No Scrubs, Just Surgeons
Chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Pairing: Brendon Park x Popstar/Actor!Reader
Reader: She/her, “Y/N” used, no face claim set
Warnings: Celebrity gossip, paparazzi, invasion of privacy, pregnancy speculation, secret marriage, hospital setting, light workplace chaos, mild language, staff gossip, medical inaccuracies
A/N: I took a peek at the poll, and this one won. I hope you all enjoy it. I was honestly a little nervous about this chapter, I hope the "readers" enjoy it.
Summary: When one of the biggest pop stars and actresses in the world suddenly announces an indefinite hiatus, the internet immediately starts spiraling. But when she is photographed arriving in Pittsburgh wearing both an engagement ring and a wedding band, the mystery becomes impossible to ignore, especially for the staff at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
CHAPTER FOUR
Part One: The Wrist Fracture
The next clue came from a patient who had slipped on the last three steps outside her apartment building and landed badly on her right arm.
She was twenty-nine weeks pregnant, visibly uncomfortable, and trying very hard not to cry while apologizing to everyone who came near her. Her hair had been pulled into a messy knot at the back of her head, but half of it had come loose, soft strands clinging to her damp forehead and the side of her neck. Her maternity leggings were dusted with grit from the fall, one knee scraped faintly beneath the fabric, and her coat was bunched awkwardly beneath her in the bed like she had been too shaken to take it off properly.
Her left hand kept returning to the curve of her belly again and again, like if she stopped touching it for too long, something terrible might become true.
“I know you’re busy,” she said for the fourth time as Mohan adjusted the bed rail beside her. Her voice wobbled around the edges, the kind of voice people used when they were trying to be polite while barely holding themselves together. “I just got scared because I fell, and then my arm hurt, and then I started worrying about the baby, and my husband is on his way, but he works across town, and I feel stupid for panicking.”
“You’re not stupid,” Mohan said gently.
She had that calm tone she used with patients who were already halfway to apologizing themselves out of the care they needed. Her hands were steady as she checked the rail, then softened the blanket around the patient’s legs.
“You fell while pregnant and hurt your arm,” Mohan added. “That is a very reasonable reason to come in.”
The woman swallowed hard and nodded, though she looked like she only half believed it.
Robby stood near the doorway, one shoulder close to the frame, his eyes moving from the monitor to the patient and back again. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, damp winter coats, and hospital coffee gone cold. Somewhere beyond the curtain, a tech laughed at something under their breath. A cart rattled over uneven flooring. The ED kept moving around them, loud and alive and indifferent.
“OB cleared fetal heart tones?” Robby asked.
“Normal,” Mohan said. “No abdominal trauma, no bleeding, no contractions. She’s sore, but from what we can tell, baby is okay. X-ray shows a distal radius fracture.”
“Ortho?”
“Paged.”
Santos, who had been standing at the counter reviewing the film, looked up from the screen. The pale blue light caught the side of her face as she tilted her head, studying the image like it had personally offended her.
“It’s a pretty clean fracture.”
Robby gave her a look.
She lifted her chin. “I said pretty clean, not ortho clean.”
“That distinction will save lives,” Robby said dryly.
Santos gave him a look right back, entirely unbothered.
Mohan glanced toward the hallway. “Garcia is technically on for this.”
“Technically?” Robby asked.
“She got pulled upstairs for a post-op issue.”
Santos frowned. “So who’s coming?”
Before Mohan could answer, Park appeared in the doorway with his usual lack of ceremony.
There was no greeting, no casual acknowledgment, and no wasted breath. He did not enter like a colleague clocking in for another ordinary shift. He entered like he had already decided the room had a problem and that everyone was taking too long to solve it.
He was already pulling on gloves as he stepped inside, snapping the cuff over one wrist with a sharp little sound that cut through the room. His eyes moved around the space, quick and assessing, clocking the patient, the monitor, the film, the supplies, and the people gathered too close to the bed.
Then his gaze landed on Robby.
He gave him a nod.
It was not warm. It was not friendly. It was not even especially expressive. But it meant something, in the very limited language Park seemed to use with people he respected enough not to immediately dismiss.
Robby nodded back, just as small.
Then Park stepped fully into the room, already focused and already irritated by whatever inefficiency had brought him here, like someone had cut him out of the hallway and placed him exactly where he needed to be.
Santos blinked. “You’re ortho consult now?”
“No.”
Robby looked at him. “Then why are you here?”
Park held out his hand for the tablet. “I owed Garcia a favour.”
“That’s ominous,” Santos said.
“It’s a wrist fracture.”
“Still ominous.”
Park ignored her and took the tablet from Mohan. He reviewed the image, thumb moving once over the screen, then looked toward the patient.
“Right wrist?”
The patient nodded quickly. “Yes.”
“Any numbness in the fingers?”
“No.”
“Tingling?”
“A little, but I think I’m just scared.”
Park stepped closer and examined her hand with the same efficient focus he brought to every consult. Technically, this was not even supposed to be his consult. He had not been paged because he was the best person for the patient. He had been paged because Garcia had apparently collected on whatever debt Park had been stubborn enough to owe her.
And yet, he moved like he had already decided the room was his responsibility.
He checked sensation first, then capillary refill, then movement, then swelling. His voice remained clipped, his expression giving away absolutely nothing, but his hands were careful. More careful than his tone suggested, especially when the patient winced and tried to hide it.
“Sorry,” she whispered automatically.
Park did not look up. “Don’t apologize for pain.”
The woman blinked.
Santos, from near the counter, looked at him.
Park continued the exam like he had not said anything worth noticing.
“Fracture is stable,” he said. “You’ll need immobilization and ortho follow-up. We can avoid surgery unless alignment changes.”
The patient let out a shaky breath. “Okay. That’s good.”
“It is.”
She shifted slightly against the pillow, one hand resting protectively over her belly. Her thumb moved in a nervous little stroke over the fabric of her shirt.
“I’m sorry, I keep asking everyone this,” she said, “but the pain medication thing scares me. I don’t know what I’m allowed to take. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Park paused.
His thumb rested against the edge of the tablet. His eyes flicked once to her hand on her stomach, then back to her face. He looked like he knew exactly what to say, but was choosing the words carefully enough that nobody in the room missed the effort.
Mel, who had come in with extra supplies tucked against her side, slowed near the supply cart. Mohan’s pen hovered over the discharge paperwork. Santos glanced up properly this time, her attention sharpening.
Then Park’s tone changed.
It was still him, direct and gruff, like he was giving a singular order rather than offering comfort. It was still stripped down to the bone and free of anything that could be mistaken for bedside fluff. But the sharper edge dulled just enough to catch everyone off guard.
“Do not white-knuckle pain because you think suffering means strength,” he said.
The patient looked up at him.
“Stress is not neutral. Acetaminophen is usually the first-line option during pregnancy, but you follow the dosing instructions and confirm with OB if you have liver issues or any other complications. Avoid NSAIDs unless your OB specifically clears them, especially this far along. Ice, elevation, and proper immobilization will matter more than people think.”
The patient blinked at him.
Santos blinked too.
Park kept going, as if he had not just revealed he could speak to someone without making them feel like a poorly assembled chair.
“Keep your fingers moving. Don’t let the sling pull your shoulder into your ear. Sleep propped if lying flat makes your wrist throb. If swelling increases, if the fingers go pale, blue, cold, numb, or the pain gets worse despite medication, come back.”
He adjusted the edge of the splinting material, then added, almost like an afterthought, “Tell your partner you need rest and a well-deserved break. No heavy lifting. No unnecessary strain. No cooking.”
The patient stared at him.
Park’s mouth shifted at the corner, barely enough to count as a smirk and just enough for Santos to notice.
“If your partner can manage it,” he said, dry as bone, “he can do the chores. Cooking, cleaning, whatever else keeps the house standing.”
The patient’s mouth parted, caught between surprise and a laugh.
Santos looked like she had just discovered a new symptom.
Robby’s eyes flicked to Park, then away again, like he refused to acknowledge it on principle.
“Oh,” the patient said, the meaning catching up to her all at once. “Yeah. Of course. I can definitely tell him doctor’s orders.”
Park looked at her directly then.
“Do not wait until morning because you don’t want to bother anyone.”
The patient’s mouth trembled.
She looked younger than she probably was. Just scared. Just tired. Just a woman on an exam bed with a broken wrist, a baby inside her, and the terrible helplessness of not being able to tell whether fear was instinct or panic.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
Park nodded once.
Her eyes moved over his face with sudden, exhausted gratitude, the kind that came when someone had expected dismissal and received instruction instead. Not comfort, exactly, but something solid enough to hold onto.
“Do you have kids?”
Robby’s attention snapped to the monitor a little too quickly. Mohan looked down at the chart. Santos turned fully toward Park now, not even pretending she was not interested. Mel went very still beside the supply cart.
Park adjusted the splint tray.
“No,” he said.
The answer was immediate. Flat. Unhelpful. True enough, maybe, depending on how someone counted a child not yet born.
The patient gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. You just sounded like someone who has had to talk a pregnant woman out of panicking before.”
A strip of gauze shifted beneath Park’s fingers. The metal edge of the tray clicked softly against the bedside table.
“My wife worries as well,” he said.
The sentence took a second to register. Then Santos’s eyebrows lifted, Mohan looked up from the chart, and Mel’s eyes went straight to the hair tie on Park’s wrist.
Robby stared at Park with the expression of a man watching puzzle pieces fall from the ceiling and refusing, out of pure exhaustion, to assemble them.
The patient smiled faintly, like she understood exactly what he meant. Like she heard pregnancy in the shape of that sentence, even if Park had not said it out loud.
And then she said the thing that ruffled every feather in the room, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not.
“Then congratulations to you two,” the patient said softly. “Your wife sounds wonderful.”
Mohan’s pen stopped moving. Santos stared. Mel’s hand tightened around the supplies tucked against her side.
Park’s jaw did not move.
“Thank you.”
The patient laughed, then immediately winced because laughing moved her arm.
Park looked at her sharply. “Don’t do that.”
“Laugh?”
“Aggravate the fracture.”
“That’s not exactly something I can control.”
“Try.”
Santos turned away, biting the inside of her cheek so hard it probably hurt.
Mohan finished the discharge instructions with him, adding OB follow-up and return precautions while the patient nodded along, still looking overwhelmed but no longer quite as alone in it. Park stayed long enough to make sure the splint was placed correctly, his attention narrowing every time the wrap shifted or the angle looked even slightly off.
When the sling sat too close to the patient’s neck, he corrected it himself. He did not ask permission in any soft, reassuring way. He just adjusted it with practiced precision, loosening the tension, easing the strap down, making sure her shoulder was not forced up toward her ear.
“She’ll be okay?” the patient asked quietly, touching her belly again.
Mohan answered first. “Everything looks reassuring, but OB will give you the final follow-up plan.”
Park looked at the patient, then at her hand on her stomach.
“You came in,” he said. “That was the right call.”
It was not warm in the obvious way. But it was kind.
And somehow that made it stranger.
Because Park being cold was easy to understand. Park being blunt made sense. Park acting like everyone else had personally wasted his time since birth was almost comforting in its consistency.
But this careful, specific, almost hidden softness was something else entirely.
Especially because he had not even been supposed to be there.
When Park left the room, Santos waited until he was fully out of earshot before turning to Robby.
“His wife worries?”
Robby did not look at her. “Most people worry.”
“His wife.”
“Yes, Santos. We established he has one.”
Mohan’s expression remained thoughtful, her eyes still on the hallway where Park had disappeared. “He gave good advice.”
“He’s a doctor,” Robby said.
“No,” Mel said quietly.
Everyone looked at her.
She was still near the supply cart, one hand resting on the edge of it, her face thoughtful in a way that made the room feel smaller.
“He gave specific advice.”
That landed differently because she was right. It had not been vague. It had not been the usual safe little script about taking Tylenol and calling OB if she was concerned. It had been the kind of advice that came from repetition. From memory. From someone who had listened to the same fear enough times to know every branch of it before it was spoken.
Santos looked back toward the hallway. “And he only came because he owed Garcia.”
Robby sighed. “Please don’t make that sound dramatic.”
“It is dramatic,” Santos said. “He wasn’t even supposed to be the consult.”
Mohan’s expression sharpened a little at that.
Because that part mattered.
Park had not walked into that room because it was his patient. He had not been assigned to her. He had not been the person everyone expected to show up. If Garcia had not called in a favour, if Park had not apparently decided to honour it, none of them would have seen it.
None of them would have heard the shift in his voice. None of them would have watched his hands turn careful. None of them would have heard him say, my wife worries. None of them would have watched a pregnant patient congratulate him and seen him accept it.
Langdon, who had just arrived at the doorway and caught only the last ten seconds, looked between them.
“Specific about what?”
Santos said, “Pregnancy-safe pain control.”
Langdon’s mouth opened slightly. “Park?”
Mohan nodded.
Langdon considered that, then glanced down the hallway Park had taken.
“Huh.”
Robby pointed at him immediately. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said huh. That’s your pre-gossip noise.”
Langdon leaned against the wall, innocent as sin. “Maybe his wife is pregnant.”
Everyone looked at him.
The words hung there, ridiculous and suddenly not ridiculous enough.
Then Santos made a face, like her own brain had offended her.
“Park? Expectant father? No.”
McKay, passing behind them with a chart in hand and absolutely no intention of stopping, heard enough to contribute without breaking stride.
“That baby would come out judging APGAR scores.”
Robby took the chart from Mohan. “And there it goes.”
Santos snorted.
Langdon looked far too pleased with himself.
Mohan shook her head, but there was a smile tucked at the corner of her mouth.
Mel looked back toward the hallway, less convinced than before. Because the thing about Park was that most people mistook silence for emptiness. They saw the clipped answers, the unimpressed stare, the brutal efficiency, and assumed there was nothing underneath but more of the same.
But Mel had seen the hair tie. She had heard the shift in his voice. She had watched him tell a scared pregnant woman not to suffer just because she thought suffering meant safety. She had watched him make something almost like a joke about a partner cooking and cleaning because the patient deserved rest. She had watched him accept congratulations without correcting it.
And now she knew he had not even been supposed to walk into that room at all.
So no, Mel did not write anything down. But later, when she passed the betting board near the nurses’ station, she slowed, her eyes catching on her own guess among the crossed-out theories and messy arrows. For a second, she thought about changing it. Then someone called her name down the hall, and she left it alone.
Not yet, at least.
Though later, she would wish she had.
Part Two: The Grocery Store Clip
The grocery store clip became its own minor scandal three weeks after the airport photos.
It was not even good footage. It was shaky, zoomed-in, and clearly filmed from inside a parked car by someone who had no business acting like they were conducting public service journalism. The angle was terrible, the sound was muffled, and half the frame was taken up by the dashboard. Still, it showed enough.
It showed you coming out of a Pittsburgh grocery store in leggings, sneakers, a long cardigan, and sunglasses, holding a brown paper bag close to your chest while two older adults walked beside you.
The woman beside you was small, neatly dressed, and carrying a reusable tote bag full of produce. She had the kind of careful posture that made even grocery shopping look composed. The man on your other side wore a dark jacket and glasses, one hand hovering protectively near your elbow as you stepped off the curb. You were laughing at something he said, your head tilted down, your smile quick and private before you noticed the camera and looked away.
The internet immediately lost its mind again.
WHO ARE THEY????
Wait, those are not her parents. Her parents have been photographed with her before.
Are these her in-laws???
She is grocery shopping in Pittsburgh with someone’s parents. This woman is MARRIED married.
The way that man is holding the cart like he’s protecting royalty.
She looks so normal here I’m crying.
Not her buying cereal and hiding a husband.
The cardigan adjustment. The CARDIGAN ADJUSTMENT. That woman loves her.
She has been adopted by someone’s Pittsburgh parents and I need answers.
Gossip channels picked it up within hours. E! played the clip under a segment titled POP STAR’S PITTSBURGH INNER CIRCLE EXPANDS, while TMZ went less subtle with MEET THE POSSIBLE IN-LAWS?
Inside the Pitt, the video made the rounds during a rare slow stretch near the nurses’ station. Rare was generous. It was not quiet exactly, because the Pitt was never quiet, but there were fewer alarms going off at once and nobody was actively shouting about discharge paperwork, which passed for peace.
Princess held up her phone, eyes wide as the clip looped for the third time.
“Okay,” she said, “but these are not her parents.”
Perlah leaned closer, squinting at the screen. “No, her parents are the airport parents. I know her dad now. That man has a very specific angry father face.”
Mateo, who had been restocking gloves nearby and pretending not to care, glanced over despite himself. “Those have to be in-laws.”
Langdon appeared behind him with the speed of someone who had been spiritually summoned by gossip. “In-laws means husband. Husband means my hockey player theory remains alive.”
Santos took one look at the screen and shook her head. “Those are not hockey parents.”
Langdon frowned. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know,” Santos said, still watching the clip. “But they’re not.”
Mel reached over and zoomed in before anyone could stop her. “They look comfortable with her. Not staff. Not security. Not random family friends. Look at that. See how she lets the woman fix her cardigan?”
On the screen, the older woman reached up and gently tugged the front of your cardigan closed, fussing over you with the unmistakable confidence of someone who had permission. You smiled down at her, a little embarrassed, but you did not pull away. If anything, you leaned into it just enough to make the whole thing worse for everyone watching.
Javadi made a small noise. “That’s so sweet.”
Dana, passing behind them with a stack of charts, glanced over once. “That’s mother-in-law behaviour.”
Everyone turned to her.
Dana stopped walking. “What?”
Princess pointed at the phone. “So you agree?”
“I agree that women who fix your clothes in public either raised you, love you, or both,” Dana said. “That’s all.”
Robby looked over from the desk. “Are we diagnosing family dynamics now?”
McKay sipped her coffee without looking away from the screen. “It’s less depressing than diagnosing half the waiting room.”
The footage kept playing. The older man opened the back of the SUV and took the grocery bag from you before you could protest. You said something to him, laughing, and he shook his head like the matter was settled before you had even opened your mouth. Then he guided you gently toward the passenger door while the woman stayed close at your side, still watching the curb like she personally distrusted concrete.
Mel watched the clip again, quieter now.
“She doesn’t look scared with them,” she said.
Mateo nodded. “She looks taken care of.”
Langdon opened his mouth, probably to make a joke, then seemed to think better of it.
The phone kept glowing between them, the grainy little video looping again and again, turning one grocery run into an international investigation.
Then Santos looked at the frozen image and frowned.
“Okay, but if those are in-laws,” she said, “the husband is definitely not famous.”
Robby raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because famous people don’t grocery shop with their in-laws in Pittsburgh,” Santos said. “They send assistants.”
Dana gave her a look. “Some people like their in-laws.”
Santos shrugged. “Sounds suspicious.”
Park saw the grocery store clip later that night in his office.
Not because he went looking for it. Because you sent it to him with the message:
Your mom is famous now.
He opened the video and watched his mother fuss with your cardigan outside the grocery store while his father took the bag from your hands like he had personally sworn an oath against letting pregnant women carry cereal.
Park stared at the screen for a long moment.
The fluorescent office light buzzed softly above him. Somewhere outside the door, a cart rattled past, followed by the low murmur of voices and the distant call of someone asking for respiratory. His desk was cluttered with patient files, a half-finished coffee, and a pen he did not remember stealing from the nurses’ station.
He watched the video one more time.
Then he typed back:
She told you to button your coat.
Your reply came immediately.
She told me YOUR baby needs warmth.
Park’s mouth twitched.
A second message appeared.
Also your dad bought three kinds of soup because he said I looked “too famous and too tired.”
Park leaned back in his chair and allowed himself exactly one private smile.
He’s right. Eat the soup.
You sent a photo back three minutes later.
One bowl of soup. One grilled cheese cut diagonally. His mother’s hand in the corner of the frame, setting down a glass of water like hydration was now a family mandate.
Under it, you wrote:
Your parents are trying to adopt me from you.
Park looked at the photo longer than he needed to.
Then he typed:
Too late. I married you first.
A bubble appeared almost immediately. Then it disappeared. Then it appeared again.
Finally, your next message came through.
Your mother also tried to pay for everything and I told her you already told me to use the black card for whatever I wanted, so now she thinks you spoil me too much.
Park stared at that message.
Then he typed back:
Use it.
Your answer came a second later.
That is not helping your case.
It is not a case. It is a card. Use it.
You sent back a photo of the soup again, this time with the grilled cheese lifted halfway toward the camera.
Brendon Park, if your mother hears you say that, she is going to lecture you about responsible spending while also handing me another cardigan.
Park’s mouth twitched again.
She can lecture me after you eat.
Another typing bubble appeared. Then it disappeared. Then it returned, which meant you were either laughing, overthinking, or both.
Your dad also said Gus is coming for next week’s golfing trip, so apparently I have to “rest up” because there will be “men loudly discussing grass” in the house.
Park looked at the screen.
Then, very slowly, he blinked.
Gus talks about his swing for forty minutes before he takes one. Leave the room if he starts.
Your reply came seconds later.
Your mother already warned me. She said if Gus corners me, I should pretend the baby is kicking and escape.
Park could picture it too clearly.
His mother standing in the kitchen, one hand on her hip, giving you tactical instructions on how to survive his father’s golfing friends. His father pretending not to hear while absolutely hearing. You sitting at their table, wrapped in one of his mother’s cardigans, eating soup like you had always belonged there.
Another message came in.
Your dad says you should come golfing.
Park typed back immediately.
No.
He said you would say that.
Then he already has his answer.
He also said you need sunlight and hobbies.
Park looked up at the ceiling.
The fluorescent light buzzed above him, steady and irritating. Somewhere beyond his office, the hospital kept moving without mercy. People needed things. People always needed things. A monitor alarm went off down the hall, then stopped. Someone laughed once, sharp and tired, before the sound disappeared behind a closing door.
He looked back down at the photo.
The soup. The grilled cheese. His mother’s hand. Your message still waiting on the screen.
Park exhaled once through his nose, then typed:
Tell him my hobby is being right.
You sent back:
He said that is not a hobby, that is a personality defect.
This time, Park did smile, but it was gone almost as soon as it appeared.
Then he typed:
Eat the soup. Rest. Avoid Gus. Use the card if you need anything.
A moment later, your answer came through.
Yes, doctor.
Park stared at those two words longer than he should have.
Then, because he was alone in his office and no one was there to see the hard line of his mouth ease, he typed:
Good girl.
Part Three: Seven Months Later
By the time seven months had passed since the airport photos, the betting paper had finally disappeared from under the nurses’ station keyboard.
Dana found it during a supply check one afternoon. She had been looking for extra labels, not evidence of workplace nonsense, but there it was, folded beneath the keyboard like contraband. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and stared at the names and guesses written across it in three different colours of pen. There were arrows, crossed-out theories, question marks, and one very aggressive circle around the words hockey player, which looked suspiciously like Langdon’s handwriting.
Dana stood there for a full ten seconds, expression flat, holding the paper between two fingers like it had come out of a biohazard bin. Then she threatened to throw everyone’s five dollars into the sharps container if she ever saw it again.
After that, the staff stopped pretending the game was official, but the mystery never really died. It simply became one of those strange background stories people mentioned whenever the television in the lounge played entertainment news too loudly, whenever a patient’s daughter recognized your song on the radio, or whenever Langdon got bored enough to remind everyone that he had, in his words, “always had an instinct for celebrity marriage fraud.”
The world kept guessing for a while, then moved on the way the world always did, impatiently and without apology. There were new scandals, new breakups, new albums, new award-show speeches, and new celebrities to dissect until there was nothing left but bones and speculation.
Every few weeks, someone online would post a blurry photo and swear it was you in Pittsburgh. Every few weeks, someone else would claim they had finally identified your husband. Some people insisted he was a tech CEO. Others argued for a producer. There were theories about a private equity heir, a reclusive novelist, and even a plastic surgeon. For about three days, someone suggested he might be a doctor, but that theory was mocked into oblivion almost immediately because apparently no one on the internet believed a world-famous singer would secretly marry a Pittsburgh surgeon with the bedside manner of a locked filing cabinet.
The theory that refused to die, however, was the hockey player.
It had started with one grainy photo of you leaving a private restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh two years earlier behind a man in a black baseball cap who was, apparently, “definitely tall enough to play defense.” From there, the internet built an entire imaginary marriage. Gossip channels picked it up. Fan accounts made timelines. Someone made a thread connecting you to four different Pittsburgh hockey players based on nothing but height, vibes, and one liked Instagram post from 2024.
At the Pitt, Langdon treated this as vindication.
“I said hockey player first,” he reminded everyone whenever the theory came up.
Santos, every single time, reminded him, “So did thousands of people with no jobs.”
Inside the Pitt, life went on with its usual stubborn refusal to make room for anything soft.
The emergency department remained crowded, loud, underfunded, overheated in some corners and freezing near the ambulance bay doors. The air always smelled faintly of antiseptic, burnt coffee, plastic tubing, and somebody’s lunch forgotten in the microwave. Monitors beeped. Phones rang. Patients argued. Families cried quietly behind curtains. Someone was always looking for a clean blanket, a missing chart, a working printer, or a doctor who had vanished into another room five minutes ago and somehow become impossible to locate.
Dana still ran the floor like a woman personally holding the building together with tape, caffeine, and the force of her voice. Robby still looked like the shift was aging him in real time. Langdon still had the dangerous habit of making jokes when the room got too tense. Mel still noticed things no one else noticed and then pretended she had not noticed them quite so intensely. Santos still acted like being corrected was a personal insult before quietly doing better the next time. Whitaker still managed to look both deeply competent and slightly lost, depending on the hour.
And Brendon Park remained Brendon Park.
He came and went from the emergency department with the same sharp efficiency as always. He wore dark scrubs, a clipped badge, an unimpressed stare, and no wedding ring. He carried no softness where anyone could see it. He gave no indication of anything beyond irritation and orthopedic certainty.
He still corrected splints like they had personally offended him. He still spoke in short, cutting sentences that made residents stand straighter. He still gave no hint that he had a private life at all, let alone one the entire internet had been trying and failing to uncover for seven months.
Except now, if anyone had really thought about it, the hints had been there.
There had been the hair tie. The packed lunches. The ring on his badge. The phone calls. The way he sometimes stepped away from the noise of the department with his phone pressed to his ear, his voice too low for anyone to hear. The way he seemed unexpectedly familiar with the anxious logic of pregnant women who were afraid every ache, fall, medication, or missed meal could hurt the baby before anyone could reassure them otherwise.
But nobody thought about it hard enough.
That was the thing about secrets in hospitals. They did not hide because no one saw them.
They hid because everyone saw too much.
At 3:12 in the afternoon, the television over the nurses’ station switched from a local weather update to breaking entertainment coverage.
No one paid attention at first because there were too many other things happening. Robby was reviewing a chart with his coffee balanced dangerously close to the keyboard. Mohan was calling for repeat labs while glancing toward a patient who kept insisting her dizziness was “probably nothing.” McKay was trying to convince a man with a swollen ankle that “walking it off” was not a treatment plan. Dana was arguing with transport over the phone, one hand pressed to her hip, her expression making it very clear that someone on the other end was about to lose.
Then Princess gasped.
It was not a small gasp. It was a full hand-to-chest sound of spiritual emergency, loud enough that Perlah looked up from the medication cart and Dana immediately turned with narrowed eyes.
“What?” Dana asked.
Princess only pointed at the television.
On-screen, shaky paparazzi footage showed the side entrance of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. The camera bounced and refocused, catching the dull grey of the hospital doors, the curb crowded with photographers, and the flash of someone’s hand blocking the lens for half a second.
The lower-third headline flashed beneath the clip in bold letters.
Y/N SEEN LEAVING PITTSBURGH HOSPITAL, FIRST CLEAR PUBLIC SIGHTING IN MONTHS
The footage jumped again.
Then you appeared.
You stepped out wearing a pale yellow sundress beneath a light cardigan, your hair loose around your shoulders and sunglasses covering your eyes. You looked beautiful in a way that felt almost too private for a camera to catch, softer than the girl from the stage and quieter than the woman from the album covers.
Your mother walked close beside you, one hand hovering protectively near your back, while your father moved ahead with his jaw tight and one hand raised toward the photographers as if warning them not to come any closer.
The camera angle shifted and caught what the cardigan could not fully hide.
You were visibly pregnant.
Your baby bump was round beneath the soft fabric of your dress, and one of your hands rested there as the flashes exploded around you.
“Oh my God,” Mel whispered.
No one told her to be quiet.
On the screen, another man stepped into frame first.
He was older, broad through the shoulders, with the relaxed confidence of someone who had no idea he was about to become the internet’s newest suspect. Gus had come with you that afternoon partly because he was the baby’s godfather, and partly because he wanted an excuse to see Brendon, annoy the crap out of him during his shift, and loudly ask whether becoming a father had made him any less allergic to fun.
To the cameras, though, Gus looked like an answer.
He moved beside your parents easily, staying close enough to help but far enough not to crowd you. Your father said something to him, and Gus nodded once, serious for once in his life, before lifting a hand toward the paparazzi as they surged too close.
Inside the Pitt, the reaction changed immediately.
Princess leaned closer to the screen. “Wait. Is that him?”
Langdon’s entire soul returned to his body. “Hold on. He’s tall.”
Santos shot him a look. “Do not start.”
“He could play defense.”
“He is wearing loafers.”
“That doesn’t disqualify him.”
Dana stared at the screen. “I swear to God.”
On the footage, Gus glanced back toward the hospital doors, then stepped aside.
A man came through behind him.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark jacket thrown over surgical scrubs. Moving with the controlled purpose of someone who had no interest in the cameras and even less patience for the people holding them.
Nobody said anything at first. Robby’s coffee sat forgotten beside the keyboard, Santos stopped mid-blink, and Whitaker held his granola bar halfway out of the wrapper like his body had forgotten what came next.
The man cut through the mess of cameras and shouting paparazzi as if the entire world had narrowed to the distance between you and the waiting SUV.
His hand went immediately to the small of your back.
No hospital employee touched a patient like that.
Park leaned close to say something near your ear, and you turned toward him instead of away from the cameras. Your fingers caught lightly in the front of his scrub jacket, and he bent without hesitation, one hand braced above your head as he helped you into the SUV.
Then he kissed you.
The first time, half of them missed it. The second time, nobody did.
Your father stepped closer, blocking the worst angle with his shoulder. Your mother moved too, protective and calm, as if the whole family had silently agreed that the world had gotten one glimpse and would not be allowed to take more.
But it was already too late.
The cameras had caught everything. They had caught the kiss. They had caught the baby bump. They had caught the rings, the parents, Gus stepping aside like he knew exactly who belonged there, and the man who had apparently been standing in front of them for months wearing dark scrubs and an attitude problem.
Then Park turned, and your mother reached for him first.
She hugged him like family, not awkwardly or politely, and not with the stiff public embrace of someone tolerating a stranger for the cameras. She wrapped both arms around him, her hand coming up to the back of his neck as she spoke close to his ear.
He bent his head slightly to listen, nodding with a seriousness that made the gesture feel heartbreakingly domestic.
Your father stepped forward next, and Park clasped his hand before pulling him into a quick half-hug, dapping him once with the easy familiarity of someone who had done it a hundred times before.
And then, impossible as it seemed, Dr. Brendon Park smiled.
It was small and crooked, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but it was real enough that your father immediately cracked up, head tipping back like Park had said something under his breath only he could hear.
The camera caught it because, of course, this was the one private thing the world managed to get in perfect focus.
Within minutes, the clip would be slowed down, zoomed in, sharpened, reposted, and handed over to amateur lip readers who treated the moment like national intelligence.
DID HE JUST CALL HIM DAD???
No, I swear he said, “I told you I had it.”
Her dad LAUGHED. This man is not new. This man has been at the family cookouts.
That dap was too smooth. They’ve done that before.
That is not security. That is son-in-law behaviour.
WAIT. IS THAT A DOCTOR?
Inside the Pitt, none of them had the internet captions yet.
They only had the footage.
They only had the impossible sight of Park standing there with your father’s hand in his, smiling like someone who belonged beside your family so naturally that the cameras were the only strange thing about it.
Langdon’s mouth fell open. McKay stared at the television with her coffee halfway to her mouth. Santos looked personally betrayed by the laws of reality. Javadi, who had just arrived at the desk with a fresh chart, stopped so suddenly that Mateo nearly walked into her.
Dana closed her eyes with the exhausted expression of a woman watching God prove a point she had made seven months earlier.
On the screen, the camera zoomed just as the man turned back toward the SUV, and for one clean shot, his face filled the frame.
It was Dr. Brendon Park.
The anchor’s voice sharpened with excitement as the footage replayed.
“We are working to identify the man seen assisting Y/N into the vehicle, but social media is already asking whether this could be the mystery husband fans have speculated about for months. For months, many fans believed the singer may have been privately linked to a Pittsburgh hockey player, but this new footage appears to suggest a very different answer.”
Robby stared at the television without moving. Beside him, Mel looked like her entire notes app had just burst into flames. Santos’s eyes flicked once toward the hallway, then back to the screen, as if expecting reality to correct itself. Langdon, for once, had no joke ready.
Javadi’s voice came out faintly.
“She married Park the Shark?”
Mateo stared at the screen, his coffee forgotten in his hand. “No way.”
Princess pressed both hands to her mouth. “She really said no scrubs, just surgeons.”
Dana turned slowly. “Do not make that the headline.”
Langdon blinked once, then seemed to remember that his own theory had just died on live television.
“So,” he said weakly, “not a hockey player.”
Santos did not look away from the screen. “For once, I’m sorry you were wrong.”
McKay finally took a sip of her coffee. “I’m not. This is worse.”
Robby stared at the frozen image of Park’s hand at your back.
“That,” he said, “is ortho.”
Dana turned her head toward him with a look sharp enough to cut glass.
“Do not say it like a diagnosis.”
Whitaker swallowed, still holding the forgotten granola bar.
“Isn’t that Dr. Park?” he asked quietly. Then he frowned at the screen. “But who was the other guy?”
“The godfather, maybe,” Mel said, already building a mental case file against her will.
Langdon looked wounded. “Or a hockey player.”
Santos turned on him. “Read the room.”
The elevator behind them dinged.
The doors slid open.
Brendon Park walked into the emergency department in dark scrubs, his badge clipped neatly to his chest, no wedding ring on his hand, and the expression of a man who had not yet been informed that his entire private life was currently playing above the nurses’ station.
He stopped after two steps.
Every single person at the desk was staring at him.
Even the department seemed to lose its rhythm around him. A printer hummed uselessly. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeped with terrible timing. Whitaker’s granola bar wrapper crinkled in his hand.
Slowly, Park’s eyes lifted to the television.
The footage replayed again, showing his hand at your back, the kiss before you got into the car, your visible baby bump, your mother hugging him, your father clasping his hand, Gus stepping aside with the confidence of a man who had known the secret the whole time, and the rare smile that had no business existing under hospital lighting.
It showed your face turning toward him like he was the safest place in the world.
Park looked away from the screen and back at them.
If he felt anything about being exposed on national television, his face had chosen not to participate.
Then his phone rang.
The sound cut through the silence so sharply that Princess flinched.
Park did not look away from them as he reached into his pocket and pulled it out. His eyes dropped to the screen for only a second.
His thumb paused over your name.
Then the hard line of his mouth eased before he could stop it.
He answered the call.
“Yes, sweetheart,” Park said quietly.
The nurses’ station became medically useless.
Santos’s mouth parted. Langdon looked like his soul had left his body again. Mel’s eyes went wide, shining with the horror and joy of someone whose private theory board had just been struck by lightning.
On the television behind him, the footage froze on the image of Park kissing you beside the SUV. In front of them, the real Park stood under the harsh hospital lights, phone pressed to his ear, giving them absolutely nothing except the one thing he could not quite hide.
He listened, his gaze lowered.
“No,” he said, even softer. “Don’t watch it. Your mother will get upset, and then your father will call me.”
A pause.
His mouth twitched.
“Because he always calls me.”
Another pause followed, and the whole desk remained frozen in place, nosy and horrified and fully committed.
Park glanced once at the television, then back at the crowd of people staring at him like he had just walked through the doors carrying a confession in both hands.
His voice stayed low.
“Yes, I know they saw.”
He listened again.
Then, with the calm precision of a man who had chosen exactly what to reveal and exactly what to keep, Park said, “It’s fine. I’m coming home after shift. Tell our son to stop kicking your ribs until I get there.”
Princess made a sound so small and strangled that Perlah grabbed her arm.
Santos whispered, “Our son?”
Langdon whispered back, “I am going to be sick.”
Dana closed her eyes.
Robby stared at the ceiling like he was asking for strength from whatever god handled orthopedic surgeons with secret pop-star wives.
Park listened for another second, his posture still controlled except for the faintest shift in his mouth.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know. I miss you too.”
The beeping monitors suddenly seemed rude.
Santos closed her eyes.
Langdon whispered, “This is worse than the kiss.”
Princess made a tiny noise behind her hands. “No, it’s better.”
Park’s eyes flicked toward them.
Everyone immediately pretended to be looking somewhere else.
Badly.
He returned his attention to the call. “Eat something before you nap. No, coffee does not count. Neither does stealing my fries from last night.”
There was a pause.
His mouth twitched again, barely there but undeniable.
“No,” he said. “You cannot name him after your favourite character just because he kicked during the finale.”
Mel’s hand flew to her mouth.
Javadi whispered, “They’re naming the baby?”
Mateo whispered back, “Obviously not after a hockey player.”
Langdon turned slowly to glare at him.
Park looked at them again.
This time, nobody even tried to hide that they were listening.
His expression flattened.
“Privacy,” he said into the room, not the phone.
Dana lifted both hands. “Don’t look at me. I’m just standing here being betrayed by information I did not ask for.”
On the other end of the line, you must have said something, because Park’s eyes shifted back down and his shoulders lowered by half an inch.
“Yes,” he said. “They know.”
A pause.
His gaze lifted slowly toward the entire nurses’ station.
“No, sweetheart. They are not being normal about it.”
Princess choked.
Santos turned away so fast she nearly walked into the counter.
Langdon looked personally wounded.
Robby muttered, “That is unfairly accurate.”
Park listened again, then sighed through his nose.
“I am not putting you on speaker.”
The silence that followed was immediate and devastating.
Every single person at the nurses’ station looked offended.
Princess dropped her hands from her mouth. “Rude.”
Dana pointed at her without looking. “Do not say rude to the man whose secret wife you all found out about on cable television.”
Park ignored them.
“Yes,” he said into the phone, lower now. “I’ll call you when I’m done. Rest. Tell our son to behave.”
Another pause.
This time, the softness was not in his expression as much as his voice. It dropped into something private, something careful, something that did not belong beneath fluorescent lights and hospital noise.
“Love you too.”
He ended the call.
For a beat, the only sound was the television replaying the clip again.
Then the department exploded.
Not loudly enough to count as unprofessional, exactly, but loudly enough that Dana’s soul visibly left her body.
Princess clutched Perlah’s arm. “He said love you.”
Perlah looked dazed. “He said sweetheart.”
Javadi stared at Park like she had just watched a statue blink. “He said our son.”
Mateo nodded slowly. “Yeah, that one did damage.”
Langdon pointed at the television, where the replay had frozen on Park kissing you beside the SUV. “I would just like to say, in my defense, the hockey player theory had legs.”
Santos looked at him. “It had delusion.”
“It had height and build evidence,” Langdon insisted, waving one hand like he could physically sketch Brendon Park’s shoulders into the air and win the argument through proportions alone.
“It had nothing.”
McKay took another sip of coffee, eyes still on Park. “I can’t believe the internet spent seven months looking for a famous husband and he was just here. Being mean about splints.”
Robby looked at Park, then at the screen, then back at Park.
“That,” he said slowly, “is the most ortho thing you have ever done.”
Dana turned her head toward him with a look sharp enough to cut glass.
“Do not make secret marriage sound like a specialty.”
Park slid his phone back into his pocket with the calm of a man who had not just ruined everyone’s afternoon, their theories, and possibly Langdon’s will to live.
Then he looked at the television.
Then at them.
“If anyone says hockey player,” he said, his voice calm enough to be dangerous, “I’m leaving.”
Langdon immediately raised both hands. “I wasn’t going to.”
Santos scoffed. “You were absolutely going to.”
“I was processing.”
“You were grieving.”
“I lost a theory today, Santos. Have some respect.”
Park gave Robby one brief nod, the same controlled nod he always gave him, like nothing had changed and everything had.
“I’m here for the consult,” he said.
Robby stared at him. “You are aware we all just saw you kiss your pregnant pop-star wife on national television.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re just going to go see a consult?”
Park’s stare remained brutally level.
“Is the fracture going to set itself?”
No one had an answer for that.
Then, because the universe apparently had one final punchline left, the television replayed the clip again. On-screen, you smiled up at Park like he had hung the moon, and the anchor’s voice carried clearly through the nurses’ station.
“Sources close to the singer say her husband is believed to be a respected Pittsburgh surgeon.”
Princess whispered, reverent and delighted, “No scrubs. Just surgeons.”
Dana closed her eyes.
“Absolutely not.”
Park paused halfway down the hall. For one wild moment, everyone thought he might turn around and tell them off.
Instead, without looking back, he said, “She’ll like that.”
Then he kept walking.
The nurses’ station erupted again. Behind him, the television replayed the kiss one more time, and this time, even Dana did not tell anyone to turn it off.
Part Four: The Post
Three hours later, your Instagram updated for the first time in months.
The notification landed like a dropped match, and within three minutes, the internet broke all over again.
The photo was simple.
You were sitting on the edge of a cream sofa in one of Brendon’s oversized sweaters, your legs tucked beneath you, one hand resting over your belly. Your wedding band and engagement ring were clear in the soft afternoon light, no longer hidden, no longer angled away, no longer treated like something the world had to earn slowly through blurry photos and obsessive zoom-ins.
Brendon sat beside you, mostly out of frame, but not hidden.
His shoulder was visible. The sleeve of his dark shirt. One hand covering yours over your stomach, broad and steady and unmistakably his. His thumb rested against your ring finger, close enough to the diamond that the entire internet would have plenty to scream about.
The caption read:
Surprise.
Yes, I’m married. Yes, we’re having a baby. Yes, he’s a surgeon. No, he does not play hockey.
My new album, No Scrubs, Just Surgeons, comes out October 3rd, 2026.
And because apparently one announcement wasn’t enough, my next film is coming soon too.
Thank you for loving me through the quiet. I needed it more than you know.
— Y/N Park
Inside the Pitt, Princess screamed so loudly that Dana threatened to confiscate every phone in the department. Perlah grabbed her by the shoulders, eyes wide as she stared at the screen. “The album is called what?”
Princess looked close to tears. “She used it. She used the title.”
Langdon stood beside them with his phone in his hand, pale with betrayal. “She really said he does not play hockey.”
Santos patted his shoulder with no real sympathy. “That part was for you.”
“It felt targeted.”
“It was deserved.”
McKay leaned against the counter, reading the caption again with the exhausted disbelief of someone who hated how much she liked it. “No scrubs, just surgeons. I hate that it works.”
Javadi looked up from her phone. “The post already has six million likes.”
Mateo whistled under his breath. “Park’s hand is trending.”
Robby looked tired in a way that suggested the sentence had physically aged him. “Of course it is.”
Dana pointed toward the hallway without looking away from the group. “Nobody say that to him.”
Naturally, Park chose that exact moment to return from the consult.
The conversation died too quickly to look innocent. Princess lowered her phone by half an inch. Langdon’s expression still looked personally devastated. Santos tried and failed to arrange her face into something normal, while Dana stood with both hands on her hips like she was seconds away from banning joy from the department entirely.
Park slowed near the desk, his gaze moving over each of them before landing on Robby.
Robby immediately held up both hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
Park’s eyes dropped to Princess’s phone.
The post was still open. His hand over yours. Your ring visible. Your caption sitting underneath it like a match thrown into dry grass.
Park stared at the screen for a moment, sighed through his nose, and took out his own phone.
Langdon watched him carefully. “You knew about the album title?”
Park did not look up. “Yes.”
“You told her about it and approved that?"
“She liked it.”
Santos blinked. “That’s it?”
Park scrolled once, calm as ever. “That’s usually enough.”
Princess made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a prayer. Perlah clutched her arm and whispered, “That was romantic.”
“It was medically irresponsible,” Dana said, though nobody knew which part she meant and nobody had the courage to ask.
Robby watched Park type something on his phone. “Are you commenting?”
“No.”
A second later, Princess gasped again.
“He liked the post.”
Langdon looked personally offended. “You don’t even follow the hospital account.”
“I’m married to her,” Park said flatly.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only one you’re getting.”
Santos looked from the photo to Park, her voice quieter this time. “So she’s really Y/N Park?”
Park slid his phone back into his pocket. “She has been for a while.”
That shut them up more effectively than anything else could have.
He did not say it like a confession or a victory. He said it like a fact, like the world had spent seven months chasing something that had never been a mystery to him.
She was having his son. She carried his name with pride. And somehow Brendon Park had been walking around the hospital for months with the softest secret in the city hidden behind bad bedside manner and orthopedic consults.
Princess stared at him like she might never emotionally recover.
Then Langdon cleared his throat. “So does this mean we’re invited to the baby shower?”
Dana turned on him immediately. “Absolutely not.”
Park looked at Langdon. “No.”
Langdon nodded slowly. “Fair.”
Santos folded her arms. “What if we bring gifts?”
“No.”
“What if they’re expensive?”
Park paused.
Robby pointed at him. “Do not negotiate with them.”
Park resumed walking, which was probably the only reason Santos did not continue. Behind him, Princess whispered, “I’m buying the baby something anyway.”
Perlah nodded. “Obviously.”
Dana pointed between them. “I can hear you.”
McKay looked down at the Instagram post one more time and shook her head. “I still can’t believe he was just here the whole time.”
Robby watched Park disappear down the hall, dark scrubs, clipped badge, no wedding ring, same brutal walk. Then his eyes drifted back to the photo of Park’s hand resting over yours.
“Yeah,” he said. “That tracks.”
Langdon frowned. “What does that mean?”
Robby picked up his coffee, took one sip, and immediately made a face because it had gone cold twenty minutes ago. “It means the man hid a whole pop-star wife, a baby, and an album rollout behind bad bedside manner and orthopedic consults.”
Santos nodded slowly. “That is disturbingly efficient.”
Dana sighed like she could feel a headache forming behind her eyes.
On the television above them, the entertainment segment replayed your hospital footage again. The kiss. The baby bump. Your parents. Gus stepping aside. Park’s hand at your back. Your smile tilted up toward him like you had known all along that the world would eventually catch up, but never quickly enough to touch what mattered.
Down the hall, Brendon Park kept walking toward his next consult with the same infuriating calm he brought to everything else. The internet was on fire. Half the emergency department was emotionally compromised. His wife had just announced to millions of people that she was Y/N Park, mother-to-be, actress, pop star, and apparently the kind of woman who could turn a private orthopedic surgeon into the most searched man in America before dinner.
He still did not turn around.
At the nurses’ station, Princess looked at the caption one more time and whispered, with feeling, “No scrubs. Just surgeons.”
Dana did not even look up from her chart.
“I hate all of you.”
But she did not tell anyone to turn off the television.
Another surprise arrived a week later, right in the middle of day shift, when the department was loud enough that nobody should have noticed one cream envelope sitting beside the sign-in sheets.
The nurses’ station was its usual mess of half-finished coffees, loose pens, printed labels, patient stickers, discharge papers, and someone’s abandoned granola bar wrapper shoved too close to the keyboard. Monitors beeped from down the hall. A patient in curtain four was arguing about wait times. Someone near triage was asking for another warm blanket. The printer had jammed twice already, and Dana looked like she was one small inconvenience away from personally unplugging it from the wall.
So, naturally, she noticed the envelope first.
It sat there looking far too expensive for the counter it had landed on, thick cream cardstock with Dana’s name written across the front in neat black ink. Beside it was another envelope addressed to Day Shift and Night Shift, PTMC Emergency Department, which somehow made the whole thing feel even stranger.
Dana stared at it with immediate suspicion, like it might explode, sue her, or require a staff meeting.
“Zidan dropped that off,” Shen said as she passed behind the desk with a chart tucked against her chest. “Said it came through security and looked too fancy to leave downstairs.”
Ahmad Zidan, standing near the entrance with his radio clipped to his shoulder, glanced over at the sound of his name. “It had gold lettering,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I wasn’t leaving it beside the visitor badges.”
Then Princess saw the tiny embossed baby carriage.
Perlah saw the gold border.
Langdon, who had somehow developed a sixth sense for drama since the Y/N Park reveal, appeared at the desk with absolutely no reason to be there.
“What is that?” he asked.
Dana opened it slowly, already annoyed that everyone was watching over her shoulder.
Inside was a baby shower invitation.
A real one. Thick paper, soft gold lettering, tiny pressed flowers around the border, and Brendon Park’s home address printed neatly beneath the date and time.
The house he shared with his pop-star wife.
For once, the desk actually managed to shut up.
Princess covered her mouth first. Perlah leaned closer like the words might change if she read them from a different angle. Shen stopped pretending she was only passing through. Even Ahmad tilted his head from near the entrance, clearly trying to read the card from a distance without looking like he cared.
Jack, who had come up behind Robby with a coffee in one hand and the exhausted posture of a man already regretting being near a conversation, looked at the invitation once.
Then he looked at Dana.
Then he looked back at the invitation.
“That’s real?” he asked.
Dana checked the second card tucked behind the first one, her expression shifting from suspicion into something softer that she immediately tried to hide. “Day shift and night shift.”
Mel stared at the invitation. “To his house.”
“With his wife,” McKay said, blinking.
“For the baby,” Javadi added, smiling so hard she had to look down at the counter.
That was the part that got them.
After months of theories, blurry videos, hidden rings, break room debates, and Park walking around the hospital like a man allergic to personal information, there it was in Dana’s hand. They had not just watched the secret unfold from the outside. Somehow, impossibly, they were being let in.
Princess clutched Perlah’s arm. “We have to buy the baby something perfect.”
Dana pointed at her immediately. “Do not make this weird.”
“It is already weird,” Langdon said. “We are going to Brendon Park’s house for a baby shower hosted by his world-famous pop-star wife.”
Santos nodded slowly. “That is objectively weird.”
Ahmad raised one hand from the entrance. “For the record, security appreciates advance notice if celebrities are involved.”
Jack took a slow sip of coffee. “That sentence alone makes me want to call in sick.”
Shen glanced down at the card again, softer now. “It’s kind of nice, though.”
Robby took the invitation, read it once, then looked down the hall like he expected Park to appear and deny the entire thing. “Yeah,” he said, sighing. “It is.”
Nobody made fun of him for that.
Mostly because they were all thinking the same thing.
For the rest of the shift, the invitation stayed on the counter where everyone could see it. Nurses stopped by pretending they only needed supplies. Residents walked past, doubled back, read the address, and walked away with the same stunned little expression. Night shift found out before dinner and lost their minds all over again. By the time Park passed the nurses’ station later that evening, half the department had already discussed gift ideas, parking, whether the baby shower would have famous people at it, whether Ahmad would need to coordinate security, and whether showing up in scrubs was disrespectful or iconic.
Park noticed the invitation first.
Then he noticed everyone staring at him.
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
Princess lifted the card like evidence. “You invited us.”
Park looked at her for a moment. “My wife invited you.”
Dana crossed her arms. “And you allowed this?”
“She wanted to meet you”
The desk went quiet and Park visibly regret saying anything with emotional weight attached to it.
So he added, “Most of you.”
Langdon put a hand over his chest. “Am I most of you?”
“No.”
Santos tried so hard to hold back a laugh that she had to turn away.
Jack looked at Park over the rim of his coffee. “You do realize inviting this department to your house is a terrible idea.”
Park glowered at him. “I’m aware.”
“And yet?”
“My wife likes them.”
Jack nodded once, like that explained everything. “Yeah. That’ll do it.”
Ahmad stepped closer, just enough to join the conversation without fully abandoning his post. “Do you need security for the event?”
Park looked over at him.
Ahmad shrugged. “I’m asking professionally.”
Langdon leaned toward Santos. “He wants to go.”
“I heard that,” Ahmad said, completely unbothered.
Whittaker, who had been standing at the edge of the desk with a chart in one hand and the confused expression of someone who had missed at least three important chapters of workplace lore, looked from the invitation to Park, then back to the invitation again.
“So,” he said carefully, “are we supposed to RSVP to you or to the pop star?”
Everyone turned to him.
Whittaker’s face went pink. “I just don’t know the etiquette for secret celebrity doctor baby showers.”
Park stared at him.
Dana closed her eyes.
Langdon whispered, “That is actually a fair question.”
Park took the chart from Whittaker’s hand, signed it, and handed it back.
“My wife,” he said flatly.
Whittaker nodded, very serious. “Right. Of course. Your wife. The pop star.”
Park walked away.
Whittaker watched him go, then leaned slightly toward Princess and whispered, “Do you think she’ll have cupcakes?”
Princess looked at him like he had just said the most important thing all day.
“She better.”
Ahmad, still near the desk, nodded once. “If it’s catered, I’m available for security.”
Park stopped walking.
Ahmad lifted both hands. “Professionally.”
Langdon leaned toward Santos again. “He means for the food.”
“I heard that too,” Ahmad said. Then, after a beat, he looked back at the invitation. “But if there is food, where do I put down that it has to be halal?”
Princess pointed at the bottom of the card. “There’s an RSVP email.”
Ahmad took one step closer, suddenly much more invested. “Good.”
Jack sighed into his coffee.
Shen smiled down at the invitation.
Whittaker looked between all of them, still holding his chart. “So we’re all going?”
Dana rubbed at her forehead. “Apparently.”
Ahmad nodded, satisfied. “Good. I lost money on the betting board. I deserve a plate.”
Langdon turned. “You bet against Park?”
“I bet against a doctor,” Ahmad said, sounding genuinely regretful now. “Which was my mistake. I should have known it was a doctor of some kind.”
Santos frowned. “But not Park?”
Ahmad looked down the hallway where Park had disappeared, then back at the invitation.
“No,” he said. “Nobody saw that coming.”
For once, nobody argued.
And somehow, in the middle of the noise, the beeping monitors, the ringing phones, the broken printer, and the constant churn of the emergency department, the cream envelope stayed exactly where it was.
Tucked safely at the nurses’ station.
Making everyone’s day a little brighter.
