Open Heart One Shots (Choices)

A Love Like Ours

Summary: When Cassie faces off against one too many PITAs, Ethan is there to help cheer her up in more ways than one.

Cassie Valentine had woken up on the wrong side of the bed and the day had gone downhill from there. She'd slept through her alarm (not an uncommon occurrence if truth be told) and her roomies hadn't banged on her door (or if they had she didn't notice on account of being asleep).

When she stayed over at Ethan's, he made sure she got up on time, either by tempting her with freshly brewed coffee or by annoying her until she shoved the covers back. But he was away for a few days to consult on a case at Mayo Clinic.

By the time she made it to the T station, the platform had been crowded. She had to let three trains pass before she could squeeze into a miniscule space between two boys with huge backpacks that dug into her back the entire trip.

All this to say, she was late for shift, which didn't endear her to her supervisor, Zaid Mirani. He assigned her shit cases just for the heck of it. At least that's what she told her fellow dolphin, Sienna Trinh, when they crossed paths earlier.

By the time she sat down to gobble her lunch in the cafeteria ─ cardboard disguised as pizza ─ she had seen six patients all of whom would have given Nigel, her PITA from intern year, a run for his money.

She wished Ethan was here because then the Diagnostics Team could review cases and she would have an excuse to dump the pending patient files on someone else.

When she walked into the patient room on the fourth floor, she could tell from the frown on the patient's face that her luck wasn't about to change today.

"It's about time," the middle-aged woman carped, eyebrows knitting together as she hunched forward. "Do you have any idea how valuable my time is?"

"My apologies, Mrs. Carstairs," said Cassie solicitously, glancing briefly at the chart to confirm the name.

She'd mixed up the name of her last patient and had to spend five minutes listening to the man berate her for lacking basic intelligence. If she had still been an intern instead of a third-year resident, she would have taken his criticism to heart. As it was, she'd gone for a run in her head until he finished.

"I don't want your apologies," sniped the patient. "I want this contraption out of me. Those incompetent nurses refused to do so without sign off from so-called doctors in this hellhole."

She raised her hand to show the cannula inserted in the back of her hand. The area around the insertion site was slightly blue indicating that it had been in use for a while.

Cassie rechecked the file which showed remarks from the night resident on duty that the patient was good to discharge provided her latest blood work was clear. The lab report at the front of the file confirmed that it was.

"Good news, Mrs. Carstairs," said Cassie, determined to be cheerful. "Your latest labs are negative, and I can discharge you. A follow up with your family physician in a few weeks should suffice."

"And you couldn't have done this two hours ago so that I could have had lunch at home instead of eating the garbage you call food?"

"Let's get this cannula removed," said Cassie, ignoring the diatribe. "I'll ask one of the nurses..."

"No!" shouted Carstairs. "I'm not waiting any longer. You're a doctor, aren't you? Do your job and take this monstrosity out."

Rather than argue, Cassie put on gloves and placed everything she needed on a tray. After making sure the drip lines were disconnected, she began to gently extract the needles. The woman started howling within seconds.