Chapter Text
By four-thirty in the afternoon, the ED had that particular end-of-shift energy Will knew too well: not calmer, exactly, but meaner. The easy cases had been handled hours ago. What was left was the tail end of chaos—people who had waited too long, people who had nowhere else to go, and one drunk guy in curtain three insisting he had been “poisoned” by a hot dog. Will signed off on a chart, scrubbed a hand over his face, and told himself he was almost done. That was when Maggie’s voice cut across the department.
“Will, trauma coming in. Thirty-eight-year-old male, fall during a run, possible clavicle fracture, shoulder deformity, road rash, no LOC reported.”
Will glanced up automatically. “Vitals?”
“Stable. EMS says he’s being a terrible patient.”
Will snorted. “We’ll this is going to be fun. Maybe it’s one of those guys who decides doing a marathon is a fun thing to learn to do in your thirties with no real training..”
Maggie’s mouth twitched. Then she checked the tablet in her hand and looked back at him with an expression that made him pause.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re gonna enjoy this one.”
That was never a reassuring sentence. The ambulance bay doors banged open a few seconds later, and the gurney rolled in fast. Connor Rhodes lay on it looking deeply, personally offended by the entire concept of gravity. His dark running shirt had been cut open at the collar, one shoulder scraped bloody, the fabric dirty from pavement. His face was sheened with sweat, jaw locked tight against pain. One arm was held rigid against his body, and there was already bruising blooming beneath his right clavicle. Even flat on a gurney, he somehow managed to look annoyed rather than vulnerable.
Will stopped dead in the middle of the trauma room. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Connor turned his head, saw him, and let out a slow breath through his nose. “Please tell me you’re not my attending.”
“Oh, I am absolutely your attending.” Will stepped in beside the gurney, already reaching for the rail as the paramedics transferred Connor over. “What happened? Get tackled by a stroller on the Lakefront Trail?”
“No my favourite 10k route,” Connor said tightly, “apparently contains uneven stretch of sidewalk now.”
Maggie made a soft sound that was suspiciously like a laugh.
The younger paramedic handed Will the run sheet. “Found him near the river trail. Witness said he clipped the edge of the curb trying to dodge a cyclist, went down hard on his right side. No loss of consciousness. Vitals stayed good. He refused pain meds twice.”
Will looked at Connor. “Of course.”
Connor shifted minutely and went pale from it. “I said I didn’t need narcotics for a broken collarbone.”
“You don’t know it’s broken yet.”
Connor gave him a flat look. “Will.”
“Fair point.”
Will moved to the injured side carefully. The deformity was subtle but there, a slight tenting over the midshaft clavicle, swelling already building. Road rash ran angry and red down Connor’s shoulder and upper forearm. His breathing was shallow in the way people breathed when deeper breaths hurt too much.
“Any numbness? Tingling?” Will asked.
“No.”
“Head strike?”
“No.”
“Neck pain?”
Connor hesitated just enough to annoy him.
“Connor.”
“No significant neck pain.”
“That is not a real answer.”
“It means my neck is fine orthopedically and neurologically but my shoulder feels like somebody hit it with a tire iron.”
“Better.”
Will palpated gently along the clavicle, and Connor’s entire body went rigid.
“There it is,” Will murmured.
“Fantastic,” Connor said through clenched teeth. “Very pleased for both of us.”
Maggie hooked him up to monitors while Will ran a quick neurovascular check. Distal pulse intact. Hand warm and grip strong, though Connor clearly resented being asked to demonstrate it. Good that all was good and made Will breathe a little easier.
“Okay,” Will said. “X-ray, pain control, sling, and somebody clean up that shoulder before it starts looking anymore like abstract art.”
Connor stared at the ceiling. “No narcotics.”
Will folded his arms. “You are currently lying shirtless in my trauma bay bleeding on our nice clean sheets, and you still think this is a negotiation where pain control is just a suggestion not medically necessary.”
“I’m not staying overnight. I am sleeping in my own bed tonight or a woman I pick up at the bar’s if she like the wounded solider look.”
“I didn’t say you were being admitted.”
“Good.”
“You are, however, taking something for the pain”
Connor turned his head enough to glare at him. “Tylenol.”
Will laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. “That’s adorable.”
Maggie handed over a pair of gloves. “You want me to call Sharon and tell her one of the surgeons broke himself doing cardio?”
“Please don’t,” Connor muttered.
Will smiled without mercy. “Please do. All joking aside, she does need to know that Connor is going to be out for a few weeks, longer if it is broken.
Connor actually looked alarmed. “William.”
“Relax. I’m hopeful you are being dramatic.”
Maggie lifted a brow. “Debatable.”
The portable x-ray tech came in, and the next few minutes were all positioning and controlled misery. Connor tolerated it badly, which by normal standards meant with gritted teeth and icy silence. Will stayed at his side anyway, one hand braced lightly near Connor’s good shoulder to steady him when they needed to shift him and at one point Connor shut his eyes and hissed out a breath.
Will looked over. “You want those pain meds now?”
“No.”
“Please blink twice if your masculinity is preventing good decision-making and keeping you hostage.”
Connor opened one eye once imaging was done, Maggie came back with saline, gauze, and that expression nurses got when they knew their patient was about to discover the true meaning of sting.
Connor took one look at the tray. “No.”
Will leaned against the counter. “That’s not how medicine works.”
“It should be.”
“You fell into dirty Chicago sidewalk dirt. Chicago’s germs got under your skin. We need to clean it out.”
“It’s road rash, not trench warfare.”
Will glanced at Maggie. “He’s even more dramatic when he’s hurt.”
Connor made a low, affronted sound. “I’m literally a trauma surgeon, drama comes with the territory.”
“Today you’re a patient.”
“That feels medically inaccurate.”
Maggie started irrigating the scrapes on his shoulder. Connor went dead still.
Will watched the muscles in his jaw flex. “You okay?”
Connor’s eyes opened slowly. “I hate both of you and my shoulder, dirt and really this whole experience.”
“That’s fair,” Maggie said.
A few minutes later the x-ray came up on the screen, and Will stepped over to review it. There was a Midshaft clavicle fracture, displaced, but not disastrously so. He exhaled because it was better than it could’ve been.
Connor was watching his face. “Well?”
“You broke it.”
Connor looked almost pleased to be right. “Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment.”
Will pointed at the image. “Midshaft clavicle fracture, some displacement. No obvious pneumothorax. No shoulder dislocation. You’ve been lucky.”
Connor tipped his head back against the mattress. “I don’t feel lucky.”
“You will when I remind you it could’ve been your neck.”
That got a tiny pause then, quietly: “Yeah.”
Will knew that tone. The aftershock one. The moment when the adrenaline started to ebb and the brain circled back to what almost happened. He softened a little. “Hey.”
Connor looked at him.
“You’re okay.”
Connor held his gaze for a second, then looked away first. Will stepped back to the bedside and started explaining treatment options, more gently now. Conservative management first. Sling. Pain control whether Connor wanted it or not. Follow-up imaging. Orthopedic consult if needed, especially if the displacement worsened or healing lagged. No operating. No lifting. No pretending this was fine because he was bored.
Connor listened with his usual intelligent impatience. “So,” Connor said when Will finished, “in summary, you’re saying I’m going to be inconvenienced for the next what 6ish weeks.”
“I’m saying if you try to scrub in tomorrow, Sharon’ll have security drag you out by your one good arm.”
Connor’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You’d enjoy that too much.”
“Probably.”
Maggie came around with the sling and helped get it in place. Connor bit down on whatever response he’d been about to make while they maneuvered his arm. When it was done, he looked rumpled, scraped up, and deeply unhappy. Which, Will had to admit, was a little funny.
Connor noticed him trying not to smile. “Don’t.”
“Oh, I’m definitely going to.”
“You are the least compassionate doctor in this hospital.”
“That’s wildly untrue.”
“You just looked delighted by my suffering.”
“I’m not enjoying your suffering, I’m sorry you broken yourselves while trying to be out and destress. You have enough going on with everything without adding tenting over your shoulder to the drama.”
There was a stretch of quiet after that. Not awkward. Just oddly still compared to the churn of the department outside the room. Through the open door came the usual soundtrack, phones ringing, stretchers moving, somebody asking for labs, somebody else swearing under their breath.
Connor shifted carefully on the bed. “You almost done for the day?”
“Yeah.” Will checked the clock on the wall. “Another twenty minutes, assuming no mass casualty incident.”
Connor glanced at the monitors, then back at him. “Big plans?”
Will grabbed the discharge packet from the printer. “Coffee with Jay.”
Connor gave him a look. “That sounds nice.”
Will looked up at that. The word had landed with more weight than the conversation really called for.
“What?”
Connor shrugged with his uninjured shoulder, then winced because apparently even that was too much motion. “Nothing. Just good, nice, just a simple thing but wish I had siblings I was close to.”
Will studied him for a second. Connor stared back, then said, “Are you going to discharge me today?”
Will laughed under his breath. “Depends. Are you going to manage at home ok?”
“Are you offering to come over and be my nurse maid. Bed bath, spoon feed me or feed me my chocolates covered strawberries with your bare hands.”
“Erm here.” He handed over the paperwork. “Discharge instructions. Read them and ignore at your peril.”
Connor scanned the top page. “No running.”
“No.”
“No lifting.”
“No.”
“No surgery.”
“Definitely no.”
Connor looked personally betrayed. “This is not far.”
“That is medicine for you.”
Maggie stepped back in with a small bag of supplies and a prescription printout. “And this,” she said brightly, “is ibuprofen, ice, and the crushing realization that your body has limits.”
Connor took the bag with grave resentment. “Thank you, Margaret.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
Will nearly choked.
Connor looked at him. “Don’t start.”
“Oh, I’m starting immediately.”
Connor got off the bed slowly, face going pale again as gravity reminded him what had happened. Will instinctively reached out a hand toward his elbow. Connor glanced at it then at Will. Then took it just for a second. Long enough to steady himself. Long enough for Will to feel the tremor of pain he was trying to hide. Once he was upright, Connor let go.
“There,” he said. “Dignity preserved.”
“Debatable.”
Connor adjusted the sling with his free hand and started toward the door. At the threshold he stopped and looked back.
“Will.”
“Yeah?”
“Text me when you get home.”
Will blinked. “Why?”
Connor’s expression went neutral in that way it did when he was pretending not to mean something. “Because people who say they’re just grabbing coffee are usually the people who end up treating a stabbing in an alley at eleven p.m.”
“That is weirdly specific.”
“It’s Chicago.”
Will huffed a laugh. “Fine. I’ll text.”
Connor gave a short nod, satisfied, then headed out into the ED, scraped up and one-armed and somehow still carrying himself like he owned the place.
Maggie watched him go. “He likes you.”
Will, gathering up Connor’s chart, didn’t even look up. “That makes it sound like we are going to start going steady anyway he tolerates me.”
Maggie made a skeptical sound and walked away before he could argue. A few minutes later, Will finally signed his last note, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the exit. The day had that washed-out late afternoon look through the ambulance bay windows, the city all gray-blue light and traffic. He pulled out his phone.
Off work. Coffee?
Jay answered almost immediately.
Already on my way. Don’t let the hospital suck you back in.
Will smiled despite himself and typed back:
No promises.
Then he shoved the phone in his pocket and walked out into the cold, with no idea the day still had teeth. The cold outside Gaffney hit Will like a reset button. Not a full one nothing that generous but enough to strip the hospital smell out of his nose for a minute, antiseptic, overheated air, stale coffee, stress and replace it with March wind, exhaust, and the faint bite of the river somewhere beyond the buildings. He stood on the sidewalk pulling on his jacket, shoulders finally dropping an inch now that nobody was actively trying to bleed on him. His phone buzzed.
Jay: Outside. And before you ask, no, I’m not illegally parked.
Will laughed under his breath and glanced up. Jay’s truck was at the curb half a block down, exactly the kind of spot that was legal only if nobody looked at it too hard. Jay was behind the wheel with one hand draped over the top, sunglasses on even though the sun was already sliding toward evening. Will headed over and yanked open the passenger door. The heat in the cab was on too high, of course. Will started unzipping his jacket immediately.
“You look terrible,” Jay said.
Will shut the door and gave him a sideways look. “Hello to you too.”
Jay pulled away from the curb with the absolute certainty of somebody who believed traffic signals were more of a group suggestion. “Long day?”
“Connor Rhodes fell over run and broke his collarbone. That’s going to be a nightmare and administrative headache for the next 2/3 months.
That got Jay to glance at him.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Jay barked out a laugh. “How?”
“Sidewalk. Cyclist. Pride. Gravity.”
“Rough combination.”
“He refused pain meds.”
“Of course he did.”
Will leaned his head back against the seat. “He was offended by the entire experience. Maggie called it the crushing realization that his body has limits.”
Jay’s mouth twitched. “And did he take that well?”
“He took it like Connor takes most things. With elegance, repression, and visible irritation.”
Jay laughed again, and something in Will unclenched hearing it. That was the whole reason for coffee, really. Not the coffee itself. The pause. The hour stolen out of a week that had teeth in it. A place where Jay could be Jay, A place where Will could be Will, not Dr. Halstead, not the guy everybody looked at when blood hit the floor just brothers.
The traffic was ugly in that lazy Chicago way where everything moved just enough to keep your hope alive while still ruining your evening. Jay drummed his fingers once on the wheel, then looked over.
They stopped at a red light. A woman in a giant camel coat crossed in front of the truck, dragging a tiny white dog with the attitude of a larger animal. Somewhere down the block, somebody leaned on a horn for so long it became a personal statement. Jay glanced at him again, longer this time.
“What?”
“You okay?”
Will turned his head. Jay was casual about it, like he always was when he was actually asking something real. No softness in the voice. No big brother lecture. Just the question, set down plain between them.
“Yeah,” Will said.
Jay waited.
Will exhaled. “Yeah. Just tired.”
“You’ve been doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you say you’re tired when what you mean is everything’s annoying and your eye’s twitching and you’ve had too many people ask you stupid questions.”
Will considered. “Okay, maybe a little that.”
“Mm.”
The light changed, Jay drove on and Will looked out the window at the blur of storefronts and pedestrians, at the early-evening rush starting to build. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Jay made a skeptical sound.
“I’m serious. Busy, but manageable. Rhodes kept me entertained.”
“By injuring himself?”
“Mostly by being insufferable while injured.”
Will smiled again, then his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out.
Connor: Presumably still alive?
Will stared at the screen a second, then snorted.
“What?”
“Connor.”
Jay groaned. “He really texted you with his one good arm?”
“Apparently.”
“Well?”
Will typed back with one thumb.
Yes. Haven’t been stabbed, set on fire, or dragged into surgery against my will. Yet.
The reply came almost immediately.
Give it time.
Jay watched Will shove the phone away. “He’s funny when he’s wounded.”
“He’s funnier when he’s annoyed.”
“That’s a low bar.”
They made it to the coffee place ten minutes later, one of those narrow little hippy neighborhood spots with exposed brick, hanging plants that looked expensive to keep alive, and the kind of menu board that somehow made coffee sound like you needed a graduate degree.
Jay stopped outside and looked at it with open suspicion.
“This place has hipster vibes,” he said.
“That’s because it’s a coffee shop.”
“No, this place has matcha or ubi sakura vibes. There’s a difference.”
Will was already climbing out. “You’re being old.”
Jay killed the engine and got out too. “I’m younger than you.”
“Biologically yes but inside you’re eighty-six.”
“I could still beat you in a fight.”