Open Heart One Shots (Choices)

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Summary: Cassie spends a grueling day dealing with a crisis in the emergency department only to find that love is blind after all.

A/N: Based on a prompt request I received on Tumblr: "Thinking they're beautiful even when they look their worst"

Pagers went off across Edenbrook Hospital with a 911 code calling for all available doctors to report to the Emergency Department.

Cassie Valentine had just come off a 14-hour shift where she'd come into close contact with several bodily fluids, each more disgusting than the next. She couldn't wait to go home and wash off her gruesome day.

The trickle of water they laughingly called a shower in the resident locker rooms didn't even warrant a consideration. She wished she was going back to Ethan's place and his multi-body jet shower system. But he was on the night shift, and she didn't feel comfortable going there when he wasn't around.

When the page came, a part of her groaned in dismay knowing that she was likely stuck looking like this for the next little while. As a third-year resident, she knew better to think that end of shift meant end of shift. If a 911 page came and you were on premises, you hauled butt.

By the time she made her way to the ED, her friends were already there along with Zaid and Ines, lined up near the doors. She grabbed protective gear and gloves before joining them.

"What's happening?" she asked the group.

"Multi-vehicle accident, two DOA,15 injured," said Zaid, his face more dour than usual. "Edenbrook's the closest trauma center so they're sending them all here."

As the team of doctors waited for the paramedics, Cassie found herself next to Bryce. He looked chipper and rested.

"You look like hell," he grinned, taking in the straggly hair, ponytail escaping her hair tie and the wrinkled, stained scrubs that she hadn't had time to change out of.

"And you look like you're about to head off to a club for a night of dancing instead of likely being on your feet for the next foreseeable future," she replied, grinning back to show him she wasn't offended by his candor.

"Close enough," he said, feet tapping in anticipation. "I was supposed to meet friends at a country western bar in Cambridge, but Tanaka called me back."

"Country western, huh?" she mused, trying to imagine her surfer friend in a cowboy hat and boots. "I didn't think you were into that."

"First time," he said. "But you know I'm always up for new experiences. Speaking of. Here we go."

The team sprang into action as the ambulances pulled up and the stretchers started rolling in with the paramedics quickly calling out stats.

"On the count of three," said Cassie to the team around her as the first patient was brought into the treatment room. "One, two, three..."

They grasped the sheet placed over the slide board and deftly transferred the patient to the bed.

And with that the ballet of an emergency department during trauma began with patients being triaged, treated on site based on severity of injury or wheeled off for surgery.

Cassie lost sight of her friends, but she occasionally heard Jackie shouting instructions or Sienna's gentle voice bringing down the frenzy level when a patient started hyperventilating from panic.

At one point during the night, she saw Ethan overseeing this year's crop of interns caught in the fray of triaging patients, his austere manner at odds with the calmness of his voice. It reminded her of the first time they'd met, in an emergency as you'd have it, and how he'd guided her through her first thoracotomy.

Several hours later, the ED was finally operating at normal levels and Cassie was able to clock out after checking on her patients. She had been working for at least twenty hours, awake for much longer.

Leaning against the wall, her brain was trying to get her tired body to cooperate and just head to the locker room. Even the trickle was starting to sound like a waterfall, and she desperately needed that shower now.

She opened her eyes when she felt the air shift as someone came to stand beside her. She smiled as his scent broke through the other more noxious ones wafting from her scrubs.

"You're beautiful, you know that, right?"

With laughing eyes, she glanced over at Ethan, who looked pristine and freshly showered, like he'd never spent hours in the middle of a trauma. She couldn't wait to be an attending and have access to better shower facilities.

"Scrubs covered in grime and puke, hair all messy and sweaty, not a lick of make up on and I smell," she said with a laugh, shaking her head. "You must love me deeply, Dr. Ramsey to even think I'm beautiful looking and smelling the way I do now."

"Madly," he confirmed with a smirk.

"Someone's mad alright," she quipped, closing her eyes as exhaustion took over.

Maybe she should just crash in the on-call room, she thought, rather than try to catch the bus home.

"Come with me, Rookie," he said, taking her hand in his.

Too tired to argue, she followed him, waiting until they were inside the elevator to ask where they were going.

"You'll see," was all he said as he pressed the button to the seventh floor.

He led her down the hallway to the Diagnostic Team's office, swiping his card to unlock the door before switching on the lights. He pressed a button to shade out the glass walls, cocooning them away from prying eyes.

"If you've brought me here to have sex," she said, biting back a yawn, "you'll have to do all the work. I'm too tired and might just sleep through it."

"Tempting as that sounds," he said dryly, "I have something better in mind. Follow me."

He walked towards a door in the corner that Cassie had always assumed was a storage closet. But he opened it to reveal a fully equipped bathroom with a glass-enclosed shower.

She stared at the shower enclosure with rapture, not catching the amusement on Ethan's face as he watched her face shift from tired to excited.

"Go ahead," he said with a wave of his hand as she gazed back at him. "Take your time. I'll go grab your things from your locker."

"Care to join me?" she asked, her eyes turning flirty as she found her second wind.

"If I get in there," he said, stepping closer, "you're not going to get clean for a long time."

With that he gave her a peck on her forehead and shoved her forward, shutting the door behind her.

A few minutes later, he heard the sound of the shower come on and her loud groan as the jets likely soothed her sore muscles. Her sounds of pleasure made him almost turn back to join her. Almost. But what she needed more was this time to wash all the worries and fatigue away.

They could wait, he thought with a grin as heleft to get her things. And besides, the couch in the team's office was aperfectly acceptable substitute.