Medical Magic (Drarry)

Chapter Two: The Beeper's Call

            It was nights like tonight that ate away at Draco. He would never, ever wish for a catastrophe to happen, but he would like enough work to keep him busy and his thoughts at bay. He only had one patient in the ICU at the moment, and he'd already completed his stack of paperwork.

Moments like this, Draco's thoughts always turned to the past he'd left behind when he'd fled Europe. He missed his mother, who had always tried her best against a tyrannical husband they both feared. If anyone didn't deserve the consequences of his actions, it was her. Some days he considered sending her a message, just to let her know he was still alive. But that would only complicate things, and besides, he was sure his mother believed him dead by now. It wouldn't be fair to her to correct the assumption and cause her even greater pain.

As it always did when he thought about home, his thoughts turned to Harry Potter and the Golden Trio, the ones who had saved him and his mother from Azkaban. He wouldn't be here without them. Hermione and Ron would be married by now, and Draco was positive Hermione would have hyphenated her name – it just seemed like something Hermione would do. And Ron wouldn't care.

It was Harry Draco was really curious about. Even in America he was famous, but he wasn't the front page of every paper here, and news rarely reached Draco. But he owed Harry his life, twice over. He hoped Ginny and Harry had gotten married and had a brood of children to look after. He knew, somehow, that Harry would want several kids, just as Draco did. It came with being an abused, only child. He wanted Harry to be happy.

Draco didn't know at what point he'd started calling the Golden Trio by their first names inside his head, but he'd had enough imagined conversations with that that he felt like they might even be considered friends at this point. Of course, that was all pretend.

Draco's beeper went off. Glancing down, he saw a code red had been called. Leaping up, he sprinted out of his office. When he got to the ER, Beth was waiting for him.

"What happened?" he gasped.

"Car accident, Dr. Malfoy. One dead at the scene, one still alive. It doesn't look good." Beth was the head nurse and had been for the last twenty years, making her one of the hospital's most competent employees. Draco respected her immensely.

Taking a deep breath in, Draco centered himself. He had to be at his very best right now. "Alright. I'll go scrub in. What operating room is the patient in?"

"Three."

Draco nodded and ran off towards the patient that needed his complete focus.

Five hours later, Draco threw down the paddles in disgust and whispered, "Call it."

One of the nurses stepped forward and glanced at the clock. "Time of death, 3:32 am."

Draco stepped back from the still-warm body and felt tears threaten. No matter how many patients he lost, it never got any easier, and he was glad. If it ever became easy to lose someone, it was time he left the profession.

Stepping out of the room to clean up, he ran into Beth.

"We lost her. Where is her family?"

"In the waiting room."

Draco nodded before turning to scrub out.

Beth called after him. "I'll send someone up to your office with tea." The foreign doctor only drank tea to everyone's amusement, something the hospital had had to start stocking after his arrival.