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Claire’s fidgeting restlessly as she half-pays attention to Dr. Melendez. He’s talking about a past case he had and how it relates to a current patient, and she knows she needs to refocus on him, but she’s exhausted and it’s nearing the end of an extra-long shift. She can’t help it that her eyes keep straying to the clock behind him, and if he sees it happening, he graciously doesn’t scold her for it.
In her defense, she knows the answers to all the questions he’s asking—they all know the answers. Of course, Shaun still calls him out on it regularly, despite Melendez calmly giving the same response every time: they’re a teaching hospital and he needs to put some effort into actually teaching. In fact, that particular give-and-take is so predictable by now that Claire would almost call it an inside joke between them, if she didn’t know better. (And she does know better, doesn’t she?)
The clock on the wall doesn’t tick, but Claire swears she can hear it. It must be an illusion of her sleep-deprived mind, and she stares at it for so long that it almost seems like the hands on it have stopped moving altogether.
When Jared nudges her shoulder, she stops her instinctive reflex of shoving him back twice as hard. He’s only trying to bring her back to the present, which means something must be happening of which she should be aware. (She should be grateful he’s trying to help her out, but all she feels is irritated.)
She switches her attention over to Shaun, who’s now seated at the closest desk, an MRI image on one of the monitors in front of him. She catches the end of what Melendez is saying and gathers that it’s an image from the aforementioned case he was talking about, from one of his patients the previous year.
“It was one of the more unusual cases I’ve had since I started working here,” Melendez is saying, mostly to Shaun, probably because he’s the one actually studying the screen. “Now, what do you see?”
There’s a beat, then two, before Shaun announces, “I see nothing abnormal.”
Melendez does a double take at him and it’s obvious that was the last answer he was expecting. “Since when do you see nothing?” He turns slightly, studying the image closer and then shakes his head. “Never mind, that’s the wrong one.”
He places a hand on Shaun’s shoulder so he can lean down and click on the correct image, pulling it up on the screen, then straightens and moves back. “There. Now what do you see?”
It takes Shaun less than ten seconds before he’s swiveling in his chair and describing the rare abnormality present in the image, but Claire’s brain has skipped a couple times, so she’s not hearing him. She knows something about what she just witnessed doesn’t make sense, but isn’t sure what. It’s like one of those “Circle What’s Wrong With This Picture” illustrations from a children’s magazine. Or the nagging feeling that manifests in a familiar place in which something is distinctly different, but it’s not obvious what. She can’t identify what has changed about her world, but she knows for a fact that something has.
She glances at Jared, who’s nodding along with Shaun’s explanation, and then starts contributing his own observations. He seems to notice nothing amiss, and it almost makes her second guess herself. But she has enough confidence, by now, to trust her gut, and she can’t ignore the odd feeling as easily as someone else might.
She looks back and forth between Shaun and Melendez, who are now animatedly discussing the patient’s illness in greater detail (though those details are lost on her) and she tries desperately to figure out what’s going on—what it is that she can’t quite see.
“Excellent analysis, Dr. Murphy,” Melendez is telling him. “Wish I’d had you on my team back then, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief.”
“Grief?” Shaun asks, puzzled. “I thought this patient lived.”
“He did.” Melendez furrows his brow. “I meant grief as in…work. You would have saved us a lot of work in figuring it out. It took you considerably less time than it took us, back then.”
“There’s no point in wishing to change the past,” Shaun tells him, as if Melendez were genuinely wishing to travel back in time. “It already happened.”
“That it did,” Melendez nods in agreement, “but still…good work.”
Shaun nods, seeming pleased at the compliment, and it’s not their exchange that gives Claire her answer. Nor is it Melendez asking the three of them what their recommended treatment protocol would be for that particular patient. No, it’s the way their attending leans back so that he’s half-sitting on the desk, setting a hand on it to steady himself.
Claire stares at his hand, tuning out the way Jared has eagerly jumped in with his answer (and she makes a mental note to ask Shaun for the details of that whole case later, when she’s more awake and less thrown by the events of the past ten minutes). She’s just realized what didn’t fit into the normal patterns of the people she spends most of her time with, day in and day out:
Since when does Dr. Melendez touch Shaun? Since when does anyone?
And perhaps, more importantly, since when does Shaun allow himself to be touched?
She considers writing it off as inconsequential: a random, trivial exchange between two people who weren’t thinking about it. Such incidents happen hundreds of times a day, all over the hospital. (All over everywhere.) And indeed, if she’d witnessed the moment between any other two people in the building, she would have brushed it off without a second thought. But with these two? She simply can’t ignore it. Melendez is well-aware of Shaun’s aversion to touching people, just as Shaun has made it clear, numerous times, that he hates being touched, even by the people closest to him. (Over the past year, she could count on one hand the number of times she’s seen Dr. Glassman touch him, and she knows the man is the closest thing to a real father that Shaun’s ever had.)
That leaves her with one persistent, burning question: what had she just witnessed? (And why does it seem, of the four of them present, like she’s the only one who’d noticed that it was anything out of the ordinary?)
For the rest of their meeting, she’s more alert than ever, constantly switching her gaze between Shaun and Melendez, but nothing else seems even remotely strange about their interactions. She’s almost convinced she’d imagined it, but…no. She’s only tired, not completely delusional. It had definitely happened, but maybe it doesn’t have any of the significance she’s attaching to it? Maybe it had simply been a lapse on both of their parts, neither of them fully aware of their actions. And maybe things will look different after a real night’s sleep, something which has eluded her for days now.
So she pushes the incident to the back of her mind, deciding she’ll pull it out and reexamine it again if it ever seems to merit such attention (which she knows it probably won’t).
It’s nearly a week later that Claire’s in the ER, thinking about what a slow day it’s been thus far. Her thought jinxes her (obviously), since not even a moment later, she registers the sounds of two people who have started arguing nearby. No, not just any people, she knows one of them: Shaun Murphy.
She walks a few beds down to find him, obviously deeply unhappy and distressed, but he hasn’t progressed to full-blown irate.
“Shaun,” she interrupts, “what’s going on?”
“Dr. Nolan won’t listen to me. He is intent on killing his patient.”
Claire glances at the bed they’re standing over in alarm—thankfully, said patient is currently unconscious and not witness to what’s happening.
“This man is not your patient,” Nolan says, and Claire winces at the anger in his words—Shaun doesn’t even seem to notice it.
“Claire,” Shaun practically throws a tablet in her direction, “read that.”
She spares him a quick, curious glance before reading over the stats of the patient, but unfortunately, neither man has given any indication what they’re even arguing over. “I don’t—”
“Dr. Nolan has misdiagnosed his patient. When I corrected him, he reacted with unreasonable hostility.”
“Unreasonable hostility?” Nolan repeats, and Claire sees that his face has started to become tinged in red. Not good. “What right do you have to be performing any sort of assessment on my patient, never mind accusing me of—”
“I heard the alarm sounding as I walked by,” Shaun says, speaking right over the last of Nolan’s words, which the other doctor doesn’t appear to appreciate, whatsoever. (And Claire figures that Shaun must be referring to the general alarm that goes off when someone’s vitals become concerning, but he doesn’t clarify his point.) “I stopped to investigate, and upon reading the patient’s information, noticed that he’d been misdiagnosed.”
“I’ve been practicing for over twenty years,” Nolan shoots back. “I think I know better than you what’s going on with this man. I don’t need to hear the opinion of—” He stops, glancing at Claire, and swallowing back whatever he’d been about to say.
“Please, Dr. Nolan,” Melendez says from behind her, alerting her to the fact that he’s been drawn over by the commotion, “by all means, finish your sentence.”
“A first year resident,” Nolan bites out.
Claire steps aside, moving to stand next to Shaun, which allows the two senior doctors to stare each other down. It’s the longest ten seconds Claire thinks she’s ever experienced since she began working at Saint Bonaventure Hospital.
Finally, Melendez says icily, “May I?” He’s ostensibly asking permission, but there’s no real question in the words.
Nolan nods once, in a gesture cold enough to rival Melendez’s question. In response, Melendez holds his hand out to Claire and she can only stare at him blankly until he quirks an eyebrow and motions to the tablet she’s forgotten she was holding.
“Oh. Right.” She hands it over and Melendez peruses the information: the patient’s medical history, the symptoms he’d presented with upon admission to the hospital, his original diagnosis, and the results of his recent lab tests.
“The problem isn’t his brain,” Shaun says, as Melendez glances at him briefly, and Nolan bristles. “It’s his heart.” Shaun’s staring at Nolan again, either oblivious to or not caring about the other man’s dislike for him. “When I explained my reasoning, Dr. Nolan ordered me to leave him and his patient alone. But I can’t. Because he’s going to die.”
After another minute of silent reading, Melendez hands the tablet back to Nolan. “I don’t want to step on any toes,” he says, tone conveying he truly couldn’t care less if he did, “but I concur with Dr. Murphy. A closer inspection of the lab results will confirm as much. It’s an easy thing to miss, though. I suspect that even I might have, if Dr. Murphy didn’t point it out.”
Claire gathers that the last sentence is meant to salve Nolan’s wounded ego, as the other man swipes across pages on the tablet, eyes widening in a way that must indicate he’s seeing what Shaun has insisted was there all along.
Nolan clears his throat, seemingly even more unhappy now that Shaun’s been proven right. “I suppose I should thank you, Neil.”
“No,” Melendez says firmly, “not me.”
It takes a few long seconds for Nolan to turn to Shaun, and it sounds like he’s chewing glass when he grits out, “Thank you, Dr. Murphy.”
“You’re welcome for me saving your patient’s life, Dr. Nolan.”
Melendez briefly shuts his eyes as he rubs his temple, Claire bites her lip to keep from laughing, and Nolan stalks off angrily to corral a nearby nurse and change his patient’s treatment plan.
When Claire turns back to their boss, he’s glancing between the two of them. “Trust me, there’s no love lost between me and James Nolan, but diplomacy will get you everywhere.” Almost like an afterthought, he punctuates that with: “Shaun.”
“Diplomacy doesn’t save lives,” Shaun counters, rocking back on his heels and then making a visible effort to calm himself. “Not when people won’t listen.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Melendez allows. “Instead of escalating to a near shouting match next time, though, I suggest you call me or Dr. Glassman. Or discuss the best way to persuade that specific person by consulting with one of our nurses.” He raises his voice to add, “I suggest one of the mean ones, since they know how to get their way.”
That has the nurses within earshot heckling him, albeit good-naturedly.
“There are no mean ones,” Shaun says, matter of factly, which causes Claire to tilt her head as she watches him. She knows for a fact that he isn’t a fan of some of their staff—in a hospital this large, no one would ever love all of their co-workers. So for him to say that out loud, knowing he doesn’t strictly mean it… She realizes he’s said it because he knows it will endear him to them (even as they’ll know it’s said with the same lightheartedness with which Melendez had made his comment).
And endear Shaun it does, as the nurses start fawning all over him, going on about how sweet he is.
“Hey, what about me?” Melendez asks, smiling even as he says it.
“We tolerate you,” one of them quips, as Melendez rolls his eyes. But he’s not really paying her much attention; in fact, Claire could almost believe that he’s having trouble looking away from Shaun.
“I should be reprimanding you for interfering with another doctor’s patient,” Melendez tells him, as Shaun nods, face serious again. “But you did save his life, and I won’t censure you for that. You always need to speak up when you witness something that doesn’t sit right with you. If you aren’t comfortable speaking to the person directly, then like I said before, come to me. Or Glassman.” He looks at Claire, making sure she’s registered that the statement is meant for her, as well.
“I don’t have a problem speaking with people directly,” Shaun informs him, as if it were something Melendez might have missed. “Or arguing with them.”
“We’ve noticed,” Melendez says dryly, his smile exceedingly fond. “Excellent work, Shaun. Keep at it and we just might let you stick around.” He glances at Claire. “You, too.”
“Gee, thanks, sir,” she says, tone as dry as his was, but she’s close to laughing again.
“Time to get back to our actual patients,” their attending reminds them, then gets distracted by his phone buzzing.
As if on cue, Jared calls for her and Shaun from across the room, impatient in a way that alerts her to the fact that it’s not the first time he’s said their names. She waves to let him know they’ll be right over, and before she and Shaun can take more than a few steps, Melendez is reaching out to grasp Shaun’s arm and stop him in his tracks.
“Not you,” he says, holding up his phone to imply that’s what the message was about. “I want you with me. Andrews has requested a consult that’s right up your alley.” Shaun nods and the two of them exit the ER; Claire’s left staring at the place where they’d been, once again questioning herself.
“Claire!” Jared snaps, as she spins around to find he’s given up on waiting and come to retrieve her, instead. “What’s it take to get your attention lately? And where did Shaun go? He’s supposed to be with us right now.”
“Melendez wanted him for a consult—and did you see that?”
“See what?” He sounds beyond frustrated. “There are seven patients we should be seeing even as I speak and I don’t know how we’re going to fit them all in. Looks like it’ll be another late night.”
“Never enough hours in a day,” she mutters, as she follows him.
It’s not until much later, after their patients are all finally settled, and Jared has gone home, that she realizes she never got to finish her question.
They’re lined up just inside the ER entrance, everyone hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
The news they’d received twelve minutes earlier hadn’t been good: a subway derailment with mass casualties, and they were the nearest hospital so they’d be receiving the majority of those who were critically injured.
Claire takes a few deep, calming breaths: her usual ritual, by this point. There haven’t been too many of these tragedies in her first year at Saint Bonaventure—only five, in fact. But to her, that’s five too many.
She knows what to do, along with everyone else. They’re all capable of handling the worst injuries that life can throw at them, but that never makes it any easier. She’s learned, over time, to detach herself from the suffering of patients. If she relates to it too closely, she doesn’t have the mental fortitude to pull through.
It still hurts, though. (The difference now is that it usually hurts after the fact.)
She looks to her left, then her right, taking in all of the anxious faces waiting along with her. She recognizes the way her colleagues are using these last few minutes before the storm’s arrival to steel themselves for the horror they’ll be imminently facing. She clasps her hands, then unclasps them, then clasps them again. She considers that despite everything, they’ll no doubt be too late to save some of the injured. People had already died at the scene itself, and of the ones being transported, many are close to death. Some might even die on the way…
She shakes herself out of it; she can’t entertain those kinds of thoughts right now. Not if she wants to stay sane and be able to do her job over these next few hours.
She knows this is bad; if she hadn’t before, the sight of Aaron Glassman in scrubs, to her far right, would have given it away. It’s literally all hands on deck for this: every single person available who can treat the injured has been summoned to help. And though Glassman still practices somewhat regularly, it’s exceedingly rare to see him on the front lines of something like this.
Shaun is on her immediate left, standing stoic and silent, and she looks to him, soaking in his usual quiet kind of strength. She admires his ability to remain level-headed and intensely focused whenever they’re facing down a catastrophic situation like this. Except…there’s something off with him. He doesn’t seem quite as calm as he normally does in these situations.
“ETA less than two minutes,” a nurse calls, from somewhere behind the assembled group, having just received the latest update from first responders.
Claire turns back to Shaun, and even as she watches, he begins shifting his weight from one foot to the other, mouthing words she can’t discern, at first. They slowly get louder, though, and she realizes he’s computing math equations: number of train cars derailed times number of probable passengers per car times likelihood of life-threatening injuries.
No other mass casualty event that they’ve dealt with, thus far, has led to such an odd reaction from Shaun. She sifts through every possible reason for his unease and remembers, much too late, how his brother had died. Of course. They should have known, they should have seen it before now. (She feels insurmountable guilt that they hadn’t.)
Her attention is split in half when the ER doors open and the first flurry of EMT’s arrive with patients. The initial few aren’t extremely critical and Melendez signals their team to hang back with most of the others, letting a few nurses usher the patients past them. They’re waiting for the influx of the worst casualties, which they know are only moments away. Claire can’t help her continual glances at Shaun, becoming more worried when he doesn’t react to the sudden rush of people into the ER.
Melendez is on the other side of Shaun, and he’s noticed what Shaun is doing, too. She’s debating reaching out to Shaun—to do what, she has no idea—but she knows she has to try and help him in some way because things are getting worse, not better. Before she can move, Melendez looks over and meets her eyes. She isn’t exactly sure what his gaze conveys, but she knows that it reassures her immensely. Melendez turns to Shaun and whispers something Claire can’t hear. Shaun stills momentarily, but then continues with his spoken calculations, like they’re a counterpoint to whatever their attending has told him.
“Shaun.” Melendez’s voice is severe enough that Claire startles slightly from the tone of it.
Shaun doesn’t respond, just keeps talking to himself, and Claire would have missed what happened next if she weren’t watching them: Melendez reaches over and wraps his hand around Shaun’s wrist. It’s not a brief touch in gesture of support, either, it’s a moment that stretches. And lingers.
When Shaun goes quiet, Melendez says, “We can help these people. They need us.” He lowers his voice to add, “They need you. But you can only help them if you focus and come back to the present with me.”
Shaun’s staring at the hand on his wrist, then looks up at Melendez’s face. After a few long moments, he nods, and Melendez lets go of him. (That’s when Claire realizes that Melendez had known exactly what Shaun was thinking about, even if he’d made no indication of the sort.)
Claire can’t label what she just witnessed, but she knows it’s something significant.
She doesn’t have long to reflect on it, though, because the worst of the casualties arrives just then, and their team is scattered in different directions, doing everything in their power to save the lives now in their hands.
It’s been a particularly bad day for Shaun Murphy.
Claire has been witness to it since its inception, when he’d shown up late—for once, not because the bus had been late, but because the electricity had gone out at his place. That meant his phone had died instead of charging overnight, like normal, and there had been no alarm to wake him.
She’s only seen it a couple times in the past year, but Shaun is much harder on himself when things go wrong and he perceives them to be his fault. Even though he couldn’t control losing power, he tells her it doesn’t matter, because he should have replaced his phone’s battery right when he’d first noticed how quickly it drained during the day. Instead, he’d thought it would last a while longer since he charged it every night. (Claire tries to reassure him that his plan had been fine, up until the whole ‘power going out’ aspect, but it’s no use—Shaun still places all blame solely on himself.)
His day had gotten worse from there. They’d almost lost a patient that morning, and then another one a little past noon (and she’s praying bad situations don’t happen in threes today). Then, she’d witnessed part of a fight he had with Dr. Glassman in the cafeteria, which resulted in Shaun actually getting up and leaving for his lunch break. No one knew where he went, but when he came back, he wasn’t in any better mood, and she suspects it’s all the worse because him leaving at lunch meant he’d never had a chance to eat.
“You must be hungry,” she tells him, a little past 3 o’clock, when there’s a rare lull in their day and they’re waiting around before a scheduled team meeting with Dr. Melendez and Dr. Andrews.
“I’m not hungry,” Shaun says, sharply. “I’m upset.”
“Yeah, I got that.” She gestures to the vending machine down the hall where she’d gotten the bag of Cheez-Its she’s currently snacking on. “Still, want anything? On me.”
He shakes his head, sinking down into a nearby chair and staring at the floor like it holds the answers to every question he’s ever had.
She takes a seat next to him, taking care not to touch him or invade his personal space in any way. “This is about Dr. Glassman, isn’t it?”
Shaun doesn’t answer her, though his shoulders tighten and she knows she hit the mark, perfectly.
“I’m always here if you want to…talk about anything.”
“I don’t want to talk,” he informs her. “I want Dr. Glassman to stop being unreasonable.”
“He worries about you,” Claire says, gently. She doesn’t add that a lot of them do—they can’t help it, sometimes. Shaun brings out the protectiveness in a lot of them, and she suspects it’d be true even if he didn’t have autism. Something about how young he looks, how innocent…it makes her see him like she would a kid brother, at times.
As it turns out, it’s wise of her not to mention anyone else’s concern, since Shaun gets up from the seat, obviously agitated. He takes a few strides away from her, then turns to glare. “I. Am. Not. A. Child.”
“Whoa, no one said you were.” She can feel the heat rising in her face. “That’s not what I meant. At all.”
“I can make my own decisions.”
“I know that. Everyone knows that.”
He doesn’t seem to be hearing her. “My whole life I’ve heard people telling me ‘no’. Telling me I can’t do things. Because I’m not like everyone else.”
“Shaun—”
“I’ve had to prove them wrong.” He slaps the wall behind him. “At every turn.”
She pauses to consider that, how difficult it must have been for him. It’d be hard for anyone, never mind someone who didn’t view the world in the same way as almost every person they interacted with. “I’m sorry, Shaun.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he says, as his anger fades. “It’s merely a fact.”
“So this issue…whatever it is that you were arguing with Dr. Glassman about?” She waits, but Shaun doesn’t elaborate. “I suggest you do what you do best.” When Shaun tilts his head slightly, in question, she grins. “Prove him wrong.”
He doesn’t outright smile at her, but she can see the approval in his eyes. “I had already planned to. Thank you, Claire.”
That’s when Melendez arrives, slowing his steps as he looks between the two of them. He clearly knows he’s interrupted something, but refrains from asking about it. He tosses Shaun a white paper bag that the younger man barely manages to catch. Claire recognizes it as the kind the hospital cafeteria uses.
“Lunch,” he tells Shaun. “Aaron told me you didn’t eat.”
Shaun’s expression has turned decidedly unhappy. “I don’t want—”
“It’s not just you,” Melendez interrupts, before Shaun can get too far into his usual protests. “I do the same thing for everyone, if necessary. Just last week I bought Jared lunch when he didn’t have time to take a break—and he never paid me back, now that I’m thinking of it.”
“Oh no, can you spare the five dollars when you only make a surgeon’s salary?” Claire asks, feigning sympathy, and Melendez sends her an unimpressed look. They both know he doesn’t care about the money, he’d simply been trying to make light of a situation that clearly bothers Shaun (that is: whenever he suspects that others are trying to take care of him too much).
Their boss doesn’t bother replying to her, turning to tell Shaun, “Eat during our meeting. I don’t need you annoying me—you know, more than usual—because you have low blood sugar. We have a long afternoon and evening ahead of us.”
Shaun’s on the verge of sulking. “I’m not hun–” He uncharacteristically breaks off mid-word, because he’s opened the bag and apparently approves of what he finds inside.
“What was that?” Melendez asks, somewhat smugly.
Shaun mutinously keeps his mouth shut, even as his eyes light up when he pulls an apple out of the bag. Then he frowns and takes out an orange.
“Oh yeah, that’s mine, forgot I threw it in there. I wanted a snack. Just like Claire here, though my choice isn’t as healthy as hers.”
She ignores the sarcasm, clutching the Cheez-It bag tighter. “Don’t disparage my processed food snacks.”
Melendez holds out a hand for the orange; instead of dropping it into his outstretched palm, like Claire expects (Shaun had long ago learned the easiest ways to avoid contact with others), the younger man turns his hand so their fingers brush when he passes it over. There’s a flicker between them which Claire reads as quiet gratitude from Shaun, and silent acknowledgement of the same from Melendez.
That’s not all there is, though. There’s definitely more. It’s not even in the way they’re looking at each other; it’s in the energy, the spark between them in that hallway, and she’s unwittingly gotten close enough that she can almost feel the electricity they share.
It’s speaking to a greater truth that she’s slowly become aware of these past several weeks. It seems there’s more to their relationship than what’s obvious on a professional level. There’s an undercurrent that runs through every conversation, every glance, every casual touch (and that last factor, alone, should have been enough to confirm her suspicions). Still, it’s difficult to wrap her mind around the idea—at first glance, they seem so different. It’s hard to imagine them working at all on a personal level. Hard to imagine them wanting to do so.
And yet…
“You’re all on time for once,” Dr. Andrews says, as he arrives and unlocks his office door. “Except for Dr. Kalu, I see.” He looks disapprovingly among the three of them as they head inside to the conference table that takes up part of his spacious office. “I see you’ve decided to treat my office as your personal lunch room.”
“Appreciate it,” Melendez says, giving him a fake salute, and Andrews only huffs with annoyance (which is greatly exaggerated, as usual).
That’s when Jared dashes into the room, clearly out of breath from his sprint. “Oh good, you haven’t started. I got caught up in completing my weekly paperwork, ahead of time, as usual.” He directs that at Andrews, who doesn’t even bother trying to hide his eye roll. They all know that whatever Jared had been doing, it was decidedly not paperwork (nor anything even remotely close).
Claire glances away so no one sees her smile, and wonders when they’d all became as close as they had. It happened without her noticing, it seemed, and now that she’s aware of it, she wouldn’t have it any other way. (Or with any other people, for that matter.)
Claire hates their occasional overnight shifts, for no other reason than it drastically messes with her sleep schedule. It’s also incredibly hard to stay awake if she’s already sleep-deprived going into it. (It seems a lot of her time is spent sleep-deprived, lately—ah, the life of a resident.) Coffee and soda generally make up a good portion of her diet on those nights, the steady rush of caffeine keeping her from going crazy, especially when it’s slower than usual.
Like right now.
Jared is throwing a bouncy ball at the wall, catching it, and then repeating the process. He must have done it 500 times in a row now, and she has the strangest urge to take the ball and throw it at his head. Or maybe her own. Then she’d at least be unconscious.
Normally, she’d be seizing the downtime to steal a quick nap, but she still has a bunch of patient charts to go over from earlier that afternoon. Jared is supposed to be doing the same thing, but he’s clearly given up for the time-being.
She lets her gaze drift over to Shaun nearby, envying the methodical way he can complete his work while patently ignoring any distractions—if he’s in the right frame of mind, that is.
Speaking of which—how is he not infuriated by that incessant thumping?! She can’t take it anymore and kicks out her foot right before Jared’s about to catch the ball again. It goes flying, narrowly missing the shins of Dr. Nolan, who happens to be walking through the ER right then. He pins them with a death glare that has Claire cringing and Jared pointing at her to try and absolve himself of all blame. Thankfully, the other doctor is either too busy, or deems it not worth his time to harass them, since he doesn’t deviate from his usual path to come chew them out.
Claire sighs with relief and clicks the button on her tablet to turn off the screen. Her eyes are killing her and she needs a five minute break.
“You have some nerve,” Jared’s accusing, “I was on one of my longest streaks! 568! And it's ruined because you can’t let other people have fun.”
“573,” Shaun corrects. When the other two look over at him, where he’s been silently on his own tablet for a half hour, he repeats, “573 simultaneous catches. In a row.”
“Are you sure?” Jared frowns.
“Yes. You can’t count.”
“Ha!” Jared points at Claire, like he’s won something. “573. Take that.”
She tosses her hands up in silent question, having no idea what he’s even gloating about. She’s also slightly amazed at Shaun. “You were counting while working?”
He nods. “Of course. You weren’t?”
That’s when Melendez walks up to them. Claire can tell, from one look at his face, that he doesn’t want to tell them whatever he has to tell them, and she quickly sits up straighter in her chair.
“The EMT’s have told me that he doesn’t have life-threatening injuries,” Melendez begins, and Claire can practically feel her heart fall out of her body, “but Dr. Glassman was in a car accident.”
Her eyes automatically fall on Shaun, realizing a second later that Jared and Melendez are watching him, too. Melendez is repeating that Glassman should be fine, the injuries are minor—a broken arm is the worst of it, from what he’s heard. She’s not entirely sure that Shaun is registering anything he’s saying, though.
Her guess is confirmed when Shaun swallows a few times before looking up at Melendez, managing to whisper, “What?”
Claire’s seen Shaun in a lot of states, but she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look so completely…lost.
Her first instinct is to reach out and touch him, but she stops herself. She’s barely aware of Jared getting up and going to the nurse’s station, presumably to get as much information as possible firsthand.
“He’ll be fine,” Melendez says, yet again, even as Shaun jumps up and tries to walk past him. The older man doesn’t allow it, moving to block his path. “Shaun. Stop.”
For his part, Shaun does come to a stop, but it’s only to stare pointedly at their boss. “I need to see him. I need to make sure he’s okay.”
“He’s not here yet,” Melendez says. “And once he is, he won’t be our patient. Our team is too close to him.”
“No,” Shaun protests. “No, no, no—”
“It’s final and no argument is going to change that. It wasn’t my call, either. This came from the top, Shaun.”
“I need to see him,” Shaun insists again, voice rising in a way that Claire knows means he’s dangerously close to spiraling. “I need to be there. What if they miss something?”
“They won’t,” Melendez promises. “And even though we’re not treating him, I’ll be reviewing everything, as will Andrews. And I’m sure, Glassman himself. No one will miss anything.”
“They could,” Shaun points out, pressing his hands to his ears, trying in vain to block out the world. “You don’t know. No one knows. What if they don’t see something I would see? What if he dies!” Claire instinctively shrinks back, both from the idea and Shaun’s obvious pain at merely saying the possibility out loud.
Melendez doesn’t waver when he says, quietly, “He’s not going to die.”
“Everyone dies!” Shaun yells, and the heartache Claire hears in his voice—sees in his eyes—has her looking away because she can’t stand it. Not when there’s no way she can take it from him.
“Not today,” Melendez tells him, and when Claire forces herself to look at them again, she realizes that unlike her, he’d never turned away.
Shaun collapses into the chair he’d jumped up from only a minute earlier, almost like his legs aren’t supporting him right then. He doesn’t reply to Melendez’s statement, simply stares straight ahead of him. Somehow, Claire knows that what he’s seeing in his mind has nothing to do with Dr. Glassman, but rather, the trials of pain and suffering which had made up most of his life before Shaun had met him—Aaron Glassman had essentially saved his life in every way that mattered.
“Do you hear me?” Melendez is demanding, voice sterner than she’s heard him use with Shaun in a while. He’s placed his hands on the arms of Shaun’s chair to lean over him in a move that—in any other situation, with any other person—would have had Claire warning them to stop immediately. But in this situation, with this person…it seems like the exact right thing to do. And when Shaun doesn’t respond to his question, Melendez reaches out, cupping the back of Shaun’s neck, and the mere contact has the younger man lifting his head to meet his eyes. “Shaun. Not. Today.”
Shaun closes his eyes, silently whispering something Claire can’t make out, and she finds herself holding her breath until he opens his eyes again. “Not today,” he repeats, gravely.
She sees the relief cross Melendez’s face—sees it in the way his whole body relaxes, in fact. It must be contagious, since she feels it sweep over her, too. She’s immensely grateful for Dr. Melendez—she doesn’t know if anyone else could have helped Shaun calm down, taken him so quickly out of the spiral he’d been in serious danger of falling into. (The only exception is maybe Aaron Glassman himself.)
The next few hours pass in a whirlwind. Glassman arrives with a few minor injuries, none more severe than the broken arm the EMT’s had reported. Their team hovers nearby while he goes through the intake process, and Claire actually feels bad for Carla Talbot, the physician who’d drawn the short stick of treating him. The woman’s hardly a novice, but it has to be intimidating to have her every call scrutinized by physicians who outrank her, because true to his word, Melendez reviews everything that Talbot does (with Shaun there to give his unofficial approval, as well). They forward a copy of the chart to Andrews, and Glassman makes a point of going over everything just like Melendez had predicted.
Talbot is competent, though, and at ease under pressure. No one questions her judgement in even the most minor of ways (and Claire’s actually surprised that Shaun hasn’t managed to find something to complain about—she can’t help wondering if Melendez’s steady presence is partly the reason for that). Talbot finally clears Glassman to leave the ER after ordering him to stay the night for observation. He grumbles over that, but it’s more pretense than anything—he knows at his age and with his medical history that after a serious accident like the one he’d been in, it’s standard to stay the night to make sure no unforeseen complications arise. (Along with the unspoken fact that no one on their staff would dare take a risk when it came to their president's health or well-being.)
Not long after that, Glassman is comfortably settled in one of the private rooms upstairs, arm securely in a splint while they wait for the swelling to recede so he can be fitted for a proper cast.
“Thank you, all, for overseeing my care.” His eyes settle on Shaun. “Even if it was in an unofficial capacity, for most of you.”
“Not a problem,” Melendez tells him, then glances at Shaun, who hasn’t managed to take his eyes off Glassman except to check his vitals regularly. “Just…don’t do this to us again, okay?” There’s an underlying thread to the words and Claire can’t discern its meaning.
Glassman gives a short laugh. “Wasn’t planning to.” He looks from Melendez, to Shaun, and then back again. “Thank you,” he repeats, this time aiming the words only at Melendez.
The other man nods in return, and Claire again gets the feeling there’s something more to the conversation that she’s missing. She glances at Jared to see if he picked up on it, but as usual, he seems completely oblivious to the things she’s noticing more and more.
The next moment, Shaun impulsively leans over to give Glassman a hug in his hospital bed, and it no longer surprises Claire the way it once would have.
(And neither does the fond smile she finds on Dr. Neil Melendez’s face as he watches them.)
It’s the end of another long day. Another long week. Claire is mentally counting down the steps from the locker room to the main doors in an oft-repeated ritual that she engages in when it seems like the exit is too far away. Her counting is forgotten, though, when she reaches the lobby at the same time Shaun is approaching from another direction. He’s also on his way out and stops when he sees her a few feet away.
“Good night, Claire,” he says politely, adjusting the strap of his shoulder bag.
“Night, Shaun,” she replies, automatic, but her eyes have been drawn to the large glass windows ahead of them. Or rather, to who’s beyond them—Dr. Melendez sitting on a bench out front, half-slouching as he leans back, his arm propped on the back of the bench, head resting on his hand, as if that’s the only thing keeping him upright. It’s rare to see their mentor looking so tired. Or defeated.
She knows why—they all know why. He’d lost a long-term patient that day. Haley Scott, a 21-year-old woman whose prognosis had been getting better by the day, but she’d died from sudden, unpredictable complications. It was the kind of thing that just happened sometimes. No way to see it coming, or fix it after it happened. Melendez is usually able to move past those kinds of things (they all are, to be honest, or else they wouldn’t be able to do what they did), but this case hit him harder because he’d been her doctor for over a year and he’d thought (they’d all thought) that she was out of the woods and likely to make a full recovery.
Claire hadn’t fully realized until now how much Haley’s death affected him. She can’t recall ever seeing him this despondent. “I should go talk to him,” she tells Shaun absently, and he must follow her gaze to see who has her attention.
“Dr. Melendez is suffering after the loss of his patient,” Shaun says, nodding, but his next words almost give her whiplash from how quickly she snaps her head around to look at him. “You shouldn’t talk to him.”
“Shaun,” she starts in protest, “I know you usually prefer to avoid emotional talks, but for a lot of people it helps to have someone to talk to. Everyone needs someone, sometimes.” She motions to the windows, where Melendez hasn’t moved at all in the time they’ve been standing there. “I agree that Dr. Melendez is generally more reserved than a lot of doctors here, but this looks like one of those times where he needs someone.”
“I agree,” Shaun says, which throws her into complete confusion, since she’d been expecting an argument. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“You’ll…what?” she asks, even as he’s already walking away.
“Talk to him,” Shaun repeats, over his shoulder, like her question had been literal.
She opens her mouth before shutting it again, realizing there’s no one left to talk to. Except maybe herself. She knows that Shaun and Melendez are closer now—maybe both even want to be closer than they are—but it’s still odd that Shaun would willingly involve himself in someone else’s emotional turmoil. (Since when does he talk about comforting someone as if…he wants to?)
Part of her wants to follow him outside. She should tell Shaun to be careful and remind Melendez to be kind. But even as the thoughts cross her mind, she knows they don’t really fit anymore. Especially not that last one—gone are the days when the older man wanted Shaun to prove himself twice over everyone else (and those days never lasted that long to begin with). Their relationship is much different than it was in the beginning, changing more every day, and Claire has gone back and forth on what it could mean too many times to count.
She knows she shouldn’t be watching them through the window (it feels intrusive even as she does it) but she can’t look away. She’s not sure what she expects… Maybe Shaun to stand stiffly next to the bench while offering some words of condolence that Melendez accepts with a wordless nod? Maybe Melendez to wave him off before he even speaks, recognizing the attempt, but not forcing Shaun to actually go through with it?
What ends up happening, though, is that Shaun sits down next to the other man without waiting for an invitation, as far as she can tell. And Melendez doesn’t move back to give him more space—if anything, he shifts closer, and she can’t say for certain, but she thinks they’re close enough that they have to be touching. She momentarily freezes, waiting for Shaun’s reaction, but nothing happens. They don’t even seem to be talking, just sitting together quietly. She doesn’t know how long she watches them, strangely mesmerized. Maybe it’s a minute? Two?
“What’s so fascinating?” Glassman asks, causing her to nearly jump out of her shoes as she whirls to face him. He’s standing slightly behind her right shoulder, and obviously knows what she’s watching because he’s looking outside, too.
“Nothing,” she says quickly, embarrassed. She feels like she’s been caught doing something wrong. Maybe she is, but at the most, it’s slightly invading two people’s privacy (and how private do they really want to be if they’re out in the open, anyways?).
“Nothing seems to have left you standing here, unmoving, for over a minute.” There’s the smallest hint of mocking in Glassman’s tone, and she doesn’t know if it makes her feel better or worse.
“I just…” She vaguely motions to the windows. “I was worried,” she admits, because it’s true. “Shaun told me he was going to talk to Dr. Melendez and I…”
Glassman absently rubs at the shoulder where his sling is, still having another two months to go before they even consider taking off his cast. “You…?”
“I don’t want Shaun to get hurt,” she mumbles, reluctantly. “To make the effort to reach out and be rebuffed. Which Dr. Melendez occasionally does to all of us when he’s not in a great mood.” She drops her eyes to her feet. “It’s silly, I know. To feel more protective of him than my other friends.”
“It’s not silly,” Glassman counters. “Shaun has a natural way of bringing that out in people and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think we could all stand to look out for each other more than we do. Besides, it doesn’t look like he’s going to get hurt, to me. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
Claire glances back at them to see what he’s talking about and she can’t believe what she finds. Melendez is smiling about something, and Shaun has turned to look at him, his mouth turning up slightly. From the look on his face, it doesn’t seem like he’s amused by whatever Melendez finds amusing—it seems like he’s happy because Melendez is happy.
“He’s…the two of them…” She stops, tries again. “There’s something different between them now.”
“Something’s been different for a long time,” Glassman says, surprising her with the agreement. And then even more when he says, “It took you this long to notice?”
He starts walking toward the doors and she jogs a little to catch up with him, unwilling to let the conversation end when she might finally get some answers. “What do you mean?”
They’ve left the building and she wants to grab his uninjured arm to get him to stop walking because he’s heading right for the bench where their two colleagues are still seated. “I’m not one to comment on other people’s personal lives,” Glassman tells her, “but it’s not like they’ve ever made an effort to hide it.”
She blinks at him, still not comprehending, then looks over at the bench—and her world flips upside down, because Neil Melendez and Shaun Murphy have chosen that moment to kiss each other. It’s relatively chaste, maybe because they’re in public, but it’s devastatingly sweet, and the obvious affection in it makes something in her heart ache as she watches them. She’s so distracted, in fact, that she actually trips (over nothing, she looks back to check) and barely manages to catch herself before ending up on the pavement.
“Case in point,” Glassman says wryly, motioning to the two men, and thankfully not commenting on her sudden lack of grace. “Get a room, you two.” His words are said in the lightest of tones, and it causes them to break apart, turning to look behind them.
“We have a room,” Shaun replies, mouth twitching in a way that lets Claire know he recognizes the joke and might even find amusement in it. “We have eleven rooms, in fact. Between Neil’s apartment and my own.”
(Shaun’s use of Melendez’s first name might throw Claire as much as their kiss did. She never heard Shaun use it before except in a professional context when he’s stating the other man’s full name. It appears that outside of work, a different set of rules applies to them now.)
Melendez laughs at Shaun’s comment and Claire marvels at the way he suddenly seems ten years younger, much of the stress and grief from the day fading into the background. “Speaking of which, we should get going. It’s late and it’s been a rough day.” He stands, holding a hand out to Shaun, who accepts it without hesitation and lets himself be pulled to his feet. “Night, Aaron. Claire.” Shaun echoes the sentiments, and it’s not until they’ve left that Claire realizes she didn’t even respond in kind.
She turns to Glassman, silent question on her face, and he seems vastly more amused than he was a minute earlier. “They’ve been together for months,” he confirms. “They were pretty hesitant at first. Careful about things. And I wasn’t convinced it’d be the right thing for either of them. But it wasn’t my call, obviously.” He’s staring off in the direction they’d gone. “I’m glad for that, too, because I would have made the wrong one.”
Everything’s falling into place. The camaraderie, the touching, the general closeness. They hadn’t been working their way towards something; they’d already gotten there and she was simply seeing it from the outside.
“They’re…”
“You love who you love,” Glassman says simply, then sends her an arch look as he takes a few steps backwards, probably eager to get home himself. “I’m surprised you never realized it.”
“Why is that?”
“I thought you were much more observant,” he calls, nodding at her in lieu of a wave as he leaves.
She can’t help laughing, knowing he’s right, in a way. She’d seen all the individual pieces, just not the bigger picture they comprised.
“What’s so funny?” Jared asks, and she turns to find him watching her. He’s holding a half-eaten apple and seems much too awake for this time of night (and after the day they’d had, at that).
“Nothing,” she says, changing her mind mid-word. “Just something Dr. Glassman said to me. About Shaun and…” She checks him carefully for any reaction. “Dr. Melendez.”
He takes a bite of his apple, but doesn’t otherwise react. After a few moments, he prompts, “What about them?’
“They’re a couple!”
“And?” He’s shrugging, then takes in the look on her face. “Wait, this is new information to you? They’ve been together for a while.”
She’s taken aback. “You knew?”
“Well, yeah.” He’s genuinely surprised at her shock. “They made it fairly obvious, so I assumed everyone knew. They were a big subject of gossip a couple months ago, when people first figured it out. It’s died down since then.” He pauses. “Though as I was leaving, I overheard two people talking about them. Apparently they kissed out here and a few people witnessed it.”
“I was one of those people.” She looks from him to the building several yards behind him, amazed that the news had spread so quickly. “It was only a few minutes ago!”
“You really didn’t know?” He’s frowning at her in disbelief.
“Don’t you think I would have mentioned it?”
“I figured you were on one of your ‘I’m above all the gossip in this place’ kicks.” He’s shaking his head. “I can’t believe it took Glassman outright telling you. This is actually hilarious, Claire. Leave it to you not to notice when two people are so obviously in love.”
“Shut up,” she mutters, as they start walking, but she’s smiling too much for it to have any effect.
(She should have been much more observant, indeed.)