Bad Day [Roderich and Antonio]

It was days like this that Roderich really felt like he needed a raise.

He'd spent much of the morning running tests on a very uncooperative six-year-old (who'd burst into tears at every needle-prick and swab, rendering him annoyingly flustered, as he'd never been good with kids) and while some of the tests still needed a few days to complete, he had a strong suspicion that he was heading in the wrong direction with the diagnosis. He'd also had to deal with the death of an elderly woman that the previous day had been doing quite well (she'd seemed to be responding to the antibiotics, and how had he been supposed to know that that nodule on her intestine was going to burst?) and the lovely event of having another patient bleed out onto him (prompting him to not only change scrubs but to practically give himself a shower in the men's bathroom, soap and all.) As of now he was sitting at his desk and filling out a load of menial paperwork that had been dumped on him, attempting to listen to the Chopin waltz he had playing in the background and resisting the urge to just scream.

Or chuck a pencil at the first person who walked through the door in a cheery mood. Whichever came first.

Roderich half-raised that pencil, then caught himself. No, violence did not = good idea. Besides, this was Antonio, and he surely wasn't trying to be obnoxious.

"I would have figured that this would have been one of the first places to look," he remarked coldly. "And don't call me Roddy."

It was a respect thing to him, really. He preferred to be addressed by his last name and his title, not by a nickname that reminded him more of something one would call a pet. Being referred to by his first name he could forgive, but 'Roddy'...

"What do you want from me?" he demanded.

Roderich's brow furrowed, and he gave Antonio the icy, tight-lipped look of disapproval that he normally reserved for interns that failed to wash their hands. He opened his mouth to protest being called by a childish nickname again, then decided to save the admonishment for whatever trivial case this might very well be.

"If this is another case of conjunctivitis, I told you, just tell the lab to run some adenovirus and picornavirus titers..." he muttered. "Do I really need to come see? Can't you just show me the patient's file here?"

Oh, how tempted he was to ask whether this was a medical emergency and decline as soon as Antonio stated that it was not. But he wasn't that rude, and perhaps there was a slim chance that this was actually something important, and he didn't want the guilt associated with refusing a case like that.

He rose from his seat, giving an overdramatic sigh that surely even Antonio in his stubborn cheeriness would notice. "At least you've ruled something out. How about you tell me what this is about while we walk down there? I don't want to take too much time."