Thirty minutes painstakingly trickled by before Mr Campbell's epidural abscess had been thoroughly drained. And upon completion, Caliana was convinced that her fingers would be stuck permanently throwing up gang signs from the way she'd had to keep her fingers angled to manipulate his spinal column from the site of infection.

"You do know it doesn't really work that way." Preeti's voice rang in the air as Isaac and Caliana had now retired to his shared office for a well-earnt break. Caliana heaved a small sigh as Gerrard's gangly stature came into view — the apparent recipient of Preeti's words. He was residing in the farthest corner of the office, with his trainers kicked away and his feet planted upon his desktop moments away from his computer screen monitor.

Preeti circled as the door swung to a close with a harsh, resonating bang alerting her to Isaac and Caliana's presence. She waved a curt hand to the two. "Oh, are you two here to finalise the arrangements for the Conference Trip this weekend?" She didn't await a response before resuming. "Gerrard and I will be out of your hair in two mins, tops! Let me just quickly down this coffee before I have to head back to the wards." She flipped up the lid of her scalding beverage, before bringing it to her lips.

"Wait. Since Callie's here, why don't we ask her what she thinks? I mean, she's a girl with a good head on her shoulders, I'm sure she'd agree with me." Gerrard slanted his head quizzically at the latter girl, a small snigger escaping from his thin lips as he presented Caliana with a wry grin.

Caliana narrowed her eyes as she spun to face Gerrard. She could hear Isaac sifting through several incomplete discharge summaries from behind her; the rustling sound of paper against paper hanging in the air. "Ask me what, exactly?"

Preeti unleashed a subdued yawn, a cast of hot air blowing from between her lips as she ambled towards the door. "Gerrard doesn't understand how a woman can be gay without having been with a Man before. He thinks it's like saying you're allergic to fish without ever having eaten it."

Caliana clenched her jaw, her eyebrows knitting together as she met Gerrard's unwanted gaze. She wondered if he could see the seething steam arising from her ears, as she prepared a lengthy monologue for his wealth of ignorance.

"I concur." Caliana's mouth tumbled open as she recoiled from the familiar sound of Isaac's gravelly voice materialising from behind her.

He peered at Caliana's look of contempt, before meeting Preeti's wary gaze. "Well, he is right. One hundred percent." He projected his voice as he continued, draping one hand over the other upon the melamine surface of his desk. "So, Gerrard, tell us all how many times you were sodomised before you realised you were straight?"

The words were spoken with such solemness that everyone in the room was rendered silent before Caliana broke it with her clangorous laughter. Preeti set a hand over her mouth to stifle her more subtle giggles. Gerrard huffed then, tossing a grated countenance over at Isaac as he mumbled an inarticulate sentence about needing to check on his foundation doctor as he trodded out of the room. Preeti mouthed a quick 'thank you' to Isaac as she swung her stethoscope around her neck, lifting it slightly to remove the hair caught in the neckline before following suit and exiting the room.

"You know, you almost had me there," Caliana spoke first. "I guess you really can be diplomatic when you want to be, after all."

"Mhmm." He mumbled in return, a smug smirk playing on his face as his fiery-blue eyes impaled the numerous papers on his desk, once again.  He grasped his reading glasses, swinging them between his elongated fingers before perching them onto his nose. Caliana couldn't help but follow the angle of his jaw with his movement– sharp enough to be one of the most noticeable parts of his face, and yet it had felt impossibly silky smooth when it had rested against the crook of her neck earlier. "Ah, you'll be glad to know I found out why your bleep was constantly ringing, by the way."

His words broke her from her previous reverie, and she hoped her tanned skin was enough to disguise the subtle flush that swept itself across the tip of her nose. "Because the hospital is overwhelmed and understaffed?"

"Yes, but no. Not this time." Isaac concluded. He glanced up, his eyes skirting around her face, avoiding full eye contact but lingering upon her lips more than a few times. "I assign all the bleeps at the start of the year, and so I was able to find out that the foundation doctor holding bleep 104 has had their bleep linked to yours."

Caliana shook her head unhurriedly, her eyebrows rising in query. "I don't...what does that even mean?"

Isaac leaned forward across his desk, his finger gripping the end of his pen tight as he tapped it against the hardened surface. "It means that they've asked for all their bleeps to be redirected to 101 – your bleep. So, in other words, they've been shirking their duties."

"Oh," Caliana replied, her jaw slackening. "Well, maybe they had a good reason. Maybe they were sick?" She quietly added. "And I mean actually sick."

"Do you know who 104 belongs to?"

"No. Should I?"

"Doctor Winslow," Isaac replied.

"Well, then that settles it, doesn't it?" Caliana answered, a small laugh fleeing her lips as she waved a hand in gesticulation. "Amari would have a good reason for doing something like that." She pursed her lips as she registered the less-than-impressed countenance shading Isaac's face. "Did you know that Gerrard is pretty much dumping his entire workload on him? Amari's really overwhelmed, Isaac!"

"Are you overwhelmed, Caliana?" The taunt was evident from his tone of voice.

"Sometimes." She hesitated. "Yes. But I also have a supportive supervisor."

Isaac skimmed past the latter half of her statement. "And have you ever directed your bleeps elsewhere?"

"Well, no but—"

"So, you agree then? Amari has no good reason to shirk his duties. He's being irresponsible and selfish."

"Why do you have to be so cynical all the bloody time?" Caliana spat in response as she rose from her chair. "I've literally just explained that Amari's struggling and instead of offering to help, you're going on like he has some sort of secret agenda. Amari's my friend. He wouldn't have turned his bleep off without a good reason. I know that for a fact."

"I'm surprised you've made it this far being that gullible," Isaac retorted. "Look, I'm trying to make your life easier. If you continue to cover for him, you're going to be the one struggling. But if he is having a hard time as you say, then he needs to escalate his concerns to the medical director." But Caliana refused to budge, her hands crossed over her chest in protest. "Okay, fine. Keep covering for him. But when you do become the one who is overwhelmed, and come running back to me to apologise--"

"I w—won't." Her earlier confidence fell to her boots as Isaac suddenly stood up, and scooted across the room to where she stood. She was reminded how big his presence truly was as he stood towering over her, a small smirk playing over his face. And despite the room being remarkably spacious, she was no longer sure whether it inhabited enough oxygen for the two of them.

"—When you do, you should remember how I like my apologies to be delivered." His left hand reached over her shoulder, leaning against the ajar door frame. He hadn't touched her in any way — physically at least — but that didn't stop her from stumbling backwards as she peered at him through fluttered eyelashes.

"How?" Caliana breathed.

This time his full lips curved into a familiar all-knowing smirk, his eyebrows rising, emphasising the small nick within the skin overlying his left brow. "With a side of Lemon and Herb wings, of course."

His hand dropped as he prepared to make his way out of the office. But he halted as he felt Caliana's hand reach out. "Isaac? Are we good?"

She closed her eyes, biting the inside of her cheek as she thought out the best way to phrase her words. "I just mean...we obviously have the trip to Greece this weekend, and I don't want it to be weird between us. When...we're alone."

He cleared his throat, hand delving through his mane. "It won't be." He considered his following words. "I for one am actually looking forward to it." He crossed a hand over his chest. "I was thinking if you send me your address tonight, I can pick you up tomorrow morning, and we can head to the airport together."

"Together?" She blinked up at him.

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

---

With only a few hours in tow, until her shift came to an end, Caliana resolved to track down Amari's whereabouts. She had dropped Roscoe a message asking whether Amari had left for work that morning, and she received prompt confirmation.

On her pursuit, she made several stops, answering a number of her bleeps in the process.

She stopped at Juniper ward to evaluate a patient with burning chest pain. Turns out, they had a severe case of acid reflux.

She then stopped at Maple to assess a patient with a high blood sugar reading. On taking an in-depth history, she was able to elicit the fact that the nurse had taken the blood sample reading less than ten minutes after they'd consumed two iced ring doughnuts and a cinnamon Danish.

She finally hunted down Amari in a side room in Magnolia ward – the acute respiratory ward. She cupped her hands around her eyes as she peeked through the transparent window and saw him cradling a close-fitting respirator mask on his face. He was sat cross-legged on the hard floor, gazing up at the patient in the bed.

Caliana squinted at the patient's head border, and read the name Juliette. Her gaze descended to the female in question, and she saw a girl who appeared to be in her mid-twenties. She had a simple facemask firmly placed on her head, the strings attaching it digging into her skin. A nasogastric tube was lodged deep within her left nostril, providing her with artificial nutrition; the end of the tube covered in dried blood. Around the numerous wires, Juliette's hair cascaded in tightly coiled tresses, held in place by a lemon-and-lime coloured head draping. But what was most eye-catching was how her chest-nut-coloured skin was gleaming -- not in a way that indicated health and youthfulness, but rather in a way that suggested her body was fighting so hard that it was producing excess amounts of sweat.

Caliana bit down on her lower lip. Had Isaac been right after all? Did Amari have an ulterior motive for his actions? She internally heaved a sigh, shaking her head as she knocked on the door entrance. "Hey. I'm sorry to interrupt, but can I borrow Doctor Winslow for a moment?"

Amari's laughter ceased, his shoulders wilting and the colour draining from his face as he took in Caliana's frame. He stood up, silently making his way towards her.

"As long as you are only borrowing him." Juliette joked in return; her voice was scratchy in quality and coupled with the high frequency of intonation suggested that she was not a local resident.

Caliana offered Juliette a small grin. "I promise." She gripped the hem of Amari's scrub top, tugging him out of the room. "Hello Judas. Care to explain what exactly is going on?" She held her bleeper out in front of them.

"I'm sorry!" Amari erupted, snapping the mask away from his face, and exhaling a torrid breath. "I was going to ask you...but I didn't get a chance. Juliette was feeling really down today. She has Kartagener's syndrome, and she's been in this hospital for six months this admission. She's been waiting for a lung transplant, and she found out today she's not a current candidate for one because her sputum culture has grown Burkholderia cepacia."

Caliana's brain racked through her earlier memories of medical school. Kartagener's syndrome was a rare genetic syndrome which meant all organs were on the opposite side of normal anatomy, so the heart sat on the right instead of the left. It also meant you were born with severely damaged lungs and suffered a lifetime of severe sinus infections. Caliana recalled that Burkholderia cepacia was a dangerous bacterial infection which was notoriously difficult to treat and was one of the contraindications to a lung transplant. "Oh my god, that's awful." She tiptoed, peering over Amari's shoulder and through the glass window at Juliette. "I can't imagine...she must be around our age as well." She halted, her eyebrows knitting in bemusement. "Wait...did she tell you all of this today?"

"No, not quite." Amari scratched the back of his neck, offering a coy smile. "I met her a couple of weeks ago in the Crown Inn. She's been rebelling against her diagnosis and going there was probably part of the reason she picked up that stupid infection." He continued almost as an afterthought. "I didn't know she was a Little Oaks patient when I first met her."

Caliana nodded. "Right. Okay, that makes sense. But you could've texted me and told me! I've had the day from Hell because of all the bleeps."

"That bad, huh?" He tucked his chin against his neck. "Well, look, there's only two hours left 'til nine. Why don't you head home and get packing? I'll cover your bleep. It's the least I can do."

"Really?!" She wrapped her arms around him in a friendly hug as he chuckled. "I knew there'd be a good explanation for all this." But when she pulled back, she saw that Amari's attention was already miles away from her as he stared through the window at Juliette.