Proof

Summary: MC (Callie) gets frustrated when her hard work has almost no impact on her ranking for the junior fellowship. An impromptu meeting with Ethan ensues.

Note: I have to give credit for this idea to my wonderful friend Lovemesomesnark. Thanks for making my muse run wild, M! 😊️

There is not enough coffee in the world to get me through this Monday.

Callie is on her fourth cup. It’s only eight in the morning. She’s entertaining the idea of begging Ethan to let her use his coffee machine. The cafeteria coffee tastes especially horrible today and is doing nothing for her crappy mood.

In the few brief moments of quiet early in her shift, she keeps thinking about the updated ranking list. She really needs to stop thinking about it, because remembering seeing her name next to the number 17 just makes her silently fume all over again. For four weeks she’s been pushing herself harder than she ever has. Work has taken over her entire existence. She dreams in diagnoses and lab reports. She wants this, more than almost anything, and she refuses to let Ethan second guess his decision to make an exception for her to compete for this position.

Thankfully the hospital gets busier and busier as the day goes on, and mostly keeps her mind off of the junior fellowship. Ines praises her work ethic and how quickly she’s picking things up. Callie appreciates it, but when she allows herself a moment of bitterness, she thinks to herself that she’d appreciate it more if she could see the effort paying off in her ranking.

That, and she’s been growing increasingly frustrated that all of the more complex patients seem to get set neatly in Aurora’s lap while she simultaneously manages to avoid every patient that she dismisses as “easy” or “boring”. It irritates her to no end. These feelings of bitterness are unfamiliar and unwelcome, especially when the whole reason she went into medicine was to help people, not to cherry-pick patients because they were more interesting and could further her career. That’s not the kind of doctor she wants to be.

The first time she’d confronted Aurora about swooping in and taking a patient that Callie had started with, she’d had the graciousness to look guilty for half a second. Then that expression had vanished all too quickly and been replaced with a nonchalant shrug and a quip about taking it up with the chief.

Every time Callie thinks about going to Ethan she stops herself. Barely, sometimes, but she does. He wasn’t thrilled about this junior fellowship in the first place. She doesn’t think he’d get irritated enough with her questions to remove her from the running altogether, but she doesn’t particularly want to test that theory.

And if she’s being honest, she likes the hints of friendship that have slipped into their conversations. She doesn’t want to lose that. When she’s feeling even more honest, she also admits to herself that her feelings for him are starting to grow beyond just friendship, and she doesn’t want to lose the brief moments of flirtation and chaste, innocent touches that set her nerve endings on fire either.

Monday drags on. There’s a lull late in the afternoon, which Callie has learned all too quickly usually means they’re about to get slammed. Sure enough, almost as soon as Elijah comments on how quiet it is, patients flood the ER. Most of them have straightforward complaints and concerns, but the third patient Callie examines is a bit of a mystery. She’s fairly young. Her symptoms are all over the place.

Callie orders labs, running over possibilities in her head, and (surprise, surprise, she thinks sarcastically) by the time she comes back, Aurora is with her patient. Irritation rises in her throat.

“Dr. Emery,” she says calmly. “May I speak with you?”

“I’m with a patient,” Aurora says dismissively.

“Yes. A patient I was examining.”

“Chief Emery requested that I work with this patient. If you’d like to tell her otherwise, be my guest.”

A lightbulb suddenly goes off in Callie’s head at the comment. She’s hardly forgotten that Aurora is the niece of the chief, but suddenly, Aurora consistently ending up with all of the most complicated, challenging patients makes more sense. Of course she stays ranked number one. She has chance after chance to improve and demonstrate her skills when she’s constantly working with the most difficult patients.

The patient glances between the two of them. “Dr Ross?” she asks in confusion.

Aurora turns away from Callie and continues asking the patient questions. Callie plasters a smile on her face. “Dr. Emery will be taking over your care now. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”

“Yes. You are,” Aurora smiles pleasantly, and it just frustrates Callie more.

The cafeteria coffee tastes somehow even more awful when Callie stops there yet again. What she really wants is to rant and complain to someone about how ridiculous this whole situation is, but she suspects that won’t help things. So she sips the burnt, bitter liquid, and tries to keep calm. It works until she walks back by the ranking list and gets irritated all over again.

Before she can talk herself out of it, she’s outside Ethan’s office and knocking on his door. Loudly.

“Come in,” he calls.

He’s poring over a chart when she walks in and shuts the door behind her. He pulls his glasses off. It annoys her that her first automatic thought is how good he looks in those glasses.

Not why you came up here, Callie.

“Rookie,” he greets her. “Aren’t you supposed to be seeing patients?”

“Oh, I was,” Callie begins. “Until the Chief apparently decided Aurora should be working with my patient instead of me.”

Ethan raises an eyebrow, and suddenly all the frustration she’s been feeling comes pouring out. It’s like a dam has burst, words laced with bitterness flowing out of her. She expects him to cut her off, to tell her how unprofessional she’s being. She half expects him to tell her to leave and that she’s no longer in the running for the junior fellowship.

Instead, he stays seated at his desk, his fingers steepled together. She isn’t sure if that’s worse or better than him telling her to stop. At least maybe she’ll feel better once she gets it all out, even though this isn’t at all how she intended for this conversation to go.

It’s not until she says, “Do you still not trust me to work with the more complex patients? How am I supposed to show you what I can do if you never give me the chance?” that he suddenly gets up and walks over to her.

A tiny thrill runs through her at the clear frustration she can see written all over his face. She’s seen him frustrated and annoyed before, but there’s something different about his expression now.

“My level of trust in your ability has no impact on the patients you’re assigned or your ranking.”

“So I’m just imagining that nearly every complicated patient who walks in this door is handed off to Aurora?”

Ethan’s eyes blaze, turning a deeper shade of blue. “Are you accusing me of favoring Dr. Emery, Dr. Ross?”

His voice has gone low. Callie feels her heart start beating faster at his proximity. What is wrong with her?

Stop it, she scolds herself. Wrong place and way wrong time.

“No,” she says firmly. She’s well aware of how he feels about favoring anyone. He’s the last person she’d suspect of pulling strings to benefit any single person.

She meets his gaze. “I’m saying you can’t possibly expect anyone else to improve their skills or become a better doctor if the chief gives every challenging case to her niece.”

She swears the air is sucked out of the room. Ethan’s office is silent but for the quiet rhythmic tick of the second hand on his clock. God, what has she done? Now he really is going to remove her from the running. Will she even be allowed to finish her residency here? Did she just throw her entire career out the window?

Callie desperately tries to figure out how to possibly salvage this conversation. It’s not often her temper comes out, but every time it does, she finds herself wishing she’d come up with a recovery plan beforehand.

She realizes Ethan still hasn’t said anything. He’s just standing there, mere inches away, watching her. Why isn’t he saying anything? He leans in, just a little, and she swallows hard when she catches the scent of his cologne. It’s hard to think of a rational argument for her outburst when he smells so good and is standing so close to her.

“That isn’t what’s happening,” he finally says, and Callie feels her irritation flare up all over again.

“So I am just imagining it then,” she all but spits out. “All those times she refuses to see patients because they’re too ‘boring’ and then gets handed the most complicated ones, even if someone else started with them, I’m just-mmph!”

Ethan’s mouth crashes on to hers. Callie freezes, convinced she’s imagining this too. There’s no way that Ethan Ramsey is kissing her in his office.

He isn’t really gripping her hips in his hands. He can’t be holding her against the solid warmth of his chest. He definitely isn’t letting her slip her arms around his neck and thread her fingers into his hair when she finally registers that his lips are on hers and her brain and her heart screech at her to kiss him back. He can’t possibly be kissing her harder when a soft noise of pleasure slips out of her throat.

She trails one of her hands down from his hair, his stubble scratching pleasantly over her fingertips.

“Ethan,” she sighs, and hearing his name on her lips seems to shock him into realizing what they’re doing.

His hands drop from her hips and he jerks back immediately. He stares at her, his expression nearly unreadable. They both jump when his pager goes off.

Saved by the patients, Callie thinks. Ethan steps over to his phone and responds to the page.

Callie wills her thundering heart to slow down, her breathing to return to normal. She touches her lips, still in disbelief that Ethan just kissed her. He hangs up his phone and steps back around his desk.

“Callie. This can’t happen,” he says.

She gives him a pointed look. “It just did.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes briefly.

“It can’t happen again,” he clarifies. “You’re an intern. I’m your attending. I apologize. It was the heat of the moment and I was unprofessional.”

“I think I should clarify first that I have no complaints about you kissing me.”

Ethan closes his eyes again, then shakes his head. He looks at her sternly, but this time, she knows she’s not imagining the trace of a smile playing across his lips.

“I was paged to come assess a patient who just came in with some confusing symptoms. Let’s go.”

Callie fights back a smile. “Is this because you kissed me?”

She can’t resist teasing him, just a little, and is rewarded with another hint of a smile on his face, even as he huffs out a frustrated sigh.

“No. You said you want more chances to prove yourself, to build your skills.”

They step into the elevator. Callie nods. “Yes. I’m a good doctor. But I know I can be even better. I want to be better.”

The elevator stops and they walk out into near chaos. Nurses and doctors nearly swarm them. Ethan waits and falls into step with her as they head into the patient’s room. It does something to her, that simple gesture; to her heart, her confidence, her determination to succeed here.

“Well then, Rookie,” Ethan says, giving her another brief hint of a smile. “Go be better.”