The Queen of Hearts(8)
Practicing medicine had not been my lifelong goal, unlike for my roommate, Emma, who’d had a determination to be a surgeon since the age of three. Meanwhile, as a toddler, I’d aspired to be a bulldozer, a career plan that received the enthusiastic support of my older brother. There’s something so appealing about the notion of achieving your aims by pulverizing obstacles into rubble, isn’t there? Unfortunately, it soon became evident I did not have what it took to be an actual bulldozer, what with being human and all. I moved on, dreaming of jobs inspired by beloved literary influences: ballerina, wizard, authority on unicorn behavior. My interest in a more realistic career didn’t manifest itself until my senior year of high school, when I was eating with a friend whose father was a family doctor in our small Kentucky town. I could still recall the reverence accorded to him from surrounding diners as he murmured into the restaurant’s phone in response to a page, bolting midmeal for the hospital. The restaurant manager made a big show of comping our bill.
Doctors were beloved. This struck a nerve in my healthy imagination. They zipped around learning everyone’s secrets, delivering babies, soothing the sick, showing up in the nick of time to save the day. When the shit really rains down, who needs a ballerina?
“Sadie.”
I snapped to attention at the sound of my name. Or a name that was similar to mine, anyway. Apparently, I hadn’t made a tremendous impression on my team yet, since none of them seemed to realize my name was Zadie.
But maybe I was wrong about making an impression, because I looked up to find the chief’s eyes locked on me: a long, deliberate appraisal. I resisted the urge to squirm.
“Pay attention,” he said finally, but his tone was mild. “This is Sandford Pelley.” He gestured to a hulking Sasquatch with massive shoulders and animated chest hair spewing up from the V of his scrub top. “He’s from ortho.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“You too,” rumbled the Sasquatch. “Have you ever reduced a fracture?”
“Not yet,” I said hopefully.
“I’m sure Sadie can help you, Pelley, if you need some real muscle,” Dr. X offered. “Send her to me when you’re done; I’m going to check on whatever fresh hell just rolled in before Clancy manages to terminate somebody.” He strode toward the curtain separating the trauma bay from the rest of the ER, but then swiveled around and directed his last comment to me.
“You were good,” he said. “This kid owes you his life.”
—
“. . . excuse me, Doctor? Excuse me, Doctor?”
With a start, I realized the voice was addressing me. It belonged to a tiny, wizened man with a corona of wispy white hair. He was gimping along the hall, clutching a faded floral-print pillow, a Bible, and a leather strap attached to some kind of steamer trunk on wheels. “I can’t find anybody,” he told me plaintively. “Where did they go?”
“Oh,” I began, but stopped as he turned to me, his withered hand suddenly clutching mine in a fierce grip.
It was after midnight. Silver had finally been stabilized and sent to the ICU, and I’d been slinking through the ER with my head down, hoping to sneak in a short sleep before someone recognized my white coat and handed me a laceration tray. I’d been blasted from an uneasy slumber at four o’clock yesterday morning by my roommate, who was also assigned to the trauma service this month on a different team. Emma is the kind of person who can effortlessly transition from sleep into a well-oiled machinelike functionality. By contrast, I have to be poured out of bed each morning like human syrup, and I lurch around, emitting miserable squeaks until I’m caffeinated. It was going to be a brutal month.
Patients were crammed into every thin-walled room of the ER, wheezing or bleeding or clutching their chests, spilling out into the halls, bellowing for somebody to bring some Dilaudid, or at least some fucking morphine. My new friend stared at me, ignoring the sideshow, his watery blue eyes locked on mine with the intensity of someone who has just discovered the key to cold fusion. Then his eyes clouded in a baffled fugue. “Where is Bertie?” he asked.
“I don’t— Who is Bertie?” I tried.
My friend slowed his wobbly shuffle and began to cry. “Oh no,” I said. His thin shoulders shuddered. I cast a desperate look around, but everyone seemed preoccupied with their own issues: stemming a torrential hemorrhage, or warding off asphyxiation, or whatever. The elderly man had now come to a complete halt, sobbing piteously in the middle of the hall.
“Oh no,” I said again. I scooted his huge trunk over to the side, where it was less likely to cause a traffic jam, and then returned to him. Not knowing what else to do, I wrapped my arms around his frail torso and guided his weepy head onto my shoulder, patting the back of his neck ineffectually from time to time. A musty smell, like an old couch, wafted off him. He embraced me back, and I thought he might have felt some comfort by the hug, because after a while his cheek burrowed against my coat and the volume of his cries lessened a little. Still, there was no way to detach.
It’s possible I might have stood there until I became petrified, but rescue arrived in the form of an amused but disembodied voice just out of my line of sight. I knew immediately who it was, though.
“Sadie? What are you doing?”
“He’s lost,” I explained.
“Bertie,” howled my friend, wiping his nose on my sleeve with extravagant abandon.