Chapter Text
8:15 AM. The blaring voice of the alarm clock screams into her ears as Daisy jolts awake. Rubbing her hazel eyes groggily and upsettingly murmured something about giving her five more minutes, but when the clock doesn’t appeal to her request she grabs the soft pink alarm clock and violently throws it across her bedroom, the blaring horn meets the loud thud of physics and is deafened as it hit the wall and pathetically rolls on the ground, the glass on it is a spiderweb pattern.
Daisy groans as she gets off her bed like a salted slug and stands over the broken alarm clock, she suddenly feels really bad as she picks it up and sees the cracked glass and the dying pulse of the clock ticking, but she was having such a brilliant dream of a certain blue colleague, she couldn’t help but be disappointed to hear the ringing of the clock instead of his voice comforting her, she eyes the time and sees that her shift starts in 15 minutes. Daisy gasps.
…
“FIFTEEN MINUTES?! Did I oversleep that long?!”
She tumbles into her wardrobe to wear her Nurse uniform while brushing her saffron-orange hair and dog ears, she always wondered if there was a more expert way to describe the colour of her fur but she never really searched it up. As she buttons her blue shirt up and checks the time again she gets a notification on her phone, it’s from the Head Nurse, asking her why she’s not at the hospital yet, she looked up to the Head Nurse a lot, despite being only 25, she has risen up to the status of Head Nurse as well as being able to run the entire place so neatly and is always employee of the month, they are quite close friends so she talks with her a lot more than the others, not that the talks in question are very long given the business of the hospital, but it’s nice really.
Daisy finishes getting ready as she grabs her keys and a mini chocolate bar before bolting out the door, locking it before dashing to the elevator. Despite living in an apartment on the third floor where the chances of a robbery or an anomaly break in are much lower than others, it’s always good to remember to lock the doors, she heard the young couple downstairs had found their apartment torn apart because the boyfriend forgot to shut the door before leaving for work and an anomaly broke in, and the girlfriend got so upset that she dumped him, oof.
Either way, boyfriend or not, she wasn’t taking any chances, because as much as she hated herself and her life, coming back to a nice clean home almost always managed to brighten her day, she had elaborately decorated the place in bright pastel pictures and furniture that is mockingly contrasted spectacularly to her dark internal thoughts.
Right now, Daisy feels the cool morning air brush through the fur onto her face as she unlocks her bicycle and wears her pink helmet. She pedals all the way to the hospital and locks her car in the staff car park, before running through the glass doors and startling a patient with a minute to spare before the time hits 8:30.
The blue dog Secretary at the counter, Raymond, eyes her tiredly before sighing, her heart skips a beat at the sight of him. He seems to have worked the night shift and is just about to check out, but now he needs to check her in since she just arrived.
“You’re unusually late for someone who works in a hellishly understaffed hospital.” Raymond grumpily tells her as he looks up at her through his glasses before he starts to type into the computer, Daisy notices the slight shaking in his fingers as he types, probably a consequential effect of having to drink so much coffee during the night shift. Ever since Barney had gifted the hospital staff a new coffee machine for giving him free Starbucks treatment, it has been much less of a hassle to access coffee, though strangely, the Intern, a happy yellow rabbit who has recently joined the staff, who was with Barney that day, doesn’t talk about it despite the coffee machine being a great addition to the hospital, and thanks to him as well, though there was oddly that one officer was lingering around that day, oh well.
Daisy watches as Raymond as he types her name into the system along with something , he seems so upset about having to sign in another person in, it makes her heart ache to see him like that, and makes it ache more given she is the reason why, if only she didn’t have that stupid dream about him last night than she wouldn’t be late and forcing him to stay back to sign her in. What’s the point of living in the dream world with a dream version of your crush if his real-life self can’t even finish his shift properly, because of YOU!
Raymond finishes signing her in and as he walks out past her she calls out to him, figuring she could do at least one nice thing for adding an extra two minutes, unpaid, to his already miserable shift.
“H-hey Ray!” Daisy shyly calls out to him, she is trying her best to make it look like she’s not an internally simping catastrophe and her heart rate is accelerating at the speed of a rocket as he halts and turns his head to look at her
“What is it now, Nurse Daisy? I must get going, now.” the blue Secretary replies, trying not to sound too rude to a colleague, but again, she WAS the reason he had to stay back two extra minutes, and he was already running off four hours of sleep and ten scalding hot coffees for the past 8 hours and all he wanted to do is go home and crash in bed.
Daisy’s heart skips again as he looks her in the eyes and says her name, gosh, why must she be so burdensome to others? She hated it, she couldn’t feel that she was being helpful to the others, if not bring them down. Why can’t she feel she is ever enough, or if she’s too much or-
“Nurse Daisy? You’re staring.” Raymond says blatantly and Daisy snaps out of her stupor, God why is she so stupid!
“Hehe, sorry, something just came up in my head, y’know?” Daisy replies sheepishly as she pulls the chocolate out of her tote bag. “Here, you should take this, you seem tired and it’s really good.”
Raymond stares at it before replying, his voice slightly, oh so slightly softer as if he were pitying her sad attempt except he only found it pathetic and pitiful, but not pitying it. “Sorry, I don’t like sweet things, I’ll see you later, Nurse Daisy.” And he walks forward. Suddenly, the new secretary walks in, she’s a sheep, her hair is fluffy and crimson like Autumn leaves as she walks past him, Raymond stops in front of her, suddenly it seems like his gloomy atmosphere is gone as he greets her.
“Good morning, Auburn” His eyes soften as he greets her politely, and it seems he’s contemplating whether he should go back to the reception to check her in, until he remembers she does that herself.
“Good morning, Ray, did you work the night shift? You seem awfully tired, probably from dealing with anomalies, here.” Auburn pulls out a bottle of juice of some sort and hands it to Raymond.
“O-oh thanks!” Raymond replies and takes the bottle, putting it in his bag gently.
“No problem, have a safe ride home!” She smiles at him before walking past him and Daisy into reception.
Raymond seems to have a lingering gaze on her as he walks out into the sunshine. Daisy feels like she just got hit in the heart with a freaking one-tonne hammer.