#like EXCUSE ME for not worrying about the soiled dressing when the guy's pressor requirements were climbing

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Four felt pretty satisfied, if he was being honest.

It hadn’t been a terrible night. Nor had it been a particularly hard one. But his patient had started out somewhat unstable, showing signs of a brewing infectious response, febrile, unstable blood pressure, and shaking despite being sedated. Four had spent hours in his room trying to sort things out, hours trying to implement the plan the night team had put together during rounds.

And, slowly, things had started to stabilize.

After that, Four spent the next few hours just tidying things up and doing maintenance work - changing lines to prevent infection, cleaning messes, taking out the filled trash cans, keeping up with medication infusions running dry, checking vitals and outputs. Over the course of a twelve hour shift, he’d probably sat down for maybe an hour over multiple little breaks.

And, in the end, the patient was on less sedation and fewer blood pressure medications by the time day shift came.

So yes, Four was pretty satisfied. At least until the Monday-Friday day crew rolled in, checking lines, pointing out caps that Four had missed, complaining about the state of the patient’s dressing that Four had missed.

And suddenly, all that hard work felt completely disregarded, and Four found himself in a sour mood as he headed towards the parking garage.

He caught sight of Legend, who looked similarly grouchy. “How was your night?”

”Fine,” the travel nurse shrugged. “Just some annoying patients.”

”Oh?”

Legend huffed. “One guy said I wasn’t taking good care of him simply because he was a Zora. Like I just was a racist to him. Meanwhile, his chief complaint was back pain that he’d had for four days, while my other patients had chest pain, an asthma attack, and a drug overdose. The doc gave the guy a muscle relaxer and some pain medicine and we were discharging him and he said I hurt him when I took the fucking pulse-ox sticker off his finger and demanded a bandaid. I hate people.”

Four grimaced. At least his own patient hadn’t really been an issue, particularly since the guy had been intubated and sedated the entire night. “Were the others at least decent?”

”Oh yeah,” Legend answered casually. “Chest pain dude was pretty chill considering he was probably having an nSTEMI. Even cracked some jokes. OD was an OD, usual nonsense. Before that group I had a teenager who had broken her ankle from running in heels and her friends kept trying to make her laugh so that was nice, and then there was the two-year-old who fell down a couple stairs… uh, what else, priapism guy came back—"

”Not priapism guy,” Four laughed. “He really never is gonna learn.”

”Hey!”

Legend and Four turned to see Twilight and Wild trotting towards them with a wave.

”Wait, are we all on night shift rotation right now?” Four asked, baffled. “I swear you were on days, Twi.”

”I picked up extra,” Twilight answered blearily. “I hate myself.”

”Oh shut up, you love night shift,” Legend huffed. “Best time to work.”

”I’m a morning person,” Twilight grumbled. “I want to go to bed.”

”I say we should get breakfast together,” Wild proposed.

Twilight rolled his eyes. “You always want to eat. I want to sleep.”

"I'm down for food," Legend said, shrugging.

"Breakfast it is!" Wild clapped his hands happily as Twilight groaned.