A twelve hour shift in the ER could be brutal for any doctor, but for Ryan Ashton, it was every day. Often, the work was gratifying, and making a difference in the lives of other made up for all of the ridiculous hours and sometimes uncomfortable situations. It was a mostly thankless job, filled with grumpy patients who were in pain, and their families who always thought they knew better, but Ryan truly loved the work. He was the type of person who thrived in a high pressure environment and the majority of his residency had been handling traumas straight off of ambulances and tending to crashing patients on gurneys. Now, as the attending physician, his life was more about paper work, supervising and seeing people only after they had been dealt with by nurses and subordinates. 

Truthfully, it got a little boring.

“Doctor,” said a blonde nurse, dressed in pale blue scrubs, “we've got room seven's x-rays back if you want to take a look.” 

The dark-haired man looked up from scrawling his name on a form and slid a chart back into its appropriate spot behind the nurses station before putting his hand out for the x-rays. Ryan held the films up to the light and immediately spotted a clean break in the forearm. “Get him in a cast up to the elbow, I'll write a script for painkillers and be in to talk to him as soon as I can,” he said, before handing the films back off to the nurse. 

As she left, his eyes wandered to the clock on the wall. It was just past nine, and Ryan only had a few more hours on his shift before he could go home and sleep. Above him, the fluorescent lighting continued to beat down on the shiny floors, hurting his already tired eyes even more. Briefly, he wondered if he had time for a quick cup of coffee before he had to make his rounds to patients waiting to see a doctor. It had been a fairly slow night so far, just a few broken bones, a sick kid or two, and only one heart attack. Normally, Boston was more lively than this.

[i]We got a bus on the way![/i]

Ryan knew how quickly things changed around a hospital, especially in the ER, but he had apparently thought too soon that the rest of his night would be forms and prescription writing. Coffee would have to wait.

“ETA?” he asked, watching as the trauma team began to mobilize.

“Less than five minutes,” one resident answered. 

“Stats?” 

“Nineteen year old African American male, multiple gunshot wounds to the torso.”

As they said, a city never slept.

Ryan waited for the arrival of the rig and quickly made his way down to the ambulance bay as the teen on the gurney was rushed past him. He wasn't in good shape, but Ryan had faith in his staff and he knew that they would work as hard as they could and then some to save his life. “Get him stable first! He's my number one as soon as you're done. He's gonna need surgery to dig those slugs out.” And then Boston PD would be by, wanting to know who shot this kid and why, and they would need the evidence from his body. It was better to extract the bullets sooner rather than later. The kid was in for a rough few hours if he made it that long.

Although Ryan wanted to be in the ER where the action was, there were things he was legally obligated to do first. He dealt with the EMT's fairly often, but they were hardly ever the same people as their shifts were as sporadic as his own. He never took the time to get to know any of them, either, not that he really had the time. The city had a limited number of medical vehicles, and they weren't to be out of commission long from one emergency to another. 

“One of you have a report for me?” he asked, his smile polite but slightly tired as he reached for a pen from his coat pocket. Ryan looked expectantly to the dark-haired EMT, waiting for someone to hand him something to sign. All that money spent at medical school and those years of being a resident had ultimately led up to him signing his name over and over. He was living the dream. “And where are the cops? They're never far behind you guys,” Ryan chuckled.