#priya: thread.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & cole | @ncbodyssoldier where: outside of their patient's room

it isn't that priya had planned to bribe him with sugar, exactly. she just figured that if she was going to be assigned to work with one of the most notorious attendings in trauma—one who saves lives like it's muscle memory and tells off residents with the same calm he uses to ask for coffee—she might as well show up with her best foot forward. in her case, that foot comes with a tupperware of homemade pistachio cardamom cookies and an aggressively upbeat "morning, dr. harrison!" that she immediately regrets for sounding too chipper, too eager, too much. for a moment, she just stands there awkwardly, cookies clutched like a peace offering she isn't sure how to deliver. "you, uh, don’t have any allergies, right?" she asks finally, trying for casual and missing by a few miles. “they’re cookies,” she adds, holding the tupperware up like it's evidence in court. “i bake when i’m nervous. and i’m nervous because—i mean, i’m excited! to work with you. and i didn’t want to show up empty-handed.” god. abort mission. she shuts her mouth before it could get worse. still, she keeps holding out the cookies. stubborn hope wrapped in plastic and sealed with a purple post-it that says good luck today! in her loopy handwriting. maybe it's stupid, but she has a gut feeling about dr. harrison, that behind the sardonic smirks and barked orders and that go bag everyone kept whispering about like it had mystical properties, there's a real human being trying his best. and priya? she's more than ready to learn from him.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & miller | @ncbodyssoldier where: a patient's room in the neuro wing

she hadn’t meant to break the damn thing. really, she hadn’t. priya had just been trying to wash her hands after rounds, same as any other morning, but she’d leaned a little too hard on the faucet while turning it off and the whole metal handle came loose with a sickening clunk. and now, because she doesn't know who else to call without getting chewed out for it, she’s done what any panicked, half-delirious intern on the later half of their too long shift would do: she’s paged miller. 911, no less.

the sound of running water fills the room—not flooding, thank god, but definitely not stopping either. priya is crouched over the sink with a towel in hand, trying to twist the broken handle back into place, muttering something that sounds vaguely like a prayer. “come on, come on, please just-” the metal clanks again, water splashing across her sleeve. she flinches and groans, wringing out the cuff uselessly.

by the time she hears footsteps in the hallway, she’s already accepted her fate: she's going to die here, wrist-deep in a half-broken sink. “before you say anything,” she calls out without turning around, “i know this looks bad, but technically it was already kind of broken. i just… accelerated the process.”

[gcnetics]

who: priya & ryan | @beneathoaktrees where: a random hospital starwell

priya lingers longer than she should in the stairwell, hands curled tight around the railing as if the metal might anchor her. the hospital air carries that ever-present mix of sanitizer and exhaustion, and she swears it's starting to seep into her skin. restructuring. downsizing. words that have been floating through every whispered conversation in the cafeteria. words that kept finding her no matter how she tried to dodge them.

of all the people she could run into here, it had to be ryan, someone who seems entirely too steady for the chaos priya feels gnawing under her ribs. she straightens automatically, bracing herself the way she always does in front of authority, rehearsing excuses in her head even before he says anything. she isn't supposed to be here while on the clock, she knows that, but she also knows she needs a breath before she falls apart in front of the wrong person.

“i’m fine,” she blurts, too quickly, before he even asks. the echo of her voice off the concrete walls makes it sound ridiculous. her grip on the railing tightens. “i just needed a second. everything feels like it’s… closing in. like the walls are moving.” she gives a half-laugh, brittle and sharp, then glances at him sidelong.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & sienna | @pinkauras where: a 4th floor conference room

priya isn't supposed to be here. she knows that as soon as she slides the badge over the scanner and ducks her head just enough to not look suspicious—but here she is anyway, tucked into the corner of an empty conference room on the fourth floor, the kind with the too-long table and the chairs no one ever adjusts because it isn’t their problem. she hasn’t turned the lights on, just lets the gray slant of morning through the blinds, casting striped shadows across her white coat. it's quiet here, in a way that the interns’ bullpen never is. no pagers chirping, no one snapping at her to move faster, no looming reminder that tess harrison reed has the power to pluck her out of the program at any second. priya's trying to steady her breathing, to pretend she has some semblance of control.

and then, inevitably, the door creaks open.

her head snaps up, guilt already blazing across her face even though she hasn’t technically done anything wrong—well, except for the part where she isn't supposed to be hiding out in here. she freezes when she sees who it is. “sienna,” she breathes, voice pitching low like she’d been caught sneaking out of class in high school. the silence stretches a beat too long before she tries to fill it, words rushing out in a tumble. “i swear, i was just-just needed a second. not running away, or, you know, completely imploding about the possibility of getting fired. definitely not that.” her attempt at a laugh sounds thin even to her own ears.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & eve | @silverskies where: a patient's room on the fourth floor

the smell hits her before she even steps fully into the room—sharp and sour, the kind of stench that clings to the back of her throat. priya wrinkles her nose, pressing the back of her gloved hand to her face as if latex could somehow shield her from it. of all the ways she imagined spending her day at pine valley, cleaning up after a patient’s spectacularly bad bout of food poisoning had not made the mental list. “of course it’s us,” priya mutters under her breath, setting the mop bucket down with a grimace. she can already hear tess’s voice in her head: interns earn their keep.

she glances at eve, trying to read her expression. she's struggled reading the other woman recently. maybe it's the glow from the gala still following her around, maybe it's just eve’s way of surviving the trenches without complaint. priya wants to be a better best friend, to ask how it went, what it felt like to step back into the orbit of someone you’d once planned forever with. but right now, with the mess in front of them, she isn't sure she can manage anything beyond survival mode. priya grabs the mop like it's a weapon, narrowing her eyes. “alright. ground rules.” she levels her gaze at eve, serious despite the ridiculousness of it. “no kicking. no biting. no rabbit punching.” the corners of her mouth twitch despite herself. if she doesn't laugh, she’ll probably gag.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & eli | @gcldensage where: the third floor resident's lounge

priya hadn’t exactly planned on running into eli tonight, not when she's still catching her breath from the whirlwind of the gala. it's one thing to stand at eve’s side while she floats back into orbit around him, another to now face him without her roommate as a buffer. she leans against the counter in the nearly empty residents’ lounge, mug of stale coffee warming her hands more than her insides. her eyes flick up as eli walked in, and for a moment she debates slipping out before conversation can find her, but running isn't an option anymore, not with eve committed to figuring things out between them.

“you know,” she starts, tone dry but not unkind, “i was going to say congratulations, but that feels a little weird coming from me. so instead i’ll say good luck. with her.” her lips curve just faintly, a shadow of a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. there's a beat, heavy and awkward, before she tips her head, studying him with a curiosity she’d been avoiding. “so… how’s it feel? first official pvmc outing as... whatever you guys are?” she doesn't bother to soften the question, doesn't bother to pretend it's casual.

when he doesn't immediately answer, she smirks, the expression edged with challenge. “don’t worry, this isn’t some kind of cross-examination. you can say whatever.” a pause. then, in a low mock-solemn voice, she adds (in her worst eli impression), “i refuse to answer on the grounds that i don’t want to.” the words hang between them, teasing, but priya’s gaze stays steady, waiting to see whether he’ll laugh, bristle, or do something else entirely.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & theo | @ncbodyssoldier where: the peds floor

priya hates how quiet the hallway feels at this hour, the kind of quiet that makes her more aware of every anxious tap of her shoes and the weight of her badge clipped to her coat. since the announcement at the gala, every glance from a senior physician has felt like a judgment, every missed detail like a nail in her own coffin. theo everett isn't tess—thank god—but he has this unnerving way of seeing through the careful layers priya kept up. she doesn't know what's worse: being ignored, or being noticed in exactly the way she doesn't want to be.

when he corners her outside a patient's room, she tries for lightness, a joke she doesn't quite believe in. “if you’re about to ask me how i’m doing, i refuse to answer on the grounds that i don’t want to.” the words tumble out too fast, but she forces a crooked smile to match them. she fiddles with the hem of her sleeve, the gesture as involuntary as breathing. “besides,” she adds, softer now, “i don’t think you actually want the real answer.” she braces herself, already anticipating the way theo’s expression will make her feel seen in a way she isn't ready for.

[gcnetics]

who: priya & elaine | @mindsbeat where: elaine's office

the office is too quiet, too pristine, the kind of quiet that makes priya feel like her bones are rattling inside her body, like her heart had developed a sound you can hear, some awful, clunky thing thudding along against the stillness. she sits perched at the very edge of the visitor chair, elbows tucked in like she's trying to make herself small—which is funny, given that she’d spent her entire surgical rotation trying to do the exact opposite. be big. be bold. be noticeable. but this is different. this isn't rounds or the pit or even the or. this is her. dr. zhang. head of neurosurgery. the kind of surgeon people talk about in the way little kids talk about astronauts or movie stars. and also, somehow, the woman who birthed sienna? it's a mindfuck. “so,” priya says, then immediately regretted speaking at all. her voice is dry, too bright. she clears her throat and tries again. “thank you for seeing me. i know you’re—” not my boss, not technically in charge of interns, not my therapist, not my mom “—very busy.” she smiles too fast, like a reflex. she isn't even sure why she’d come. technically, she's excelling in her neuro rotation. technically, she has no reason to be here. but between the four hours of sleep, the eleven hours in the hospital, and the way her chest had been aching like a bruised peach since this morning’s rounds, she’d just sort of…shown up. like her feet had carried her here without permission. “i guess i just—i wanted to ask if you had any feedback. on how i’m doing.” a beat. “as a student. not as a—uh. sienna’s roommate.” her fingers twist the edge of her sleeve into a frayed little knot. “i mean, obviously, you don’t have to sugarcoat anything.” another beat. she's trying not to let her voice wobble. “i just want to know if i’m…cut out for this. for neuro. for any of it.” she looks up finally, wide-eyed and deadly serious, her practiced bravado peeling back to something soft and real and a little cracked at the edges. “because sometimes i think i am. and then sometimes i think i’m just—really good at faking it.”