Chapter 15 Off Tempo #2
"It's not a sentiment. It's—" Theo broke off as the server appeared with the coffeepot.
When they were alone again, Catherine gave her a small, strained smile that didn’t fool anyone. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lower the mood. I tend to get introspective when I'm tired. Start overthinking everything."
"It’s okay. I want you to talk to me about what you’re feeling. And look, we don't have to stay," Theo said. Her voice dropped lower, meant only for Catherine across the small table. "We can go home if you want. Climb back into bed and have a nap."
Catherine's expression shifted, something that might have been relief crossing her face before she nodded.
But then she hesitated. "Actually," she said, and Theo heard the care in her voice, the gentle tone that suggested she was trying not to hurt her feelings, "I think I should go alone.
If I actually want to get some restful sleep. "
The words landed awkwardly between them.
Theo felt them settle in her chest, registering as rejection even though Catherine's tone carried nothing but practicality.
Her shoulders stiffened automatically, a physical response she couldn't quite control, and she reached for her own coffee to give her hands something to do.
"Sure," Theo said, forcing her voice into something approaching casual. "No problem. I have a shift soon anyway."
It wasn’t a lie exactly, though ‘soon’ may have been a stretch. Her shift started at three. But Catherine nodded as if accepting the explanation, and Theo felt the small distance that had opened between them widen incrementally.
She wanted to ask if she'd said or done something wrong, if Catherine was regretting this weekend, if asking for space meant something larger than simple tiredness.
But those questions felt too vulnerable and too intense to voice in a crowded café over breakfast, so she swallowed them and smiled instead.
Catherine slid out of the booth with movements that looked more careful than they had walking to the café. She pulled her wallet from her coat pocket and extracted a twenty, setting it on the table between them.
Then she leaned across the space separating them and pressed a kiss to Theo's lips.
The kiss was soft and sincere, carrying affection that contradicted the awkwardness of moments before.
Theo felt herself relax into it instinctively, her hand coming up to touch Catherine's face, thumb brushing her cheekbone.
"Bye, darling,” Catherine said.
Theo smiled, not trusting herself to speak without letting the hurt still lodged somewhere inside her slip out. She didn’t want to leave things like this, on a conversation about age gaps and diverging life paths. It felt wrong.
She watched Catherine move between the tables with the same grace she carried everywhere, and had the sudden, irrational urge to call her back. To ask her to stay.
But Catherine was already pushing through the café door, stepping onto the sidewalk where morning light caught in her pale hair.
Theo tracked her movement through the fogged window, watching as Catherine paused just outside.
For a moment, she stood there. Her shoulders rounded forward, the grace dissolving into something that looked almost fragile.
She lifted one hand to her temple, pressing there briefly, then continued down the sidewalk and disappeared from view.
Theo sat alone in the booth with cooling coffee and Catherine's twenty-dollar bill, aware of the noise around her but feeling separate from it.
The warmth of their kiss still lingered on her lips, but beneath it ran a thin thread of unease she couldn't quite name or dismiss.
She told herself it was nothing, just Catherine being tired and wanting space to rest properly.
She told herself she was being paranoid, reading too much into ordinary behavior because the newness of their relationship made everything feel heavy with meaning.
But the image of Catherine's changed posture stayed with her, the way she'd seemed to shrink once she thought herself unobserved, and Theo found herself gripping her coffee cup harder than necessary while trying to convince herself that everything was fine. Absolutely and completely fine.
* * *
The ER had found its early-evening rhythm, that Sunday lull when most people were home, and the accidents hadn’t started stacking up into the chaos to come.
Theo stood at the nurses' station with a tablet in hand, her fingers flying across the screen as she updated charts.
Around her, the department maintained its constant motion.
Monitors beeped in steady patterns from bay curtains that shifted with passing staff.
The overhead PA system crackled occasionally with announcements about incoming ambulances or requests for specific doctors.
A nurse wheeled a patient past on a gurney, their conversation low and reassuring, while another checked vitals at a nearby computer.
Natalie appeared beside her, dropping a patient chart onto the counter with a thud that meant she'd just dealt with someone frustrating. "Guy in ten is demanding to see an attending because, and I quote, “I don’t want some intern fresh off the boat.”
“Did you tell him you are the attending?” Theo asked without looking up from her screen, “And that, despite your parents emigrating from Guangzhou, you were born here, or were you saving that for later?”
"Oh, no, I told him. With great pleasure." Natalie leaned against the counter, scrolling through her work emails with her free hand. "He's now requesting a different attending. I told him that’s no problem and he's welcome to wait six hours for the next shift rotation."
Theo smiled despite the tension still coiled in her chest. This was normal, this was routine, this was the kind of everyday absurdity that pushed the morning's unease to the back of her mind.
"Did he at least—" she started, but Natalie’s eyes suddenly shifted over her shoulder, widening with a look Theo had seen a thousand times in other people and never once imagined turning toward her.
Through the sliding doors came paramedics moving fast, a gurney between them, and for a moment, Theo’s mind refused to assemble the image into anything coherent.
There was only an oxygen mask, the flash of pale hair against the pillow, the cream turtleneck she had watched Catherine pull over her head that morning as she stood half-dressed in the bathroom doorway, asking if it looked too academic for breakfast.
Behind them, Luis. His face the color of chalk.
He spotted her across the entrance, and his voice cut straight through the noise. "Theo!"
The world seemed to pause there, balanced on the edge of a single suspended second, and then her body moved before the thought could fully form, carrying her across the space between the nurses' station and the gurney with long strides that devoured the distance.
Hobbs was already there, hands moving through the initial assessment with the dominance of someone claiming territory.
"I've got her," he said without looking up.
"No." Theo stepped in beside him. "I've got it."
Hobbs glanced up then, irritation forming. "Brennan, I literally just—"
"She’s mine, Hobbs." The words came out with an edge that made two nearby nurses look up.
Hobbs’s hands stilled. He studied her face for a moment, something in his expression shifting as comprehension landed, and then he stepped aside without another word.
"Put her here," Theo heard herself say, the voice that emerged calm and authoritative in a way that felt almost surreal, as if it belonged to the version of her that had managed every other crisis of her professional life without hesitation.
Her hands guided Catherine’s body from the paramedics’ stretcher onto the gurney, and the clinical part of her mind noted things automatically, the way it always did: the slack, unnatural weight of someone completely unresponsive, the way Catherine’s limbs fell where gravity took them, the terrible absence of any instinctive resistance.
Catherine's eyes were closed, lashes dark against pale skin, and her breathing was irregular, shallow then deep in a pattern that made Theo’s stomach drop.
Theo's hands moved to Catherine's neck, fingers finding her pulse point. Fast. Too fast. The rhythm thready and uneven beneath Theo's fingertips.
"Catherine," Theo said, voice low and urgent, leaning close enough that her breath stirred pale hair. "Catherine, can you hear me?"
No response. Catherine's face remained slack, no flicker of recognition, no indication she registered sound or touch.
Theo swallowed. The thought of causing her pain dragged bile up the back of her throat, but she needed Catherine back. She needed her awake and okay. She drove her knuckles into Catherine’s sternum. Hard. Hard enough to bruise.
Catherine jerked, a small, wounded sound catching in her throat.
Relief broke through Theo so fast it was almost dizzying.
“Localizes to pain,” she called to her colleagues, already moving onto the next step.
Checking airway, tilting Catherine's head to ensure proper positioning.
Assessing breathing, watching the rise and fall of her chest, and noting the irregularity.
Circulation confirmed through pulse check.
The ABCs of emergency care, so automatic she could perform them unconscious, became the only thing keeping her functional.
Leads were going on. A cuff tightened around Catherine’s arm when her body jerked suddenly, muscles contracting in the unmistakable pattern of seizure activity. Her back arched off the gurney, jaw clenched tight, hands curling into rigid fists.
Theo moved immediately to stabilize her, one hand on Catherine's shoulder to keep her from rolling off the gurney, the other reaching for the bed's side rails. Someone was already swinging the oxygen toward them.
“Suction ready.”
Theo prayed they wouldn’t need it. She counted the seconds under her breath.