My take on babyshark ... but Emma is ridden with Catholic Guilt?
Sometimes, Emma feels the cross on her chest burn.
It is a simple, silver pendant her grandmother had given to her when she went to college, and she has since rarely been without it. Before she goes to bed at night, she looks at the ceiling, clutches the cross, and tells herself that she's grateful for everything. For all the lives she's saved, for the life God has given her, and the promised Heaven she'll enter after death. She knows she has done right by Him when a lightness enters her chest ā hence the life-saving business she has inducted herself into ā and she feels the pump of her heart rise to meet Him.
However, the lightness in her chest, she's found, is not limited to healing patients. In fact, she knows the cause of these exceptions, and it is not a thing, but a man. Not a man like the Son or the Father or the Holy Ghost, but a man of flesh and bone who makes her feel untethered from the Earth. When he walks past her, brushes her hand on accident, catches her eye over a patient's head, she hears blood thrumming in her ears.
It's then that her cross necklace burns white-hot, and Emma wishes she could close her eyes and disappear and pretend her feelings don't exist. But she remains, and the cross sears her skin.
Brendon Park is eighteen years her senior. Emma learned this on the first day of September, when Dr. Robby clapped him on the back with a "happy birthday, Shark. How's it feel to be forty?" and she folded the fact into a neat square and filed it away in her brain.
She had been taking note of various things for the past month, like how he wears the largest glove size, and how a Boston accent fringes his speech when he gets angry. In the morning, he smells like pine and hair gel, but the scent fades by the end of the day. Once, Emma noticed animal teeth marks on his ID badge. It was then that he caught her staring from across the patient's cot, tilted his head and set his jaw, like she'd angered him somehow. Her face had grown hot, and her chest constricted. The lightness she felt before was replaced by a great wave of shame and the reality of the situation hurdled into her.
Dr. Park was in the ED for a consult, a student who'd fallen out of his frat house's window and broken his leg. There was another boy in the corner who reeked of alcohol.
"Can someone show Cooper's friend out please?" Dr. McKay was asking.
Emma turned. This was a nurse's job. But Cooper's friend was staring at her with red eyes and a scowl that was all too reminiscent of one particularly violent golfer. She shuddered.
"I'm sure he can see himself out," Dr. Park said. He was still looking at her.
Emma replays this moment during each of her interactions with him. Because she has to remind herself that he watches her just as she watches him. It sets off a dull throb between her legs that frustrates her to no end. She can't do anything about it but pray it goes away.
On days that Brendon Park visits the ED, Emma leaves work with energy humming beneath her skin, begging to be released. She thinks the shower is the safest place to find relief. The water is loud enough to drown out the nagging voice of guilt in her head.
She presses her front against the shower wall, hiding herself, trapping her arm between her body and the tile. Her fingers work rapidly. It's like the five second rule, she thinks, except maybe five minutes. No one has to know, no one has to know.
Her mind, unbidden, supplies images, phantom touches to her skin. What if he were standing behind her with one hand between her legs, the other palming at her breast. What if she could feel him ā feel him ā hard against her. What if he were to bend over, bring his lips to her ear, and whisper her name.
She shatters into a million pieces. It's like the lightness she feels in her chest, only everywhere.
She remains stuck to the wall, her hand now limp, her shoulders twitching. After a few moments, the lightness disappears.
The tile is cold as she slides to the floor and begins to sob, but the cross on her chest continues to burn.
Perhaps to be continuedā¦ ?
Idk this just came to me lol
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