Hi, could I please make a request with baran X wife!reader, where r comes in as a trauma (maybe like a pretty bad car accident or something like that) and baran is really worried and protective while everyone is treating r? Thank you !!
first, do no harm (baran al-hashimi x wife!reader) .ೃ࿔*everyone at PTMC knows chief emergency attending baran al-hashimi does not play about strict adherence to medical procedure. but when her wife is injured in a car accident, she has to decide whether she's willing to compromise on the rules.
tags: hurt/comfort, established relationship, married, canon-compliant setting, medical inaccuracies, irl baran would be on a power trip if she did this but we ignore that for the sake of the hurt/comfort, you are totally high
Baran’s hip hurts. She’s standing against the nurse’s station with all of her weight shifted to the other side, and it still won’t stop throbbing. She’s supposed to go out to dinner with you tonight, but she thinks if she has to take more than 20 steps between now and the time she goes to bed her body might just give out. Maybe she’ll suggest making stir fry instead.
In a few minutes, she’ll join Abbot for her final rounds of the night, which won’t be hard, just names and presentation. Then she’s off. She is thinking, with a small and guilty pleasure, about the leftover rice she knows is in the refrigerator at home. By extension of that, she is thinking about you.
Baran’s personal phone has been sitting in her locker in the staff room for the better part of two hours, the dark screen facing the metal locker’s door, receiving nothing, buzzing for no one. She'd meant to take it out at seven-thirty when her shift was supposed to end, but she'd gotten pulled into the consult that ran long, and in a few minutes she’d have to lead the shift-change. Besides, Baran was hardly a phone-addicted woman; she felt no pull toward it, no itching craze to check it. It wasn’t on her mind at all.
She only thinks of this because Dana is across from her, pressing the clunky red phone to her ear that was ringing incessantly up until a few moments ago. Baran hates that fucking phone. It was helpful exactly one time, during the blackout, but now just serves as a medium through which they can get forty spam calls again, and the sound of it ringing is shrill and piercing and makes her ears ring. She would chuck that phone from the rooftop if given the chance.
Ten seconds pass. Then twenty. Baran quirks an eyebrow at Dana and all her shoulders-back brows-furrowed gruffness, something about the call very clearly not going right. Dana doesn't have a good poker face, and Baran immediately wants to know why. She may pride herself on her composure, but she’d never claim she isn’t nosy.
"What?” Baran mouths with a quirk of her lip, which quickly morphs into a frown as Dana holds up a single finger, silently commanding her to wait.
Dana’s voice drops low, gruff with an edge Baran rarely hears from her. “And how soon will you be here? Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
Dana exhales through her nose sharply before covering the receiver. Baran waits for Dana to scan the bay, look for a resident or a charge nurse or to assist with what Baran assumes is an incoming trauma. But Dana looks at Baran specifically, her eyes don’t drift. Baran lifts her chin, trying to wrest away the nausea that just swept over her.
“What is it?”
Dana crosses the desk, grabbing Baran’s arm and trying to lead her away. "Can I pull you aside for a moment?”
Baran plants her feet. "Tell me here. What’s wrong?”
Dana purses her lips. “Dr. Al-Hashimi, please, follow me.”
“No,” Baran snaps, and a few heads turn their way. “Tell me, Dana. Who was that? What’s wrong?”
Dana levels her with a mom-glare, but Baran is a mom too and is impervious to it. She won't be moved. Dana breaks quick enough.
"There was an MVA,” Dana says carefully. “EMS called ahead because they couldn’t get a hold of you but they know you work here. They’re about eight minutes out.”
“Couldn’t get a hold of me?” Baran breathes, head spinning. “Why would they— was it Y/N?"
"The incident was reported at seven-forty-nine," Dana is saying. She's watching Baran with that careful, steady look. "ETA is four minutes. A teenage driver, illegal street racing, ran a red at the intersection of—"
"Her injuries," Baran says. "What did dispatch tell you?"
"Head trauma, possible rib fracture, lower extremity injury. She was responsive at the scene,” Dana replies. “GCS of thirteen."
Thirteen out of fifteen. Disoriented but not unconscious. Thirteen is not fourteen, which is where she’d want it, but thirteen is also not eight, which is where she’d start to make very different preparations.
"Baran,” Dana takes one step closer. She must’ve been calling Baran’s name, who didn’t hear it. "What do you need, hon? What can I do?"
Baran takes one breath in through her nose and releases it slowly through her mouth, hand coming up to squeeze tightly around her wrist.
"Please get Abbot and Langdon, if he’s still here," she says. "Tell them incoming trauma, MVA, head injury and possible rib fracture. I want imaging on standby and I want ortho paged."
Dana is already reaching for her radio. "Done. Anything else?"
"Yes." Baran straightens. "Would someone grab my phone from my locker? The code is 4-7-1-9."
Dana nods once, her movement slowing to a stop, and her eyes drift back up to Baran. "Are you going to—" She finishes the sentence without words, instead raising a single brow.
Baran only offers one singular nod before she's beelining to the ambulance bay. She hears the siren before she sees the lights, the Doppler shift of it growing closer, and she forces herself to stand still and breathe even as other doctors rush out to help her receive you. Her wife. Baran has been in room after room after room delivering this kind of news about someone that someone loves, and she has watched what they do. There’s usually the one who crumples, or goes rigid, or flees. She always had empathy, but now she has a direct understanding. She wants to do all three. Her chest feels like it’s going to implode. She feels both weightless and leaden, like she’ll either crack through the earth and plummet to its core or float off, somewhere far away.
The ambulance pulls in. The back doors open before the vehicle has fully stopped and the paramedics are already yelling: "-y year old female, restrained driver, T-bone impact on the driver's side, airbag deployment with delayed activation, she's been in and out—"
Your body jolts around like a rag doll as the stretcher bumps its way out of the back of the ambulance. Your head lolls this-way-and-that as if weightless. There’s a C-collar on you, a line in your left arm, a pressure bandage along the hairline where your head must’ve slammed into something. Baran can hardly breathe at the sight of it all as Langdon and Mel descend upon your stretcher, jogging with it as you’re rolled in.
A treating physician cannot have a primary care relationship with an immediate family member. It compromises the objectivity of clinical judgment in ways that can lead to either over-treatment or dangerous minimization, because love is not a diagnostic tool and it never has been.
But Baran is also the chief attending on duty, which means it is ultimately her call to make, which means she can assign Abbot as the primary and oversee, or she can assign Abbot as the primary and step back entirely, or she can (and the protocol is grayer here than people admit) take primary herself on the grounds that she is the most qualified physician in the building and that the injuries in question, while serious, are not so acutely life-threatening as to require surgical intervention, and that her training is specifically relevant to every item on this presentation. Baran is someone whose hands do not shake. They are perfectly steady now, even as her pulse thrummed in her teeth, in her spine, behind her eyes.
She is through the door, back into the ER and coming up alongside your moving stretcher before Langdon can finish his first thought. "Hold on," she says. "What's the reasoning on that?"
Langdon looks up, eyes a little owlish.
"Dr. Al-Hashimi—"
"The reasoning, Langdon."
"I'm cautious about the rib given the mechanism. I want to rule out pneumothorax before we—"
"Breath sounds are equal bilaterally," Baran says, because she can hear them from here, has been hearing them since she walked in. "Trachea is midline. Sat is ninety-seven. This isn't a pneumo." She pulls a pair of gloves from the box on the wall. "Order the CT chest anyway, I want to see the full picture. But we're not holding on that basis."
Langdon holds her gaze for a moment. He is a good doctor and a careful one, and she respects him. But it is more important in this moment that he respects her.
"Sure," he says slowly, letting the words go reluctantly.
"I'll take primary," she says curtly. "Someone get Abbot in here, and Langdon, stay. I want you on the imaging review because I want your eyes on it independent of mine, and you are to say something if you think I'm wrong about anything."
Langdon nods once as Mel rushes off to get Abbot, and Baran steps up in her place.
Close up, it's different. She can see the blood at your hairline more clearly, a gash of maybe two centimeters that has been partially dressed by the paramedics, still oozing slightly. Your hands are resting open at your sides, which is either calm or the absence of enough presence of mind to close them. Baran puts her gloved hand over yours, heart pumping hot blood through her veins. “Y/N, eshgham, can you look at me?"
Your eyes drift around aimlessly for a moment before arriving on hers. She shines her penlight in your eyes as your stretcher keeps moving, apologizing with a raspy voice as you whine.
“Do you know where you are, hon?” Dana asks as they finally reach a room, getting ready to transfer you onto the bed.
"Hospital," you croak.
"That's right. Do you know what happened?"
You groan as they start to jostle you. "There was a car."
"You were in a car accident. Someone hit you,” Baran confirms, "I need you to tell me where it hurts. Can you do that?"
"Head," you wheeze with visible effort: "Side. My side."
"Your ribs?" Baran is already reaching to palpate, carefully, feeling for crepitus. You hiss at the contact, trying to pull away. "I know, I know. I'm sorry,” she responds, blinking the tears out of her eyes, trying to push it all back, down, far away. There’s a fracture, possibly two. "What about your ankle? How does it feel?"
You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to locate that specific pain among the throbbing ache everywhere. You can’t really pinpoint it, so you just supply: “Ouch.”
Langdon huffs out an amused breath as Abbot bursts in, still pulling his gloves on. "What the hell is going on here? Y/N? Baran, you're primary?"
"Yes."
"And you want me—"
"To help. Eyes on everything I do. You countermand me the second you think I'm compromised, you have my full authorization and I mean that." She glances at him then, just briefly. "Jack."
His crossed arms drop as she rounds the bed. "Jesus," he exhales. "Okay. Right. Hi, Y/N. You’re not lookin’ nearly as bad as I thought you would be going off of Baran’s face.”
You hold up a loose-armed thumbs up. “I always look good. Tha’s why she calls me hot stuff,” you slur.
Jack’s eyes shoot up to Baran in amusement. “You drug her?"
"She got two of fentanyl in the field," Baran says. She's already peeling back the paramedic's dressing at your hairline, gazing down at the still-oozing wound. She holds the pressure and looks up. "Langdon, I need this closed."
"On it." He's already moving to the supply cart to get the staples.
She turns back to the room. "C-collar stays until we have the head CT. Cardiac monitor, second IV right arm, supplemental O2 at two liters. Any update from ortho?"
"They said ten minutes,” Dana says.
"Please ask them to be down here in eight."
Dana gives her a look and picks up the phone anyway as the beeping of your heart rate monitor ticks up. All eyes fall on you.
"Baran." Your voice has gone thinner, frightful. Your fingers scrabble at the bed rail. "Baran, I can't— something's wrong, I can't— "
"It's the medication," she softens her voice. Langdon has come back with the stapler and is setting up at your head; she shifts fractionally to give him room without releasing your hand. "Keep your eyes on me."
"Wait,” you gasp, “‘t doesn’t feel right."
"I know it doesn't." She keeps her voice even as an anchor. She has done this ten thousand times with people less important. She can help you through this. "Find my face, honey. Right here." Your eyes find hers and then skate off, glassy and searching. You're trying to reach for something with your left hand, the one with the line in it, fingers splaying open uselessly.
"Hey." Dana catches your wrist before you can pull the IV, "Leave that alone, Y/N. That's keeping you comfortable."
"Well, I don't feel comfortable," you moan.
"I know," Dana says sympathetically, guiding your hand back down on the bed. "But you gotta try to stay still."
"Tracking's better than field report. I'd call her a fourteen,” Abbot updates the room.
Baran knows this, she's been watching. She just nods without taking her eyes off of you. You make a low, distressed sound, head moving restlessly against the pillow, C-collar shifting with it.
"I’m serious, something really feels wrong."
"Nothing is wrong, Verstappen," Abbot says. He has moved down to your ankle now, palpating carefully, watching your face for the pain response. "Your brain is lying and telling you that because of the medication. Your vitals are good."
"It doesn't feel like it's lying," you repeat miserably.
"I know," Baran smooths her thumb along the uninjured side of your hairline, gloved and careful. "That's what makes it convincing. But you’ve got several doctors in here to make sure you’re okay. Including me."
Your eyes squint at Baran, something finally clicking behind your eyes. Then, small and muzzy: "You're not supposed to be my doctor."
Abbot coughs noisly behind you, then oofs as Dana juts her elbow into his ribs.
"No," Baran agrees, ignroing them both. "I'm not supposed to be your doctor."
"Are you in trouble?"
Still hunched, Abbot mouths ‘yes’ behind Baran with an exaggerated nod of his head while Baran’s own expression remains impassive. "Not yet."
You grin, letting your head thunk back against the bed. Your eyes drift shut, then drag back open with visible effort to glare at Langdon who’s approaching you with the stapler. At least he has the courtesy to offer you a sympathetic smile.
"I’ll make it really fast,” he promises. “Just a few small pinches.”
You flinch at the first one and make a sound through your teeth.
"Three more," he says.
"I hate this stupid ED," you inform him, though your syllables are all jumbled. His grin spreads wider across his face.
"Two more."
Your grip on Baran's hand tightens with each one, which she happily allows (it makes her feel at least semi-useful.) Her gaze flicks between the cardiac monitor — rate 104, sinus tach, no big deal — and watching your chest rise and fall and watching your eyes.
"Done," Langdon says. He steps back, strips his gloves, reaches for a fresh dressing. There are four staples across your forehead now, injected in a clean line. "Lac's closed."
"Good." Baran looks across at Abbot. He's finished with the ankle, already straightening.
"Displaced, probably," he says quietly, just to her. "Ortho's going to want to look at that tonight." She nods. That's a problem for twenty minutes from now.
"We're going to take some pictures," she tells you. "Head first, then chest. The collar has to stay on until we rule out a neck injury. I know it's uncomfortable."
"S'fine," you murmur.
"Is it?"
You purse your lips. Caught. "No."
Abbot steps up on your left. "Radiology's ready. You want to take her down?"
"Yes," Baran replies quickly. “Please.”
Dana has already moved to the head of the bed, hands on the rail. "Ready?"
"Where are we going?" you ask the ceiling.
"To get your picture taken," Dana reminds you.
A loopy frown pulls at your lips, memory already lapsed. "For what? I look terrible."
"You look fine, hon."
"Liar," you groan, slurred enough to make Dana laugh. Baran takes your hand as they start to move, fingers lacing through yours. Your grip tightens immediately around hers, a tiny little breath puffing from your mouth in what she takes to be near-contentment.
"Close your eyes,” she whispers, leaning down to place one soft kiss to your forehead. “I'll tell you when we get there."
There’s no time at first, only the way her breath leaves to see him again.
She thinks his does too, maybe, both caught in stasis to be in front of each other again. She punches the control pad, tearing out its innards until the door to his cell slides open.
They nod as the other prisoners ask questions. She holds his eyes until it becomes too much and she goes to free the others.
More shouted questions that Clint tries to allay, but Sif finds herself with no room for any of it.
“Come.”
She leads them out of the Raft, over her trail of incapacitated agents; she doesn’t really have a plan from here, but she has Clint and that’s enough for now. She trusts he’ll know something. She can’t trust Coulson with this, and her one Asgardian contact won’t work for long.
Clint and the Falcon find them a safehouse, talk about leaving a signal for Captain Rogers and what they need to do. She learns names and meanings and Clint touches her arm like they’ve never been apart. It sets a chill in her blood.
Later it’s a fire. He comes to her room to ask her something, but it’s finally only them so he gets all of four words out before she’s on him. A hand at cheek and one at waist, pulling him to her lips and pushing him back against the door. It bumps closed and she locks it without looking because she has the taste of him again and it takes only two seconds before he’s returning her fervor.
He’s older and she can see it. He’s older and it makes her want to hold on tight. He’s older and it hurts. She has always known their time together was limited, that was the way of these things, but she keeps getting chances and she’ll take them. Part of her thinks they should be talking with words about this, but they’ve always spoken better with hands.
Right now his hands are telling her they still want her too, and that’s enough. For now that’s enough.
you come around, i'm ruined (baran al-hashimi x wife!reader) wc: 4k .ೃ࿔* this is the part of loving a doctor nobody warns you about: the missed dinners, the late nights, the absence. you miss your wife even when she's around you. you miss her more when she's not.
tags: domestic arguing, angst, communication issues, kind of bad!wife baran but also deeply stressed out and overworked baran, established relationship, married, 80% hurt 20% comfort, probably the most out of character i've ever written baran but angry angst isn't my strong suit so bear with me
note: this was in fact based on an ask but i can't find it :(( shout out to whoever requested this!!
It's nearing ten o'clock when you finally hear the tell-tale signs of Baran slotting her key into your apartment door. It opens and Baran comes in bringing the cold with her, the cold air swirling into the semi-heat of your apartment.
The heat’s been weird all week (it’s barely working in your home, in the hallways and in the lobby it isn’t working at all) and it only grates on your already poor mood that Baran keeps the door open as she shrugs off her coat and slides off her shoes when she could have closed the door first. It doesn’t make you any happier that she doesn’t call out your name, or even announce that she’s home. She enters as a mute.
You watch her come around the corner, eyes adjusting to the dimness of the apartment that you keep luminated strictly with candles and warm-toned-lightbulbed lamps. Brown eyes sweep across the table, the food. You, sitting there.
"Hi," she says, a little out of breath, a little surprised. It pisses you off even more. Why should she be surprised that you made dinner? You always make dinner. She’s going to come home two hours late and act like it’s out of the ordinary for you to go out of your way to welcome her home?
"Hello," you reply shortly, stabbing at your room-temperature asparagus forcefully, pushing it into your mouth without even looking at her.
"....It smells great in here,” she tries, setting her bag down on the counter slowly. The hair on the back of her neck sticks up as she senses your terrible mood. “I sent you a message."
You glance at your phone. The screen is still dark, as it has been for the last two hours. "That’s weird, because I didn't get it."
She pulls her own phone out and frowns at it, pressing something. A beat later yours buzzes on the table. You look at the time stamp: nine forty-one. Six minutes ago. Running behind. Don't wait up.
You scoff at it, tossing your phone back down on the table where it clatters noisily. Baran raises an eyebrow at your petulance, already unimpressed.
"What?"
"Well, it’s not really helpful to send a message when you’re six minutes away from home when I’ve already been ‘waiting up,’"
you say. Baran makes a throaty sound, pulling her hair tie loose from her hair, letting her curls, messy from a long shift, tumble down her back.
"I know. I'm sorry. We had a stroke victim and a polytrauma back to back and it just—"
"Compounded?" you supply.
Her hands come behind her back, fingers laced in that formal, slightly braced posture she gets. "Yes."
"Right."
You push back from the table and pick up your plate, crossing to the kitchen. Your food has gone so cold that there’s a chill condensation on all your vegetables, so you won’t even try with the microwave. Plus, the action gives you somewhere to go and something to do while the thing you're not saying works its way up your throat. You scrape the plate into the bin.
Behind you, you hear Baran open the refrigerator. The soft sound of a container being taken out followed by the microwave door. This is the part where you're supposed to ask her how her day was, where you welcome her home with softness and care, where she stands at the counter with leftovers and you sit on the other side and she tells you the anonymized, de-identified version of her day and you tell her about yours.
"You could've called," you say instead, to the sink.
She hums the same pitch as the microwave. "I’m sorry, I know."
"Before nine-forty-one, I mean."
"I know." A tightening in it. "It was a busy shift."
"They're all busy shifts, Baran."
The microwave beeps one high tone, followed by several staccato notes that are piercing and annoying as fuck, but neither of you move to kill it.
"What does that mean?" she asks, tone inviting conversation. She's being careful. You turn around. Baran’s standing at the counter with her arms crossed and her food forgotten in the microwave. Her face is wearing the same careful open invitation but careful blankness she brings to patient rooms and team meetings and it makes your blood boil that she dares to shut down her emotions at you.
"Don’t do that," you huff, "You know what I’m talking about. It’s always a busy shift. I have been eating dinner alone at that table for three weeks and you don't — you didn't even — you didn't call! You didn't text until six minutes ago. I didn't know if you were even okay."
Baran's jaw tightens. "I'm clearly okay."
"No shit, I can see that now." You gesture at her. "Don’t patronize me. I didn't know that at seven o'clock!"
"You know what my job is," she says. "You've always known what my job is."
"I know." And you do and have never once asked her to be anything other than what she is. But it feels like she’s issuing a reminder and it sinks under your skin in a way you can't talk yourself back from tonight. "I'm not asking you to quit your job, Baran. I'm asking you to send your wife a goddamn text when you're going to be two hours late."
"I sent you a text!"
"When you were basically already home!"
"I was in a trauma bay before then, Y/N!"
"You weren't in a trauma bay from five-thirty to nine-forty, when you could've—"
"I was managing a department," she cuts you off and you can hear the cold settling in, the temperature dropping in her affect as she start to feel cornered. "I was covering for a resident who called out, handling a consult that should have taken twenty minutes and took ninety, and then yes, a trauma at seven. So no. I didn't have time to provide a running update on my whereabouts."
"A text. One text. At some point before nine forty-one."
"I'm sorry I didn't send it sooner." Offered the way she'd offer a concession across a conference table.
"Are you?" you ask.
The blankness falters. "What?"
"Are you actually sorry? Because you sound like you think I'm being unreasonable and are just saying that to get me off of your back."
"I think," she says, and you can hear the aggravation rising in her voice, "That you understand the demands of my job, and that we've had this conversation a thousand times!" "
“That's kind of my whole thing, Baran! We keep having it!"
Baran's chin comes up a fraction in indignation. You've learned to read her the way you learn the layout of a house you live in, the places where the floor dips, the light switch that's around the corner instead of beside the door. That small upward tilt of her chin means she's about to defend herself. "I am doing the best I can," she says. "I work twelve, sometimes fifteen hour shifts in a department that is chronically understaffed and I come home to you every night—"
"Oh, right, I’m sorry that that’s such a chore.”
Her eyes swarm with anger and confusion. "That is not at all what I just said."
"Pretty damn close to it though, no? This is a thing you do for me? On my behalf?"
"I was not—" She stops. Presses her lips together. When she speaks again the careful management is fraying at the edges, like she's having to hold the even tone with both hands. "I was making the point that I show up. Every single night I'm here."
"Congratulations that you come back to your home to your wife," you snap. "Oh my god! What the fuck was that even supposed to mean!? You come home to the life you set up and you're pissed about it?"
"Y/N—"
"It doesn’t actually count because you're not even here."
Baran's eyes flash red. "You keep just throwing that type of shit out. What is that supposed mean? Use your actual words!"
"I sit across from you at dinner and ask you how your day was and you give me bullshit," you cry out, hands flying up. "You don’t trust me to help you carry any of it so you dumb it down. And take out names because you don’t trust me to hold them. I ask you about your co-workers and your friends and your highlights only for you to give me shit because you don’t want me to know them! You keep your whole job in a separate room and then wonder why I feel like I'm on the outside of your life."
She stares at you incredulously, eyes darting around your face as if looking for a sign you’re kidding. "Y/N, I am legally and ethically obligated to protect my patients' privacy.”
"I know what HIPAA is, Baran."
"Then you know I cannot come home and narrate my shift to you! I am not ‘keeping my job in a separate room’ from you. I have professional standards to maintain that exist for very good reasons."
You scoff and watch a stronger kind of anger wash over her face. “It does, Y/N!"
"I'm not asking for patient files when I ask you to tell me about your day." The shaking starts somewhere in your hands, but quickly reaches your voice. "I just want to hear about you because I fucking miss my wife. You come to bed after I'm asleep and you're gone before I'm up. I miss you, Baran. When you're right here I miss you."
Baran stays silent and you feel your stomach turn with rage and sickness. "Say something, Baran."
"I don't know what you are looking from me right now,” her voice trembles. "You want me to tell you things I can't tell you, and when I find a way to protect the people in my care while still coming home to you every night, you tell me I'm not present enough? What's the right answer? I've already cut down my hours. What exactly else am I supposed to be doing differently?"
"I know you're trying," you say. "I know you work incredibly hard, Baran, I see it. I have never once asked you not to, but there's a difference between being busy and making me feel like the last thing on your list."
Her face drops from frustration to hurt. You both stand in that narrow kitchen for a few moments, puffing out heated breathes. Baran gets her act back together first.
"Eshgham, you could never be the last thing on my list."
"Baran," you say her name and watch her stop. "When did you last ask me how I was doing? Not how my day was. How I am. When did you last ask me something about my life that wasn't perfunctory just to get through a meal?”
Baran looks at you with something that could be the beginning of understanding, but there’s still something missing from your usually so emotionally intelligent wife. Maybe it’s the late hour or the grueling shift, who’s to say, but you are stunned by what she replies: "I think we need to stop. We’re just exhausted and this is turning into something larger than it is."
You know that she knows that’s a fucked up cop-out. That chin rises again and she squirms (as much as Baran Al-Hashimi ever squirms, anyway) with a little readjustment of her shoulders, a slight turn of her head. You can see her looking at you out of the corner of her eye, watching the first flicker of shock morph onto her face when your eyes start to water.
"Right," you whisper.
"I'm not dismissing you," she adds, eyes going a little softer, a little nervous at your reaction. "I’m just saying we're both tired, and maybe this isn't the right time to talk about this."
"Maybe this isn't the right time to talk about this," you repeat, feeling a humiliating burn rise in your throat. "Uh-huh. You've said that before."
Baran's jaw tightens again, getting defensive. "Because you tend to have these conversations when we're both depleted and nothing productive comes out of it."
"Well you never start them at all! I always have to. And every time you find a reason the timing is wrong, and then the morning comes and you're gone."
Baran scoffs in offense. "That is not what I do."
"You just told me I was making it into something larger than it is," you say, and your voice breaks on it this time, actually breaks, and you hate it, hate that you've gotten here, hate that this is the version of you she gets right now. "You literally just said I’m blowing this out of proportion but you won’t even let me finish."
"I didn't—" she starts.
"Yes you fucking did."
The microwave has been done for ten minutes and the food you made for your wife is getting cold again inside it. You are standing in your kitchen with your wife and you have never felt farther from her than right now.
Baran runs an exhausted hand over her face. "I just came off a twelve-hour shift, I walked in the door ten minutes ago, and—"
"And I've been here all night," you shoot back. "Waiting for you."
"I didn't ask you to do that!"
You gape. You have absolutely no response to that, and she falters at your shock. Those lips part slightly, brown eyes go a bit wider.
You breathe out a laugh. "Wow."
"Hold on. I didn't mean it like that."
"Okay."
"I was just—I'm saying you don't have to wait up—"
"Believe me, I heard you." You reach up and press your fingers against your eyes for a moment, breathe in through your nose, drop your hand and turn away.
"Please, Y/N, just pause for a second," she straightens up to follow you, and it's the most raw she's sounded all night. "I didn't mean that you shouldn't—"
"I know what you meant," you say, picking up your phone and storming out of the kitchen. "I'm going to bed."
"Y/N," she rounds the corner and is immediately on your tail, tone edged with panic. "Wait, please. That was entirely out of line. I cannot believe—I should not have said that. Can we just talk for a few more moments, please?"
"I'm tired." And you are. Past words, past the point of anything useful. "We'll talk in the morning."
You hear the silence behind you. She knows that you've borrowed the line. You go to the hallway and pause at the linen closet, pulling out the extra pillow and the blanket from the top shelf.
"What are you doing?" Baran's voice is upset behind you, thready and raspy.
"Getting some things," you say.
You hear a sniff and see her shadow moving from its reflection on the wall in front of you. She’s either wiping her eyes or anxiously running her fingers through her hair. "Are you not sleeping in our bed?"
You look at her over your shoulder. She's standing closer than you expected with her arms crossed over her chest like she's self-soothing. Her hair is tousled and tangled around her worn face. Her lip is trembling slightly from where she’s moving her mouth around in that familiar fidget you used to soothe with your gentle thumb over her soft lips. The most familiar person in the world to you. But also the most painful right now.
"I think I need some quiet right now," you say.
She opens her mouth and closes it, and it's so unlike her, that small faltering, that your chest aches with it. "Y/N," she whispers, taking a half step toward you. "Please. Don’t— don’t go down the hall.”
“Why not?”
Baran looks crushed that you even have to ask her that. "Because I do not want us to go to bed angry, and I said some very awful things I need to apologize for. That I want to apologize for.”
You purse your lips partially to look tough and partly because if you don’t your bottom lip with quiver again. “So now that I'm threatening to go, you want to be around me?"
Baran’s face crumbles. “I always want to be around you, azizam. That—that was never what this was about. You have to know how much I love you."
It comes out almost like a beg, or maybe bewilderment, like she can't quite fathom that you might have lost the thread of it. "You have to — even tonight, even when I was — you have to know that. Right?"
"I know you love me," you sigh.
She takes another step toward you and then seems to catch herself, she's not sure she's allowed. “I want to be around you. I chose this life with you. I will always choose this life with you,” She swallows her words and it hurts your heart. Baran always knows what she's going to say before she says it. She usually doesn’t hesitate. "I’m sorry. I was just trying to get through the shift and get home and I forgot that getting home isn't the finish line.
Her voice dips into a fragile octave. "You're not just— you're not just the place I land."
You tilt your head, swallowing around the thick, burning clamp in your throat. "But I can be if you’d let me."
Baran shakes her head immediately. “No. I mean you’re so much more than that to me. You're not just some… I don’t know. Soft surface meant to absorb my stress when I need it.”
Her hand comes up and she presses her fingers over her mouth for a second. "That is a horrible thing for me to make you feel," she says softly. "You are the only place I actually want to be. I've done a terrible job of reminding you of that, honey. I am so sorry."
Her eyes hold a wet, heavy brightness. She reaches out, the backs of her fingers dragging high and light against your arm, leaving the exit wide open. She leans in when you don’t pull away, her weight settling against you as she pulls you into her arms, cradling you to her body. The familiar scent of her (hospital sanitizer and the faint, warm amber of her perfume) floats around you. You are exhausted, and you are still so hurt, but Baran exhales—a long, shuddering breath that deflated her entire posture against you:
"I'm so sorry, eshgham. Please, please come to bed with me. At least for a little while. And then after, if you decide you still want to sleep in the guest bedroom, I'll help you set it up."
You pull back just far enough to look her in the eyes, breaking the comfort of the embrace before it could soften you too much. "Okay," you finally say, your voice quiet, flat, and entirely unembellished. "But I need you to know that you’re not just dragging me to bed so we can pretend everything is fine."
Her eyes, dark and pooling with unshed tears, scan your face. The exhaustion was there, but so was the hard line you had just drawn.
"If I come with you, we are dealing with this right now," you insist. "For real."
"Yes," she promises, her voice rough. "I am not looking to dodge this conversation, aziz. All we'll do is talk. I promise."
But promises to talk are cheap, and you know it. She hasn’t promised to actually change her behavior, and the sting of how easily she had brushed your feelings aside for most of the night was still burning. Her fingers slide down your wrist to find your hand, her grip tight and pleading. You don’t squeeze back. You let your hand stay limp in hers.
"I was really lonely tonight, Baran," you say into the dimly lit hallway, "And I feel like I can’t talk to you about that without this happening.”
Baran’s hands come up to cradle your face, tilting it toward what little light there is, like she needs to look directly at the damage she caused. "I am so sorry,” she breathes, eyes full of molten sorrow. “You should never have to navigate my exhaustion just to tell me you miss me.” She’s quiet for a second, biting at her shaking lip. “I don’t think I have said it yet, but I missed you too. I missed you the whole day and the whole drive home and I walked in the door and just—”
“I want to believe you,” you interrupt like a plea, “But, Baran. You couldn’t even send me a check-in message? And now you’re saying you missed me the whole day? I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know how to believe that.”
Her thumbs are still against your face, so very still that you can see her actually working through it. "I think I compartmentalize in a way that isn't fair to you. I tuck you away somewhere safe in my head while I'm at work so I can get through it."
“But I can’t see that," you defend, "I guess it’s sweet to know you do think about me, but if you just lock it all inside of you, how am I supposed to know about it? You’re asking me to trust something invisible and that just isn’t fair."
Baran closes her eyes for just a second. "I’m sorry," she says. "You’re right. I bring that same containment home to you. That’s—"
"Fucked up?" you suggest.
Baran laughs, watery and lovely and relieved that you're opening up to her once more, even just a little bit. "Yes, very, very fucked up."
Her head tilts down to look at you more directly. You let her do her little analysis. You know that beautiful, brilliant, spinning brain inside that gorgeous head needs a few moments to finish its churning.
You count to ten-mississippi before taping your fingers where they’re still around her neck into the base of her skull. "Talk to me. That’s kinda the whole point here."
She exhales, slow and shaky. "I wasted tonight," she says quietly. "Well. Not just tonight, but I think you know what I mean."
You nod. "I do."
“I am so sorry. You keep making dinner and waiting up and asking me how I am and I just…" her voice goes small, "I took all of it and I gave you nothing back."
Her eyes trial down to your lips and she tilts her head down ever so slightly, telegraphing every micro movement. Her kiss is as soft as rain, meant to reassure and also repent, before she pulls away and continues.
"I have been so careless with you," she whispers into you parted mouth, and her first tears fall. You let fall into your arms. You rub a hand over the bumps of her spine, keep your other hand on the back of her neck.
"Baran," you say, into the side of her head.
"Mm."
You pull back just enough to see her face. Her eyes are wet and raw with an openness she doesn't always let out of its enclosure, and on any other night it would undo you completely. Tonight you hold onto yourself.
"You know I love you more than anything in this entire world, but I'm not doing this again. I can't keep having the same fight and going to bed with the same apology and waking up to nothing having changed. This is — I need you to understand that this is me telling you that I'm running out of road here."
"I understand," she says seriously, squeezing your head.
"Do you?"
Brown eyes meet yours and they do not waver, they do not flinch. They bare themselves completely to you as she replies, firmly: "Yes."
You look at her for a long moment. "Okay," you say finally. "Then come to bed."
okay imagine this.. reader x baran again from me.. they start dating towards the end of baran’s time at the ptmc and they agree that once it’s over they’ll become official and then baran takes a permanent job there and ends things with readers and it’s a whole bunch of angst, yearning, and arguing and what not..
nothingman, pt. 1 (baran al-hashimi x reader) ˚₊· ͟͟❥ wc: 3.7k
tags: heavy heavy heavy angst, fighting, reader is PISSSSSED, hurt no comfort, nurse!reader, boss!baran, age gap but its legal obv, medical inaccuracies, baran's son mentioned!
note: we are so back. this was such a yummy request thank you thank you thank you for sending it!! this also isn’t beta read so if you see errors just scroll🥹
Technically, you and Baran Al-Hashimi are nothing. She is not your girlfriend. You are not hers. You would be reaching, probably, to even call her a friend.
But you have had a grand total of seven dinners together since Baran first came to PTMC. All of them were at restaurants on the far periphery of the city alternating between Uzbek, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Szechuan, and once—out of some perverse sense of irony—a French-Vietnamese bistro in a strip mall wedged between a tanning salon and a place that only serves bubble tea.
Each restaurant was chosen by the older attending. At first, you kinda just assumed she was just a really big foodie, or just had a taste for the kind of garish decor and laminated menus those kinds of restaurants always had.
It took you until the third dinner, in a Kurdish place lit only by tea candles, to finally understand why Baran had never suggested anywhere closer to the hospital, or her neighborhood, or even central Pittsburgh: Baran is the acting department head; you are her employee.
Come March, you'll no longer be her direct report. But for now, even the implication of fraternization is enough to set off the rumor mill, not to mention the inexorable march of the Title IX committee armed with a constitution of policies, some of which you have memorized.
Suffice to say, you're content with the arangment. You can play the part of the pretty little secret if it means getting seated across from Baran in a family-run restaurant where no one knows your last name, let alone what you’re doing there together.
Maybe it’s cowardice. You never ask for more than what Baran offers. When she cancels, you say “of course,” and when she texts you at midnight after three weeks of silence, you take an Uber across town without asking why. You have only spent the night together once, and even then, Baran was up before you, fully dressed, drinking coffee at the window and writing something long and complicated in a small, battered notebook. She did not try to explain. You did not try to understand.
Despite all the secretiveness, dinners with Baran are a truly lovely affair. She's attentive and never checks her phone, lets you order whatever you want, entertains your performative bicker over the check before picking it up with a firm glance. She walks you to your car after and waits for the text that you made it home, and in October, in the stairwell of the parking structure on the north side of the hospital, on a completely ordinary Wednesday night, she kissed you and then stood there afterward with her forehead against yours, eyes closed, not saying anything, just breathing.
You have been waiting for March since October. You're three weeks out.
She texts you on a Wednesday afternoon: Are you free Sunday? There's somewhere I'd like to take you.
Of course you're typing out and sending yes before you've finished reading it. The attention to punctuation and capitalization would make you shit your pants if the message was from anyone else, but that's just how Baran talks, and by extension, types. You've gotten used to the formality of it all by now.
Sunday comes and she's at your door in dark trousers and a coat that probably cost more than your rent, and she smiles when she sees you.
"Hi," you breathe, a giddy smile on your face. "Sorry, I just have to grab my shoes and we're good to go."
"Take your time," she encourages easily, but she doesn't step into the threshold of your doorway. You shoot her a look.
"I'm not diseased, I promise," you joke, still light, still high on the anticipation of spending an evening with the beautiful doctor, but your smile fades when she just tilts her head and doesn't enter.
You pause, give her a chance to come in. She doesn’t.
"Okayyy," you say slowly, slipping on your slides. "Well, nevermind. I'm ready. Let's go."
She takes you to a wine bar twenty minutes from the hospital. You sit across from each other in low lighting and dutifully do the first-fifteen-minutes-of-a-date thing, the catching up, the small careful questions. A server comes. Baran orders sparkling waters for you both.
You look at her, tracking those careful hands once the bottle comes and she’s pouring it into two glasses for you both. She'd ordered you a glass of something you hadn't even known you wanted in September and gotten it exactly right, and tonight she is ordering sparkling water?
You feel a wave of nerves crash over you and it’s then you notice how weird the restaurant she’s chosen is. It can hardly qualify as such, it’s more of a bar. Every other patron is in a suit, but not a date night suit, business attire. They all look like lawyers and bankers. There’s not a couple in sight, no candle-lit intimacy. People seem like they’re coming here for deals.
You swallow. "No drinking tonight?”
"Early morning tomorrow."
Her fingers press white against the glass, the knuckles bloodless, and you watch her look at the table instead of you. The nothing taste of having not eaten enough today sits at the back of your throat, sharp and hollow as your tongue finds the inside of your cheek nervously.
"Baran—" you start.
"There's something I need to tell you," she says, at the same time.
Baran wraps both hands around the glass and you watch her do it.
"They've offered me the permanent position," she says. "Full-time department head. I accepted on Friday."
The chair beneath you is the kind that looks comfortable and completely isn’t, the hard edge of the seat digging into the backs of your thighs, your vertebrae, sending a painful twinge up your back.
You blink. “I’m sorry?”
"I wanted to tell you in person. I thought—" She stops, looking down at her hands. "I thought we should talk about it."
"When did they come to you?"
She pauses and takes a deep breath. "There had been some preliminary conversations. Back in October."
Your brain helpfully supplies a mental calendar of October: the forehead against yours, her eyes closed, one minute, two minutes, the promise of March was in October, the first dates, if that’s even what you can call them.
"Preliminary conversations?" you repeat, voice rising.
"Nothing was decided then," she says quickly, and there's something almost pleading in it. "I swear, Y/N, it was just conversations. Feeling things out. I didn't know if I was even going to take it."
"But you knew it was a possibility."
"Yes." She looks pained. "Yes, I knew it was a possibility."
"Regardless, did you think I didn't need to know that?"
"I didn't know what to say." She leans forward, and you can see the tension in her shoulders. "I was trying to figure it out. The job, us, all of it. I didn't want to worry you about something that might not even happen."
"Worry me?" You stare at her. "Baran, we were—I thought we were—"
"I know." She reaches across the table like she might take your hand, then stops. "I know what you thought. What we both thought. But this position—it's permanent. It's stability for me and for my son. I can't just—" She stops, frustrated. "You don't understand the pressure I'm under."
"Then help me understand, Baran."
"You're young," she says, and it lands wrong immediately. You watch her realize it, watch her try to backtrack. "I don't mean that as—I just mean you're in a different place. You don't have a child depending on you. You don't have—" She stops. "This job is everything. It's my career. My son's tuition. Our health insurance. I can't risk that for—"
She doesn't finish the sentence. Doesn't say for you. But you both hear it.
"So what was I, then?" Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. "Just something you were trying out until you got what you actually wanted?"
"No." She looks genuinely distressed now. "No, that's not it. Y/N, I care about you. I do. But I have to be realistic about what I can afford to lose."
"And I'm not worth losing anything for?”
"That's not what I'm saying." Her voice rises slightly, defensive. "You're twisting this into something it's not. I made a career decision, a good one at that, one I had to make. The fact that it affects us doesn't mean I was trying to hurt you."
"But you knew it would,” you reply. “You had to know it would.”
She's quiet for a moment. "I knew it would complicate things."
"Complicate." You laugh, and it sounds bitter even to your own ears. "Yeah, okay.”
"I said if circumstances changed—"
"But you knew they weren't going to change!" Your voice breaks. "You knew in October that they weren't going to change, so why the fuck would you dangle that in front of me to begin with?”
"I wasn’t certain!" She's getting frustrated now, you can hear it. "I was trying to see if there was a way to make both things work. I didn't lie to you, Y/N. I just—I didn't know what to do."
"So you did nothing."
"I did what I had to do." There's an edge to her voice now. "I made the choice that made sense for my life. I'm sorry if that hurts you, but I can't—" She stops, takes a breath. "I can't put my entire future on hold for a relationship that might not even work out."
You gape at her. “Do you really — do you seriously have that little faith in me? Do you trust me that little?”
“Can you let me talk? You’re not being fair.”
"I'm not being fair?" You stare at her. "Baran, I have been waiting for you since October. Don’t pretend you don’t know that’s true because I’ve told you that, and you’ve kept taking me out on dates, and—" Your voice cracks. "And you've known the entire time that it was never going to happen."
“I was trying to figure out if there was a way—"
"There wasn't." You pick up your bag. "And you knew that. You just didn't want to tell me."
"Y/N, please—" She reaches for you, and you pull back.
"I need to go."
"Can we talk about this?" she huffs. “Y/N, come on.”
"I think you've said everything you needed to say." You stand up, and your hands are shaking. "Congratulations on the position."
You watch something in her face go through a door and shut. She doesn't try to stop you and doesn’t follow you out.
When you glance back through the window, she's still sitting there, staring at her untouched water.
—
You show up Monday because you have to show up Monday, because Baran Al-Hashimi is your department head now, permanently, indefinitely, and the department doesn't know what happened in a wine bar on Sunday. The department just needs you there, so you are there.
She doesn't treat you differently. She keeps with your last name in briefings, first name in the hallway, she defers to your clinical judgment when it's relevant, and you have no idea what it costs her and you are not going to ask. You have learned how to stop asking things. You should be given something for it.
Three weeks in she falls into step beside you between the supply room and the east corridor and says how are you doing.
"Fine," you say.
"You don't seem fine."
You completely ignore that, turning toward the nursing station where you can see Trinity and Dennis talking to Robby. You know Baran won’t do anything with an audience.
Predictably, she stops several feet away, grabbing your arm to get you to stop too.
"I'm not trying to—" She stops. "I'm asking because I want to know."
"I frankly don’t care what you want,” you reply face intentionally void of emotion. “Please let go of my arm.”
"Y/N, I know you’re upset," she says, all quiet, big eyes trailing over your face. She drops your arm cautiously as if testing to see if you’ll dart. "I don’t want you hurting.”
"That’s not how it works,” you shoot back, “I’m trying to do my job without letting this get in the way, so how about you grow the fuck up and do yours.”
Baran’s eyes go a bit wide at that, plush lips dropping open as she scans your face in shock. “You're being entirely unfair."
You bark out a laugh. "That’s rich.”
"I never promised you a relationship, Y/N."
You stare at her. "Seriously?"
"I promised you that if circumstances changed, we could explore one."
"And are those oh-so different to you?”
Baran straightens up. “Yes, Y/N! Those are two very different things!”
"So what line are you drawing between them? What, you'd keep me on a leash? Just far away enough so you could test out if you were actually willing to be with me? What was I to you, Baran, a free trial?"
Baran's expression sharpens immediately.
"No," she says. "And you know that's not what this was.”
"Don't tell me what I know." Your voice rises despite yourself. "You don't get to decide what this feels like from my side. You don't get to spend months building something with me and then act shocked when I have a reaction to finding out you've been making plans I wasn't even aware existed!”
"I’m more surprised by how determined you are to interpret everything in the worst possible faith!"
"The worst possible faith?" you repeat. "You sat across from me in that bar and told me you'd known since October there was a possibility you'd stay. October. Do you understand how insane that sounds to me now?"
"You are an adult," Baran says, voice clipped now. "With your own agency. I did not manipulate you into developing expectations."
You take a step closer before you can stop yourself. "Oh, sure, you just conveniently benefited from them, right?"
“Y/N—”
“Fuck all the way, off, Baran,” you snap. “You’re my boss permanently now, remember? So unless it’s for work, leave me the hell alone.”
—
April arrives, March bleeds out. The two of you are still in the same building, in the same department, wearing the same laminate badges in the same fluorescent light, and all the waiting was for nothing, has soured into a cold-hard nothing, and will stay that way. It sits in a lump in the corner and rots, rots, rots.
—
It’s Lena Handzo, the night shift’s charge nurse, who tells you that Dr. Al-Hashimi turned down a conference in Boston last month.
"Said she couldn't leave the department for that long," Lena says, eyebrows raised and smirking, and you make a noncommittal sound go back to your work.
Lena frowns. “What’s up with you? You love gossiping with me.”
“Long week,” you reply sympathetically, not looking up from your computer. “I’m behind on my logs, too, and if I hear one more Attending bark up my ass I think I’ll just have to quit.”
Lena tsks. “Let’s not do that.”
“I won’t, if I can get these done,” you say. “Thanks for the update, Handzo.”
She nods, patting your shoulder. “Honey, you know it’s my pleasure. I’ll see if I can keep everyone off your back.”
You are still thinking about it three hours later when Baran spawns right behind your swivel chair. You smell her before you see her, something deep and earthy and vaguely antiseptic and painfully recognizable.
"Do you have a patient in bay seven?" she asks.
"Doctor Mohan has a patient in bay seven," you reply shortly. “I’m just assisting.”
"Do you want me to take a look?"
"Suit yourself.”
You hear the sharp intake of breath behind you. You imagine her power stance, hands clasped behind the lululemon, the curls that couldn’t quite be contained with the claw clip. You fight every animal instinct that begs you to turn around and snarl. You imagine you must look like an animal on edge, ears perked up in attention, waiting for a sign that she’s gone—
"I heard you covered the Delgado case this morning," she says.
Your eyes stay trained on the keyboard, fingers pressing the keys, clicking one, then another, then another. "I did."
"That was above and beyond. You didn't have to stay for that."
“Well, I did.”
"I believe it turned into a twelve-hour shift," she says. "You were only scheduled for eight."
"Mhm.”
She is quiet for a moment. "Are you sleeping?”
“Are you meant to be asking me that, Dr. Al-Hashimi?”
"I'm asking as someone who—" She stops. Recalibrates. "Yes. As your department head. Who notices when staff are working themselves into the ground."
"Then I appreciate your concern for my wellness." The words come out flat, professional, empty. "I'll make sure to log my hours appropriately."
"That's not what I—"
"Perlah," you call out, louder than necessary, swiveling your chair just enough to address the nursing station without looking at Baran. "Would you pass along the updated labs for bay seven when you get a chance?"
Perlah glances up, then past you to where Baran is standing. Her eyes flicker with confusion before she nods. "Sure thing."
You turn back to your screen. Baran hasn't moved.
"You look exhausted," she says quietly. Too quietly for anyone else to hear over the ambient noise of the station—Dennis on the phone, Trinity’s keyboard clicking, the distant beep of monitors.
"I'm fine."
"You're not. You look exhausted."
"With respect, Dr. Al-Hashimi, I don't think my appearance is really—"
"Y/N." Her voice has an edge now. "Stop.”
"Stop what?"
Her jaw tightens. "This little pity party. As your department head—"
"Already pulling rank? How's that working out for you, by the way? The career move, I mean. Worth it?"
"That's not—"
"Because you look tired too, if we're doing wellness checks." You tilt your head, examining her with clinical detachment. "Actually, while we’re on topic, when's the last time you slept?"
Something flashes across her face. Hurt, maybe. Good.
"We are not doing this here," she says, ice chilling her voice.
"Doing what? Having a conversation? Isn't that what you wanted?" You turn back to your screen. "Or did you just want me to say 'yes ma'am, thank you ma'am' and make you feel better about—"
"Watch yourself." Her voice drops, sharpens. "I understand you're tired, but you need to watch your tone right now."
"Or what?" You spin around. "You’re gonna put something in my file?" You're talking faster now, the words tumbling out. "You already have access to that anyway, so—"
"I said that's enough." Her voice is quiet. Deadly quiet. Samira has definitely stopped typing. "You're not in a state to be here right now. Go home."
That catches your attention. You gape at her.
"I have four hours left on my—"
"I'm aware of your schedule." Each word is precisely placed. "As your boss, I am telling you to go home. Clock out. Leave."
"On what grounds?"
"Because you're exhausted, acting immature, and you're disrespecting your superior in front of the entire station. This is not a discussion. Go home before I have to make this official.”
The worst part is she's right, to some degree. But what cuts is the way she is using the position, the authority, the thing she chose over you—to send you away. To protect herself. To prove that she can.
"Fine." You stand up too fast, chair rolling backward. "Anything else, Dr. Al-Hashimi?"
Something flickers across her face. But her voice stays steady. "No. That's all, Y/N."
You grab your bag. You don't look at Perlah. You don't look at anyone.
You definitely don't look at Baran as you walk past her toward the exit.
But you feel her watching you leave.
—
"Dr. Al-Hashimi? Can I borrow you for a second?"
"Of course." Baran doesn't look up immediately. She finishes the lab she's reviewing, hands it off to Langdon, sets down her pen. Baran follows the woman who she is slowly recognizing as Melissa from HR three steps away from the station, just far enough that the noise covers their voices.
"We received a resignation letter this afternoon," Marissa says. "Effective immediately. I wanted to let you know before processing it."
"Who?"
Marissa says your name.
Baran goes very still. "What?"
"It was submitted about two hours ago,” Melissa supplies. "It surprised me too. But I just wanted to check if there were any performance issues we should document, or if—"
"No." Too fast. "No, nothing like that. She’s—she’s an excellent nurse."
Marissa nods slowly. "Okay. Then I'll process it. We'll need to arrange an exit interview, but given the circumstances—"
"Yes. Fine. Whatever the protocol is."
Marissa hesitates, blinking at the tone. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. Thank you for letting me know." Baran's already turning back toward the nursing station. “Excuse me."
She beelines down the east corridor, past the supply room, into the medication room at the end. It's empty. She closes the door.
Her hands are shaking. She presses her palms flat against the counter and tries to breathe.
She pulls out her phone, fingers hovering over your name in her contacts. She hasn't texted you in weeks, the most recent message still the invitation for dinner, and your eager response with its exclamation points and little beaming emojis.
She types: What are you doing? You're throwing your career away over this? You worked so hard to get here.
She stares at the words, thinks about nursing school, the late nights you told her about, the clinical rotations, the NCLEX. How proud you were when PTMC hired you. How much this job means to you.
The Wound (is the place where the light enters you) — A Series
pairing: baran al-hashimi × exgf!attending reader 𖥔 ݁ ˖<𝟑.𖥔 ݁ ˖
ao3: lieutenanttrouble (24 chapters are up on ao3, 15 chapters are up over here!)
series wc: 69.8k
summary: baran al-hashimi accepted a new attending position at pittsburgh trauma medical center, hoping for a fresh start after years of hard choices and an uneasy divorce. she did not expect to run into the woman she once loved with a depth that shaped her early adulthood.
tags/warnings: slow burn, physicians, canon adjacent, hospital typical blood and violence and all that yummy stuff, bisexual baran al-hashimi, angst, hurt/comfort, panic attacks, seizures
chapter one: the start
chapter two: reacquainted
chapter three: time
chapter four: execution
chapter five: she's got humor
chapter six: like a complete unknown
chapter seven: the truth is rarely pure
chapter eight: half return
chapter nine: crack, baby (you don't know what you want)
chapter ten + chapter eleven (combined for tumblr) : orbit
chapter twelve: well, you look like yourself…
chapter 13: you wear the same jewels (that i gave you)
chapter 14: my little hawk, why do you cry?
chapter 15: what did you learn from the tillamook burn...
chapter 16: …or the fourth of july?
– coming soon –
chapter 17: (just between us) did the love affair maim you too?
chapter 18: if you leave the light on
chapter 19: what a ghostly scene
chapter 20: everything, everywhere, all at once
chapter 21: in circles
chapter 22: you begin
chapter 23: the heart that beats under the bone
chapter 24: i'm tired of this searching, would you let me let go?
“she brushes my hair with a physical hand, lowers my body down to the land, my angel…” ▹▹ adrianne lenker
summary: two years after kaveh, you and baran decide to try again for a child, but it ends before it really begins.
notes: hurt/comfort, infertility, miscarriage, established wife!reader dynamic, divider cred @pixopix
In the fourth-floor staff bathroom, scrub pants at your ankles, a little stick balanced against your knee, you find out you're pregnant.
The knock sounds at the door for the third time, another "You okay in there, hon?" which forces you to call back a casual "just a second" in a voice pitched higher than you meant to use, and press your forehead to the cool tile until your heart settles enough to stand.
You resists the urge to call your wife over the phone despite how the secret bubbles excitedly in your throat; you selfishly want to see her face when you tell her, not just hear her gasp over the line and have to imagine what her face and body are doing some three floors down in the ER. Plus, you have a three-year-old. You’ve gotten pretty good at having patience.
So you carry it around all day instead, order takeout and then scrub the dinner dishes you’d pulled from the cabinets to busy yourself as Baran puts Kaveh's down for the night.
She pads sleepily back into the kitchen and perches on the counter in one of your old t-shirts, peeling an orange with her thumbnail because she refuses to use a knife for it — your wife, who you know can suture a femoral artery after being blindfolded, spun around thrice, and waterboarded, but gets the ick from cutting into an orange.
You set the test down beside her, face up, and don't say anything at all.
She looks at it first in confusion, and then you watch understanding burst open behind those big brown eyes. “Are you—“
You nod before she even finishes and she's off the counter so fast the orange peel skids clean across the tile and splats onto the floor.
“Oh my goodness, eshgham!” She's got both arms around you, kissing your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your mouth. “Baby, are you serious?”
“You're gonna give yourself whiplash,” you laugh, breathless, holding onto her while she's everywhere at once.
“Don't care,” Baran pulls back to fully look at you. You can't imagine it's the best you've ever looked, rumpled after a long day of work, scrubs dirty, shoes the same, but you've been together long enough you know she's seen it all. “Y/N. We're having another baby.”
“Technically it's one test.”
“I don't care about technically,” she says, grinning wide enough that it must ache, forehead dropping to rest against yours. “Science is science. There's chorionic gonadotropin in your pee.”
You pull a face. “Don’t be gross, Baran.”
“Oh, please. Don't 'gross' me, we're both doctors,” she laughs in response, smiling so hard she looks a little crazed, and you've never been more in love with anyone in your life than you are with your wife right now.
You giggle again, helpless at the intensity of it all, and let her fold you fully into her arms, rocking the two of you side to side against the counter like there's music only she can hear.
“We're gonna be second-time moms,” she murmurs eventually, into your hair, still holding on.
“Yeah,” you say, and feel her smile against your scalp. “More like second-time MILFs.”
“Y/N.”
“I've got it: SILFs.”
“Y/N.”
—
You're seven weeks along when the floor falls out from under you.
You'd agreed to wait until twelve weeks to tell anyone this time. Especially Kaveh, who's three and would announce it to the entire daycare, the mailman, possibly a stranger at the grocery store. It was meant to stay yours a little while longer. You just wanted to carry your baby, known to only you and Baran, for just a little longer. You wanted your little baby to be safe.
You're halfway through morning rounds when the cramp pins you in place. You make it five more minutes before they have you doubling over, and that’s when you know something is seriously wrong.
Your hands are shaking too hard to find Baran's name at first. Her cell goes straight to voicemail because it’s mid-shift, of course, so you call the ED desk and ask for her by name, and Dana says hang on, hon, and you wait.
You sink to the cold tile, back against the door, doing the breathing you've taught a hundred frightened people to do.
“Hey honey, what's up?” Baran says, a little breathless, like she jogged to grab the phone.
You press the phone harder against your ear, blood slicking the side of your leg. “I'm bleeding,” you rasp, voice so thin it might snap. “It’s everywhere, B. I—I think I'm having a miscarriage.”
There's a beat where you feel her go still through the phone, a stillness with weight to it. Then, evenly: “Okay. I'm coming, don't move. Where exactly?”
“Bathroom. Third floor, by radiology.”
“I mean in the body, honey.”
“Oh, duh, vaginally. Sorry,” you shake your head, embarassed and overwhelmed and wanting to sob. Your brain's gone somewhere else entirely that isn't up at all for taking calls.
“Don't apologize, it's fine, baby. Stay where you are,” You can hear her moving already, a door, a hallway. “Try not to move around too much. I'm on my way.”
Ninety seconds later the bathroom door flies open. Baran’s in scrubs, eyes wide, and she’s on her knees beside you in one smooth motion. She drops her phone to her scrub pocket and cups your face with one hand, the other steadying the back of your neck. “Oh azizam,” she breathes. “I’ve got you, honey, it’s okay. Let me see”
You watch as she reaches inside the bag you didn’t realize she'd brought and starts pulling stuff out. Your sweet wife brought supplies. Your eyes burn harder.
“I'm going to get a pad on you,” Baran looks up through her curls. “Can you shift your hips just a little?”
You do, eyes trained on the ceiling as you will yourself not to cry. Baran is silent as her gentle hands move, but you almost wish she’d talk to you. It’s so suffocatingly quiet in here.
“Feet up.” She guides your heels onto the lip of the cabinet under the sink, then rolls her own jacket and slides it under your hips without being asked.
“Thank you,” you rasp, and she kisses you firmly.
“Don’t say thank you,” she breathes against your mouth. “I’ll handle this, okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She reaches for her phone and unlocks it one-handed, her other palm resting at the back of your neck, steady and warm.
“Yeah, it's Al-Hashimi from the ED. I need OB down to the third floor bathroom by radiology, my wife's having a miscarriage, I need someone good, not whoever's free.” A pause. “No, get me Whitfield if she's in the building.”
Her hand moves in slow circles against your neck the entire time she's talking, cradling you gently. “Wheelchair too, she's not walking anywhere. Yeah. Now, please.”
She hangs up and is back to you immediately, both hands on you again, pulling you completely into her.
“Dr. Whitfield's good,” she says, low, close to your ear. "Samira and I did called her down for a consult earlier this week. She's very gentle. She'll take care of you.”
You finally allow your eyes to fall from the ceiling, and they fasten into your beautiful wife. Her eyes are shining wet too, hands shaking where they’re on you. She’s devastated, just as you are.
“Baran...”
There’s so many things you want to say, but that's all you have. Just her name and the way your voice breaks clean in half around it as the first of your tears start to spill and spill and spill.
"Come here, come here,” Baran moves in close and gets both arms around you, one hand cradling the back of your head, and she brings her mouth to your temple and just stays there, breathing. "Havâ-to dâram, you hear me? I'm right here, honey. I've got you, I’ve got you."
You press your face into her neck and she tightens her hold, and she is warm, and she is certain, and she rocks you just slightly, so slightly, like there is still music only the two of you can hear.
—
You work with ultrasounds enough to know your baby is dead long before the tech confirms it. You see it on the screen and it immediately makes your heart sink so completely you force yourself to tear your eyes away.
There aren't many other things to look at in the room. There's no art, no window, so you look at your wife, but all that's there to see is the sorrow shining openly in her eyes, her thumb moving over your knuckles, the way her breath keeps hitching and the proof shows in her chest.
Afterward she's waiting in the hallway with your scarf and coat already open in her hands. She’s always fretted about you being cold.
“I called Marisol, she's got Kaveh for the night,” she says, easing your arm into the sleeve. “So we're not rushing anywhere. Take whatever you need.”
You nod. You don't trust your voice not to break the second you use it.
“You want to just go home? Or sit in the car a bit first, your choice.”
You hadn't known that was a choice. You choose the car but don’t even make it to the parking lot before you’re sobbing in the elevator, Baran wordlessly pulling you into her side and cupping the back of your head, humming and humming and humming a lullaby to ground you.
—
You sit in the car for almost forty minutes, the engine running for the heat, her hand resting on your thigh the whole time as you two talk, and talk, and talk.
“I keep thinking about everything I did wrong,” you finally say, eyes fixed on the concrete pillar through the windshield. “Y’know, the shift I picked up Saturday. Plus, my back twinged getting Kaveh into the car seat and I had that one stupid iced coffee with Kiara, even though I knew I probably shouldn't.”
Your voice catches before your list can continue, but you trust your wife understands what you’re getting at. It’s a plea, a bid to be told your wrong; Did I do this? Was this me?
“Woah, no.” Her hand presses down, grounding. “Definitely not. Don’t even start going down that road, Y/N.”
You make yourself anyway.
“None of that did this,” she insists. "Most of the time there's just no reason in a miscarriage like this one. There’s no fault. It just… honey, it just happens.”
“But it had to happen to me. I failed, Baran. I couldn’t do it.” Your voice splits right down the middle. “I just– Why couldn’t it happen for me specifically?”
She's quiet a second, and when she talks again it's lower, rougher than before. "I don’t know, nafasam. I’m sorry. I wish I could give you an answer." She picks up your hand and presses it flat against her own chest, lending you her heartbeat. “But you didn't fail at anything, okay? Your body's not a thing that failed. You were so, so brave.”
You cry properly then, and she unclips her own seatbelt so she can lean fully across the console, the gearshift digging into her ribs, and just holds you there in the worst possible position for it, because the only alternative is letting go. That isn't a thing Baran has ever known how to do.
—
Baran takes leave for the first time since she was recovering from birthing Kaveh.
She makes round after round of meals without being asked. She runs you baths and sits on the closed toilet lid doing the crossword, reading you a clue now and then because she knows you like the guessing. Her hands are always somewhere on you; your foot in her lap while you read, fingers combing slowly through your hair on the couch, a palm flat against your back at the sink. You know she knows you like it, but you suspect it helps her too. Her baby may be gone, but you’re still right here.
Kaveh is only three. He climbs into your lap with his dinosaur and tells you all about it. He draws you little pictures, stacks his blocks up into a tower for you to knock down because that’s what he does when he’s upset. He kisses your cheek right back when you lean down to tuck him in. He hugs you around the neck and tells you he loves you, and you hold him so close to your chest on those nights you sometimes hear him squeak like a little mouse from the force.
After two weeks, you tell Baran you don’t know if you can do it again.
You’re tucked into her side, the TV on more for noise than for watching. “I don't know if I can do this twice.”
You wait for her to push, even gently, but you just feel her chin settling on top of your head.
“Then we don't,” she says easily. “You're enough. This family's whole already, Y/N. I just want you to feel whole again too, however long that takes.”
“What if I never do?”
“Well, my love for you wouldn’t change,” she says truthfully. “But maybe we can see if there’s someone else who can help you, not just me. I don’t want you just to ache always, azizam, not if there’s something we can try to do.”
You don't have an answer for that. You just turn your face into her neck and let her carry the weight of you for a little while longer.
—
It's two weeks before you go back to work. Baran walks you in that first morning even though her shift doesn't start for another hour. The winter air stings, but you feel the warmth of her anyway, her hand never quite leaving you. Your wife has always been so touchy.
“Call me,” she says, hands around your ears because she is a major fidgeter and wants always for you to be comfortable, wants to shelter you a little bit longer. “Whatever I'm doing, I'll pick up.”
“I think I’ll be okay,” you whisper. “But thank you, B.”
“Love you,” she murmurs against your lips.
“I love you more.”
You watch her walk off toward the ED, that same brisk, sure stride that makes residents scatter out of her way, and you stand there a second longer than you need to, just to watch her go.
You check in with your first patient at nine, same as every Tuesday. Around noon your phone buzzes a gif of a little bear holding up a heart. At two, it’s a photo of you and Kaveh. At five, another corny gif of a sand timer and pink glitter letters screaming “TWO HOURS TO GO!”
She comes home and finds you on the couch that night, and immediately shakes off her shoes. She's quieter than you were expecting, and you usually anticipate your wife being a little more subdued after a long shift.
But she settles down next to you without a word, and you remember she lost a baby too. She had wanted it just as bad.
You guide her body into your lap, taking the claw clip out and fixing her hair. You work gently through the little tangles without a thought, humming that untraceable little song a half-beat behind how she usually does it, maybe a little off-pitch. You aren't suprised at all when she joins in.
armed and dangerous⋆ 𖤓 ⋆˚࿔ (baran al-hashimi x wife!reader) is it really any surprise that baran goes all out for her son's bring-your-parent arts and crafts day?
the pitt au | established relationship | ~2.7k | divider cred |
notes: all fluff, just baran being a little bit of a control freak!!
FAMILY CREATIVITY DAY! Saturday, October 12th, 10am–12pm. Join us for a morning of art, connection, and fun! All families welcome. Light refreshments provided.
You hum at the flyer that Kaveh's teacher handed to you through the car window while you were waiting in the carline. A Saturday. You weren't on call and neither was Baran.
You take a picture of it right there in the pickup line, the car behind you be damned, and text it to your wife.
you: [image attached]
you: thoughts
The three dots appear immediately. She must be on a break.
🤎: Oh, this is very cute. I wonder what the project is.
🤎: Do you think it's something we bring materials for or they provide everything?
🤎: Also what does "light refreshments" mean?
🤎: Are we talking fruit and crackers or are we talking actual food? Are we expected to bring anything?
🤎: I can stop at Giant Eagle on the way home from work.
🤎: Do you think any of the kids have nut allergies? Would you please ask Kaveh?
You stare at your phone. The car behind you honks. You pull forward six inches.
you: are you fr right now
🤎: What?
you: b, it’s an art event for second graders
🤎: ??
you: "light refreshments" will mean a little bowl of goldfish crackers next to a juice box situation
🤎: I already looked it up on the school website, it says "collaborative mixed media collage" which is actually really fun. Mel was just telling me how collage has such a rich history as an artistic medium—
You put your phone in your cupholder rather than finishing reading because you are in a school zone and you are a responsible adult. Also, you’re grinning so wide at the windshield that an elementary schooler who catches sight of you might shit their pants.
You pick the phone back up at the next red light.
🤎: —and i think i have some good scissors at home so the paper edges will be much cleaner.
you: you are not bringing your good scissors to kaveh's school
🤎: Sure I will. They can go my purse.
you: it’s not a bring your own scissors event, b
🤎: That is why I am going to put them in my purse. 🙂
—
Saturday arrives and Baran is up before you. You find her in the kitchen at eight-fifteen in her Lululemon set, her jug of a water bottle on the counter and a bowl of fruit cut into precise little cubes beside it. Kaveh is in his chair eating cereal. There is already, somehow, a small tote bag by the door, fit to bursting with supplies.
“Oh my god,” you stop walking. "Don’t tell me you packed a bag.”
"Kaveh packed a back," she corrects, without looking up from her phone.
You glance at your son, quirking a brow. He grins toothily and shakes his head.
"Right,” you grin, rounding the table to kiss his curls. “What’s in Kaveh’s bag?”
"Scissors and a bone folder. Oh, we also found some washi tape I had left over,” Baran lists, “Plus a few good magazine pages I pulled last night—"
"Y— Kaveh pulled magazine pages?"
"From the ones we were going to recycle anyway."
"When?”
“Last night?”
“Kaveh went to bed at 7.”
Baran frowns. “Well, I did the magazine part. I couldn't sleep."
Kaveh calmly takes a bite of cereal. "Maman also printed some pictures," he offers helpfully.
You turn to gape at your wife.
"They were reference images," she clarifies, taking large sip from the bucket bottle. "For composition."
"Baby," you say.
"Don't."
"Sweetheart."
"I mean it."
"It’s a second grade—"
"Kaveh, are you done with your cereal?" Baran asks, very loudly, in the direction of your son.
"Almost," says Kaveh.
"Take your time, azizam." She picks up her Hydroflask — truly the size of a small child, you've always thought, a gallon jug with a straw — and takes a long, dignified sip, looking at you over the rim with an expression that communicates, very clearly, that this conversation is over.
You love her so much it's honestly a little embarrassing.
—
Kaveh's school gym has been transformed, sort of. There are round tables covered in butcher paper and each table has a big tray of supplies in the middle, kids magazines, construction paper, tissue paper, glue sticks, safety scissors, stickers. A hand-lettered sign on the wall says CREATE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL TOGETHER and there are, as you predicted, goldfish crackers next to juice boxes on a folding table by the door. Kaveh's teacher greets you both near the entrance.
"Dr. Al-Hashimi, Dr. Y/L/N! So glad you could make it." She crouches to Kaveh's level. "Kaveh, do you want to pick your table?"
Kaveh points immediately at the table closest to the snack station.
"Fantastic choice, buddy," you tell him sincerely.
Ms. Blake straightens up and gestures broadly at the room. "So the project today is totally open, families just work together to make a collage. The theme is 'us,' so whatever that means to your family! There's no wrong way to do it. Just have fun."
"Wonderful," says Baran warmly. "Is there a particular size constraint on the final piece?"
"No constraint!" Ms. Blake says brightly. "Just whatever fits on the paper!"
"Great," says Baran. "And the adhesive provided is just the glue sticks?"
Ms. Blake blinks. "...Yes?"
"Perfect," says Baran, smiling. "Thank you so much."
You wait until Ms. Blake has moved on to the next family, then you turn to tease your wife, but her head is down into her tote back, hands already rummaging through it to pull out her own supplies.
“There she goes,” you whisper to yourself as Kaveh dashes off to greet his friends and their families who are taking their seats. “B, I need you to have fun."
Baran looks up from where she’s rummaging through the bag. "Sorry? I am going to have fun."
You put both hands on her shoulders, look her dead in the eyes, and say: "Baran. Please put the bone folder away."
She holds your gaze for a long moment.
Then she puts the bone folder back in the bag.
"Thank you," you say.
"You're lucky I love you," she frowns. You just laugh and kiss her cheek, leading her to the table by the small of her back.
—
Within ten minutes of sitting down, Baran has organized the supply tray. The magazines are now stacked by approximate size (you have not a clue why, because you’ll be using them for the images INSIDE, but you know better than to ask); tissue paper is in a small pile off to the side; Baran has flicked through approximately forty pages of National Geographic with a narrowed eye, head slightly tilted, completely still.
She pulls out a page. Blue water, some kind of aerial shot. Holds it up to the construction paper background she's already selected — a deep navy. Nods once, to herself.
"Maman," says Kaveh, who is on his third helping of goldfish and has crushed four capri suns, and has cut out a picture of a golden retriever with the safety scissors. "Can I put the dog on it?"
Baran looks at the dog picture, her navy paper. “Yes, fandogham. Let’s put it in the bottom left corner."
Kaveh slaps the dog picture enthusiastically in the center.
The corner of Baran's mouth tightens almost imperceptibly. You press your lips together.
"What if," Baran says carefully, "we tried it over here—" she nudges it gently toward the left— "just to give the other elements some room?"
"I like it better here," says Kaveh.
"I think the dog could stay," you tell her, rubbing a grounding circle on her back.
"The dog can stay," Baran says with a bit of tension to her voice. YOu watch her distract herself by trimming the edge of the blue water page with a precision that is making the dad at the next table visibly insecure. He has been trying to cut a straight line with the safety scissors for five minutes.
He glances at Baran's scissors.
"She came armed," you tell him, quietly, with great sympathy.
He tsks. “Smart woman. These safety scissors are sh— crap.”
You grin. “Oh man, don’t let her hear you say that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
A warm, amused voice from beside you, without looking up: "I can hear you."
—
Twenty more minutes pass.
"You know," you say conversationally, watching your wife hold a piece of tissue paper up to the light, "Ms. Blake said there's no wrong way to do it."
"Sure, but there is a right way," Baran replies, tilting it again. She notices a crinkle and frowns, placing it down and selecting a new one to inspect.
"Well, so, no. That is exactly the opposite of what she said."
Kaveh ignores you both, tongue sticking out as he sorts through the various little cutouts he’s made. He picks one and brandishes it to you guys.
“Is that a wheel of cheese, baby?” you beam.
"Uh-huh," he nods. “I’m gonna put it on.”
You look at Baran, who is trying so hard to fight back her grimace.
"Where are you thinking?" she asks.
Kaveh points to the upper right corner.
"Next to the moon?" Baran asks. Her task of the past ten minutes has been cutting out planets and stars and asteroids from a cosmology magazine she found in the stack. She’s been planning an elaborate sky.
"No, it is the moon," Kaveh says. “Like the story with the cow where she's playing the fiddle and jumps over the cheese moon.”
You pull a face. “I’m 90% sure that was a different story.”
"Interesting," Baran responds to him, elbowing you in the ribs, but she's smiling now. "Making it a celestial body. Kaveh, that's very creative."
Kaveh accepts this as his due. "I know," he says, and reaches for more goldfish.
—
About forty minutes in, you have, collectively: the aerial water shot, the cheese moon, a golden retriever and two dobermans, Spiderman next to a cutout of red carpet Lady Gaga (Kaveh really liked her outfit,) a cutout of that the tsunami from that one famous panting, some random house from that one realtor show with the twin brothers — all framed by four strips of washi tape that Baran has placed with a level of care that you find both ridiculous and deeply attractive.
You are in charge of the text elements, which means you are cutting letters out of magazine headlines. You are doing this badly. Your hand slipped cutting out the B so it looks like a 3. Your A is missing the crossbar.
Suffice to say, you can feel Baran sweating next to you.
"You can say it," you tell her, very focused on cutting out an H for Kaveh.
"You're doing great," she says, very carefully.
You hold up your jagged P. "I think I nailed this one."
She just hums, eyes not leaving your hands, and you decide to take pity on your wife.
"My love,” you say pleasantly, “Would you like to do the letters?”
Her hand is already out.
You grin “Wow, so you actually think I suck. I didn't even finish the thought.”
"Oh, you were going to offer me the scissors,” Baran teases, wiggling her fingers. “C’mon, we’re on the clock here.”
You put them in her hand. She's already reaching for the magazine before they've fully left your fingers, flipping through with the same focused efficiency she brings to everything, and within about thirty seconds she's found a headline she likes and is cutting clean and even. You try to absorb what it is she’s doing that you obviously were failing at, but aside from the fact she rotates the paper rather than the scissors, it seems just to be her. Naturally composed, completely absorbed, dedicated to the job.
Kaveh has pressed flower stickers up and down her sleeve at some point in the last twenty minutes. She hasn't said a word about it. She finishes the letters, wipes the dried glue off Kaveh's hands before her own, and then holds the collage out to him at arm's length, tilting it slightly.
"What do you think?" she asks him. "Is it good?"
“I think it’s okay,” he nods, “But look at what I found!”
He holds up a children’s magazine from the 1990s that has the three little pigs on the front. “It’s us!”
Your eyes giddily shoot to Baran’s, half expecting her to self-implode, but you’re surprised to find she’s grinning.
“I think you’re right,” she replies warmly, finger tapping the book. “I think that one is Mommy.”
You squint toward the one she’s pointing at. “What, why?”
“Because those two are doing labor,” Baran gestures to them, then lowers her voice to whisper in your ear. “Your piggy isn’t doing shit.”
“Woah!” you grin, “Hey, I’ve been trying to help but I keep getting benched.”
This is true. After Baran took over cutting you suggested adding some pretty little flower stickers on the “grass” (represnted by a thick strip of green paper Kaveh had pasted down) and were met with two resounding, disgusted Nos.
"Mmhm. Excuses, excuses," she tuts, already reaching for the magazine. You watch her carefully cut out the three little pigs with the same scissors she used for the letters, clean around every curve.
She hands the cutout to Kaveh, who immediately glues them down slightly crooked, but Baran just laughs.
You lean in and press your nose to her temple, just for a second, and she tips her head toward you without thinking about it.
"For what it's worth," she murmurs, "I think your piggy is very cute."
“That sounds like a terrible euphemism.”
She pulls back, scandalized, and slaps your arm. “We’re in our son’s second grade classroom.”
“He doesn’t know what that word means,” you defend with a beaming smile, then turn back to your son. She huffs, but she's smiling, and she stays leaning against you.
“Kav,” you prompt. “What do you think, bud? All done?”
He tilts it a full 360 degrees, mimicking his Maman, then nods. “All done.”
—
You carry the collage out to the car. Kaveh runs ahead to press his nose against the car window, which he does every single time, without fail, despite the fact that it is his car and he knows exactly what is inside it.
Baran falls into step beside you. Tote bag over one shoulder, Hydroflask in her other hand. The October air is cool and bright and the trees on the block are just starting to turn.
"Fun?" you ask.
She considers it the way she considers everything, properly, all the way down. "Yes," she says. "Really."
You look at her. The small smile she's not bothering to hide. The flower sticker still on her sleeve, right where Kaveh put it two hours ago.
"You know," you say, "the collage is really beautiful, B."
She glances at you sideways, a little pleased, trying not to show it. "Kaveh did most of it."
"Kaveh did the cheese moon and the three little pigs," you say. "You made it beautiful."
She's quiet for a moment. "It was a good morning," she says, simply, and you can hear everything she means by it.
You take the tank of a bottle from her so you can take her hand instead, and she lets you without comment, fingers finding yours easy and warm. You stop walking. She takes one more step before she realizes, and turns back to look at you, brow lifting slightly in question.
You answer it by stepping forward and kissing her, free hand wrapping around her waist. She makes a small sound against your mouth, warm and soft, tilting her head to make it deeper.
When you pull back she's looking at you with sparkly eyes and a pleased quirk to her lips. "What was that for?”
"You are a very good mom," you tell her. "And I had a really good day."
She holds your gaze for a moment, then pulls you back in by the front of your jacket and kisses you again, slower this time, high on happiness.
Kaveh peels himself off the window and turns around with a smear of grime across his forehead, a toothy grin on his face.
Baran pulls back, smooths your collar down with both hands, and goes to get the keys. She wipes the grime off with her sleeve, the flower-sticker side, and says absolutely nothing about it.
