Beautiful Oblivion (The Maddox Brothers, #1)(98)

“Has it been as busy down here as it’s been up there?”

“Yes,” David said. “Probably worse.”

“Can you still do that port for me?” Christy said, her eyes begging.

I looked to David, and then back at Christy. “The way things are going, if I take that pager, I’ll be stuck up there until quitting time. They really need me down here.”

David looked at his watch. “Tasha comes in at three thirty. We can handle it until then.”

“You sure?” I asked, slowly taking the pager from Christy.

David waved me away dismissively. “No problem. I’ll take the pager from you when Tasha gets here so you can go home.”

I clipped the pager to the waistband of my scrubs, and headed upstairs, waving good-bye to Christy.

She frowned, already feeling guilty. “Thank you very, very much!”

I passed Chase for the umpteenth time. As the hours passed, he’d looked increasingly nervous. Everyone was. From the looks of things inside the ER, it seemed like all hell was breaking loose outside. I kept trying to sneak peeks at the television but once I finished one case, the pager would go off again to direct me to another.

Just as I had anticipated, once I arrived on the surgery floor, there would be no leaving until David relieved me at 3:30. Case after case, I was moving the C-arm from surgery suite to surgery suite, sometimes moving a second one in for whomever was called up for a surgery going on at the same time.

In one afternoon I saw a shattered femur, two broken arms, and a broken hip, and shared an elevator with a patient in a gurney accompanied by two nurses, all on their way to the roof. His veins were visibly dark through his skin, and he was covered in sweat. From what I could make of their nervous banter, the patient was being med-flighted out to amputate his hand.

My last case of the day was precarious at best, but I didn’t want to have to call David up to relieve me. My girls were out of town with their father, and David had a pretty wife and two young sons to go home to. It didn’t make sense for me to leave on time and for him to stay late, but I had already logged four hours of overtime for the week, and that was generally frowned upon by the brass.

I walked past the large woman in the gurney, looking nervous and upset. Her hand was bandaged, but a large area was saturated with blood. I remembered her from the ER, and wondered where her family was. They all had been with her downstairs.

Angie, the circulation nurse, swished by, situating her surgical cap. It was covered in rough sketches of hot-pink lipsticks and purses. As if to validate her choice of head cover, she pulled out a tube of lip gloss and swiped it across her lips. She smiled at me. “I hear Chase has been asking about you.”

I looked down, instantly embarrassed. “Not you, too.” Was everyone so bored that they had nothing better to do than fantasize about my non-love life? Was I that pathetic that a prospect for me was so exciting?

She winked at me as she passed. “Call him, or I’m going to steal him from you.”

I smiled. “Promise?”

Angie rolled her eyes, but her expression immediately compressed. “Damn! Scarlet, I’m sorry, your mom is on line two.”

“My mom?”

“They transferred her call up a couple of minutes before you came in.”

I glanced at the phone, wondering what on earth she would be calling me at work about. We barely spoke at all, so it must have been important. Maybe about the girls. I nearly lunged for the phone.

“Hello?”

“Scarlet! Oh, thank God. Have you been watching the news?”

“A little. We’ve been slammed. From the few glimpses I’ve gotten, it looks bad. Did you see the reports of the panic at LAX? People were sick on some of the flights over. They think that’s how it traveled here.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Nothing ever happens in the middle of the country.”

“Why did you call, then?” I said, confused. “Are the girls okay?”

“The girls?” She made a noise with her throat. Even her breath could be condescending. “Why would I be calling about the girls? My kitchen floor is pulling up in the corner by the refrigerator, and I was hoping you could ask Andrew to come fix it.”

“He has the girls this weekend, Mother. I can’t really talk right now. I’m in surgery.”

“Yes, I know. Your life is so important.”

I glanced at Angie, seeing that she and the surgical tech were nearly finished. “I’ll ask him, but like I said, he has the girls.”

“He has the girls a lot. Have you been going to the bars every weekend, or what?”

“No.”

“So what else is more important than raising your children?”

“I have to go.”

“Sensitive subject. You’ve never liked to be told you’re doing something wrong.”

“It’s his weekend, Mother, like it is every other weekend.”

“Well. Why does his weekend have to be the weekend I need help?”

“I really have to go.”

“Did you at least send dresses with them so their daddy can take them to church? Since he’s the only one who seems to care to teach them about the Lord.”

“Good-bye, Mother.” I hung up the phone and sighed just as Dr. Pollard came in.