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There are no lunch breaks in the Pitt. That’s what Emma remembers from her first week so many months ago. Remembers not having the time to feel hungry until Princess and Perlah began to swim in front of her one day and then a chair was being shoved underneath her and a protein bar pushed into her hand.
Now she knows, now she keeps a little stock of snacks in her locker to grab when she can, and an emergency one tucked away on a shelf in the breakroom too.
Now she has a routine and she can recognise, even when she’s busy, the difference between hunger she can push through if needed and hunger that means she needs to find 30 seconds to inhale some food.
But of course, now, she also has the added benefit of Dana. Dana who brings in a lunch even though she rarely gets time to eat it in one sitting, just sort of grazes and nibbles at it, mostly when she’s pouring herself a coffee.
At some point Dana started making a little bit more, started sliding the food over to Emma too. At some point they began to split the responsibility of making lunch for work, they get one of those large containers that’s split in two so they can each have something different if they want.
Emma makes a fleeting comment once, jokingly, about them having lunch dates at work and the pair of them have ran with it ever since.
Not every shift lends itself to a minute or two with shoulders brushing as they stand at the counter in the breakroom, or chairs pressed closer than necessary together if, on those rare days, they can actually sit down to eat.
But occasionally it does happen, and it’s the closest they can get at work to acting like they’re not just friends. Emma calls them their lunch dates like always, and Dana will roll her eyes and grumble something about other nurses on other floors getting actual lunch breaks but will follow her into the break room when she can to steal a few seconds alone.
(She thought it would bother her more, the secrecy of their relationship, but Emma finds herself not minding. More importantly she gets it, gets the monumental blow up that would occur if it got out that still relatively recently divorced 50-something years old Dana Evans, her boss, was dating her.)
But today is one of those glorious shifts that is as close to quiet as they ever get, the sort that has people checking and double checking patients and boards and charts to make sure they’ve not missed anything because how could they possibly have a moment to themselves to breathe and think.
And for Emma it gives her the opportunity, with a glance over shoulder to make sure there is no one following her, to quietly slide up behind Dana, entirely too close to be appropriate, and snake a hand round to snag a tomato right out of Dana’s fingers and into her own mouth.
“Get your own lunch.” Dana tells her, a playful finger wagged in Emma’s direction as she slinks away to the fridge and grabs her pre-made iced coffee. The type of drink that makes Dana wrinkle her nose and complain about how it’s 90% sugar and next to no caffeine.
“That is my lunch, I made it.” Emma replies, steps the short distance back to Dana so their shoulders brush.
“Don’t get smart with me.”
“You like it when I’m smart with you.” Emma smirks and Dana rolls her eyes, bumps her with her shoulder in lieu of a response.
But Emma can see the way she blushes pretty pink. It makes her want to press her lips to the colour on her cheeks, she snags another bit of food from right underneath Dana’s fingers instead.
“Have you thought any more about next week?” Emma asks, feigning casualness as best she can.
She watches Dana mull over the question for a long moment, muscle in her jaw ticking as she does. God, she likes, perhaps even loves but that’s a feeling she’s still considering, many things about the older woman but she’s so damn stubborn.
That in the four or so months they’ve been seeing one another, Dana has not once let her take her on a date. She had to fight (and then do it in secrecy) just to make her a home cooked meal with some candles a couple of weeks ago.
And Emma knows it comes from some great fucked up experience that Dana isn’t used to someone that wants to wine and dine her. The little Emma has gleamed about her failed marriage has made it clear that Dana was a maid to her husband and a mother to her children, and a charge nurse who always has to keep it together.
Being a woman who wants to have the attention on her every now and then, wants to be made to believe she’s beautiful and worthy of someone’s undivided time sits way, way down that list, perhaps it has slipped off the list entirely.
And so Emma has made it her mission to rectify that, makes sure to dote on Dana just as much as she dotes on Emma.
(Admittedly her own experience in relationships prior was one disastrous boyfriend who treated her atrociously. Whilst that certainly left its marks, marks that Dana has been ever so gracious to work around, particularly in the bedroom, she likes to think she still knows her worth.)
When she stays the night she slips out of bed before Dana’s alarm to make coffee for them both, leaves little notes dotted around Dana’s home about how much she appreciates her. And now she’s finally managed to cook for Dana too.
But she wants to take her out, properly, to a restaurant, where they both dress up and have one glass of wine too many and end it giggly and clutching onto one another. She’s even got a table booked, a little out of the way place that she’d heard Trinity talking about taking Yolanda there. Maybe it’s a bit over romantic but don’t they both deserve such a thing?
Before Dana can answer though someone is calling her name and she’s whisked away into the rhythm of keeping everyone running once more. Emma returns the half eaten lunch to the fridge with a sigh and heads back out herself.
The next break Emma gets is an hour before the end of the shift and this time she’s ravenous, tearing into her emergency protein bar with gusto as Princess laughs from her seat in the breakroom
“I’m hungry.” Emma whines at the laughter. One of the new med students had asked why it was so quiet today and lo and behold, it got a hell of a lot busier.
Princess watches her for a long moment, the same way Emma has watched her size up countless other points of interest, usually followed by something in Tagalog to Perlah that she can’t understand.
This time it’s French that she speaks with, “You know Dana asked to switch shifts with me next Thursday?”
Emma forces herself to try and continue chewing evenly, face relaxed, hums a non committal noise in return.
“Dana never asks to switch shifts, not unless it’s something to do with her girls, but it’s not, she said she just needed the day.”
Emma knows she’s caught, she just isn’t sure how caught, isn’t sure how much Princess may know. So she stays quiet, focuses on crumpling the wrapper for the now finished protein bar in her fist and throwing it in the trash.
“And then I remembered that you were off on Thursday too.”
“Okay…” drawing out the sound, a confused furrow in her brow. Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.
A sigh, from Princess, disappointed maybe, Emma thought. Watching as she stretches her neck, vaguely reminded of the way a snake rears back before it strikes. The same way that Princess clearly doesn’t have time to allude to things anymore, doesn’t have time to dance around the point when they could both be called back into the fray at any moment.
“How long has this thing been going on?” She asks bluntly.
“I have no idea what you’re on about.” She had been going for nonchalant even as her heartbeat kicks up an order of magnitude, it sounds more strangled than she would like.
And Princess must realise, that for as badly she wants the gossip, that Emma looks half a second away from having a heart attack right where she stands, like a little rabbit trying to stay as still as possible to avoid the hawk. Which isn’t exactly what she was going for, softens her voice, speaks quieter even though they’re still speaking in French.
“I’m not going to tell anyone, it’s sweet. Dana’s happier recently, it’s not like she favours you, if anything you take on far more than your share of the work around here.”
Emma chews on her lip, harder than she should, a habit Dana has been trying to get her to stop. Although she’s one to talk about bad habits Emma always thinks.
“It’s been a few months. We-“ sucks in a stilted little breath, hopes Dana won’t kill her for breaking this easily, “It’s been good, we didn’t mean for it to happen! I know it’s an HR nightmare, trust me, I’ve been looking at other hospitals to go to.”
“It’s that serious?” Princess asks, whistles lowly when Emma shrugs, mumbles something about how it’s not that big a deal to move jobs. “You’ve got it bad.” She laughs, and Emma feels her face burn, she knows it’s true. “I won’t tell a soul. I’m not about to piss off Dana, there’s plenty of doctors to do that already.”
Emma smiles, feels a modicum of tension ease out of her. “When you say not a soul, does that include Perlah?” Emma clarifies, half teasing.
“Who do you think told me?” Princess laughs, gets to her feet and gestures for Emma to head back out into the chaos. “And if I was you, I’d maybe stop sharing your lunch with her. Sickeningly cute, but a bit of a giveaway.”
And then Princess is walking away, throwing a wink over her shoulder as she goes, and Emma can see Perlah trying and failing to suppress her own smile.
But it’s Dana that catches her eye, a questioning arch of her eyebrow, and Emma tilts her head just so to draw her just far enough away from listening ears.
“I hear you might be free next Thursday.” She says when Dana stops in front of her, the pair of them peering down at a chart in Dana’s hands.
A deep sigh, filled with resignation, “They know don’t they.”
“Yup.” Emma nods, pops the p at the end for good measure, “It’s our lunch dates that did it I think. But you didn’t answer my question. Can I take you out on a date next Thursday?”
Dana breathes out a laugh, she always blushes so easily when Emma speaks. It makes her feel powerful, to be able to do this to someone who commands such respect from everyone around her.
“Only if you wear that little black set you surprised me with a couple weeks ago.” Dana bargains and Emma is nodding without even considering it, thinking about skipping the dinner part of the date she’d planned in her head altogether for a moment.
And Dana smirks back, and Emma grins giddily, before sobering for a moment, a little guiltily. “I really am sorry Princess and Perlah found out, I know how worried you’ve been about something like that happening.”
“It’s okay, those two are like sniffer dogs when they think there’s something juicy anyway.” Dana assures her, a glance over her shoulder to where Perlah is watching them amusedly. “Besides, I don’t think we’re the only ones that HR would throw a fit over.”
She leaves Emma with that and heads back to work, and no matter how much Emma tries to wheedle the information out of her over the next few days she doesn’t give anything away.
It takes Emma seeing Trinity and Yolanda and Baran all arriving in the same car for her to rush into work that morning and corner Dana for confirmation.
And all Dana does is shrug and say, “You really think Santos could be kept in line by only one woman.”