Medically Speaking

Chapter 23

A/N: Quick reminder that I'm not a medical professional, so medical situations are unlikely to be completely accurate. There will also be mentions of domestic violence in this chapter, but it will not be detailed.

The constant thrum of activity in the emergency room is part of what originally drew me to working in this part of the hospital. I don't like to be still, can rarely stand to be alone with my thoughts. I thought I was going to thrive both on the unpredictable nature of it and the constant motion. Back then, there needed to be something happening or I would get stuck in an endless cycle of running through all of my mistakes, everything that I regret. The things that I could have done differently that would have changed the course of my life forever.

Mine. Others'.

You're never alone in the ER. There's always someone who needs you. Something that needs to be done. Things are better now, but the Joey who had walked into this hospital four years ago had desperately needed that. A sense of purpose. No room to think of herself. Unfortunately, it had only fed the monster that was forming. I gave and gave, desperate not to feel anything. Desperate to save the parts of April I saw in every case that came into my hands. Determined that my life wasn't going to be defined by the horrible breakup I had endured a few months before.

Axel's words had chased me straight into the arms of my mother last night. Instead of going home to shower and change, I went directly to Alice. She had taken one look at me and declared that we needed to start on bread, so I'd have some to take home with me. She didn't ask questions as I pounded my frustration into the dough with my fists.

She had been dying to know what had me so worked up, but she didn't press and I didn't explain. I had been too busy thinking, trying to figure out why Axel had been trying to set me up with a friend who very much seemed to be in another relationship. Trying to figure out what I wanted. I knew what I wanted in the long run, a family. Like theirs: tight knit, loyal, and caring. If there was ever going to be a doctor that made me break my own rules, it would be Sean. I could see myself with any of them. Possibly even several of them at one time.

The thought honestly scared me. More than a little. I've stopped trying for anything beyond monogamy for a reason. Tristan, Garrett, and Keith had caused a lot of damage, but they hadn't been the only ones. The Anderson's have something special, and I had wanted it more than anything in the world and I had spent so much time trying to find it. What I had found had all been artificial, though. None of it was genuine. It had taken me years, but I finally accepted that a family like what the Anderson's have was something that happened to you, something that fell into your lap, not something you went hunting for and tried to craft for yourself.

Even if six of them weren't wrapped up in relationships I was unwilling to come between, opening myself back up to that felt like a risk I couldn't take. Not when I needed their friendship more than their affection. Not when I couldn't choose just one or even five of them. Not when I shouldn't even be thinking about this at all, not when I'm still mentally getting over breaking up with Miranda and fighting with feeling touch starved.

Right now, I'd be using them, and I can't live with that. But friends... friends I could do.

Certainty had come in the form of a loaf of bread, lovingly baked before being wrapped in a parchment paper and sent home with me, but even with that, I was grateful for a day in the ER. Grateful for a day where I couldn't waste a moment being selfish. I missed them and regretted that I was losing a day of having them within arm's reach, but I needed this.

I was taking a moment of down time to work on charting when my attention was drawn to the nurse running the emergency communication between the ER and the ambulances as she pushed away from the desk, a careful calm on her face. Dr. Tiner was on his way out of a patient's room when she called out to him. "We have a major trauma on the way. GSWs to the face and abdomen, patient is a 16 year old female. ETA is fifteen minutes."