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The good thing about stereotypes, Shane Hollander thinks to himself, is that they can be pretty reliable.
At least, from his general experience. Neurosurgery residents? Wunderkind with a god complex. Cardiac surgeons? Gunners with bloodlust and an aversion to work-life balance. The OB-GYN department? Glamzilla on a rampage across the Glamazon. Dermatologists? Richer than you, smarter than you, and more beautiful than you even on their deadbeat days. (Not, Shane thinks to himself, that derm residents have deadbeat days.)
Ortho? Former D1 athletes with more biceps than brains, and (probably) egos much larger than their dicks.
And no one serves this stereotype better than Ilya Rozanov.
Brash, blonde and built, with the kind of bone structure that Shane finds at best eerily geometric and on his weaker days, maybe even a bit (a lot!) okay to look at. Shane can admit that to himself; he got LASIK last year. But dude’s a bully who singles Shane out for consults. Really useless ones. The ones that have him trawling through the ED in the elite and compact time between 4 and 5 am when he could be napping, but he’s not, because he somehow got roped into admitting a post-op trauma patient that Rozanov “just couldn’t handle.” That’s where his ginormous ego draws the line, apparently. The ortho resident’s most recent case, Rozanov had declared over the phone, has anemia. Anemia – of blood loss, because of an emergent below-the-knee amputation – and here’s the kicker, right, Rozanov clearly has the foresight to have two packs of RBC thawing and two more prepped in the bloodbank, but he can’t handle admitting the patient, because, the other man explains through the phone in his stupid voice, anemia is a medical problem, and he knows Shane can’t resist a problem-based approach and a hemoglobin below 10.
So not at all a useless consult, honestly, but he knows when Rozanov’s trying to pull a fast one on him. Yet somehow Shane still finds himself going along with it, because heaven knows the other man would probably forget that blood is a chelator and then who’s gonna deal with the resultant hypocalcemia? Not Rozanov, that’s for sure. The last time the dude handled calcium metabolism was probably in his protein shake.
Shane gets to the ER and loads EPIC to see how much blood loss Rozanov’s declared – 100 mL, my ass, and a hemoglobin drop from 14 to 9.5 g/dL?
He is a lying liar who lies.
“Hollander! What brings that pretty face of yours down to the ED?”
He turns to the obnoxious voice carrying across the background noise of the trauma bay. Rozanov approaches from the nearest nurses’ station, where Shane sees at least two interns (just standing around, for shame) blushing and giggling in his wake.
“Whatever, Rozanov. We literally got off the phone five minutes ago.”
“Ah-ah. Six minutes, Hollander, but only because I’ve been counting every moment that I miss out on your freckles.”
“Fuck off. I had to use the stairs to get here. Everyone’s loading up patients for OR in elevators 2 to 4.”
“And somehow, your face tells me that you think that’s my fault.”
“Literally how many times have I told you to stop calling me to admit your patients? These are your patients! There should be continuity of care! There should be accountability! There should be regular monitoring of electrolytes!”
Rozanov gives him a one-sided smirk that, against all odds, manages to look the slightest bit earnest. There’s a twinkle in his eye that Shane doesn’t trust. “Electrolytes? Like what I drink after a workout?”
“Fuck off with that himbo attitude. I know you matched into Mass Gen.”
He gives him a squint. “Hmm. I would ask how you know that, but I’ve come to accept that maybe you just know everything about everyone. But, so what? You wouldn’t have the singular pleasure of meeting me, and then where would you be, Hollander?”
“Proably sleeping through my 4am alarm.”
“I wouldn’t worry about sleep. You look fresher than a pillow with a mint on it. Much prettier, too.”
“Shut up.”
“Clearly we’re meant to find ourselves here, a quarter past four, engaging in quality time over…” He takes a peak from across the bed into Shane’s workstation. “...Creatine.”
“You know it’s creatinine.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It gets to a point, Rozanov.”
Rozanov has the audacity to cross his arms over the rails of the stretcher and put his chin over them (the aforementioned patient between them seems to be doped up on the good stuff and has not so much as twitched during their entire conversation.) His little one-sided smirk turns into an outright grin. “Anything to get you to pout at me up close is a win in my book. God knows a guy needs a pick-me-up while on call.”
Shane has to look up from where he’s been reviewing the chart. “Rozanov.”
“The one and only.”
Shane has to take a calming breath and fight an urge to roll his eyes. “Do you mean to tell me that you called me over here – me, who’s not even the one on deck to handle ED admissions – because you wanted to flirt?”
Rozanov’s ensuing grin is even more devastating when he’s clearly very pleased with himself. “This is why you’re the brains of this operation.”
“Rozanov!”
“Look, you won’t answer my calls when we’re not on call. Sometimes our schedules don’t even match up. I know you have a rotation in cardiology next week, so you’re probably gonna be with that redheaded cardio fellow. She’s annoying, by the way.”
“Who? Rose Landry?”
“Even her name is annoying.”
“What’d she do? And how do you know my rotations?”
Rozanov’s grin takes on an edge of nervousness, and it seems the question catches him off guard enough for him to be honest. “It’s, uh, it’s posted in our call room. Like the schedules of all the internal medicine residents.” He scratches his nose with a tip of a blunt fingernail and avoids Shane’s eyes. “I try to keep track of these things, in general.”
Shane gives him a side-eye anyway, to the best of his ability. (Shane does everything to the best of his ability.) “Okay, two things – first, is this why we’re almost always on call together? Did you have a say in this, and how come no one asked me? And second, what’s with the Rose Landry slander? She’s amazing. She’s a site investigator for the RCT on empagliflozin. They’re trying to see how it impacts the cardiotoxicity of immune checkpoint inhibitors.”
“I am 100% not pretending when I say I don’t understand what half of those words mean.”
Shane quirks up an excited eyebrow at that. “For real?” He has to debate with himself on the ethics of telling Rozanov the results from the interim report. Is it legal for him to show the screenshots he took? He’s not sharing it for his own gain or benefit, right? Also it’s just really cool info. Empagliflozin was not just good for diabetes, but also heart failure, renal protection, and drug-induced cardiotoxicity? Who knew?
“It’s totally awesome, I attended her lecture when she presented their results last fall. They’re publishing the full paper next year in the NEJM. I could be persuaded to share it,” Shane murmurs absently, trying to remember where he stored those screenshots.
Suddenly Rozanov moves from across the stretcher and hovers by Shane’s elbow. He’s slowly breaching that invisible border of The Prime Real Estate of Shane Hollander’s Personal SpaceTM. “Persudaded, Hollander? Is that really all it takes?”
“Yeah, of course? Rose is brilliant. I can show you some of her lecture slides, but in confidence.”
“Hmmm.” Rozanov drapes himself across the standing desk of Shane’s workstation. “Any particular preferences for these methods of persuasion? Over coffee? With a sandwich? Black tie formal?”
Shane has to look up. He’s almost done reading the OR tech that Rozanov signed off on. Say what you want to say about the man, but his reports are a thing of detail and beauty. “Oh, anywhere, I’m easy. If you really want to see, all you have to do is ask.”
A deep breath. Is Rozanov feeling ok? “Well. That’s not a word I can say I associate with you all that much, but thanks for the image.” The ortho resident straightens up from his artful slouch. “Shane Hollander. Please, can you show me Landry’s interim results? On her immune thing?”
Shane pauses from typing his admitting orders to look at Rozanov, and really, the man’s trying his best. Whatever his end goal might be, which, frankly, is yet to be elucidated. Shane gives him a genuine smile of appreciation nonetheless. “The interim results of the RCT on empagliflozin for cardiotoxicity of ICIs, which are getting published in the NEJM.”
Rozanov’s eyes are entirely somehow glazed over, but his pupils still manage to dilate where they’re staring at Shane’s mouth.
“God, Hollander, the things you say.”
“And to answer your question, okay, yes.”
Rozanov punches the air a little, much to Shane’s confusion. He has to worry about this dude sometimes. Or, wait. Is Rozanov making fun of him? “Hey, you’re not just pulling my leg, are you? You really wanna hear me pontificate about SGLT2s?”
Rozanov meets his eyes with a slightly panicked look on his face. “Yeah, of course I do, Hollander. I love a good esjeeltoo.”
“SGLT2.”
A careless handwave. “Yeah, those. Talk to me about SGLT2 to twenty. Also, I watched your presentation when we did that multi-disciplinary thing last June. You presented a lot of lab values and tables. There were all these numbers and, uh. Units. You were good.”
Shane can’t help but let out a giggle, and sends a tiny prayer of thanks that the patient’s PCA drip is still a ways from running out. “Rozanov, I was just summarizing her course in the wards. You liked listening to me talk about labs and units? That’s fun for you?” He leans in a little, across the desktop, into the other man’s personal space. This close, Shane really doesn’t have LASIK to thank for the vision. Ilya Rozanov is as much of a marvel from ten inches away as he is from ten feet across the room. “Millimoles per liter? Grams per dL? Microgram per kilogram per hour?”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here, Hollander, but in the interest of letting me retain my dignity, you really have to wrap it up. And stop looking at me with those eyes.”
“What?”
Ilya Rozanov – ortho dudebro extraordinaire – has the audacity to blush. He clearly didn’t mean to say the last sentence.
“Look, I’m the easy one, yeah?”
What conversation are they even having right now. “What?”
“How else will I get you to willingly spend time with me, Hollander?”
Shane has to step away from the keyboard because he might type in an order for asdfhlksrdongern and then where would this patient be? Not on the way to a room, for sure.
“Are you telling me you’d listen to me talk about labs of patients you don’t handle and RCTs of drugs you don’t use, to what. Hang out with me?”
“Is that really so hard to believe?”
“Since when do you like hanging out with me?”
“Since when have I been contacting you to admit my patients.”
Shane has to give him a Look. “My god. You. No.”
Rozanov hangs his head in mock despair. There's an honest-to-god blush creeping up his neck.
“This started July of last year, Rozanov! We first handled that case together. That infected hip prosthesis–”
“Oh shit, that one was so bad.”
“...Yeah? That was… a while ago? I don’t get it. Did you honestly think that calling me at ass o’clock was a way to get brownie points?”
“I know you’re getting mad, but also you just said ass, and you really have to warn a guy, Hollander.”
“That’s why Hayden gave me this look when he noticed that you called my personal phone and not the pager!”
“He’s a smart one, Pike. But not as smart as you.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I like to think what we have is something special. Symbiotic,” Rozanov points out, even as his blush touches his earlobes a vivid shade of red.
“What do you get out of it?”
The other man takes a deep breath. The blush has not left his face. The blush has set up residence and is thinking of buying the adjoining property to rent out. “After all this? A date. Can you believe it?”
Shane can’t help the shocked giggle to come out of him in the past half-hour. This is the least professional he thinks he’s ever been, and sends a furtive glance towards the remaining minutes behind the second blood bag. Time to wrap this up (the conversation, of course. Not the patient.)
“Uh huh.” He can’t stop grinning. Who knew Ilya Rozanov had zero game. “And what do I get out of it?”
And here Ilya Rozanov draws himself up to his full height, shoulders drawn back and chin tilted at an angle. They’re roughly the same height, but he manages to look like he’s looking down, and that angle is, well. It’s a really good look on him. “Whatever you want from me, Hollander.” That patented smirk is back on his face. “Like I said, I’m easy.”
“No, you’re a horrible flirt, is what you are,” Shane says, voice not un…fond, wrapping up his notes on the EMR. Best to get those next packed RBCs released. Heaven knows the patient has endured enough, being an unwilling witness to this whole conversation. “Now go. The sooner I examine him, the sooner he can be transferred to the wards.”
“And are we still on for later? After we finish this shift?”
“You won’t be too tired by then?”
“Hollander, it takes a bit more than this to tire me out.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Let me sleep in after hand-offs. Call me at 1.”
Rozanov gives a mock salute. “On the dot. I’m going to be counting the minutes.”
“Fuck off, Ilya.”
“Not the Ilya. Don’t wear it out, sweetheart.”
Shane makes a shooing noise. “Hard no on the pet names. We’re not there yet. You have a lot to make up for this…long game you’ve been playing.”
“As corny as it sounds, I’m actually serious about you.”
Oh my god. “Leave me alone. Go back to terrorizing those interns.”
“And here I was telling them to look out for your cheekbones.”
Shane makes a move to kick him out of the cubicle.
“You’re a problem, Rozanov. Call me later.”
“I’d make a comment about how internal medicine loves problem solving, but that might be a bit too much?”
“Fuck off.”
“I’ll call you later.”
And finally the other resident left him alone to let him do his actual job. The patient did get admitted under internal medicine, and the blood bags all transfused to reach a hemoglobin of 11, and the post-transfusion calcium levels were all normal. All’s well that ends well.
And just for the record, a couple of hangouts, a couple of days, and a couple of dates later? Shane Hollander got to verify the truth of those aforementioned stereotypes. Case in point: Ilya Rozanov, ortho bro, former D1 athlete, more biceps than brain. And yeah, his ego was pretty big, but really not as big as the rest of him.
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