Open Heart One Shots (Choices)

Lullaby

Summary: While caring for Baby Hudson in the neonatal ICU, Ethan Ramsey can'thelp but reflect on the past and provide comfort to someone who needs it.

When it came to Dr. Ethan Ramsey, everyone learned to take cover if they saw him coming. Anyone that had worked in Edenbrook Hospital for less than a day knew that. Everyone that is except the new internal medicine intern, Dr. Cassie Valentine.

She had called Ramsey an asshole, been chewed out by him for nearly killing a patient, flirted with him at Donahue's, called him out for his shitty attitude towards interns at morning rounds, and had barely escaped being caught eavesdropping one night. That was just the first week.

Everyone from nurses to orderlies to long-term patients started taking bets on how Valentine would best Ramsey next. Neither could have predicted seeing the Great Ramsey accompanying a lowly intern to his luxury sedan and returning a short while later holding a grimy green stuffed frog in hand.

Marlene and Sarah, the two nurses that worked most closely with Dr. Ramsey, had exchanged baffled looks at the sight of the habitually austere physician smiling. The two doctors had just neared Patient Hudson's room when Dr. Valentine excitedly grabbed the toy from him only to have him lunge for it and miss.

That's when the miracle smile had happened. It had transformed him from handsome to irresistible.

That's why they had been a bit surprised when they heard how Ramsey had rebuffed Valentine later that night and walked away, unseeing or more likely uncaring of the devastation on her face.

Little did they know that also during that night, everything would change even if the two people at the heart of the story didn't quite realize it...yet.

Ethan Ramsey had no trouble admitting when he was wrong. It had never happened before, but theoretically he had accounted for the possibility. The intern Valentine had gotten under his skin from the first and made him uncomfortable with how astute she was.

Still, she would finish her three years and move on to the next hospital or wherever. If she survived the residency, that is, without killing another patient. And if she showed him the potential he had seen when he had first read her application. Then his job would be done.

Earlier, when he had walked into the neonatal ICU and seen her with Dolores' baby, he had been surprised by her determination to see the night through. She hadn't asked or even hinted she wanted him to stay, but he'd found himself unable to leave her or the baby fighting for his life.

So, they sat side by side, coffees in hand, eyes glued to Baby Hudson's slowly rising and falling chest as he breathed through the ventilator. Every now and then they exchanged desultory words, nothing of consequence. Their earlier, emotionally charged conversation was still fresh in their minds and they avoided anything close to that.

When he'd seen her before, she'd been dressed for a night of clubbing. Now, she was in scrubs, her hair tied back with two locks escaping on either side to frame her face. She looked tired and sad.

Losing a patient was always hard on a doctor, even more so when it happened in their first couple of weeks. He knew from experience that nothing but time would heal that loss.

Sometime during the night, Valentine — Cassie, he thought, face softening — closed her weary eyes, her head falling against his arm in an awkward angle. He shifted so that she was nestled into his shoulder, a more comfortable position than the one she'd been in.

She was less likely to wake up with a crick in her neck this way. Of course, he hadn't realized it would mean he was essentially trapped. Not that he was going anywhere. Not until he was assured that Dolores' son would survive.