musesandlyrics | 7.4. Friedrich Nietzsche quote
"The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Co-written with cutandlearn
[Follows THIS]
Chris was out on the MT1 balcony with a cup of coffee. He leant on the railing and sipped it, and anyone would probably assume he was out there alone from his body language. He wasn't, though. Somewhere behind him, Serena was standing there with her own coffee, both of them left alone after Proctor had been out there discussing the case with them. They had relayed everything that had gone down. The CT showed a small bleed with some swelling on the brain from the hit to the head, but some meds managed to reduce both. It was the injury to the guy's side that was the most worrying. The glass shard turned out to be five inches long, and the piece Chris had been trying to fish out of the wound without luck had just been the tip and not a small piece at all. It had pierced the kidney, and they needed to operate before the guy bled to death. Luckily they were able to save the kidney, and his life, even if the surgery had been a good three hours long just from the sheer positioning of the glass and the fact Jeff's blood pressure hovered so low they needed to give him a transfusion.
He had survived through it, though, and Serena was more than an anxious mess by the end of it. Chris had just walked out of the OR without saying much to her in the guise of seeking out Proctor. Their boss had been out on the balcony with, of all things, a smoothie with an umbrella in it. Chris didn't even ask. But now they were alone again and his phone beeped. He turned around, leaning his back against the railing to check it. Dave wanted him to call him ASAP. Chris quickly texted back that he was elbows deep in a case and would be in touch soon.
As soon as his phone beeped and he turned around, Serena's gaze was on Chris as she watched him carefully. How the hell did she manage to get a slap in the face like an ex winding up at MT1 the day after their perfect first date? She was still trying to work out what she'd done in a past life - or this one - to deserve it. What either of them had done. "Everything okay?" she asked Chris quietly as she moved off the wall and walked over to lean against the railing next to him.
Chris nodded and shoved his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs. "I don't see why not. Dave just wants me to call him. He's had the flu, he probably just wants someone to commiserate with. Aimee's still at work after a long shift, apparently. I know how she feels." He rested he elbows on the railing, watching the bustling around inside the hospital beyond the glass walls. He was realising just how damn many glass walls this place had. Made the whole glass house metaphor even more ironic. "How ex is the ex?" he finally asked. "I'm not sure he got the memo."
"Dave? Oh... well, you need to call him. Because he's got the flu. He's your best friend, so you should definitely call him and cheer him up. I put it down to the brain bleed. I'm sure it's just because he had a near death mosh pit experience and apparently has taken to the morphine Kleebus gave him. I'm a little surprised the tox screens didn't show anything. I was half expecting him to be positive for ecstasy." Serena pulled her mouth to the side as she looked down at her coffee. "It was a year before I came to MT1. He should have been more than over me. I'm not exactly that amazing. We weren't anything epic, at least not that I remember. There weren't puke tests, no beach sex, no fixing of clickers. Don't get me wrong, Jeff wasn't a bastard or anything. He was a nice boyfriend. But that was about it. He was just nice. The spark fizzled after a while."
"Epic enough to date him," Chris commented lightly as he took a sip of his coffee. Dave would understand that he had a case, the call could wait. "Near death experience and you were there..." He whistled lowly. "To think, he could have seen Elvis. But nope, you. You were in his near death experience. Pretty sure none of my exes crossed my mind when I was down the sink hole with a cut harness. I think his spark is still going a little healthily, at the very least."
Serena waved her hand dismissively as she balanced her coffee in the other one. "It's the drugs and the head wound, that's all. I doubt I was in his near death experience he's just putting me in it because I was here. That's all. There's no spark, or epicness. None. What about your current? Did she cross your mind down the sink hole?" she asked, trying to change the topic just a little.
"Morph doesn't make you hallucinate, and he knew who you were. He wasn't talking in tongues. He only started to check out the more blood he lost. He seemed pretty lucid when he first got here." Chris pressed his lips together and glanced down at her. "Seriously? You're asking me that? I can't believe you asked me that." He shook his head in annoyance and took another large mouthful of his coffee.
"I'm sorry, okay? It was a dumb question. Just like my stupid ex showing up here with his stupid face. I can't believe out of all the cities in this country he chooses Miami to take a time out and get injured. But it's nothing, right? Nothing. He's just... Jeff. I haven't thought about him in over a year." She took a sip of her coffee, but her stomach was starting to tense up and even the precious beverage didn't sit so well.
Chris turned to her and looked like he had a lot he wanted to say, but ended up just closing his mouth and going back to his coffee. With another look at her, he again was about to say something, but got interrupted by his pager that started to beep just a couple of seconds before Serena's did. "Fuck, please no more incoming," he mumbled to himself as he unclipped the pager.
Serena tossed her coffee into a nearby trash can, frustratingly in the dark about anything Chris might have been about to say. It just felt like everything was against them today and she just didn't get it. First dates were meant to kick off something even more special. Maybe it had been too special and now they had to be kicked back down to Earth. She unclipped her pager and took a look at it. Her stomach did a flip-flop in response and she sucked in a breath. "It's a 911 for Jeff..." She bolted before even waiting for Chris to read his own page, hanging onto her pager and stethoscope as she ran through the corridors to the ICU.
The page left a sour taste in Chris' mouth for some reason he had no explanation for. In fact, with Serena bolting off like a bat out of hell, Chris was actually tempted to hang back and call Dave. He didn't, though. No matter how much Serena's ex made him feel irked, he was still their patient. He read over the page and then clipped it back to his belt, tossing his still half-full coffee into the nearby bin. One of these days, he would actually finish something he bought from the cafeteria. He picked up his pace and made it to the ICU just a minute or so after Serena, only to be met with the sight of the guy awake, very much not unconscious or arresting or even bleeding out. In fact, he was smiling and reaching for Serena's hand. Chris pushed his way in between them and caught the guy's wrist before there was any connection. "911, huh? Better check that blood pressure," he stated, keeping a hold of the guy's arm lightly so he could take some gloves from the dispenser.
Serena was caught somewhere between looking angry and guilty as she just stared at Jeff. There hadn't been a swarm of nurses waiting for her, or even a crash cart ready. Jeff was just sitting there and smiling at her. Somewhere deep down she wanted to smack him for being such a selfish prick, but she moved to the other side of the bed and tried to stay out of reach of his other hand while she pulled on some gloves and moved to check his surgical wound just in case there had been any pain. It was possible, right? It could just be because he wanted to talk to her about something other than their past relationship that had somehow been thrown back into the present. "Anything hurting, Jeff? Feel any pain..."
Jeff frowned a little at having Dr C holding onto him, not sure why the blond doctor suddenly had it in for him. This guy was supposed to be the best but his bedside manner could use a little work. Not to mention the fact he'd only meant for the page to go to Serena and not this guy. "Nothing you can't make feel better," he murmured as his eyes fixed on Serena and he grinned a little. "There's something I really wanted to talk to you about. I was hoping we'd be alone for this, but it's not like this guy is your boyfriend, right?"
"No, she's completely single, dude. Open range," Chris said dryly and started to pump up the sphyg quickly with maybe a little more force than usual. He looked up at Serena and pierced her with a gaze before looking back down at the monitor as he released the air from the cuff slowly. "You better hope you sweet-talked the nurse who sent the 911 for you well enough. Their job could be on the line. I might leave it up to Dr Warren to fill out the incident report. She does so love her paperwork. BP is still low. I'm going to hang another bag of blood." He picked up the guy's chart to make some more annotations and then grabbed a nurse on her way past, holding it out to her. "Can you contact the blood bank and have that sent up, please? And let the nurses know that if anymore false 911 pages are made, I'll pass it on to legal."
Serena wet her lips as she peeled back the dressings and touched her fingertips gently against the wound before closing it back over. "Surgical site looks fine. Little red but that's to be expected. And Dr C's full of shit. Just for the record," she told Jeff as she met his gaze. "I'm not single, there is no open range. I'm just your doctor right now, Jeff. That's it. I'm here to look after you."
Jeff looked just the slightest bit guilty about the 911 but he was sure the results would have made it worthwhile. Until Serena burst his bubble in that gentle tone of hers. It didn't stop him from trying one more time. "But this fate, Serena! Don't you see? How else would I have wound up here with you being my doctor? It's just meant to be. We were stupid to break up in the first place. I still love you."
Serena sucked in a breath and just stood there dumbfounded. She didn't know how else to tell Jeff it wasn't on without sounding like a complete bitch. And without really dropping herself, and Chris, in it.
Chris had nearly dropped the clipboard at Jeff's next comment, but luckily the nurse already had a hold of it. He murmured a thank you to her, knowing the nurses didn't deserve having his bad mood taken out on them. His phone buzzed again with another message and even though he was slightly glaring at the patient now, he checked the message. Another one from Dave, telling him it was really important and to call him as soon as he had a break. He was glancing back and forth between Serena and Jeff, waiting for Serena to cut the guy's comment down, but she didn't say anything. Chris shook his head, not sure how much he could deal with right now. He held up his hand, the phone still clutched in his palm. "This isn't an emergency and it's wasting my time. It looks like you have everything under control, Dr Warren. Sounds like you have stuff to talk about..." He roughly shoved the curtain to the side and stalked up the ICU corridor. If he stayed there, he would say something he really regretted.
"Chris!" Serena called out to him but Jeff did manage to get a hold of her rest this time and she nearly went falling back against him as her momentum got cut short. Her heart leapt up into her throat and she still struggled to find her voice as her gaze went from a retreating Dr C to her ex in the bed. "I'm in love with someone else," she finally choked out and pulled her hand from Jeff's. "Totally and utterly crazy in love even if I promised him I wouldn't be. I'm sorry, okay? I am. But he's real, and he fixed my clicker."
Jeff frowned. "He--what?"
Serena sighed. "He fixed my clicker, and he held my hair when I puked, and he let me wear his lucky red boxers. We're going to Disneyworld and maybe it's not Disneyland, but it's still pretty amazing. I'm sorry Jeff, I really am. But this isn't fate. Not the you and me part. You're just going to have to find someone else, okay? I can't... I... I gotta go." She turned to chase after Chris, hoping like hell she could find him otherwise she really was going to go back and smack Jeff in the side for ruining this for her.
Word Count | 2,361
Friedrich Nietzsche
Co-written with cutandlearn
[Follows THIS]
Chris was out on the MT1 balcony with a cup of coffee. He leant on the railing and sipped it, and anyone would probably assume he was out there alone from his body language. He wasn't, though. Somewhere behind him, Serena was standing there with her own coffee, both of them left alone after Proctor had been out there discussing the case with them. They had relayed everything that had gone down. The CT showed a small bleed with some swelling on the brain from the hit to the head, but some meds managed to reduce both. It was the injury to the guy's side that was the most worrying. The glass shard turned out to be five inches long, and the piece Chris had been trying to fish out of the wound without luck had just been the tip and not a small piece at all. It had pierced the kidney, and they needed to operate before the guy bled to death. Luckily they were able to save the kidney, and his life, even if the surgery had been a good three hours long just from the sheer positioning of the glass and the fact Jeff's blood pressure hovered so low they needed to give him a transfusion.
He had survived through it, though, and Serena was more than an anxious mess by the end of it. Chris had just walked out of the OR without saying much to her in the guise of seeking out Proctor. Their boss had been out on the balcony with, of all things, a smoothie with an umbrella in it. Chris didn't even ask. But now they were alone again and his phone beeped. He turned around, leaning his back against the railing to check it. Dave wanted him to call him ASAP. Chris quickly texted back that he was elbows deep in a case and would be in touch soon.
As soon as his phone beeped and he turned around, Serena's gaze was on Chris as she watched him carefully. How the hell did she manage to get a slap in the face like an ex winding up at MT1 the day after their perfect first date? She was still trying to work out what she'd done in a past life - or this one - to deserve it. What either of them had done. "Everything okay?" she asked Chris quietly as she moved off the wall and walked over to lean against the railing next to him.
Chris nodded and shoved his phone back into the pocket of his scrubs. "I don't see why not. Dave just wants me to call him. He's had the flu, he probably just wants someone to commiserate with. Aimee's still at work after a long shift, apparently. I know how she feels." He rested he elbows on the railing, watching the bustling around inside the hospital beyond the glass walls. He was realising just how damn many glass walls this place had. Made the whole glass house metaphor even more ironic. "How ex is the ex?" he finally asked. "I'm not sure he got the memo."
"Dave? Oh... well, you need to call him. Because he's got the flu. He's your best friend, so you should definitely call him and cheer him up. I put it down to the brain bleed. I'm sure it's just because he had a near death mosh pit experience and apparently has taken to the morphine Kleebus gave him. I'm a little surprised the tox screens didn't show anything. I was half expecting him to be positive for ecstasy." Serena pulled her mouth to the side as she looked down at her coffee. "It was a year before I came to MT1. He should have been more than over me. I'm not exactly that amazing. We weren't anything epic, at least not that I remember. There weren't puke tests, no beach sex, no fixing of clickers. Don't get me wrong, Jeff wasn't a bastard or anything. He was a nice boyfriend. But that was about it. He was just nice. The spark fizzled after a while."
"Epic enough to date him," Chris commented lightly as he took a sip of his coffee. Dave would understand that he had a case, the call could wait. "Near death experience and you were there..." He whistled lowly. "To think, he could have seen Elvis. But nope, you. You were in his near death experience. Pretty sure none of my exes crossed my mind when I was down the sink hole with a cut harness. I think his spark is still going a little healthily, at the very least."
Serena waved her hand dismissively as she balanced her coffee in the other one. "It's the drugs and the head wound, that's all. I doubt I was in his near death experience he's just putting me in it because I was here. That's all. There's no spark, or epicness. None. What about your current? Did she cross your mind down the sink hole?" she asked, trying to change the topic just a little.
"Morph doesn't make you hallucinate, and he knew who you were. He wasn't talking in tongues. He only started to check out the more blood he lost. He seemed pretty lucid when he first got here." Chris pressed his lips together and glanced down at her. "Seriously? You're asking me that? I can't believe you asked me that." He shook his head in annoyance and took another large mouthful of his coffee.
"I'm sorry, okay? It was a dumb question. Just like my stupid ex showing up here with his stupid face. I can't believe out of all the cities in this country he chooses Miami to take a time out and get injured. But it's nothing, right? Nothing. He's just... Jeff. I haven't thought about him in over a year." She took a sip of her coffee, but her stomach was starting to tense up and even the precious beverage didn't sit so well.
Chris turned to her and looked like he had a lot he wanted to say, but ended up just closing his mouth and going back to his coffee. With another look at her, he again was about to say something, but got interrupted by his pager that started to beep just a couple of seconds before Serena's did. "Fuck, please no more incoming," he mumbled to himself as he unclipped the pager.
Serena tossed her coffee into a nearby trash can, frustratingly in the dark about anything Chris might have been about to say. It just felt like everything was against them today and she just didn't get it. First dates were meant to kick off something even more special. Maybe it had been too special and now they had to be kicked back down to Earth. She unclipped her pager and took a look at it. Her stomach did a flip-flop in response and she sucked in a breath. "It's a 911 for Jeff..." She bolted before even waiting for Chris to read his own page, hanging onto her pager and stethoscope as she ran through the corridors to the ICU.
The page left a sour taste in Chris' mouth for some reason he had no explanation for. In fact, with Serena bolting off like a bat out of hell, Chris was actually tempted to hang back and call Dave. He didn't, though. No matter how much Serena's ex made him feel irked, he was still their patient. He read over the page and then clipped it back to his belt, tossing his still half-full coffee into the nearby bin. One of these days, he would actually finish something he bought from the cafeteria. He picked up his pace and made it to the ICU just a minute or so after Serena, only to be met with the sight of the guy awake, very much not unconscious or arresting or even bleeding out. In fact, he was smiling and reaching for Serena's hand. Chris pushed his way in between them and caught the guy's wrist before there was any connection. "911, huh? Better check that blood pressure," he stated, keeping a hold of the guy's arm lightly so he could take some gloves from the dispenser.
Serena was caught somewhere between looking angry and guilty as she just stared at Jeff. There hadn't been a swarm of nurses waiting for her, or even a crash cart ready. Jeff was just sitting there and smiling at her. Somewhere deep down she wanted to smack him for being such a selfish prick, but she moved to the other side of the bed and tried to stay out of reach of his other hand while she pulled on some gloves and moved to check his surgical wound just in case there had been any pain. It was possible, right? It could just be because he wanted to talk to her about something other than their past relationship that had somehow been thrown back into the present. "Anything hurting, Jeff? Feel any pain..."
Jeff frowned a little at having Dr C holding onto him, not sure why the blond doctor suddenly had it in for him. This guy was supposed to be the best but his bedside manner could use a little work. Not to mention the fact he'd only meant for the page to go to Serena and not this guy. "Nothing you can't make feel better," he murmured as his eyes fixed on Serena and he grinned a little. "There's something I really wanted to talk to you about. I was hoping we'd be alone for this, but it's not like this guy is your boyfriend, right?"
"No, she's completely single, dude. Open range," Chris said dryly and started to pump up the sphyg quickly with maybe a little more force than usual. He looked up at Serena and pierced her with a gaze before looking back down at the monitor as he released the air from the cuff slowly. "You better hope you sweet-talked the nurse who sent the 911 for you well enough. Their job could be on the line. I might leave it up to Dr Warren to fill out the incident report. She does so love her paperwork. BP is still low. I'm going to hang another bag of blood." He picked up the guy's chart to make some more annotations and then grabbed a nurse on her way past, holding it out to her. "Can you contact the blood bank and have that sent up, please? And let the nurses know that if anymore false 911 pages are made, I'll pass it on to legal."
Serena wet her lips as she peeled back the dressings and touched her fingertips gently against the wound before closing it back over. "Surgical site looks fine. Little red but that's to be expected. And Dr C's full of shit. Just for the record," she told Jeff as she met his gaze. "I'm not single, there is no open range. I'm just your doctor right now, Jeff. That's it. I'm here to look after you."
Jeff looked just the slightest bit guilty about the 911 but he was sure the results would have made it worthwhile. Until Serena burst his bubble in that gentle tone of hers. It didn't stop him from trying one more time. "But this fate, Serena! Don't you see? How else would I have wound up here with you being my doctor? It's just meant to be. We were stupid to break up in the first place. I still love you."
Serena sucked in a breath and just stood there dumbfounded. She didn't know how else to tell Jeff it wasn't on without sounding like a complete bitch. And without really dropping herself, and Chris, in it.
Chris had nearly dropped the clipboard at Jeff's next comment, but luckily the nurse already had a hold of it. He murmured a thank you to her, knowing the nurses didn't deserve having his bad mood taken out on them. His phone buzzed again with another message and even though he was slightly glaring at the patient now, he checked the message. Another one from Dave, telling him it was really important and to call him as soon as he had a break. He was glancing back and forth between Serena and Jeff, waiting for Serena to cut the guy's comment down, but she didn't say anything. Chris shook his head, not sure how much he could deal with right now. He held up his hand, the phone still clutched in his palm. "This isn't an emergency and it's wasting my time. It looks like you have everything under control, Dr Warren. Sounds like you have stuff to talk about..." He roughly shoved the curtain to the side and stalked up the ICU corridor. If he stayed there, he would say something he really regretted.
"Chris!" Serena called out to him but Jeff did manage to get a hold of her rest this time and she nearly went falling back against him as her momentum got cut short. Her heart leapt up into her throat and she still struggled to find her voice as her gaze went from a retreating Dr C to her ex in the bed. "I'm in love with someone else," she finally choked out and pulled her hand from Jeff's. "Totally and utterly crazy in love even if I promised him I wouldn't be. I'm sorry, okay? I am. But he's real, and he fixed my clicker."
Jeff frowned. "He--what?"
Serena sighed. "He fixed my clicker, and he held my hair when I puked, and he let me wear his lucky red boxers. We're going to Disneyworld and maybe it's not Disneyland, but it's still pretty amazing. I'm sorry Jeff, I really am. But this isn't fate. Not the you and me part. You're just going to have to find someone else, okay? I can't... I... I gotta go." She turned to chase after Chris, hoping like hell she could find him otherwise she really was going to go back and smack Jeff in the side for ruining this for her.
Word Count | 2,361