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matcha3mochi · 9 days ago

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PROTOCOL Pairing: Doctor Zayne x Nurse Reader

author note: love and deepspace is my addiction guys LOL anyways enjoy!!

wc: 3,865

chapter 1 | chapter 2

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Akso Hospital looms in the heart of Linkon like a monument of glass, metal, and unrelenting precision. Multi-tiered, climate-controlled, and fully integrated with city-wide telemetry systems, it's known across the cosmos for housing the most advanced medical AI and the most exacting surgeons in the Union.

Inside its Observation Deck on Level 4, the air hums with quiet purpose. Disinfectant and filtered oxygen mix in sterile harmony. The floors are polished to a mirrored sheen, the walls pulse faintly with embedded biometrics, and translucent holoscreens scroll real-time vitals, arterial scans, and surgical priority tags in muted color-coded displays.

You’ve been on the floor since 0500. First to check vitals. First to inventory meds. First to get snapped at.

Doctor Zayne Li is already here—of course he is. The man practically lives in the operating theatres. Standing behind the panoramic glass that overlooks Surgery Bay Delta, he looks like something carved out of discipline and frost. His pristine long coat hangs perfectly from squared shoulders, gloves tucked with methodical precision, silver-framed glasses reflecting faint readouts from the transparent interface hovering before him.

He’s the hospital’s prized cardiovascular surgeon. The Zayne Li—graduated top of his class from Astral Medica, youngest surgeon ever certified for off-planet cardiac reconstruction, published more than any other specialist in the central systems under 35. There's even a rumor he once performed a dual-heart transplant in an emergency gravity failure. Probably true.

He’s a legend. A genius.

And an ass.

He’s never once smiled at you. Never once said thank you. With other staff, he’s distant but civil. With you, he’s something else entirely: cold, strict, and unrelentingly sharp. If you breathe wrong, he notices. If you hesitate, he corrects. If you do everything by protocol?

He still finds something to critique.

"Vitals on Bed 12 were late," he said this morning without even turning his head. No greeting. Just judgment, clean and surgical.

"They weren’t late. I had to reset the cuff."

"You should anticipate equipment failures. That’s part of the job."

And that was it. No acknowledgment of the three critical patients you’d managed in that hour. No recognition. No room for explanation. He turned away before you could blink, his coat slicing behind him like punctuation.

You don’t like him.

You don’t disrespect him—because you're a professional, and because he's earned his reputation a hundred times over. But you don’t like how he talks to you like you’re a glitch in the system. Like you’re a deviation he hasn’t figured out how to reprogram.

You’ve worked under strict doctors before. But Zayne is different. He doesn’t push to challenge you. He pushes to see if you’ll break.

And the worst part?

You haven’t.

Which only seems to piss him off more.

You watch him now from the break table near the edge of the deck, your synth-coffee going tepid between your hands. He’s reviewing scans on a projection screen—high-res, rotating 3D models of a degenerating bio-synthetic valve. His eyes, a pale hazel-green, flick across the data with sharp focus. His arms are folded behind his back, posture perfect, expression unreadable.

He hasn’t noticed you.

Correction: he has, and he’s pointedly ignoring you.

Typical.

You take another sip of coffee, more bitter than before. You could head back to inventory. You could restock surgical trays. But you don’t.

Because part of you refuses to give him the satisfaction of leaving first.

So you stay.

And so does he.

Two professionals. Two adversaries. One cold war fought in clipped words, clinical tension, and overlapping silence.

And the day hasn’t even started yet.

The surgical light beams down like a second sun, flooding the operating theatre in harsh, clinical brightness. It washes the color out of everything—blood, skin, even breath—until all that remains is precision.

Doctor Zayne Li stands at the head of the table, gloved hands elevated and scrubbed raw, sleeves of his sterile gown clinging tight around his forearms. His eyes flick up to the vitals screen, then down to the patient’s exposed chest.

“Vitals?” he asks.

You answer without hesitation. “Steady. HR 82, BP 96/63, oxygen at 99%, no irregularities.”

His silence is your only cue to proceed.

You hand him the scalpel, handle first, exactly as protocol demands. He doesn’t look at you when he takes it—but his fingers graze yours, cold through double-layered gloves, and the contact still sends a tiny jolt up your arm. Annoying.

He makes the incision without fanfare, clean and deliberate, the kind of cut that only comes from years of obsessive mastery. The kind that still makes your gut tighten to watch.

You monitor the instruments, anticipating without crowding him. You’ve been assisting in his surgeries for weeks now. You’ve learned when he prefers the microclamp versus the stabilizer. You’ve memorized the sequence of his suturing pattern. You know when to speak and when not to. Still, it’s never enough.

“Retractor,” he says flatly.

You’re already reaching.

“Not that one.”

Your hand freezes mid-motion.

His tone is ice. “Cardiac thoracic, not abdominal. Are you even awake?”

A hot flush rises behind your ears. He doesn’t yell—Zayne never yells—but his disappointment cuts deeper than a scalpel. You grit your teeth and correct the tray.

“Cardiac thoracic,” you repeat. “Understood.”

No response. Just the soft click of metal as he inserts the retractor into the sternotomy.

The rest of the operation is silence and beeping. You suction blood before he asks. He cauterizes without hesitation. The damaged aortic valve is removed, replaced with a synthetic graft designed for lunar-pressure tolerance. It’s delicate work—millimeter adjustments, microscopic thread. One wrong move could tear the tissue.

Zayne doesn’t shake. Doesn’t blink. He’s terrifyingly still, even as alarms spike and the patient's BP dips for three agonizing seconds.

“Clamp. Now,” he says.

You pass it instantly. He seals the nicked vessel, stabilizes the pressure, and the monitor quiets.

You exhale—but not too loudly. Not until the final suture is tied, the chest closed, and the drape removed. Then, and only then, does he speak again.

“Clean,” he says, already walking away. “Prepare a report for Post-Op within the hour.”

You stare at his retreating back, fists clenched at your sides. No thank you. No good work. Just a cold command and disappearing footsteps.

The Diagnostic Lab is silent, save for the low hum of scanners and the occasional pulse of a vitascan completing a loop. The walls are steel-paneled with matte black inlays, lit only by the soft glow of holographic interfaces. Ambient light drifts in from a side wall of glass, showing the icy curve of Europa in the distance, half-shadowed in space.

You stand alone at a curved diagnostics console, sleeves rolled just above your elbows, eyes locked on the 3D hologram spinning in front of you. The synthetic heart pulses slowly, arteries reconstructed with precise synthetic grafts. The valve—a platinum-carbon composite—is functioning perfectly. You check the scan tags, patient ID, op codes, and log the post-op outcome.

Everything’s clean. Correct.

Or so you thought.

You barely register the soft hiss of the door opening behind you until the room shifts. Not in volume, but in pressure—like gravity suddenly increased by one degree.

You don’t turn. You don’t have to.

Zayne.

“Line 12 in the file log,” he says, voice low, composed, and close. Too close.

You blink at the screen. “What about it?”

“You mislabeled the scan entry. That’s a formatting violation.”

Your heart rate ticks up. You straighten your spine.

“No,” you reply calmly, “I used trauma tags from pre-op logs. They cross-reference with the emergency surgical queue.”

His footsteps approach—measured, deliberate—and stop directly behind you. You sense the heat of his body before anything else. He’s not touching you, but he’s close enough that you feel him standing there, like a charged wire humming at your back.

“You adapted a tag system that’s not recognized by this wing’s software. If these were pushed to central review, they’d get flagged. Wasting time.” His tone is even. Too even.

Your hands rest on the edge of the console. You force your shoulders not to tense.

“I made a call based on the context. It was logical.”

“You’re not here to improvise logic,” he replies, stepping even closer.

You feel the air change as he raises his arm, reaching past you—his coat sleeve brushing the side of your bicep lightly, the barest whisper of contact. His hand moves with surgical confidence as he taps the air beside your own, opening the tag metadata on the scan you just logged. His fingers are long, gloved, deliberate in motion.

“This,” he says, highlighting a code block, “should have been labeled with an ICU procedural tag, not pre-op trauma shorthand.”

You turn your head slightly, and there he is. Close. Towering. His jaw is tight, clean-shaven except for the faintest trace of stubble catching the edge of the light. There’s a tiredness around his eyes—subtle, buried deep—but he doesn’t blink. Doesn’t waver. He’s so still it’s unnerving.

He doesn’t seem to notice—or care—how near he is.

You, however, are all too aware.

Your voice tightens. “Is there a reason you couldn’t point this out without standing over me like I’m in your way?”

Zayne doesn’t flinch. “If I stood ten feet back, you’d still argue with me.”

You bristle. “Because I know what I’m doing.”

“And yet,” he replies coolly, “I’m the one correcting your data.”

That sting digs deep. You pull in a breath, clenching your fists subtly against the side of the console. You want to yell. But you won’t. Because he wants control, and you won’t give him that too.

He lowers his hand slowly, retracting from the display, and finally—finally—steps back. Just enough to let you breathe again.

But the tension? It lingers like static.

“I’ll correct the tag,” you say flatly.

Zayne nods once, then turns to go.

But at the doorway, he stops.

Without looking back, he adds, “You're capable. That’s why I expect better.”

Then he walks out.

Leaving you in the cold hum of the diagnostic lab, your pulse racing, your thoughts a snarl of frustration and something else—unsettling and electric—curling low in your gut.

You don’t know what that something is.

But you’re starting to suspect it won’t go away quietly.

You sit three seats from the end of the long chrome conference table, back straight, shoulders tight, fingers wrapped just a little too hard around your datapad.

The Surgical Briefing Room is too bright. It always is. Cold light from the ceiling plates bounces off polished surfaces, glass walls, and the brushed steel of the central console. A hologram hovers in the center of the room, slowly spinning: the reconstructed heart from this morning’s procedure, arteries lit in pulsing red and cyan.

You can feel sweat prickling at the nape of your neck under your uniform collar. Your scrubs are crisp, your hair pinned back precisely, your notes immaculate—but none of that matters when Dr. Myles Hanron speaks.

You’ve only spoken to him a few times. He’s been at Bell for twenty years. Stern. Respected. Impossible to argue with. Today, he's reviewing the recent cardiovascular procedure—the one you assisted under Zayne’s lead.

And something is off. He’s frowning at the scan display.

Then he looks at you.

“Explain this inconsistency in the anticoagulation log.”

You glance up, already feeling the slow roll of nausea in your stomach.

Your voice comes out measured, but your throat is dry. “I followed the automated-calibrated dosage curve based on intra-op vitals and confirmed with the automated log.”

Hanron raises a brow, his tablet casting a soft reflection on the lenses of his glasses. “Then you followed it wrong.”

The words hit like a slap across your face.

You feel the blood drain from your cheeks. Something sharp twists in your stomach.

“I—” you begin, mouth parting. You shift slightly in your seat, fingers tightening on the datapad in your lap, legs crossed too stiffly. Your body wants to shrink, but you force yourself not to move.

“Don’t interrupt,” Hanron snaps, before you can finish.

A few heads turn in your direction. One of the interns frowns, glancing at you with wide eyes. You stare straight ahead, trying to keep your breathing even, your spine straight, your jaw from visibly clenching.

Hanron paces two steps in front of the display. “You logged a 0.3 ml deviation on a patient with a known history of arrhythmic episodes. Are you unfamiliar with the case history? Or did you just not check?”

“I did check,” you say, quieter, trying to keep your tone professional. Your hands are starting to sweat. “The scan flagged it within range. I wasn’t improvising—”

“Then how did this discrepancy occur?” he presses. “Or are you suggesting the system is at fault?”

You flinch, slightly. You open your mouth to say something—to explain the terminal sync issue you noticed during the last vitals run—but your voice catches.

You’re a nurse.

You’re new.

So you sit there, every instinct in your body screaming to speak, to defend yourself—but you swallow it down.

You stare down at your datapad, the screen now blurred from the way your vision’s tunneling. You clench your teeth until your jaw aches.

You can’t speak up. Not without making it worse.

“Let this be a reminder,” Hanron says, turning his back to you as he scrolls through another projection, “that there is no room for guesswork in surgical prep. Especially not from auxiliary staff who feel the need to act above their training.”

Auxiliary.

The word burns.

You feel heat crawl up your chest. Your hands are shaking slightly. You grip your knees under the table to hide it.

And then—

“I signed off on that dosage.”

Zayne’s voice cuts clean through the air like a cold wire.

You turn your head sharply toward the door. He’s standing in the entrance, posture military-straight, coat half-unbuttoned, gloves tucked into his belt. His presence shifts the atmosphere instantly.

His black hair is perfectly combed back, not a strand out of place, glinting faintly under the sterile overhead lights. His silver-framed glasses sit low on the bridge of his nose, catching a brief reflection from the room’s data panels, but not enough to hide the expression in his eyes.

Hazel-green. Pale and piercing

He’s not looking at you. His gaze is fixed past you, locked on Hanron with unflinching intensity—like the man has just committed a fundamental breach of logic.

There’s not a wrinkle in his coat. Not a single misaligned button or loose thread. Even the gloves at his belt look placed, not shoved there. Zayne is, as always, polished. Meticulous. Icy.

But today—his expression is different.

His jaw is set tighter than usual. The faint crease between his brows is deeper. He looks like a man on the verge of unsheathing a scalpel, not for surgery—but for precision retaliation.

And when he speaks, his voice is calm. Controlled.

His face is unreadable. Voice flat.

“If there’s a problem with it, you can take it up with me.”

The silence in the room is instant. Tense. Airless.

Hanron turns slowly. “Doctor Zayne, this isn’t about—”

“It is,” Zayne replies, tone even sharper. “You’re implying a clinical error in my procedure. If you’re accusing her, then you’re accusing me. So let’s be clear.”

You can barely process it. Your heart is thudding, ears buzzing from the sudden shift in tone, from the weight of Zayne’s voice cutting through the tension like a scalpel. You look at him — really look — and for once, he isn’t focused on numbers or reports.

He’s solely focused on Hanron. And he is furious — not loudly, but in the way his voice doesn’t rise, his jaw locks, and his words slice like ice.

Just furious—in that cold, calculated way of his.

“She followed my instruction under direct supervision,” he says, voice steady. “The variance was intentional. Based on patient history and real-time rhythm response.”

He pauses just long enough to let the words land.

“It was correct.”

Hanron doesn’t respond right away.

His lips press into a thin line, face unreadable, and he shifts back a step—visibly checking himself in the silence Zayne has carved into the room like a scalpel.

“We’ll review the surgical logs,” Hanron mutters at last, voice clipped, his authority retreating behind procedure.

Zayne nods once. “Please do.”

Then, without fanfare, without another word, he steps forward—not toward the exit, but toward the table.

You track him with your eyes, unable to help it.

The low hum of the room resumes, like the air had been holding its breath. No one speaks. A few nurses drop their eyes back to their datapads. Pages turn. Screens flicker.

But you’re frozen in place, shoulders still tight, hands clenched in your lap to keep them from visibly shaking.

Zayne rounds the end of the table, his boots clicking softly against the metal flooring. His long coat sways with his movements, falling neatly behind him as he pulls out the seat directly across from you.

And sits.

Not at the head of the table. Not in some corner seat to observe.

Directly across from you.

He adjusts his glasses with two fingers, expression cool again, almost as if nothing happened. As if he didn’t just dress down a senior doctor in front of the entire room on your behalf.

He doesn’t look at you.

He opens the file on his datapad, stylus poised, reviewing the surgical results like this is any other debrief.

But you’re still staring.

You study the slight tension in his shoulders, the stillness in his hands, the way his eyes don’t drift—not toward Hanron, not toward you—locked entirely on the data as if that can contain whatever just happened.

You should say something.

Thank you.

But the words get stuck in your throat.

Your pulse is still unsteady, confusion mixing with the low thrum of heat behind your ribs. He didn’t need to defend you. He never steps into conflict like that, especially not for others—especially not for you.

You glance away first, eyes back on your screen, unable to ignore the twist in your gut.

The room empties, but you stay.

The echo of voices fades out with the hiss of the sliding doors. Just a few minutes ago, the surgical debrief room was bright with tension—every overhead light too sharp, the air too thin, the hum of holopanels and datapads a constant static in your head.

Now, it’s quiet. Still.

You sit for a moment longer, fingers resting on your lap, knuckles tight, back straight even though your entire body wants to collapse inward. You’re still warm from the flush of embarrassment, your pulse still flickering behind your ears.

Dr. Hanron’s words sting less now, dulled by the cool aftershock of what Zayne did.

He defended you.

You hadn’t expected it. Not from him.

You replay it in your head—his voice cutting in, his posture like stone, his eyes locked on Hanron like a scalpel ready to slice. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t even look at you.

But you felt it.

You felt the impact of what it meant.

And now, as you sit in the empty conference room—white walls, chrome-edged table, sterile quiet—you’re left with one burning thought:

You have to say something.

You rise slowly, brushing your palms down your thighs to wipe off the sweat that lingers there. You hesitate at the doorway. Your reflection stares back at you in the glass panel—eyes still a little wide, jaw tight, posture just a bit too stiff.

He didn’t have to defend you, but he did.

And that matters.

You step into the hallway.

It’s long and narrow, glowing with soft white overhead lights and lined with clear glass panels that reflect fragments of your movement as you walk. The hum of the ventilation system buzzes low and steady—comforting in its monotony. The air smells of antiseptic and the faint trace of ozone from high-oxygen surgical wards.

You spot him ahead, already halfway down the corridor, walking with purpose—long coat swaying slightly with each step, back straight, shoulders squared. Always composed. Always fast.

You hesitate. Your boots slow down and your throat tightens.

You want to turn back, to let it go, to pretend it was just professional courtesy. Nothing more. Nothing personal.

But you can’t.

Not this time.

You quicken your pace.

“Doctor Zayne!”

The name catches in the air, too loud in the quiet hallway. You flinch, just a little—but he stops.

You break into a small jog to catch up, boots tapping sharply against the tile. Your breath catches as you reach him.

Zayne turns toward you, expression unreadable, brows slightly furrowed in that ever-present, analytical way of his. The glow of the ceiling lights reflects off his silver-framed glasses, casting sharp highlights along the edges of his jaw.

He doesn’t say anything. Just waits.

You stop a foot away, heart thudding. You don’t know what you expected—maybe something colder. Maybe for him to ignore you entirely.

You swallow hard, eyes flicking up to meet his.

“I just…” Your voice is quieter now. Careful. “I wanted to say thank you.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. His gaze is steady. Measured.

“I don’t tolerate incompetence,” he says calmly. “That includes false accusations.”

You blink, taken off guard by the directness. It’s not warm. Not even particularly kind. But coming from him, it’s almost intimate.

Still, you can’t help yourself. “That wasn’t really about incompetence.”

“No,” he admits. “It wasn’t.”

The hallway feels smaller now, quieter. He’s watching you in full. Not scanning you like a chart, not calculating — watching. Still. Focused.

You nod slowly, grounding yourself in the moment. “Still. I needed to say it. Thank you.”

You’re suddenly aware of everything—of the warmth in your cheeks, of the way your hands twist at your sides, of how tall he stands compared to you, even when he’s not trying to intimidate.

And he isn’t. Not now.

If anything, he looks… still.

Not soft. Never that. But something quieter. Less armored.

“You handled yourself better than most would have,” he says after a moment. “Even if I hadn’t said anything, you didn’t lose control.”

“I didn’t feel in control,” you admit, a breath of nervous laughter escaping. “I was two seconds from either crying or throwing my datapad.”

That earns you something surprising—just the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Almost a smile. But not quite.

“Neither would’ve been productive,” he says.

You roll your eyes slightly. “Thanks, Doctor Efficiency.”

His glasses catch the light again, but his expression doesn’t change.

You glance past him, down the corridor. “I should get back to my rotation.”

He nods once. “I’ll see you in the lab.”

You pause.

Then—because you don’t know what else to do—you offer a small, genuine smile.

“I’ll be there.”

As you turn to leave, you feel his eyes on your back.

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