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when you came to PTMC, you met a doctor who everyone would have described as sweet, odd, and anything but jealousor possessive. but the truth was, she was both of those things. you came to know...
jealous!mel, who on your first day as a fresh R1 transferred in from mercy upstate, felt a weird tug in her chest when trinity claimed you as her mentee. there was no way you could survive trinity and this hospital alive– hell, you bounced on your shoe soles! you were obviously completely unprepared for the kind of work you’d be doing at PTMC. whatever hospital you completed your ER rotation in certainly wasn’t a trauma center, mel could tell. your pristine white jacket would not last the first hour. she almost wished she could see it get ruined, just to know what you would do. if you would cry, get angry, stomp around… there was a reason nobody wore white coats around this particular department, and you would learn soon enough. as you smiled at her, she felt the tug again. her hands clenched tight.
possessive!mel who snatched up the second best option, some dorky kid named adams with glasses who you seemed to be friendly with– maybe a med school friend, or a past rotation cohort– and dragged him right into a trauma. as she looked over her shoulder, she saw you looking curiously at the room, almost wishing you were a part of it. her gut boiled with the urge to drag you in, too, and she didn’t know why.
jealous!mel who heard, shortly after teaching her shaky-handed kid how to do a crike, that trinity looped you in on your first dislocation, and you managed to order her around on how it needed to be done. she saw your spunky smirk as you walked around the nurse’s station, your jacket still white, with a flustered and aggravated trinity santos trailing behind you. mel liked the idea of someone strong enough to stand up to trinity on a first day– either you were insane, or had balls of steel.
possessive!mel was not meshing with her student and struggled to find a solution. he was nice and all, but he got along so much better with dennis. mel’s stutters and momentary lapses of thought seemed to irritate the student. when she gave orders, he overlooked them. yet when dennis told the kid what to do, he took the advice. maybe adams was a misogynist, or maybe he had a low threshold for neurodivergence, but whatever it was, she passed him off gladly. dennis was a better teacher, anyway.
jealous!mel, now without a student, picked up a head lac in the south wing. the morning rush had yet to pass, so it would keep her busy and hopefully keep robby off her ass for not maintaining a student. but when she turned down the hall, she found you working on an elderly woman with a broken ankle– and trinity over your shoulder. you chewed your lip, seeming stressed, and certainly the micromanagement didn’t help. trinity had a way of repaying debts of embarrassment dealt to her, and you were about to learn the consequences of being a first year. as mel passed, you flashed her a pursed-lip grin, and her heart squeezed. if she was your senior, she would have a much gentler hand. wait, what?
possessive!mel sat quietly and sutured her patient’s forehead, asking only the most basic questions and continuing the repair in silence. in the back of her mind, she saw the swing of your hair. the bubbly way you had greeted the day shift doctors in your blinding coat. you would be hardened by this place, like she had tried to avoid, and the thought left a sour taste in her mouth. trinity certainly wouldn’t help protect you. she was so much like frank, no matter how the girl denied it, and one misstep of yours could easily result in getting screamed at or dismissed for a twenty minute break. on your first day, too. mel felt herself tensing as she watched it play back in her head. she knew what the first day felt like– the trauma, blood, fear, exhaustion. you were so sweet, so pretty, so unscathed, and you needed someone to shelter that, to let you down easy, to teach and guide you, not to yell and throw you headfirst as if choosing to save lives was a joint punishment for everyone involved–
“ow! you’re pokin’ me, doc!” the forehead lac grumbled.
“crap. sorry,” mel mumbled, easing her touch.
jealous!mel finished up with her patient, and the rest of her day flew by in a blur of cases and charts. she felt oddly sick to her stomach. maybe it was the cheap breakfast she ate on the way in.
possessive!mel had watched you butt heads with trinity for nearly a month after that first day. she had shared her interactions with you, at least a few every day. once in a while she was lucky enough to steal you for a case. but trinity held your leash tight, and your patience was growing thin. everyone could see it. almost every shift now, you got into an argument with your senior. whether it was over the right kind of suture or the standard of care, or even the patient’s wishes in a few specific moments, trinity just did not understand you. the way you wanted to treat patients based on your knowledge and experience seemed to threaten her, and so she exploded on you again and again, demanding compliance and swearing on potential writeups. more than once mel had to step in and come to your aid or get robby involved. every time she saw your cheeks pink up with the humiliation of being berated, her blood burned hot. she would never scream at you like that– nobody should ever scream at you like that.
jealous!mel watched as you, always the bigger person (in times she almost wished you weren't), reconciled the issue. you and trinity holed up in the lounge for a half hour until you emerged with a drained smile and trinity with tear-stained cheeks. you two high-fived and split off in opposite directions. you still wore your white coat, but you had on scrubs underneath. something trinity had suggested– change without abandonment of the self. you already looked heavier with the weight of this place. mel hated it. she found herself following you to the ambulance bay without an ounce of good judgement.
“are you okay?”
“huh? oh, dr. king. yes, i’m fine… um, just a… rough start.” you rocked on your feet. you did that a lot, she noticed.
“you can call me mel. you know that.”
“right. sorry.”
“don’t be. so, what happened in there? with santos?” mel asked, leaning against the stony pillar of the bay.
“i-i told her that i think we work best as colleagues. and that i would talk to robby about a new mentor.”
“a new mentor… wow.”
“yeah.”
“you know, i don’t have a med student,” mel blurted.
“right! adams gave you a hard time, didn’t he?” you chuckled. she could see the tips of your teeth. they were adorably round. “he’s a tough one to crack.”
“yeah… but, um, if you’re– if you’re looking, y’know, i… i could…”
“are you saying you want to mentor me?” you stepped closer, tucking your hands into white pockets.
“well… who wouldn’t?”
you flushed a bit and smiled at your shoes. “i think that would be great. i think we would get along much better.”
“i do, too,” mel smiled, tugging on her braid, heart pounding. “come on. i’ve got a patient you can help me with.”
possessive!mel, after that fateful day, did not let go of her grip on you. and you were right– you two did get along. really, really, really well. like, never arguing well. a well-oiled machine in every trauma well. charting on time, bedside manner in check, lab retrievals speedy, breaks taken, food eaten, shifts ended in a mannerly fashion well. mel had personally ensured that you were the least overworked individual in the emergency department. your white coat lasted with bleach pens, and by the time your third month of your residency rolled around, you got an upgrade— an embroidered patch with your name on it, not some lousy metal nametag, from mel. it was the first time you ever hugged her. mel could still smell your shampoo.
jealous!mel hated when other doctors stole you. sometimes robby or abbot would drag you away for an incoming trauma, or langdon might sweep you up in a random teaching case. you got along so well with everyone, even trinity, and with your prodigious talents as a young doctor, it seemed people took you whenever they had the chance. without you by her side, mel felt unmoored. working without you was twice as hard. you made her better, more aware. you smelled like laundry. you ate sour gum and you made old people laugh and young kids smile. mel didn’t have the people skills in her whole being that you housed inside one pinky, let alone possessing your prowess as a caregiver. you were her best thing, and everyone wanted to take that from her, it seemed. she was getting restless.
possessive!mel started doing unusual things like walking you to your car and bringing you coffee. she fixed your coat when it rode up or slid down. she leaned against walls when you spoke, crossing her arms over her chest, because she liked the way it made you stammer. she pulled your hair back into clips mid-trauma when you didn’t have the hands, even when it drew attention. she even went so far as to buy your lunches and invite you to her and trinity’s karaoke nights. if the other ER doctors were going to whisk you away during shifts, she would steal your every spare moment. and you let her. she could see the blood pumping beneath your skin when she got close, when she gave an order, when she wrapped a hand around your waist to save you from a rushing gurney on the way to take you out. she could tell that you didn’t want to be pulled from her grasp. mel was growing entirely enamored and invested, and she couldn’t hold out much longer like this. she ate, slept, and breathed you in that stupid white coat. she wished it said her name and not yours.
jealous!mel saw you talking to dennis one day months into your residency. he was making you laugh so much that your ears turned rosy, and even though it was mid-shift and she definitely needed to eat instead of flying off the handle, she barged across the department and seized your arm, yanking you away and toward the lockers. crowding you up against the wall as a few nurses passed and averted their smirking gazes, she straightened out your coat.
“is he funnier than me?”
“no, mel,” you panted, eyes soaking up her soft skin and lips so close to your own. “we were just talking.”
“good. because you’re my student,”
“i’m your student,” you repeated.
“my student to teach, a-and help, and…”
“i’m yours, mel, yeah?” you flushed, chewing your cheek. she had your wrists pinned to the wall, and with her so near, your heart threatened to stop. “and you’re my teacher. my senior. i only want to learn from you.”
“only from me,” she repeated, pressing her forehead to yours.
your eyes fluttered shut. “i only want you.”
mel shuddered and dropped your wrists, only to cup your cheeks and drag you into a kiss. in broad daylight where anybody– robby, trinity– could see. her lips carried that medicinal taste of the black-label chapstick, and you whimpered with relief as you dove in, tangling your tongue with hers, feeling her braid in your hand, brushing your fingertips over her neck and her back.
“mm– all mine,” she purred, “only i get you, get to teach you, keep you–”
“yes, baby– mel– just you! just you.”
possessive!mel revealed a new side of herself after you got her in trouble for kissing on shift. robby stumbled across you both and demanded an answer, to which you quickly interjected about no improper power dynamics and being willing to tell HR and swearing it wouldn’t impact your job, and mel stood back and grinned, wolfish and infatuated. he seemed to care very little– in fact, he might have even been happy to not deal with mel’s moodiness any longer. from then on, she was happy. peaceful at work, eating better, sleeping more, and kissing you around every corner. thinking about your soft skin beneath those scrubs, and remembering what it looked like when she last shoved that coat away from your thighs to spread them– and other things. she fought harder and she worked with passion. nobody had seen mel with such light since she first came to PTMC, and it was all because of you.
your!mel loved you more than anything. you made her a better doctor, and she made you happy. you knew it the day you came to PTMC and saw her meek eyes and soft smile that you wanted her to be your mentor, and while the road to your wish was bumpy, it reached its destination. now, you had a hot teacher and a girlfriend who fell to her knees for just your attention, and you had your dream job. really, there wasn’t much more you could ask for– well, aside from a longer break to properly shove mel against the supply closet wall.