Santana gets drunk. Not even just drunk, but, absolutely obliterated. It's a good thing she's off the next day, because it's dark out, by the time she manages to crawl out of her bed-cave. She swears she's never drinking again, as she hurls up bourbon and the tortilla chips she'd eaten at three AM. She swears there are better ways to deal with herself when she's feeling things she doesn't want to feel.
For the next week, Santana actively avoids Dr. Pierce. She dusts off the Keurig that she bought herself a year ago, to prove to Kurt that she's not a coffee snob, and she makes coffee in her office. She avoids on-call rooms and elevators. She just needs some time to process what happened when she and Dr. Pierce went on what was, if she squinted really hard, kind of a date. She needs some time to process that they kind-of, sort-of possibly came really close to an almost kiss. Or at least, time to process that she might actually have some real issues, and this could all be in her head.
Even though she's not drinking—a whole week, she's kept her vow—Santana ends up in the bar every night. Dave doesn't drink much anyway, so when he meets Kurt there after work, Santana cajoles him into being her darts partner, and they leave Kurt and Mercedes at the bar. Obviously, her surgical precision and Dave's sports prowess means they always win. It's the small victories, really, and whooping and high fiving Dave means less time thinking about the crease at the corner of Dr. Pierce, mouth and less time being pissed at herself for thinking about it.
Of course, because of Murphy's Law, or karma, or something that Santana repeatedly tells herself she doesn't believe in, Santana gets paged to the pit on one of those nights Dr. Pierce is running it. She still hasn't figured out exactly why she doesn't just pawn that duty off to a resident, but if she's learned anything from Dr. Pierce, it's that she's constantly doing something surprising.
"Dr. Lopez." Dr. Pierce doesn't call her by her first name, and she immediately gets her head in the game—and away from thought of that stupid crease—when she realizes she means business. "I've got an eighteen month old male, swallowed ball-shaped magnets."
"You have the scans for me?"
"Here." She hands over the chart, and Santana, just for a second, imagines the kind of panic that a doctor who's also a mother feels when she sees these cases. "Looks like five on the scan, but the mother says there's a possibility he may have eaten more."
"Shit. You've got an intern on him?"
"Hayward, she's over there now, bed eight."
"Good." Santana nods, jolting, as she realizes Dr. Pierce's fingers are still touching her own on the back of the clipboard. "I like Hayward."
"Who doesn't?"
"Probably Anderson, he prefers the idiots."
"There's a reason I stay away from the tenth floor." Dr. Pierce winks, making Santana flush. She's got to get a grip on this…whatever she's got going on inside. Clearly, avoiding Dr. Pierce won't work—and truthfully, she doesn't want to—but she needs to figure something out.
"Uh, well, let me go scope this kid. Do you know if Hayward told the parents we might have to open him up?"
"Not for a fact, but knowing her…"
"…they've got the whole treatment plan."
Clutching the chart to her chest, Santana spares Dr. Pierce one last glance, before heading over to bed eight. Magnets suck. Seriously, she wishes everyone would just lock them up, like they do bleach and knives. She's taken too many of them out of stomachs in her time. The problem is, they're drawn to each other. The problem is, no matter what's between them, they'll find away to each other, no matter what destruction they cause in the process. Magnets are dangerous, and she only hopes that they got this kid to the hospital before there's any sort of perforation.
"Hi there." She approaches the bed, giving her softest, sweetest smile to the toddler clinging to his mother. "I'm Dr. Lopez, I heard someone's got a belly full of something not so fun."
"I swear, I only looked away for a minute. He got into his sister's science kit, and—" The mother chokes back a sob.
"Hey." Hayward puts a calming hand on her arm. "Remember what we talked about? Accidents happen, and you're in the right place. Dr. Lopez is the best surgeon."
"I thought you said you were going to do the, uh, endoscopy?"
"I, um, didn't—" Hayward looks frantically at Santana, torn between appeasing the patient, and not getting herself in trouble.
"It's your lucky day." Santana steps in. "You get two for the price of one. Dr. Hayward will be in there with me the whole time. Now, you've already been told that this might require surgical intervention?"
Jane Hayward, of course, already has a stack of signed consent forms, and Santana makes a note to try and get her on her service more often. Though she's only in her first year of internship, Santana knows, especially judging by the way she calms down both the mother and the toddler, when they take him into the OR, that she'd make an exceptional peds fellow. She knows Shelby would agree, and she knows that she'll actively try and recruit her, even more than Santana can. But she knows they won't be alone in their thinking. An intern as competent as Hayward is a rare thing, and if she keeps it up, she'll have her pick if fields not only in this hospital, but in dozens of others.
She lets Hayward do they endoscopy, and she curses when they're only able to remove three. That's never good, and with the scans at least a half-hour old, Santana is mostly concerned that they've traveled into his intestines. Has she mentioned that she hates magnets? They're unpredictable. They don't follow a set path. They just make their own, and they're the worst sort of foreign object for someone to swallow.
Once she sends Hayward to tell the parents that they're going to open their son up, she lets her make the first incision. It sucks, this kind of surgery, but luckily, even with finding five more magnets inside, after running the whole of his intestines, there's no perforation. Once he's closed back up and sent off to recovery, Santana debates between making coffee in her office, or going straight for a nap.
The need for coffee wins out—it always does—and Santana plugs in the machine, then waits patiently for it to work. Honestly, she hates it. She hates the way it sputters and spits hot liquid on her desk. She hates the taste of it, but she'll make do. She'll make do, because the alternative isn't great. The alternative is weird electric touches, and thinking about kissing Dr. Pierce. The alternative is dangerous, and she won't, she can'tdo it.
A knock on the door breaks Santana from her thoughts, and when she looks up, there's Dr. Pierce. She's holding a cup of coffee, apparently from Starbucks, since it's the only place other than the cafeteria that's open all night, and she's pulled her hair up, a contrast to how it was a few hours ago, falling on her shoulders. Santana hates that she noticed that. She hates that she notices so many things about Dr. Pierce. Thinking about it, she scowls.
"Wow, that unhappy to see me?"
"Huh?" Santana bites her lip, and rakes her hand through her hair. "No, uh, sorry. Guess I'm just hitting the delirious hour."
"I don't think I'll ever get used to the hours between three and five. This is my fourth cup of coffee."
"If I hadn't been in surgery until a half hour ago, I'd be right there with you." She holds up her mug, then takes a long sip. Not for effect, but because she really needs it. "How's the pit?"
"Quiet. Calm before the next storm, I'm sure, so I'm taking a break. Figured I'd come up and see how the surgery went?"
"You check on every emergency surgery that happens while you're running the show?"
"I…no, I don't." Dr. Pierce flushes, and Santana immediately feels bad for her tone.
"Sorry." She mumbles.
"Did I do something to upset you? I mean, I figured that if I did, you'd be the first person who'd tell me. You've never hesitated in the past."
"No. You didn't."
"Okay." Dr. Pierce nods, stepping closer, to perch on the edge of Santana's desk. "I guess I was making something out of nothing then. I thought you were avoiding me."
"No." Santana lies, looking into her mug. "Just been busy. Summer, and stuff."
"Summer, right." She nods, as if Santana's lie made any sort of actual sense. "Well, Liam's been asking about you. I told him I'd see if you wanted to have dinner with us soon. We've got the outside space, and he's all about me grilling hot dogs…"
"Oh." Everything inside of Santana screams out for her to say no, screams out for her to continue her wholly successful tactic of avoidance, she can't bring herself to look in this woman's eyes and do it. She can't bring herself to disappoint her, or, especially, to disappoint that little boy. She can't fight this draw she has toward them. "So, when we're you thinking?"
"Well, after tonight, I've got three days off. So anytime them…or next week, whenever you feel like it."
"Okay, well I'm off Wednesday."
"Wednesday it is then. How do you like your hotdogs?"