The Queen of Hearts(63)

“One hour and forty-five minutes! One hour and forty-five minutes! Like I ain’t got nowhere more important to be. Like I don’t have things I need to get done. And what happens if I up and die in here? How’s anybody gonna know? What kind of hospital just lets you die on them?”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Goodhouse. My name is—”

“Sorry! Don’t be thinking ‘so sorry’ gone make anything okay,” interrupted Mrs. Goodhouse. “What happens if I just go ahead and die on you? You gone just keep saying ‘so sorry’?”

“No, I—”

“Well, I’ll tell you about ‘so sorry.’ ‘So sorry’ gone be the fool who did this to me. I am sick. I need something for this now. You best get to stopping this sick and doing something to fix my weave.”

The woman on the chair, still seated with militaristic rigidity, nodded knowingly and fixed me with a stone-cold stare. “Mmmm-hmmm!” she said, her voice rising significantly on the second syllable.

This was not going according to my mental image of my first patient encounter, but I gamely plowed ahead.

“Can you tell me about your abdominal pain?” I asked.

“Abdominal pain? Woo Lord. What in the world you talkin’ about, ab-dom-i-nal pain? Can’t you read? I never said nothing about no abdominal pain.”

“Ah, well, it says here, ‘Patient states she is sick to her stomach.’”

“Why, yes, I am sick to my stomach. Who’s not gonna be sick, they have their hair burned off their head? That not gonna bother you? Uh-huh. I am sick.”

The other woman backed her up again. “Mmm-hmm. That’s right.”

Now thoroughly bewildered, I asked, “You’re here for something about your hair?”

“Are you blind too?” screeched Mrs. Goodhouse. “Look at my head!”

I looked. There was indeed something wrong with Mrs. Goodhouse’s hair. The scalp appeared normal but the hair itself was radiating out from her head in teeny shriveled corkscrews, like the corona on an angry dandelion. There was also a . . . scorched appearance, an impression bolstered by a distinctly unpleasant odor.

“What happened?” I wondered.

“What does it look like happened?” barked Mrs. G. “This damn fool working on my weave put some chemical on there and done burned it near off! What I want to know is how you aim to fix it. I ain’t waiting no one hour and forty-five minutes to hear ‘so sorry.’”

I was literally speechless. Chemical damage to one’s weave had not yet been covered in any lecture I’d attended. Was there even a diagnosis for this? And what kind of shoddy triage had led to this being described as “abdominal pain”? It seemed sharing this sentiment with the unhinged Mrs. Goodhouse would be unlikely to result in commiseration.

“I’m just going to consult with a . . . hair doctor,” I blurted. “Be right back.”

The ER was abuzz. People scurried every which way, and several ambulance gurneys tied up traffic in the hall. I wanted to locate the third-year ER resident, a blustery guy by the name of Micah Abbott, although it seemed unlikely he’d be much help in soothing the aggrieved Mrs. Goodhouse. He was even less likely to be fruitful regarding a solution to the hair crisis, since he was blindingly white and bald as a snake. But presumably he’d seen chemical burns to the scalp before and would know how to write a quick note while effecting an expedient, if unsatisfactory, dismissal. After searching every part of our assigned hallway, I finally caught sight of him standing in a crowd outside the closed curtain to one of the trauma bays across the ER, where the noise from some tremendous ruckus was emanating out.

“Hey, Dr. Abbott,” I said, waving at him across the hall as I hustled in his direction. “I have a lady who—”

“Ah, there you are!” someone said, interrupting me. I found myself grasped by the elbow so I was pivoted in the opposite direction. A little rustle went through the crowd outside the trauma bay, many of whom appeared to be staring at me. I opened my mouth to protest but shut it abruptly as I realized the elbow grabber was none other than Dr. Elsdon himself. “Let’s head into my office for a second,” he said.

“But I . . . Shouldn’t I tell Micah about room twenty-two?” I asked, bewildered. Had I screwed up somehow? Surely they didn’t have video cameras in the exam rooms.

“We’ll let him handle that one,” said Dr. Elsdon, walking quickly. We turned down the long corridor outside the emergency department entrance. I remembered Dr. Elsdon’s office was actually located in a separate building connected to the hospital by an underground pedway. This was probably a ten-minute walk. What had I done to warrant such an intervention, and from the chair of the emergency department, no less?

Dr. Elsdon had only one speed: snappy. We hurtled around a corner, where a grim-faced blond woman dressed chest to toe in a startling shade of purple was waiting. I recognized her as Dr. Elsdon’s administrative assistant. Oddly, she was standing next to Emma, who had also been placed on the ED rotation this month—this meant she and I would have alternating shifts—along with James DeMarco, our class president, who was one of the other third-year students on the rotation. James was a tenderhearted guy who carried out his responsibilities as class president in an avuncular fashion, being a few years older than most of his peers. He was the only bearded dude in our grade, and he was gawky and earnest and people absolutely loved him. Our classmates went to him with a litany of troubles: financial, romantic, academic, even, in a couple of disturbing instances, sexual. But he was that kind of guy: people knew they could trust him.