Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
NYLA
Even though Jaden has been absolutely professional since the start of our shift in the ER today, his presence makes me nervous. Even now, as I head towards treatment room four with him in tow and my patient’s test results in hand, I can feel him there.
We kissed three times yesterday, and every single time it knocked the ground out from under my feet. Today we haven’t been any closer than coworkers normally are.
I’d love nothing more than to know what he’s thinking, but right now my patient deserves my full attention.
His mere presence is already distracting me far too much today.
Every second we’re not treating an emergency, I’m standing with him in my mind in the parking lot of the ambulance station, wondering whether the decision I made was the right one.
Would it have been better to tell him everything about my medical history? Even though I’m healthy and might well stay that way?
Besides, we’re not a couple or anything like that. We’re going with the flow and seeing what happens. No guarantees, that was the deal and he agreed to it.
I enter the examination room. ‘Ms Rodriguez, your test results are back,’ I say to the sixty-seven-year-old woman who came into the emergency room a few hours ago with weakness, nausea, and heart palpitations, and I sit down on the stool next to her gurney.
Jaden is leaning against the cabinet opposite me, his expression friendly.
‘How’s it looking, Doctor? Can I go home?’ She looks at me expectantly out of her wrinkle-covered face.
I open the medical chart and skim her values.
‘Your blood sugar level and sodium look good, but your kidneys are having a bit of trouble doing their job at the moment.’ Her creatinine is slightly elevated, but the patient has no pre-existing conditions that could be problematic here.
‘We’ll monitor that, but at the moment there’s no reason to worry. ’
No reason to worry. As I say the words, it hits me what I’ve just said: what any doctor would say in this situation.
The lady nods, and I can feel Jaden’s gaze resting on me. I wonder what he’s thinking right now, what he sees when he looks at me, and whether he might even be a little proud of me.
I quickly focus on the results again and pause in surprise. ‘Your potassium level is severely elevated.’ Much too high, to be precise.
‘How high?’ Alarmed, Jaden pushes off from where he’s standing and comes over to me. When he steps up beside me to read the values himself, I catch the scent of his skin. A far too intense tingling shoots through my stomach. ‘That can’t be right,’ he says now, looking at the chart.
Definitely not. A value that high would have to cause life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, but the patient has neither palpitations nor paralysis, and the ECG was unremarkable as well.
‘Ms Rodriguez, earlier we talked about the medications you take regularly,’ I say, addressing the patient thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure you didn’t forget any when you listed them?’
‘I only take the blood thinners and the cholesterol medication, nothing else,’ she confirms.
Then the lab made a mistake; there’s no other way to explain the situation. I look over at Jaden, whose expression tells me he’s thinking the same thing. A split second later I’m in danger of losing myself in the endless green of his eyes.
‘Would you stay with Ms Rodriguez?’ I ask him, making an effort to sound matter-of-fact. ‘I need to check something.’ And catch my breath. Desperately.
‘Sure, we still have a lot to talk about anyway,’ he replies with an open smile. ‘Isn’t that right, Ms Rodriguez? You held back at least three of your grandchildren from me earlier, didn’t you?’
‘Five.’ She motions for Jaden to come join her. ‘So, there’s also Fernanda, the little adventurer,’ she begins.
I rise from my chair and turn to leave. When I reach the door, I turn back and watch the scene.
Jaden and the lady are laughing together as if they’d known each other for years.
If they weren’t in a sterile treatment room and she weren’t currently getting an IV, no one would suspect that she was unwell.
That’s because of Jaden, because of the way he makes her stay here easier.
How he does everything he can to make sure she’s all right.
The sight reminds me of the man with the heart attack, the one he told jokes to in the ambulance. Back then, Jaden’s selflessness moved me deeply. Because I hadn’t yet realized that he hadn’t just done it for the patient, but also for himself.
Since yesterday, however, I know for sure: What looks like zest for life is in truth escape.
Day after day. Moment by moment. No more, but also no less. Those were his words when he talked about how things could go on between us. Was that also a kind of escape?
No. There would have been no need to run away, after all I had already made it clear beforehand that we were better off staying away from each other. He could have agreed, wouldn’t have had to make that suggestion.
My carousel of thoughts spins faster and faster. To escape it, I leave the treatment room and run upstairs to the first floor, where the lab is located.
The potassium level measured for my patient is wrong, I’m sure of it, and that’s the only thing I should be dealing with right now. In the hallway I almost bump into Autumn.
‘Oh,’ is all she says, smoothing down her fiery red hair, visibly confused.
‘Are you okay?’ I scrutinize her. ‘You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.’
Her cheeks immediately turn bright red. ‘Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine.’
‘Mhm.’ Nothing is fine with her, I can see that. Sonora mentioned something the other day about the father of Autumn’s little patient. It was all very cryptic, but she still hinted that something might be brewing there. ‘Does it have something to do with your patient’s dad?’ I ask.
Her shocked expression is answer enough. ‘No,’ she replies in a shrill voice, clears her throat and exhales quickly. ‘No, really not, I’m just in a hurry… because of… because of a patient’s test results.’
‘Sure.’
‘He has pneumonia, he was on the mend but now his cough has gotten worse and …’ she stammers incoherently.
I consider pretending not to notice that she’s completely falling apart and that it’s blatantly obvious this has something to do with that man.
But then I nod in understanding; after all, she’s not the only one on an emotional roller coaster.
If she were to ask me what’s going on with me right now, I wouldn’t know what to say either.
That there’s a man whose effect on my heartbeat is stronger than any physical exertion, even when he’s not doing anything special?
That when I’m near him I can simply forget everything and that it feels so liberating I just want more and more of it?
Or that all of this—as wonderful as it is—could end in disaster?
No one knows what things will be like in a month, a year, or a decade. The memory of Jaden’s words is everywhere inside me. Maybe they should scare me more, but they also feel liberating.
What he said yesterday is true. Day after day I treat one-percent people who, from one second to the next, no longer are, while I’m healthy despite my twenty-five percent.
And I am; Dr. Becker confirmed it, I’m healthy and I might even stay that way.
Besides, my calculation isn’t entirely correct. My risk might not actually be twenty-five percent. That’s just the most pessimistic figure that can be derived from the probabilities.
The most optimistic one is six.
Six percent risk that my illness will come back.
Six percent.
‘Nyla?’ Autumn waves her hands in front of my face. ‘You still with me?’
Her question echoes inside me. It should be easy to answer, and yet I can’t. Because I can feel that the Nyla she knows is just about to dissolve.
Somewhere between the Nyla I’ve been since my diagnosis and the many versions of me I could become, I give my roommate a meaningful smile. ‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘I’m still here.’