The Infamous Ellen James (Infamous Series) (22 page)

"A fucking fantastic weekend." He brushes the hair out of my eyes and places his palm on my cheek. "Thanks for staying with me."

"Thanks for having me. And I agree, we had a fucking fantastic weekend. Emphasis on the fucking." I give him a sarcastic smile.

"Yes, smartass, a whole lot of emphasis on the fucking." He laughs lightly before leaning in and giving me a sloppy, wet kiss that ends with him licking the side of my face.

"Oh my god! Stop licking me, weirdo!" I act exasperated, but I secretly enjoy his sense of humor and ability to constantly make me smile.

"You love it." His grin is as wide as Texas and I can't fight the urge to smile back at him like an infatuated idiot.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. Give me some more sugar, Casanova. This time no licking." I pucker my lips and he gently places his lips to mine, tenderly kissing me.

"Have a good night at work, Ellie, and text me later if your night isn't too busy. I'm on call for the rest of the week so I'm sure we're going to cross paths at Regency at some point."

"Okay." I give him a swift peck on the cheek before hopping out of the truck.

As I head to the lobby door of my building, I notice a disheveled and very dirty-looking man walking out of my apartment's parking lot and toward the main road. His back is to me, but I'd know that man anywhere. That's Frank. ER frequent flyer Frank. I'm praying he didn't see me getting out of Trent's truck, and I have a feeling that I'll probably be seeing him in the ER very, very soon. This poor man has had a lifelong battle with mental illness, his primary diagnosis being paranoid schizophrenia. He's definitely made me feel uncomfortable at times, and he can come across as a total creep, like Amy would say, but I really do feel bad for him. No one should have to suffer through a life that's a constant battle of trying to keep your foot in the door of reality's house while crazy town is constantly trying to pull you right back out to Never Never Land
.

As I unlock my apartment door, I can hear Adele's
Rolling In The Deep
blaring from the stereo. I am little concerned about what this could mean. Amy and I have specific music that we play when we are pissed off about a guy. Rihanna when we're slightly pissed off; think angry texts and phone calls. Taylor Swift when we're definitely pissed; think egg his car or toilet paper his house. And Adele, well, she's the big guns, the "I'm going to rip his balls off, make a nice slow cooker meal with them, and then shove said ball-roast down his throat" kind of pissed. Yes, we totally go Hannibal Lector.

Nice Chianti and some fava beans
, anyone?

So you can see my concern when not only is Adele blasting from the speakers in my apartment but
Rolling In The Deep
of all songs is playing.

I hesitantly head into my apartment, finding Amy and Lizzy sitting on the living room couch, eating ice cream. Amy is belting out the lyrics of the song like she's singing for a crowd of thousands into her giant ice scream scooper that must be serving dual purposes—spoon and microphone. My sister is just sitting next to her, digging into her pint of chocolate chip cookie dough, seeming to enjoy the impromptu concert that's taking place in my living room. I walk towards the stereo and pause the music.

"
WE COULD HAVE HAD IT
.... Hey! What the hell, Elle?" Amy scowls at me.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing is going on. Lizzy and I are just enjoying some ice cream while we listen to Adele." She avoids my eyes and dips her scooper into the gallon tub of Rocky Road ice cream that is sitting in her lap.

"Don't be an asshole. I know you. And I know what Adele means. Lizzy has plenty of reasons to listen to Adele, but you, I need to hear your reasons." I point my finger at her as my voice raises.

"Stop pointing at me, dickhead!" Amy shouts with a mouth full of ice cream.

"Seriously, what's going on?" I look at Lizzy.

"James pissed Amy off—" Lizzy starts to say before Amy throws a pissed look her way, promptly causing her to shut her mouth.

"What happened with James?" I look back to Amy, impatiently tapping my foot. I need to hear this story and I only have a short time before I have to get ready for work.

"James… Nothing happened with James. Let's hear about your night with Trent! Did he bang your brains out?!"

"Yes, he did, in fact,
bang my brains out
, but you're not off the hook. Spill it, Amy, or else I'll be worrying about you all night when I'm at work." I'm trying to use the guilt factor to entice her into telling me what in the hell happened with James. I mean, it seemed like she was really hitting it off with him.

Amy sighs heavily and looks down at her ice cream, stirring her scooper through the melted cream on top. "He's an asshole, all right? A total dickhead douchebag and I don't ever want to speak to him again. He turned my pussy down! My pussy! My perfectly groomed, hot, sweet, tight—"

I cut her off before she starts to give me exact measurements of her labia. "He turned you down?"

"Yeah, Dr. Limp Dick turned me down. I basically threw myself at him, and he just dropped me off at our apartment." Oh god, she's already nicknamed him. This is worse than I thought.

"I don't get it. You two seemed like you were hitting it off before Trent and I left the country club." I'm definitely taken aback by this, but I feel like there's a piece of this story that's missing.

"Yeah, apparently my vagina was too drunk for his liking. Fucking dickhead…” Amy grumbles into her ice cream, and now I just got that missing piece. I swear, sometimes Amy just can't seem to grasp the big picture, especially when it comes to men. She's pissed off at James for refusing to have sex with her because she was too intoxicated. I think I just gained a hell of a lot of respect for that man. If I had more time, I'd sit down, chat with Amy, and try to get her to open her fucking eyes, but work calls.

"Can we finish this conversation tomorrow? I have to get ready for work."

"Sure. I can't wait to rehash how some guy refused to make boom-boom with my so-called 'drunken vagina,'" Amy rolls her eyes dramatically as she uses her fingers for air quotes.

Looks like I'm going to have my work cut out for me with this situation.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“My bright idea came to me one night, deep inside my rectum…said no one ever.”

"Ellen, I just placed a patient in bed two," Trudy says as she sets the chart down in front of me. "I should warn you… It's Katy." I sigh heavily before grabbing Katy's giant chart and glancing up at Trudy. She's one of our emergency room registrars, and the fact that even she knows who Katy is should tell you that the ER might as well be this woman's second home.

Katy Parson is a thorn in my side. A raging yeast infection inside my snatch; a cluster of hemorrhoids in my ass. No joke. She's a thirty-year-old woman whose presence of facial hair and absence of proper hygiene has a strong resemblance to Chewbacca. She frequents my ER because she has an obsession with anal fixation and a strong proclivity for sticking random household items up her ass. Last week, it was a tube of toothpaste, and the week before that, it was an aerosol can of air freshener.

I'm cringing at what she may have stuck up her ass tonight.

The list of possibilities is endless…

"Thanks, Trudy," I say before standing up and walking toward bed two. This is one of those moments where I ask myself,
Why in the hell did I choose nursing as a career?

"Well what brings you in tonight, Katy? I feel like I just saw you in here the other day with… What was it? A bottle of Febreeze trapped in your rectum?" I've lost my patience with this girl, and I'm more than aware that sarcasm is leaking from my voice like a faucet.

"I was changing my light bulbs and one accidentally got stuck…"

Seriously?
A
god damn light bulb
?

I roll my eyes in annoyance and set her chart on the bedside table.

"An
accident
?" My look says
You're full of shit, and I know it.

"Yes, an accident. I just don't know how I keep getting myself into these situations." She laughs nervously as she awkwardly adjusts on the bed. I grab my phone and call the nurse's station, telling our hospital secretary to put a call out to the first surgeon available and notify X-Ray that I need them up here right now. The fact that she has a glass light bulb lodged in her rectum has definitely met the requirements for emergency surgery, and I can tell by the way she's barely sitting on the bed that she's telling the truth.

"Throw this gown on and just go ahead and stand for the time being. The last thing we need is for the light bulb to burst while it's still inside of you. X-Ray should be up shortly. This
accident
is most likely going to require emergency surgery." I set a patient gown on her bed, get supplies to begin drawing blood, and start her IV.

"Emergency surgery?! Oh my god! Can't they just pull it out? I mean, it went in pretty easily…” Her eyes are wide as the entire situation registers in her mind.

"Uh, yeah. Light bulbs are
glass
, therefore, the only way to remove it safely from your rectum is to have you under sedation and in the operating room." I place the tourniquet around her arm and start perusing for a good vein. I can see she's starting to get scared at the mere idea of going into surgery, and a small part of me is sympathetic for her, but the other part of me, the part that's seen her continuously mutilate her asshole with her sick obsession, is extremely aggravated.

This woman is now starting to put her life in jeopardy and I'm not sure how much further she can take this. We've tried everything to get her into counseling, therapy, anything to help her work through her questionable mental state, and she continually refuses our supportive resources. The entire situation is frustratingly exasperating. How do you help someone who doesn't want to be helped? And even more importantly, how do you get someone to stop heaving random objects up her butt?

Who wakes up and says, “Hmmm, I think I'll make my coffee, read the newspaper, and maybe attempt to put this coffee pot in my ass”?

A crazy person, that's who; a crazy person who is otherwise ignorant to the fact that she may quite literally die with cleaning supplies hanging out of her rectum. And why doesn't she just buy a dildo, a vibrator, or a butt plug? Even anal beads might do the trick! She obviously prefers things that are, in fact, quite large, and I know from experience that you can purchase some extremely hefty dildos.

An X-Ray technician arrives in the room after I've managed to draw blood to ensure she's stable to go under anesthesia and started an IV with fluids now running to get her well-hydrated for surgery. I walk out to the nurses' station and sit down, waiting for X-Ray to finish and a surgeon to arrive. I'm charting my current assessment for the obsessive anal fixator and glance up to see Trent strolling through the ER doors. I can't help but grin as he walks toward me, still dressed in the clothes he was in earlier today when he dropped me off at my apartment.

"Oh thank god! Dr. Hamilton is here to save the day!" I act overly excited and he shakes his head, laughing at my sarcasm. Trent sits down next to me just as the X-Ray tech drops off Katy's films. I slide them over to him and give him a huge smile.

"Here you go. She's all yours."

Trent pulls the films from the giant yellow envelope and his eyes go wide at the sight of a perfectly intact light bulb lodged inside someone's anal cavity. "Are you joking with me right now? I got called in for this." He runs his hand through his hair in irritation.

"Definitely not joking with you. Your patient Katy
accidentally
fell on this light bulb and now it's lodged inside of her ass."

"Wow. That is the most ridiculous story I have ever heard. Is this the same Katy that Dr. Mitchell had to remove an aerosol can from of last week?" He flips to the next slide, an even closer view of the problem he's just been hired to fix.

Not your brightest idea, Katy.

"Yes, that's her. The obsessive anal fixator." I click through her electronic chart, pulling up the files I know he will need to look through, labs included. "Here you go. This is everything you'll need. Her labs look fine, and I've got her in bed two standing straight up. I refuse to let her sit down on my bed. I'm not in the mood to deal with shards of glass and a hemorrhaging asshole tonight." He chuckles and slides his chair closer to me, glancing through Katy's medical history.

"You know I wasn't even first call tonight, but I agreed to come in when they called and said it was you who was requesting a surgeon. Now I'm rethinking my decision." He winks at me before standing up and heading towards Katy's room.

"Aw, you're the sweetest, Dr. Hamilton! I owe you big time!" I yell over to him as he walks into bed two.

Trent peeks out from behind the curtain. "I'll remember that, and I'll make a list of all the ways you can make this up to me!" He calls back with a wicked grin.

Trent saves the day and successfully removes the light bulb from Katy's ass. She's now in recovery and doing fine. I really hope this girl will get some help, because her anal fixation is starting to put her life at risk.

Death by anal fixation
.

Don't feel bad. I'm laughing my ass off, too.

I have another patient in bed three and start scrolling through the chart. My eyes immediately grow wide when I see his name…
Frank Dubussy
. The paranoid schizophrenic who frequently forgets to take his medication. The same man I've now witnessed twice walking the streets near my apartment. My gut told me I would be seeing him soon in one of my ER beds, and it looks like my instincts were spot on.

My heart goes out to this man; really, it does. His mental illness takes a toll on him daily, and his quality of life is truly questionable. I quickly call one of our psychologists on staff and request that he sees Frank immediately. Then I ask Tony to walk into his room with me. There's one thing I've learned from working in the ER for as long as I have, and that's to
always
bring a strong man into an already established crazy patient's room with you. You just never know what could happen, and it's best to have another person there to help if they get violent. Frank has never gotten violent with me, but he's been extremely inappropriate before, making sexually explicit suggestions that made even me feel violated and uncomfortable.