A/N: This is a Daryl/OC story and its complete. Trying something new here and finishing things before I post them, lol. Its three chapters long, just a little thing, but I hope you enjoy it.

She had curly hair, he noticed that right away, long, auburn, curly hair. Debra, the charge nurse had said her name was Allison and she was a new graduate nurse. She hadn't even taken her state board exam yet and they were throwing her onto this floor. The hospital didn't usually do that; new grads went to Med Surg or some other less stressful unit. Not PICU, where you never knew what was on the other side of the door as you approached the patients room.

Yet here she was.

That was interesting to him, because that was a first, and he heard that she asked to be assigned here. Nothing like baptism by fire, he was sure this girl had a screw loose, there was a perfectly good pediatric ward one floor down and she asked to come to PICU? He was intrigued by her already, to say the least.

Normally Daryl didn't pay attention to the women around him at work. They were all his age and mostly married, they all had a few laughs sometimes too and were all friends. Both at work and out of work, but he didn't notice them, not like he noticed her.

She was way too young for him to be noticing her though, he was 42 and divorced, with twin daughters who were nine years old. If this girl was twenty-five it would be a miracle and he suspected she wasn't even that old. Debra was sure to put her with him too, he supervised all of the new nurse's because he had been working on the unit for so long. When Debra wasn't there it was he who was in charge, and he did it well.

If you worked on Daryl's weekend it was a delightful, Daryl weekend, Louise always said. If you were on Debra's weekend it was a disastrous Debra weekend. It wasn't her fault, people just coded a lot more often on her weekend. It was kind of a joke now.

The floor was Post ICU, the step down unit, people on their floor were very sick, but not sick enough to be in the ICU. They were all on telemetry, to monitor their heart rates and with good reason. These people were what nurses called train wreaks. On this floor, the nurses did dialysis, hung blood and did hyper-al, which was nutrition through a central line in their subclavian vein, in the neck. That was just the tip of the iceberg, they also mixed their own IV's, had at least two patients on ventilators every shift, ran cardiac meds by IV and generally ran their asses off all night long.

This floor wasn't for pussies, and the night shift wasn't either. That's why Debra had him break in the newbies, because he didn't hold a thing back. He told it like it was, the good, the bad and the ugly.

He took his job seriously and didn't believe in sugar coating anything, and he loved to teach. Debra knew all of this about him and he was a great right hand man. If she wasn't into women, she would have snatched him up right away, and her girlfriend loved him too. In the summer the whole floor got together for barbeques and trips together. They were a family.

The new girl would either fit in or she wouldn't, but Debra thought she would.

So, when Daryl approached the nurse's station that night and went into the med room to get the saline flushes for his patients on IV's or who had IVAD's, also called heparin locks, for medications to be given through, Debra stopped him. She closed the door as he was shoving prefilled syringes of saline into the pockets of his cargo pants and alcohol swabs into the other pocket.

"She's new and she's yours." Debra said pointing to the girl at the nurse's station talking to Louise, the unit secretary.

"I have five patients tonight Debra, you didn't cut me any slack when you made the assignment even though you knew you were sticking me with her."

"You can handle it." She said crossing her arms in front of her.

"Ya think? Hope she can keep up, I've got two vents, one unresponsive, total care, thanks by the way for that. Maggie, has the aides down on her end of the hall way, so I'm just swinging in the breeze here with my student I guess? I don't get an aide right? The guy in 13b is confused and needs to be restrained, I started his IV twice last night when he pulled it out, and tonight I have to run blood into him. The lady in 19b keeps desatting, and the Doc didn't call back with the new orders for O2 yet, and then I have James."

James wasn't going anywhere because he was in a coma, another total care. He was injured in a motorcycle accident and had been on the floor a long time. The rumor was his parents paid extra, above what the insurance paid so that he could be on this floor. James was in the only private room on the floor, it was usually an isolation room but no one had come in with any funky diseases in a while so James had the room with a view and he couldn't even see it.

"James isn't going anywhere, and Daryl, who better for her to learn from than you?"

"Stop kissing my ass Debra, you just want to see if this girl has the balls for this floor."

"She isn't a student she's a GN, she takes her boards next month." Debra replied. "She asked to come here, she's already got some balls. But you need to know, Ginny down in HR is her Aunt, and that's how she got here, why she wants to be here I have no clue. But I want her, don't scare her away." She laughed as she opened the med room door again.

"I don't scare anyone away." He called after her.

Debra turned back to him. "You scare plenty of people away."

He shook his head as he followed her out and back to the nurse's station.

"Hey, come on, you're with me tonight." He said to the girl standing on the other side of the desk. "I'm Daryl and we got a lady on dialysis that needs heparin 5,000 units, go draw it up in a 3ml syringe and meet me in room 19."