#boxer liam

“Hello,” he finally said, his cheeks reddening underneath the extensive bruising. His lips moved slowly, pink and moist, the bottom lip split open.

“Hello.” You mentally shook yourself, moving to stand in front of him and holding your board tightly, a barrier between the two of you. “What’s your name?”

“Liam James Payne.”

“And date of birth?”

“August 29, 1993.” He was close to your own age. Suddenly, Brett and Caroline’s grins made sense. Caroline had been trying to hook you up with various doctors and technicians for months, but you had a strict personal policy of not dating co-workers. But this… dating patients was definitely against a code of ethics.

“So what brings you in today?” You asked, looking away from him. You were not going to let these inappropriate thoughts ruin your professionalism.

“I was, uh, in a fight. Broke my hand.” You could feel his eyes on you, but you kept your eyes on your clipboard.

“Alright, I’m going to examine that and the wounds of your face and then you’ll need an x-ray on your wrist. We’ll go from there.” You set down your clipboard and picked up his arm gently. With sure fingers, you probed his wrist which was swelling at an alarming rate. Catching his grimace, you left it alone and started touching his face. He watched you carefully as you examined his split lip and his swollen eye. He had a cut right above his eye which was probably why it had swollen shut. You sent him off to get x-rayed and tracked down Caroline.

“No.” You said, crossing your arms over your chest and glaring.

“Isn’t he cute!” Caroline asserted, grinning from ear to ear.

“We cannot date patients.” You really wish that rule didn’t exist because he was something else.

“Well he won’t be your patient after tonight,” she said, sauntering away. You shook your head and took care of some filing while you waited for his x-ray to be finished. Finally, the results came in and what you suspected was correct: he had broken his second and third metacarpal. You met back up with him in the room.

“So, looks like you’ll be needing a cast. I’m also going to glue the cut above your eye shut while we get your cast set up.” Liam nodded and you went to get a cast specialist who, to your displeasure, had already gone home for the night. Short of doing it all yourself, Caroline was the best bet to help you. As she was wrapping his wrist, she kept shooting you looks, urging you to do or say something. You stayed silent, though, cleaning the blood off his face gently, your fingers careful and a little unsteady around his mouth. Caroline silently slammed her heel down on your toes and gave you a very pointed look before beginning to mix the plaster.

“Your lip will heal fine on its own. You’ll just have to lay off the kissing until it does,” you said, your tone neutral and cool so it didn’t come across flirtatious.

“Well, damn,” he muttered, smiling at you and stretching the cut, which made him wince and drop the grin which was a shame. He had a kind smile that reached up to his eyes and made them glow. You bit back your own smile and moved up to his forehead.

“Tell your girlfriend she’ll have to chill out for a while,” you answered, applying the surgical glue to either side of the cut.

“No girlfriend to tell,” he said, looking up at you through his lashes and ignoring Caroline completely.

“Sorry, boyfriend,” you corrected, holding the sides of the cut together.

“Nope, no boyfriend either,” he answered, smiling again.

“Well, then it should be very easy for you.” You smiled at him carefully before filling out the rest of his information on the chart; what his full injuries were and how you treated them. Caroline finished with his cast but before she could give him care instructions and leave you alone with him, you told him he was free to go when she was done and disappeared down the hall. You basically ran to the break room to grab your things and dropped his chart off with Brett, then bolted out the front doors. You’d had to stay an extra hour but you couldn’t decide if it—if he—had been worth it.

The next couple days were rough. After your day off, you were on day shifts for the rest of the week, but you had the Saturday overnight again. No matter how tired you were or how busy, you couldn’t seem to get Liam out of your head. You wondered how he was healing and whether he’d been kissing anybody.

Around two am on Saturday, you were picking up a patient file from Brett when Liam approached the counter again. If he’d looked bad last weekend, you couldn’t even accurately explain just how much worse he’d gotten. The entire left side of his face was bloody and broken and his right arm hung limply at his side and he was limping pretty badly.

“Liam?” You asked, your jaw dropping. He attempted a smile but it came out as more of a grimace, showing off a mouthful of bloody teeth. Instinct kicked in as you ran out into the waiting room and caught him just before he fell, his solid, muscular body weighing you down. Brett stood in alarm, unsure of what to do. “Okay, I’m setting him up in room 1 now.”

You basically carried him into the ER and got him into the first room, helping him onto the examining table. You tried to make him lay back but he resisted, shaking his head in pain. Taking a moment to exam his arm, you saw why: it was entirely ripped out of the socket. Brett ran in with the paperwork and set it down beside you while you set to work, gently guiding his arm back into the shoulder socket and trying to ignore his low moans of pain. The low moan turned into a deep gasp when you finally got it back into place. Now that he could, you forced him to lie down and started filling out the paperwork for him. You remembered his name easily but you needed his birthdate and all the other basic information.

“What happened?” you asked. He had been periodically rinsing his mouth of blood while he talked and he took another moment just then to spit into the wastebasket. Whatever cut he had in his mouth was still bleeding badly.

“Got in a fight,” he answered, closing his eyes.

“That’s what you said last week.” You didn’t write anything down yet because you had a nasty feeling about this. He was silent for a long time but you waited.

“I’m a boxer.” He gave a deep sigh, like he was embarrassed. “I got put up against a ringer, an awesome fighter who needed an easy win. But I refused to give him the easy win tonight.” You sighed deeply too, writing a quick explanation in the paperwork.

“I need to clean your face before I can figure out what’s wrong with it,” you said quietly. He nodded and you set to work, gently scrubbing to get the dried blood off of him. He had a black eye, a fractured nose, and a huge cut right over his cheekbone that was the source of most of the blood. Both the cuts from last week were healed though, so that was nice.

“How bad is it?” he asked, his voice subdued.

“You need to take off your shirt,” you said, ignoring him. He started to get it off but was unable to pull it over his head so you worked it off gently. As you suspected, the entire shoulder was bruised and he had extensive bruising all over his finely shaped abdomen. Due to the bruising over his ribs, you suspected he had a cracked rib but was unsure.

“Am I going to need an x-ray?” he asked, taking shallow breaths.

“Yeah.” You helped him stand, but he was unsteady at best. Taking immediate responsibility for him, you had him put his uninjured arm (relatively uninjured—it was the arm with the broken wrist from last week) around your shoulders and you helped him to the x-ray room, where the technician took over for you. You passed his x-rays (which showed a fractured ankle and two cracked ribs) off to the doctor and went to the break room.

“So, Liam’s back, huh?” Caroline asked, raising her eyebrows at you.

“Don’t.”

“Wait a second…” Caroline was looking over her stack of paperwork and then looked up at you, her eyes bright and excited. “He wasn’t your to take!”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t mine to take last week either.” You hissed, turning your back on her and heading back up to the front, where Brett asked about his condition. You answered honestly before being flagged down by the doctor, who had wrapped his ankle and was leaving you to glue his face back together. He also handed you a prescription for codeine, which surprised you. Liam’s ribs must have been worse than you thought.

“You’re back,” Liam said as you re-entered, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. You smiled at him softly, digging out the needle and thread. You couldn’t do anything about the extensive bruising, but you could stitch his face back together. The cut was too wide for glue.

“Sit still,” you said gently as you sat next to him and began stitching the cut back together. Every once in a while, you’d see him wince, but for the most part, he held his composure very well. After you finished, you were standing at the sink washing your hands and you heard Liam clear his throat carefully.

“Are you okay?” you asked, wondering if there was something that you’d missed.

“Yeah, I just… Well, I was wondering… I know I’m not exactly very attractive right now, but I was wondering if you wanted to get a cup of coffee some time?” His cheeks (at least the unbruised parts) were bright red and he looked so shy and cute that you felt awful when you responded.

“I’m sorry… I can’t date patients.” You finished filling out his paperwork and gave him his prescription and a set of crutches before sending him on his way.

After that, you didn’t see Liam for a while. Really, you didn’t see him again until three weeks later when he was leaving as you were coming in. He smiled at you and gave a small wave as you passed and you noticed the bruising on his face was entirely gone, the stitches had been taken out, and he was no longer limping. He was a quick healer. Then, about four weeks later, when you got off your Saturday night shift early Sunday morning, you saw an unfamiliar car parked right next to yours. As you got closer, you saw a slightly familiar face standing next to it.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without the bruising,” you said, smiling softly, your keys in your hand.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without the scrubs,” Liam answered. You’d changed before you left that morning because you thought, for once, you might be able to make it to morning mass before you dropped of exhaustion.

“You’re looking a lot better.” He really was. Every sign of injury was gone and he was even more beautiful than you’d originally thought.

“Got my cast off yesterday.” He flexed his wrist for you, smiling.

“What’s up, Liam?” you asked, shifting your purse higher up on your shoulder.

“Well, I figured, now that I’m all healed up…”

“Oh, Liam…” You sighed deeply. “I’m an ER nurse. You’re a boxer. You knows how often you could be in the ER?” Liam’s eyes sparkled for a moment and then he slowly smiled.

“I’m not boxing anymore.”

“What?”

“After that last accident, I decided it wasn’t worth the cash anymore. A friend with a construction company hired me and I’ve been working there for two weeks. So… I really shouldn’t be seeing you in the ER at all. I’d like to see you though.” Liam gave you a soft, eager smile. You bit your lip, unsure. Even if he did come into the ER, you could pass him off to someone else. “And it’s not like you saw anything unprofessional…”

“Coffee?” You asked, smiling despite yourself.