Chapter Text
“...we know this is not ideal, but things need to change. What happened last week during the apartment fire cannot, under any circumstances, happen again. We will be sharing the name of the surgeon or emergency medicine physician you are paired with at the joint-department meeting tonight, and you are responsible for coordinating a shift to shadow one another. Please see the attached form you will be required to fill out after your experience to discuss who you shadowed and what you learned about them and their speciality. All paperwork and proof of the shift being completed together (picture is preferred) is due at 0700 on February 15th. We hope you all can take this experience and use it to become not only better coworkers, but more compassionate physicians.”
Samira’s voice trails off as she finishes reading the email out loud. The hub has gone silent around her, a rare occurrence that only serves to make her more unnerved. Even Santos has nothing to say from where she stands above Samira’s chair with a gobsmacked look on her face.
The contents of the email aren’t fully registering in her brain, swirling around her head with a million other little things as she attempts to process them. It almost feels like a joke, one of the pranks Emma and Mateo play on Javadi during slower shifts, not an actual order from upstairs.
Shadow a surgeon.
Even the thought of that doesn’t make sense—the entire concept doesn’t make sense.
She knows the hospital is scrambling, especially after what happened last week, but this doesn't seem like the best solution. There are numerous complex issues that contributed to the loss of that patient—understaffing in the ER, lack of clarity on the chain of command in the surgery department, and too many more to name—but none that can be fixed through shadowing.
Sure, there’s a bit of animosity between the two departments. This isn’t a surprise, and the board should definitely not be throwing a fit about it when they all but encourage it.
Every single department upstairs has issues with the ER for one reason or another: they frown on EM doctors for being average at everything instead of masters in one speciality; they think they put in too many orders for no reason; they blame them for admitting patients when they’re already overworked. The ER has been and always will be the hospital's punching bag.
Samira would be lying if she says it doesn’t bother her. The ortho team talks down to her every single time she calls them for a consult, yet if they were thrown in a room and forced to practice any type of medicine that doesn't involve bones, they’d be screwed. Peds won’t accept patients until the results of every single blood test on earth is back, even though they have more than enough beds and staff upstairs to handle them. And God forbid Samira call psych down to check someone out before she holds them in a room for two days to rule out every other issue possible.
The absurdity of this program won't get to the root of the problem. If anything, it’ll just make them all hate each other more.
She would have to spend twenty-four hours following around a colleague like a lost dog. Samira can’t remember the last time she even thought about shadowing. It’s likely back in med school when every second tagging behind a physician awkwardly felt like a divine experience that would shape her future.
Only now, she is a doctor. She doesn't need to shadow anyone, much less a surgeon, to be a better emergency medicine physician. The ER needs her down here. Her patients need her here. She’s of no use to anyone on the sixth floor holding a retractor for hours on end in a stuffy OR.
Next to her, Javadi’s head falls down to hit the desk as she groans against the keyboard. “I know who I’m getting. She probably paid Gloria off to have me assigned to her.”
Santos snorts out a laugh, turning to lean back against Samira’s desk. “Personally, I think this is great. Amazing, even. We get to have a personal assistant for the day, a fucking surgeon. Also maybe we can see a cool surgery. Shit—I’d be happy with an appy.”
Of course she’s thrilled, still pining for the double-board spot for R3 year. Typical. Samira smiles wearily at the pair before glancing down at the glowing computer screen again. No matter how long she stares at the email, the bleak announcement shining back at her like a sick joke, it doesn’t change the reality.
She’s skimming the words again, tapping her foot against the desk leg absentmindedly, when she registers someone speaking to her.
“Samira, you alive?” Looking up from the email, exhaustion from the three hours of sleep she got last night pulling at her, she finds Ellis and Al-Hashimi standing on the other side of the hub.
“Yeah, sorry. Just tired,” she gets out, closing the email and spinning around to face them in her chair. Santos has moved on to drumming a light beat on Javadi's back, Javadi’s head still flat on the counter. At least Samira's dread for this ordeal is shared, and as odd as it is, it makes her feel a tiny bit better. “Did you see admin’s email? The shadowing thing?”
She briefly worries about discussing this in front of Al-Hashimi, her position making this conversation a bit different than ranting to another resident or intern, but she tosses the concern aside as quickly as it appeared. Despite Al-Hashimi’s short-lived allegiance to Gloria during her first few days, she proves time and time again to be on her staff’s side first, and the board’s second. Knowing Al-Hashimi on the level one knows their first, and best, mentor, Samira knows there’s no way she thinks this program is a good idea.
Ellis scoffs. “It’s insane. They have time to draft up a glorified babysitting program but not hear us out on the issues that actually impacted our work that night.”
“Literally. Camaraderie between us and everyone upstairs wouldn’t have helped, proper staffing would have,” Santos pipes up as Javadi snaps in agreement, Kwon even nodding where spins in her chair a few feet away.
Samira sighs, standing up from the desk and grabbing her pager. It’s only 7:00 a.m., and feeling this much dread when her shift is only just beginning doesn’t bode well for having a good day. At least it gives her something to think about during her shift instead of the fact her radiator decided to stop working in the middle of the lovely Pittsburgh winter, or the fact there’s a hole in her sneakers she’s too lazy to try to fix.
“Is it random pairings? For who we’re shadowing?” She asks as she clips the pager to her waistband. A part of her wishes they wouldn’t tell her the answer. A random match would be awkward, but knowing the board thought deeply about who to put her with might be worse.
“It’s random, or at least that’s what they told us,” Al-Hashimi says, setting her coffee down before grabbing an iPad from the powerbank. A collective groan fills the hub, the energy getting impossibly more depressing. Al-Hashimi holds her hands up in mock-surrender before continuing. “The attendings are equally as annoyed about this as you guys are, trust me. But we have to do it, and we owe it to Gloria to try it out before dismissing it. So let's all try our best to suck it up.”
They all go quiet, a mutual distaste but acceptance on everyone's faces. Samira picks at her nails, thoughts running a mile a minute despite Al-Hashimi’s reassurance. She would be missing crucial time in the ER for this. Twenty-four whole hours away from her patients, all to walk behind an old surgeon with an ego in hopes she’ll learn something. She would also have to spend a shift down here being followed by them too. How would she be able to do her job with them breathing down her neck the entire time?
Patients hate surgeons—and for good reason. They never come in rooms for more than a minute, swooping in to poke and prod them like a science experiment and not a human being with a unique story. They all, despite a very small select few, treat them as an opportunity for a thrilling case, a one-way ticket to a new procedure or a flashy byline in a medical journal.
Even worse was having to work with them and put up with their snarky comments about sutures that weren't one hundred percent perfect or claims they saved someone's life when they only really did a crike. Merely thinking about it has Samira’s heartbeat racing, anger swelling in her chest.
Al-Hashimi claps her hands once, trying her best to smile. “Speaking of the department meeting, did everyone do their signouts?”
They all nod, even though the last thing on Samira’s mind right now is shift transfers. The unease still grows in her stomach, rolling around as it keeps festering.
With the broken heat in her old and too expensive apartment, her fucked up sleep schedule that’s determined to make her a shell of a person, and her mom’s sudden decision to drop everything and galivant with a stranger on a cruise for an entire year, Samira already has enough unease in her body. The dark, heavy cloud builds every day; her constant companion. The last thing she needs is this program to throw a screw in her already jacked up life.
She has all her patients from Shen, none of them particularly tough, and on the outside she’s perfectly prepared for her shift. But this stupid, outlandish ordeal is pulling at her focus, making it hard to actually think about work instead of aimlessly staring at the computer screen.
“Great! Let’s head out then while we have coverage.” Al-Hashimi shoots them another uncannily-positive, and likely overcompensating, grin, jerking her head to the elevator and beckoning all of them to follow her.
With an exaggerated groan, Javadi pushes back from her chair and shuffles after her, Santos on her heels flicking the strand of hair that escaped Javadi's ponytail. Whitaker sighs and starts to follow, on the way tapping Kwon on the shoulder from where she still spins in her chair. She rises with a glare, slipping her phone into her pocket and trudging after him.
“Bye Joy!” Emma says a bit too loudly from where she stands behind her. Samira jerks her head to look at her, unaware of how long she’s been standing there. She doesn’t have the mental energy to think too hard about when Kwon and Emma got on a first-name basis. She makes a mental reminder to ask about it later, knowing fully she’ll forget, and closes out of her email.
She could go check on the little boy in South 8? Maybe he needed more pain meds or his parents would want an update. Or there was the older woman in North 1 who really shouldn’t be left alone this long—
“You can’t avoid it, Samira. Come on, before Shen beats us there and holds it over our heads,” Ellis says, though Samira can see the apprehension on her face.
Rolling her eyes, Samira abandons her post at the computer station and moves to follow Ellis to the stairs—the stairs which Samira despises taking. She curses herself for agreeing to forgo the elevator during the month of January in solidarity with Shen, Ellis, and Langdon’s pointless fitness challenge. Something about getting ten thousand steps per day, she really didn’t pay much attention when they were explaining it to her.
“He’s likely already up there chatting up Miller’s resident,” Samira muses, shoving the door to the staircase open with a bit too much force.
Ellis laughs. “Probably hoping he’s paired up with him.”
Samira’s laugh is half-hearted at best, the knot in her stomach tightening at the thought of pairing up. She wouldn’t be too upset with anyone she could be matched with. Her coworkers are all adequate at their jobs and easy enough to converse with. Some are tougher than others, a lot tougher, but she seriously doubts she would get paired up with Walsh, Cunningham, or any of the surgeons who take a sick, sardonic pleasure in being assholes to residents.
She’s still stewing when they reach the second floor landing, murmuring a small thanks to Ellis as she holds the door open. In the back of her mind she can hear Ellis talking about something, rambling on about the new med student who got moved to night shift, but her focus is all over the place, too exhausted and tapped-out to participate in the conversation like a normal person.
After a minute of nodding along and doing her best to appear to be an active listener, they stop outside the meeting room. The door is propped open enough for Samira to immediately get a sense of just how excited everyone inside is about this ordeal. As they step through the doorway, her eyes snag on Robby chatting with Gloria in the corner, looking like he would rather be anywhere else. He’s faring better than Javadi and Whitaker, the pair sitting in the corner and flicking what appears to be a mint wrapper back and forth on the table.
Shen waves them over to where he sits in the middle, his mouth never leaving the pink straw of his coffee.
“What does the pink straw mean?” Ellis asks as she pulls out a chair.
Shen raises his brows, taking another obnoxious sip. “That the barista thinks I'm gorgeous.”
Samira laughs along with Ellis as she sinks into a chair and snags one of the mint candies on the bowl ahead of her. The sharp taste helps her wake up, the lingering brain fog and dark, murky feeling reeling back a bit as the flavor dissolves on her tongue.
She tunes out Shen’s pestering regarding if they took the stairs or elevator up, choosing instead to attempt to make out the forms resting on the middle of the table. The words are a blur from here, but she can see two lines at the bottom of the page, likely for signatures—the signatures of her and her partner.
“Do you know who you’re getting paired with?” Ellis asks him, following Samira and grabbing a mint.
Shen shakes his head. “Nah. Gloria’s been dodging everyone's questions. Won’t say anything about it.”
“Shocked,” Samira mutters, eyes falling to the open seats across the table from her. It doesn't escape her notice that without any direction, the surgeons are choosing to sit on one side and the emergency medicine doctors on the other. They’re two groups divided not only by scrub color and love of cutting into people, but bowls of cheap candy and ominous, neon-yellow forms.
“Do you guys want anyone specific?” Shen questions.
“I don’t know, maybe—” Samira’s words are cut off by the sound of the door opening again. Her head turns at the noise, the knot in her stomach tightening at the sight of the three people walking in.
Clearly having just come from surgeries, clad in baggy scrubs and matching navy caps, is none other than Doctor Walsh flanked by her equally annoying colleagues, Cunningham and Jo. They don’t stop their conversation as they step in the room, laughing about something Samira can’t hear from where she sits. Davidson must say something especially funny, given how Walsh rolls her eyes and nearly smiles.
It’s rare Samira catches her smiling, largely due to the fact that the majority of the time she runs into Walsh, she’s down in the ER for a consult and therefore looks quite miserable. When she does manage to witness the occasional grin, it’s almost always the result of a dig or inside joke Samira isn’t privy to.
There was that one time Samira caught her in the elevator, Walsh coming in for her shift as she was going up to scope out empty beds in the ICU for Al-Hashimi. She stewed over the interaction for weeks, unable to forget every single detail of the maybe thirty seconds they shared in the small space.
Part of this was due to seeing Walsh in her casual clothes; jeans and a sweater instead of navy scrubs. She looked oddly nice, unsettlingly so, and the image of her in such a normal, stripped-down state stuck with Samira for too long not to mean something.
Samira does not have a crush, not at all, that’s not what the something meant.
She prefers to call it a professional infatuation.
It’s a much more appropriate—and accurate, because a crush would be outlandish—word. She doesn’t get crushes on women she knows so little about. Her brain wouldn’t let that happen.
The last thing on her mind, and something that she has absolutely zero spare time for, is dating. She’s a driven woman with a plan for herself, one that doesn't leave her much room or energy to pretend to care about someone else. If she manages to find someone who fits the very strict list of criteria she has for a future partner, maybe she’d consider it. But the likelihood of someone ticking all or even a few of her boxes is so low that it’s foolish to even spend time entertaining the possibility.
She briefly thinks back to the question Vidya asked her back in med school, sitting on the dirty couch in their cramped apartment during one of the rare study breaks they would allow themselves. A woman in the frozen food aisle of Trader Joe’s asked for Samira’s number earlier that morning, and she turned her down, later citing her long list of standards this woman didn’t appear to meet in the two minutes they spoke.
Vidya stared at her for a while before asking Samira if she actually had high standards, or just had high walls.
Samira brushed it off at the time, but even four years later, whenever she rules someone out or ignores flirting attempts because of them not meeting her list, her old roommates question stirs in the back of her mind.
It’s all irrelevant, because Samira doesn't have a crush on anybody, and if she were to, it definitely wouldn’t be Walsh. There’s not a universe out there where Emery Walsh of all people manages to be the one who checks all of Samira’s boxes. Not one.
This silly, completely incomprehensible, and even a tad illogical, idea of having a crush is besides the point. The main reason her brain wouldn’t let her forget the elevator ride was because of the pathetic way she smiled at Walsh, and the even more pathetic way Walsh didn’t bother returning it.
Samira had given her a soft smile when she stepped inside the elevator, a small blink-and-you’ll-miss-it greeting, but got only a curt nod in return. Not even a half-smile or hint of acknowledgement, as if they hadn’t worked together for four years.
Four years is a lot of time to spend observing someone.
Samira knows Walsh always looks a bit paler when she doesn’t get a lot of sleep the day before, or how the little curls that peak out of her scrub cap tend to curl when she gets sweaty. She can tell how long Walsh has been on call based on what shoes she has on—Birkenstock clogs if it’s been more than twelve hours, typical sneakers if it's been less. Samira knows she runs cold, always wearing a baggy long-sleeved undershirt with her scrubs no matter the season. She even knows how Walsh tends to rub her left shoulder after running a more physically demanding trauma, as if she hurt it years ago and it never healed right.
She knows enough about Walsh to assume a smile would be returned.
Contrary to Ellis’s belief, and the way she couldn’t stop teasing Samira about the interaction for weeks after it happened, this is not evidence of a crush. Samira would be annoyed if anyone she’d known for four years didn’t return a smile. It was basic manners, something a lot of people in this hospital lacked— Walsh being one of them.
Samira needs her future partner to have manners, and Walsh lacks manners every time she opens her mouth. Not that she’s thought about Walsh as her future anything. Her brain would never let her feel more than mild annoyance for someone who views social graces as a waste of time. A lack of manners is distasteful, that’s why the interaction bothered her so much. Nothing more.
When she stressed this to Ellis right after it happened, ranting for ten minutes about the ordeal, all Ellis did was shake her head and laugh in her face, tossing out a, “wasn’t aware you suddenly cared so much about manners,” before walking off.
Her eyes drift to where the surgeons are congregating, the trio standing next to where Shamsi’s sitting at the end of the table. They seem to be deep in a serious conversation, the good mood and laughs from earlier nowhere to be found. Cunningham looks like he’s almost preaching, hands flailing and pointing to the forms in the middle of the table while Shamsi nods with pursed lips.
Walsh doesn’t seem to be listening all that much, instead untying her scrub cap and staring at the forms in the middle of the table. She pulls off the navy fabric and tucks it into her pocket, stray hairs falling from her tight bun around her face.
Out of nowhere, Walsh’s attention drifts from the conversation, gaze flicking over to where Samira sits ramrod-straight in her chair. Samira freezes, eyes widening for a brief moment before darting away, not wanting to feel the weight of Walsh’s gaze for longer than she has to. It always has a way of making her feel…pinned, like an animal caught in a snare.
Her thoughts of Walsh disintegrate when she hears someone say her name, turning to find Shen looking at her expectantly. Blinking a few times, Samira turns her attention back to them. “Sorry. I’d be happy with Miller, maybe? Or the new attending that transferred from UT? I’m not too picky.”
Ellis nods, leaning back in her chair. “New girl is nice. She went to med school with Jefferson. Ran into her in the parking garage last night.”
“I want Shamsi,” Santos says with a smirk as she sits down, shooting Javadi a look she doesn't reciprocate.
“Give it rest today, please,” Javadi begs, throwing her mint wrapper at Santos’ face. It misses, because Javadi can’t aim for anything, fluttering down to the middle of the table and landing right in front of Samira. She snatches it before Santos and Javadi start a battle over the stupid thing.
Thankfully, right as Santos opens her mouth to likely tease Javadi both about her mothers surgical skills and delectable (as she puts it) appearance, Gloria claps her hands twice. The energy in the room disappears all at once, all casual small talk and light-hearted conversations fizzling out with her silent command. A few stragglers take their seats, Walsh and the others finally breaking away from Elieen to do the same.
“Samira,” Santos whispers through the quieting conversations. Samira turns to see her gesturing towards the plastic mint wrapper Samira is still holding in her hand, the wrinkly material making a scratchy sound as she crunches it up. “Toss it over.”
Deciding it’s not worth it to get in the middle of whatever this thing is, she begrudgingly lines the wrapper up between her fingers and flicks it, aiming right for Santos’s open hands a few seats down. However, because today has to go and throw her another curveball, the wrapper doesn’t go where she aims. Samira watches helplessly as it skitters to the other side of the table just as the last people are sitting down.
The good thing is Gloria is too occupied sorting something on her laptop to notice it fly across the surface.
The bad thing, something that’s beyond mortifying and will be replaying in Samira’s brain the entire rest of her shift, is the fact the wrapper hits Walsh’s forearm.
Not only did Walsh decide, likely due to it being the only seat left, to sit in the chair right across from her, she’s now also looking at Samira with a furrowed brow and something akin to mild annoyance. She glances back down at the wrapper, picks it up, and looks back at Samira with a question in her eyes.
“Give it back,” Samira now finds herself whispering, cursing Santos and Javadi for this entire debacle. Her hand reaches across the table, only for Walsh to pull back at the last second to move it out of her reach. Samira wants to scream at her, or hit her in the face, but preferably the latter. She huffs out a little angry breath, reaching for it for the second time, but is yet again met with Walsh’s infuriating, and somehow entertained, expression.
She’s enjoying this.
“What do you say?” Walsh asks, tilting her head and fiddling with the wrapper between her fingers.
“I say give it back—”
“Dr. Mohan, Dr. Walsh, I don’t know what’s so funny over there, but it must be something worth ignoring my presentation over.”
Samira freezes, eyes widening at Gloria’s unamused tone. With burning cheeks, she turns to find the entire room looking at her, Walsh, and the scene before them: Samira leaning over the table with an arm out, Walsh leaning back smugly in her chair, and the wrapper nowhere to be found.
“I apologize,” she stammers out, “we were just—”
Gloria holds a hand up, silencing her. “That’s okay, Dr. Mohan. I don’t care what you two are fighting about again this time—”
Walsh seems to bristle at this, rolling her eyes again and leaning back further in her chair. “I’m just playing with her, Gloria. You should know what I look like when I’m fighting—”
“Don’t interrupt me, Emery. You’re getting too comfortable,” Gloria says, gesturing towards the surgeons sitting on the other side of the table. “That’s the reason we’re here. All of you are getting too comfortable. You seem to think your paycheck means you can treat everyone else in this hospital like they’re below you.” Samira doesn’t have time to relish in someone finally putting the surgery department in their place before Gloria is turning her focus to the other side of the table, the side her and her colleagues reside. “And you all think you’re experts at every specialty and should be free from any criticism because of your workload.”
No one in the room moves, surgeons and emergency medicine doctors alike frozen in their seats. Samira can’t remember the last time she saw Shen sit still for so long without twitching. Even Santos and Javadi are unmoving, eyes wide and mouths shut as they stare at the wall.
“I know none of you want to be here—I don’t want to be here. But we’re only here because of all of you. We lost a patient because of the very egos in this room. A woman lost her husband because none of you could act like adults and cooperate for more than thirty seconds.”
Samira’s stomach drops at the mention of the patient they lost, his chart flooding back to her in a wave she can’t shove down—Nathan Smith, 42, elementary school science teacher who rolled into the ER after a fire in an apartment complex. Burns over his entire body. Broken femur and superior humerus fracture from trying to pull his wife out and getting stuck in a doorway right as it collapsed.
Even as she sits at this table in the uncannily modern and stark conference room, she’s thrown back to that night, to the scent of burned flesh and smoke lingering on the paramedics clothes, the sounds of patients in pain and children crying. They had gotten thirty two patients from the fire almost all at once. The ED had been overrun, working tirelessly to save everyone they could. They only lost two: one older woman who was dead before they slapped a red bracelet on her, and then Mr. Smith.
“When I went back to read his chart, I couldn’t tell who was on his case. Almost everyone in this room participated in his treatment, yet none of you could tell me how he died until we brought legal in. It took six hours—six entire hours—of interviewing all of you for us to sort it out. Doctor Robinavitch, care to tell the room what we found?”
Robby cleared his throat, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “We forgot to check his airway, and if we had, we would’ve seen smoke coating it. Right as the doctor triaging him asked him to open his mouth, the patient screamed and turned his head as EMS rolled the man with the axe stuck in his chest by. The doctor working on him was so shocked by the sight, they forgot to go back and check the airway again. When surgery asked if one of us did, someone said it was cleared, and it spun out from there as more of my staff kept endorsing it.”
The room is dead silent as Robby speaks, everyone holding their breath despite knowing how the events of that night unfolded.
Robby drags a hand down his face before continuing. “The doctors treating him were more focused on the external burns on his chest, so when he complained of chest pain, it was assumed it was from the burns. When his lung collapsed, we couldn’t intubate because of his swollen airway. By the time surgery came in and criked him, it was too late and he got a pulmonary edema soon after.”
Gloria nods. “Eileen, anything to add?”
Eileen exhaled sharply, shooting a glare towards the side of the table where the surgeons are avoiding her eyes. “When I came down to check on the patient, I was told by four of my residents and two interns that the airway had been cleared. When I asked every single one if they were one-hundred percent sure, they all said yes. None of you—” she gave her staff another pointed look, “—wanted to admit you didn’t know, so you lied, despite me telling you all to always verify the airway yourself.”
Gloria nodded, grabbing a paper from what must be a legal representative sitting next to her, if the pressed suit and squeamish look on the woman’s face told Samira anything. “The ER’s negligence, which can partly be blamed on the overwhelming number of patients you were all dealing with that night, and the surgery department’s inability to admit when they’re wrong and the hostile learning environment they create for their residents, to the point they don’t feel safe questioning their peers and superiors work, is what killed this man. Even if you are in this room and didn’t treat Mr. Smith, you all foster a space where hostility, cockiness, and peacocking is put above patient care.”
Samira never worked on Mr. Smith herself, if she had there’s no way she would have ever forgotten to check an airway, but it still stings. It should have never happened. She was stuck in the red zone all night, running between trauma bays elbow-deep in blood and burns. By the time she heard the shouting from Mr. Smith’s bed in yellow and made her way over, there were already too many doctors and nurses around his bed to get a good picture of what was going on.
“There were eleven of you in the trauma bay when he died, not counting PAs, RTs, and nurses. Eleven of you were shouting over each other and playing cowboy in that room with this patient. The two residents who started this chain of incompetence, Doctor Reed from the ER and Doctor Scott from surgery, have been let go. We have no issue letting more of you go if something like this happens again. However, we want to avoid that if possible. That’s where this program comes in.”
The entire room seems to sit up a bit straighter, and Samira herself even perks up a bit.
Gloria clears her throat, clicking around on her laptop for a few seconds before speaking. “You all got my email, and the details of the program should be clear. For one twenty-four hour shift, you will each shadow someone of the opposite speciality. In the middle of the table, you’ll find the form you both need to fill out at the end of this experience. You will take a picture with the clock visible—”
“Like a ransom photo?” Shen questions, raising his brows with a small smile. Quiet laughs fill the room, and even Kwon’s lips twitch as she looks up from her phone hidden under the table. Samira bites back one of her own.
“As I was saying,” Gloria continues, shooting Shen a less than pleased look, “You need proof you did the entire shift, the more pictures the better. Our goal for this is to improve teamwork to ensure patients receive the best-possible care in our walls. That starts with squashing this animosity your two departments have with each other.”
Robby barks out a dry laugh, rolling his eyes. “Properly staffing the ER would help patients get the best-possible care.”
“Thank you for your input, Robinavitch. Staffing is an important issue. I assure you we are doing the best we can with our budget—”
The sharp shrill of a pager going off interrupts Gloria's sales pitch, saving Samira and everyone else from hearing the same script for the hundredth time.
Everyone turns to see Garcia fumbling with the black machine clipped to her waistband, silencing it with an exaggerated sigh before looking back at Gloria with a frown that’s so fake Samira nearly laughs again. “Damn it, it seems I’m getting paged. Really important case. How about you just cut to telling us who we’re partnered with? I would hate to miss out on patient care, since that’s such a big priority for this place now.”
From the corner of her eye, Samira watches as Walsh’s hands drop from her own pager suspiciously releasing the call button, her face, as always, completely unreadable.
Gloria takes a deep breath before speaking again. “Great timing, Doctor Garcia. I’ll read out your pairings, and remember it’s on you both to find two shifts that work to shadow each other outside of your normal hours.”
Samira picks at her blunt nails, hands starting to get clammy where they’re resting on her bouncing leg. Her nerves, forgotten in the events of the meeting, have come back full force. Looking around at the surgeons in the room, none of them are standout prospects.
Garcia isn’t too bad, and the new attending seems nice enough, but then her eyes fall on Walsh and the stress hits her again. Walsh has the personality of ninety percent of the surgeons in this hospital—abrasive, snarky, terrifyingly-introverted, and sarcastic to the point of it being hard to follow. All they know how to speak about is surgery, and all their brains do is think about it. Their days off are spent at clinics or conferences, not with family or friends or doing anything besides fixating on their only interest.
Samira can’t judge them too harshly, it’s not like she’s much better. Her days off consist of working on her own research, poring over articles, and finding ways to show up to the ER and work a few hours despite Dana’s protests. Her coworkers are much better at the whole “having a life” thing.
Being around a surgeon, someone whose entire life and brain is occupied by one singular thing, makes her feel more exposed than ever. They’re annoying types of people, but she shares more traits with them than her coworkers downstairs. She looks at them and their absent social life, inability to connect with other non-surgeons, and disinterest in speaking about anything other than medicine, and sees a sad reflection of herself.
Is it a good thing to be seen for something you have been told is a problem? Something that you need, or at least what other people think you need, to work on fixing? To have the very traits she’s told to change be mirrored in someone else?
It scares her to think about the answer.
Samira crosses her legs, hoping it will stop the absentminded shaking. It doesn’t work, big shocker, and her foot now kicks the table leg instead. Anything to keep her from floating away from this room.
“Doctor Santos, you’re with Miller,” Gloria reads out.
Miller groans, his head falling into his hands. Santos holds her hands up, looking offended as she chews on a mint. “Miller, don't do that. Come on, it’ll be fun!”
Miller seems unconvinced, dragging his hands down his face. “God.”
Gloria sighs, glaring at the two of them before looking back at her laptop. “Doctor Ellis is with Cunningham. Shamsi you get Javadi. Garcia and Whitaker—”
Samira’s leg is practically drumming a beat on the leg of the table now, each second passing only making her nerves worse. She wishes Gloria would tell her already, not drag it out painfully like this. She doesn't even register the sounds of disappointment, and for very few, excitement, coming from around her as the list is read out. The rhythmic tapping helps her not freak out, focusing instead on that motion instead of the wave of stress building in her body.
She faintly hears Gloria droning on, saying every name except Samira’s own, when Walsh clears her throat across the table. Glancing up, she’s shocked to find Walsh already looking at her.
Eye contact with Walsh feels like a sort of challenge; she’s daring you to be the one to look away first, and mocks you when you fail. It’s confusing and condescending and makes Samira feel something she has no idea how to begin to sort though.
However, this time Walsh’s gaze contains none of the infuriating cat-and-mouse game she always seems to delight in playing. This one is simply that of mild annoyance. Samira can’t begin to fathom what she did to piss off Walsh this time, considering they haven’t been on the same shift in two weeks and six days.
This observation is not because Samira’s brain keeps track of when Walsh is on call—that would be something she would only do for people who tick her boxes. She only knows, and cares, about this because of how frustrating it is to work with the other night shift trauma attending. He’s old-fashioned and rude, keen on spending his shifts berating everyone in the ER like incompetent children.
He’s not Walsh, and it doesn’t mean anything that Samira thinks about this every time she sees his name on the consult board.
Even as she wracks her mess of a brain, sifting through mental piles of reminders to text her mom back and another test she could order for the teenager in Central 8, she comes up empty for possible infractions she’d committed against Walsh.
Samira shoots her back a look of confusion, only to be met with Walsh exhaling once sharply through her nose, the corner of her mouth twitching up to a small smirk.
“That’s my leg, Mohan,” she murmurs under her breath, emphasizing her point by bumping her own leg against Samira’s still moving foot.
Samira’s foot pauses against what she realizes in horror must be Walsh’s inner thigh. Her very warm, solid, and definitely not part of the table-leg, inner thigh. The inner-thigh she’s been practically kicking for the past ten minutes.
She's going to combust right here in this freezing conference room that smells like cheap hand-sanitizer and too much Old-Spice deodorant, just explode into a bunch of tiny, embarrassed pieces. Walsh is still staring at her, biting back her stupid smirk, when Samira finally moves her foot back to the floor.
“Sorry,” she whispers back, her cheeks burning as her eyes dart from Walsh’s unwavering gaze to land on the much safer, and less…confusing, bowl of mints.
“It’s alright,” Walsh replies, leaning back further in her chair, spreading her legs a little more from their already relaxed position as she checks a silent message on her pager.
Samira fights the urge to roll her eyes at Walsh’s posture change. How Walsh sits, or rather, how she lounges, in chairs is another reason Samira could never have a crush on her.
She sits like she can’t be bothered to pay attention or show one ounce of interest in the conversation. She’ll lean back and spread her legs, crossing her arms and watching everything around her unfold with such an aggravating sense of superiority.
It’s irritating.
Samira supposes she’s being a tad dramatic, likely due to her own posture habits her mother instilled in her as a young girl: sitting up straight, legs crossed, attentive listening, the whole nine-yards. They’re all second nature to Samira now, signs that she respects and cares about the person in the conversation enough to pay attention to them completely.
Walsh does none of that. She looks perpetually annoyed, looks confusing, when she sits down. Her future partner wouldn’t sit like that. They wouldn't take up space in a way that made the constant knot in Samira’s stomach pull tighter at the sight of scrub pants stretched over solid thighs or forearm muscle on display from being crossed across a chest.
“Walsh!” Samira jerks her head up at Gloria’s voice, pushing thoughts of Walsh and the fact her foot was getting way too comfortable on her inner-thigh to the back of her mind. She watches as Walsh’s attention drifts lazily from reading her pager to Gloria, her signature look of distaste still present. “You’re taking Mohan.”
All of the air in the stuffy room is sucked out at that moment.
One sentence, and every bit of breathable oxygen is yanked out through the giant floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking downtown Pittsburgh.
You’re taking Mohan.
Okay.
Samira could do this.
She could be normal and calm about the fact she would be spending hours tied to someone who probably relishes in the sound of babies crying and is allergic to compassion in all forms. She could be cordial with Walsh, who’s probably the type to hit “no tip,” at the coffee carts downstairs and likely parks too close to the lines in the employee garage and makes it hard for the person next to her to get out.
She could spend forty-eight hours with someone like this. She doesn’t really have much of a choice.
Samira would have to spend two entire days tethered to Walsh. She has to get to know her enough to write about it, and then report her findings like it’s a fucked up science experiment.
Hypothesis: Walsh is an asshole.
Evidence: The last four years working with her and one twenty-second elevator ride.
Conclusion: Samira hates surgeons.
It’s quite simple. She doesn’t need this program to tell Gloria that. Forty-eight hours with Walsh wouldn’t make her have some change of heart. She wouldn’t leave her shift smiling thinking about how kind and amazing Walsh is.
She’s great at her job, phenomenal even, but Samira doesn't need to tell them that. The board knows this. They wouldn’t have made Walsh a Senior Attending at thirty-eight if they didn’t. They’re looking for something deeper, something Samira has zero interest in finding out and also something she has absolutely no faith Walsh even possesses.
Samira would leave with a bigger distaste than she came in with, but only more evidence to back it up.
Then there’s the picture. The thought of holding up her phone and taking a picture with Walsh is completely incomprehensible. She couldn’t even imagine asking Robby or Abbot for one, and she’s spent more time around them than her own mother these last four years.
What would they even talk about? There’s not one topic Samira could think of, or one thing they have in common, that comes to mind. Maybe they would spend the twenty-four hours in silence, trailing behind each other pretending the other person isn’t there. That somehow is more mortifying than the thought of making small-talk.
At least Walsh doesn’t seem too thrilled about this either, the only signs of a reaction from her being a small clench of her jaw and a nod. Garcia appears to care more about their pairing than Walsh does, if the way she’s nudging Walsh’s thigh with her leg under the table says anything.
That’s just great—Walsh must confide in Garcia about her dislike of Samira. The two of them are probably going to discuss how awful this pairing is for her later on while they cut into people. Great.
Samira forces herself to look forward, ignoring how Ellis is nudging her own knee against hers. What’s with everyone today? She doesn’t have too much time to ruminate on whatever it is she’s feeling, as it’s interrupted by the sounds of chairs scraping the floor and people standing up. The meeting must be over, Samira having been so absorbed in her thoughts she failed to notice.
Brushing her now sweaty palms on her pants, she rises from her chair and starts for the door. She makes it not even two feet before Al-Hashimi’s hand is grasping her shoulder as she slides up next to her. “On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you’ve felt in your life, rate your pain.”
Samira gives her an annoyed look, the same one they’ve exchanged too many times to count when Robby says something insane downstairs or a patient did something outlandish back at the VA. “Ha-ha. Very funny.”
“The NPRS is no joke, Samira. I’d be curious to know what your partner’s rating is right now.”
Samira quickly glances around the room, thankful Walsh and Garcia have already left and won’t hear Al-Hashimi’s’s teasing. “Please don’t say partner like that.”
“I’m not saying it in any way.” Al-Hashimi says in mock-innocence as she holds the door open for Samira. She rolls her eyes, Al-Hashimi laughing softly as they make their way into the hallway where some of the surgeons and ER doctors have congregated—on separate sides of the hall, of course. Al-Hashimi gives her shoulder a small pat, and her smile, casual and mellow as it always tends to be, widens a fraction at the sight of something behind Samira’s shoulder. “I seem to have overstayed my welcome. I’ll leave you and Emery to sort your schedule.”
“What—” Samira questions with a furrow of her brow, confused at what she possibly means. Al-Hashimi’s hand, still lingering on Samira’s shoulder, slides down her arm slowly before she starts off towards the elevators.
Samira turns around, nearly flinching when she almost locks eyes with Walsh, who’s staring at her shoulder with her signature intense gaze.
Did Samira have something on it?
She checks herself, and there’s nothing there. Walsh’s eyes drift over from her shoulder to where Al-Hashimi slides by where she and Garcia are standing against the wall. Garcia says something that pulls her attention back to their conversation, but not without shooting Al-Hashimi one last look of what almost looks like frustration.
Odd.
Samira isn’t aware they have issues. Not everyone gelled with Al-Hashimi during her first few weeks here, but it only took a little bit for most people to warm up to her different teaching style—a style that Samira much prefers to Robby’s. She can’t think of a time when Walsh and Al-Hashimi have been anything less than professional and respectful to each other in the trauma bays. Maybe she missed something.
Well, if Walsh is here right now, there’s no time like the present to sort out their schedule. It would be better to do it now instead of having to page her another time and prolong the whole charade. The sooner they got it sorted, the sooner it would be over.
Squaring her shoulders, Samira begins to weave through the crowd of people to where Garcia and Walsh are still leaning against the wall. As she approaches, sticking her shaky hands in the pockets of her scrub pants to hopefully hide the pathetic display of nerves, she catches the end of their conversation.
“—already have to deal with him at Trinity’s apartment, and now this? The kid used my toothbrush, Emery.”
“Have you ever considered not fucking a resident?” Emery questions, sounding simultaneously bored and entertained by Garcia’s distress. Her eyes are still staring at the elevator bay where Al-Hashimi stands waiting for it to come.
Samira holds back her own laugh, having heard the infamous toothbrush story from at least four different people who were in Trauma 2 when Garcia dropped that piece of information. She chooses to focus on the image of Whitaker, Garcia, and Santos brushing their teeth side by side like a happy family instead of the way the knot in her stomach tightens hearing Walsh say the words “fucking a resident.”
Garcia scoffs, swatting her shoulder. “That’s rich coming from you when your old-ass still hasn’t tried to talk to—”
“I’ll pull you from the thoracostomy so quick if you finish that sentence.”
Samira finally reaches them, ducking under Callahan’s outstretched arm and nearly bumping into a surgery fellow. Garcia breaks out into an unabashed grin as Walsh’s face, as always, is the picture of indifference.
Samira presses her lips together in a lame attempt at a smile. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says, turning to look at Walsh. “I thought we should pick our shifts today while we’re both here. Easier than emailing back and forth.”
Walsh nods, pulling her phone out. “That’s fine. Doctor Garcia was just leaving.”
Garcia looks between them. “I was. I need to go catch Al-Hashimi before she gets downstairs. Good to see you Samira. I’ll tell your attending hello for you.”
It’s impossible for Samira to miss the glare Walsh sends Garcia’s way before she disappears into the thinning crowd.
Whatever is going on, Samira couldn't possibly begin to imagine. She usually doesn’t mind being on the outside of workplace gossip, considering the last time she got involved she had to hear about McKay’s sex life, but something about this is different. A tiny part of her brain wants to know more, a part of her brain she thought she left in college.
“Come on,” Emery mutters, shooting off a text on her phone before walking off in the opposite direction towards the staircase. Samira gets the sense that’s Walsh’s way of saying to follow her, another tally to add in the “lack of manners and social graces” column.
Huffing out a breath, she begrudgingly tags along. It takes all of two seconds for her to catch up to Walsh, partly due to how short Walsh’s legs are, but mostly due to Samira’s habit of speedwalking everywhere she hasn’t been able to shake since starting in the ER.
Walsh looks up at her with raised brows. “In a rush, Mohan?”
Samira slows down, waiting for Walsh to catch up. Her shoes drag against the floor as she walks with no sense of urgency or energy, taking her sweet time.
Aggravating.
“No,” she says, crossing her arms as they reach the door to the stairwell. She isn’t sure where Walsh is going, but Samira doesn't have a choice but to follow her, she supposes. Walsh hums to herself, a smile flickering across her face briefly. She reaches the door before Samira, pushing it open and holding it for her.
So she does have some manners, it seems.
Samira mutters a thank you, slipping through the gap into the empty stairwell. The door slams shut behind them, the loud noise making her flinch where she stands at the landing, one hand on the cold metal railing in a sad attempt to ground herself. Walsh gives her another look—Samira was already getting very tired of that and the shadowing hasn’t even started—before starting down the stairs. The stairwell does nothing but amplify the awkward silence building with each passing second, the sound of their footsteps the only thing echoing in the space.
It presses into Samira until she can’t take it anymore, deciding to ask the question that’s been lingering in her mind since the meeting. “Did you page Garcia in the middle of Gloria’s speech? During the meeting?”
Walsh exhales out of her nose, not a full-laugh, but it’s something. Samira feels an odd sense of triumph hearing it. She wonders what it would sound like if Walsh laughed fully, if she was even capable of letting herself feel enough joy to do it in the first place. They reach the ground floor, and before Samira can reach for the door, Walsh is in front of her and holding it open again.
Two points in the manners column is not enough for Walsh to tick a box, Samira reminds herself as she steps through the doorway while definitely not inhaling deeper than normal to catch a whiff of whatever cologne Walsh uses.
“I was bored. Thought it would speed it up.” Walsh says, falling back into step next to Samira while tucking her hands into the pockets of her scrub pants. They walk in silence for a few more seconds before a light touch to Samira’s lower back steers to the left at the end of the hallway. Walsh is apparently leading them to the hospital lobby, for what, Samira has no idea. “We do it during morning huddle every week.”
Samira smiles softly to herself, only at the thought of the two of them pulling that stunt every single week, not at the way her back is burning from the pressure of a touch so gentle she almost thinks she’s imagining it. It’s hard to conflate someone like Walsh, a person who is never not tense and downright snarky, all sharp edges and abrasiveness, with having such a soft touch.
Her hand is gone before Samira can fixate on it, probably for the best. Samira clears her throat, dragging her eyes away from Walsh. “Oh. That’s funny.”
Another hum is all she gets in return. Figures.
After a few more seconds, they reach their destination, which for whatever reason is the coffee cart. Walsh wanted coffee? Is this a joke?
They get in line behind a few nurses, and Samira turns back to face her. “I work today, but I’m off for the next two days. So—”
“Hi Dr. Walsh, the usual?” A scratchy voice interrupts. Samira looks over to find the barista, an older man who has to be at least in his seventies smiling wider than anyone should be in a hospital this early in the morning. His warm demeanor makes the dark cloud in Samira’s chest dissipate a little, if only for a moment.
“Yeah Earl, and whatever she wants,” Walsh replies, jerking her head to where Samira stands next to her. Besides the fact Walsh appears to prefer the lobby coffee cart (everyone knows the one in the courtyard is infinitely better), Samira is floored Walsh is familiar enough with this kind looking old man where he remembers her order. Not only that, but she knows his name.
None of this conflates with the version of Walsh she has in her head. The version she’s been building for four years would never offer to buy an EM resident coffee. Maybe she would just to spit in it or something. She could see Walsh doing that.
The “Walsh has manners,” column was getting quite full of tallies, and Samira isn’t sure how this makes her feel. It’s not like she’s ticking a box, Samira reminds herself.
So she’s nice to a barista, so what? Doesn’t change the fact she ignored Samira in the elevator and seems determined to ignore her presence down in the ER.
“That’s okay. But thank you,” Samira manages, giving Earl an apologetic smile.
Walsh sighs, one hand running through her now loose bun. “Mohan, just order.”
Samira stares at her for a few painfully long seconds, but concedes in the end. She’ll order and pay for it herself. She slept through her first alarm this morning, so she was completely noncaffeinated and coffee wouldn’t hurt.
“I’ll have a medium cold brew with a splash of almond-milk, and that’ll be separate. Thank you,” She finally gets out, reaching into her pocket for her phone to pay. She’s too late though, the catchy ding of someone tapping their card ringing in her ears before she can reach it. Biting back a much more pissy and less workplace appropriate retort, Samira gives Walsh a tiny glare. “You don’t have to buy me a pity coffee, Doctor Walsh. I wanted to pay for it.”
Samira pointedly ignores the fact it’s only been five minutes alone with Walsh and she’s not only proven she possesses the ability to have manners, but also the ability to tip well, having watched her press the 25% button of the card reader after tapping her card.
She’s still not a box-ticker.
They move to the side, Walsh staring at her for a few seconds in yet another awkward silence, before shifting her weight on her feet, appearing completely dissuaded by Samira’s little outburst. “I don’t make a habit of pitying people, Doctor Mohan. And you’re a resident. I’m buying your coffee.”
“Thats—”
“I’m not fighting you on this. It’s one coffee. Take it.”
Samira opens her mouth, wanting to tell Walsh she can’t just order her around like that, but the look Walsh levels her with makes her decide to refrain. Dana always talks about picking and choosing your battles. This is a battle she decides is not worth picking. “Fine. Thank you.”
“See. Look how easy that was,” Walsh says, expression blank as slips her phone back into her pocket and looks at Samira.
Samira doesn’t have the energy to fight with her today, despite how badly she’s itching to. For now, she searches for another topic to fill the silence, but comes up empty. Thankfully, their drinks are called out, saving her the trouble. She nearly laughs seeing Walsh’s order: black coffee, decaf. Of course.
“Decaf?” Samira muses, unwrapping her straw and sticking it through the lid, wincing at the awful scratchy sound it makes.
“My hands can’t shake. Unlike Robby and Frank, my sutures need to be neat,” Emery replies, taking a sip.
Samira can’t hold back the smile at the dig at Robby, pushing down the laugh bubbling up her throat. “Robby’s sutures are pretty rough.”
“They’re shit. You should be thankful Collins taught you how to do yours.”
At the mention of Collins, Samira’s chest squeezes. Four months since she moved and her absence stung all the same. “How did you know Heather taught me?”
Walsh looks up at her again, and despite the fact they’re now in a multi-story, open and airy, window-filled lobby, her gaze feels the same it did in the conference room. “Because yours are beautiful, just like hers. That med student you have downstairs…William?”
Beautiful. Samira’s sutures are beautiful.
The compliment, coming from someone who sutures for a living, makes her brain spin in a way it hasn’t in so long Samira almost forgot it’s capable of doing so. Her mind catches on the word like a record scratch, replaying it a few times before she realizes Walsh is asking her a question.
Samira swallows, ignoring the way her cheeks are heating up. “Do you mean Whitaker?”
“Yeah, him. His are awful. Can tell Heather wasn’t there to teach him, that’s for sure.”
“Mhm…” Samira’s voice trails off, taking a sip of her coffee in an attempt to get back on track. She was here to find a time to shadow, not to have coffee bought for her and to see Walsh’s manners and make small-talk that isn’t as painful as she remembers it typically being. “Anyways, should we do tomorrow? For my shift shadowing you?”
Walsh nods, pulling out her phone and opening her calendar app. From the quick look Samira gets, it looks meticulously organized, color-coded down to the minute. Samira’s calendar system of choice was a plethora of sticky-notes on her fridge and bathroom mirror with important dates scribbled on.
Surgeons are such strange people.
“Tomorrow night works. I start at eight and get off around ten or eleven the next night. Usually on weekends we stay a few hours late for cases that always come in around nine. I’ll try to finish early though so I don’t hold you.”
“Sounds good. Should I just meet you on the surgery floor?” She questions, her body already vibrating at the thought of getting to come into the hospital on her days off. Even if it’s to shadow Walsh and likely be shut in the OR for hours, it’s better than being home and alone with her thoughts.
“No, wait in the attending’s lounge once you get here, it’s next to the skills lab.” Samira nods, about to turn and leave, when Walsh’s phone is placed on the counter in front of her. “Put your number in. I’ll need to text you the code for the scrub room.”
She takes it tentatively, typing it in quickly before practically shoving back in Walsh’s hands.
Emery Walsh now had her number in her personal phone. They all knew how to text each other on Epic, and she and Walsh have exchanged a few messages on there for patient follow ups and orders. That isn’t the same as this though. Her personal number now lives in Walsh’s phone next to people she cares about and texts regularly, as if they’re friends outside of work.
It feels oddly intimate, something she doesn’t even share with her coworkers. The only people she works with who she texts are Ellis and Santos. Well, Ellis, Santos, and now Walsh.
Samira’s fingers tighten around the straw of her drink. She can’t tell if the moisture on her hands is her own sweat, or the condensation from the cup.
Definitely the cup.
“Okay. Let's just get this over with,” Samira mutters, running a hand through her messy bun as she feels her pager begin to buzz on her hip. She’s both relieved and forlorn at the thought of heading back to the ER, but duty calls.
“You might learn something from this program. Could be worth your time if you let it,” Walsh muses, tilting her head slightly before her eyes fall to Samira’s pager that’s now been buzzing for at least fifteen solid seconds.
Samira ignores it, letting it vibrate against her hip, the repetitive pressure helping keep her from drifting away during what’s been the most confusing hour of her life since she started working here. "I don’t know what they expect me to learn about you or surgery in general during this charade. I would be much better off taking care of patients downstairs.”
“I think you’ll learn something,” Walsh replies, holding her eyes with that pinning, calculated gaze as her free hand reaches down to Samira’s hip. She silences Samira’s pager, fingertips brushing the soft fabric of Samira’s scrubs near her waistband, before stepping back and starting towards the elevators. When she speaks again, she doesn’t bother turning around. “Maybe surgery will surprise you, Mohan.”
Samira is left standing next to the coffee cart with the drink she didn’t pay for and the terrifying realization these will be the longest forty-eight hours of her life.