Chapter Text
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It starts innocently enough.
Dr. Tillman likes both her jobs. Most days of the week, she's an ER doctor down at St. Vincent's, but every so often she gets a mysterious phone call and then she spends the next few hours or days patching up one of John's acquaintances at the Hawking Memorial Clinic, a very exclusive facility in Manhattan.
They're both good gigs. The ER is long periods of relative calm that can turn hectic and and terrifying at a moment's notice; an arriving ambulance pumps Dr. Tillman full of adrenaline surer than an IV, but she's the paradoxical calm among the chaos, moving methodically, with laser-sighted focus. Prioritizing, parallelizing. She's good at her work, good at saving lives, but sometimes she hates what she does, hates that some people that don't make it.
In contrast, the Hawking Memorial Clinic is tranquil—and boring. There are no ambulances wailing there, only a handful of patients that need monitored (and occasionally babysat) as they heal. Sometimes Dr. Tillman needs the repose, the peace, the quiet. Sometimes she needs a few days in a row where nobody dies. Other times, she starts yearning for a little excitement.
And one day, she gets it.
She's headed back up the hallway after checking on a patient when she passes the doorway to the locker rooms. She hears shuffling inside, and voices.
"...don't think it'll fit," comes a voice.
"You saying I'm fat?" comes another voice. A snarky, sarcastic voice. Dr. Tillman recognizes it right away.
"Elizabeth?" she says. "Shaw? What are you two doing in here?" She comes around the corner to see the two of them frozen like kids caught red-handed pillaging a cookie jar. Shaw is halfway into a pair of green scrub trousers and Elizabeth has her blouse hanging off one arm. Her face reddens. Shaw shrugs and pulls up the pants.
"Uh...borrowing some clothes?" Elizabeth squeaks.
"You two weren't making out in here, were you?" Dr. Tillman asks suspiciously.
"No!" Elizabeth says.
(Dr. Tillman is pretty sure she hears Shaw mumble something about missed opportunities.)
"Why are you two pilfering scrubs?" Dr. Tillman asks.
"Uh—um—"
"Our latest number works at a hospital," Shaw says. "We need to get close to him." She tosses a scrub top at Elizabeth, who manages to catch it before it hits her face.
"So you're stealing our scrubs?" Dr. Tillman asks.
"Borrowing," Shaw says. "Acquiring. Acquisitioning. Whatever. The colors are almost identical."
Dr. Tillman finally realizes the implications of their thievery.
"You're going to go undercover as—what, nurses? Doctors? To get at this guy?"
"Yeah," Elizabeth says. She pulls the top over her head and smooths it with her hands.
"Do either of you have any medical training at all?" Dr. Tillman asks.
"Uh..." Elizabeth says. Shaw shrugs and says, "Some basics."
"What do you call a gunshot wound in medical parlance?"
"A hole?" Shaw tries.
"Trick question. Do either of you know how to run an IV?"
Elizabeth blanches. Shaw looks sheepish and says, "Eh, it's been awhile..."
Dr. Tillman pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. "You're going to stick out like sore thumbs."
"You got a better idea?" Elizabeth says defensively.
"Actually, yeah," Dr. Tillman says, putting her hands on her hips. "How about a real doctor to go along with your charade?"
Dr. Tillman is bored out of her mind. She figures a little excitement couldn't hurt. After all, it's just for a few hours. How bad could it be?
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Later that evening, John gets a phone call.
"Dr. Tillman," he says smoothly, leaning back in Finch's desk chair. He kicks his feet up on the desk. "What can I do for you?"
"I am never working with the Terrible Two again," comes the seething yet calm voice from the phone's speaker.
"Uh...the case didn't go so good?"
"John," Dr. Tillman says. "For a brief, glorious five seconds this afternoon, I was. on. Fire."
"Oh," John says.
"And on the sixth second, I was soaking wet, because Shaw shoved me under an emergency shower."
"...that's a good thing when you're on fire," Reese notes.
"It wouldn't shut off! It jammed open! "
"Oh," John says.
"So after somehow avoiding explaining to some very, very grumpy administrators just how we managed to flood an entire wing of the building, I go out to the parking lot, soaked to the bone, to find my car has been towed."
John runs his hand over his face.
"Finch will pay for it—" he begins.
"That's not the point. The point is, Shaw broke into somebody's car and stole it to drive us home."
"She's resourceful like that."
"And then the cops tried pulling us over."
"'Tried'?"
"Turn on the news. Now."
Reese blinks and reaches for the keyboard on Finch's desk. Before he can enter a password, one of the six screens lights up on its own and a web browser appears.
"POLICE STILL SEARCHING FOR SUSPECTS IN DANGEROUS HIGH-SPEED CHASE—"
"Wow," Reese says. A video begins to play; shot from a helicopter, it tracks a small brown sportscar as it neatly skids through an intersection, taking the turn just fast enough to throw off the cops cars on its tail. "Slick driving. That's Shaw. Think she's showing off a bit. Where are you now?"
"In my house," Dr. Tillman says. "Watching myself nearly die. It's on every channel, John."
"Relax—"
"Every. Channel. I—look at that—did you see that? Did you see that? How did I live through that?"
Even John is dully impressed at the way the little sportscar weaves in and out between other cars.
"Try not to think about it too much," John says. "The important thing is you're here and the bad guy was stopped."
"Barely," Dr. Tillman hisses. "Elizabeth was zero help. She tried hacking the elevator to make it go faster because Shaw thought it was too slow stopping at each floor. We got stuck between floors."
"Ah," Reese says.
"Then she spent five minutes trying to hack the hospital firewall. Why, you ask? Because she wanted to show Shaw some picture of God-knows-what, and the firewall wouldn't let her because the site was blocked for 'Adult Activities'. We were this close to getting caught in the supervisor's office."
"But you didn't," John points out.
"And Shaw? Don't even get me started. She's the reason I was on fire, you know. Did I mention that? Why did she even have a cigarette lighter? She doesn't even smoke!"
"Uh—"
"I don't know what their problem is," Dr. Tillman growls. "Look, I know Shaw. Okay? She's really good with guns, and rescuing people, and stuff like that. And Elizabeth is smart enough—most days. She can make a computer do things it's not supposed to do. Shaw and Elizabeth are just great when they're apart. But when they're working together? I swear, their IQ drops by about a hundred points! Each. Especially Elizabeth's!"
"So I've noticed," John says dryly.
"I like them, but this is ridiculous!"
"Look, uh—Finch can take care of everything."
"Including my frazzled nerves?"
"That's what alcohol is for."
"Oh, for the love of God—look, you know what? Ultimatum. First: don't ever put me on a case with those two. Ever. Second? I want a raise."
"A raise," John parrots dumbly.
"If I have to keep taking time away from my patients to put those two idiots back together, I want my money's worth."
"How much?" John sighs.
Later that evening, John tells Finch how much. Finch blinks owlishly at John.
"They're worth the cost," he mumbles.
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