Untitled @yournevergonnamakeitsworld - Tumblr Blog

Mar 5

( gif from this beautiful set by the lovely @doctorjackabbot ! )

☤ ─ DEATH KNELL ; jack abbot

summ. You & Dr. Abbot have always locked horns. But Death has a way of changing people. pairing. jack abbot / f!attending!reader w.count. 5k ! a/n. medical inaccuracies , mentions of death & suicidal ideation , no y/n . Ah yes the classic 'enemies-but-not-really'-to lovers/the 'nobody bullies you except me' trope!

A POPLITEAL INJURY sends Trauma-2 running amok.

You reach for the landline to contact Surgery just as Shen suggests it on an exhale.

“They’re running circles upstairs with the MVC pile-up from earlier. He’ll be ischemic by then regardless of the tourniquet," Ellis points out.

“Ah-ah. Vascular shunt can do the trick, wouldn’t you say?” someone chimes, but you’re too distracted with dialing in the extension.

“Sure, why the hell not,” you relent, holding the handset loose at your ear. It’s a crazy idea, yes, though fortunately isn’t a stupid one. “But that’ll risk exsanguination. I’m paging for a consult. Walsh has a better eye on this anyw—”

Something clicks; the line goes dead.

You blink in confusion to see:

Abbot, with his fingers pressed down the receiver.

He’s braced himself against it, the flex of his freckled arm outstretched as he proceeds to lean down towards you to meet your affronted glare, voice low as he closes in on you.

“I’ll do it,” he croons.

You reason the stumble in your heart as a startle reflex. Shake your head back in focus.

“Am I running this, Dr. Abbot, or are you?”

“You are. But you’re also uselessly running the standard of care, so I’m inclined to override,” he censures. “Like Ellis said: Surgery is tied up with people who have minutes to live. I can buy our MasterChef here an extra golden hour if we restore perfusion.”

“And trust me of all people when I say I wanna save this guy’s leg,” he continues. “Hell, might even buy enough time for Walsh to stop by the vending machine before your little consult.”

You let the dig pass and the amputee joke go unnoticed. “That knife is the only thing tamponading him from a call lighting up the blood bank, cowboy.”

“You’re right. So call them to standby MTP,” he agrees surprisingly easily, releasing the receiver and— much to your chagrin— begins to dial their extension for you; and all while still confidently, deliberately, holding your frustrated gaze for maximum tension.

The call goes through. You muffle the handset on your shoulder as you narrow at him.

“A vascular shunt is a surgical procedure, Dr. Abbot, temporary or not.”

He shrugs, shooting that cocked-head-and-deadpan-stare he always does that makes you want to wipe out of his face. “So put the word emergency in front of it.”

You scowl. Rear your head back and break away from his eye-contact in metaphorical defeat.

Jerk, you mouth, just before you begin rattling off the case to the line.

Punk, he murmurs back, finally pulling away from your personal space to glove up. “Gowns up everybody,” he announces. “Get the med-students in, Ellis, they’re gonna wanna see this.”

You hang the landline up at last. “Just so you know, I called the morgue too while we’re at it,” you joke, dryly.

Abbot snorts dismissively. “Ye of little faith. I’ve done this a hundred times in field hospitals. Trust me, punchy.”

“Oh, the morgue’s not for the patient,” you say, sidling past him as Princess ties the back of your PPE gown. “It’s for when I’m done beating you with your own leg for undercutting me in my trauma case.”

“Yeah?” Abbot narrows, his half-hearted smile flashing canine-sharp. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

So it goes.

The dynamic between you has always been a pointed, inflammatory thing; be it in disagreements over patient treatment (“Aw, relax, punchy. It’ll be my head on the inevitable Gloria-guillotine, not yours. Who knew you cared about me that much—?”) or bickering over things as small as accidentally drinking someone else’s coffee order (“Yes, ‘Jerk’ written on it means it’s your drink— who else do you think the drawn-on one-legged stickman is supposed to be?”).

For frequent flyers and medical staff, the friction eventually settles into background noise: a familiar cadence of clipped exchanges, cheap jabs and catty banter threaded into the humdrum tapestry of rolling carts and beeping monitors. A daily occurrence enough that, if neither of you lock horns or go after each other’s throats, would sow a discordance into the Pitt’s rhythm more than they’d realise.

Not that it ever intervenes with patient care, ofcourse.

The both of you may conflict or fall into disparaging hisses and crows at each other, but you two are still the professional duo for when the calls come in and and traumas start thundering down the bay (The PittFest MCI had not only sharpened your respect for one another since, but also strengthened your trust in each other’s inner compass and capabilities— Not that you’d ever admit that to each other.):

You can contradict each other without the cruelty when absolutely necessary; can quarrel while intubating flawlessly; can hand him the ten-blade intuitively while deep mid-argument. But when a patient threatens to get combative with you, Abbot is first to step in and intervene; And when a visitor or family member thinks to browbeat him, you’re first to jump to his defense.

A symbiotic relationship; Part of the natural order in the department, however jagged it appears to outsiders.

(Ahmad already has a betting pool up for who’ll bend or break first. Half the staff already sees the hostile dynamic as something intimate and borderline romantic, after all, so why not profit? “$40 says those two are secretly exes.”)

And so it carries on, and on, and on.

Until—

“Keeping up, punk?” Abbot says offhand, yanking the bougie out an emergency cric.

The room perks their ears for the snap, the bite, the caustic remark. Your unimpressed tone that’d have clapped back against him in an instant with something along the lines of, You’re the one with the limp in your step, jerk.

But it never comes. Just Perlah’s relieved declaration of a yellow end-tidal.

The entire bay’s anticipated gaze pins you down in surprise.

“What do you think?” you simply reply. It’s a lazy retort— uncreative. Flat. As if you’d been drained of the energy you usually have to take the bait and turn it against him.

The nurses glance curiously at one another in silent conversation.

From where he’s standing by the patient, Abbot cocks his head ever so slightly, taken aback. Even tries to chase your gaze when it’s pulled away towards Lena, who’s popped her head into the room to inveigle you: one of your patient’s visitors wanted to speak with you, it seems.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Abbot calls out as a last ditch effort, unable to hide the quiet dismay in his voice as he tries to tease you with, “You haven’t even called me Jack-ass in the past hour. You must be feeling generous today.”

You take a deep breath and smile at him as you back out the trauma door. It’s tight; performative. A poor attempt to lighten the mood.

“I guess I am, huh?” you shrug, and disappear round the corner.

Abbot blinks. Tries to wrap his head around the entire exchange; think back on whenever he’d pushed a button he shouldn’t have and made you stonewall him— But nothing comes up.

The ordeal bothers him the rest of the shift.

…And then the next.

And the next.

And the—

There grows, for lack of a better word, a newfound peace within the Emergency Department.

Ironically, it’s the most unpeaceful the place has ever felt, too.

Contesting between you both have now slowed to a crawl. Habitual head-butting in regards to dosages, imaging, consults, or whatever else, thins out. Childish arguments with him eventually shorten, tempering out into mild retaliations and half-baked barbs, where Abbot’s compromises are miraculously met without the usual amount of needling and bickering from your end.

Nothing has grinded to a halt completely, no, but the thrum of life in the air has gone. A notable absence.

It unsettles everyone.

It unsettles Abbot, most.

Knocks him off-kilter; spikes a dread in his heart. He’d chalked the initial shift in you off as fatigue, went out of his way to deliberately get a rise out of you (“You’re slipping, punchy.”) only to receive in return a half-hearted scoff that only carved the concern deeper into his marrows— makes him want to grab at you and rattle you back awake.

Is it me? Did I say or do something? Have I crossed a line?

It isn’t. He knows it. A basal part of his soul that has come to entwine itself into your own, after all this time, knows instinctively that it isn’t his fault.

There’s the way your jaw tightens whenever your phone buzzes from a notification, after all, and the too-carefully-arranged composure you carry in your calm demeanor after you answer your phone calls outside mid-shift.

It’s an external thing, he pieces. Personal.

Something Abbot isn’t allowed to be privy to, and won’t yet be anytime soon, it seems.

He just wishes you’d talk to him.

A black cloud hangs in the ED today.

“Rhythm check, hold compressions,” you say, not even bothering with looking at the monitor.

The EKG sings like a clarion.

Asystole.

“…Call it,” you order aloud at last.

05:47AM, Ellis declares, warily. She had honestly expected less give from you. (Earlier in one of your previous patients, you’d flashed your teeth against Shen in defiance on the mere suggestion of calling time of death— it hadn’t felt like your usual bites. It had felt unreasonably, uncharacteristically personal.

Now, though, you just seem to deflate.

She doesn’t know which to be more afraid of.)

It’s been a shitty nightshift for everyone. You in particular, having lost your third patient in a row. You’re beginning to crack in front of everybody’s eyes: hairline fractures, in that your quips are meaner now; words blindly callous, derision more intentional.

Worst of all, Abbot isn’t in today to soften your blows and weather your pain with you.

The monitor continues to whine.

Asystole.

A flat and dull sound that somehow slices through your head akin to a rusted, serrated edge grating into your eardrums. Eternal tinnitus. A crooked blade cleaving your heart— your soul— unevenly; brutally.

Signifies a harrowing death knell that peals and tails you like a banshee’s cry through every failed patient, every family member’s tearful goodbye. An incessant, painful, beep that goes on and on and on and on and—

“Will someone turn that fuc— the damn monitor off, please?”

A tense beat passes as eyes flicker across the bay.

Jesse, closest to the EKG, blinks owlishly at you.

“It’s already off, Doc,” he awkwardly says.

Oh, you realise. It is.

The ringing is in your head. Has been. It’s been following you down all the way from the Oncology patient wards since weeks ago, and been echoing like a swan song inside the hollow of your ears and into your skull until now.

“I’m—” Sorry, you don’t get to finish.

Lena has barged into the door. Got a call for an MVC. Two traumas incoming ETA-5. We gotta clear this place, hon’.

So you do.

Everyone jumps into swift action. Your deceased patient is whisked off to be cleaned and put in the viewing room. The bay is sanitised, prepped and reset thanks to housekeeping and techs. In no time two gurneys barrel in, and the picture EMS paints for everybody is automatically clear to the room: 13-year-old victim, 19-year-old drunk driver.

You swallow it down and get the job done.

As Senior Attending you’re bouncing between the connected bays, pulling all the stops to save a life; shooting medical orders and guiding the Residents’ hands where you can.

MTP is dialed in for the 13-year-old girl in Trauma-2. It doesn’t look good. You try anyway.

In Trauma-1, OR has been called down to assist with the 19-year-old patient. Walsh materialises in a moment’s notice, and the next time you’re checking in on her she’s gone elbows deep in guts with her team in an emergency thoracotomy.

His vitals, however ugly, look promising.

They wheel him upstairs as soon as he’s somewhat stabilised. You tell his family that’s been pacing outside the bay for the last fifteen minutes on what the update might be; what to and what not to expect, that Your son was in severe condition from the accident, and right now they’re in the best hands possi—

“She’s crashing!”

You fly into Trauma-2. Reckon the vitals in a flash. Bradying. BP tanking. It doesn’t take much to tell she’s decompensating.

Shen is on chest compressions with Ellis on standby before you even feel the carotid disappear beneath your fingertips. An MS4 is on airway. Nurses declare labs and run transfusions. Jesse hangs up the cell-saver, and another unit of blood and FFP at your behest. And then another unit. And another.

He doesn’t argue with you. No one will argue when it comes to saving the life of a 13-year-old girl.

PEA, resume compressions…

…Rhythm check, pause compressions.

Asystole, resume compressio—

You spend the better half of the hour coding her.

Outside, her parents and brother weep into each other’s arms. It takes everything in you not to hurl at the idea of calling them into the room for their goodbyes, the adrenaline running through your veins in a sick and twisted fight-flight-freeze.

It’s part of the job. You do it anyway.

You listen to them scream, and shout. You listen to the EKG monitor— no, the ringing in your head, because Jesse’s cut the sound for everybody since you called it— and listen to them beg and plead and wail for my babygirl, my twin sister, my darling, why can’t you save her? Isn’t that what you do?

You let them berate and abuse you. Let them hurl curses and crucify you. They shriek and claw at your scrubs to get the fuck out, and in a blind glimmer of hope you mistake the figure stepping between you two to be Abbot— but it’s merely security breezing in.

I’ll go, you tell Ahmad. Let them stay.

Dr. Shen shoots you an apologetic look, and takes over the case. Even he, stalwart and unflappable, is rattled by the grisly scene.

“Christ, hon’,” you hear Lena wince once you’ve backed out the trauma bay, “Your face—”

“Just a minor scratch,” you dismiss, waving her away and mumbling something along the lines of, Courtesy of mom there. But it’s alright. I’ll… clean up. Call me if you need me— I just, I just need to get some air, okay?

You can’t recognise your voice.

You haven’t been able to for weeks, really, since the last time you sat at the bedside holding a cold hand in the Oncology ward.

Haven’t been the same when you first heard the diagnosis, infact; up until you listened to the final, agonal breaths; up until the nurse had shut the monitor off when the flatline had come and rung its way like a harrowing tocsin into your head that’ll follow you for the rest of your life.

Haunting you in increments: Across the weeks from the ward, to the Sunday funeral, to the patients you’ve lost, to your fourth patient in a row today, and further on now—

Echoing up, up and up the stairwell towards the roof.

A low-grade droll in the back of your mind that you can’t shake, can’t palm your buzzing ears over. It hums like a Call of the Void when you peer over the edge of the rooftop, and take an inhale of fresh air deep enough it stings your lungs.

It’s a beautiful morning.

The sun isn’t out yet, but it still is a sight. In the dark horizon, distant God-rays threaten to slip through the gaps between soft clouds and wake the sleepiness of Pittsburgh.

You stagger. Shift your weight from foot to foot. Let the burn at the back of your eyes creep its way into tears that blur your vision into a bokeh effect over the cityline.

When you stuff your hands into your pockets as you consider it, you skirt at the idea of allowing your shoes to toe further past another foot— to take that damning step onto the metal parapet edged around the roof.

Asystole.

Still, nothing can cut through that palpable sound of a flatline in your skull.

Nothing.

It continues to drawl its Siren song; like Death itself is seeking you out, unhinging its jaw into the gaping maw beyond that’s only one step away.

Asystole.

Nothing cuts through the blaring sound of Death’s croons. It’s deafening.

Asystole.

Nothing will help. Nothing and noone—

The door creaks.

“Hey, punchy,” comes a familiar voice.

You’re surprised to find the world clears into silence for the first time today.

✆ …the number you have dialed is currently unavailable… ✆ …the number you have diale‎d is currently unavailable… ‎‎[…] 6:32 | U ok? Pick up 6:33 | Would u atleast leave me on read 6:33 | So i know ure okay?

“Hey, punchy,” says the voice, sliding his cellphone into his jeans. “Little rude of you not to pick up my calls, don’t you think?”

Behind you, you can hear the creak of the rooftop door swing shut; the nigh-imperceptible tap of shoes on concrete approaching. If he hadn’t spoken at all, you would’ve recognised Jack Abbot by gait alone regardless.

“What’re you doing here?” you say, trying for scorn. It comes off as a choke instead— there’s still that ball in your throat from the grief you’re battling inside out, even if the phantom alarm in your head has seized now that he’s here.

“Oh, you know,” Abbot shrugs. “I missed you.”

He turns to narrow his sight at the short step-up away you are from the ledge. The stethoscope— your proverbial yoke around your neck, ironic as the situation is— is now hanging listlessly on the guardrail like a bid farewell.

Abbot has to tamp the dread in his heart, the hammering against his ribcage.

“Sure,” you hum, unfazed by his attempt to jest. A presence looms by you: it’s him, leaning on the guardrail. You can feel his classic gaze burning through the profile of your face like a brand on your skin. Can imagine the gentle look he’d give you in your mind's eye.

“I do miss you,” Abbot repeats, and you can hear the sincere honesty in his murmuring voice. “We all have.”

Then, carefully: “What happened tonight?”

That lets out a genuine huff of laughter from you. A half-hearted, bewildered sound. Where do you begin, from the Oncology ward? From the funeral? From everything at work that led up to today?

“Life happened,” you summarise wryly, shaking your head. “Let’s see… 26-year-old fresh graduate who stroked out after an overdose in a party. Then Ruth— our frequent flyer— seized her heart out into arrest. Didn’t make it into the ambulance bay, EMS pronounced her dead.”

“No time to grieve her though,” you say, breath skittering. “No, no. 29-year-old officer with a GSW through the neck rolls in. Neuro barely stepped into the room before he started tanking. Took me long enough before I had to call it. Can’t heal a cervical fracture, anyway, can we?”

Your joke is raw and bitten out. Something in Abbot splinters at the sight of you like this— unraveling at the seams, lips curled and cheeks bitten from the inside to stop a sob from escaping.

“Had a MVC after that, too,” you continue. And this must be it, Abbot thinks— the tipping point that had sent you over the metaphorical edge; that had made you want to follow it by climbing your way to the roof— because your voice is barely hanging on by a thread now, shaking with effort.

“13-year-old girl who snuck out to have icecream with her twin brother meets 19-year-old drunk driver who took his dad’s car for a late night joyride.”

Abbot openly grimaces. The horror of being a Doctor, sometimes, is that it’s far easier to imagine the scene already: Abbot figures the orders he’d have given, the calls he’d have made, the drugs to be pushed into lines— even if you give him little to no detail.

“She pushed her brother out the way. Coded her for an hour, maybe. Had to look at her family in the eye and tell them that their, their little girl is—”

You grit your teeth. Whip your face leftwards, so he can’t spot the tears that’s running freely down your cheeks.

“Oh, but don’t worry, Jack. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, see? I managed to crack the chest and save the life of the 19-year-old who murdered their daughter,” you wave, in mock-dismissal. “Because that’s the job isn’t it? The Hippocratic Oath we solemnly swore to. So there’s that.”

…I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required—

A painful beat passes.

You exhale, hard, when you hear Abbot’s clothes rustling: he’s ducked under the rail to come stand beside you now.

He gathers what to say in his head just as a frigid breeze passes, carrying away the tiny tremble of words you’d very suddenly, quietly spoken.

And I lost someone close to me to cancer.

“…What?” he startles, before the words could fully hit him.

Then it clicks perfectly into place: the buzz of notifications in your phone then, the long calls mid-shift that wore you out, the slow descent of your hope that had eaten away at you as you braced to face the inevitable end.

“I’m sorry,” he corrects himself, instantly. “I know what that’s like,” he adds, which, well—

It snatches a vicious, incredulous laugh from you. It’s unreasonable and disproportionate of a reaction, but you couldn’t help but go for the jugular and lash out at him.

“How could you possibly—? You don’t understand a thing, Jack,” you begin, turning to face him now.

(There’s an agitated mark on your face he zeros on. Has half the mind to reach out to run his finger over the thin, clotted line. Holds the reflex to ask, How did you get that? Who hurt you?)

“I do,” he says. “I do understand.”

He tries to set a comforting hand on your shoulder, but you’re snarling.

“No,” you wrench from his grip, voice cracking from grief. “You have no idea what it’s like. You don’t know a damn—”

“I do know,” he overrides steadily, which pisses you off because he’s so incredibly fucking patient with you still, despite how much of an asshole you’ve been this enti—

You stop.

Blink.

His words hang for a moment. A shudder washes over.

“…You do, don’t you?” comes your realisation.

You remember now. He’d lost his wife to cancer too, once upon a time.

“Yeah,” he says, resolutely. A voice of someone who’s weathered the worst. “I do.”

The fight leaves your body.

A wretched exhale escapes you, and before you know it you’re finally burying your face into your hands as you stumble back to the railing, crumbling apart.

This is how it is in this field, isn’t it? You work and see the worst long enough you start forgetting it might happen to you next. Too complacent. Too busy with saving people’s lives to think about your own. Your own circle; own circumstance. Then the blow comes, and the wind is knocked right out your lungs, swept right off your sails.

You get the rug pulled from right under your feet and you’re brutally reminded just how insignificant life is when Death points its merciless finger to its next victim— whether young or old or saint or sinner.

“Jack,” you hiccup at long last. “I’m so fucking tired.”

It’s the brittlest Abbot has ever heard or seen you.

He never wants to hear it again.

“You must be,” he relents, softly, and reaches to fold you into his arms. “C’mere.”

And you do.

That, he supposes, is what undoes him.

Neither reflexive resistance nor censure. You just step forward to him like he’s a beacon of light amidst the mire of tonight’s atrocities, and let him pull you safely close as you choke back tears.

An embrace is unexpected considering your dynamic. But it’s a quiet surrender that feels neither unceremonious nor graceless. This closeness that both of you have always disguised as petty combat isn’t unwelcome— has never been, come to think of it. If anything it’d felt like you belonged, like a slotting piece of a puzzle, perfectly fit in the shelter of his arms.

I’m sorry, you sniffle, for all of it.

You’re not sure for what exactly, or why it felt right to apologise, but it slips out from you anyway as you fist at his jacket and curl into the warmth of him; press your ear to the constant of his heartbeat in a bid to anchor yourself someway, somehow between your spiralling.

He tightens his hold without thinking when you bury your face into his neck. Feels the tremor of your shoulders. Listening to your hitches, your stumble of breath as you try to contain your crying into something discreet.

“Yeah,” Abbot offers, inadequate as it is. “I know.”

He’s settled a hand at your nape, threaded his fingers into your hair. The other has wrapped firmly around the small of your back; a plinth. Steady, firm. A physical pillar to keep you from unravelling.

This high upon the rooftop, the wind cuts sharper, so he angles himself just enough that you’re shielded from most of it. Then Abbot simply keeps you close, chin resting lightly against the crown of your head, and waits.

(He can wait. Will wait, for however long it takes.)

He’s never been one for words or a speech, anyway. He prefers contact; prefers the comfort a touch could translate.

By and by, the city rouses from its daze and begins its waking routine of distant sirens and bustling traffic. Sunlight begins to reflect and cast a saffron glow across the skyline. When you finally sniffle, finally shift away from his space to look up at him past your wet lashes, your eyes are red-rimmed.

Abbot dashes a stray tear before it falls, then courteously lets his arms drop.

“Morning,” he greets humorously, hoping for a reaction. (His voice is drowned, it feels like, in affection.)

Under the daylight, you look younger like this. Smaller. The bone deep exhaustion that’s hollowed you out is clearer to see in the open air. You look— diminished.

(Pretty, still. Beautiful. In the way Abbot has always found you to be and only ever admitted by hiding it behind snarky remarks. Your sharp-wittedness has given way for a rare softness in your edges now, looking the most unguarded he’s ever seen you. It makes him itch to tuck you safely back in his arms.)

“Robby’s morning shift,” you say, looking at Abbot’s clothes: sleeved jacket over a black tee and jeans. “You came all this way on an off day.”

Tonight had been a watershed moment, you realise, between the two of you. The intimacy of falling apart in another’s hands; the disarmament of your armour, heart and soul vulnerably bared out for him.

And he’d held it— you— as gently as he could.

He shakes his head before you can continue. “S’fine, punchy.”

“Lena snitched?” you guess.

“John,” he corrects, and does his signature duck where he chases to meet your exasperated, downturned gaze. “What? I’m serious. He called me. Afraid. Can you believe that? I actually thought Hell froze over.”

“Today is a first for everything, I guess,” you hum, resurfacing the ghost of your usual self to make a joke. “Just… Don’t get used to it.”

(It’s a loaded line. A nervous ease back into normalcy. Don’t get used to being my hero.)

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Then, like the gentleman he is:

“C’mon,” he chides, without bite, “It’s freezing out here,” and shrugs his jacket off in favor of wrapping it around you. Vintage carhartt. Thick. Warm from the heat of his body.

It smells dizzyingly of him. Something half-masculine and half-heady and above all— homely.

Jack Abbot smells like coming home.

“Prince Charming, wow. Did you practice that move in front the mirror? Be honest,” you rib, sheepishly nestling into the scent and warmth like a cat that got the cream as he tugs at the front of the jacket.

“Mm. Yeah, totally,” he nods, if only to see you secretly light up at him taking the bait. “I actually even scribbled an elaborate script into my palm too, if you wanna see—”

Your burst of laughter is bright, however small. Meets the gleam in your eyes and rounds your cheeks in song.

There it is, Abbot thinks, breaking into a dimpled smile. There you are.

A pelvic injury sends Trauma-2 running amok.

“Rummel tourniquet,” you deadpan, outraged. “Are you shitting me right now?”

Vascular is on the way down, Princess declares, hanging up the line. 2 minutes out!

“Yeah? Safer. Quicker. We can tie the bleeders shut in 30 seconds, tops,” Abbot shrugs distractedly, voice aloof as he peers past the suction. “Could even let Vascular skip their way here instead of running.”

“Pressure’s 40,” you grit, sidling past the nurses handing him his loops and equipment. “He needs a damn REBOA—”

“Which is overkill for this patient,” he interjects. “You heard the numbers from labs. His lactate is sky-high. Hemorrhagic shock. You balloon him now, you’ll risk ischemia on his super duper important organs, don’t you think?”

The condescending tone has one of the more tenderfoot MS glancing nervously between them. The others, though, seem to drift around the scene completely ordinarily.

You roll your eyes with a lazy scowl, but you’re grabbing the tubing anyway and handing it over to him. “You’d have done it either way even if he wasn’t in shock.”

He makes a face and a noise of assent. “Well, REBOA takes precious time compared to a Rummel, punchy, y’know this. Besides, I can see the artery right infront of me, so relax. Take a look. Textbook external iliac—”

“Yeah, yeah, I see it,” you bite, before sighing out a, “You’re a goddamn Jack-ass, y’know that?”

If Abbot could’ve paused to meet your gaze he would have.

“Punk,” he counters.

“Jerk,” you volley.

But a relieved smile blooms across his face instead.

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