A/N: I'm back! Hope you enjoy, please leave a comment. Consider checking out my other fic I just completed, Let Me In. It's a kaisoo vampire au. Thanks for reading! enjoy!

Switching from day shifts to night shifts was never easy. Disrupting the body’s circadian rhythm never really ended well, Tao could best describe it as jet lag, with a hint of flu-like illness. Increased caffeine intake was a given, loud music between calls helped also. Obviously, the weekends were a busier time for night shift staff but disregarding that there was no other pattern. You could have one Monday where ten people all had heart attacks at the same time, or a Monday where everyone made it through the day without any serious injury.

They’d been having a particular problem with an elderly lady who had fallen over in her rather obscure home. Tao suspected a hip break, the way one of her legs looked longer than the other backed up his theory nicely. Normally this would not be much of an issue for the two of them, but because she’d fallen in the upstairs area of the house, and for some reason, the staircase had a very low ceiling, they were worried about how to transport her. Realistically they needed some extra assistance.

Kris had spent the last 30 minutes chatting with her casually, not once letting on how serious this situation could get. Hip fractures had chances of compromising blood supply to the leg, as a very important blood vessel runs through it. Obviously they weren’t about to make her panic by telling her these things, so instead, the conversation topics centred around her children and grandchildren, who unfortunately weren’t living in the area anymore. 

Kris always had a soft spot for the older ladies, they always made him think of his own grandma.

Frustrated, Tao called in again, leaning against the bedroom door facing out to the hallway, walkie-talkie in his right hand. “Hello, this is unit 6362, just checking for an ETA on that backup unit?” 

The beeping from the walkie-talkie was loud and obnoxious, signalling the end of a transmission each time. After an awkward few second wait, the lady from control got back to him. “Hi 6362, a priority call came through and the backup unit was diverted. The next available unit will be sent to you.”

Oh, great.

Not that he could get mad at it, that's how ambulances work. Some people believed this misconception that you were put into a queue to wait for one, but that wasn’t true. Different calls had different levels of urgency, they’re not going to make someone who is having chest pains wait for an ambulance, they weren’t going to leave a woman in labour. Call handlers had to essentially triage their patients when resources were short, the sickest are seen first.

Which is what had happened to Tao.

He felt slightly guilty, the woman had been on the floor for a substantial amount of time before she managed to call for an ambulance, and was very uncomfortable. Ideally, he wanted to get her to the hospital as soon as they could, but there was no safe way to do it with just the two of them, especially with how awkward the staircase was. He wasn’t about to compromise his patient’s safety. 

Turning back into the room, Tao sighed. “Looks like the wait is going to be a bit longer than anticipated,” He said, voice a little bit louder than normal, Mrs Choi didn’t have very good hearing anymore.

For someone in such a bad situation, she was very relaxed and very sweet. Tao would have expected her to be a bit impatient, especially now she’d been waiting for so long. He guessed she was one of those sweet older people who didn’t want to trouble anyone by asking for help, Tao worried for those type of people the most. 

Kris joined in. “I hope you didn’t have any plans for the day, Mrs Choi.” He said with a loud voice, giving her a sad smile.

She politely said she didn’t get out much anymore, not after her husband’s passing. Though her weekly routine of going to the markets, going swimming and going to church was still the same. The first time since they arrived, she fussed, saying that she was beginning to feel more pain.

Kris was on it, giving her just a little bit of morphine as a topper. Tao thanked whatever god there was that made these patients so… patient? Clearly feeling distressed but hiding it because they don’t want to be a burden. How could they ever be a burden? They’re someone’s parents, someone’s grandparents, someone’s neighbour. No one is ever a burden, even the regular callers.

Looked like it was going to be a long night, for them both and poor Mrs Choi.

--

Things weren’t really going any better for anyone in the emergency department either, particularly for Junmyeon, who had been sat and the nurse's station for the last fifteen minutes, engrossed in a medical book. Going from the pile of other books next to him, he hadn’t found out what he wanted to know.

Sehun had brought him coffee, before patting his back and going to do rounds. Junmyeon was grateful, he’d not really slept the previous night, and he’d worked through his break today to read. He was getting frustrated, none of the books were telling him what he needed to know, and he was beginning to feel the pressure.

He slammed his arms across the book and put his head down, sighing loudly.

From across the room, Yixing had been watching him. He’d not had any kind of conversation with Junmyeon since their initial meeting, and he could see that Junmyeon looked like he needed help, but his anxiety was beating his today. The boxes of pills which he needed to log into the system were his metaphorical wall, built to protect himself from unwanted social advances. He was torn.

Another fifteen minutes passed, Yixing snuck quick glances in as he typed furiously on the computer. Poor Junmyeon was onto another book now, flicking through the pages angrily, a frown on his face.

Yixing had an internal debate. He could go over, ask him if he needed a hand or just someone to listen to him verbalise his thought processes, with a high chance of somehow embarrassing himself. Or he could stay hidden at the medicine cupboards and get increasingly more anxious as he watched Junmyeon struggle with something.

Either way, it was a lose-lose situation. He was probably going to embarrass himself regardless, best to be of help to someone at least. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, clenching his fists and feeling the dampness of his palms, before slowly making his way over to the nurse's station.

The doctor didn’t react or even notice that Yixing was stood there, so he awkwardly announced his presence with a gentle hello, feeling his voice go slightly higher than usual, making him blush.

“Oh, Yixing! Sorry I didn’t see you there, my brains a bit fr