Welcome to Hell

I write a lot of sinful things for the poeple to gobble up <3

[toastykaykes]

Bad Romance

Andrew "Pope" Cody x F!Reader

In the middle of the dangerous Cody family empire in Animal Kingdom, a young nursing student unexpectedly falls for Andrew “Pope” Cody, a deeply damaged man struggling to separate himself from the violence and control that have defined his life. As their slow-burning relationship grows, they are pulled deeper into family conflict, criminal fallout, and Smurf’s ruthless attempts to destroy their connection. While Pope learns what it means to be loved gently for the first time, she must decide whether loving someone like him is worth the danger and heartbreak that comes with it. Together, they fight for the possibility of a life beyond the chaos that raised him.

Word Count: 5.4K

Edit: This is chapter 1 of a 20-part series. Let me know if you have any feedback on my writing!

Chapter One – Saltwater and Sutures

You learn to measure time in breaths long before you learn to measure it in shifts.

Inhale, turn the patient. Exhale, check the line. Inhale, rewrap the dressing. Exhale, smile at the daughter who is trying not to cry in the doorway.

That morning starts like most of them do: fluorescent lights too bright for the hour, the hallway at the rehab facility smelling faintly of antiseptic and microwaved oatmeal, your shoes already sticky with something you don’t want to identify before you’ve had your second coffee.

“Room twelve needs to be bathed,” Ruth, the day nurse, says without looking up from her chart. “Family’s coming by at nine. They want her hair braided.”

You glance at the wall clock. Eight twenty-three. Your body hums with the particular tiredness that belongs to people who work nights and go to school days and have decided, for reasons you can no longer remember, that this is sustainable.

“Got it,” you say.

The hallway is quiet at this hour, that strange lull between the chaos of breakfast and the chaos of visitors. TVs murmur behind closed doors. Somewhere, someone coughs, the sound deep and wet. You pass the nurses’ station and tuck the clean linens tighter under your arm.

Room twelve’s door is half open.

You knock anyway.

“Good morning,” you say softly as you step inside. “It’s just me.”

The woman in the bed does not answer, because she hasn’t spoken in weeks. Her chest rises and falls under the thin blanket in stuttering, shallow movements, each one a small argument with gravity. The cannula at her nose hisses gently. Her eyes are closed, lashes fine and pale against her skin.

You flip the chart at the foot of the bed with your free hand, though you know what it will say. Her name. Her diagnosis. Comfort care only scrawled in the last attending’s handwriting. No further interventions.

She is dying. Not in the dramatic way movies like to show, with last words and tidy resolutions. In the quieter way you see here most often: the body releasing its hold inch by inch, too slowly for anyone to mark the exact moment it started and too inexorably for anyone to stop it.

“Ms. Alvarez,” you say, leaning in so your voice doesn’t echo. “It’s bath day. Your daughter’s coming soon.”

Her eyelids flutter at the word daughter. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. You decide not to examine it too closely.

You move through the routine the way you were trained, the way you have done it so many times that your hands know the sequence before your mind finishes forming the thought.

Warm the water. Check the temperature on your wrist. Expose only what you need to. Talk, even if she cannot answer. Especially then.

“Water’s nice and warm,” you murmur as you unfasten the gown. “I’d complain about the hospital blankets, but I think you’ve heard that one before.”

Her skin is parchment-thin under your fingers, the blue of veins visible in the hollows. You slide the cloth along her arm in slow, careful arcs, lifting and supporting and never tugging. You turn her on her side with practiced leverage and a murmur of apology, even though she makes no sound. You clean the places no one ever mentions in polite conversation and know can ruin a life if neglected.

You braid her hair last.

It is wispy and sparse, more scalp than braid, but her daughter asked, and you have learned that sometimes it is not about the result, but about the evidence of care.

“Pretty,” you say when you’re done, stepping back to admire the crooked plait over the pillow. “She’s going to like that.”

You check her skin for new redness, her heels for signs of breakdown, the corners of her mouth for dryness. You straighten the sheet. You smooth the blanket.

There is a quiet in the room when you finish that is not entirely medical.

You stand there for a moment longer than you need to, counting her breaths without realizing you’re doing it.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“Hey.”

The voice from the doorway pulls you back.

It’s her daughter. Mid-thirties, hair scraped into a messy bun, eyes ringed with the exhausted red of someone who has been doing too much for too long.

“Sorry,” she adds quickly. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t,” you say, which is almost true. “Come in.”

She steps into the room, arms wrapped around a reusable grocery bag that you know is full of things her mother will never eat.

“You braided it,” she says, eyes going immediately to the pillow.

“Like you asked,” you say.

Something in her face softens. She sets the bag down in the chair and moves to the side of the bed, taking her mother’s hand.

“Hey, Mamá,” she whispers. “Look at you.”

You retreat to the sink to give them the illusion of privacy, but there is nowhere to go in a room this small. Their voices come to you anyway, thin and frayed and too intimate to really hear.

“She looks comfortable,” the daughter says after a minute, looking over her shoulder.

“She does,” you say.

“Is she…?” She trails off, biting down on the rest.

You know what she wants to ask.

Is she in pain. Is she suffering. Is this the end.

You are not a doctor. You cannot pronounce anything. But you know the signs. You live in the in-between space where the medical and the human touch.

“She’s not tense,” you say carefully. “Her breathing’s a little shallow, but that’s normal at this stage. If she looks uncomfortable at any point, you come get us. We’ll make sure she has what she needs.”

The daughter nods, blinking rapidly.

“Thank you,” she says. “For…all of this. For her hair. She’d care about that.”

“It’s no trouble,” you say, and mean it.

After she leaves, you chart.

You write down the temperature of the bath water, the condition of Ms. Alvarez’s skin, the fact that her daughter visited, that her breathing remains unchanged. The system wants numbers. You give it what you can.

There is no field for the way you watched the daughter kiss her mother’s forehead as though memorizing the shape. No box to check for the knot in your own chest when you turned off the overhead light and left them with only the glow of the lamp.

You find a corner of the progress note and write: “Patient appears peaceful. Family present at bedside.”

It is the closest you are allowed to come.

The rest of the shift passes in the usual pattern: vital signs and incontinence care, a confused man in Room nine who keeps trying to climb out of bed, a woman in seven who insists she can walk and nearly proves herself wrong. You answer call lights. You change linens. You listen to the same story twice from a wife who has no one else to tell it to. You squeeze your own hand hard under the charting station once to keep from crying.

When your twelve hours are finally up, the sky outside the facility is the bright, unforgiving blue of late morning in Oceanside. The parking lot shimmers with already-rising heat. You shrug your backpack higher on your shoulder, the straps cutting into your muscles, and feel the sweat gathering at the back of your neck under your scrub top.

Ruth catches you at the door.

“Don’t forget to sleep sometime,” she says, which is her way of saying you look like hell.

You smile. “I’ll pencil it in.”

She shakes her head, but there is something like fondness in the gesture. “Crazy kids.”

You change in the locker room, folding your scrub top into your bag and pulling on cutoff shorts and a faded T‑shirt that smells faintly of salt and sunscreen from the last time you wore it to the boardwalk. Your sneakers feel too tight after a night on your feet, but you lace them anyway. The mirror above the sink shows a version of you with dark crescents under her eyes and a line between her brows that didn’t used to be there.

You scrub a hand over your face, tie your hair up again, and tell your reflection, “Second shift. Let’s go.”

The Salt Shack is three blocks from the rehab facility and feels like it exists on a different planet.

By the time you reach the boardwalk, the air has shifted from antiseptic and air conditioning to salt and fried food. The ocean throws light back at the sky in hard white shards. Seagulls stalk the trash cans with the grim purpose of career criminals. Kids are already shrieking at the edge of the surf, their parents hovering nearby with towels and sunscreen.

The Salt Shack sits halfway down the boardwalk, squeezed between a touristy T‑shirt shop and a place that sells churros and corn in plastic cups. The sign above the shack is hand-painted, the blue letters sun-faded and peeling: THE SALT SHACK – BOARDS · SMOOTHIES · SUNSCREEN. Someone once added AND GOOD VIBES in sharpie underneath.

Marco is leaning against the counter when you arrive, a battered paperback in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He is perpetually tanned, perpetually squinting, his gray hair pulled into a short ponytail that has seen better days. The lines around his eyes are as much from smiling as from the sun.

“You’re late,” he says as you approach.

You check the clock above the register. You are three minutes early.

“You’re lying,” you say.

He grins, flicks ash into a coffee can, and drops the cigarette in after it. “Good. You still know how to tell.”

“Ruth tried to keep me,” you say, stepping behind the counter. “Told me I should sleep.”

“Ruth is wise,” he says. “You should listen to her.”

“Says the man who’s been running this place since before I was born,” you say, grabbing an apron from the hook and tying it around your waist. “When’s the last time you took a day off?”

He waves a hand vaguely toward the horizon. “Days off are a construct of late capitalism, niña.”

“You charge eight dollars for a smoothie.”

“Exactly,” he says, as though you’ve proved his point.

The shack is a narrow rectangle of space—blender and fridge on one side, racks of rental boards and wetsuits on the other, a small refrigerated case of bottled drinks in front. There is a bell on the counter that Marco claims is only for children and assholes; you have seen adults reach for it and pull back at the look he gives them.

You clock in on the ancient tablet mounted under the counter, the screen cracked at the corner and held together with tape.

“Same deal?” you ask. “Cash at the end of the day, plus tips?”

“As long as the government never finds out,” Marco says.

“They won’t hear it from me.”

He nods toward the worn stool in the corner. “You’ve got an hour before the zoo arrives. Study while you can.”

You pull your pharmacology textbook from your bag and set it under the counter, already open to the chapter on anticoagulants. The words look less hostile in this light.

The first customers of the day are easy: a father renting boards for his kids, a woman in a wide-brimmed hat who wants the “strongest sunscreen you have, I burn if I look at the sun wrong.” You move through the motions with practiced ease, fingers tapping amounts into the ancient register, mouth repeating the same instructions you’ve given a hundred times.

“Keep the board leashes away from the fins.”

“Rinse the wetsuits in the barrel before you bring them back.”

“Don’t forget to drink water. Heatstroke is not a good souvenir.”

Marco drifts in and out of your periphery, restocking wax, making small talk with the regulars, occasionally disappearing to the back to pretend he’s doing inventory while actually calling whoever he calls when he thinks you’re not listening.

By noon, the boardwalk is alive.

You watch it unfold in pieces between customers: a group of teenage girls taking turns posing for photos with their feet in the surf; a couple arguing over a map, gesturing in opposite directions; a man walking three small dogs that look like they belong in a movie about enchanted forests. The smell of grilled meat from the corn stand to your right, the sugar-slick scent of funnel cakes from somewhere behind you.

At some point, a familiar hunched figure shuffles up to the counter. You brighten.

“Hey, Ms. Jenkins,” you say. “You’re early.”

“Can’t stay away,” she says, voice creaky with age and cigarettes. Her white hair is pulled back under a visor that reads LIFE’S A BEACH. “Gotta check you’re doing your job.”

“Somebody has to,” you say. “Marco’s slacking.”

“I heard that,” Marco calls from the back, not looking up from his book.

Ms. Jenkins ignores him and leans on the counter. “You working both places again today?”

“Just got off the other one,” you say.

She tsk’s under her breath. “They’re gonna work you into the ground, girl.”

“They have to catch me first.”

She orders the same thing she always does: half-watermelon, half-mango smoothie, no sugar. You already have the cup in your hand before she finishes saying it.

As you add ice to the blender, she watches you with a fondness that makes the back of your throat tight.

“Met any nice boys yet?” she asks.

You roll your eyes and hit the blend button. “Define nice.”

“That means no,” she says.

“That means I’m busy,” you say.

“You’re always busy.” She shakes her head, then softens it with a smile. “Don’t let them take everything from you, honey.”

You don’t ask who them is. School. Work. Time. The city. It could be any of them or all at once.

You hand her the smoothie. She slips a five-dollar bill into the tip jar, ignoring the price.

“That’s too—” you start.

“Take it,” she says. “I like to imagine I’m paying for your future palace.”

“I’ll name a shrub after you,” you say.

“Name a room,” she retorts. “I’m not a shrub.”

You laugh as she wanders away, her visor bobbing through the crowd.

The afternoon stretches. You settle into the dual rhythm of working and studying, your fingers moving automatically over the register while your eyes sneak back to the open book between customers. The names of medications blend with the names of beachside vendors and regulars in your head.

It’s not until later, when the sun has shifted and your shoulders have started to ache from standing, that you see him.

Not him, not yet.

First, you hear the voice.

“Hey, Scrubs.”

You look up.

A man in a half-zipped wetsuit leans against the counter, salt drying on his chest in pale streaks. His hair is sun-bleached and damp, curling at the ends, and his grin is the kind that has probably gotten him out of more trouble than it should have.

“You know this is a medical establishment now,” you say. “I can’t talk to you without a co-pay.”

He barks a laugh. “Damn. Deran said you were mean. He undersold it.”

You realize, belatedly, that you’ve seen him before—on the boardwalk, near the water, drifting in and out of the periphery of stories you do not yet know. You don’t have a name to go with the face, but he carries himself with the loose, careless swagger of someone very used to being where he wants to be.

The wetsuit he’s wearing is one of yours. You recognize the faded logo.

“What’s wrong with it?” you ask, nodding at the suit.

“It’s been trying to drown me,” he says. “Zipper’s stuck. Arms are cursed.”

“Sounds like user error,” you say.

His grin widens. “You calling me incompetent, Scrubs?”

“I’m calling you someone who didn’t read the rental agreement,” you say, reaching for the clipboard. “Name?”

“Craig.”

“Last name?”

He hesitates for a fraction of a second. It’s subtle enough that if you weren’t trained to notice small changes in people’s faces, you might miss it.

“Cody,” he says.

The name means nothing to you.

You write it down without reaction.

“All right, Craig Cody,” you say. “Turn around. Let me see the damage.”

He does, spinning so his back faces you, arms spread theatrically as though presenting himself for inspection. The zipper has snagged halfway, teeth misaligned. It’s an easy fix.

“Hold still,” you say.

“Always do,” he replies.

You hook your fingers around the tab and work it gently, coaxing the teeth back onto the right track. It slides up with a reluctant zip.

“There,” you say. “You’ll live.”

He spins back around, hands on his hips. “What, no sticker? No lollipop? Worst clinic ever.”

“You’re a grown man,” you say. “You can buy your own lollipops.”

He leans on the counter again, studying you with open curiosity.

“You really a nurse?” he asks.

“Student,” you correct. “Halfway through.”

“Smart girl,” he says.

“Too tired for flattery,” you reply.

He laughs, delighted. “Deran’s gonna lose his mind.”

“Who?”

“My brother.” He jerks his chin in the general direction of the water. “Owns a bar. Thinks he’s mysterious. He said there was this mean little nurse at the Shack who didn’t fall for his charm.” He winks. “I told him he was getting old.”

You decide not to unpack that.

Instead, you nod at the ocean behind him. “You gonna stand here all day or actually surf?”

He presses a hand over his heart as though wounded. “You trying to get rid of me, Scrubs?”

“I’m trying to work,” you say, as the bell on the counter rings to punctuate your point.

A child in a sunhat beams up at you, one sticky hand already reaching for the tip jar. Marco materializes out of nowhere and gently redirects it.

“Later,” he tells Craig without looking. “She’s on my clock.”

Craig pushes away from the counter with exaggerated reluctance, but not before flicking a glance at your name tag, finally reading it.

He says your name aloud, tasting it. “Nice to meet you, Scrubs-Real-Name.”

“You’ve already forgotten it,” you say.

“Probably,” he agrees cheerfully. “I’ll be back.”

You watch him jog toward the shoreline, board under his arm, his laughter folding into the noise of the crowd.

You don’t see the man at the railing.

If you weren’t busy rinsing a blender and ringing up a sunscreen for a tourist who insists on paying in exact change, you might have noticed him earlier: a tall figure standing apart from the flow, leaning on the boardwalk rail with his hands curled loose over the metal, gaze fixed not on the crush of people but on the line where the water meets the sky.

If you had, the day might have ended differently in your memory.

As it is, he is just another unnoticed absence in the framework of your life, waiting.

The afternoon builds in layers.

By two o’clock the boardwalk is a moving picture: tourists shuffling past with sunburnt shoulders and paper cups, teenagers weaving through them on skateboards, parents herding damp children away from the edge of the sand. Music spills from somewhere—some stall down the way playing a playlist that can’t decide what decade it prefers. The ocean keeps doing what it always does, unbothered, waves shouldering in and dissolving on the shore.

You fall into the rhythm of it.

A family from Ohio rents three beginner boards. A couple from somewhere up north wants to argue about whether the “reef-safe” sunscreen is actually reef-safe. You make a smoothie for a girl who looks like she should be in school and listen while she tells you, breathless, about catching her first clean wave that morning.

“Thought I was gonna die,” she says. “And then I didn’t. It was…sick.”

“You’ll be back tomorrow,” you tell her, handing over the cup.

She grins, already nodding. “Hell yeah.”

Ms. Jenkins returns mid-afternoon, as she always does, claiming she needs to “check the tide” even though she could just look at the chart posted by the lifeguard stand. She leans on the counter and complains about her knees for five minutes and then, as if remembering something, taps a crooked finger against the laminated tip jar sign.

“You still thinking about that program?” she asks.

“Which one?” you say, though you know exactly what she means.

“Your nurse thing,” she says. “The extra letters you said you wanted.”

“BSN,” you say. “Yeah. Still thinking about it.”

“You still killing yourself for it,” she corrects.

“That too,” you say lightly.

She squints at you, then at the open textbook under the counter. “You’re going to do it.”

It’s not a question. It lands with the same certainty as vital signs written in ink.

“I’m going to try,” you say.

“You’re going to do it,” she repeats. “And when you get there, you remember this place. Remember you were your own person before anybody else tried to claim you. You hear me?”

There is something in her tone that makes your throat thick.

You nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

She nods back once, satisfied, and shuffles off, visor tilted against the sun.

The Salt Shack door opens then, letting in a spear of white light that cuts across the floor.

“Hey, can you—”

You don’t finish the sentence, because the person stepping in is not a stranger.

He’s the owner of the surf shop a few stalls down, the one with the glass front and the expensive branded boards lining the walls. His name is Tom or Todd or something else that starts with a sigh. You’ve seen him a hundred times and never heard him call anyone by name.

“Afternoon,” he says. “Got a kid asking if your rentals are good for his level. Figured I’d send him here before he breaks his neck on my stock.”

“Nice of you,” you say. “We’ll take your overflow.”

He leans his elbows on the counter, glancing over your shoulder at the racks of boards, expression unimpressed.

“See Cody out there?” he asks.

You blink. “Who?”

He jerks his head toward the water. “Craig. Brunette idiot. Arrogant. Wraps his leash around his ankle like he’s never seen the ocean before.”

You follow his gaze.

It takes a moment to pick Craig out of the cluster of bodies bobbing beyond the break, but once you find him you can’t really miss him. He’s the one cutting across a wave with his arms too wide, yelling something you can’t hear at someone you don’t know. He looks like he was born on a board and, simultaneously, like he’s trying to impress an audience that exists only in his head.

“Yeah,” you say. “He was here earlier.”

Tom’s mouth twists.

“Figures,” he says. “Those boys always were trouble.”

You turn back to him. “Those boys?”

He seems to realize, belatedly, that he’s said more than he meant to.

“Nothing,” he says too quickly. “Old people talk.”

“You’re not old,” you say.

He snorts. “I feel it when they come around.”

There’s something in his voice that’s more wary than annoyed. You recognize that tone. You heard it in the rehab facility this morning, in the son who asked if his mother would be comfortable and meant, is she going to die while I’m at work?

“Problem?” you ask.

He forces a smile. “Just don’t like certain last names around my insurance premiums, that’s all.”

“Cody?” you say, testing the weight of it.

He exhales through his nose. “Janine raised them wild. Good for business sometimes. Bad for everybody else.” He straightens, already regretting the loose honesty. “Don’t let him charm you. He doesn’t mean half the things he says.”

“And the other half?” you ask.

“He means too much,” he says, then shakes his head like he’s brushing off a memory. “Take it from someone who’s been here a long time. You keep your head on straight, you’ll be fine.”

He nods once toward your textbook as though that settles something—like ambition is armor—and leaves without waiting for a reply.

You watch him go, the line of his shoulders tight.

You tell yourself it’s none of your business.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The afternoon drifts toward evening, the heat bleeding out of the day in slow increments. Shadows lengthen across the planks of the boardwalk. The crowd thins and then swells again as people trade beach towels for sweaters, salt-sticky skin for clean clothes from the backs of cars.

Marco puts on a sweatshirt with the shack’s faded logo across the front and starts wiping down surfaces no one has touched.

“You can cut out at eight,” he says. “I’ll close.”

“You sure?” you ask. “I can stay.”

“You already put in your hours across town,” he says. “I’m not trying to get sued for exploitation.”

“That implies you have a lawyer,” you say.

“That implies I have money,” he counters.

You smile despite the ache in your feet.

The clock above the register reads seven forty-five.

In fifteen minutes, you’ll be done. In thirty, you could be home. In forty-five, you could be asleep.

The thought makes your bones sing.

A group of teenagers wanders up, still damp from the ocean, and rents three boards for an hour. A woman in a visor that says MOMMY NEEDS WINE buys two bottles of sunscreen and tells you, too loudly, that her children are tyrants. You nod sympathetically, ring up the sale, and think briefly of Ms. Alvarez’s daughter holding her mother’s hand.

Somewhere in there, Craig returns.

You don’t see him at first. You hear him.

“Scrubs!” he yells from twenty feet away, as though you might have forgotten he exists and need an auditory reminder.

“You know she has a real name,” Marco mutters under his breath.

“I’m not convinced he’s learned it,” you say.

Craig saunters up to the shack with his board under his arm and his wetsuit half-peeled down to his waist. His chest is flushed pink from the sun, his hair dripping and wild.

“Best waves we’ve had in weeks,” he says, as though you asked. “You see that last run?”

“I don’t have telescopic vision,” you say. “And if I did, I’d use it for more important things than watching you wipe out.”

“Slander,” he says, clutching at his heart. “I was majestic.”

Marco, who has been listening with the patient exasperation of a man who has seen this pattern play out too many times, snorts and turns away.

Craig leans on the counter, unabashed.

“You get off soon?” he asks.

“Why,” you say, “are you planning to injure yourself right before I leave so I feel obligated to stay?”

He grins. “I mean, if that’s what it takes to get your number…”

“You’re not my type,” you say.

“Heartbreaking,” he says, but there’s no real sting in it. He looks more entertained than offended, as though your resistance is a novelty.

He returns the board and wetsuit without incident this time, dropping them in the barrel with exaggerated care. You check the fins, the leash, the seams. Everything is intact. You tick his name off the rental sheet.

“Hey,” he says suddenly, as you’re about to close the folder. “You work anywhere else?”

“Why?”

“Information,” he says. “For plotting.”

“Then no,” you say. “I live here. In this shack. I sleep upright in the wetsuit rack.”

He stares at you for a second, then bursts out laughing. It’s loud and unrestrained in a way that makes three people at the churro stand glance over.

“Deran was right,” he says, once he can breathe again. “You’re mean.”

“You keep saying that like it’s an insult,” you say.

“It’s hot,” he says.

“You’re wet and dripping on my floor,” you reply. “Go home.”

He salutes, still grinning, and backs away.

“See you, Scrubs,” he calls.

You do not say see you back.

You’re too busy wiping down the counter to notice the way his eyes flick, briefly, to the side—to the railing, where a tall figure stands half in shadow, one forearm resting on the wood as he watches the horizon.

You don’t see Craig walk up to him, slap him on the shoulder, gesture animatedly toward the shack. You don’t hear whatever half-formed jokes pass between them, the way one voice rises and falls and the other answers with almost nothing at all.

You don’t see the way the other man does not look at you directly. How his gaze circles the shack’s open front, catching on your movement and flinching away again, as if aware of his own watchfulness.

You flavor it later with what you will know then. For now, it’s just evening and work and the promise of sleep.

At eight exactly, Marco shoos you away.

“Go,” he says, flipping the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. “You’re starting to look like a ghost story.”

“Thanks,” you say. “That’s the look I was going for.”

You untie your apron and hang it on the hook, tuck your textbook back into your bag, count the drawer while Marco does a vague approximation of wiping down the smoothie machines. The cash is sticky with sugar and sweat; the coins are cold and familiar in your fingers.

You’re about to close the register when you notice something in the tip jar that wasn’t there before.

Among the usual crumpled ones and the five Ms. Jenkins slipped in earlier, there’s a folded napkin.

You frown, fishing it out with two fingers. The weight of it is wrong. There’s a slip of paper inside.

“I didn’t see anyone put that in,” Marco says, leaning closer.

You open the napkin.

A phone number is scrawled across the napkin in surprisingly neat handwriting, a name under it. Craig, followed by a smiley face that looks more like an accidental stab of the pen than an intentional expression.

You stare at it for a moment.

Marco makes a low noise that could be either amusement or dismay.

“Bold,” he says.

You fold the napkin again.

“I’m not calling him,” you say.

“I didn’t say you should,” Marco replies. “I said it’s bold.”

You drop the napkin into the trash with more ceremony than necessary.

Marco watches it disappear under a pile of used smoothie cups and straws.

“You know he’s not used to that,” he says.

“Then consider it educational,” you say.

Marco laughs softly. “Careful, niña. Some boys think lessons are invitations.”

“That’s their problem,” you say, slinging your bag over your shoulder.

“Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes it becomes yours.”

You don’t like the way that sits in your stomach.

“Lock up behind me,” you say.

He gives you a lazy salute. “Always.”

You step out onto the boardwalk.

The light has shifted again. The sky is deepening toward indigo, the pink streaks over the ocean fading into gray. The air smells more of fried food now than salt, the tide whispering under the noise of people packing up for the day.

You turn your face toward home.

If you had glanced back at the shack, you might have noticed a man standing at the far edge of the boardwalk, near the railing, still as the post beside him. You might have noticed the way his gaze tracked you as you walked, not with ownership or expectation, but with a wary kind of curiosity, as though he were waiting to see which way you’d turn at the end of the planks.

You don’t look back.

You don’t see him watch you disappear into the thinning crowd.

You walk home with salt dried on your skin and the faint sweetness of mango still clinging to your hands. Your shoulders ache. Your feet hurt. Your brain is full of medication dosages and the color of Ms. Alvarez’s daughter’s eyes when you handed her the chart to sign.

You tell yourself you’ll sleep the second you hit your bed.

You don’t know yet that when you close your eyes, the last image that will surface before sleep is not the rehab facility or Ms. Alvarez’s braid or Craig’s grin, but the blurred memory of a man at the railing, half-shadow, half-light, and the strange feeling that there was a second storm on the boardwalk today you never quite saw.

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 5 AM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

At 5:00 AM, the ER finally quiets—and for the first time all night, it’s not the chaos you’re trying to survive.

Word Count: 3.8 K

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

5:00 AM

By five in the morning, the emergency department no longer feels like a place meant for people.

It feels like something that has been used up.

The sharp chaos of earlier has burned itself out, leaving behind something quieter, but not peaceful. The kind of quiet that hums. That lingers. That still carries the weight of everything that just happened.

The overhead lights buzz faintly, casting long, pale strips across the floor. The shine of the tile has dulled where it’s been cleaned too many times in too short a span, faint streaks catching in the light if you look too closely.

You sit at the workstation with your shoulders curved inward, your body folding in on itself in a way you hadn’t noticed until now. The laptop is still open in front of you, the screen washed in white and pale blue, the cursor blinking patiently at the end of a note you’ve read three times without actually processing.

Your fingers hover over the keyboard, unmoving. For the first time all night, you’re not racing anything. And without the adrenaline pushing you forward, everything else crashes in at once.

Your wrists ache.

Not sharp, it’s worse than that. A deep, constant pull that radiates up your forearms every time you flex your fingers. You press your palms lightly against the edge of the counter, stretching them out, trying to shake it loose, which provides little to no relief.

On top of that, your neck is tight, and your eyes burn. You’re exhausted in a way that feels almost… unreal. Like your body is trying to shut down while your brain refuses to let it.

“Don’t fall asleep on me.”

His voice cuts through the quiet. It’s low and close. You hadn’t heard him approach.

You look up to see Abbot is standing a few feet away, chart tucked loosely under one arm, his other hand resting against the edge of the counter like he’d been there longer than you realized.

There’s something different about him now since the attack and the conversation. It’s not exactly softer, but more so, less contained.

The sharp edges of control he carries so easily during chaos have loosened slightly, worn down by hours of work and no rest. His sleeves are still rolled, the fabric creased and marked from the night, his forearms exposed in a way that feels almost distracting now that you’re actually noticing things again. His hair has fallen out of place. A few strands slipped forward over his forehead.

“I’m not,” you say, your voice quieter than you intend.

Abbot’s gaze drops briefly to your hands. His hands are still braced against the counter, tense. “You were about thirty seconds away.”

“I was resting my eyes.”

“Sure you were.” He lifts an eyebrow.

You let out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, his eyes remain on you. His gaze moves, slowly and deliberately, taking in the way your shoulders are slumped, the tension in your hands, the slight delay in your reactions. His hazel eyes linger longer than they should.

“Have you eaten?”

The question lands out of nowhere.

You blink. “…What?”

“You heard me.”

You hesitate. Simply because the answer is immediate and not something you can really spin into sounding okay. “…No.”

His expression doesn’t change, but something shifts behind it. “When was the last time you ate?”

You try to think and immediately regret it. “...Um, breakfast.”

“As in the time of day a normal person would eat breakfast?”

“It’s not that big of a deal.” You straighten slightly. “I was busy.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“It kind of is.”

“No, it’s not.” The word is calm and final. Before you can argue, he’s already reaching into his pocket, pulling out his phone like the conversation is over.

You stare at him. “…What are you doing?”

“Fixing it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” He doesn’t even look up. His thumb moves across the screen quickly, efficiently, like ordering food at five in the morning for someone else is as routine as writing orders.

Your chest tightens. “You’re not seriously—

“What do you want?”

You freeze. “What?”

He glances up at you, just briefly. “Food.” 

There’s no hesitation in the question. No room for deflection. You look at him, then away. “…Something easy.”

“Done.”

He doesn’t ask anything else. Just finishes the order and slides the phone back into his pocket like it was never a discussion to begin with. And that, that does something to you.

….

The central desk feels more alive than the rest of the department. Not busy, but occupied.

Ellis stands on one side, flipping through a chart, her hair half-fallen out of whatever tie she’d put it in hours ago. Shen is leaning back in his chair like he owns the place, one ankle hooked over his knee, looking entirely too awake for someone who just worked through a mass casualty. He’s still slurping on an almost empty Dunkin' cup. 

His scribe sits beside him, looking utterly miserable. The guy has two charts open, both unfinished, his eyes flicking between them like he’s trying to will them into completion. Which is unfortunately not working.

Ellis looks up when you approach. Her gaze softens slightly. “You’re still standing.”

“Barely.”

Shen snorts. “That’s disappointing. I thought Abbot would’ve worked you into the ground by now.”

“He tried,” you say lightly.

“Still working on it,” Abbot mutters from behind you.

You hadn’t heard him follow, again. It’s starting to get annoying how smooth he is.

Shen grins. “There he is.”

He gestures lazily toward you. “You know I still think you should be working with other very capable physicians who would so gratefully appreciate your competency.”

Abbot doesn’t even look at him, pretending to be busy putting away the chart so as not to hear the question. 

Shen laughs. “You’re not even going to consider it?”

“No.”

You quickly pull out your flashcards before that conversation goes anywhere else.

“Pharm,” you say, flipping the first card.

Ellis raises an eyebrow. “You’re studying now?”

“I have an exam.”

Shen straightens just enough to show interest. “Alright. Let’s hear it.”

You inhale. “Vancomycin—”

“Indication,” Ellis cuts in smoothly.

“Serious gram-positive infections, especially MRSA—”

“Side effects,” Shen adds.

“Nephrotoxicity, ototoxicity, red man syndrome—”

Abbot’s voice comes from just beside you. “Administration?"

You glance at him, maybe a little too quickly. “…Slow infusion. At least sixty minutes.”

He nods once. “Good.”

Shen groans. “Of course she’s good. She’s your scribe.”

Abbot’s response is immediate. “She is good because of her own dedication.”

Shen gestures to his own scribe. “Take notes.”

The guy looks like he might actually pass out.

Ellis laughs quietly. And you feel something warm settle low in your chest.

...

You stay at the desk longer than you mean to, flipping through flashcards, answering questions, half-studying, half-watching everything around you.

But you’re aware and too aware of where Abbot is. When he moves. When he’s looking at you. Enough that every time your eyes lift, there’s a chance—

He’s already looking. And every time it happens, your stomach tightens, and your focus slips.

You don’t realize how hungry you are until the smell hits you. The wafting smell of 

It cuts through everything. Your stomach reacts before your brain does. Abbot notices. Of course he does. “Come on.”

You look up. “What?”

“The lounge.”

“But the floor—”

“Will survive ten minutes.” 

You hesitate for a split second and stand anyway.

Your footsteps echo softly as you follow him, the distance between you small enough that you’re aware of it. Aware of the way he slows slightly to match your pace. Aware of the fact that he didn’t have to.

But he did.

…

The lounge is quiet in a way that the rest of the hospital isn’t. The low hum of the vending machine fills the background, steady and mechanical, almost soothing compared to the layered noise of the department. The overhead lights are dimmer here, warmer, casting soft shadows across the walls and the worn couch tucked into the corner.

It feels like a place people come to forget where they are. Even if it’s only for a few minutes.

You’re halfway through your food before you realize you haven’t spoken. Haven’t done anything except eat and try not to think about how aware you are of him standing across from you.

 He’s leaning against the counter with that same quiet presence that somehow manages to take up more space than it should.

He’s not looking at his phone. Not checking a chart. Not moving.

Just… there. Watching.

You swallow, shifting slightly in your seat. “You don’t have to just stand there,” you say, trying for casual and landing somewhere slightly off.

“I know.” He stays right where he is.

You look up, and he’s already looking at you. There’s something different in his expression now.

“Then why are you?” you ask.

“I like knowing you’re actually eating it.”

You blink. “That’s… a little controlling.”

“Maybe.”

There’s no denial, no softening. He just says it like it doesn’t need to be explained. Your pulse stutters. You look back down at your food. You take another bite.

Slowly.

Your wrist twinges again, only this time it's sharper. You flinch slightly, but it's noticeable.

He of course sees it immediately. “Stop.”

Your head lifts. “What?”

“The wrist thing.”

You freeze slightly. “It’s nothing.”

“No,” he says, pushing off the counter now. “It’s not.”

And suddenly, He’s closer. You can feel it in him.

The shift.

The space between you is closing by just enough to matter.

“Give me your hand,” he says.

Your breath catches. “…You’re very bossy when you’re off the floor.”

“Only when I’m right.”

You hesitate just long enough for his eyes to flick to yours then lower. “Don’t make me ask twice.”

There’s something in the way he says it. His voice is gravely, and his tone leaves no room for objection.

Your stomach flips. You slowly set your food down and hold your hand out.

He takes it without hesitation. His grip is careful but firm. His fingers wrap around your wrist, turning it slightly, exposing the inside of your palm to the light. His touch is warm—steady in a way that feels grounding and entirely too noticeable at the same time.

You try not to react.. and fail miserably. This contact gives you time to really look at his face. Not like you haven't had past encounters today to satiate that need.

He’s close enough that you can see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the tired lines near his eyes, the way his focus narrows entirely onto what he’s doing.

“You’re straining it,” he murmurs.

His thumb presses lightly along the tendon. “Does that—”

You inhale sharply. “Yeah.”

You don’t even let him finish.

Because yes. It does hurt a lot.

He doesn’t pull away. Instead, his fingers adjust slightly, pressing in a different spot—more precise this time.

You suck in a quiet breath.

He notices. Of course he does.

“Too much?” he asks, his voice is softer now. Much more gentler. 

You shake your head. “No.”

It comes out too fast. A little too honest.

Something flickers in his expression. His thumb slows, just slightly. Like he’s aware of it now. Of the effect he has on you.

“You’re going to injure it if you keep pushing like that,” he says, but his tone has shifted—less professional, more… something else.

You swallow. “Kind of hard not to.”

“That’s not true.”

You look at him. He finally lifts his gaze to meet yours. And the moment your gaze locks—it holds.

“You’re allowed to slow down,” he says.

The words land differently. Not as advice, more so as something closer to a challenge. You shake your head slightly. “Not here.”

His grip on your wrist tightens just a fraction. Not enough to hurt.Just enough for you to look at him.

“Especially here.”

Your breath catches. The room suddenly feels smaller and warmer. Your pulse is loud enough that you’re sure he can feel it under his fingers.

“You’re not invincible,” he adds quietly.

Neither are you, you almost say. But the words don’t come out, because he’s still holding your wrist. He’s still too close. And still looking at you like—

like he’s trying to decide something.

You try to pull your hand back. Not abruptly, but just enough to break the contact. He doesn’t stop you. But his fingers don’t immediately let go either.

There’s a second.

A pause.

Then—

he releases you.

Slowly.

And somehow that feels worse than if he hadn’t at all. You flex your fingers, trying to regain some sense of control.

“That’s going to bruise,” you say lightly.

“Then maybe you’ll remember to take it easy.”

You glance at him. “That was not light pressure.”

“No,” he agrees. “It wasn’t.”

You shake your head slightly. “You’re intense.”

His mouth curves faintly. “I’ve been called worse.”

You huff quietly. “I can imagine.”

There’s a beat.

“You always deflect when something gets close to you?”

Your stomach drops slightly. “That felt like a loaded question.”

“It was.”

You lean back slightly in your chair, trying to buy space. “Why?”

His gaze doesn’t move. “Because I’m trying to figure out if you do it on purpose.”

You hold his gaze. “…And?”

“I think you do.”

Your pulse picks up.

“Or,” you say carefully, “I just don’t feel like being psychoanalyzed at five in the morning.”

His expression shifts. Not one of the offensive, but rather more interested. “Fair, but I’m not wrong.”

You exhale slowly. “You’re a little too observant.”

“I told you,” he says quietly. “I notice things.”

“So,” you say, trying to lighten it, “what happens if I don’t slow down?”

His response is immediate. “You will burn out.”

You blink. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

You look back at him. His expression is steady, but less guarded.

“You push like that long enough,” he continues, quieter now, “you stop noticing when you’re exhausted. You stop noticing when something’s wrong.”

His eyes flick briefly to your wrist before they come back to your face. “And then one day you miss something you shouldn’t.”

Your breath slows. “That sounds… specific.”

“It is.”

You don’t ask, even though you want to. Instead, you try to shift the conversation. Because you need to.

“Okay,” you say lightly. “What if I just worked with someone less intense?”

His gaze sharpens instantly. “Who?”

You shrug. “I don’t know. Someone easier.”

His head tilts slightly. “Easier.”

“Yeah. Less… you.”

There’s a pause.

“No.”

The word lands flat, certain.

You blink. “That was fast.”

“I didn’t need to think about it.”

Your heart skips. “That’s a little—”

“Accurate?”

“Possessive.”

There it is.

You said it.

The word hangs in the air between you. He doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t deflect. Doesn’t laugh. Instead, he steps closer.

Again.

“Do you mind?” he asks.

Your breath catches. Because that— that’s different. Not defensive. Not dismissive. Direct.

You swallow. “…I don’t know.”

Honest. Maybe a little too honest. His gaze drops briefly to your mouth. Then back to your eyes. And that is not subtle.

“You should figure that out,” he says quietly.

The air in the room has changed. It’s not subtle anymore. Not something you can ignore or pretend isn’t there.

It’s heavier. Closer.

The space between you and Abbot feels smaller than it should, like something invisible has shifted and neither of you is quite willing to acknowledge it out loud.

You’re still sitting.

He’s still standing.

Too close. Not touching. But close enough that it matters.

Close enough that every small movement feels amplified.

You become aware of everything.

The quiet hum of the machine behind you. The faint tick of something cooling in the corner. The way your own breathing sounds louder than it should.

You shift slightly in your seat, more to break the feeling than because you actually need to move. It doesn’t help.

“Say something,” you mutter quietly, the words slipping out before you can stop them.

His eyebrow lifts. “About what?”

You gesture vaguely between the two of you. “This.”

There’s a pause. He doesn’t look confused. Doesn’t look surprised. If anything, he looks like he’s been waiting for you to say it.

“You want me to define it?” he asks.

Your pulse jumps. “That would be a start.”

Another pause. This one is heavier, more deliberate. Then—

“No.”

The word is calm. Controlled.

But there’s something underneath it now. Something that presses into your chest.

You stare at him. “No?”

“No.”

You exhale. “That’s not helpful.”

“It’s not supposed to be.”

Your heart stumbles slightly.

“Then what is it supposed to be?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, his gaze shifts—slow, deliberate—taking you in the same way he had earlier. Something that feels like it has weight behind it.

“Complicated,” he says finally.

You let out a quiet, breathless laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”

“It’s the only way to put it.”

You shake your head slightly. “That’s such a man answer.”

His mouth twitches faintly. “Would you prefer something more complex?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

You blink. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’ve been told that.”

You push back slightly from the table, creating space. You need it.

But the moment you do, he steps forward. Not aggressively, not fast. Just purely intentionally. Closing the distance you just made.

Your breath catches.

“Don’t do that,” you say quietly.

“Do what?”

“That. What you just did.”

He tilts his head slightly. “You mean stand closer?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Your throat tightens. Because there isn’t a good answer to that. Not one you’re willing to say out loud. “You know why.”

He watches you. “I want to hear you say it.”

Your pulse spikes. “That’s not fair.”

“No,” he agrees. “It’s not.”

And somehow that makes it worse.

Because he knows. He knows exactly what he’s doing. And he’s doing it anyway.

You look away. Because if you keep looking at him, you’re not sure what’s going to happen.

“It’s inappropriate,” you say finally, grasping for something solid.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

You let out a quiet breath. “You’re my attending.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

You look back at him, and his gaze hasn’t moved. “Then what did you ask?”

“Why is it inappropriate?”

You stare at him. Because he’s not letting you hide behind it. Not letting you default to the easy answer.

“You know why,” you say again.

He shakes his head slightly. “I want your answer.”

Your chest tightens. “…Because it’s not supposed to feel like this.”

The words slip out softer than you intended. But when they land, he goes still. You can feel it.

That shift.

“That,” he says quietly, “is a better answer.”

Your breath catches. You shouldn’t have said that. You know you shouldn’t have said that. But it’s too late now. Because he heard it and he’s not ignoring it.

“Say it again,” he says.

Your head snaps up. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Your pulse is racing now. “I’m not repeating that.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” You stop yourself. Because what? Because it’s true? Because it changes things? Because it makes this real?

Your silence answers for you. He watches you for a long moment. Then, “You’re not wrong.”

You swallow. “…That doesn’t make it better.”

“No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”

A beat.

Then—

“But it doesn’t make it go away either.”

Your chest tightens. The room feels smaller and warmer.

You should step back, you should leave. You should—

You don’t move, and neither does he. And that’s the problem. Because you’re both standing there. Knowing exactly where the line is. And how close you are to it.

Your hand moves before your brain catches up. Not intentionally. Not really.

You reach for your coffee cup, but misjudge the distance slightly, your fingers brushing against his hand instead.

It’s brief. Accidental.

But it’s enough.

Everything stills.

Your breath catches.

So does his.

You should pull away.

Immediately.

Instead, you hesitate. Just for a second. And in that second, his hand shifts.

Not grabbing, not holding. Just… adjusting.

Enough that your fingers don’t separate right away.

The contact is light. Barely there. But it’s intentional now.

You feel it.

He feels it.

Neither of you moves.

Your heart is pounding. Your thoughts are gone. All you’re aware of is the warmth of his hand against yours and the fact that this—

This is the moment. The one you don’t come back from.

Your voice is barely there when you speak. “…We shouldn’t.”

It’s not firm, totally not convincing. He doesn’t let go. “I know.”

The words are just as quiet, just as unconvincing.

Your fingers shift slightly. Not pulling away. Not leaning in. Just… there.

Suspended.

“You’re not stopping,” you whisper.

“You’re not either.” That lands, because he’s right. And you both know it.

Your chest rises with a slow breath. You can feel it now— how close he is. How little distance there actually is between you. How easy it would be to close it. How soft his lips look right now.  It would be too easy.

Your fingers finally move. You slowly pull your hand back. And this time, he lets you. The loss of contact is immediate. Sharp in a way you didn’t expect. You look down and back up.

And the tension, it doesn’t break.

It just…settles into something heavier. More real.

He steps back first, shifting to give you your space back.

“That was a bad idea,” you say quietly.

“Probably.”

“You didn’t sound convincing.”

“It wasn’t.”

You let out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “This is such a mess.”

“Yes.”

Another beat.

Then—

“Are you going to pretend it didn’t happen?” you ask.

He considers that and shakes his head. “No.”

Your stomach flips.

“Good,” you say before you can stop yourself. And now it’s your turn to realize what you just admitted.

A small, knowing look crosses his face. It’s not smug or teasing. Just… aware.

“You should finish your food,” he says.

The shift is subtle. But it doesn’t erase what just happened. Nothing really will.

You nod slowly. “Yeah.”

He turns slightly toward the door. Then pauses for just a second. Without looking back, he says, “Don’t work with anyone else.”

Your breath catches. And before you can respond, he’s already walking out. Leaving you alone in the quiet room with your untouched coffee.

Your pulse is racing. And the realization that you didn’t say no.

Taglist: @coffeeblackandcomfortablynumb @materialgirl-97 @soyelfleureon @amnatreal @rei-scorpio @starkgaryan @ilovechaiandyogurt @slowburnsky

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 4 AM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

At 4:00 AM, a familiar face from your past pushes all the wrong buttons—and Dr. Abbot makes it very clear he doesn’t like the competition.

WC: 4.2k

TW: Brief discussion of growing up in a toxic household.

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

4:00 AM

The emergency department hums quietly around you.

Not the frantic chaos it had been earlier in the night — just the steady mechanical rhythm of a hospital that never truly sleeps. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor chirps softly. A printer near the nurses’ station spits out a lab report with a low mechanical whir. The faint scent of disinfectant drifts through the hallway, mingling with the stale coffee that has been sitting in the break room since midnight.

The overhead lights have been dimmed in most of the trauma area now, leaving the department washed in that strange pale glow hospitals seem to take on in the early morning hours.

Your heart is beating far louder than anything else in the room. He just said he’s protective of me.

His expression shifts almost immediately back into its usual controlled neutrality. Still, the air between the two of you feels different now. Almost charged in a way that makes it difficult to breathe normally.

“If you’re feeling okay, we should probably get back out there,” he says quietly.

Your voice comes out softer than you intended. “Right.”

You move away, breaking the physical tension. You move to swifty grab the long forgotten laptop and open it to log in again, although your brain has completely forgotten what chart you were even working on before the assault.

You and Abbot leave the room, walking side by side at a comfortable pace for once. He turns slightly toward the trauma board, scanning the remaining patients. There aren’t many left now.

The worst of the night has passed.

A few minor injuries remain. One intoxicated patient is under observation. The burn patient McKay had treated earlier is sleeping comfortably, waiting for a room upstairs still. For the first time since the shift began, the emergency department almost feels… peaceful.

Almost.

Dana breaks the quiet. Her voice cuts across the hallway from the nurses’ station. “New patient.”

“From EMS?” Abbot glances up.

“Nope,” she gestures toward the waiting room, “Walk-in.”

“At four in the morning.” Abbot sighs quietly.

Dana shrugs.

“Apparently.”

Abbot turns toward you.

“Come on.”

You grab the laptop and follow him down the hallway.

…..

The room door to seven creaks softly as Abbot pushes it open. The overhead light inside the room is still dim, casting long shadows across the pale green walls. The exam bed sits in the center of the room, with the paper sheet slightly crumpled where the patient must have sat down.

And sitting on that bed is someone you absolutely did not expect to see tonight. Ethan Carter.

Your stomach drops. 

Ethan is leaning back against the pillow like he owns the place, one leg dangling casually over the side of the bed. His dark hair is slightly messy, like he ran his hands through it one too many times, and the collar of his hoodie is pushed back enough to reveal the faint purple bruise forming along his temple. But the moment he sees you, his entire face lights up.

“Well, well,” he says slowly.

Your heart sinks.

Abbott glances between the two of you.

“You know him.”

“We go to school together.” You sigh, wishing this manchild would just fall into a hole and die.

“We go to the same nursing school.” Ethan grins. He leans forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees while his eyes sweep over you with open curiosity. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Obviously,” Your arms cross instinctively.

“Damn.” Ethan lets out a low whistle.

Abbot’s posture shifts beside you. His broad shoulders square and tighten slightly. Something that would normally be barely noticeable. But you notice it immediately.

“Well, what seems to be the emergency tonight?” Abbot asks. His voice is tight, professional. Slightly colder than usual.

“Oh — right.” Ethan finally glances toward him.  He gestures vaguely toward his head, “Just a minor head injury.”

“How did this minor head injury occur?” Abbot asks while snapping on some gloves to examine the patient’s head. He starts feeling around his skull, assessing for any hematomas or lacerations.

“Basketball game got a little aggressive.” Ethan shrugs. His gaze barely lands on Abbot before his attention slides right back to you. “You, however, look exhausted.”

“Thanks.” You deadpan.

“No, seriously.” Ethan smiles lazily, his eyes holding a glimmer of mischief in them. He tilts his head slightly, a shit-eating smirk adorning his face. “Do you always look this cute at four in the morning?”

Abbot's fingers halt for just a second while examining Ethan’s head. He finishes his physical examination, and his voice drops half a degree. “Any headaches?”

“Kinda.” Ethan sighs dramatically.

Abbot lifts his gaze from the boy on the bed to you, making sure you are still there. Still with him. You hold his gaze for a few seconds before he turns to sit on the stool in front of Ethan, trying to block you from his sleezy eyes. “Loss of consciousness?”

“Maybe for a second.”

“Any nausea and vomiting?”

“A little nausea.”

“Follow my finger.” Abbot moves closer to the bed.

Ethan obeys, though his eyes keep flicking toward you.

“(Y/n), you working all night?” he asks casually.

“Yeah.” You nod.

“Damn.” He smirks slightly, “That explains why you didn’t answer my texts.”

Abbot pauses mid-exam. Very slowly, he raises his gray-curled head to look Ethan in the eyes. Ethan notices the look, but instead of backing down, he simply grins wider.

“I’ve been trying to get her to go out with me for weeks,” he explains casually.

Abbot’s face becomes perfectly neutral.“Focus.”

“Relax, man.” Ethan chuckles before, unfortunately glancing at you again. “You free after this shift?”

Abbot finishes the exam without another word, standing up from the chair. His form towers over Ethan before he steps back from the bed.

“Mild concussion,” he says flatly, “Rest, hydration, and avoid physical activity for twenty-four hours.”

“Sounds boring.” Ethan shrugs.

Abbot opens the door. “Discharge papers will be ready shortly.”

Ethan sits up on the bed, slinging his legs off to the side as he stands up. “As long as (y/n) brings me the paperwork,” he glides to walk past you, and as he does, he leans slightly closer. “You should text me when you get off.”

Abbot’s jaw tightens. “You need to wait in here, and one of the nurses will bring you the paperwork once it's completed.” 

Ethan flashes you one last grin before heading out the door down the hallway. “Relax, old man, I’m using the bathroom.” 

The room feels smaller after Ethan leaves.

Not physically. It is still the same narrow exam room with its pale walls, the sink in the corner, the cheap rolling stool tucked half under the counter, and the paper on the bed still rumpled where he had been sitting. But the air feels altered somehow, sharpened by the silence he leaves behind and the look on Abbot’s face as the door swings shut behind him.

He doesn’t move right away. He just stands there beside the bed with one hand resting… no, more like gripping onto the rail, shoulders square, jaw set in that careful way of his that usually means he’s either holding back a comment or deciding whether one is worth making.

You set the laptop down on the counter a little too quickly. The plastic edge taps against the laminate with a sound that feels absurdly loud in the quiet.

Abbot glances toward it, then back at you. “You didn’t mention the texts.”

You blink. “Excuse me?”

“The texts,” he repeats, in the same mild tone he might use to ask whether a patient has any drug allergies. “He seemed under the impression there were texts.”

You can’t help it. A laugh slips out of you before you can stop it. Abbot’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s the faintest narrowing of his eyes, the kind that says he knows he’s being laughed at and hasn’t decided yet whether he minds you laughing at him.

“Oh my God,” you say, fighting a smile. “You are jealous.”

That gets a reaction.

Small. Almost imperceptible. A shift of posture, a slight tilt of his head, a look that lands somewhere between unimpressed and caught.

“I am not jealous,” he says.

“Mm.”

Abbott folds his arms loosely across his chest. “He was irritating.”

“He is irritating.”

“He was eye-fucking you while I was trying to evaluate him for a concussion.”

You lean one hip against the counter and look at him. Really look at him.

The loosened gray curls at his forehead. The fatigue sits in the corners of his hazel eyes. The sleeves rolled to his forearms. The calm, dry, maddening restraint of him even now, when the edge in his voice gives him away more than he realizes.

“So,” you say softly, “you were annoyed.”

Abbott holds your gaze for a beat too long. “Yes.”

The answer lands in the room between you with more weight than it should. Not because of the word itself, but because of how little he usually gives away.

Because he could have shrugged it off, deflected with sarcasm, changed the subject, done any of the things he usually does when a conversation gets too close to whatever it is he is feeling.

Instead, he said yes.

You glance toward the hallway through the crack in the open door, then back at him. The department beyond is quiet enough that you can hear the low murmur of Dana talking to a nurse at the desk, the distant hiss of a blood pressure cuff inflating in another room, the metallic clink of a supply drawer opening and closing somewhere farther down the hall.

But inside room seven, it feels like the whole hospital has gone still.

Abbot pushes away from the bed and walks toward the counter, stopping close enough that you straighten without meaning to.

He doesn’t crowd you.

He never really does.

That’s part of what makes moments like this so unbearable. He leaves space. Enough that you could walk away if you wanted to. Enough that you can feel how much he is choosing not to close the distance.

“What exactly is he to you?” Abbot asks.

The question is quiet. Controlled. Casual if you aren’t listening carefully.

But you are. You shrug, trying for lightness and not quite getting there. “A guy in one of my classes who thinks persistence is a personality trait.”

Abbot’s mouth twitches faintly, but the annoyance is still there beneath it.

“He’s been texting you.”

“He got my number from a study group chain.”

“And you kept answering?”

You stare at him. He realizes how that sounds half a second too late. The look on his face is almost worth the whole exchange.

It isn’t embarrassment exactly. Abbot doesn’t embarrass easily. But there is the slightest tightening around his eyes, as if he knows he has stepped a little too far into something that is not technically his business and is now deciding whether to retreat or keep going.

You save him.

“Sometimes,” you say. “Usually, to tell him to leave me alone.”

Abbott nods once, slowly, before looking away. Suddenly very interested in the painting on the wall. “Reasonable.”

You smile despite yourself. “You say that like it’s a medical recommendation.”

“It should be.”

That almost gets a real laugh out of you. The tension eases by a fraction. Not enough for it to go away, but just enough to breathe through it.

You open the chart again, mostly to give your hands something to do. The bright rectangle of the screen throws light across both of you, catching the edge of Abbott’s profile as he glances down at the note.

He doesn’t leave.

He could. The patient is discharged. The room is done. The ED is limping through the strange, hollowed-out hours before dawn, and there are a hundred other things he could be doing.

Instead, he stays beside you while you finish typing. You can feel him there, the quiet warmth of him, the shape of his presence filling the space without asking permission.

“You should chart the neuro exam,” he says.

“I was getting there.”

“You were glaring at the keyboard.”

“It’s an effective method.”

Abbot huffs a quiet laugh. The sound is low enough that it slips under your skin.

You type the rest of the note while he stands close enough to read over your shoulder. He points out a missing phrase without touching the computer, his hand hovering just above the screen.

“Add that he denied vomiting and document return precautions.” You add them as swiftly as he said them. When you finish, you hit the “ready to go” button and close the laptop. The click of it shutting feels like a marker, like something ending.

Or the beginning. You’re not sure which.

Abbot is still looking at you. There’s no humor in his expression now. No sarcasm either. Just that unnervingly direct focus of his, the one that makes you feel seen in ways that are difficult to survive.

“What?” you ask softly.

He takes a moment to answer.

“I’m trying to decide,” he says, “whether you attract trouble or if trouble just has excellent taste.”

The laugh that escapes you is surprised and breathless and a little too warm.

“That was smooth.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

You tilt your head. “You flirting with me now?”

Abbott’s mouth curves, but only barely. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

You shouldn’t be entertaining flirting with your boss. 

Instead, it does the opposite.

Because it’s the look in his eyes when he says it. It’s the roughness in his voice, the way his lips slightly part. Most importantly, simply because he doesn’t move away afterward.

You straighten from the counter slowly.

The room is still dim. Softly lit. Quiet enough that you can hear the rustle of your own scrubs when you shift your weight.

“Can I tell you something?” you say.

“You usually do.”

You roll your eyes. “Do you have to answer every serious question like that?”

“Yes.”

That gets you smiling again, but only briefly. Your eyes dip down to look at your fingers picking away at your skin. “I mean, actually.”

He doesn't say anything, making your eyes shoot up to see if you somehow ruined the moment. Already cursing yourself mentally for being so stupid. However, just as you opened your mouth to utter a string of apologies to just forget about the question, he cuts you off.

“You can always talk to me. What’s on your mind?” 

You glance back down at your hands before speaking. “I wasn’t joking earlier,” you say. “About school being hard.” 

Abbot says nothing; he just waits.

It is something he does well, you’ve noticed — silence that doesn’t push, doesn’t rush, doesn’t demand, but leaves enough room for the truth if you decide to tell it. The truth feels bigger at four in the morning. Maybe because everyone is too tired to pretend as well as they do in daylight.

Maybe because the hospital is built for confessions at this hour — dim hallways, quiet rooms, the strange intimacy of exhaustion.

You take a breath.

“I work all the time because I have to,” you say. “Tuition, rent, groceries. All of it.”

Abbot leans one shoulder against the counter across from you, watching your face with that same patient attention he gives people who are trying to say something difficult.

“And my family isn’t exactly helping.” The words feel clumsy in your mouth. Almost too small for what they mean.

Abbot’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly. Not reflecting pity, something quieter than that. It’s sharper.

You look away, toward the darkened hallway outside the room.

“My dad…” You stop, start again. “He wasn’t a good person.”

The sentence lands hard despite how simple it is.

Abbot remains completely still.

You keep talking because if you stop now, you might not start again.

“He liked control. He liked making sure everybody in the house knew exactly how much space they were allowed to take up. My mom spent years pretending that if she stayed quiet enough, he’d calm down.” You laugh once, without humor. “He never did.”

The hospital feels miles away all of a sudden.

The monitor in the corner. The chart on the counter. The scrubs on your skin. All of it fades under the memory of old walls and slammed doors and the instinct, carved into you young, to listen for footsteps before you decided whether it was safe to breathe too loudly.

“I think that’s part of why I wanted this,” you say, your voice thinner now. “Medicine. Nursing. Whatever version of it I can get to. Because when I was growing up, nobody was in control in the way that actually mattered. Nobody made anything safer. Nobody protected anyone.”

Abbot’s gaze never leaves your face. “And you want to.”

 “Yeah.”  You nod, the words come out almost embarrassingly soft. “I want to be the kind of person who helps. The type of person who just knows what to do. Someone who makes things better instead of worse.”

Something in Abbot’s face changes.

Not dramatically. He is not a dramatic man, at least not in the obvious ways. But the line of his mouth softens slightly. The set of his shoulders eases. The guardedness he wears as a second skin slips just enough for you to see the man underneath it.

“You already are,” he says.

The answer is immediate with no hesitation. There’s no dry humor to blunt it, making it hit you harder than you expect.

Your throat tightens. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know.”

The room goes quiet again.

Only this time the silence feels full instead of empty.

You look down, blinking once, then twice, irritated by the sting behind your eyes.

This is ridiculous. You are in a nearly empty emergency department at four in the morning, trying very hard not to cry in front of a man who captivates and infuriates and distracts you in roughly equal measure.

Abbot notices, because of course he does.

He says your name very quietly. Not doctor-soft. Not patient-soft. Something else.

You look up.

He is closer than he was a second ago. You didn’t see him move. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe the room simply shrank again.

“You’re allowed to be tired,” he almost whispers. The sentence is so gentle it nearly undoes you.

You let out a shaky breath and laugh to cover it. “That sounds dangerously close to emotional intelligence.”

“Don’t spread false rumors around.”

This time, you do laugh. A small one. Wet around the edges, but real.

Abbot’s mouth lifts faintly in response, and for one suspended second, the whole room seems to tilt. You don’t know what makes you say the next part. Exhaustion, probably. The strange honesty of the hour. The way he is looking at you, like there is nowhere else in the building he needs to be.

“I think that’s part of why…” You stop. Start over. “Why, I’ve always liked older men.”

If Abbot is surprised, he doesn’t show it in the usual way. He just becomes even more still.

You can hear Dana laughing at something outside the room. A cart squeaks past in the hall. The whole hospital continues existing around you while you stand there and say the kind of thing you never say out loud.

“They feel…” You search for the word. “Safer.”

Abbot doesn’t interrupt.

“Not because they’re older,” you add quickly. “Not really. It’s more…” You let out a breath. “They’re settled. They know who they are. They don’t play games as much. They don’t need to prove anything every five minutes. They feel like…” You glance down, embarrassed now. “Like if something went wrong, they’d know what to do. They’d protect you.”

The last sentence comes out so quietly you almost think he might not have heard it.

But Abbot hears everything. His eyes are on you with an intensity that makes the back of your neck go warm. The fluorescent light catches in the gray at his temples. In the tired lines at the corners of his eyes. In the expression, he is trying very hard not to let it become too readable.

When he speaks, his voice is lower than before. “Is that what you think?”

You swallow. “Sometimes.”

Abbot’s gaze drops for a moment, not away exactly, just down to your mouth, maybe, or the bruise still faintly visible at your cheek, or the loose strand of hair that has fallen forward again. When his eyes come back to yours, something in them has shifted.

It is not softer. It is worse.

If it were softer, you could survive.

This is intent. This is restraint under pressure. This is a man standing on the right side of a line because he has decided to, not because he doesn’t know where it is.

“You should be with someone,” he says slowly, “who makes you feel safe because they’re safe. Not because you’ve learned to settle for people who are simply less dangerous than what you came from.”

The room goes completely still.

You stare at him.

He has no idea what that sentence does to you. Or maybe he does.

That might be worse.

The air between you is so tight now that it feels almost visible. Abbot pushes off the counter and takes one step closer.

Almost enough to touch. Close enough that if either one moves, your lips would touch. The thought alone makes your pulse beat against your throat.

“You deserve better than survival,” he whispers, the air kissing your skin. “You deserve the world.”

Your breath catches. The hospital drops away again. No printers, no monitors, no muffled voices through the wall. Just the two of you and the terrible, beautiful quiet of what he has just said.

You should say something. Anything. You should make a joke, deflect, tease him, step around him, break the moment before it grows too big to carry. Instead, you stand there and look at him and let your silence tell on you.

For the smallest fraction of a second, his expression changes, softening around the eyes in a way that feels almost private. Abbot looks at you like he is forgetting how to breathe.

You are not doing much better.

The bruise on your cheek still aches faintly beneath the heat of his gaze. Your hands are resting flat against the edge of the counter because if they weren’t, you think they might shake.

The room feels airless.

“Jack-,” you rasp out, and his name comes out so quiet it barely qualifies as sound.

Something flashes across his face then — something raw and immediately hidden. Want, maybe. Or conflict. Probably both.

The crackle of the overhead speaker breaks the moment open. Not a code or incoming trauma. Just a bored voice from transport asking for a chart to be sent upstairs.

Abbot closes his eyes for half a second as if the universe has a personal vendetta against him. You let out a breath that sounds embarrassingly close to a laugh. When he opens his eyes again, the expression is back under control. Mostly.

“Of course,” he murmurs.

“Of course,” you echo.

Neither of you moves right away. Abbot steps back just enough to make the room survivable again.

“You should go back to the desks and sit down for a minute,” he says.

“That’s not exactly what I was hoping you’d say.” The words slip out before you can stop them.

Abbot stares at you. Then very slowly, the corner of his mouth lifts.

“There she is,” he says.

“Who?”

“My sunshine.”

You laugh, really laugh this time, the sound shaky but warm.

Abbot looks pleased with himself for all of two seconds before his expression shifts back into something quieter. Something fond, maybe. He glances toward the hallway. “I need to check on room three.”

You nod, though disappointment curls low in your stomach. Disappointed that nothing happened.

He notices that, too, because apparently nothing about you is private around him anymore.

“I’ll be back,” he says. It should not feel intimate, but it oddly does. He turns to go, gets as far as the doorway, then stops and looks back.

The light from the hall catches the edge of his profile, the rolled sleeves, the tiredness he carries with such irritating grace.

“By the way,” he says.

You lift your head.

“If that dick from your class texts you again—” Abbot’s expression is mild. Too mild to soothe your heart. “Tell him your schedule is full.”

Your heart flips. “With what?”

His gaze lingers on you for one charged, impossible second. “Better decisions.”  He walks out before you can answer. The door swings slowly in his wake.

You stand alone in the room for a moment, pulse hammering, staring at the empty doorway like the floor has shifted under you. 

Outside, the emergency department goes on being a hospital. Dana argues with transport.  A monitor beeps steadily. Somewhere down the hall, a patient coughs. But none of it sounds the same.

Because Abbot said I’ll be back like it meant something. 

Because of the way he looked at you when he said My sunshine. 

Because you are suddenly, painfully aware that dawn is coming, and with it the end of the shift, and you have no idea what happens to something like this when the fluorescent magic of the emergency department wears off and the real world returns.

You pick up the laptop with numb fingers and try to remember how to breathe.

It takes a while.

Taglist: @coffeeblackandcomfortablynumb @materialgirl-97 @soyelfleureon @amnatreal @rei-scorpio @starkgaryan @ilovechaiandyogurt @slowburnsky

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 3 AM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

At 3:00 AM, the quiet of the ER is shattered when a routine call turns dangerous, leaving you shaken and the entire department on edge. In the aftermath, Dr. Abbott’s protective instincts take over—revealing just how much you mean to him.

Words: 1.8k

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

3:00 AM

Three in the morning is the strangest hour in a hospital.

The chaos of the earlier disaster has faded, but the quiet that replaces it isn’t peaceful. It’s the kind of stillness that settles over a place after too much adrenaline—when everyone is exhausted, but sleep is still impossible.

The emergency department hums softly around you. A monitor beeps somewhere down the hall. A nurse quietly restocks a supply cart near triage. The overhead lights have been dimmed in the trauma hallway, casting long shadows across the polished floor.

You step out of the physician’s room with your laptop tucked against your side, scanning the department for Abbot.

You glance toward the nurses’ station. Dana leans against the nurses’ station, rubbing her temples.

“Remind me,” she mutters to no one in particular, “why people keep blowing things up in cities.”

“Job security?” One of the nurses snorts quietly.

“You’re not helping.” Dana rolls her eyes.

You close one chart and just look at the tracking board on the laptop.

Your cursor blinks. Waiting for one more.

There's a new patient waiting to be seen in room 12 brought in by EMS for an altered mental status. You glance up at the board and frown slightly. That must have come in while you were finishing the trauma notes. Or in the physician's room while Dr. Abbot was softly brushing the hair away from your face. Before you could even talk about what that was, he stepped out, saying he had to step away to check on a patient upstairs.

You scan the hallway instinctively, still looking for the man of the hour. You sigh quietly.

“I’m going to find Abbot,” you tell Dana.

She waves a hand without looking up. “If you see him, tell him I need him to sign three charts before he disappears again.”

You nod and head down the hallway.

Halfway down the corridor, a voice calls weakly from behind one of the doors.

“Hey… hey…”

You stop, turning to see the source of the sound coming from room twelve. The door is cracked partially open, and the lights inside are mostly off except for the faint glow of a monitor.

“Hello?” you call gently, eyes glancing around the hall, trying to find someone else who could help.

No response.

You push the door open a little further.  The patient lies in the bed, partially turned toward the wall, the blanket twisted around his waist.

“Hi,” you say softly. “Do you need something? I can grab a nurse.”

For a second, he doesn’t move. Then he turns, and something about the look in his eyes makes your stomach drop.

Wide. Unfocused. Wild.

Before you can step back, he lunges.

The movement is sudden and violent. His hand grabs your arm and yanks you forward into the room hard enough that the laptop slips from your grip and clatters to the floor.

“What—”

You couldn't even get out your words before his other hand swung, hitting your left face. Pain erupts across your cheek and jaw. Your head snaps sideways as he shoves you backward against the wall, his grip tight.

“YOU DID THIS,” he shouts, his voice raw and unsteady.

Your brain struggles to process what’s happening. You try to pull away, but he grabs your shoulders again, shaking you violently and smacking you against the wall. Somewhere down the hallway, a chair scrapes loudly.

Then voices.

“What the hell—”

The door slams open, with Shen tumbling in first. “What the—”

The patient drops you to the ground and runs toward Shen, swinging wildly, hitting him across the arm. 

“Security!” Shen swears.

“Get him off!” Dana appears seconds later with two nurses behind her.

Security rushes into the room, grabbing the patient’s arms as he thrashes violently.

“He’s psychotic—”

“Careful!”

The patient screams incoherently while they restrain him against the bed. The hallway outside erupts into controlled chaos. Medication orders are being yelled to help sedate him.

And then, Abbot appears. His tall form takes in the scene instantly. 

You are lying on the floor against the wall. Your laptop is sitting on the floor, thrown across the room. Security is pinning the patient down while he’s babbling. 

“What happened?” Something dark flashes across Abbot’s face.

“Altered mental status. There was supposed to be a sitter, but apparently they disappeared,” Dana answers quickly.

Abbot doesn’t look at her. His eyes are locked on the patient. The man spits something unintelligible and struggles against the restraints.

Abbot steps forward toward security and the patient.  The room goes very quiet.

“You touch one of my staff again,” he says evenly, “and I will personally make sure you regret it.” His voice is calm, despite the tension in his shoulders and his fists clenched at his sides.

Security tightens its grip. The patient finally goes still, breathing hard. Security then transports the patient to a room by the HUC to keep a new sitter with him.

Abbot doesn’t look at him again as they remove him from the room. Instead, he turns toward you trying to fix yourself back up. And the expression on his face changes immediately.

“Hey,” His voice is softer now, “Look at me.”

You blink, trying to steady yourself.

“I’m okay.” The whole left side of your face throbs.

Abbot studies your face carefully. 

“Everyone else out.” Dana gestures toward the door.

For a few seconds after the room clears, the emergency department seems to shrink to the quiet space between you and Abbot. The door closes behind the last nurse.

The shouting from the hallway fades into distant noise. All that remains is the soft electronic rhythm of the cardiac monitor beside the bed and the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead.

Abbot stays where he is for a moment, crouched slightly in front of you, his attention fixed entirely on your face. You’ve seen that expression before. He wears it when something important is happening, like a patient who is unstable. But now that he’s looking at you that way, you don’t know how to feel.

“You’re going to sit,” he says quietly.

You realize you’re still standing. Your legs feel slightly unsteady as you lower yourself onto the edge of the chair beside the wall.

Abbot pulls the rolling stool closer and sits directly in front of you. Close enough that the faint scent of hospital soap and natural musk clings to his scrubs.

His voice drops into the calm, methodical cadence you’ve heard a hundred times during patient exams. “Headache?”

“A little.”

“Dizzy?”

“No.”

His hands are steady and warm as he gently tilts your chin and lifts the small penlight from the pocket of his scrub top and clicks it on. The beam of light is narrow but bright.  The feeling of his fingers on your skin makes your heart drop. 

“Look straight at me. How’s your vision? Does it look blurred or doubled?”

You do, and the light flickers across your eyes while he checks your pupils carefully. “No.”

“Follow the light.”

You track it slowly left, then right. Abbot studies your eyes for a moment longer before switching the light off.

“Pupils equal.” His tone is clinical. His mouth forms a slight frown while his eyes soften, “Any nausea?” 

“A little.”

His hand shifts carefully to the side of your jaw where the bruise is already beginning to form. His touch is gentle. Careful. “You’re going to have a hell of a bruise.” 

You wince slightly. “Great.”

Abbot’s jaw tightens. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Your heart stutters. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, you were just trying to help.” He examines your shoulder next, moving his fingers slowly along your arm and shoulder to check for tenderness. Every movement is deliberate and professional. But the tension in his shoulders is unmistakable. His jaw tightens slightly before saying, “But you shouldn’t have been alone in a room without someone else.”

 He doesnt leave room for you to interject. “You tell me if something hurts.” 

Your pulse is racing again, though not from fear this time. “I will.”

He feels around your head, thoroughly assessing for any hematomas. He checks the back of your head last, brushing your hair aside gently. “You’re lucky.”

You glance up at him, making Abbot exhale slowly. For a moment, he just sits there. Close enough that you can feel the warmth of him beside you.

“You’re not going anywhere alone tonight,” he says finally.

“I’m fine, I promise.” Your eyebrow lifts slightly.

“I don't care. Remember last week when you said you were fine after working 12 hours straight while having a cold and hallucinated that our shift was all a dream? Yeah… you're not leaving my side for the rest of the shift.” Abbot’s mouth twitches faintly.

“Do you have to constantly remind me? I will never come to work sick again.” You moan, cheeks blush in embarrasent. 

“It was cute.”

Before you can respond, the door opens, and in walks Shen. He immediately stops in the entrance way once he sees the two of you. “You alive?”

“She’s fine,” Abbot answers before you can.

Shen enters fully into the room slowly, glancing between the two of you. That's when he noticed the bruise forming along your cheek.

“Damn.” He whistles softly, “That guy got you?”

You nod.

Shen looks at Abbot.

Then back at you.

Then back at Abbott again.

Something amused flickers across his face.

“Well,” he says lightly, “I guess we know what happens when someone messes with Abbot’s scribe.”

Abbot doesn’t react.

Shen just folds his arms, a slight smirk forming at the corner of his lips. “I could hear your loud ass all the way down the hallway.”

“I was simply setting boundaries within my ER.” Abbott’s voice is flat.

“You were threatening.”

“Oh I’m sure the gentleman didn’t mind. Anyway, (y/n) needs ice.” Abbot simply ignores him and brings the attention back to the matter at hand. You. 

“You’re deflecting.” Shen laughs quietly.

Abbot starts to stand, with his back to Shen. “I’m working. I’d suggest you do the same as well because it was your patient you picked up who attacked (y/n) because there was no sitter outside.” The tone of his voice makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. You could sense the anger radiating from him. 

Shen raises his hands and silently exits the room, leaving the two of you alone once again.   

Abbot looks down at you, his eyes softening while glancing around your face.  “You still have a headache?”

“No.”

He nods slowly before reaching toward the counter for a cold pack. He presses it gently into your hand. “Hold this.”

You place the icepack against your left cheek and temple. The cool sensation relaxes you instantly. Abbot leans back against the wall beside the door with his arms crossed, simply watching you.

For a moment, neither of you speaks….Until finally you break the silence.

“You’re hovering.”

“You were assaulted less than ten minutes ago.” Abbot raises an eyebrow.

“Still hovering.”

“Just making sure you don’t keel over and die while on shift. That's a lot of paperwork.” He shrugs slightly.

You smile faintly.

Abbot studies your face again, and you notice his gaze shifts slightly. A loose strand of hair has fallen forward again, brushing across your cheek.

Without thinking, he reaches out so his fingers catch the strand gently. He tucks it behind your ear..again. His hand lingers for half a second longer than it should be, softly caressing the top of the bruise not covered by the ice pack. When he pulls back slightly, his voice is quieter now.

“You should probably stay near me the rest of the shift.”

Your heart skips. “Protective?”

Abbott’s mouth twitches faintly. “Yes, I am.”

But he doesn’t move away.

And neither do you.

Taglist: @coffeeblackandcomfortablynumb @materialgirl-97 @soyelfleureon @amnatreal

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 2 AM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

2:00 AM: the ER is finally quiet—and the tension between you and Dr. Abbott starts to speak louder than the chaos ever did.

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

Word Count: 2.7K

2:00 AM

By two in the morning, the emergency department feels like the hollowed-out shell of the chaos that had consumed it hours earlier.

The storm has passed.

But the air still feels charged.

Not loud. Not frantic.

Just… waiting.

The trauma hallway, which had been packed shoulder to shoulder with stretchers, shouting voices, and the constant blur of movement earlier in the night, now stretches out in long, quiet lines of fluorescent light. A few of the overhead fixtures have been dimmed, leaving pockets of shadow between the rooms, the brightness uneven and almost surreal.

The polished hospital floor still carries faint streaks where someone had mopped up blood not long ago. You can see the difference if you look closely, the slight dullness where the cleaner hadn’t fully lifted the stain, the faint ghost of something that had happened here.

A supply cart sits abandoned beside the wall, one drawer half-open, syringes and gauze spilling slightly over the edge like whoever left it there had simply run out of time—or energy—to finish.

The department isn’t clean. It’s just… quieter.

You sit at the workstation outside Trauma Bay 1, shoulders slightly hunched forward as the pale light from your laptop screen washes over your face. The glow makes everything feel a little too sharp, a little too still, like you’re the only thing in motion.

Your fingers move more slowly now. Each keystroke is deliberate. Measured.

Hours ago, you had been typing like your hands were racing the clock—like if you missed something, someone might die. Now, the urgency is gone, and in its place is exhaustion.

Your wrists ache.

Not the sharp kind of pain. The deep, dull kind that settles into your bones after too much repetition. Your fingers feel stiff. Your neck is tight, shoulders pulled up from hours of tension you hadn’t even realized you were holding. 

Adrenaline had carried you through the worst of the night. But now that the emergency department has quieted, your body is collecting its debt.

Across the hall, Abbot stands beside the trauma board. Even from where you sit, you can see it.

The fatigue.

Not obvious. Not sloppy. Abbot doesn’t unravel the way some people do after a shift like this. He doesn’t slump or drag or complain. But it’s there in the edges.

His scrub sleeves are rolled halfway up his forearms, the fabric wrinkled and faintly stained from hours of work. His hair—those neat gray curls that had been perfectly in place at the beginning of the shift—has loosened, a few strands falling forward across his forehead in a way that makes him look less composed, more… human.

He studies the trauma board in silence.

The remaining patients.

The empty rooms.

The ones upstairs.

You watch him for a moment longer than you probably should before he then turns. Like he felt it.

“Done yet?” he asks. His voice is quieter now. Roughened slightly, like he hasn’t had water in hours.

“Almost.” You glance back down at the screen. Your voice comes out softer than you intended.

Abbot walks over.

Not sitting. He never really sits. Instead, he leans one shoulder against the edge of the workstation, close enough that you can feel the shift in the space beside you, the subtle awareness of someone standing there.

Watching.

“You’re still on the hematoma case,” he says, eyes flicking across your screen.

“It’s a complicated case,” you answer, fingers still moving.

“Mm.”

It’s not quite an agreement. More like acknowledgment.

His gaze lingers on the chart for a moment. Then—inevitably—it shifts to you. You can feel it before you look up. The weight of it heavy.

“You caught that fast,” he says.

You shrug, keeping your eyes on the keyboard. You glance up, just briefly and find him still looking at you.

Not casually. Not distracted.

Focused.

Like he’s trying to understand something. It doesn’t last long before he straightens slightly, pushing himself off the counter.

“Rounds.”

“Now?” You blink.

“You planning to sleep here?” Abbot raises an eyebrow.

“You don’t know how tempting that sounds right now.” You close the laptop slowly, the soft click louder in the quiet hallway than it should be.

There’s a beat. Then—The faintest hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. It’s small. Barely there. But you catch it.

“Come on,” he says.

….

The department feels different as the two of you walk down the hallway.

Earlier in the night, every step had been urgent. Every voice raised. Every movement sharp and purposeful. Now—

Your footsteps echo softly against the tile. The sound feels too loud. Too clear.

A nurse at the desk glances up as you pass, offering a tired half-smile before dropping her gaze back to her charting. Somewhere farther down the corridor, a monitor beeps in a slow, steady rhythm—no longer alarming, just… present.

Alive.

The hospital at night is a strange place.

Abbot walks slightly ahead of you, his pace slower now, no longer cutting through the hallway with urgency but moving with a kind of deliberate calm. You match it without thinking.

He pushes open the door to Room Six.

The hinges creak softly.

Inside, the teenage girl with the abdominal shrapnel injury lies sleeping beneath a thin hospital blanket. Her face is pale, but relaxed now, the tightness that had been there earlier replaced by the fragile stillness of recovery.

The monitor beside her bed displays steady vitals.

Abbot steps inside, his movements quieter here. Respectful.

He studies the monitor first. Assessing the patient, then the IV lines and pump infusions. His eyes move in a pattern you’ve started to recognize.

Systematic.

Careful.

Certain.

“She’ll be okay,” he says finally.

You lean lightly against the counter in the room, opening your laptop again to add the follow-up note. The keys feel heavier now under your fingers. You still type anyway.

Because that’s your job. Because you don’t know how to stop.

When you glance up, Abbot is watching the patient.

Not rushing, not checking the clock. Just… making sure.

And something about that, the stillness, the patience,  makes your chest tighten in a way you don’t quite understand.

…..

Abbot is already in the hallway when you step out of Room Six, the door closing softly behind you. He doesn’t move right away. He just stands there for a second, arms loosely folded, gaze angled down the corridor like he’s deciding where to go next.

Or maybe just… thinking.

When you come up beside him, he doesn’t look at you immediately.

“Next,” he says after a beat, voice low.

But there’s no urgency behind it. Just habit.

You follow him anyway.

….

Room Three is dim. It’s softer than the rest of the department, the overhead light turned down low to something almost gentle. The kind of light meant for rest, not treatment.

The mother lies propped slightly upright in the bed, her arms wrapped in clean white bandages that look too stark against her skin. The redness from the burns has softened into something less angry now, less immediate, but still there—still real.

Beside her, curled awkwardly in a chair far too small to be comfortable, the little boy sleeps. His blanket is twisted around his legs, one arm hanging off the side of the chair, fingers brushing the edge of the bed like he needed to make sure she was still there.

Your chest tightens slightly at the sight.

Abbot steps in quietly, his presence shifting instantly into something softer. He doesn’t wake them, not even daring to speak. He just moves to the foot of the bed, scanning the chart, then the bandages, then the monitor.

“Superficial,” he murmurs after a moment. “She got lucky.”

You open the laptop again, typing quietly.

“McKay handled it,” you say.

“She’s good with kids.” Abbot glances toward the boy.

“You sound surprised.” You look up at that.

“She doesn’t lead with it.” Abbot shrugs faintly.

You watch him for a second. There’s something in the way he says it.

Something observant. Not just about McKay. About people.

You finish the note and close the laptop softly.

When you look up again—

Abbot is watching you.

Not in that clinical, assessing way. Not exactly. Something quieter, more aware.

It lasts just long enough to make your pulse shift.

Then he looks away.

“Come on.”

….

You don’t make it back to the trauma hallway before someone calls out.

“Doctor?” A nurse appears from one of the side rooms, her expression tired but alert, “room Eight’s asking for you.”

“What’s going on?” Abbot pauses mid-step.

“Chest pain,” she says. “Came in during the last wave. Vitals are stable, but he’s anxious.”

“Of course he is.” Abbot exhales quietly.

He gestures slightly.

“Let’s go.”

You follow.

…..

Room Eight is brighter than the others.

Too bright. 

The overhead lights are fully on, casting harsh shadows across the small space. 

The patient sits upright in the bed, one hand pressed against his chest, his breathing shallow but fast—panic more than physiology. His eyes snap toward the door the second you walk in.

“Finally,” he says, voice tight. “I thought you forgot about me.”

Abbot doesn’t react to the tone. He never does.

“I didn’t,” he says calmly, pulling the stool closer. “Tell me what’s going on.”

The man gestures vaguely at his chest. “It just—tight. Like I can’t breathe right.”

Abbot watches him for a moment.

Not just listening, buy watching.

“How long?”

“Since I got here.”

“Worse or the same?”

The man hesitates.

“…Worse.” 

You’re already typing.

Abbot reaches for the stethoscope, placing it against the patient’s chest, listening carefully. The man’s breathing stutters under the pressure.

Abbot’s eyes flick briefly toward you…then back to the patient.

“Your heart sounds fine,” he says after a moment. “Lungs are clear.”

“So what is it?” The man frowns.

“What happened tonight?” Abbott leans back slightly.

The question lands differently.

The man hesitates again, almost contemplating if he wanted to say it aloud, before looking down.

“I was there,” he says quietly. “At the terminal.”

Your fingers slow down. Abbot doesn’t interrupt, just staring at the man for him to continue.

“I didn’t get hurt,” the man continues. “Not really. Just… got knocked around a bit.”

“But I keep hearing it.” His breathing picks up again.

“The explosion.” Abbot’s voice softens.

“Yeah.” The man nods.

The room goes quiet with a silent tension.

Abbot studies him for a moment longer. Then says, gently—

“You’re not having a heart attack, you’re having a stress response to a trauma that just happened.” 

“…So I’m not dying?” The man lets out a shaky breath.

“No.” Abbott shakes his head. “But it feels like you are.”

The man lets out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh.

“Yeah,” he says. “It does.”

Abbot nods once, almost sympathizing with what the man feels.

“We’ll help you calm it down.”

You type up the plan on the chart. And as you close the laptop again, you realize—

This is the first time all night that the problem wasn’t something you could see. Abbot still handled it just as precisely.

…..

You step back into the hallway, succumbing to the quietness in the department at that moment. The kind of quiet that only comes after everything has already gone wrong.

Abbot moves back into Trauma Bay 1 without hesitation. The ventilator hums steadily beside the blast lung patient, the soft mechanical rhythm filling the room like breathing that isn’t quite real.

He checks the monitor.

“Oxygen’s good,” he says.

You add the update to the chart and then close the laptop. And for the first time all night, there’s nothing left to write.

The realization feels strange. You feel as if you’re forgetting something, like the silence itself is wrong.

Abbot stands beside the bed for another moment.

Then turns.

“Coffee.”

…..

The physician’s room is almost unrecognizable in the quiet. Earlier, it had been a revolving door with people rushing in and out, grabbing supplies, checking charts, barely pausing long enough to sit.

Now, it looks abandoned. The overhead lights are dimmed, casting long shadows across the small table. Empty coffee cups and crumpled wrappers are scattered across the surface, evidence of a night no one had time to think about food.

Abbot moves to the coffee machine. You hesitate in the doorway for half a second before stepping in.

The smell hits you immediately. Burnt. Overbrewed. Terrible.

You didn't mean to make a face, but your face is very expressive.

Abbot notices without looking.

“Don’t judge it.”

“Oh, I’m definitely judging it.”

He pours two cups anyway. The liquid sloshes slightly as he hands one to you.

Your fingers brush his, just briefly. But it’s enough. And it lingers longer than it should.

Abbot leans back against the counter, one shoulder resting against the cabinet as he watches you over the rim of his cup.

“Have you thought more about staying in emergency medicine yet?” he asks.

“Still trying to get me to be a nurse here?” You take a sip and immediately regret it. But caffeine is caffeine. 

“Why again are you in nursing school instead of med school?” That shut you up real quick, making you look down to think.

Abbot stands there, waiting. 

“It’s cheaper first off. And I won't waste my twenties dying.” You state while listing the options on your fingers.

“But will you be satisfied as just a nurse?” Abbot shakes his head slightly, but the truth in his question hits you hard. His eyes are sharp. 

You stay silent for a few minutes, simply sitting in the silence, before you shake your head and let out a huff of a laugh. “It doesn't matter because I'm already going through with this.” 

“You had instincts. Of the years I have been working in the medical industry, I have never seen someone with so much potential who doesn't see it within themselves.” His words land differently this time. Quieter. More certain.

All you can do is look at him. The room goes still again.

Not empty, just charged.

Abbot pushes off the counter slowly, moving one step closer to you. Not enough to crowd you, but just enough that the space between you changes.

“You noticed something two attendings missed,” he says.

“I just saw the swelling.” Your voice drops without meaning to.

Abbot studies your face carefully, like he’s memorizing something.

“You see things,” he repeats.

Your pulse picks up. You suddenly become very aware of how close he is. How inappropriate this would be if someone walked in. 

You shift slightly, and a loose strand of hair falls forward across your face. All of a sudden, you see Abbot raise his hand. His hand pauses, just for a second, like he’s giving himself the chance to reconsider. 

Then, he reaches forward. Gently. Oh, so gently does his finger brush the strand of hair back behind your ear.

The touch is light and careful. But it sends a sharp, electric warmth straight through your chest.

You both go still for a moment, neither of you dares to move.

The hospital hums somewhere beyond the walls, distant and unimportant.

Abbot’s hand lingers just a fraction longer than it needs to before he lowers. Slowly.

“You’d make a good ER doctor. Without a doubt in my mind.” His voice is softer when he speaks. His eyes have a glimmer before he sucks in a breath and backs up. 

Your throat feels tight. You open your mouth and nothing comes out.

Because for the first time all night, you don’t know what to say.

Taglist: coffeeblackandcomfortablynumb @materialgirl-97

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 1 AM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

As the ER catches its breath at 1:00 AM, a final trauma case tests everyone’s limits—and the way Dr. Abbott relies on you makes the growing tension between you impossible to ignore.

Words: 2.7 K

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

1:00 AM

The emergency department doesn’t quiet all at once. It unwinds.

Slowly.

Like a storm finally drifting away from the coastline, leaving the ocean behind it unsettled and churning long after the thunder disappears. The trauma hallway still looks like a battlefield.

Gauze wrappers and empty saline syringes litter the countertops where they were tossed aside during the worst moments of the rush. A portable ultrasound machine sits abandoned beside a chair near the wall, its cord loosely coiled on the floor like someone had meant to return for it but never had the chance.

The air still smells faintly of antiseptic. But underneath it is the lingering scent of smoke from the explosion victims earlier—clinging stubbornly to clothes, hair, and the walls themselves.

And blood.

There’s always blood. However, at least the sirens have stopped. For the first time in nearly three hours, the ambulance bay outside the glass doors is empty. The flashing red lights that had reflected endlessly across the department’s white tile floors are gone now, leaving the space strangely dim and quiet in comparison.

You sit at the workstation outside Trauma Bay 1, shoulders slightly hunched over the laptop while the final trauma charts slowly begin to close out.

Your wrists ache. The muscles along your forearms burn faintly from typing nonstop for hours, and your eyes feel gritty and dry from staring at the glowing screen for too long. Still, your fingers keep moving.

Across the hallway, Abbot stands at the trauma sink washing his hands. He does it the same way he always does after a complicated case.

Slowly.

Methodically. Like he’s scrubbing away more than just blood.

Water runs over his hands while he works soap carefully between his fingers, scrubbing beneath his nails before rinsing again. The bright overhead lights catch the silver strands in his hair and the faint shadows beneath his eyes that weren’t there at the start of the shift.

Abbot is quiet. But then Abbot is always a little quiet after adrenaline. It’s something you’ve started to notice over the past few months working with him.

While other doctors pace or vent or replay the trauma cases out loud, Abbot seems to fold inward instead—processing everything silently before returning to work as if nothing happened.

The faucet shuts off with a metallic click. He dries his hands with a paper towel, tossing it into the bin beside the sink before pausing there for a moment. His gaze drifts slowly across the department.

The stretchers.

The staff still moving through the hallways.

The patients who remain.

Like someone mentally cataloguing the damage after a storm.

Then he turns and walks back toward the workstation.

“How many left?” he asks quietly as he leans one shoulder against the counter beside you.

You glance up at the trauma board mounted above the desk. The once-overflowing list of patients has finally thinned.

“Two critical still here,” you say after scanning the names. “One upstairs in surgery. Three transferred out.”

“Better than it could’ve been.” Abbot nods once.

From the nurses’ station, Dana snorts without looking up from the paperwork she’s working through.

“That’s the motto of emergency medicine,” she mutters dryly.

You almost smile.

…..

A nurse appears beside Abbot a moment later, pushing her hair back beneath her surgical cap.

“Dr. Abbott?”

“Yeah?” He turns slightly.

“The blast lung patient from earlier is waking up.”

“Good.” Abbott straightens immediately. Then his gaze shifts toward you.

“Come on.”

You grab the laptop and slide out of the chair, following him down the hallway toward Trauma Bay 1.

The room looks calmer than it has all night. The ventilator still hums beside the bed, pushing steady mechanical breaths through the tubing, but the frantic cluster of doctors and nurses that had surrounded the patient earlier has disappeared. Now only a respiratory therapist stands near the monitor, adjusting the oxygen line.

The man on the bed—Evan, the patient who arrived coughing blood and barely breathing hours earlier—is awake now.

His eyes blink slowly against the harsh fluorescent lights overhead.

“Welcome back.” Abbot moves to the bedside.

“Am I… alive?” Evan squints at him.

Abbot tilts his head slightly, considering the question.

“Last time I checked.”

“What happened?” The patient swallows carefully.

“You had a rough evening,” Abbot says calmly.

Your fingers move quietly over the keyboard as he speaks.

Follow-up exam. Patient conscious. Respiratory status improving.

“Did I… die?” Evan glances toward the ventilator tubing beside him.

“No.” Abbot shakes his head. Then he gestures vaguely toward the hallway. “But you came close enough that we’d prefer not to repeat the experience.”

“Fair.” The man manages a weak laugh.

Abbot checks the monitor again.

“Oxygen looks good.”

“If he keeps improving, we may be able to extubate later.” Respiratory nods in agreement.

“Add that.” Abbot glances toward you.

You type the note automatically.  Evan watches the exchange between the two of you.

“You’re the one typing everything?”

“I’m an Emergency Medicine Scribe.” You nod.

He studies you thoughtfully.

“Well,” he says slowly, “thanks for not letting the big man forget anything important.”

“I forget plenty of things.” Abbot raises an eyebrow.

“Not medical ones.” You type without looking up.

Abbot huffs a quiet laugh.

“Careful,” he says. “You’re starting to build unrealistic expectations.”

…..

When you step back into the trauma hallway, the atmosphere feels different. Not calm, but manageable. Dr. Robby stands near the nurses’ station reviewing the trauma board with Dana. He looks even more exhausted now than when he arrived earlier—his scrub jacket slung over one shoulder, his glasses slightly crooked on his nose.

“How many are still critical?” he asks.

“Two here. Three upstairs.” Dana flips through the patient list.

“Good.” Robby nods.

“You call that good?” Dana raises an eyebrow.

Robby shrugs.

“I’ve seen worse.”

Whitaker approaches carrying a stack of charts beneath his arm. “The teenager with the abdominal shrapnel made it through surgery,” he reports.

“That’s good news.” Ellis looks up from across the hallway.

“Surgeon says she’s stable.” Whitaker nods.

Dana writes the update on the board.

“Alright.” Robby exhales slowly.

“Then we survived.” He glances around the department.

….

The adrenaline crash begins to hit everyone at once.

“Remind me why I chose emergency medicine again.” Whitaker sinks into one of the chairs near the counter with a tired groan.

“Because you like chaos.” Ellis walks past carrying a tray of supplies.

“I need better hobbies.” Whitaker sighs dramatically.

McKay emerges from Room Three a moment later with the little boy from earlier sitting beside her on the bed while she finishes wrapping a bandage around his arm.

“You’re very brave,” she tells him gently.

“I didn’t cry.” The boy sniffles.

“You absolutely did,” his mother says weakly.

The kid glares at her. McKay laughs softly.

“You both survived,” she says. “That’s the important part.”

When she steps back into the hallway, her gaze lands on you and Abbot at the counter.

“Heard about the hematoma catch earlier.”

“It just looked odd.” Your face warms slightly.

“Good instincts.” McKay nods approvingly.

Abbot leans casually against the counter beside you. “She notices things.”

“Keep her.” McKay grins.

“I wasn’t planning on firing her.” Abbot rolls his eyes slightly.

“You two are terrifying together, by the way.” Whitaker overhears the conversation and chuckles from his chair.

“What does that mean?” You glance up.

Whitaker gestures vaguely between the two of you. “She spots things nobody else sees and Abbot fixes them.”

“She reads.” Abbot’s voice stays neutral.

“That’s the highest compliment he gives anyone.” Whitaker laughs.

….

Shen reappears a few minutes later from the locker room with damp hair and a clean set of scrubs, looking marginally more human than he had an hour earlier when he was covered in someone else’s blood. He pauses just inside the trauma hallway, surveying the department with a slow turn of his head.

“Well,” he says finally, his voice echoing faintly off the tiled walls. “That escalated quickly.”

Dana gestures toward the trauma board with the pen still clutched in her hand.

“We’re almost clear.”

Shen whistles softly, low and impressed.

“Impressive.”

Then his gaze drifts across the room and lands on you standing beside Abbott at the workstation.

He tilts his head slightly.

“Still working?”

You lift the laptop a few inches in demonstration.

“Charting never ends.”

“Abbot’s been hoarding you all night.” Chen smirks.

Abbott doesn’t look up from the chart he’s reviewing. Shen leans forward slightly, resting one elbow on the edge of the counter like someone settling in to watch a show.

“I’m stealing her next shift.”

“I’d like to see you try.”  Abbott answers instantly.

Shen grins. Abbot’s expression doesn’t change.

“She keeps my charts from getting sued.”

“That’s not the reason.” Shen’s grin widens.

“Focus on your own scribe.” Abbott finally lifts his gaze from the screen. Shen laughs under his breath before pushing himself away from the counter and heading back down the hallway.

But not before tossing over his shoulder—

“We’ll revisit this conversation later.”

Abbot mutters something under his breath that you’re fairly certain is not meant for hospital documentation.

…..

The department begins thinning slowly after that. Not emptying—emergency departments never truly empty—but the crowd of extra physicians who had rushed in during the explosion finally begins drifting away.

Dr. Robby is the first to go. You spot him near the nurses’ station gathering his things, rubbing the bridge of his nose like someone who hasn’t slept enough in several decades.

“Dana,” he says tiredly, “if anything explodes again tonight, I’m not answering the phone.”

“Noted.” Dana doesn’t even glance up.

Robby pauses beside the counter where you and Abbott are working. His eyes move briefly between the two of you, lingering for just a second too long.

“You two did well tonight,” he says.

“You too.” Abbot nods once.

Robby looks back toward the trauma board one last time, then sighs.

“I’m going home before someone else blows something up.”

You watch him leave through the staff hallway doors, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Whitaker follows not long after. He pushes himself out of the chair he’d been occupying near the workstation with a groan that sounds like every joint in his body is protesting.

“If anyone asks,” he mutters while gathering his charts, “I was never here tonight.”

“You're documented on at least three trauma cases.” Ellis snorts softly from the hallway.

Whitaker shrugs. He glances toward Abbot and you. It was a fleeting glance, like he was trying to see if something was there. Whitaker chuckles before disappearing down the hall after Robby.

McKay waves as she passes a few minutes later, the little boy from earlier now clutching a juice box with sleepy determination.

“You two still standing?” she asks.

“Barely,” you answer.

“Good work tonight.” She smiles.

Then she’s gone too. 

Shen appears 

“You know,” he says casually while walking past the workstation, “I’m still convinced Abbott bribed someone to get you assigned to him permanently.”

“I didn’t.” Abbott exhales quietly.

“You sure about that?” Shen glances at you.

“I’d like to think I got assigned to the best trauma attending based on my own merits.” You raise an eyebrow.

“Dangerous confidence,” Shen smirks.

Abbott closes the chart he’s reviewing.

“Fuck off, Shen.” Shen grins.

“Touchy.”

But he finally leaves you alone.

…..

It was now quiet. 

The department feels enormous. The trauma hallway that had been crowded with doctors and nurses an hour earlier now feels strangely open. The fluorescent lights hum overhead. A monitor beeps softly somewhere down the hall. The rest of the hospital continues its quiet overnight rhythm.

You sit at the workstation finishing the final trauma note while Abbott reviews another chart beside you. The silence stretches between you.

Not uncomfortable.

Just…

aware.

You can hear the faint scratch of Abbot’s pen as he writes something in the margin of a chart. You can feel the warmth of him standing beside you. Finally, Abbot taps the screen of your laptop.

“You missed something.”

“What?” Your stomach drops instantly.

He leans over your shoulder, one hand braced lightly against the counter beside the keyboard. The sudden closeness makes your chair roll an inch closer to the desk. Your pulse jumps.

Abbot’s arm is close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating through the thin fabric of his scrub sleeve.

“Critical care timer.” He reaches across you and taps the screen with one finger.

“Oh.” You stare at the blinking line on the chart. Your fingers move quickly to correct it.

“Long night.” Abbot straightens slowly.

“Yeah.” You finish the note and close the chart with a quiet click. For a moment, neither of you moves. Then you glance up at him.

“Thanks for trusting me earlier.”

Abbot studies you for a moment. The look in his eyes is quieter than usual.

“You earned it.”

Your chest tightens slightly. You look back down at the laptop screen even though there’s nothing left to type. For a moment, neither of you says anything.

The quiet hum of the department fills the space between you.

Finally, Abbott pushes away from the counter.

“You should consider emergency medicine.”

“That your recruitment pitch?” You glance up.

“You kept up. You’re more than competent.” He shrugs.

“That’s a terrifying endorsement.” Your lips twitch slightly.

“Not everyone survives their first mass casualty shift.” Abbot’s mouth curves faintly.

“Encouraging.” You lean back slightly in the chair.

Abbot folds his arms loosely.

“You noticed the carotid swelling before anyone else.”

“It looked wrong.” You shrug.

Abbot studies you for another second before turning back toward the trauma board.

“Get some water,” he says, “you look like you’re about to fall asleep on the keyboard.”

“I’m fine.” You scoff quietly.

“Hydrate.” Abbot glances back at you.

“Yes, doctor.” You sigh dramatically.

Abbot rolls his eyes slightly. But the corner of his mouth lifts again.

And somewhere down the hallway— Another monitor alarm begins to beep.

Because even after everything—

The emergency department never stays quiet for long.

.....

Tag list: @materialgirl-97

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 12 AM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

12:00 AM: the ER is still in crisis, and one small detail you notice changes everything.

Words: 2.7K

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00PM 10:00PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

12:00 AM

By midnight, the emergency department has become something else entirely.

The word hospital doesn’t quite fit anymore.

Hospitals are supposed to feel orderly. Structured. A place where the quiet hum of machines and the steady rhythm of nurses’ footsteps create the illusion that everything is under control.

Tonight, the Pitt’s emergency department feels closer to a command center.

Stretchers line the hallway walls where chairs used to sit. Portable monitors beep in uneven rhythms like a strange mechanical orchestra, alarms rising and falling over each other in layers of noise. Nurses move quickly between beds carrying blood coolers, IV trays, and medication syringes, their shoes squeaking softly against the tile as they weave through the chaos.

The smell of antiseptic lingers in the air, sharp and sterile.

But it’s losing the battle.

Smoke clings stubbornly to patients’ clothing from the explosion downtown. Sweat and exhaustion hang in the air like humidity. Beneath it all is the unmistakable metallic scent of blood.

And still—

The ambulances keep coming.

You stand at the counter outside Trauma Bay 1, typing fast enough that the laptop keys click like rainfall against the plastic keyboard.

Your wrists ache.

The tendons along your forearms burn from hours of nonstop charting, but your fingers keep moving anyway.

Your screen is crowded with open charts—three trauma notes blinking with half-finished documentation, two procedural logs stacked side by side, and the critical care timer for Abbot’s first blast lung patient still running in the corner of the screen.

00:58:17 00:58:18 00:58:19

Inside Trauma Bay 1, Abbot stands beside the bed.

At first glance, he looks almost relaxed—arms folded loosely across his chest while he studies the monitor above the patient’s head.

But you’ve worked with him long enough now to recognize the difference between relaxed and focused.

Right now, he’s a coiled spring.

The ventilated patient on the bed—Evan, the man who arrived coughing blood and barely breathing—has finally begun stabilizing. Oxygen saturation has slowly climbed into the mid-nineties after nearly an hour of fighting to keep his lungs functioning.

Blood pressure is still fragile, but holding.

“Good,” Abbot murmurs. He reaches over and adjusts the ventilator settings slightly, his gloved fingers moving across the controls with careful precision.

You type the adjustment automatically. Ventilator settings modified. Oxygen saturation improving. Patient tolerating ventilation.

“How far behind are you?” Abbot glances sideways toward you.

“Four charts active.” You tilt the laptop toward him slightly.

“That’s it?” His eyebrow lifts.

You blink at him.

“You say that like it’s a small number.”

“You’re getting faster,” Abbot says with a small shrug.

Your fingers pause for half a second. Before you can answer, the ambulance bay doors slam open. The sound echoes down the trauma hallway like a gunshot.

Several heads turn automatically. Paramedics rush in, pushing another stretcher.

“Forty-year-old female!” one of them calls breathlessly. “Blast exposure, altered mental status!”

Abbot is already moving.

“Trauma One.”

The team moves instantly, transferring the patient onto the trauma bed.

You reposition yourself beside the counter where you can see both the patient and the monitor clearly, your fingers already hovering over the keyboard.

The paramedic continues the report as the transfer happens.

“Patient was inside the transit terminal when the device detonated. Witnesses say she was thrown backward into a metal bench.”

You begin typing.

00:02 — Patient arrival Trauma Bay 1

The woman groans weakly.

Her face is streaked with soot, bruising already blooming across her cheekbones. Blood runs down the side of her scalp from a deep laceration hidden beneath tangled hair.

Her breathing is uneven, shallow.

Abbott leans over the bed.

“Hey,” he says calmly. “Stay with me.”

Her eyelids flutter.

“Heart rate one-twenty. Blood pressure ninety over fifty.”

Abbot presses gently along the woman’s ribs.

She gasps sharply.

“Chest tenderness,” he murmurs.

Your fingers move across the keyboard.

Primary survey completed. Chest tenderness present.

For a moment, the case seems straightforward. A blast trauma resulting in a rib injury. Possible pulmonary contusion. But then the patient suddenly begins to struggle. Her breathing quickens, chest rising and falling in short, shallow bursts.

Respiratory glances up at the monitor. “Oxygen eighty-five.”

“That’s odd.” Abbot frowns. He listens to her lungs again with his stethoscope, “breath sounds still there.”

“What’s the problem?” Shen appears in the doorway, wiping blood from his gloves.

“Oxygen dropping, but lungs sound clear,” Abbot says, gesturing toward the monitor.

Shen studies the patient. “Pulmonary contusion, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Abbot says slowly.

Across the hallway, Robby calls for another ultrasound while Whitaker finishes suturing a laceration in Room Four. McKay passes by carrying a small child wrapped in blankets, murmuring softly to keep him calm.

The department is still moving at full speed. But something about this patient feels wrong.

You stare at the monitor.

Then at the chart.

Then back at the patient again.

Your brain begins connecting pieces.

The uneven breathing, the bruising along the neck, the way her voice sounded when she tried to speak. Something clicks.

“Dr. Abbot?”

“What?” He glances toward you.

You hesitate..Then say it anyway.

“Her neck.”

“What about it?” Abbott looks down immediately.

“There’s swelling on the left side.” You lean slightly forward.

“That could just be bruising.” Shen squints.

But you’re already scrolling through the EMS report.

“She was thrown into a bench,” you say slowly. “Blunt neck trauma.”

“Carotid injury?” Abbot’s eyes sharpen.

The room is still. Shen steps closer as Abbot grabs the ultrasound probe.

“Let’s find out.”

The probe slides across the woman’s neck. The ultrasound monitor flickers. For a moment, the screen shows nothing but shifting gray shapes. Then Abbot exhales slowly.

“Well.”

“Damn.” Shen leans over his shoulder.

You stare at the image. A dark expanding pocket beside the carotid artery; a growing hematoma.

Abbot glances back toward you.

“If that keeps expanding,” he says quietly, “her airway collapses.”

“That would’ve been fun to discover later.” Shen whistles softly.

“Good catch.” Abbot nods once.

The words are quiet.

He turns to the nurse. “Call vascular surgery. Now.”

Across the room, Robby glances over.

“What did I miss?” 

“She saved your patient.” Abbot gestures toward you.

“Not bad.” Robby raises an eyebrow.

Whitaker glances over from the next room. McKay smiles faintly as she passes the doorway.

“You might have picked the right scribe,” she says.

Abbot doesn’t answer. But when he looks at you again, something in his expression has shifted. Less testing, More certainty. He steps closer to the counter as the surgical team rushes in to take over the case.

“You noticed that before we did,” he says quietly.

“I just saw the swelling.”

Abbot studies your face for a moment.

“You see things.”

“That’s kind of my job.” You shrug slightly.

“Most scribes just type.”

Your stomach flips. 

Shen walks past, shaking his head. “I’m stealing her next casualty.”

Abbott answers instantly.

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re territorial tonight.” Shen laughs.

“She’s efficient,” Abbott replies calmly.

You feel heat rise to your face. Robby claps Shen on the shoulder.

“Leave Abbot’s scribe alone. He’s clearly attached.”

“Oh, I noticed,” Shen grins, knowing exactly what he’s doing.

“Focus,” Abbot mutters.

But when the others drift away toward their patients, Abbot lingers beside the counter.

The trauma hallway is still chaotic. But the space between the two of you feels strangely quiet.

“You realize,” he says softly, “you probably saved that woman’s life.”

“I just pointed something out.”

Abbott shakes his head.

“No.”

His gaze holds yours.

“You changed the entire plan.”

Your heart is beating far too fast. 

“Good work.” Abbot finally steps back. Then he grabs another pair of gloves. Because at that exact moment, another stretcher bursts through the ambulance bay doors.

….

The surgical team sweeps into Trauma Bay 1 less than two minutes after Abbot calls them.

Blue caps. Sterile trays. The clipped, purposeful energy of people used to stepping into disasters halfway through.

You step slightly aside from the counter to give them room, though your eyes never leave the screen as you finish documenting the vascular consult and the ultrasound findings. The cursor blinks impatiently between lines of text while the room shifts around the patient.

Garcia leans over the woman’s neck while Abbott explains quickly.

“Blunt trauma to the neck from a metal bench during the explosion,” Abbott says, voice steady. “Rapidly expanding hematoma. Airway currently stable but trending the wrong direction.”

Garcia nods once. “We’ll take her upstairs.”

Abbot steps back just enough to clear space for them.

You keep typing.

00:11 — General surgery at bedside. Expanding carotid hematoma confirmed.

The patient is wheeled out less than two minutes later.

And just like that— Trauma Bay 1 is suddenly empty.

For half a second, the room feels eerily still.

Blood-streaked gauze litters the floor. A discarded syringe rolls slowly against the base of the bed. The monitor that had been screaming alarms a moment ago now sits silent.

Your fingers stop moving.

Only because there is nothing left to document.

Abbot pulls off his gloves and drops them into the biohazard bin, the faint snap of latex echoing in the quiet room.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Yeah.” You blink up at him.

“You look like your brain’s buffering.”

“Just catching up.” You exhale.

Abbott studies you for a moment.

Then nods once.

“Good work.”

Before you can respond, the ambulance bay doors slam open again.

The sound echoes through the trauma hallway.

Dana’s voice carries across the department almost instantly.

“Another one!”

“Of course.” Abbot sighs softly under his breath.

You’re already reopening a blank chart.

The stretcher comes in slower than the others had. Two paramedics guide it carefully through the trauma bay doors, their hands gripping the rails like they’re trying not to jostle something fragile. The patient on the stretcher is conscious. That alone sets him apart from half the trauma victims tonight.

A police officer.

His uniform shirt is half unbuttoned and streaked with soot, the fabric torn along one shoulder. One of the paramedics keeps a steady hand on the officer’s chest while the other pushes the bed forward.

“Thirty-six-year-old male,” the paramedic reports quickly. “Found two blocks from the terminal. Possible blast debris injury. Severe leg pain and numbness.”

“Move him over.” Abbot gestures toward the trauma bed.

The officer grits his teeth as the team helps transfer him.

The moment his left leg shifts onto the bed, he hisses sharply.

“Easy,” Abbot says calmly.

“Working on it,” the officer mutters.

Your eyes drop to the injury. The man’s left pant leg has been cut open from thigh to calf. And the damage is immediately obvious. The entire thigh is swollen. Not the soft swelling of a bruise. This is tight. Distended. The skin stretched shiny under the fluorescent lights like something is inflating beneath it.

Abbot notices it at the same moment you do.

“When did the pain start?” he asks.

“Ten minutes after the blast,” the officer says, breath uneven. “Got worse in the ambulance.”

Abbot presses gently along the thigh.

The officer jerks violently.

“Jesus—!”

“Sorry,” Abbot murmurs.

He presses again, more carefully this time. The swelling is worse in the inner compartment.

“Vitals?” Abbot asks.

The nurse reads the monitor. “Heart rate one-twenty-four. Pressure one-oh-two over sixty-eight.”

“Can you move your foot?” Abbot asks.

The officer tries. The boot twitches weakly.

“That’s it.”

Abbot crouches slightly beside the bed, running his fingers down the man’s ankle before pressing against the top of the foot.

“Can you feel that?”

“…Barely.” The officer hesitates.

Abbot’s eyes narrow.

You feel the tension in the room shift before anyone says it out loud. 

“What’s going on?” Shen appears in the doorway of Trauma Bay 1, wiping his hands on a towel.

Abbot gestures toward the leg.

“Rapid swelling.”

Shen leans closer. Then whistles softly.

“That’s not good.”

Abbot presses along the calf.

The officer flinches again. “Feels like my leg’s about to explode,” he says through clenched teeth.

“That’s because it basically is.” Shen folds his arms.

Abbott doesn’t look up.

“Compartment syndrome.”

Your fingers pause for a split second. Then start typing again.

00:36 — Suspected compartment syndrome left thigh. Rapid swelling noted.

“Compartment pressure kit.” Abbot looks at the nurse.

The nurse nods and moves.

Across the hallway, Robby glances over from another trauma bed.

“What’ve you got?”

“Leg about to lose circulation,” Shen answers.

“Fun.” Robby winces.

The pressure kit arrives. Abbot inserts the needle carefully into the muscle compartment. The digital reading appears on the monitor.

“Thirty-eight.” Shen leans closer.

“That’s bad.” Abbott exhales slowly.

Shen nods.

“Real bad.”

“You wanna explain what that means?” The officer looks between them.

“It means the pressure inside your leg is cutting off blood flow.” Abbot meets his eyes.

“…That sounds bad.” The officer swallows.

“It is.”

Your typing speeds up.

00:39 — Compartment pressure measured at 38 mmHg. Acute compartment syndrome suspected.

“Surgery’s still upstairs.” Shen glances toward the hallway.

“Then we stabilize until they get here.” Abbott doesn’t hesitate.

The officer shifts slightly. 

Big mistake. 

The movement sends another wave of pain up his leg.

“Doctor,” he mutters. “I’m gonna pass out.”

“Not yet.” Abbott reaches for the medication tray.

“This will help.” The syringe appears in his hand.

The officer exhales slowly as the medication pushes through the IV.

The swelling still looks wrong.

Too tight.

Too fast.

Abbott watches it for another second.

“…Damn.” Then mutters under his breath.

“What?” Shen notices.

Abbott presses along the thigh again. The muscle barely gives under the pressure.

“It’s getting worse.”

“Surgery’s not here yet.” Shen glances toward the door.

Abbott looks back at the leg. Then makes a decision.

“Prep for bedside fasciotomy.”

“Here?” Shen raises an eyebrow.

Abbott meets his gaze.

“You want to wait until the muscle dies?”

“Fair point.” Shen exhales.

You type quickly.

00:42 — Emergency bedside fasciotomy planned.

“…That sounds like something I should be worried about.” The officer stares at Abbot.

“You should be worried if we don’t do it.” Abbot gives him a side glance.

The room shifts instantly into preparation.

Scissors.

Sterile drapes.

Surgical instruments clattering onto trays.

You keep typing. Across the doorway, Shen glances toward you.

“You still keeping up?”

“Barely.” You lift the laptop slightly.

“Abbot’s lucky,” Shen smirks.

Abbott looks up immediately.

“Shen.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop distracting my scribe.” 

My scribe

“You’re territorial tonight.” Shen laughs.

Abbot doesn’t answer, but the corner of his mouth twitches. 

Your pulse jumps again. 

Abbot turns back to the patient.

“Alright,” he says calmly.

“We’re going to relieve the pressure in your leg.”

“Please tell me I’m unconscious for that part.” The officer stares at him.

“…You will be shortly.” Abbot pauses.

Respiratory steps closer. The nurse prepares sedation.

You type every second. Every medication. Every incision.

Because in a mass casualty night like this— details are everything.

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 11 PM

Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

11:00 PM: the ER is drowning in trauma patients—and when Dr. Shen pulls you away from Abbott to help save a life, it becomes very obvious your attending doesn’t like losing you.

Words: 1.5K

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

11:00 PM

By the time the clock on the wall creeps past eleven, the emergency department barely resembles the place it had been when your shift started.

The transformation hasn’t happened all at once. It’s been gradual—like watching a wave roll closer and closer to shore until suddenly you realize the water is already around your ankles.

The hallways are full.

Stretchers line the walls where chairs once sat earlier in the evening. Portable monitors hum beside beds that didn’t exist an hour ago. IV poles crowd the corners of the trauma hallway like thin metal trees, their lines stretching toward patients whose injuries range from manageable to catastrophic.

Even the waiting room has changed.

The doors have been propped open to make room for triage overflow, and every few seconds another voice cuts through the rising noise—nurses calling out vitals, respiratory adjusting ventilators, paramedics rattling off reports as they push stretchers through the ambulance bay doors.

The emergency department has stopped trying to catch up.

Now it is simply trying to survive.

You stand at the counter just outside Trauma Bay 1 with your laptop balanced against the edge of the workstation, typing so quickly your wrists ache.

Your screen is crowded with open charts.

One belongs to Abbot’s blast lung patient, now stabilized on a ventilator but still fragile enough that the slightest dip in oxygen could send the entire room scrambling again. Another chart belongs to the shrapnel case Ellis rushed to surgery twenty minutes ago, the operative team still sending updates through the system.

A third chart sits half-finished.

That one belongs to the woman Shen has been fighting to keep alive for the last thirty minutes.

You rub your wrist once quickly before returning to the keyboard.

There isn’t time for soreness.

Across the room, Abbot stands beside the trauma bed, one hand braced against the rail while he studies the monitor with the kind of stillness that only comes from years of doing this job.

His patient’s oxygen saturation has finally crept into the mid-nineties, but the rest of the vitals are still fragile. Blood pressure low. Heart rate elevated. The ventilator hisses softly as it breathes for the man lying motionless beneath the bright trauma lights.

Abbot adjusts the ventilator settings carefully, his gloved fingers moving with precise familiarity over the controls.

“You’re still breathing,” he murmurs toward the unconscious man, the words quiet enough that only the patient and the handful of people in the room hear them. “That’s encouraging.”

Your fingers move automatically across the keyboard.

Ventilator settings adjusted. FiO2 increased. Patient tolerating ventilation.

Abbot glances sideways toward you, one eyebrow lifting slightly.

“You keeping up?” he asks.

“Barely.” You tilt the laptop toward him just enough to show the rapidly filling chart.

“Good.” The corner of his mouth lifts.

Across the hallway, Shen’s voice rises above the noise.

“I said I need another unit of blood,” he snaps, pressing a hand harder against the woman’s abdomen where the bleeding refuses to stop.

Dana doesn’t even look up from the phone she’s holding against her ear.

“You’ll get it when the cooler arrives!” she shouts back.

“Fantastic,” Shen mutters.

His gown sleeves are dark with blood now, the fabric soaked through almost to his elbows. Unlike Abbot, whose movements stay measured even under pressure, Shen works like someone already three steps ahead in his own mind.

He’s fast. Aggressive. Unbothered by the idea of shouting across the department if it means saving time.

“Pressure’s dropping again,” one of the nurses says anxiously.

Shen swears under his breath. “Of course it is.”

He shifts his weight and glances across the trauma hallway toward Abbott, then toward you.

“How attached are you to your scribe?” he calls.

Your fingers pause over the keyboard.

“What?” Abbot looks up slowly.

Shen gestures toward you with the hand that isn’t currently trying to keep a patient from bleeding out. “I need someone documenting over here before I lose track of what we’ve done.”

Abbot’s expression barely changes…but something tightens almost imperceptibly in his jaw.

“You have a scribe,” he says.

“Yes. And he’s currently documenting on the wrong patient.” Shen snorts. 

As if summoned by the insult, Shen’s assigned scribe appears awkwardly at the doorway of Trauma Bay 2, his laptop clutched in both hands while he stares down at the screen with the haunted look of someone who is several steps behind the chaos unfolding around him.

Shen glances at him once, then back at you. “See?”

Abbot’s gaze flicks briefly toward you.

For a moment, you can practically see the calculation happening behind his eyes.

You know what he’s thinking. If you leave, he loses the person who has been tracking every medication, every order, every second of this disaster.

Shen notices the hesitation.

“Relax,” he says dryly. “I’m not stealing her permanently.”

Abbot’s voice stays calm.

“No.”

“No?” Shen raises an eyebrow.

“No.”

The word hangs there in the air between them.

It isn’t loud. But it’s unmistakably firm.

Shen tilts his head slightly. “Abbot.”

Abbot meets his gaze.

Shen gestures back toward the woman bleeding out on his trauma bed. “I’m a little busy preventing a death over here.”

Abbott glances toward the patient, then toward you.

His voice remains calm, but there’s an edge to it now. “Fine.”

Shen’s mouth curls slightly. “Appreciate it.”

Abbot turns toward you.

“Go help him.”

You hesitate.

Abbott notices immediately. “What?”

“You sure?”

“You asking permission to leave?” His eyebrow lifts.

“Just confirming,” you say, trying unsuccessfully to hide the small smile tugging at your mouth.

 “Go.” Abbott exhales quietly.

You grab the laptop and move across the trauma hallway toward Shen’s bay.

Behind you, Abbot mutters just loud enough for you to hear— “Don’t let him kill anyone.”

Shen laughs. “Your confidence in me is inspiring.”

…..

The moment you step into Shen’s trauma bay, the pace changes. The woman on the bed is pale now, her skin slick with sweat while the monitor above her flashes numbers that are steadily dropping.

Shen nods toward the counter.

“Perfect,” he says. “I need timestamps.”

Your fingers are already moving. “What have we done so far?”

Shen rattles off the list like he’s reading from memory. “Tourniquet applied in the field. Massive transfusion protocol started here. Two units blood, one plasma. TXA ten minutes ago.”

You type as fast as he speaks.

“Abdomen distended,” Shen continues, pressing harder against the bleeding wound. “Possible internal bleed. Surgery’s on its way.”

The patient groans weakly, making Shen lean in closer.

“Stay with me,” he says quietly.

Her eyelids flutter open. “My daughter…”

Shen glances briefly toward the hallway. Ellis is moving between beds, directing staff like an air traffic controller managing a sky full of emergencies.

“We’re looking,” Ellis calls back without breaking stride.

The woman nods faintly. Shen adjusts the pressure on her abdomen again before glancing toward you.

“You always type this fast?” he asks.

“Only when people are bleeding.” 

He huffs a quiet laugh.

Across the trauma hall, Abbott looks up.

You catch it in your peripheral vision.

He’s watching.

Not obviously.

Just long enough to confirm you’re still there.

Then he turns back to his own patient.

…..

Dana appears again in the trauma hallway holding another phone.

“Robby!”

Dr. Robby looks up from the hallway patient he’s been stabilizing.

“What now?”

“Police bringing in one of their own,” Dana says. “Severe burns and blast injuries.”

“Of course they are,” Robby sighs.

Whitaker appears beside him. “I’ve got room three ready.”

“Fantastic,” Robby mutters. “Tonight we’re turning every room into trauma.”

McKay walks past them carrying a pediatric patient wrapped in a blanket.

“Speak for yourselves,” she says. “I’m running a daycare over here.”

The little boy sniffles. “You’re not daycare.”

McKay smiles softly. 

“You’re right,” she says. “Daycare would charge more.”

….

Back in Trauma Bay 2, the surgical team rushes in to take over.

“They’re taking her upstairs,” Shen says finally, stepping back as the surgeons prepare to move the patient.

You finish documenting the handoff. Shen wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve and glances across the hallway toward Abbot. 

“You should probably go back before he starts glaring holes through the wall.”

You follow his gaze. Abbot is exactly where you left him. Only now his arms are crossed. And yes— He’s watching.

You close the chart.

“Thanks for the help,” Shen says.

“Anytime.”

You walk back across the trauma hallway. Abbot doesn’t say anything immediately when you reach the counter. He just glances down at the laptop.

“How bad?”

“Still alive.”

Abbott nods once. Then he mutters a quiet “Good.”

You glance up at him. “You miss me?”

Abbott gives you a look. “Don’t get cocky.”

But the corner of his mouth twitches.

….

Dana’s voice suddenly echoes across the department again.

“Another wave incoming!”

Everyone turns toward the ambulance bay.

More sirens. More flashing lights.

Abbot pulls on another pair of gloves.

Then he looks at you. “Ready?”

You flex your aching fingers over the keyboard. “Always.”

The ambulance doors burst open again and the night keeps getting worse.

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 10 PM

Dr. Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

When the first victims from the downtown explosion begin flooding the emergency department at 10:00 PM, you and Dr. Abbott are pushed into a night that will test every instinct you have.

Word Count: 3.7K

Warnings: blood, trauma

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

10:00 PM

The first thing that changes is not the noise.

It is the rhythm.

Up until now, the emergency department has still been pretending it is an emergency department instead of a battlefield. There have been stretchers and sirens and hurried footsteps, yes, but there has still been some recognizable order beneath it all: a room assigned, a patient handed off, a physician at the bedside, a chart opened, a plan made. Even the first trauma, with the soot and the shrapnel and the smell of smoke embedded in a stranger’s skin, had fit into a pattern your brain understood.

This does not.

At 10:01, the ambulance bay is all flashing lights and motion, red and white strobes painting the glass doors in pulses sharp enough to make the whole trauma hall look unreal. A siren winds down outside only for another to replace it, the sound stacking on itself until it becomes one continuous scream.

Dana is still on the phone when you look up from your laptop. She has the receiver pinned between her ear and shoulder, one hand braced flat against the desk, the other stabbing at the board as if she could force it to make more space.

“How many now?” she snaps into the phone. She listens, her mouth flattening. “No, don’t give me ‘multiple.’ I need a number.” Another beat. “Fine. Send what you’ve got and page day staff back in if they’re available. Everybody. I don’t care if they’ve had a drink, a shower, or a spiritual awakening. If they can safely get here, I want them here.”

Across from her, Abbot is already pulling on gloves as he walks, dark eyes sweeping the trauma hall with that unnerving steadiness of his, like he can stand in the center of a disaster and somehow make it slow down enough to be handled. The sarcasm never fully leaves him, but it narrows now, becomes a blade instead of a shield.

“Dana,” he says, not loudly, but with enough force that half the people nearby turn anyway. “Call Robby. Call Whittaker. Call McKay. Anyone. Tell them this isn’t optional.”

Dana does not bother looking up. “Already doing it.”

“That’s why I keep you around.”

“That and my sparkling personality.”

“It definitely isn’t the coffee.”

The corner of Dana’s mouth twitches, but she is already moving again, barking at the unit clerk to print extra trauma labels and clear the hallway beds nearest the bays.

You are standing just outside Trauma Bay 1 with your laptop open and your pulse drumming hard enough in your throat to make you aware of every swallow. Abbot glances at you as he steps backward into the room, and there is something different in that look than there was an hour ago. Less appraisal. Less testing. He is not wondering anymore whether you can keep up.

He is assuming you will.

“Sunshine,” he says, and even now there is that dry edge to it, that faintly impossible almost-smile that does stupid things to your stomach. “Try not to let me sound incompetent in the chart.”

You force yourself to breathe, to steady your fingers on the keyboard. “That might be outside my scope.”

Then the doors slam open and the first patient of the second wave comes through.

He is young, maybe late twenties, carried in on a stretcher by two paramedics and a firefighter with ash ground into the knees of his pants. His face is blackened with soot except for the streaks cut through it by tears or sweat. His shirt has been cut away. Burns bloom angry red across his upper chest and neck, while glittering puncture wounds pepper his left shoulder and flank where shrapnel has lodged like fragments of another world.

But the thing that hits first is his breathing.

High, ragged, wrong.

Respiratory moves at the same moment Abbot does.

“What’ve you got?” Abbot says, and the room closes around the patient as the stretcher locks into place. 

The lead paramedic drags a forearm across his brow before starting the report. “Male, twenty-eight. Found ambulatory initially near the terminal entrance. Became progressively more short of breath during transport. Suspected blast exposure with superficial burns and multiple penetrating fragments. Hoarse voice, worsening stridor, sat dropped from ninety-four to eighty-six in the last three minutes.”

Your fingers are already flying.

22:02 — Patient arrival to Trauma Bay 1. Male, approx. 28 years old. Suspected blast injury with facial soot, chest and neck burns, hoarseness, progressive respiratory distress, multiple shrapnel wounds.

Abbot leans over the patient, one gloved hand braced on the rail, voice low and sharp. “Hey. Stay with me. What’s your name?”

The man’s eyes are wide, frightened, rimmed red. “Evan,” he rasps, and even that single word sounds scraped raw.

Abbot’s gaze flicks to the neck, the mouth, the singed hairs at the nostrils.

“Inhalation injury,” he says, and the room pivots with him. “We intubate early before his airway swells shut.”

The patient grabs weakly at Abbott’s wrist. “No— I can breathe—”

“For the moment,” Abbott says. Not unkind. Not soft either. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

You document while respiratory sets up and the nurse draws meds. Burn. Blast. Airway compromise. Anticipated difficult intubation. Potential airway edema. The note is building under your hands almost as fast as the room is changing shape around you.

Outside in Trauma Bay 2, Chen’s voice rises over the noise. “I need pressure on that now, not in five seconds. Now.”

You glance up for half a second and catch a woman on Shen’s bed with a tourniquet cinched high on her thigh and blood soaking through layers of gauze despite it. Her left leg is gone below the knee. A firefighter’s reflective jacket has been draped over the lower half of her body, but it does nothing to soften the reality of it.

Ellis is halfway between the bays and triage, a tablet in one hand, her hair pulled back tight, moving with clipped purpose as she diverts a teenager with a forearm fracture to a less acute room and flags another patient with abdominal pain and a rigid belly straight toward resuscitation. She has no time for bedside gentleness now, only efficiency.

“Talk to me, Ellis,” Dana calls.

“Three red tags inbound, four yellow in the waiting room, and one walking wounded who is about to become a problem if someone doesn’t sit him down.”

“Join the club.”

Back in your bay, Abbot nods to the nurse. “Medications.”

“Etomidate and succinylcholine ready.”

“Push.”

You catch the times the instant they are called. You type them before the sounds have even stopped vibrating in the air.

22:04 — Etomidate administered. 22:04 — Succinylcholine administered.

Abbot steps in with respiratory at his shoulder. Every movement sharp and exact. There is no flourish to the way he works, no dramatic pause, just competence so practiced it becomes its own kind of violence against chaos.

“Tube.”

Respiratory places it in his hand. Abbot’s jaw sets fractionally as he visualizes. Then he advances.

For one suspended second, the whole room seems to narrow to the line of his sight.

“Cord view.”

He advances again.

“Tube’s in.”

Respiratory confirms. “End tidal color change. Bilateral rise. Sat climbing.”

You type without looking down.

Abbott secures the airway, then shifts immediately to the burns and shrapnel. “Portable chest. CBC, CMP, coags, type and cross. Get trauma surgery aware. And somebody page burn.”

A nurse starts to move, then stops when another ambulance siren cuts in, louder than the rest, close enough to rattle the glass.

Dana’s head jerks toward the doors. “We’re out of monitored beds.”

Abbot doesn’t even look up from adjusting the vent settings. “Then we invent some.”

“That’s not how beds work.”

“Tonight it is.”

He says it so flatly you almost laugh, which feels unhinged, so you don’t.

Another stretcher slams through the bay doors, and this one does not come to you.

It goes to Ellis first.

The patient is a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with blood caked at the waistband of her jeans and a shard of something metallic protruding from the right lower side of her abdomen. She is conscious, pale, shaking hard enough that the stretcher rattles.

Ellis puts both hands on the rails as it rolls, pacing the stretcher in reverse while the paramedic reports. “Teen female, shrapnel to abdomen, hypotensive in transport, responsive but worsening abdominal tenderness—”

Ellis’s expression changes on the word hypotensive. “No, she’s mine. Room six was discharged? Good. Push her there. Call surgery. Keep the fragment in place. Nobody touches it.”

The girl starts crying the moment they stop moving. “Is my mom here? She was with me, she was right there—”

Ellis leans in, one hand steady on the bed, voice calm enough to cut through the panic. “I don’t know yet. Right now my job is to keep you alive long enough for you to yell at me later, okay?”

The girl sobs once and nods.

Ellis turns immediately. “Two large bores. Blood if her pressure drops again. Let’s move.”

You catch all of it from the edge of your vision while Abbott’s patient stabilizes by degrees. The chest X-ray comes in wet and ugly, diffuse bilateral opacities beginning to bloom. Blast lung, exactly as suspected. Not a punctured lung this time. Not a hemothorax. Different injury, same clock ticking in his blood.

Abbot studies the image for less than two seconds. “He stays ventilated. ICU if we can get a bed. Which we can’t. So for now he stays with us.”

You put it in the note. Before you can finish, another shout tears through the hall.

“Collapse in triage!”

Whitaker appears almost before the words are done leaving Dana’s mouth. He still looks like he got dressed while running—scrub top half tucked, half not—but there is a strange steadiness to him as he drops to a knee beside a middle-aged man who has crumpled against the wall near the waiting room doors. Soot covers the man’s face and forearms. He had apparently walked in under his own power. He is not walking now.

“What happened?” Whitaker asks, already checking a carotid pulse.

The triage nurse answers breathlessly. “He said he was fine. Then he sat down and went gray.”

Whitaker’s hand presses to the man’s left upper quadrant, and his expression shifts from alarmed to focused in an instant. “He’s not fine. Distended abdomen, guarding— probably internal bleed. I need a monitor and someone who likes miracles.”

“You called?” Robby’s voice cuts across the hallway.

He has arrived with his hair still damp, scrub jacket open, face set in that exhausted, sharp-edged way only senior attendings seem capable of, as if sleep and irritation and brilliance have all learned to coexist in the same body. He takes in the room in one sweep and somehow sees everything: the vented blast lung in Abbot’s bay, the amputee in Shen’s, the teenager Ellis is stabilizing, Whitaker kneeling over the collapse at triage, and Dana is one snapped phone cord away from homicide.

“Tell me this is less bad than it looks,” Robby says.

Dana gives him a dead stare. “It’s worse.”

“Fantastic.”

He drops beside Whittaker anyway. “What do you have?”

“Walk-in from the blast. Hypotensive, rigid abdomen, likely splenic or liver injury. He dumped at triage.”

Robby palpates once, looks at the man’s color, then nods. “He’s bleeding somewhere useful. Let’s not waste time pretending otherwise. Move him. Hall bed B if we have to.”

“There is no Hall bed B,” Dana says.

“There is now.”

Whitaker glances up despite himself, and for a second there is almost a flicker of relief on his face. Robby has that effect on people: abrasive enough to make students sweat, competent enough to make everyone else breathe easier.

McKay arrives less dramatically but somehow changes the room just as much. She comes through the side doors with her badge half-clipped and her hair barely tied back, one hand already pulling on gloves. There is no question in her first sentence, only purpose.

“Who needs hands?”

Dana points down the hall. “Burns, shrapnel, probable peds wave inbound, and if you ask me one more clarifying question I’ll bite you.”

McKay nods once and veers toward a young mother being helped off a wheelchair, her blouse singed, both forearms blistered and red where she must have thrown them up to protect her face. The woman is trying not to cry because a little boy is clinging to her side with streaks of soot on his cheeks and only a shallow cut over one eyebrow.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” McKay tells the boy while guiding his mother toward a room. “You stick with me. We’re gonna clean you both up and make your mom hate hospital gowns in a minute.”

The boy stares at her. “Are you a doctor?”

“I am when people are unlucky.”

He almost smiles.

That is McKay all over, you think distantly even while typing—there is steel in her, but it is wrapped around something warmer, something that knows exactly how to crouch down to a child’s eye level even when the department is catching fire around her.

In Trauma Bay 2, Shen is in a different kind of war. His patient with the traumatic amputation is crashing in slow motion, pressure sliding despite blood and pressure and hands. The floor near the bed is slick. He’s barking orders with controlled precision, less sardonic than Abbott, more openly sharp.

“I need another unit. No, not in theory, in my hands. Now.”

The nurse passes it over. Shen spikes it himself.

The woman on the bed is semiconscious, skin waxy, eyes fluttering. “My daughter,” she whispers. “My daughter was with me.”

Shen glances once at Ellis, who is crossing the hall with fresh labs in hand.

“I’ll have someone look,” Ellis says immediately.

The patient tries to focus. “Please.”

Shen softens by maybe half a degree, which on him reads like a landslide. “We heard you. Right now stay with me.”

Abbot’s first patient is as stable as he is going to get in the ED, and the room pivots again before anyone can feel relieved. Two more casualties are coming through the bay doors at once: one wheeled by EMS, one staggering under his own power with a bloody towel pressed to the side of his face and glass in his hair.

The ambulatory one shouts before anyone can stop him. “There was another one! Another blast!” Then he bends over and vomits onto the floor.

Dana closes her eyes for one beat. “Of course there was.”

The paramedic with the stretcher does not break pace. “Female, forty-two, likely tympanic membrane rupture, facial lacerations, confusion, possible closed head injury. She was farther from the epicenter.”

Lower acuity. For now.

Dana points. “Fast track is dead. Put her in eleven. McKay can pick her up.”

But as they wheel past, the woman’s right hand slips off the side of the stretcher. Her fingers are blue.

You only see it because Abbot sees it first.

“Stop,” he says.

The stretcher halts.

He steps in, takes one look at her breathing pattern, then pulls the sheet back from her torso. Her chest rises, but not well. A narrow piece of shrapnel is buried just below the clavicle, easy to miss beneath the blood and grime.

“That’s not fast track,” Abbot says. “That’s now an upgrade.”

Ellis looks over from her room. “To where?”

Abbot scans the overfull hall, then makes a decision so fast it feels like watching a trap spring. “Resus three. She decompensates, she dies in the hallway.”

Dana points with her pen. “Move.”

And just like that the woman becomes your next example of what tonight is doing to everyone’s thresholds: simple until she isn’t, stable until she absolutely isn’t.

A minute later, while you are trying to split your attention between documenting Abbott’s first trauma disposition and the upgrade of the second, he reaches across your shoulder and taps one line on your screen.

“You wrote ‘tachypneic.’”

You blink up at him. “He was.”

“Yes but he was also gasping.”

His arm is still braced on the counter near you, close enough that you can smell antiseptic and coffee and something indefinably him beneath the gloves and stress. There isn’t time to react to proximity in a room like this, and somehow that makes it worse.

You change the word.

Abbott’s gaze flicks over your face, then back to the screen. “Good.”

He means the note. Maybe.

He straightens, but not before his shoulder brushes yours as he turns. It is probably an accident. It feels like nothing of the sort.

The next twenty minutes stop behaving like time.

Robby is now running what used to be hallway triage like it was a field unit, snapping at anyone who hesitates and then immediately doing twice their work himself. He’s not warm, exactly, but he radiates the brutal reassurance of someone who has seen awful things before and remains offensively functional. He throws a quick question to Whitaker about the collapsed walk-in’s pressure, corrects his hand placement on an ultrasound probe without looking, and then tells him, “You’re doing fine, which is irritating because now I have to keep teaching you.” Whitaker, pale but focused, almost smiles and starts to blush, and goes right back to work.

McKay cleans burns and splints hands and talks a terrified little boy through having glass picked out of his scalp as if the world has not become a siren. Ellis moves from patient to patient with the ruthless sorting instinct disasters require, identifying who can wait, who cannot, who is dying, and who might still be dragged back if someone gets there fast enough.

Dana pages overhead again, her voice hard and clipped.

“Attention, all available clinical staff. Mass casualty protocol remains active.” Then, lower, to no one in particular: “If administration asks whether we followed policy, I’m going to develop selective amnesia.”

Abbot hears her as he steps out of Trauma Bay 1 and strips his gloves off with a snap. “Don’t worry. I’ll lie for you.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

He looks around the hall once, every line of him taut, and then his eyes land on you again.

You are halfway through documenting a sedation time, trying not to lose the thread of three patients at once. He steps close enough that his voice doesn’t have to carry. “How far behind are you?”

There is no judgment in it. Just the question. The assumption that he needs the real answer.

“Two charts clean, one half-done, one active, and if somebody gives me another verbal order without making eye contact first I might AMA myself.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “There you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re finally talking like you work here.”

Before you can decide whether to be offended or absurdly pleased, a crash from the far end of the hall jerks everyone’s attention sideways. One of the walking wounded has seized near the waiting room chairs, his body rigid, then jerking, a fresh sheet of panic rippling through the families packed against the walls.

“Head injury!” Ellis shouts.

Robby points. “Whitaker, on me.”

They move together, and Abbot moves too, but Shen calls across the hall first.

“Abbot, I’m losing mine.”

The amputee. Her pressure is tanking again. For one second the department hangs on a knife edge, every physician dividing themselves in impossible fractions.

Then Abbot decides. “Robby has the seizure. Shen, I’m coming.”

He starts toward Trauma Bay 2, then turns back and looks straight at you. 

“Stay with me.”

It is only two words, spoken in the middle of mayhem, practical and clipped and absolutely about work.

It still lands like a hand at the back of your neck.

You go.

In Shen’s bay the woman’s monitor is screaming, pulse thready and too fast, blood continuing to ooze around dressings that should already be enough. Shen is pressing low at the groin now, jaw set, his own scrub top marked through at the chest and sleeves.

“She’s got more going on than the leg,” Shen says without preamble. “Abdomen’s getting bigger. She’s bleeding into somewhere interesting.”

“She needed an OR yesterday,” Abbot says.

“Join me in reality.”

The woman’s eyes flutter. “My daughter—”

“We heard you,” Abbot says, unexpectedly quiet. He looks over to you, “Time.”

You answer instantly. He doesn’t need to check whether you’re there anymore. 

“22:31.”

 “Document loss of pulse if it happens. Not before.” He nods once, already moving. 

 “Got it.” You swallow hard.

There is something electric in moments like this, something sharp and almost unbearable about being necessary at the edge of someone else’s disaster while the man beside you operates like the center of gravity itself. Abbot is not gentle like this. But in the middle of this, with blood on the floor and another siren winding down outside and too many people dying at once, he trusts you as if that trust is the most ordinary thing in the world.

And maybe that is worse than flirting.

Maybe that is everything.

Dana appears in the doorway with another printout in her hand. “Police are sending one of their own. Critical. Two minutes out.”

Shen laughs once, humorless. “Why not.”

Abbott doesn’t look up from the patient. “Put them wherever God feels generous.”

“God stopped answering the phone twenty minutes ago.”

The woman in the bed cardiac arrests at 22:32.

It happens fast—one ugly slide on the monitor, a flatness to her pulse under Shen’s fingers, the whole room snapping tighter at once.

“Lost pulse,” the nurse says.

Abbott’s voice changes, drops into that absolute command tone that somehow makes everyone else move faster. “Start compressions.”

You type the time.

Shen climbs onto the step stool. Robby is still at the seizure across the hall. Ellis is holding pressure on the teenager’s abdominal wound in room six. McKay is calming a child while assessing whether his mother’s burns are deeper than they first looked. Dana is directing stretchers into spaces that did not exist an hour ago. Whitaker is somewhere in the middle of all of it, trying to be useful and succeeding more than anyone expected.

The department is saturated.

And outside, through the glass, another set of lights turns into the bay.

The chapter closes on that image: the reflected strobes, the open trauma doors, Abbott’s voice cutting through the room while you catch every second of it, and the certainty settling cold in your ribs that this is not the end of the wave.

It is only the middle.

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 9 PM

Dr. Jack Abbot x Scribe! F! Reader

As the first wave of trauma patients floods the ER at 9:00 PM, you and Dr. Abbott are thrown deeper into chaos than ever before—and the quiet tension between you only sharpens under pressure.

Word Count: 3.7K

Masterlist

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

9:00 PM

The change in the emergency department happens slowly enough that no one notices it right away.

At first, the noise simply softens.

Conversations at the nurses’ station trail off mid-sentence. Someone’s phone rings twice before it’s picked up. Even the steady rhythm of monitor alarms seems to stretch farther apart, the electronic beeping echoing longer than usual against the fluorescent-lit walls.

The department hasn’t gone quiet.

But it has paused.

Like a room full of people suddenly sensing something in the air.

You only realize something is wrong when Dr. Abbot does.

He’s standing beside the trauma board with his arms loosely crossed, scanning the patient tracking screen the way he always does—calm, focused, every line of text absorbed in seconds. When Dana slowly lowers the EMS phone from her ear without saying anything, Abbot’s gaze lifts instantly.

Dana never hesitates.

She talks fast, efficiently, as if silence itself irritates her.

But now she’s quiet.

Abbot studies her for exactly one second before asking, “How bad?” his voice low and steady as he pushes himself off the counter and steps closer to the desk.

Dana exhales slowly through her nose before answering, the sound sharp with contained frustration. “Multi-vehicle collision on the interstate,” she says, placing the phone carefully on the counter like she’s resisting the urge to slam it down. “Dispatch is still sorting out details.”

Abbot folds his arms again, but his posture shifts slightly, the subtle change signaling that his brain is already reorganizing the department in his head.

“How many vehicles?” he asks.

“Four confirmed,” Dana replies. “Possibly more.”

Abbott nods once, absorbing the information. “Injuries?”

Dana gives a humorless shrug. “Unknown.”

Abbot mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like fantastic before straightening and glancing around the department.

“Alright,” he says calmly, clapping his hands together once in quiet decision. “Let’s get ahead of it.”

The tone is casual, almost conversational. But the reaction is immediate.

Nurses begin clearing stretchers from the trauma bays. Respiratory rolls a ventilator down the hallway. Someone drags a cooler of emergency blood products across the floor, the plastic scraping loudly against tile.

The department pivots from routine to readiness in seconds.

You grab your laptop and follow Abbott into Trauma Bay 1, the familiar weight of the computer tucked under your arm as the smell of antiseptic and sterile plastic fills the air.

Abbott moves through the equipment with methodical precision, checking the airway cart first before testing the suction tubing.

“What’s the potassium on the appendicitis patient?” he asks suddenly, his voice carrying across the room while he flicks on the laryngoscope and checks the battery.

You glance down at the chart. “Three point two,” you answer.

“Replace it,” Abbot replies automatically, setting the laryngoscope back into its slot.

“Already ordered,” you say as your fingers move across the keyboard.

Abbot nods slightly without looking up.

Then he glances toward you.

“You ever worked a mass casualty before?” he asks.

You shake your head. “No.”

“Good,” Abbott says thoughtfully.

You blink.

“That’s supposed to be comforting?”

Abbot hums quietly as he checks the oxygen tubing. “It means you don’t know enough to panic yet.”

You stare at him.

“That might be the worst reassurance anyone has ever given me.”

For the first time since the phone call, the corner of Abbot’s mouth twitches.

He glances at you, one eyebrow lifting slightly. “I’m full of them.”

Despite the tension building in the room, you feel your mouth twitch in response.

Before you can say anything else, the trauma bay doors swing open.

Dr. Shen walks in first. He’s already pulling gloves onto his hands while scanning the room, his eyes flicking rapidly from equipment to stretchers to staff with sharp efficiency.

“What’s the story?” he asks as he steps fully into the bay.

“Highway crash,” Abbot replies.

Shen whistles quietly.

“Well that’s going to ruin everyone’s evening.”

Abbott glances sideways at him.

“My evening was already ruined when you walked in.”

Shen grins widely.

“That’s fair.”

Behind him, Dr. Ellis steps into the trauma hallway, tying her hair back as she surveys the cleared trauma bays and the equipment lining the walls.

“Tell me we’re exaggerating,” she says.

“We’re not.” Dana answers from the desk. 

Ellis nods once.

“Alright.”

She gestures toward the trauma rooms.

“You take Bay 1,” she tells Abbott. “Chen gets Bay 2. I’ll triage overflow.”

Abbot nods easily.

“Works for me.”

You notice he doesn’t ask where you’re going.

He assumes you’re staying with him.

.....

The siren reaches the ambulance bay before the vehicle does.

It rises sharply in pitch as the ambulance pulls closer, echoing through the department like a warning bell.

Every head turns toward the doors.

The moment the ambulance backs into the bay, the paramedics are already moving.

The stretcher bursts through the doors seconds later.

“Male, thirty-two!” one of them calls breathlessly. “Found near the highway crash site—possible debris strike!”

Abbot steps forward immediately. “Trauma One.”

The team moves with practiced coordination, transferring the patient onto the trauma bed.

You slide into position along the counter, laptop already open.

The cursor blinks.

Waiting.

“Patient was outside his vehicle when another car hit the median barrier,” the paramedic continues rapidly. “Debris scattered across the roadway. He took a hit from metal fragments.”

You begin typing.

21:19 — Patient arrival Trauma Bay 1.

The man on the bed groans weakly.

He’s conscious. Barely.

Blood mats his hair along one side of his head where a jagged scalp laceration cuts across the skin. Smaller puncture wounds dot his chest and shoulder where fragments of twisted metal have embedded beneath the surface.

Abbot leans closer.

“Hey,” he says calmly, placing one hand on the bedrail. “Stay with me.”

The patient blinks sluggishly.

Abbot begins the primary survey.

“Airway intact?,” he says.

“Breathing equal.” Respiratory nods.

“Circulation?”

The nurse checks the monitor.

“Heart rate one-thirty. Pressure ninety-eight over sixty.”

Abbott studies the wounds again. “Shrapnel injuries.”

Your fingers move rapidly across the keyboard.

Vitals.

Mechanism.

Exam.

The patient suddenly coughs and then grimaces. “My… chest…”

Abbott presses gently along the ribs. The man winces sharply. The older man’s eyes narrow. “Possible rib fractures.”

He glances toward the nurse. “Portable chest X-ray STAT.”

Across the hallway, Shen is already setting up Trauma Bay 2. Ellis stands near the entrance speaking with EMS, sorting incoming patients. The department is moving faster now, but it still feels manageable.

Controlled.

Then the patient grabs Abbot’s sleeve weakly. “There was… a bang…”

Abbott leans closer. “What kind of bang?”

The man struggles to breathe.

But he manages two words.

“Loud.”

Then—

“Explosion.”

Your typing slows.

Across the room, Shen looks up. “Explosion?”

Abbott studies the patient carefully. “Where?”

The man swallows painfully.

“Bus… station…”

The trauma bay goes silent.

Across the department Dana suddenly calls out.

“Abbot!”

He turns toward the doorway. “What?”

Dana’s voice is tight now.

“Dispatch just confirmed something.”

Abbott waits.

Dana swallows.

“They’re saying it wasn’t a crash.”

Chen straightens.

“What?”

Dana looks toward the ambulance bay.

“Police are reporting an explosion downtown.”

The words settle over the room like a storm cloud.

Abbott’s expression shifts.

Not panic.

Focus.

He pulls on a fresh pair of gloves. Then he looks directly at you.

“Y/N.”

You glance up.

“Yeah?”

“Stay on that chart.”

You nod.

Your fingers begin moving faster.

Outside—

another ambulance siren echoes through the night.

Then another.

Then another.

Chen steps beside Abbott. “How many victims?”

Dana stares toward the doors. “More than we can handle.”

Abbott surveys the department one last time.

The cleared trauma bays.

The waiting stretchers.

The staff already moving faster.

Then he nods once.

“Alright,” he says quietly.

“Nothing we haven’t handled before.”

....

Outside—

three more ambulances pull into the bay.

The first ambulance doors open before Abbot has even finished stabilizing the man in Trauma Bay 1.

The sirens don’t fade this time.

They multiply.

One cuts off just as another rises behind it. Then a third joins in, the sound stacking over itself until the whole ambulance bay seems to vibrate with it. It fills the department with a sharp mechanical urgency that settles under your skin and stays there.

The doors burst inward.

Paramedics pour through in a rush of orange vests, trauma shears, and quick, clipped reports that overlap before the first one has even ended.

“Female, twenty-six, blast exposure, multiple shrapnel wounds—”

“Pediatric male, possible head injury—”

“Another two behind us—”

The controlled readiness of the emergency department doesn’t break.

It transforms.

It becomes motion.

Abbot steps out of Trauma Bay 1 just far enough to see the hallway, his gloved hands already flexing once at his sides as he takes in the first wave of casualties. For half a second, the entire department hangs on that glance of his—Dana at the desk, Ellis at the ambulance entrance, Shen turning toward the nearest incoming stretcher, nurses moving with supply trays already balanced in their hands.

Then Abbot’s voice cuts cleanly through the noise. “Ellis.”

“I’ve got triage,” she answers immediately, already halfway to the doors, one hand lifted toward the incoming paramedics as she starts sorting patients before they’ve even cleared the threshold.

“Shen.”

“Working on it,” Shen says, pulling a face shield down over his eyes as he strides toward Trauma Bay 2.

Abbot points toward the room with two fingers, quick and decisive. “You’re primary on the next trauma.”

Shen grins under the shield, and somehow, even now, there’s still enough of his personality left for him to say, “Finally, something fun.”

Abbot exhales through his nose. “You need better hobbies.”

The woman being wheeled toward Bay 2 starts screaming before the stretcher even stops. It’s a hoarse, animal sound, the kind that rips straight through the center of a room and makes every nerve in your body tighten in response. Her clothes are torn and blackened with soot, and her arms are flecked with cuts where metal fragments have embedded in the skin. Blood runs in thin uneven lines down both wrists.

Shen is at her bedside before the brakes lock.

“Alright,” he says, his voice low and controlled despite the speed he’s moving at. “Eyes on me. Let’s go, people.”

Across the hallway, another stretcher appears. Ellis intercepts it before it can even be assigned.

“Stable?” she asks the paramedic, pacing backward with the moving bed.

“Leg injuries and partial-thickness burns.”

“Bay 3,” she says immediately, and points without hesitation. “Not a trauma room. Move.”

The stretcher veers down the side hall.

Everything is happening at once.

The department fills with overlapping voices.

“Get me vitals.”

“Respiratory to Trauma Two.”

“Where’s the ultrasound?”

“Open blood now.”

“Move that cart.”

You slide back into place along the trauma bay counter, laptop open, the edge of it resting against your forearm as the cursor blinks on the screen, patient note still open and waiting. The bright blue-white glow from the screen catches on Abbott’s glove as he turns back toward the patient already in Bay 1.

But the room hasn’t finished filling.

Another paramedic rushes in hard enough to nearly skid on the floor, steering a second stretcher straight toward the empty side of the bay.

“Male, mid-twenties!” he shouts over the noise. “Blast debris, abdominal injury, deteriorating en route!”

Abbot doesn’t waste a second. “Bring him here.”

The stretcher swings in close, the wheels clipping one of the metal legs of the bedside tray as the team crowds around to transfer. The patient is young—too young, you think automatically, though they all are—and pale beneath the smears of soot and blood on his skin. A makeshift pressure dressing has been strapped low over his abdomen, but dark blood is already blooming through the gauze in a slow, ugly stain.

Abbot steps to the bed as soon as the transfer is complete.

“Alright,” he says, and even now his voice is quiet, not loud. It doesn’t need to be. The room organizes itself around it. “Let’s get to work.”

You begin typing.

21:23 — Second patient arrival, Trauma Bay 1. Male, mid-twenties, blast exposure, suspected abdominal trauma.

The paramedic starts report while still catching his breath.

“Found approximately thirty feet from the blast site. Conscious when we got there, increasingly lethargic during transport. Abdominal pain, hypotension, possible internal hemorrhage.”

“Vitals?” Abbot asks, already cutting away the remainder of the blood-soaked bandage.

The nurse glances at the monitor as leads are snapped on, blood pressure cuff inflating.

“Heart rate one-fifty. Pressure eighty-six over fifty.”

Abbott nods once. “We’re bleeding somewhere.”

Your fingers move faster. Mechanism of injury. Initial vitals. Declining mentation. Suspected internal bleed.

The patient’s eyes flutter open just long enough for him to register the bright lights overhead and the figures surrounding the bed. He groans and tries instinctively to curl around the pain in his abdomen, but Abbott braces one hand gently against his shoulder and keeps him flat.

“Stay with me,” Abbot says, leaning closer, his voice low enough that it somehow still reaches through the noise. “What’s your name?”

The patient swallows hard.

“D—Dylan.”

“Alright, Dylan. I’m Dr. Abbot. You’re in the emergency department. We’re going to help you.”

The man nods weakly and then winces as Abbot palpates lightly along the abdomen. Even the smallest pressure makes him cry out.

Abbott’s eyes narrow.

“Diffuse tenderness. Guarding,” He glances toward the nurse, “Two large-bore IVs. Start fluids. Type and cross. Trauma labs.”

“Already drawing,” she answers.

Across the hallway, Shen’s voice rises. “Pressure dropping— I need another line in here now.”

The sound of Ellis directing triage overlaps with him, efficient and clipped.

“This one can wait. That one cannot. No, not there— put him in hallway one if you have to.”

The room feels tighter now.

Hotter.

Like the air itself is being compressed by the number of moving bodies and urgent decisions being made inside it.

Dylan gasps suddenly, one hand clutching weakly at Abbot’s scrub sleeve.

“My— chest…”

Abbott shifts immediately, his hand sliding from the abdomen up along the ribcage.

He presses gently, making Dylan jerk, pain flashing over his face.

“Possible rib fractures,” Abbot says aloud, both for the team and for you, and your fingers record it immediately. “Ultrasound now.”

The ultrasound machine is wheeled closer. Abbot takes the probe without looking, because the nurse has already put it into his hand before he asks. That’s what the room has become now—everyone moving ahead of each other, not behind.

You are typing, listening, watching, documenting everything.

And then someone slams into you. Hard.

A respiratory therapist trying to cut between the trauma bay counter and the portable monitor catches your shoulder with enough force to knock you sideways into the edge of the counter. Your hip clips the metal corner, pain flashing hot and sharp, and your laptop nearly slips from your hands.

“Sorry—” the therapist starts, already moving.

Abbot looks up instantly.

“Watch it,” he snaps, the words sharp enough to crack through the room. “She’s charting.”

The therapist turns red beneath his mask, mutters another apology, and changes course.

Your heart kicks once hard against your ribs.

Abbot’s attention lands on you for one brief second, eyes flicking over your face, your shoulder, the laptop still secure in your grip.

“You good?” he asks. 

It’s quick. Quiet. But there’s something in it that lands hotter than it should.

You nod once. “Yeah.”

Abbot studies you just long enough to decide whether he believes it.

Then he turns back to the bed. “Time?”

Your gaze drops to the corner of the screen instantly. “21:24.”

The nurse repeats it aloud.

The FAST exam begins. Abbot slides the probe over the patient’s upper abdomen, his face illuminated by the shifting grayscale flicker on the small screen. For a second the room narrows to the image, to the angle of his wrist, to Dylan’s rough, uneven breathing.

Abbott pauses, then his voice drops. “Free fluid.”

The room changes around those two words. No one panics, but everyone gets faster.

The nurse already holding saline drops it onto the tray and reaches for blood paperwork. Someone calls for the trauma surgeon. The second IV line goes in. Respiratory hovers closer in case the patient’s mental status dips further.

You type it all. Positive FAST. Free fluid. Ongoing hypotension. Concern for intra-abdominal hemorrhage.

Dylan coughs, then coughs again harder, blood flecking his lips this time.

Abbot’s eyes lift immediately. “Lung involvement too.”

He steps around the bed and listens to the chest with his stethoscope, head tilted, face unreadable.

“Breath sounds?”

“Present bilaterally but diminished at the bases.” Respiratory answers from the far side. 

Abbott nods, then sets the stethoscope aside.

“Prep for intubation.”

Your chest tightens. The room surges into the next phase before anyone can pause on the decision. Medications are pulled. The airway cart swings open. Respiratory moves to the head of the bed. Across the hall, Shen is dealing with a trauma of his own, and you can hear it in the clipped pace of his voice.

“No, I need that pressure held lower. Lower. There.”

Ellis appears in the doorway of Bay 1 for exactly one second, one hand braced against the frame as she looks between Abbot and the patient.

“Two more red tags incoming,” she says.

Abbot doesn’t look away from Dylan. “Use Bay 3 and the resus room. If they can breathe and answer questions, they wait. If they can’t, they come here.”

Ellis nods once and disappears again.

The emergency department is no longer trying to look like anything but a mass casualty response.

Stretchers line the hall. The usual neat traffic flow is gone. A monitor alarm from triage competes with the hiss of oxygen in Bay 2 and the sharp rip of someone tearing open sterile packaging behind you. Still, Abbot remains exactly what he has been from the second Dana lowered that phone.

Steady.

The nurse holds up two syringes.

“Etomidate ready. Succinylcholine ready.”

Abbot nods. “Push.”

You record the time the instant she says it.

21:26 — Etomidate administered. 21:26 — Succinylcholine administered.

Dylan’s body slackens.

Respiratory steps in.

The laryngoscope passes to Abbot’s hand. He doesn’t rush. He never does. Even now, while the hallway outside is filling with blast victims and someone in Bay 2 is actively screaming, his movements remain economical and exact.

“Tube.”

Respiratory places it into his hand and Abbot advances. The whole room seems to hold still for one impossible second.

Then—

“Cord view.”

Another second.

“Tube’s in.”

Respiratory confirms immediately. “Color change. Bilateral rise.”

You type.

Abbot secures the tube while the nurse tapes it and another starts adjusting the vent settings. For one brief moment, the bay settles around the rhythm of the machine breathing for the patient. Then Dylan’s right hand twitches weakly against the sheet. He isn’t fully under enough to be still.

Abbot looks down. “Give him more sedation.”

The nurse nods and pushes the medication.

Dylan stills again.

You keep typing.

Because if you stop, even for a second, the pace of it all threatens to overwhelm you.

This is what mass casualty charting feels like, you realize—not dramatic in the way television makes it seem, but relentless. A thousand details trying to outrun your hands. Every medication, every procedure, every timestamp demanding to be caught before it disappears into the noise.

The patient from Bay 1—the first one, the man with the scalp laceration and chest shrapnel—has not stopped being your patient just because another one arrived. A nurse is dressing his head wound now while another physician assistant reviews his chest X-ray. Shen is still yelling in Bay 2. Ellis is still deciding which injuries matter most and in what order. Dana is somehow on two phones at once.

And through all of it, Abbot glances toward you again.

You’re still typing.

Still there.

Still keeping up.

The smallest flicker of approval touches his expression.

He doesn’t smile, not really.

That would be too much, too obvious, too soft for a man like him in the center of something like this. Instead he reaches for the next instrument the nurse offers, looks at the chart screen in your hands for one brief beat, and says under his breath, low enough that no one else would catch it unless they were listening for him specifically—

“That’s my girl.”

The words strike through you like a live wire. Your fingers don’t stop moving. They can’t.

But heat floods your face anyway, sharp and immediate, and for one terrible second you are deeply, acutely aware of every inch of yourself in the room.

The laptop in your hands.

The sting in your shoulder from being knocked into the counter.

The bright overhead lights.

The sound of the ventilator.

The fact that Shen absolutely hears everything, even if he pretends not to.

You don’t dare look up right away.

Because if you do, you’re afraid your entire face will give you away. So you do what you know, you just keep typing. Vitals. Intubation. Positive FAST. Suspected internal bleeding. Critical care time ongoing.

Across the hall, someone starts crying in Bay 3.

Not screaming, crying. The kind of sound that carries differently because it comes from a place that has already understood what’s happened.

Ellis’s voice answers it—calm, warm, practical. “I know. I know. Stay with me.”

Dana appears in the doorway of Bay 1 with another update sheet in her hand.

“Police just confirmed a second device,” she says.

The room stills for half a beat. Not because anyone is surprised anymore, but because the number changes things. 

“You’re kidding.” Shen looks up over his patient from the opposite bay.

Dana shakes her head. “No.”

Abbot strips one pair of gloves off and reaches immediately for another. “How many total victims on route?”

Dana glances down at the paper.

“Still unknown. They’re saying multiple self-transports too. Anyone ambulatory is finding their own way in.”

Abbot nods once. “Then we split triage. Ellis keeps sorting the walking wounded. Shen keeps Bay 2. I’ll keep one and call surgery for this one.”

Dana’s eyes flick toward you briefly. “You keeping up?”

You don’t stop typing. “Barely.”

Dana snorts.

“Good. Means you’re awake.”

Abbot’s mouth twitches, just slightly.

He turns back to Dylan’s bed. “Let’s get him upstairs before he bleeds out in my department.”

The room moves again. And so do you.

Because there is still another siren outside.

And another.

And another.

The first wave isn’t ending. It’s only just beginning.

[toastykaykes]

The Pitt Masterlist

Dr. Jack Abbot

Jack Abbot x Scribe! Reader

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM

1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM 6:00 AM 7:00 AM

Dr. Robby

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 8 PM

Dr. Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

Info: After the chaos of the first trauma, the emergency department settles back into its familiar rhythm of stitches, scans, and never-ending charts. But as the shift picks up speed, Dr. Abbott begins relying on you more than usual—and the quiet tension between you becomes harder to ignore.

Word count: 1.3K

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

Masterlist

8:00 PM

Abbot walks ahead of you down the hallway without slowing, his stride long and purposeful. You’ve worked with him enough shifts now to know that pace means his brain is already five steps ahead—sorting patients, prioritizing problems, running through differentials.

You tuck the laptop under your arm and hurry to keep up.

“Room seven,” Abbot says over his shoulder, glancing briefly at the tracking board. “Laceration repair.”

You’re already opening the chart.

“Twenty-four-year-old male,” you say quietly as you walk beside him. “Forearm laceration from broken glass.”

Abbot nods once.

The movement is small, but you’ve learned to read his quiet approvals.

He pushes open the door.

…..

The patient sits on the edge of the bed, gripping a wad of gauze wrapped around his forearm. Blood has already soaked through most of it.

His eyes flick nervously between you and Abbott as you enter.

Abbot pulls the rolling stool toward the bedside, lowering himself into it with the relaxed confidence of someone who has done this thousands of times.

“Evening,” he says calmly. “I’m Dr. Abbot.”

He gestures slightly toward you without turning fully.

“And this is Y/N. She’s my scribe. She documents everything so I can focus on taking care of you.”

The patient nods uncertainly. “Okay.”

You move quietly along the wall and open a new note, the familiar rhythm of documentation already settling your nerves.

Abbot carefully removes the gauze. The cut is long but clean, probably four centimeters. The edges gape slightly when the patient moves his wrist.

Abbot studies it for a moment, then looks up.

“Good news,” he says. “This isn’t too deep. We’ll clean it out and put a few stitches in.”

Relief visibly drains from the patient’s shoulders. “Sounds good.”

Abbot glances back toward you, “What time did he arrive?”

You glance at the chart, “19:46.”

Abbot nods and pulls on a pair of gloves. “Let’s irrigate.”

The saline splashes across the wound. The patient jerks slightly.

“Sorry,” Abbot says mildly. “That part’s never anyone’s favorite.”

You document automatically.

Left forearm laceration approximately four centimeters in length. Clean wound edges. No foreign body visualized.

Abbot reaches for the lidocaine syringe. “Little pinch.”

The patient winces as the needle slides beneath the skin.

You type: Medication. Dose. Time.

Abbot waits a moment for the anesthetic to take effect, then glances over his shoulder toward your laptop.

“You’re already writing the procedure note?”

You nod, “Trying to stay ahead.”

He studies you for a brief second.

Then nods. “Good.”

It’s the kind of approval that would barely register from anyone else.

From Abbot—

It feels like you just passed an exam.

He picks up the suture kit and begins repairing the wound. His hands move with quiet precision.

Needle driver. Suture. Tie. Cut.

You watch while documenting, the movement almost hypnotic. Four stitches later he leans back slightly.

“That should do it.”

He places a dressing over the wound before glancing toward you again, “How many sutures?”

“Four simple interrupted.”

Abbot nods once.

“Exactly.”

Then he stands, already halfway to the door.

“Next.” ….

The hallway outside is louder now.

A child is crying somewhere near triage. Someone argues with registration. A monitor alarm chirps down the hall. The waiting room must be filling.

Abbot glances toward the tracking board. “Room ten.”

You pull up the chart while walking, “Fifty-eight-year-old male. Dizziness.”

Abbot pushes the door open.

The patient is sitting upright in the bed with his arms crossed tightly across his chest. His eyes immediately lock on the laptop in your hands.

He introduces himself calmly, “I’m Dr. Abbot.” Then he gestures toward you, “This is Y/N, my scribe.”

The patient scoffs. “Why do you need someone typing while I’m talking?”

You keep your eyes on the screen.

Abbot answers before you can react, “So I can focus on treating you.”

The man frowns, “Well she doesn’t need to type everything. I dont need someone recording everything I say or do.”

You continue documenting, refusing to look up.

Abbot’s tone remains level. “She does.”

It isn’t aggressive. But there’s a quiet authority behind the words that shuts the patient up immediately.

The exam begins. The man describes dizziness when standing up along with lightheadedness, and a little fatigue.

It sounds simple at first. But something about the way Abbot’s expression tightens makes your stomach twist slightly.

“What medications do you take?” Abbot asks.

The patient shrugs. “Blood pressure pills.”

You scroll through the chart. And then you see it. Your fingers stop.

Metoprolol and Amiodarone.

You glance up, “Dr. Abbot?”

He turns slightly. “Yeah?”

You rotate the screen toward him.

“He’s on a beta blocker… and amiodarone.”

Abbot’s attention sharpens instantly and he turns back to the patient. “Any chest pain earlier?”

The man hesitates, reluctant. “Maybe.”

Abbot checks the monitor. His heart rate is 42. Bradycardic.

His jaw tightens slightly. “Let’s get an EKG.”

Within seconds the nurse wheels the machine into the room.

The strip prints out slowly. Dr. Abbot grabs it immediately and assesses.

Your heart sinks when you see the pattern. Heart block.

What started as “simple dizziness” suddenly isn’t simple at all. Abbott turns toward the nurse.

“Pads on him. Let’s page cardiology STAT.”

Then he glances at you.

“Good catch.”

Your chest tightens slightly.

Behind you the patient mutters reluctantly, “Guess the typing girl noticed something.”

Abbot doesn’t look at him.“She usually does.”

..

When you step back into the hallway, Abbot pauses beside you, making you halt. For a moment the noise of the department fades into the background.

He studies your face carefully.

“You read ahead on the chart.”

You nod. “I try to.”

Abbot tilts his head slightly. “That’s why you caught the medications.”

Your pulse quickens slightly.

“I guess.”

He watches you for another moment.

Then finally turns back toward the hallway.

“Stay ahead of me like that,” he says quietly, “and we’ll both survive this shift.”

Your heart does something inconvenient in your chest. Oh my god.

…

The appendicitis patient from earlier is still waiting on surgery consult.

Abbot stops at the doorway while you pull up the chart.

“CT confirmed appendicitis,” you say.

Abbot nods. “Let’s update him.”

Inside the room, the patient looks up nervously. Abbott explains the results calmly and reassures him that surgery will be done soon.

You document the treatment plan while Abbot answers questions. By the time you step back into the hallway, the department feels noticeably busier.

More stretchers. More voices. More noise.

You’re finishing the chart for the heart-block patient when a coffee cup appears beside your laptop.

You look up.

Abbot is already halfway down the hallway.

“You looked like you needed it,” he calls.

You stare at the coffee for a second before taking a sip.

Still warm.

Your heart does something inconvenient in your chest.

….

At 8:59 PM, you’re finishing the last line of documentation when Dana suddenly calls across the department.

“Abbot.”

He looks up from the board.

Dana is holding the EMS phone, her expression tight.

“They’re sending multiple ambulances.”

Abbot straightens slightly. “How many?”

Dana listens for another moment.

Then slowly lowers the phone. “They think it’s a multi-vehicle collision.”

The nurses’ station goes quiet.

Abbot looks toward you. “Finish that chart.”

You nod.

He turns toward the trauma bay.

“Everyone get ready.”

Outside, distant ambulance sirens begin to echo through the night.

[toastykaykes]

The Longest Shift - 7 PM

Dr. Jack Abbot X Scribe! F! Reader

A twelve-hour shift in a Level 1 trauma emergency department is never quiet. As a medical scribe trying to balance nursing school and the chaos of the ER, your job is simple: keep up, stay out of the way, and document everything.

Working alongside Dr. Abbot—brilliant, intimidating, and frustratingly hard to ignore—makes that a lot harder than it should be. Between trauma alerts, impossible patients, and the relentless pace of the night shift, the line between professional and personal begins to blur.

And some things… don’t belong in the chart.

Word count: 2.7k

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00PM 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 2:00 PM 3:00 PM 4:00 AM 5:00 AM

Masterlist

7:00 PM

“Good evening, everyone.”

Your voice carries lightly through the ambulance bay as you push through the sliding doors, already mentally preparing yourself for another long shift.

Even working part-time, it’s exhausting trying to juggle nursing school, shifts in the emergency department, and a social life that barely exists anymore. Most nights it feels like you're sprinting between responsibilities with just enough energy left to collapse into bed.

A few tired greetings trail behind you as you walk down the hallway.

“Evening.”

“Hey.”

Someone mutters something that might have been a hello or might have been a complaint about the coffee.

You step into the physician’s room, the familiar cramped space welcoming you with the low hum of a refrigerator in the corner. The room itself is nothing impressive—just a small table cluttered with half-finished charts, a rack lined with battered scribe laptops, and a whiteboard that hasn’t been updated since yesterday afternoon.

You reach for one of the computers, silently hoping for a miracle.

Fully charged. Thank God.

While turning to leave, your eyes catch a bright sticky note taped to the bulletin board.

All bets due tomorrow @ 7pm.

You sigh quietly.

Great.

You make your way out to the hallway and slide into an empty chair between two patient rooms, balancing the laptop on your knees as it slowly powers up. The machine makes a grinding noise like it’s fighting for its life.

These things take forever just to start up—let alone log in.

The loading circle spins lazily in the center of the screen.

“Hey, sunshine. You ready for today?”

You turn immediately.

Dr. Abbot stands just behind your chair.

His gray curls are still perfectly in place, though you know from experience they won’t stay that way for long. By hour six they’ll be falling loose across his forehead in a way that somehow makes him look even more unfairly attractive.

Tonight he’s wearing his usual black Figs scrub set, sleeves slightly rolled up, stethoscope draped around his neck. His sharp eyes look alert despite the late hour, scanning the department automatically the way experienced ER physicians do.

God.

He looks annoyingly good.

“Almost,” you mumble, cheeks warming slightly as you gesture toward the still-loading screen. “This computer is fighting me.”

Abbot leans slightly to glance at the laptop.

“Computers older than half the residents,” he says dryly.

You huff out a quiet laugh.

He straightens again, hands resting briefly on the back of your chair.

“Take your time,” he adds, voice calm.

The corners of his eyes crinkle just slightly before he turns away and heads toward the HUC desk, where Dr. Robby, Dr. Santos, and Dana are discussing the current board.

The moment he leaves, the laptop finally finishes loading.

Victory.

You quickly log in, pulling up the tracking board.

“And I’m in,” you call after him as you stand and sling the laptop under your arm. “Ready whenever you are, Dr. Abbot.”

Abbott glances over his shoulder and gives a short nod before starting toward the patient rooms.

You fall into step behind him.

The ED is already alive with movement.

Phones ring. Monitors beep. A nurse wheels a crash cart down the hallway while someone else calls for respiratory therapy over the phone.

Abbott stops outside the first room and pushes the door open.

“Who do we have in here?” he asks over his shoulder.

You glance down at the chart while stepping inside.

“This is Ms. Willow,” you say as your fingers begin moving across the keyboard. “Forty-five-year-old female brought in by EMS with shortness of breath.”

The woman in the bed looks visibly uncomfortable, sitting upright with her hands gripping the sheets as she tries to breathe.

Abbot approaches her calmly.

“Well hello, Ms. Willow. I’m Dr. Abbot. I’ll be your doctor tonight.”

He gestures back toward you without turning fully around.

“And this is Y/N. She’s my scribe—she keeps me on tract with my charts. Is it okay if she stays in the room?”

Ms. Willow barely glances your way.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she says breathlessly. “Just… please help me breathe.”

Abbott nods once. “Of course.”

He pulls the stool closer to the bedside.

“Tell me what’s been going on tonight.”

While the patient explains her symptoms, Abbott begins his physical exam—listening to her lungs, watching the rise and fall of her chest, checking her oxygen saturation.

Your fingers move rapidly across the keyboard as you document everything.

History. Vitals. Physical exam findings. Possible differentials.

Whenever the patient pauses between sentences, the only sound in the room becomes the steady rhythm of your typing.

Sometimes you wonder how you haven’t developed carpal tunnel yet.

The exam finishes quickly and efficiently.

Abbot steps back.

“Alright,” he says reassuringly. “We’re going to get a chest X-ray, some labs, and start a breathing treatment to help open your airways.”

The patient nods gratefully.

Abbot glances toward you.

“Got that?”

You don’t even look up.

“Already ordered.”

He gives a small approving nod before stepping back into the hallway. As soon as the door swings open, the full chaos of the ED crashes back over you. Monitors are chirping, phones are ringing. Somewhere down the hall, a nurse is calling respiratory again.

Abbot is already walking quickly toward the next room.

You take two quick steps to keep pace.

“Next one?” he asks.

You glance at the board on your laptop.

“Room twelve. Thirty-two-year-old male here for abdominal pain that started about six hours ago.”

Abbot hums thoughtfully as he pushes the door open.

Inside, the room smells faintly of antiseptic and stale sweat.

The patient sits hunched forward on the bed, arms wrapped around his stomach.

Abbot pulls the rolling stool closer.

“Evening,” he says calmly. “I’m Dr. Abbot.”

He gestures briefly toward you. “And this is Y/N, my scribe. She documents the visit so I can focus on you.”

The patient nods weakly.

“Yeah… okay.”

You’re already typing.

First provider contact: 19:14.

Abbot leans forward slightly.

“So tell me what’s going on tonight.”

The man shifts uncomfortably. “Started this afternoon… right here,” He presses a hand into the right side of his abdomen.

Your fingers move quickly as you document the history.

Abbot asks a few more questions.

“Nausea?”

“Yeah.”

“Vomiting?”

“Once.”

“Fever?”

“Think so? I don't have a thermometer at home, so I couldn't check.”

Abbot glances at the monitor.

“Temp is 100.8.”

You add it to the chart automatically.

“Alright,” Abbot says, standing. “Let’s take a look.”

You watch the physical exam carefully, almost anticipating each movement.

Inspection.

Palpation.

Abbot presses gently into the patient’s abdomen. The man flinches.

“Does that hurt?”

“Yes.”

Abbot presses again, then releases.

“And when I let go?”

The patient inhales sharply. “Yeah—worse.”

Abbot’s expression shifts slightly.

You already know what he’s thinking. Your fingers type quickly.

Rebound tenderness present.

Abbot straightens. “We’re going to get some labs and a CT scan,” he tells the patient. “I’m also going to give you something for the pain.”

The patient nods gratefully. Dr. Abbot steps into the hallway and calls to the nurse. “CBC, CMP, lipase, CT abdomen pelvis with contrast.”

As you follow him out, he glances down at your screen.

“Good catch on the rebound tenderness.”

You blink.

“You said it.”

Abbot gives you a sideways look.

“You wrote it before I said it.”

Then he’s already moving toward the next patient. You were outside the next room when the overhead speaker suddenly crackles.

“TRAUMA ALERT. TRAUMA ALERT. ETA TWO MINUTES.”

The entire department shifts instantly. Conversations stop.

Nurses start moving faster. Respiratory grabs equipment and heads toward the trauma bay.

Abbot turns sharply toward the trauma board. “What do we know?”

Dana appears beside it, scanning the incoming report.

“Eight-year-old male. Pedestrian struck. Reportedly run over.”

Your stomach tightens.

Pediatric trauma. Those are always the worst.

Abbot’s voice sharpens immediately. “Trauma bay one.”

You follow him quickly, clutching the laptop tighter against your chest. By the time you reach the trauma bay, the room is already filling up with respiratory, nurses, and two med students—Joy and Ogilvie—who hover near the wall, ready for whatever comes in.

You step into your usual position at the side counter, where you can see everything without getting in the way. Your cursor blinks on the screen. Waiting.

Abbot pulls on a pair of gloves. “Alright everyone listen up,” he says. But before he could get out a POW-WOW, the doors burst open. Paramedics rush in, pushing the stretcher.

And the room goes silent for half a second.

The boy on the stretcher looks impossibly small. Blood covers the side of his face and shirt. One sneaker is missing. The other hangs twisted at an unnatural angle.

Your chest tightens but your fingers stay steady.

One of the paramedics begins the report while transferring the patient.

“An eight-year-old male pedestrian was struck by an SUV traveling approximately thirty miles per hour. Patient reportedly ran over before the vehicle stopped.”

You start typing immediately. 

19:23 – Patient arrival trauma bay one.

“Initial GCS nine in the field. Improved to eleven during transport. BP ninety over sixty. Heart rate one-forty.”

Abbot steps forward, his voice gravely. “Alright, we’ve got him from here.”

The team transfers the child to the trauma bed.

Abbott begins the primary survey. “Airway?”

“Patent,” respiratory confirms.

“Breathing?”

Joy listens with a stethoscope while dodging other personnel trying to assist the child. “Breath sounds diminished on the left.”

Abbot nods immediately. “Possible pneumothorax.”

The room erupts into controlled chaos.

“Pulse ox eighty-nine.”

“Pressure dropping.”

“Get a chest tube tray.”

Someone turns toward you.

“Time?”

You glance down instantly. “19:24.”

The nurse repeats it aloud.

Abbot grabs the ultrasound probe. “FAST exam.”

You document everything. Bruising across the abdomen. Road rash along the child’s arm. His leg bent in a way that makes your stomach twist.

Dr. Gracia arrives fashionably as always. “What do you guys have?” 

Joy presents to the case to Dr. Garcia while everyone is still working to keep him stable. To keep him alive. 

Abbot presses the ultrasound probe against the abdomen, and his expression tightens. “Free fluid.”

Internal bleeding.

Abbot looks up. “Prep for intubation.”

The nurse draws up medications. “Etomidate ready and Succinylcholine ready.”

The nurse looks to Abbot. “Doctor?”

Abbott nods once. “Push.”

Your fingers fly across the keyboard.

19:26 – Etomidate administered.

19:26 – Succinylcholine administered.

The child’s body goes still.

Respiratory moves quickly with the laryngoscope sliding into place. The room holds its breath.

Then—

“Tube in.”

“End tidal confirmed.”

Someone looks toward you again.

“Time?”

“19:27.” Your fingers keep moving.

Abbot’s voice cuts through the room. “Chest tube now.”

The surgical resident performs the procedure quickly. When the tube enters the chest cavity, dark blood rushes into the chamber.

Your stomach flips.

“Massive hemothorax,” someone mutters.

Abbot turns toward the students suddenly. “Ogilvie. Differential for hypotension in pediatric trauma.”

He freezes.

Your brain answers automatically. Before you realize it—

“Hypovolemic shock from internal bleeding,” you say quickly. “Tension pneumothorax… or cardiac tamponade.”

The room pauses briefly. Abbot looks at you. Just for a second. Then he nods.

“Correct.”

His voice is calm, but the approval in it is unmistakable.

Then he turns back to the patient.

“Let’s move. He needs OR now.”

…....

The trauma bay doors swing shut behind the surgical team as they rush the boy toward the operating room. For a moment, the emergency department seems strangely quiet, like the building itself is catching its breath after the storm that just blew through.

Your fingers finally stop moving. You stare at the screen, the chart now filled with lines of documentation.

Medication timestamps. Procedures. Critical care notes.

Everything.

You slowly flex your hands, realizing they’ve started to ache from typing so quickly.

Across the room, a nurse begins resetting the trauma bay. Blood-soaked gauze disappears into biohazard bags. The chest tube tray is cleared away. Monitors are wiped down.

Like it never happened.

Except it did.

Abbott pulls off his gloves with a practiced snap before tossing them into the trash. For a moment, he just stands there, eyes tracking the doors where the trauma team disappeared.

Then he turns.

His gaze lands on you.

You suddenly become very aware that you’re still clutching the laptop against your chest like it’s a shield.

Abbot walks over and nods toward the screen.“Let me see.”

You hand it over immediately. He scrolls slowly through the documentation. Your stomach tightens slightly as he reviews it. You watch his eyes move across the entries.

 19:23 – Patient arrival. 19:26 – Etomidate administered. 19:26 – Succinylcholine administered. 19:27 – Intubation successful. 19:29 – Chest tube placed.

Every second accounted for.

Behind you, a quiet voice breaks the silence.

“Wow.”

You glance over your shoulder.

Joy is standing near the wall, still looking slightly stunned.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone chart that fast,” she says, half laughing.

Ogilvie nods beside her.

“I blinked and the whole trauma note was already halfway done.” You shrug lightly, trying to play it off even though your heart is still racing.

Abbot finally stops scrolling. For a moment he doesn’t say anything. Then he closes the chart and hands the laptop back to you.

“Good documentation.”

The words are simple.

Professional.

But something about the way he says them makes warmth spread through your chest. Those words coming from Abbott, that’s practically a standing ovation.

“Thanks,” you manage.

He studies you for another moment, eyes narrowing slightly. “You’ve done pediatric traumas before?”

You shake your head. “No.”

That seems to surprise him.

“You handled it like you have.”

You glance down at the keyboard.“I just type what everyone says.”

Abbot lets out a quiet breath that almost sounds like a laugh.

“That’s not all you did.”

Your cheeks warm slightly.

Before you can respond, Joy pipes up again.“I was supposed to answer that question, by the way,” she says, pointing at Ogilvie accusingly.

Ogilvie throws his hands up. “Hey, I thought it was directed at you!”

Joy crosses her arms dramatically.“Well now you look like an idiot.”

Abbot raises an eyebrow at them both. “Or,” he says calmly, “you could take it as motivation to review pediatric trauma physiology.”

The med students immediately straighten.“Yes, of course.”

Abbot glances briefly back at you. The corner of his mouth twitches slightly.

Then he turns toward the hallway. “Alright,” he says, his tone shifting back into work mode. “Back to the circus.”

.......

The moment you step out of the trauma bay the noise of the emergency department rushes back in full force.

Someone is arguing with registration.

A monitor alarms loudly from one of the rooms.

A nurse rushes past carrying blood tubes.

The controlled chaos of the ER continues like the trauma never happened.

Abbot slows slightly so you can catch up beside him.

“You’re in nursing school, right?” he asks.

You nod.

“Second year.”

“Explains it.”

You glance at him. “Explains what?”

“The differentials you gave.”

Your heart stutters slightly.“Oh.”

Abbot glances over at you briefly. “Most scribes wouldn’t have caught that.”

You try to shrug casually even though your stomach flips at the compliment. “Well… I figured hypotension in trauma is usually bleeding until proven otherwise.”

Abbot nods approvingly. “Exactly.”

You reach the workstation outside the patient rooms and pause. Abbot leans slightly against the counter while reviewing the tracking board. The fluorescent lights catch the faint gray in his hair.

Up close, you notice the slight crease between his brows that only appears when he’s concentrating. Your brain immediately reminds you:

He’s your boss.

And also about 20 years older than you. And definitely off limits. You clear your throat and glance down at the laptop. “So… what’s next?”

Abbot studies the board for another second before pointing. “Room seven. Laceration repair.”

You nod and start walking. But as you pass him, Abbot says quietly—

“Nice work in there.”

You pause for half a second before continuing down the hallway. And despite the exhaustion already creeping into your bones…

You can’t stop the small smile tugging at your lips.

[toastykaykes]

Paint it Black (Ch. 1)

Minors DNI: 18+ Logan Howlett x Mutant! Reader

Summary: The meeting doesn't go as planned, your past comes back to haunt you. Only this time, your called to fight. Word Count: 1526

“(f/n), please come in. How was your day?” Professor Xavier greets you with his usual warm, kind smile as you step into his office. His voice, though calm, carries the weight of his authoritative role.

“Like always,” you respond, settling into one of the plush leather armchairs positioned in front of his desk. “They don’t know how much I enjoy teaching them, but it’s best not to let them know. Can’t have them thinking I’m some big softy now, can I?”

Charles lets out a soft, genuine laugh, glancing up from his paperwork. “No, of course not. That would be downright disastrous if they found out.” His eyes twinkle with amusement, reflecting his understanding of the delicate balance you maintain.

Your gaze drifts toward the large windows behind Charles, catching a glimpse of the students playing outside on the grass. The scene outside is a stark contrast to the intensity of the discussions that usually take place inside. “Am I just early, or was the meeting canceled tonight?” you ask, your discomfort evident. You long to be in your pajamas, curled up and away from the formal attire that feels increasingly restrictive.

“And here I thought you just wanted to enjoy my company,” Charles remarks playfully, causing a soft laugh to escape you. “They should be here soon. You, dear, just have a talent for arriving early. Not that I’m complaining.”

A flush of warmth rises to your cheeks at his statement. You appreciate his kindness, even if you feel undeserving of it. “Likewise, Professor.”

A comfortable silence falls over the room, the only sound being the soft scratch of his pen against paper. The familiar tranquility of Charles’s office wraps around you, offering a brief respite from the storm of thoughts swirling in your mind. Your eyes close for a moment, your head leaning back against the chair, savoring the peace before the chaos begins.

Charles’s gaze softens as he observes you. “You do know if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here (f/n). I know you’re a very private person. Just know you don’t have to be alone.”

Your eyes drop to your hands, fingers nervously picking at one another. It’s a habit you’ve had for years, an involuntary reaction when anxiety rears its head. The quiet and darkness sometimes pull you back to a place of fear—back in that cell with those monsters. The thought of what you endured before finding refuge here is a heavy burden.

Charles knows some of the truth. He’s aware of your involvement with mutant trafficking, a dark chapter of your past revealed when he found you barely surviving on the side of the road. But the full details remain unspoken, a secret you guard fiercely. The idea of their reactions if they knew the extent of your past actions and choices is almost unbearable. You release a shaky breath, realizing how deeply his words resonate with your internal struggle. “I know, Charles.” The apology is unspoken but present.

Before Charles can offer more comfort, the door to his office swings open, shattering the peaceful atmosphere with a burst of noise. The team bursts in, their voices blending into a lively cacophony of playful bickering.

“Can you guys stop comparing those and be aware? We’re here for a meeting!” Ororo's voice rises above the din, trying to bring order to the chaos between Cyclops and the others.

“Well, look who beat us here,” someone remarks, though their identity is lost in the noise.

“Hi, guys!” you call out, managing a smile.

Scott, holding up a crumpled piece of paper, joins in the fray. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with this horrendous, unproportional, God-awful drawing I got from a student on the way over here, would you, (f/n)?” He presents the drawing of him firing his optic beams, clearly proud despite his grumbling.

Ororo chimes in, her voice smooth and calming. “Come on, you guys. You should be grateful any child considers you ‘heroes.’”

As the rest of the team filters in and finds their seats, your gaze drifts to the corner where he stands. His stance is relaxed but alert, suggesting he’s ready for action if needed. Even in the dim lighting, his muscular build is apparent, and the weariness in his features speaks of countless battles fought. His hair, tousled in a way that makes him seem almost softer, only adds to his intense allure.

When his eyes lock onto yours, the focus is piercing and palpable. His gaze is sharp and unwavering, cutting through the space between you with an intensity that feels almost tangible. You find yourself blushing under his scrutinizing stare and quickly turn your head forward, hoping to hide your embarrassment. Damn it, why does he have to be so... intense?

“Alright, everyone, there’s a matter that is extremely important we need to discuss,” Charles says, regaining the room’s attention. His tone shifts to a serious and resolute note. “We’ve received intelligence about a mutant smuggling ring known as Venos, operating in a remote location. They’ve been trafficking mutants and are involved in particularly egregious activities.”

The room falls silent, the gravity of the situation sinking in. Your heart sinks at the mention of the name. The cold dread that follows makes your blood run icy. No, not this.

“I’ve invited Logan here to assist with his combat knowledge and mission expertise. I will be using Cerebro to locate survivors and pinpoint their location. I need everyone to stay alert and train accordingly.”

Logan’s expression darkens as he grumbles, “You really think this is gonna be easy? I’ve seen what these guys can do. We need to be ready for anything.”

“Which is exactly why we’re putting together a team. And you will be training them all. Thank you again for volunteering,” Charles responds.

Logan’s frustration is palpable as he mutters a curse under his breath and abruptly exits the room, slamming the door behind him. His departure leaves an uneasy silence in his wake.

The conversation among the remaining team members and Charles continues for a few more minutes. You look down at your hands, feeling the weight of dread settle in. The thought of facing those from your past—people who are still operating, still victimizing others—makes your chest tighten. This mission isn’t just about justice; it’s about confronting your own demons.

Charles eventually dismisses everyone with a warm gesture. “I don’t wish to keep any of you longer than necessary. Go and enjoy your evening. Wonderful job today, everyone.”

As the team begins to file out, you head toward the door, only to be stopped by Logan’s abrupt, gruff voice. “Hey,” he calls, his tone demanding attention. “Got a minute?”

Startled by his sudden approach and the harshness in his voice, you hesitate. “Um, sure. It’s Logan, right? What’s up?”

Without waiting for a more formal invitation, he motions for you to follow him to a quieter part of the hallway. His steps are purposeful, almost impatient, as he leads you away from the main area.

Once in a more secluded corner, he leans against the wall, crossing his arms in a way that highlights his imposing, muscular build. His eyes lock onto yours with a challenging glint.

“Listen,” he begins, his tone direct and uncompromising, “I don’t know you well, but when Chuck started talking about this mission, you looked like you were about to crumble. If you’re not serious about this, don’t bother. I don’t need anyone who can’t pull their weight.”

His blunt words sting, and you bristle at his assessment. It’s clear he doesn’t mince words, especially when it comes to evaluating his teammates.

“I was just processing everything,” you reply, trying to keep your voice steady. “It’s a lot to take in, especially since it’s my first mission. I don’t usually do missions.”

Logan’s eyes narrow, scrutinizing your response. “Processing is fine, but if you’re going to be part of this team, you need to be ready. I don’t want anyone getting hurt because they weren’t prepared.”

His harshness is tempered by a hint of something—perhaps a begrudging respect or concern. You meet his gaze with determination. “I understand. I’ll do my best to catch up and be ready. I won’t hold you back.”

Logan gives a curt nod, his mouth twisting into a snarky smirk. “Yea, sure, bub.”

With that, he pushes off the wall and heads down the hallway, his heavy boots echoing in the corridor. The encounter leaves you feeling a mix of apprehension and resolve. Despite his gruff demeanor, it’s clear that you need to prove yourself. And his harshness, while tough to take, has lit a fire under you.

“It’s (f/n),” you call after him, but he doesn’t acknowledge your correction.

As Logan disappears around the corner, you take a deep breath, bracing yourself for the challenges ahead. You know you need to face this mission head-on—not just for the sake of the team, but to confront your own past and the scars it has left behind. The path won’t be easy, but you’re determined to prove yourself, no matter how hard it gets.

But first a drink.

[toastykaykes]

Paint it Black (Prologue)

Hello! This is the beginning of a series for me! Series rating will be M (18+). There will be mention of torture, mention of SA, abuse, fighting, alcohol, sex, and probably more that I'll warn before the chapter.

Pair: Logan Howlett x Mutant!Reader.

Please give me feedback so I can become better! But anyway guys, here's the Prologue!! Teehee Enjoy

Word count: 1116

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CLANG 

CLANG CLANG

.

.

“Get up.”

You peek through your eyes, feeling as if you are the earth gazing upon humanities evils. There’s so much crust and filth embedded in your skin, it’s essentially consuming you. You just want to sink and hide beneath it. Away from all of this. Away from this pain. 

You look past this facade and see the same place you’ve been encased in for…how long now? You’ve lost track of time, between the hell they put you through and the salvation you call your mind when everything goes black.

Grime and grease, blood and bodily fluids litter the concrete floor of your cell. No bed, no toilet, just chains they use to confine you. To use you. 

“I SAID GET THE FUCK UP! WHAT YOU CAN’T EVEN HEAR ANYMORE?” The man yells, the increase of volume and proximity making your earthbound soul shake. He pounds the cell wall, this fist probably getting scuffed trying to make himself look like a monster. 

A monster.

You shift your head, (e/c) eyes finding the same guard as always who comes to collect you. His face naturally hosts a snarl of a smirk, as do most of the people at this place. Oh how you just wish to clean the earth of them all. People like them, all they do is hurt and consume others. You manage to contort your muscles in your face to paint on some form of a twisted smile. If it even could be called that. It’s more so of a snarl, but depends on who’s looking. To him, he takes it as a smile, throwing one back as he enters the stall. 

“I knew that would catch your attention honey,” He draws out while his hand jerks out to grab your head, smacking it against the wall behind you, “ya know you’ve lasted way longer than another mutant down here. Poor Wanda couldn’t handle it anymore…tsk. What a shame, right.” 

As you take in his words, your heart feels like it stops. There’s no way she’s..gone. She was so strong, way stronger than me. We both promised to get out of here together, to finally free ourselves of this filth. To make sure no other children and women would ever go through this pain. 

Something that is all you feel right now, throbbing throughout your body. If your body had anything left in it, you would feel the tears slip past the threshold, becoming one with the dirt on your face. You let your eyes fall, shutting out the feeling his hands go lower to your neck ready to start. The cold steel of the needle just barely pierces your skin. 

His chapped fucking lips scorch your ear, “You’re all just filthy demons. You act like you're all powerful when really all you are is weak. Disgusting and impure. Can’t even fight back, I bet you like what we do to you huh? You filthy whore.”

Fight back? All I’ve been doing is fighting back. Day after day, fighting the urge to just let myself die. To end this hellish loop I've been stuck in. But I never did, because of Wanda….

You fall inside your mind, where you're standing surrounded by your shadows. Your safe place. It’s here where you can truly react to what just happened. Wanda is gone. The only person who made you feel an ounce of sanity. Gone. Your knees give out as you gasp, feeling the air leave your body. You feel the shadows around you, swirling between your fingertips and through your anger. You gaze up, tears cascading down your cheeks to see the door. That goddamn red door. 

You begin to smile. Wanda wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. 

I’ll show them who the real monster is. 

And you let your shadows paint the door Black. 

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“Miss (l/n)?” 

You look up from your stack of ungraded assignments to see Daven holding his hand up. You smile. “Something on your mind Daven?” 

“I was wondering if you have a favorite hero here? Like mine is Cyclops. He’s so cool with his lasers that go ‘bbsszzzz’” Daven asks with a huge grin, hands reenacting exactly what Scott’s eyes do when fighting. The whole class starts to laugh, children chiming in louder who theirs is. 

You can’t help but chuckle as they start to all talk about who on the X-men is their hero. So much for a quiet break. “How about you all draw your favorite X-men and give it to them as a gift? I think that would be quite nice, wouldn't you?” 

This of course went over very well with them, their smiles growing wider in excitement. Chairs topple over as you see them all rush to get their papers and crayons, some grabbing paints. “Remember to be clean!” You chime while sitting back down, grading their homework assignments before their attention span dies. 

By the end of class, everyone has their special drawing and the room is clean. Thank God. 

You hold the door for them as they all let out one by one. “Next week you have a quiz! So remember to read your chapters over the weekend.” You smile at them all, feeling content they enjoyed their art class. It’s something you hold dear to yourself, always finding serenity and peace with it. Which makes your heart happy to be able to share with them. 

“Miss (l/n), I have something for you.”

You look down to see Marie, adorably clad with pigtails and bows that match her uniform. 

“Whatcha got sweetie?” You say while reaching out to grab what she was offering. 

“My hero doesn’t come here often. He’s mysterious like that. But I wanted you to give it to him if you see him.” Her drawing is a misshapen round circle person clad in a yellow suit with what looks like knives poking out of his hands like Freddy Kreuger. HUH

“Honey, you sure you don’t want to give it to him? You made it. I’m sure he’d love to receive it from you.” You look down to see her shake her head no. 

“No, I think you should give it to Logan.” She then turns on her cute little shoes and makes her way out the door and down the hall.  Bro I don’t even know a Logan. Huh, maybe Professor Charles knows something about this. You sigh to yourself before folding it into itself and stuffing it into your bag. You feel the exhaustion from today begin to settle in with the quiet. Closing the door behind you, you walk down the hall, ready to get this meeting over with.

[toastykaykes]

Ghost Whisperer: Chapter 1

Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley X Reader

18+ Content

Warnings: Violence, Death, Drugs, Weapons, Guns, Gore, Smut,Sex, Harassment, and Assault, Abuse, etc.

AN: Hey guys, Heres Chapter 1 for y'all. Sorry, it took a while. I'm hoping to update this weekly, if not sooner.

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Your arms scrape against the rugged terrain of rocks and gravel, trying not to make too much noise. Luckily, the grass is pretty high which gives you cover. Your whole body ached from the 50 lb bag on your back, and your skin felt filthy. Holy fuck did you just want to relax at home and eat a cheeseburger and drink, but noooo. Fucking Lt. Oliver just HAD to have me come on a three musketeers adventure. Fucking asshole, I’m going to make his life-

“...I-...Inj-...”

You heard the discomforting tone of the radio static, interfering with whatever message was trying to be relayed. 

“Say again, over.” You press into your mic and keep your attention to the city edge ahead.

“Capt. Patches, we have a critical down here! Jones was shot!” 

No, not Jones. You press on your mic, “Roger that. Will begin the descent. What building are you located, over.”

You immediately pull yourself up and rise to a crouching position. You pull your hand over your head, securing a hood to cover your head. Rising your rifle and pushing the butt of it into your shoulder, you take a deep breath..Your legs begin to shake as you push forward down the hill, missing the jagged rocks and gravel. Despite kicking up dust, you can see homes and buildings 25 meters out, adjusting your scope to scout the perimeter. No enemy personnel could be seen doing patrols around the city. No terrorists?

You make it to the city unharmed, suspicion on high alert. Why was someone shot with no enemies in sight?

 “Oliver, what is your location?” You repeat again, dodging behind a building and clearing the alley. All the buildings here were falling apart from previous battles. Holes in all the walls, Dirty, ratted clothes covering the floors of the alleys and sidewalks. It looked like a dead zone, not even civilians were around….

“This is Patches. Say again your location, over.” You spout before entering one of the homes. Broken glass scattered across the front entryway. Using your foot, you silently push aside the broken door. Your boots make crackling sounds while walking over the debris. Blood scattered along the walls of the hallway. You bring your head to lock over the scope and begin to clear the house. 

Photos line the wall, giving the facade of a once-happy family. A married couple with two young kids was in every single frame. Blood scattered across the glass covering their happy faces, and making you feel goosebumps. You bust through a door, quickly rotating in case someone was hiding behind the door. Nothing. You make haste to leave and travel down to the second bedroom. As you were about to open the door, hand on the knob..you hear a gasp. 

Someone’s in here…You rearrange your gun to prepare for an enemy within the room. Your (e/c) blinked a few times, before settling into a stare through the scope as your hand turns the handle to the door. In a swift movement, the door flies open as you point your gun at a slumped person in the corner of the room. Oh my God, Jones!

Sgt Jones was slumped in the corner of the room. His hood covers the top half of his face. Blood poured from his chest, and his hands were caked in blood from trying to put pressure on them. You run over to him, putting your rifle on safety and slinging it behind your back. You pull back the hood to see his eyes. 

“Goddammit Jones, can you hear me?!” You breathlessly say while grasping his head with both his hands. His eyes started to roll back into his skull, “Fuck.. No, no. Not today brother. Not on my watch!”

You let go of his head, making it slump forward toward his chest. You promptly take off your pack and start rummaging through the pockets to find materials to help patch him up. As you grab the gauze and start to undo it, you call it in the radio. 

“Bravo 1, this is Capt. Patches. We have a soldier down, I repeat-” The sound of a gun cocking behind you immediately made you stop.

“I think, Captain, it would be best for you to not repeat that.” 

You feel the hairs stand up on the back of your neck as he says that. Your eyes go wide with  the realization of what just happened.

“You killed your own brother.” You breathed out, head turning to see his face harboring a sick stomach-dropping smirk while he has his handgun pointed at you. You felt nothing but fear and betrayal washing over you. 

“And I’m about to kill my sister.” With the way he was locking his gun at you, you knew you he was going to do it. All you could do was push down the mic to bravo as he took his shot.

.

.

.

Hot white fire washed over you.

.

.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

.

.

Ma’am? Oh shit-

“Yes, yes. I’m okay,” You choke out, sitting up straighter and turning your gaze away from the tall brush outside your window, “I guess you could say it’s been a while since I last was in an environment like this.” You smiled a sad smile at the Private who just nodded before turning back around to look forward. His eyes took one last glance before engaging with the driver about being late or something.

 You look down at your hands, rubbing your thumb over your hand as a silent promise. That this time will not end up like the last. You will not fall subjective to betrayal ever again. Your eyes try to flutter shut, welcoming sleep with open arms. Instead, every time they close, all you can see is Oliver standing over you with a gun while Jones sits dead in the corner. You scrunch your eyes harder after seeing that. Turn it off. He is not in control of me. He can’t hurt me anymore.

Tearing your eyelids apart, you realize sleep won't welcome you like you wish it would. Instead of sleep being a warm, beautiful, comforting blanket- it’s rather cold, dark, and suffocating. Just relax (y/n), you’ll get rest soon enough. 

Pulling out what looks like a tube of lip gloss, you take a long drag and exhale. Feeling warmth spread across your whole chest, you take a deep breath. “How much longer till we get to the base?” 

The private who talked to you before turns, “Estimated arrival is 1200, so approximately half an hour left Ma’am.” Pointing to his screen before resuming his previous position. 

Half an hour… that's enough time to read some information. I’m not going to be left in the dark this time. Pulling your bag onto the bench, you start rifling through. When your hands come out, they're holding files.

Show me what you got TF-141

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“Get in here boys it’ll be any minute now.” Price yelled while moving his packs to sit alongside the door. 

A chorus of yes sir followed immediately with the sound of their boots stomping down the hallway. Small laughter can be heard as Soap slaps Gaz on the back, Ghost chuckling while following behind. They drop their bags in order after Price’s.

“Any minute for your dick to get cut off, that’s what.” Soap smirks while watching Price hold back a reaction. You could tell by the fact of how he had to hold his breath for a minute, before replying.

“This isn’t the time for stand-up. Which by the way, you suck at. Any minute we’ll have our new member and then it’s wheels up for Iran.” Slapping his gloved hand on the door twice, making it slide open. People can be seen outside, hustling to do whatever they were assigned. 

“Speaking of the new member, I hope the guy is half-decent at his fucking job.” Gaz gives Price a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. It’s a rare and risky circumstance for a team like theirs to add new personnel to the mix right before a mission. No time to get comfortable together, to practice as a real team. It’s no shocker some are a little hesitant about the whole..predicament.

“What if it’s a woman?” Soap pushes Gaz’s head to the side, moving to sit down on his pack. His eyes glance around to see everyone silent.

Ghost simply stands, adjusting his gun and slinging it over his broad shoulders. “Doesn’t matter who they are. If they are good enough to be added to our team, we should be fine.” His deep, accented voice made all the men look up at the Lt, hearing his words and understanding. Ghost may be a silent killer, but when he’s with his brothers, he knows when to keep them in check.

“I appreciate your words, sir. I certainly hope I don’t let you or the team down.” You say dropping your packs beside your feet. Pulling your hood up to expose your face, you smile at all of them. I’m not even ten seconds here yet and there’s already conflict regarding a new member. Yay.

They all took a moment to take in your features. You stood there proud, showing your (e/c) eyes, hair pulled into a slick bun granting view to your undercut near the nape of your neck. Delicate yet muscular physic, your black trousers hugging your curves. Matched with a grey thermal top, adorned with a bulletproof vest. You looked almost too pretty to be in this field of work. 

Capt. Price clears his throat. “Ah, it’s a pleasure to meet you, soldier. I’m Captain Price and these here are my men.” He sweeps his hand across the remaining individuals. 

“Why hello there lass. I’m Sergeant John Mactavish, but I go by Soap.”  Charming.

“I’m Sergeant Kyle Garrick, Gaz on the field.” Fun

You turn mister dark and brooding...

“And you, sir.” You say while looking over at Ghost. Holy fuck- If you weren’t on the same task force you would’ve been intimidated by him to say the least. He stands tall above you, his build while hidden by his attire, still impressive. His broad shoulders, muscular arms, built legs. His face adorns a skill mask, hiding his facial features except his soul-crushing eyes. His presence alone makes you feel safe yet in danger at the same time. 

“Ghost.” His almost black eyes pierce yours. You can see almost, consuming by them. Filled with more demons and stories than you could imagine. You continue to stare into his eyes longer than you should’ve. Holy shit- he has an accent. And he’s hot. You haven’t even his face yet- girl you need to chill ur ass down. You gotta be a boss bitch right now. Shaking your head, you take a step back.

“Well I am Captain Patches. I am a field medic and specialize in yes, you guessed it, patching fuckers like you up.” Smirking, you turn to face Captain Price. Hearing Soap cackle and Gaz scoffing, you extend a hand to him. “Excited to be serving along you sir.”

Price cracks a half smile while shaking your hand. “Glad to have you onboard ma’am. Now that you’re here and introduced to everyone, let’s get this shit on the road. Packs up, we have to depart in T-2 minutes.” 

Well at least he’s nice.

Grabbing your packs, you follow the rest lead the way outside the building and to the tarmac. Seeing the C-17 in the distance making your heart soar. I can’t believe were seeing eachother, old friend. Time to fuck some shit up. You go to pull your hood up, covering your face, but are met by another hand pulling the hood back down. 

“Wha-” you turn around to see Ghost walking behind you, eyes facing forward. His hand returning to his side.

“Don’t put your hood up yet. You’ll get radios and mics during the briefing,” his dark eyes briefly glance down into yours, “Ma’am.” 

Quickly turning your head back straight, you puff your cheeks. What the fuck is literally happening right now. Lord have mercy.

[toastykaykes]

Ghost Whisperer (Prologue)

This will be a Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader series. You are a Special Forces Medic, who is being thrown into TF-141 to make sure everyone stays alive and sane. Little do you know, a certain ghost will take a liking to you. Call it a,...Ghost Whisperer <3

TW: (NSFW) 18+, Violence, Language, Abuse, Sexual Themes, Sex Scenes, Drugs, Weapons, Death, Sexual Harassment, etc.

WC: 598

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“What the absolute titty-fuck were y’all thinking out there?” Shepard growls while slamming the conference door shut, sealing the rest of the building from hearing and seeing the very fun conversation about to take place.

The air was so thick you could slice that shit. Shepard was glaring daggers while looking around the conference table. There sat Cpt. John “Soap” MacTavish, Lt. Simon “Ghost” Riley, Sgt Gary “Roach” Sanderson, Cpt. John “Bravo 6” Price. They all looked like they were one breath away from death, having been immediately transported to the facility after losing Maj. Hassam in Iran.

“Explain to me how you fuckwads are supposed to be the best task force in the world and let Hassam, a global terrorist, get away?” 

“We were doing what we could from whatever bullshit you put us in.” Soap said while pointing at the rest of the team. “You think it was a coincidence they just happened to know where we were in transit to? We had no choice but to retreat and let him go.”

“You wanna say that again, Captain?” Shepard challenges him, pulling out a chair on the opposite side of them. He takes his seat and tilts his head, continuing to stare at Soap.

“He said we were sold out. Someone who knew the details of our operation spread their fucking legs to Hassam,” Ghost said while looking Shepard dead in the eye. “Everyone on the team followed protocol to the fucking T, everything was done to perfection. The only reason it crumbled as it did, was because someone ratted our location. So, General Shepard, do you care to explain to us how your mission got leaked into enemy hands?” 

The room became silent. Shepard scoffed, with a deep frown plastered on his old face. Shaking his head a little dramatically, he stands up from his seat with his hands behind his back. “Thank you so very much Lieutenant for clarifying. I did not know you were compromised, I thought y’all were picking dandelions and jacking each other off.” He glares at Ghost before heading back to the door. 

As he stops in front of the door, Shepard turns to look at the men who so desperately want to fucking sleep and not hear this man bitch and moan. “I do not know how the coordinates were leaked. But I will find out. As for you four,” he sweeps his pointer finger at all of them, “I’d prefer if you kept your tone respectful. Be mindful, I am your fucking boss. With that being said, get back to the base and get some rest. You all look like shit. Also, you all will have a guest in the morning to keep you all in check so shit like this doesn’t happen again.”

This rose a response from all the men. “Why the fuck do we need another teammate? We work perfectly fine together and get the job done.” Price spoke up loudly, agitatedly looking at his mates for backup. To which a few nodded their heads in agreement. 

“Why not add to your legacy, no?” Shepard spits out, eyes darting between the four, “It’s finalized, you’ll be meeting “Patches” tomorrow morning and then it’s packs up for transport- to fix what was fucked up today! Hassam has to be found alive for questioning.” Soon followed by the slam of the door, TF-141 was left to their own thoughts about how tomorrow would go down. How next time, they’ll be ready for whatever the bastards hit them with.

“What the fuck type of call sign is Patches?”