STUCK ON YOU
November 1998

"It's just wrong."

Thunder cracks outside as Gracie draws labs on an unconscious male patient in Exam One. She watches the guy's blood drip into assigned tubes as she shakes her head with a weary smirk. It's approaching daylight hours, but Gracie has been on all night — having reluctantly taken on a twenty-four hour shift, starting at 5pm the previous day. She has another twelve hours to go before being set free, and she was grateful (to say the least) when Malik clocked in for the day shift. He provided a much needed breath of fresh air after the insanity that was graveyard.

She glances up from under her eyelashes at Malik, who stands across the room, hooking up a banana bag to a deeply snoozing drunk. "How is it wrong?"

"Men and women can't relate to each other," Malik replies, and Gracie snorts in response as she withdraws the needle from her kid's intravenous line and tosses out the biohazards. "What? It's true! They live such different lives."

"I don't get why people make it such an issue," Gracie laughs, stripping off her latex gloves. "Only really weak guys can't be friends with girls."

"I'm just sayin', any woman who has a guy as a good friend is either a tease, or living in denial."

She rolls her eyes playfully, not really taking his words to heart. She snatches up her tubes of blood and the corresponding chart, announcing dryly, "I gotta get these to the lab."

"Think about it!"

Gracie just shakes her head as she makes her way out into the hall. She drops her samples off at the lab before finding her way back to admit, arriving just in time to find Carter turning up behind the desk, with Roxanne at his side. Gracie has always genuinely liked Roxanne, an affable insurance broker, and it is for this reason that she smiles when Roxanne greets her. She has no reason to dislike her. "Hey, Gracie!" Roxanne exclaims. She is holding a section of the newspaper in her hands. "Would you ever live in a commune?"

Gracie blinks with confusion as she makes a note in the chart, and exchanges it for another. "What?" is all she can manage to say.

"There's an ad here for a communal vegetarian household."

Carter snatches the newspaper out of Roxanne's grasp, giving her a telltale look. "And I do enjoy steak, thank you," he says wryly.

"Now, John, let's not be picky."

"Looking for a new place to live, Carter?" Gracie asks conversationally, looking over Dr. Weaver's notes on her nineteen-year-old in Exam Three.

"Yeah..." Carter blows out a slow breath as he checks the board.

"John lost the RA job," Roxanne supplies helpfully.

"What?"

Carter doesn't look thrilled. Gracie can't blame him. After the legend that was the medical school's Halloween party, where he had been a resident advisor in the dorms, she would have been less than thrilled too, were she in his position. "You can thank Lucy for that," he sighs.

"I don't think it's necessarily Lucy's fault —"

"Yeah, but she certainly didn't help."

"Oh, here's one," Roxanne announces suddenly, her gaze focused on the paper. She reads aloud, "Furnished apartment in old townhome, access to full kitchen, many amenities..."

Carter perks up. "That sounds promising."

Roxanne leans against the counter and replies, "Yeah, and not too far from the hospital... look, I can talk to my realtor and set up an appointment for you after work?"

"All right," Carter agrees with a bit of a smile. "See you later."

Gracie watches as he leans in to give Roxanne a quick kiss. "Bye," she tells him, and Gracie looks back to her chart awkwardly. She knows Roxanne has left when Carter joins her side and starts removing his coat.

"Yeah, I was up half the night packing. They want me out today."

"You wanna talk late nights?" Gracie quickly retorts, as if this were a challenge to see whose night was worse. "I'm about ready to staple a seatbelt to the forehead of every teenager that comes in here."

Carter's bubbling with chuckles before she even finishes her sentence. "What happened?"

She taps the chart in her hand. "Nineteen-year-old, not wearing a seatbelt while riding in the car with his buddy. When they wrecked, the car folded around him." While he's looking at something on the computer and not at her, Carter is actively listening, and he winces at these words. "Unconscious, tubed, and no breath sounds of the right. I kid you not, the flight crew darted his chest three times, and he'd still drop his sats. He crumped in trauma. When they cracked his chest in the OR, both of his lungs were destroyed. He's either gonna die, or be a veggie."

"Damn."

"Oh, and the driver? C1 fracture. Promptly told me to go fuck myself rather than touch him. But I whispered sweet nothings into his ear, he shut up pretty fast."

He shakes his head and turns to look at her. "Sounds magical," he says with a bit of amusement, watching as she makes a note in her chart.

Gracie snorts, all worked up. "I'm tired of telling people to wear their seatbelt. They just don't listen. I give up. I'm on strike."

"Didn't Florence Nightingale have some kind of pledge?"

She leans in close to his side, catching a hint of his aftershave in the process. "By the way, ICU's backed up 'cause of my veggie kid." Carter groans, and Gracie chortles loudly as she takes off for another patient. His reply drifts over her shoulder in passing, and all she can do is smirk as she departs.

"Viva la strike."

Later, Gracie hears about a trauma that came in, involving two carpet installers covered in glue; but she's too caught up with a patient in radiology to come assist. As the rain dies down and morning pushes into afternoon, she admits an asthmatic and takes advantage of fifteen blissful minutes to head up to the cafeteria, grab some food, and call to check up on Oupa. When she finally returns to the department, she walks so fast that she nearly runs into a familiar form.

"Hey now —"

His hands press down on her shoulders to steady her, and she looks up to find a baby-faced, clean shaven Dr. Carter. Her jaw drops.

"Where'd Sasquatch go?" Gracie asks breathlessly.

Carter gives her an unamused look. "As with everything in my life today, I blame Lucy."

"Carpet glue?"

All he can do is nod, and Gracie laughs before sweeping around him. "That was smart," she says. She makes her way into the lounge, and he follows.

"How much longer are you on?"

"Off at five," Gracie replies absently, reaching into her locker and pulling out a blood glucose monitor. "One hour, twenty minutes, and thirty-six seconds to go."

He collapses on the couch and watches as she pricks her finger to test the sugar. "At least it's not a thirty-six hour shift."

"You'd have to bury me alive before I offered to take on a thirty-six hour shift."

"Bury you alive?"

"I hate the thought of it."

He crinkles his forehead with mixed amusement at her words, shakes his head and sighs. "Yeah, I wanted to sneak out of here a bit early, go look at that apartment; but I don't think I'm gonna be able to get out in time."

Gracie ponders his statement. She has thought about his housing search ever since Roxanne pointed it out this morning, but a part of her toils over mentioning anything about it at all. She's not sure why she's thinking about it — perhaps because now she considers him a friend, and she only wants to help. But another part of her wonders about Roxanne, and what that would mean if either of them thought this was a good idea. So she says nothing, instead focusing on her pending glucose reading. "Everything good?" Carter asks.

It was a decent reading. She shrugs and put her supplies back in her locker, saying, "Can't complain." He murmurs an assenting word, and it is this that drives her to bring up her thoughts. "Hey..." she begins almost too casually, her gut churning, "you know... if your search doesn't pan out... I mean, you know. We have a spare room at home. Actually, it's more like a fold-out couch in a creaky old lanai, but the price is right."

Carter watches her with a steady gaze and a small smile on his lips. He says, "We'll see."

She shuts her locker, shifting the conversation in a casual, natural way as she bustles toward the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go personally thank Lucy for singlehandedly eliminating the threat of cryptids in our workplace."

And that is all that can be said.

Darkness had long since settled over Chicago by the time Gracie finally hears a knock at her front door. Having been home for hours, unable to sleep, exhaustion deep in her bones, she walks around now in a warm, hooded sweatshirt and pajama pants, surreptitiously straightening the living room of Oupa's many puzzle boxes. And when the sound comes, she hurries to the door before the caller resorts to ringing the doorbell, not wishing to wake her grandfather.

Standing on the front porch, is Carter.

She greets him with nothing more than an inquisitive look, wrapping her sweatshirt-clad arms around herself in an unconscious attempt to shield herself from the chilly wind outside. He takes a moment to state his purpose for visiting so late. But finally, he says it, more a question than a statement.

"Does your offer still stand?"

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