Flirting with the Society Doctor / When One Night Isn't Enough (34 page)

Lately, in the evenings, she’d had no appetite. In the middle of the night, however, she more than made up for it. She leaned into his side, inhaled his familiar scent and allowed her heavy eyelids to close. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tired. Will you stay over anyway?” She wanted him to, so
much, didn’t want to miss one opportunity for them to be together. She yawned again. “I mean even if we don’t … Maybe after a little nap.”

“Honey. Stop.” He pulled her onto his lap and kissed the top of her head. “Go to sleep. I’m happy to sit here and hold you.”

“And I’m happy to sit here and be held.” By him. More than he could ever know. “In case you change your mind, I put together a package for your lunch tomorrow. It’s in the fridge with your name on it.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drew her head to his chest and kissed her forehead. “Thank you,” he said. “You can give it to me in the morning.”

Seconds before drifting off to sleep Ali asked, “If a full-time position were to open up in the E.R., would you take it?”

He didn’t answer right away, seemed to consider his words carefully. “No,” he finally said, rubbing his hand up and down her arm as if to comfort her. “At the end of the month I’m leaving.” He spoke softly. Then almost to himself he added, “Nothing and no one will keep me here.”

After a few hours of sleep, and some pre-dawn sustenance, Ali “accidentally” woke Jared when she climbed back into bed, and they made slow, lazy love. He kissed her deeply, thoroughly. He whispered in her ear, telling her he loved her body, loved how she touched him, loved how she made him feel. She’d hoped he’d take it one step further and say he loved her. He didn’t. And she realized how much she wanted him to.

In the morning Ali had barely closed the door behind Jared before she had to run to the bathroom to vomit. She could no longer ignore the signs. Breast tenderness. Weepiness. Exhaustion. Nausea and vomiting. And, if
those indicators weren’t blaring enough, as of that morning her second period in a row had failed to make an appearance.

After her shower, Ali drove to the small pharmacy out by the college to pick up a pregnancy test.

L
ATER
that evening, Ali applied pressure on the brake pedal and eased her car onto the exit ramp for Madrin Falls. At the stop sign she took a moment to look over at the passenger seat. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay, Gramps?”

“Just some indigestion,” he said, fumbling to open a roll of antacids he’d taken out of his jacket pocket.

“I told you we shouldn’t have gone for Italian food.” She turned onto North Street.

“You said I could choose the restaurant, and Antonella’s has the best tiramisu in five counties. A little heartburn is a small price to pay.”

That might be so, but his color didn’t look good, and he kept rubbing his hand over his sternum. “I’m taking you to the hospital for an EKG.”

“Relax, Allison. I’m fine.”

He was not fine and, whether he liked it or not, they were going to swing by the E.R. before heading home.

She’d just turned onto Main Street when Gramps cried out. “Ow, ow, ow, it hurts.” Both hands clutched to his chest, his body went rigid, then limp.

“Gramps!” Ali yelled. She glanced over to see him slumped in his seat, his head lolled to the left. Her eyes watching the road, with her right hand she shook him. “Gramps!”

No response.

Should she stop to render first aid or plow on to the E.R. less than a mile away? “Gramps,” she yelled, shook him again. This time he moaned.

Gas pedal met floor mat and the car took off. Ali made a screeching turn up the hilly drive to the hospital, honked at pedestrians too stupid to look where they were walking and skidded to a stop under the bright red “Emergency Room” sign. She slammed the car into park, and, heart pounding, jumped out and ran for help.

“Come on. Come on.” Gramps could die in the time it took the freakin’ electric doors to open. Once inside, Ali yelled out as loud as she could. “I need help. Now.” She ran for the empty stretcher in Trauma Room One. “Dr. P., Polly. Where is everyone?”

Pushing the stretcher to the sliding doors Ali met up with Jared, who ran out of Exam Room Three, and Polly, who came from Trauma Room Two.

“It’s Gramps.” Nothing more needed to be said. Polly helped her navigate the stretcher. Jared ran out ahead of them. By the time Ali and Polly had the stretcher out to the curb, Jared stood holding Gramps in his arms.

“He’s conscious,” Jared said.

The second Jared laid Gramps on the stretcher Ali started to push.

“Wait,” Polly called. “The side rails.”

Ali knew better than to transport a patient without the side rails up. She locked the railing on her side of the stretcher into place while Polly did the same on the other side.

“Let’s go. Let’s go,” Jared called out. On the way in Ali rattled off Gramps’s past medical history, including a myocardial infarction five years ago and his current medications.

Another nurse on duty joined Jared, Polly and Ali in Trauma Room One. She whipped out her scissors, prepared to cut up the front of Gramps’s shirt. “Wait. That’s his favorite shirt,” Ali said, fumbling to undo the buttons.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” the nurse, not one of Ali’s favorite people at the moment, said.

The shirt unbuttoned, Ali struggled to take it off. Polly tried to help, twisting Gramps’s arm into what looked like an uncomfortable position. “Careful. You’re going to hurt him,” Ali said.

“We need to get him hooked up to the monitor,” Polly said. “Think like a nurse or Teresa’s right. You shouldn’t be in here.”

The shirt finally off, Polly attached the chest leads, Teresa hooked up the oxygen and Ali primed the IV tubing. That done, she grabbed the basket of IV supplies and prepared to insert the peripheral intravenous cannula. She straightened the arm and tied the rubber tourniquet above his elbow. She exposed the antecubital fossa and palpated for the vein. Once she identified the insertion site, she opened the prep pad and cleansed the area. She operated on autopilot. Had done this thousands of times.

Bevel up, she positioned the needle and prepared to puncture the skin. Gramps’s skin. Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away. Lowered the cannula. Her hands shook. A tear dripped onto the surface she’d just disinfected.

“Outside,” Jared said. His tone authoritative.

She didn’t move, knew she was hindering their care but couldn’t get her legs to walk. Gramps’s color looked gray. Not good. The cardiac monitor beat out an irregular rhythm, far slower than normal. He lay motionless on the table, except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

A strong arm came around her shoulders and led her to
the door. “We’ll take good care of him, Ali,” Jared said. “Wait in the lounge.”

“Line’s in,” Polly said. “IV infusing.”

“Waiting for medication orders, Dr. P.,” the other nurse said.

Ali pulled away and ran for the stretcher unable to bear the thought this might be the last time she’d see him alive. “I have to tell him where I’ll be.” She leaned in close to Gramps’s ear, crying in earnest. “I’ll be right outside, Gramps. Polly’s here. And Dr. P. They’ll take good care of you.” She kissed his cool, clammy cheek. “I love you. Don’t you leave me. I need you so much. Especially now.” How could she possibly raise a baby on her own without Gramps’s help?

His lips moved. At first no sound came out. He tried again. “Quit … your … carrying on,” he struggled to whisper. “Love … you, too.”

She clung to his chest, didn’t want to leave.

“Come on, Ali,” Jared said, his hands on her shoulders, gently urging her to stand.

She didn’t want to wait all alone in the staff lounge away from what was happening. Instead she paced outside Trauma Room One, in case Gramps needed her, in case there was anything she could do to help. The door opened. As if Polly knew Ali would be there, she handed out vials of Gramps’s blood to take to the lab. Ali ran like world peace hinged on how fast she got there. A few minutes after she got back, the nurse assisting Polly came out. She picked up a chart for another patient and walked toward Exam Room Two. “What’s going on in there?” Ali asked.

“Dr. P. said he’ll be out to talk to you in a few minutes.”

Huh. The next time she asked Ali to cover a shift for her—
fugetaboutit.

Ali paced some more.

The third time the door opened, Jared walked out. And—oh, my God—he popped a piece of gum into his mouth. Ali’s last thread of control snapped. “What happened? What the hell happened?” She peeked through the partially opened door to see Polly pulling a blanket up to the head of the stretcher. Had Gramps died? Was Polly covering the body? She tried to push past Jared.

He held her tight. “Let’s go to the lounge.”

Rule number one about delivering bad news: Do it in private.

Panic surged inside her. Ali’s vision blurred, her heartbeat pounded in her ears. “I am not going anywhere.” Her body went frigid, started to shake. She struggled to take in enough air. “Somebody had better tell me what’s going on or I’m going to make a scene the likes of which you will never forget.”

“Calm down, Ali. Gramps is stable for now. He’s resting comfortably.”

Ali went limp with relief, thought she might faint.

Jared caught her, held her. “Hey. Are you okay?”

No. She wasn’t. Her world revolved around Gramps. She loved him more than anything, couldn’t imagine life without him.

“Come.” Jared coaxed her toward the lounge. “You need to sit down.”

She tried to turn. “I need to see Gramps.”

Jared tightened his hold. “You need to get yourself together before you go in there. I don’t want him upset.”

He was right.

Inside the staff lounge Ali sat at the table, feeling shaky and unsettled, while Jared filled a paper cup with water from the cooler. Her hands trembling, water dribbled down her chin when she took a sip. Jared grabbed a napkin and
blotted the wetness like a parent would do for a child. Yet he didn’t want children. She fought to keep from crying, looking down at her lap when she said, “Thank you.”

“Dr. Ansari is on duty in the cath lab,” he said, back to business. “He has one more patient for angioplasty. He agreed to stay late to add Gramps to today’s schedule.”

Ali’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you for arranging that.”

“He’s doing it for you, Ali. A professional courtesy. Gramps will stay down in the E.R. so I can monitor him until they’re ready.”

Tears overflowed her lids, streaming down her cheeks. “Thank you, Jared. I don’t know what I would have done if …”

“Shh.” He sat down beside her, took her hand in his. “Gramps is asking for you. You can’t go in there looking a mess.” He handed her some tissues. So sweet. So caring. So temporary. She cried some more.

“I know.” She sniffled and blotted her eyes. “Please tell him I’ll be in in a few minutes.”

“I will.”

Two hours later, Ali sat alone in the cardiac cath lab waiting room, watching the seconds click past on the wall clock. Three minutes after seven. Dr. Ansari had planned to be done by seven.

The hallway deserted, as it was after hours, there was no one to talk to. No one to bother with questions, to keep her mind from thinking the worst.

She stood and walked to the window, looked out into the darkness, watched snowflakes lazily drift into lit areas of the tiered parking lot below. It was the type of night she and Gramps loved to turn off all the lights in the house, push the sofa over to the bay window in the family room
and watch the snow pile up on the street. And snowplows. There was something about clearing snow, piling it into mounds, they couldn’t get enough of.

“Oh-oh. Here comes another one,” Gramps would say. Then they’d identify shapes in the snow banks piled under the streetlights. Gramps loved the snow. Never complained about shoveling it. Would he ever make another snow angel? Feel an icy flake melt on his tongue?

Just when she’d thought her tear ducts swollen shut from overuse, more tears formed in her eyes. Toughen up. Being weepy and unstable would not help Gramps. Seven-ten. She twisted a section of hair until it knotted and pulled at her scalp. Counted the people walking on the sidewalk. Seven. An ambulance raced up the hilly drive, its lights twirling.

Someone walked into the waiting room. Ali spun around so fast she lost her balance and had to grab on to the window ledge.

Jared, still in his scrubs, hurried forward, reached out to steady her. “Whoa. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Sorry. I’m waiting for Dr. Ansari. He was supposed to be done at seven.”

Jared glanced at the clock. Seven-fourteen. “Some procedures take longer than others.”

She knew that. Patients suffered reactions to medications, unexpected complications, cardiac arrest, death.

“I know that look,” he said. “Stop it. Don’t think the worst. No news …”

“Don’t you dare say no news is good news. No news could also mean the doctor is putting off giving you the bad news.”

“You’re a piece of work.” He shook his head. “Here.” He handed her a strawberry yogurt, a plastic spoon and a banana. “I thought you might be hungry.” He took a bottle
of water from his back pocket and held it out to her with his other hand.

Instead of taking them, she walked between his outstretched arms and didn’t stop until her cheek settled against his chest. With Jared she didn’t have to pretend to be strong, didn’t have to worry about saying the right thing, about acting or looking a certain way. He’d seen her at her worst, and it hadn’t scared him off. “Thank you for coming.”

He hugged her tight. “You’re here. Where else would I be?”

Such sweet words. She started to cry. Again. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t make it. He’s my only family.” The only person who loved her. A sob escaped her. “If he dies I’ll be all alone.”

Ali couldn’t stop the outpouring of emotion that followed. Steady rivers of tears ran down her cheeks, her nose dripped and her lungs drew in air via gasping breaths. For Gramps, who might die. For Jared, who would soon leave. For the baby she was carrying. For herself, left to deal with it all on her own.