Chapter Text
The first time she winds up in his emergency room it’s at the end of a 12 hour shift.
She was his last patient of the night. He was tired and his feet hurt and the coffee pot in the break room wasn’t nearly made strong enough to get him through the rest of this shift. He heads to his last patient's room, head buried in a clipboard, fully intent on giving her a once over and getting out within 5 minutes.
Emily Prentiss. Visible external trauma to face and torso, minor contusions, fractured ribs 9 and 10 on left side, x-rays revealed no internal trauma or bleeding. Minor concussion.
He would sign the prescription for a high-dose acetaminophen and discharge her to a family member. Easy enough. He might even get home in time to catch Jack before bed.
He reaches the room and hears her mutter “fucking finally” under her breath as he swishes the curtain open. He looks up from her chart as he hears a soft “Emily” come from the corner, and notices a blonde woman sitting in the chair next to the bed. She’s hushing the woman lying in the bed, presumably his patient and the one who said the offending comment.
He pauses to survey her as she rolls her eyes at her friend. She looks like shit. She has a friction abrasion down the side of her face, likely trailing down her left side as well. Her blouse is half on, muddied and torn at the elbow, blood stains spotted along the side. Her eyes look sunken in, buried under various cuts and scrapes, but they glint with something fierce when she looks up at him. She’d be exceptionally pretty if she didn’t look like she got dragged behind a truck for ten miles. Hell, she was still exceptionally pretty. The fact that she’s sitting up is either evidence that her pain medication has already kicked in, or that she’s extremely stubborn. Given her initial comment he’d guess the latter.
“Emily Prentiss?” he asks as he places her chart on the side table. The woman in the bed grunts and nods which he takes as confirmation. “You have quite the impressive fracture on your 9th and 10th ribs, but x-rays looked good, no internal bleeding” he starts. He pauses as he’s rattling off her chart when she leans over and whispers something that sounds like “I told you so” to her friend in the chair. She swats back at her again, catching his eye before staring purposefully at the brunette on the bed. The brunette, Emily, turns back to him with another eye-roll, likely waiting for him to continue.
“You know you shouldn’t be rolling your eyes like that with a concussion”
Emily raises an eyebrow as her friend huffs out a quick laugh. Normally he wouldn’t be so blunt with a patient but he was really starting to feel that 12th hour.
“My apologies Dr…” she spoke, squinting her eyes to attempt to read his coat. His lip twitches to a smirk, pulling the fold in his coat taunt so she can read the blue script. “Hotchner”.
Her voice is low and dry and she pronounces the “T” in his name sharper than he’s heard before. He continues on.
”You’ll receive a prescription for some pain medication, I recommend ice and rest. Have any of your concussion symptoms worsened in the past hour?”
“Other than the fact that these lights make me feel like I’m being interrogated by God himself? No.” She emphasizes her point by squinting up at the lights and he chuckles.
“The symptoms will likely last for 24 hours. Do you have someone to monitor you and drive you home?”
The woman in the chair perks up at this, chiming in “Yes, Doctor, I can take her home and keep an eye on her”. Emily protests at this, whining “Jayje…” until the blonde gives her a look that would shut even him up. He nods, satisfied. The blonde woman seemed like she was capable of handling the brunette and Aaron didn’t feel like worrying himself over her.
“You’ll need to drink lots of water, try not to sleep for a long period of time, and if you’re nauseous for more than 2 days you come right back here” he continued on the usual concussion spiel.
“Trust me Doctor, this is not my first rodeo” she laughs to herself. He raises an eyebrow and she pulls out a badge from her hip. It drops down and the bold “FBI” letters next to her name make him nod.
“Perks of the job” the blonde woman says, and he notices a matching badge and a holster on her hip.
“Well then you don’t need to hear me lecture you. You’re free to go Ms. Prentiss, you can check out with the women at the front desk.” He packs up his charts and goes to leave. He gets thank you’s from both women, and as he closes the curtain behind him, he can’t help but hear the same low, dry voice once more.
“If I knew the doctors here looked like that I might get concussed more often”
He smirks to himself, signing his name at the bottom of her papers and dropping them at the front desk. As he’s rushing out of the locker rooms, he smiles as the image in his mind of the brunette woman fades into the picture of the blonde one waiting for him at home.