Disclaimer: Nothing's mine.

A/N: Hey, now there's a tumblr acocunt where you can find visual footage for this story - so YAY ! The blog's title is 'Adverse Events' and its contents are divided in three seasons - I go by the nickname zorokoch , you should be able to find it if you write ' zorokoch ' or ' Adverse Events ' in tumblr's Search field :) That said, I hope you enjoy whatever this story has got to give, also I'm always curious to know your thoughts on anything concerning the story's contents and characters. Thanks for staying tuned :)

'Got internal bleeding in third!' Paris' voice came from behind one of the ER curtains.

'I'm clamping a torn carotid in fourth so hold it there,' Rory answered from behind the neighboring curtain.

'Shit. Really?'

'Do I look like I'm kidding?'

'Can't see you, can't tell.'

'Well I'm not.'

'Oh. You are clamping a torn carotid.'

'Yep.'

'That sucks, big time.'

'It does.'

A monitor started beeping.

'Okay, that's it, my patient's crashing, I'm calling code blue.'

'We're only five doctors for nearly fifty casualties, we're getting swamped,' Rory groaned. 'We need more people.'

'I called the Chief but he's not picking up. Tell me about swamped.'

'Hey, need help here?'

'Jess, is this your sweet voice? Heaven sends you!' Rory elated as she heard his voice.

He pulled both ER curtains open so that they were able to see one another and both Rory and Paris sighed with relief.

'Actually, Alinski did. Code blue, huh?' Jess asked while changing his disposable surgical coat.

Paris looked up from her patient after checking his pupils.

'Rory's got one with torn carotid, and mine's with internal bleeding, started crashing a minute ago. Chief's not picking his phone and we're stuck with the OR schedule. Come cover my guy until I go and get some semblance of order around the OR. Rory, I'm gonna need you to call your interns.'

'My interns?'

'All of them.'

'But they're still...'

'They're plankton, severely underqualified and aspiringly stupid,' Paris cut in. 'I know that. But we're short of people and anyone who's available will be of use.'

'Okay.'

'Okay. Let them teleport here.'

Paris took out her mobile and tried the Chief again. Nothing. Then dialed again.

'Helen, I need you to check up with all available scrub nurses and arrange teams of two. We've got a bus crash emergency and it's bad. Let them be ready in half an hour, I'm gonna arrange an OR schedule by then.'

Paris had already taken the list of admitted patients in the ER, marking the ones that needed emergency surgery, dividing them by type of trauma and extension of vital organ damage.

As she passed through the ER corridor, more ambulance sirens were approaching, loud and alarming. This was one night from hell.

'You're such a sweet boy,' the elderly lady's voice came from the stretcher Jess was pushing towards the ER.

About a dozen more casualties had just arrived and Jess was responsible for managing the surge of victims, functioning as makeshift ER triage chief. Paris was downstairs, managing the OR and organizing the most urgent among the surgeries. Rory's interns had arrived about two hours ago, providing some much needed backup. A couple of more colleague surgeons had managed to arrive too, so the situation was slowly getting under control.

'Such a sweet, sweet boy,' she repeated, the smile over her chapped pale lips weak but sincere.

'Oh, I get that all the time,' Jess answered absently, motioning for one of the interns to come over.

The woman was probably suffering temporary victim to savior spur of adoration. Her fingers around Jess' wrist were icy cold. She was the last one the rescue team had found. She had been thrown off the rear window and had spent almost three hours out in the cold, suffering some severe hypothermia.

'What's... what's your name?' she asked while Jess was giving instructions to the intern. She was starting to slur. Jess suppressed a frustrated sigh and took a glucose 5% infusion, starting a drip. If they didn't get her stabilized in the next ten minutes, they were gonna lose her. 'It's Jess Mariano. Doctor Jess Mariano. Kate, I'll need to undress you in order to get warm blankets over you. Okay?'

'I always ima... imagined stripping before a hot young man before I die under... different circumstances,' she managed to get out with a smile.

Jess stopped and gave her a look, giving her his full attention for the first time since he admitted her in the ER minutes ago. The lady's ID said she was seventy-five years old but as he looked at her wrinkled face, he saw the bravery of a former spitfire. She had lived a conscious life, calling challenge in its face.

'I'm gonna die, sweetie. They say...' she paused, closing her eyes and licking her trembling lips, 'They say one can feel these things. They're right.'

'Kate,' Jess leaned down so they were eye-level. 'I'll need you to shut up and let me undress you now,' he said in a low, serious voice.

'As I said, such a sweet boy,' she smiled and closed her eyes.

Jess motioned for the intern to hurry and they undressed her, wrapping warm blankets around her bony body. They attached her to a monitor so that they were able to check with her pulse and saturation.

'Adam, stay with her until I go check the rest of the triage for newcomers,' Jess said, checking Kate's monitor once again.

'Please-' Kate's voice came from the stretcher. 'Jess... will you stay with me? It's not gonna take long.'

Jess stopped and looked at her. Her eyes were shut, because keeping them open probably cost her too much energy. She was pale, turning cyanotic. The intern stood by her side, looking from Jess to the patient and then back at Jess' strained face.

Jess pinched the bridge of his nose and looked to the side, letting out a sigh.

'Adam, go check for newcomers and bring me a list with all admitted in the ER tonight.'

The intern gave a quick nod and left, not risking getting Dr Mariano angry. It was a well-known fact Dr Mariano didn't like to have to repeat himself and in the rare cases the interns were assigned with him they were like high strung dogs ready to sense each pull of the leash.

Jess pulled a chair and sat next to the stretcher.

'Thank you,' she said quietly.

'You know there's been a big crash and many people were hurt, right?' Jess asked grimly.

'Yes.'

I was in it was left unsaid but it felt like it was out there anyway.

'Someone might be needing me while I'm sitting here,' Jess said.

'Yes.'

'Yet you want me to stay here with you.'

So that you're not alone. So that someone acknowledges that you were here.

'Yes.'

'I'm not typically called sweet. Especially by strangers,' Jess let out a lopsided smile.

Strangers' normal reaction towards him was instant spite. For a good reason, of course.

'I'm more of a brood,' he confessed, winning a dry chuckle from Kate.

She opened her eyes. Her irises had turned a shade of smudged green.

'You're a sweet brood then,' she said.

The monitor started beeping. Her ECG was slowing, her pulse sensor showing thirty beats per minute.

Kate mouthed something but it was incoherent and couldn't get through the sound of the monitor alarms.

A couple of hours later an early November sun was rising above New York city. Cars and ambulances were pulling in and out of the hospital's parking lot and the morning buzz would soon mark the start of a fresh new day in St Morrison's.

Dr Rory Gilmore and Dr Paris Geller were sitting on the sofa of the lockers' room, gathering the strength to change out of their scrubs before a morning rush of doctors invaded the surroundings.

'I thought about your situation with Dugray,' Rory said, suppressing a yawn.

'Or the lack of thereof,' Paris rolled her eyes. Of course her friend would have the time to spare on pondering her love life (or lack of thereof) while saving victims of a mass casualty incident.

'I may have found an explanation for his reluctance to elope.'

'The guy's damn lazy - didn't we already establish that?.'

'Well, he wasn't lazy when you were playing hard to get.'

'Because he was trying to prove a point. Now that he's proven it he lost interest, the lazy bastard.'

Paris let out a huff, eyeing her cup of gone cold coffee with venom.

'You know, sometimes I hate all those stupid pretty girls whose personality can fit into a matchbox.'

'Only sometimes?' Rory's smile was playful but Paris' fervor was real.

Paris shook her head vehemently, making a futile gesture with her hands.

'I'm so terrified of the way they get away with their meek personalities, and how people call such a girl weak when, say, she parades around with someone else's husband, and I'm called mean bitch when I call such a girl on her shit. I'm feeling offended such girls even exist.'

'Oh, whoa. Easy there.'

'And sometimes I even... Damn, I hate myself for even thinking that, but sometimes I even think, why do I need to be that amazing overachieving morally uplifted person when it gets me nowhere anyway and... Damn, I'm so angry, Rory. So damn angry. Why doesn't he want me?'

'The best you can do is be yourself. You can't help that you're epic. You can as well enjoy it.'

'Yes, Sensei Rory.'

'Okay, imagine you're Tristan.'

'What? Why would I do such a perverse thing?'

Rory shook her head with a laugh.

'You are a high-school badboy who got transferred to military school. Then you got into medical school and soon after graduating you went abroad to provide medical service for a refugee camp.'

'Are you gonna cover Dugray's bio or something?'

Rory ignored Paris' comment, seemingly gaining momentum in her thesis, taking a large gulp, finishing her coffee.

'During all that time - from the immature teenager to a grown-up man, when did you ever know what it's like to fall in love and build a relationship?'

'I'm confused, do we or don't we count Dugray's infatuation with himself and his right hand?'

'First of all, yuck, and second - I mean real relationship with an actual woman.'

Paris made a face.

'What about cougary-Claudia Shiffery hotshot Shefield? They were known to be in a relationship.'

'He ever gave you the impression he was in love with her?'

'Well, no.'

'My point exactly. Tristan is almost thirty years old and he's never been in a loving relationship with a woman,' Rory spread her arms in a ta-da gesture. Then took Paris' abandoned coffee and finished it.

'He loved Aiden's mom,' Paris noted.

'I believe he thought he did, but from the skittish bits and pieces I've heard from you, he was more in love with the image of her than with the real person herself. They never managed to interact, never really got to know each other. Their interaction was solely based on doctor-patient bonding growing into something more but never really evolving to its full potential-'

'Hey, hey,' Paris put an hand up, 'where are you getting with this?' she narrowed her eyes skeptically.

'I don't think he's reluctant because he's scared of your big bad brain or by those impressive lady-balls of yours. I think he was honest when he told you he didn't know what comes after the sex part. He never really had anyone he thought about in terms of a relationship.'

Okay. So maybe Dr Phil had a point. With Shefield things were all about hitting it off in the bedroom. Giving and taking physical pleasure, finding comfort in a warm body, a relationship that was self-sufficing and uncomplicated and felt more like a bargain at the time than anything else. With Aida it had been an untold story, countless and countless of what-ifs. He was forever gonna be in love with the one that got away, but he never really tasted what a real relationship with a woman meant. If you never saw something, not even a glimpse, how were you supposed to recognize it?

'You're a couple of steps ahead from him in this,' Rory said. 'All I'm suggesting is, give him some time and see if he gets on the same page.'

Paris went silent. She thought about how much change knowing someone's secrets brought on. Did knowing Tristan's secret change what she knew about him? And could you really know someone without knowing their secrets? How much the way you handled someone's secret spoke about you? Because today she learned something about him he probably didn't realize himself.

'Also, I think Tristan may have a reason to believe he's walking in Doyle's shadow,' Rory added, turning towards Paris.

'Doyle's shadow? Do you realize Doyle is five feet and his shadow should be calculated at sunset somewhere around the pole in order to encompass Tristan's mutant-tall frame?'

'Just something to think about,' Rory shrugged innocently. 'I decided I'm too tired to change. Come on, let's get some sleep,' she poked Paris with a tired smile. 'And, by the way, good job handling crisis management, Dr Geller. You were a blast.'

Rory stood up, grabbed her coat from the hanger and and gave Paris a wink before she left the lockers' room in her scrubs, stifling a yawn.

Paris stood up and went to her locker to change. Ten minutes later she was on her way to the hospital exit. As she walked through the ER corridor, she glanced at the glass windows that separated the exam rooms from the corridor. There were patients of different age - some of them had their heads wrapped in gauze, others had arms and legs covered in cast. Some of them were resting, others were hugging their relatives. They were the survivors, celebrating they got to live.

The complexity of healing. There was beauty in it. It wasn't a beauty easy on the eye. Because one wouldn't look to find peace when looking at bruises. Yet, they were part of getting better, part of surviving long enough to get to live. They meant you got to get better so you got a chance to heal. So they shouldn't be such a bad thing, right? You couldn't separate the good scars from the bad ones. Honestly, scars were never really what you looked for when you sought perfection. The thing is, with scars you got something else - you got completion. And when you took a look at the grand picture it wasn't perfect. But it was beautiful all right.

'Hey.'

'Hey. How are you?'

'Groggy. What about you?'

Jess gave her an apprehensive look, chewing on the inside of his lips. They were standing in the ambulance parking lot, facing each other. And, honestly? He looked like he was gonna puke any second now.

'Jess...' Rory sobered, worry creeping into her voice. 'What is it?'

He stepped forward and put his palm at the back of her neck, pulling her head in for a hard kiss. As they pulled apart, Rory narrowed her eyes.

'Jess, what's going on?'

He was breathing heavily and his bloodshot from lack of sleep eyes were stirred a deep shade of brown.

'Marry me,' he whispered, his stormy eyes intent on hers. 'Life is short and I'm a sweet brood. Marry me, be my wife.'

Rory blinked, trying to proceed what he was saying.

'O-kaay.'

'Okay?'

'I... I mean I will.' She took a breath and tossed her head, shaking off the worry she had felt for a moment. 'Boy, you scared the shit out of me. But yes, I will marry you,' she grinned fully now, the thought finally sinking.

Jess let out a deep sigh, looking genuinely relieved. Then, as he seemingly remembered something, his brow furrowed.

'I don't have a ring.' he uttered and licked a lip. 'Jeez, I'm such a dork.'

Rory studied him with a curious smile.

He looked so clueless, he was obviously more surprised by his proposal than she was.

Rory put both arms around his torso and pressed her cheek into his side.

'You're also a sweet brood. I've heard they're quite the catch these days.'

He pressed his lips into her hair and they started walking.

'I love you,' he mumbled against her hair.

'Ditto. Oh, I just got the funniest revelation.'

'What is?'

'We're gonna have two best men.'

'Huh.'

'Can you imagine? Paris and Tristan, wearing matching ties and plaid suits? I just can't wait until I see their faces when they get the news.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Jess?'

'Yeah?'

'I'm gonna be your wife. Rory Mariano. I think there's a nice ring to it, what do you say?'

'Hell yeah.'

'Come on, smartass, let's go home.'

They continued walking into the new day.

'I like the scars because I like the stories. Bravery, stupidity, pain—none of them come free.'

— Jessica Martinez, Virtuosity

TBC