" Si no dejas de hacer preguntas te dejo a un lado de la carretera. "
Yang grumbled as Ruby bounced in the passenger seat of the jeep with way too much energy than necessary. She had to keep one hand on the wheel and another over the cup holders so the girl wouldn't accidently launch her coffee out the window.
" Ay, por favor , you never tell us anything!" Ruby persists, turning towards her sister as they pull off the highway. The weather was warming up these few days, allowing them to ride roofless with the wind blowing through their hair.
"There's nothing to tell," Yang sticks in again, looking over her shoulder as she changes lanes. "Not yet, atleast."
"Well is she pretty?"
"No shit sherlock."
" Obtienes tu boca de Qrow, " Ruby complains, still not discouraged. "Just tell me at least what her job is, you're going to the hospital so is she a nurse or something?"
"She's a doctor, a good one too," Yang finally relents - she grimaces as Ruby's eyes pick up their usual exhausting sparkle. The fact that she hasn't accidentally swerved at her random outbursts was a miracle.
"Yang's got the hots for a surgeon," she teases, dodging a swipe of Yang's hand. "Maybe she can fix that cold dead heart of yours."
"Maybe they can excise all the annoying out of you too."
They finally, finally , pulled up in the school's dropoff loop, Yang hitting the break a little harder than necessary. "Alright, get out before I kick you out." she says as some of Ruby's friends start to wave at her.
"Wait," she says before leaving. "If you're meeting her today, take off the aviators."
"What, why? I like my sunglasses"
"They make you look like you're part of the mafia or something, drug dealer Xiao Long, now that's a cool title," Ruby says, grabbing her bag and hopping out of the car before Yang could demand an explanation. "See you later!" she shouts quickly before running off.
" ¡No parezco un traficante de drogas!" Yang calls as the bell rings, triggering some haunting memories of her own high school experience. She was off the property with a huff before the sound finished, a plume of dust kicked up behind her. Her sunglasses were tucked away into the glove compartment for safe measure.
"Wait, how are you here? Did Blake sneak you in?"
Yang shoved another spoonful of the hospital cafeteria pasta into her mouth with a plastic utensil. Her elbows were planted solidly into the wooden table and she ate the dingy food with a gusto the residents have never seen before. "Nope, I'm here to drop off her heels, I guess she's running late."
She took an audible sip of her drink that caused Weiss to turn away in disgust. The cup wasn't even set on the table before she put more food into her mouth. "I guess I've been here so many times that the nurses all recognize me, they let me right in. Jaune even told me which operation room she's in. Not sure what a maze procedure is, but it sounds fancy."
"That doesn't feel very legal, or safe." Weiss comments, eyeing Yang as she continues to eat aggressively. She took a tentative bite of her own food, extra careful as if she was compensating for Yang's behaviour.
"Oh come on, she's already on a first name basis with basically the entire staff."
Everyone sitting at the table with Yang turned towards a brunette as she approached their table with a tray of food in hand. Sun and Neptune moved their chairs to make space for her, clearly on friendly terms with her.
Sun grabbed an apple off of her tray that was met with little retaliation. He took a bite, talking through a full mouth. "Speaking of that, I'm pretty sure you're the only person that she hasn't met yet. This is Ilia, she's another resident. Neptune, Blake, Ilia and I all went to medical school together"
Yang stuck out a hand, one that the girl merely looked at before Yang pulled it back in embarrassment. "Well I'm-"
"I know who you are, you're the blonde idiot that thinks flirting over sutures is effective." Ilia cuts in, clearly not willing to entertain pleasantries. "Not even including the impressive medical bill you've racked up over the same accident over and over."
Yang seemed up to the challenge, bucking horns with the bold brunette. "Well, by all means I think it was effective. Or maybe it was someone else who I was making out with at her doorstep last night."
Neptune choked on his water and coughed violently as Sun slapped him on the back. Ilia seemed to freeze completely as Yang put on a victorious smile. She shoved some more pasta into her mouth like it was her reward.
"You guys were what ?!" Neptune managed out after recovering. "I can't believe that this son of a bitch finally did it, nice!" He stood up to give Yang a high five which was met with solid contact.
The two boys and Yang were laughing loudly as Ilia was silent. She stared straight at her food for a few minutes before getting up. Chair scraping on the hard linoleum floor, she walked away without saying a word.
Sun watched as she disappeared through the doors before glancing back to the tray she left. "What's with her? She left her food." He looked around the table and was met with no answers. Sun shrugged and dragged the tray over and started eating.
Suddenly, all three of their pagers started vibrating, rattling on the wooden table. They grabbed at them quickly and stood up in unison.
"Damn it, there was a gas leak in an apartment, explosion on the fourth floor." Neptune says, blindly grabbing at his coat on the back of his chair.
"They're paging me too, at least twenty incoming and enroute. They're paging all the heads, it must be serious." Weiss followed suit and ran out of the cafeteria behind Neptune with their coats billowing behind them. In fact, several doctors and nurses all got similar pages and streamed out through the doors.
Sun sighed in frustration. "Oh, come on." He shoved his pager back into his pocket and sat down heavily, shoving food into his mouth.
Yang watched him curiously, having finished her meal. "What? She asks. Sun looked at her in confusion before realizing he wasn't making any sense.
"Sorry, Blake's running long, that's what my page was." He sighed before getting up, clearly sad that he must part with his meal. He pulled on his coat before dashing off, but only made it halfway across the room before he doubled back. He stared at Yang sitting alone in the deserted cafeteria with pasta stuck on a fork halfway to her mouth. "Oh, fuck. What am I going to do with you."
"It's fine, you can go. I know my way around anyways." Yang says before finishing her last bite. She got up, picking up the tray and returning it to its bin.
"No, I can't leave you unattended, I'd probably get fired." He tapped his foot loudly trying to come up with a solution. His face lit up and he beckoned for her to follow him which she did quickly. "You're right, all the nurses and doctors know you. You can just hide out in the ER with me while we work, they'll probably not even take a second glance at you."
"Sounds fun, you think I can break some bones?" Yang asks as they jog through the halls. They opened the stairwell doors and descended the floors quickly. Sirens could be heard from the ambulance bay, the scratch of gurneys on the hard linoleum floors, the familiar astringent scent of antiseptic.
"Well, we're not exactly breaking bones, but you could probably follow around Nora and watch her set some. It sounds exactly the same and looks just as painful." He says as they arrived at the bottom of the stairs. They pushed through the doors to the ER, where Sun immediately slapped his hand over Yang's eyes.
"On second thought, maybe you should go to the gallery." Sun rushes out, placing his other hand on Yang's shoulder and quickly guiding her away. Several gurneys were set up along the ER and connecting hallways holding burn victims waiting to be debrided. It was quite unsightly, with the wounds to their skin spanning much of their bodies. An intern nearby doubled back and threw up into a nearby trash bin.
"Get over here Sun, we have to triage now, there's more incoming!" A woman's voice shouts out from across the floor - Robyn was rapidly assessing patients as they were wheeled in from the bay. She placed tags on each gurney as they passed; red for critical care, yellow for urgent, and green for stable.
Sun only moved his hand when they were well away from the trauma patients and in front of the elevators, whose buttons he pushed at impatiently. The doors opened and he ushered a confused Yang inside. "She's on floor 3, OR 5, gallery 5. Don't let anyone see you!" He calls out before dashing away, leaving the elevator doors to close on Yang that was standing there dumbfounded.
It took her 10 minutes to finally find the right gallery, a lot of wandering through the upper level halls where she hadn't ever been to. A few close calls with nurse's who didn't recognize her, but she managed to find it eventually without any bystanders around.
A significant portion of the staff were called down to man the ER and OR to cope with the influx of trauma patients, leaving the rest of the hospital nearly deserted - Yang was able to slip around corners and halls unseen.
Carefully, Yang pushed open the doors to the spectators booth. Seeing that the chairs lined in the room were deserted, she walked in and let the door close softly behind her.
The gallery was elevated above the operation room, indented into the wall with one side made entirely of glass to watch the surgery below. A small television was in the corner of the room that showed a video feed of the surgical field from a mounted camera. In addition, a small communications device located on the wall near the door was streaming the audio from inside the OR to the gallery.
The light labeled 'listen' was blinking green as a woman's voice was playing through it. Fascinated, Yang took a seat and watched as the doctors and staff worked on their patient. The lead surgeon was facing away on the left side of the patient while her assist was facing Yang, who she instantly recognized as Blake under the light blue mask and scrubs - her scrub cap was black, with little embroidered bees buzzing around on it.
"Alright, ablating the PVs on the left side."
The lead surgeon with red hair tied neatly under her scrub cap, Pyrrha as she recognized from the ER, took a tool from the nurse and brought it back down to the patient.
"Checking overlap, looks good. Blake, why don't you continue the ablations with the bipolar?"
Blake, opposite to her, took another tool from the nurse and started working in the incision. Yang watched her minuscule and delicate movements through the television. A small amount of smoke rose from where she was working with the bipolar.
"Okay, tell me the advantages of using cryoablation in this case compared to radiofrequency ablation."
Blake didn't hesitate at all to answer while continuing her work, the small scar lines being made on the heart tissue starting to form where her tool passed.
"Cryoablation is associated with a higher atrial contractility restoration rate, this patient showed signs of weakness in the left ventricular wall so this method was preferred as it better restores its function."
Pyrrha seemed satisfied with the response, checking over Blake's work every once and a while. She spoke quietly with the anaesthesiologist, hands held up within the sterile field.
"What about cons in this case."
"Larger caliber probes and longer exposure times that make it unsuitable for the standard percutaneous insertion, but I'd say it's justified in this case based on the extent of his condition."
An OR nurse reached over to re-douse the area with saline. Blake looked up at the heart monitor briefly, checking all the patient's sats before resuming her work. Pyrrha seemed rather relaxed with letting Blake take the lead, turning towards a nearby nurse standing by the doors.
"Update the family that Mr. Valece is doing great. We'll be out in a few minutes to bring him to the ICU for a bit until we move him to standard recovery."
The lady nodded before pushing out the doors. Once Blake had finished and the heart-lung bypass was removed, Pyrrha removed the instruments from the patient's thoracic cavity and reached for the internal defibrillator paddles.
"Let's get this heart started, shall we. Charge to 20,"
"Clear."
Everyone lifted their hands off the patient as his body jolted slightly with the charge. Yang watched as Pyrrha squirted some more saline onto his heart and readjusted the position of the paddles on either side of his heart.
"Okay, once more. Charge to 30,"
Everyone raised their hands again, watching the cardiac monitor.
"Clear."
Another shock was delivered, this time succeeding in achieving sinus rhythm. The machine beeped rhythmically as a few staff members started to clap - it wasn't often they got to see this procedure done, much less done successfully.
Pyrrha sighed loud enough that it was audible over the comms. She stepped away from the surgical field and pulled off her gloves and gown.
"Blake, check the entry and exit blocks and close for me and place an AtriClip. I'd say use a purse-string suture just to be safe, we don't want him decompressing on the way back to Mistral."
Blake was left as the sole surgeon in the room as Pyrrha went to scrub out. Yang could see her pull her scrub cap off and stretch after the long surgery. She turned her attention back to Blake, who was finishing the last of the procedure.
Her gaze was down at her work, composure relaxed and professional. She moved her arms with grace and stability Yang had never seen before. At least, not around a garage or repair shop. Her tools clattered onto the table as she set them down, having finished the last of the sutures. The nurses started to finish the rest of the post-op procedure as Blake stepped away from the table.
Rolling out her shoulders, her gaze wandered up until they stared straight at Yang. Eyes wide, Blake froze, trying to comprehend if it was actually Yang or not up in the gallery.
"Holy shit."
Yang heard quietly through the comms, it was Blake's voice. The anesthesiologist turned to her questioningly who she apologized to quickly. Blake jabbed a gloved finger at Yang from her position in the gallery and gestured for her to get down.
Purely to annoy her, Yang got up and walked over to the comms device, pushing and holding down the 'speak' button.
"Nice work, Dr. Belladonna, but I think you have a consult right now, with me. Outside, maybe in a closet."
Yang snickered as she watched Blake's eyes widen even further in horror, looking back and forth at the OR staff that stared at her blankly. A scrub nurse started laughing before quickly stopping herself and playing it off as a cough. Blake stormed out of the OR, never taking her eyes off of Yang as she walked leisurely out of the gallery's door.
As soon as Blake spotted Yang hanging around the corner, she charged straight at her. Yang was chatting with a nurse that she seemingly knew from her past visits, cracking a joke and laughing with her. As soon as the nurse saw Blake hurtling down the hallway straight at them, she politely made her leave as quickly as possible in the opposite direction, leaving Yang abruptly confused and alone - until Blake reached up and grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and pushed her back into the wall with an audible thump.
"Are you trying to get me fired?! Do you know how long of a suspension I'll get if they find out that I brought a fucking cilivian into the gallery?" She stared at her furiously, "Do you think? Ever? In your life? Do you ever consider the consequences of your actions!?"
Yang smiled and placed her hands on Blake's waist and pulled her closer. "Damn, I love it when you're angry. Maybe I should break some rules more often then." She felt her stomach drop when Blake's eyes lit with an anger she hasn't seen since when she broke Ruby's replica sword last summer.
"You, are. Intolerable!" Blake practically snarls, tightening her grip on Yang's shirt and jerking her down. She stared into her eyes for a few moments as the anger dissipated and her grip started to loosen. The pale lavender of Yang's eyes looked much too innocent in relation to the utter garbage that came out of her mouth. "You are so lucky you are hot."
Yang let out a loud laugh as Blake released her from her grasp, the girl turning to hide the tinge of red on her cheeks.
"You guys have some world-class security here, surgery looks way cooler in person than on TV." Yang says.
"Don't tell anyone you were in there," Blake says back while turning back towards her, glancing down the hallway for anyone within earshot. The floor still seemed to be deserted spare for a technician passing through.
"My lips are sealed, but maybe you want to shut them up for good? Preferably with yours?" Yang suggests - what she lacked in common sense she made up for in confidence; blatant, unfiltered confidence.
Blake clapped a hand over Yang's mouth before she could say anything more. She tried to talk again, voice muffled under Blake's hand - she had a pretty strong suspicion that it was something dirty - what else would it be.
Grabbing her hand, they turned a corner into the halls - a small huddle of interns were standing right on the other side pretending like they hadn't just spied on the whole altercation. Staring dead forward, Blake didn't dare look back once at them, dragging Yang along behind her at her unusually fast pace.
They arrived at the resident's locker room a few minutes and staircases later. Yang walked in and looked around curiously at the rows of lockers and benches, at the sofa lodged in one corner and a small mini fridge pushed up to a wall. Large windows on the far wall let the last rays of sunlight in for the day, missing the leaves of a sad looking fern by a few inches.
Blake brushed past her to her locker and rummaged around. She produced Yang's leather jacket which she threw straight at her face. Yang caught it and pulled it on, pulling at its lapels and collar before taking a deep breath of one side of the fabric.
"Smells good, what perfume do you use?" She asks, clearly happy to be reunited with the worn piece of clothing.
"Cherry blossom, and stop smelling it. It's embarrassing." Blake replies, closing her locker. She walked over to wear Yang was standing, who was looking around at various plaques on the walls. "You have my heels, right?"
"Yup, right here." She produced the black heels and handed them over with a smile. With nothing to hold now, Yang jammed her hands into her pockets.
Heavy footsteps started to approach from down the hall, the unusually characteristic sound belonging to one specific person. They both turned as a person walked through the doorway. "Oh, hey Sun. How was the bomb?"
He gave them both a wave before walking to his own locker and pulling off his coat. "Good, and explosion, not a bomb. They diverted some of the later traumas that didn't need to go to a class 1 trauma centre to another hospital so there wasn't much input after the first few."
"Wasn't there some guy with an impaling trauma?" Blake asks from the locker beside him. "We haven't gotten
"Yeah, he got thrown back by the blast while on the sidewalk and landed on a picket fence," Sun says, remembering the dull groans the man let out when he arrived in the ER fondly. "God, it was such a cool case."
"Wait, actually?" Yang asks, interested in the gruesome case. Sun seemed happy to tell the tale and all its gross details.
"The metal went straight through his abdomen, I can't even start to imagine how lucky he is that it barely nicked any major organs or vessels." He tells excitedly to Yang's amusement. "Neptune and I were in and out of that surgery in less than an hour, that guy has got a hell of a story to tell now."
He pulled off his shirt and buttoned up a white one, looking oddly at Blake. "How come you're not getting dressed? Weiss will get mad at you if you don't show up to the mixer again."
Blake let out a loud sigh. "Oh shit, I completely forgot about it." She walked over to her locker and pulled it open. It was filled with nothing but half read books and some papers. "I didn't even bring a-"
"Here." Sun pulled out her black dress from the night before out of his locker. "I knew you'd forget this morning, because you were practically one of the undead. I grabbed it along with mine." Blake took it gratefully and started changing.
Straightening his tie in the mirror, Sun glanced over the Yang who was awkwardly standing in the middle of the room rocking on her heels. "Why don't you come, Yang? There'll be so many people there that they won't even realize you don't work here."
Her face lit up with the proposition, to Blake's dismay. "I'm not exactly dressed for the occasion…" She said, looking down at the leather jacket and worn faded jeans she wore. She was wearing her heavy work boots as well that could be heard from across the hallway.
"Nah, you look fine. Just put this dress shirt underneath, the mixer's semi-formal anyways." He grabbed another white shirt from his locker and tossed it at her. "That's my backup shirt, so don't go spilling hor d'oeuvres or anything on it."
Yang shed her jacket and started to change, tossing her shirt on the couch and pulling Sun's on. It was a bit tight at the chest, but otherwise fit her well. She grabbed her jacket as the three moved to leave the room, with Blake jumping to get her heels on.
"Okay, this is not some kegger party or anything," Blake warns as they start walking through the halls. Similarly dressed staff members were starting to stream in the same direction, all just as begrudgingly as the three. "Have you ever been to a banquet? It's like that."
"Does a sports banquet count?" Yang offers.
"Barely. Did it have a buffet?"
"Yes."
"Then no."
Sun snickered as they pushed through into the stairwell and started to descend a few floors. "Look, relax. It isn't that bad," he says. "It's boring as hell, but not much more than that."
"You can say that because you're fun and sociable and quirky ." Blake retorts, earning her such a palpable look of disgust from him that she started laughing.
"Never call me that again," Sun spits, "You just gave me a stomach ache, good god."
The group finally reaches the cafeteria floor, pushing through the doors into the hall. It was packed with staff streaming into the room, music playing inside quietly.
"I told Neptune that I'd meet him in the south entrance, I'll find you guys later." Sun says before disappearing into the crowd, blonde hair bobbing around as he dodged party-goers.
"You ready?" Blake asks, looking up to Yang beside her - a grin that wide was not what she was expecting in the slightest.
"This place seriously just keeps on getting better and better."