Prompt: meant no harm
"Aren't you a doctor, Holly? Didn't you swear to 'do no harm' and all that when they gave you the scalpel and the white coat?"
But Holly just ignored her girlfriend and went back to filling out the paperwork on the clipboard a bored-looking nurse handed them when they arrived.
"I'm pretty sure broken bones count as harm, Hol," the blonde pouted, lifting the flannel-wrapped ice pack that she'd been holding to her face.
"Keep the ice on it," Holly said sharply, "and try to keep from talking. I'm pretty sure it's just your nose but I'm going to ask them to X-Ray your face too, just in case there are any corresponding breaks in the zygomatic bone or the maxilla. I hit you pretty hard and I don't like the way you're starting to bruise."
Gail pouted. "This is all your fault, you know," she said and stuck out her bottom lip.
"Mmmhmm," Holly answered dryly, "and I'm sure it has nothing to do with you hiding in our dark basement and jumping out from the corner to try and scare me. I mean, what were you thinking, babe? You were the one to insist I take those self-defense classes in the first place."
The blonde shifted position and grimaced as the movement aggravated something in her face.
"Well," she answered, her tone grumpy, "I didn't think you were going to jam your elbow into my face and then spin and throw an uppercut."
She sounded pitiful and Holly couldn't but help feel a little sorry.
"At least I realized it was you before I threw you to the ground," she said.
Gail harrumphed, and adjusted the soggy ice pack against her aching nose and face.
"It hurts, Hol," she said, the doctor could hear the beginning of a new round of tears in her girlfriend's voice.
"I know, honey," she said. "Here, lean against my shoulder and try to hold on. I'm sure the nurse will call us at any moment, and then you're just one embarrassing story and a couple of X-Rays away from a day or two of narcotic-induced bliss."
But that only soothed Gail momentarily.
"Oh, my God," she whispered dramatically, "Holly, what are we going to tell the doctor?"
But the brunette didn't follow. "What do you mean, Gail—are you sure you didn't lose consciousness for a moment? Do you feel dizzy or nauseous at all?" Holly began to worry that maybe she should ask the doctor to order an MRI as well.
"Hol, if we tell them what happened, they'll arrest you for domestic abuse." Gail was trying to whisper but failing, and Holly was glad it seemed to be a slow day in the ER so far.
"Gail, it was an accident. We'll just tell them everything, how it was all a misunderstanding. They'll probably laugh but they won't arrest us, honey."
But Gail was looking back and forth between her girlfriend and the big, burly security officer sitting in the corner, currently paging through a back issue of some magazine extolling the benefits of late-pregnancy workouts.
"Baby, you beat me up. They're going to arrest you. We have to get our story straight. If we tell them what really happened they'll think I'm making it up to protect my abuser. Trust me, Hol, I'm a police officer."
Holly couldn't decide whether to laugh or sigh. "Gail, when in your experience as an officer of the law has 'getting a story straight' every worked out for anyone? It'll just make them more suspicious. We'll just tell the truth. Nothing will—"
But she was interrupted by a tiny nurse at the door.
"Peck? Abigail Peck?"
"Just stay cool, Hol," Gail whispered as the brunette helped her up, "I got this. You're not getting cuffed today."
Holly rolled her eyes and led her ridiculous girlfriend out of the waiting room and into the curtained-off examining room to where a young male nurse was waiting.
"And what is the nature of your injury today," the nurse—Joel, according to his name tag—asked, gently peeling away the mostly melted ice pack Gail had been holding over her nose and face to help keep it from swelling.
"I'm a sex goddess," the blonde responded defensively.
Holly just snorted and rolled her eyes again.