situation of not really knowing what to say, so lamely think to mention the weather. “It’s crazy how cold it is, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Coldest it’s ever been in California was -45.”

I glance at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, in 1937.”

“How do you know that?”

“I looked it up yesterday to see if I was in any danger of my balls freezing off.” He shrugs. “So, I guess it’s a way off.”

“A way off -45 or a way off freezing off your anatomy?”

“Both. Hopefully.”

He grimaces, then starts rubbing one of his arms through his sleeve, apparently trying to warm up. The movement jars his hand that’s still half-heartedly trying to unfog his glasses and he fumbles them. I dart forward, managing to catch them before he drops them on the floor, then hand them back to him. He hurriedly shoves them into his lab coat pocket.

I realise we’ve both been standing and awkwardly talking about the weather before Newbie tried to hurl his glasses on the floor. He seems to register this too, jarring into life with an unnaturally jerky movement and then walking in the direction of reception, now using both hands to rub his forearms seeming to not have immediately felt the effect of being inside the way I did.

I have a sudden idea. “Hey, Newbie, wait a second.”

“I need to get back, my bag was in that ambulance, I need to get it before they go on another call and take it with them. It’s got my house keys in it.”

“Fine, go to reception and order a taxi, I’ll catch you up there.”

I hurry to the lockers, telling myself Newbie definitely won’t leave before I get back to him. Definitely not, he definitely won’t run away. Despite his clearly wanting to. And despite him having a history of running away – sometimes quite literally when he’d pissed me off to the point I’d actually chase him.

Once I have what I was looking for, I sprint to the reception for the hell of it, not because I’m worried. And I definitely don’t feel relief at seeing him waiting there. Carla seems to have cornered him again and as I get closer, I hear her apparently making plans with him.

“-and then if you come over Thursday evening, I can make my famous Mofongo and introduce you to-“

“Sorry for interrupting, ladies.”

Carla gives me an irritated glance. Newbie oddly looks relieved at the interruption, then notices what I’m carrying which results in him just looking confused. I proffer it to him.

“Here, it’s cold.”

“You’re giving me your jacket?”

“I’m lending you my jacket.”

“But… don’t you need it?”

I shrug. “My car’s in the lot and I have a sweater, that’ll be enough.” The sight of him trying to warm himself back up was bothering me more than it should have done.

Newbie’s looking dubiously at the jacket. “How will I get it back to you?”

“Give me your number and I’ll meet you somewhere to collect it.”

“It’s not that bad, the taxi will have heating-“

I roll my eyes, then grab one of the sharpies from reception. “Roll up your sleeve.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

He sighs, but follows the order. I hurriedly scrawl my number onto his forearm.

“There, you can call me and arrange to give it back.”

He stares at his sharpie’d arm for a second, before rolling his sleeve down and taking the jacket. “You could have just used a ballpoint, that’s not going to come off for days.”

“I’m sure you’ll exfoliate it off in a hot second, Princess. Ballpoints smudge. Don’t want to lose that jacket, it’s leather.”

“Of course it is,” he mutters, struggling into the sleeves. I was expecting it to look comically large on him, but it actually fits him pretty well, slightly too big but not ridiculously so.

“Yeah well… don’t want parts of you to freeze off.”

He gives me a surprised glance, so I add: “The Mofongo tastes like squashed bananas, by the way. Maybe avoid that particular dinner date.”

“It’s plantain,” Carla snaps. “And you aren’t invited. Not after last time.”

“Someone call a cab for Dorian?”

I briefly, nonsensically want to punch the taxi driver. This feels like it used to. It feels right.

Nothing’s felt right in so damn long.

“Uh… ‘kay,” Newbie shuffles his feet, avoids meeting my eyes, then apparently gives up any pretence of acting like a normal human and just mutters “bye” to his feet before hurrying out. I watch him scurry off, unpleasantly aware that I’m probably looking like an abandoned dog and that I have an audience. The residents at least have the decency to all either hide or pretend that they’re working, but Carla’s staring at me critically and announces:

“That was unexpectedly chivalrous.”

When I glare at her, she clarifies with “I mean, you lending Bambi your jacket. Not what you said about my Mofongo.”

“It’s cold,” I lamely point out. “And your husband inexplicably didn’t show up and offer to skin himself to keep Newbie warm, so someone needed to step up.”

Digging at Carla and Gandhi’s weird marriage usually defuses a situation, with her generally just announcing that I’m (obviously) an ass. It doesn’t have that effect this time, with Carla suddenly flushing and mumbling something that sounds like “Turk’s in surgery”.

That’s strange. Based on everything I know of their ridiculous relationship, Newbie showing up at Sacred Heart should result in Gandhi appearing around five seconds after Newbie entered the building. And then them climbing all over one another, or whatever the hell that whole Eagle / Giant Doctor bullshit crap was about. Hell, that frat boy surgeon would abandon a coronary artery bypass graft mid-surgery to give Newbie a goddamn hug.

Something’s up, but – quite frankly – if it’s about Gandhi then I do nahwt give a crap. If he’s spending less time with Newbie then… well, good. He never deserved Newbie’s time anyway.

I have a sudden thought and spin on my heel. Carla squawks at me for apparently abandoning her mid-conversation (and I wasn’t, she was muttering to herself).

“Can it Carla, I’m going to find Kelso.”

- - - - - *JD – Present day – a taxi in California* - - - - -

The cab is warm.

Despite that, I seem to be trying to sink into the jacket. It’s comforting.

I don’t remember him having a leather jacket before. It doesn’t surprise me that he has one, he’s basically a mid-life crisis personified. But this is clearly well-worn, the leather discolored at the sleeves and around the pockets from use. I realize I’ve been absently stroking the jacket and quickly stop myself, hurriedly removing it, having to twist against the seatbelt to get the jacket off me.

It’s dangerous. How it smells is dangerous. How it’s making me feel is… deadly.

I glance at it on the seat next to me, collapsed into a deceptive coil of material. Like a snake. A wrinkly, leathery, gross, empty tube of a snake.

This is getting weird. Don’t visualize that.

I sigh and retrieve my cell from my pants pocket, swiping up to wake the screen. The light is jarringly bright in the cab and I squint at it, resisting the need to put my glasses back on. I scroll into my contacts list, then roll my sleeve up and compare them.

Yeah, he hasn’t changed numbers.

I don’t know why I kept it in there. It was a weird, horrible temptation. I’ve definitely been drunk over the years and spent… I mean, probably hours in total staring at the number and arguing with myself over calling him. Messaging him.

Sending him an offensive gif and immediately blocking him. Then getting a new number and doing it again.

I never have. It was dumb. The whole point was to… get away from this. I changed my cell number the day I left Sacred Heart. Opening myself up to contact from him would undo all the good work I’d managed to undertake. It’d kill any progress. But I still painstakingly carefully copied the number every time I upgraded my cell, making sure it was saved to the cell and the SIM. Just to be sure.

I have to contact him now, though. He knows me too well, it’s actually unfair. He knows I have to message him and get his jacket back to him. I can’t just ignore him and steal his outerwear. And it might be considered an overreaction if I change my number after that. I mean… it would be.

And it wouldn’t be. It’s confusing.

I open WhatsApp and create a new chat, adding him from my contacts list. I stare at the contact info for a moment, tapping on his profile picture to maximize it. I did this too. When I felt particularly… weak. Watching his picture change. Sometimes pictures of his kids, sometimes pictures of just him, sometimes…. Sometimes him and Jordan. When those ones came up, I felt sickly guilty, hurriedly closing the screen down and telling myself to delete the number from my contacts, that this was unhealthy. Bordering on stalkerish.

Obviously, I never did.

Thankfully his current profile picture is just of him. I stare at it for a moment. He’s outdoors somewhere, there’s foliage (or something, I’m hardly an outdoorsman) in the background, he’s wearing shades and a cap, grinning. He was probably hiking or something.

He doesn’t look happy, weirdly. It’s his odd fake grin he used to do when he was really pissed about something. Lips pulled back, all teeth, vaguely threatening for something that is technically supposed to be… y’know, nice.

I might be reading too much into that, of course. It’s just a picture. A snarly picture.

I hurriedly shut the app down. I don’t need to do this right now. In fact, it’s better not to do this right now.

I open the app again and look at my profile picture. Squint at it critically, tilting my head to one side.

It’s from my last vacation. We were in the Caribbean and I’d been swimming the whole morning, clambering back onto the boat with insane hair, laughing, when the photo was taken. When he took the photo.

I stare at the picture. I look happy. I was happy. The warmth and joy seem a total lie in the current cold and… everything.

I blink abruptly, inhaling sharply to catch the slide in my mood, halting the descent into all that shit, banishing the sudden (and very inappropriate) urge to cry. I look critically at the photo.

It’s a lie. It doesn’t represent me. Not now.

I snort to myself. Who am I kidding? That JD – despite it not being that long ago – looks totally different. I thought I was going gray then, vainly complaining about looking old with a few silvery strands running through my hair, not with this shit. And I looked healthy; I’ve probably lost about 30 pounds since then. Actually, scratch healthy, I was getting a bit… squishy then.

I guess at least that’s not really a concern now. I can’t complain about my inexplicable weight gain and bemoan getting older and its effect on my metabolism, when it was more to do with eating and drinking too much and exercising too little. Living too well, really.

The taxi driver clears his throat and I jump, realizing that we’ve arrived back at St Anne’s and that he’s apparently been trying to get my attention for a while.

“Uh, sorry. Do you have an account with the hospital?”

He looks at me blankly. “Do I look like I have an account with a hospital?”

No, you look like you have 3 ex-wives and an STI.

I don’t have my wallet, because that asshole ambulance driver has taken it hostage. I switch from obsessively staring at images of myself to Apple Pay and boop my cell (whilst muttering ‘boop’ under my breath) on the contactless payment card machine. I grab the receipt (I’ll charge that, I can’t have it eating into the small fortune I charge, or whatever he said about me), leave the taxi, then yelp and shoot back in to grab his jacket.

It’s bad enough I need to contact him about it, worse if I have to tell him I left his stupid jacket in a taxi and it’s now being worn by a Romanian pimp.

My shift finished at some point on the highway when I was desperately trying to keep Mr. Denvers among the living, so I don’t need to get back to reception. First priority is finding my bag – and my actual coat, which is black angora and weirdly depressing to wear now, in comparison. I retrieve both from the ambulance, point out to Ewan the driver that he could at least have left them at Sacred Heart reception for me, then report to reception to punch out.

Saskia, who is in charge of the current shift, gives me a concerned glance. “Are you alright, Doctor Dorian?”

I’m immediately worried I don’t look alright. I need to look alright. Otherwise, everyone will know I’m not alright.

And these people don’t really even know me, so they shouldn’t know what alright looks like on me.

I’ve said ‘alright’ too much now, it’s become a meaningless concept.

“Yeah, patient crashed during the transfer. I got him back, but… y’know, I’m worried.”

I abruptly feel guilty that I haven’t been worried about Mr. Denvers. I’m a terrible person.

Saskia nods, giving me a compassionate look that makes me feel worse. “Go home and get some sleep. When are you next here?”

I shrug. “I haven’t been sent my schedule for next week yet.” I sound flat and I try to inject some life into my conversation. “Obviously I’m hoping I’ll have a shift here and be with the best head nurse in the business.”

Now I feel like I’ve betrayed Carla and Saskia looks unconvinced. She gives me a worried look and then suggests I get some sleep.

Seriously, do I look that crap?

I don’t really remember getting to Enzo (or Malik the Fourth, if you’re fancy), which possibly backs up my looking like crap. I zone all this shit out and focus on driving home, trying not to glance at the jacket on the passenger seat next to me. It feels unnervingly like it’s taken on a life of its own.

Unfortunately, once I’m back, I don’t have any distractions anymore and so end up staring at my cell again, looking through my recent photos and then wincing. I give up, updating my profile picture to one that was taken last year at some formal event which I think of as my ‘professional’ photo, but switching it to black and white so it’s not obvious that my hair is significantly grayer than then.

Thanks for the jacket. This is my number.

I stare at the message, at the little blue ‘sent’ tick. After so much stress, it seems anticlimactic. And not informative enough.

This is JD, by the way.

I grimace. I start editing the message, then see that he’s typing, so quickly stop. He’s seen it now, it’s too late.

I watch the typing animation for a few seconds, the three dots waving cheerfully, then decide that this is pathetic. I abandon my cell, stubbornly ignoring it chiming as I get changed into my PJs and then pour a glass of wine. I pick my cell back up and look at it once I’ve sat back down on the couch.

Hey Newbie. Want to get coffee and return my clothes?

I frown at my cell.

I didn’t take your clothes. You offered your jacket. I knew I should have said no, you’ve made it weird.

I put some Berlioz on via Spotify, relaxing on the couch, pointedly ignoring my cell and drinking my wine. I pick up a random fiction paperback I’ve been trying to read, but abandon it almost immediately to check my cell again.

Not weird, just true. Coffee?

I sigh. There’s not enough coffee in the world to make this ‘not weird’, but… still…

Sure. Sunday?

- - - - - *Cox – Present day – Sacred Heart* - - - - -

“Bobbo.”

Kelso gives me an irritated glance. “What do you want, Cox?”

I grin at him. “What happened to our easy banter? I just got a blast from the past and it reminded me that you used to have a sense of humor, you old bastard.”

He grunts. “That was before you showed up here drunk for a week and nearly caused a million-dollar lawsuit.”

I roll my eyes. That was years ago. And that lawsuit would have happened anyway.

Why the hell has Kelso not retired by now, anyway? I keep forgetting he’s human and has technically aged, but the bastard looks pretty much the same as he did when Newbie left Sacred Heart.

“I said, what do you want, Cox?”

“Staffing suggestion.”

Kelso returns to looking at paperwork on his desk. “At the last management meeting you said hospitals were for treating the sick, not employment opportunities. Why the hell have you suddenly changed your tune?”

“We’re down an attending, right? That last one… can’t remember his name, anxious guy, bad overbite… he couldn’t cut it and left.”

“You drove him away. He’s running an emergency medical care unit in Kyiv now, he says it’s a nice break from what you put him through.”

“Yeah, whatever – look, I was thinking, we could get a locum.”

Bob snorts, then apparently realises I’m being serious. “A locum, Perry?” Oh, he used my name. I think that’s the first time in over a year. “You complain about billing arrangements with medical insurance companies and now you’re saying you want to hire a locum?”

“Yeah, most of them are assholes, but… if there was a locum we actually knew did a good job then it’s different.”

“No, it’s not. We don’t have the budget. We might do, if you stopped treating patients without insurance or refusing to accurately fill in medical treatment records so our billing mechanisms get screwed up.”

I’m feeling slightly desperate at this point. “What if I stop? Or… start?”

Kelso frowns. “What?”

“If I stop treating the patients without insurance and fill in the treatment paperwork fully?”

“You mean, what if you stop being a pain in my ass? Can you stop being a pain in my ass?”

“Possibly.”

Bob’s looking at me levelly. “What’s going on? I’m not going to say I’m not tempted…” he trails off, then glances at his computer. “If you mean it, then I’ll make enquiries with the standard agency that-“

“No,” I interject quickly. “I’m talking about a specific locum.”

“You can’t pick and choose, Perry, they aren’t puppies.”

This one is. Or he used to be, sort of.

“It’s Newbie.”

Kelso’s face goes blank for a moment. “Who?”

“Newbie. You know… JD.”

Kelso blinks and I wonder if he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. Is he really claiming he doesn’t remember Newbie?

“No.”

“You know he’s good and he’s somewhere on an agency list around here, he just dropped off a patient from St. Anne’s, so he’s practicing in California again-“

“No.”

“I’ll stop treating uninsured patients, I’ll fill out the paperwork properly and…” I desperately fish around for something else. “And… I’ll reduce the readmission numbers. Either through patient care or by fudging them.” Kelso says nothing, so I add: “And I’ll stop making snarky comments during rounds. I’ll be supportive.”

Kelso still doesn’t answer and just watches me, the silence stretching painfully between us. I blurt out: “I’ll buy you muffins every day.”

This apparently clinches it, with Kelso sighing. “Alright. Assuming you can actually keep any of the promises you just made – and I seriously doubt you’re physically able to attend rounds without making your hilarious Coxisms – I’ll look into it.”

“Thanks.”

“On a temporary basis only. If you break your word then he’s out. That’s assuming he agrees to attend.”

I grin. “He has to, if he’s assigned a duty here.”

Kelso frowns. “No, if he says he won’t take the contract then he’s not here. I’m not going to deal with an expensive locum with an attitude, you’re bad enough.”

I snort. Kelso doesn’t know Newbie, he won’t refuse a request for help. He’s Newbie, for God’s sakes.

“And one more thing – you stop drinking.”

I frown. “You a scout for the AA or something, Bob? You guys get paid commission?”

“I mean you stop drinking scotch. You damn well know what it does to you and if this shit is happening then you need to be stable. And you leave him alone, Cox.”

I lift an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Meaning if I do hire him, then you keep your distance.”

“I don’t need to be warned to keep my distance from anyone, I do it automatically. You know that.”

“Not with him.”

I snort. “You didn’t remember him a minute ago and now you’re hallucinating.”

Kelso looks at me levelly for a moment, seems to stop himself from retorting and then glances back at his screen. “I’ll look into the process. But remember your damn side of it, Perry. If you even think about reverting to your usual asshole self, then he’s out. You’ve slipped Chief, giving me something I can hold over you.”

I roll my eyes again and leave.

- - - - -

I’m back at my apartment and halfway through pouring myself a glass of scotch before I remember what I promised Bob. Or what I sort of promised by not protesting. I stare at the glass for a moment.

It won’t hurt. And he won’t know I’ve drunk it. But if I do break my kinda-promise to him then he can technically break his. It’s… somehow like I’m cursing it.

I’m definitely not above twitchy superstitions – not just the Perfect Game - and this is too damn risky. I pour it down the sink. Then pour the rest of the bottle away, as keeping the thing is just inviting temptation.

I consider getting a beer, then shrug and make myself a mint tea, briefly wondering what the hell I’m turning into and then deciding I don’t particularly care. I shove the herb absently into the hot water, add some honey and then slump onto the couch.

Mint tea definitely doesn’t work so well to ruminate on as scotch, but I’ve got a lot on my mind.

Newbie.

Newbie’s back.

There’s a horrible jerk of hope I can feel in my guts at the thought. I can’t get too hopeful about this shit. It’s unrealistic. And it’s damn hazardous.

Ignoring this, the hope continues to bubble up, fermenting dangerously.

I check my cell. Nothing. Rat bastard has stolen my jacket and ghosted me.

I try to use the lurking depression this thought summons to suffocate the uncharacteristic optimism, choking the air away from it. I can’t deal with this shit. I can’t survive this. I can’t survive him vanishing again.

I glance desperately back at the sink, regretting pouring away the scotch. I need that, dammit, I need that if he’s going to pull this shit again, even if it’s just to drink myself into oblivion, I can’t feel this again, I can’t-

My cell chimes. I pick it up and feel the hope suddenly erupt throughout my body, nearly strangling the breath out of me.

Unknown number: Thanks for the jacket. This is my number.

I stay not breathing, just staring at the message. At the unknown number, at the photo of someone so familiar looking so unfamiliar, looking so professional somehow, so poised and polished. Like he was earlier.

This is JD, by the way.

It’s so abruptly stupid – who the hell else would it be? – that I snort, my breathing finally returning. I quickly add him to my contacts, resisting the urge to give him some ridiculous nickname. I’m not sure why - it isn’t exactly like he’d find out and get pissy with me - but it seems another unnecessary risk. So, I just add him as ‘JD new’, briefly glancing at his old number. I’ve lost count of how many new cells I’ve brought since he left, but each time I’ve meticulously transferred the number, trying to preserve it somehow.

I need to actually reply, so send: Hey Newbie. Want to get coffee and return my clothes?

I’ve replied in such a hurry that I haven’t filtered the way I usually would and have actually implied I want to see him, but screw it. I was far too open with him earlier as well. It’s weird, but he’s being damn weird too, so it’s not that strange. My implying I actually want to see him is still less weird than him dressing like a sociology professor and being spiky.

He’s being spiky again and ignoring me, so I drink some more of the mint tea and try to distract myself, turning on a hockey game and mindlessly watching it. When he eventually does reply, he sounds expectedly pissy:

I didn’t take your clothes. You offered your jacket. I knew I should have said no, you’ve made it weird.

I roll my eyes. Not weird, just true. Coffee?

He replies a lot quicker and apparently drops the attitude: Sure. Sunday?

The damn optimism has come back and it’s expanded from the damn fermentation process. I grin moronically at my cell and then hurriedly put it down.

- - - - - *JD – Present day – California* - - - - -

I’m staring blankly at nothing, absently drinking the wine and trying not to think.

Why am I doing this to myself?

I lean my head back against the couch and close my eyes. Why am I doing this?

I should just send him another reply saying I can’t meet him. That I’m deathly allergic to coffee now. That I forgot I had an important event on Sunday and need to go to my grandma’s funeral.

There aren’t any grandmas left now, of course, but he doesn’t need to know that.

That’s depressing.

I open my eyes and then curl my knees up against my chest and sigh. Then balance the wine glass on my patella and glance sideways at the wine, sloshing against the curve of the glass. I blink a few times, trying to focus on it without my glasses.

I can’t do this. I couldn’t be blamed so much last time, I didn’t understand… well, anything. But I should be smarter now. I should have learned. I definitely learnt medicine when I was here before, but if I keep entertaining this then I’ll not have learnt anything else.

It started fine. Well… not fine. It was weird to begin with, but my whole life has been weird really. When I first arrived at Sacred Heart, I was around 25, so I guess that made Doctor Cox around 40. I mean, that’s weird. To think he was around the age I am now. That he was younger than I am now. I still don’t feel anywhere near as confident as he was. Or that I’d do… well, anything he did.

Don’t think about it.

My eyes are unexpectedly watering which I’m going to pretend is because I was just trying to focus on my wine glass. I bite my lip, abruptly breathing heavily to try to calm down, to squash all of the feelings down that I really don’t want to have right now. About everything, about the last few months, about coming back here. About it feeling like coming home, but also feeling sickly anxious constantly.

This counts as thinking about it.

I knock back the glass of wine hurriedly, hoping it’ll at least silence all this shit. Hoping that it’ll drown out the need to think about anything, to remember anything.

As always, it fails.

- - - - - *Cox – fifteen years ago – Sacred Heart* - - - - -

I whistle sharply and, as expected, Newbie comes immediately to heel, trotting along next to me as I glower into mid-distance. The stress of being on shift for over 24 hours is starting to get to me, whether I want to admit it or not. As ever, he’s almost painfully enthusiastic.

“How can I help, Doctor Cox?”

I snort. “Jessica, you presuming to think you can help me is, quite frankly, preposterous. About as damn preposterous as your hair looks right now.”

He glances upwards ridiculously, trying and clearly failing to see his own hair. “It’s extra-hold mousse; I thought it would be a good investment for long shifts.”

“You look like a hoopoe that drank a gallon of coffee.”

“Is a hoopoe a bird? I bet it’s a bird.”

“You damn well sound like a hoopoe that drank a gallon of coffee.”

He tilts his head to one side, looking at me curiously and adding to the whole ‘spiky-haired bird’ look he has going on. “Do you need coffee? Should I go get you some?”

I roll my eyes, shoving open the door of the nearest supply closet. “I know it’s what you dream of, Abby, but you’re not going to become a trophy wife, no matter how hard you try at the whole ‘domestic goddess’ schtick, you just aren’t hot enough, Princess. Now, I know you all get told that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder would have to be damn well riddled with glaucoma to think you’re beautiful. It’s just a myth they tell you plain Janes so that you feel better about yourselves.”

He's ignored my rant, craning slightly to look into the supply closet. “What do we need from there?”

“We’re running low on IV bags in the ICU and I damn well need some earplugs to block you out.”

“Yeah, because I’m the one constantly talking…” he ducks under my arm to slip inside. I shrug my shoulder up slightly to avoid getting mousse all over my sleeve, then glance around the empty corridor quickly before following him inside. He’s digging around in the IV bags and makes a protesting noise as I close the door behind me, leaning my forearm against it to secure it closed and throwing the little room into gloom.

“How am I supposed to get these if you do that?” He rustles around for a moment longer, then I see him move in the half light, glancing back over at me. “How many do we need?”

“We don’t need any damn IV bags, Newbie.”

I see him pause, apparently registering what’s required of him. He turns and leans against the rack he’s been standing at. “I don’t have the… stuff. I told you earlier.”

I’m glad of the half-light we’re in currently, he can’t see the blood I can feel rising in my cheeks, heating my face up. “Yeah, well, I thought I’d do you a favor and get it myself. I know modern women think they should be independent, but chivalry isn’t entirely dead.”

Emboldened by this, Newbie’s prowling over to me in the self-assured way he does when he mistakenly thinks he’s been promoted to something closer to an equal to me.

“I knew you’d admit that you wanted-“

I catch his shoulder and shove him roughly down to his knees. “Shut the hell up, Newbie, and put your damn mouth to better use.”

I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes, having to bite back the sigh I want to make as he pulls my scrubs pants and underwear down in one fluid movement. The exhaustion and frustration and plain horror of the damn hospital are almost melted away with the first swipe of his hot tongue on my cock, feeling him hook one of his hands over my bare hip, his thumb pressing gently against the tense skin just under the flare of my ilium, whilst the other keeps my pants and underwear out the way. I feel my lips twitch and I briefly bare my teeth into a snarl at nothing as my cock immediately begins to fill and swell with what he’s doing.

He thinks he’s being cute or something, teasing me, lapping at my rapidly hardening cock. I catch his hair, ignoring the sensation of the mousse to press him forwards, his nose pushing against my pubis. He makes a brief, choking noise, so I relax my grip and let him pull back for air.

“We don’t have time for you to enjoy yourself down there, just damn well get everything prepped.”

He huffs out a breath from his nose into my happy trail and then starts sucking me off efficiently, his lips and tongue moving smoothly up and down the shaft of my dick in a practiced motion that he knows works too damn well on me. I’m already fully hard, feeling the blood thudding through my cock and against his wet tongue. He makes a quiet gasping noise, swallowing hard as a drool of precome floods his mouth. I push him away, still on his knees in front of me, my gaze drawn to his lips, trails of saliva mixed with precome connecting his moist, slightly swollen lips to my achingly hard cock. It twitches at the sight and Newbie inhales sharply in response, then palms his cock through his scrubs pants, his erection visibly straining the thin material.

I fish the condom out of my white coat pocket and show it to him briefly. “Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.”

Newbie’s weirdly quiet when turned on, his usual constant chatter silenced with a sort of breathless arousal and tendency to stare with dilated, dazed eyes that look overlarge and impossibly dark. He’s watching as I pull the rubber out of the wrapper and quickly roll it down my cock, dragging it down to the base. It feels cold and impersonal after his hot mouth has been working over me and puts me immediately into an irritated mood at the contrast. His continued awed staring at me doesn’t help matters, so I grab him by the forearm and drag him upright, my cock brushing against his thigh as he stands. He glances down at it, then presses a palm against my chest, tracing over the solid outline of a pectoral muscle and looking into my eyes in the gloom of the supply closet. He leans forwards slightly and I quickly spin him around, pushing him against the supply closet door.

He knows the rules, he knows not to damn well try to kiss me.

Admittedly, he may have just been dizzy from the lack of oxygen due to my cock being halfway down his throat, but it’s not worth risking it.

He braces his forearms against the door and looks back over his shoulder as I hurriedly shove his scrubs pants and underwear down to his knees.

“I told you I didn’t have any of the stuff, right?”

“We’re in a damn medical supply closet, genius.” I grab some lube off the nearest shelf, drooling it generously over my sheathed cock and then spreading it across the cold, slightly clammy-feeling latex and then wiping my hand dry against my coat and pushing hard against his lower back to get better access. He moves as silently instructed, trying to widen his legs as much as he can with his pants restricting the movement of his knees and then pressing his forehead against where his arms are braced against the door.

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

I line my cock up against his ass and then thrust my hips forward, biting my lip to stop the groan of pleasure as my cock head presses hard against his asshole. There’s a brief resistance and he makes a soft little whimper before he manages to relax and I slide in a couple inches. Newbie inhales shakily and then presses his face back against where he’s bracing his arms to keep himself quiet as I start to furiously thrust into him over and over, pressing myself deeper into his hot, tight body with each thrust. I’m finally fully inside him, my balls feeling achingly full pressing against his as his body tenses around me, practically squeezing me in a hot, blissful grip. I grab him by the hips to fully anchor him in place and then roll my hips forward. He groans, despite his attempts to be quiet, shuffling his position so he’s got one arm against the door and then starts jerking himself off with the other, the wet, squelching noises of him efficiently stroking his cock audible between our labored breathing.

If I had more time I’d stop him, either by telling him put his hand back up where I can damn well see it or by fucking him so hard that he has to use both arms to brace himself again. But we don’t have time, this is nahwt for pleasure, it’s purely functional. Any second someone could code or need one or the both of us and I don’t want to ever have to worry that I didn’t react fast enough to an emergency because I was inside my damn resident. So, I let him cheat, let him stroke himself as I fuck him, despite knowing that he can come just from me fucking him. It’s not an option, that’s not why we do this.

Technically, I don’t care whether he orgasms or not, that’s not why we do this.

I definitely don’t care. That’s not why w- that’s not why I do this.

I start to brutally fuck him, the wet noises of him jerking himself off mingling with the muted slapping of my hips against his ass and our harsh breathing. He feels damn well amazing, hot, tight, gripping onto me like his insides never want me to leave, squeezing me so my erection gets impossibly harder and aches enough to make my balls tingle. The pleasure’s starting to pulse through me lazily, making my hips move more jerkily against him.

A more urgent spike of pleasure shoots through me and I grunt and change positions slightly, pressing a hand hard against his back to bend his spine slightly more, tilting his ass upwards at a different angle, allowing freer access. He rears his head back as I do this, bowing his whole back as he nearly sobs out a couple of breaths, stretched out and vulnerable, skewered on my cock as it nudges inside him as deep as it can go.

He's so taut, his body clenching around me, that I’m slightly surprised he doesn’t orgasm immediately. I pause and then, realizing he’s on the brink but not quite there, pull nearly entirely out of him and then deliver two sharp hip thrusts deep into him.

He unravels almost instantly, a muted yelp as he shoves his face against his arm and starts to jerkily come, spasmodically clenching around me as he slides his hand furiously up and down his cock to milk the orgasm out of himself. I last a second longer and then roll my head back, closing my eyes and letting out a huff of breath as I’m overwhelmed by the pleasure, roll after roll of pure sensation pulsing through me as I fill the rubber with what feels like a never-ending spurt of impossibly hot semen, my hands gripping his hips bruisingly tight.

The frustration, the exhaustion, it all melts away in a tidal wave of ecstasy and adrenaline. My heartbeat’s thundering through me, I’m certain Newbie can feel it where my cock is still buried in his ass, twitching hard. I allow myself to stay like this a few moments more, briefly permit the luxury of it, then pull out of him. He nearly collapses, having to hurriedly grab one of the shelving units for support. I roll the rubber off, flinching at how much is inside it and then efficiently tying the end and dropping it on the floor. I pull my scrubs pants back up, brush my hair back from my face where the curls have gone a bit wild and then straighten my coat.

It was fast. Efficient. What was necessary.

“Five minutes, Samantha. ICU. And clear this mess up.”

I shove him out the way of the door and stalk out, not looking back at him, not acknowledging any of that shit.

It’s… nothing. Just something we can both do to relieve the stress, to stay sane. To stay on top of our games. That’s what matters.

That’s all that matters.