A/N: First chapter story that I've posted! Woo! Alright, because this is AU please be aware that some things will be changing in order to fit my needs. However, where I can, I will stick as close to canon as possible. This WILL eventually be SAM/OC however there will be mentions of other pairings if you look close. For anyone who lives in the Memphis area, I apologize. Never been there... I'm just making things up. I will try to post AT LEAST once a week, however the reason I'm getting this first one out is because school is about to start. So we'll see how that goes. Now without further ado, please enjoy and tell me what you think!
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. I also do not own Kill Bill, Syfy, Coca-Cola, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The young woman glanced at the silver watch on her left wrist as she stepped into the elevator and sighed softly, seeing the hands at quarter to seven in the morning. She pushed some of her long brown hair over her ear and took a sip of the steaming coffee she held in her right hand while settling in among the other people, mostly staff, inside the small metal box.
"Ground please," she mumbled to whoever was closest to the button panel.
As the doors opened and she stepped out onto the ground floor she was assaulted with the stark, yet familiar, smell of cleaning agents and something more subtle and metallic that she knew was blood. The emergency department was always busy, people swarming about like insects in a nest. She bumped up against someone's shoulder as she slid into the break room.
"Hey!" the person chirped, "Sera!" they continued in the same excited tone.
Sera slid her deep blue eyes to the now beaming woman, clothed in the same baby blue scrubs as herself, as she headed to the beige lockers in the corner of the room.
"Hey Emily, I'm still in the process of waking up." Sera acknowledged, with her own subdued smile.
"Oh I get ya, I've been going strong for about eight by now though- I'm charge today. I think they have you in triage if I remember correctly." Emily responded, putting a hand on her hip and leaning against the door frame.
Sera nodded. "Sounds good to me, I could use some action first thing. Are you on until eleven or are you pulling a double?" Sera asked as she slid her messenger bag off her shoulder and onto the floor in the corner of the lockers.
"I'm off at eleven. I think they cut me off for the pay period but we'll see how long that lasts. You know how it goes." Emily finished with a chuckle.
Sere nodded again, leaning up against the small table that sat in front of the lockers and wrapping a hair tie around the loose bun she formed on the top of her head. "Yeah that's why I'm here; Covering a morning at the end of the week because people are cut off." She groused, tipping her coffee up to drain it.
"You night owl, you," Emily said with a laugh. "But hey I'll catch up to you later before I leave. Have a good one!" she finished and spun out of the doorway, her name being paged on the loud speaker.
"Yeah, sure," Sera said to the now empty doorway.
Sera would normally be feeling just like Emily if she were on her usual midnight shift, but for some reason, she always had trouble starting in the mornings. The caffeine was starting to seep into her system though as she stood up straighter and prepared to walk out onto the floor. She opened her locker, grabbed an ink pen and her stethoscope from amongst the extra scrubs and shoes, and took a deep breath. She pocketed the pen and slung the stethoscope around her neck. Finding her center, she tossed her coffee cup and headed toward the door.
Sera never saw Emily again that day, the influx of patients coming through triage kept her busier than usual. The older nurses on the staff claimed it was because of the full moon but whatever the cause, Sera preferred being busy.
The normal cases came and went, being transported to their designated department. There were broken bones, severe abdominal pain that was likely appendicitis or an impactment, people having symptoms of a heart attack, and even a woman going into premature labor. Sera had been able to keep her hands mostly clean though for the first half of her shift.
"Oh hey Mr. Brewer, what is it this time?" Sera asked, recognizing the middle-aged man on the examination table as she walked into one of her rooms.
"How many times do I have to ask ya to call me Fred, Girl?" Fred asked with a bright smile on his face.
"Probably as many as it takes for you to call me Sera." She replied, cracking a wry smile.
Fred was one of their "regulars". He came in about once a month with a new complaint of pain, and it was common knowledge that he visited more than just this particular hospital. There were several located in and around the Memphis area after all.
"Aw alright, Missy… Well it's my neck this time. Nothing seems to help except for those pills y'all gave me last time. It's killin' me!" Fred told her while bringing a hand to the back of his neck and glancing away from her.
"Alright, Fred. Let me just do my part here and I'll get the doctor." Sera said while pulling her stethoscope from around her neck and starting her assessment.
Slipping a community support program's pamphlet under his hand and receiving the usual remorseful sigh in return, Sera left the room. She walked up to the centrally located nurses' station and got the attention of one of the desk clerks.
"Could you tell Dr. Stevens that the man in number three is Mr. Brewer? Thank you," Sera said while looking at the screen that showed the conditions of patients on incoming ambulances.
The clerk frowned and shook her head, but picked up the phone to relay the message. Sera knew that most people didn't understand Fred's condition and simply wrote him off as a drug seeker. It was her job to take what patient's said at face value, not to judge them. So she reported his pain and always left him with information on getting into a detox and rehab program, just in case he wanted it.
As Sera was getting a drink of water from the fountain she heard "Nurse needed to trauma, nurse to trauma," over the loud speaker.
She glanced around to see who would be headed in that direction, and frowned when she didn't see any nurses in the hallway. She looked over to her rooms. The couple of patients located there had already been seen, were stable, and were simply waiting for their transport to a new department. The next ambulance was still fifteen minutes out. Unless someone was a walk-in, she could spare a few minutes.
"I've got it," Sera called to the desk clerk as she strode briskly toward trauma.
Sera could hear the man groaning when she was still two rooms away. She glanced at her work phone and the program that gave her basic information on each patient in the unit. It wasn't somebody she had triaged so he was probably taken directly to trauma, but he had been stable when the nurse notified the doctor of his primary complaint. It looked like they thought he was possibly dehiscing from an abdominal incision and she knew those could easily turn into an emergency situation.
With a sharp knock on the door Sera walked in and immediately assessed the situation. The man was already in a gown and was doubled over on the bed, grasping at his abdomen. A woman with a small child on her hip had a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"I'm Nurse Donovan. Can you tell me what's wrong?" Sera said coming to a stop at the bedside and placing two fingers on his neck to gauge his pulse.
The man shook his head, in too much pain to speak. His pulse was racing, and she noticed he was close to hyperventilating.
"We came in because the stitches he had on his stomach from his hernia surgery looked really infected. We were waiting for the doctor to come in to look and my husband went to pick up Nick… he's been like this now for a couple minutes." The woman told Sera, glancing away from her husband only briefly.
Sera frowned. "Sir, I'm going to lift up your gown and take a look." She warned him. She only had to glance at the wound before she quickly replaced the man's gown.
"Ma'am I'm going to need you to wait in the hallway with your child, the doctor will be coming in any second." Sera stated calmly, reaching behind the bed to hit the staff emergency button.
"O-oh… okay." The woman said wide-eyed. "Is it bad?" she asked stepping away from her husband.
Sera gently but quickly ushered her to the door. "It's nothing we can't take care of." She told her, avoiding the question.
After making sure the woman, and the child, were completely outside of the door and couldn't see into the room she spun on her heel and all but ran back to the bed.
"Just hold on sir, I'm going to lie you down." Sear told the man, laying the bed flat.
As she was lifting the man's gown back up a nurse assistant, Sera vaguely remembered her name being a variation of Danielle, walked in and asked her what she needed.
"I need you to hand me all of the sterile gauze you can find in that cupboard and the bottle of saline." Sera said as she snapped on some gloves.
Another nurse walked in and upon looking at the man's exposed abdomen, came over to grab gloves and assist Sera. The man's stitched wound had definitely been infected. The skin around the wound was an angry red and a thick yellow drainage was apparent on the parts of the gown that had been touching it. Blood was also seeping out now from around the torn stitches. A small portion of fat, muscle, and intestine could be seen poking out among the black threads. He wasn't just dehiscing anymore, he was eviscerating.
As the two worked to cover the wound with gauze soaked in saline, the doctor came in after what seemed like forever. He immediately called the OR to clear a space and told the nurses to help him set up for transport.
As Sera tried to keep the wound from opening further, the other nurse was trying to clean around the opening. The risk for sepsis was huge at this point, since the site was already infected and now bowel was outside of the body cavity. Seeing that the other nurse was still busy with her cleaning and the doctor was inserting an IV, Sera closed her eyes.
Concentrating, Sera could feel the unique life energy that was the bacteria invading the man's tissues. It felt like a dull roar against his weak immune system and their power seemed to grow even stronger as his body lost the fight against them. She focused her own, more powerful energy, toward the bacteria. She carefully started to lessen their numbers and simultaneously healed the further damage that they had caused around the wound, damage not visible to the naked eye.
Satisfied that she stopped their progression a few moments later, and hopefully avoided a septic situation, Sera opened her eyes and glanced at the other nurse and doctor. They were still too distracted to notice her eyes fade from a milky white color back to her normal blue.
As Sera walked back toward her rooms, the eviscerated man on his way to another surgery, she fought off some dizziness and a wave of nausea. She clutched at her stomach briefly until the feelings passed. Shaking her head to clear it, she met the EMS team at the door and took her next stretcher-bound patient from them.
At seven thirty that night Sera grabbed her bag from the break room, replaced her locker items, and headed to the elevator. On her way out she waved tiredly to the hospital security guard and tucked her hands in her pockets for the short walk home. Her small apartment was in a complex only a couple of blocks away from the hospital, as it was meant for its staff. It wasn't spectacular to her but it was definitely on the nicer end, having security and a main lobby acting as gatekeepers to the living area.
As she swiped her key card on the elevator the doors closed and the light behind the number two button lit up. Upon exiting the elevator she took a left and walked all the way to the end of the hall. Again swiping her key card, Sera gained access to her dark, two-bedroom apartment.
Flipping on the lights, a hallway became visible, and she slid off her tennis shoes before tossing her key card on the small table in the entryway. Progressing further into the apartment she passed a half bathroom and a door that opened into the smaller of the two bedrooms. At the end of the hall she flipped on the next set of lights and a spacious living room appeared; a kitchen with an island was slightly visible off to one side. Walking through the living room Sera came to her final destination.
The final light she turned on illuminated the deep purples and pastel greens of her bedroom's decor. She dropped her bag next to her large dresser and began to strip out of her scrubs. Tossing them into the closet, aiming for the basket but missing, she heard whistling start up from her bag.
The Kill Bill themed ring tone was just finishing by the time she wandered over and grabbed it and a ding alerted her that she missed the call. Typing in her password the missed call from "MOM" flashed up on the screen. Sera frowned. Tossing the phone on the dresser she opened some drawers and pulled out her usual running gear, some stretch pants and a t-shirt. She quickly changed and grabbed her iPod from next to where she had tossed her phone.
Another ding alerted her to the fact that she now had a voicemail. Sighing, she again typed in her password and bent to lace up her running shoes.
"Seraphina Fae Donovan!" the voice of her mother belted out, "It has been weeks since we have heard from you and I have been calling you nonstop!" her mother continued. Sera finished her task and stood up, rolling her eyes.
"You have missed so much training and we need your help. You know that there have been more cases than usual, or at least you would if you bothered to check in. Call me back Seraphina, or better yet, come home!" The message concluded and Sera imagined her mother throwing the phone across the room at the end.
Leaving the phone alone, and purposefully NOT calling her mother back, she headed back out of the apartment. She left most of the lights on and grabbed her key card and a bottle of water on the way out. As Sera again stood on the sidewalk, she popped in her ear buds and let out self-suffering sigh as she started her jog, the beats of the Red Hot Chili Peppers motivating her steps.
After a few miles Sera decided she was done for the night and headed back toward her apartment. She stripped out of her running clothes and quickly rinsed off before she set about to make some dinner. Still in a towel she rummaged in her cupboards long enough to grab a pot to fill with water and the ingredients for spaghetti.
She got everything on the stove and starting to heat up then headed back into her room. She braided her long hair and let it rest on her shoulder and grabbed a pink camisole and some black shorts. A few minutes later she was back in the kitchen finishing her meal. After snatching a can of Coke from the fridge and a heaping bowl of pasta she settled down on the couch. It didn't take her long to finish and she watched bad Syfy Channel movies until her bed started calling her name several hours later.
Back at the hospital, the new triage nurse that took over for Sera when she left waited by the door for some new patients being brought in. Three males, all currently in critical condition after their classic car was T-boned by a semi-truck. She greeted the paramedics as they brought in the first of the three from the helipad.
"No names given, and no one has called in here looking for them?" The nurse asked as she watched them wheel him in, the other two stretchers on their way.
"Correct. The big one here was conscious when we arrived but only long enough to ask about the other two, apparently his brother and father." The paramedic replied.
"Go ahead and take them straight to trauma. This is going to be a long night." The new triage nurse groaned.