The Queen of Hearts(45)

“I said, Eleanor Packard is coding,” the nurse on the other end cried. Dimly, we could all hear shouting and the tiny, plucky sound of alarms through the phone’s speakers, adding to the nerve-jangling shriek of our own alarms. “Please come. She’s coding.”





Chapter Eighteen


COMBAT WITH THE MAXIMUM BAD GUY





Late Summer, 1999: Louisville, Kentucky


   Zadie


I was holding the phone between my chin and shoulder, lying with my head propped up on a pile of Emma’s pillows, which she’d transposed to the foot of the bed. Graham, who was omnipresent these days, was lounging outside the open bedroom door, watching some stupid movie. I could hear a steady drone of racing car engines, which were no doubt engaged in a superfluous violent cross-city car chase. Emma faced me, reclining against the headboard, watching the call transpire with undisguised interest. Her entire body had perked up; even her hair seemed to be magnetized with concentrated attention. I felt too weary to hide anything. I wanted comfort, and the best place to be for that right now was curled up with my beloved roommate, wearing my oldest, softest, and least flattering pajamas, trying to distract myself with some bad TV. Well, some bad TV other than whatever ridiculous testosterone-fest Graham was watching. The last thing I felt like doing was romancing it up outside the hospital, even though I’d been clamoring for this for weeks.

“Ah, c’mon, Z. You got me all excited about the date night, and I want to celebrate your last day on the rotation. I had lots of flowery things to say,” X offered.

“Ooh,” I blurted, momentarily intrigued in spite of myself. “Give me a little illustration.”

“Not happening, unless you get your hot little ass over here.”

“We-ell . . .” I said, torn. Maybe I should have rallied. Maybe the best way to erase my blues would have been distraction.

Sensing weakness, X pounced. “I got you something, Zadie,” he said, his voice softening. “You’ve been on my mind all day, and I know I should be more courtly to you, especially when it was such a rough day. I know you’re upset”—he hesitated—“and I really want to comfort you.”

Yes, that sealed it. For all his many virtues—brilliance, wit, dedication, scorching talent in bed—X was a man most comfortable in a world of other men; he didn’t normally seem given to expressing emotion or producing spontaneous gestures of thoughtfulness. I know I should be more courtly was, in X parlance, akin to saying I feel a passionate connection of our souls. Or something like that. High drama on a normal day for him might have consisted of a creative cursing streak if a scrub tech dropped his hemostats.

But I knew he was capable of caring deeply about things; I had seen his face go white late this morning when Lima Trauma, the young father with the neck injury, suddenly had a massive stroke and died. X had summoned Lima’s wife, a woman in her early twenties with that kind of pale English skin that is more pink than white. Her hair had been reduced to the consistency of pillow stuffing from repeated bleaching and she was built like a dumpling. Nevertheless, she was a pretty thing, and friendly, even despite the ordeal of her husband’s injury. I could hear her anguished sobbing through the thick family room door as Dr. X broke the news. Lima’s body was gone by the time we finished afternoon sign-out. Dr. X had stood silently by the empty unit bed, expressionless, until the charge nurse Val had walked up behind him and slipped something into his pocket.

I snuck back in and asked Val about it. I suspected Val might be the one person at the hospital who knew about our affair. She was always perceptive, and her glance had gone straight to me a few times during rounds when Dr. X had thrown out some subtle double entendres. But then, charge nurses generally knew everything. When I asked about the item Val had given Dr. X after Lima’s death, I’d been surprised to hear the answer. “Lima’s wife’s name and address,” Val told me. “He always writes to their families. And they almost always write him back; some of them have been corresponding with him for years. He rarely ever talks about it.”

So, should I get out of bed and activate my hot little ass into mobility while the night was still young and X was still in an unusually gushy mood? After this week, we could date openly, since I’d no longer be on the trauma service, and I felt eager to see how that was going to play out. I murmured a capitulation into the phone and hung up, turning to find Emma staring at me with laserlike intensity.

“Spill it,” said Emma.

“Ah . . .”

“It’s X, that fifth-year general-surgery resident,” called Graham from the other room, without tearing his eyes away from what now sounded like a decapitation by chain saw.

Both of us turned to him in astonishment.

“How did you know—” I began.

“Why didn’t you tell—” burst out Emma at the same time, both of us bolting toward him.

Graham tore his attention away from the television gore and held his hands up in surrender. “Whoa, ladies,” he said. “I just know things. How’d it happen, Fletch?”

“Dr. X?” Emma said. “Dr. Xenokostas, your chief resident? That’s who you’ve been sneaking around with?”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say sneaking around—”