[Jaykobell]

Neil stopped dead in his tracks, cutting his breakfast short, as he heard Murray ask him a relatively important question. "Oh," he said quietly, slowly turning his chair around to face Murray. "Hey, Murray; how's it going?"

"Endzela, answer the question," the head doctor insisted, and Neil's mind started going a few miles per hour. "Where is your nurse? Reception is saying she hasn't come in and that she hasn't called in."

"Um." There were only two options for Neil to choose from: either he told the truth and he got reprimanded for it; or he went on to lie to his head boss in order to protect both him and Cybele. Both options were risky, though the latter was a little bit more so. If Murray ever found out that Neil had lied to him, the younger doctor would get punished all the more for it.

"Well?" Murray insisted, and the frown on his face made it clear he wanted an answer as to why Cybele was missing from the office.

Sighing, Neil rolled his eyes and leaned against his chair. "She's not here because I gave her the day off."

For a split second, he felt like that explanation alone would have been enough; but then Murray's frown got even worse, and Neil understood he wasn't out of the woods yet. "Why?"

[Jaykobell]

It went without saying that every employee was supposed to report when they weren't coming in. It was usually done in advance, especially when it came to long holidays, but when it was the day of, calling was usually the way to go. Even if Cybele had called, Neil knew that Murray would've ended up in his office asking for a reason.

"She wasn't feeling well," he settled on, and he hoped that short, precise answers would eventually get Murray's curiosity satisfied.

"Did she call you directly, then?" Murray asked, and his patience was starting to run thin.

"No," Neil answered, at which point he turned his chair back around to return to his desk so he could start his breakfast, "I'm the one who told her not to come in yesterday."

When he didn't hear anything back from Murray, Neil got ready to take a bite from his sandwich; when he suddenly felt his chair getting forcefully jerked around. He gasped, and he sank into his chair as Murray forced it back around, stopping it in its tracks just as abruptly. At that sudden movement, Neil felt his stomach rise up in his throat, and there was a hint of nausea that was rising up in his chest.

[Jaykobell]

Neil tried to take deep breaths to get rid of that nauseous feeling, though that didn't prevent him from giving his superior the stink eye. "What the hell, Murray?"

"Don't give me that," Murray said, and his harsh tone of voice made it clear that Neil was better off sitting down and listening than asking questions of his own. "I'm asking you why your nurse isn't here, and why she hasn't called in, and why you decided willy-nilly to give her the day off," he explained, making it clear what he wanted to know. "Now stop wasting my time and tell me what's going on!"

"We lost a patient yesterday, all right?" Neil snapped back at him, frowning at Murray's attitude and how forceful he felt like he needed to be. "She was devastated."

Murray's face changed when he heard Neil's reason, and although it seemed sympathetic at first, he quickly returned to a frown. "Are you serious?" he hissed, and he let go of Neil's chair to straighten up. "Cry me a goddamn river! It happens all the time!"

"She was very close to him," Neil explained, trying his best to defend Cybele's reaction; even though part of him knew it wasn't any good excuse to be off work. "It was very personal for her; like she lost a friend, and not just a patient."

[Jaykobell]

That explanation didn't seem to satisfy Murray at all, and Neil found himself at a loss. "Then tell your nurse to stop getting attached to patients," the head doctor told him, and admittedly, Neil found that comment to be uncalled for. "It's part of our job that we'll lose patients. We can't save them all."

"I know that," Neil pointed out, and he frowned at his boss; something that earned him the older doctor bending down to the point where their faces were much too close to one another.

"Clearly your nurse doesn't," Murray argued back, and he ignored Neil's increasing displeasure at hearing the harsh comments Murray was saying about Cybele. "Don't start giving her the day off every time a patient dies," he warned, looking straight into Neil's eyes as he spoke. "Or else she'll be off at home more often than she'll be here working. Am I clear, Endzela?"

At those words, Neil grimaced and pushed Murray off him, putting pressure over the older doctor's shoulder with one hand to force him off. "Cybele is perfectly capable. I told her to stay home: she didn't want to," he snapped, and part of him regretted pushing Murray away when he saw the rage ever-growing in the head doctor's face; but he knew that he was right. "Don't assume my nurse is incompetent."

[Jaykobell]

When Neil rudely rebutted Murray's words, screaming and swearing weren't what came next. Instead, the head doctor glared at the younger doctor for a moment before slowly bending down again, prompting himself up on the armrests of Neil's chair. He looked Neil in the eyes for a moment, in silence, his face unreadable. "Listen here, Endzela," Murray started, his voice equally flat and unreadable; and that tone gave Neil chills.

"I'm the one in charge in this hospital. What I say, goes," he reminded the doctor, and he edged his face just a little closer. "I don't discriminate my employees based on their competence," he pointed out, and only then did he show annoyance in his face. "I am very happy with Cybele's performance; and I want it to stay that way, so don't start ruining things." There was a pause, and when Neil didn't come back with another cocky answer, Murray added, "Am I clear, Endzela?"

Neil had turned his head just enough to avoid looking Murray in the eyes, though he was still looking in his general direction. The head doctor wasn't always the gentlest, but Neil couldn't deny that it was thanks to his iron fist that the hospital functioned so well. Still, it wasn't the first time Murray's harsh attitude had clashed with Neil's own headstrong personality. "Fine," the younger doctor eventually replied, resting his head against a prompted fist, his elbow barely having any space to sit on the armrest of his chair.

"Try to survive without your nurse, then," Murray said, letting go of Neil's chair and turning around to leave. "I'll be expecting your report by tonight."

[Jaykobell]

"Was he mad?"

The morning had gone relatively well; at least, once Neil had figured out how Cybele had organized his schedule. It had looked incredibly complicated on the outside, but after reading the notes and figuring out the color code, Neil had found out it was actually surprisingly simple to understand.

He'd gone through his consultations for the morning, and he was settling down for lunch when the phone rang. He'd thought about letting it ring through to voicemail, but after a sigh and a roll of his eyes, he had settled on at least looking at the dial to see who was calling. Good thing, too; because he got to pick up the phone right before Cybele's call got to voicemail.

"Well, yeah, he was," Neil answered, looking over his hand as he spoke on the phone. He'd been surprised to see Cybele calling, but considering the nurse, he could understand why she was calling. At least, she sounded well enough. "But you know how Murray is," he added, chuckling, and although Cybele couldn't see it, Neil rolled his eyes, smiling. He avoided mentioning what the head doctor had actually said; really, those comments had been uncalled for, and Neil didn't feel the need to pass them on to his nurse.

[Jaykobell]

There was silence on the other side, and Neil could assume that his answer hadn't pleased Cybele. "I shouldn't be home," the nurse eventually said, and Neil sighed on his end.

"But you are," he replied, letting himself lean against the chair, letting his head fall back a little bit. "Don't worry about it. He's upset with me, not with you, anyway; for a change."

He tried to laugh it off, but Cybele's constant silent on the phone made it clear that she was feeling bad over the situation. "I'm so sorry," she replied quietly, and she sounded genuinely apologetic and tormented. "I shouldn't have cried yesterday; it was so unprofessional. I... I'm sorry."

Neil sighed, putting his free hand over his face and rubbing the bridge of his nose. Cybele was a hard worker, and she knew what she was doing; but her overly apologetic personality sometimes got to him. The point had been for her to stay home and relax, and to forget about what had happened; instead, she was worrying about not being at work. "Cybele," he spoke, and he tried to sound authoritative, though he did his best not to sound harsh, "stop it now. You didn't do anything wrong. Now stop talking like you did."

Yet another pause, though this one could be expected. After an awkward moment of silence, Cybele quietly said, "I'm sorry."

[Jaykobell]

"You always work hard," Neil went on to say, trying to find a way to justify Cybele staying home without just forcing her to accept it as fact, "and you never call in for anything; sick or otherwise. A day off will do you good."

"But that's not why you told me to stay home," Cybele argued, and Neil was at a loss as to what he was supposed to say.

"What if it was?" he retorted, and he straightened up in his chair, twirling it around slowly to distract himself. "I'm sure you cried because you've gone through a lot, and you just need a day to relax. Are you feeling better than yesterday?"

"Well..." There was a bit of a pause, and then a sigh. "Sort of."

"See?" Neil said, and he got closer to the phone, stretching his arm so he could be ready to end the call and hang up. He knew there was no arguing with Cybele when she was convinced of something, and that was exactly what was happening. "So I don't want to see you or hear from you until tomorrow, when you'll be here bright and early, and ready for anything. Got it?"

Neil could tell Cybele disagreed, but the nurse only sighed, resigning herself to the situation. "Yes, doctor."

[Jaykobell]

The next day, Cybele had returned to the hospital, ready for duty; and the day after that, and then the day after that. The routine returned the moment the nurse was back to her desk, and Neil was relieved that Murray hadn't felt the need to pass the same harsh comments to Cybele herself upon her return. Hopefully, that discussion would stay between the two doctors.

The job was fairly uneventful, being the same old routine; answer the phone, schedule appointments, help the doctor with some procedures; nothing new. Even emergency cases hadn't been relayed to them all that often; things were going well.

Cybele was alone in the office when she was in the process of filing out a form for a patient. She remembered the woman's name, but for the life of her, she couldn't locate the file. "Weird," she mumbled to herself, frowning a little as she looked over her desk — where Neil usually left the patients' files for her to review, update and then file away — over his desk, and all around the office. Somehow, the file wasn't around, and Neil was in the consultation office; the form wasn't nearly that important that she needed to interrupt his appointment with a patient.

She went a little deeper in her search, looking more thoroughly through her shelves and Neil's own desk, and her frown got worse as she failed to find the file.

[Jaykobell]

She quickly looked through the filing system, just in case she would've misfiled the folder. "Where did he put it?" she mumbled, sighing and rolling her eyes; sometimes, the doctor didn't help her job at all, scattering files wherever he wanted.

As she turned around the office, trying to leave no stone unturned, she eventually came across Neil's bag; she frowned for a moment. "He wouldn't have taken it home, would he?" she wondered, and partly from curiosity, she unzipped the black leather bag and looked into it.

"Goodness," she gasped, her eyes widening just a little at the sight, "his bag is an awful mess." She had to shove papers around and about, trying to see if any small, thin beige file was hidden between all those loose papers. It was so stuffed that she had no choice but to take out a few papers at a time, trying to free up some space for an easier search.

She eventually got to see the very bottom of the bag, but no office file. "I guess it's not in here, either," she sighed, and she was about to put back the loose papers she'd taken out when the remains of his bag caught her attention. She cocked her brow as she noticed all sorts of crumpled papers and loose paperclips just laying around in the bag. "Is he even keeping trash in this?"

[Jaykobell]

Considering how dirty his bag was, Cybele figured she could do Neil a favor and get rid of his trash. He didn't seem to have anything very personal in the bag, regardless; the majority of the loose papers were medical notes or articles, with very few being some information on patients he needed to keep in mind, and things of the like. Really, it would only do the doctor good to clean his bag some.

She pulled out some of the crumpled papers, and she found more notes. "Why didn't he just throw these out?" she groaned, shaking her head at the mess. Truly, she liked to tell herself this was one of the many reasons why Neil needed Cybele to work for him. "Honestly."

She'd put the majority of the crumpled notes away when she came to something different. Skimming over it made Cybele do a double take, and reading it more carefully, she blinked. It looked like a prescription note from the hospital, and while there was nothing wrong about that in and of itself; the note was signed and authorized by St. Lazare's head hematologist, doctor Martin Donato. The note read a specific prescription that Cybele didn't remember seeing very often at all: "Prophylaxis injections to be administered three times a week; 25-40 IU/kg."

"Prophylaxis..." Cybele echoed, and for a moment, she thought nothing of the medicine; although she thought it negligent that Neil had been keeping this prescription in his bag. "Why does he even have this?" she groaned, and she hoped that he hadn't been forgetting to give a patient their prescription.

That wasn't the case. "Patient: Neil Endzela; Age: 31."

[Jaykobell]

"Wait... this is for him?" She read the note again, and there was no mistaking it. The paper was marked with Neil's name, address, medical information, and age, together with Martin's signature and the very specific medication and dosage.

"But prophylaxis; isn't that for hemophilia?" She frowned, and then she felt regret; together with a pang of fear. Why was it crumpled in his bag? While there was doubt in her mind, since she didn't deal with blood diseases too often, Cybele was almost certain that this was a prescription for the treatment of hemophilia: a blood disease where the body failed to effectively stop the bleeding from an injury. She couldn't remember Neil ever mentioning that before; was this maybe an old prescription? The date wasn't exactly old, but it was far from being recent, either.

Finding this, she figured that the doctor wouldn't appreciate finding out that she'd been touching his bag, albeit with good intentions. Instead of throwing out the crumpled papers, she carefully put them back in the bag, crumpling them all again back into little paper balls; including the prophylaxis prescription. She then put back the loose papers, zipped it shut, and then returned to her desk to do something else. She was still missing that file to finish the form, but there were plenty of other things she could do.

Among those other things, her mind continued to run into a loop over that prescription. Did Neil have hemophilia; and he hadn't told her about it? Even in or outside of surgeries, she'd never seen him cut himself or get injured, so memory couldn't confirm if he had previously shown any symptoms of it.

[Jaykobell]

Cybele knew that Neil often complained about the latex gloves used in the hospital, so she figured he was allergic to latex. That was one thing of many she'd noticed about him, like how he tapped things when he was nervous, and how he liked his meals usually the same every day. She'd noticed a few things about him and his habits, but hemophilia had never been one of them.

Her mind went around in a loop almost all day over the matter, because she found it worrisome. Why was the prescription sitting in his bag, crumpled underneath all sorts of other papers? Had he submitted it to get the medicine? Hemophilia wasn't a disease that eventually went away; it was, as of the present time, incurable. If Martin had prescribed Neil with prophylaxis infusions, then the doctor would need to keep getting them his whole life.

Did Murray know if Neil had hemophilia - or some kind of blood disease? Would it be better if Cybele went and asked about it from him or from Martin directly? But then, how was she supposed to explain why she was asking or how she'd found out? She wasn't even sure if Neil actually had a condition.

"You okay there, Cybele?" Neil's voice had brought Cybele out of her thoughts, and before she knew it, the day was over.

[Jaykobell]

"What?" Cybele quietly replied, blinking and looking up from her desk. "Yes... Yes, I'm okay," she assured the doctor, who cracked a mischievous smile at her.

"All right, if you say so," Neil replied, and then he started going to his own desk to pack up for the night. "It's not like you to daydream," he pointed out, chuckling, as he went for his bag and opened it. "On the job, I mean."

Cybele's heart went up to her throat when she saw Neil going to his bag, and she hoped that he wouldn't pick up on his papers having been touched or put out of order. She doubted the doctor had organized his mess that thoroughly, but one could never know.

She let herself relax when Neil zipped the bag shut again, and only when he turned back around to look at Cybele did the nurse realize that she'd been staring at him. "Something wrong?" he asked, and Cybele gasped, looking away back to her own things.

"S-sorry," she apologized, shuffling her papers, albeit a little arbitrarily, to stimulate the effect that she was also packing up. "I spaced out for a moment." She could feel the doctor staring back at her, and her instrincts told her he had a smile on his face.

[Jaykobell]

Cybele was so busy shuffling her papers and getting ready to pack that she failed to notice Neil walking over to the edge of her desk. She ended up ignoring him for some time, up until she bothered to look up just to see him leaning against her desk on both arms. She jumped just a bit, and she stared, wide-eyed, at Neil's large smile.

"Are you spacing out," he started asking, and then he tilted his head, "because of my good looks?"

Cybele opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out; instead, she stared back at Neil with her mouth wide open. "Wh... Of course not," she ended up saying, and she felt bad when she saw Neil's brow raise.

"Ouch," he replied back, looking at her curiously, with a hint of playfulness in his face, "harsh."

"Th-that's not—" Cybele tried to say, and she quickly stopped herself, considering how flustered she was. "I didn't mean it that way. I mean, you look... charming, but I was thinking of something else," she tried to explain, genuinely hoping that awkward — and rude — comment hadn't hurt Neil's feelings in any way.

She figured she didn't need to worry about that as Neil rolled his eyes and his smile got even bigger. "Cybele, I'm teasing."