A/N: Finally starting this for real. The basic germ for the idea came from enjolrastic's photoset.

Once again: I do not own any characters or situations originally created by Victor Hugo. As for how the hospital system works here, this isn't based solely on a single institution or medical system. I understand that my experience working in such a place may be different from the readers' , so bear with me. I have tried my best to be as accurate as possible with the actual medical bits.

Chapter 1: The Easy Day

"It's closed, Navet. You can dress the incision now."

As the resident assisting the operation stepped in to put gauze on the newly stitched up wound, the surgeon still kept her eye on the patient on the operating room table, in order to watch for any signs of distress. 'It's always about the first hour,' Eponine Thenardier told herself as she glanced at the monitors hooked up to the young girl, who'd been rushed to the hospital after an apparent fall from a bridge. She bit her lip as she recalled the story according to the attending physician at the emergency room: the girl had been playing with some friends and running along the rail of the bridge when she'd slipped and fallen onto the embankment. 'It may explain the bleeding but it does not explain the spiral fractures on her arms or all of her broken ribs,' she thought.

"Ma'am, I think we're done here," Navet Avril said eagerly as he placed the last bit of dressing on the wound. "Looks like she's going to walk out of here, eh?"

"Hopefully. You did well out here," Eponine replied. She glanced at Louison, the anaesthesiologist. "I'll be around to check on her in an hour. Please tell me right away if there is any emergency."

"Of course. It's the rules," Louison said before directing the nurses who would help her wheel the patient out of the operating room. "Careful with that IV there! Her veins were already collapsed enough as it is!"

Eponine saw Navet wince as they went to scrub out in an adjacent cubicle. It was not always easy for the nursing staff or younger members of medical teams to work with older physicians, especially those of the likes of Louison, who were practically considered pillars at the Saint-Michel Hospital. It did not matter if one was like Navet, the most brilliant resident in a department, or even if one was like Eponine and already a surgical fellow. The fact still remained that they had years ahead of them to train and perfect their art.

"It's an easy day eh, Ma'am?" Navet said as they tossed their soaked operating room gowns into a bin.

"I already told you, you should call me Eponine," the young woman chided. "I don't like it when everyone is formal even outside of the operating room."

Navet laughed a little sheepishly. "I meant there's no serious emergency or disaster coming. I really could use some sleep."

"Don't jinx it," Eponine warned. She looked at the clock, which read half past one in the afternoon. For some people this, and not the graveyard shift, was considered the unholy time of the day. "You should get some sleep in the call room. I'll tell you if we have another case." She remembered now that her trainee had been on his feet since very early that morning.

Navet grinned gratefully and barely held back a yawn. "Thanks Ma'am-I mean, Eponine."

"One more time, you're getting a demerit," Eponine joked. She waited for Navet to quit the scrubs room before she washed her face and took out the pins that held her hair up in a severe bun. She then smoothed back her dark tresses into a more becoming ponytail. 'I can be seen in the cafeteria like this,' she thought before heading to the call room, where she'd left some of her things.

When she arrived there, Navet was already snoring in one of the padded desk chairs on the far side of the room. Eponine tiptoed past him and over to where the day's rota was tacked to a worn corkboard. By this hour, the once fresh paper was now covered with pen marks, correction tape and post-it notes for all the emergency alterations that tended to come up on the trauma rotation. 'Combeferre won't be scrubbing out for another half hour,' Eponine realized as she tracked down the name of one of her friends. Apparently her former classmate had suddenly been called in to see to a case of blunt injury from a construction site. As far as Eponine was concerned, this was a relatively easy situation compared to the vehicular accidents, stabbing incidents, burns, and maulings that she had seen over the years, both in and out of the hospital. She turned her attention away from the rota towards the large table in the middle of the room. As usual this space was littered with clipboards, half-eaten takeout, empty cups of coffee, and hibernating laptops. She clucked her tongue as she found her own things half-buried under the day's newspaper, which bore the headline: "17000 expected at Saint-Michel rally, police to be in full force'.

After changing out of her operating room shoes and into her sneakers, and then going over a little paperwork, Eponine found her purse and pocketed her phone before heading out of the surgery department complex. Almost immediately she heard another voice, this time that of a woman, calling her name. "Chetta, I didn't know you were off-duty," she greeted her friend.

"No such thing as off duty in obstetrics, only short breaks!" Musichetta Laurain said breathlessly as she glanced at her phone, as if expecting it to go off any time with another urgent call. She wiped her tanned forehead before looking at Eponine. "I heard that you got the little girl who was brought in today? Looks like you and some of the crew need to go down to the Child Protection Unit, again."

Eponine let out a resigned sigh. "I'm doomed to be there; first I was the patient, now I'm the reporting doctor," she said.

Musichetta's face twisted with sympathy. "Things get better."

"Tell me about it," Eponine scoffed. "Until when are you decked here?"

"Six tonight. I may stay till seven, till Joly gets out of a case conference," Musichetta replied. "He'll probably spend the rest of the night looking up statistics and the odds of us coming down with the next strain of whatever they have in infectious diseases control this week."

Eponine rolled her eyes at the mere image of Musichetta's brilliant but hypochondriac boyfriend frantically looking up every database on his laptop. At that moment she caught sight of another, taller and decidedly more handsome figure in a white coat. "Hello Marius!"

Marius Pontmercy nearly tripped on a dangling shoelace, but just managed to keep on his feet as he smiled at the two ladies. "Hi Eponine, hi Chetta," he greeted awkwardly. "Where is Combeferre?"

Eponine gestured over her shoulder to the room she had just left. "He's still at work. What about you?"

"I've got a little reviewing to do," Marius said. "Orals coming up in two weeks."

Eponine and Musichetta winced. Oral exams were the last and arguably most dangerous hurdle to overcome before a fellow could be certified as a specialist or sub-specialist in his or her field. It was just as unfortunate for Marius that he was training under the neurology department, which was known for giving particularly gruelling examinations. "You'll do well," Eponine said encouragingly.

"I hope so," Marius replied as he adjusted his hold on his papers.

"Chetta and I were going down to the cafeteria for some coffee. You should join us and take your mind off that for a little bit," Eponine suggested with a grin.

"I think I can spare a few minutes," Marius said with a smile. He touched Eponine's arm lightly. "Thank you Eponine."

Out of the corner of her eye Eponine could already see Musichetta fighting to keep a straight face as Marius walked away. "Oh don't give me that look, please," Eponine whispered.

"Couldn't you be more obvious?" Musichetta quipped.

"It's 2014. There's nothing wrong with a girl going for what she wants," Eponine retorted.

The obstetrician gave her a withering look. "What if I happened to be busy now and couldn't join you in the cafeteria?"

"I need a wingman," Eponine said. "Chetta, please? I'll go with you on your next shopping trip before your next date with Joly, and I won't complain no matter how many things you try on."

Musichetta laughed. "You don't have to go that far. Anyway I can feel my caffeine titer beginning to drop," she joked before looping her arm around Eponine's.

Eponine smiled widely as she and her friend made their way downstairs. The hospital cafeteria was on the ground floor of the hospital's wing, and one had to pass near the emergency room to get to the cafeteria entrance. After a few narrow misses with gurneys, the two doctors finally were able to find a corner table away from the cafeteria door, in sight of the television near the counter.

"I wouldn't get your hopes up though," Musichetta told Eponine frankly. "You never know when some emergency may strike and Marius will have to be on call."

"He'll be here. He's a gentleman," Eponine insisted.

"And we're ladies and we're all doctors, and we all know what comes first," Musichetta reminded her as she stirred some sugar into her drink. "No offense to you or Marius though, since you're an awesome woman and he's really a nice guy, but I always thought I'd see you with someone a little more fiery."

"Please don't tell me again that I ought to go out with Combeferre. We tried that in medical school and I wouldn't even dare say it coded."

"I'm not saying you should go out with him. I know how good, and more importantly how not so good you two are for each other. All I'm saying is that you need someone who can keep you on your toes."

Eponine rolled her eyes as she put down her coffee. "I need someone who won't drive me out of my job or my sanity. I've worked years to get here, and I'm not going back."

"And you think Marius could be that?"

"Maybe?"

Musichetta shrugged before waving to someone entering the cafeteria. "Combeferre, how nice of you to join us."

Daniel Combeferre sighed with relief as he slid into an empty chair. "Congratulations on saving that kid, Eponine," he said.

"That's high praise," Eponine replied with a smile. It meant more that Combeferre was fair in his assessments and critiques, but very rare in giving effusive compliments. It was a trait of his that had endured from their first days in medical school, as well as throughout internship, residency, and subspecialty training in the trauma division. In fact it only made her all the more determined to keep up with him professionally. "How's your patient?"

"He'll live, but I'll have to send him down to the physical therapy department soon enough. He wasn't just knocked by a beam but he had his leg shattered too," Combeferre said. He paused to get himself a cup of black coffee, which he downed at an alarmingly fast rate. "What are you two torturing each other about?" he asked the ladies.

"The usual topic," Musichetta said.

"I am doing something about it, and he should be here any minute," Eponine hissed.

Combeferre laughed. "Are you talking about the future neurologist Marius Pontmercy?"

Eponine felt her face burn. "He was looking for you."

"Yeah, I got his text. It's all taken care of," Combeferre said. He frowned as he looked towards the counter. "Breaking news..."

Eponine turned to see a newscaster on screen, dressed in a bullet proof vest. "We have reports that a dozen shots were fired at the speakers and into the crowd at the demonstration in Saint-Michel square. The protestors are facing off against the police on the south side of the square. No fatalities have been confirmed yet, but the wounded are being brought now to the nearest hospitals-"

Combeferre swore as he crumpled his empty cup. "Time to start scrubbing in. So much for Navet's naptime; he's drooling all over the call room."

Eponine sighed deeply as she looked at Musichetta. "If Marius comes by here, give him my apologies and my regards."

"Oh I'll tell him to ask you out this time," Musichetta said. "You go get those bleeders, Ponine."

"I really owe you, Chetta. Thanks," Eponine said before racing out after Combeferre. She was thankful that she'd changed into her rubber shoes, otherwise she knew she would not have been able to run so quickly through the crowd now heading towards the emergency room. As she and Combeferre rounded a corner, she saw the emergency room doors swing open as some orderlies carried in a man covered in blood from head to toe.

Combeferre suddenly stopped in his tracks and did a double take. "God no..." he muttered before swearing under his breath and barrelling into the emergency room.

"Combeferre, wait up!" Eponine called as she ran after him. She saw her friend talking quickly to one of the orderlies, stepping aside only to let more wounded be brought in on gurneys. She risked a glance at the first patient who had been brought in and winced when she saw him flinch as someone set up an IV line. 'At least three entry wounds in the chest and a gash on the scalp, lacerations on all extremities, but hopefully no fractures,' she thought. This man's golden hair was matted with blood and he was almost too pale to be considered as still living.

"Doctor Thenardier, Doctor Combeferre, we need you to scrub in immediately; we'll send the patients up to the OR as soon as they are stabilized," one of the older attending physicians, Mabeuf, shouted over the din.

Eponine nodded just as she felt Combeferre seize her arm. "You know someone?" she asked.

"Him," Combeferre said, gesturing to the patient that Eponine had been watching. The surgeon rolled up his sleeve to show the tattoo on his left forearm. Eponine already knew the words there well: 'Liberte, egalite, fraternite, ou la mort.' She glanced at the patient's arm and saw these same words imprinted there as well.

Combeferre met her gaze again. His eyes were wild but his tone was level. "He's one of my oldest friends, since we were children. He is, in many ways, my brother, Eponine. If there's anyone here who can save him, it's you."

Eponine swallowed hard, both at the pain in Combeferre's eyes and the request in his words. After all, if it had been one of her own siblings lying on that gurney, she would trust only Combeferre to look after him or her. She steeled herself to look at the patient, and then at her friend. "I will do my best."

"Thank you," Combeferre said before going off to where a medical team was summoning him.

Eponine quickly surveyed the IVs and monitors being hooked up to her patient before going to the door so she could head upstairs and scrub in. Before she could step out, a thought occurred to her. "Combeferre! What's your friend's name?" she called.

Combeferre looked up quickly. "Auguste Enjolras. You'd best stick with his last name though."

Something about this name struck Eponine as vaguely familiar, almost as if she might have seen or heard of it earlier in the day. "I'll remember that," she said before racing upstairs to scrub in for what she knew would be the most gruelling operation of the day.