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Emma is a good nurse, maybe. She isn't sure yet, she hasn't been doing it for very long. But she's trying to be a good nurse, which is what counts. Dana - who Emma always wants to call Nurse Evans, like she's a teacher, but everyone tells her not to do that - keeps telling Emma that she's doing a great job. Most of the other nurses say that too, and even one of the doctors told her to keep up the good work. Doctor McKay, that's her name. Emma has to glance at each of the doctor's badges every time they speak to her so she doesn't get their names wrong. That would be embarrassing.
Honestly, Emma's only goal other than doing a good job is not embarrassing herself.
She's finally no longer shadowing another nurse, which is pretty scary. They wouldn't let her loose in the ER unless they thought she could do it, but that doesn't mean she feels confident. Princess tells her to shout if she needs help at any time, and then Perlah says the same thing. And so does Jesse, and Donnie, and Ahmad. Emma really hopes she doesn't have to call for Ahmad, but she has heard that every nurse gets punched at least once. It hasn't happened to her yet, though, so she must be lucky.
Doctor Al-Hashimi asks Emma to go into triage with Doctor McKay, which is great because Cassie is really patient with Emma, and lets her call her Cassie. Mateo is also out here, and Emma knows from Javadi that he doesn't try to date coworkers so she feels safe around him. Joy also dips in and out as Cassie offers to teach her a few different basic procedures, which Joy doesn't seem to enjoy very much, but at least she's funny. Considering she's at work, Emma is having a good time. The patients are friendly, all things considered, and she remembers how to do everything that Cassie asks her to do.
This is great. She's going to get a good grade in nursing.
There's a young woman with a migraine out in the chairs, and Mateo asks Emma to take some medication out to her along with a cup of water. There's no reason to bring her back into triage to do this, so Emma goes out into the crowded waiting room and finds the woman in question.
"Hi, Miss Spencer. I've got some medication that should help your pain." Emma says gently, holding out the water and the pill cup to her.
"Thanks." The woman grunts, hiding behind her sunglasses. She takes the pill cup fine, but when she tries to take the water her hand slips and she spills it all over the lap of the man sitting next to them.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry." Emma gasps and steps back, holding up her hands in apology as the man shoots up from his chair.
"Look what you've done, you stupid bitch!" He yells. He's glaring at Emma, even though it wasn't actually her fault, so she steps back again.
"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to-" Emma is cut off by the man punching her square in the face.
It knocks her off her feet, sending her sprawling onto the linoleum floor. She cries out, spitting blood onto the ground as it rushes down her throat from her bleeding nose. The pills from the cup skitter across the floor and under a row of chairs. Pandemonium breaks out around her; patients screaming, the boots of a security guard running past her, blurry as tears form in her eyes. She can't get her bearings back, head spinning, barely computing what just happened.
Someone says her name, and all Emma can do is whimper. A hand rests on her shoulder, and she looks up from the pool of blood under her to see Cassie crouched in front of her, face calm apart from a slight panicked look in her eyes.
"Emma, sweetie, are you alright?" Cassie asks, hauling Emma to her feet carefully.
"Miss, um, miss- miss Spencer needs an-another dose of… I don't remember what it was called, but I dropped it. Mat-Mateo knows." Emma dribbles blood down her scrub shirt, clinging to Cassie's hands. "She needs it-" She spits out another mouthful of blood, "-needs it for her migraine."
"Don't worry about me, kid, I'll live." Miss Spencer says. She's in Emma's peripheral vision, which is so blurred with tears that she can't make her out properly.
"Come on." Cassie leads Emma back into a triage room and sits her down on a chair. She hands her a bowl to spit the blood that's still pooling in her mouth into. "Jesus, he got you good."
Mateo and Joy appear in the doorway, both with horrified looks on their faces.
"Mateo." Emma tries to say, but it comes out slurred and mumbled through the blood. Joy looks almost imperceptibly disappointing, for some reason. "Miss Spencer-"
"Needs another dose of her medication, we know." Cassie insists.
"Is that what you care about right now?" Mateo asks.
"Could you just go and do it so she stops worrying about it?" Cassie asks, firmly, like a mother.
"Sure, but keep me updated. That looks nasty." Mateo ducks out of the room again.
"I'm sorry." Emma says, starting to get her senses back as the bleeding stops. "I'm such an idiot."
"It's not your fault some dickhead decided to knock you on your ass." Joy says, coming further into the room and sitting on a stool beside Emma, opposite Cassie. "Do you think your nose is broken?"
"Um… it hurts?" Emma does know how to assess a broken nose, but the technique escapes her now.
"Do you want to do the assessment, Joy?" Cassie asks.
"Sure." Joy straightens up a little. "This is, like, the opposite of the time you took my blood when I cut myself."
"Oh yeah." Emma remembers that. It was her first day, the fourth of July. "You probably won't drop a vial of my blood, though."
"Probably not." Joy agrees. "Can you breathe through your nose okay?"
Emma takes a deep breath, which serves to calm her a little if nothing else. "Yeah, it feels okay."
"Alright, tell me how bad this hurts." Joy gently touches her fingers along Emma's nose, their faces close.
Emma can't help but stare at Joy's beautiful dark eyes, even though Joy isn't looking back at her, focused on examining her nose. It doesn't hurt that much anymore, now that the shock of getting sucker punched out of nowhere has worn off.
"I think I'm fine." Emma says when Joy pulls away. Her voice comes out small, a little shaky. Joy is very pretty.
"I think you are too. No undue tenderness, no crackling noise indicating broken bones." Joy grabs a wipe from a box on the side and starts wiping the blood off of Emma's nose and mouth carefully. "If he didn't break your nose then you probably don't have a concussion either."
"I agree, but I want you to take a break for a bit. Sit here, relax until you feel ready to come back." Cassie says. "Doctor's orders."
"Oh, no- I mean, I'll take a break." Emma insists when Cassie gives her a look that she probably gives her son regularly. "But I'll do it in the staff room so I'm not in the way."
"I'll make sure she gets there." Joy says, throwing a bloody wipe into the trash. She holds out her hand to Emma. "Come on, girlie. Huckleberry said there's pizza in the break room."
"Huckleberry?" Emma asks, taking Joy's hand and hauling herself up. She isn't used to everyone's nicknames yet.
"Dennis. Doctor Whitaker." Joy explains. "Doctor Santos calls him Huckleberry because he's from a farm in Nebraska."
"That feels mean." Emma says. She doesn't like mean nicknames. "I hope no one has a name like that for me."
Joy grimaces a little as they walk through the ER to the staff room.
"What? Do they? What is it?" Emma asks, following Joy through the door into the little kitchenette. Does she even want to know?
"I may have heard Princess call you Bambi." Joy sits Emma down at the table and goes to the sink to get her a glass of water. Emma gasps. "I get it though! You look like a baby deer when you shine a flashlight in it's face. I think it's affectionate - from Princess, I mean."
Emma considers for a moment. "Well, I guess it could be worse. And it's kinda accurate because my mom is dead."
"Jesus!" Joy laughs, then looks horrified with herself. "That was so fucking inappropriate, I'm so sorry."
"No, that was a joke on purpose, you were supposed to laugh." Emma giggles.
"I didn't expect dark humour from you."
"I'm full of surprises."
Joy puts the glass of water down in front of Emma and rummages through the fridge. She comes back with a few slices of a Margherita pizza and sits down next to Emma. They both take a slice and eat in silence for a moment, peaceful now they're out of the chaos of the main ER.
"It's a shame I'm not staying here." Joy says. "I'm getting to quite like you."
"You're not staying?" Emma asks. She keeps forgetting that the med students will have to move on at some point. While she won't miss Olgilvie, because he's rude to her all the time, losing Javadi and Joy will break Emma's heart.
"Oh, God no. I hate this place." Joy shrugs. Emma tries not to take that personally. "But, uh, maybe we can hang out when we're not working. If you want to."
"Oh, yeah! I don't know many people in the city because I'm not from here, so it would be nice to have a friend." Emma smiles.
She has been invited to hang out in the park and have a beer with the nurses after a shift before. Sometimes she goes, and she does have a good time, but she would like a girl friend to get coffee with on occasion. Someone who knows the city a little better than she does so they can explore it together. Joy can be a little standoffish but she is generally friendly, and that could be explained by her hating the ER.
Maybe they won't be friends, but that's okay. At least Emma will have someone.
"Sure, we can hang out." Joy finishes her pizza slice and holds out her hand to Emma. "Give me your pass and take your shirt off."
"Excuse me?"
"Your scrub shirt? It's covered in blood. Honestly, if I had you as my nurse right now, I'd ask to be transferred to West Bridge." Joy beckons with her fingers. "Give me your pass and I'll get you a new shirt."
"Oh! Thank you so much." Emma hadn't even considered that until right now.
She pulls off her scrub shirt - she's wearing a baby pink long sleeve underneath, which fortunately didn't get stained at all. Then she hands over her pass, which she's sure she was told not to do during orientation but she trusts that Joy isn't going to start raiding the pharmacy.
Joy leaves Emma alone in the break room, and she takes a second to breathe. Today can still be a good day. Up until getting punched, she was having a nice time with Mateo and Cassie out in triage. Although she hopes doctor Al-Hashimi lets her come back into the ER itself now, where she might be a little safer. Patients who are sick enough to back here usually aren't in a punching mood. She hopes so, at least.
Suddenly, raises voices come from outside the staff room, near the charge nurse's station. Footsteps race to the door and Dana appears in a flash.
"Who punched by protégée!" She yells, making Emma jump. Dana drops into the chair next to her and examines her face. Emma catches sight of herself in the mirror and sees the bruises forming around her nose. "Oh, sweetheart, are you alright?"
"I'm fine now." Emma insists.
"She is fine." Joy confirms, trotting in after Dana. "No broken bones, just a lot of blood."
She hands Emma a fresh shirt and her pass back. Emma is grateful to have them back so she looks like a nurse again, not a lost teenager. She pulls the shirt on, clips her pass to it, and smiles at Dana.
"That rat bastard." Dana spits. "Ahmad! Who punched my nurse?"
"We got him, girl, I told you." Ahmad yells back. "I tackled the guy, you should've seen it. It was bad ass."
"I'm sure you think that." Dana mumbles so he can't hear her. "Do you want to go home, Emma? I would completely understand if you did."
"No, no, I'm fine." Emma stands up and brushes herself off. "I've had a sit down and a snack, I can do anything. Although, um, I'd rather not go back to triage if that's okay."
"I'll cover triage." Joy says.
"You hate triage." Emma reminds her.
"I'll do it for you."
Emma smiles at her. Yeah, they're friends now. Joy is stuck with her.