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Out of all the ways to end up in the ER, of course Beca Mitchell had to be in it for the absolute dumbest one.
She should have known better than to let herself be goaded by Amy. In retrospect, everything that had started with Amy challenging Beca, one way or the other, ended up getting blown way out of proportion. Like the time during their first Spring Break when Beca got attacked by dogs in Philadelphia, or when she spent the night in jail sophomore year for destruction of property or when her car got towed a couple of months ago for being irregularly parked while they were skinny dipping on a lake.
And now, a painful trip to the E.R. on Christmas Eve after tripping over a ridiculously big Christmas gnome decoration during a snowball fight and breaking her arm was simply... awesome, just fucking marvelous, really.
What an awful fucking way to spend the holidays.
“A doctor will be by to see you soon, hon. Pain meds should be kicking in any minute, hang tight.”
The hustle and bustle of the Emergency Room faded into a comforting buzz at the back of Beca’s head. She barely registered the nurse’s word as the burning pain in her arm receded into an uncomfortable sting. She sighed in relief, letting her head fall heavily onto the pillow and settled in for her long wait.
She was going to kill Amy.
“How do you feel about a Yugikassen?”
Beca blinked her friend in confusion. Amy had her own way of saying things and Beca liked to think she had gotten pretty good at getting what she affectionately called “Amy speak” over the last four years. Yet, sometimes, the woman still managed to catch her off guard.
“How do I feel about a what?” Beca repeated, taking a big swig of her beer.
It was cold in Portland and instead of being inside her mother’s cozy and toasty living room, Beca had been dragged outside for God-knows what reason. At least she had managed to bring her beer out with her.
“Snow war, Shortstack,” Amy repeated in a should-have-been-obvious tone.
“Can’t you say snowball fight like a normal person?” Beca rolled her eyes, fighting off a chill.
“Now where's the fun in that?” Amy smiled mischievously, hiding something behind her back.
Before Beca could reply, she got a snowball smackdab in the middle of her forehead.
“Amy!” Beca furiously cried, wiping the snow off her face.
“Come on and fight me, Shawshank!”
“Miss Mitchell! I’m Doctor Beale and I’ll be your ER physician today.”
The sudden introduction startled Beca out of her daydream and brought her back to the ER where a preppy looking redhead, all easy smiles and — wow, those were some incredibly blue eyes — had introduced herself as her doctor.
Now, she may be pretty high on pain meds, but Beca’s pretty sure this had to be some kind of joke. The kind of joke Amy — who was suspiciously nowhere to be found — would play on her. Because the woman at her bedside couldn't be that much older than her, so there’s no way this is her doctor… right?
“I’ve examined your x-rays and unfortunately your films revealed a couple of closed hairline fractures along your humerus and ulna,” the woman continued, in a soothing tone that Beca assumed was meant to put her at ease.
She pointed to a few spots on the x-rays where Beca supposed her fractures were meant to be but her vision’s already blurry enough that she couldn’t make them out.
“Are you sure you’re a doctor?” Beca blurted out interrupting Doctor Pretty Eyes’ explanation on casting her arm.
If she was offended by Beca’s question, she didn’t let on, although her smile became more teasing than appeasing.
“Yes, I’m sure,” the doctor answered, amusement coloring her features.
“You’re just so… pretty,” Beca sighed. “You’re like, physically flawless."
Doctor Beale giggled, blushing a little, and Beca was convinced she wasn’t human at all. Maybe an angel.
A beautiful, antiseptic-scented angel.
God, she was so high.
“I did win an awful lot of beauty pageants when I was a kid,” she said with a jesting tone. “But we can talk about it later. I think we should work on putting your cast on first.”
Seriously, Beca was going to kill Amy. How could she let her fend off for herself while high on painkillers? With a beautiful angel-like woman disguised as a doctor taking care of her?
But Beca was too dopey to fight, so she just stuck her arm awkwardly at Doctor Beautiful, so she could set her forearm back to its original place and cast it up.
//
Beca’s mind was still a little bit foggy and her arm felt weightless, but she had been discharged and was now trying to get Amy to come and pick her up. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to have left and Beca was sure she was somewhere around, she just had no idea where.
“Amy, I swear to God if you're not here in twenty minutes, I’m taking an Uber home and leaving you behind!” she hissed over the phone the best way she could, fumbling with it to try and disconnect the call.
She groaned in frustration. Sometimes she seriously wondered why she kept that girl in her life.
“Everything okay?” a soft voice startled Beca, her phone slipping through clumsy fingers.
“Jesus fuckin—” her words got stuck somewhere in her throat when she was suddenly face to face with Doctor Pretty Eyes again. “H-hi,” she stuttered.
She hoped against all hope she hadn’t actually called her that out loud.
Away from the loud, organized chaos of the Emergency Room and once again being of (relatively) sound mind Beca was able to appreciate just how truly attractive Doctor Beale was.
Dressed in simple, dark blue scrubs and a pristine white coat, she managed to exude an effortless kind of beauty Beca found herself inexplicably drawn to.
“Hi,” Doctor Beale’s smile was even more disarming up close than it had been under the E.R’s harsh, bright lights. “Everything okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” Beca gulped, afraid to sound even more idiotic than before if she said anything else. “Just waiting for my friend, that’s all.”
The doctor hummed, sitting next to Beca on the bench as if she had been invited. Not that Beca minded.
“How’s the arm?” the doctor asked lightly, bewildering Beca even more.
“Fine,” she breathed, causing Doctor Beale to arch a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at her.
Seriously, had this girl had any flaws at all? “Alright, so it’s sore. Better than before, I guess.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s true,” the doctor giggled, causing something to squirm within Beca’s stomach.
There was a beat of semi-awkward silence before Beca dared to open her mouth again.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be, doctor…?” she wasn’t going to call her Doctor Pretty again.
“You can call me Chloe,” she winked. “And I’m also waiting for a friend. She's finishing up a surgery.”
Beca hummed, thumping a beat on her leg as she looked around to see if Amy was anywhere around.
“You don’t seem too stifled with the cast,” Chloe indicated her beating hand. “Is this not your dominant hand?”
“Oh, what? Uh, no,” Beca stammered, wishing she could sound like an eloquent person for once in her life. “Thank God I’ll still be able to work on my music with this thing on.”
“A musician! That must be a lot of fun!”
Beca couldn’t help her own smile at Chloe’s contagious zest.
“Yeah,” Beca’s smile was bashful. “I mostly DJ right now, I make mash-ups and club house mixes, but I’ve been experimenting with creating my own sound for a while now.”
She had no idea if it was the lingering effects of her pain meds or Chloe’s disarming smile that were causing her to answer things so quickly and thoroughly; she just knew she didn’t quite care to stop it.
“That’s amazing,” Chloe said dreamily. “Maybe I’ll get to hear your stuff one day.”
Beca chuckled. “I have a couple of sample beats at home.”
It took her brain a while to catch up with her mouth and by the time it did, Chloe was already smirking mischievously at her.
“Is that an invitation?”
Beca stuttered again and Amy — inappropriately timed and obnoxiously loud Amy — chose that precise moment to drive into the hospital’s parking lot and honk noisily to get Beca’s attention.
“I—I gotta go,” she ended up saying instead.
“That’s too bad,” Chloe sighed, a little pouty.
Before Beca could say her goodbyes with something a little more clever, to try and save some face, Chloe opened her bag and started rummaging through it. She pulled out a blue Sharpie out of it and grabbed Beca’s casted arm.
“Here’s my number, so you can call me and we can meet up. Maybe you’ll let me listen to your mixes?” she said airily, in a tone that totally suggested the mixes weren’t the only thing she was interested in, and Beca didn’t know what to do with herself.
“Cool,” she grimaced at her own awkwardness.
“Bye Beca!”
She made her way to where Amy was still disturbing the entire parking lot with her annoying honking, only stopping when Beca got into the car.
“Took you long enough,” Beca grumbled.
“Long enough for you to get the hot ginger doctor’s number,” Amy fired back, finally driving them back to Beca’s mom’s place.
As Beca looked down at Chloe’s flowy script she couldn’t help but smile; maybe the holidays wouldn’t be as bad as she had originally thought.