Hope everyone's having a wonderful holiday season!
Fiyero waited at the park entrance, checking his watch every thirty seconds. The movie didn't start for another half an hour, but he'd been standing there for the past hour, and was getting antsy. Would Elphaba show up? Did she change her mind? Was she standing him up? Was all this time wasted? Was –
"Fiyero."
He exhaled loudly when he saw Elphaba walking up to him. If it weren't for her verdigris, he probably wouldn't have recognized her in street clothes. "Hi… Dr. Thropp."
"Elphaba," she corrected. "At least when we're not at the hospital."
He grinned. "Sure." He led her into the park. "Did you have a nice day off?"
"I did. But I secretly stopped by to visit Glinda for a bit this afternoon."
"Yeah. She had her baby this morning. He's adorable."
"He is. It'll be a long, quiet twelve weeks without her. And before we officially end all work talk for the evening, I want to tell you again that I'm really proud of you for taking charge in the clinic. I didn't get a chance to repeat myself before because I've been drowning in paperwork. I didn't know it would be that hectic, nor that you wouldn't have a senior doctor with you. But you did great. You all did."
"Thanks."
"But know that it'll never happen again."
"Thanks."
They easily found the area dedicated to the movie screening, and picked a spot near the middle. Fiyero pulled a large picnic blanket from his bag and began to set up their spot.
"I didn't know it was 'bring your own blanket'," Elphaba said, watching as Fiyero meticulously smoothed out the wrinkles as best he could.
"It's not, but we're doctors. I figured bringing one from home might be safer than using a publicly-provided one."
"I… didn't bring one."
"We can share mine…" He slowly lifted his gaze to hers. "If that's okay with you?"
She sat down next to him. She was doing her best to not feel awkward about this, since she wanted to enjoy the movie. She was willing to admit that she liked Fiyero as a doctor, but didn't know if she wanted it to influence her liking him as a friend. "Have you seen this movie before?" she asked, not wanting to sit in an uncomfortable silence.
"I saw it once when I was a teenager. It was at a friend's birthday party, and she insisted on watching it. Of course, being a teenage boy, I thought romantic movies were sappy and ridiculous."
"Do you still think that?"
"I have a deeper appreciation for the script and special effects, but that's as far as I'm prepared to go."
She chuckled softly. "I feel the same, but there's something about this movie that I love. I can't exactly describe it, since I don't like most romance movies, but I have a soft spot for this one. That's probably why I was so agreeable when Glinda wanted to watch it almost every week."
"How did you and Glinda become friends?"
"We were roommates in undergrad at Shiz. We mostly kept to ourselves in the beginning, only speaking to each other when we needed to. We were polar opposites; she spent her nights at the Ozdust Ballroom, and I spent mine inside, reading. She was planning a big party at the Ozdust and somehow convinced me to go. I started to feel sick, but I hid it. I was never a big party person, but a few of my Ozian Literature classmates were there discussing the reading, and I really wanted to stay."
For some reason, Fiyero felt that Elphaba pushing through a party while sick in order to continue an intellectual discussion seemed very on-brand for her.
"I started feeling tired, so I went to a small room for some quiet. By the time I recognized the signs that I forgot to take my Epoetin shot, my body felt like absolute crap, and I could barely move. I was about to pass out, which was another problem in and of itself, when Glinda found me. She didn't know my full medical history at the time, but could still see that something was horribly wrong. I was too weak to come up with a convincing lie, so the truth just slipped it. She made her boyfriend stay with me while she ran back to our dorm room to get my medication." She pulled her ponytail over her shoulder. "I was too weak to administer it myself, so I had to talk her through it. Needless to say, she was a nervous wreck, but she got through it with both of us still in one piece. Once I felt a bit better, she walked me back to our room. I told her to go back to the party, but she refused, sending her boyfriend away and staying with me the rest of the night."
Fiyero listened to the story with sincere interest. "That's sweet."
"I don't remember much about the rest of the night, but I remember waking up with her nose a hair away from mine. She stayed with me the entire day, making sure I took my medicine and rested. She always says that's the moment she discovered she wanted to become a nurse. I say she was looking for an excuse to miss class. 'Do you know how much paperwork you have to fill out when your roommate dies, Elphaba?!'"
The movie started, which cut off the rest of her story. The two settled together on the blanket, slowly inching closer together as the romance on the screen unfolded.
Fiyero glanced over at Elphaba a few times during the movie, watching as she was fully engrossed in the film. All her attention was on screen, but all his attention was on the way her knees were drawn up to her chest, how her arms were loosely draped around her legs, how her ponytail was coming loose, and how little whisps of hair framed her face. Her sharp features in the hard, hospital lights softened under the gentle moonlight.
"Are you alright?" he asked, noticing her shivering.
"I'm fine. Anemic, remember?" she whispered, giving him a small smile as she snuggled deeper into her sweater. "I knew it was gonna get chilly. I should've worn something heavier."
Fiyero shrugged off his jacket and gently draped it over her shoulders. She looked over at him, the romantic soundtrack playing over the movie.
"Warm-blooded, remember?" he whispered, lightly smacking his arm.
She smiled at him, and pulled the jacket tighter around herself. "Thanks."
"No prob."
By the time the credits were playing, Elphaba's head was resting on Fiyero's shoulder, and his arm was around her waist. Neither complained about this current position.
"Elphaba?"
"Hmm?"
"The movie's over. People are starting to leave."
"Oh." She shifted and he gently removed his arm. She slid off the blanket, allowing him to shake it out and fold it back into his bag. "Thank you for tonight. I had a good time," she said as he escorted her out of the park.
"I did, too."
"But Fiyero, you can't tell anyone at the hospital about this, especially the other interns."
"Why not?" He had an inkling why, he just wanted to see if she'd say it.
"You just… can't. Please."
He bit back a sigh, but nodded. "Our secret's safe with me."
She held out his jacket to him.
"You keep it for tonight. I'll get it back tomorrow."
"I can't come into work with your jacket."
"And I can't have you getting cold tonight. We'll find a way to do a discrete hand-off." He took it from her, only to redrape it over her shoulders.
When Fiyero rounded the corner, the last thing he expected to see was Pfannee, ShenShen, and Shem with their ears pressed to the on-call room door, giggling and whispering to each other. "What's going on?"
"Shh!" Pfannee hissed, glaring at Fiyero. "We're trying to hear."
"Hear what?" He pressed his ear to the door, his jaw dropping as he identified the noises and what they meant. "What… are they… Who's having sex in the middle of the morning?"
"Dr. Bfee and Milla. They've been at it for the past twenty minutes," Pfannee said.
"We should give them some privacy."
"Tigulaar, they're having sex in the middle of the day in an on-call room. They don't want privacy," Shem said, covering his exposed ear to hear better as the noises slowly grew louder. "She's getting ecstatic."
"He's getting asthmatic," ShenShen said, hearing what sounded like wheezing.
"What are you four doing?"
The interns whipped around and stood at attention, seeing an exhausted-looking Elphaba with her hands on her hips.
"Nothing," Pfannee lied.
"And that's the problem. You should be doing something. Preferably saving lives, and moving out of my way."
"She's not happy," Fiyero muttered nervously.
"She's gonna be furious if she goes in there right now," Shem muttered back.
Elphaba's eyebrow rose as her hands moved from her hips and across her chest. "Well?"
"You don't wanna go in there, Dr. Thropp," Pfannee said. "They're… repainting. It smells like paint. And not the sweet-smelling paint. The paint with the smell so strong, you can taste it, and it tastes metallically and bitter."
"Dr. Norral, I've been on-call all night. I have exactly twenty minutes before my next meeting, and I planned on spending it with my eyes closed, and not looking at my disobedient interns."
"Hey. Has anyone seen Milla?" Sarima asked, coming up to the group. "She's late for our c-section consult."
"Nope," Shem said, popping the 'p'.
Having had enough, Elphaba shoved her interns aside and pushed the door open, but froze as her brain processed the scene in front of her.
"Dr. Thropp!" Milla cried, pulling her lab coat over her exposed front.
"Thropp, don't you knock?!" Boq groaned, glaring at the green girl.
Elphaba found her body frozen to the spot, her eyes unable to look away. She made a noise in the back of her throat before forcing her eyes shut. "I'm suddenly no longer tired."
Sarima peeked her head in the doorway. "Milla, you have exactly five minutes to fix yourself up and meet me in Mrs. Turnoll's room."
"Y-Yes, Dr. Thetial," Milla nodded.
"Disperse!" Fiyero whispered to his friends as Elphaba closed the door.
The two diagnostic doctors turned around to see the four interns scampering off in separate directions.
"Interns," Sarima sighed, shaking her head.
"I'm sleeping in my office," Elphaba groaned, dragging her feet to the elevator.
Elphaba really didn't want to go to the diagnostic team meeting, but it was her final task before going home, and she decided to push through it. She entered the diagnostic team conference room, pausing in the doorway when she saw Sarima sitting on the attending Ophthalmology surgeon's lap, softly caressing his cheek.
"Now I expected this type of behavior from Crope and Tibbett, but you, Sarima? And especially after what we witnessed this morning."
The dark-skinned doctor looked up. "I'll see you later, Hames."
"Okay, Sarima." He kissed her forehead and she pushed herself off his lap. "Dr. Thropp."
"Dr. Juyh," Elphaba nodded, watching as he left before hurriedly setting up the projector. "We have older cases to review, and the National Ozian Medical Journal just posted an article about a new procedure based on one of our old –"
"I lost her."
Elphaba stopped. "What?"
Sarima sat and buried her face in her hands. "I lost Mrs. Turnoll. She wanted to wait as long as possible for the c-section, despite my objections. I tried to give her my expert medical advice, but she didn't listen. And neither did her husband. The baby became distressed, and I did everything I could, but it wasn't enough. There was too much blood, and it wasn't clotting, and it just kept…" She trailed off. "That poor boy will have to grow up without his mother."
Her shoulders relaxed. "I'm sorry, Sarima."
"Things like this have happened before, and it never gets easier. Perhaps my high success rate makes my losses hit harder."
"Loses hit hard, regardless of high success rates."
"I know. I'm being ridiculous. Every so often, I forget to turn off my emotions and I start getting attached." She looked up at her, revealing her bloodshot eyes. "How do you do it? How do you stay detached and unfeeling?"
"I…" She thought for a moment. "I didn't grow up with a lot of love. I have a spoilt little sister who treats me more like a maid than an older sister, a father who loves my sister more than me and doesn't try to hide it, and a mother who wasn't there because she died giving birth to my sister. I went from practically living at a hospital as a patient to living at a hospital as a doctor. I had to be detached in order to survive." She sat next to her. "I can be detached, but I'm not unfeeling. Despite the rumors, I'm a human being, not a green bean. I've just learned to have a hard exterior."
Sarima leveled her a look. "Are you telling me that you're a lovey-dovey, touchy-feely person on the inside?"
"Oz, no. I'm saying that –"
"Sarima, you need to talk to Boq!" Tibbett glowered as he marched into the room, with Crope on his heels. "My patient almost woke up on the table today because our anesthesiologist was distracted by the painful bruise on his neck he said you gave him!"
"He'll be fine," Sarima said distractedly.
"But my patient almost wasn't!" He lunged for her, but Crope held him back. Sarima didn't flinch.
"Alright, let's just focus on diagnostic work now. If you want to admit Sarima as a patient, I suggest you do it after the meeting, outside this conference room," Elphaba said, her authoritative tone carrying weight over her superiors.
"I will talk to Boq," Sarima promised through her teeth, and the adults settled into their meeting.
Elphaba couldn't do anything about the attendings' tension lingering throughout the room. It felt like she was trying to move through goo. She was talking and they were nodding that they heard her, but she wasn't sure they were fully listening. She skipped over some lesser-important notes, feeling that it was miscellaneous at the time, and would send an email later.
"Any questions?" she asked her colleagues.
They responded with grumbles of 'no' and head shakes, and Elphaba sighed, ending the meeting and cleaning up. Crope and Tibbett were the first ones out, but Sarima lingered.
"I never told you the reason I transferred here from Greater Ozma Hospital," Sarima said, her voice barely above a whisper as she stood right next to Elphaba. "If I have the chance to protect my intern the way I wish I was protected, I'm going to do everything in my power to do just that. Doctors heal, but also know how to hurt." She glanced at her. "But you already knew that."
"I know," Elphaba agreed with a nod, watching Sarima leave.
Her pager beeped and she looked down, saw an emergency code from the clinic, and hurried out of the conference room.