#this is badddd

Ava should have known something was wrong the second she woke up with chest pain. As a cardiothoracic surgeon and a cancer survivor, she was aware that sudden onset of angina was never a good sign. Still, she had pushed the thoughts away and took a couple ibuprofen, assuming she had just strained her costal joints when she helped lift an elderly patient onto a bed the day prior.

That’s what she told Sarah anyway, when her girlfriend had hugged her from behind and she flinched without thinking. The brunette had been worried, apologizing and gently touching the space where her fourth and fifth ribs should have been. Ava just shook her head, reassuring Sarah that she was fine and pressing a kiss to her lips to punctuate her point.

She had been fine, during consults and even throughout a whole surgery with Sam; a trauma involving a burst aortic aneurysm. Well, she had claimed she was fine, though Sam had probably noticed how she wasn’t speaking very much. To Doctor Zanetti she may have appeared to be in a bad mood but the truth was Ava couldn’t breathe properly. The ache in her chest had only gotten worse, not to mention the rattling sound that she could hear vaguely every time she took a breath. Pneumonia signs warranted a chest x ray, especially in her remission, but she persuaded herself that she was fine.

“Hey, Ava!”

Connor caught up to them as they left the scrub room, hand gently catching Ava’s bicep so she turned to look at him. He had a tablet in hand and promptly asked her if she could take a look at a case. Sam stopped to bid them goodbye, claiming she was taking her lunch and would see them around. With that, Ava let Connor babble away about his patient as they continued in the other direction, going back towards the OR floor nurse’s station.

“So I was thinking if we go in through a sternotomy-” his words cut off as he looked over at his coworker, “Ava? You okay?”

“What? Oh, y-yeah, I’m peachy keen.”

“You’re really pale,” he said but shrugged, “Anyway, if we make our cuts in the muscle here-”

Ava was trying her best to listen to his idea, leaning heavily on the wall as she walked because her vision had started getting wobbly. She knew this was bad, something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t speak up. She hated appearing weak, especially around her colleagues, so she just wanted to get out of there. If she could just make it to the hallway with a bathroom she could make an excuse and disappear for a moment, she just needed to sit down and catch her breath.

“Woah, Ava,” she hadn’t even noticed that she stopped walking, her body slowly sliding down the wall. Connor caught her before she fell completely, not even minding that the tablet that had been in his hands hit the floor with a clatter. Ava couldn’t answer him, her ears ringing and her chest still clenching painfully. This felt worse than when she had gotten viral pneumonia as a teen, which had left her on an oxygen tank for weeks after her recovery. She couldn’t breathe and that was made clear by the raspy gasps she made with every inhale. Connor leaned down to hook a hand under her knees, lifting her with only a little struggle due to the deadweight of her body.

“Ava, stay with me, okay?”