bella🏎️

“Precious is looking for you at the Nursing Station,” he informs, which— well, coming from him, is the most courteous way you will ever hear him say Get the fuck back out there and make yourself useful, to someone crying their eyes out in an on-call room.

“Shit. Okay,” you nod, trying for steadiness as you blink back tears. But your voice cracks, and the humiliation only adds to the shame of you having flinched out your skin at being caught weeping by your literal boss, alongside the exhaustion and the weariness and the grie— 

“Sorry. Just. Give me a minute.” You sniffle. Wipe your tear-stained cheeks like a child as you palpably feel Park observing (…judging?), silently, before drifting into the room.

He leans against the work table. Crosses his arms. (A shred of consideration, perhaps, if you’re hopeful to read it as such: A 6’2” beast of a man trying his best not to crowd you in a tiny room by keeping distance; keeping your space on the bed yours as much as he’s keeping his own in the corner.)

“Minute’s up,” he bluntly declares, after a beat. And just before you can open your mouth to protest:

“What the hell happened?” he asks.

You look up at him, blindsided.

Park has never been the type for small talk or inanities. A captain of a no-nonsense, streamlined, tight ship who preferred to nip bullshit in the bud. The abrupt gesture of conversation has you haywiring for a moment: He hadn’t asked it in a way that sounded fed up or impatient at all.

You shake your head. Duck your gaze to pick at the soles of your shoes. They’re stained, still, with dried blood. 

He just wants to make sure you’re not a liability, you reason to yourself. Quit crying before you ruin your image to him.

“M’fine,” you finally exhale. “Just exhausted.”

“You’ve had shittier days,” he disagrees immediately, as if he’d predicted your reply— which is true, you’ve endured longer hours than today before in your career. Park is simply cutting to the chase, like the problem solver he is; that familiar tone in his voice sparking your reflex into deference. Don’t waste my time, it feels like.

And so you yield. Unlatch the floodgate of your heart. 

You tell him about the 15-year-old who could’ve been saved with a clamshell thoracotomy had his sternum and ribs not been pulverised into too many fragments for you to pick out; about the premature twins delivered to the NICU after an 8-month-pregnant mother had suffered an Open Book pelvic crush fracture on the drive back home from their OBGYN check-up with PTMC just an hour before.

You tell Dr. Park about the other trauma patients you watch code and die on the table despite doing everything you could; and about the 12-year-old little girl with the open skull fracture, and the above-the-knee amputation you had to perform on a 17-year-old teen, and the 21-year-old man who you’re sure is going to wind up paralysed from the waist down.

That while most of your patients were stabilised enough to survive and pull through emergency surgery, they still have a long way yet to go in suffering the winding road to recovery; still have to endure the ICU anyway to fight for their life, and we both know how postoperative mortality rates fucking look like, don’t w—?

“Hey,” Park overrides sharply, cutting cleanly through the tempest in your spiralling head. 

You suck in through your teeth with a flinch. Fortify yourself. Bring the levees back up around your heart for when he spears you with a barrage of strictures; to tear into you for wallowing in your despair like a child. 

Only—

“You just said you did everything you could,” he points out incredulously, brows pinched. “That’s as high as the ceiling goes in trauma cases like these.” 

A difficult thing to hear, given his stern cadence as he harshly says it, and an even harder pill to swallow. But it works enough, surprisingly, to steady you back into some semblance of sanity. Anchoring you from going adrift. 

“Anything further is the work of God— and I don’t believe in in divine miracles,” he censures, pragmatic. “I believe in Doctors. And the good ones do everything they can.”

(That is to say: you did good. You are good— of which also says: I believe in good. I believe in you.)

It feels like a cold plunge. Shocks you into blinking up at him again, with what you can only imagine is owlish surprise, considering the way he’s looking back at your teary gaze with that same unimpressed expression he gets whenever he states something glaringly obvious: Detached. Clinical. 

You bleed out the saturated warmth welling up somewhere beneath your ribcage before it can drown you. Flood it with cerebral rationale instead:

Park the Shark does not hand out compliments, and so you ought not to foolishly consider what he implied as such. This is… charity. That scrap of validation he knows everyone seeks desperately from him. Just an off-hand lifeline thrown to buoy you through rough waters.

(Then again, you’ve never known Park to say something just for the sake of saying it. He’s the taciturn sort, and above all an unapologetically brutally honest one. So maybe—?)

You internally shake your thoughts.

“The rest is just noise,” comes his fierce conclusion. “Tune it out.”

“Did it take long?” you ask, just as the redundancy of the question had hit you. “To tune it out, I mean.”

It should’ve been a blatant no to hear from the cold-blooded Park the Shark of all Doctors— bold and hardhearted and perfectly sensible for someone who’d earned a certified specialty in Ortho-trauma early on in his career. Bone-deep certainty driving his hands and cold data clearing his head that provides infallible, utilitarian disconnect from him and other people. 

But it appears, briefly, like he’s considering something as he stares at you. It’s gone into the depths before you can make out the shape of it: A flash of something alive underneath the maritime blue of his eyes. 

“Your shift is over,” he settles stiffly, after the pensive moment. “Go home.”

That sits you up straight, diverted by the non sequitur. “What? No, I—” You must have crossed a line; must have failed some unknown test he’d been dishing out to be abruptly dismissed like this, surely? “I can keep going—”

“Go home, pup,” he repeats, in that menacing snap of finality he uses to clinch arguments. Teeth and a scrunched nose in a half-snarl. “I won’t say it again.”

“Two more consults,” you barter pathetically, sliding off the bed before you can stop yourself: You’ve planted yourself stubbornly in front the door where he’s made headway to exit after pushing off his corner. “I have four more patients.” 

You unflinchingly meet his leviathan-keen gaze when he stops short in front of you. There’s an exasperated bristle to his expression, as if you’re a pesky little sea urchin insistent in blocking his path back to the shoreline.

“You’ve been on your feet for over 14 hours.” So have you, Shark, you manage to swallow back. “Yeshua volunteered to come in early,” Park continues, visibly growing more annoyed. “You covered for him last time. Scale’s even.”

“Yeshua? He never volunteers for anything,” you scowl, only for it to hit you a moment later. Yeshua never volunteers. Park would have had to put him up to it, essentially giving you an out, and… sparing you a kindness? 

Be realistic, you remind yourself. It couldn’t be. He’s probably punishing Yeshua for something while replacing your uselessness. Two birds with one stone. Ever efficient.

“Look, alright? I’m done crying. I got it out my system,” you insist, as patiently as you can. Pointedly taking a deep breath and tucking your hair back in an attempt to back your mettle. “I’m fine. I’m not a liability, Dr. Park—”

A noncommittal scoff. As if to say Is that what this is, pup? “If you were, I’d have told you a long time ago.”

There it is again. A liferaft. The sliver of recognition you can’t help but take to heart as implied approval, like the greedy, self-indulgent girl you are. Clinging hopelessly onto the flimsy fact that his absence of criticism is the closest thing anyone can get as praise.

“Now move, or you will be moved,” he warns, dryly.

You heed him before your imagination runs wild at the idea. Step aside to let him make his way out the door. End the conversation.

But he shifts slightly to pull it wide instead, his hand coming up high against the door and above your head to hold it open for you. An easy, economic motion, stretching him into a looming figure. There’s more than enough space to let you pass if you dip below his arm just a fraction.

Hardly chivalrous. Enough, though, that it’s a dissonance to his otherwise… ungracious character.

Well? An impatient tilt of his head to the threshold. Ladies first. 

“Handover after speaking with Precious,” he orders sharply, disregarding your shy, sheepish Thanks once you finally duck past him. “I don’t wanna see you after that.”

It should’ve come across unforgivably offensive with the way he’d delivered the coarse words, but the entire exchange you’d just shared with him since he’d walked in had only served to soften the abrasiveness of his instruction into something achingly endearing in your chest.

“…Yeah,” you mumble, flustered. “Okay.”

2.

The amputation bites you back in the ass within a few months of the MCI: a teen with an athletic scholarship loses his future, an angry father’s threat to sue you comes to fruition, and PTMC’s Legal Department contacts you— and all the medical staff involved in the operating theatre that day, much to everyone’s chagrin— in regards to the case.

Dr. Brendon Park has a decorated career in medicine long enough to have faced his own line of medical malpractice lawsuits against him. You, however, do not. 

The email alone sends you spiralling.

“Quit pacing,” Dr. Park scowls. He sets the break room coffee pot down with a frustrated thud that echoes like a gavel. “You’re gonna give me a fucking headache.”

“They’re filthy rich,” you ignore, undoing your surgical cap with an exasperated rake of fingers through your hair. “They could easily take this all the way to court if they wished—”

“Then I’ll testify on your behalf,” Park dismisses, easily. He doesn’t even meet your gaze as he hisses it— delivered so scathingly yet casually; you can’t decipher if there’s any truth to it or if he’s just trying to placate you from wearing a hole through the floor. “Every doctor gets sued at least once in their life.”

You throw your hands up. “Yeah, well, I was sure as shit hoping not to join that statistic.”

“Then go get a fuckin’ job at the VA hospital,” he cuts, brutal. (It’s sensible: any lawsuit there would instead go against the government.) He’s raised his voice now, to bring an end to the discussion. “Or, you can doctor up and deal with this like everybody else has to.”

“It’s a deposition,” he says, in what you can only compare to as a verbal eye-roll. “Not the end of the world.”

Feels like it, you don’t snap back, resorting instead to a huff too deliberate to go unnoticed. Park shoots you a look sharp enough to pierce through your soul at the sound, and you find yourself shrinking back from the eye-contact instinctively.

His pager blips through the tension before he can lash out at you. He assesses it between a sip. Sighs frustratedly.

“They’re going to ask you questions,” he begins— and the coffee must’ve stilled the torrent in his veins, because his voice has shifted to something more relenting; though with no less attitude. 

“Yes or no will suffice. If you give anything more, the lawyers will poke holes— and trust me, they will find a way to— so keep it short. Stick to the facts and the data. Don’t overexplain or try to defend yourself, because that’s your attorney's job. D’you understand?”

He takes another swallow of his coffee. Watches you nod stiffly as you absorb the information. 

“ED needs consult,” Park announces, lazily. He jerks his chin. “Use the distraction.”

On any other day it might’ve been humiliating to be dismissed this offhandedly and sent away on what’s most certainly going to be a menial case— but for some reason this time feels less like blatant rejection and more like he’s giving you another out; another escape.

Distraction. It’s unusually transparent of him.

The way he’d said it hadn’t been unkind. Not exactly warm, either. Still rough around the edges in a way only Park can manage to deliver an attempt at comfort.

So you do take it.

You know better than to come back from the moment’s reprieve still being a useless worrywart; so you let his cold advice ring through your head across the days like a countdown— All the way up until Park had allowed the hospital attorney to pull you out of a simple arthroscopy procedure, and finally escort you to your deposition, of which you spend the entire time fidgeting in your seat.

“You did excellently,” compliments Attorney Morgan Stiles, in the wake of the aftermath. “You gave me infinitely less trouble than Park did, for what it’s worth.”

In the middle of the elevator ride back down, your attention snaps to the folder in hand being offered to you. Park had completed his deposition yesterday morning. He hadn’t mentioned a peep of it to anyone.

ORAL DEPOSITION TRANSCRIPT, reads the document, once you curiously accept it. You skim the unnecessary information— dates, names, summaries, confidentialities— and jump to a random page: 

(Somewhere in the end-half of the deposition, you figure. You can picture it in your mind’s eye; the austere hospital courtroom, with Dr. Park seated sentinel and glacially calm as usual, voice answering steadily throughout the examination in that unabashed impatience and contempt reserved for people taking up his time.)

A: That’s the nature of traumatic cases. What you’re doing is conflating a poor outcome to poor medicine, which isn’t the case, because some of PTMC’s best trauma surgeons were operating on this patient.  Q: And would you agree a different Senior Attending Physician, such as you, Dr. Park, may have altered the outcome for this patient had they been present? A: No. I’d have done exactly the same thing as my Resident did from bedside to theatre. Q: And so you maintain your Resident did not err in her decision to amputate above-the-knee? A: Yes. Q: Would you classify her decision as a judgement call, given the circumstances of the mass-casualty? A: Didn’t we just clarify this? [Sighs] No. Q: Are you confident in your answer, Dr. Park? A: Confidence is sure as hell what it takes to work as an Orthopaedic Surgeon in a Level-1 Trauma Center, isn’t it? MS. JENN WALTERS: That’s nonresponsive, Doctor. A: Jesus christ, yes. I’m certain. Q: If confidence is needed for an Orthopaedic Surgeon, as you’ve said, why did your Resident reportedly appear distressed following the case? MS. MORGAN STILES: Objection. Relevance.  Q: It regards to the confidence of the standard of care the physician delivered-- A: Excuse me? No, absolutely not. It regards to her being a Doctor with a fucking conscience. Q: Be professional, Doctor. You’re on the record. A: You undermine my Resident, Sir. A trained and capable surgeon who recognised the acuity of the injury, escalated accordingly, and executed it appropriately to standard of care. That’s exactly why I signed off operationally, and that’s why I’m here. If you challenge her decision, you challenge mine-- Q: [crosstalk 00:44:21] --As established, yes-- A: --Her “poor confidence” post-operation doesn’t indicate the level of competence she performed in that OR whatsoever. If you’re gonna try her as guilty for showing a little heart after an evidently difficult case amidst an MCI, then you should be trying me, the entirety of the Surgical Department, and the goddamn rest of PTMC too for every tear we shed on a loss, don’t you think? Q: Carry on, Doctor. MS. MORGAN STILES: Objection. Asked and answered. You’re not required to continue, Dr. Park. A: Yeah? Well, I want it on the record anyway-- Good medicine begins with good character, and hers has never once been in doubt to me. I don’t-- I wouldn’t want to lose her. Any doctor worth their salt wouldn’t want to lose someone like her.  Q: Alright. Well. Shall we say you acknowledge all of what you said, Dr. Park, as your personal opinion? A: [Pause 3s] It’s a professional one.

You blink, dumbfounded. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”

Attorney Stiles shoots you a discerning look as she studies your flustered expression. 

“That page you’re reading,” she repeats slowly, taking the transcript back with a knowing smile as the elevator descends, “I was saying, that for all the times I’ve had to represent Dr. Park, he’s never once failed to acknowledge the competency of his colleagues. He is, for all intents and purposes, a man of honesty.”

That makes you deflate more than you’re willing to allow yourself. Professional opinion, you remind yourself. That’s all it is. 

“But,” she continues, and this time you do glance at her with a flash of hope in your eye too bright to ignore, “I’ve never seen him jump to anyone’s defense the way he did for you that day. He took off on a tangent. You can’t gauge the tone in his transcript, but he was angrier than he sounds here. Angry for you.”

Something treacherous flits behind your ribcage. You smother it before it can take flight. “He’d have done it for anyone, I’m sure.”

A snort. “I’ve represented him multiple times across the years. He never has,” she says, brows raising at you. “Dr. Park has always been a man in control of his emotions especially when it matters most— but that deposition was the first I ever witnessed him lose his cool. You must be a pretty good doctor, aren’t you?”

The elevator dings. Sound akin to a lightbulb going off in your head when you decipher the smirk on her face.

“Like he’s mentioned: he was just…” You shrug unconvincingly, laughing it off with an awkward smile as she slips out to her floor. “He was just being professional.”

She winks as the doors shut. “Sure. Whatever floats your boat, Doc.”

3.

“…ith the systems out. Spectralinks are down. Paging departments will be done by the hospital landline or in emergencies by mobile phones,” Park explains, before raising a clipboard with a sticky-note attached. “This is my number. Only contact me if it’s urgent, unless you want an early fucking grave.”

But that’d been over a week ago. Within specific context of a literal cyberattack sending everybody offline and analogue.

Here, now, with your phone in hand and vision swirling after forcibly hurling the contents of your stomach out in the dingy bathroom sink of a bar— You hit send on your text before you can backpedal and wonder if this too could even count as an emergency to Park’s eyes:

Stranded in a bar, your last long island iced tea sweating on a cocktail table had tasted glaringly off; And it must be paranoia kicking you into overdrive, vulnerably surrounded by a posse of drunkards, but you’d decided to empty your stomach just in case before you could talk yourself out of it.

Maybe it’d been a heavy pour, you’d tried to convince yourself, Or just a flat drink, or the fact you’ve been nursing alcohol on a relatively empty stomach after a 6 hour spinal fusion cas—

Your heart stumbles. Notification chirping.

You’d expected him to not open your long-winded, over-explained S.O.S messages from you at all. Maybe leave you on read. Hell, blocking your contact would’ve been less of a surprise than a straightforward reply going:

9:55 | Address and live location.

Straight to the heart of the matter, as usual. You know better than to argue. Too late to take it back without making further a fool out of yourself.

➤ …You started sharing your Location with Park the Shark 🦈.

9:51 | [Live Pin📍631 Suismon St. Pittsburgh, PA 15212.] 9:51 | Its ok rlly i can just call an uber. U can ignore this

He calls you two minutes later, saving you in the nick of time from being inveigled into a game of pool with the ragtag group of strangers you’ve been held socially-hostage to by proxy of your now-missing friend. (You should’ve known better than to thirdwheel her and her partner.)

Ten minutes. Stay on the phone, Park orders, You okay?

The abrupt bound of your heart at the question feels ill-timed given the situation, but you feel the unbidden surge in your gut anyway: Here is Park the Shark, beastly and brutal, asking if you were okay.

“Oh. Yeah, I—”

“Yo,” comes a new voice. It’s the ginger who’d cornered and badgered you into the game, a drunken grin on his face as he leans on his cue stick, eyes obviously wandering. “Who’re y’on that call with? C’mon, join me.”

Your grip tightens around your phone.

“My boyfriend,” you blurt reflexively, anything to throw up a boundary to ward off or deter anyone else from encroaching further into your seemingly-inviting space. “He’s on the way to pick me up.”

A beat.

The lie catches up to you a moment later. Has blood rushing to your face and your ears when you remember, mortifyingly, that Park is overhearing everything over the line. 

Fuck. Whatever. It’s done. You’ll deal with the fallout later, you figure. Endure the humiliating consequences he’ll put you through and the inevitable snarl of a lecture. The all-too-familiar trademark wrath of Park the Shark that you’ve survived before—

Park hums. A half-breath that escapes as an… amused huff. (You’re probably mistaken, right?) Makes your pulse rabbit further. “That shake him off?”

You’re caught off guard. Glancing sideways at the group prowling your periphery, half-waiting for you to rejoin them for the night. “Not really,” you admit. “How close are you?”

“Seven minutes. Just keep talking to me. What’d you drink?”

You obey dutifully. Answer whatever he asks: why you’d been out tonight, where your friend had gone, and about the little clique that had invited you into a round of pool with less choice than they made it feel like. 

Park doesn’t interrupt you when you make an off-hand lament about your heels digging at your ankles, nor about your addled drink; rattling to him that no, no, I threw it up. I’m a little queasy but I’m fine, really. I can still just call an Uber and power through the hangover tomorrow morning— 

His voice keeps you company. Occupied. Distracts you just enough to make the short wait less insufferable; That by the time you’re looking up from where you’ve been picking distractedly at a drink coaster, you witness Park’s leviathan shape slice through the bar and part patrons like water to a prow, not sparing a drop of attention to the turned heads as he sails past the pool table into a dead-reckoning towards you.

Let’s go, is all he snarls. Abrasive. Canine-sharp and a flashing glint of jagged teeth as he delivers his classic shark-stare to your fishy onlookers. And if the inebriated ginger and his shoal of drunkards had any suspicions about Park being with you, it’s promptly dashed by his hovering hand behind your back as he weaves you through the revelling crowd; his leading presence and angling body enough to shoulder and be a proverbial breakwater for you all the way out the door.

It’s drizzling out tonight. Chilly. When you exit the bar, the dark sleek of his car is idled (Read: parked illegally) and waiting at the slick curb. He strides ahead just enough to open the passenger door, hand on the roofline as he guides you to duck into your seat. It’s a welcome warmth of pressure behind your back, and then again when the crown of your head brushes his palm. 

A shield from clipping the frame. Startles you more than the touch itself. 

“Hey. Eyes on me,” he orders, in that maddeningly level tone of his, once he’s sure you’ve settled properly and clipped your seatbelt on. “If anything changes— you tell me before you decide to throw up in my car, or I’ll leave your ass on the street. Got that?”

“God forbid.” Your smile is tight-lipped and sheepish. “Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Park.”

He doesn’t answer until much later, when he’d put in your address and let the murmuring humdrum of the radio fill in the space, that he stiffly reminds: 

“Didn’t I tell you before not to get used to me playing nice?” 

Your mouth opens, then shuts in contemplation before you let yourself slur your words. “I know. I’m sorry. This was highly unprofessional and I, I shouldn’t’ve called, but I just figured…”

He’s white-knuckling his steering wheel. You can see the masseter in his jaw flex. “Don’t make it a habit,” he snipes.

“I won’t,” you start, fumbling for your phone in your purse. Your vision is muddling as the seconds fly and your soberness begins to ebb once more. “I’ll delete your contact, if you want—”

“I meant the unsafe drinking,” he amends, pointedly. 

You blink. Battle with yourself, fleetingly, on whether he knows what he’s just unintentionally implied; how dumb it would be to ask Does this mean I get to keep your number? as your lockscreen winks back to sleep again. Does this mean you care? Does this mean—

“It was a personal opinion, wasn’t it?” you find yourself blurting out. 

The car rolls to a stop at the red light of an intersection. Nothing but the steady, pitter patter of rain threading the silence with a melodic lull. It unwinds you more than you realise, has you unconsciously sinking into the comfort of your seat. There’s no taking back what you’ve asked now. No escaping. In for a penny…

“What you said about me in your deposition, I mean,” you continue. I don’t want to lose her. That’s what he’d stopped himself from saying, hadn’t it?

The traffic light blinks go. Sea-green floods through the windshield and washes over Park. Reveals him in a way you’ve never witnessed before: caught out; a fish out of water. There’s a few loose strands over his forehead that somehow only makes him the most domestic you’ve ever seen him— and frustratingly attractive.

Someone honks. (That hopeful part of you is digging its watery grave again: taking his distracted hesitation as something else that could be entirely different.)

“You’re lucky you’re drunk,” he comments, once he remembers to move. Blank. You can’t read him. Can’t gauge the depth of the ocean-blue in his eyes from where you’ve been metaphorically walking the plank.

“Oh,” you murmur humorously, letting him off the hook for ignoring the question, “you’d know if I was drunk, Park, believe me.”

“Yeah? What the hell are you right now, then?”

“Sleepy?” you offer, before shaking your head. “No. Not that.” Head over heels, you don’t answer, turning to gaze outside the window instead. Watching raindrops race as the city flickers past. “…I’m struck.”

A beat.

You can feel him spare a pensive glance as you let your head tip back into the carseat, eyes fluttering heavily for a moment’s reprieve between your tipsiness; Can feel him like a brand on your skin, gaze searing into your profile. Judging you, perhaps, between the streaks of streetlights passing rhythmically across your face.

You can hear him in your head, even if the words never leave his mouth. The hell’s that supposed to mean?

Silence. 

You must have let it stretch too long, though, because something shifts in the tense air that you can reflexively pick up after years of working hand in glove with him in the OR: Stillwater. Doldrums. A calm before the storm.

Park’s attention has sharpened to a scalpel’s point.

Somewhere between the syrup-thickening haze of sleepiness, your thoughts have quietly muted out, and your eyes slowly slip shut into the diaphanous beginnings of a fever drea—

His hand lands on you.

Presses on the inside of your wrist.

(Who knew Park the Shark could be so gentle, comes your candid thought.)

It’s enough to startle you, lazily cracking one eye open to peer at him through the gossamer of exhaustion: Park’s got an arm across the console reaching easily for you, gaze focused— not on you, not quite, but on where his fingers meet your pulsepoint.

He’s… counting your heartbeat.

(You hope he doesn’t notice your pulse skip at the contact; at the dreadful idea he’d discover your girlish fondness over him—)

“You said you threw it up,” he says, evenly, turning from another red light to warily chase your half-lidded gaze. “Hey. How long after?”

“Mh,” you hum, susurrus. “Soon, I think.”

“Pup,” he asserts. Then your proper name. (You take a deep breath in at that, hope he doesn’t feel the goosebumps line your skin at the bass of his voice.) It stirs you awake.

“I’m fine,” you muse drowsily, flattered. “Just… tired. S’been a long night. Had that spinal case today, remember?”

Park glowers. Withdraws his hand back. He doesn’t look reassured or humored when that same sea-green light from traffic bathes him soft again. 

“I’m driving you to the ED. Keep your eyes open ‘til we get there,” he orders, already checking his blindspot as he makes a sharp turn when you begin to protest. “And shut up and stop arguing with me.”

That was that.

He’d firmly ceased the conversation from any possible attempts of dispute, and drove you to the ER to hand you over to a rightfully stunned Dr. Shen, while ignoring the prickle on his skin from half the medical staff curiously watching the scene take place. 

Then Lena is asking you questions, though your thoughts are a little gummy around the margins. Park answers where he can. Ever the one to make the situation efficient. She called me to pick her up from a bar. I’m worried her drink might’ve been spiked. It’s been roughly twenty minu…

(I’m worried. The words pass so fleetingly it could’ve been imagined by you. It probably had been.) 

And then IV lines, and a bed, and the turn of Park disappearing behind the curtains of North-4, and—

Come morning, there’s a white paper bag set at the foot of your bed by your zipped purse. The label and symbol emblazoned below its handles is recognisable: it’s from PTMC’s Gift Shop. 

You peer into it to find… slippers.

Slippers? Not the standard-issue hospital ones that are rubber-soled and thin, but the plush ones; meant for visitors or nit-picky patients unexpectedly admitted overnight: Pale blue, absurdly comfier than necessary. There’s neither a purchase receipt nor a tag in sight.

Your heels are tucked neatly by the wall instead of being kicked someplace else. For one disorienting second, you expect to see Park posted by it in that impossibly statuesque stillness of his— nose down, arms crossed and folded, expression predatorily severe in that way it always gets before he launches into a scathing lecture.

…He isn’t there, of course. That would’ve been ridiculous. Park had no reason to stay once you were in capable hands; once you were safe.

(His absence leaves a stubborn hollow in your chest regardless.)

“Oh, hey,” you begin, when Lena checks in on you sometime later. “I’m feeling way better. Thank you. But, uh, can I just ask— Who bought me the slippers?”

Her brows are raised as she peeks at you over her spectacles, half-amused. “Who d’ya think, sweetheart?”

+ 1.

By the (alleged) third HR report that quarter, Gloria does a shakedown in regards to the infamous Park the Shark.

It pisses him off even more than usual. It pisses off everyone in Orthopaedics, in fact. On one hand because an angry Dr. Park means a shorter fuse and more tongue-lashing; And on the other: because everyone in Ortho defends each other’s throats like they were their own.

The in-fighting between departments have never been anything but off-hand retorts and petty remarks; but now that someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who’d bribed a guy managed to catch wind on which specific departments have reported Dr. Park— well. It hadn’t taken long to figure out the names.

“And yet, somehow, not a single peep from any soul in the Ortho Department,” points out Gloria, after she’d stolen you into her Director’s office for a ‘brief conversation’ one Monday morning. You have a feeling you might not have been the first person buttoned into this situation today— let alone the month.

“Oh,” you say, failing to hold back the bubble of laughter at what her tone is setting up. “You think we’ve been Stockholm’d?”

“I think Dr. Park is a six-foot-two white man who has an intimidating presence to match with his terrible reputation and notoriously curt behaviour.”

You make a face. “He went toe-to-toe against Precious and lost.”

(This time Gloria makes a face. She knows well and clear the spitfire of a personality your charge nurse Precious— a four-foot-eleven Filipina who’s been running the Ortho floor like the Navy itself long before you or even Park joined— carries around. )

“Well,” she relents comically, sinking into her office chair. “Precious is an outlier.”

“So you think everyone else is just too afraid to speak up?” you conclude.

“Doctor, I need you to take this seriously.”

Right, you inhale, making a theatrical show of straightening up. Gloria looks expectantly at you as you gather your thoughts with a sigh.

“Do you remember when Dr. Lee lost his youngest daughter back in June?” you begin, glancing at the back of a framed picture on her desk. “It was a car accident. Quick and painless. Common for her age group; Common emergency case for a Level 1 Trauma Center like ours.”

“Funnily enough, after he buried her— Dr. Lee didn’t encounter a single paediatric trauma case for the remainder of the year, you know?” you continue, meeting Gloria’s gaze. “Somebody else was always mysteriously available to take the patient away from Lee’s hands.”

If Gloria got the hint, she didn’t show.

“And on Ramadan, Dr. Arif never worries about whether he’ll faint toughing out an 8-hour operation like he did in his intern year,” comes your next story. She knows this one, surely: Park had infamously kicked him out the theatre for it. “That’s because ever since that day, trauma cases during that month are redirected to somebody else if it overlaps with the only time Arif gets to break his fast.”

“There’s also Suren, one of our best and most senior scrub nurse, who had to step away from work to return to Mongolia and dedicate her time taking care of her dying mother. She left just last month with a collection enough to help her tide over anything: hospice, funeral, even travel.”

Gloria interjects with a finger— “Precious started that fund,” — which only serves to make you snort.

“You really think our nurses here are paid enough to pool together almost, what, ten grand on a week’s notice?”

“Okay, alright, I get it,” she instantly says, sounding unbelievably incredulous. It grinds your gears more than you expect.

“So you think Dr. Park is responsible for all this… charity? You think he goes out of his way to order cases to be rescheduled or redirected for others; That he’s the type of man who would reassign personnel for their benefit— that he’s somebody who’d go the extra mile?”

“I don’t think. I know,” you correct, matter-of-fact. “He’s a good man. He may be an asshole, and the furthest thing from being nice— but that doesn’t mean he’s unkind.”

Gloria’s mouth purses at your defense. The uncharacteristic flash of ferocity and canines you’re baring is, undoubtedly, an unconscious trait of mettle you’ve inherited from the Shark. Protective; territorial.

“When you work with Dr. Park long enough, there are two things you learn quickly. One: is that he values efficiency. Tact to him is for people who have time to waste. If there’s a path of least resistance that gets him the results he desires— that the patient needs, above all— he’ll do it.”

Gloria gives you a stare that looks like, and secondly?

“Second: he’s fair. Consistent. He’ll tear you apart for a shitty postop note, sure, but he also never humiliates people for things outside of their control. He’ll bitch about the circumstances, ofcourse, but doesn’t everybody? He doesn’t care to be liked. He sure as hell doesn’t look for approval.”

There’s a myriad of things you can add on that you curb yourself from saying: My first year of Residency I didn’t have to endure the blatant misogyny for long because he drilled respect into my peers' skulls. In every case where there was an escalation or combative patient he would already be standing ahead of me like a bulwark. Whenever I come home to the blue pair of slippers he bought me because I complained about my heels once in passing, I’m reminded he picked me up when I had no one to call and drove me to the ER. 

You shake your head. Draw steel into your voice. 

“It’s difficult to tell the difference between whether Dr. Park is inconvenienced or concerned,” comes your conclusion, “until you eventually realize that with him, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Gloria’s office chair squeaks as she sinks back.

“You sound very certain,” she says, after a defeated pause.

The smile you give her is deceivingly sweet. “I am.”

Recognition comes by Thursday evening in the breakroom, thanks to nursing chatter.

“A little birdie told me you stuck your neck out for me,” says a low voice. 

You shut the refrigerator door. Turn around to see the broad back of Dr. Park, busying himself with pouring what looks to be his third coffee. 

“I’m sure everyone on the floor did,” you answer, leaning to the counter adjacent to him. “Especially Precious, I heard.”

“Little lady chewed Gloria’s ear out over nursing staff shortages and safety measures instead,” he muses. “She was locked in that room with Precious. Not the other way around.”

A punch of a laugh escapes you. “I could never.”

“But you did,” he allows, making you look at him in surprise. “Whatever bullshit you said to Gloria three days ago in that office seemed to convince her I’m worth the HR-trouble of keeping around. I got off with a slap on the wrist.”

(Which roughly means: he’ll keep his head down for awhile until the storm has passed, before he’s back to biting the heads off whoever he deems incompetent again.) 

“It wasn’t bullshit,” you deny. “I won’t bore you with the details. But I just told her the truth.”

“That I’m an asshole?”

You shrug at his deadpan expression. “Well, we can’t all be perfect.”

A beat. 

And then— Park laughs.

Laughs.

Curling at his lips and dimpling into his cheeks. Slight, brief, but candid. It’s a mellow, breathier sound than you would’ve ever expected. Knocks the air from your lungs in an instant and damn near startles your brain into short-circuiting. He’s never looked more roguishly handsome than he is now:

Privately smiling. Slicked-back hair now boyishly tousled from the surgical cap he must’ve yanked off after that 7 hour scoliosis case, eyes crinkled at the corners and half-weary from exhaustion as his arms lazily uncross to grab his mug. It feels alot like you’d managed to peer behind the drawn curtains; like you’ve just met the glimmer of Brendon Park.

“Don’t expect a thanks,” he scoffs, too tired to deliver it seriously, and you find yourself wishing you could continue memorising his smile when it finally vanishes behind a long sip of his coffee.

“I don’t. I wouldn’t have said what I said professionally if I didn’t believe it all personally,” you dismiss, as if it’s obvious.

His mug eventually lowers. It takes all the willpower in you not to watch the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows his drink. Again, there’s that curious flash you catch momentarily in the watercolour blue of his eyes, diving away from sight.

“Guess that answers your question, then.”

You blink. What?

Park stares. Waits for it to register. Nothing comes, however; Not until he easily shifts forward, suddenly stepping proximally close into your space, enough you can smell the coffee steaming from his mug as he slightly corners you in an attempt to reach with his other hand—

The drive to the ER, you suddenly remember. 

The realisation of it all comes to you in the zip of electricity that travels up from where Park has now (deliberately?) brushed his hand against the skin of your wrist— your pulsepoint: He’d been reaching for his pager left ontop the counter behind you, it appears.

I don’t want to lose her. That’s what he had stopped himself from saying that day. You’re sure. The evidence had been right there; it’d been the furthest thing from being professional. It’d been intimate.

It was a personal opinion, wasn’t it? You remember tipsily asking. A nondescript way of asking if you matter at all in the way he matters to you. If it had been something more— and now: I guess that answers your question, then.

“Oh,” you say, like an idiot, as if his confirmation hadn’t just brought up a thousand other questions in your mind. 

His eyes tarry. Always something so jarringly intimate in the way they cut clean into yours. Lets it take up your speechlessness.

You wonder if the there-and-away flicker of his gaze to your lips, just before he’d turned to leave the breakroom, was just a feverish figment of your imagination.

Delusion, you convince yourself, when the door clicks shut. Surely.