Chapter Text
Dennis has a bad feeling as he flashes his PTMC ID at the security guard by the side entrance of the rink.
The guard gives him a cursory glance up and down, clearly wondering why some lost co-ed is trying to sneak into the benches.
“I’m Greg’s replacement for the game,” Dennis supplies, in a tone that does not remotely convey how much he doesn’t want to be here.
He’s running on about seven hours of sleep- which would be fine, if he hadn’t just come off a forty-eight-hour ER shift. He’s already been puked on twice in the past eight hours. Once by a little kid with the stomach flu, and again by the kid’s dad, who also had the stomach flu.
All Dennis wants to do is crawl onto the couch with Trinity, eat leftover Chinese food in his fuzzy socks, and binge the newest season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
But no.
He’s here instead.
At PPG Arena in downtown Pittsburgh.
Instead of holed up on his couch under a nice, cozy blanket and watching people drink their body weight in soda because they can’t have coffee or alcohol he’s shivering at the side entrance of an arena.
He’d go as far as to say he regrets being here.
He regrets it in the way only a man who has had one protein bar since noon and a guilt-based inability to say no can regret something.
“Just one night,” his former med school lab partner had said when he’d called Dennis a few hours ago. “Our team doc’s stuck out of town by bad weather. You’re in emergency medicine, you can handle sports stuff.”
Dennis can handle sports stuff.
He just doesn’t like sports stuff.
He was never very coordinated as a kid. While his brothers played pee-wee flag football and high-school tackle football, Dennis hung out on the sidelines picking at the grass. The few times he did try and play catch with his dad, he’d end up catching the football with his face. No. Dennis doesn’t like sports stuff in general.
And he especially doesn’t like sports stuff that happens in loud buildings that smell like cold air and sweat.
But Greg Treviano had been an excellent lab partner in med school. He’d covered for Dennis so many times that Dennis had lost count.
Like when Dennis had been sleeping in his car because he couldn’t afford rent, and the tow truck driver had towed away his Ford Fiesta with him still in it. He’d had to jog to class from the tow yard in the snow. Greg had distracted their absent-minded professor with long, rambling questions about his time in Vietnam.
Then there was that time in their anatomy lab, when their professor had a strict no-tardiness policy and Dennis had been running late after falling asleep in the library. Greg had popped open a second-floor window for Dennis to climb through just in time to make the roll call.
Weird how most of those stories involved Dennis sleeping.
But yes. Dennis owed Greg Treviano more than one favor. Probably several dozen at this point.
Never mind that Greg himself was now a doctor of physical therapy, which was apparently “different.” And God forbid the countless EMTs at the game counted as adequate medical staff.
When Dennis had brought that important little fact up, Greg had sighed.
“Look, I know. But it’s the rules. We’ll need to forfeit if we don’t have proper staff. Please?”
Ah hell. Dennis was a pushover.
He’d agreed, and Greg had cheered over the phone and given him driving instructions.
Not that Dennis had a car anymore. He’d sold the Fiesta so he could actually afford to finish med school, and the idea of telling Trinity where he was going was beyond humiliating. She’d tease him to no end. He liked her, he really did, but he drew the line at her making fun of him for getting roped into dumb stuff. Especially because she often roped him into said dumb stuff.
So, he’d taken a bus to the train station, then the train to Steel Plaza, then walked the rest of the way, shivering in a thin coat that had been rescued from the ER lost-and-found and meant for someone twice his size.
By the time security finally waves him through, Dennis already feels like a damp apology of a person.
He has no idea where he’s going beyond Greg’s vague directions: walk down the hallway, turn right at the first door, then left. He wonders where Greg even is right now. The very least the man could do was guide Dennis to wherever he’s supposed to be.
He must look as confused as he feels, because a woman with slick black hair approaches him.
“You lost?” she asks. She’s wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins staff jacket.
“Um, yeah. I’m the replacement doctor for tonight’s game?”
She quirks an eyebrow, and Dennis feels his cheeks heat. Did he really sound that out of place?
After a moment she snaps her fingers. “Right! Dennis! Greg said you were coming. C’mon, I’ll show you where to go.” She checks her watch. “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?”
Dennis shrugs sheepishly. “There was some bad traffic. I just got back from the hospital.”
She gives him a questioning look.
He’s changed out of his scrubs already, now in ratty jeans and a worn-out black T-shirt he’s had since middle school. He’s already on the skinny side and the crazy hours he works aren’t doing wonders for his appearance.She must think he’s sick or something.
“Working. In the hospital,” he corrects himself quickly. “I work in the hospital. The ER. At PTMC.”
He winces at how stupid he sounds, but the woman’s eyes go soft in recognition.
“You guys took the majority of the people from Pitt Fest, right?”
Oh.
Dennis will never forget Pitt Fest.
It had already been one of the worst days of his life before the mass-casualty alert came in. He still hears the screaming sometimes when he’s trying to fall asleep. Still sees the blood soaking through towels too fast. The way someone would pass out mid-sentence while he tried to keep their insides where they belonged.
His forehead starts to ache and forces his expression to smooth out.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That was us.”
She nods. “Yinz saved my sister’s life.”
Dennis blinks.
“Oh,” he says, because his brain has temporarily stopped offering better words.
She gives him a small smile. “I’m Cindy. Follow me.”
He does, trailing after her through the winding underground of the arena.
Greg is a fucking liar.
There is no universe where Dennis would have found his way around here alone.
They pass concrete hallways, pipes overhead, doors with codes, carts rattling past. It smells like cleaning solution and old metal. The sound of the crowd above them is a constant, distant thunder.
Cindy pushes through a set of heavy double doors-
-and suddenly they’re rinkside.
It’s breathtaking in the most overwhelming way possible.
The space is enormous. The ice glows under the lights. The arena is packed with thousands of people, all talking over each other. Music blasts from somewhere unseen, and an announcer booms about sponsors like this is the Super Bowl of… whatever this is.
Dennis feels like an ant that wandered into a cathedral.
“Pretty cool, right?” Cindy says.
“Cold,” Dennis mutters, pulling his thin coat tighter.
Cindy crouches and drags out a stuffed-looking medical bag and a folding chair from beneath a recessed bench in the wall. She snaps the chair open and sets it against the boards. There’s a bright red medical cross on the back.
On the floor, three long strips of tape mark a path - two forming a straight line toward a small gate that opens onto the ice, the third connecting them into a square around the chair.
She nudges the chair into the square.
“There. Direct line of access to the ice and your special chair,” she says cheerfully.
Special chair. Dennis feels like he’s being put in time-out.
She points toward a smaller open hallway nearby. “EMTs are down there with a stretcher.”
She digs through the bag and hands him a black walkie-talkie. “Preprogrammed. Just hold the button if you need them or other assistance. But honestly? If you just wave, they’ll be watching.”
Dennis stares at the ice. “How do I know when to-”
“The refs will whistle. Good chance one of the staffers will see you and kinda push you onto the ice.”
…Fantastic.
Dennis looks down at his ratty sneakers.
Yep. Still regretting this.
Was there literally no one else who could do this for a professional hockey team? He’d eat absolute shit if he stepped onto the ice like this.
As if reading his mind, Cindy produces a pair of black non-slip shoes from nowhere and hands them to him.
“They might be a little big,” she says with a wink, “but that’s better than falling in front of ten thousand people.”
He can’t tell if she’s kidding.
She also hands him a black staff jacket like hers, just without a logo on it.
“You help either team. They’ve got their own staff, but as the home team, we’re in charge.”
Dennis wants to tell her he’s not “home” anything.
He decides not to.
He is, frankly, a little afraid of her.
Cindy gives him a final once-over, like she’s assessing a rescue kitten before releasing it into traffic. “You’ll be fine. Just hang out and watch the game.”
Then she leaves him there.
Alone.
In his special chair.
Dennis pulls out his phone and checks his texts.
That lesbian bitch: dude, you left without me???
That lesbian bitch: hot date????
He rolls his eyes.
Huckleberry: no, just had something to do
Huckleberry: chinese in the fridge
That lesbian bitch: dibs on the orange chicken
Dennis straightens in his little medical time-out chair.
Huckleberry: that’s MINE
That lesbian bitch: thats what u get for ditching secret lives night
Dennis stares at the screen.
Damn. He’d really wanted that orange chicken.
He locks his phone and looks out over the ice. There’s already hockey players out on the ice warming up or doing whatever it is they do before games. Pittsburgh is playing Boston, and the color scheme is confusing. Both teams are black and gold. The Pittsburgh team is wearing black jerseys with golden patches, and Boston white ones with golden patches. His brain already hurts as he tries to keep track of who is who as they zoom around. There are thousands of screaming fans and professional athletes flying past at speeds that feel medically irresponsible.
Fucking Greg.
Should have just let Dennis sleep away medical school in his Ford Fiesta.