Archive of Our Own

Eternia Regional Medical Center has sixteen floors. Emergency on the ground, rising up through labor and delivery, intensive care, transplant, and a dozen other specialties. The ambulance bay runs directly underneath the patch of the roof that isn't consumed by machinery, and the sound of the sirens reaches up here, too. The lights flash off the surrounding buildings in the dim of the early morning.

Adora's never treated anyone who's fallen nearly two hundred feet before, but she knows what impacts do to bones, tissue, organs. The ambulance bay is steps away from the emergency department, full of supplies and people who know what they're doing. Anyone who survived initial impact would immediately get an airway and medications and everything possible to stop the bleeding, a dozen people pulled to a crisis that would jump to the top of triage, time and effort spent on salvaging a lost cause instead of the kid with occult sepsis in the waiting- 

"There are donuts in the staff lounge," Catra says, leaning against the railing next to her. The bag in her hand crinkles. "If you ever decide to add food to your coffee diet."

Adora cups her travel mug with both hands. "Says the woman who hasn't had a vegetable in a decade."

"Potatoes are vegetables." Catra's grin is loud in her voice. "And so is sugar, technically. You know it all comes from corn and beets now." Through a bite of donut, she says, "So now who's healthy."

"Both of us, apparently."

Catra snorts. At this hour of the morning, the dark gray sky fades into orange at the horizon. "If I wasn't still off the clock, I'd be working you up for that obvious delusion."

Adora checks her watch. Even if the elevator is full, it's never taken more than eleven minutes to get back to the ED, so they should head down now. Or Adora should. Catra never seems to mind being late. Even in undergrad, she'd slide into class after the lights had already gone down and the lecture had started, and in all those years, Adora's never understood how she manages not to care.

"Relax," Catra says, as if that's literally ever worked. "I think they can function without your life-saving hands for a second."

Adora's face is hot in the cool morning air. "It's not about that and you know it."

Catra crumples the bag with a smooth motion. "Yeah, dummy, I know."

She pushes off the railing, and Adora follows. She can still see the ground from here, concrete that would absorb none of the force of a body smashing into it. Maybe it is high enough.

"Loser has to take the next intern," Catra says, before she starts to run to the doors.

At the top of the stairwell, over their hammering feet, Adora calls down, "I always do that!"

"Always the loser." Catra's laugh is breathless. "Obviously."

They spill into the emergency department three minutes late. Adora's the only one who notices the time, or the only one who minds.

When Adora was a junior, all of the pre-med students were assigned to a senior doctor to shadow. She was full of jitters the next day, but Razz moved too quickly for Adora's anxiety to linger anywhere. Razz flit between exam rooms and hallway beds, delivering diagnoses and medications and lab results, and the only name she ever got wrong was Adora's.

Next to a dying woman's bed, Razz said, "Did I tell you the four things?"

Razz had told her a lot in the previous hours. "I-I don't know."

"Then I didn't." Razz reached a gnarled hand to hold the woman's, thin, still. The morphine is still working. "They help loved ones say goodbye to someone before they go."

Adora hadn't said goodbye to her mother. She didn't want to think about what she'd said instead. She didn't want to figure out right then if she'd loved her, either.

"And when there's no one to say them," Razz said, gesturing at the empty chairs on the other side of the bed, "it works to say goodbye to those that will keep living, too. Even if they don't hear it." She squeezed the woman's hand before she laid it back on the bed. "We'll come back, Mara."

They did make it back, before it was too late. Adora stayed back and watched, stomach a tight knot, as Razz talked. Razz didn't sound like the earth was rocking under her feet like it was under Adora's.

Adora didn't walk away that day with any of Razz's magical confidence and calm under fire. But she walked away with something.

I forgive you

People swear that the full moon makes a shift worse, and even though there's no scientific reason why it would, it's always awful. A wave of respiratory infections, a multi-car pile-up, half a dozen overdoses. Even the SNFs send over more unresponsive patients than usual. It's a race from one room to another, trying to keep everyone's names and statuses and meds straight, and Adora's wrung out by ten o'clock. The thirty seconds it takes for the ADC to dispense the lorazepam she needs feels like the first time she's stood still all morning.

"Hey," Catra says, skidding to a stop next to her. "Did you see that the EMR updated? They moved procedures again."

Adora groans as loudly as she can get away with. "Fuck me."

Catra grins. Somehow, she always seems happier when everything gets crazy. "Maybe later," she says, before taking off again.

The ADC snaps open with the lorazepam vial. Adora's heartbeat slams so hard that she's never been more tempted to take a patient med herself. It's so busy that, twenty minutes later, it takes too long to notice the man behind the curtain next to her lunge forwards.

Adora manages to shove him back onto the bed, but there's blood on his hand, and once the techs and security take over, she turns. Catra's retreated to the nursing station. She presses a square of gauze to her mouth, eyes steely and narrow. She leans back when Adora steps towards her.

"It's okay," Adora says, reflex. "Let's go to-"

Catra shakes her head. "I'm fine." Her voice is muffled. Red starts to spot through the gauze. "Do your damn job."

Adora takes a breath, trying to ease the frantic energy that wants to drive her forward. "Right now," she says, "you are my damn job." She grabs gloves much slower than she wants to. "Let me-"

Catra shakes her head again, grinding her teeth hard enough to hear. "Fuck off," she snaps, and springs up too fast to catch. She disappears into the all-gender bathroom, lock clicking loud behind her.

Adora's not sure what to do with the gloves. They shake when her hands do.

"Don't take it personally," Bow says as he puts down the phone. "She blew off at least three nurses first, including me, so it's not you."

Adora walks past the empty bed to her patient, and has no idea what she was in the middle of doing. She muddles through that, and the next thousand tasks, and claws out one pause to stress vomit. If she keeps in the rhythm of moving from bed to bed, she can almost believe that the security incident didn't happen.

It's mid-afternoon before things finally slow down. People are starting to trickle in from the waiting room, scattered rashes and coughs and burns, and the panic eases. Adora can even consider unlocking a computer to chart without thinking about which patients could crash while she does that.

She's halfway through a procedure note when a cup appears next to her hand. Condensation drips down the plastic side, filled with something pale orange. Catra slides into the computer station next to her. Her lip is swollen, red line where it bled.

"It's mango," Catra mumbles, looking at the screen while she scans in. "Thought you liked it. The caf didn't have a lot of options."

Adora doesn't remember when that ever would have come up, but she's right. "Yeah," she says, "I do. Thanks." After a moment of weighing it, she risks, "How are you doing?"

"I'm-" Catra pauses, scab stiff when she frowns. "Okay now. Sorry I was a bitch earlier."

Adora takes a sip of the smoothie. The hospital cafeteria isn't fancy, but a smoothie is hard to mess up, and anything tastes good after this morning. "I think getting punched in the face means you get to be a bitch for a minute."

Catra's laugh is just off-pitch, too high. "Well, if that's all it takes. Should get punched more often."

"Definitely don't do that, my heart couldn't take it." Adora jiggles her mouse to keep the screen awake, and before she can think too much about what she just said, she adds, "I figured out where they hid procedures this time, in case you're looking."

The last bit of tension finally melts out of Catra's shoulders. "God, yes."

Adora manages to work through the smoothie before she has to fly back into the rush, and unlike her coffee this morning, it doesn't come back up.

please forgive me

Adora can never tune out the alarms. She focuses on the small chest under the heel of her hand, reminding herself over and over to push in deep enough when every cell in her body tells her to be gentler.

"Nothing," Catra says, for the second time, scowling at the monitor. The angry swollen lumps on the screen look more like an sea creature than an airway. "There's gotta be-"

Adora drives deep again. "We need Glimmer now," she says, for at least the third time. If Scorpia says anything back, it's not loud enough to hear over the metronome in her head.

"Bitch only teleports when we don't need her." Catra puts down the laryngoscope and wipes the kid's neck, angling his chin back. "Scorpia, I need-"

"He's-"

"-a catheter on a syringe with saline, and a-"

"-too small to cric, you'll-"

"That's why I'm not doing one, Mom." Catra runs her fingers down the front of the throat, skirting the burns, and pauses to hold it steady. She presses the needle into the throat and slides the catheter down. In seconds, she has the bag attached and pumping. "That's definitely in, is it-"

Glancing back at the monitor, Scorpia shakes her head. "Not enough."

Adora really, really doesn't want to have another next-of-kin conversation today. Especially not for a six-year-old. "We need to find-"

Catra shakes her head. "No time." She has a blade in the kid's neck before Adora knows she's holding one, sliding down. Blood spills out over her fingers as they work in the wound, threading in plastic. It bubbles with the next compression.

Adora doesn't know what the fuck she's going to tell the parents.

Catra slams down the suction before she bags again. "Now-"

Glimmer bursts in, at last, still peeling off her bloody gloves. "Bad one on the roof." She squints at the airway past Adora's hands. "What did you-"

"Pharynx swelled up, larynx too fucked for the needle cric to respirate, so I did a trach." Catra looks at the monitor, smiling. "Sats are way better."

Moments later, the heart is beating again, sharp regular waveforms. Leaning closer to Catra, Glimmer says, "You're supposed to tell your attending," she says, gesturing to herself, "before you do something badass. I can't believe I didn't get to see that."

Catra rolls her eyes, but a smile twitches on her lips. She looks back at the patient's chest, rising and falling with every squeeze of the bag. "Next time, get here faster."

The next OR opens in minutes. After the patient rolls away, Adora rolls her aching shoulders. She tries to breathe slow over her pounding heart. "What was that?"

Catra's eyes are electric as she strips her bloody gloves. "Slash trach."

"I don't remember us learning that."

"No," Catra says, leaning against the door to hold it open until Adora passes. "But I saw videos. A lot of them. It's not exactly neurosurgery."

It takes two tries for Adora's shaking fingers to pinch the cuff of her glove correctly. "Procedure is-"

"-for surgery to be here to do it themselves, but they weren't, were they?" Catra turns to scan across the patient board. "My other patients are still waiting for stuff, do you want to jump in on-"

Adora throws the balled-up gloves in the trash with more force than she needs. "That was stupid dangerous."

Catra looks at her, face going tight. "No airway is also fucking dangerous."

Adora heard the alarms too. "But you're - we're not trained to do that. You could've-"

"What? Killed him?" Behind Catra, a gurney rushes past. "He had no pulse. Does your magic CPR count as being alive now?"

"No, but-" Adora shifts her sore shoulders. "I could've kept going, maybe the needle cric would've been enough to get him upstairs."

Catra's glare deepens. "I saved his life. Glimmer's happy with it." She steps closer, lowering her voice. "Not my fucking problem if you can't handle that you're not the only one here who's competent."

A code sepsis goes out over the PA, and Catra disappears into the rush of people headed towards it. Adora should go too, or check on another patient, or at least chart. She opens the EMR, and when she blinks again, her computer's been idle long enough to lock itself again.

They manage to maneuver around each other for the rest of the shift, but as the night shift fades in, they wind up across from each other at the last open computers. Catra keeps her focus narrow on her screen. Adora knows where this goes if neither of them talk - they walk past each other for a couple days until something pulls them back together, like a professor being unreasonable or a crisis that needs all hands, and they fit again like nothing had happened.

Adora doesn't want to waste that kind of time. "I'm sorry."

Catra's head comes up, eyebrows furrowed.

"For earlier, with the trach. That was amazing, what you did, and I should've said that. So I'm sorry."

Catra blinks, shoulders easing. "Well. It was stupid dangerous too. If I do decide to do a little neurosurgery, you'd better stop me."

But Catra wouldn't. She always knows how big of a risk she can take and still land on her feet. Adora feels like she's about to fall even when she's planted on solid ground.

"Seriously," Adora says. "The kid's still in the ICU, but he wouldn't have made it there without you."

Catra looks back at her screen, pink flush at the top of her cheeks. "And you. And Scorpia. Team effort." She types something. "Now let me finish this while there's still time to go home and be there for more than five minutes."

By the time they finally save their final notes, they have ten hours before they have to be back, and they spend too much of that with Catra's flask in the park. Adora's careful, the way she always is, not trusting herself to keep in the swarm of bees that buzz in the back of her head all the time. Catra isn't.

"Arms've gotta hurt," Catra says, sounds slipping in her words. "You were going for a while."

Adora shrugs. She doesn't feel her arms anymore, even though she hasn't drank enough to justify that. She can barely feel the bench under her. "They're fine."

Catra's smile slides on. "That's why I make you do the CPR. Got the muscles for it."

Adora could argue with that - she isn't fit anymore, not really, not since she traded her field hockey stick for medical textbooks. One of the hundred things that Adora doesn't recognize about herself anymore.

"You're so-" Catra's head rolls to the side, tilting onto Adora's shoulder. "Just - you never give up."

Adora's stomach tightens with how wrong that is. She's hyperaware of every car that whizzes past and how few steps it would take to get there, but Adora's seen enough vehicle versus pedestrian cases to know that it's not a sure thing. She's so tired of not giving up.

"The word you want is stubborn," Adora says instead.

Catra shakes her head, pauses to wince, then shakes it again. "You're saying it like - like a bad thing. S'not bad."

"Stubborn would've lost the patient today."

"Not for sure. Giving up would've. But you don't do that." Catra's head feels heavier on Adora's shoulder. "Stubborn's great. Like it a lot." She hums once, short and low. "Like you a lot."

Adora breathes past her heart hammering somewhere in her throat. Catra isn't sober. Adora can't see zebras where they don't exist. She doesn't need to add to the list of things to apologize for.

Catra tenses, grimaces. "Fucking dizzy out here," she mumbles.

Adora steadies her to sit up, shoulder burning where Catra's head had been. "Then let's get you inside."

They're both within walking distance, so it's not weird for Adora to walk Catra home, and if it's harder to stick to the sidewalk on the blocks between their apartments, Adora's the only one there to know.

thank you

Muscle squishes between Adora's hands, but she can feel that the heart's empty. It hasn't moved by itself in way too long.

"I'm calling it," Angella says, looking at her watch. "Time of death-"

"We could run another unit." Adora pulses limp tissue again, and it feels like her own heart squeezing. The woman it belongs to has a dragonfly tattoo on her shoulder and green paint under her nails and a name that Adora doesn't know, and she wasn't brought here to die. "We could push more epi."

Angella touches Adora's elbow, smudging the blue gown with red. "The brain isn't coming back. She's gone."

Adora's lost patients before, and she remembers every one with flashbulb detail - ragged wound edges, rattling final breaths, smell of cooked meat so strong she can taste it. Now, she has the slick sensation of a still heart sliding away from her hands, and it stays even once her gloves are gone. Everything blurs together, after that.

Adora isn't sure how she got to the roof. She isn't sure when worms crawled under her skin, either. She should probably be glad that she already threw up at home this morning. Her chest is too tight for how loudly her pulse pounds in her ears.

She doesn't have time for this. She's still on shift and she has patients waiting for her, an allergic reaction and a probable radial fracture and a manic episode, and the dozen more in the waiting room that she's supposed to see after them, and instead she's here.

She gasps, because air isn't making it into her lungs, and if she's lucky she's dying. It's still almost two hundred feet to the ground. Adora's never treated anyone who's fallen that far. Maybe they wouldn't even try to resuscitate.

Day shift is too busy already to deal with another trauma, especially without her there to help. Catra would probably try to get an airway no matter how mangled Adora was, pull out some other wild technique she'd taught herself because she refused to let a patient go, not like-

"Hey," Catra says, stepping in front of her. "Slow breaths."

Now there are two people off the unit. More blood on her hands. "I'm fine," Adora forces out.

"Yeah, this is what fine looks like." Catra gives a measured inhale that Adora doesn't want to copy. "You'll be more fine if you breathe, though."

Adora shakes her head when there's not enough oxygen for words. She gestures towards where she remembers the door being, because they need Catra downstairs, because every second Adora's responsible for more pain makes the ripping in her chest worse. She shouldn't live through wasting resources like this.

Catra catches her hand, squeezing in a rhythm that's definitely closer to twenty times a minute than Adora can manage right now. Unlike Adora's compressions, she doesn't stop. "You are my job right now. Breathing is your job, and right now you're not doing it."

The sun has already disappeared over the horizon, but the sky still streaks orange over them. Flickers of sound from the street reach the top of the roof - dogs barking, horns honking, music trickling out of windows. It's hard to feel dead muscle with something else in her hand.

"You're doing great," Catra says.

Adora can almost swallow, now. "Sure?"

"I'm your doctor right now, I get to say how you're-"

"She had a pulse when she came in." Adora should know the patient's fucking name. "Thready, but she had it. And I lost it."

Catra squeezes her hand again. "It was a bad crash. Angella said there was no way to get ahead of the-"

"I know!" Adora hadn't meant to shout. "I know people are going to die, she's not the first one, I know. I shouldn't be freaking the fuck out and making patients wait and-"

"If you get tachypneic again, I'll bite you." Catra grips Adora's hand in both of hers, flashing teeth. "They're going to have a lot of questions downstairs then."

Adora laughs, though the joke doesn't really deserve it, because she won't cry. Not at work, not in front of someone who might see through her to the empty pit where a person should be. She's already fallen apart enough.

"You care," Catra says. "That's a good thing."

Adora doesn't care enough.

"You lost a patient. You're literally the only person who thinks you shouldn't be taking a minute."

It's definitely been more than a minute. Environmental services has probably already cleared the trauma room, blood soaked up and headed to the incinerator. It would look the same as when Adora came in this morning. The patient has to be in the morgue by now.

Adora straightens her shoulders, lead heavy in her gut. "We need to go back."

Catra doesn't let go of her hand, even though it's sweating enough to start to stick to Catra's skin. "I need a hug first. If you're up for one. If I have to track down Scorpia when we get back, I will."

"Sure," Adora says, against every ounce of better judgment she has.

Adora doesn't have enough experience to evaluate a hug, really. Scorpia is who everyone on the unit calls for families that are struggling with a bad outcome or guilt or just the shock that brought them in to the ER. So probably the itch at the back of Adora's head is easing because Catra's good at them too, not because-

None of this is proof of anything. The only logical differential here is that she's Catra's friend, or classmate, or coworker pushed closer by the chaos around them. A tidy line of horses that don't justify how hard her heart beats.

"Bite," Catra warns again, breath on her neck. There's the brief sensation of teeth on skin and the shiver it drives down Adora's spine is so out of place that it makes her eyes prickle. "And I'll make you explain downstairs."

"My breathing's fi-"

"You're thinking so damn loud it's giving me a headache."

Adora lets her arms drop, and Catra pulls back in one smooth step. "The first aid cabinet in the staff lounge has the good ibuprofen," Adora says, to drown out the weird drop in her stomach. "Gel caps."

Catra shrugs. "If you won't get me anything stronger."

Adora knows they need to go. She shouldn't even have wasted as much time as they have. But-

"Thank you," Adora says. "For this."

Catra smiles, small. There's something else on her face that Adora can't read. It's hard to look at. "Thanks for being a better patient than me."

Adora's braced for the rest of the shift, but no one asks where she was, or says anything about her disappearing. The room is cleared when Adora gets back, but she's not called onto any other traumas, and Angella doesn't remind her to chart whenever she has a moment's pause.

I love you

They can stay later in the park if they don't need to be at work in the morning. Catra drinks, and Adora looks at the lights of passing cars to keep her eyes open. She should've gone home hours ago, but she's too hollow to be alone before she has to be.

"-said she needed a 12, not an 11, but of course she didn't fucking listen to me." Catra looks at her flask in her hand before dropping her hand next to her on the bench. "Like, it got the job done, but that suture would've been out way faster if she wasn't a dumbass."

Adora doesn't remember who she's talking about. Catra doesn't sound like the story's important.

"Wish you were on that case. You would've - well. Would've known better and even if you were, like, possessed by an ancient ghost doctor that didn't know shit, you would've listened."

Adora smiles despite herself. "Why am I getting possessed by an ancient ghost doctor?"

"I'd do it. You know a ton of shit. Super - nice and con-con-thoughtful." Catra's face flushes deeper than the alcohol or the cold. "Hot as fuck."

Adora's cheeks are probably flushed too, from how much they burn. She takes the flask by the cap. "I think you're done."

Catra shakes her head, pulling the flask back. "I - no. I was going to-" She grimaces, digs a knuckle into her temple. "Keep thinking about it and thinking about it and fucking - going insane, but. Told myself I'd finally do it."

It's late enough that there are fewer cars on the street, but all that means is that they're going faster. The hospital is still across the street. Adora's seen enough MVAs to know that they're not all survivable, either.

She turns where she sits, knee up on the wood, hands ready at her sides. "Do what?"

Catra moves, and Adora grabs her shoulders, and then Catra's lips are on hers, hot, vodka sharp. Catra's hands are on her open jacket, pulling her closer. Adora can't breathe. She doesn't really want to.

When Catra drops back against the bench, pupils wide, it takes everything Adora has not to follow her. Catra's laugh is shaky. "That."

"Oh," Adora says, while her brain tries to catch up.

Catra laughs again. It's a sound Adora wants to trap in a jar. "Yeah."

Hoofbeats. Horses. "You had a lot tonight," Adora says.

Something slips in Catra's expression. She lets go of Adora's jacket, and the fabric holds the shape of her hands. "Yeah," she says, expression smoothing flat before she looks back out towards the road. "Guess I did."

The buzzing in Adora's ears gets louder. Catra was supposed to agree. Laugh again, maybe, at the big joke this had to be. Not shove her hands in her pockets like it's gotten colder in the last thirty seconds, tighten her shoulders with all the tension that the alcohol had melted out.

A few hours ago, Adora was charting, outlining all of the answers she'd considered and dismissed for each patient before she finally figured out what was wrong. A differential diagnosis can change. Every doctor she's ever shadowed or worked under would say that if she has new information, it should change.

"We, um." Catra clears her throat. "It's late."

"Wait," Adora says. When Catra looks back at her, eyes dark pools, Adora loses any sense she might have had left. "I'm an idiot."

Catra's smile is back, or a version of it. "Just in general, or-"

Adora tries to move slower, slow enough that Catra can still push her away if she wants to, but Adora barely makes contact before Catra surges back to her, warmth against the scrub top that's too thin and too thick at once, hungry as the fire under Adora's ribs.

"Yeah," Catra says, once they break apart, breath harsh. "You're an idiot."

"Hopefully it makes me less appealing to ancient ghost doctors."

Catra's snort is definitely more than that joke has earned. One of her hands is still on Adora's hip, holding at least some of her weight. "Nah," she says. "They can't have you. Right now, you're mine."

There's nothing Adora can say to that, not in words. So, for once, she doesn't try.

It's getting colder on the roof at night. The city lights are brighter than Adora remembers. They make the loose ends of Catra's hair glow.

Catra turns when the door closes, smile bleeding across her face, and Adora doesn't need to hide her own. "Security!" Catra mock-calls, holding the railing with one hand to sway towards her. "We have an intruder!"

The visitor's sticker on Adora's shirt crinkles when she moves. Her new badge only gets her into the outpatient clinic where she's doing her fellowship - torn ACLs and sprains and concussions. Sometimes the athletes come in before they have injuries, too, and she can explain how to avoid them. Adora's favorite diagnosis is the one that she stopped from happening.

There's only one thing about this place that Adora misses. "You got me," she says. "You've blown my," she gestures vaguely at the machinery that takes up the rest of the roof, "air purification system heist."

"It's obviously a diversion." Catra rests her back to the railing. The paper bag in her hand crinkles, half-open. "I know you're really after the cookies. Your tricks won't work on me."

The metal rail is cold when Adora leans against it. "I mean," she says, heartbeat skipping, "you do seem pretty distracted."

They've agreed not to make out on the ERMC campus, even when they seem to be alone. But a kiss that fast barely counts. Even after months and months of contact, Adora's skin still buzzes where Catra's had been.

"What are they teaching you in sports medicine?" Catra says, almost a grumble, too light to matter.

Adora pushes past all the ways she can answer that somewhere other than the hospital roof, where they're only about sixty percent sure there aren't cameras. She reaches into the bag in Catra's hand and pulls out a cookie, chocolate chip. "Cookie theft," she says.

She drops it when Catra tries to wrestle it back, but there are more. The sirens sound farther than sixteen floors away when ambulances scream under them, and there's no time to look at the ground.