Chapter Text
After three and a half months working in the Pitt, Emma Nolan was sure of three things. It wasn’t for the faint of heart. She wouldn't have survived this long without Dana. And despite being a level I trauma hospital that sees thousands of patients every week, the elevators were terrifying.
Or maybe that's because she'd been stuck in one for the past half hour with the most intimidating doctor she'd ever met in her entire life—Dr. Park.
They call him Shark.
She'd never liked sharks. Sure, they have their place in the ecosystem and she would never advocate for their extinction but they're definitely the reason she doesn’t venture too far into the waters at the beach.
And now she was stuck between the second and third floor with a figure more menacing than any creature swimming under the surface of the ocean. To think, today started so normal—or, well, as normal as a day can be in this place.
Her alarm had gone off at 5AM like most mornings and as she stood at the sink, brushing her teeth and looking at the wild mess of curls in her bathroom mirror, she made the decision to do something different with her hair. It was five days to Halloween and Princess and Perlah had spent the day before discussing all the usual injuries to expect from the holiday.
Last year, a guy came in with a severe allergy to the latex in his mask and his face swelled so severely, they had to cut it off of him.
Year before that, a teenager severed the tendons in her hand trying to carve a pumpkin.
And Princess couldn't resist mentioning that one time a patient came in for acute rectal pain and after an X-ray, they discovered he had a whole bag of candy shoved up his rectum.
Emma wasn't looking forward to the horror stories she would now be front and center for but at least most of the Halloween injuries happened on night shift.
But despite the uncertain future looming ahead, she woke up on the 29th feeling more festive than usual. Halloween was her favorite holiday since she was a kid. She and her mom would plan her costume weeks in advance and make everything from scratch. When she was young, she thought it was because her mom was a crafting genius and loved to create things herself.
Now that she was older and a little bit wiser, she knew it was because glue and thrifted clothes were cheaper than the store bought costumes she'd be wearing for one day.
Emma gathered her hair into sections and twisted them until she had two buns secured on top of her head. She pulled a few curls out to frame her face and then grabbed two, plastic barrettes she'd found at the dollar store. One bright orange pumpkin with a goofy grin and a bat with its wings open. She clipped one on each bun, secured a pair of ghost earrings (nothing dangling—she knew all too well that patients will grab at anything they can get their hands on) and smiled at herself in the mirror.
That smile didn't last more than three seconds when she walked in for her shift and found it was already a mad house. An overnight system update had turned a somewhat outdated but perfectly functioning system into a useless pile of junk. E-Faxes weren't sending, computers kept crashing, and any patient data entered into the system had a delay of thirty seconds to a full minute before it popped up on the board.
Which doesn't seem like a lot, but in a place like the Pitt, every single second counted. Emma spent most of the morning running around just hand delivering papers to different doctors. In between, she helped triage, stood by Dr. King as she expertly stitched a laceration on a woman's foot, set up an ECG for an elderly patient presenting with burning in her chest, and watched paramedics rush in two MV victims.
She paused at the hub as several doctors rushed forward, two grabbing the female victim who was awake and staring wide-eyed as she took several shallow breaths, and three circling a male whose entire leg was crushed and covered in blood.
Jesse, Perlah, and Princess took off and Emma took a step toward them when she was intercepted by Dana.
“Mind running this up to three? This damn update got our faxes sitting in our outbox like turds in a bowl.”
“What a lovely image,” Dr Santos mumbled from a nearby computer. She sat back and raked her fingers through her hair and rolled her eyes. “These computers are going to be the death of me.”
Dana looked at Emma and smiled, handing her three orders for imaging. She glanced to the trauma bay where, already, the doctors were stripping the male patient and assessing the horrible damage to his leg. A small sting of jealousy pinched her chest but she was still the newbie around here. She didn't argue.
Not with Dana.
So as quickly as she could without actually running, she stepped into the elevator and rode it up to the third floor.
It was always so jarring how quiet the other parts of the hospital were. Well, quiet compared to the chaos of the Pitt, anyway.
Patients sat waiting for their names to be called, soft music played over a quiet speaker, and the nurses and techs moved about in a hurried, but calm sense of urgency. She was a little jealous.
One of the techs lifted his head from the desk and smiled at her.
He was cute.
Youngish, maybe mid-twenties.
Emma had seen him around once or twice but mostly in passing and from too far away to actually make eye contact. He stood as she stepped closer, holding out the paper orders for him.
“Our faxes aren't sending out.”
“Yeah,” he said, glancing down at his computer. “This system update is crazy. We've been backed up like hell.”
She glanced to the waiting area down the corridor. No one screaming in frustration. No one standing there, tapping their feet and staring pointedly at them.
Okay, she was definitely jealous.
“Right? It's super crazy.”
God, what was she even saying? She sounded stupid and if she lingered too long, she was fairly certain Dana would send someone to retrieve her. She offered the cute tech a smile, glanced down at his name badge—Adam—and took a step back.
“I'll see you later.”
“Sure. I like your pumpkin.”
“Oh, thank you.”
He waved and she ducked her head to hide her smile all the way back to the elevator in the main hall.
Adam.
Super cute, imaging tech, Adam.
Maybe she could come back up here and talk to him again later. Maybe if she did, he would ask her out. All of her friends were going out on Friday for Halloween. She could invite him.
Butterflies fluttered against her stomach as the elevator doors started to shut. Just before they could, a hand shot into the open space and practically shoved them back open. Emma blinked at the shadow that passed over her and shivered as she lifted her head.
She tried to hide the surprise on her face but didn't react in time. Sharp eyes narrowed on her, taking in the sight of her wide gaze and parted lips before they cut away. She backed into the corner as Dr. Park stepped inside the elevator.
Even though she'd already pressed the button for the first floor, he pressed it again. Like he didn't trust her to have done it right.
She'd only encountered him twice since July. The first time, she only glimpsed him from afar but stood at the hub, listening as Princess and Dana called him Shark. Princess made some kind of remark about him eating her that wasn’t exactly sexual but definitely had that undertone and Emma turned away with a blush across her cheeks.
The second time she encountered Dr. Park was about a month ago. She was heading to the restroom and he came around the corner, nearly colliding into her. He put a single hand on her shoulder then, and guided—though it definitely felt more like a push—her out of the way and kept going.
And now here he was…in the same elevator.
At least it would only take a few seconds before they'd be down in the Pitt and she could flee like a fish darting through the water away from a predator.
But things never go right in the Pitt and halfway between the second and third floor, the elevator trembled hard enough to make her stumble to the side. She reached out for the first solid thing she could find and when her brain realized a split second too late that she was holding onto his arm, she jerked away like she'd been burned.
He stood solid, not fazed at all by the jerk of the elevator and just before the lights blinked off, Emma lifted her gaze and found him staring down at her. Brows furrowed, blue eyes somehow cutting like a scalpel, and jaw tight.
And then darkness.
Until the emergency light blinked to life and bathed Emma, the elevator, and the shark-like predator Dr. Park in red.