Work Text:
Valentine’s Day, like every major U.S. holiday, is just kind of a mess when it comes to emergency departments.
The day shift will see a lot of burns and knife-related incidents, be it from amateur chefs trying a new recipe way above their skill level to impress their partner or harried florists trying to get just one more bouquet ready for the last-second rush. Physical altercations will roll in throughout the day as partners discover infidelity or other breaches of trust, plus there will be a surprising amount of ankle fractures from women who insist on wearing high heels when the sidewalks are still icy.
Candle and wax burns, food allergies and choking will only increase in frequency and severity throughout the day and into the evening for the night shift to handle, especially the alcohol poisoning, romantic mishaps, and substance-induced physical altercations.
It’s going to be a lot.
Right now though—it’s the calm before the storm.
The night shift is wrapping up—the board is in halfway decent shape, all things considered—and Samira is perched at her preferred work station, getting an initial read on the patients for the day. Out of the corner of her eye, she clocks Robby and Abbot standing shoulder to shoulder a few feet away, Abbot pointing out the highlights from the night before.
“Good morning, Samira,” Cassie chimes as she drops to the workstation across from Samira’s. She’s got a pale pink long-sleeve on under her scrub top, and a couple heart-shaped stickers temporarily affixed to the edges of her ID badge.
“Hi,” Samira gives her a little wave. “You’re in a good mood this morning.”
“Oh, yeah, Brian made me breakfast in bed, gave me a bouquet of roses,” Cassie says with a dreamy smile before she shakes out of it, her voice kind as she quietly asks, “No one to get you flowers this year, Samira?”
Brian, the patient-turned-boyfriend from the calm before the shitstorm that was last Fourth of July has ended up being a huge step up from Chad. Cassie’s never been happier, which is great, it really is, even if Samira thinks asking out a patient isn’t particularly ethical.
That said, Samira still tries not to let it get to her when that happiness ends up feeling, to her, a little insufferable. Cassie’s in that rosy honeymoon phase where she thinks everyone should have that form of happiness you can only get with a partner.
Cassie’s happy. Happy is good.
Samira is also happy.
Happiness can be found in many different forms.
She shrugs it off with a wave of her hand, because it’s really not a big deal.
Nearby, Robby peels away from Abbot, who ends up at one of the other workstations a few feet away, probably wrapping up the last of his charting before he badges out for the day, to get his rest and gird himself to the onslaught of holiday mishaps tonight.
“But even if I did, they wouldn’t be roses.”
“Oh?” Cassie tilts her head, a little surprised. “I thought everyone liked roses.”
“I don’t know, there’s just something about them that I find boring.”
“Well, what flowers do you like?”
Samira freezes. She’s never really thought of it that way.
Flowers, of all things, aren’t something she’s taken the time to think of other than just looking at roses and knowing they’re not really her thing.
Her retrospective chart review. Journal articles. Case reports. Cutting edge medical equipment the hospital will never splurge on for the Emergency Department. A good mango panna cotta from that one Indian/Italian fusion place by her apartment she only splurges on when she really needs a treat. The old Bollywood movies she used to watch with her father.
“I don’t know, really. It’s not that I think flowers aren’t pretty.”
“But if you had to pick a flower.”
She shrugs, “I don’t know. Marigolds seem too obvious. Lilies are pretty, but they’re so toxic to cats, I never keep any plants around the apartment. Just a couple succulents.”
“I thought you didn’t get another cat after ‘Lil Wayne passed away.”
“Oh, um,” she fumbles a bit. “No, no, I haven’t, but it’s just—still part of the routine I guess.”
“I’m not much of a fan of roses either,” Mel pipes up as she makes her way over to their little cluster, and Samira can’t help but feel a little grateful for the distraction. “The only rose I really like is Rose Tyler. Though, Rose Landry has been coming in at a close second these days. Becca’s a huge fan of Heated Rivalry.”
Samira has no clue who either of those Roses are, or what Heated Rivalry is, but doesn’t have a chance to ask because Trinity joins them, knocking into Samira’s shoulder with her elbow before she drums her hands on the counter, “So, got any hot plans for Valentine’s Day, Melanoma?”
“I actually took Becca out for Galentine's Day last night. She’s got a Valentine’s party at the Center tonight, so I’m going to have a nice time at home with wine and maybe a couple romcoms.”
Samira catches the way Mel, one of the most meticulous, intentional speakers in the department, doesn’t clarify if she’s going to be drinking wine and watching romcoms alone or with company, but then again, Samira’s pretty sure she’s the only one who’s accidentally caught her and Frank making out on the fourth floor of the staff parking lot last month.
Before Trinity has the opportunity to make a crack at the way Mel plans to spend her evening, Mel goes wide-eyed, her tone innocent in a way Samira eventually figured out means she’s covering as much disdain as she can muster—which, to be fair, is not much—with geniality, “Do you have plans tonight Trinity?”
There’s no way Mel hasn’t heard through the ever-churning grapevine of nursing gossip that Garcia very much did not invite Trinity along to her Valentine’s weekend trip to New York City with her college roommates.
“Nope,” she pops the p, does a bad job of not sounding sullen as props her chin on folded arms. “Huckleberry’s off to the farm, so I’ve got the place allllllll to myself tonight.”
“That sounds peaceful,” Mel says, but doesn’t stick around to see if Trinity agrees or not, grabs an iPad and saunters off toward North Six.
Trinity mutters something under her breath that Samira doesn’t bother trying to catch—it’s either something snarky, or it’s something snarky in Tagalog—but they’re interrupted when Robby calls them over to round.
She ends up taking over one of Abbot’s cases—a 27-year-old woman came in at around 4:45 this morning and seems to be nursing some kind of infection, but with a couple delays from the lab, he didn’t have time to solve the mystery of what kind before shift change.
Medical mysteries. She thinks of those often too.
Samira finds Abbot by the hub, squinting down at the iPad in his hands because he refuses to cave and keep a pair of readers on hand like Robby does. She sidles up next to him, logs into the unoccupied computer to enter in some repeat labs.
“Mohan.”
Without looking at him, she nods at the screen, “Good morning, Doctor Abbot.”
He doesn’t look at her either, keeps his gaze trained ahead of him, “Interesting conversation with McKay, earlier.”
Of course he was catching Robby up and listening to their chatter.
“It’s normal for colleagues to discuss holiday plans during moments of downtime.”
“And what I hear is that I’m not supposed to try to buy you flowers.”
She shrugs, clicks over to another screen even as she feels the burn of his sideways glance on her left side, “Not if you want to deal with thousands of dollars in unnecessary vet bills. Personally, I’d rather have your keep your cat healthy.”
“Not motivated by flowers, motivated even less by food,” he grumbles under his breath. “What’s a guy supposed to do to give you a nice holiday?”
To anyone else in the department, they look like she’s just consulting him on a case. Thank goodness Princess is still on maternity leave and Perlah's coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.
“I’ve got a nice medical mystery to start my day. What else could I be missing?”
Finally, Abbot looks at her with his trademark intensity, with more than a little skepticism as they stand near a hub draped in decorations for the holiday, and Samira can only hold back so much of her grin, “It’s really not a big deal,” she insists, because Valentine’s Day hasn’t been relevant to her since she stopped having to bring in valentines for her classmates in elementary school. “Plus, it’s not like I don’t have plans I’m very much looking forward to on February fifteenth.”
Abbot loses the stoicism he keeps when they’re at work, just enough for her to see how excited he also is for their conveniently shared day off. She doesn’t know what strings he pulled, but even that’s enough of a gift for the day.
“Well, that’s fair.”
Glancing around to double check that no one’s paying attention to them, Samira checks something on her phone real quick. She then hooks a finger into his nearest belt loop and tugs, just once before returning her hand to her side, “You should get out of here.”
“The biggest workaholic I know is telling me to go home?”
She rolls her eyes, but she also knows he’s about five minutes away from pulling a double, so long as it means being able to catch a couple traumas together. She’d like that, but she’d also like him to get some sleep, “If you want the hot breakfast that’s on its way to your house, you should.”
“Now I really am going to have to get you something.”
“If you need ideas, I wouldn’t say no to my own go-bag. But don’t you dare splurge on one of those butterfly ultrasounds. That thing is way too expensive.”
Abbot lets out a low chuckle that makes her fingers twitch, it takes a lot to not reach out to him, “I’m sure I’ll think of something,” he breaks off when Esme comes by, pushing her EVS cart, waits for her to round the corner. “Besides,” he leans in, a bit too close to just be considered colleagues, “You’re getting the go-bag for your birthday. With the butterfly.”
Samira presses her lips together to tamp down on both the urge to admonish him for his outlandish spending habits when it comes to her and the excitement of the upcoming, extremely thoughtful gift. Which also means that, now that she knows, he’s also going to get her something else on top of it as an actual surprise.
He steps around her, his hand gliding a hot line over her lower back that, if they were seen, could no way read as either accidental or remotely platonic, “Have a good shift, Doctor Mohan.”
She glances at him over her shoulder, catches his eye as he heads toward the locker room, “Have a good morning, Doctor Abbot.”
Not a minute later, Dana calls her name—penetrating trauma, three minutes out.
Time to go to work.