Chapter Text
Vi orders the trainees into the ER, the unconscious patient bouncing on the gurney between them as paramedic trainee stutters a half-hewn history to the first nurse that meets them at the emergency doors. An EMT administers CPR on the patient as they’re taken back, the trauma room doors closing behind them as a code is called over the intercom.
“You trusted trainees with this?” snickers a nurse from Vi’s side, his white dreads tied behind his head with a thick band. “That’s bold.”
“They won’t learn if they don’t do,” Vi shrugs, her utility belt jingling with the action.
“And if someone dies?”
Vi looks at Ekko, jaw tight and brow high. “They won’t.”
A trauma team passes them, eyes latched on electronic pads resting in the crooks of their arms as they pass on information to a blue-haired woman in a white coat.
“47 year-old African-American male collapsed in a bowling alley approximately 47 minutes ago. EMTs…” the team discloses, the tall doctor’s eyes adhered to the tablet within her hands as Vi turns away.
“They’re in decent enough hands.”
“I bet they are” Ekko snorts, not unaware of where Vi’s attention was focused the moment prior.
“You don’t have anything better to do?” she snaps, cutting her eyes at her old friend. “Like, I don’t know, run a code?”
Ekko has the gall to laugh at her. “That’s not my wing, but I do have assessments I need to complete on these rookies. See you at home?”
Vi waves at the younger man, flippant hand loose as she turns her back on both her patient and her crew. Home used to be such a vague term for people like them, those who hopped from one roof to the next, who found food where they could and family where they couldn’t. Home to people like Ekko and Vi wasn’t a roof; it was simply a place where they could sleep without one eye open.
Now, however, she supposes the place they call home could be considered both.
“See you,” Vi mutters, her tone nearly impossible to hear beneath the hustle of the ER.
He hears her nonetheless.
Moments later, Vi’s outside busy wiping down the ambulance when a nurse she doesn’t recognize comes bursting from the ER’s foyer, bright eyes wide and face flushed.
“Who’s the lead paramedic of the cardiac arrest that just came in?” they call out, looking across the bay at each of the five ambulances still parked within it.
The driver sighs out a laughs as Vi stands up straight in the ambulance, nostrils flared and back aching. She rolls her shoulder back, trying to loosen up the twitching muscle between her shoulder blades.
It isn’t necessarily a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less inconvenient. Vi has reports she needs to finish and, now that the rest of her crew is being kept by a code, an ambulance she needs to clean. She doesn’t need to be bothered with some entitled brat’s insecurity.
No matter how pretty they happen to be.
Vi announces herself, drawing the nurse’s gaze and anxious energy as she requests the rig driver to finish up the transfer report in her stead.
“Dr. Kiramman would like to speak with you,” the nurse rushes, rushing back through the doors before Vi can offer a rebuttal.
“Ha, and you thought you would get out of it by having the rookies take it back,” the driver snorts, scribbling on their clipboard.
Vi sucks her tongue at them, clambering out of the ambulance with a furious sort of grace. Knees burn as her feet connect with the asphalt below, hip aching and spine twitching with a painful electricity as she rises to stand. Despite this, she strolls into the ER, running an errant hand through her hair.
From a nearby trauma room, her paramedic-in-training shouts out CPR reps, beads of sweat falling onto the unconscious patient beneath them as nurses push a variety of drugs through a poorly-placed line and ready for shock. An intern’s beady eyes flick towards each warm body in the room as they push artificial breaths, hands shaking about the wide bag. She enters the already too-busy room and shuffles to the the far corner, eyes flickering in search for a familiar pinched grimace.
A chill comes to her side and not a moment later a persistent tapping of long fingers on her shoulder tear her attention from the code. Scarred lips curl into the gentlest grimace possible and she turns to find ZMRT Station #516’s most loathesome doctor.
“What happened?” she snaps at Vi, stepping much too close as her low, accented tone snakes across the trauma room hall to Vi’s red ears.
Dr. Kiramman is absolutely the worst doctor to turnover to at Hex General. Contrary to the Chief of Station 516’s belief, this is not an opinion; it is an indisputable fact supported by the experiences of all fourteen senior paramedics at the station. She doubts the history, vitals, and interventions thrice over before the ambulance even arrives to the bay and interrogates accepting nurses before the initial call is even finished. Paramedics hate talking to her no matter the case, no matter their confidence, because she always has a way of condensing their knowledge and experience to a simple question.
“What exactly did you do?” Dr. Kiramman growls, upper lip curling as she glares down at Vi.
Tired as she is, Vi isn’t one to back down. “If you actually turnover with the nurse -”
“I want to hear it from you,” Dr. Kiramman snaps back, arms crossing over her chest as brows pinch tightly together. She turns to face Vi more fully and cocks her head slightly to the side, half of her attention still diverted to the control chaos on the other side of the room.
“It’s a 47-year-old Black male with historically uncontrolled hypertension that collapsed while bowling. He was unresponsive before we arrived and no one could give a clear history when we got there. On-board ECG was indicative of pulseless V-Fib. We started CPR, a line was placed, and 300 milligrams of amiodarone administered at 2248. Shock administered en route, no change, CPR resumed. And here we are.”
Dr. Kiramman’s eyes flicker between hers before tracing down her body. It’s not a good expression – all of 516 could attest. “Epinephrine –”
“I was trained on amiodarone.”
“Well obviously it didn’t -”
“Got ROSC,” calls out a nurse from the bed, the rapid but steady pulse a staccatto as the trainee paramedic sits back and takes a steadying breath. A CNA taps his shoulder and helps him off the patient bed, giving him a pat on the back as the patient is moved from the gurney to the hospital bed. Heaving for breath, he meets Vi’s eyes with a nod and shuffles off to the side, sweat dripping into his eyes before he swipes at it with the back of his hand.
Dr. Kiramman’s gaze meet Vi’s, then slinks down her body with barely-disguised disgust, before rolling as she turns to the patient, issuing order after order as she tosses her white coat onto a nearby hook. Moving to the mobile record station, deft fingers fly across the plastic-covered keyboard to submit formal orders as the charge nurse cuts her eyes at her. There’s a silence in the room as everyone catches their breath and annotates administration times, Vi’s team lingering at the corners as the hospital’s team finalizes stabilizing care and equipment. Once the patient has been fully turned over and disconnected from the EMS systems, the EMT and medic trainee swoop in to slide the massive gurney from the treatment room.
Vi pats them on the back as they pass her, a jerking nod dismissing them as she takes the patient notes from the EMT. Staring at the back of Dr. Kiramman’s dark blue-scrubs, where bony shoulder blades roll and twist as her weight settles on one leg, Vi allows her eyes to trail down the doctor’s body.
Four years, she laments, a chiseled curl to her lips. Four years I’ve put up with you and your bullshit.
“I’ll pass our notes on to the nurse station for upload,” the paramedic grunts with a sniffle and a roll of her shoulder.
“No need,” Dr. Kiramman mutters, pausing her rapid typing to reach behind her, furrowed gaze coming to Vi and sapphire eyes bright under the flourescent lights. “I’ll take them.”
Vi unclips the carbon papers and tears the copies from the originals, stacking them and offering them to the taller woman. The doctor takes them with a softness unexpected of her, eyes falling as she gives her a jerking nod.
“Thank you, Ms. McMichaels,” Dr. Kiramman mutters, turning back to the computer. Vi nods once and turns to leave, only stopping at a soft addendum from the suddenly timid doctor. “You can tell your team they did a good job.”
There’s a silence after the doctor speaks, her spine straightening and her head cocking to the side as the nurses look between them before returning to the patient.
Vi nods, though Kiramman can’t see it, settling her hands on her hips. She taps the automatic doors with her foot, causing them to open and flooding the room with the reverberating conversation of the ER. “Family’s in the waiting room.”
Heavy bootsteps lead her out of the treatment room and out into the bay, jaw clenching and eyes pointed somewhat downward.
“Thanks,” Dr. Kiramman mutters, barely audible even to the nurses beside her.
Of all the teams at 516, hers is the only to have ever nearly impressed the infallible Dr. Kiramman and Vi won’t deny the flood of cotton-like pride that fills her chest as she follows her team’s trail back to the ambulance.
The newest EMT takes over cleaning and resetting the ambulance as the driver moves them further along the bay, leaving the main space for other drop-offs. Vi, appreciating the cool air of the summer night, stands outside with her trainee, walking them through compiling the report as they continue to wipe at their brow and neck. Check-ins, she decides, will come when they’re out of view of the main lobby, when they don’t have to pretend to be the gruff, unfeeling Zaunite medics that the precious Piltover staff believe them to be. Until then, however, there was no choice.
“Drink some water, stifle the tears, and finish the report,” she tells her team whenever they have a particularly rough pick-up. “Cry in the cabin if you have to.”
It’s not her fault no one’s ever taken her up on the offer.
A scruffy head of hair pops out of the back as the medic trainee finalizes their report and hands it to Vi for review, gaze bored as it comes to the leads. “I’ve got it clean and ready to go.”
Without turning around, Vi scrolls through the typed reports, reviewing medication dosages and administration times, and calls out, “Trash and all?”
“Yeah,” the EMT drudges with a sigh.
“Didn’t see you throw it in the ER dumpster,” she muses, nodding at the report before signing for it as a supervisor and handing it back to the training. To the side, she commends her trainee and offers her signature on his PQS after they get back to the station.
“Well, I mean,” the kid in the rig stutters, face pinking. “It’s packed up and ready, I just need to toss it.”
“So toss it.” They duck back inside and emerge a moment later, face completely red and a fat bag of trash hanging over their shoulder as they trudge back around the main ER, soft mutterings hisses from their pouting lips. To her trainee, Vi orders him to, “Check his work. He has a habit of cutting corners.”
The trainee nods and bounds back into the ambulance. When the EMT returns, they onload the gurney, wipe it clean and reset it with fresh linens. Another call comes in as the trainee looks through the cabinets and lockers, Dispatch rumbling off a bulleted report of an altercation at Progress Park that resulted in a physical assualt.
They’re not nearly ready enough to take another call, so it gets snatched up by Rig 978. A shame, Vi laments, they could’ve used an easy call.
The trainee corrects the EMT’s organization of the ambulance - “disorderly, like you just shoved it wherever you wanted” - and instructs them to redo it as Vi steps out from under the ambulance bay’s stone canopy. Pale eyes look upwards to a dark sky spotted with the occassional cloud, their borders rimmed with the lumity of a full moon.
Another call comes over the radio - public drunkeness with PD requesting medical support - and a sigh falls from her aching chest.
It’ll be a long, long night.
#
They’re on their twelfth call for the night, transporting some dumb bastard to Hex Gen for a feral dog bite on his forearm, when pale sunlight begins to peak from behind the horizon. Vi’s irrigating the wound best she can with a jerryrigged squirt bottle (she stabbed a whole in the sterile water bottle with a twenty-gauge needle) and praying that most of the bloody run-off trickles into the yellow basin below the wound as the ambulance rumbles through the city streets. The man’s arm is mangled and discolored, and his capillary refill is pretty shit, so a C-A-T was applied before irrigation, and a thick pill of doxycycline was practically shoved down his throat in an attempt to shut him up.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
She’s lucky a mask covers the exhausted grimace twisting her scarred lips, else the rambling mouth of the patient might speak on that, too.
“I thought it was friendly, I really did,” the twenty-three year old man mutters on, one hand wrapped in his mussed hair before an EMT pulls his arm back down to take another set of vitals. “I didn’t know it was bound to try and rip my shit off.”
Vi refrains from commenting on the fact that he shouldn’t be approaching random animals in city streets anyway, angling the bottle to squirt lukewarm sterile water underneath a partially avulsed flap of skin. The patient snatches his arm away with a hiss and barely-restrained curse in Vi’s diretion, effectively splashing bloody water all over himself, Vi, her trainee, the EMT, and her precious rig.
“Damn, dude, can’t you fucking numb me or something?” he snaps, holding his arm to his chest as the appendage begins to tremble. “That fucking hurt.”
Vi shakes her head and flicks her fingers at him in a wordless request for they wounded arm back. From the corner of her eye, her trainee wipes a gloved hand on his uniform, lips twisted slightly downward behind the clear faceshield.
“Not allowed to give any pain meds in the rig, I’m afraid,” she grunts as the patient finally relents his arm back to her, whatever muscles that weren’t eviscerated by a canine twitching as the she continues irrigating. “Less incentive to get held up for Fen or some shit.”
The trainee readies a patch of hemostatic gauze before Vi can stop him, and she’s quick to shake her head at him. “No need for that. Gauze is fine. We’ll tape to secure so they can cut it easier.”
His cheeks alight at the correction, and he’s quick to put the hemostatic to the side, shuffling through drawers until he finds a roll. Breaking it open, he offers it to Vi, free hand waiting to recieve the dirty basin and empty bottle. The exchange is quick as Vi sets the thin guaze directly on the wound and begins to wind it tight about the man’s arm, securing it with two strips of medical tape before laying back to the side.
Annoyingly, the man keeps fucking talking.
“What’s that that he put away? Why’s this gauze any better? Is it clean? Am I gonna go septic? I have a final in two days, I can’t go septic. Well, maybe I could, it’d be kinda nice since I didn’t study as much as I could have -”
Vi’s never been particularly patient with her patients, especially not when they’re like this, but something about the amount of calls and the fact that it’s the end of their shift and they should be back at the station working on turnover by now instead of patching up some collegiate idiot divides her empathy into miniscule fractions.
“You’re more likely to contract infection from your fight with Fido than anything we do to you here,” Vi grumbles, standing from her seat beside the patient and returning to the front. The trainee’s got it from here, she figures. He’s kind of a chatterbox, too, and she needs to update the hospital. The fact that she takes a moment to breath and relax herself before ever touching the radio is beside the point.
She’s halfway through her report when three shrill beeps scream from the receiver interrupt her, cutting off her report and bringing a sharp curl to her upper lip. Removing her thumb from the call button, she waits for the voice of whoever found it important to interrupt her and can’t say she’s necessarily surprised at the lulling accent and sharpened tone. A fire lights in her spine and she slaps a hand to her forehead because of course it would be her.
“Have you already administered antibiotics?” Dr. Kiramman snaps over the radio, causing the driver to take a steadying breath as they roll their eyes and shake their head. Vi slams the partition between the front and back closed a bit harsher than necessary, cheeks reddening.
“Of course I haven’t, princess. But I did spit and rub dirt it in to irrigate. Good fucking god,” Vi hisses into the radio, her finger pointedly away from the call button. The driver snickers and takes a turn onto the main road towards the hospital as she presses onto the receiver, trying to keep the frown on her face from affecting a tone that should be professional. “Initial round of doxycycline 100mg started PO at around…” Vi pauses, looking at the carbon paper her notes are written on it with brows tightly knit together. “0647. Wound irrigated with sterile water and patched with rolled gauze. Cap refill running six seconds, a tourniquet placed to manage blood loss at 0639.”
“Why doxy?” the doctor huffs over the radio immediately. “Augmentin -”
Vi presses the call button three times in quick succession, overriding Dr. Kirammans pharmacology lesson. “Patient’s allergic. Started PO because he’s upright and breathing.”
“Excuse me?” Kiramman drawls, the honest confusion coming through a the static of the radio a little too clearly.
Vi and her driver catch each other’s gaze for a moment, sharing a light chuckle as they turn back towards the front. “AOx3, clear and stable airways. Talking. A little too much, if we’re being honest.”
“Well,” Dr. Kiramman huffs over the radio and, after a period of silence, the familiar voice of the nurse returns.
“Sorry about that. Keep going,” the nurse who originally took her report sighs.
When they arrive at the hospital, the patient is still upright, still breathing, still fucking talking at 0655 in the morning, and Vi follows the team in as they lead the gurney to a minor treatment room. She left the driver and a free EMT to clean the mess up in the ambulance and cavi-wipe every surface they can reach, taking the moment to stretch her back out in an attempt to stay awake. Instead of following her team to the back, though, Vi hangs on the offside of the nurse’s station, allowing her trainee to take lead. Ekko is absent, but there’s a few nurses she recognizes enough to strike up a short conversation with while she waits.
One, donned in pale pink scrubs fitted to her defined curves and blonde hair wrapped in a loose bun, takes a special interest in Vi and rolls her chair over to lean on the desk in front of her spot on the counter. Vi looks over the bustling ER, the department no less busy than it’s been all night, with nurses and their assistants speed walking from one room to the next, documentation carts rattling and the low hum of a thousand different conversations reverberating about the floor.
“So,” the nurse drawls, well-manicured hand wrapped about a spotless, peach-colored Stanley cup. “McMichaels, right? Busy night? I’ve seen more of you than I usually do.”
Vi nods, the corner of her lip gently raised as her gaze runs over the woman once. She’s… alright; would be good enough if Vi wasn’t dead fucking tired and covered in too many unnamed substances. If they’d met at a bar, Vi would try for her. Here, though, at work?
She’s barely got enough energy in her to flirt.
“Yeah, it’s busy alright,” Vi grumbles, a muscle between her shoulder blades tightening so hard her elbows begin to ache. The department is cold this morning, making the deep, pulsating ache nearly unbearable as she takes a steadying breath. Her gaze travels about the emergency room, looking for something particular but unnameable, and though she can’t place her finger on the pull in her chest, she knows for a fact that the nurse speaking to her is not the cause of it.
“It’s been a long night for us, too,” the nurse continues, arching her head to the side side as she takes a breath, tone a bit too sweet for Vi’s limited amount of patience. “But do you have plans after your shift? I know this great brunch place...”
Vi knows all the brunch places in Progress County like the laces of her boots. Openings, closings, menus, which ones have bottomless mimosas and discounts for first responders, whatever you can name. If it were the guys from the station or Ekko or Jinx, she would be inclined to accept the offer, but, looking down at the nurse before her, she finds the invitation… lacking.
“I have to head home after shift,” Vi smiles, eyes soft for exhaustion alone. “I’ve got work tonight and need all the sleep I can get.”
“Ah,” the nurse sighs, turning her legs towards the charge nurse on the other end of the desk as a pitiful, unrestrained pout forces her bottom lip out. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“It’s been nice talking to you, though,” the paramedic offers, if only to maintain the fragile network she’s cultivated over the years she’s worked with Hex Gen. She offers a genuine smile as she pushes off the counter, knees popping as she moves to the furthest treatment room to join her team. She’d rather a familiar annoyance than a flirtatious one. Besides, the sooner they complete the passdown to the Doc, the sooner her team can leave, and the sooner they can turnover at the station and go home.
Vi comes to the fabric partition of the treatment space and pulls it an inch to the side, watching as the nurse turns over with her trainee and the EMT.
A familiar heat comes to her left side as a clipboard is passed from the trainee to the nurse, a patient smile on their face.
“Your initial treatment plan was sound, I suppose.”
The voice is familar and still grating, the heat of their body so close to Vi’s that it’s both nauseating and unsettlingly alluring.
“Odd, isn’t it? How I know what I’m doing,” Vi snarks back, her spine tightening as her steel-toe boot begins to tap on the linoleum beneath them.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” scoffs the woman beside her, arms brushing against Vi’s as they come up to cross over her chest. The motion draws the paramedic’s gaze from where their patient is blabbering to the nurse to the woman beside her, who watches the patient transfer with an unperturbed pout of her lips.
Hair tied back in tight but messy ponytail to keep the brunt of her dark locks from her face, Dr. Kiramman has a permanent frown curling her lips downwards and a chiseled furrow between two pristine brows. Her sharp jaw constantly clenches no matter what she’s looking at - Vi caught her glaring at a news segment on puppies once, she swears - and her twitching gaze never rests on one thing for too long. Right foot always tapping and long fingers ceaseless in their twitching and fidgeting, the doctor is seemingly always pissed about something.
Vi’s sure that it just so happens that paramedics and EMS seem to wear the yoke of her annoyance more often than not. There’s no possible way that it’s the doctor’s own personal vendetta. Just coincidence.
Bright, sapphire-colored eyes meet hers from the corner of Dr. Kiramman’s gaze, the tiniest, most miniscule twitch of her lips preluding her next words. “I’d just say you’ve got decent enough luck to get easy cases.”
Vi can’t help the humorless laugh that rips through her throat at the woman’s husked words, her eyes rolling so far back in her head that it makes her head ache as her crossed arms twitch with something fierce and burning in her veins. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, doctor. I’d like to see you -”
“Forgive me, Ms. McMichaels,” Dr. Kiramman interrupts with a tilted head and cocked eyebrow, tone dripping with something that makes Vi’s bones itch. “But I’m afraid I must go do my job. Justine, could you call the radiologist and make sure he’s awake? I’d like imaging on the bite just in case. Also -”
Dr. Kiramman brushes past her without sparing anymore attention to the slack-jawed paramedic, her arms still crossed even as she stands before a well-meaning nurse who annotes the verbal task list as the doctor slinks around to place the actual orders. The paramedic trainee and EMT nod as they’re dismissed, exiting the treatment room with gazes drawn pointedly downwards as Vi scowls after the doctor.
Luck, Vi spits to herself as she turns on her heel and exits the ER. I wish it were.
#
The shift was shit.
Cailyn was set to work from six to six like every other shift worker but, like the charge nurse of her shift, she finds herself sat at a temporary work station finishing notes, sigining off on orders that should’ve been done hours ago, and revising treatment plans after discussing cases with other doctors long after she’s supposed to clock out. Her supervising resident, a fourth year with too much time and anger on his hands, snapped at her three times in a single hour about her assessments and treament plans - all in front of patients - she has three missed calls from her mother, and her coffee is cold again.
Blue eyes drag to the clock on a far wall. 0842.
Caitlyn sighs and considers the duty room beds, with their vinyl surfaces, thin polyester sheets, and flimsy pillows. She brought a change of clothes and a shower bag; it wouldn’t be remiss if she just signed off this last note and crashed there for the next few hours or so. It wouldn’t be the best sleep, but it’d be something and she -
“Want to hit the Drop tonight?” speaks a measured voice from the doorway to her left. Thin arms crossed over her chest and thin shoulder leaning on the metal threshold of the office door, Mel Medarda regards Caitlyn with a gentle upwards tick to her painted lips. A highly regarded plastic surgeon at Hex General, Dr. Medarda has been with the hospital since her residency, and over the span of a decade, she built the craniofacial department into something all other Kiramman Corps-owned hopsitals apire to be. Determined, infallable, and a genius with a scalpel and needle, the woman was a god in her own right. She’d initially fought for Caitlyn to transfer to her specialty - with a beauty unmatched and a brain to match, the woman would excel in the field much like she did.
You could run the burn unit, Medarda argued nearly a year ago after Catilyn used her desire to help people, to save, as an excuse to avoid the green-scrub-wearing department. Your mother would absolutely adore it.
At the time, Mel hadn’t known exactly how wrong that was to say. Nowadays, she knows better.
“No,” Caitlyn huffs out a laugh, her shoulders falling as she turns back to the electronic health record before her. The dog-bite boy, the one that dreadfully over-confident paramedic treated. “I’ve got shift tonight.”
“You don’t have to drink,” Mel offers in her typical musical tone, a well-polished effort to change the stubborn woman’s mind. “It would just get you out of this drab little office.”
“I need to get some sleep,” she tries again.
“Don’t we all,” the plastic surgeon barks out with a laugh. “Come on. You’re getting wrinkles from working so much.”
It’s a lie, Caitlyn knows it is, but she can’t help the way her gaze falls to the dark circles beneath her eyes in the reflection of her thermos. The person that looks back at her is a stranger, the light long gone from her eyes as a scruff of fly-aways frames sallow skin. Thin-framed bluelight-blocking glasses are perched haphazardly on the bridge of her slightly crooked nose, and she’s never looked more like her mother than she does now.
Good god, she gasps to herself, aghast. When did that happen?
“That’s the bar down by Sixth Street?” Caitlyn asks Mel, spinning in her chair to face the older woman once more. Her left hand, just barely laid upon the keyboard before her, taps the ‘f’ key, the calloused pad of her finger thrumming against the worn indent of the plastic as her gaze falls to the spottled desk before her. “The one with the nacho cheese fries good as sex?”
“The very same,” Mel grins, straightening up a bit at her victory of convincing the unconvincible.
Extra calories will be worked off during the next shift, the resident figures, her fingers stilling on the primary keys as her eyes meet those of the elder surgeon’s.
Caitlyn pulls her access card from the computer, Dog-Bite Boy’s record fading into darkness as she sighs.
“I suppose I could make an appearance.”
#
On Sixth Street, situated between a run-down local mechanic and a laundromat better suited as a front than anything else, The Last Drop is a known watering hole for anyone that frequents the hospital for work or chronic care. Though small in total square footage, the owner is good friends with both owners of the neighboring businesses, which allows the minimal sidewalk space of all three properties to be used for all the bar’s patrons. Going there, one is likely to meet their care managers, physical therapists, nurses, and medics, all in their natural and unprofessional habitat. Varying conversation floats from one graffitied wall to the next, some conferring on troublesome cases, others disagreeing with intentionally vague treatment plans, but most simply venting on the day’s events.
Inside, one is greeted by a foyer just large enough to breathe before stepping up a single step to a bar that extends the entire length of a building deeper than it is wide, with a space just large enough to stand to the left and a singular corner booth to the right. Shouldering oneself towards the back, past the patrons standing at the dark mahogany bar and the porous wall littered with defiled dollar bills stuck with gum and tack, leads them to a horseshoe-shaped booth with tattered vinyl and a single circular table on the right. To the left, a spiral staircase leads to an upper level used only for the singular bathroom present and a dartboard so well-played that it’s more useful as decoration than an actual playboard. Chronically smelling of cigarette smoke, whiskey, and the nearby channel, The Last Drop is a place of dear comfort for medical personnel no matter their proficiency or education.
Caitlyn could spend forever in the horseshoe booth in the back, if only to play cards and relax. Today, however, any sort of peace escapes her, even as chalked-out windows keep the bright streetlights at bay. Mel, Jayce, and Viktor speak to one another freely, each sipping on the liquor of their choice as their shoulders relax and their smiles become looser. They speak on their current cases with vague mentions and run-around details, all enough to connect clinical dots but never enough to specifiy a certain patient from another.
As is proper, Caitlyn reminds herself, an invisible white coat heavy on her shoulders.
“You should’ve seen this kid’s face,” Jayce cackles, a jack and coke teasing the rim of a tall glass as he gesticulates with his massive hands, his body reminescing on today’s most interesting case. “I thought he was going to drop when I started drilling into the socket.”
Interns never did well in their orthopedic surgery rotation.
Caitlyn sure didn’t.
Grandma gets a new hip. Papa gets a new knee. A broken femur is reset. Yet no one truly takes the time to learn exactly how it’s done. How the structures are repaired. How vicious a surgeon’s hand has to be when faced with solid osseous.
And the smell. God, the smell.
“One of the nurses had to hand him a Vicks and send him to the corner.”
They share a quick laugh as Caitlyn shuffles the set of drink-stained bar-cards in her hands.
“You can say the femur is hard as concrete as much as you want,” the orthopedic surgeon continues after a sip of his drink, gaze falling to Caitlyn’s hands as she steeples the cards and flutters them into a shuffle. “But they never realize exactly what that means until you bring out the saw.”
“Even so, the people they’re allowing to graduate nowadays are so,” Mel hums as she stirs her drink, mouth pursing as she finds the right word. “Disappointing. I don’t remember being so air-headed during my internships.”
“Education as a whole has taken a deep dive in standards,” Viktor sighs from Caitlyn’s left, nursing his gin and tonic. “It’s no surprise that we should see a similar result in our recent medical graduates.”
“Oh, but they do adore telling everyone with ears about their doctorates,” Jayce grumbles. Then, gesturing towards Caitlyn with his drink, he grins. “Are you gonna actually deal out or are you content with shuffling all night?”
Caitlyn straightens and cuts the deck, arching her brow at the slightly older man. “What are we playing?”
“Spades,” Jayce says at the same time Viktor suggests, “Rummy”, and Mel offers, “Poker”. They share a fleeting, teasing glances before chuckling at one another.
“Hold ‘em is fine,” the orthopedic surgeon relents with a sip of his drink. “Princess here has to leave soon anyway. I mean, you have shift tonight, right?”
Caitlyn hums in affirmation, cutting the deck once more before shuffling it together and dealing out pairs of cards for everyone. “Unfortunately.”
“The ED works their residents like draught animals,” Mel laments with an empathetic sigh as Caitlyn lays three cards facedown in the middle of the table. “Plastic surgery would never treat you so terribly.”
The words are said with a raised brow and the gentle upwards lilt of her lips, manicured fingers thrumming against the edge of her cards. It’s a joke, Caitlyn’s exhausted mind registers after a moment, though thinly veiling a true offer. Smiling in kind, Caitlyn takes a sip of her water before shaking her head.
“As honorable as botox and breast implants are,” she snorts, spinning her cards in place on the sticky table. “I find my empathy better wasted on car crashes and overdoses.”
“Ever the saving grace of the masses,” Viktor snickers. “Is the pay truly worth the burnout, though?”
“Are any of our pays worth what we do?” Jayce laughs in kind, flipping the three cards before them over. Three aces of each suit besides spades greet them at the action. “You sure you shuffled this deck, Cait? Because that’s -”
“A hell of an odd,” Viktor finishes for him, brow arched.
“I’ve been doing nothing but shuffling. It’s not my fault the bar’s deck is loaded,” she snips back, leaning back and taking a look at her own cards as everyone else does the same.
A ruckus erupts at the bar’s entrance, the resounding cacophony reverberating throughout the small bar as slurred greetings are shouted back and forth. Attention fading towards the sliver of bar visible from her place in the booth, Caitlyn watches as the bartender raises her hand in a wide wave to the newcomer, blue braids swinging with a sharp turn as a slanted grin stretches across her face.
“‘Bout time, slacker!” she shouts as Caitlyn lays another card beside the trio of aces. A jack of spades. “You’re late for your shift.”
“Not my fault people keep tryna die,” a familiar voice volleys back, though exhaustion and an unfamiliar accent lace the bright tone and soften the edges of their syllables into something new, intriguing.
“Well tell them to stop, we have a business to run,” the bartender snips back, a wild smile on her face as she turns back to the shaker before her. “Wash your grubby hands and check on the horseshoe, I haven’t been able to cut back there.”
“If they really need something, they can come up and ask like everybody else.” From behind the graffitied wall, a familiar scrap of poorly cut pink hair erupts, bangs pushed back with an errant hand as a loose smile tightens about the edges. A well-cared for black leather jacket sits on broad shoulders typically bearing a dark polo, and a surprisingly crisp white t-shirt tucks into tattered black skinny jeans as heavy bootsteps clunk along the hardwood floor. Fate alone keeps their gazes apart as she moves behind the bar, tossing her jacket on a hook as she passes it, an unfamiliar easy expression on her scarred face.
She washes her hands as instructed, the t-shirt straining against winding muscles dark with what must be a massive tattoo on the full expanse of her back.
Perfectly sober, it’s truly a shock when a breath escapes her aching lungs and her heart pounds only once, but viciously against her ribcage at the sight before her. Idle thoughts ponder why thick musculature and overt egos are suddenly attractive as long fingers curl about a lukewarm glass of water.
A waving hand in front of her draws Caitlyn’s attention from the paramedic back to her friends.
“You alright over there, Cait?” Jayce snickers at her as he leans back into his chair, Mel grinning in kind. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Another drawback of working the ER, you tend to get haunted by your patients.” Mel feigns a shiver before returning her slanted gaze to Caitlyn, lips spreading into a wider grin. “But I think I know that look.”
Before Caitlyn can stop her, Mel turns in her chair, looking towards the bar as if any one of the gaggle of patrons there holds the answer she’s searching for. “Let’s see, who is it?”
“It’s no one,” Caitlyn rushes, averting her gaze to the table. “Let’s just play.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do, but now even I’m curious.” Jayce turns in kind, smile wide as Viktor leans to peer over his broad shoulders, all three now scouring the small section of visible bar to see what stole Caitlyn’s attention so succinctly.
“There’s nothing there, so can we just -”
Customers part like some cruel biblical reenaction, and Vi’s distinct visage comes into plain view, shoulders rippling and muscles of her chest fighting against the fabric of her shirt as she ties a black apron behind her hips. The black polo with a Asclepius Staff logo and the baggy cargo pants comprising her typical uniform do the woman absolutely no justice, and Caitlyn scorns this particular train of thought as she puts her elbow on the sticky table and shoves her face into her hand.
Stupid. This is so stupid.
“Who is that?” Viktor muses, and they don’t need to ask who he’s referring to.
“Oh, it can’t be,” Mel husks.
“Isn’t that your little paramedic friend?” Jayce asks, turning back to Caitlyn with a raised brow and uneven smirk, one arm resting on the back of his chair while the other lays over his unseen pair of cards.
“No,” Caitlyn rushes, raising her head. She hesitates, gaze faltering, then shakes her head furiously, waving at the air as if to brush the conversation aside. “Well, yes, she is a paramedic, but we aren’t friends.”
“That’s what makes this particularly interesting,” Viktor has the gall to titter, his lilting accent framing the chuckle in an odd way.
“What’re the odds.” Jayce looks back at the bar, where Vi is grabbing a palm-sized notebook and pen as she talks to the other bartender with a serious expression on her face. It’s so similar to the look she gives Caitlyn when they turnover with one another; it’s just missing the twist of a frown and that wrinkle between her furrowed brows, the singular hand on her hip. It’s missing the viscerality that thrums against Caitlyn’s spine just right.
“Three aces, now this,” Mel laughs, turning back to face her, gaze a bit too giddy for the resident’s liking. “Your luck is truly astounding, little fox.”
There is no reason for this, Caitlyn decides, preparing to make the awkward scoot out of the horseshoe-shaped booth and make a mad dash out of the dive bar. If she really is lucky, Vi won’t see her and they’ll avoid what is most likely going to be a disdainful exchange of words.
Her purse is on her shoulder and Jayce is trying to convince her to finish a hand when a shadow darkens the already poorly-lit table, drawing the gaze of the four patrons.
“Hey, sorry for leavin’ y’all to yourselves. You doing okay or can I get you -” an unfamiliar accent falters on a too familiar voice as Caitlyn’s gaze rises, meeting that of the paramedic she’s been at odds with for almost four years. Vi’s head cocks to the side a fraction, a furrow-less brow tightening slightly as her mouth works around words unsaid. Flickering thoughts pass over storm-grey eyes as they trace down Caitlyn’s body, what’s visible from her failed escape, before she takes a quick breath and turns her attention to the other patrons at the table. “Y’all are from the hospital, right?”
“We are,” Mel confirms, twisting to regard Vi fully, eyes cutting at Caitlyn from the corner of her eye before returning to the paramedic-turned-waitress. “You’re a paramedic, right? You turnover to our hospital all the time. McMichaels, no?”
“Ah, Vi’s fine,” she mutters, hands finding a place on her hips as she settles her weight on a single leg. A polite, if not easy, smile stretches her scarred lips as she nods at Caitlyn’s friends, pointedly avoiding the resident to her left. “But yeah. I do the occasional aerial transports for y’all, too. Not as often as I’d like, but.”
Vi’s words trail off with a haphazard shrug.
“Mel,” the plastic surgeon returns, extending a gentle hand that is quickly taken by a surprisingly soft grip. “I’ve seen you around, but I don’t believe we’ve formally met.”
“A pleasure,” Vi mutters, releasing her hand as she looks to the rest as they introduce themselves.
“And I’m sure Caitlyn needs no introduction,” Jayce, ever the instigator, ever the pain in Caitlyn’s ass, snarks, resting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands together. “You probably work with her enough to be tired of her.”
Grey eyes come to her once more, and cordiality falters on Vi’s lips as she offers a nod. “Didn’t think this kind of place was your style.”
There’s nothing to say, not when she wants to leave, not when her friends have put her in such a predicament. “I -”
“Oh, she loves it here,” Mel interrupts, eyes never leaving Caitlyn’s. The twist of her lips and sharp glint in her eyes can mean nothing but trouble, but before she can formulate some kind of response, Mel continues. “What did you say about the nacho fries? They’re ‘good as sex’, right?”
“Well, no, I mean, yes, I did say that but it was hyperbole, I wouldn’t,” Caitlyn stutters, hands gesticulating awkwardly in the air before her. Eloquency leaves her at the slanted grins of her friends, and she deflates, hands falling to her lap as she settles on shooting her friend a glare.
“Well, I’m glad you like them,” Vi says from her side, switching her weight to the other leg. “Family recipe.”
“Can something so simple really be considered a recipe?” Caitlyn hears herself say, tone twisted into that hissing deflection that it always resorts to when Vi’s attention is on her. It’s not what she meant to say, not even close and from the clicking tongues and shaking heads of her friends, she knows that it’s far from the right thing to say. “I mean, I didn’t mean -”
Why can’t she fucking think right now?
“Hey, you’re the one that likes them,” Vi snorts, rolling her eyes and turning her attention back to the others. “Do y’all need refills or anything? Or you want some food?”
“Oh, I think we’re okay,” Mel sings, looking to the two men who shake their head with pursed lips. “Caitlyn, do you -”
“I have to go to work,” Caitlyn rushes, scooting in short, awkward movements to escape the corner that is suddenly much too stuffy. “Sorry.”
Scrambling in her purse, she pulls out a random collection of bills and tosses them unto the table as she stands, narrowly avoiding colliding with Vi in the claustrophobic space. Nodding, Caitlyn practically sprints from the bar, checking more patrons with her shoulder than she intends to in her hasty departure.
Tumbling onto the sidewalk, the chilly fall air lays gently upon her feverish skin, and breathing is suddenly tenfold easier. The ghost of cigarette smoke passes by her, mixed with the sweet haze of Black ’n’ Milds. Nimble fingers scratch on her palm as she speeds off to the side street where she’s parallel-parked, free hand grappling for her keys.
Collapsing into the driver’s seat, she stabs at the lock and simply sits. Breathes.
In the yellow fog of the streetlights, car still and heart racing, Caitlyn wonders what the absolute fuck is wrong with her.
#
Staring off in the direction Caitlyn sped off in, Vi can’t help the arch in her scarred brow or the tilt to her head. Shaking it off, she offers the table of remaining doctors a nod and the offer to call for her should they need anything. As she turns to return to the bar, she notices the interrupted game of Hold ‘em on the table.
Three aces, she notes idly. Huh.
Back behind the bar, Vi works with Jinx on opening tabs, placing food orders, and mixing drinks. She scorns the occassional patron that requests a blended margarita or an espresso martini (who even orders that shit at a bar like this?) and works around her sister in a well-practiced dance. In between orders and food serving, she makes idle conversation with those at the bar`. As the night stretches on, however, a certain absence suddenly nags at her.
“Hey, J,” she calls over her shoulder as she stretches for a bottle of Patron. “Where’s Vander?”
Jinx shrugs as she throws a flurry of liquors into a shaker. Slamming the lid on it and shaking it with two hands, she turns back to her sister. “He said he had some business to take care of, but didn’t say when he’d be back.”
Vi nods, turning back to the bar and lining up four shot glasses. Haphazard pours fill the glasses one by one, and she throws a few small slices of lime on the small platter before extending it to the small group of college-aged boys in front of her. She adds the shots to their tab and charges extra for the limes - they won’t be sober enough by the end of the night to register the excess - and moves on.
Despite her best efforts, her exhausted mind doesn’t stop conjuring the images of hazy sapphire eyes and flushed cheeks.
A few hours pass before Mylo tumbles into the bar, hair messy and bag slinging from his shoulder.
“You wanna talk about late,” Vi mutters over the din of the bar, tapping Jinx’s side with her elbow and jerking a chin at the lanky boy slipping between patrons until he slides behind the bar. “Prime example here.”
“Listen -” Mylo begins, breathless and tossing his bag into the far corner, barely a foot from the spiral staircase.
“Excuses, excuses,” Jinx groans, flicking excess condensation at him. “Just start taking orders.”
With the boy’s arrival, Vi dismisses herself, shoulders aching and lower back straining against each step. Tossing the apron on a bar hook and grabbing her jacket, she maneuvers herself to the spiral staircase, slow steps leading her up to the second floor. Crossing the empty space, she slams a shoulder into a not-quite-hidden door to shove it open, revealing another, more dilapidated spiral staircase. Mounting it with careful steps brings her to the apartment space she shares with Vander, Jinx, and Ekko.
#
Split between two levels, the primary level is reserved for the three kids, each with their own small room large enough for a full-sized bed, a decent sized drawers, and a desk. Between Vi and Jinx’s room lies the singular bathroom on this floor, consisting of a commode, a single-sink vanity, and a stand-up shower. A long living room with a tattered couch and mismatched loveseat face a relatively new flatscreen leads directly into an open concept kitchen, separated only by a small kitchen island and a few barstools stolen from downstairs. A spiral staircase in the far right corner leads up to Vander’s apartment, where the layout is practically the same, though missing the kitchen space. Salt-stained sliding glass doors at the far end of the apartment open up to a balcony three feet deep and five feet across that faces the Piltover Channel, the arch of the bridge interrupted by the few buildings in this area tall enough to compare to apartments above The Last Drop.
Vi takes off her boots at the entrance, kicking them to the side as she crosses the stained carpet to grab a bottle of beer from the yellowed refrigerator. Opening it using the thick ring about her middle finger and tossing the bottlecap into the recycling, Vi trudges over to the couch and collapses onto it. A clock above the television provides the only noise that disrupts the quiet of the apartment, the steady, repetitive tick-ticking lulling Vi into a slouch as she takes a sip of her beer.
2137, it reads, the second hand steadily chiseling away at the hours. The math is slow in her exhausted mind, and the realization of another night of not nearly enough sleep draws a heavy sigh from her chest. With a groan and crackling joints, Vi stands from the couch and goes to her bedroom to grab a change of clothes.
She finishes her beer in the shower, where the water burns so hot, her skin flares fiery red and pulses by the time she steps out of the small cubicle. A dripping hand wipes at the foggy mirror, and a flash of blue eyes and plush lips greets her before her own reflection.
Ah, she sighs to herself, spinning the empty bottle along the countertop. The good doctor.
Of the four years she’s been back home and splitting shifts between the bar and the station, she’d never seen Caitlyn at the Drop. At least, not that she can recall. Though, if she made herself up like she did tonight every time, Vi doesn’t think she would recognize her. Caitlyn’s hair is longer than Vi thought it’d be, since she only sees it tied up in a painful-looking ponytail, and she never realized just how blue her eyes were, even in the dim lighting of the horseshoe. She did her makeup tonight, too, at least moreso that she ever did while on shift. Her dark eyeliner was sharply done, crisp and perfect, and her lips looked glossy, pink. Beneath scrubs, it was impossible to tell just how perfect the doctor’s curves are, how endowed her chest. Dressed in a sleeveless cream blouse that tucked into tight, dark blue slacks, however, it was quite plain that the annoying dredge of a woman is, Vi begrudgingly admits, attractive.
Shaking her head, Vi brushes her teeth, hoping the bristles will scrub the thoughts of the doctor from her mind as well. If it didn’t, whatever attitude the doctor had during their next shift together most certainly would.
Retiring to her room, Vi collapses into her desk chair with a groaning huff and opens her laptop. There’s not nearly enough time for the amount of homework she has, but there’s not much a choice either.
Her eyes find the small clock at the corner of the computer screen - 2217. A headache presses at her temples and behind her eyes. It would have to do.
#
Shrill ringing from beside her head shocks Vi awake, muscles tensing with a ferocious anxiety as she scrambles from her desk chair to stand. Heart pounding in her chest and flickering gaze snapping from place to place, it takes her a moment to recognize her surroundings. She notes the pale wood of the cheap desk, the large dark spot of drool on a spiral notebook, a laptop long dead, and her desk chair slowly spinning to a stop.
Her room. Four years and it still takes her a moment to recognize her room.
Lungs twitch to take a deep breath, fists unclenching at her sides as she holds for a moment, then exhales, slow. Still raging atop her desk, her phone vibrates in screaming circles until she slaps at it with a calloused hand. Beaten into silence, the screen alights with the time and a few notifications.
She doesn’t have time to keep breathing, and she moves to pack her backpack with the laptop, its charger, and notebooks before throwing it onto her bed. Donning fresh(ish) clothes - some torn up jeans and a band t-shirt she’s had since she was seventeen - she goes to brush her teeth and roughly style her hair, then grabs her bag and leaves, locking the door behind her. Jinx was most definitely still asleep and Ekko was either asleep or already at work, and the quietude of the apartment was tempting beyond reason.
Vi is nothing if not reliable, however, and so she trudges off to the station with an ever-present ache between her shoulders.
A bus ride with two line switches puts Vi two blocks from the station she’s considered a secondary home for the past four years. She’s not late enough to sprint, but a brisk walk doesn’t hurt as the station comes into view through a collection of dilapidated buidlings. The ringing of bells and rumble of engines greet her as a firetruck rips through the fire station a half-block away and across the road, its groaning honk of a horn pounding sharply against Vi’s tired ears as it flies towards the south.
Vi stops to watch it shoot down main, her spine stiff and legs tight. Only when it turns left does she relax enough to turn back and continue her fast pace down the sidewalk.
Split evenly between the Zaun and Piltover county lines, Zaun Medical Response Station #516 is the primary bi-county emergency medical services station for both cities. As such, the building itself is massive, with a total of thirty rigs ready to go at anytime. Though only three stories, a wide paved area surrounds it which houses both the ambulances and a massive helicopter landing pad. Quite literally standing on the line, ZMRS #516 is the only EMS station permitted to transfer and receive patients via helicopter. The only other facilities capable of such a feat are Hex General in Piltover and Lane University Hospital in Zaun.
It’s nice, Vi reasons, being a part of a station that can do nearly everything. It makes her feel like she’s back in the service, like she’s free to do anything she wants, anything she can to save someone.
Though rarely, Station #516 gives Vi the opportunity to fly again.
Strolling through the bay doors after just a moment more of walking, Vi waves a greeting to the team she’s relieving, a slanted smile coming to her exhausted face. Before other EMS personnel, pretending isn’t nearly as necessary. She doesn’t need to stretch her lips too far or hold her shoulders too high. Pretending to be too happy or too sad is a warning sign. Pretending you’re just burnt out isn’t.
So Vi got real good at being burnt out. Somedays, she’s able to convince herself it’s the truth.
Clambering upstairs, bag slapping on her hip, Vi rushes towards the locker room, ducking inside and going to her locker. Unlocked, it takes only a flick of her fingers to swing the metal door open, revealing one uniform that should’ve been washed three days ago and another that’s… practically fresh. If she has to wear a bit more deodorant today, then it is what it is. And while perfumes and colognes aren’t necessarily prohibited, just discouraged in case of allergies, she can always fall back on them. So, after Vi strips and dons the baggy cargo pants and polo that makes her look like a cheap sponge, she sprays cologne in the space before her and walks through. She slides her boots back on and collects her bag before heading back down stairs, running a hand through her hair.
The other EMTs and paramedics greet her upon her return, one of the young ones offering her a thermos of black coffee with a smile before returning to her break room she passes by. An easy stroll in her step, Vi approaches one of the off-going teams, the flat cement of the bays floors and walls allowing her to catch the tail end of their conversation.
“I swear that fuckin’ doc’s a bigger pain in my ass than my boytoy,” says one before he’s cut off by a hissed out, “gross”. “It’s like, if you don’t trust EMS enough to give you a good turnover, then work literally anywhere else in the hospital. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with us, the stuck-up prick of a woman.”
Vi’s steps falter just behind Rig #473, her back coming to the cold metal as she arches an ear towards the conversation just out of sight.
“She’s hot, sure,” says another voice - female, young. “But her looks just don’t make up for the fact she’s a total bitch. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with her that much. And this is the last time I trade hours with Jackson.”
A hot doctor who has a bone to pick with EMS that was on shift last night; it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who the subject of the team’s scorn is. Still, even when agreeing with them, even when her throat tightens with cutting addendums to their gripes, Vi can’t seem to get her feet to move from their place behind the rig.
“Jackson can only handle her because he’s got this kink for dommy mommies,” snickers the first man. The snide comment is followed by a disgusted groan from another counterpart.
“You didn’t just say that out loud with your physical mouth, did you?”
“What?”
“It’s gross,” says a fourth person.
“Not to mention incorrect,” says the second.
“Explain,” orders the first.
The second voice sighs, grunting as if shifting in their seat as Vi takes a careful sip from the steaming coffee in front of her. “You really think someone whose work demands her full attention and absolute, unwavering control for twelve hours nonstop wants to do so in the bedroom too? No, no. She’s a princess, I’d bet fifty dollars on it.”
“Sixty that she can’t turn it off at all,” the fourth voice volleys back. Then, with a dripping sort of venom that makes Vi’s skin crawl, he husks out, “Give me fifteen days, I can prove it.”
Something burns through Vi’s aching joints, setting alight formerly still muscles until they drag her forward from behind the rig and into view of the EMS team. Whatever comment that prepares to come next falls flat at her entrance, their faces dropping at her heavy footfalls and slouching shoulders.
“Oh, Vi, hey,” greets a blonde boy from her right that she recognizes as the initial complaintant. “Didn’t know you were changed already.”
“What’re we talkin’ about?” she grunts in lieu of a proper greeting, her ability to pretend already close to being fried so early in the morning.
“Ah, just this detestible little doctor at the ER last night,” says a woman she recognizes as the owner of the second voice. “Total hottie. So long as she keeps her mouth shut.”
The others laugh as something flicks at the flint housed at the base of Vi’s heart, at the trigger that’s always been sensitive for so many different reasons, but never for a woman she detests so much.
Before she can redirect the flame, it slips from her scarred lips.
“Funny you say that, when you’re only doable when wearing a gag and a bag.” The vile words rush out of Vi with the accompaniment of a curled lips and white knuckles about her borrowed station thermos.
The group fall silent at her scathing, and perhaps unnecessary, insult. Logic is absent when she internally searches for a reason to validate the venomous words, all that resides within her is a writhing ball that itches and burns at the edges of her ribs. When the group of five looks to Vi with gaping mouths and wide and shifting eyes, she has nothing soothing to offer them. Instead, she simply scoffs and trudges away, the muscles connecting her shoulder blades to her spine aching so bad that the pain slithers into her elbows.
Thankfully, the off-going crew is silent until the rest of her team finally arrive. Vi takes a few deep breaths in attempt to soothe the pain between her shoulders as her trainees attempt a turnover with the repugnant team, her eyes cutting whenever they happen to land on the exhausted personnel. Both the blonde man and the lewd woman from before are blessedly silent as call information and supply stocks are passed, and they’re nearly able to say goodbye at the end of their turnover before a call comes over the radio.
“EMS requested to scene, 11th and Harold. Possible substance use.”
“To the sick and the dead,” one of Vi’s EMTs calls out in lieu of a goodbye, the trainee paramedic hopping in the back with them as the driver slides into the front and calls their intention to report.
When Vi climbs into the passenger seat, she just barely catches the passing response, “And to keeping them from either” when she slams the door shut.
#
The rig shakes as it tumbles to 11th and Harold, a street that probably shouldn’t exist even on its best days. Vi grapples onto the oh-shit handle as the driver weaves through relenting traffic as safely they can, Dispatch crackling through the on-board radio as they overtake a shitty little Prius.
“Twenty-six year old male, displaying aggressive behavior. Police haven’t been able to approach out of caution. No evidence of weaponry, but suspect hasn’t been apprehended or Terry’d.”
“Fuck me,” her driver spits, one hand on their forehead as they drive to the scene. “So they just expected us to walk up and calm a tweaker that’s possibly packing.”
Vi, jaw tight and hands aching, turns halfway in her seat to address everyone in the rig. “Listen and don’t argue. I’ll go for initial assessment.
“You,” she says, turning the driver. “Keep it in drive and ready to go. Smith,” she says, turning towards the two EMTs. “Off-load the gurney with Richard but stay out of sight until I call for you. When they’re like this, they tend to associate the gurney with restraints. I don’t want to resort to that unless we have to.”
Then, twisting until it’s uncomfortable, she finally looks her paramedic-in-training in the eye. She never bothered learned his name, didn’t think it was worth it before now, until she finds her eyes reading his nametape before issuing orders. “Houghton, I want you on radio with dispatch and Hex Gen. Keep them and the uniforms on-scene updated on what’s going on.”
“I can’t -”
“You can,” she insists, spittle flying from her mouth as she turns back to the front. “Y’all know these counties, so y’all know this won’t be pretty. So, I want each of you to prepare yourselves. And I swear to every god and every holy thing in this world, if you don’t do exactly what I say when I say it, I will kill you myself.”
The ambulance eases to a stop at the police department’s black-and-yellow line, all but one door flinging open though only one person approaches the beat cops who secure the scene, a single bag on their shoulder.
When the gangly rookie sees Vi, he scoffs, one hand on his holster, the other scratching at the three chin hairs he calls a beard. “And what the hell do you think you’ll be able to do?”
“Talk,” she snaps, barely offering him a passing glance as she bows beneath the police tape, her hip aching. “I only want to talk to him.”
“Good luck, rat,” the beat cop spits, turning his gaze from the paramedic with a venomous smils on his lips. “Though I still say trapping two is better than one.”
She ignores him and makes her way towards the alley none dare approach, the vinyl strap tight in her hand. Though small, it’s enough to treat a single druggie; a B/P cuff, an oximeter, enough Narcan to bring a thousand men back from the dead, and a CPR life-key all ready to go at a moment’s notice. Acute trauma equipment rests in vinyl pockets at the ready just in case, but Vi knows it’ll never get quite that far.
Beyond the tape, Rig #322’s gurney rattles as it’s extracted from the back as Vi rounds the corner to find a singular man with his torso curled up on a brick wall. His legs shoot out in unintended angles before curling back into his body, back and forth and side to side, in and out, all the while muttering words Vi doesn’t comprehend.
“Sir?” she tries, one hand on corner of the brick beside her.
Wide eyes meet hers, though a fierce nystagmus prevents a solid focus between the two as Vi stands straight, allowing her full uniform to be highlighted in the pale light.
The patient shouts out something indecipherable, something akin to both a shout and a cry, as Vi meets her full height, and the animalistic whine causes the paramedic to retreat into herself.
“No, no,” she hurries, extending both hands palm forward as she curls back into her own torso, nearly at a full crouch as she hushes at the patient. “It’s okay. I promise, everything’s okay. I know it hurts and I know nothing feels right.”
Vi’s on her knees, crawling, inching, towards the man who shies from her even still, eyes wide and smile gentle.
“It’s so much, isn’t it?” she whispers, knees grating upon broken glass and shuffling nearby trash. The man before her, though, he stops shuffling away from her. Though still curled up, one of the patient’s hands falls from his face to the ground, grip loose, shifting eyes shooting from Vi to the wall, to something still further off.
Jerking movements akin to a nod encourage Vi to shift a bit closer, broad side still protected by a square dumpster.
“Ain’t it too much?” Vi’s accent is slipping through the professional mask she insists upon as she creeps closer to the twtiching patient. “But I can help you, sir.”
“I ain’t a sir,” the patient spits, one hand limp while the other cups his own face. He turns away from Vi even as his hand drags upon shattered bottles and garbage. “I’m just a man.”
“A man with a name, though. What is it?” Vi attempts, inching closer.
“What’s in a name?” the man giggles, turning further away as his hands drags behind him. “Garbage is trash and trash is the same, no matter if you call it gold or silver or shit.”
It’s a poem, perhaps, and Vi wouldn’t entertain it if this was a bar and not an alley, if the man before her was drunk and not high on whatever he was high on.
“What is man, then? A bipedal creature wihout feathers?” Vi offers, scrambling five inches forward. Five feet more, and she could actually treat.
Her patient cackles at her inference, limp arm twitching a fraction as his head connects with the brick wall behind him a bit too sharply. “Am I chicken? Do you think I’m a chicken?”
Vi shuffles forward a bit too much, her foot connecting with a bottle that rattles across the alleyway. The sharp noise sends the patient to his feet within a second, his shoulders a bit too broad, his face a bit too stern as he looks down at Vi.
“Do you think I’m a coward?”
“No, no I don’t,” Vi rushes, positioning her feet beneath her just in case. “I don’t think you’re a coward at all. I actually think very highly of you.”
“You’re a fucking liar,” he spits, lunging at Vi. When he doesn’t receive the reaction he wants, his shoulders slacken a fraction and he leans back on his heels. “No one thinks highly of a tweaker like me. I’m here with the trash like all them upstairs think I belong with. I’m nothing to think highly of, Miss.”
“Hey now,” Vi tries, turning her side to the man as she slowly brings herself past the dumpster. What’s left, three, four feet? She can make enough idle conversation to get her across thirty-six inches, surely. “I ain’t a miss as much as you ain’t a sir.”
“A miss with a name, nonetheless,” the man cackles, back slamming against the brick wall as he sinks back down to the ground. “You’ve got a weird way of handling people, you know.”
Past his slurred syllables and his jerking movements, Vi scootches forward, her leading shoulder just passing the lump of garbage just beside the dumpster. Two feet. If the patient wasn't so unpredictable, she'd close the distance. Given his state, though, so she simply folds her legs beneath her until she sits before him cross-legged, one hand on the treatment bag and the other on her thigh as broken glass digs into her ass.
“I’m not handling you,” she smiles, the scarred side of her lip faltering in the stretch. “I was just chatting.”
“Duggin,” the man coughs out without prelude. “My name is Duggin.”
“That the name your parents gave you or the one you chose yourself?” Vi asks as honestly as she can. It’s no matter if a snort escapes her the moment a cackle shoots from her patient.
“It’s my name,” Duggin sobers, a lopsided smile still on his face as he stands.
Posture slack and smile loose, Vi doesn’t see the harm in standing alongside him. After all, they’ve got a rapport now. She knows his name, he just needs to know hers.
Slowly finding her footing beneath her, Vi stands, wiping at her knees before coming to full height. When she offers a slanted grin to Duggin, however, she finds the smile replaced by with flared nostrils and a toothy grimace. “Duggin, what’s wro-”
“You’re a fucking pig,” he spits, right before his fist connects with her temple.