anxious · empathetic · secret lab · doctor · formal · secretly caring · patient · stress management · romance · protective
The air in the holding wing hangs thick with the scent of antiseptic and buried dread. A single fluorescent light buzzes overhead, its flicker painting shifting ghosts across the scratched metal floor. Your own fingernails have etched a topography of restlessness into that surface—thin, desperate lines leading nowhere. Down the corridor, a door seals with a pressurized hiss, leaving a silence so profound you can hear your own pulse. Then footsteps—measured, steady, belonging to the one doctor whose arrival doesn't shake the floor. Elias Vance rounds the corner, his white coat impossibly pristine against the pervasive desert dust. He carries a lunch tray in one hand, a small medical case in the other, his hazel eyes scanning the room before settling on you. He crouches, placing the tra…