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Brendon walked out of the bathroom to see his husband still spread out across their bed, appearing asleep and had to shake his head. “Are you going to wake up this morning?” he asked as he walked over and sat on the edge of the bed.
John hummed. “What time’s it?” he asked, half asleep.
“Six,” Brendon said. “I need to be leaving soon.”
Right, Brendon was working today, while John’s day was completely work free. He hadn’t worked a night shift last night, didn’t have a day shift scheduled, and he didn’t have another shift tonight. Over forty eight hours away from the hospital. He was going to sleep in as much as he could today.
“Hmm… then you should get going,” John said, finally opening his eyes and blinking up at his husband. “Traffic can be annoying.”
Brendon hummed. “And are you going to be getting up then?” he asked.
“Me? Why would I want to get up before the sun comes up when I don’t have to work today?” John asked.
“You’re not going to get up and ready before the monster comes over?” Brendon asked.
Ah yes, their four year old daughter, Riley, who could in fact be a monster before she ate breakfast.
John let out a small laugh. “Our four year old daughter is still asleep, therefore I am still asleep,” John said. “We’ll make breakfast together when she wakes up.”
“Well then, all I can say is good luck to that,” Brendon said as he leant over and pressed a kiss onto John’s forehead.
“Have a great day over there,” John said as Brendon stood up from the bed. “Have some fun cutting into people.”
Brendon chuckled. “I always do.”
John had probably gotten thirty more minutes in bed before he heard the sound of little feet running up and jumping onto the bed.
“Papa!” Riley screamed out as she crawled over the bed to flop over him. John let out a loud ‘oomph’ as her weight fell onto his stomach. “You need to wake up.”
“Oh, I do?” John asked as he blinked open his eyes to see her. “But I want to sleep in.”
Riley shook her head. “No, we have to get up now,” she insisted. “The sun’s up now, that means we get out of bed.”
“Okay, okay, I’m getting up,” he said as he moved to sit up. As he did so, he glanced at the clock on his bedside table. 7:24 At least he was able to get a little more sleep, though it was still certainly earlier than he would have liked for a day off.
“Breakfast time,” Riley said as she jumped off of the bed and ran to the bedroom door.
“Right, breakfast time,” John said. “Just let me go to the bathroom real quick.” Riley nodded, though she still told him to make it quick.
John shook his head. “How did I get such a bossy kid?” he muttered to himself.
“Can we have lucky charms?” Riley asked as they walked down the stairs, Riley looking up at him with pleading eyes.
“Only if you don’t tell Daddy,” John said. Just like when John first moved in with Brendon, Brendon had tried (and mostly failed) to break John’s sweet tooth. Now that their daughter was getting to the age of announcing her food preferences, Brendon had been doing the same. At least when Brendon was around, he had been mostly successful in getting the young girl away from the sugary foods.
When it was just her and John however…
John enjoyed eating lucky charms more than whatever healthy breakfast food Brendon bought.
Riley smiled as they reached the last step and she ran towards the kitchen.
John followed after her at a more sedate pace. As she ran over to the pantry to get the box of cereal, John spotted one of their insulated coffee mugs sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty kitchen counter.
Stuck on the side was a small post it note with Brendon’s handwriting:
‘So you’re not running around with her half asleep.
-B’
John smiled as he brought it to his mouth, taking a sip. Amazing.
Riley came over to him, tapping John’s leg with the cereal box. “Can you help me pour it?” she asked.
“Yeah,” John said as he turned to the cabinets. “Which bowl do you want?”
“The cat bowl,” Riley said.
John hummed as he picked out the bowl with the pink and purple cats and then handed it to Riley. He then helped her pour the cereal and milk inside of it at the table.
“So, do you still want to go to the park today?” John asked as Riley started in on her bowl of cereal.
“Of course,” she said around a mouthful of cereal. “We have to see the ducks.”
“Just the ducks?” John asked as he took a sip of the coffee. It was great, just like Brendon always made it.
“And the swings, and the slides,” Riley added. “I have to show you I learned how to do the swings by myself.”
“You can do them by yourself?” he asked, genuinely shocked. “When did you learn that?”
“Last week, Daddy took me when you were at work,” Riley said.
Oh yeah, the one day shift John worked in three months just so happened to be the same day his daughter grew up on him. Of course.
“Fine then, you’ll have to show me,” John said.
Riley nodded as she took another spoonful of cereal.
They had plans today, big plans as their daughter would say.
First they were going to go to the playground at the park down the street from their house where they would first hit the swings and see who could get the highest.
After the swings, they would go to the slides and race each other down on the two that were side by side. And since she was finally big enough, Riley wanted to go down the giant one.
When they were done with the slides, only after Riley won, they would go over to the pond a bit a ways from the playground, where Riley loved to watch the ducks and turtles swim around the pond.
Only when Riley got her fill of watching the ducks, they would walk around the pond to where there was a small cafe on the opposite side from the playground. John would get a coffee, while Riley would pick out whichever pastry caught her eye in the display case. Though sometimes they would both get a hot chocolate if the weather was cold. It was the middle of June right now though, so an iced coffee and pastry it was. After they took their time eating their treat and drinking their coffee next to the window that looked out at the pond, they would finally go home.
The plan was great, something John and Riley did every week on the first day he had off, something the worst problem they ever encountered was two older boys hogging the slides.
Only this time, they never made it past the swings.
Riley had watched some of the older kids on the swing as they arrived at the playground. All of the swings were currently taken by them, and since they couldn’t do anything out of order here, Riley seemed to be fine with watching and waiting.
John was fine with it too, until he saw the older kids start jumping off of the swings when they hit the top of their arc.
And really, it wasn’t that big of a deal, they were all in the nine or ten year old age range, and he had done the same when he was that age. But when his four year old saw them and turned to him…
“Can I try doing that, Papa?” Riley said as she pointed at the kids and looked back at John.
“Um…” John gulped. “I think you need to be a little older to try that.”
Riley frowned. “I think I can do it though, Papa,” she said.
“All those kids are a lot older than you,” John tried to say, though it seemed like Riley was having none of it.
“I want to do the jump,” she insisted.
“How about we wait until Daddy is here with us as well?” John tried.
This option, Riley looked to at least contemplate for a moment before shaking her head. “I want to try it,” she said. “Show him I can do it next time he comes.”
“Fine, we can do this once,” he said.
Five minutes later, when they were on the swings and Riley had gotten the height she deemed enough to try to jump, John told her to go ahead if she was ready.
For just a moment, it looked like Riley might actually be successful, that she would land and demand to try it a second time. But she didn’t land it right, landing on her arms the same time as her feet and then falling to the ground.
Oh, please, please stand up. John thought as he stood still for a second. Most of the time, when it looked like she hurt herself, they would go running over only for her to jump right back up and be perfectly fine.
Though this time, she didn’t. This time, when she lifted her head enough to look at John, he could already see tears streaming down from her eyes.
He was already running over to her before he realized it, dropping down to his knees right next to her. “What’s wrong?”
Riley’s bottom lip was wobbling as John saw her clutching her right arm. “My arm hurts,” he said in her small voice.
“Let me look at it,” he said as he helped her move to sit up, then gently took her arm in his hands. She whimpered as John tried, as gentle as possible, to palpate it and examine it. But doing so told him one thing, it wasn’t just the shock of falling onto the ground from some eight feet that had her crying. There was definitely at least a cracked bone going on.
“It really hurts,” Riley said.
“I’m sure it does,” John said. “What do you think about checking out Papa’s work?” he said.
Carrying Riley in his arms into the PTMC, John took one of the side entrances he usually took into the Pitt, not wanting to deal with the mess the waiting room would be mid morning. It was only marginally better when he got to the middle of the ED bay, because of course today had to be one of the most chaotic days of the summer, just his luck.
The first person he made eye contact with, walking inside, was Dana.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she saw them.
John gave the charge nurse a small smile. “We had a bit of an accident at the park this morning,” he said as Riley turned her head just enough from John’s shoulder for Dana to see her tear streaked face.
“Well, we just cleared out Room 8,” Dana said. “You can go in there.”
“Thanks,” John said as he turned to make his way in that direction.
🦴 🦴 🦴 🦴 🦴
Whitaker let out a large breath as he stopped out of Trauma 2. It was long, dicey, but in the end, the guy hadn’t made it.
Which sucked… a lot.
It always sucked when they lost a patient.
He just had to remind himself that the man’s chances when he was first brought in weren’t that great. Motorcycle versus semi truck. The guy on the motorcycle almost always loses.
“Whitaker,” he heard Dana call out his name. He let out a small sigh as he turned to look at her. She was beckoning him to come over.
“I got a case for you in Room 8,” Dana said. “Shen needs some assistance.”
“Dr. Shen?” Whitaker asked. He was ninety nine percent sure Shen hadn’t been working today, in fact the man almost never worked day shifts. “He’s working today?”
“You’ll see,” she said as she handed him a tablet and gave him a soft push in the direction of Room 8.
As he walked into the room, Whitaker expected to see Shen having been brought into this shift for some reason and to be leaning over a patient, needing support. That wasn’t exactly the case.
He didn’t expect to see Shen sitting on the side of the bed with a small girl sitting next to him in the center. She was small, probably no more than five, with slightly tanned skin, and brown hair pulled into two braids.
“Ah, Dana sent you in here,” Shen said, giving Whitaker a smile. The girl sitting next to him didn’t seem that happy, and judging by the way she was holding her right arm to her chest, he could see why.
“Yeah,” Whitaker said. His eyes bounced between the girl and Shen, still confused on what was going on in here. “What do we have here?” he asked.
“This is my daughter, Riley,” Shen said as the girl turned her tear streaked face to look up at Whitaker. “She took a bad fall at the park today. Pretty sure she broke her arm.”
Whitaker nodded as he let Shen fill him in on all the details of the girl’s, his daughter’s, Riley’s case. She fell about ten feet, landing right on her right arm, to a sickening crack. From Dr. Shen’s look over, he highly suspected that she had broken one of the bones in her arm, now they just needed to know for sure.
“Is Daddy going to have to put it in a cast?” Riley asked, looking at Whitaker with two big brown eyes.
“Um… yeah, depending on what the x-rays look like, we’re probably going to need to give you a cast,” Whitaker said.
“I want Daddy to do it,” Riley said. “He’s a bone doctor. He does a lot of casts.”
“A… bone doctor?” Whitaker said as he looked at John in slight confusion. Trying and failing to see a connection. He wouldn’t describe his job to kids as a ‘bone doctor’ so he didn’t know why Dr. Shen would tell his daughter that. Unless she was talking about someone else, but Whitaker couldn’t recall a time when Dr. Shen talked about being with another doctor here.
Riley nodded her head eagerly. “Yeah, Papa can tell you, Daddy fixes a lot of broken bones,” she said.
And oh, it seemed like they were talking about a different doctor then.
“Um… let's get you an x-ray first,” Whitaker said.
“X-ray?” Riley said, looking up at Shen.
“You’ve seen those before,” he told her. “It’ll take a picture of your bones.”
“Oh, those,” she said, sitting up slightly straighter. “I want to see my bones.”
Even with Dana trying to pull some strings by saying this was Shen’s daughter they needed the x-rays for, they still had to wait. It was nearly as busy as it had been on the Fourth of July last year. And Whitaker was dreading to see how long he would have to stay behind after this shift.
After nearly an hour, Whitaker being brought into two other patients’ cases, the images and results for Riley’s x-rays finally came back. He quickly looked them over before going in to see the Shen’s, seeing just what they had expected, a clean break along the radius bone in her arm.
He grabbed the tablet and brought it back to Room 8, pulling the door closed behind him as he entered to give them some privacy and relief from the chaos taking place outside.
“You got the images?” Dr. Shen asked.
“Yeah,” Whitaker nodded. Right as he was about to hand the tablet over to let Dr. Shen look at the x-ray images, the door Whitaker had just shut slammed open. He quickly spun his head around, expecting it to be Dana or Robby saying they urgently needed him on a trauma, but it wasn’t them.
It was Brendon Park. Park the Shark, from upstairs in ortho.
What was Park doing in here? He had to wonder. Sure the girl had a broken arm, but it wasn’t anything bad enough to require surgery, he definitely hadn’t asked for an ortho consult.
“What happened?” Park asked, in the voice that made Whitaker nearly jump out of his skin.
“Daddy, I broke my arm,” the girl said, her small voice making everyone in the room go silent.
Whitaker blinked, looking between the girl and the Shark with wide eyes. Did she just call the Shark… daddy? He… he had to have heard her wrong, right?
🦴 🦴 🦴 🦴 🦴
Brendon let out a deep breath when he was finally able to step out of the operating room. That knee replacement had wound up a lot more complicated than it should have been.
He felt a buzzing in his pocket - his phone. He brought it out of his pocket to take a quick look at it. The actual buzz was from some random app Brendon forgot he had on his phone. But then, right beneath it, he saw a text message notification.
It was a text from John from over an hour ago. If they did their whole park routine, they should be just about to go home now.
Brendon swiped his thumb across the screen and brought up the message.
John: Hey, don’t freak out but we’re down in the pitt.
Followed by a selfie of him and their daughter sitting on one of the beds in what could only be the ED. Riley wasn’t smiling like she did in nearly all the pictures they took of her. She wasn’t crying, but she definitely wasn’t happy either.
How was Brendon not supposed to freak out about that?
“Uh… Dr. Park?” he heard one of the ortho residents call out to him, but Park didn’t turn to hear what they had to ask him, instead making right in the direction for the elevator that led down to the ED.
Like nearly every time he came down here, people made way for him like Moses parting the Red Sea. He started by spotting the charge nurse standing in the middle of the bay. She waved at a room behind her, not even asking him a question as she said, “Room 8 on the left.”
He nodded at her as he turned his head, immediately spotting the sign to Room 8 and going right over.
He opened the door and walked straight inside, seeing Riley sitting in the middle of the ED bed with John sitting next to her, half hanging off the side of the bed. “What happened?” he asked.
As he said that, out of the corner of his eye he saw whichever doctor assigned to her tense up, but he paid them no mind, his eyes raving up and down Riley’s body, looking for any signs of injury. His eyes immediately locked in on the way she was holding her arm and the discoloration he could already see forming on it.
“Someone tried jumping off the swings but didn’t exactly make it,” John said as Brendon walked over to them.
“Daddy, I broke my arm,” Riley said, looking up at her with her large eyes that always squeezed his heart. At least she didn’t look like she was on the verge of tears anymore. He never held up well when she was in tears.
Brendon nodded, his throat still tight. “I see that,” he said. He then turned his head to the resident he had seen when he first came in here.
He had never bothered to learn any of the names of the residents down here, but he was pretty sure this kid was one of Robby’s ‘favorites.’ He could only assume that meant the kid was somewhat competent. Brendon quickly glanced at the ID hanging off the resident’s chest - ‘Whitaker.’ He could remember John mentioning him a couple of times, though he was pretty sure this kid usually worked the day shift.
“Where are the x-rays?” Park said, his voice sharp and direct, cutting through the room, though the girl on the bed seemed to not pick up on the tension among the doctors surrounding her.
“H- Here,” Whitaker said as he handed the tablet to Park on the screen showing the girl’s x-rays.
Brendon took the tablet from him, quickly looking at the scans.
A clean break. Right in the middle of the radius bone. Distal radial fracture.
It wouldn’t require surgery, that was a large relief. But it would be casted for the majority of the summer, which was going to suck.
“Can I see it?” Riley asked, trying to angle her body to see the x-ray image.
Brendon turned the tablet around so she could see it, pointing at and explaining each part patiently.
“Will I have to have a cast thing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Brendon said.
“I want it to be purple,” Riley said.
Brendon nodded. “Purple, you got it.” When it came to Riley, both he and John were well aware at this point, that if there was something she had a choice of color in, it had to be purple.
“How long will I need it?” Riley asked just as he was finishing wrapping it up.
“At least a month,” he said.
Riley’s eyebrows furrowed. “Is that a long time?”
“It’s most of the summer,” Brendon said.
Riley’s eyes widened. “That’s a long time.”