Sneak peek of new gang harry! (Patreon)

We have a new gang harry you guys and this is everything I have written so far! Let me know what you think :) 

_______________________________________________________________________

i.

The first breath of autumn carries a distinct scent. 

It was warm, cidery and sweet; like late evenings in early October with close-knitted pumpkin-colored socks and swaddling snug in a dusty quilt from storage, all hues of oranges, reds, and browns, palms heated by cocoa filled mugs nestled between them. Pancakes dipped in maple and honey, surgery on nose hairs as they are on taste buds. Sat in a car with an apple cinnamon freshener fixed to the vent, shuddering with the heat. 

The air was crisp and biting, each breeze carrying the last sigh of a leaf’s final breath. Goosebumps pimple in tiny eggs beneath sleeves, snaking down the stomach and scaling across the back. Maybe the sun will pull from behind the clouds to cast a spot of warmth, and maybe it was welcomed, or maybe it was unbidden, but it gave brief kisses goodbye before it planned on disappearing for a few months. 

At that first smell of fall and that first chilled wind that tickles up her arms, Y/N is transmitted to a higher plane of existence, she’s almost absolutely sure of it. It just put her in a much better mood than she would otherwise. Instead of the burning alive in the thick synthetic material of her scrubs, she could sit outside for lunch and detach herself from the sterile air of the hospital. She could stab her fork into sliced strawberries without someone appearing, begging her to take their shift next Saturday, or pleading with her to take the obstinate man in bed 304 who absolutely refuses to take his medicine -- like the very act will kill him. 

In the courtyard, where there were large trees with thick branches coated in leaves various shades of reddish-yellowish-brown hanging over the sitting areas, she was at absolute peace. Looking at the clock, she doesn’t dread that it’s just half past noon and she has a little over six more hours to go. Instead, she thinks in six short hours she will be snuggling her face into the soft fur of her dog (a Swedish Vallhund -- the viking dog -- properly named Ubba), in ghost printed slippers, with her belly full of the roast that she put in the pot before she left, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the TV.  She’d be content beyond belief and that was something to look forward to. 

Plus it was a pretty calm day, or as calm as days could be at the hospital. She’d admitted a new patient, helped a sweet old woman ambulate after her knee surgery, passed her meds, helped a new PCA with a bed bath, and discharged a patient who finally got a kidney transplant and could go off dialysis. It had been a while since she had a day float by so nicely, where she could sit outside with a sandwich and fruit and feel at ease while she was there. 

And hell, once she had finished eating she hadn’t even gone out of her way to avoid Niall -- a prick of a nurse who liked to dump his difficult cases off to her. Went right past his med cart without even a glimmer of a thought to speed behind him. . .had even raised her hand up to greet him, but as soon as he locked eyes with her, his shoulders sagged with what looked like relief.  

“You’re just the person I wanted to see,” he jabs his thumb at the doorway of the room he’d been looming outside of, and if her day had been a new, shiny vinyl Niall had just scratched the record, “Two things: the man in there is a rotten arsehole who won’t eat or take his medicine -- he’s one of Dr. Pogsky’s --  and he’s got the same first name as another one of my patients, n’y’know how me head gets boggled. Do me a favor and switch me?”

It wasn’t as if Niall was bad at being a nurse either, which was the stupid part; little old ladies loved him, middle-aged men thought he was a lads lad, women in their late twenties to early thirties thought he was just a doll, and kids went googoo for him when he started slinging suckers -- but old men hated him.  Hated his guts, actually, and neither he nor Y/N could pinpoint exactly why. Normally they’re just grumpy old men who don’t much like Y/N either but are more inclined to be complacent with her because she offered them pudding cups. 

She grimaces at his request, “I dunno, Niall, I kinda --” 

“I’ll take anyone of your shifts at any point in time, and you can bet ya I’ll have at your next C.diff patient,” he snaps his fingers, eyes glimmering like he’d just realized the perfect way to sweeten the deal, “And I know Carter flew in that cardiothoracic surgeon from Germany so he could assist in doing a heterotopic heart transplant next Thursday, I guarantee I’ll make it so you can go watch the whole bloody thing.”

And he always had the best compensation for it! Which was so annoying, because Y/N wishes she were stronger or hadn’t accidentally let him know all the things that she couldn’t stand so he could dangle relieving her of those duties in front of her face when he wanted something. As much as she would like to not deal with a “rotten arsehole” who refuses to eat or take his medicine, but she much less wants to deal with C.diff and a heterotopic heart transplant is like a once in a lifetime kind of thing to see. She had been so bummed because Dr. Carter played favorites on who could peek in on his OR, and Y/N had managed to never become one of those favorites. Niall, however, was Dr. Carter’s golden boy and everything he had ever looked for in a nurse. Which meant a one-way ticket into incredible surgeries that she could only dream of being able to watch, all if she just dealt with a curmudgeonly bloke? 

Her shoulders slump in defeat and Niall knows he’s got his hooks sunk deep to her muscle as he reaches out to squeeze her shoulders firmly, a large grin on his face before he tells her gleefully, “Come with me then, Babe, I’ll go over his chart with ya and do the paperwork myself!”

That’s how she had ended up here, outside the door of a man who was admitted about a week ago, with a list of diagnoses about a mile long. . .Class II CHF, Chronic Pancreatitis, Hypertension, Gout, and Niall was pushing for a psych evaluation because he thinks he’s depressed, and well. . .well, no wonder. As terrible as it sounds, she could understand why he would be pissy --  sometimes Niall was much too chirpy after someone’s woken from a nap, she’d tell him to bugger off too. 

She had his oral medications in a small medicine cup tucked between her fingers and a small cup of water. Dr. Pogsky was about the worst doctor to have if the patient didn’t want to take their medicine -- his automatic response to the charting wasYou must not be a very good nurse then -- and it was so irritating Y/N could spit on him when he says it. All-day doctors will have something to say about how they’re doing things on the floor when they barely spend any time with the patients and it grates her nerves so ferociously she has to grind her teeth to stop from saying something that might get her written up. 

With a deep breath, she rolls out her neck and slinks into the room after giving a perfunctory knock with her the back of her hand, “Mr. Gibson?” She calls from behind the curtain drawn around his bed -- how the room is set up, is from where she enters, his pressed against the right wall and adjacent to that is the TV. With the curtain drawn, there was no way he could see the screen, she has doubt that he owns a self phone or computer that’s keeping him preoccupied, and unless someone was silently giving him a bed bath, she heard nobody in here. The window was long, expanding from the wall across from where she stood at the door but none of the haze autumn sunlight had a chance to enter. There was a singular lamp flickered on, but that was it. “Are you decent?” 

There’s a short grunt that comes from behind the curtain and Y/N takes that as her permission to proceed, drawing the curtain back to reveal an average-sized man, skin pale, eyes bleak and sunken, lips cracked dry -- he had thinning hair, dyed brown but the roots show he’d gone grey. He looked small in the bed, his gown rumpled around him, and from his frail appearance and the mostly untouched lunch tray sitting on the table that’s to the side of him (along with a few angry notes from prior nurses), he hadn’t been big on eating

No wonder he’s grumpy, Y/N thinks to herself, she sure as hell would be too. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Gibson, I’m Y/N, and I’m taking over for Niall for the rest of your stay with us as your morning nurse the days I’m here,” she rolls out her shoulders, trying not to feel defeated when he looks at her with absolutely no care in his gaze, “Which means you’ll be seeing a lot of me. I brought your medicine,” she shakes the cups in her hands, “Toss these puppies back real quick and I can get your area cleaned up a bit.’ 

He shuffled in the bed, his brows pinching, “I don’t want the medicine.” 

“So I’ve heard,” she nods, “I’ll stay until you do then, but think of it this way -- the quicker you take it, the quicker I leave, the quicker you get back to your brooding.” 

There was a nurse who had trained Y/N when she had started working here two years ago, fresh-faced from nursing school, and still rolling on the belief that tiptoeing around a patient was the way to go about it. Her name was Janet, she was five-foot-three and took Y/N outside to the courtyard for lunch because Spring was Janet’s favorite and she liked smelling the flowers from the garden while she ate her turkey and cheese. For some reason, her and Janet got along very well, and Janet decided that she would squeeze every ounce of advice out of herself before she retired that following Summer, to make Y/N the best that she could be. 

“If a patient’s every givin’ you trouble, call ‘em out on it. Don’t walk out of that room with your tail between your legs -- call their bluff, let them know you see through them, and you’re not giving up even if they start swinging and cursing. You get loads more respect that way,” she shrugged her shoulders, “And sometimes you have to let them know when they’re being babies. There’s plenty of people out there who need help and can’t get it for some reason or the other, and they want to refuse it? Whine and cry about getting help?” She shook her head, “The day you let them get away with being brats and don’t get at least a little jab in, is the day I go live a thousand feet deep in a cave, ‘cos I oughta be embarrassed for not teaching you anything.”

And Y/N quite liked Janet and knew for a fact that she couldn’t swim, so she doesn’t give up. 

They sit there quietly for a moment and where Niall had given up in a huff of air, Y/N merely smiles at him, spots a rolling chair sticking out just behind the curtain and uses the ball of her foot to roll it over. She’s about to make a big show of sitting down but he holds up his hand, “For fuck sake, fine,” he grumbles, voice croaky, “I’ll take the bloody pills, just leave.” 

“Just as soon as I get this place cleaned up.” She tells him, handing him the pills and the water, watching as he tosses them back and drinks the entire little cup of water -- even makes a show of showing up underneath his tongue, and she smiles, takes the cups away from him, and tosses them in the bin. 

First, she starts with the curtain, pulling it open on the side directed towards the window so that she opens up some room for her to work. She plucks some gloves on, picks up the waste bin, and throws away the tissues, paper towels, shreds of paper with no writing, and plastic cups of water from the table. There were quite a few cans of soda from the vending machine around the table where the visitors usually sat suggesting that he did have people come to see him, so she made good tossing that as well. She even tidied up the newspapers and magazines. 

He said nothing, until she pulled the window curtains open, “Close those damn things!” He all but protested, squinting at the light but Y/N ignored him, instead of drawing the much thinner screen over to block out some of the light pouring into his room. 

“I’m just opening them for a little,” she told him, “I’ll close them in about an hour or so, so you can get a little light in here.” 

He doesn’t protest anymore and Y/N takes this as a good sign, as she takes her gloves off, washes her hands, then plops her tush right down on the rolling chair she’d moved earlier that had convinced him to take his medicine, “Well, Mr. Gibson, since we’ll be seeing each other quite a lot, I think I ought to get to know more about you, yeah?” 

“Weren’t you supposed to let me brood?” He grumbles, looking out towards the window. 

“Right after you tell me what you do for a living,” she counters. 

For the first time, his lips drag up and crack a small, barely there but still there kind of smile. She knows she’s not the reason though. . .she doesn’t know how she knows but she just does. She can feel it. 

“Business.” He answers shortly, and Y/N nods. 

“Business, right, that’s fun,” she spun back and forth in the chair a bit, “I was never great at understanding stocks and whatnot so maybe you’ll be able to teach me something.” Y/N makes a mental note to put in an order for lip balm, as she watches his tongue smooth out over is mouth, “Alright, I got one fact about you, I’m happy with that. How about I learn another in . .” she checks her watch, “Two hours? Then we’ll see about a shower and some new clothes.” 

Clearing his throat, he says, “Not in two hours. . .I’ve got -- a coworker is coming, and I need to be alone with him.” 

Y/N raises her hands, “Fine by me, then we’ll do it in four hours.” She leaves no room for him to decline her, as she stands and moves the TV remote closer to him, “I think channel 5 is the news if you’re interested. See you soon!” 

When she’s left the room, she’s met with an overenthusiastic Niall who gives her a big thumbs up, “Knew you’d do the ol’ man better than me.” Y/N rolled her eyes at his comment on the way to the nurse’s station. 

Niall sticks around like a leech, and two hours later while he’s still thanking her (and giving her a white cherry flavored sucker), and she’s filling out another patient’s chart, she had forgotten that Mr. Gibson was getting a visitor at all. 

Or at least she had until a deep voice catches her off guard, commanding attention in essence but gentle in tone, “Excuse me,” Y/N nearly jumped out of her skin,  eyes flickering up to the voice and finding that a way-way-way too cute guy to be looking her directly in the eye was staring down, a small smile at his mouth and a bundle of flowers in his hand. The visitor tag on his shirt read ‘Harry’ and Y/N thinks it fits him quite nicely -- he looks like a prince, so why wouldn’t he share the name? His eyes were an all-consuming green, seafoam-y and bright, and his cheekbones were killer, along with a jawline that could cut glass, leading down to lips a soft, smooth strawberry pink. He combed tousled curls that tickle his ears,  away from his face, and Y/N sees that he’s got tattoos littering his arms because of it. It’d been a really long time since she was truly just taken by someone before, to where her breath caught in her throat and she was almost mad at him for being as gorgeous as he was. At some point, it just wasn’t fair. “I’m looking for Johnathan Gibson? Is this the right floor?” 

She cleared her throat, opening her mouth to respond but the sucker she’d been working diligently on flops out of her mouth and onto the desk. A small gasp leaves her and she feels her cheeks go warm, grabbing the sucker and making quick to toss it, giving an embarrassed smile to him. He watches amusedly, his brows raised, and Y/N’s about to call Janet and beg to live down in the ocean with her. 

“You’re on the right floor, yeah, he um --” she takes a Clorox wipe from the tin under the lip of the desk and wipes away at the sticky spot the sucker left, still making an effort to look up at him, but keeping her gazes as fleeting as she could without making it too obvious that she was acting like an overexcited high schooler, “He told me a coworker was coming, actually.” 

“The old man spoke about me?” He grinned, showing off pearly teeth, a beautiful smile and for  absolute fuck sake, this couldn’t be any more unfair, “I’m truly touched -- just knew that I was his favorite. Though this whole “coworker” thing just won’t do, m’practically his bloody son at this point.” 

Y/N huffs a small laugh, “It’s good you brought flowers,” she told him, “It should make him feel better, they look lovely.” 

Harry takes a look at the flowers like he hadn’t remembered they were in his hand and subsequently Y/N takes this as a chance to look at the rings that decorate his knuckles, two golden brassy rings with an H on his pinky  and an S on his ring finger, on his middle finger there was a golden lion with its mouth wide open around a purple jewel, detailed so precisely he had definitely paid a pretty penny for it and his thumb. His thumb he had on his thumb, but she couldn’t make out the details of that one, but it also looked pretty expensive. 

“These?” Harry looks into his hand, shaking them by the stem, “Not for the old man, I brought them for whoever his nurse might be as an apology,” he leans forward, pressing his chest against the desk and lowering his voice, “Between you n’me, he’s a bit of a prick, yeah? Whoever has him is a sorry soul.” 

Y/N feels her body flush warm, “Oh,” she gives a little laugh, “Then m’sorry to say that sorry soul is me.” 

Brows raising once more, he peels back some, “Well in that case, he’s a lovely lad, isn’t he? You’ll have a good time with him.” 

He presents her with the flowers and when Y/N takes them from him, their fingers stroke together and she swallows thickly, “Thank you, you really didn’t have to though --” she waves at him, looking for a place to set them, a variety of colors that reminded her of autumn, but she couldn’t tell you the type of flower they were, “ -- everyone’s a bit of a grouch when they first come in, but they tend to lighten up when they realize you’re the one who brings the drugs. Plus, I’m persistent, I’ll keep pushing till he loves me.”  

This works a chuckle out of him and it’s warm, dipped in nectar, sliding down her ears, “Guess we’re lucky you’re his nurse then.” Then he pauses for a moment, before prompting, “So his room is. . .”

“Oh yeah! Sorry,” she shakes her head, “It’s 507.” 

“Thanks Babe,” he drops his eyelid in a cheeky wink and Y/N thinks she might pass out, “Look forward to seeing you again.”