Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Undisputedly, this week was the hardest week of their lives. At The Hub Hospital in Colorado, they got pretty much the most difficult cases Colorado had to offer. All the patients whose county hospitals couldn’t figure out got sent to the Hub, where people assumed they had a better chance.

Sure, sometimes they were right and they lived, but this week wasn’t one where all the patients lived and got happy endings. This was the hospital where they lost patient after patient until the interns broke and the doctors worked until they were just a complicated pile of mental stress and bones.

This week especially was hard. The organ transplant receivers were...struggling, as were the doctors treating them.

The first one to go was Mrs. Walter, and that wore everyone down a couple notches, to say the least.

Mr. Morello went next, and that...was hard. Losing patients wasn’t something you ever got used to, and losing multiple people so soon made it difficult for everyone to go on.

Walking into their little break room meant finding James, sitting on the couch and looking out the window, one hand gently stroking his facial hair as though he was trying to come up with some way to distract himself from the deaths.

“Hey, man,” Aleks spoke, jolting James out of his reverie with what he hoped was a way to cheer James up. James’ smile was the light of the hospital that meant to keep it out of dark places like this. But right now, James’ face looked tired, as though he was dead on his feet, and his eyes looked like they would be no different shut and sleeping when they directed their attention to Aleks.

Aleks smiled, hoping it would alleviate some of James’ emotional tension, but when it did nothing, Aleks continued talking. “So I thought you could use some lunch,” he said, instead of pointing out how obviously bad James needed Aleks, needed someone to take his mind off the pain.

“No, thanks,” James’ voice is barely a whisper as he shifts in his seat, facing more forward as Aleks sits beside him, putting the bag of take out on the coffee table in front of them.

“Guess that lunch was kind of a one time thing, then,” Aleks mumbles, shifting to face sideways on the couch to better address James. “There’s no way you saw that coming, dude. I mean, rabies? Who checks for rabies anyway? Testing for it woulda meant wasting time those patients didn’t have.”

“Guess I was obsessed with getting those organs,” James replies, and Aleks considers a whole sentence progress, something that he jumps on immediately.

“You had to be, those people would’ve died without them, and that was a call you had to make. I would’ve made the same call.”

James looks over at that, and he looks a lot more broken inside than Aleks could’ve possibly anticipated. But all he says is, “Yeah?” and he looks...almost like he believes Aleks, almost a little bit better.

Almost.

“Anyway, I got us lunch, and I think we’ve earned a little Panda Express.” He reaches for the bag and starts to open it, fully content on the idea that this is the moment he pulls James out of his depressive snap. His “all the patient deaths are my fault” self-blaming episode that Aleks hates seeing more than anything in the world. Like some kind of breakdown.

But, now was one of those days the universe liked to chose specifically to prove Aleks wrong, because the moment he started pulling boxes and chopsticks out of the bag, their pagers went off.

James looked at his before Aleks could look at his own, and immediately mutters, “Oh God,” and Aleks knows somewhere in the hospital, a patient is coding.

Not another one. Please. Not today.

James shuts his eyes, tightly, so tight that from across the couch Aleks can make out the wrinkles in his face that stress brought on, the gray hairs in his bun and his beard. “Come on ,” he mumbles, and it’s so soft a plea that Aleks almost doesn’t hear it.

Wishes he hadn’t.

Chapter Text

Walking into the patient’s room meant hearing the mind shattering, elongated beep of ‘no heartbeat’ from the machine as James grabs the paddles and looks over the patient at the nurse  on the other side. Blonde hair and a hopeful smile that screams, ‘Maybe we’ll save this one!’ Lindsay Washburn. James had always kind of liked her cheery disposition, but right now knew he couldn’t match it.

“Clear!,” he calls out, pressing the paddles on the patient’s chest and squeezing them, pulling them off just as the patient’s chest jumps up. It always felt like they were following the electric paddles, like one more volt would’ve saved them. It breaks James’ heart every time he sees it. As soon as his hands leave the patient’s chest, Lindsay is pressing the O2 mask back onto his face, eyes fixed on the patient until James speaks again.

One glance at the heart rate monitor, “Still in v-tach,” he says, out loud.

Another second goes by.

“Clear!”

Lindsay pulls away at the same moment James leans forward and presses the paddles on his chest again, and he doesn’t have to look up to know there’s another nurse beside Lindsay, one he vaguely recognizes as Jakob.

“Clear!”

He presses the paddles down a third time, desperately determined to save one fucking patient today.

When he pulls away and looks at the monitor, he knows.

They all know.

Thing about James was, he was known for his sarcastic comments and angry screaming.

This was neither of those things. He said nothing when he furiously shoved the heart monitor to the floor, said nothing as he punched a hole in the wall and stepped away.

That made it worse.

Made it burn a hole in Lindsay when he met her eyes, hands tangled in his hair and ripping it out of the organized bun it used to be this morning. She’d never seen him lose control like this, and it wasn’t something she ever wanted to see again. Because unlike all the other times, this was real, heartbroken anger. Pained, furious emotion. And she hated seeing it in James.

Unlike all the other times, when James ran from his emotions, he stayed. Stayed frozen with his hands in his hair after everyone else left, stayed until Aleks came in and stood silently at his side.

When Aleks appears, it spurs James back into reality. He lowers his hands back to his sides, looking over as he speaks in a soft, cracked sort of sad voice. “He...wasn’t about to die, was he? Coulda waited another month for a kidney.”

Then James looks down, to the floor, and he turns and leaves.

It clicks a couple seconds later. “Where are you going? Your shift’s not over.”

James doesn’t stop, but Aleks knows he heard him.

“James!”

James stops, doesn’t turn around, but he stops and it’s enough for Aleks.

“Remember what you told me? The second you start blaming yourself for people’s deaths, there’s no coming back.”

He can hardly finish the sentence from choking on his own heart when James turns to face him, eyes red with tears Aleks never thought he’d see.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

James shuts the door behind him when he leaves.