Chapter Text
It’s been two weeks since his first meeting with Dr Stump and Pete can’t get him off his mind, even though they haven’t met again since. Pete hasn’t seen as much as the tails of Dr Stump’s lab coat for fourteen calendar days and still the image of his clear aquamarine eyes creep through his subconscious at least ten times a day. Pete knows that he might be becoming a tad obsessive when he even finds himself thinking about Dr Stump whilst performing a bowel prep and enema on a patient with a stoma bag. A task which should have been reserved for an intern by the way, and not a fourth-year resident. But Beckett has endless ways to make Pete’s work life a misery, so last week he spent most of his shifts performing enemas or lancing infected boils.
Pete stares glumly out of the train window as he mulls over what series of stomach-turning jobs Beckett will have in store for him today. At least he didn’t get fired, he thinks, although the thought turns sour when he remembers his trip to Beckett’s office. And he has to squeeze his eyes shut tightly, imagining that the memories of that day are left scattered along the train tracks where they can’t weigh him down any longer. He opens his eyes again to watch Chicago zip by them as the Red Line zooms to the centre of the city and rests his already pounding head against the cool glass; the rain drops barely graze the surface before they too are swept away by the speed of the train.
Pete barely registers the sharp burst of pain that radiates through his frontal bone as the sudden and grinding halt of the train throws him backwards before he slams into the glass window. He hears the screech of metal on metal, the shouts, cries, and screams of his fellow passengers, and the pounding of the blood in his ears. Bags and people are strewn across the floor of the train carriage having been thrown from their seats by the sudden force. Pete’s mind flashes back to his high school physics class; Newton’s 1st Law – an object in motion will stay in motion at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
Outside the window he’d been gazing out just seconds before he sees the train has been thrown from the tracks it was so smoothly gliding along. He thanks his lucky stars that he boarded on the last carriage of the train because just up ahead the front half of the train has flipped on its side with the sparks leaping from frayed wires already generating small flames. An alarm is blaring, the lights are flickering, the rain batters against the windows now without the velocity of the train to deflect the droplets. Immediately, Pete springs into action; he does a quick pat down of himself to ensure he has no penetrating wounds or deep gashes, and when he finds himself to be intact, he starts darting around the carriage and running quick exams on the other passengers.
“We need help over here!” a voice calls.
“Keep pressure on that,” he advises a man with a head laceration as his head snaps up in search of the voice.
“Help!” shouts someone else, a female voice this time.
“Help! Please!” another cry.
He clambers down the carriage, pushing stray bags out of his way as he seeks out the voices that are growing louder and more frantic with each cry for help. Pete pushes through a huddle of passengers crowded around a young man who is trapped under a heavy metal luggage railing that had dislodged with the force of the crash and trapped him underneath. Pete drops to his knees, snaking a hand through the metal bars to take a carotid pulse, it’s there but it’s weak.
A sobbing woman clutches the man’s hand; it’s sprawled out limply just barely escaping the luggage rack which presses down on his forearm and the majority of the rest of his body. Fortunately, his head hasn’t been compressed by any part of the metal structure and Pete quickly checks his pupils, equal and responding to light appropriately. A good sign.
“What’s his name?” he asks the woman, his voice coming out brasher than he intended.
“J-Jaime, James,” she hiccups, “he’s my son, he’s my only son, please.”
“It’s okay ma’am, I’m a doctor. I’ll do what I can for now and the paramedics are on their way,” Pete barely recognises his own voice, it’s calm and steady and nothing like the way he feels on the inside.
Every med student dreams of this scenario, where they find themselves at the scene of a medical emergency and run to the rescue and save the day. Once upon a time, Pete held that fantasy too; he imagined himself on a plane and the flight attendant would ask if there was a doctor on board, he’d spring into action and depart the plane playing a gracious and humble hero as he batted off praise from the other passengers and the chorus of thanks from the family of the life he had just saved. Pete isn’t that naïve anymore, years of working in the ER have taught him that there is no glory in holding a life in his hands, it’s nerve wracking and nauseating at the best of times. And here he is alone, on a crowded train with no medical supplies, and without the security of a sterile operating room just two floors above him.
When the paramedics board the train Pete breathes a sigh of relief, up until now he’s not been able to do much beyond monitor his patient’s pulse and reassure his hysterical mother whilst trying to take a medical history between her sobs and hiccups. His heart soars when he recognises the paramedic duo that clamber towards him, he knows these guys, and right now they are the knights in shining armour, not him.
“Frank! Gerard!” he calls out to them, “I got a 27-year-old male, massive crush injury to the chest and abdomen – he’s got a pulse but it’s weak and thready and I’m struggling to find a pulse in the popliteal artery. Can’t tell much else without getting this thing off him and I need to get a BP reading stat,” Pete says everything in one breath.
Frank nods, “fire department is outside, Saporta is coming up right now to get it off him.”
Pete offers him a tight-lipped smile just as a pair of firefighters from Station 17 that he vaguely recognises from drop offs in the ambulance bay board the train. He scoots out of the way as they converse in hushed tones with Frank and Gerard about the best way to remove the luggage rack without causing any more damage. Pete makes himself small, curling up in an empty seat as he watches them work. He hopes the onlooking passengers think that he’s trying to stay out of the way, that he’s wedged himself away because of the debris littering the floor. That’s only partly true, he does need to let the paramedics and firefighters get to work, but he also needs to calm himself down if he’s going to be any help to them when they free the patient.
Images of Dr Stump swim across his vision. Beckett’s voice echoes in his ears. Whispers of hospital gossip whirl around him. Maybe he is a bad doctor, maybe he is too overconfident, too brash, and too unqualified. If Joe or Andy were here, he doubts they’d be hiding on the side-lines.
“Wentz! We got it.”
Pete nods, shakily making his way back to the patient. He’s been in the field before, he’s seen mass-casualty events like this up close, but he’s always had a team around him, he’s never felt so alone before. Because suddenly Frank and Gerard, the firefighters, and every passenger in the crowd has their eyes trained on him, they’re expecting him to take charge here, he swallows dryly.
“Pressures 140/90,” Gerard says gravely.
Pete’s hand shakes as he presses on the patients abdomen, it feels rigid, indicating a bleed. Pulling up the leg of the patient’s trousers he sees his legs are swollen and rigid, his heart sinks.
“We gotta get him in a rig and to the hospital right now.”
Frank nods and they roll the patient onto a gurney and the firefighters help them exit the train and make their way to the ambulance. The patient’s mother runs along behind them, bubbling hysterically and insisting she needs to join them in the ambulance.
“I’m sorry ma’am, with Dr Wentz joining us there isn’t space for another body in the ambulance,” Gerard tries to explain kindly.
Pete’s mind is in overdrive. Crush injury. Traumatic Rhabdomyolysis. Acute Renal Failure. He can envision the words scribbled in his own handwriting in one of his med school journals. He needs to get this patient to the ER right now, he needs calcium and insulin, he needs to perform a bilateral fasciotomy, he needs the mother to stop fucking yelling.
“You don’t understand!” she wails, “my son, he’s a paranoid schizophrenic. It’s fine now while he’s unconscious but when he wakes up he will be confused and scared, he might get violent. He needs me there, I’m the only one that can calm him down.”
Pete grinds to a sudden halt, the patient jostles in the gurney as he stops it’s smooth path towards the ambulance; Newton’s 1st Law – an object in motion will stay in motion at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Frank clenches his jaw, shooting him a questioning look. He stares blankly at the mother, this would have been an important thing to mention when he asked if he had any medical conditions whilst they waited for the paramedics. He tries to not feel irritated, she’s scared, she’s in shock too, still this complicates things a lot.
The 5 P’s of compartment syndrome: pain, pallor, paresthesia, pulselessness, paralysis. He sees the words in his mind as solidly as they were printed on the pages of his Introduction to Traumatic Injury textbook. How is he supposed to ask the patient if he is experiencing paresthesia if he is also experiencing the disorganised thoughts and dysfunctional language that commonly present in schizophrenia? How is he supposed to get the patient to lie still in an MRI if he has delusions of persecution? Call it an ethical hamartia, call it personal trauma, but he isn’t overly keen on pumping a patient full of sedatives to make them docile.
He swallows a sigh, he doesn’t need to cause this woman anymore distress so he turns his attention to Gerard who is already halfway into the ambulance, “call ahead to the hospital, ask them to get someone from psych down to the ER for a consult when we arrive, ask for a Dr Patrick Stump.”
***
Patrick shivers as he stands in the trauma bay. Yes, he is technically sheltered from the rain by the overhanging roof canopy that extends outwards from the ambulance bay entrance to the ER, for the exact purpose of keeping the emergency medicine staff dry whilst they wait for their patient.
But the issue there is that Patrick is not an emergency medicine doctor. He should not be standing out here, chilled to his bones because the flimsy trauma gown he has draped over his boring-as-ever work clothes does nothing to offer protection from the elements. Once again, Patrick is not an emergency medicine doctor, he does not work in the ER, he does not wear trauma gowns and stand in trauma bays with a bitter wind chill of 2°C whipping against his face.
But he should be thankful the roof shelters him from the rain, he supposes. Because even though he’s standing outside in the cold, with none other than Dr Beckett at his side, and waiting to consult on a patient that he has been given absolutely zero information on, at least he’s still dry. The fact that he was personally requested to consult by none other than Dr Wentz - Pete as he had said to call him - makes his heart swell in chest, but that is teetering on the verge of unprofessionalism so Patrick elects to focus his gratitude on not being soaked to the skin.
“I didn’t think we’d see you back down here so soon, you know,” Beckett says from next to him, his tone is almost pleasant but Patrick can detect the venom in the subtext, “hope this mass casualty event won’t be too much for you to stomach.”
“I completed residency too, I did a rotation in emergency medicine, I’m a doctor, I’m not squeamish,” Patrick retorts, a little more icily than he had intended.
“Yes, but now you’re just a psychiatrist,” Dr Beckett drawls nastily, “don’t worry - we’ll have you back to your office in no time, I’m sure it’s more comfortable for you up there.”
“I’m happy to be wherever I’m needed,” Patrick says through gritted teeth.
This is a lie. Because although Patrick is apparently so vital to this patient that he’s been dragged down to meet the ambulance, he would rather be anywhere else right now. Not because he’s scared of all the blood, and the lacerations, and the general assortment of stomach turning sights one might expect in the ER following a mass casualty event, but because he can’t stand to be in the vicinity of Dr Beckett any longer.
“Well, I doubt this is where you’re needed, but my idiotic resident seems to think we need a psych consult,” Dr Beckett rolls his eyes and leans back lazily against the wall.
“You don’t believe him?” Patrick asks.
“Of course I don’t, I don’t believe a word the comes out of Wentz’s mouth and if you were as smart as the board thinks you are, then you wouldn’t either,” Dr Beckett says darkly.
Patrick ignores the obvious dig directed at him to find out more and satisfy his own curiosity, even if it does go against his personal rule on entertaining hospital gossip, “that doesn’t seem very fair,” he comments.
“I’ve been more than fair with Dr Wentz, I’ve tried with him, I really have,” Dr Beckett says, and Patrick knows he’s bluffing because his tone his now full of faux innocence and compassion, “but I’m afraid he’s just not fit for this programme. Or any residency programme really, I mean between the anger issues and the promiscuity in the workplace, he’s just not professional enough.”
He leans in whisper this to Patrick, as though it’s a heavily guarded secret and not something Dr Beckett blabs about to anyone who will listen. Dr Beckett is nasty, and superior, and self-serving at the best of times, but for some reason he seems to have some vendetta against Dr Wentz.
Okay, after Patrick and Dr Wentz - Pete - met for the first time, Patrick might have bent his rules on hospital gossip a little to find out some information about him. Because sure he hears things in passing, and sometimes he’s just too polite to tell someone he isn’t interested in hearing the latest heartbreak Pete has caused amongst the nurses, but he doesn’t actively seek out gossip. So Patrick knows that Beckett punishes Pete more harshly and more frequently than any other resident, and he also knows some people seem to think he deserves it given the violent and explosive temper many of them reference.
Despite barely knowing him Patrick doesn’t believe half the things he hears about Pete, he’s just surprised so many others seem to take Beckett’s version of accounts when he clearly there is something else going on there.
“Well, he seems like a good resident to me, after all he was right about Mrs Hernandez’s undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which would still be undiagnosed if he hadn’t taken the initiative to page for a psych consult.”
Dr Beckett’s face flushes an ugly purple shade and his eyes bulge slightly, “yes, well even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
Fortunately, Patrick doesn’t have to resist the urge to tell Beckett to fuck off for very long, because at that precise moment the wail of the sirens rise to a sharp crescendo as an ambulance pulls into the bay in front of them. The rear doors burst open, Beckett comically launches himself forward to greet the EMS team, with an urgency that Patrick doesn’t think is necessary in any emergency short of literal the end of the world. A duo of paramedics clamber out of the ambulance, Beckett starts interrogating them so ferociously Patrick can see the spit flying from his mouth from the position he maintains under the canopy. A gurney is unloaded from the ambulance, a woman clutches the side of its rails as she stumbles out too.
Finally, Pete appears on the threshold of the ambulance doors, still elevated above them inside the rig Patrick watches as he catches sight of Beckett and his features turn sour. It’s still drizzling, but a sliver of sunshine breaks through the clouds almost as if it has come to greet Pete itself. It’s rays cast a beam of bright, golden warmth across his stormy expression. The breeze ruffles his dark hair, tousling it in a way that the glam team of Vouge magazine could only ever dream of achieving .There is a smudge of dark grime on the left side of his face which only defines his sharp cheekbone. There is a rip in the material of his shirt, revealing the smallest sliver of dark, golden brown skin. Time seems to stand still, and Patrick half expects a choir of angels to start harmonising around them as he forgets all about the mass casualty event and ogles Dr Wentz.
In reality, Pete pauses for a split second to glower at Beckett before he jumps down from the ambulance to join the paramedics debriefing Beckett. Patrick snaps back into reality as soon as the soles of Pete’s worn out converse collide with the tarmac. Patrick looks down bashfully at his feet, hoping that no one noticed him staring at Pete like the protagonist of an 80s rom-com seeing his prom date descend the stairs.
Beckett is leading the gurney into the main body of the ER with the wailing woman hot on his heels, Petehangs back a little. Patrick hovers awkwardly, unsure if he should approach him, ask him if he’s okay, or if he should retreat back into the ER to follow the patient he is supposed to be consulting on. The patient upon whom his input was apparently so vital he was paged 911, not once, not twice, but a total of three times. When Patrick realises that Pete still hasn’t moved, but remains fixed to his spot next to the ambulance with his frame trembling like a leaf in the wind, he decides to approach.
He places a hand delicately on a transfixed Pete’s shoulder, this makes him flinch and Patrick retracts the hand like it’s been burned. Up close like this he can see the blood splatters on his t-shirt, the faint lilac petals of a bruise beginning to blossom on his forehead, the haunted, far-away glaze over his eyes.
“Sorry,” he murmurs sheepishly, “I didn’t mean to startle you, I just wanted to ask if you’re okay?”
Pete nods slowly, “I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking,” Patrick points out, trying to sound casual but the words come out like a diagnosis.
“I’m fine, it’s just the first time I’ve stopped since the train crashed, I guess I didn’t realise how much of an adrenaline rush I was having,” Pete says this lightly, his voice floaty, casual, and full of shit.
Maybe someone else would have believed Pete, maybe the Dr Hurley and Dr Trohman - two residents often glued to Pete’s side in the residents lounge and presumably his friends, Patrick has learned since he conducted a literature review on Pete’s life - would have been fooled. Maybe they wouldn’t have been, he had tried to keep his inquisition casual to maintain the thin veil of professionalism, he couldn’t ask too many questions, so he doesn’t have all the information yet. Pete’s a convincing liar, but Patrick is an experienced, renowned, award-wining, psychiatrist - he thinks he knows a thing or two about behavioural cues and deceptive word choice.
“You’ve just been involved in a mass casualty trauma, that’s a lot for anyone to compartmentalise, even a doctor,” he offers kindly, electing not to call Pete out because he thinks interrogating him right now would be a) unhelpful, and b) make him sound like Dr Beckett.
Pete nods numbly, still gazing out into the distance. Then, so fast that Patrick would’ve missed it if he’d blinked, Pete lunges forward, his legs scrambling to scutter into the ER. Patrick has to maintain a light jog just to catch up for him, a travesty he’d curse Pete for if this angle didn’t give him the perfect view of his ass under his tight jeans. He sends a silent thank you up to whoever developed the infection control guidelines that recommended medical staff wear their personal clothes to and from work. Because Dr Wentz looks dazzling in scrubs, but the inky, restrictive denim hugging his hips is a sight that made the agonising small talk with Beckett worth it.
Patrick flops into the trauma bay behind Pete, fumbling around like a fish out of water as he watches the trauma team hook the patient up to a dozen machines. There’s shouting, quick exchanges of stats, hurried calls for a rapid administration of a dozen different drugs with a dozen different dosages. Patrick hovers on the sidelines, he understands the words being exchanged, he knows why Beckett is rudely ordering a nurse to fetch the insulin. He knows exactly what the trauma team is treating the patient for, why they are making these live-saving calls, what he doesn’t know is why he is here. Beckett, who’s stood at he head of the patient scrutinising his blood pressure reading and barking at interns, shoots him a pitiful, smug look. As if he’s saying ‘it’s okay, Dr Stump. Not everyone is cut out for emergency medicine, you don’t need to worry about getting your trauma gown bloody.’
Of course, there isn’t actually any blood present at the scene. Pete has blood on his shirt, traces of it smeared across his arms, Patrick assumes the blood isn’t his because Pete doesn’t have any noticeable lacerations. It must have come from someone else on the train, someone else Pete helped or crossed paths with. Patrick’s stomach twists when he realises that he is relieved, grateful even when he comes to this conclusion, when he realises that his desperate hope that the blood wasn’t Pete’s would have to mean it came from someone else.
Patrick isn’t okay with the fact someone else has been injured in this mass casualty trauma, that would make him a terrible, immoral, and not fit to be a doctor type of person. But the shame that creeps up his spine, sending the hairs on the back of his neck into prickly, upward facing spikes is enough to make him slightly nauseous when he realises that he is okay with someone else being injured if Pete was spared.
Patrick is a horrible person. A horrible person with morals plummeting like the patients blood pressure, a horrible person who is so infatuated with this man he had a brief encounter with two weeks ago that he can’t stop staring at his fucking ass when someone is quite possibly dying on the table in front of him.
Pete, still dressed in his own clothes - dark grey, probably black at one point but now washing machine faded, tight jeans. And a slim fit also grey but lighter this time t-shirt, now decorated with the blood of some unfortunate soul who’s wellbeing Patrick has all but disregarded for the sake of being able to ogle at Pete’s silhouette beneath the expanse of stretched grey fabric. Pete slings a scethescope around his neck, snaps on a pair of blue surgical gloves, and makes his away through the crowd of residents and nurses to try and reach the patients bedside. Patrick says try, because before he can even get close enough to discern the pattern on the ECG, Beckett has swiftly grabbed him by the scruff of the tight, grey t-shirt that hugs the outline of his pectoral muscles if you squint (Patrick is squinting despite the prescription in his glasses being perfect), and pulls him back.
Pete cries out in protest, “what the fu-,” he begins angrily, but then looks around at the trauma team, the patient’s mother, and Patrick, who eye’s are now all firmly trained on him rather than the patient with probable compartment syndrome (not that Patrick was ever really looking anywhere else), and he forcefully mellows his tone, “what are you doing?” he decides to opt for a seething hiss instead.
“I think you should step outside, Dr Wentz,” Beckett says, smiling sweetly for the benefit of their audience but his tone venomous as a viper to the trained ear - otherwise known as someone who witnessed their last ferocious spat in a trauma room just like this one, otherwise known as Patrick.
“I disagree,” Pete says coolly, “this is my patient, I climbed through a derailed train carriage to get to him, you’re not going to kick me out now.”
Pete is seething beneath the skin, Patrick is sure of it. His cheeks don’t flush exactly, Patrick is confident the deep golden undertone in Pete’s skin disguises his blushing well - unlike Patrick who’s left conspicuously beetroot at the most inoppertune moments. But his jaw clenches, his brow furrows, and despite the lack of the tell tale enraged crimson that would bloom across Patrick’s paler-than-a-cadaver skin if he were in Pete’s shoes, he senses the fire beneath the surface all the same.
“You’re injured,” Dr Beckett says with faux concern, motioning lazily to the blossoming bruise on Pete’s forehead, “I assume you got it in the accident, unless you’ve been engaging in fistfights again. Hope it wasn’t with a patient this time.”
Pete looks ready to explode, his latex cladded hands clench into fists at his sides, and even in his safe corner on the sidelines Patrick can sense the anger radiating from him. It’s like a living, breathing thing; it’s like Pete’s anger has metastasised into the eleventh body in the already overly crowded trauma room to stand firmly like a shield between Pete and Beckett. Patrick’s just not sure who it’s protecting; because as Pete glowers at Beckett, Patrick sees why the hospital gossip cycle is fizzing with stories of Pete’s temperament, his outbursts, his tendency to act with his fists. In this moment, with his flaring nostrils, clenched jaw, and a burning stare that would be more effective than silver nitrate as a cauteriser, Pete looks terrifying.
And Beckett looks believable, as the staff around them exchange glances and whispers, the gossip becomes credible. They’re biased of course, their heads already filled with the preconceptions of who Pete is. Patrick realises he doesn’t really have any evidence to present to the contrary aside from his desire for Pete to be nothing like all the things everyone says he is.
“I’ve never hit a patient, you know that,” Pete spits.
The trauma team lean in, edge closer as they watch this soap opera play out in front of them. No doubt taking mental notes to be spread around and exaggerated in nursing stations throughout the hospital till a better story comes along.
“I also know you…struggle to manage your feelings sometimes,” Beckett says, voice sickly sweet like honey riddled with trapped, drowning flies, “and that’s okay, we’re working on it, remember? But right now I have a life to save, so you need to step outside and deal with all those feelings somewhere else. So you’re off the case.”
Patrick really thinks Pete might hit him, part of him wants Pete to hit him.
“I’m fine,” Pete says through gritted teeth.
“You have a head injury, imagine you have a concussion. Imagine you have a brain bleed,” Beckett says this like he hopes he does, “imagine your judgment is impaired and I let you practice medicine, who knows what could happen to this poor man. Get yourself checked out and we’ll talk later.”
Beckett maintains a guise of concern and sympathy the whole time, so convincing that Patrick almost finds himself believing him. So convincing that Patrick almost finds himself frustrated with Pete, wondering why he’s still burning holes in the skull of his attending who is only looking out for him, only trying to protect him. But not quite, maybe he really is sensing something in the unspoken subtext, maybe it’s just a foolish desire for Pete to prove everyone wrong, but he’s not as enamoured with Beckett as the rest of the audience.
“Fuck you,” Pete spits, throwing the stethoscope at Beckett’s feet as he barges passed Patrick and leaves the double hinged door swinging behind him.
“I’m so sorry about that everyone,” Beckett says, placing a hand over his chest to convey his deepest, falsest condolences, “I’m working hard with Doctor Wentz to combat his little anger problem.”
The audience gush into a chorus of understanding, sympathetic chittering. Hardly anyone seems focused on the patient anymore when they now hold the title of an eye witness to another infamous Beckett versus Wentz showdown.
“Oh, and Doctor Stump,” Beckett adds and he now feels dozens of eyes on him as their attention snaps from reassuring Beckett to scrutinising the psychiatrist who showed up to a trauma, “we don’t have much use for you whilst the patient is unconscious, I’ll have someone page you when he wakes up. In the meantime, why don’t you go and check up on Doctor Wentz, maybe you could use your… expertise to help him simmer down.”
Patrick gapes at him like a fish; he wants to respond that he has a million things to do, a pile of charts to look over, dozens of patients of his own to see, a series of papers to peer review. He wants to tell Beckett he has more important priorities than an aggravated resident, like Pete he wants to tell Beckett to fuck off. But he elects to ignore that urge, he needs to maintain his reputation as a well respected professional - although he doubts anyone would care about the frumpy psychiatrist cursing at Beckett after Pete’s display. Nonetheless, he has to make up for ogling at Pete’s ass somehow, so he dawns his most civil and respectable smile.
“I’ll do that.”
Patrick turns on his heel and leaves the trauma room before he can see another smirk curl over Beckett’s lips. In the bustle of the ER he is disorientated for a moment, his eyes searching through a sea of blue and green scrubs and white lab coats till he sees Pete slouched glumly on a bed in the corner of the room.
He approaches cautiously, still unsure on his analysis of Pete, “are you okay,” he asks carefully.
Pete’s holding a gel ice pack to his forehead, looking slightly calmer but more miserable, “fan-fucking-tastic,” he snaps. Then, looking up to see the source of the voice, his face softens a little again, Patrick tries not to read too much into that, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was you.”
“Its okay,” Patrick all but squeaks.
Pete leans forward, resting his elbow on his thigh to pinch the bridge of his nose, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry you had to see that. This isn’t me, its just Beckett he-” Pete retracts back to his former position and shakes his head, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise,” Patrick says softly.
“I do though,” Pete says solemnly, “maybe if I apologise to you then you won’t believe what everyone says, you won’t believe what he says,” Pete gestures with his head back towards the trauma room where Beckett is no doubt reenacting an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, or Days of Our Lives.
“I don’t listen to hospital gossip, I don’t know what they say,” Patrick lies.
Pete looks up at him, warm hazel eyes meet his and Patrick wants to melt into a puddle on the floor. Partially because the golden flecks in his irises are twinkling like stars, but also because he looks so hopeful, so relieved, so grateful. And so trusting, Pete believes Patrick doesn’t know about the patient he hit (allegedly), about the walls he’s punched (allegedly), the crash carts he’s flipped over (again, allegedly). Pete believes Patrick at face value, and Patrick just lied to him so seamlessly. He tries to tell himself he was just trying to protect Pete, to wrap him up in cotton wool and cushion him from vicious and biting remarks, but the guilt turns his stomach nonetheless.
“You don’t?”
Patrick shakes his head, unable to bring himself to lie to Pete again.
“So I have a clean slate with you then?”
Patrick nods, feeling like the most awful person to grace the face of the earth when he sees the way Pete’s eyes melt and flood with relief and joy.
“I’ve not a clean slate with anyone in this hospital for a long time, things between Beckett and I started going downhill half way through intern year. Rapidly downhill, he’s had it out for me since then. I know I don’t help myself with the shouting and the swearing, and…well, the gossip writes itself really.”
Patrick’s mind is spinning, maybe he should get off his high horse and stop judging the hospital staff for fueling the fire of gossip and rumour. Because with this shred of information, with this hint of some altercation between Pete and Beckett he already has a series of questions burning the tip of his tongue. He wants to know about the who, and where, and when, and why - but he really needs to remain a semblance of professionalism so he keeps his words careful and his thoughts guarded.
“Have you thought about going to HR?”
Pete snorts, “been and got the t-shirt, they don’t care. Beckett, despite being an enormous cun-,” Pete breathes heavily through his nostrils as he bites back the urge to swear, or at least he opts for some less offensive cursing, “despite being a pain in the ass, Beckett has a lot of power around here. Like a lot more than you’d think, he has the board in his pocket. He has money, like serious, generational wealth kind of money, he makes investments and promises of investments and…well, he’s too valuable for anyone to question him. And like I said, I know I don’t help myself.”
“I’m sorry,” now it’s Patrick’s turn to apologise.
“You don’t have to apologise,” Pete says, smiling softly as he echos Patrick’s words back to him.
“Are you okay, like for real - are you okay?” Patrick asks again.
“I can confirm that I am for real okay,” Pete sighs as he gets to his feet, “my head hurts but I didn’t hit it that hard, not hard enough to knock any sense into me anyways. But no dizziness, no nausea, no confusion - so I diagnosis myself as for real okay.”
“I’m glad.”
“I need to change into my scrubs, Beckett will probably still write me up for being late even though he knows I was in a literal train wreck this morning,” Pete gets to his feet and goes to walk away before he stops in his tracks, “wait, the patient - it’s why I had them page you. James McDonald, 27 years old. His mother says he’s a paranoid schizophrenic, said he’ll likely be agitated, aggressive, violent when he wakes up in a strange environment. I thought you might be able to help."
Patrick’s heart swells in his chest. Schizophrenia isn’t really his area of expertise, but Pete doesn’t need to know that. Because Pete thought of him, Pete had him paged instead of any other psychiatrist, he could have requested the head of department but he asked for Patrick. He knows this is most likely because Patrick had his back with Mrs Hernandez, but he choses to ignore this fact and instead relish in the fact that Pete chose him.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Doctor Stump - Patrick. I knew I could count on you, and er, thank you for…thank you for letting me have a clean slate.”
“No problem,” Patrick chokes out.
Pete offers him one last dazzling smile before he walks towards the elevator and maroons Patrick in the bustling ER, leaving him suddenly and acutely aware of how loud it is around him without Pete there to drown out the noise.