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Emergency medicine is full of freaks. They run on nothing but adrenaline and caffeine. Natural uppers. They have a habit of rearranging your thoughts for you, fitting them into more convenient and more painful and more interesting boxes. Good odds for a betting board. Good gossip to be traded between traumas like cigarettes in prison. News of a rumored hookup can get you out of a particularly nasty degloving. Mumblings of a breakdown, or even better, a fight, can get you out of triage for an entire shift.
Or, can get you sent to triage if that’s where you want to be sent. If you, like Joy, are an embarrassment to emergency medicine.
She doesn’t want to watch people die all day every day. So what? Since when is that a crime? She’d rather solve problems than kick the can down the road. There’s a man in the ICU, or maybe he’s down in the morgue, tag on his toe, body zipped up in a cold plastic bag. Doesn’t matter where he is; there’s a man, somewhere, who was wheeled into the emergency room yesterday. Half a dozen residents and students fumbled around in his chest cavity in the name of learning experiences. Whitaker, mousey and boyish and so exhausted looking, used internal defibrillation paddles. Mohan turned his lung upside down, along with Javadi and the quippy surgical resident. Then, everyone stripped off their gloves and their once-sterile gowns and sent this man off to an operating room so he could continue to be poked, prodded, and filled with strangers' blood. And everyone promptly forgot about him. No longer their problem. Hands wiped clean, the world goes on. He’s surgery’s to butcher now.
Joy can tolerate a lot she doesn’t like. This place is mandatory exposure therapy. All the worst, most annoying people gathered in one giant room, buzzing with anxiety and pride. She swallows it down, bitter, jagged little pill. The still living ghost of Alanis Morissette making herself known. She can take it, the trauma rooms, the gore, the anguished wails that never, ever seem to end, no matter how much anyone tries.
The thing is, she doesn’t want to.
Joy can do plenty of stuff she doesn’t want to do. She can change a tire. She won’t. She can recite the periodic table. She’d rather not. She could compete with the other med students for intubations and approving nods from attendings. But why? Why do that when she could do anything else?
She tells Princess about what she saw. Mohan and the night shift attending getting into the same car at the end of the shift yesterday. Yes, she’s sure it was them, matching cargo pants, matching curls, matching exhausted gait. Yes, Joy is sure that Mohan hooked her finger through Abbot’s belt loop, tethered the two of them together, and laughed as they made their way through the parking garage into a black Subaru Forester. Yes. She’s sure they turned left out of the garage. Not right.
This earns her a bag of mostly intact pretzels, and after Princess talks to Perlah and Perlah to Dana and Dana to Al-Hashimi and Al-Hashimi to Santos, it gets her a full day in Chairs. It’s purgatory to the tryhards like Ogilvie, but an oasis to anyone who isn’t still lingering on their International Baccalaureate days.
Santos is here too, but she's here against her will. Exiled to Naughty Resident Island for her myriad of crimes. Another try-hard. A secret try-hard, which is almost worse. All that time and energy spent pretending not to care when she obviously does care. Cares so much it's spilling out of her pores; some tragic daily empathetic hangover. It would be less sad if it were tequila or vodka Red Bulls or cocaine.
She drags Joy along with her to every patient as if she’s a carry-on with a broken wheel. Pulling, teeth gritted, grip angry, from one room to another. One terminal to the next. Joy, for her part, gives out 100 ice packs and 101 splints before sending people back to their seats. They all hate her. They can hate her from out there. From Chairs.
Joy wants to roll her eyes every time someone calls it that. Chairs. Everything down here needs to have a nickname. It’s not the ER, it’s the Pitt. It’s not the waiting room, it’s Chairs. The Hub. ER Ken, Huckleberry, and Crash. Capitalized, trademarked, all in line with the quippy style guide that comes with the employee handbook. It’s myth-making. A new, shared reality that Scientologists could only wish to achieve. But Michael Robinavitch, the Tom Cruise of Pittsburgh, the Xenu of emergency medicine, is gone, doing his own stunts on his way up to Canada. Wrapping his motorcycle around a tree in the hopes of conveying true, authentic emotion.
Santos and Jesse stare daggers through her.
Joy snags a juice box.
Santos doesn’t stay in Chairs for long. A few hours, and then her sentence on Naughty Resident Island has been served. Mel, saccharine idealism of a 7/11 Slurpee, replaces Santos, joining of her own volition, apparently. A break from the noise. Everyone needs to take a turn, don’t they? So smiley. Joy rolls her eyes without meaning to in response. She doesn’t remember Mel being so smiley yesterday, but maybe she just hadn’t been paying attention.
A hundred more ice packs, a sling, 800 mg of ibuprofen. A dozen teachable moments that Joy white knuckles through. Two more hours in the beautiful monotony of triage. No one dies. None of them are even close to dying.
Javadi approaches her by the heavy locked doors that lead out to the waiting room. The jingling zipper on her pretty pink jacket gives her away. A bell on the collar of a prized indoor cat. “Dr. Al-Hashimi wants us to trade off,” she says. Her voice is so bright and high that the frequency hits the nerves in Joy’s teeth the wrong way.
“I’m good out here.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I know it can be such a grind on Chairs.”
Joy shifts her weight between her feet. Javadi follows suit, mirroring her. “No, I want to be out here. You can stay in the thick of things and duel it out with Ogilvie.”
“I’m really not trying to be mean,” Javadi begins with a cadence ripped straight from an overproduced vertical, micro-drama. Popular cheerleader befriends emo reject to save the werewolf prom. “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to show a little initiative, you know?” She stares at Javadi blankly. Narrows her eyes just the tiniest bit. “It’s just that—” she stops herself, plasters on a big bright smile like the ones in the toothpaste commercials. “With your rotation eval, and how hectic things can get even when we aren’t like precariously avoiding going analog.”
Joy figured out Javadi’s whole deal two hours into their first shift. People pleaser, nepo baby, girl genius on the highest dose of sertraline her tiny body can handle. Born and bred for a prestigious residency in some equally prestigious specialty. It’s all been picked out for her, set up so she can forgo it all in latent teenage rebellion. So she can yell, ‘plastic surgery is your dream, not mine!’ in the pouring rain. A martyr for the noble cause of emergency medicine.
“I know things were really crazy yesterday,” Javadi says as a way to fill the silence. “My first shift last year was actually on the day of the Pittfest shooting.“
“I know.”
“Oh,” she blinks. Her voice is still sing-song bright. “Someone told you?”
“It’s all any of you ever talk about,” Joy says. “There’s a plaque in the hallway.” It’s right across from the wall of people who died during the worst days of the pandemic. They installed a torture hallway in the emergency room and no one but Joy seems to think that’s even the slightest bit weird. It is weird.
“Right,” Javadi says. She is well acquainted with the torture hallway and all it entails. “Well, I just—I’ve been in your shoes before, and as an MS4, I can tell you this specialty is one you really have to go the extra mile for if you want a positive evaluation. More than any other in the hospital.”
“Aren’t you like 14?” Joy asks.
“Twenty,” She corrects as if Joy simply put a decimal one spot to the right. A simple mistake. “Twenty-one this week.”
“Congratulations,” Joy deadpans.
Javadi takes the tablet out of Joy's hands. Literally pries it from her fingers. And then she smiles with those weaponized doe eyes. No one has ever told her no in a way that matters. “Dr. Al-Hashimi wants you by the Hub.” The finality in her voice doesn’t match the slight shake of her hands as she inputs her credentials
And that’s that. Out of sight, out of mind. A patient sent off to surgery, a med student sent back into the mess. It's all the same down here. Orders sent, orders received. Cogs in a very loud machine.
Joy looks over her shoulder, hoping to glare with enough force that Javadi will feel it. She wants to worm her way under Javadi’s people-pleasing skin. She’s only met with the back of her head, a perfect, perky ponytail held by a pink scrunchie, the same shade as her jacket and her socks. She must have cleared out a Lululemon, daddy’s plastic in hand. Or maybe a kitchen knife. She wouldn’t put it past her.
An old man throws up on her feet. It soaks through to Joy's socks.
She doesn’t really know Shen. He’s one of the night shift attendings. He views med students more as environmental features than anything else. Barnacles stuck to the bottom of a ship. Certainly alive, but not necessarily worth considering in any meaningful way. He doesn’t care for med students. Doesn’t dislike them either. Joy appreciates his neutrality. Is impressed, frankly, with his ability to stretch an iced latte across a twelve-hour shift.
John Shen, as far as Joy knows, doesn’t pay any attention to med students, which is why she has to do a double-take when she catches sight of him in the weird, hidden-away locker hallway. The other departments have actual locker rooms with doors and benches. They’ve evolved past the panopticon-ical observation that the emergency room seems so devoted to. There's nowhere to hide here.
Shen is leaning against the bulletin board across from the lockers, one of his legs crossed over the other. He has one of his coffees in hand, the orange straw is set at an angle, pushing up against all the ice cubes. Both his head and his straw are pointed toward Javadi, magnetically pulled to the prettiest thing in the room. She has her own drink clutched between her palms, slender fingers alternating along the Dunkin logo. It’s filled with what Joy can only assume is hummingbird nectar. It’s noxiously pink, just like her lip gloss. Javadi makes an exaggerated motion with her shoulders, eyes flashing wide as she recounts a story, and Joy cannot help but notice that she looks a little bit like a puppet from Sesame Street. So animated in all of her movements. Her hair never escapes its confines; her lip gloss never fades. She’s always camera-ready to tell children about the importance of elbow pads when riding a bike or saying hello to their neighbor.
Joy must stare for too long because Javadi Puppet turns her entire body towards her and smiles. “Sorry, am I blocking your locker?” she asks.
“Is there somewhere I should be turning in my coffee order?”
“Huh?” She inhales sharply, eyes going big again as understanding dawns on her. “Oh,” Javadi half-laughs. “Dr. Shen is actually a family friend. He and my brother were like best friends growing up.”
Joy trains her eyes back on Shen. He hasn’t changed his posture in the slightest. If he glanced her way earlier, he’s long since returned his gaze to Javadi and the bite marks that dot her straw. She seems like the kind of girl who bites and doesn’t let up. He looks like he knows that. Family friend. Sure. “Cute.”
“I can move.” Javadi offers, but Joy begins her retreat before she can finish her sentence.
Javadi is standing in front of her locker, but it doesn’t matter. Al-Hashimi wants to see her in the lounge, so there’s no chance she’ll be out of here before 8:00 anyway. There’s charting to do. Intentional reflections written in the style of Rupi Kaur to mull over.
People are kind of obsessed with Javadi. Flies to honey, thirty-year-old medical professionals to the naive med student. And, it’s not as if Joy doesn’t understand, in the abstract, why they’re following her around like lost puppies. Ugly place, beautiful girl with powerful parents. It’s just so overt.
No nurse has ever been as nice to Joy as Mateo is to Javadi. And, as far as she knows, no nurse has stared at her ass as shamelessly either. Shen calls her Vic at one point with an exasperated sigh that’s meant to communicate a fond understanding. Yet another nickname. Yet another inside joke. Ogilvie is four seconds away from trying to shut her up with a kiss like they’re in a nineties movie.
Joy tells Kim that she overheard Shen offering to drive Javadi back home after her double, and it wasn’t clear whose home he was talking about. Joy is lying. Obviously. But it still gets her mercifully paired up with McKay instead of Whitaker. If she’s going to get lectured, she’d rather it be from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
A folded-over piece of scrap paper. The back of an announcement about drug rep lunch from the 8th floor that somehow found its way down here. Joy would rather find herself on a stretcher than attend to someone on one this morning. Everything is too bright and too loud. People have always said she has nice handwriting. They seem to be shocked by this every time.
Javadi’s parents cornered her in the hallway and asked her where she was last night.
Joy presents the note to Princess. Holds it between her middle and index fingers like an offered cigarette. Princess plucks it from her fingers, stuffs it in her pocket, but doesn’t read it. There’s a trauma rolling in through the automatic doors.
“Kwon, you’re on this with me,” Mohan announces. She passes a pair of gloves Joys way, but they’re a size too big.
Whitaker once told her there are no lunch breaks in emergency medicine, but Joy refuses to starve herself for these people. There’s no doubt in her mind that the bags under his eyes are mostly thanks to the fact that he’s running on an insane calorie deficit. His body is cannibalizing itself. There’s not much left to cannibalize.
Her BLT from the sandwich cart is dry. The bread crumbles into the cellophane wrapper, the lettuce is nearly translucent, but it’s something towards a caloric intake. Her eyes dart around the physicians' lounge. It’s really not much of a lounge at all. Out of date, a bit sterile. Not in the way of cleanliness but in the way of absence. They hide a case of Diet Cokes in the very back of the fridge behind a wall of off-brand Chobani Flip yogurt cups. The can is deliciously cold in her palm. The condensation soaks into her lifeline.
Javadi jingles her way into view. New jacket, light blue this time. What a departure. Really, a daring deviation from her previous body of work. She barely gives Joy a second glance as she makes her way to the communal fridge, pulling open the door even as the handle shifts. She bends forward, inspecting the shelves. Her jacket and her scrubs ride up her back as she does, revealing a sliver of smooth skin above her waistband.
“Have you seen my lunch box?” Javadi pokes at the wall of plastic tupperware that lines the second shelf.
“Lunch box?”
She doesn’t turn. “Purple. It has my initials on it.”
Joy wants to ask if it’s monogrammed. “Can’t say I have.”
Javadi huffs. “Trinity thinks she’s so funny.”
“Santos stole your lunch box?” What a heartwarming workplace comedy. “Doesn’t she know that’s not very nice?”
“I’m starving.” Javadi presses her hands to her temples, the fridge falling closed as she steps to the side. She pivots, finally facing Joy, and her eyes swoop down to the table, checking to make sure she hasn’t been secretly eating out of Javadi’s stolen bento box the whole time. Then, she looks both ways, raising a brow conspiratorially like she’s letting Joy in on a big secret. “Don’t let anyone see you drinking that, by the way. That’s Lena’s secret stash, and she’ll totally kill you.”
They are inventing new people everyday and sending them directly to the PTMC basement. “Who the fuck is Lena?”
"Night shift charge nurse. She was here this morning," Javadi says. "Red hair, glasses, she's always humming."
"The night shift nurse is going to kill me?" She's heard it a million times this rotation. The nurses run the ED, nurses do all the real work, nurses make the world go round. This is the physicians' lounge. "How?"
Javadi is so aghast, Joy must have sprouted wings in the middle of their conversation. "You have no idea how things work around here, do you?"
"We weren't all born in Central 7."
A line appears between her perfectly threaded brows. "I was born in the maternity ward."
Everyone keeps whispering that things are slow. Mouthing the word instead of actually saying it out loud. Advanced degrees vs senseless superstition. Which will win out in the end? Theater kids, all of them. Dramatic, adrenaline junkies seeking praise and dodging any sort of emotional regulation. Born for the stage and forced into emergency medicine. Macbeth haunts Trauma 2.
It’s slow today, meaning they’re approaching a safe patient-to-staff ratio. Only one person has unexpectedly given birth before L&D could make the trip down. (It takes five flights of stairs to have a baby. They don’t tell you that in medical school.) Langdon got tired of talking to her fifteen minutes in and sent her to practice her sutures behind the Hub. Told her he would let her get some practical experience later if her knots were clean enough.
“Anything good?” Princess asks. She’s facing the opposite direction, the back of her thighs pressed against someone's abandoned workstation. She’s vigilant. Joy will give her that.
Joy hasn’t had anything interesting to report in days. Not since Ogilvie attempted to ask Al-Hashimi out for coffee to ‘improve his Farsi.’ She stretches her legs out in front of herself, heels against the tile. She can see the outline of her toe through the webbed fabric of her sneaker. “Yeah,” Joy bends her knees again. The rolling chair moves. “I saw Javadi steal a Diet Coke from the staff fridge.”
When she looks back over, Princess is chewing on the inside of her cheek with narrowed eyes.
“Baby genius turned baby criminal.” Joy tacks on in hopes of upping the stakes. Mohan has been “mentoring” her all day, trying to fold her into every trauma that comes through. Mohan doesn’t seem to believe in lost causes. Seems to believe she can brute force her way through anything. That’ll change one day.
“You really keep a close eye on her, don’t you?”
“What?”
Princess hums, pushing away from the work station. She doesn’t say anything more.
Javadi finds her in the parking lot. Joy didn’t know she was old enough to drive, but based on the keys clutched in her hand—a Lexus, of course—she must be.
“I don’t know if we got off on the wrong foot or if there’s been like a huge misunderstanding, but I think we need to talk,” Javadi says. “Or something.”
“Can I pick something?”
“What?”
“If my options are talking or something, I’m picking something.”
Every thought that has ever crossed Javadi’s genius brain immediately flashes across her face. Poor thing, she can’t really help it. They didn’t cover poker faces in her private tutoring. “That’s not funny.”
Joy shrugs. “I’m not trying to be funny.”
“You’re always trying to be funny.” Javadi hurls it like an insult. It lands like a poorly executed compliment. “Why are you making up rumors about me?”
Something pricks at the back of Joy’s neck. Not guilt, necessarily. Rumors come and go at the hospital. They approach and recede like the tide. They’re inevitable, fleeting, barely worth taking note of in the first place. She doesn’t feel guilty, but the tone of Javadi’s voice, the tilt of her head in the dwindling sunlight, does alert a dormant tripwire in her hindbrain. “I don’t think about you enough to make up rumors about you, Javadi.”
“You told everyone I’m sleeping with Dr. Shen?” She sounds equal parts outraged and humiliated. A delicious flavor of shock perfectly suited for the background of an Olivia Rodrigo power ballad.
Older brother's best friend seems like exactly her type. A simulacra of every teen movie and self-insert fanfiction she’s ever read. “Aren’t you?”
She balks. Javadi Puppet, Joy thinks with a bit of smug enjoyment. “What kind of question is that?”
“Really seems like you’re sleeping with him.” It’s almost not fair that Javadi has had zero real life experience. She has no idea that questions like that make you sound even guiltier than you might have before. She doesn’t even know that not every accusation needs to be met with a response.
“He’s a friend of my brother.” Not helping her case, but she doesn’t know that.
Maybe she really doesn’t know that Shen has a thing for her. It’s almost impossible to believe that Javadi hasn’t noticed the way his eyes stay glued to her lips. “He’s obsessed with you.”
“Why is that any of your business?”
Joy sighs. Her keys spin around her index finger. Javadi’s eyes follow the motion closely. “For the record, that’s not what I said.”
A half-laugh escapes Javadi’s mouth. “But you did say something.”
“Someone asked me what I thought was going on between you and Shen, and I answered.”
“Who?” She recrosses her arms in a gesture ripped straight from Degrassi. Or Glee. Probably Glee. “Who asked you?”
Joy considers her options. The list is endless. Two weeks from now, she’ll never have to see any of these people ever again. The Pitt will be little more than a weird, distant dream. “Ogilvie. He has a crush on you.” That last part isn’t even a lie. “Look, I have to go.”
Javadi takes a jerky step toward Joy. All the poise and stability of a newborn giraffe. “I know you hate it here, but that doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me.”
“When you’re out of my line of sight, I mostly forget you exist.” Joy presses the alarm button on her key fob and motions towards the noise. “Oops. Got to go.”
Her face falls, lips pulling together in a disappointed pucker. It might be the prettiest Victoria Javadi has ever looked.
“You know, it’s funny,” she can hear Ogilvie beginning. “There was actually a commodities speculator named Richard Dennis who called himself the Prince of the Pit. If you’re ever looking for a second career, you already have a namesake.”
Whitaker nods. Prays to some higher power to be taken out of his misery, Joy presumes. “Crazy coincidence, man.” Someone answers his prayers, or the universe rolls a set of dice, because Whitaker is saved by the emergence of Javadi, her bashful face tucked in towards her shoulder. Santos has an arm around her, parading her through the bullpen, pointing to the light-up, hot pink sash that reads Birthday Girl in big blocky letters.
“Trinity, please. Please, this isn’t—there are people out in the waiting room—I really should get back to work,” she pleads.
Santos jabs her in the ribs. “You only turn twenty-one once, Crash, come on.” They continue on their tour through the department. Everyone they stumble upon offers her a wide smile, a high five, a hug, a condescending but well-meaning shoulder shove. The people's princess, the baby of the department, is finally old enough to drink, as if they haven’t been sneaking her beers and wine coolers for the past year at the after-shift hang-outs they keep hidden from Joy and Ogilvie. You’d think she just brought home an Olympic medal.
“There’s a surprise for you in the lounge,” Mateo tells her, taking over corralling duties from Santos. He places a hand on either shoulder. Cartoon hearts pop into Javadi’s eyes. A floating Cupid appears over her head. She makes an instinctual gurgling noise in the back of her throat and then grimaces at herself. Mateo guides her towards the open door.
“This is super nice, but seriously, you guys did not have to do anything.”
Everyone is like so totally super nice to her. They’re like sooooo sweet.
There’s a chain store sheet cake with plaster white icing and wobbly purple cursive (her favorite color! Wow!) adorned with heart-shaped sprinkles and candles they won’t light. There’s a balloon bouquet with those big foil number balloons front and center. A Happy Birthday banner hangs on the wall behind the table, but by the looks of the falling Y, it’s been used and reused a dozen times before.
Joy eats two slices of cake off a paper plate. No one makes you work a trauma when you’re eating cake.
Jesse, who has been nothing but a snarky bitch for Joy’s entire rotation, earnestly says “I think the birthday girl gets first dibs on intubations,” when she and Ogilvie both jump to get involved with a GSW to the chest. They treat her like a god around here. Like a Kennedy. The brightest progeny of a great enduring dynasty. A freshly minted twenty-one year old in a plastic tiara cannot be the best thing that has ever happened to emergency medicine. But maybe she is. Maybe that’s the state of emergency medicine. If their Lululemon-to-Lululemon communication is anything to go by, even Al-Hashimi seems to adore her.
Today is the shining, optimistic, rose-tinted Camelot they will all look back on one day. Remember when Victoria turned twenty-one? Remember when life was sunshine and rainbows? Remember what it was like before Robby ended up in his own Chappaquiddick incident? They’re starry-eyed today, but it’s only a matter of time before this whole ordeal is picked apart like the Zapruder film.
Joy can’t explain why she’s in this sticky bar surrounded by sticky people. Well, no, she can explain exactly how she found herself here. She has run out of good gossip, and gossip remains her only real bargaining chip in this place. The eidetic memory amazement wore off exactly thirty-six hours after she begrudgingly revealed it. With every passing day, more and more is being passed off to her. More patients, more tasks, more responsibilities, more dead people with devastated families. She needs more material. She was, technically, invited. Everyone was invited. The King of fucking England was invited to this party.
10 P.M., Tequila Cowboy, come dressed as a romcom character or else. Joy struggles to imagine what ‘or else’ could entail. Yet another stern talking to in the parking garage? She’ll take her chances. It’s surprising to see just how many people actually did show up in their closest approximations to How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days or Mamma Mia 2.
She spots Javadi immediately. She’s standing smack in the middle of the room, holding court with some of the younger nurses wearing a perfect replica of the dress Jennifer Garner wears in 13 going on 30. Of course she is. Her life seems straight out of that movie, except the body swapping never actually happened. Joy ducks away towards the bar, she doesn’t want to be spotted by any of their coworkers. Not that they would pay much attention even if they noticed her. Still, she wants people to let loose. To do something worth whispering about the next day. They won’t do that if they know that Joy is here.
The bartender leans forward and does that frat boy thing of casually pointing to his ear to signal the fact that she’ll need to speak up, as if Joy doesn’t know that it’s loud in here. They’re standing 18 inches apart. She knows exactly how loud it is. Her request for a Vodka Cranberry is met with a curt nod.
“Open or closed?” the frat boy asks.
Joy takes a shot in the dark and hopes to be rewarded. “You can put it on Garcia,” She yells. He offers her a thumbs up and nothing more.
The music is terrible. A Swedish techno-enthusiast hijacked the playlist, but no one around seems to care in the slightest. Joy makes her way to an empty corner, free drink in hand. She plants herself against the wall. It’s too early in the night for the crowd to be this tipsy, but this isn’t just any night. This is a national holiday. Green tea shots as necessary celebratory symbols. Today, Victoria Javadi is 21. Today, a new savior has been anointed. There were a few days where the abandoned Baby Jane Doe was parked in the ER before Pedes and CPS finally figured out their shit. She was the department baby. Their baby. Javadi is the only person who can rival that sort of admiration. Her milestones are being charted on the back of a white board somewhere. First tooth, first words, first skull-splintering hangover. A million gold stars to the birthday girl.
Unfortunately, everyone is behaving themselves. For the most part. Santos and Garcia are grinding like they’re vying for Prom King and Queen, but everyone already knows about Santos and Garcia. Any actually interesting info about them would be broken by Whitaker, but he’s just too nice to consider that. Shen is here and that in and of itself is interesting considering he should be working tonight. He must have struck a deal with Abbot so he could be here with all the twenty-somethings. He isn’t doing much, just standing off to the side, head bobbing to the terrible music as Javadi dances with her little friends ten feet away. Does he know he looks like a creep? Does he care?
Javadi is wasted. Giggly, off-tempo, effervescently wasted. That doesn’t stop her from looking away from the ICU intern that’s babysitting her and locking eyes, immediately, with Joy. Sharp, near-magnetic eye contact. She’s like one of those drug sniffing dogs.
“You’re here!” Javadi’s arms shoot straight up, the contents of her branded cup threaten to spill all over her head. Or, it would if there was anything in it other than ice. Her smile is bright, like she actually expected Joy to be here. She immediately pulls her arms down, realizing that her dress is too short to move like that unless she wants to flash everyone in the bar. She’s already walking a thin line. Her tits are spilling out over the neckline. Joy’s eyes keep darting to the underboob cut-out. She can’t tell if the dark mark she’s seeing is a shadow or a hickey.
Javadi weaves her way through her dancing friends. “I can’t believe you made it,” she says. There’s glitter dotted along her cheekbones.
Joy clears her throat. She wasn’t planning to actually talk to anyone tonight. “I was in the area.”
Novelty laces through Javadi’s voice. “I have a tab! You can put whatever you want on my tab.” She reaches out and grabs Joy’s forearm, steadying herself. Her mouth twists into a conspiratorial grin. “It’s all on John’s card, don’t worry.” Joy goes to speak, say something about how generous Shen is, but Javadi cuts her off. “I really can’t believe you came. I thought you totally hated me.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t hate you, Javadi.”
“No, I know, you forget I exist.” She sways on her feet, squeezes Joy's arm a little tighter. “But you can’t forget things, can you? Even if you want to.” It's almost a threat, the way Javadi says it, looking down at Joy through long, mascaraed lashes. She knows she could get away with murder if she really wanted. If she said please and thank you to her co-conspirators.
“You should get back to your party.”
“You’re so smart.” Javadi taps the bottom of her empty cup against the top of Joy’s. The sound is hollow. “You’re so smart, I don’t understand why you don’t just try.” She has the eyes of a disappointed sacrificial lamb. Like she can’t believe you would actually lead her to the altar. Her little lamb voice asking, Really, the altar? But you promised you wouldn't. I really thought better of you.
“Don’t worry about it, party girl.” It doesn't seem to dissuade Javadi in the slightest.
She lets out a huff, rolling her eyes. “I worry about everything,” she says matter of factly. Each syllable runs into the next, her own words a runaway train. “‘S like my whole thing.”
This isn't getting her any good material. All it's doing is drawing attention to Joy's presence. People keep glancing over in their direction, confused as to why Javadi would even be talking to her. This is the dramatic climax of Popular cheerleader befriends emo reject to save the werewolf prom. "Go. Party." Joy reiterates.
Javadi plucks the drink from Joy's hand, placing her empty cup in it's place. "You're at my party." For a second it looks like she's going to turn on her feet and head back into the crowd, where she belongs. Instead, she takes a heaving breath in. "Let's do shots."
"Shots?"
Javadi hums her confirmation. "You're familiar with the concept?"
It's a whole production to get all of Javadi's little friends up to the bar, to make sure all of them get the pink shot glasses supplied to the bar by Javadi's parents, to make sure everyone is ready and everyone is done giggling, and that enough photos have been taken for the various Close Friends Instagram stories this night will be memorialized in. Documentation for the historical record.
"So it's salt, then lime, then shot?" she asks Joy, presumably unaware that she's referencing Winona Ryder. Caricature of an 80's high school party newbie and she doesn't even know it.
"Salt, shot, lime." Nurse Emma corrects her. She's been drinking for four whole weeks now. She's a veritable expert.
All arms reach to the center of the group, even Joy's after Santos catches sight of her and glowers. The lime falls from Joy's shot glass in the madness of the high-pitched, celebratory cheers. Javadi watches, licking salt from the back of her hand. "We can share," she offers before throwing her head back, wincing as the tequila hits her tongue. She takes her lime between two slender finger, bites down carefully, and pulls Joy forward, spitting the wedge directly into her mouth. Her strawberry lip gloss smears across the corner of Joy's lips.
Tiny, fresh-faced, baby doe Emma glances between them. Her voice is soft. "Woah."
Princess is pretending not to grin. The file folder held in front of her face isn’t very convincing. “I heard you had a fun night last night.”
"And who told you that?"
She shrugs. "Wouldn't you like to know?"