"What's his deal?" a raspy voice asked just before Addison propped her thin arms onto the side of the nurse's station, and tilted her violet-dyed head in the direction Séamus went. 

"He wasn't held enough as a child," Finn replied calmly, submitting his notes and reaching for the paper cup of bitter, burnt cafeteria coffee sitting next to him. He grimaced as he took a sip of the foul sludge, mourning the cup of perfect spiced mocha currently being buried under piles of refuse six halls down. 

Fuck he knew he was going to regret that, and briefly considered making the drive back to Camilla on his lunch break just to get his fix.

"Isn't he your cousin?" she asked, arching her brown brows in surprise as Finn’s brown gaze lifted. "You're kinda insulting your own family."

"Yeah, well, Aunt Cahira is a bitch, so," he supplied with a shrug, his nose wrinkling as he lifted his cup for another sip. 

A draw of the awful concoction he nearly choked on as Séamus appeared and brightly crowed, "Ooooh, are we insulting my mother? Can I join?"

Finn rolled his hand toward his cousin as he sputtered, coughing on the sludge, as if to say "see?", and the violet-haired nurse snorted out a shocked laugh in response. 

"Well, I-," she began as Séamus climbed up the nurse's station to sit atop the counter, but was cut off when one of the veteran techs stuck her head out of Trauma One. 

"Dr. Byrne!" she called out, motioning to Finn to make it clear she was discussing him, not Séamus or Finn's older sister Siobhán, who also attended the ED. "We could use your help, if you have a moment?" 

"I'm coming!" Finn yelled with a thumbs up before shoving away from the desk and shrugging on his lab coat as he turned to his reclining cousin. "D'you think we confuse the other staff here, what with there being three of us and all?" 

"Naaaah," Séamus said with a dismissive wave. "We annoy the hell out of them, though, and that's half the fun." 

"You're a menace," Finn replied with a laugh, shoving his cousin's shoulder as he passed. 

"Had a frighteningly detailed dream of happening across your fated mate that caused you to have to run ten miles instead of five in order to deal with the emotions!" Séamus bellowed his final guess on his cousin's tardiness, and Finn turned to find him using his cupped hands as a megaphone, a mischievous grin shaping his lips.

And so, Finn mirrored the action as he began walking backwards, cupping his hands around his mouth and calling out a petulant, "Suck off!" 

"You couldn't afford all of this," Séamus replied dramatically, running his hands down his body with sultry intent, only to topple from the counter with a ungraceful flail of limbs and a muffled screech as Addison placed a well-timed shove to the center of his spine. 

Finn caught the flailing arm of his patient yet again, ducking backwards before it could collide with his face this time, barely swallowing down the curse that rose to his lips. 

"Mrs. Morrey," he shouted, clutching the bleeding appendage to his chest and resigning himself to a scrub change before his next assignment. "Either you calm down and allow me to treat you as we discussed, or I will be forced to sedate you." 

"No!" The panicked omega screeched, fighting against Finn's hold, bucking and thrashing wildly, desperate to free her arm from the alpha's significantly stronger hold. "No!" 

Finn did not move fast enough to avoid the foot she buried in his flank, winding him with the surprising strength hidden in the assault.

Wheezing as he grabbed the other flailing appendage, Finn bellowed, "I need ten ccs of Valium, twenty-five milligrams of Phenergan diffused into a liter of saline, and a sterile stitch kit! And where the hell is radiology?" 

"The mobile X-ray machine is currently in use in Trauma Five," Addison explained around the sealed syringe she held between her teeth as she ripped open a bag of saline and plopped it onto the counter. She then dug the vial of Phenergan from her pocket as she spat out the syringe, unsealing and uncapping it briskly before puncturing the seal on the vial, turning it upside down and drawing up the dose she needed. The needle was then stabbed into the injection port of the saline bag, the dose diffused, before she spiked the tubing and began to prime the line. 

"Well, someone tell them to wrap it the hell up!" Finn snapped, holding the patient's arms tightly to his chest as Addison hung the bag, both of them ignoring the omega's wails as Addison fished a saline flush and an alcohol wipe from her other scrub pocket. With a series of brisk but steadily careful movements, she had the patient's IV sanitized, flushed, and connected to the tubing. 

"Where's that Valium?" Finn asked, tightening his hold ever so slightly as the patient sobbed. 

"The intern is getting it from the Pyxis," Addison offered calmly, referencing the automated medication dispensing machine stored within the ED that the pharmacy kept stocked with common medications, in order to limit treatment delays. 

And as if the comment had summoned them, the intern careened through the door, chest heaving, and held out not only the vial, but also the sterile stitch kit Finn had requested, with a victorious smile. 

"Did you need anything else?" they asked, nearly begging with their eyes for a way to be useful, as Addison took the vial and fished a second, sealed syringe, from her pocket. She drew up the dose without hesitation, as Finn nodded his head toward the table in the corner. 

"Bring me that table, and set the kit on it, but do not open it yet," he ordered sternly, before his attention returned to the sobbing omega tucked against him. "Sssh, it's okay. I'm not going to hurt you, Mrs. Morrey. I'm trying to help you." 

"He's going to hurt me," she sobbed out, the first time she had made any reference to the cause of her injuries. In fact, she had quite blatantly refused to reveal the origin of the blood-pouring cuts and broken bones she arrived laden with. Rather, she had shuddered and jumped, even as she cried out in agony with every movement, every time someone so much as sighed too hard around her. Had panicked the moment Finn had explained her need for stitches and an X-ray, and the inevitability of her receiving a cast, turning violent and terrified at Addison's arrival. 

"Who is he, Mrs. Morrey?" Finn said as calmly as he could through the fury pulsing throughout his veins, but wasn't given the chance for a response before Addison punctured the injection port of the omega's IV line once more, and plunged the Valium into her veins without a word. It took mere moments for Mrs. Morrey’s eyes to grow heavy and her body to slump into Finn's, losing the fight she had clung to for so long. 

Soon, she was well and truly asleep, leaving Finn with nothing left he could do to help her aside from tending to her wounds. 

So, with a sigh and a nod, he did just that. 

An hour later, Finn closed himself into the locker room with a sigh, slumping against the door as his head fell back against it with a heavy thud. 

That had been rough, one of the roughest patient encounters he'd had in a long time, and yet Finn somehow had to pull himself together, to shake the weight of the assignment, in the time it took to change into a clean set of scrubs. 

And he wasn't quite sure if he would be able to.

After all, the signs of abuse had been clear, so fucking clear, well before she'd mentioned that mysterious him mere moments before she was sedated, and he could never understand how it had been allowed to get this bad before someone noticed. 

Or they had noticed, and either didn't care, or had the same archaic, fucked up ideals as those Finn reported to. 

Because he would report this, as he always did, and as always he would be told nothing could be done for a bonded mate, even if she were being mutilated, even if she were terrified and miserable and hurt. 

For, in the eyes of his bosses, of everyone able to make a difference he had ever come across, an abused omega was better than a dead one, better than one suffering through mate withdrawal. 

And so his faith in the system would crumble a little further. 

Yet, he would keep going, would plaster a smile to his face and force himself to shake the weight of it all, of the guilt and shame that came with his role in this fucked up system, and keep on going. 

Because he was a doctor, and that was his fucking job. 

So, with another muffled sigh, Finn forced himself upright with a groan, and began to change.

He was in the middle of pulling the blood-sodden scrub top over his head when the pager clipped to his hip began its incessant, irritating buzz, its shrill toning, once more. 

"Son of a-," he began, before abruptly cutting himself off with yet another sigh, and tossing the ruined fabric into the biohazard bin, teeth gritting. Still determined to shake the weight of that last case, to string himself together the best he could so perhaps he would be able to help someone. Finn mumbled a curse, scrubbed a hand down his face as he unclipped the pager from his waistband, and opened the message, blessedly silencing the skin-crawling sound. 

Yet, as his brown gaze consumed the words scrawled across the tiny screen, Finn's heart dropped to his fucking feet in the same instant as his skin went clammy and a horrified shudder coursed up his spine…because this could not be fucking happening. 

The pager clattered from his hold, colliding with the hard floor, forgotten and unwanted, as he burst from the room, shoving a new scrub top on as he ran, pleading to the heavens to be wrong, for it to be literally anything, anyone, else. 

And as the door slammed shut behind him, the forgotten pager's cracked screen rolled across the linoleum floor, tilting toward the fluorescent lights. 

CODE YELLOW--CODE TURQUOISE

MISSING PATIENT, OMEGA IN HEAT. ALL AVAILABLE UNAFFECTED PERSONNELLE REPORT TO THE NURSE'S STATION IMMEDIATELY.

MISSING OMEGA IN HEAT.