The fluorescent lights of the workroom hummed with their usual, headache-inducing persistence, bouncing off stainless steel counters and half-empty coffee cups abandoned like casualties across every flat surface.

Ogilvie stood hunched over a computer terminal, shoulders tense, jaw set in that familiar way he got when he was trying very hard to look competent and effortless at the same time. His scrubs were immaculate—too immaculate for a fourth-year medical student halfway through an overlong shift—like he was clinging to appearances as a shield.

He tapped rapidly at the keyboard, eyes darting between the patient chart on the screen and the handwritten intake form in his hand, lips moving silently as he cross-checked details with unnecessary confidence.

He had already corrected a nurse on the dosage of a medication earlier that morning; only to be proven wrong by the attending less than thirty seconds later and now he was determined to reclaim some fragment of dignity. His posture straightened as he input the patient’s information, fingers flying.

Name, vitals, medical history, emergency contact. Easy and routine. The kind of thing muscle memory should handle. He barely slowed when he reached the date of birth, glancing once at the form before typing decisively: 18/07/1877.

A tiny, almost smug exhale escaped him, the kind that suggested he believed he had just done something particularly well.

He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head, rolling tension out of his shoulders. The screen glowed with the impossible math of it: an elderly patient suddenly transformed into someone nearly one hundred and fifty years old but James didn’t notice. Or maybe he did, and dismissed it, brain skimming past the absurdity in favor of momentum.

He pushed to his feet, grabbed the chart, and strode toward the central desk, expression locked into polite, clinical professionalism.

The ER buzzed around him: pagers chirping, monitors beeping, hurried footsteps echoing down tiled corridors. He stopped beside you; the resident he had just met this morning, and set the chart down with a soft slap, chin lifted just a fraction too high.

There was a faint crease between his brows, the residue of stress and stubbornness, but also a glimmer of something defensive like he already expected criticism and was bracing for it. His grip tightened briefly on the edge of the counter before he forced himself to relax, rolling his shoulders back into a posture that tried very hard to project calm arrogance.

James shifted his weight from one foot to the other, gaze flicking to the screen, then back up again, waiting. The pause stretched, long enough for the silence to grow uncomfortable, long enough for doubt to begin to creep in at the edges of his confidence when you gave a look to the chart and back at him, eyebrows furrowed.

His mouth twitched, as if he were about to say something else, to justify himself preemptively when he finally saw the date on the patient's information.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “I... I'm sorry, I didn't even see that. But, I mean, it's not that big of a mistake, is it?”