musesandlyrics | 6.7 Oscar Wilde quote
6.7. "I can resist everything except temptation."
Oscar Wilde
Co-written with geniuscowboy | Follows Miami Medical 1x02
Serena was riding high. In fact, if it was possible to ride higher than high - that was what she was. She'd survived her first solo case and managed to save the patient, and she'd confronted her fair of craziness by sitting on the edge of the hospital roof with Dr Proctor. She'd thought her day was going to end a lot differently given she'd found Proctor on the roof earlier without his shirt on. She was sure she was about to witness another attending wash out. And the questions about what kind of trauma injuries she'd be faced with if he jumped had spooked her, until she realised it was more just a test of her knowledge. He had been feeling her out.
Lucky for her she knew her shit. She hadn't wound up at Miami Trauma and on Alpha Team because she was a blonde ditz. She was a trauma surgeon, and now that Dr Kay knew it, too. They could all kiss her ass as far as she was concerned. She was awesome! Only when she went to find Dr C to share her victory, he wasn't anywhere to be found. He'd gone home. She wasn't surprised when he'd been the one on call, and awake for some ridiculous amount of time. She hadn't envied him the shift.
Since she'd already proved her medical snooping prowess, Serena decided to use her new found skills to discover Dr C's address. She just couldn't leave it alone, and she couldn't stand the idea of him faceplanting in his food. She'd deny the curiosity about finding out what his place was like, or any kind of attachment besides a Resident and Chief Resident relationship. She couldn't help that he was someone she wanted to share her day with, right? Right.
Serena pressed her lips together as she had a moment of doubt now she was standing on his doorstep. Only her finger was pressing the buzzer, and it was too late now.
Chris' home was near the beach because beyond outdoors was something he could never get enough of. He liked the easy access to be able to feel the sand between his toes after a hard day at MT1, and the sun and the beach air always managed to chill him. It wasn't a huge place, but it was ultra modern, in an ultra modern beach complex. His bed was the part of the whole thing he saw the most these days, and after the past two days, he was more than ready to see it again after the bike ride up the causeway home. In fact, by the time he got there, it felt like his eyes were hanging out of his head and full of sand. Adrenaline got him home, but he was also sweaty and gross, so he needed to shower and grab something to eat. By the time he got those two staples out of the way, he frustratingly found himself wide awake and over-tired.
He had been standing out on his balcony looking at the views of the beach in the distance, bottle of orange juice in one hand adorned in nothing but a pair of Mr Happy red pyjama pants. At least he had anticipated bed, right? It was a start. Starts were good. Now he just had to shake the urge for his mind to keep stuck in overdrive contemplating Proctor and his Jacksonville Indians, and his patient and her do-over. Not to mention the head hunter. What the hell was that all about anyway? And why the hell was his doorbell ringing? Didn't anyone know it was dangerous to disturb a trauma surgeon who hadn't slept in nearly forty hours? He rubbed a hand over his face and went in through the apartment to get the door, only to have his eyebrows shoot up in surprise at who his visitor was. "Dr Warren?"
Dr Warren's own eyebrows shot up as she saw the Mr Happy red pyjama pants, and the scar free chest. The very nice, muscular, scar free chest. It was true she might have the smallest of crushes on Dr Proctor, but right now she really wasn't thinking about the Englishman. She was definitely thinking that Made in America was solid gold. "Ah..." she was speechless for a moment as she shook her head and tried to drag her gaze back up from his chest to his eyes. "Hello. Sorry. Were you sleeping? I didn't mean to... It's just it didn't feel right not talking to you today. I'm sorry. Again. But I had my first solo case, and it was awesome. I was awesome. I'm not crazy! And I totally owned Dr Kay in the end."
Chris didn't know what to say at first. He just stood there, pointing to her and then to him with his mouth open as he tried to form some words. "Wait, I don't look that bad, do I? Do I look like I just got out of bed?" he asked, leaning back to catch his reflection in the trendy decorative mirror hanging on the wall. Okay, yeah, he looked pretty rough and waved his hand. "Scratch that. You didn't... you came all the way from work? Why didn't you catch me there? And all on the awesome too. Well done. Kay's a jerk, not many people manage to own him. Is that... um... nothing's wrong, is it? That's all? Because I didn't even know you knew where I lived, and the hospital isn't exactly a couple of blocks away."
"What? No, no... the pants threw me, that's all," Serena replied quickly. He did look rough, but he also looked kind of cute and sleepy, and she just wanted to cuddle him. She tried to get her eyebrows to drop back down even if she was still surprised at where her thoughts were heading. Her wavy hair was still down around her shoulders, but the scrubs were gone and she was just dressed in jeans and a light blouse. "Yeah, I did. I'm sorry, I just... wanted to share the awesome, and now it just seems so stupid. I might have stolen your address, or just acquired it by dishonest means. Nothing's wrong, I just... are you okay? I know you were on call, and it's hard. You haven't passed out in any food at least."
Chris pressed his lips together and pushed them out a little in a tiny, confused pucker. The lack of sleep was making it hard for him to keep up with her chatter. He looked down at his standard pyjamas. It was either this or naked and he couldn't help but wonder how she might have reacted if it had been a night for the latter and he answered the door to her in his birthday suit. "I usually save that party trick for when I'm drunk," he offered and then stepped aside for her to come in. She had stolen his address? Then had come all this way to 'share the awesome'. Inviting her in was probably the least he could do. "You're stealing my address, Proctor is trying to steal my locker, and Jacksonville is trying to steal me. Today is really not my day. Come in, come in. It's not stupid, just don't expect my brain to keep up one hundred percent. You'd have better luck trying to get Tuck to tapdance on the helipad in a tutu."
Serena's face fell instantly before she could stop it, and try and just remain as impartial as possible. She had crossed the threshold and was now standing closer to Dr C as one word caught in her mind and got stuck on repeat. "Jacksonville?" she asked quietly. She hadn't even heard any rumours, too busy trying to save her patient, and prove that she wasn't some dumb blonde bimbo playing doctor.
Chris closed the doorly quietly and looked over her face with a nod. "Yeah, Jacksonville," he confirmed and then raised his eyebrows a little. "Why? Would you miss me?"
Serena wet her lips she reached up to push her fingers through her blonde curls. After a moment of avoiding his gaze she met it again. "Yeah, I would."
Chris merely shrugged and went into the living area of his apartment so he could sit down and take a load off. "Not often people stay at the one hospital their whole working career," he reasoned, folding his hands across his stomach and relaxing back into the seat. But he soon smirked. "You'd still have Proctor."
Serena moved forward to take a seat next to him, not sure just how much she was allowed to relax given she had stolen his address. She pulled her mouth to the side before she smirked back and rolled her eyes. "He's only good for scaring the crap out of me, and testing me on my medical knowledge while scaring the crap out of me. He's just my boss. My boss-boss."
Chris started to laugh and then indulged in a long, slow rubbing of his eyes before he finally dropped his hands back onto his thighs and looked at her in amusement. "Who are you trying to kid? You have like a schoolkid-teacher crush on him. But don't be ashamed of it, the guy's... intriguing. And just to make a point, he should be testing your medical knowledge at every turn, we all should be. Hell, Zambrano still thinks some days I'm doing my first surgery," he said with a small snort.
"She really does seem to... have issues with you. Sure it's not a peer crush? Maybe she wants in your pants, and it's coming out all mangled?" Serena arched her eyebrow at him before she slid further down, and rest her head back. Her gaze slid back over his bare chest as she sucked on her bottom lip. Adorable and sexy while tired... it was unfair, and oddly torturous. "Maybe you should test me on my anatomy?"
"Who-oa, did you really just use the anatomy line on me? Seriously? You really are only in your early residency days, aren't you? That'll only work so often," Chris laughed at her. It wasn't hard for him to remember back to his own attempt to pick up with that very line, though it did feel like ages ago, even if he was still a resident himself. "Eva doesn't want in my pants, but I'm sure she'd like to smack me in the face more often than not. But she's the sort of person that needs to be rubbed up the wrong way now and again. Makes her feel important," he added with a cheeky smirk. "Nice attempt at avoiding the Proctor Crush, but I'm not going to let you forget it that easily."
Serena blushed as she tried to shrug it off. "Hey, it's the first time I've used it. Only maybe I shouldn't have tried it on the Chief Resident. So I guess I lose points for that, right? If she doesn't want in your pants, then maybe she just wants to shove something up your butt as well as smack you in the face. Personally I think your face shouldn't be smacked. It's too pretty. I think I'm the one that takes the facial hits." She winced slightly as she reached up to touch her war wound. She still couldn't believe she'd actually been hit by the patient she was trying to save, but it had been a clue for her. "Why not?"
Chris propped his head up on his head as he listened to her. "I heard about that, and I hate to break it to you, but in this job, you'll get smacked around and assaulted sometimes. It sucks, and it makes you feel like you're doing a shitty job, but at the end of the day whether you work in Trauma, the ER, or Aged Care, if you're a doctor or a nurse, patients are gonna hit out sometimes, and you had a beauty. You alright?" he asked her, his blue eyes sweeping over her face and coming to rest on the cut on her cheek. "She can try all she wants with the butt action, but that's not my cup of tea. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I'm just not interested in playing Doctors and Nurses with Eva. Why not? Because it's so much fun to wind you up. He's winding me up, so I get to wind you up. That right there is pulling rank with style."
Serena bit her lip under his gaze, and gave a small nod. She shivered without warning, and closed her eyes briefly. She was starting to come down from the adrenaline rush of having succeeded in her first solo case. "Yeah, I'm good. I don't mind taking the hit. It actually helped me starting putting two and two together. Everyone just kept saying the guy was just drunk, but there's no way he would have been like that. There's angry drunk, and then there's a different kind of acting out. I don't really blame you. Not sure I'd play Doctors and Nurses with her either if I was a guy. She's a little bit scary." Serena laughed softly as she shifted to stretch her legs over the top of Chris'. "Yeah, alright. I'll give you that. Why does he get under your skin so much?"
"Just don't forget that sometimes, they are just gonna be drunk assholes," Chris reminded her with a small nod. "It'll always balance itself out somewhere along the line. It ain't bad one hundred percent of the time. For every outrageous mental case we get in that blows our mind, we have one that we nab in a few minutes with the patient up in bed watching Ellen by dinner time. That's what I love about this job. No two days are ever the same." He gave a small wry laugh and yawned widely. "She isn't scary. She just wants everyone to think she is. She's just as vulnerable as the rest of us at the end of the day, just as capable of having any next patient wheeled in through those doors stab right at our fragility. I guess that right there is why he gets under my skin so much. He knows already it all... or appears to. He just comes without any of the gaps in between filled. I don't like failure, but he's here to teach us all that sometimes... it's just inevitable."
Serena frowned a little. "Or maybe he's here to teach us that it might be inevitable, but it doesn't have to happen so quickly. That we can still do something. Even then it depends on your definition of failure. I heard about the kidney thing. Do you call that a failure because she had to lose the whole thing? I'm sure your stitching was beautiful. It always is." Serena tried to stifle her own yawn as she saw Chris'. "Am I keeping you up?"
"Nope, we can't always do something. He knows that. And no, I don't call that a failure. I call it a freak of nature that we were lucky to have her open to spot in the first place. She's still alive, right? There's no failure in saving a life, even if you've gotta lose a few body parts in the process of pulling it off. I just didn't anticipate taking it, but in my own defense, I was operating on very little sleep. I was following leads by then and functioning, whether it was Zambrano or Proctor. She had been going on about not being able to read Proctor or anticipate his moves like she had done with Reiner. I was personally just trying to fix the kidney without killing her. It was only barely a couple of hours before that he was telling us to exhaust all avenues first before taking the drastic route and I was on edge trying to do the op without her heart going into v-fib every five seconds. I had a headache trying to follow his direction today, but I can't help it. We all have days where we aren't firing on all cylinders. The difference between me and Eva is I don't want to know what the guy is going to do it before he does it. I want to know how to make the call myself one day, and if that means walking on my own two feet now, then so be it." He shifted in the seat and rested his cheek against the back of the sofa. "Ah-uh... my own body's doing a good enough job of that."
Serena moved again, this time scooching closer to Dr C so that she could run her fingers through his hair soothingly. Her knees were on either side of his thigh as she all but straddled it. "I'm really not sure I even want to know what Proctor's going to do next, but I at least get one part of it. Sitting up on the roof is... amazing. It's unbelievable how the city looks up that high, and watching the sun start to touch the horizon... It just makes you stop. Makes everything just... stop." She was starting to blush again as she wet her lips. "Well, without it sounding too much like a line, there might be something that could help you sleep."
"Knowing when to stop is a good start for a lot of things. In Trauma, you need to be able to see the beauty in the things around you. I guess it's why I like to let my hair down when I'm not at work. maybe that right there was Reiner's downfall. He just never took the time to stop and separate from it." Chris shrugged, but he was watching her face closely through heavy-lidded tired eyes. "Oh yeah? What do you suggest as the best treatment, Dr Warren?" he murmured, holding her gaze.
Serena nodded in agreement, but she couldn't quite bring herself to reply. Not when she had butterflies suddenly churning in her stomach, and an urge to just kiss him. Then her lips were locked on his, and she was kissing him in answer to his last question. An orgasm did amazing things for people. It could help with headaches as opposed to hinder them, it even cleared the sinus, and as far as she was concerned it helped men fall asleep.
Chris was hazily tired and the brain function was clearly on a go-slow. It took him a few moments to put two-and-two together to realise she was actually kissing him. Sure, they had been sniffing around each other a little with the flirting, which was probably inevitable. He wasn't shy in those stakes, by any means. He just didn't know if the line between flirting and not would ever get blurred, or if it was easier to not let it bend a little. There had maybe been a lot of flirting with other staff at the hospital over his time there, but this was different. They were on the same team and he was technically senior to her. It could get messy, but only if they let it, right? He started to kiss her back, even if it was slowly and lacking a usual energy he would probably be sporting if he had some sleep under his belt.
Serena didn't mind if it was lacking in energy, in fact she was enjoying being able to just take things slowly. She was clearly the least exhausted out of the two, but it didn't matter. what mattered was that he was kissing her back. That had to mean he was okay with it. They were both sensible doctors. This really wouldn't get messy if they didn't want it to. Her hand dropped to his chest, and she started to explore it with her fingertips. His skin was warm, and she moved to straddle him a little better as the kiss deepened, her tongue sliding languidly over his and she moaned softly.
Running on empty and operating on autopilot, Chris pretty much just ended up following her lead here. Maybe at some point, he just thought he was still asleep but had actually passed out in exhaustion and was now actually dreaming about this turn of events? He really was too tired to try and analyse it, and that could well be a mistake. He wouldn't pick up a scalpel in this condition, should he really be making out with their Team's new resident? Maybe not, but que sera sera. Unless her heart was going to stop in the middle of it, what did it really matter? He pushed his hands up the back of her shirt and rested them on her waist as he just let her take the lead. At least she was an awesome kisser. He could really easily roll with this.
Words: 3499
Oscar Wilde
Co-written with geniuscowboy | Follows Miami Medical 1x02
Serena was riding high. In fact, if it was possible to ride higher than high - that was what she was. She'd survived her first solo case and managed to save the patient, and she'd confronted her fair of craziness by sitting on the edge of the hospital roof with Dr Proctor. She'd thought her day was going to end a lot differently given she'd found Proctor on the roof earlier without his shirt on. She was sure she was about to witness another attending wash out. And the questions about what kind of trauma injuries she'd be faced with if he jumped had spooked her, until she realised it was more just a test of her knowledge. He had been feeling her out.
Lucky for her she knew her shit. She hadn't wound up at Miami Trauma and on Alpha Team because she was a blonde ditz. She was a trauma surgeon, and now that Dr Kay knew it, too. They could all kiss her ass as far as she was concerned. She was awesome! Only when she went to find Dr C to share her victory, he wasn't anywhere to be found. He'd gone home. She wasn't surprised when he'd been the one on call, and awake for some ridiculous amount of time. She hadn't envied him the shift.
Since she'd already proved her medical snooping prowess, Serena decided to use her new found skills to discover Dr C's address. She just couldn't leave it alone, and she couldn't stand the idea of him faceplanting in his food. She'd deny the curiosity about finding out what his place was like, or any kind of attachment besides a Resident and Chief Resident relationship. She couldn't help that he was someone she wanted to share her day with, right? Right.
Serena pressed her lips together as she had a moment of doubt now she was standing on his doorstep. Only her finger was pressing the buzzer, and it was too late now.
Chris' home was near the beach because beyond outdoors was something he could never get enough of. He liked the easy access to be able to feel the sand between his toes after a hard day at MT1, and the sun and the beach air always managed to chill him. It wasn't a huge place, but it was ultra modern, in an ultra modern beach complex. His bed was the part of the whole thing he saw the most these days, and after the past two days, he was more than ready to see it again after the bike ride up the causeway home. In fact, by the time he got there, it felt like his eyes were hanging out of his head and full of sand. Adrenaline got him home, but he was also sweaty and gross, so he needed to shower and grab something to eat. By the time he got those two staples out of the way, he frustratingly found himself wide awake and over-tired.
He had been standing out on his balcony looking at the views of the beach in the distance, bottle of orange juice in one hand adorned in nothing but a pair of Mr Happy red pyjama pants. At least he had anticipated bed, right? It was a start. Starts were good. Now he just had to shake the urge for his mind to keep stuck in overdrive contemplating Proctor and his Jacksonville Indians, and his patient and her do-over. Not to mention the head hunter. What the hell was that all about anyway? And why the hell was his doorbell ringing? Didn't anyone know it was dangerous to disturb a trauma surgeon who hadn't slept in nearly forty hours? He rubbed a hand over his face and went in through the apartment to get the door, only to have his eyebrows shoot up in surprise at who his visitor was. "Dr Warren?"
Dr Warren's own eyebrows shot up as she saw the Mr Happy red pyjama pants, and the scar free chest. The very nice, muscular, scar free chest. It was true she might have the smallest of crushes on Dr Proctor, but right now she really wasn't thinking about the Englishman. She was definitely thinking that Made in America was solid gold. "Ah..." she was speechless for a moment as she shook her head and tried to drag her gaze back up from his chest to his eyes. "Hello. Sorry. Were you sleeping? I didn't mean to... It's just it didn't feel right not talking to you today. I'm sorry. Again. But I had my first solo case, and it was awesome. I was awesome. I'm not crazy! And I totally owned Dr Kay in the end."
Chris didn't know what to say at first. He just stood there, pointing to her and then to him with his mouth open as he tried to form some words. "Wait, I don't look that bad, do I? Do I look like I just got out of bed?" he asked, leaning back to catch his reflection in the trendy decorative mirror hanging on the wall. Okay, yeah, he looked pretty rough and waved his hand. "Scratch that. You didn't... you came all the way from work? Why didn't you catch me there? And all on the awesome too. Well done. Kay's a jerk, not many people manage to own him. Is that... um... nothing's wrong, is it? That's all? Because I didn't even know you knew where I lived, and the hospital isn't exactly a couple of blocks away."
"What? No, no... the pants threw me, that's all," Serena replied quickly. He did look rough, but he also looked kind of cute and sleepy, and she just wanted to cuddle him. She tried to get her eyebrows to drop back down even if she was still surprised at where her thoughts were heading. Her wavy hair was still down around her shoulders, but the scrubs were gone and she was just dressed in jeans and a light blouse. "Yeah, I did. I'm sorry, I just... wanted to share the awesome, and now it just seems so stupid. I might have stolen your address, or just acquired it by dishonest means. Nothing's wrong, I just... are you okay? I know you were on call, and it's hard. You haven't passed out in any food at least."
Chris pressed his lips together and pushed them out a little in a tiny, confused pucker. The lack of sleep was making it hard for him to keep up with her chatter. He looked down at his standard pyjamas. It was either this or naked and he couldn't help but wonder how she might have reacted if it had been a night for the latter and he answered the door to her in his birthday suit. "I usually save that party trick for when I'm drunk," he offered and then stepped aside for her to come in. She had stolen his address? Then had come all this way to 'share the awesome'. Inviting her in was probably the least he could do. "You're stealing my address, Proctor is trying to steal my locker, and Jacksonville is trying to steal me. Today is really not my day. Come in, come in. It's not stupid, just don't expect my brain to keep up one hundred percent. You'd have better luck trying to get Tuck to tapdance on the helipad in a tutu."
Serena's face fell instantly before she could stop it, and try and just remain as impartial as possible. She had crossed the threshold and was now standing closer to Dr C as one word caught in her mind and got stuck on repeat. "Jacksonville?" she asked quietly. She hadn't even heard any rumours, too busy trying to save her patient, and prove that she wasn't some dumb blonde bimbo playing doctor.
Chris closed the doorly quietly and looked over her face with a nod. "Yeah, Jacksonville," he confirmed and then raised his eyebrows a little. "Why? Would you miss me?"
Serena wet her lips she reached up to push her fingers through her blonde curls. After a moment of avoiding his gaze she met it again. "Yeah, I would."
Chris merely shrugged and went into the living area of his apartment so he could sit down and take a load off. "Not often people stay at the one hospital their whole working career," he reasoned, folding his hands across his stomach and relaxing back into the seat. But he soon smirked. "You'd still have Proctor."
Serena moved forward to take a seat next to him, not sure just how much she was allowed to relax given she had stolen his address. She pulled her mouth to the side before she smirked back and rolled her eyes. "He's only good for scaring the crap out of me, and testing me on my medical knowledge while scaring the crap out of me. He's just my boss. My boss-boss."
Chris started to laugh and then indulged in a long, slow rubbing of his eyes before he finally dropped his hands back onto his thighs and looked at her in amusement. "Who are you trying to kid? You have like a schoolkid-teacher crush on him. But don't be ashamed of it, the guy's... intriguing. And just to make a point, he should be testing your medical knowledge at every turn, we all should be. Hell, Zambrano still thinks some days I'm doing my first surgery," he said with a small snort.
"She really does seem to... have issues with you. Sure it's not a peer crush? Maybe she wants in your pants, and it's coming out all mangled?" Serena arched her eyebrow at him before she slid further down, and rest her head back. Her gaze slid back over his bare chest as she sucked on her bottom lip. Adorable and sexy while tired... it was unfair, and oddly torturous. "Maybe you should test me on my anatomy?"
"Who-oa, did you really just use the anatomy line on me? Seriously? You really are only in your early residency days, aren't you? That'll only work so often," Chris laughed at her. It wasn't hard for him to remember back to his own attempt to pick up with that very line, though it did feel like ages ago, even if he was still a resident himself. "Eva doesn't want in my pants, but I'm sure she'd like to smack me in the face more often than not. But she's the sort of person that needs to be rubbed up the wrong way now and again. Makes her feel important," he added with a cheeky smirk. "Nice attempt at avoiding the Proctor Crush, but I'm not going to let you forget it that easily."
Serena blushed as she tried to shrug it off. "Hey, it's the first time I've used it. Only maybe I shouldn't have tried it on the Chief Resident. So I guess I lose points for that, right? If she doesn't want in your pants, then maybe she just wants to shove something up your butt as well as smack you in the face. Personally I think your face shouldn't be smacked. It's too pretty. I think I'm the one that takes the facial hits." She winced slightly as she reached up to touch her war wound. She still couldn't believe she'd actually been hit by the patient she was trying to save, but it had been a clue for her. "Why not?"
Chris propped his head up on his head as he listened to her. "I heard about that, and I hate to break it to you, but in this job, you'll get smacked around and assaulted sometimes. It sucks, and it makes you feel like you're doing a shitty job, but at the end of the day whether you work in Trauma, the ER, or Aged Care, if you're a doctor or a nurse, patients are gonna hit out sometimes, and you had a beauty. You alright?" he asked her, his blue eyes sweeping over her face and coming to rest on the cut on her cheek. "She can try all she wants with the butt action, but that's not my cup of tea. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I'm just not interested in playing Doctors and Nurses with Eva. Why not? Because it's so much fun to wind you up. He's winding me up, so I get to wind you up. That right there is pulling rank with style."
Serena bit her lip under his gaze, and gave a small nod. She shivered without warning, and closed her eyes briefly. She was starting to come down from the adrenaline rush of having succeeded in her first solo case. "Yeah, I'm good. I don't mind taking the hit. It actually helped me starting putting two and two together. Everyone just kept saying the guy was just drunk, but there's no way he would have been like that. There's angry drunk, and then there's a different kind of acting out. I don't really blame you. Not sure I'd play Doctors and Nurses with her either if I was a guy. She's a little bit scary." Serena laughed softly as she shifted to stretch her legs over the top of Chris'. "Yeah, alright. I'll give you that. Why does he get under your skin so much?"
"Just don't forget that sometimes, they are just gonna be drunk assholes," Chris reminded her with a small nod. "It'll always balance itself out somewhere along the line. It ain't bad one hundred percent of the time. For every outrageous mental case we get in that blows our mind, we have one that we nab in a few minutes with the patient up in bed watching Ellen by dinner time. That's what I love about this job. No two days are ever the same." He gave a small wry laugh and yawned widely. "She isn't scary. She just wants everyone to think she is. She's just as vulnerable as the rest of us at the end of the day, just as capable of having any next patient wheeled in through those doors stab right at our fragility. I guess that right there is why he gets under my skin so much. He knows already it all... or appears to. He just comes without any of the gaps in between filled. I don't like failure, but he's here to teach us all that sometimes... it's just inevitable."
Serena frowned a little. "Or maybe he's here to teach us that it might be inevitable, but it doesn't have to happen so quickly. That we can still do something. Even then it depends on your definition of failure. I heard about the kidney thing. Do you call that a failure because she had to lose the whole thing? I'm sure your stitching was beautiful. It always is." Serena tried to stifle her own yawn as she saw Chris'. "Am I keeping you up?"
"Nope, we can't always do something. He knows that. And no, I don't call that a failure. I call it a freak of nature that we were lucky to have her open to spot in the first place. She's still alive, right? There's no failure in saving a life, even if you've gotta lose a few body parts in the process of pulling it off. I just didn't anticipate taking it, but in my own defense, I was operating on very little sleep. I was following leads by then and functioning, whether it was Zambrano or Proctor. She had been going on about not being able to read Proctor or anticipate his moves like she had done with Reiner. I was personally just trying to fix the kidney without killing her. It was only barely a couple of hours before that he was telling us to exhaust all avenues first before taking the drastic route and I was on edge trying to do the op without her heart going into v-fib every five seconds. I had a headache trying to follow his direction today, but I can't help it. We all have days where we aren't firing on all cylinders. The difference between me and Eva is I don't want to know what the guy is going to do it before he does it. I want to know how to make the call myself one day, and if that means walking on my own two feet now, then so be it." He shifted in the seat and rested his cheek against the back of the sofa. "Ah-uh... my own body's doing a good enough job of that."
Serena moved again, this time scooching closer to Dr C so that she could run her fingers through his hair soothingly. Her knees were on either side of his thigh as she all but straddled it. "I'm really not sure I even want to know what Proctor's going to do next, but I at least get one part of it. Sitting up on the roof is... amazing. It's unbelievable how the city looks up that high, and watching the sun start to touch the horizon... It just makes you stop. Makes everything just... stop." She was starting to blush again as she wet her lips. "Well, without it sounding too much like a line, there might be something that could help you sleep."
"Knowing when to stop is a good start for a lot of things. In Trauma, you need to be able to see the beauty in the things around you. I guess it's why I like to let my hair down when I'm not at work. maybe that right there was Reiner's downfall. He just never took the time to stop and separate from it." Chris shrugged, but he was watching her face closely through heavy-lidded tired eyes. "Oh yeah? What do you suggest as the best treatment, Dr Warren?" he murmured, holding her gaze.
Serena nodded in agreement, but she couldn't quite bring herself to reply. Not when she had butterflies suddenly churning in her stomach, and an urge to just kiss him. Then her lips were locked on his, and she was kissing him in answer to his last question. An orgasm did amazing things for people. It could help with headaches as opposed to hinder them, it even cleared the sinus, and as far as she was concerned it helped men fall asleep.
Chris was hazily tired and the brain function was clearly on a go-slow. It took him a few moments to put two-and-two together to realise she was actually kissing him. Sure, they had been sniffing around each other a little with the flirting, which was probably inevitable. He wasn't shy in those stakes, by any means. He just didn't know if the line between flirting and not would ever get blurred, or if it was easier to not let it bend a little. There had maybe been a lot of flirting with other staff at the hospital over his time there, but this was different. They were on the same team and he was technically senior to her. It could get messy, but only if they let it, right? He started to kiss her back, even if it was slowly and lacking a usual energy he would probably be sporting if he had some sleep under his belt.
Serena didn't mind if it was lacking in energy, in fact she was enjoying being able to just take things slowly. She was clearly the least exhausted out of the two, but it didn't matter. what mattered was that he was kissing her back. That had to mean he was okay with it. They were both sensible doctors. This really wouldn't get messy if they didn't want it to. Her hand dropped to his chest, and she started to explore it with her fingertips. His skin was warm, and she moved to straddle him a little better as the kiss deepened, her tongue sliding languidly over his and she moaned softly.
Running on empty and operating on autopilot, Chris pretty much just ended up following her lead here. Maybe at some point, he just thought he was still asleep but had actually passed out in exhaustion and was now actually dreaming about this turn of events? He really was too tired to try and analyse it, and that could well be a mistake. He wouldn't pick up a scalpel in this condition, should he really be making out with their Team's new resident? Maybe not, but que sera sera. Unless her heart was going to stop in the middle of it, what did it really matter? He pushed his hands up the back of her shirt and rested them on her waist as he just let her take the lead. At least she was an awesome kisser. He could really easily roll with this.
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