Fic: We'll relearn/learn it together.
Author: truthaboutglee
Rating: PG-13 (for some sexual references)
Warnings: Sexual References. A lot of nursing terms/medical terms, but I’ve been told it’s fairly easy to understand.
Word count: 4000 ish
Spoilers: None
Summary: Set in my Give Your Heart a Break ‘verse, in the future. I highly suggest reading that fic first before reading this. Blaine Anderson-Hummel, cardiology nurse, has just come back from his honeymoon and has realized how exhausting his job has become lately. Literally. With the encouragement of his husband, Dr. Kurt Anderson-Hummel, he decides to apply to become a clinical educator with the local nursing school. Fluff ensues.
Author’s Note: This takes place in the Give Your Heart a Break ‘verse, but in the future. I strongly recommend reading the other fics in that ‘verse before reading this. The title is taken from a blog post written by a preceptor (aka a nurse who oversees/teaches nursing students or new grads). This fic was basically written as a type of catharsis for me as I started it when I was getting ready for my last hospital placement in my third year of nursing school. I finished my placement, so therefore I finished this :) There’s a lot of nursing/medical language and it’s pretty much a mixture of how my 4 hospital placements started out but with fluffy Kurt and Blaine mixed in. This fic is nursing central, so just be mindful of that. What can I say, I love nursing!
It was nearing 3 o'clock in the morning and Blaine was trying really hard not to fall asleep on top of the piles of charts in front of him. He was working his first night shift since he had come back from his honeymoon and he felt absolutely slammed with work. He and Kurt had saved up their vacation time and they had three glorious weeks to themselves. The first week was the crazy week of the wedding. There was way too much going on to even try to enjoy the time off, but it was worth it. After the best day of their lives, Blaine and his new husband flew to the Dominican Republic, where they slept, ate, relaxed and had sex to their heart's content.
It was amazing. But now Blaine was right back to working several 12 hour shifts in a row, with almost a 5-6 patient load each time. He was grateful that he hadn't been scheduled any night shifts since he had returned because honestly, they were awful. There was always a lull after all assessments were completed, medications were given and charting was finished. There was only so much coffee a person could drink until it stopped working. Not to mention how awful it was to try to sleep in the middle of the day. No matter how tired you were, it was still difficult to sleep when the town was just waking up for the day. Day shifts weren't really any better, especially with the amount of workload the nurses were forced to have.
Blaine had been working as a cardiology nurse since he graduated college almost ten years ago. He had gotten a few pay raises in his time, but his job never changed. And honestly? After 2 weeks of pure relaxation, 3 weeks back to work was enough to realize how exhausted he was of his job. He loved being a nurse and he loved being able to see Kurt at work and getting to have lunch with him, if he wasn't in surgery. Kurt kept fairly good hours because the cardiology department kept a strict schedule with rotation and a lot of the surgeons liked to do their surgeries between 9am and 5pm, unless it was super complicated or an emergency case. More often than not Kurt was home when Blaine was finished his shift, which was honestly one of his favourite things in the world. There was nothing like coming home to your husband (husband! He still wasn't used to that!) who either had a homemade meal or takeout waiting for him to eat for dinner and a comforting hug and kiss when he walked in the door absolutely dead tired.
Yeah…he was just exhausted. He needed a change. One of his managers had actually suggested that Blaine apply to be a clinical educator for the nursing students at the local University and work part time on the floor before he had left for his wedding. He hadn't thought about it much at all during the week of the wedding and during the honeymoon, but since he had returned to work, he started to ask around a bit. A few senior nurses and a few recent hires on the floor had been clinical educators for the university. They had all told him that it was a nice change, especially he if started working less shifts on the floor. The money was good too and the only thing he would have to do on the side would be to read over reflections, medication profiles and pathophysiology write ups (which were super easy), get patient assignments and do the evaluations for the students.
He hadn't talked to Kurt about it yet, but now that's he's learned a little about it, he'll discuss it with him as soon as he can.
Or, he will if this night shift doesn't kill him first.
He had just closed his eyes for a few minutes when he felt a warm hand pressed against his shoulder, shaking him out of the sleepy haze he had drifted into.
"Hmmm…what?" he mumbled, blinking hard and yawning loudly. "Kurt? Is that you?"
Blaine rubbed the sleepiness out of his eyes to see his husband dressed in Operating Room scrubs, a surgical scrub gown (worn as a coat) and the white surgical cap with black music notes on it that Blaine had bought for him.
"Hi sweetie. Tired?" Blaine nodded and yawned again. Kurt pulled over a chair and tugged Blaine over to cuddle with him. Blaine wrapped his arms around Kurt's torso and tucked his face into Kurt's neck.
"Fuck, I'm so tired Kurt."
"Only a few more hours left, then you can go home and sleep."
"Mhmm…" Blaine mumbled sleepily. "Will I have a few hours with you when I get home, or no?"
"Well, I did just do a 6 hour emergency surgery so I think I might be granted some time to sleep in," said Kurt, laughing quietly. "I texted you to tell you that I was coming in but I guess you missed it."
"Really? Maybe you sent it to me when you were in a bad service area and it got eaten or something. I liked the surprise though. Thank you for coming to see me."
"It was my pleasure, sweetie." Kurt leaned in and kissed him softly.
"Mmm…while you're here, I want to talk to you about something that I've been thinking about since we got back from our honeymoon," said Blaine.
Blaine quickly explained the job he was looking into, and the requirements and how his manager and several other nurses on the floor encouraged it.
"I think you would be an amazing clinical educator Blaine. I think this is a great opportunity and you should definitely take advantage of it."
"It's not exactly a 9-5 kind of job, but at least I won't be totally burnt out at the end of the week, you know?"
"Oh god, yes. I still don't know how you've been working the same job in the same place for almost ten years. A lot of nurses would have been burnt out by then and moved on to something less stressful," said Kurt.
"I know! I'm surprised too. I love this job and I love the people who I work with. But coming back from a truly relaxing honeymoon made me realize how exhausting this job is. I don't necessarily want to leave but I want my workload to tone down a bit and I think this is a good way to do it. Of course I'd have to talk with my nurse manager about it, but I don't think I'll have a problem. Now, all I need to do is submit my application and resume to the university and hopefully get the job!"
"I think you're a shoe in, honey. Everyone will love you and you'll get hired on the spot!" Kurt kissed him on the cheek and nudged his cuddly husband off of his lap. "I need to go check on my patient in recovery and I'm going to head home. I'll see you in a few hours okay? I'll make sure the bed is nice and cozy for you."
"Thanks love, see you soon!"
Three Weeks Later
"Dr. Kurt Hummel."
Blaine loved calling Kurt on his cell phone when he was at work. He used his sexy, authoritative doctor voice because he knew it was the cardiology floor calling.
"Yes, Dr. Hummel? This is Blaine Anderson-Hummel calling about your patient Mr. John Doe? He's really constipated and I think he needs a laxative…"
"Blaine."
"Yes, Dr. Hummel?"
"Blaine."
Blaine burst out laughing; he couldn't fool his husband for a second.
"Oh come on Kurt! That could have been totally legitimate!"
"Yeah, sure, maybe if you didn't use your full name to introduce yourself and used a fake patient name, I would have believed you."
"Maybe I just like bragging that my last name is now Anderson-Hummel."
(Kurt had legally changed his last name to Anderson-Hummel as well, but he continued to go by Dr. Hummel at work, so no one would get confused).
"You're cute. Now what did you actually need my love?"
"I got an email from the university…"
"And…"
"I GOT THE JOB!"
"Oh, sweetie! I knew you would get it! Congratulations! I wish I could keep talking to you but I'm being paged. What time is your lunch at?"
"It's at 1pm."
"I'll meet you in the cafeteria okay?"
"Can't wait! Love you! Bye!"
Two Weeks Later
After several meetings with his manager, the person in charge of all of the clinical educators hired by the university and the professor who was leading the course that incorporated the placement, Blaine was pretty sure he was ready for the job.
Sam, one of the younger nurses on the floor, was also a clinical educator on the side. She was only able to get hired part time when she applied to work on the Cardiology floor, so she decided to look into being a clinical educator. She had pulled him away at lunch one day and gave him a piece of paper with a bunch of tips on it.
"You don't want to be super strict with the kids, especially when it's their first placement in the hospital. I learned it the hard way. No one was around to tell me all the little things you can do to make the experience better for you and the kids."
Blaine glanced at the page briefly. Number one on the list was, Don't be afraid to fudge the hours!
"Um…Sam. Can't you get in trouble for making up the hours?"
"Blaine! Sssshhh! Don't talk so loudly!"
"Sorry, Sam," he said sheepishly.
"It's an unspoken rule among clinical educators. Especially when you are working with second year students. They only get assigned one patient, right? Sometimes it can be incredibly dead around here, unless you ask the other nurses to save skills, like dressing changes, for the students to do. You might have days when you are super busy. But don't be afraid to send the kids home early if they are just standing around in the hall because all of their patients are independent and there are no skills for them to practice. Just don't tell anyone. Plus, if you think about it, the time the kids spend writing all of their assignments on the side and the time you spend marking them/reading them over, the time is basically made up."
"Have you ever done 12 hour shifts with your kids?" Blaine asked her.
"Only if they have 2 or more patients. But that only happens when they have more experience after being in previous rotations. I don't think you'll have too much of a problem of meeting the hours. Just have all of your shifts be 8 hours long, or at least 8 hours long on paper, and you'll be fine. They don't have many hours that are required in their very first rotation and it is fairly busy around here. Plus, the kids will be nervous and stressed because it's new to them, so it's nice to give them a little break."
"Great. Thanks for your help, Sam. I'm pretty nervous about the whole thing and I definitely want the kids to like me, so anything helps."
"Aww, don't worry Blaine. The kids will love you," she said, giving Blaine a reassuring smile. "And one more thing. Ask Kurt if you can send a student to watch an open heart or a valve replacement or something. Or send them to see an angioplasty or angiogram. My clinical educator did that with our group and I'll never forget it. I do it for my kids too. It's an amazing experience."
"Will do. Thanks again, Sam!"
Before starting the placement at the hospital, the clinical educators and their groups of students were asked to meet at the School of Nursing for an orientation day. They would meet in the skills labs and rotate through different areas so the clinical educators could assess the skill level of their students. Then they would meet in one of the classrooms and go over the expectations of the students and educators as a large group. Later on they would all meet at Blaine would be meeting his group, which he was pretty excited about. The little contact he had had with his students had all been by email, so he was eager to start matching faces with the names on his list.
Blaine arrived at the School of Nursing a little early so he could talk to the professor in charge of clinical that semester, along with the other educators. He didn't really recognize anyone except for Sam, who would be teaching students on a general medical floor. He stuck by her as the professor went through a list of expectations and handed them important packages to help guide them through the clinical rotation. Soon enough, all of the students started walking through the doorway in the classroom where the orientation was being held. They were all wearing red scrub tops and black scrub pants. The students were required to wear the same uniform with the name of the school embroidered on the tops, so they could be easily picked out as nursing students in the hospital. Blaine was very thankful that he was no longer required to wear regulation scrubs and that he could wear whatever colour he liked.
The was only one other male clinical educator in the group so eventually his group of 6 students were standing in front of him nervously.
"Hi guys! I'm Blaine. It's so nice to see you all in person! Why don't you all introduce yourselves and we can head to the skills lab and work on some skills!" Blaine talked about his education and his work experience before encouraging the students to introduce themselves. Blaine's positive attitude and excitement seemed to work like magic on the nerves of the students because they all visibly relaxed and started introducing themselves to him one by one.
There was Anna, Kayli, Shane, Michael, Brianna and Emily. All of the girls seemed to know each other from living in the same dorm. Shane and Michael are roommates and best friends, as far as Blaine could tell. Everyone definitely had really different personalities, but they all seemed to mesh well when it came to working as a team to do skills, or to encourage and provide advice for another group member. Blaine was very surprised at how skilled his students were when performing clinical skills (setting up IV bags and tubing, dressing fake wounds, etc.) and they all seemed very intelligent. He knew his group would be strong when it came to actually practicing on the floor. They all seemed to like him, too, which was a good thing. When he sat down with the group to talk about expectations and the upcoming schedule, the kids seemed a little overwhelmed, but he managed to convince them that they would get through this rotation together.
After sitting through a boring presentation by the professor, Blaine met up with the students at the hospital. He showed them where the locker room & cafeteria was before heading to the cardiology unit. It was about 2pm when they actually arrived on the floor, so not much was happening. A lot of the nurses were sitting in the nursing station doing some charting and some were wandering from room to room checking on their patients. He lead them inside the nursing station and introduced them to the group of nurses and then lead them to the telemetry monitors, where he showed them how to print out EKG strips for their patients (which they were expected to do first thing in the morning). He showed them the racks where the charts were supposed to be put at all times and he showed them the ward clerk's desk, the kitchen and the tiny room they used to give report at shift change. They were just about to head to the main part of the floor when Kurt stepped off the elevator.
Blaine wasn't planning on saying hello to him while he was with his students, but as soon as Kurt saw him, he smiled widely, waved and walked right over to him. Blaine blushed a bit but smiled just as widely as Kurt approached the group. Kurt was wearing a crisp navy dress shirt with a patterned gray tie and pinstriped black slacks with shiny black dress shoes. He was wearing his white lab coat with the hospital name, his name and his qualifications embroidered on the breast with his sleek black stethoscope hanging around his neck.
"Hi Blaine!" he chimed, "Is this your group of students?"
"Yes it is! Everyone, this is Dr. Kurt Hummel. He's a cardiothoracic surgeon and he's on the floor pretty frequently to check up on his post-op patients. If you're lucky enough to have a chance to, Dr. Hummel is going to let you come and watch an open heart surgery," said Blaine, looking over at Kurt who was nodding in agreement.
The students started murmuring in excited voices with the mention of getting to watch a surgery.
"That's right! But I can't make promises. Things are always changing around here and you can't really guarantee anything," said Kurt seriously. "If you don't get the chance to see a surgery during your placement, Blaine and I can figure something out and hopefully get you in here when you have some free time. Watching a surgery is the chance of a lifetime, especially as nursing students."
"That's for sure," said Blaine. "Anyways, Dr. Hummel, it was nice seeing you. We were just about to go tour the rest of the floor."
"Oh okay! I'm going to go check on some patients. Have fun! I'm sure I'll be seeing you around quite a bit on the floor. Don't be afraid to come say hi," said Kurt, smiling at the students.
Blaine started walking away from Kurt, making sure the students were in front of him when he turned around and gave Kurt a cute little wave and a wink. Kurt blew a kiss at him before laughing a bit and turning away.
As he lead the group through the halls on the floor, he stopped and pointed out the clean utility room, where all of the supplies and equipment were, the pyxis room, where they had the pyxis machine, the fridge for insulin and other medications that needed to be refrigerated and IV bags, among other supplies.
"Now guys, I made you a little scavenger hunt with things you would find in the clean utility and pyxis rooms. There's so much stuff in here and even by the end of your placement here you still won't know where everything is! Trust me, it takes forever! But hopefully this scavenger hunt helps a bit," said Blaine. He took a few papers out of his bag and handed them out to the students. "I'll be around, but don't come ask me for help unless you really can't find something!"
The students went off to the clean utility room and Blaine hung back a bit, planning to go chat with one of his coworkers while the kids were doing the scavenger hunt.
The four girls in his group were walking together in front of him. "Dr. Hummel was so cute, wasn't he? I wouldn't mind if he was around all the time, that's for sure!" he overheard one of them say.
Blaine was glad he was walking behind the girls because he was blushing and grinning like a madman.
"Cute? Try drop dead sexy. If this was Grey's Anatomy, you can bet your ass I'd meet him in the on call room, if you catch my drift."
"I think he's married though, I saw a ring," said one of them.
"Boooo!" The girls chorused, bursting out in giggles.
Yes, he's married to me, Blaine thought. He's my husband. Blaine couldn't stop the pure happiness he was feeling from bubbling in his stomach. He sighed a little dreamily to himself and went to go talk to his coworker Nat to kill some time while the students completed the scavenger hunt.
Later on, after the students had finished the scavenger hunt, Blaine sat down with them and went through a chart so they would know what to look at tomorrow morning. He assigned them all a patient to care for tomorrow; he wanted to start off light for the first day so he didn't want them to stress out too much about giving medications, so they would do it next week.
"Okay guys, I think we're all finished for the day. I'll meet you here tomorrow at 7:30am, alright?"
The students said goodbye and all gathered at the elevators, waiting for the doors to open. Blaine was about to wait with them when he spotted Kurt standing at the ward clerk's desk. He walked over quickly and Kurt greeted him with a smile. Blaine leaned in and kissed him quickly, paying no attention to the group of students behind him.
A chorus of gasps and surprised giggles broke out behind him. Blaine spun around quickly, his cheeks flushing immediately.
Kurt was giggling in his ear and all of the members in the group were smiling and looked a little surprised, if not amused.
"Um yeah so….Dr. Hummel is my husband. Just so you know," said Blaine, shrugging his shoulders and laughing a little.
"And you weren't going to tell us?!" Kayli exclaimed.
"I was planning on it! I was trying to be professional and make a good impression. I didn't really know how you guys were going to react so I didn't really want to say anything…"
Kurt squeezed his shoulder and Blaine knew he understood what he meant.
"Well, don't worry Blaine. I think you guys are really cute," said Kayli. The rest of the group murmured their affirmations and Blaine smiled in relief.
"We are pretty cute, I have to agree," said Kurt with a wink.
Blaine laughed and shook his head at his husband.
Suddenly, a loud ding sounded out, signaling the arrival of the elevator.
"Go!" said Kurt, pushing Blaine lightly towards the elevator. "I'll see you at home in a few hours."
"Bye Kurt!" he called out. The seven of them shuffled into the elevator. As they travelled down to the main floor, Kayli said, "Nice catch Blaine! Kurt seems really great."
"He does!" the other girls chimed in.
"I'm so excited about getting to go see a surgery!" said Michael. "Me too!" said Shane. The rest of the group started chattering excited about the upcoming challenges the placement would bring as they continued going down.
This is going to be great.
Author's Note 2:
Damn, I wish Blaine was my clinical educator. Much like his students, I did have a placement on Cardiology, but in my third year instead of my second. I did get to go see some cool procedures and I learned a lot! I was pretty nervous to start my placement at the beginning of March, so I started writing this to help me feel less nervous. Then it sucked up all my time and I didn't get around to finishing it until the day after I finished my placement. Oh well! Many thanks to my lovely friend Sam, who is not a nurse, but got a special cameo because she cheered me on as I was writing and I appreciate it a lot and she's awesome and I love her. Thank you so much for reading! If you have any questions, please send me a message here or on tumblr! Keep an eye on this 'verse. I might be writing more sooner or later.