Work Text:
Emma curses the foolishness that had made her want to switch providers. She’d bought into the idea that it would help with her credit score. But her mom was right. She should’ve stayed on the family plan.
The waterpark dad’s IG page keeps buffering like crazy.
“Come on, come on, come oooon…” she mutters, holding her phone up as if she were trying to toss it into the sun.
She has run up and down the perimeter several times trying to find good signal. Her nurse scrubs have grown itchy with sweat. She is just about ready to dash inside again and ask for someone else’s phone – when she spots the older doctor in the dark blue scrubs with the slicked back hair and large hooked nose. Cigarette in his mouth, looking down at his phone.
Emma is torn between her natural shyness and the recent desire to speak up and take charge. Be more proactive. Her mother thinks she’s ridiculous when she talks like that.
Emma inhales. She won’t allow herself to chicken out.
“Excuse me. Sorry. Can I – can I borrow – I really need to use your phone. It’s an emergency.”
The older doctor looks up sharply.
It might just be the way his eyebrows are shaped, but his eyes are kind of terrifying, the way he’s glaring up at her.
Emma can immediately sense this guy is going to chew her head off.
So she begins to speak fast.
She starts to describe the waterslide incident, even though he probably saw the news on the phone or knows about it just by virtue of working here.
She uses both hands, gesticulating wildly to convey the serious nature of the patients’ injuries. Then she balls her hands together quite unconsciously, as if she were about to beg and plead, and tells him she needs to “stalk” the patient’s IG so that she can find a good photo of his kid to send to the police because one of the casualties is said to be a young child and God forbid that the child in question is the patient’s kid –
“All right. Jesus,” he cuts her off, brows furrowed. Eyes flashing steel. “Just shut up and take it.”
He hands her the phone with an aggrieved look.
Emma exhales. “Thank you so much. Um.” She pauses. “Can I go on your IG page? I’m sorry for prying, but I can’t look at all of his photos unless I’m logged into an account –”
“I don’t have Instagram,” he says flatly.
“Oh, that’s – not a problem. Could I log into my Instagram account from your phone? I promise I will log out when I’m done, of course –”
“Fuck, kid. Just do what you need to do already. I’ve got five minutes left,” he says in a clipped voice.
Emma nods hastily.
“I’m just going to download the app on your phone, if that’s okay. It just works faster. You can look over my shoulder to see what I’m doing,” she mumbles, fingers flying over the keys, hoping she still remembers her Insta password.
“No, thanks,” he drawls, exhaling smoke, watching her handle his phone.
After a minute, he does get up. He throws away the cigarette.
“Well?”
Emma’s shoulders flinch slightly. “Um, I think I got it – this is a good pic of his son, right?”
She shoves the screen towards him, expecting him to actually look. He scowls, but he takes a step towards her. All he can see is a picture of a grinning kid missing a few teeth. And a dark, slightly damp curl, falling against her cheek.
“How the hell should I know.” He pulls back. “Seems fine.”
“I – Could I keep using your phone so I can send it to the police –”
“If you stopped asking and just did it, you wouldn’t be wasting more of my time.”
Emma laughs a skittish laugh. “Of course. You’re right.”
She keeps him there for another three minutes. Pacing in front of him. Mumbling as she paces. Playing with one of her braids nervously as she waits for the pages to load.
She glances up at him every few seconds to check if his patience has run out.
He looks increasingly put off, but he doesn’t say anything.
Emma wonders, briefly, if he’s always had scary eyes. Even as a kid.
When she finally receives the confirmation from Pittsburgh PD she lets out a happy sigh.
“Yes! The police is on their way over. We did it!” she tells him with a candid grin, forgetting that he wants nothing to do with her.
The older doctor rolls his eyes. “Great. Phone now.”
Emma gives it back shyly, aware that she’s covered it in a layer of sweat.
“Thank you so much, you’re a life-saver. And not just because you’re a doctor!” she says awkwardly as she steps towards the entrance.
But she turns to face him one more time before fleeing.
“I’m Emma, by the way!” she bellows, pointing at herself.
For a second, she thinks he will simply ignore her. Because why should he care.
But he rolls his head, still glaring, and says one word.
“Shark.”
Emma frowns. Opens her mouth to ask, really?, but then thinks better of it.
Because he really does look like a shark.
She smiles shyly and runs off.
Dr. Brendon Park swears loudly.
He meant to say Park.
Well, he actually meant to say nothing at all.
But for some reason, his stupid nickname had come out instead.
Fuck’s sake.
He’d stumbled over his words in front of a baby nurse, barely out of her teens, by the looks of it.
Not that she could tell.
He looks down at his phone. She hadn’t logged out of her Instagram.
Dr. Park puts the phone back in his pocket, deciding he’ll delete the whole app later.
The OR gets busy, so he doesn’t really look at his phone again until he’s home.
Cold beer in hand, his thumb hovers over the IG app. Then he opens it again.
He scrolls aimlessly, just to see.
Emma Nolan is her full name. She has pictures of various badges, up close. There’s too much information about her personal life. Because that’s what kids do these days, he thinks, annoyed. They plaster their names and faces everywhere.
But he keeps looking. Maybe out of inertia.
Lots of pictures of sparkly, fluffy, girly things. Sunrise pinks over the cityscape and baby blue sweaters and cinnamon drinks and fairy lights in cramped dorm rooms and annotated textbooks with little gold stars and animal stickers and multi-colored pens and nursing kits as birthday presents.
Lots of quotes about being brave and strong and true.
Endure everything with kindness.
Nauseating, predictable stuff, but. He can admit she’s easy on the eyes.
There’s a picture of her with her hair down. Two separate curls still fall softly against her cheeks. And he stares at it for a beat too long, feeling like a creep, because she looks like such a kid, grinning as she holds a stethoscope to a stuffed bunny’s belly, playing pretend.
He’s had an extra beer so that might be the reason, but he’s not proud of the image that comes up in the shower. Emma and her stubborn little curls, asking him to please give her a hand.
And he scrambles to think of something else, but she’s so insistent and present and quick on her feet, pacing up and down, fluttering around him, not letting him be until he gives her what she wants.
And her mouth is so fucking chatty, even though he told her to shut up and take it.
The phone. He meant. Just the phone, not – fuck.
He feels like an asshole and an idiot for stroking it to the wide-eyed newbie, but he likes to think that age makes her not just naïve, but gutsy, bold enough to approach him, even though she doesn’t realize it.
And it’s that stupid quote that gets to him.
Endure everything with kindness.
He can see her do just that.
Enduring. With so much kindness.
He groans as he comes all over her sweet, enduring face and her stubborn little curls.
Dr. Brendon Park doesn’t feel too bad afterwards, because the kid is, despite her baby face, a legal adult. And anyway, he deletes the IG app the next day and moves on with his life. It was just a stupid fantasy. Letting off steam on a working holiday.
If he runs into her in the ER, he can just ignore her. He’ll probably forget her face anyway. She’s one of many, after all.
But a month later, he steps into OR 5 and spots her waiting with the other nurses by the anesthesia cart. It only takes him a few seconds to recognize her under the mask and hair cap. One curl stubbornly pokes out.
It takes her slightly longer to catch up.
Her eyes widen and glimmer with both nerves and excitement.
“Dr. Shark!” she mouths quietly behind the mask, loud enough for him to hear. “It’s Emma.”
He would normally make short work of a chatty nurse, especially one who just used his nickname.
But he pauses for a moment. Not knowing if she actually thinks his name is Shark.
Emma seems to read his mind.
She lowers her eyes. “I meant, Dr. Park. Sorry. I – um – I am doing a few rotations in the OR, to get a CNOR.”
He nods, still quite unable to figure out what to say. Which does not happen, as a rule.
He clears his throat.
“Watch and learn, then, Nolan,” he replies stiffly. It comes out slightly nicer than he intended.
Emma’s eyes brighten when she realizes he recalls her last name.
Park swears under his breath.
He shouldn’t have let that one slip.
He’ll have to think of something sterner next time – but he’s still caught off guard by her presence in the room.
And, of course, Garcia is standing only a few feet away. Watching them intently.
He doesn’t have to wonder if the surgeon noticed anything, because she makes sure to whisper to him gleefully, as she crosses to the other side of the operating table,
“Dr. Shark and Baby Deer. Who would’ve thunk.”
Dr. Brendon Park clenches his jaw angrily. Who, indeed.
Certainly not him.