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jackwabbitFandom: Star Trek Discovery
Rated: G
Category: Culmets. Angst. Medical.
Word Count: 538.
Season: Post-two, Pre-three.
Spoilers: General Series Knowledge Through The End of Season Two.
Summary: You put on the scrubs. You do the job. Even if it’s the last thing you want to do. Because there’s no one else. Because it’s short-staffed and there’s a heavy caseload. Because when you’re in the scrubs, you’re a doctor. You’re not allowed to be anything else. Even in the twenty-third century.
Notes: Title from the Sense8 episode of the same name. Direct Continuation of “Natural Remedy.” Finally, this one is for lemonpiefirefly. I'm grateful that our first costume brought us together, and that it's been eclipsed by so many more. I love you.
Also, this is part of the "I Rang The Bell With My Heart In My Mouth" series, and stories in this series are presented as inspiration strikes, not chronologically. See notes above for timeframe/related stories.
In Hugh’s experience, doctors could sleep through a hurricane. The old adage about them waking up quickly because they were used to it? That was something laypeople liked to believe, but it was a myth.
He’d tried to wake too many sleep-deprived colleagues for too long to buy into that. There was a reason that nearly every contact list in every sickbay or hospital he’d seen was headed by something like “call three times – and use priority alert every time – before moving to next name.”
Yeah, people who worked long, very irregular hours for several days in a row didn’t wake easily.
Hugh was no exception, and after he finally realized his alarm was going off, he silenced it and rolled back over to sleep more, like he always did.
Then, like he sometimes did, he remembered what had been going on before he’d fallen asleep, and that was when he jerked awake suddenly, if incompletely.
He fumbled for his PADD on the nightstand and once he managed to get it in his hands and right side up, he flicked it on. He had no notifications. No messages. Nothing.
He sighed in relief. That was a good thing.
That meant nothing bad had happened with Paul while he’d been asleep.
He dropped the PADD onto the floor at the side of the bed and closed his eyes again.
Ten minutes later, his alarm only sort of woke him out of a quickly-resumed sleep. Ten minutes after that, it did it again, and this time, it did a better job. Hugh sighed.
“Fine,” he said aloud, rolling over and swinging his legs out of bed.
Normally, he’d have hit the delay button another few times, but today wasn’t normal. Not by a long shot. So he managed to get dressed, slam down some coffee, and head to sickbay.
As soon as he got there, he looked for Paul. And as he’d expected, he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been discharged to quarters just yet after all (something about the severity of his injuries and Tracy not trusting him not to run off to engineering, which Hugh had to agree with), but he’d been sent to a secondary unit to free up space in sickbay for those still more seriously wounded. He was someone else’s patient now.
Hugh knew that was the right decision.
Still, he wanted to see him.
But it would have to wait.
Because right now, Doctor Culber, attending physician coming on shift, took precedence over Hugh, hopefully still husband of Paul.
Doctor Culber relieved Doctor Pollard, sending her away for twelve hours rest.
Then he got to work.
He repaired a few lacerations that had either been ignored or had had to wait while higher priority patients had been treated. He took a ruptured bladder patient to surgery. He constantly monitored patients and changed orders based on myriad screens and readouts.
Yes, Doctor Culber was busy.
His shift passed quickly. It was half over before he realized it.
But whenever he could, Hugh snuck a look at his personal PADD, which was linked to the secondary unit and continuously displayed only one set of vitals – Paul’s.
And for Hugh, the day seemed like it would never end.