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queenbirbs · 5 years

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what if the closest we get to the moment is now | Ethan Ramsey x MC

WC: 10k+

Rating: Mature

Content: N*FW, contains semi-graphic medical scene (nothing too bad, but I don’t know everyone’s level of comfort with these sorts of things)

Summary: An OH AU where everything is a little bit different, but also very much the same; or, Ethan is an ER attending and MC is a paramedic, but they still manage to fall in love. Title taken from Katie Herzig’s Closest I Get.

+ + +

He sees her three times before he learns her name.

The first time is at the intersection of State and Congress, which he approaches with that tight feeling in his chest. It’s the feeling that only comes from jogging the three-mile route from his apartment, where he goes up around the government center and back down Bowdoin, before taking a lap around the Common. Then there’s the historic facade of King’s Chapel and the less-historic Chipotle on the corner, where he can choose to extend his route by taking Water Street up to Congress and circle back to his apartment.

Which is the route Ethan takes this morning with Jenner at his side, dawn slowly approaching as the sky shifts from that deep blue to a hazy gray.

The only light comes from the streetlamps and the headlights of the delivery vans and buses that idle at the major intersections. State and Congress being one of those -- his last one, actually, before he crosses to return home.

The appearance of another jogger at the intersection isn’t strange. Though he purposefully goes for his runs before five a.m., he knows he isn’t the only one with the same exercise preferences (or the same work schedule). There are others he sees along his route sometimes, though he doesn’t know their names, as he’s never been inclined to strike up a conversation while waiting on a light change before.

The woman in front of him is much the same; he spots the earbuds at the same time he hears the humming. She paces back and forth on the sidewalk, trying to keep her heart rate up. Ethan moves closer to the curb and into her peripheral, making her aware of his presence so he won’t frighten her by hovering behind.

“Morning,” she says to him, offering a quick smile. He returns the motion, suddenly unsure of himself, as he finds that he wants to say something back.

The light changes, cutting off any chance of a reply.

And then they’re crossing and he’s watching the way her ponytail swings in the beam of the headlights and the white piping down her leggings that frames tall, shapely legs that end in a pair of bright orange sneakers and then, suddenly, they’re on the other side.

Where she goes right and he goes left.

He thinks of her once more that day, hours into his shift, before deciding that he probably won’t see her again.

+ + +

The second time he sees her is at Derry Roasters.

It’s the local coffee shop down from the hospital that he frequents when, instead of pulling out every follicle of hair one-by-one, he goes to drink expensive lattes to escape the doe-eyed nuisances that are his interns.

Ethan is nearing the front of the line when he spots her at the back. Instead of running gear, she’s dressed in a black T-shirt and navy cargo pants, clearly dressed down out of some uniform. Her hair is pulled back in that same ponytail; she runs her fingers through it, her wide eyes giving off an overwhelmed vibe. It’s been years since he’s actually looked at the scrawling cursive above his head, having ordered the same drink so often that the baristas automatically charge him for a Vienna as soon as he steps up to the counter. In theory, he could take his drink and get back in line, sidle up to her, and offer his suggestion. Maybe she would chat with him, maybe he would get to know her name.

Maybe he would promise to see her again to share a coffee at a later date.

Before he can test such a theory, a young man darts into the shop and straight over to her. Ethan is trying to place where he’s seen the man before, but then the bartisa calls out his order and his pager is buzzing and he’s shoving down the disappointed feeling in his chest when he sees the young man’s head dip down to whisper in the woman’s ear.

He takes his coffee and goes, thinking of her twice more that day, and hopes that he’ll see her again.

+ + +

The third time he sees her is in the ER.

There’s a traffic jam of stretchers in the receiving bay, filled with the hypochondriacs or the psych evals or the people who called a closed doctor’s office, only to be told by the secretary’s voicemail to call 911 or visit the ER if any of their (usually minor) problems persist. Several paramedics are holding the wall, as if helping out in any way would inconvenience them.

Ethan is helping a nurse transfer in the fourth victim of a six-car pile-up when that ponytail catches his eye.

Down the hall, the young woman is leaned over a stretcher, one hand on an older man’s shoulder to keep pressure on a bandaged wound, while the other rests on his arm. She says something to the man, whose worried frown ticks up into a half-smile as he nods. Standing on the opposite side of the stretcher is the same young man from the coffee shop, who Ethan now recognizes as Rafael, one of their regular paramedics.

The nurse takes over the accident patient and Ethan returns to the line, shuttling the new patients in and signing off for the intakes. It takes him six minutes to get to Rafael and his new partner, who immediately launches into her patient’s status.

“Henry here took a fall, he’s got a five-inch gash along his clavicle.”

Ethan takes the copy of the report she hands him and assists with transferring Henry over to a bed. His gaze flickers down to her uniform where, pinned above her heart, a nametag reads S. McTavish. Before he can think of a way to find out her first name, a code blue sounds from on down the hall.

Rafael and McTavish are long gone by the time Ethan steps back out into the receiving bay, where another nurse has joined to help the first, leaving him to resume his duties.

It isn’t until hours later that he remembers the copy of the report he handed off to the nurses station. Rifling through the intake folder, he retrieves the document and is pleased to discover her first name at the top, written out in neat print: Sloane.

+ + +

As if the universe has designated him a break, he starts to see her everywhere.

Aside from the daily drop-bys in Edenbrook’s ER, he runs into her at the market one Thursday, and then the liquor store that same afternoon. Their interactions are short -- awkward in that way that barely-colleague ones are -- though he manages to make her laugh at his terrible joke in the wine aisle, so he considers the whole trip a success. He runs into her again at Carson Beach, where he runs Jenner so the Boxer-mutt mix will release some of that pent-up energy she’s infamous for. That breathless feeling hits him again when he sees her pass by on the HarborWalk, then circle back around and jog towards them across the sand, her orange sneakers kicking up little clouds behind her.

“Doctor Ramsey, hi!” she greets, flicking back the long rope her hair is braided into. Her skin glistens with sweat from her mid-morning run.

“Good morning, Miss McTavish,” he returns, keeping his eyes pointedly on the flush staining her cheeks and not letting it drift downwards to the shorts she wears that look as if they were sculpted on. He wouldn’t know, of course, as he certainly wasn’t checking out her backside when she jogged past earlier.

“And who might this be?” Sloane is already kneeling, so he doesn’t get a chance to stop her before Jenner knocks her down into the sand.

“Jenner, off!”

His dog perks her head up at the command, then resumes her wet kisses across Sloane’s neck. From underneath the mound of wet dog comes laughter, which eases some of his anxiety.

“Oh, she’s just a big ol’ girl, aren’t cha? Aren’t cha?” Sloane shoulders Jenner off her so she can sit up, ruffling her dark fur where it’s coated in sand. Ethan tosses a frisbee down towards the water and uses the distraction to help her back onto her feet.

“I’m sorry, she usually isn’t--” he cuts himself off with a sigh. Sloane follows his gaze and starts chuckling at his dog, who has abandoned the frisbee and is now trying to chase down a clump of seaweed in the water. “Actually, she’s a real pain in the ass. But I am sorry she knocked you over. I’m out here to tire her out so she’ll behave.”

Sloane flaps a hand at him, quieting his apology.

“Don’t worry, my dog Relay is the same way.”

Ethan watches his own dog give up on the seaweed and wade back onto the shore, trying to think up a response. “I’m from South Carolina,” she continues to explain. “About an hour outside of Hilton Head, so I take him to the beach as much as I can. Except for when I went to college in Columbia.”

“What did you study?”

“Pre-med. And then I went to Northwestern for med school, but that didn’t work out. So, I thought I’d try Boston out for a while, see how the north coast will treat me.”

He wants to ask how she went from studying medicine in the Windy City to responding to heart attacks on the east coast, but can’t come up with a way to do so that would be polite.

“How are you liking Boston so far?” he asks instead.

Her gaze leaves the stretch of blue water in front of them to meet his own, her mouth rounding into a smile. Standing this close underneath the bright sun, he can see the freckles that dot her nose. They fan out in small strokes across her cheeks.

“It’s interesting.”

“Just ‘interesting’?” he teases, shifting his stance in the warm sand, which brings him a few inches closer. Sloane doesn’t move away, though. Instead, her shoulders roll in a lazy shrug as her smile widens.

“Jury’s still out on a final verdict. For now, interesting.”

“Well, if you need any recommendations, let me know. Though,” he gestures to the beach surrounding them, “I can see you already know some of the sweet spots.”

“Thanks, Ramsey. I might just do that.”

“Of course. And it’s -- you can call me Ethan.”

“Okay, Ethan. Then you can call me Sloane. Deal?”

“Deal.”

+ + +

He doesn’t see Sloane again until the next Thursday, and even then their moments together are a few, too-brief moments in the ER.

The Fourth of July weekend keeps both of them up to their eyeballs in emergencies. He’s starting to see why Doctor Mirani always insists on taking the next week off. Just when he thinks he’s seen it all, someone manages to stick a firework in a new orifice.

When his shift is reaching its eleventh-hour, the receiving bay mysteriously empties, and the waiting room starts to clear out. It is, of course, when one of the interns from diagnostics uses the Q-word, which sends a shockwave of groans through all the staff. True to the nature of the universe, calls from emergency dispatch flood in about a ten-car pile-up in the tunnel. Ethan pushes off the nurses station to prepare for the oncoming storm when Kendra, his charge nurse, hangs up the phone.

“Dispatch is sending us a few that Mass Kenmore couldn’t take.”

Ethan scoffs, biting his tongue from making a rude comment about the rival hospital.

“What’s on the menu, then?” he asks, reaching over the desk for his coffee.

“A tractor-trailer hit an ambulance,” Kendra relays with a frown. “They’re sending over the two medics and the driver to us.”

The coffee in his mouth suddenly feels like lacquer, thick and cloying in his throat as he swallows.

“Did they say what company the ambulance was with?”

Kendra shoots him a curious look at the question, obviously wanting to know why he cares, but she’s been working alongside him almost as long as he’s been at Edenbrook. She can tell when he’s going to keep mum, especially when it comes to gossip.

“No,” she finally says, “sorry.”

The pile-up victims arrive first, with their herniated discs and second-degree facial avulsions and grade-three contusions -- enough to keep him busy, hopping from bed to bed to oversee the interns as they fumble about.

Then he’s back at the nurses station to book the avulsion into the next-available OR, while also sending a queasy-looking intern to the bathroom and performing another sweep of the immediate area for any familiar paramedics, when a voice sounds over his left shoulder.

“You’re a regular Mark Greene, huh?”

The anxiety in his chest ebbs away. Relief rises and crests across his shoulders, which ease down when he turns to see Sloane, her hands tucked into the pockets of her EMS jacket, leaning against the counter next to him.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Her mouth opens to contradict him, then abruptly closes as she runs a critical eye over his form. He resists the urge to straighten under the sudden scrutiny.

“I pegged you as a man who prefers the classics, as opposed to HIPPA-violation hook-up primetime, but,” her shoulders bounce in a quick shrug, “we all have our guilty pleasures.”

Ethan clears his throat. Then, for good measure, clears it again.

“I can assure you that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on -- you can’t tell me you’ve never watched a single episode of ER or Grey’s. There’s nothing more entertaining than tearing a show like that apart.”

A nurse interrupts to get his signature on a report, giving him a chance to steer the conversation away from his watch history of medical dramas.

“Can I ask why you’re loitering in my ER in the first place?” Following the motion of her elbow, Ethan finally notices Rafael sitting in the corner. One of his interns is suturing up a wound on her partner’s waist, while several of the other interns stand around and ogle the young man’s physical attributes. They scurry off to the far corners of the department when he reminds them that drooling is not a part of their job description.

“Superman got a little banged up earlier,” Sloane explains, concern flitting across her face. “One of the walls buckled in when we were retrieving the other two medics from their rig. It’s like the thing was held together by spot welds and promises.”

Although ambulance construction isn’t his expertise, he is rather gifted in the art of observation. Which is how he knows that Rafael wasn’t the only one injured on the job, if the way Sloane is favoring her right side is any indication.

“Have you been seen to?” he asks, biting back the urge to roll his eyes when she seems surprised at the question.

“Oh, no -- it’s just a scratch, don’t worry.”

She wavers under his gaze, the one he uses to quietly bully patients into telling the truth. Within a minute, she’s hopping up onto an empty bed. The wince when she moves to take off her jacket tells him that his instincts were correct. Just below the cut of her sleeve is a four-inch laceration that she’s covered with two loops of gauze and a scrap of medical tape.

He busies himself by tending to the wound, trying to ignore the heat of her body and the little hitches of her breathing when he applies the antiseptic. This close, he can smell the coffee on her breath and the minty scent of her lip balm. His mind drifts to how such a combination would taste on his own lips, before he shoves the thought deep, deep down. When he glances up, though, he sees a similar hunger dancing through her eyes. Something base and egotistical uncurls from his chest at the sight.

“I could’ve done all this myself, you know,” she teases, watching as he fastens a piece of tape across her new bandage.

“Yes, I saw your handiwork,” he reminds her with a playful scoff. “Is that how they’re teaching students to bandage wounds at Northwestern?”

Sloane laughs at the gentle barb and slips back into her jacket.

“It’s what they teach to the ones who drop out, I guess.” She’s grinning as she says it, but her gaze drops to the floor for a brief moment, the movement telling him there must be a story there. Now isn’t the time for it, though he suddenly wishes that it were, if only to spend a few more minutes with her.

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, he reminds himself as he leads her out into the hall. “I’m surprised you remembered,” she says.

“Just… paying attention.”

+ + +

Late September in Boston is his favorite. When the heat of summer has peeled away and the promise of blistering cold is still some distance away, when all of the summer tourists have flown back home and the autumn ones haven’t yet arrived.

When the rain is more than just relief from the stagnant warmth, such as it is on this morning. The pavement is slick and dark with it, giving Ethan something to focus his attention on as he approaches the last intersection before home. Given the weather and people’s affinity to avoid it, he’s only seen a handful of runners out this morning, so he’s surprised when he spots someone already standing at the corner. Their figure is draped in a dark jacket, their hood up against the rain. It’s only because of the orange sneakers and the hound dog at their side that he knows it’s Sloane.

“Good morning.”

She whirls around at the sound of his voice. He enjoys watching the surprise on her face shift to joy, as she moves her hood back to take him in.

“And here I thought that Relay and I were the only ones crazy enough to be out in this mess.” Sloane gestures to the Bluetick hound at her side, who is busy sniffing Jenner’s backside.

“No, I thought I’d start my day off by getting the both of us drenched so my apartment smells like wet dog the rest of the day.” His sarcastic remark gets a huff of laughter out of her, which makes him want to grin like an idiot.

He doesn’t, but only just barely.

The light changes and they jog across to the opposite corner. “Well,” he begins, trying to think of some way to continue talking to her (but without offering to follow her home, which would come across either sexist or creepy). “I hope you--”

“Do you want to get breakfast?” she asks. “I know a great place off Amherst that opens in about--” she raises her fist into the air so the jacket’s sleeve will slide back enough for her to peek at her watch, which he shouldn’t find endearing, but he does. “--ten minutes.”

“Do they allow dogs?”

“They have a covered patio.”

“I’m not sure if that would protect us from the rain.”

“It’ll let up.”

Ethan glances pointedly at where the sun is struggling to break through the overcast sky. He thinks of the day ahead he’s already planned, about the laundry that needs to be done and the counters that need cleaned and the fridge that needs a purge. Then he looks back at his side where Sloane stands, who seems unable to resist ribbing him gently as she waits for an answer. “Come on, you’ll enjoy being spontaneous for once in your life. I promise.”

Sloane is right on two counts. The first is that the place does serve great food. The second is that the rain does let up about twenty minutes after they arrive, allowing them to watch as the city around them wakes up. Lights in the law offices next door switch on; cars clog up the avenues and block the intersections; people in business attire head off to work, passing people in delivery uniforms who have already been on the clock for several hours.

“Why did you become a paramedic?” he asks, genuinely curious to know something more personal than general shop talk or the way she takes her coffee (both topics which they covered already).

Sloane’s eyes narrow as she chews on a piece of toast, thinking over her answer.

“I like helping people.”

“I’m not some layman, so I’m not going to accept such a boring answer,” he tells her, and enjoys the little twitch of her lips as she gives into a grin.

“Good, because I’m going to tell you the real reason. Or, well, the major one.” Taking a sip of her coffee, she continues, “I like the uncertainty of it. I could go on a call and help an old woman back into her bed, or I can go on a call and talk a man down from the brink, or I can go on a call and help the rescue squad cut open a burning car and pull a person from certain death.”

“You like the unknown,” he surmises.

“Exactly!” she nods, gesturing with her fork in agreement. “I arrive to situations where everything has gone to hell, and I’m like the eye of the storm, keeping everything cool and calm and copacetic. It’s like an adrenaline rush.”

“You would be a good ER physician.”

She shrugs at the comment, though a flash of something passes across her face, so fleeting that he can’t put a name to it.

“I don’t know about that -- I like being out in the field. And with my crappy luck, if I did become a doctor, I’d wind up being placed at Mass Kenmore.” She makes a face at the idea. “Then I’d have to deal with the raccoons.”

“Raccoons?” he questions.

Her fork pauses on its way to her mouth.

“Oh, my god!” she hisses, leaning towards him across the table. “How do you not know about the raccoons? It’s, like, an infestation over there. One of them even got into our rig once when Raf was driving and got under the pedals. We would’ve ended up on the other side of the 93-North ramp and in the river if I hadn’t pulled the e-brake.”

“In the middle of the highway?”

“There’s no shoulder on the ramp, I had no choice!” She’s giggling over the rim of her coffee cup as she defends her actions, using the cup and his silverware when he requests a recreation of the scene.

She was right on a third count, Ethan realizes, as he watches her tale unfold, interrupting occasionally to ask for clarification.

He is, in fact, enjoying the spontaneity of saying yes.

+ + +

“You’re like my little Georgia peach.”

“I’m not from Georgia.”

“Oh, baby, say something else to me.”

“Touch me again and I will strap you to this stretcher.”

“That a promise, Peach?”

Ethan finishes checking over the fractured tibia in the fast track bay and ducks out into the hallway, having heard enough of the conversation.

“What seems to be the problem here?” he asks. Both Sloane and a man on the stretcher next to her look up at his arrival.

“I’m waiting on a bed to open up,” she explains, her jaw clenched tight.

“I hit my head,” the man moans pathetically, lifting a hand to touch his bandaged forehead.

“That’s because you drank too much and ran headfirst into a parked car, Junior.”

“Oh, so you do know my name?” Junior leers up at her, abandoning his injured head to reach for Sloane again. “Say it again for me, Peachy.”

Ethan decides it’s well past time for him to step in, doing so before Junior can get close enough to grab her.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to keep your hands to yourself.” Ignoring the man’s drunken babbling, Ethan glances around for a resident to dump the man onto. When none appear in sight, he beckons a male nurse over to help assist with the transfer.

“It must be my lucky day,” Junior crows as they wheel him down the hallway. “Two McDreamys all to myself.”

Resigning himself to the harassment he’ll be dealing with for the next hour, Ethan helps the nurse get him transferred into a bed. It’s another ten minutes before he can escape to return the stretcher to Sloane, who flashes him a grateful smile. Her hand brushes against his as she takes the stretcher from him and he convinces himself that the tingling sensation across his skin must be from the carpal tunnel he’s suddenly developed.

“Thanks again for the save, McDreamy.” With a wink, she’s off and gone, disappearing through the doors of the ambulance bay.

Across the hall, Kendra looks up at him from the nurses station and raises an eyebrow. He orders her back to work, scoffing when all she does is smirk in response.

+ + +

He thinks the knock at his door is something else at first.

Four thumps against wood drift over to where he lies, slumped on the sofa. It’s his noisy neighbors, he’s sure. The music he put on returns to its full volume once the racket ceases, allowing him to sink back into himself.

The thumps sound again, somehow harsher this time. The noise gets Jenner’s attention, who trots over to the front door and sniffs. Whoever is on the other side causes her to race back over and bark excitedly at him.

“Who is it, then, Lassie?” Ethan shoves himself up out of the hole he’s burrowed into and crosses the room.

That it’s Sloane standing on the other side of the threshold is a surprise (one of two that he’s received today, though this one is infinitely better than the other). “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need this.” In her hand is a bottle of liquor that, upon his closer inspection as he takes the bottle from her, is his favorite brand of scotch. “Everyone is going to send flowers, but I thought I’d bring over something you’d actually use.”

He doesn’t ask how she found out; the staff in the emergency department were well-known for their inability to keep mum on anything. The tragic diagnosis of his mentor and best friend definitely would have been the daily fodder. “Kendra gave me your address,” she explains, having somehow read his mind. Her now-empty hands wring together, then disappear into her pockets.

Ethan backs up, swinging the door wider to wave her inside. She stops just inside the entryway and succumbs to Jenner’s demand for belly rubs. He can feel her eyes on him as he goes to the kitchen to pour them each a glass. “Are you listening to cello covers of The Smiths?” she asks.

“If I knew who they were, then yes. But no, this is just an instrumental collection I selected at random.”

“Well, at least it isn’t Patsy Cline.”

“Good thing that you weren’t here an hour ago, then.”

He enjoys hearing her little huff of laughter as she comes to stand next to him in the kitchen. Handing her the other glass, they sip in companionable silence for a while. The sky outside his loft mellows to a brilliant orange, the clouds piped in pinks and purples. Sloane moves to the tall windows to take in the view; the light traces the features of her profile, outlining her in gold. It isn’t just the liquor in his stomach that suddenly warms him to the core.

“Your place is really nice.” After giving the open space an assessing spin, Sloane turns back to face him. “I’m glad to see that it actually looks lived-in.”

She moves to the bank of bookcases along the far wall, where photographs are symmetrically-spaced across the shelves. Ethan follows to study the pictures with her. There are a few from childhood, most with his older sister Allison, the two of them shoved next to each other in front of various American landmarks, their matching shirts stamped with cheesy phrases like South Dakota ROCKS! and Yellowstone National Park: Where the Wild Things Are!

She picks up the one of them pointing back at Mount Rushmore with bored-looking faces. Ethan remembers his mother insisting on the pose while they whined about how hot it was. Just as he remembers lying in their motel room that night, listening to his parents argue about cheating out in the parking lot. He’d been too young to understand, but being the older and wiser sibling, Allison had turned on their little box TV and let Johnny Carson drown them out.

“When I was little, I thought the mountains were naturally formed like that,” Sloane admits with a self-deprecating grin.

“That… explains some things.” He chuckles when she whacks him in the arm with the picture frame, before she sets it back onto the shelf and eyes another one. It’s a photo of Harper, Chris, and him at a dean’s dinner party, all of them in the fanciest attire they could swing on a medical student’s budget. They’re all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to make their mark in medicine.

Ethan wonders what it says about him that he’s kept this photo up on his shelf, despite the fact that both of the people in it are technically his exes -- Harper being the longest and most recent, and Chris being a one-night stand that multiplied into several more before ending abruptly. He wants to believe that it shows he can remain good friends with his previous partners -- but it’s probably a testament to his lack of other friends in his life, he realizes.

Though she’s not an Edenbrook employee, Sloane knows enough about the hospital through the gossip mill (that always seems to start in his department and then work its way through the rest of the facility) that she recognizes both faces.

“You went to school with the chief of medicine and the chief of nursing?” Her eyebrows dart up at his answering nod. “Wow, is there a fast-track placement at Columbia that I can get in on?”

Ethan snorts over the rim of his glass.

“Sure, if you can become one of the dean’s kids, they’ll make you chief innovation officer.”

“I’m sensing that you’re not just making up an example here.”

“Nepotism is afoot at every hospital, but it runs rampant at Edenbrook.”

As if shelving away the cheery turn the conversation has taken, she places the photograph back. His throat tightens at the next one down. Sloane is staring at it as well, biting at her lip, as if torn on whether or not she wants to expose the elephant in the room. “You’ve sufficiently liquored me up,” he reminds her. “Ask away.”

“That’s not why I brought--”

He waves a hand at her, cutting off her defense; he knows what she wants to know, what everyone asked him all day long at the hospital ever since the meeting this morning.

“Ask.”

Still, she hesitates -- but before he can demand again, she finally speaks.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Jesus, Sloane, just get to it.”

“That was my question,” she snaps back.

Realization washes over him. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s not one of them. She’s an outsider, looking in. She’s not interested in adding coal to the gossip mill to keep it churning; she’s not eager to know how long Naveen has or who’s going to take the now-vacant chief of emergency services position, or any of those pointless details.

She’s worried about him. It’s been so long since someone has that it takes him a moment for it to sink in.

“Oh.” He clears his throat, then clears it again, thinking it over. Does he want to talk about his mentor and best friend and the two months he was given to live? Does he want to talk about how everyone will expect him to accept the empty seat Naveen will leave? Does he even want to give up the long, grueling hours and getting his hands dirty and the adrenaline rush of saving a patient’s life -- all so he can sit behind a desk and nod at people? “No, not really,” he admits, surprising himself with the answer.

Sloane nods once and turns from the photo of Naveen and him, moving over to the barely-used, big-screen television.

“Are you savvy enough to have Netflix on this, or are we gonna have to haul out the VHS player that I definitely know you have stored away somewhere?”

Brushing dust from the photograph, he prepares to respond to her smartass remark with one of his own, when she makes a weird, strangled gasping noise that has him spinning around.

To see her holding a box set of ER season one, betrayal carved into the set of her jaw. “You have the entire series on DVD and you let me stand there that day and make a fool of myself with my excellent references?”

“You called me a regular Mark Greene,” he defends, “and I said I had no idea what you were talking about.”

Sloane rolls her eyes as she drops down onto the couch. She reaches for one of the four remotes that seem to come with every piece of technology he buys and, without him needing to explain, turns off the music and connects to the DVD player.

“What, I suppose you think you’re Doug Ross?”

“Clooney’s a good looking man.” He settles down onto the couch next to her, though he gives her enough space to not make her feel crowded. “I wouldn’t be opposed to such a comparison.”

“You realize the only way to settle this is with a marathon.”

“I’ve got nothing but time.”

It’s the quiet, he realizes, that must’ve woken him up. The television screen is dark, having shut off due to inactivity. With the only light spilling in from the kitchen, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the living room. Scattered across the coffee table is the evidence of their impromptu watch party: a half-eaten bowl of popcorn. a quarter of a pepperoni pizza, and two empty glasses.

Curled up next to him is Jenner, who blinks awake to watch him collect the dishes as quietly as he can. Because curled up next to Jenner is Sloane, who has her face nestled between the cushion and a blanket he’d found for her when the Christmas episode, combined with his surround sound, made her cold.

“Stay,” he whispers at Jenner. She wags her tail as he gets up, but obeys the command.

“I should go home,” comes Sloane’s voice, muffled against the cushion she was snoring on seconds prior. There’s that feeling again, like his heart is suddenly too big for his chest cavity to hold, when her body contradicts her words by snuggling even deeper into the blanket.

“You can stay,” he murmurs, reaching out and tucking a piece of her hair back behind her ear. “I’ll wake you up early so you can get home and get ready before your shift.”

“Gotta day off,” she tells the cushion, a yawn finishing out the slurred sentence.

“Then we can go get breakfast at that place off Amherst again. Deal?”

The quiet of his living room stretches on as he waits for an answer. When none comes, he straightens and starts to head for the kitchen, sure that she’s fallen back asleep.

And then, so soft that he almost misses it for running the water: “Deal.”

+ + +

Annually, Boston EMS hosts a gala to raise funds for the upcoming fiscal year.

As one of the leading hospitals in the city, Edenbrook always receives an invitation to attend. And thus far, as the emergency department attending, Ethan has always declined the RSVP, as he can’t imagine anything more mind-numbingly boring than being stuffed into the overcrowded ballroom of the downtown Marriott with the city’s elite.

So, it’s no surprise that when Harper receives the invitation that she throws it into the trash without ever consulting with him. Honestly, he doesn’t blame her at all. It does make the whole situation rather awkward, though, when he asks her to dig it out of her trashcan so he can send in his response.

It doesn’t take him long once he arrives at the function to find Sloane.

She’s surrounded by her station, obvious even from a distance away due to the way they interact with each other. Ethan takes his time, though, circling the ballroom and letting himself be dragged into tedious conversations with the mayor and the police chief and every other person he didn’t come here to see. It had been their agreement, Harper’s and his, since she had rifled through her trash for the invitation after all.

By the time he’s done with his due diligence, Sloane and her company have moved over to the long bank of windows that overlook the wharf. He takes a moment to appreciate her figure in the dress she wears, the cut of the neckline dipping just low enough to catch his attention. Her gaze flickers up to scan the room and Ethan gets the pleasure of watching her spot him. A brilliant smile spreads across her face as she waves him over, unlooping her arm through her co-worker’s to reach for him and drag him into their circle.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming!” she chides, her elbow playfully nudging his side.

“It’s not typically my kind of scene.” It’s the truth, though it’s more of a deflection from the real truth, which is that he moved his schedule around and dry-cleaned his suit just to come here and see her. He hasn’t had enough drinks to spill that secret.

“Yeah, I have to say I’m pretty surprised to see you here, Doctor Ramsey.” Rafael gestures to the throngs of guests that surround them.

“Well,” one of the women shrugs, “I’m sure this is what the ER on New Year’s looks like.”

“The people here have more clothing on than our typical New Year’s patient, but sure.”

The group laughs at his poor attempt at humor, while Sloane shakes her head at him, though he can see her lips twitching from holding back a grin. He is soon introduced to the rest of the station: the training EMT Sienna, the station supervisor Elijah, and two of the firefighters Bryce and Jackie.

Though Sloane always seems to have the ability to merge into any environment, Ethan is glad he gets to see her amongst her people, still in her element despite the champagne and fancy attire. Her witty attitude and infectious demeanor are like magnets, drawing in people from other stations into their circle.

He can’t help but notice, though, that she keeps him close to her, either with a hand on his back or by looping her arm through his. Delight at her touch simmers low in his stomach over the course of the evening, a feeling he can’t blame on the alcohol this time.

After the live auction is over and the dessert plates have been cleared away, the guests start to slowly trickle out. Their table is one of the first to leave, deciding to continue the party at a little hole-in-the-wall bar down on the wharf. It’s how Ethan comes to be standing on a rickety pier, dressed to the nines, sipping on a draft beer at ten p.m., well past his usual bedtime.

There’s a brush of warmth against his arm. He looks down to see Sloane leaning against the railing beside him, squinting out at the dark water.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Of course. Anything to help our city’s finest.”

She gives a soft snort over the rim of her drink.

“You’re impossible.”

“You like impossible.”

“You’re right.” She’s smiling as she says it, leaning into his arm. He moves his hand from the small of her back and wraps his arm around her shoulders, bringing her into his chest. She lets out a contented sigh.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she hums.

“Why did you drop out of med school? From what I see on a daily basis, you’d have your pick of residencies.”

For a long moment, there’s only the muffled pop tunes bleeding through the bar and the rhythmic churn of water against the pier and none of those things are her response. He fears that he’s finally stumbled upon the one topic that had warning signs all over it not to approach, and that he barreled right through every one of them.

“My sister got sick,” she eventually says. “She went to the doctor on a Tuesday and she was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma by the next Wednesday. Her girlfriend split soon after and the only family we have to speak of can’t be trusted any farther than you can throw them.” She sucks in a breath, her fingers clenching around the drink she holds. “So, I moved back home and took care of her. But loan holders don’t care about why you dropped out, they want their monthly-minimum -- and with no decent-paying residency to lean on, I had to figure out something. I ended up hiring a caregiver to be with Sydney in the afternoon and evenings, so I could go work my retail job and then go to night classes to get my EMT certification.

“I spent a year working for the local EMS and learned how to be adaptable to any situation. My partner taught me how to drive a rig at sixty miles-an-hour while taking hairpin turns on county roads. I helped deliver babies at both Texaco stations in town, fought brush fires with the volunteer fire department, waded into the river to rescue an idiot teenager who decided to try out drifting during Hurricane Matthew. I’d gone into the job to keep a foot in the door within the medical field, but suddenly…”

“...you loved it,” Ethan finishes for her. Beside him, she takes a sip of her drink and nods.

“Exactly. Then, in the last week of January 2017, my sister died. And a week after her funeral, after all the extended family stopped coming by and pretending to care, I’m sitting in her living room on the floor, and I’m organizing her finances to start the process of selling her house. I get to this envelope that just has ‘Read this’ written across it. So, I mean, I opened it, of course -- and there’s a letter from Sydney to me that she’d written probably a month prior to her death. In it, she tells me that she’d saved up money during all those years I was away at school for us to go on a trip together.

“But with her cancer treatment going nowhere, that was no longer an option. She wrote about how my work stories made her laugh, about how obvious it was that I loved what I did, but that I didn’t deserve to be stuck in our hometown for the rest of my life, carrying her dead weight around. Her words, mind you -- her dry humor would rival even yours. And then she went on about how she didn’t want me to be fucked over by quitting school for her, how she wanted me to continue my education, and that she wanted me to use our trip money to go back to school. So, I called up a realtor, spent three months keeping the house from looking like anyone lived in it, sold the place, and within the next week I was living in a duplex out in Lower Roxbury and enrolled in a paramedic course at Northeastern.”

Ethan lets the story settle, lets the noises of the evening fill up what little space remains between them.

“Thank you for telling me,” he eventually says. Pressed against his side as she is, it doesn’t take much for Sloane to dig her elbow into his ribcage.

“Okay, I told you my story. Tit for tat, as they say.”

“No one actually says that.”

“C’mon, I know stalling when I hear it. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Wracking his brain for something to say, he spits out the first thing that comes to mind: “I wanted to be a diagnostician.” Sloane perks up at the statement, shifting to look up at him. “Before, you know, during my early days of medical school. I had it all planned out, signed up for all the seminars to attend so I could rub elbows, narrowed down my list of where I would spend my residency. All before I started my first year.”

Dragging in a breath, he continues, “And then one day during my first year, I’m waiting for the subway, and this man falls onto the tracks. At first, no one moves. We’re all stunned into place, watching, as if we’re waiting on him to jump back up onto the platform by himself. Someone finally moves, and then a crowd runs to the edge and they’re all yelling for help and for police and for a doctor. It’s stupid, but the word ‘doctor’ finally spurred me into action. I jump down there with two other people. The man was impaled on a section of broken track, so we not only have to get him off the tracks, but I’ve also got to make sure he doesn’t bleed out in the process. There’s no time to worry over the puncture wound while we’re all in the path of a soon-to-be oncoming train, though, so we simply had to pull him off the metal. It was… intense. We carry him over to the stairs and get him laid out on the ground, where I can finally take a look at him.”

“How bad?”

“The metal had sliced through his fourth intercostal.” Ethan brushes his fingers across the same spot on her back. “So, not only am I dealing with a chest cavity wound, but as I’m talking to the guy and trying to get information out of him, I can hear his breath getting shorter and shorter.”

“Pneumothorax?”

“Exactly,” he nods. “And all I have on me is a backpack full of textbooks. So, I borrow this woman’s pocket knife and another woman’s bicycle pump to create a makeshift chest tube. By the time I got it up and running, the paramedics arrived and carted him off.”

“I have a question,” Sloane interrupts.

“Hmm?”

“You said you borrowed the bike pump… the woman really wanted it back after all that?” Ethan feels her shoulders shake with contained laughter as he scoffs at her terrible joke. “Okay, okay, sorry -- back to the story. So, is that what made you change your field?”

“It seems juvenile, looking back, for one moment like that to matter so much--”

“No, it makes complete sense!” she insists, tipping her head back and closing her eyes as she tries to think of how she wants to convey her point. “It’s like… you sit in classrooms all day and you poke at cadavers and you can name every muscle in the body, but it’s nothing compared to the real thing. You’re a conductor and the patient’s life is this symphony you get to control. That rush -- it makes you take leaps you wouldn’t normally take.”

Her eyes open in time to spot the look of contemplation on his face. There’s something else, though, in the set of his jaw, in the ragged breath he takes in.

“Or risks that are worth taking,” he says. His other hand drops from the railing as he turns into her, gathering her even closer. Sloane moves readily, easily into the circle of his arms. “Like this.”

He leans down and she stretches up, meeting for a kiss that goes on and on -- until there is only the sound of the surf, steady underneath their feet.

“Yeah,” she agrees, and Ethan can feel the words against his lips. “Exactly like that.”

+ + +

“Make it harder.”

“Hmm.”

“Levator scapulae.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Trapezius… supraspinatus… rhomboid major… come on, this is Anatomy 1010 stuff.”

“I’m beginning to think that we should have agreed to ‘if Sloane complains about my seduction technique, she forfeits the competition.’”

“If you have to say the words ‘seduction technique’ out loud, then it’s probably not working anyway.” The words are barely out of her mouth before she’s squealing with laughter as Ethan digs his fingers into her ribs, tickling her there. “Inter… intercos -- intercoastal.”

The mattress dips as he shifts, dropping down to skim his lips across the skin covering the muscle she labeled. So far, she’s gotten all of them correct -- which means he’ll have to make this game of theirs a little more difficult. Shifting again, he centers his weight onto his left hand and distracts her with a lazy kiss against her lower back. He smirks at her bored sigh. “Latissimus dorsi.”

“Mmm, no, I want you to think… deeper.” His lips touch the spot again, his tongue dipping out to taste the skin there, warm and salty sweet. Tracing the outside of her thigh with his other hand, pleasure clutches at him when he sees the muscles in her leg twitch as his fingers stroke further inward, closer and closer.

“Iliocostalis?” Maybe it’s his imagination, but some of the confidence has left her tone, replaced by that low, breathy voice she uses -- the one that could get him to move mountains, if only his work schedule would allow it.

“Very good,” he murmurs, his fingers dragging two heavy passes across her inner thigh, where her abductor muscle tenses at his attention. She squirms against his bed, spreading her legs a little wider, silently urging for his touch to come a little closer. Unable to resist any longer, Ethan sinks two fingers into her. He groans as she clenches around him. Shameless little gasps fall from her mouth as he slides in a third finger, her hips gently rocking against his bed as she begs.

His name on her lips could be an aphrodisiac, could be sought after like the maca root, could convince men and women alike to traverse 3,000 feet into the mountains to seek out. It’s his luck, then, that she’s chosen to let him have the taste of her.

He curls down over her to nip at the skin of her waist.

“Longissi -- no, fuck -- serratus posterior inferi--”

All at once, Ethan pulls away. Self-satisfaction floods through him as Sloane groans in frustration, rolling underneath him so that she can glare directly at him.

“You know the rules,” he tells her with an easy shrug, as if he’s done with their game (as if he isn’t hard as a rock, staring down at her, pissed-off and naked in his sheets). He’s expecting her to do quite a number of things, all towards the goal of getting her way. What he isn’t expecting is for her to wrap her legs around his waist and use all of that hidden strength she possesses to tug him down on top of her, where she proceeds to kiss along his jaw and nip at his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“You tried your seduction technique,” she says. “Now I’m trying out mine.”

He feels every inch of her smile as she drags a hand across his chest, down over his hip, and around the base of his cock. Arousal is a hot poker to his sternum, drowning everything else out. His awareness tunnels until it’s only her (and her touch and her breath on his skin as she chuckles and the slick slide of her thighs against his hips and it’s all too much and not enough at the same time).

“I think it’s working,” he chokes out, talking about too many other things that he can’t put names on yet.

“Hmm… you know what?” she grins, beating him to the answer. “I think so, too.”

+ + +

It all starts when the waiting area empties out. A rare sight on a rainy Friday afternoon, when car accidents and ankle sprains typically fill the lobby to the brim. Such a rarity, indeed, that the interns collect at the double doors to take in the scene.

Ethan clears his throat, enjoying the way they all spin around in a panic at the noise.

“What’s say you all find something more productive to do with your time than stare out at the parking lot -- unless you’ve decided to abandon your medical careers and become meteorologists?”

Marisa, one of the more vocal interns, grabs a handful of her breast and tilts her head.

“There’s a thirty percent chance that it’s already raining.”

Some of the group laughs, while others glare. Ethan doesn’t bother asking about the pop culture reference and shoos them all away with threats of inventorying the supply closets if they don’t find patients to care for.

Sidling up next to him, the pediatric specialist stares out at the rainy day. Tucked into her elbow is the clipboard she’s never seen without. The interns all think it’s full of patient charts and motivational quotes. Ethan wonders what they would think of Ines Delarosa if they ever found out that hidden between the hand-outs on SIDS and the importance of handwashing is the newspaper’s sports section. Because, aside from being the state’s leading pediatric emergency physician, Ines is also a die-hard Bruins fan -- she’s even got the season glass seats to prove it (and a ridiculous amount of memorabilia, which he only knows about because he graciously attends her Halloween party every year).

“It is odd to see it so s-word,” she says, dodging the wrath of the ER gods by avoiding the word.

“If it keeps up, maybe you can get off early and snag a good seat at the game.”

Ines chuckles and shrugs her shoulders.

“A girl can dream.”

He turns from the doors to see that the interns are following his commands when Ines makes a concerned noise. Glancing back out the window, he spots the flashing lights of two cop cars as they streak down the street, followed quickly by a third and a fourth. After the eleventh he quits counting. “There’s a whole squadron heading east,” Ines calls out to the room. “Anybody know anything?”

“I’ll check Twitter,” Kendra suggests, her fingers flying across the keyboard. Both doctors watch as the screen loads, reflected in her horn-rimmed glasses. Ethan’s stomach tightens as her dark eyes go wide behind the lenses. “Oh, shit.”

It takes seven minutes for the first victim to arrive. From then on, the ambulance bay resembles a floodgate, filling up with concussions and internal bleeding and broken bones. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, with staff from every other department coming to assist. Even Chris and Harper come down to help -- and it’s almost like med school all over again with the three of them working together, side-by-side. Any awkward relations between them are buried deep in the wave of such a disaster.

Ethan spends the two minutes he can spare explaining the card system to the interns before handing each of them a stack. As he races from one bed to another to oversee the critical cases and get them transferred into the next available OR, he notes the lack of black cards. He can’t help but hope that it’s a good sign, and that the accident wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been.

But with each new patient’s stuttering recount of the disaster, he finds that hope slowly dwindling. A partial tunnel collapse, they say, repeating what the news anchors have been relaying on the screens in the break room, where they’ve set up a makeshift triage for the less critical. One patient tells him about the crunching noise of the impact, while another one cries over the terrified screams of those trapped in between the layers of rubble.

It isn’t until the third hour (or fifth or sixth, he isn’t sure; time is a construct that he only becomes aware of when he has to call a time of death) that he finally gets an opportunity to talk to Sloane. He’s caught glimpses of her before now, rushing in and out of the double doors. This close, he can see the dust and grime that coats her jacket, the reflective strips splattered with black sludge. Streaks of the substance are smeared through her hair and down onto her neck.

“Hey,” he reaches out, cupping her cheek in his hand and drawing her eyes up from the transfer report she’s scribbling on at the nurses station. “How are you holding up?”

She bites at her chapped bottom lip, dragging in a breath as she thinks over a response.

“It’s… bad,” she tells him. “Out there.”

“It’s amazing, though,” one of the interns pipes up from where they’re hovering nearby, “that so few people have such serious injuries.”

Sloane meets the remark with silence and Ethan knows there must be countless victims that she had to overlook in order to get to those that would have a chance of survival. Placing her hand over his, she turns her head and presses a quick kiss to his palm.

“I’ve gotta get back out there.” She gives his hand a squeeze before she pulls away, back into the rush of bodies and out the door. Sloane McTavish, once more unto the breach, he thinks as he watches her disappear.

By the mid-afternoon, the ER’s lobby is no longer just a home for the injured. Loved ones come in droves, in fast-moving packs across the parking lot and through the entrance to clog up the reception desk. They demand to know if their brother or partner or best friend are safe within the hospital, their panic bouncing between one another and magnifying when the staff can’t give them the answers they need.

From inside the curtained-off cubicle where he’s working on a patient, Ethan can hear Harper giving a speech to the crowd. It’s sympathetic, but not coddling; assertive, but not aggressive. Her ability to sway a large group of panicked patients into understanding the reality of the hospital’s situation within two minutes is why she excels at being the chief (and why Ethan would never be able to do what she does -- he would’ve been mauled the minute he opened his mouth).

“You need any help?”

His head snaps up to see Sloane hovering at the gap in the curtain. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lighting, but she looks paler than last he saw her. Her knuckles are white where she grips the curtain’s edge, he also notes. “Raf is restocking our rig,” she continues. “He said for me to take a quick five and grab something to drink.”

“Take five means to sit down and get some rest,” Ethan points out.

“If I sit down, I’m gonna fall asleep.” She takes a long drink from the styrofoam cup in her other hand and grimaces. He can’t help but worry about how much coffee she’s ingested -- enough that there are fine tremors in her hands, her body running on caffeine and cortisol.

Finishing off the suture, he calls for a nurse to start the discharge process and guides Sloane over to an empty seating area.

“Sit down, honey. I’m going to get you something to--”

Her muffled cry of pain cuts him off. Ethan drops down onto one knee in front of her and cups her chin, forcing her glassy eyes to meet his. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong? What hurts?”

“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “I’m fine, I--”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. What hurts?” He reaches for the zipper on her jacket when she snags his wrist and pushes him away.

“I told you: I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.”

He frowns at her hurried assurances.

“Forgive me, but I’ve heard that one before. I didn’t buy it then, either. Let me at least check you out.” His authoritative tone seems to sway her. She drops his wrist and inches forward in the chair; her pained wince as she does so worries him further. He’s got her zipper halfway down when a voice calls out from behind them.

“Slo, you ready to roll?”

Before he can stop her, she’s yanking her zipper back up and shoving past him to join her partner.

“Yeah, I’m all set.”

Ethan gets to his feet and prepares to coax her into getting checked out when Rafael glances between the two of them and smirks.

“Aren’t there supply closets for this kind of thing? If you need to get a leg over, partner, I can go grab a snack real qui--”

Sloane knocks her fist into Rafael’s arm, ignoring his fake cry of alarm as she turns and heads for the double doors.

“She’s injured,” Ethan tells him. “Keep an eye on her.”

Rafael quickly sobers, his grin falling away. He nods once before jogging back down the hallway and through the exit.

The rescue squad has reached the third section of the tunnel, Kendra tells him at some point in the early evening (or he thinks, at least; he hasn’t had the time to look out a window and actually take in the position of the sun in several hours). The opening brings a new flood of victims, their injuries more critical, given their extended time underground without aid.

Most of his interns are holding up surprisingly well, given the sheer influx of patients and the higher amount of critical codes. Ethan’s found only a handful of them having a pity party in the on-call room. His brain is too fogged to stumble his way through an original speech, so the one he gives is ripped straight from Doctor Greene. None of them seem to notice, though, solidifying Sloane’s claim that his interns are all fans of Hugh Laurie’s medical drama instead.

His thoughts turn once more to his girlfriend as he leaves an intern to wipe away their tears and moves back out into the hallway. The few times he’s seen her he’s been too busy with a patient to get close enough to check on her. Reaching into his pocket for his phone, he’s about to resort to texting Rafael again to get a status when he spots her across the room.

She’s standing at the nurses station and staring down at a report. The pen in her hand moves back and forth in short strokes across the page, too sloppy to be anything legible. Even from where he stands, he can see the choppy rise and fall of her chest. Hurrying past a cluster of waiting gurneys, he pushes his way through the hallway traffic to reach her side. He calls her name as he rounds the counter. The lack of reaction in her drives that stake of worry down farther into his chest. Gripping her shoulder, he gives her a little shake.

“Sloane, hey, look at me,” he urges.

His breath catches in his throat when she complies; her pale face is clammy, her lips tinged blue. Blinking heavily up at him in confusion, she tries to take a step back. His instinct already has him shouting for a bed. He’s moving even before she can collapse, catching her before she hits the floor. He loops an arm under her knees and another around her back, fighting back the wave of panic when her head lolls to the side.

Kendra rushes over with a bed; they wheel her into the closest open room, a team of nurses racing in behind them.

“’m fine,” Sloane mutters as Ethan jerks her zipper down. “Jus need a new… bandage--”

“Fuck,” Kendra swears.

Looking down at the bloodied mess of her shirt, Ethan can’t help but agree with the sentiment. He tugs the fabric up to expose a blood-soaked bandage, secured only by a few strips of medical tape. Peeling back the bandage, he sucks in a breath through his teeth at the jagged laceration across her lower abdomen. The one she clearly tried to pack with gauze and walk off.

“Jus patch me up an--”

“Goddammit, lay back down!” he orders as Sloane tries to sit up. “You’re not fit to do anything but try to save your own life for once. You’re in hypovolemic shock.”

“If I was, be dead already,” she argues, her words slurring together.

Kendra produces a pair of scissors and they cut off her uniform as Ethan orders for a blood transfusion, as well as a CT scan to rule out internal bleeding.

“BPs at eighty-nine, heart rate is 126,” Kendra reads out. “She’s in tachycardia.”

Fury at her disregard for her own safety roils in Ethan’s gut, compounding on the anger he already feels towards himself for letting her go earlier. Layered beneath everything is fear, thick and cold and viscous as it eats away at him.

He spends the next hour going through the motions of testing and eliminating any possibilities of further injuries. Once they get her downgraded from stage three and stabilized, Ethan allows her to give in to sleep and steps out to check on the rest of his department. Finding everyone at their posts (and no one sobbing in the on-call room), he returns to Sloane’s room.

Where he’s surprised to find her awake, albeit groggy.

“Hey,” she greets, her voice almost lost underneath the steady beeps of the monitor.

Ethan steps further into the room and shuts the door behind him, snuffing out the hospital’s incessant noise. Settling down into the chair by her bed, he reaches out to take her offered hand and brings it to his lips.

“I need you to explain to me what the hell you were thinking.”

She sucks in a breath, holding it for a long moment before letting it out. He raises his head, clutching her hand to his cheek as he watches her mull over her answer.

“I was in the first section of the tunnel,” she begins. “The one we’d already cleared. I was on my way to help Raf board someone when I heard this noise. Like an animal wailing, you know, really high-pitched and drawn out. It’s closer to me than him, so I get down on my hands and knees and I’m crawling through the wreckage and I’m calling out and I can -- I can tell it’s a kid because he starts to talk, and he’s asking for his mom, and finally I spot him and he’s… he’s just a little tiny thing.”

She pauses to catch her breath. Ethan turns his head and presses a long kiss against her knuckles. “He’s pinned underneath his mom, who we… had to move past earlier... and he’s tucked up underneath a seat. I don’t know how we missed him before, but I know I’ve got to get him out of there; he’s soaked in blood and I can’t tell if it’s his own or his mom’s, and there’s no time to try to figure it out. I finally get him out and he’s got a gash above his ear -- deep enough that I know I’ve got to hurry. And… that was it. I was going too fast, wasn’t watching all of my steps, and I’ve got him in my arms when I feel myself start to slip, but I’ve got him so I can’t stop myself, so I tucked him close to my hip and rolled into the fall and... landed onto a broken railing.”

“That you slapped a bandage over and ignored,” Ethan finishes for her. “Without letting anyone know and refusing to let me check--”

Sloane shakes her head; tears track down over her pale cheeks.

“You don’t -- Ethan, there were so many people down there, trapped and screaming and… and we were hauling out buckets of debris to get to them and sometimes, by the time we got to them, they wouldn’t be screaming anymore and I knew I couldn’t stop and sit that out, I couldn’t--”

“You’re lucky you only needed stitches and a blood transfusion. If you had gone on any longer, you would have progressed to stage four hypovolemic shock. You could have fallen into a coma from blood loss,” he hisses out, the anger from earlier returning with a vengeance. “Only a rookie would pull a stunt like this.”

She meets his narrowed gaze and it’s like she can see past his front, past the frustration; without moving, without speaking, she peels back those jagged layers to see the worry and guilt that festers below.

“This is what we do,” she murmurs. “Sometimes we forgo our own safety for the sake of others.” Tugging on his hand, she urges him to sit beside her on the bed where she can run a comforting hand through his hair and down his arm, reassuring him of her presence.

“I know,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss her forehead, then the bridge of her nose, and then her lips. All of the pressure in his head evaporates at her touch, at reassuring himself that she’s okay. “But next time, let me do it. I am closer to the ER, after all.”

Sloane lets out an exasperated chuckle, rolling her eyes at his lame joke.

“You’re lucky I love you.”

“I know,” he says, that soft smile of his making an appearance -- the one only she gets to see. “Get some sleep. I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

Standing up, he reaches above her head and switches off the strip light. The room dims, lit only by the muted hallway lights that leak through the blinds. Leaning down, he gives her a longer, sweeter kiss, trying to pour all of his relief into it. “I love you, too,” he tells her as he tucks the blanket in around her.

“Wake me when your shift ends.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

+ + +

He approaches the light with that tight feeling in his chest; his body’s assurance of a job well-done. Covered in a fine sheen of sweat from the summer heat, he yanks at the collar of his T-shirt and wafts it against his chest, groaning at the feel of air moving against his skin.

“Are you prepping for the marathon?” he asks between ragged breaths. “Is that why you were going so fast?”

“Wasn’t going any faster than usual,” Sloane replies with a shrug. Leaving her side, Relay trots over to sniff at Jenner and then at him, nudging his pocket with interest, where the tennis ball they toss around in the Common hides.

“Well, either you’re lying, or I’m starting to show my old age.”

“You’re not old,” she scoffs. “You’re thirty-eight.” Turning towards her, Ethan recognizes the look on her face; he immediately becomes invested in whatever she’s about to say next. “Here, I’ve got an idea: I’ll race you. If you beat me, then you’ll get a treat.”

Both dogs and he perk up at the term. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

The light changes.

They take off, jogging across the intersection and up onto the opposite sidewalk.

Where they both turn left for home.

+ + +

AN: I did some routine googling for the medical information in this, but not nearly enough as I probably should have. Take it with a grain of salt. *Fixed as of 6/2/21: changed Sloane’s dog name from Haint to Relay. Haint is a term for ghosts or evil spirits, which I learned originated from Gullah culture in GA and SC, so I feel it was appropriation for me to use it with an MC who is white / is not part of that culture. This fic also contains a real-life AU in the fact that Boston EMS does not work on the same structure as Chicago or NYC, where some ambulances reside within certain quarters at a dedicated fire station -- however, in this they do because everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

#ethan x mc #ethan ramsey x mc #choices #open heart #open heart fic #f: what if the closest we get to the moment is now #Kaila writes things #we get to play 'will this massive wall of text show up in the tag or not?'#picture it: me; 2019; desperately wishing tumblr had the same rich text format editing that AO3 does

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