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*

"Yaaaaawn."

It was very quiet in the hospital, almost remarkably so. You never knew what you would get when you signed in for a night shift - there could be a pileup on the highway, a massive influx of drunken revellers, or we could turn into the set of some low budget horror movie set into an abandoned hospital with flickering lights and empty gurneys lining the blood-splattered hallways. At least ours were only stained with other bodily fluids, despite the best attempts of the janitorial staff at keeping the puke at bay.

"Yaaaawn."

"I can see whether you've had your adenoids taken out or not."

I chuffed and inhaled some of the sweet aroma of coffee from my mug before flicking a smile in the direction of Doctor Browning enjoying her own mugful over on the small table while I had taken over a good half of the couch in the break room. She didn't look quite as tired as I did, but maybe she was even more used to this than I was. Who knows. Were bears nocturnal? I doubted that, but I suppose you could learn into that, too.

"Just have to push through the midnight dumps and then I'll be fine," I told her with a little smile.

"Oh yes," she rumbled. "It always gets worst at this time."

"At least we'll be more chipper for it once the bars close and the patients starts rolling in," I mused. "And in its eternal wisdom, the hospital administration thinks that by having a PA giving them banana bags and stitching them up after they take a tumble and are shipped here, they can save so much money for other noble purposes."

"What do you expect?" she snickered. "Which one are you more likely to see, a Morgan S. Kleiner Neonatal Intensive Care Unit or a Morgan S. Kleiner Newly Drunken Stitching Up Unit?"

"You do have a point," I mused. "I guess we're just not sexy enough."

The big bear lady chuckled roughly once again and dipped into her coffee.

"Yeah, right."

I stretched my paws up above my head, which caused the sleeves of my white coat to roll down a bit to expose bare arms, since I was wearing green scrubs underneath it. That was another thing you learned to do for night shifts - never dress nicely, you'll come to regret it later on. That's why I knew to wear plastic shoes, too.

"Doctor Logan, though..." she mused.

I gave her a curious look. She could very well see it, too, and smiled coyly at the sight of my expression upon hearing her statement.

"He wears scrubs well," she said.

Well wasn't this an interesting turn of a topic, I thought. Perhaps her knowledge of me sharing my life with a certain firelion of masculine persuasion was the reason she found it prudent to engage me in some girl talk, thinking that I would be up to gossipping about the butt of the trauma surgeon tiger.

"It's a bit hard to tell most of the times," I replied in an equally playful tone to her initial remark about the implied tightness the tiger's ass created in his hospital clothing, "he's usually wearing one of the trauma gowns when I get to see him around here."

She winked.

"You weren't around the one night shift when he was sleeping on his belly in Exam 6 and Libby happened to go in looking for a spare monitor..."

Oh, my.

Did she just tell me that the nurse in question had found the hunky medical tiger asleep, blissfully unaware of the feminine loin stir he was capable of causing in that state, and then she had summoned the entire female staff at paw to go and peek at the sight of his butt on display while he dreamed of...portal veins or something?

"You don't say," I mused, trying not to sound too scandalous, or camp, for that matter. "Did you pull rank to get a good view?"

"I might have," Doctor Browning answered conspiratorially.

"Heheh," I smirked. "Shame that he had to go upstairs with that hot appy instead of lingering down here."

"He likes being where it all happens" he said, "he wants to cherrypick all the interesting cases before anyone else gets to snatch them up."

"Don't have to tell me," she replied. "He's been like that ever since he was a mere surgical intern. Would elbow his way through to get at the cream on the top."

"Well he is a cat..." I suggested.

My tired mind did come up with another, much naughtier remark about cats enjoying their cream, but it wasn't really suitable for polite conversation, and left it at that.

"I'm sure he'll be coming down sooner or later," she said, "he'd be angry if he didn't finish an appy in less than half an hour."

I chuckled.

"Always like that, huh?"

"I started my residence here the year he started his surgical internship," she said, "I've seen him around a lot over the years."

"That's an interesting coincidence."

"Meh," she shrugged, "they come and go. We've just happened to stick here. Hopefully you feel the same. We need you and your clinic."

"Awww, well it's not just my clinic," I rubbed my neck, feeling a bit shy,"we all put our effort into it, don't we?"

"Oh, certainly," she replied, "but at least you look like you're not about to run as soon as your internship is over."

I chuckled.

"I like the ER too much," I said, "if I didn't, I'd gone for family medicine or surgery when I finished my training."

"Well you get to do a plenty of both here."

"Runny noses, ear aches, diabetes control, ulcers, cysts, lacerations...debridement...yep," I listed out. "So much more than what I could do when I was a nurse. I feel so much more...useful, I think, knowing that I can deal with so much of this stuff now using my own skills and my own authority instead of having to rely on someone else."

"And it saves helluva my time, too," she chuckled. "And everyone else's, when we've got someone who's good at that kind of work and keeps the fast track running while the rest of us deal with the more difficult cases that require more time and resources."

"Isn't that our purpose?" I suggested.

"Well I know it all started when they wanted to give something to do for all those discharged WW2 medics, as far as I can remember," the bear said.

"The VA is a big employer of PAs," I replied. "Even I was being headhunted but I opted for the open position here."

"See a lot of them here too," she replied. "Well, maybe not a lot, but our own share."

"Picking up their pieces," I mused.

"Sometimes that, too," she said before slurping on her coffee. "And I'll be...looks like we didn't jinx it yet."

"Hmmm?"

"By saying that it was quiet," she mused. "Usually that's the worst thing to do."

"Yeah," I chuffed.

"Well I should be going, anyway, have to check up on the UTI on 4 and the CHF on monitoring bed 2."

She finished her coffee and got up, the chair legs screeching behind her.

"Catch you later."