#gabe: thread.

[gcnetics]

who: gabe & indira | @ncbodyssoldier where: the operating room

the o.r. is too bright. gabe adjusts to it like he adjusted to everything else that first day—quickly, quietly, and with the kind of faint detachment that lets him push past the unfamiliar. new place, new staff, same bodies on the table. his hands, his instincts, they don't care about the badge clipped to his coat or the color of the scrubs around him. what matters is the kid under anesthesia, the team moving like a clockwork organism, and the fact that he hadn’t tripped over his own feet yet. so far, so good. he glances across the sterile field and catches sight of the scrub nurse handing off instruments with easy precision. small frame, steady hands, calm presence—he clocks all of it automatically. when she looks up, offers him a scalpel like it's something sacred instead of stainless steel, she smiles. just briefly, one of those soft ones that doesn't reach all the way but still sticks with you. gabe blinks, pivots his gaze back to the site. "thanks," he says, and when she doesn't immediately look away, adds, “you have a nice smile. has anyone ever told you that before?” it comes out before he can second-guess it—easy, offhand, not flirtatious so much as observant—but the o.r. has a strange intimacy to it: quiet voices behind masks, gloved hands passing sharp things, lives paused mid-sentence. he doesn't mean anything by it, not really. but then again, maybe he does.

[gcnetics]

who: gabe & dinah | @pinkauras where: the prep room of o.r. 2

the or is still humming with the tail-end static of prep—stainless steel gleaming, instruments arranged like a hymn, and the usual low murmur of voices giving way to purpose. gabe stands just outside the sterile field, arms folded, eyes flicking over the imaging that had been pulled up on the monitor near anesthesia. a fractured radius, multiple carpal bone fragments, and what looks like an attempted love affair with a table saw. his mouth tightens at the sight of it. “that’s how you lose your fingers,” he mutters, more to himself than anyone else, but loud enough to carry—dry, even-keeled, and just shy of exasperated. he glances sideways, like the comment might need a witness. the nurse on his right isn't one he recognizes. gabe takes a beat, then nods slightly, as if revising his internal file. whoever she is, she isn't green. he leans in a little, tone low but not unkind. “please tell me his dad is not the kind of guy who thinks duct tape solves bone trauma.” it's his first week, and already it feels like every hallway is a landmine of old ghosts and new dynamics. he can play nice, sure, but small talk never came naturally. still, if you were going to spend hours shoulder-to-shoulder in an o.r. with someone, might as well know who you’re working with. so he extends a hand, just enough to show he's trying. “gabe spencer. peds fellow. you?”

[gcnetics]

who: gabe & elaine | @mindsbeat where: a consult room at the hospital

the hospital doesn't look any different than the last dozen he’s worked in—maybe a little more glass, a little more faux wood paneling in the waiting rooms—but trauma is trauma, and peds is peds, and gabe has long ago stopped getting jittery over first days. he’d already rounded with his attending, introduced himself to the nurses in the picu, and now, apparently, he's being pulled into a neuro consult by none other than the department chief. he found her in one of the consult rooms, back to the door, reviewing scans on the overhead monitor with dark scrubs and a focused stillness that reminds him of the surgeons who’d trained him: no wasted movement, no small talk, the kind of person who expects competence on arrival. “pediatric neuro involvement, huh,” he says, mostly to himself. “this the eight-year-old with altered mental status from the er?” a silence settles, clinical and clipped. gabe waits for her to fill it, but when she doesn't, he takes a breath and steps into it himself. “i skimmed the notes on my way down. emts said ‘possible stroke,’ but the kid had been at soccer practice in ninety-degree heat, no water for forty minutes, gcs of fourteen on arrival.” he glances over at her, catching just the edge of her profile. “are we thinking a stroke stroke or a heat stroke?” gabe asks, voice wry. “there’s a difference.”

[gcnetics]

who: gabe & eve | @silverskies where: the pediatric wing

the peds wing at pine valley isn't quiet, exactly (no part of a hospital ever really is), but there's a softness to it that gabe hadn’t realized he missed. smaller gurneys, stickers on clipboards, laughter, now and then, unburdened and bright. the noise still churns around him—footsteps, pagers, monitors—but underneath it all is something steadier, something like purpose. he's trying to focus on that. not the stares from a few nurses who clearly didn’t expect to see a new fellow strolling in like he’d worked here for years, not the odd silence that follows when his name is mentioned in passing, certainly not the weight of the past six weeks pressing like a bruise he hadn’t stopped poking. just the work. he can do the work. room 307. neuroblastoma. four-year-old. biopsy pending, but the kid is stable and his parents are sharp. gabe skims the chart with one hand, the other braced on his hip, lips moving as he mutters under his breath. he doesn't notice the intern at first—just another pair of scrubs hovering near the door—but the moment her shadow stills beside him, he glances up. blonde hair. wide eyes. steady hands, from what he can tell, even if they are clenched a little too tightly around her tablet. she looks young, but they all do these days. still, something about her posture catches his attention. too careful, like she's bracing for impact. “you the one assigned to peds?” he asks, already knowing the answer. she has that look: nervous but trying to hide it, eager to prove herself. he offers a nod, something close to a smile. “good. i could use an extra set of hands.” gabe tilts his head, studying her more closely. familiarity tugs at the edge of something, but he lets it go. he’s met a thousand interns in a thousand hallways. this isn't any different. “you’re with me on this one,” he says, tapping the chart. “we’ll get the results, talk options, then scrub in if it comes to it. you good with that?” a pause. gabe softens, just slightly. “hey,” he adds, voice dropping into something warmer, less clipped. “we’re friends now. you can ask me for help.”

[gcnetics]

who: gabe & sophie | @endlessunsh1ne where: the hallway of pine valley, right outside the elevator

it's the worst kind of déjà vu. gabe rounds the corner of the pediatric wing, coffee in hand, thinking about his next case, the latest chart still open on the tablet pressed against his side—and then the universe stops. not in the dramatic, collapsing-star kind of way. more like the silent snap of a rubber band, just before it breaks. she's standing there. in scrubs. with her badge clipped just so, like she used to. sophie. his sophie. or, no, not his anymore. that's clear. six weeks wasn’t long enough to forget the sound of a door slamming behind him, the way the apartment emptied overnight like she’d never existed inside it. six weeks wasn’t long enough to forget the look on her face when she’d found him, or worse, when she didn’t say a single word. his chest tightens, too full and too hollow at the same time. he tries to breathe through it, to compose something like logic, something that doesn't sound like what the hell are you doing here? or please don’t look at me like that. the hallway narrows to her expression, unreadable and surgical, the way she'd looked at open abdomens and broken spines. he hadn’t known she’d taken the job, hadn’t even considered it. pine valley was supposed to be his fresh start, his penance in motion. and now? she's standing between him and the elevator like she belongs there. “dr. murphy-spencer,” he says, voice rougher than intended, brittle from all the things he hadn’t said six weeks ago. “i didn’t know you’d be here.” he doesn't say he’d missed her. he doesn't say he dreamed of her leaving over and over again. he doesn't say her name like he used to, with tenderness and history and hope. he just stands there, waiting for the crash.