Chapter Text
Hermione’s hands stung as she pumped a tennis-ball sized lump of foam into her hands and began spreading it up her forearms. This was her fourth trauma today– she just had all the luck. Last week when Cedric had been on call, there had been only two Plastics traumas all week. There wasn’t even a resident on service this week. They always did this to her because she kept advocating for the residents to get to take their allocated vacation days. Why was she in academia again?
“Ok, time out,” she called as she backed into the OR, hands held before her carefully. The circulator, Diane, started running down the checklist. Tim handed her a gown, and she suited up for another gruesome case. The orthopedics attending wasn’t here yet, but it looked like the degloving injury on the right arm was all hers.
Time passed in a blur– she assessed blood flow in the affected arm, trying to determine if a graft would take or she would need a flap. At one point, the orthopedics team came in and started playing 80s rock; she looked at the scans with them as they talked through the rest of the surgical plan. Finally they were done; the orthopedics attending left his residents to close, and she tediously and meticulously began closing all the existing injuries and told the residents to go home. They would leave the poor patient with glaring scars, and she felt that on principle if a Plastics attending was on the case, the scarring should be almost invisible. Nonetheless, she felt like she was reliving a nightmare. The whole point of becoming an attending was that she would be free from this. She hadn’t slept in over 24 hours and she had made no progress on her grant. She just wanted her own time back.
She barely noticed the OR doors opening, but she definitely noticed when Draco Malfoy, newly appointed Lead Administrator for the Surgery Department, started looming behind her. She looked back, not having the energy to suppress her annoyance and relying on her mask to obscure her facial expression.
“Come on, Granger,” Draco said irritatingly. “You’re killing my metrics. First start case is supposed to be in here in five minutes. The whole day is going to be behind.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you want to close? I’m sure you’ll be much, much faster than I am. Go ahead and scrub in. I’ll watch.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept watching her. She slowed down her suturing out of pure contrariness.
“This all gets charged to the patient, you know,” Draco reminded her. “Every minute of every nurse’s time, every second the OR isn’t used for a different case– you’re not just hurting me, you’re hurting him.”
“Get out,” Hermione grunted, but she did speed up.
Finally, she grabbed the wet sponges Tim had left on the mayo stand and cleaned off the patient as best she could, then ripped off her gown. Draco, for some reason, was still here. “Can I help you?” She raised her eyebrows.
“I just wanted to have a chat with you about your RVUs, whenever you get a chance,” Draco said. “You know. Relative Value Units. The units I use to determine your value.”
Hermione spread her hands out. “All I have to do is write up four operative reports, give handoff to the PACU, chart review and round on all my patients, and do the three cases I have scheduled for today. So I guess I’m free. Please, tell me about how I am not making enough money for the hospital.”
Tim and Diane were doing a great job of pretending not to be there.
Draco raised his eyebrows. “You’re free now? Great, let’s go to my office.”
“You—you dull scalpel, did I not just tell you I have to give PACU handoff? You can stay in this OR with me while we wait for your ridiculously overcrowded PACU to have an open bed.”
“Fine.” He crossed his arms. “You’re not doing enough elective procedures.”
She crossed her arms right back. “I’m doing exactly as many elective procedures as are called for based on the patients I see.”
“You’re not doing enough to justify your salary.”
“That sounds like a you problem.” Then, suddenly hopeful, she said, “Maybe you should fire me.”
Draco scowled. “I did bring that up. Apparently they need you for call coverage.”
Hermione sighed sadly. She was never going to leave this place. She was going to be stuck in this terrible pseudo-residency forever, because she was never going to get enough time to herself to apply for a new job.
“So great to chat. Speaking of call coverage, I am currently covering call. Primary call. As an attending. There is literally nothing else you can threaten me with. You can either hold the pager for me or get out of my OR.” She turned to the computer aggressively.
“This isn’t over,” he warned her, but she was already tuning him out, muttering her operative report into the microphone.
~~~
Five months later saw a different Hermione– one who had slept the night before, and who had won not one, not two, but three grants. She had pulled it off. Well, one was from a grateful patient and not based on any scientific merit whatsoever. And one was for a pitiful amount of money. But one was a legitimate, for-real, actual, competitive NIH grant that would fund her lab hopefully through her next two big papers. The hospital would take their administrative cut, as usual, but even that couldn’t dampen her high spirits as she floated into the administrative offices. Who could yell at her about RVUs when she was bringing in enough grant money to pay her own salary plus three research assistants?
Seeing Draco Malfoy written above Senior Lead Administrator for the Surgery Department did depress her slightly. That leech kept getting promoted.
“Well well well, if it isn’t my most recalcitrant surgeon come to beg,” Draco said smugly as he dramatically turned in his chair.
Hermione raised her eyebrows. “Is it begging to have my own grant money dispersed to me?”
“It is when I have the power to say no,” Draco said, again smugly.
“Do you have the power to say no?” she asked, her curiosity piqued. “Wait, please, I’m begging you, say no. Give me one reason to quit this job.”
“Ah, so you admit it,” Draco said.
“Excuse me?”
“You admit you came to beg,” Draco spun his chair even more, now facing his computer. “Unfortunately today I cannot grant your request– I will in fact be bequeathing upon you your grant money, that you may continue to terrorize lab rats and lab assistants alike.”
“I’m actually moving away from animal models– if you saw my most recent paper, we found a way to simulate the underlying matrix–”
“Do I look like I read scientific papers?” Draco asked, with more self-knowledge than he usually displayed. “Now please, go and either do more elective surgeries or win more grants, I care not which. But one last thing– there’s a charity ball coming up, and you are going.”
She had almost made it to out the door, her new funds already mentally allocated, when she registered his last sentence. “What?”
“Do more elective surgeries or win more grants! Or more trauma, but I’m going to need you to cut the per-case OR time in half if you’re going to do that. Have you considered being faster?” he said innocently.
“Not that,” she growled. “I don’t have time for a ball. I already did my schmoozing for the year. I get to not think about my physical appearance for at least 3 months.”
“Only three months?” Draco said, instinctively antagonistic. “No, that was before you became our rising star. If you didn’t want to do this, you should have won fewer grants. You see, now everyone wants to meet you. Or, perhaps more accurately, the CEO thinks you’ll help with fundraising since you have all this…” he gestured vaguely toward her hair, “scientific energy.”
“Who’s going to cover my call?” she asked.
“What are residents for?”
“Do you even know?” Hermione asked despairingly. “They can’t cover attending call.”
Not missing a beat, Draco said, “What is Dr. Diggory for?”
She conceded that it would be feasible that Cedric might cover one night of call, and if anyone could force him to do it, it would be Supervising Senior Lead Administrator for the Surgery Department Draco Malfoy.
“Do I get a plus one?” she asked.
“Why, planning on asking someone?” Draco looked interested.
“You, of course,” she deadpanned.
“Excellent, I accept,” he said gallantly. “Especially since you do not get a plus one, but I can very generously save you the embarrassment of outing your unimportant status as I am already invited. The gala is next Tuesday. Don’t forget, no scrubs allowed!”
She really wanted to slam the door on her way out, but she figured that her quiet, controlled, gentle door closure was more of a win, since she remained in control even under the greatest duress. Next Tuesday. Horrific. She needed to move some cases. She needed to update her experimental schedule.
She needed to buy a dress.