Work Text:
1989
Dana has just stepped out of the shower when she notices the mark on her ribcage. She moves closer to the mirror, first wiping the condensation off with a towel from the rack, to get a better look. She's almost positive it wasn’t there before she got into the shower. Though when she hadn’t received her soulmate mark on her eighteenth birthday, or even her nineteenth, she stopped looking for it. It isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility that it has been there for days or even weeks now and she just hasn't noticed it until now. However, there is this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that it is brand new.
To finally get her mark on a random day in June at the age of twenty-three years old, she's more than a little confused. Almost all of her friends had received theirs on their 18th birthday or at least shortly after, like they were supposed to, but no one had an answer as to why Dana’s hadn't appeared yet.
She shifts to her side, one hand cupping her left breast to see the initial more clearly. Sure enough, right there in bold black is the letter M.
1993
Four years with just this one single clue as to who her soulmate is and Dana doesn't feel any closer to knowing than if she didn’t have the mark at all.
She isn't quite sure how she's supposed to know when she's met her soulmate. Everyone has just told her that when you know, you know. But what's the point of a soulmate mark if it doesn't lead you to your soulmate? It all seems pointless to her. But still, every time that she meets a guy named Matthew, Mark, Miguel, Martin, or Marcus, the voice in her head asks, is he the one?
One too many dates with a guy named Mitchell who, it turns out, has been hiding his soulmate mark, has her swearing off searching. Maybe she's the one person on record in the city who will never find their soulmate.
1997
If Dana were to go back in time and tell her younger self that at thirty-one years old she still hadn’t found her soulmate, it probably would have sent her into a downward spiral. Hell, she isn't feeling great about it now. She knows that a partner isn't everything, but she can't help but feel lonely. She wants to be able to go home to someone at night. She wants to wake up wrapped up in another person’s arms and fall asleep in them too. She wants to love someone else and be loved in return.
She’s lost count of how many friends’ weddings and baby showers she’s been to, and each time an invitation arrives in the mail it hurts just a little bit more. Dana always thought that she would be married by now, that she would have met her soulmate in college like most of her friends. She imagined that she’d meet whoever this M stood for, graduate college, land a job as a nurse at PTMC, get married, and have maybe two kids by now. So far she’s only graduated and landed the job at PTMC.
It's starting to seem like she isn't meant to have the same things that everyone else does.
2002
“Dana!” Dr. Adamson calls from the other side of the nurses’ station.
A man she hasn’t seen before stands next to him. He's tall, just a couple inches taller than Adamson himself, with dark brown hair and a crooked smile. When she meets his eyes, the rest of the room freezes for just a second before returning to normal.
“This is Dr. Robinavitch, our newest emergency medicine fellow.” Adamson says once the two of them have reached her. “He just completed his residency at Charity in New Orleans. Dr. Robinavitch, this is our very best nurse, Dana Fitzpatrick.”
“Dr. Robinavitch, welcome.” Dana offers her hand to the new doctor.
“You can just call me Robby, everyone does.” The moment he takes her hand in his, Dana feels a sudden spark travel up her arm, followed by a pulsing under her breast where her soulmate mark is.
Weird, she thinks. Robby must have felt it too, because his head tilts to the side in confusion. For a brief second Dana wonders if this is what she's been waiting thirteen years to feel. She shakes the thought from her head, reminding herself that it isn't possible. Robby is short for Robert, obviously, and that definitely doesn't start with the letter M.
—
As the months go on and the two work together more often, Dana still isn't able to shake the feeling that something is different. Her mark continues to pulse whenever she touches Robby or vice versa, and she still doesn't have any answers.
Dana mentions it to her friend Sarah one night over drinks. Sarah received her mark on her eighteenth birthday, the letter P, and met her now husband, Paul, the following year during their first semester of college.
“Can you remember the first time you met Paul?” she asks, desperate for a confirmation. “Do you remember if your mark felt different the first time you touched?”
Sarah thinks for a long moment, “Gosh, it’s been so long. Maybe? I remember my heart racing.” She pauses. “Didn’t you say this guy’s name is Robby? There’s no way he could be your soulmate.”
“I know that.” Dana says, a little more forceful than necessary.
"What, you think the universe got your soulmate wrong?" Sarah laughs.
Dana rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “I don't know. I just…I can’t explain it. There’s something there, I’ve never felt like this before.”
—
Seven hours into a fifteen hour shift, Dana is ready to go home. The day started off fine, just your run of the mill emergency room visits; toddlers with the common cold brought in by their anxious parents, a couple of patients with a broken bone, another patient who had suffered a heart attack. By 2pm, there are a handful of vomiting patients that need to be seen, likely just a flu outbreak.
Dana steps into a patient’s room to check their vitals and complete their intake information. She places the pulse oximeter on their index finger right as they lean forward to vomit, completely missing the bag they’d been given upon check-in, and vomit all over the front of Dana’s scrub top.
“I’m so sorry.” They mumble before Dana steps out of the room.
Dana weaves through the busy emergency room, headed for the staff break room for a clean pair of scrubs. She's just taken her scrub top off when the door to the break room opens. She tries to cover her bra-clad chest with the clean top, but isn't fast enough.
"I—" Robby comes to a quick halt just barely inside the room. His gaze drops from her face and Dana follows his eyes, which come to land on her mark.
He swallows thickly, "Is that your soulmate mark?"
"Yes," Dana answers, pulling the clean top over her head.
"Have you found them yet?"
Dana refuses to meet his eyes, instead focusing her attention on shoving the soiled top into a plastic bag. "No," she whispers.
The room is silent for a long moment, Robby's eyes finding their way back to Dana's ribcage where he now knows her mark to be, before he says, "Me either."
—
"Hi there," Dana steps into curtain three, greeting the man that is sitting on the bed. "I'm just gonna take your vitals before the doctor comes in."
"Is it possible to get Michael as my doctor? We're old college buddies." He says, offering his arm for the blood pressure cuff.
Dana frowns, "I'm sorry, we don't have a Dr. Michael that works here in the ER."
"Right, no, sorry. Michael is his first name. Dr. Robinavitch?"
Michael. Michael Robinavitch. Her hands stop moving, hovering above the blood pressure cuff. She feels lightheaded, her throat suddenly dry. Robby isn't Robert at all. Robby is Michael. Could he really be…?
—
Dana is standing outside in the ambulance bay after the end of her shift, puffing on one last cigarette before she makes the walk to the bus stop. She hasn't been able to think about anything else except the name Michael Robinavitch since that friend of Robby's mentioned it hours ago.
"Those things will kill you, you know." Dana turns at the familiar voice to see Robby walking toward her, his bag slung over his shoulder.
"Yeah, well…" Dana flicks the long ash of her cigarette to the ground and drags her foot over the spot where it's fallen. Her eyes remain on the asphalt when she asks, "Why didn't you tell me your name is Michael?"
Robby sighs, "No one calls me Michael anymore. I guess I didn't think anything of it." He tilts his head to the dark sky, the stars not quite visible due to the city lights.
Dana sniffs, "How long have you known that we're soulmates?"
"I thought it was a possibility that first time we met. That first jolt, I assume you felt it too?" He pauses. "And then I saw your mark today."
She stubs her cigarette out, tosses the butt into the ashtray nearby. "Are you gonna show me yours?"
Robby takes a look around, making sure no one can see them where they're standing, before he raises his scrub top up. There on his ribcage, in the same spot where Dana's rests, is the bold black letter D.
Before she can stop herself, her fingers are reaching out, lightly touching the mark. "I'd kind of accepted the fact that I was never going to find my soulmate." She says, voice thick with emotion, before she drops her hand.
"Yeah, me too." His eyes find hers, a small smile on his face. "We've found each other now though."