Cristina Yang (nicepantiesyang) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2013-09-09 20:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | cristina yang, sarissa |
WHO: Sarissa and Cristina Yang
WHERE: Hospital Staff Room
WHEN: Friday September 6
WHAT: Meeting in the staff lounge
RATING:. PG
STATUS: log; complete.
It had been a while since Sarissa had worked in a hospital, although anyone looking at her would find it hard pressed that she’d started nursing school, let alone practiced for a few years and then taken a year off to tend to the rehabilitation of her mother’s latest project. That was one of the things that came with not choosing to become either a Sidhe or a mortal, though: being stuck in a permanent state of nineteen until she did. Now that she was Summer Lady, however, any chance she had of becoming mortal, growing up and having a normal family was gone to her forever. Not that she’d know how to have a normal family anyway. When your mother was the Queen of Winter and Darkness, there really wasn’t much of a role model to learn from. Getting back into the routine of a hospital job gave her some structure and peace that had been sorely lacking in the past year, however. Here, she knew she was helping people. It wasn’t an easy job, but it was one she enjoyed. Because she was new, however, she was still given night shifts more often than others. It was near the end of her shift now, and she was in the staff room with a cup of coffee, her hair carefully arranged to cover her pointed ears and her face turned towards the window and the rising sun. Cristina pushed through the door of the staff room, yawning as she did so. She should have expected that she’d be stuck on night call right off the bat even though she’d tried to tell them she’d already done her time on the graveyard shift. That wasn’t here, she’d been told so for the next two weeks, Cristina was covering the ER from 11 at night until 7 in the morning. It wouldn’t be so bad if the place was busy but it wasn’t and she’d been having a hell of a time staying awake. That was what had led her to the staff room. The coffee pot. She made her way over there and poured herself a cup, taking it black since that made it stronger in her opinion. Cristina didn’t even notice that someone else was in the room until she’d taken her first sip. She’d seen the nurse around although she didn’t know her name. Cristina was bad with names anyhow and what with being new in town, she was constantly having to read nametags. “Hey,” she said by way of greeting. “Is it time to go home yet? Geeze.” She sat down in a chair across from the nurse. “Busy night?” Normally Cristina wasn’t this chatty but she was bored and sleepy so she might as well talk to someone. Sarissa had been aware of Cristina’s arrival even before the doctor came into the staff room - apparently the Summer Lady gig came with enhanced senses and some such. So when Cristina took the seat across from her, Sarissa wasn’t startled at the company. She just gave the doctor a warm smile. “No, it’s been pretty quiet,” she said, wrapping her hands around her coffee mug. “One of the things about a small town, I suppose. There isn’t a lot going on unless one of the new arrivals show up injured. I’ve just been doing paperwork. You?” “Trying to stay awake,” Cristina groaned as she took a sip of coffee. “I’m covering the ER for surgery but nobody has come in.” She knew better than to say that it was quiet in the ER. It was considered a jink to say that word aloud even if it were true and she’d seen it happen more than once. Someone said it was quiet and then all hell broke loose. “I’m used to a bigger hospital so this is a kind of like culture shock to me.” “I was at John Hopkins,” Sarissa said with a wry smile. “So believe me, I know.” Of course, she’d done other things that would be even more of a culture shock to someone who was only used to working with mortal patients, but that wasn’t really the point of this conversation. “I’m Sarissa, by the way,” she continued, tilting her name tag so Cristina can see. “How much longer do you have tonight?” “Johns Hopkins? Damn this must seem like the middle of nowhere to you. I’m from Seattle and it feels like the middle of nowhere to me.” She looked at the girl’s nametag. “I’m Cristina Yang. I’ve got until seven and then I’m off for three days. Thank god.” Cristina took a sip of coffee. “I’m sure I’ll sleep for the first one. Maybe all three. Doesn’t seem to be too much to do around here.” “It’s definitely a change of pace,” Sarissa agreed. “But after the year I’ve had, I kind of like it.” Aside from the fact that she couldn’t stay in her own apartment, it’d been quite restful - and she’d needed it, after what she’d recently gone through. Maybe soon enough she’d get bored like so many of the transplants were, but so far she was enjoying it. Being here, in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by fictional characters, sure beat being back home and facing the wrath of Queen Titania. “So you’re from Seattle?” she continued. “I was there a long time ago, but I remember it was a lot of fun.” Sarissa didn’t look old enough to have a long time ago, though. “Yeah it’s a cool place. I grew up in LA so it seemed a little small to me at first but I like it there. If you like rain it’s great,” she snorted and took a sip of coffee. “the hospital I worked at was a lot bigger than this one. Level 1 trauma center, full academic medical center. Back home I’m a fourth year surgical resident but here I get to be an attending. Guess they aren’t going to turn down a doctor when one shows up on their doorstep.” Cristina was also just a few months away from taking her surgical boards and applying for fellowships but she wasn’t sure if that would ever happen now. Or maybe there was some equivalent in this place. Who knew? Considering that she’d seen someone on the network claiming to be Luke Skywalker, she wasn’t sure she believed that. "The town doesn't strike me as overflowing with doctors," Sarissa said wryly. She took another sip of her coffee, willing it to give her the jolt of energy that she so badly needed. “On the other hand, they’re not overflowing with people needing rehab nurses either. It’s why I got bumped to ER. On night shift.” “The one thing this town seems to have a lot of is fairy tale characters,” she said, shaking her head. “Which is freaky shit if you ask me. There’s a dude running around here that everyone calls Prince Charming. I got a look at him, I guess he’s pretty charming, I don’t know.” Cristina vacillated between being amused by this place and being scared of it. It was a strange feeling. Sarissa chuckled. If Cristina found it freaky to have Prince Charmimg running around, what would she say if she knew she was sitting across the table from Queen Titania's heir? She didn't enlighten the doctor, however. Her role was still too new for her to be wholly comfortable with it. "I take it there isn't much by way of magical or mystical where you come from?" she guessed. “No. Maybe a few Wiccans running around but nothing mystical,” Cristina shrugged. “I know the popular theory is that magic brought us here but I don’t believe in magic. I believe in science. Now if someone could convince me scientifically that magic existed, I might believe it but until they do, I’m going with no, there is no such thing.” “Even in the last century, much of what was accomplished by science was considered magic until we figured out how it worked,” Sarissa pointed out. “What’s to say it isn’t the case here, and it only looks like magic because no equivalent of Einstein has come up with a unifying theory on how it all works?” She herself was much more comfortable with the idea of magic, having been born to a faerie queen, but she was well aware that most people who haven’t encountered it before would have a hard time believing in it. Cristina listened to her, processing what she was saying. It made sense when you looked at it that way. “You’ve got a point. Maybe Einstein will show up and figure all this shit out and we can go home,” she finished her coffee and put the cup down on the table in front of her. The only problem with that was that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go home. Meredith had told her enough about what was to come to make Cristina wonder if she was ready for all that she had to face. “I wonder if we go back, do we remember being here?” She was thinking out loud, something she did when she didn’t know what else to do. “because if we do, now that I’ve heard what happens to me from my friend, I wonder if I’d make better choices?” Sarissa pondered this for a moment. "There are people who have been here, but got sent back and then brought back again. In all those cases, they don't remember being here or anything that happened here, but it's unclear whether that memory loss happened when they were sent back or brought here again." She regarded the doctor for a moment. "What would you do differently, if I might ask?" “I wouldn’t go back to the man I just broke up with for starters,” she said. “because apparently we end up in this really crazy cycle of a relationship where he hurts me, I hurt him, we put each other through hell and I’m miserable but I keep going back.” Cristina shrugged. “or at least that’s what my friend told me. I also end up with PTSD and I refuse to get help. Which definitely sounds like me but I like to think that if I knew it was going to happen, I’d suck it up and do something about it. Who knows though? I’m a stubborn bitch.” Sarissa smiled at Cristina’s self-assessment. “Sometimes you can’t really help what happens no matter what you do.” She herself wouldn’t have chosen to become a Faerie Queen of Summer, but when she looked back at all the events that had led to Lily’s death and the mantle going to her, there wasn’t any place where Sarissa could have pointed at where she would have done anything differently. “But if you go in knowing that, at least you’d know that you chose it to happen, rather than just letting it. And if you decide that you don’t want that to happen after all...then you can make those changes.” It made sense. Cristina thought for a minute and then nodded. “That’s true. Some shit just happens no matter what. I guess I’ll find out if I ever get out of here,” she looked around the room. “Although it doesn’t appear that’s much of an option. I know some people had disappeared, I assume they go back the way they came but otherwise we seem to be stuck here.” Sarissa nodded in agreement. "So far no one's stepped forward with any information, and I don't know enough about these things to look into it myself." She smiled wryly. "I guess we just have to make the most of our lives here, until some way is found to send us back." “Yep, so it would seem,” Cristina was about to say something when her pager went off. “Oh wow, something’s come into the ER. I’m sure it’s really exciting like a hang nail.” She drained her coffee cup and stood up. “I gotta go. Nice to meet you Sarissa. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.” She’d enjoyed talking to the other woman, it was nice to have someone to talk to and keep her awake since Meredith was lucky enough to be on the first shift right now. “Good luck,” Sarissa told her with a sincere smile. She’d enjoyed the conversation too, and hoped that she’d get more of a chance to get to know the people she was stuck here with. Noting the time, she stood up and finished off her coffee. “I’d better check back on my station as well. See you later, Cristina. It was nice talking to you.” |