#{lena}

A tiny, shiny, ridiculously detailed thing hanging from your badge reel, half-hidden against the pocket of your scrubs. It swung every time you moved, catching the fluorescent light of the ED in little flashes of colour. Most people would not have looked twice at it. Most people would have seen it as just another piece of plastic merch, something cute and bright attached to a tired med student trying very hard not to look like they had no idea where they were supposed to be.

Parker noticed it immediately.

You were standing at the nurses’ station with Lena beside you, nodding along while she pointed out where things were kept, where you were allowed to stand without getting trampled, and which attendings were likely to teach versus which ones would make you regret choosing medicine. Abbott was behind the desk, already looking halfway done with the night even though it had barely started. Cruz was restocking a drawer with the concentrated frustration of someone who had done it three times already and knew nobody would keep it organized. Shen passed by with a chart tucked under one arm, offering you a polite smile that made you feel only slightly less like you were being dropped into deep water without floaties.

And Parker, who had been listening to precisely none of this, looked at your badge reel and said, “Is that the limited drop from the anniversary set?”

Lena stopped talking.

Abbott looked up.

Cruz’s hand froze inside the drawer.

You blinked, sure for one second that you had hallucinated the question out of stress, sleep deprivation, and the vending machine coffee you had chugged in the parking lot.

Then you looked down at the keychain.

Then back at Parker.

Your whole face lit up.

“Oh my God,” you said, with the kind of startled joy that made it impossible to pretend you were calm. “You know what this is?”

Parker’s expression barely changed, but something in her eyes sharpened with quiet amusement. “I know what it is.”

“That is not the same as answering the question.”

“I answered the question.”

“No, you dodged the question.” You held the keychain up between two fingers, the nerves of your first shift suddenly pushed aside by sheer disbelief. “This was online for nine minutes before it sold out. Nine. I had three tabs open and my phone in my hand. I nearly cried when the order confirmation came through.”

Parker tilted her head slightly. “That seems like an intense response to a keychain.”

“It is not just a keychain.”

“Clearly.”

“It is from the anniversary set.”

“I know.”

“And it’s the version with the alternate costume.”

“I can see that.”

“And the tiny symbol on the back is actually from episode seven, not episode eight, which means whoever designed this knew what they were doing, because most people confuse those two episodes even though the emotional context is completely different.”

For the first time since you had walked into the ED, Parker smiled.

It was not a big smile. It was barely even a smile, honestly. More like the corner of her mouth gave up resisting gravity in the opposite direction for half a second. But it was enough.

Enough for Abbott to stare. Enough for Lena to glance between the two of you with interest. Enough for Cruz to mouth, What the hell? to Shen across the desk.

You did not notice any of it. You were too busy looking at Parker like she had just revealed herself to be the only other person in the hospital with taste.

“You’ve seen the show?” you asked.

“No.”

Your excitement stumbled. “You haven’t?”

“No.”

“But you recognized the keychain.”

“Yes.”

“So you know the merch, but you haven’t seen the show?”

“Yes.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That is suspicious.”

“It’s not suspicious.”

“It’s extremely suspicious.”

“I collect limited releases.”

You stared at her. Parker stared back, perfectly composed.

“Limited releases,” you repeated.

“Yes.”

“Of anything?”

“Mostly.”

“That is somehow nerdier than if you just watched the show.”

From behind the desk, Abbott made a soft choking sound that might have been a laugh trying to escape and getting strangled halfway up. Parker glanced over once, flatly, and Abbott immediately became very interested in the chart in front of him.

You realized, belatedly, that you had just called an attending nerdy on your first night in the emergency department. Your stomach dropped.

“I’m so sorry,” you rushed out. “That was not professional. I didn’t mean—well, I did mean it, but not in a disrespectful way. More in a very impressed and slightly confused way. I’m going to stop talking now.”

Parker looked at you for a beat too long.

Then she said, “Don’t.”

You blinked. “Don’t… stop talking?”

“You were explaining episode seven.”

“Oh.” Your fingers tightened around the badge reel. “Right. Okay. So episode seven is actually where the whole thing shifts because up until then you think the main conflict is external, but it’s not. It’s about identity and memory and whether you can still be yourself if everyone around you only recognizes the version of you they need you to be—”

Lena slowly lowered her hand from where she had been pointing toward the medication room. Cruz had abandoned the drawer completely. Shen, who had only meant to pause for a second, remained paused and Abbott leaned back in his chair, watching Parker Ellis—Parker, who treated casual conversation like an unnecessary invasive procedure—stand in the middle of the nurses’ station and listen to a brand-new med student explain fictional lore with total, unwavering attention.

Parker did not interrupt you. She did not check her watch. She did not look around for an escape route. She simply stood there, arms loosely crossed, eyes on you, occasionally asking a short question that somehow proved she had actually been following every word.

“And the symbol?” she asked.

You lit up again. “Exactly! The symbol is the whole point.”

Abbott looked at Lena. Lena looked at Abbott.

Cruz whispered, “Are we all seeing this?” Shen whispered back, “I think so.”

Santos, who had picked up a double and was already regretting every choice that had led her there, rounded the corner with a stack of discharge papers and stopped dead. “Why is Parker talking to the med student?” she asked.

Nobody answered. Mostly because nobody knew.

By the end of the shift, you had survived two laceration repairs, one patient who called you “sweetheart” until Parker appeared beside you and corrected him without raising her voice, three cups of terrible coffee, and one near-death experience involving a supply closet door you opened directly into your own forehead.

You had also somehow ended up in Parker’s orbit. Not intentionally. At least, not at first. She was just there.

When Lena sent you to observe a patient evaluation, Parker was the one doing it. When Abbott asked someone to grab you before a trauma came in, Parker was already pointing you toward gloves and telling you where to stand. When you forgot where the clean blankets were, Parker walked past and said, “Second left, bottom shelf,” without even slowing down.

It was not warm, exactly. Parker was not warm in any obvious way. She did not fuss or soften her voice or make things easy just because you were new. She still expected you to keep up, still corrected you when you missed something, still gave you that unreadable look when you answered a question too quickly and not carefully enough.

But she also noticed.

She noticed when you were overwhelmed and sent you to get water before you could embarrass yourself by swaying in front of a patient. She noticed when your hands were shaking after your first code and quietly gave you a task simple enough to anchor yourself to. She noticed when your badge reel got caught on a drawer handle and untangled it before you accidentally yanked the whole thing off your scrub top.

And every now and then, in between blood work and imaging orders and the constant restless motion of the ED, she would ask something that made your brain short-circuit.

“So episode seven,” she said two weeks later, while washing her hands at the sink beside you. “That’s the one with the memory reveal?”

You almost dropped the paper towel dispenser key Lena had trusted you with. “You remember that?”

Parker looked mildly offended. “You talked for twelve minutes.”

“You timed me?”

“No.”

“You absolutely timed me.”

“I estimated.”

“That’s worse.”

She shrugged, drying her hands. “Was I wrong?”

You bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from smiling too obviously. “No.”

“Then keep going.”

So you did.

You told her about the memory reveal, then the cast interview, then the theory that had been floating around fan spaces for years. Parker listened while checking a medication order. She listened while walking with you to the vending machines. She listened while you both stood in the break room at three in the morning, the hospital humming around you, your untouched coffee going lukewarm in your hands because you were too busy explaining why one line of dialogue had changed the entire interpretation of a character arc.

Somewhere between those conversations, between exhausted midnight coffees and stolen moments beside supply carts, Parker stopped being the intimidating attending who had recognized your keychain and became Parker. Just Parker.

The person who remembered your favourite character even though she still refused to watch the show.

The person who sent you a link to a merch restock at two in the afternoon with no message except, This yours?

The person who once showed up to shift with a tiny enamel pin in her palm and said, “Found it,” like she had not spent actual time tracking down something you had mentioned once while half-asleep.

The person who kissed you for the first time outside the hospital after a shift that had left you both quiet and wrung out, her thumb resting gently against your jaw, her expression calm but her eyes careful, as if even then she was watching for the smallest sign that you wanted her to stop.

You did not want her to stop.

After that, it became both easier and more complicated. At work, nothing changed. Or at least, nothing obvious changed.

Parker was still Parker. She still had the social patience of a locked door. She still gave Abbott a deadpan stare whenever he tried to joke his way out of paperwork. She still told Santos, “No,” before she even finished asking for favours. She still made Cruz roll his eyes at least four times a night and could reduce an overconfident intern to humble silence with one raised eyebrow.

But with you, she softened in increments so small nobody should have noticed them. Nobody should have noticed the way she always left the last decent coffee pod for you. Nobody should have noticed how she angled her body toward you when you spoke. Nobody should have noticed that when the ED got too loud, Parker somehow always found a reason to send you somewhere quieter for thirty seconds.

Nobody should have noticed.

Unfortunately, the night crew noticed everything.

“I think she adopted you,” Shen said one night, as you both restocked gloves.

You frowned. “Who?”

“Parker.”

You shoved a stack of mediums into place and tried very hard to keep your face neutral. “She did not adopt me.”

“She definitely adopted you.”

“That’s a weird thing to say.”

“It’s a weird thing to watch.”

You turned to him slowly. “What does that mean?”

Shen shrugged, too casual. “She doesn’t glare at you.”

“She glares at me all the time.”

“No. She looks at you. Different thing.”

You were saved from answering by Cruz calling for help from trauma two, and you spent the next thirty minutes convincing yourself that Shen was just observant in the annoying way all good doctors were.

Then, an hour later, Abbott caught Parker handing you a granola bar. He stared. Parker stared back. You took the granola bar and pretended this was very normal.

Abbott pointed at it. “Where did that come from?”

“My pocket,” Parker said.

“You carry snacks now?”

“No.”

“You just had that?”

“Yes.”

“For who?”

Parker’s face went blank in the way it did when she had decided she was finished with a conversation. “For people with low blood sugar.”

Abbott looked at you. You looked at the granola bar. Parker walked away. Cruz appeared at Abbott’s shoulder, eyes narrowed. “That was weird, right?”

Abbott nodded slowly. “Very.”

“It’s like watching a wolf feed a baby deer.”

“Don’t say that where HR can hear you.”

By the time the trailer dropped, you and Parker had been dating for three months. Nobody knew. At least, you were pretty sure nobody knew.

The thing about dating Parker was that she did not become a different person. She did not suddenly turn sweet in a way that felt false, did not start using pet names in public, did not drape herself over you or make a show of affection in places where people could see.

Parker’s love was quieter than that. It lived in the details. In the spare hoodie that appeared in her car because you always forgot one. In the way she learned your takeout order without asking twice. In the fact that she never once made you feel silly for caring too much about fictional worlds and limited-edition merchandise and characters that felt real enough to hurt.

So when the trailer dropped during the slowest stretch of a Tuesday night shift, you forgot where you were.

Completely.

You had been standing near the nurses’ station, trying to update a patient note while your phone buzzed in your pocket once, then twice, then so many times in a row that you knew something had happened. Your fandom group chat only became that unhinged in very specific circumstances: a casting announcement, a cancellation scare, a surprise merch drop, or a trailer.

You checked your phone. Your heart stopped. Then restarted somewhere in your throat.

“Oh my God.”

Lena glanced over. “Everything okay?”

You did not answer. Your thumbs moved faster than your thoughts. The trailer thumbnail stared back at you, dramatic and glossy and real after months of rumours. You pressed play for exactly three seconds before realising you could not process this alone.

You looked up.

Across the station, Parker was charting beside Abbott, her face set in its usual expression of quiet irritation as Santos explained something with too many hand gestures.

“So I’m just saying,” Santos continued, “technically, if the patient said he swallowed one battery, but the girlfriend says she saw him with three—”

“Order imaging,” Parker said without looking at her.

“I did.”

“Then why are you still talking?”

Santos blinked. “Because I was providing context.”

“You provided it.”

Abbott snorted. Parker’s jaw tightened.

You moved before you could overthink it, crossing the station with your phone clutched in one hand. “Parker.”

Her head lifted immediately. Not slowly. Not with annoyance. Immediately.

“What happened?”

“The trailer dropped.”

Parker stared at you for half a second. Then, with complete seriousness, she said, “The trailer?”

You nodded, eyes wide. “The trailer,” you repeated.

Something shifted in her expression. Recognition, not of the trailer itself, but of your excitement. Of the scale of it. Of what it meant that you had come to her first. She turned away from her computer. Abbott’s typing slowed. Santos looked between you. “Trailer for what?”

Neither of you answered.

You stepped closer, lowering your voice like the two of you were discussing test results instead of television. “I haven’t watched it properly yet. I saw three seconds and paused because I think the opening shot is the archive room.”

Parker frowned slightly. “The archive room was destroyed.”

Your mouth fell open.

Abbott stopped typing completely. Cruz, who had just arrived at the desk with a stack of labs, froze. Lena looked up from a chart. Shen, passing behind them, slowed to a halt.

You stared at Parker with open adoration. “You remember that?”

“You complained about it for two weeks.”

“Because it mattered.”

“I know.”

“You said that like you actually know.”

“You explained the structural importance of the archive room.”

“I did.”

“Twice.”

“Because the first time you were half-asleep.”

“I was awake.”

“You had your eyes closed.”

“I was listening.”

You pressed a hand over your chest. “This is why I like you.”

The sentence came out too naturally. Too softly. Too honestly. For half a second, the air around the desk changed. Parker did not react in any dramatic way. She did not look startled. She did not look panicked. She simply held your gaze, mouth relaxing at one corner in that almost-smile you had learned to recognize as something private.

“I know,” she said.

Cruz’s eyebrows shot up. Abbott leaned back in his chair. Santos looked personally betrayed by the fact that she was clearly missing several chapters of context.

You, blissfully unaware of the way the entire night crew had started watching, leaned your hip against the edge of the desk and held your phone between you and Parker. “Okay, so look. This is the opening frame. That is absolutely the archive room, right?”

Parker leaned in. Actually leaned in. Her shoulder nearly brushed yours as she studied the screen with the kind of concentration most people reserved for scans and abnormal labs.

“Could be a reconstruction,” she said.

You gasped. “That’s what I thought!”

“Or a memory sequence.”

You pointed at her with your phone. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Casually drop a good theory like you haven’t been pretending not to care for months.”

“I don’t care.”

“You care a little.”

“I care that you care.”

That should have been nothing. It was not nothing. It landed softly between you, almost hidden beneath the noise of the ED, beneath the beeping monitors and distant voices and the squeak of Santos shifting her weight because she was apparently incapable of standing still. But you heard it, and Parker knew you heard it, and for one small moment the hospital seemed to narrow down to the two of you and the glow of your phone screen.

Then Cruz whispered, “What did she just say?”

Abbott whispered back, “I don’t know, but I’m uncomfortable.”

Lena, who looked far more delighted than uncomfortable, whispered, “I think it’s sweet.”

Santos leaned toward Shen. “Has Parker always been able to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Listen.”

Shen shook his head slowly. “Not to us.”

You started the trailer again, keeping the volume low enough that you had to lean closer to Parker for both of you to hear. The first few seconds played, dramatic music swelling from your phone speaker. You paused every few frames to explain something, rewinding when Parker asked a question, zooming in on background details that would have meant absolutely nothing to anyone else.

Parker followed all of it.

Not with the glazed patience of someone waiting for their turn to speak, but with real attention. She asked why one character’s jacket being a different colour mattered. She asked whether the symbol on the wall was the same one from your keychain. She asked if the actor in the final shot was the one you had sworn could not come back unless the writers were undoing an entire season of development.

You answered every question with increasing enthusiasm. The more you talked, the softer Parker became. Not obviously. Never obviously. But it was there in the way her shoulders loosened, in the way she stopped pretending to chart, in the way her eyes stayed on your face more than the phone because she seemed less interested in the trailer than in the way you looked while explaining it.

Around you, the department continued moving, but the nurses’ station had become a small island of stunned witnesses. Abbott stared like he was watching a rare medical anomaly. Lena rested her chin in her hand. Cruz looked between you and Parker with the intensity of someone solving a mystery. Shen seemed quietly vindicated. Santos looked offended.

“I asked her about my patient,” Santos muttered, “and she told me to stop talking.”

“She did not tell you to stop talking,” Lena said.

“She said, ‘Why are you still talking?’ That is worse.”

Abbott nodded. “It is more efficient.”

Santos pointed toward Parker. “But look at her. She’s letting the med student explain costume symbolism.”

“Character symbolism,” you corrected automatically, without looking away from your phone.

Everyone went silent. Slowly, you looked up. Five faces stared back at you.

Parker looked up too, and whatever softness had been there a second ago vanished behind a flat, dangerous calm.

“Do none of you have patients?” she asked.

The spell broke instantly.

Abbott turned back to his computer with suspicious speed. Cruz lifted the labs and pretended he had been reading them the entire time. Lena smiled into her chart. Shen coughed. Santos raised both hands.

“I’m going,” she said. “I am going. I just want it noted that this is strange.”

“It’s noted,” Abbott said.

“By who?”

“Everyone.”

You felt heat crawl up your neck. “Was I being too loud?”

“No,” Parker said immediately.

Cruz made a tiny sound. Parker’s eyes flicked toward him. Cruz stopped.

You lowered your phone, suddenly self-conscious. “Sorry. I know I kind of ramble when I get excited.”

Parker looked back at you. Her face was calm, but her voice, when she spoke, was quieter than before.

“I know.”

You let out a nervous little laugh. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“It wasn’t criticism.”

“No?”

“No.”

Your fingers tightened around your phone. “Does it bother you?”

Parker held your gaze like the answer was the easiest thing in the world.

“No.”

You searched her face, waiting for the joke, the teasing edge, the dry follow-up that would let you both move on without making it too tender. It did not come. Instead, Parker said, “You get excited. I like listening.”

The words were simple. Matter-of-fact. So Parker that they almost sounded clinical. And still, they made your heart ache.

You looked at Parker and forgot, again, that you were standing in the middle of the ED.

“Okay,” you said softly.

Parker nodded once, as if that settled it.

Then a call came in over the radio, pulling everyone back into motion. The incoming trauma scattered the station with practiced urgency, and the moment folded itself away into the rhythm of the hospital. Parker straightened, all focus again, already reaching for gloves. You moved with her automatically, shoving your phone into your pocket, the trailer forgotten for now beneath the rush of work.

But as Parker stepped past you, you noticed the collar of her scrub top had folded awkwardly beneath her jacket.

Without thinking, you reached out.

“Wait,” you said, catching the edge of the fabric.

Parker stopped.

You smoothed the collar down with quick, familiar fingers, then patted it once. “There.”

Parker glanced at you.

“Thanks,” she said.

Then, so briefly you almost missed it, her fingers brushed your wrist.

Not enough to be dramatic. Not enough to be a declaration. Just enough to be intimate. Just enough to be known.

Then she was gone, heading toward the trauma, already asking for vitals, already back to being Dr. Parker Ellis, unreadable and sharp and impossible to distract.

You turned back toward the desk, still half-smiling.

The remaining night crew was staring at you.

This time, you noticed.

“What?” you asked.

Lena pressed her lips together.

Shen looked at the ceiling.

Santos stared at you like you had just calmly performed a magic trick in front of her and refused to explain it.

“You and Parker,” Abbott said slowly, from several feet away.

Your stomach dropped.

“What about me and Parker?”

Cruz pointed vaguely between you and the trauma bay. “That.”

“That what?”

“The collar,” Santos said.

You blinked. “Her collar was folded.”

“So naturally you fixed it.”

“Yes?”

“And naturally she let you.”

You frowned. “Why wouldn’t she?”

Nobody answered right away. That was when it hit you. The trailer. The questions. The leaning in. The I like listening. The wrist touch.

The fact that none of those things looked normal to people who did not know that Parker had kissed you in parking lots and cooked you breakfast after night shifts and kept a limited-edition keychain you had given her tucked safely beside her keys.

Your face went hot.

“Oh,” you said.

Lena smiled. “Yeah.”

You opened your mouth, closed it, then looked toward the trauma bay like Parker might somehow rescue you from a situation she had absolutely helped create.

Santos crossed her arms. “Since when?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That was terrible,” Cruz said.

“Awful,” Abbott agreed.

Shen nodded. “No one believed that.”

You lifted your chin, attempting dignity despite the fact that your entire face was probably glowing. “I am going to check on my patient.”

“You do that,” Lena said, still smiling.

You walked away as calmly as possible. Which was to say, not very calmly at all.

Behind you, Santos whispered, “Since when?”

Abbott sighed. “Apparently long enough for Parker to know lore.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“It answers several questions.”

Across the ED, Parker glanced back just once, catching your eye from the trauma bay doors.

Her expression did not change. But yours did. You smiled despite yourself. Parker’s almost-smile appeared for half a second before she turned away again.

And the night crew, watching from the station, finally understood the one thing you and Parker had somehow failed to hide.

Parker had not adopted the med student.