Fic: Hospital Holidays| Arthur/Eames| PG 13
Fic: Hospital Holidays
Author: ficsoreal
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Rating: PG 13
Words: 1379
Summary: AU. Arthur and Eames are fellows covering their respective services on Christmas Eve, because every holiday story should include praying your pager doesn't go off in the middle of the night.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
The pediatric dialysis unit is purple. There are multicolored balloons bordering the walls and a flat screen television plays Sponge Bob, Dora the Explorer and Hannah Montana all day.
Arthur hates the pediatric dialysis unit.
He hates the plastic blue pull out chairs. He hates the constant hum of the blood circulators and the way the candy bowl never runs out of candy because the children are all too nauseated from dialysis to be tempted by sugary treats. He hates knowing Lindsey Wilcomb will never have to learn to pee in the potty, because her kidneys don’t make urine.
He hates having to walk past the pediatric unit to get to the adult side.
One of the dialysis machines beeps, sharp and jarring, designed to attract attention, and Arthur looks away from his computer screen towards the purple room, but the nurse practitioner is already there, shifting a slight boy in teddy bear pajamas back into the proper position. He’s holding a stuffed giraffe. The fur is matted in some spots and missing in others; Arthur’s seen that giraffe entirely too often.
“You have to stay like this, Cody, or the line will clot and your blood won’t get cleaned,” the nurse says. Cody stares back at her listlessly, thumb in his mouth.
The night can’t be over soon enough.
Nephrology fellows don’t have their own lounge. The hospital deemed it an unnecessary expense because most of their time is spent supervising the dialysis unit, rounding on patients or in clinic. So once the last patient has been transported back to the ward, Arthur logs off the computer and makes his way to the internal medicine lounge. He’s hoping to catch Ariadne, another soul unfortunate enough to be on call Christmas Eve. Maybe she’ll want to get a cup of coffee and pet his head and say, “Oh, Arthur,” when he questions his career path.
The lounge is pretty full for holiday hours; it seems as if all the medicine residents and fellows have congregated there to pass the time by bitching and stuffing their faces. Sugar cookies are piled on a gold platter in the center of the kitchen table and a ridiculous Christmas movie is playing on the television. A Santa tracker is scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Santa’s flying over Arizona according to channel 12.
Also, there’s Eames seated around one of the wobbly old tables spotted around the room, playing cards with one of the GI fellows. Eames has no place in the medicine lounge. His long coat is thrown over the back of his chair, pocket contents on the verge of spilling to the floor.
Arthur's surprised Eames is even in the hospital. What are the chances a patient will need emergency plastic surgery on Christmas Eve, anyway? He turns on his heel to walk back out. Ariadne's clearly not present or she would be in the thick of Eames' card game. Eames spots him before he makes it out of the door, making a clean escape just one more unrealized Christmas miracle.
“Dr. Darling,” Eames says, stopping Arthur in his tracks. “I’m out, guys,” he says as he stands up, waving away the roar of protests his statement hails. “The stakes were getting too rich for my blood anyway.” He pushes his pile of chocolates to the center of the table and makes his way over to Arthur.
Arthur's mouth turns down; he isn’t in the mood for much of anything at the moment, but the easiest thing to do is to wait and see what Eames wants with him. Eames ushers Arthur out into the hallway and once the door shuts behind them, he closes his hand gentle, but firm, around Arthur’s wrist and guides him through the twists and turns of the empty hospital hallways until they reach the plastics lounge. Arthur raises an eyebrow at him, but Eames only smiles. “Tell me you aren’t curious,” he dares.
Everyone is curious about the plastic surgery lounge. When Arthur was a fourth year medical student, he heard from another boy who heard from the class bicycle that the surgery lounge was outfitted like a four star hotel, but very few people besides plastic surgery fellows and significant others were allowed inside. Something about not rubbing the completely unfair, blatant favoritism of the hospital in the other residents’ faces.
Arthur follows Eames inside because he is curious and the opportunity to look around without Eames’s friends smirking knowingly at him might not come around again. The quarters aren’t quite a four star hotel but the lounge is open and clean with stainless steel appliances and a flat screen television dominates the far wall of the room with black leather couches situated for optimal viewing.
There’s a hall off to the side where Arthur imagines the call rooms are and then he doesn’t have to imagine because Eames captures his wrist again and tugs him down the hall. The call rooms have name plates hung on the doors and when they stop in front of the one labeled Eames, he turns to Arthur and says, “I thought you might appreciate a place a little more peaceful.” He raises his hand and touches the space between Arthur’s eyebrows. “You look like you’re having a rough night.”
Eames is rarely serious unless he’s working, but his face is solemn as he looks at Arthur, his eyes more grey than blue in the dim light of the hallway. It’s stupid to feel as if all the teasing, the careful distance when Arthur was still a third year medical student and Eames was already a second year surgery resident was leading to this moment, but Arthur feels that way regardless. He leans into Eames’s touch and Eames curves his hand around Arthur’s cheek.
“Darling,” Eames says and Arthur can tell with a hundred percent certainty Eames isn’t just calling him by his last name.
In the call room, before and after shots of boob jobs share wall space with humanitarian pictures featuring Eames and beaming children with freshly fixed cleft lips and palates. A little girl with black hair and brown eyes sits on Eames’s lap in one glossy print. Sutures run up the side of her nose and along her top lip, tiny and evenly spaced. Even Arthur, as much as he abhorred his mandatory three months of surgery, can tell the incisions are going to heal well. He stops in front of the picture, touches the girl’s smiling face with careful fingers and wonders why it’s taken them so long to get to this point; he hasn’t been a student in going on four years.
“That was from the first mission I ever went on,” Eames says. He’s standing close behind Arthur and his voice is soft. “She changed my life.”
Eames runs his hands up Arthur’s arms and Arthur shivers. “Only you would have little children and boob jobs on the same wall,” Arthur says.
“At the most basic level, they’re about the same thing,” Eames says, “changing people’s lives by making them more confident and comfortable in their skin.”
Arthur reaches up and back to push his fingers into Eames’ hair and Eames drops his head down to rest on Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur says, “There’s a little boy in the pediatric dialysis unit. He’s getting four hours of emergent hemodialysis on Christmas Eve.”
The sigh Eames releases gusts warm against Arthur’s neck. “What have I told you?”
“Stop skulking around the pediatric unit,” Arthur repeats dutifully. “But I don’t do it on purpose. I have to walk past the peds side to get to the adult side.”
Eames hugs Arthur tight briefly before saying, “You want to try to catch a couple of hours of sleep before the ER consults you about the next end stage patient who rolls in?”
“Yes,” Arthur says. An orange and purple comforter is scrunched up at the end of the twin bed in the middle of Eame’s room and the sheets are already rumpled. It’s not the most comfortable bed Arthur has ever been in, but at the moment with Eames snugged up behind him, both of them with their shoes still on, there’s no other place Arthur would rather be.
Author: ficsoreal
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Rating: PG 13
Words: 1379
Summary: AU. Arthur and Eames are fellows covering their respective services on Christmas Eve, because every holiday story should include praying your pager doesn't go off in the middle of the night.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
The pediatric dialysis unit is purple. There are multicolored balloons bordering the walls and a flat screen television plays Sponge Bob, Dora the Explorer and Hannah Montana all day.
Arthur hates the pediatric dialysis unit.
He hates the plastic blue pull out chairs. He hates the constant hum of the blood circulators and the way the candy bowl never runs out of candy because the children are all too nauseated from dialysis to be tempted by sugary treats. He hates knowing Lindsey Wilcomb will never have to learn to pee in the potty, because her kidneys don’t make urine.
He hates having to walk past the pediatric unit to get to the adult side.
One of the dialysis machines beeps, sharp and jarring, designed to attract attention, and Arthur looks away from his computer screen towards the purple room, but the nurse practitioner is already there, shifting a slight boy in teddy bear pajamas back into the proper position. He’s holding a stuffed giraffe. The fur is matted in some spots and missing in others; Arthur’s seen that giraffe entirely too often.
“You have to stay like this, Cody, or the line will clot and your blood won’t get cleaned,” the nurse says. Cody stares back at her listlessly, thumb in his mouth.
The night can’t be over soon enough.
Nephrology fellows don’t have their own lounge. The hospital deemed it an unnecessary expense because most of their time is spent supervising the dialysis unit, rounding on patients or in clinic. So once the last patient has been transported back to the ward, Arthur logs off the computer and makes his way to the internal medicine lounge. He’s hoping to catch Ariadne, another soul unfortunate enough to be on call Christmas Eve. Maybe she’ll want to get a cup of coffee and pet his head and say, “Oh, Arthur,” when he questions his career path.
The lounge is pretty full for holiday hours; it seems as if all the medicine residents and fellows have congregated there to pass the time by bitching and stuffing their faces. Sugar cookies are piled on a gold platter in the center of the kitchen table and a ridiculous Christmas movie is playing on the television. A Santa tracker is scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Santa’s flying over Arizona according to channel 12.
Also, there’s Eames seated around one of the wobbly old tables spotted around the room, playing cards with one of the GI fellows. Eames has no place in the medicine lounge. His long coat is thrown over the back of his chair, pocket contents on the verge of spilling to the floor.
Arthur's surprised Eames is even in the hospital. What are the chances a patient will need emergency plastic surgery on Christmas Eve, anyway? He turns on his heel to walk back out. Ariadne's clearly not present or she would be in the thick of Eames' card game. Eames spots him before he makes it out of the door, making a clean escape just one more unrealized Christmas miracle.
“Dr. Darling,” Eames says, stopping Arthur in his tracks. “I’m out, guys,” he says as he stands up, waving away the roar of protests his statement hails. “The stakes were getting too rich for my blood anyway.” He pushes his pile of chocolates to the center of the table and makes his way over to Arthur.
Arthur's mouth turns down; he isn’t in the mood for much of anything at the moment, but the easiest thing to do is to wait and see what Eames wants with him. Eames ushers Arthur out into the hallway and once the door shuts behind them, he closes his hand gentle, but firm, around Arthur’s wrist and guides him through the twists and turns of the empty hospital hallways until they reach the plastics lounge. Arthur raises an eyebrow at him, but Eames only smiles. “Tell me you aren’t curious,” he dares.
Everyone is curious about the plastic surgery lounge. When Arthur was a fourth year medical student, he heard from another boy who heard from the class bicycle that the surgery lounge was outfitted like a four star hotel, but very few people besides plastic surgery fellows and significant others were allowed inside. Something about not rubbing the completely unfair, blatant favoritism of the hospital in the other residents’ faces.
Arthur follows Eames inside because he is curious and the opportunity to look around without Eames’s friends smirking knowingly at him might not come around again. The quarters aren’t quite a four star hotel but the lounge is open and clean with stainless steel appliances and a flat screen television dominates the far wall of the room with black leather couches situated for optimal viewing.
There’s a hall off to the side where Arthur imagines the call rooms are and then he doesn’t have to imagine because Eames captures his wrist again and tugs him down the hall. The call rooms have name plates hung on the doors and when they stop in front of the one labeled Eames, he turns to Arthur and says, “I thought you might appreciate a place a little more peaceful.” He raises his hand and touches the space between Arthur’s eyebrows. “You look like you’re having a rough night.”
Eames is rarely serious unless he’s working, but his face is solemn as he looks at Arthur, his eyes more grey than blue in the dim light of the hallway. It’s stupid to feel as if all the teasing, the careful distance when Arthur was still a third year medical student and Eames was already a second year surgery resident was leading to this moment, but Arthur feels that way regardless. He leans into Eames’s touch and Eames curves his hand around Arthur’s cheek.
“Darling,” Eames says and Arthur can tell with a hundred percent certainty Eames isn’t just calling him by his last name.
In the call room, before and after shots of boob jobs share wall space with humanitarian pictures featuring Eames and beaming children with freshly fixed cleft lips and palates. A little girl with black hair and brown eyes sits on Eames’s lap in one glossy print. Sutures run up the side of her nose and along her top lip, tiny and evenly spaced. Even Arthur, as much as he abhorred his mandatory three months of surgery, can tell the incisions are going to heal well. He stops in front of the picture, touches the girl’s smiling face with careful fingers and wonders why it’s taken them so long to get to this point; he hasn’t been a student in going on four years.
“That was from the first mission I ever went on,” Eames says. He’s standing close behind Arthur and his voice is soft. “She changed my life.”
Eames runs his hands up Arthur’s arms and Arthur shivers. “Only you would have little children and boob jobs on the same wall,” Arthur says.
“At the most basic level, they’re about the same thing,” Eames says, “changing people’s lives by making them more confident and comfortable in their skin.”
Arthur reaches up and back to push his fingers into Eames’ hair and Eames drops his head down to rest on Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur says, “There’s a little boy in the pediatric dialysis unit. He’s getting four hours of emergent hemodialysis on Christmas Eve.”
The sigh Eames releases gusts warm against Arthur’s neck. “What have I told you?”
“Stop skulking around the pediatric unit,” Arthur repeats dutifully. “But I don’t do it on purpose. I have to walk past the peds side to get to the adult side.”
Eames hugs Arthur tight briefly before saying, “You want to try to catch a couple of hours of sleep before the ER consults you about the next end stage patient who rolls in?”
“Yes,” Arthur says. An orange and purple comforter is scrunched up at the end of the twin bed in the middle of Eame’s room and the sheets are already rumpled. It’s not the most comfortable bed Arthur has ever been in, but at the moment with Eames snugged up behind him, both of them with their shoes still on, there’s no other place Arthur would rather be.