on call (ch. 2 of “follow up”)
a shallura modern era hospital au ft. dr. allura and patient shiro
— original concept written for @shirofied, who wanted to see this prompt in shallura form. continued for @sugarspuncoeurls, who deserves the world for supporting my writing. save me, for this is the first multichap i am attempting in a very long time.
— [link to ao3]
Shiro thinks he’s done repeating his embarrassing story of falling off the monkey bars after telling the entire emergency room throughout his treatment, but soon after walking out from discharge, his mother calls and he groans to himself, realizing he now has to repeat the same damn story in Japanese.
“What happened?! I just saw your text,” his mother immediately blabbers after he greets her, her Japanese piqued and staccato-ed.
“I was just… I was hanging out with Matt, and I fell.”
“Matt?” his mother repeats. “Where? Are you still in the hospital? What happened?”
Shiro methodically goes through all her questions. “Matt, my friend from high school. Remember I went to his house for Thanksgiving once? And I fell at the park. I just got out of the hospital. I broke my arm.”
She zeroes in on his last sentence. “What were you doing to break your arm?!”
“I, uh… was at the park and I fell.”
“You weren’t skateboarding again, were you?! Remember when you fell the last time and now you have that scar on your face?! Grandma was so unhappy!”
“Yeah, I remember,” he sighs, leaning his face into his left shoulder to hold his phone as he signs the discharge papers — an awkward scribble with his immobilized right hand. “No, I wasn’t skateboarding.”
“What were you doing then?!”
He doesn’t know any word in Japanese that can translate monkey bars.
“I was on the monkey bars,” he sighs.
“Mou…n…ki…ba?” she repeats in a flawless Japanese accent.
“Yeah, like…” he groans as he tries to think of the description, deciding to go for the function instead. “Like the thing that kids play on in the playground.”
He hears her sharp inhale, and he knows it’s coming.
“How old are you?!” she berates in English.
He sighs. “I know, I know,” he replies. “I’m sorry.”
He presses his discharge papers between his chest and his arm splint. He silently thanks some of the nurses as he steps out of the emergency room, looking around to see if he could catch a glimpse of the very beautiful doctor whose business card is very safely tucked away in his pocket.
The sound of his mother’s voice interrupts his search. She sighs, switching back to Japanese. “Don’t do that again! You are not a child anymore.”
“I know.”
“What did the doctor say?”
Just at that moment, he thinks he sees the familiar combination of a silver bun of hair, gray pants, and white coat, but she’s turned the opposite direction, talking with one of the hospital staff members. He thinks maybe to linger a little bit to see if he could catch a goodbye but decides maybe that’s too creepy and heads on his way out to the hospital’s main lobby in the direction one of the technicians point out to him.
“It was just a broken arm,” he answers, attention returning to the phone. “I’ll need to go get a cast later, but everything’s fine.”
“Take a picture and show me.”
“Okay.”
“What about your job?”
He takes another breath. Ah, yes. Time for a comprehensive life update. “I’ll find one,” he replies. “I have an interview next week.”
“With who?”
“Some software company. I’m trying for assistant product manager,” he says, frowning to himself at his broken Japanese.
His mother doesn’t seem to care for his grammar. “Okay. Call me right after the interview.”
“Yes,” he promises.
“Don’t forget to take a picture of your arm for me,” she reminds him. “No more playing.” Then just as he’s about to say goodbye, she asks, “You don’t think they’ll see your arm?”
“I think it’ll be fine,” he reassures her. “I’ll just say it was an accident.”
“They’ll think you are wild.”
He smiles. “It’ll be okay.”
“Okay…” she says, her tone still undoubtful. “Good luck, Takashi.”
“Thanks,” he replies. “And I’ll take a picture for you. Bye.”
“Bye bye,” she tells him — in the most adorable Japanese mom way, he can’t help but smile.
He hangs up and awkwardly scrolls through his phone with his left hand to get to Matt’s contact information, finally pressing on the call function. He waits for a couple ring tones before Matt picks up.
“You’re good?”
“Yeah.”
“Need me to drive you back?”
“Please.”
“So what ended up happening?”
“Eh, a broken arm. I’ll have to get a cast later.”
“Okay, you’ll catch me up when I get to the hospital.”
“Sure.”
When Matt drives up, Shiro tucks himself into the front passenger seat, figuring out everything with his left hand. He draws the seat belt over his torso and Matt helps him buckle the belt.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Sorry about not being able to stick around,” Matt apologizes, shifting gears to drive. “I had that conference call to do and I couldn’t trust the hospital to have wifi, you know?”
“Don’t worry about it. There was no wifi, and nothing interesting happened anyway,” Shiro says, waving off with his left hand. “I literally just got this splint and some painkillers, and then these discharge papers with instructions to keep the swelling down and to see an orthopedist later.”
The corner of Matt’s mouth starts to curl up in a smile. “Did you end up saying you fell off the monkey bars? Or did you lie to protect your ego?”
“Nah, I didn’t see a point in making up a story,” he replies. “Besides, I didn’t know if how I broke my arm was going to affect my treatment or something. I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what would equate to falling off the monkey bars.”
“True.”
“I mean, my mom gave me shit about it.”
“I mean, rightfully so. We were being pretty fucking idiotic.”
Shiro laughs. “Yeah, for sure,” he agrees. “The only thing is that I have to drive my car back to my place from the park.”
“Oh, just give me your keys. I’ll do that,” Matt offers. “You literally just broke your arm. I’m not going to risk you getting into another accident.”
“Thanks.” He raises his hips up from his seat and leans to the left, allowing for a left-hand reach into his right pocket to produce his car keys.
“Just put it there,” Matt says, pointing between them. “Did they make you do a bunch of tests for your arm?”
“Nah, just an x-ray.”
“At least that’s not going to cost too much with insurance.”
“Yeah, I think it should be fine.” He stares out the passenger seat window, falling to silence.
Matt looks back and forth from him to the traffic ahead of them, his smile growing even wider. “Let me guess. The doctor was hot.”
Shiro furrows his eyebrows, shooting a glare at Matt. “What? How did you even—”
“Shiro, you are definitely the most easily read person I know, and that’s saying a lot because Pidge is a pretty easy tell too.”
Shiro scoffs. “You’ve just known me too fucking long.”
Matt cackles. “But the doctor was hot, right?”
“Yeah,” he admits.
“What’d they look like?”
He blinks, letting himself recall as much as he can without seeming as overly smitten about her as he actually is. “Really pretty,” he muses. “I think she’s black. Silver wavy hair, blue eyes. Super cute nose… honestly she looks like a princess…”
Matt interrupts him. “Okay, you don’t have to get all cheesy on me—"
“—and she gave me her number.”
“Oh see, now that I couldn’t read from your face,” Matt says, his voice growing louder and giving a small hoot. “Wow. Wow, wow, wow. This is actually exciting. Are you going to ask her out?”
“Well, I mean she technically just told me to follow up with her if I had any concerns.”
Matt sighs. “I hate to break it to you, Shiro, but I think that technically means she’s just doing her job and not flirting with you.”
“Yeah… that’s what she said but I feel like…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Okay, sure. I don’t know. She circled her cell number as she gave me her card, and maybe she winked at me as she was leaving, but I don’t know.”
“She winked?”
“…I think so.”
“Well…” Matt says, the gears in his head turning. “Maybe it won’t hurt to call and just see.”
“Yeah.”
And so that’s exactly what Shiro does — of course only after about eight hours obsessing over what he’d say when she’d pick up the phone.
But finally when he’s built enough nerves, he calls her, holding the phone close to his face with his left hand. He holds his breath as he waits through a few dial tones, sweating like he’s in a full sprint. It suddenly occurs to him that he actually hasn’t figured out exactly what to say yet, but god damn, whatever the fuck, because he’s already calling her and —
“Hey—”
And what a beautiful sound, her voice. She says ‘hey’ so gently, as if she was waiting for him, that there is no doubt in her mind that she just happened to give him her cell number.
“I—”
“—it’s Allura Altea. Sorry I can’t come to the phone right now. Leave me your name and message and I’ll get back to you.”
He stops. Oh, he’s such an idiot. That was just her answering machine. And of course. No one would ever start with ‘hey’ to an unknown caller. It isn’t like she would know his phone number before he even calls her right? — unless she actually truly expected him to call?
Then a long hard beep sounds — and he realizes he is completely unprepared to leave a message at the tone.
“Um—” and he actually hears himself stutter.
Stop it! Stop talking, he tells himself, to no avail.
“—it’s Takashi Shirogane. I was, uh, your patient the other day,” he says anyway.
Okay, stop it. Seriously.
“I guess I was just giving you a follow up call,” he continues despite his internal screaming. “Thanks for everything.”
Okay, that’s fine. Drop the call now.
“Hear from you soon,” he finishes, pressing the end call button as soon as the last word slips from his lips.
God damn it, Shiro.
He falls backwards into bed, covering his eyes with his hand. He runs his hand over his face and stares up at the ceiling, letting himself inhale and exhale to calm his nerves before lifting his phone again. Unable to think of anything else to do, he texts Matt.
Just called her.
Matt, ever the quick responder, gets back within a few seconds: So? Congratulations?
Fuck you, he replies.
What’d she say?
She didn’t pick up. I left a message.
Lol. Loser.
And then, almost as if Matt’s mocking caused the heavens to split open and grant a wish to pity Shiro’s soul, a caller shows up on his screen. The number looks familiar and it looks like—
“—shit,” he curses, getting up and searching for the business card. He picks his body off his mattress, nearly dropping his phone. Once he locates the small white paper, he matches the number on his caller ID to the number right next to her circle.
His heart thumps hard.
“Hey,” he responds, accepting the call.
“Is this Takashi Shirogane?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“Of course. How is your arm? Is the splint alright?”
“It’s good. I took some over the counters to keep the inflammation down,” he reports.
He holds his breath. He still hasn’t figured out what kind of a conversation this is. Maybe she really did just mean for him to call her for purely business reasons.
“I’m glad to hear that. Were you able to get in touch with your primary care provider about referring you to an orthopedist for a cast? If not, I can happily refer you to one of my colleagues.”
“Oh, no, I got in touch with him,” he replies. “They’ll reexamine my arm in a few days.”
“Perfect. Just keep doing what you’re doing and take care not to use your arm too much. We don’t want to displace your bones,” she says. “You seem responsible about all of this though, so I trust that your recovery will come without complications.”
She sounds so official. He almost wants to just give up and call it all off. This was a stupid idea in the first place. He should have never called her.
“Thanks,” he says.
He hears her smile over the phone, and he can just feel how radiant and beautiful it is. “Any other concerns?” After a moment, she adds, “I appreciate you taking the time to call me. I really like to hear how people are doing after I see them.”
“Well, I thought I’d… at least return the thanks.”
She’s patient-zoning him. She totally is. He should just—
“Yes, thank you. I had wanted to hear from you.”
His words get caught his mouth. “I—”
He’s not sure if she’s just being polite and not interrupting him, but she’s eerily quiet on the other side of the line.
Okay, Shiro, just fucking do it. Fuck.
He braces himself and shuts off his brain and just goes for it.
“I… I don’t know if this is appropriate for me to ask, but can I treat you to dinner maybe?” he blurts, just letting himself go. He doesn’t let himself think. “Or maybe lunch? You must have a busy schedule. I don’t know when you’d have the time.”
He swallows, pressing the phone hard against his ear, palms sweaty again.
“Dinner sounds lovely,” she finally replies.
And he lets out his held breath as quietly as possible, feeling his stomach rising into his chest. The sudden surge of happiness coursing through his system is so intense his vision almost blacks out. He can’t help but raise his free arm in victory, but then winces silently when he remembers it’s broken.
He hears some pages rustling in the background, as though she’s looking through a calendar book. “When are you free?” she asks him.
“Oh, I am always available,” he tells her.
He doesn’t think this is the moment to confess that he is currently unemployed.
“I suppose maybe Thursday night works best for me,” she replies, after a moment. “I switch to nights the day after so I don’t need to be anywhere the next day.”
“Yeah, that works for me,” he pauses. He feels like he’s forgetting to ask something… “Oh, did you have a cuisine in mind that you like?”
“I’m fine with anything.”
Damn. For as much as he prepared his opening lines, he nowhere near got as far as to figuring out specific restaurants, or even a plan for in the case she actually did say yes.
Like now.
“Maybe we’ll just figure it out the day of?” he suggests. “Maybe around 8 pm?”
“That works for me. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Uh, yeah, of course,” he says, his heart suddenly pounding hard. “I’ll pick you up?”
“I would love that,” she replies. “I’ll text you my address?”
“Yes, please.”
“To this number?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “It’s my cell,” he adds right after — something he later regrets mentioning because of how lame that sounded.
“Okay, will do,” she chirps.
“Great,” he says, lingering.
And then after a small moment of silence, she says, “Well then… I’ll see you soon, Takashi Shirogane.”
He feels heat rising in his cheeks again. “Yeah, I’ll see you soon,” he replies.
Before he can make a bigger fool out of himself, he ends the call and then takes a deep breath, curling down onto the floor and leaning against his bed.
He can’t help the big smile over his face.
He did it. He asked the pretty doctor out, and she said yes.
He sighs again. Shit, he hasn’t felt like this about anyone in a very long time. Not since he first fell in love more than a decade ago.
He looks at his phone, thrown onto the floor in his excitement. He smiles again, replaying her voice saying “Dinner sounds lovely” in his head. Dinner sounds lovely. Lovely.
Even the way she said that was lovely.
He can’t believe it. She said yes.
He stares at the black screen for a little longer before picking it back up, thinking to text Matt the updates, but before he even unlocks his phone, he receives a text from that number.
He checks it immediately. This is absolutely her number, and this is absolutely her texting him her address — within a minute of their conversation! He looks her address over, tapping it to lead to a maps application, and studying her location for a moment.
She lives about fifteen minutes away from him. Even the fact that she is within that close of a drive is exhilarating. All he’d have to do on Thursday is leave by 7:30 pm (in case the traffic is horrid because there is no way in hell he’d let himself be late for her) and then drive up to her place and —
But this is the moment Shiro realizes his grave mistake.
His right arm would still be in a splint on Thursday. And he definitely would not want to be driving her in his passenger seat when one of his limbs is completely functionless.
He definitely would not be able to pick her up for their date on Thursday.
[link to chapter 3!]
notes: admittedly, i was asked to write the allura-side pov of this piece where she's absolutely smitten by shiro, and i didn't quite get there yet, but that part is definitely coming up in the next chapter ;)
also, totally cracking myself up writing about shiro's mom roasting him, btw. so relatable.
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