#audrey x morgan

It’s ME returned from the void to throw more good doctor fic at y’all before I retreat beneath my troll bridge once more. This one features Morgan and Audrey because they don’t get enough love so I have to give it to them. And I will. 

Title: Raw Nerves

Summary: Morgan’s RA causes her to make a mistake during surgery that rattles her. She goes to Audrey determined to resign, and confesses her newly diagnosed RA. Audrey has other ideas. Canon compliant up to 3x15. 

Excerpt: : ‘“You did that today. You were ready to give up on all of your ambitions, on the thing that you have worked for, set aside your pride, and all your hopes for your own future in order to do what you felt needed to be done for your patients. I’m proud of you.” 

The shaky smile that lit Morgan’s face at that was both heartening and depressing. Heartening because it was obvious that it meant something coming from her; that she carried enough weight with Morgan for her pride to matter. Depressing because it was obvious they were words she’d rarely heard.’

Link:AO3 

“Doctor Lim?”

Audrey paused, about to enter her office, and turned to find Morgan hovering outside it, hands clenched tightly into fists at her sides, looking tense.

“Doctor Reznick, can I help you?”

She was fairly sure she could. Audrey knew an ambush when she saw one. Reznick had been waiting for her to get back and after the events of the day, she wasn’t all too surprised to find her here.

Taking a deep breath, Morgan said shakily, as though she was having to force out every word, “I would like to remove myself from the residency program. I no longer think that I’m capable of dealing with it.”

Audrey blinked. It took a lot to surprise her. She’d been a trauma surgeon for the better part of twenty years. She’d seen every ugly, gory, messy piece of humanity; both inside and out. This surprised her.

“I wanted to thank you for this opportunity,” Morgan continued. She had now clasped her shaking hands in front of her. It seemed to be taking every bit of composure and grit she’d built up since starting her residency to get through this. “It’s been an honour working with you, Doctor Lim. I learned a lot.”

She only just managed to choke out the last word. Then she stood almost defiantly, head held high, back almost painfully straight, and gave Audrey a slight nod.

A beat of silence followed this emotional pronouncement, both women staring at each other as the moment swelled. Audrey burst it. She’d never been one for dramatics. That was firmly Neil’s department.

“Come in here,” she said, nodding towards her office, stepping inside and then holding the door.

Morgan remained standing stiffly, eyes glassy, a muscle feathering in her jaw as she fought to control herself.

“Please,” she bit out, finally, “Don’t make this any harder than it already is. I don’t want it to be drawn out, I don’t want to be processed, and fill out paperwork. I don’t want you to hold my hand and tell me I’ve done a good job and I should be proud of myself, and that I shouldn’t think I’m weak or whatever other managerial bullshit you’re required to spout now as my chief. I just…I just want to go. Please.”

That last word undercut the strong defiance in the rest of her little speech.

Audrey was unimpressed.

It had been a long fucking day. She was tired, she was sore, she was pissed off. She wanted to go home, open a bottle of beer, and put on one of the gardening shows she taped and would never reveal to anyone outside of her bad-tempered cat that she watched willingly.

“Morgan,” she said, emphasising the word with as much ‘I don’t have the energy for bullshit right now’ tone as she could muster, which was a lot, “I’m not asking you to come in and have a cup of tea with me as your mentor or friend. I’m telling you to get into my office as your chief of surgery. Do you understand?”

“Okay,” Morgan said, finally. 

She stiffly moved into the room and Audrey hurried her on with a wave of the hand before closing the door and tilting the blinds. The hospital was designed in a very open, minimalist style with plenty of glass walls and doors to let in the light. It was great for her plants, but she had never liked the feeling of existing in a fish bowl, with passersby able to ogle her whenever they felt like it.

Audrey moved behind her desk and sat down, gesturing Morgan towards the chair opposite her. She sat slowly, still looking a little thrown. Clearly whatever she’d expected Audrey’s reaction to be, it hadn’t been this.

She leaned down and rummaged in a drawer for a moment before pulling out a box of tissues, which she nudged pointedly across the desk.

Morgan stared at them then, with a touch of her usual arrogance, said, “I haven’t cried in front of another person since I was eight.”

“Maybe you should,” she observed mildly, steepling her fingers in front of her, reminding herself irresistibly of her first chief of surgery.

Morgan blinked incredulously, the context of the situation temporarily lost to the situation, “This? From you?”

Audrey raised her eyebrows.

“I just mean,” Morgan amended, forcibly softening her tone, “That you’re not exactly the most…Emotionally frivolous person I’ve ever met.”

She smiled at that. Emotionally frivolous. She had to remember that. Neil would get a kick out of it, she was pretty sure, and immediately resolved never to let him hear it.

“Fair,” she conceded, “But I’m not devoid of emotion; I just control it. There’s a difference. And I also know when controlling and holding everything back is no longer the best course of action. Sometimes you need to let a wound bleed before you can patch it up. So-” she pushed the tissues closer still to Morgan with the aid of a pen.

Morgan drew the box to the edge of the table in a small sign of acquiescence, but didn’t take one. Well, miracles took a little bit more work than the impossible, she’d take what she could get.

“You have been the most obviously ambitious and driven resident at this hospital from day one,” Audrey said bluntly, leaning forward, hands clasped once more.

She didn’t see the point in beating about the bush. Not this late in the day. And not with Morgan. Straight talking was a trait they both shared and appreciated in each other.

“Tell me why you want to leave now. Without any mention from me or Doctor Melendez. And more importantly, without any kind of fight.”

“I could have killed that boy today,” Morgan whispered shakily.

“You didn’t,” Audrey pointed out.

Confronting your own mortality was hard enough. Confronting the fact that you were fully responsible for another human being’s mortality was something else. Even the hardest, most reserved and arrogant surgeons she’d ever worked with had met that beast and been shaken by it. She sure as hell had.

“I could have,” Morgan said, more forcefully. Her voice broke back down to that of a frightened child realising how small they really were in the face of the world for the first time again as she added, “That scares me.”

“Good,” Audrey said bluntly.

One of her previous mentors had observed that, with her scalpel, she had all the true delicacy that a surgeon needed. With her words, however, she could somehow have all the subtlety of a scalpel. She figured there were times for scalpels, and times for sledgehammers, and that was just how she was.

Morgan looked up from her focused contemplation of her own hands looking shocked. Audrey rather liked being able to produce that effect in her. In any of her residents. It was good to challenge them, push them out of their comfort zones, tease something new from them.

“We’re not superhuman,” she went on, when it became clear Morgan wasn’t going to be able to find a reply to that. For once. “You fucked up. It happens. Surgeons are trained to achieve perfection every single time, with every single thing that they do. That’s because when we don’t people can die.”

“Well I definitely fucked up today,” Morgan whispered, shuddering.

She stared down at her hands again, as though she could still see the mess she had made stained upon them. That might linger for a while. Audrey hoped it did. She still had blood on her hands after years of scrubbing. If she ever lost that she’d leave this profession she loved and never come back.

“You did,” Audrey agreed. No point sugar-coating it. “That’s the fact of the matter. The big secret that everyone knows about surgeons; and no-one wants to admit. That mistakes can happen. We’re flawed. We’re human. Shit’s going to happen.”

Morgan shook her head slightly.

Audrey knew that feeling. She had believed she could be perfect. She had believed she could get through all her surgeries flawlessly and never make a mistake. She’d believed that herself. When it had all come crashing down it had nearly crushed her.

There were a lot of make or break moments on the road to surgery. This was usually one of the first. How did you deal with your first big error. What did you do when you realised how easily you could kill someone? A lot of people couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility.

Med school was all about saving lives. Helping patients. Doing good. Beating the odds. Changing lives.

Residency was when the real world kicked back in. That was when you remembered that the harsh realities hadn’t disappeared while you were buried in books. And that those who had the power to save lives; equally had the power to lose them.

“You fucked up,” Audrey said, drawing Morgan’s eyes back to her, “But you handled it. You put that boy’s life in danger with your mistake. Then you saved it. He’ll go home tomorrow with his parents and his life will change for the better because of what you did today.”

“It could so easily have gone the other way. His parents could be going home right now making funeral arrangements because of me.”

“But they’re not. That’s also because of you. A monkey could nick an artery in the middle of surgery - anyone can do that. Not everyone can handle the situation afterwards. That’s the difference,” Audrey said.

Morgan blinked. Audrey enjoyed the effect of her processing the rollercoaster of that little nugget of advice for a moment.

Then she said, more seriously, “If we kicked out every resident who made a mistake during a surgery the world would very quickly run out of future surgeons.

“I don’t want to leave because I made a mistake,” Morgan said rigidly, her jaw clenched, that same feeling that she was having to force out every syllable back in her tone again, “I want to leave because I should never have been able to make that mistake in the first place.”

The deep breath she sucked in to compose herself shook audibly in the quiet of her office. Morgan hesitated, then reluctantly yanked a tissue from the box in front of her and proceeded to twist it between her hands, fraying it.

“I should never have been in that OR today. I shouldn’t have been in one for a while,” she finally got out, with the same aura of a person relieving the darkest sins of their soul in a confessions box.  

“Why not?” Audrey pushed.

Sometimes you had to apply a little pressure, cause a little pain, to get to the root of a problem before you could yank it out and stitch up the wound.

Morgan stared at the tissue she was now shredding between her fingers without really seeing it. Audrey was impressed with her steel as she managed to swallow, actually look up with her head high, when she spoke next.

“A few weeks ago you noticed that I was…Shaky during the tracheal surgery. I told you that I hit my finger with a hammer while I was hanging a painting at home…”

Morgan closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. The words were barely distinct when they came, but they came. For that Audrey commended her more than anything she had yet seen from the young woman.

“I lied to you.”

The admission hung heavy in the air for a moment, both of them hearing it and processing the implications, the enormity of this moment in the life of Morgan Reznick.

“The truth is,” Morgan said, her whole body shaking along with her words now. “The truth is that I-” She broke off and reached for another tissue, having successfully crumpled the first into a mulch of confetti in her agitation. She used this one to dab at her eyes which had started shedding tears against her concrete will. “The truth is that I…I…”

“You have rheumatoid arthritis,” Audrey said, gently.

She’d heard enough. Morgan had done enough to convince her she was ready to tell her the truth and trust her with this most vulnerable new aspect of her existence. She wasn’t cruel. She was a mentor. She was there to challenge, and push, but also to guide and assist where she was needed.

Morgan stared at her, eyes wide, every other emotion forgotten for a moment in the face of her shock.

“How did you know?”

Audrey gave her a rueful smile. “You told me that you hit your hand with a hammer, Morgan. I’ve never seen more perfectly manicured hands in my life,” Morgan gave a small watery smile, staring down at them. “No cuts, no bruising, no marks whatsoever,” Audrey said, shaking her head. “In future if you’re going to lie to my face, at least put some effort in.”

Morgan huffed a soft laugh at that, dabbing her eyes. “To be fair I was under a lot of pressure.”

“Well I’m glad you stitch better under pressure than you lie,” Audrey observed.

“That’s why I became a surgeon and not a lawyer,” Morgan joked. Then her face crumpled and she had to bite her lip hard to stop herself crying. Audrey was about to reach out to her when she coughed and said, with forced composure, “How did you know it was RA, though? It could have been something else, something other than what I’d said.”

Audrey sighed heavily. “I’m not an idiot, Morgan,” she said flatly. “You have a family history. I have eyes. And you decided to confide in Glassman who, for the record, lies even worse under pressure than you do.”

“He promised me that he’d give me a chance; that he wouldn't’ say anything to anyone,” Morgan mumbled.

“And he didn’t,” Audrey admitted, “Not until I implied that I already knew and then, well…” she trailed off with a shrug.

“So…So how long have you known exactly?” Morgan asked, now frowning slightly.

“A few months or so,” Audrey replied calmly.

“So you’ve just been waiting for this,” Morgan said, gesturing stiffly, “Ever since you figured it out?”

It was obvious she was trying to control the anger and frustration Audrey had known this would provoke in her. She was largely failing.

“Yes, I have,” she said evenly.

Morgan scoffs, shaking her head. Audrey sat up a little straighter and prepared herself with the rebuttals she had worked out for this eventual confrontation. Morgan surprised her however, “Then why didn’t you just fire me on the spot as soon as you found out? Why did you let me keep going on as a resident when you knew I was…Compromised,” she spoke that last word as though it left a bad taste in her mouth.

Audrey leaned back, considering her. She’d expected an angry tirade about why she had let Morgan continue in pain and fear all this time without reaching out to her. She wouldn’t at all have blamed her for asking that; it was a valid question. She’d spent a long time weighing the pros and cons of each option.

She took a moment to adjust to the altered trajectory of the conversation, then said carefully, and honestly, “I wanted to see how you handled the situation. That’s part of being a good attending. If you dive in the second one of your residents makes a mistake, or encounters an issue, and fix it for them, they’ll never learn or grow. Neither will you. You’re always learning in this job and anyone can have an idea you would never have thought of. You miss those opportunities if you’re too quick to assert what you think is right onto a situation.”

Morgan nodded stiffly, and Audrey softened her tone and added more gently, “It’s not easy. And this is not a decision that I took lightly in any way. But…You received a setback. I wanted to see how you recovered. And you did. The same way you did today in surgery. You dealt with it before it became a problem that I had to intervene in because you no longer cope with it yourself.”

“So you just…You used it as a test?” Morgan said, sounding hurt and betrayed, in spite of herself, Audrey knew.

The relationship between an attending and a resident was a lot more intimate than someone who hadn’t experienced it could ever understand. There was a lot of trust, that went both ways. But especially from the residents. Their attending was someone they could look up to, someone they knew would have their back, be in their corner, but who also made all the decisions in their day-to-day lives.

It was a relationship with a big, natural power imbalance, and it was difficult to negotiate from both sides.

Audrey loved it. She loved being able to teach, being able to learn from her residents. She loved being able to guide, and train, and help her surgeons thrive. And she thought she was suited to it.

She’d met attendings who worked the way Morgan assumed she had. She’d had them use those tactics, and play those games, with her. And the betrayal cut deep.

“No,” she said, voice still gentle, “This isn’t a game, Morgan. This is your life, your career, your dream. I get that,” Morgan looked up at her, a kind of desperation in her eyes, seeking that validation, the validation of someone who understood her and her love for this job.

“But you didn’t say anything,” her voice wasn’t as accusatory as it had been a moment ago, but there was still an element of distrust in it.

“No, I didn’t.” She took a deep breath, wondering how exactly to explain herself, “Being a good surgeon is about more than knowledge or skill-”

“You have to care,” Morgan interrupted, with thinly veiled sarcasm.

Audrey smiled, thinly, “We all care, Morgan,” she said wryly. “Maybe not as openly as someone like Claire, or as abstractly as someone like Shaun, but no-one does this job if they don’t care. That’s a given. I don’t care what anyone says, how aloof they appear, how emotionally frivolous,” she caught Morgan’s eye and they shared a small smile, “They care.”

“I do,” Morgan mumbled, a little unnecessarily, but she could be forgiven under the circumstances.

“You can teach surgery,” Audrey said, “You can teach technique, and medicine, and even how to cope under the kind of pressure situations we face. But you will never be a truly great surgeon if you can’t be aware of your own flaws and manage to overcome them.”

Morgan swallowed, and Audrey was sure she felt this was going to go in the direction of ‘your RA is a flaw you can’t overcome, so you can never be a great surgeon’. It wasn’t. She was kind of offended Morgan still expected her to go that conventional route. Audrey was many things but she tried, as a rule, to never be conventional.

“ You have to be able to take yourself out of the equation. You have to be able to make decisions beyond yourself - to ignore your own feelings, your own beliefs, and judgements. Your hopes and dreams, and demons, all need to go inside a little box in your head that you throw out of a window every morning before you come to work. You have to be able to do what is right for your patients, no matter what it costs you, or how hard that might be.”

She saw a faint spark of hope rekindle in Morgan’s eyes, and endeavoured to tease it into something stronger, bring back that fire she was known for.

“You did that today. You were ready to give up on all of your ambitions, on the thing that you have worked for, set aside your pride, and all your hopes for your own future in order to do what you felt needed to be done for your patients. I’m proud of you.”

The shaky smile that lit Morgan’s face at that was both heartening and depressing. Heartening because it was obvious that it meant something coming from her; that she carried enough weight with Morgan for her pride to matter. Depressing because it was obvious they were words she’d rarely heard.

“This really wasn’t a test?” she whispered the words as though they were a question, but both of them knew it wasn’t. Not really.

“Life is a test,” Audrey said, frowning slightly at how unfortunately philosophical that had sounded. “This is just something that you had to face during the course of it. It was a choice you had to make. It’s a choice that every resident will have to make before they qualify. Or they won’t. It’ll come from different places, and affect you all in different ways…But it always comes.”

“So if I hadn’t done this…If I hadn’t come to you and told you the truth…”

“If you hadn’t been able to make this decision I would have made it for you,” Audrey relied brutally. “But today you showed me that you could. You have the self-awareness and understanding to put aside your ambitions, and your dreams, and your fears and admit when you can’t do something.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t come to you sooner,” Morgan said, slowly. “Both in the sense that I feel guilty for lying to you by omission for as long as I did…But also because I think it would have made things a lot easier for me.”

“Being a resident is tough. It’s competitive and it can be cutthroat. Showing weakness or vulnerability to your superior is tough, too. Especially as a woman. Especially as a woman with a newly diagnosed disability.” Morgan flinched slightly at the use of the word, but didn’t challenge it. “I get it,” Audrey said, nodding.

“That day you confronted me in the locker room - you figured that I’d made a complaint preemptively to try and protect myself…It just made me so sure that if I came to you about any of this…You’d fire me on the spot,” Morgan admitted quietly, addressing the mess of tissues still clutched in her hand.

Audrey sighed heavily at that. “I know,” she said ruefully, “But I had to impress upon you that certain tactics weren’t going to work with me, and that you’d only cause more harm with them.”

“I understand,” Morgan said, nodding, “But…You knew then, right?” She nodded. “I know what you said about seeing how I coped and having to make decisions but…Why didn’t you just come out and confront me then and there? Force me to deal with it, to make the choice then?”

“I considered it,” Audrey said honestly, “But I decided that forcing this out of you before you were ready wasn’t going to be very productive. I didn’t want you to feel like I was another odd stacked against you in the hand you’ve been dealt. I thought that the likelihood of you responding was low, and that the chances of you turning defensive and lashing out were pretty high.”

“You just…Let me struggle alone,” Morgan said, her face becoming more closed as she said it.

“Yes,” Audrey admitted quietly.

It hurt to say. It hurt to hear. But it needed to be said. She wasn’t going to lie and deny that she caused pain. She just had to lay it bare and hope it had been worth it.

“Why?” Morgan breathed. She knew. They both knew. But Audrey understood why she had to ask. “Why didn’t you help me?” she said, voice breaking. “I- I needed help.”

It took all of Audrey’s self-control not to flinch at that.

“I know,” she said, as gently as she could. She reached across her desk and gently squeezed Morgan’s clasped hands. She waited until she looked at her to add, “BUt you couldn’t ask for that help. You couldn’t admit to needing it. Before today, you wouldn’t have been able to accept it, either, even if I had tried to give it to you.”

“You couldn’t have known that,” Morgan accused, shaking her head and pulling back.

“But I did,” Audrey said quietly. She had to proceed carefully, now. Her scalpel was balanced precariously in the middle of a network of raw nerves. One wrong move would do irreparable damage. “We know our residents a lot better than they think we do. A lot better than you all probably want to think about,” she added musingly. “But I also know,” she went on, before Morgan could interrupt, “Because I’ve been where you are now.”

Morgan looked startled, “You have-” she began, and Audrey swiftly intervened to correct.

“Not exactly where you are,” she said, and Morgan deflated a little. “But you still remind me of myself when I was a resident.” Morgan looked up again, head cocked slightly to one side, looking genuinely curious now.

As a general rule she tried not to reveal too much of herself to her residents. Her personal life was hers. She wasn’t the most fiercely private person at the hospital. But there were lines, and boundaries, and in her experience it was best to be careful when crossing them. This was one of the times she felt it would be a benefit to share her experiences as a person, not just a doctor.

“I was underestimated, too,” she began, “I was smart, driven, ambitious, and talented.” There was no point denying your own worth to anyone; least of all yourself. “I was also the one they waited on to fail every day. I was the one they wanted to see fail. And so I had to be twice as good every step of the way to prove them wrong.”

Morgan nodded, a small, unconscious thing, Audrey’s words resonating with her.

“For me ‘they’ were my superiors in the program - dusty old white men who felt challenged and threatened by very existence in their hospital.”

“With good reason,” Morgan muttered.

She blushed, telling Audrey the words had slipped out accidentally. But she smirked, pleased. “Quite,” she agreed.

Neil had confessed to her over drinks that he was never sure how she’d restrained herself from breaking bones in their chief’s body on more than one occasion. She told him she’d satisfied herself with breaking all of his records in surgery instead. Which she had. Repeatedly.

She took a breath and softened as she returned to the task at hand, “Your ‘they are your family. And, more importantly, yourself.”

Morgan glanced up at her, apparently both wanting, needing her to go on, to understand…And also terrified that she actually might.

Audrey went carefully, slowly, “You need to prove to yourself that you should be here. You need to know that all the bridges you’ve burned, all the opportunities you’ve turned down, all the things you’ve sacrificed, all the fights that you’ve had…You need to know they were worth it.”

Morgan met her eyes then slowly, tremulously, she nodded.

Audrey smiled sadly and continued, “Living every day under that kind of pressure..Eventually it breaks you.”

Morgan shook her head in disbelief, “I find it hard to imagine you ever breaking.”

The smile Audrey gave her this time was rueful. She would have loved that to be true herself, but she knew damn well it wasn’t.

“Oh believe me, I broke,” she said with a humourless laugh. “It wasn’t pleasant. But it forced me to finally ask for help, and to acknowledge something about this job it takes a long time for most residents to realise.”

“That we aren’t invincible?” Morgan said quietly.

Audrey understood that feeling, too. There was a rush to surgery that she had never been able to replicate. Not with her bike, not with sex, not with anything. Knowing that you had saved a person’s life; that they would be dead without you…It could very quickly go to your head, make you believe that you could do anything.

Coping once that bubble burst and the dam it had kept on the real world crumpled and it all came rushing back in was tough.

“Yes,” she agreed, “But it taught me that we don’t exist in a vacuum. No matter how good you are, no matter how many things you can do, no-one can do everything alone. No matter how much they might want to,” she added, correctly interpreting the wry look on Morgan’s face. “And we’re human. Holding yourself to impossible standards every day is only going to truly change one person - yourself.”

Morgan blinked, surprised. “But you did change people’s minds, didn’t you? You proved yourself to your superiors - all the men who thought you couldn’t do this job. You proved them wrong.”

“I did,” Audrey said, “But it didn’t change as much as I thought it would at the time. Everyone else will think what they want to think, regardless of what you do. Their thoughts won’t affect how you do your job. Destroying yourself trying to prove a point to them will.”

“This is all very inspiring and everything, Doctor Lim,” Morgan said shakily, staring down at her hands again, “But there’s a major difference in our stories.” She raised her head and looked Audrey in the eyes when she said, “You didn’t have a chronic incurable condition eroding away your nerves.”

“No,” Audrey agreed gently, “But I had to deal with a lot of prejudice - which, believe me, can be just as chronic, painful, and incurable as rheumatoid arthritis. Not to mention the effect it has on the nerves.”

Morgan managed a weak smile at that, but it quickly faded as she sobered once more, shaking her head, staring down at her hands again with a look of such betrayal in her eyes it hurt to watch.

“It’s not the same,” she whispered, tears forming again, despite her obvious attempts to hold them back.

“No,” Audrey said again, and Morgan looked up at her once more. “BUt they’ll say the same thing to you that they said to me,” she told her. “The same thing that they said to Murphy. They’ll tell you that you can’t.”

“And they’ll be right,” Morgan interrupted with a hysterical note to her words now.

“They don’t get to decide that,” Audrey cut in firmly. “You do. You proved that to me today. If you know what you can’t do, if you understand your limitations, then you know what you can do, and you understand your own capabilities.”

“And that’s enough?” Morgan said, with obvious disbelief.

“It’s enough for me,” Audrey replied.

She’d made her decision on this. One of her friends from med school had specialised in rheumatology and they’d had a lot of late night conversations and dinner meetings about this. The condition was damaging, but it was also variable, and relied a lot on the individual’s understanding of their own well-being and function day to day. She’d decided that if Morgan could prove she could master that, she still had a place at this hospital on her team.

The visible relief that flooded Morgan’s body seemed for a moment to sweep away every bit of pain she was in. Her eyes brightened again, and for the first time in weeks, Audrey felt that fire from her again.

“It will not be unconditional,” she said quickly. She didn’t want to ruin this moment for Morgan, but at the same time she had to establish boundaries. “I will trust you. If you tell me that you can do something, then I will let you do it. But I also need to know when you can’t do something, or if you’re unsure at all.”

Morgan bit her lip, and Audrey thought she could sense the reason for her hesitation, so clarified.

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I don’t need you to come in here every morning with a neon sign detailing where you’re at on a pain scale. We can work a system between us - but I do need to know.”

“Of course,” Morgan said. She was nodding eagerly now, sitting up straighter, perching on the edge of her seat, looking alive and intent, ready to do whatever it took to be a good doctor.

“And you’re to keep seeing your rheumatologist regularly,” Audrey went on, “I would like to be kept up to date with your progress, your meds, any new symptoms. If things get worse, if they get better. I’d like to know your options.”

“Alright,” Morgan said, though she looked a little more uncertain.

“This is not something I can force you to give me,” Audrey clarified, “It’s your choice to divulge those things to me, and it’s your right to keep them from me, but it will help me, which will help you, if I understand as much about your condition as I can.”

“I’ll forward you over all of my notes tonight,” Morgan promised, a spark of defiant resolution in her eyes that Audrey decided against challenging.

“I also think,” she went on, tone softening as she knew how this was likely to be received, “That you should tell the team about this.”

Morgan balked visibly at that, which Audrey understood. The competition the program fostered between them all was good, and generally healthy, producing good results, but it made it difficult to confide weaknesses. This was something that frustrated her, as understanding the weaknesses of your coworkers was as important as knowing their strengths.

She raised a placating hand, “Like I said, it’s not something I’m going to force you into. I know that it’s hard, I know that you don’t want to, but I think that it might help.”

“I don’t want them to treat me differently,” Morgan said quietly.

“I know. But you should be,” she started. “You have a disability, Morgan,” Audrey said, as gently as she could while not sugar-coating the facts of the matter. “That’s hard to accept, I know that. But it does change things. And it means that some things will have to be changed in order to manage that. Accommodation is not a bad word, and having team members who understand what you’re going through and can support you will not make you weak, or less talented, or less deserving of a place among them.”

“I know,” Morgan said, “Logically I know all of that. It’s the same advice that I would give to a patient in my position reacting the way that I am but…”

“But emotion is the death of all logic,” Audrey said with a sigh, “Humanity throughout history has struggled with this. I don’t expect you to come up with a solution for it in an afternoon.” Morgan relaxed at those words. “But I do think you should at least consider what I’ve said,” she added firmly.

“I will,” she promised in turn.

“Alright then,” Audrey said, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. She could almost taste the kiss of the fresh air on her skin and she was ready to embrace it on her ride home.

“Morgan remained sitting, looking a little shell shocked by the abrupt end of their meeting. “You’re…You’re really not getting rid of me?” she said, as though she felt stupid asking but couldn’t stop herself.

“No, I’m not,” Audrey said with a small smile. “Not unless you want to tell me right now that you don’t think you can contribute anything to this team anymore. That’s the only reason I would have for letting you go. Are you going to tell me that?”

“No,” Morgan said defiantly, also getting to her feet. “I can. I will.”

Audrey smiled. “Good. Then go. Do.”

Morgan actually smiled. It had been a long time since she’d seen that expression on her face.

Audrey stepped out from behind her desk and moved towards the door. “Then I think we’re done. Good night, Doctor Reznick.”

Morgan smiled and marched briskly to the door, which Audrey was now holding open for her. “Good night, Doctor Lim,” she said formally, giving her a small nod.

She moved to walk out of the office, hesitated, then, in a sudden rush, turned and pulled Audrey into a quick hug.

“Thank you,” Morgan breathed in her ear, squeezing her a little more tightly than was strictly necessary, “I promise I won’t let you down.”

Audrey recovered from the shock of the move and patted Morgan on the back a few times until she released her.

“You’re welcome,” she said warmly, “And I know you won’t.” Morgan nodded again, looking confident and renewed. “See you tomorrow,” Audrey said with a smile.

Morgan smiled back, “See you tomorrow.”