Hellooo everyone! I was watching Scrubs the other day, and it inspired me to write a hospital AU around my OTP Gruvia! And maybe a hint of RoWen. I'm not super sure exactly where this story is going, but I have an idea. Pls bear with me. :) Also, I'm not super sure where readers are in their medical knowledge, so I've gotten a little footnote glossary at the end of each chapter for the medical terms that I think need more explanation or that aren't specifically defined in the story! Terms marked with an (*) are defined. So with all that said, please read, enjoy, and review!
Disclaimer: I, sadly, do not own Fairy Tail or its characters. All rights go to Hiro Mashima. I only have unofficial ownership of the idea for this fanfic.
The Shot Heard Around the Hospital
As Juvia opened the door to the doctors' lounge, she was greeted by a blast of lethargy and boredom that almost knocked her off her feet. This was an extremely unusual situation to find in Fairy Tail Hospital's OR, or any part of the hospital for that matter, and it slightly unnerved her. Walking over to the more familiar faces, Juvia pulled up a chair and greeted her friends cautiously, "Hello everyone. What's going on?"
A blonde ophthalmologist lazily lifted her hand in response and sighed, "I wish there was something going on! No scheduled cases, no traumas, no meetings. How is that even possible?"
"You'd think more people would be pulling crazy stunts out in that weather," a red-headed woman piped up, nodding to the window through which the sun beamed down cheerfully as small, wispy clouds passed beneath it on a pleasant breeze. It was a beautiful summer day, and everyone wished they could be anywhere but at work in a hospital.
"You'd think, Erza," a pink-haired man, Natsu, scoffed, "You just want to drill into some poor victim's skull."
Erza glared hard at Natsu, causing him to shrink back in fear, "Say that again, Natsu? I'm a neurosurgeon. Is there something wrong with wanting to do my job?"
"N-No! N-Noth-thing wrong at-t-t a-all!" the orthopedic surgeon squeaked, cowering behind Lucy fearfully.
The blonde rolled her eyes at Natsu's stupidity before motioning to someone at the other side of the table, "Well, whatever case comes in, Gray sure won't be bored."
The dark-haired man in question shrugged, "Hey, I can't help that everyone loves anesthesiologists."
"Don't inflate that already overinflated ego, Ice Prick," Natsu muttered.
Juvia had been listening with rapt attention to the banter and watched in fascination as a vein throbbed in Gray's cheek and he scowled irritably, "What'd you say, Flame Brain?"
"You heard me, Ice Princess!"
"Why you little…" Gray stood up, rolling up the sleeves of his lab coat in the process and cracking his knuckles, "You want to go, Natsu?"
"Ha! Bring it on, Gray!" Natsu laughed gleefully, preparing to punch Gray in the face.
"Enough!" Erza roared as she barged between the two, "You are acting like children! Lucy and Juvia are more mature than you, and they're still *fellows!"
"Don't drag us into this!" Juvia objected, but her wide smile gave away her amusement.
Lucy snorted and remarked, "Of course we're more mature! I think we knew that all the way back in high school!"
"Hey! We're only three years older than you!" Gray brought up defensively.
"Only three years?" Juvia giggled, winking at Gray and ignoring the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. Gray smiled at her good-naturedly and laughed, causing Juvia's cheeks to turn bright red and forcing her to duck behind her hair. Lucy watched the exchange intently and elbowed Juvia with a sly smirk plastered on her face.
"Shut up!" Juvia cried and shoved Lucy's arm away, eventually getting a grip on her blushing.
Suddenly, a nurse sprinted into the lounge and declared with surprising gentleness and calm, "Prep the room! A *trauma case is coming in!"
"Lisanna? What's going on?" Erza asked her, alarmed and concerned. Traumas were never a good thing, no matter how bored the doctors were.
"Gunshot wound to the chest and leg, boy age 18. He's miraculously stable, but the bullet to the chest is still in there somewhere, his left tibia is shattered, and he's losing lots of blood. I need Juvia, Natsu, and Gray for the procedure." The RN sprinted out of the lounge to prep the room while Juvia, Gray, and Natsu whisked away to gather more patient information. The others looked on in increased worry when they heard a teenager was in such a condition.
Gray immediately got on the phone with the patient's frantic father, trying to gather the information he needed to administer anesthesia. Natsu occupied another phone with the paramedics, trying to pry the patient's status and condition out of them. Juvia, on the other hand, had rushed to find her attending instructor, only to remember that he had called in sick that morning. With a rush of dread, Juvia realized that she was on her own.
Juvia was freaking out; how would she deal with being unsupervised in an open-heart surgery? She was only a first-year cardiology fellow, emphasis on first-year. While she had graduated med school, her training was far from complete, and the only exposure Juvia had ever had to this kind of operation was in a lecture video and observing a pacemaker implantation.
Juvia rushed back to the front desk, where Gray and Natsu were still on their respective phones, and collapsed in a chair, cradling her head in her hands. Gray glanced over at her in concern, but there wasn't much he could do, since he was still attempting to wring out allergy info from the frantic father.
"Is there an x-ray of the boy's chest and leg?" Natsu was shouting, scrambling for a clearer image of the boy's injuries. Hearing that, Juvia snapped back to attention and began doing her share in the situation.
Pulling the keyboard on the desk closer to her, Juvia did her best to search the hospital databases for any tips on how to perform the procedure. The further down she scrolled, the more Juvia paled as she arrived at the conclusion that she would have to stop the boy's heart to remove the bullet if it was still imbedded in the muscle. She would need to support him on a heart-lung bypass machine, which basically acted as a heart for the boy until his own heart is fixed, and she would have to make sure there was no damage to a major artery so he wouldn't bleed out.
The task was impossibly daunting, but in the back of Juvia's mind, she remembered something her instructor had said during the pacemaker surgery.
"The greatest risk is infection after the surgery…" Juvia muttered to herself, "Ok, you can do this, Juvia."
"Did you say something, Juvia?" Natsu called over his phone conversation.
"Hmm? No, nothing! Didn't say anything!" Juvia flushed, quite flustered, "Have they gotten x-rays on the kid yet?"
"Yeah. I just got them. You wanna check them out?" the salmon-haired man gestured to his computer monitor with a flourish.
Juvia chuckled nervously and walked over, "Yes, please."
What she saw on the screen shocked her. This patient… was incredibly lucky. It seemed that the bullet had hit the sternum and rebounded into the *left ventricle, but it had miraculously missed all major veins and arteries. Juvia almost sighed in relief.
"Come on!" Natsu groaned, "A shattered sternum? Way to make my job harder, kid. Gray, do you have the patient chart filled yet?"
There was a click a moment later and Gray sighed, "Yeah, Natsu. There's nothing that'll affect you in any way. How's the x-ray?"
"Awesome for a gunshot wound, but it's making my life a heck of a lot harder," Natsu growled, "A shattered tibia and a cracked, borderline shattered sternum of all things!"
"How's the heart Juvia?" Gray asked, "Is it bad?"
"Surprisingly, not really," Juvia said casually, trying to hide her lingering doubts, "That boy got really lucky. It's only a few centimeters deep in the muscle of the left ventricle."
"Good to hear. And it looks like your job was made easier at Natsu's expense, so even better," Gray smirked, causing Natsu to scowl in annoyance.
"Shut up, Ice Princess!"
Gray rolled his eyes and looked over at Juvia worryingly, noticing that she appeared paler and shakier than normal. "Juvia, come with me for a second please."
"What are you…" Natsu questioned, glancing at the clock, "The patient could be here any second!"
"I know, Flame Brain! We won't be far. Yell for us if he gets here," Gray grumbled before leading Juvia out to the hall.
"Gray, is something wrong?" Juvia asked, concern shining in her blue eyes as she peered into Gray's own midnight black ones.
She stared questioningly back into Gray's unwavering gaze and felt the tension building slowly in the air around them. "Are you all right?" the anesthesiologist finally asked after what seemed like an eternity of silence.
"Huh? Oh, J-Juvia is fine!" Juvia stuttered, shrinking back with mortification when she noticed she had lapsed back into her childish habit of third person speech.
"No, you're not," Gray insisted, a softer expression settling onto his features, "You're talking in third person, which means you're nervous or scared."
"How would G-Gra-y-you know that?"
"Because I've known you for over a decade," Gray stated simply, "You're going to be fine."
"B-But what if Juvia messes up? The attending isn't here to help! Something terrible could happen, and it would all be Juvia's fault!"
"Don't think like that. Juvia, you're smart, you know your stuff. How else would you have made it out of medical school alive? Now, just calm…" Gray was cut off by the sound of a door slamming open and the shouts and footsteps of the nurses as they rolled the boy into the OR.
"Guys, patient's here!" Natsu called from the desk, grabbing the patient chart and taking off after the gurney.
"I think that's obvious, Natsu!" Gray called after him, rolling his eyes. He gently grabbed Juvia's arm and took off running as well. Glancing back to Juvia, who somehow managed to match his strides perfectly, he grinned and reassured her, "Juvia, you'll do great!"
Juvia managed to muster a weak smile before they caught up to Natsu, who was a few feet behind the patient. They raced down the hallway to the operating room, where they immediately separated to get their instruments ready while the nurses moved the patient.
One of the nurses grabbed the patient chart from Natsu and immediately began scribbling stats on the board. Juvia took one glance at it, made sure the boy's blood pressure and heart rate were stable, and finished setting her station. Gray was busy checking his medications and monitors. Natsu was walking over to check the boy's leg, when he saw the patient's face for the first time.
He stopped short in his tracks, face draining of all color. He looked like he was about to pass out, but he managed to make his way to the boy's head, "R-Romeo!"
"Natsu, do you know the patient? Are you related?" Gray asked urgently, mouth set in a thin line, "Natsu!"
Natsu nodded slowly, eyes not once leaving the form of his unconscious relative, "Yeah. He… He's my cousin, Romeo Conbolt."
"And you didn't realize until now?" Gray growled.
"I hadn't known the patient's name!" the pink-haired surgeon argued.
"How could you not know his name? The paramedics should have told you!" the anesthesiologist said incredulously.
"Well, they didn't! Shut up, Gray!"
Juvia decided that it was best to intervene before they made a scene at the already tense situation. "It doesn't matter now! But Natsu, you know the policy. You shouldn't operate on family members."
"I-It's too late for that! I'm the only orthopedic surgeon here today. I… have to operate on him." Natsu visibly steeled his nerves and went back to his tray of lethal-looking instruments.
"Well, if you're sure…" Gray scowled, obviously unhappy with the situation, and bent to anesthetize Romeo. Once the boy was sufficiently knocked out and *intubated, Juvia shakily stepped up to the operating table.
She poured *Betadine onto the boy's chest and cleaned him off as much as she could. As she worked, Natsu leaned over and stared into Juvia's eyes, "You better fix him correctly, Juvia."
Gray, who was much more aware of the cardiologist's delicate state of mind, barked at the man, "Natsu! You're not helping!"
But Juvia just stared back at Natsu and nodded. Then, in as strong a voice as she could muster, she demanded, "Scalpel."
After four hours of intense surgery, Juvia finally removed the bullet and a few sternum fragments and put in a few stitches. She got Romeo's heart restarted as soon as she could and moved aside to allow Natsu access to the chest cavity, finally able to breathe a little easier. Romeo's leg had been set and casted by then, so Natsu devoted the rest of three hours to setting and plating his cousin's sternum back together, looking paler and sweatier with each passing minute.
So, after a total of seven hours of operation, Romeo was wheeled out to the Intensive Care Unit, externally looking no worse for wear other than a few stitches and a cast.
Juvia, Gray, and Natsu were left to get cleaned up and accompany the patient up to make their surgical reports.
As they walked, Gray shot her a small smile and turned back to check the patient's level of consciousness. Juvia felt the rush of heat travel up her neck and hoped Gray had turned around before he could see her. Natsu, of course, was oblivious to everything and spent the trip smothering his cousin.
Thankfully, they got to the ICU in one piece and rolled Romeo into his room, where a nurse and doctor were there waiting for the report.
"No problems, Mira," Gray informed the white-haired doctor as he planted the IV pole beside the head of the bed.
"Same here," Juvia said shyly, "But you should keep an eye out for infection since I had to perform a *cardiopulmonary bypass on him."
"Kid's tough. Just watch out for his sternum and leg. They should be fine though," Natsu complimented, finally cracking a small smile. He ruffled Romeo's dark purple hair and was about to step back when the boy began to stir.
Within minutes, Romeo was awake and blinking groggily, "What happened?"
Juvia could see Natsu's blood pressure rising as he pounced on his cousin, "What happened? What happened? You had me worried sick, that's what happened! How in the world did you get yourself shot?"
"I was… shot?" Romeo slurred, obviously not completely coherent yet. However, that didn't last long because a second later, his eyes widened and he tried sitting up, only to groan in pain and be pushed down again by Juvia.
"Don't do that, Romeo! You were badly injured," she chided.
"Wh-What's going on? Where am I? Is the old lady ok?" Romeo asked frantically, eyes darting back and forth between the people in the room, "Natsu! What are you doing here?"
"Romeo, relax and calm down. You just came from surgery," Juvia soothed, worried that the boy had somehow messed up some sutures somewhere, "You were shot in the chest and leg, so you need to stay still. Please tell us how that happened?"
The teen had just opened his mouth to respond when there was a commotion out in the hallway, "Where's my son? Tell me where Romeo Conbolt is!"
"Sir, you need to calm down. Your son just came from the OR. He's in Room 3," the woman at the desk said.
Footsteps rang down the hall as Macao Conbolt flew into the room, "Romeo!"
"Hey, Dad," Romeo answered nervously, obviously terrified of his father's reaction to his accident.
"Don't you 'Hey, Dad' me, young man! How could you be so stupid to get yourself shot?" the mustachioed man roared at his son, eyes blazing in anger and fear.
"Um, Uncle Macao, Romeo already heard all this from me. We were just about to hear his explanation, so could ya be quiet for a moment?" Natsu asked bluntly.
Macao's face twisted into a constipated expression as he struggled to restrain himself, but at last he let out a sigh and nodded to Natsu, "Yeah, explain away, Romeo."
Romeo gulped and started his narration again, "Let's see… I was coming home from school, and I heard this scream. It sounded like an old woman, so I ran over to help…"
"With no form of self-defense…" Macao furrowed his eyebrows at his son's sheepish grimace, "Well, continue!"
"Uh, I got there and sure enough, there was this old lady and a dude who was pointing a gun at her. I called the cops, but the guy heard me and shot at me."
"Dude, have I taught you nothing? You should have taken the guy out!" Natsu sighed, but a glare from Macao shut him up.
"Don't listen to the idiot, Romeo. At least you had the sense to call the police," Gray nodded in approval.
"Well, anyway. The guy shot me as I tried tackling him to the ground, and I guess I passed out on him. Last thing I remember are the police sirens and being lifted off the guy by the paramedics."
Turning to the nurse beside her, Mira said, "Elfman, can you call the police station and see if they arrested the shooter? And I need you all to get out so I can attend to young Romeo over here," She demanded everybody else dangerously sweetly, ushering everyone out and slamming the door behind them. No one had the guts to object.
Macao sighed and rubbed his eyes in exhaustion, "One question. How were his injuries, Natsu?"
"Not as bad as we thought," Natsu replied reassuringly, "He had a broken leg, broken sternum, a bullet in the heart…"
Macao started and sprinted to the door, about to start knocking wildly, but Natsu grabbed him and restrained him with Gray's help, "Hold on, Uncle! Let me finish!"
"Romeo! Let me go! I gotta make sure my boy's all right! A bullet through the chest? You call that 'not that bad?'" the father yelled incredulously.
"Sir, let us explain! Or rather, let Juvia since she was the one who got the bullet out," Gray tried to reason as he struggled to contain his friend's thrashing uncle.
"M-me?" Juvia stuttered, clearly uncomfortable with the thought of speaking to her patient's volatile father, but under Gray's expectant gaze, she sighed and relented, "Sir, your son is fine. The bullet had bounced off of Romeo's sternum and was stopped by the tissue in the left ventricle. It was a very shallow wound, and the bullet didn't hit anything important. I got it out just fine, but you need to let him rest, so he can recover sooner."
Macao finally stopped resisting and collapsed in one of the chairs in the hall, burying his face in his hands, "My boy…"
Natsu stared at Gray, Gray stared at Juvia, and Juvia stared at Natsu; all three doctors were completely baffled by what to do, so Gray made a quick excuse about getting back to work, allowing them a window of escape from the emotion game that none of them knew how to play.
As they bustled in through the doors of the elevator, a teenage girl tripped over Natsu's foot on her way out and landed with a resounding crash outside the doors. Natsu immediately began apologizing, but the girl stood up like it was nothing, apologized to them instead in a soft voice, and ran in the direction of the ICU.
Juvia caught a flash of blue hair as the girl disappeared around the corner and brushed the incident off. However, as the elevator doors began sliding shut, she heard Gray take a sharp intake of breath as he stiffened. Juvia turned to him worriedly only to see him bound to the crack in the closing doors and yell in disbelief, "WENDY?!"
Important: I know some of these situations are highly idealized and may be inaccurate, but I tried to make everything within the realm of possibility. Please don't let these unlikely situations put you off. Thanks!
Note: I didn't define any of the jobs because I think they're reasonably self-explanatory. Only ophthalmologist could get confusing, and that's an eye doctor.
Glossary:
Fellow - The stage in medical education after medical school and residency during which doctors may perform most procedures themselves, mostly with supervision.
Trauma - A life-threatening bodily injury that must be surgically treated immediately.
Left ventricle - The thickest chamber of the heart that pumps oxygenated blood to the body.
Intubate - To put a breathing tube down a patient's trachea to help the patient breath while under anesthesia.
Betadine - An antiseptic used to clean surgical sites.
Cardiopulmonary bypass - The name for the action of using the heart-lung bypass machine.