Emergency Contact
Summary: After a random act of violence leaves you bleeding in the emergency room, Parker refuses to be anything less than the one waiting when you wake.
Word Count: 1.73k
Warnings: no use of Y/N, mentions of blood, and a g*nshot wound are mentioned.
Masterlist
A/N: Hello y'all, this is my first time writing for Ellis, I hope you all enjoy!
The bullet went through your thigh like it was nothing more than butter. You hadn’t meant to get shot, but really, who ever meant to get shot? You, however, definitely had not planned on it. You had simply been walking home from work, keys in one hand, bag slung over your shoulder, thinking vaguely about leftovers and whether you had the energy to do laundry tonight.
Then shouting erupted across the street.
A man’s voice. A woman’s voice. Rage sharpened into something ugly and public.
You turned instinctively, just in time to hear the crack of a gunshot.
For one strange second, nothing happened.
Then came the heat.
A white-hot, searing pain tore through your left thigh so suddenly your body did not understand it. Your leg buckled beneath you, and the sidewalk rushed up hard and fast. Your bag skidded across the concrete, keys clattering somewhere out of reach.
You stared down in disbelief as your tan trousers darkened almost immediately, red blooming across the fabric far too quickly.
“Oh my God.”
Someone screamed.
Someone else shouted to call 911.
The whole street seemed to fracture into motion while you sat there frozen, trying to process the fact that your leg was bleeding so much blood that it could not possibly all belong to you.
Ms. Gunder from the upstairs apartment was the first one to reach you, house shoes slapping against the pavement as she hurried down the steps.
“Move your hand, sweetheart, let me see.”
You had not even realized you were clutching uselessly at your own leg until she pried your fingers away. She dropped to her knees without hesitation and pressed both hands hard over the wound.
You screamed.
“I know, I know,” she said sharply, not unkindly. “You scream all you need, but I’m not lettin’ you bleed out on my sidewalk.”
Your vision tunneled.
Neighbors crowded at a distance, some crying, some shouting directions no one needed. Somewhere nearby, someone was still screaming at the couple who had started all of this. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder.
You could not seem to catch a full breath.
By the time the EMTs arrived, the world had already started feeling unreal.
Hands replaced Ms. Gunder’s. Questions were asked.
How old are you? Allergies? Do you know where you are? Can you wiggle your toes?
You heard the words, but they slid right past you.
They lifted you onto the stretcher. Strapped you in. Cut through the ruined fabric of your pants.
You only tuned back in when one of them mentioned Pitt.
“Hey, no,” you mumbled weakly, trying to lift your head. “I don’t want Parker to see this.”
The younger EMT glanced up from where he was tightening a pressure dressing around your thigh. “Ma’am, I’m not sure who she is. Is she your emergency contact? You didn’t have one listed.”
“No, she…” Your tongue felt thick. “I mean, she should be, but no.” You swallowed against the nausea climbing your throat. “My girlfriend. She works at Pitt. She doesn’t need to see this.”
The EMT gave you a look that managed to be sympathetic and unimpressed at the same time.
“Ma’am, I don’t think worrying about that is our top priority right now. Let’s get your eyes back on me, okay?”
You tried.
You really did.
But your eyes were suddenly so heavy.
The ceiling of the ambulance blurred.
The siren became a long, distant whine.
Then everything went black.
********
You come back in pieces.
Bright lights first.
Then noise.
Voices overlapping. Wheels rattling. Metal clanging. A monitor beeping too fast.
Then the smell.
Sterile cleaner, plastic, old coffee, blood.
You blink against the harsh fluorescent lights overhead as the stretcher jerks through automatic doors.
The EMT is already giving report in a practiced rush, words tumbling over one another while the trauma bay readies around you. Gunshot wound. Left thigh. Significant blood loss. Hypotensive. Tachycardic. Declining mental status.
The words wash over you in fragments.
Gunshot wound.
Blood loss.
Shock.
Weaker pulses.
The stretcher barely clears the trauma bay doors before a man steps into motion beside it.
Dr. Shen.
Even through the haze, you know him instantly. You have seen him laughing in hospital hallways, stealing fries from Parker’s tray in the cafeteria, leaning in doorways with that maddeningly relaxed posture that made him look like nothing in the world could hurry him.
That man is gone.
This version of him is all sharpened edges and command.
“Move her over on three,” he snaps, already pulling on gloves. “One, two, three.”
Hands shift you to the trauma bed.
Pain explodes through your thigh so violently you cry out.
“I know,” someone says near your shoulder. “I know.”
“Cut the pants. Full vitals now.”
Scissors rip through the fabric of your trousers. Cool air hits blood-slick skin.
Dr. Shen’s eyes flick to the wound once, taking in everything in a single glance.
“Two large-bores if EMS doesn’t already have them.”
“They do.”
“Good. Type and cross. Start blood. Keep pressure there.”
A nurse replaces one IV bag with another. Someone sticks monitor leads to your chest. Another voice calls out numbers you cannot hold onto.
Shen steps closer, hands firm and quick as he peels back the dressing to inspect the wound.
Fresh pain blinds you.
You jerk.
“Easy,” he says, pressing harder. “Stay with us, alright?”
The words are steady, practical. Not gentle exactly, but grounding.
Then he is barking orders again.
“Check distal pulses.”
“Weak DP, faint PT.”
“Page trauma surgery and vascular now. If that pressure drops any lower, we’re moving fast.”
The room erupts into motion around him.
Nurses cross in every direction. Metal instruments clatter onto trays. The monitor screams when your heart rate spikes.
You turn your head weakly toward the opening of the trauma bay just as Shen does the same.
Across the ER floor, Ellis stands frozen near the central desk.
Her badge still hangs crooked from where she clearly rushed over. Her eyes are locked on you.
Dr. Shen catches her gaze immediately and gives one sharp shake of his head.
Don’t.
Don’t come here.
Don’t look.
Don’t lose it.
It works for all of two seconds.
Because of course it does.
Ellis is already moving. She shoves past a curtain, slips around a respiratory cart, and ignores the startled protest of a nurse as she pushes into the trauma bay.
“Okay,” Shen starts the second she crosses the line, voice low and fast. “You cannot freak out, and you cannot treat her.”
Then Parker sees you.
She stops dead.
All the color drains from her face.
Your ruined pants.
The blood.
The people crowded around you.
The pressure being held to your thigh.
The blood bag hanging at your side.
Her mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
“Parker,” you try to say, but it barely leaves your lips.
That does it.
She surges forward until Shen catches her by both shoulders.
“Hey,” he says sharply. “Look at me.”
“She’s bleeding,” Ellis chokes out.
“Yes.”
“She got shot.”
“Yes.”
“You’re just standing here talking to me while she’s bleeding!”
“I am keeping you from contaminating my trauma bay,” Shen fires back. “And I am also the reason she’s still conscious, so breathe and listen.”
For one terrifying second, Ellis looks like she might swing at him.
Then her eyes flick to you again.
You are trying to stay awake.
Trying and failing.
Her whole body changes.
The panic does not disappear, but it folds inward into something tighter. Sharper. Controlled. Medical.
She inhales once, hard.
“What do you need?”
Shen lets go of her shoulders immediately.
“There she is,” he mutters.
Then louder: “Get over there and hold C-spine out of habit so you stop hovering uselessly.”
“She was shot in the leg.”
“And yet I still need you out of my way.”
Ellis shoots him a murderous glare but moves to your head, sliding her hands gently into place at either side.
The second she touches you, you nearly cry.
“Hey,” Parker says, voice shaking despite every effort to steady it. “Hey, stay with me.”
“I told them,” you mumble.
“What?”
“I told them… didn’t want you to see this.”
A wet laugh escapes her that sounds far too close to a sob.
“Well, that was stupid of you.”
“Rude.”
“There you are,” Parker whispers.
Shen glances up from your leg, where blood now stains his gloves to the wrists.
“Pressure’s dropping,” a nurse calls.
“Seventy-eight over forty-eight.”
“Damn it,” Shen snaps. “Hang the second unit. Where is vascular?”
“Two minutes out.”
“No, they were two minutes out two minutes ago.”
He presses harder on the wound.
White-hot pain shoots through you again.
You scream.
Parker flinches but keeps her hands steady beside your head.
“I know,” Parker whispers. “I know, baby, I know.”
Shen’s eyes cut upward at the word, but he says nothing.
“Femoral’s spared or she’d be dead already,” he mutters mostly to himself. “But something’s leaking.”
You do not like the word leaking.
The room tilts again.
Your hearing dulls at the edges.
“Hey!” Parker’s voice snaps close to your face. “No. No, look at me.”
You try.
Her eyes are wet now.
Actually wet.
You have never seen that before.
“Stay awake,” Parker says fiercely. “You do not get to scare me like this and then pass out.”
“That seems… unfair.”
“I’m serious.”
“Can tell.”
Shen snorts despite himself.
Then another set of physicians storms in.
Trauma surgery.
Vascular.
They crowd the bed, exchange rapid words, and inspect the wound.
“CTA if she stabilizes.”
“No time if pressure keeps falling.”
“OR now.”
Shen nods once.
“Good. Take her.”
Everything moves faster after that.
Lines are switched. Forms shoved at someone. Your bed unlocked.
Parker walks with it as they rush you toward the operating room.
No one stops her this time.
She keeps one hand wrapped around yours the entire way.
“You’re okay,” Parker says over and over, like repetition can force it true. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
At the OR doors, they finally make her stop.
She grips your hand tighter.
“I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
You try to answer.
What comes out is slurred and useless.
But she seems to understand anyway.
Because she leans down, presses her forehead briefly to yours, and says, voice breaking at last…
“You’d better wake up.”
