garrett graham ❄︎ proper lunch.
pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader summary – between wound reviews, vaccination clinics, asthma education, and stolen lunch breaks, garrett makes sure his girlfriend gets fed and reminded how good she is. warnings – medical placement, primary care setting, vaccination clinic mention, wound care mention, asthma review, food/eating. notes from me – MY SWEET DOMESTIC BABIES HOW I LOVE THEM!! based on these requests combined! thank you babes! word count – 3.1k
navigation – masterlist |
Monday
By twelve-thirty, the medical centre has already taught her three important things: the blood pressure machine in room four lies, children can sense fear more accurately than most diagnostic equipment, and nobody working in primary care gets to eat lunch at the time written on the roster.
She comes out through the side entrance at twelve forty-seven with her scrub top pulling strangely beneath her cardigan, one pocket weighted down by three pens, a folded observation sheet and a tiny glittery sticker she’d found stuck to her elbow after the morning vaccination clinic.
The air outside is cold enough to make the inside of her nose sting. Garrett’s already sitting on the little bench beside the staff car park, one ankle resting over his opposite knee, a paper takeaway bag tucked between his shoes and his phone loose in one hand.
He looks up before the door has finished closing behind her. The change happens quickly, his attention lifting away from the screen and landing fully on her like he hasn’t spent the last twenty minutes surrounded by traffic, bare winter trees and a medical centre sign advertising flu shots. “Hey, baby.”
She makes it halfway across the patch of grass before the smell reaches her. Warm bread, roasted chicken, something garlicky. Her stomach pulls painfully beneath her ribs, reminding her that breakfast had been half a piece of toast eaten while standing over the kitchen sink because she’d misplaced her other shoe. “What did you bring?”
Garrett’s grin starts. “Hi to you too.”
“Hi.” She stops between his knees, and he catches her automatically by the hips, pressing his mouth to the centre of her stomach through her cardigan before tipping his head back to look at her. “What did you bring?”
“Lunch.”
“That’s not specific.”
He tilts his head to the side. “That’s because you’ll start negotiating before I show you.”
“I don’t negotiate.”
“You told me yesterday you only wanted something small.” His hands remain at her waist while he looks up at her, dark curls disturbed by the wind and one faint crease still pressed beside his cheek from whatever lecture he’d spent resting his face against his fist. “You’ve been here since seven.”
“Eight.”
“You left the house at seven.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s worse.”
She tries to look stern, but Garrett pulls her closer until her knees touch the bench and kisses the little strip of skin beneath her scrub top where it has ridden up. It’s difficult to maintain authority while Briar’s hockey captain is kissing her stomach beside a sign asking patients not to smoke within five metres of the building.
“Sit down,” he says. “I brought chicken wraps, those potatoes you like and actual fruit because Tucker said grapes don’t count as a side dish.”
“Tucker’s becoming controlling,” she grins.
“Tucker packed the grapes.”
“Oh.” She sits beside him at once. “Tucker’s an angel.”
Garrett hands her the container with a look of deep personal betrayal. “I drove it here.”
“You’re useful too.”
“Thank you.”
She’s halfway through her first bite when the side door opens again. Janelle, the practice nurse supervising her placement, steps outside with a mug in one hand and a lanyard tangled around the other. She’s in her forties, quick-moving and kind in the specific way of nurses who can reassure an anxious parent while opening six packets with their teeth.
“There you are,” Janelle says, then notices Garrett and smiles like she has been expecting to eventually find the source of the lunches arriving in increasingly respectable containers. “You must be Garrett.”
Garrett stands immediately, because beneath the hockey-house manners and constant obscenity there’s something in him that responds to older women with professional authority like a student unexpectedly called on in class. “Yeah. Hi.”
“I’ve heard about the food.”
She closes her eyes briefly. “Oh my God.”
Janelle laughs, then looks back at her. “You did really well this morning, by the way. Especially with the twins. Vaccinating one four-year-old is hard enough without the other one providing live commentary.”
Heat moves quickly from beneath her collar to her face. The fork in her hand pauses over the potatoes. “Oh. Um. Thank you.”
“You kept both of them calm, and you explained everything to Mom without drowning her in information. That’s good.” Janelle takes a sip from her mug, already turning back toward the door. “Enjoy your lunch. Don’t let us steal you before one.”
The door closes behind her. For a few seconds, Garrett says nothing. That’s worse than if he had immediately started being annoying. She looks down and spears one potato with more concentration than it deserves, aware of his face angled toward her, his knee pressing warmly against hers.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“My girlfriend vaccinated twins this morning.”
She rolls her eyes. “I assisted with vaccinations.”
“Four-year-old twins.”
“Under supervision.”
“And one of them was heckling you?”
“She kept telling her brother the needle was going to be enormous.” Her mouth twitches despite herself. “Then she screamed before anyone touched her and scared him so badly he started crying.”
Garrett’s grin breaks wide and bright. “And you handled it.”
She shoots him a look. “I gave her a sticker.”
“Medical genius.”
“She liked stickers,” she mutters.
He nudges his shoulder into hers. “You were good.”
The praise catches in the same difficult place Janelle’s had, somewhere high beneath her breastbone, warm enough to feel almost uncomfortable. She looks down at the container. “I didn’t do much.”
Garrett doesn’t argue immediately. He reaches over instead, takes the fork from her hand and uses it to gather a piece of chicken she had pushed toward the edge. “You’ve gotta stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Turning every nice thing someone says about you into something else.” He holds the fork near her mouth. “That nurse was there. She probably knows if you did well.”
“She does.”
“And she said you did.”
She looks at the chicken, then at him. Garrett’s expression is easy, but there’s something steady underneath it, no teasing escape built into the moment. She opens her mouth and lets him feed her mostly because refusing would make this into a larger emotional event beside the staff car park.
After she swallows, she says, “I did do pretty well.”
Garrett leans in and kisses her temple.
Wednesday
By Wednesday, Garrett has been recognised by reception. He discovers this when the woman behind the front desk sees him through the glass doors carrying two containers and presses the release button without making him use the intercom.
He gives her a small wave as he crosses the foyer, and she points toward the side exit with the expression of someone directing a regular delivery.
His girlfriend emerges four minutes later with her stethoscope still around her neck and a smear of something pale across one sleeve. Garrett eyes it as she drops onto the bench beside him. “What’s that?”
She follows his gaze. “Dressing adhesive, probably.”
“Probably?”
“Nothing infectious.”
His nose scrunches. “That’s not as reassuring as you think.”
She lets her head tip onto his shoulder while he opens the first container. Today it’s soup in a sealed thermos, two toasted sandwiches wrapped in foil and a yoghurt Garrett has selected because the label contains the word protein in lettering large enough to appeal to him.
“I only have twenty minutes,” she murmurs.
“You said thirty.”
“Mrs. Patterson’s wound review ran over.”
Garrett unwraps the sandwich and places it into her hand before she can decide she isn’t hungry enough. “Bad?”
“No. It’s actually healing really nicely.” Her voice changes on the last part, tiredness thinning out beneath interest. “She had a skin tear on her shin that got infected, but the redness has come down and there’s way less exudate. I got to clean it and redress it today.”
He’s learned enough nursing vocabulary through forced exposure not to make a face at exudate. “That good?”
“Very.”
“So you fixed her leg.”
She snorts softly. “I didn’t fix her leg.”
“You helped.”
“I helped,” she nods.
The side door swings open before he can improve the claim. Dr. Shah steps out with his phone in one hand and a set of car keys in the other, a slim man with silver beginning at his temples and the permanently hurried posture of someone who’s been running fifteen minutes behind since medical school.
He sees her and slows. “Good work with Mrs. Patterson.”
Her shoulders pull in by less than an inch. Garrett feels it because they’re pressed together from hip to knee, because he’s become embarrassingly fluent in the small movements she thinks nobody notices.
“Thank you,” she says, a little too quickly.
“You were gentle, but you didn’t hesitate. Patients notice when you’re nervous, particularly with painful dressings.” Dr. Shah nods once, like the matter is settled. “She asked whether you’ll be here for her next appointment.”
Her fingers tighten around the foil. “She did?”
“She likes you.” His phone begins ringing. He glances at it and sighs with his whole body. “Enjoy lunch.”
Garrett waits until Dr. Shah has crossed the car park before turning his head.
She’s staring down at her sandwich. The tip of one ear has gone pink. “Don’t,” she warns.
Garrett takes a drink from his coffee and tries, unsuccessfully, to flatten his mouth. “Mrs. Patterson requested my girlfriend specifically.”
“She asked if I’d be there,” she grumbles.
“Requested.”
“She probably just doesn’t want to explain the whole wound history again.”
“Or she likes you.”
“She barely knows me.”
“She knows you don’t rip bandages off her leg like you’re waxing a car.”
“That’s not how anyone removes dressings,” she replies.
“You said one of the nurses at the hospital did.”
She holds up a finger. “One nurse, one time.”
He looks down at her, taking in the tired little shadows under her eyes, the escaping strands of hair around her face, the stethoscope bumping lightly against her chest each time she moves. “You know you’re good at this, right?”
Her chewing slows. Garrett lets the question stay where it lands. He doesn’t push it toward a joke or ask her to say something she cannot yet make fit comfortably in her mouth.
Eventually, she swallows and wipes her thumb over the corner of the foil. “I’m getting better.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You are.”
Her gaze lifts to his, cautious at first, then warmer when she realises he means the answer exactly as she gave it. She’s getting better. At dressings. At talking to patients. At hearing something kind without immediately dismantling it for parts.
Garrett bends and kisses her once, slow and ordinary, tasting faintly of coffee when she kisses him back. Her phone alarm goes off between them.
She groans into his mouth. “I hate employment.”
“You don’t work here.”
“I hate unpaid employment more.”
He gathers the containers while she stands, then catches the back of her scrub top before she can escape and pulls her in for one more kiss. “Text me when you’re done.”
“I finish at five.”
“Text me anyway.”
“You’ll be at practice.”
“My girlfriend always says phones work in locker rooms.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’ve never said that.”
“Pretty sure you did,” Garrett shrugs.
“That sounds nothing like me.”
Garrett kisses her forehead and lets her go. “My girlfriend’s also very argumentative.”
The side door closes on the sight of her giving him the finger.
Friday
On Friday, the bench is wet from morning rain, so Garrett brings a towel. This is apparently the final stage of whatever has happened to him. He arrives with lunch in one hand, a folded beach towel in the other and Dean’s voice still ringing in his ears from the kitchen that morning.
“Do you hear yourself?” Dean had asked while Garrett packed pasta into a container. “My girlfriend likes the pesto. My girlfriend hates raw tomato. My girlfriend says I need more fibre. You’ve become a doll with one phrase.”
“She does hate raw tomato.”
“We know,” Logan had said from the table. “We all know everything about your girlfriend. Against our will.”
Tucker, slicing strawberries at the counter, had quietly pushed a second container toward Garrett. “She’ll need more than pasta if she’s there until six.”
Garrett had looked at Dean. Dean had pointed the knife he was using to spread peanut butter. “Don’t.”
“My girlfriend–”
“I’ll kill you.”
Now she sits on the towel beside him, one knee tucked toward her chest, eating pesto pasta while the medical centre moves through its afternoon behind them. Cars roll in and out of the lot. Someone’s toddler is crying near the pharmacy entrance. Garrett has practice in forty minutes, but his gear is already in the back of the car and the rink is seven minutes away.
She looks exhausted. It’s in the small things: the way she keeps rubbing her thumb over the side of her index finger, the slow blinks, the faint crease between her brows even while chewing.
Garrett puts the strawberries closer to her without mentioning it. “Eat those too.”
She glances at the container. “You sound like Tucker.”
“Tucker packed them.”
“Of course he did.”
A nurse comes out carrying an empty mug, sees them and smiles. She’s younger than Janelle, maybe late twenties, with bright blue glasses and a name badge that says MELANIE, RN.
“There’s our lunch visitor.”
Garrett lifts his hand. “Hey.”
Melanie looks at her. “I meant to tell you before you disappeared– you were excellent with Noah this morning.”
She straightens slightly. “The asthma review?”
“Mhm. His mom said nobody’s ever explained the spacer properly without making her feel stupid.” Melanie shifts the mug between her hands. “You gave her time to ask questions. That’s harder to teach than people think.”
Her fingers curl lightly around the plastic fork.
“Thank you,” she says.
No apology attached. No immediate reason it didn’t count. Just thank you, quiet and a little pink around the cheeks.
Melanie grins. “You’re welcome. See you inside.”
When the door shuts, Garrett looks down at his own lunch because he knows better now than to turn every moment into an audience. Beside him, she takes another bite, chews, then says, almost carefully, “I was good with them.”
His whole chest seems to shift forward. He keeps his eyes on the container for another second so he doesn’t frighten her by looking as pleased as he feels. “Yeah?”
She nods. “The little boy wasn’t using the spacer right, and his mom thought she’d been doing something wrong, but nobody had actually shown her. So I demonstrated it, and then I got him to teach it back to me with his teddy first.” Her hands start moving as she talks, fork drawing small shapes through the air. “He kept putting the mask over the teddy’s whole face, which was, like, completely ineffective, but he got it eventually.”
Garrett watches her now. He cannot help it. The tiredness is still there, but something brighter has pushed through it, colour high in her cheeks and the words coming faster because she knows this, because she had been useful in the middle of somebody’s confusing morning and knows exactly how.
“You taught a teddy bear how to use an inhaler,” he says.
She gives him a look, but her mouth has already betrayed her. “Technically.”
“That’s huge.”
“It’s a bear.”
He shrugs. “Could’ve died.”
“It was stuffed.”
“Still. Brave work.”
She laughs, leaning sideways until her head rests against his shoulder. Garrett puts his container down and slides an arm around her, his hand settling over the soft cotton at her waist. She smells like hand sanitiser, rain caught in her hair and the faint medicinal sweetness of whatever soap sits beside the clinic sinks.
For a minute, neither of them speaks. She eats one strawberry from the container in his lap, then another. Garrett watches a leaf drag along the wet pavement near his shoe and thinks, with an intensity that would make Dean genuinely ill, that there may be nothing better than this.
Her weight against him. Food packed by Tucker. Practice waiting. A plastic fork balanced crookedly across her container. The knowledge that people inside that building see what Garrett sees when she talks about work with her whole face.
She nudges her nose into the shoulder of his jacket. “What?”
“What?”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
She smiles up at him. “Looking pleased with yourself.”
“I’m not pleased with myself.”
“No?”
Garrett turns his head and presses his mouth to her hair. “I’m pleased with my girlfriend.”
She groans, but her body folds closer, one hand slipping into the pocket of his jacket like it belongs there. “The boys must hate you.”
“They’re jealous.”
“They’re exhausted,” she sighs.
“Tucker supports me.”
“Tucker feeds you so the rest of the house survives.”
He takes a moment to consider this. “That’s still support.”
Her break alarm sounds from inside her cardigan pocket. She doesn’t move immediately. Neither does Garrett. They sit through the first three beeps with her cheek against his shoulder and his thumb moving slowly over her side.
Then she sighs and lifts her head. Garrett catches her chin before she can stand and kisses her, gentle at first, then a little firmer when her fingers curl into his jacket and pull him closer.
When they separate, she keeps her forehead against his. “Thank you for coming all week.”
“Course.”
She presses her forehead against his harder. “You don’t have to come every day.”
“I know.”
“You have classes and practice.”
“I know.”
“And Dean said you missed lunch with them yesterday,” she murmurs.
“Dean was offended because nobody wanted to hear his story about a girl from his economics class.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was having lunch with my girlfriend.”
She closes her eyes. “There it is.”
Garrett grins and kisses the corner of her mouth. “Go be good at your job.”
“Placement.”
“Mm. Go be good at that.”
She gets up, gathers her stethoscope and starts toward the side door. Halfway there, she turns. Garrett’s still sitting on the towel with the empty containers stacked beside him, watching her like he plans to keep doing it until the building physically removes her from view.
She lifts one hand. “Bye, baby.”
“Bye.” He waits until her fingers touch the door handle. “Hey.”
She looks back.
Garrett’s grin spreads slowly, helplessly, all bright teeth and curls and entirely too much feeling for a staff car park at one-thirty on a Friday afternoon. “Proud of you.”
She rolls her eyes so hard it should hurt, but she’s smiling when the door closes behind her.
to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.
