Work Text:
The problem with Victoria's crush on Mateo was that after he rejected her, it hadn't faded. After he encouraged her to drink underage, after she had hung out with a group after a shift, her second shift involves just as much interaction with nurses. Nurses, including Mateo.
A large part of working in the Pitt, Victoria was learning, was basically being a customer service person. Treating patients with respect, teaching them ideally why they had to wait for so damn long while also waiting insanely long amounts of time to do biological functions like eating and using the bathroom, that started to feel routine after her first week.
Victoria had realized, following that first week, she absolutely liked Chairs most. She was terrible at interacting with the public, but she liked it when she succeeded, when she was able to get a new emergency out of Chairs, when she accurately was able to assess patients, and yes, when she found herself interacting with Mateo, a slow smile would form. If it wasn't socially inappropriate, Dr. Javadi, all too aware she was not yet a doctor but routinely referred to that way in front of patients, let herself have these slow smiles, let herself have these small moments of joy when she was able to. When she wasn't, the joy just stayed unexpressed, patients were more important, after all. Mom and Dad's voices always were ready to reprimand Victoria in her head, so she used that to force herself to empathize when it failed to occur naturally.
Being a student doctor was exhausting, but the slow smiles, the small moments with the human embodiment of Utah, those made Victoria's speeding through childhood feel almost worth the price (not actually, since she would never know what the actual price was, what her life if she had been allowed to be normal would look like.)
One resident Victoria found herself interacting with often was Dr. Mel King, who had contagious enthusiasm and crying, which, Victoria tried to ignore when Mel teared up because the only worse reaction than a doctor crying is another doctor sympathy-crying. Mel was like Victoria in that she was not socially stellar but enjoyed patient interactions nonetheless, and unlike Dr. Santos, Mel's enthusiasm occurred in the form of high-fives rather than unwelcome nicknames. Victoria found herself changing gloves far more often than absolutely necessary because she liked the comradery of Mel's enjoyment, she just also had anxiety. Or, not anxiety as in the medical diagnosis, but anxiety as in the human emotion.
Victoria did find Crash growing on her as a nickname, in part probably because off-shift, Mateo sometimes referred to her by it. Trinity definitely needed a nickname of her own though, and Dennis and Victoria's texts were mostly brainstorming possible ones. Texting a boy - man, Dennis Whitaker was a man, they were adults, goddamnit Victoria - for reasons other than to send notes if they missed a class was new, a new development in Victoria Javadi's world, being friends, and especially being friends with a male. Her parents could never learn of this development, as they would be immediately swift and punishing in their judgmental assumptions.
Victoria didn't even know if she totally was only interested in men - the reason she knew enough to notice the misgendering error in the sommelier's medical records was due to some library internet searches when she was in college. The internet in general was exposing more and more heterosexual people to queer culture, but Victoria didn't know enough about who she was to know if she was heterosexual. Being so would require being sexual first, and she hadn't even had her first kiss yet. One of the songs she liked had that as a lyric: still haven't had my first kiss, starting to think that I never will, I've got too much mass, too much gravity, Too many holes in the heart inside of me No one is willing to fill. Sometimes, when she rode the bus to work instead of catching a ride from a parent, Victoria smiled as she listened to the song in her Airpods. She wasn't really alone forever anymore, since she had not only coworkers but friends now too.