Reagan breathed in through her nostrils and out through her mouth at the crowd of people watching her on stage of the auditorium they were in. She would rather do a corpus callosotomy blindfolded than public speaking. And doing it in front of a group of doctors, that was even worse. Doctors were the worst critics. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and channeled Carrie Underwood and tried to calm her nerves. Jesus, take the wheel…

She turned back to the crowd and managed to spot Dr. Irie slip in at the last moment. He was thin to the point of malnourishment and his steeled, blank eyes made him look robotic, but he was cute otherwise and she'd bet the whole herd that he was really attractive before whatever happened to him. What in the world happened to you, Naoki?

She gripped the little podium she was standing at with one hand and the slideshow clicker with her other. Kazuki-san stood towards her right, waiting to translate her words for the crowd. Alright, deep breath…

"As you all know, deep hypothermic circulatory arrest is a procedure where the patient is cooled to below twenty degrees to stop brain function and blood circulation for a short amount of time." She started, letting her voice carry to the back of the room. "Applications of DHCA include repairs of the aortic arch, repairs to head and neck great vessels, repair of large cerebral aneurysms, pulmonary thromboendarterectomy, and repair of cerebral arteriovenous malformations…" She paused to let Kazuki-san catch up. "I am here because I have not only successfully performed DCHA a total of nine times, but two of those times were performed on an infant younger than one, and three of those times I successfully lowered the body temperature to fourteen degrees, allowing a full ninety minutes of clinical death."

As she talked she let her gaze circulate the group in front of her. She didn't want to keep them too long. She knew herself that doctors got antsy if she was away from patients for too long. But they were all tracking with her. Except for one, who was sleeping on his hand. She sighed a little internally. Dr. Irie was not going to make her trip out here easy, that was for sure.

"Who can tell me the end goal of DHCA?" She let Kazuki-san finish her question before she pretended to scan the room. "Dr. Irie!"

"Cooling continues until the brain is also inactivated by cold, and electrocerebral silence or flatline EEG is attained. The blood pump is then switched off, and the interval of circulatory arrest begins." Dr. Irie said without even opening his eyes. He then said it again in Japanese.

Reagan felt her jaw drop open a little bit. That was word for word out of her notes she gave him yesterday. And it was on the bottom of a paper she wrote that she threw in the back of one. That meant that Naoki had read all of her notes. In a day. Six years of work. In an evening. But she couldn't be fully mad at him. She was also impressed. She wondered how he was over a surgical table. It was possible for doctors to be book smart but implode under pressure. Was he going to pass with flying colors when he is only given an hour tops to resect a brain hemorrhage or repair an artery? Only to then quickly bring up the temperature in the patient to avoid hypothermia?

She almost salivated at the thought of finding out. "Very good, Dr. Irie."

Dr. Irie was not going to make her trip out here easy, but she was safe in saying that he was going to make it very interesting.


Naoki moved with the rest of the group of doctors into an empty operating room once Reagan was finished going over the procedure on how to perform DHCA. He leaned against the wall and tried to make himself look aloof and not obvious that he was nursing a hangover. His head pounded right behind his eyes that made him wince with every beat. He was having a hard time keeping up with Reagan's interpreter, let alone Reagan herself, as she chattered in the middle of the operating room.

He had gone home yesterday and read through all of Reagan's notes in a six hour sitting. They had consumed him. Which was odd, since he hadn't held any interest in anything really in so long. It was different, feeling that that familiar need to learn and consume knowledge. And he had come to two conclusions: The first was that Reagan was unorthodox. Her methodology spanned beyond normal medicine. She thought outside of the box, like using ice cream to diagnose a brain aneurysm or using intervalled barbiturates to figure out the source of a seizure pattern, and that's why she was so successful at DHCA, since the procedure, in and of itself, was unorthodox. The second was that she was absolutely brilliant.

But she would never here that from Naoki.

She looked so small and petite standing next to the group of male doctors, like a child playing dress up. She held herself high, trying to make herself seem bigger than she was, reflexively holding her chin up and her shoulders back. She wasn't wearing a lab coat, but she was wearing the uniform green scrubs that marked her as a surgeon, her hands in the front pockets as animatedly she moved around the dummy laying on the table.

She turned and touched a finger to her chin, her eyes drifting to the ceiling like she was trying to decide something. She only held it for a second before dropping her hand and moving back around the table. Kotoko made that face all the time. It felt like a punch to the gut and it took all of Naoki's willpower not to audibly gasp aloud out of pain.

Your fault.

Everything is your fault.

Everything.

Naoki took a silent deep breath, the sharp knife of grief and guilt twisting in his stomach. He was panicking. He knew what a panic attack was. He could catalog the symptoms, list them off as he experienced them: heart palpitations, chest pain, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and chills. He could recite, word-for-word out of the DSM-5 the definition of a panic attack from memory.

It didn't make them any easier though.

Naoki looked around at the faces as they started to blur together. They were all captivated by Reagan, and not paying attention to him at all. Logically, Naoki saw that. It didn't stop the feeling that they were way too close and that the caving walls were only making them closer.

Without thinking about it, he made his way towards the door of the operating room, desperate for air.

"Dr. Irie!" He heard Reagan call his name but he didn't stop moving. He couldn't.

Everything is your fault.


Reagan watched Dr. Irie all of a sudden run out the door. A knot of worry dropped in her stomach and she had half a mind to run after him. But she thought about the sheer terror in his eyes when she threatened to tell the Chief about the other day, and that kept her frozen in front of the other doctors that looked about as confused as she was. What would happen, though, if they found out? Would he lose his job because he's sick? Is that even legal? She couldn't get that look he gave out of her head. The hospital was all he had left, she understood that now. She hoped, silently, that it wasn't anything serious. She was unsure how many times she would be successful at talking him down from the edge of a bridge.

It's not your responsibility, though. She reminded herself. Perhaps not personally. But, he technically was her student now. At least, for the next couple of months.

Reagan jammed her fists in the front pockets of her scrubs. A quiet, but steady murmur of speculation and gossip rose from the small crowd in front of her. She put on a big smile. "Why don't we take a break?" She suggested and as soon as Kazuki finished translating for her, the doctors turned and filed out of the operating room.

Reagan turned to Kazuki, who loyally stood next to her, watching the others walk out. "You can go too, Kazuki-san." She smiled at him.

"Are you sure, Dr. Dunn?" He said, his tousled reddish hair shining underneath the large central light. "I can stay with you."

She waved him off. "I think I can manage a vending machine without a translator. You go get something to eat."

He made a short bow and headed for the door with a short, but grateful "Thank you."

Reagan followed after a counting to sixty, and maneuvered her way around the large surgical unit. Now that it was mid-afternoon, the hallway was bustling with nurses pushing beds and wheelchairs, conversations between family members in the hallway, and doctors moving from recovery room to recovery room, checking on patients.

She wandered around the halls, her hands in her pockets, as she peaked in offices. She wasn't sure why she was trying to find him. She just had this troubling feeling that he was in worse shape than he seemed.

She finally found Naoki at foot of a large, but empty staircase, his back to her, one hand pressed against the wall. "Dr. Irie," She started as she approached him. "Are you okay?"

He didn't answer, but Reagan could see his scapulae through his lab coat contract with heavy breaths. What has the world done to you?

"Dr. Irie?" She started again, arching around him to see his face. "Naoki?"

"I'm fine." He clipped suddenly, as Reagan moved in front of him. "I'm sorry I left the class." His eyes were pitched sideways, but Reagan could see tears in his eyelashes. "It will not happen again."

Reagan looked at this man who stood two heads taller than her. "Are you sure?" For a split second she thought she saw something in his eyes. Hesitation? Uncertainty? She thought back to him on the bridge, the deep desolation in his eyes. I feel like I am drowning and I can't find which way is up.

"Are you going to tell the Chief?" His eyes moved to something above her head.

Reagan was confused for a second and then recalled their conversation yesterday in the supply closet. "You haven't given me a reason to." She shrugged. "For all I know, you ate something that didn't agree with you."

A small smile crossed his lips and he seemed to relax in his shoulders. "I read your notes you gave me yesterday."

"Oh, yeah?" She rolled her eyes and met his challenging smile. "What did you think?"

His eyes came to rest on her. "There's more to you than meets the eye, Dr. Dunn."


Me watching the first episode of the 2nd season:

beginning: what the fuck you fucking emotionally constipated fuck mothering broken toaster what the fuck i will end you with a dirty KFC spork you have the personality of a mcdonalds chicken nugget that's been run over by a fedex truck i hate u so much

end: awwww they're so cute together they were meant for each other i love this show fuck my emotions up ~~~ (ó ꒳ ò✿)

review if same