9. Ashley
9
ASHLEY
I had the whole text message typed up and ready to send, inviting Jack to a more professional setting for lunch, but Sam sat down across from me and I put my phone away. In fact, I started to pick up my tray just to join Jack in his office to eat with him but Sam started talking to me. I didn't want to add "rude, unprofessional behavior" to my list of strikes against him. He could be vindictive if he wanted to be, and right now, I needed to keep my head down.
"Where's Jackaroo at?" Sam smirked as he unfolded the wax wrapper on his sandwich and spread it out. My hands clung to my tray, trembling with frustration and nerves. Every time we interacted with one another, Sam got a little closer to figuring me out. Call it a gut instinct, but I feared he would fold back the layers of our plot and eventually out us to the board for no good reason other than I refused to date him.
"He's, uh… He's in his office today." I tried to relax, but my hands still clung to the tray with unease. Sam was a smart man, smarter than I'd given him credit for, and we had been together long enough for him to know me through and through. He could probably see the little lines around my eyes that formed when I was lying, though I tried to disguise them with varying expressions.
"You know," he said, taking a bite of food. He chewed for a second before continuing with his mouth full. "I don't think you're really married." He blinked hard and waved his cheeseburger in the air as he spoke and gestured. His hands always got involved in the conversation. It was like they had minds of their own, like he didn't realize he was doing it. I wondered what he'd be like in surgery if the nurses were talking to him and had a scalpel in his hand. "I think" —he swallowed hard and almost choked just to get the words out— "you're lying to me."
I was stuck here now. If I'd have just gotten up and walked away, I wouldn't be seated in this cafeteria full of people on their phones and talking across tables loudly. I'd be in Jack's office feeling at home and at rest. I hated days when I had to eat in the cafeteria, but he needed me to be out here with my feelers out. I followed Dr. Blake in here with hopes to sit across the table from her and get to know her better, but at the last minute she was paged away and took her banana and diet soda out with a promise of a raincheck.
"Interesting assumption." I rolled my eyes and decided if I was going to have to eat with him, I might as well actually eat. I'd been so tired lately and at times, I forgot to eat anything, which led to nausea and headaches. "I think you need to mind your own business."
The grilled cheese sandwich I'd ordered didn't look appealing. It reminded me of my days in elementary school when my friends and classmates called it "bricks and rubber" because the bread was rock hard and the cheese was so hard to chew, it might as well have been the sole of a shoe. But it was nourishment, and anything to settle my stomach would be better than the anxiety vomiting I did yesterday at lunch.
"I think you've been lying to me because you don't want me to ask you out, because you're afraid of how good we had it and that you might just miss me." So much for subtlety. Sam went straight for the jugular with that comment.
I scowled at him as I took a bite of the overly firm food and chewed thoughtfully. It was a tactic I had picked up in med school when crude and humorless men used sexual jokes as an attempt to push my buttons and work me up. It gave me time to process what was being said and respond thoughtfully instead of the reactionary knee-jerk things I'd normally have said.
When I had swallowed, I said, "If you were the last man on Earth, I still wouldn't date you." I knew it was harsh, but it drove my point home. "What makes you so sure?" The greasy sandwich burned my finger, so I set it back on the plate and focused on his glowering face.
"You don't come to work together in the same car."
"Different shifts."
"You never show affection at work. It's all work and no play."
"Have you been stalking us? We're professionals. Professionals don't play kissy face around their patients." He was really ticking me off and he was right on every count so far.
"Ashley, you expect me to believe you are married to a man fifteen years older than you?" Sam scowled and then raised his eyebrows at me. I guess there was one thing he didn't really know about me and that was that I liked older men, especially this older man.
"Jack is an amazing lover. He pleases me multiple times before he lets himself get off, and he didn't leave me at the altar to cry for three days straight and then grieve a relationship I thought I'd have with him for months after that." I didn't defend my lie with more lies. I told him the truth, and it sliced through his heart.
I watched Sam retreat inward, having another bite of his sandwich in silence this time. I almost got up and walked away, but I felt guilty because being that hateful bitch wasn't my style. I wasn't that woman, and I didn’t want him to think he'd hurt me so badly that I'd become that type of woman, either. It was giving him too much power over me, too much credit for who I was today.
"I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't mean to snap." My appetite was gone again, washed away by more nausea. The lingering thought in the back of my mind that Jack's oopsie on that yacht might have knocked me up niggled at my thoughts, but I chose to believe it was my nerves.
Stakes were high for Jack, and I wanted to help him so badly. He'd been in such a sour mood lately that it was affecting our interactions and my emotions. I didn’t want him to hurt, and I was powerless to fix it. Investigating our coworkers was the only thing I could do, and I was failing at that.
"I understand," he said, and he smiled at me softly. "I get it. I never did apologize or explain.”
"Please don't. It will only reopen old wounds and sour things between us." I sighed. I didn’t want to be that petty woman who held things over him. I wanted to be myself, and I'd moved on. So should he. "I'm happy with Jack, okay? Why don't you and I just start over as friends?”
There I was, extending an olive branch he didn’t deserve in the interest of keeping peace. Eventually, Sam would find out I had lied about Jack, but by then it would be water under the bridge. I just had to move on right now for my mental wellbeing.
"I'd like that.” He set his burger down and thoughtfully said, "How is the investigation going? I heard they still haven't finished the autopsy?" Just like that, his accusing nature vanished and he became the guy I used to know, thoughtful, caring, compassionate. I'd never fall for him, but it was easier to converse with this version of Sam.
His question did hit home, though, and I needed someone to confide in who wasn't Jack. "Can I be honest with you?" I asked, feeling skeptical that this was a good idea, but my emotions were running too high to back down now.
"Of course, Ashley. You know I will keep your secrets." He leaned in as if I were about to confess some huge mortal sin, and all I had was my modest truth.
"Jack thinks someone on his team may have sabotaged his patient, whether intentionally to discredit him or accidentally, letting him take the fall. He put me on his team to help sniff them out, and I'm not having much luck." My face contorted, and I said, "Sort of like a secret sleuth."
Sam chuckled and his face lit up. "I get it. You need to save hubby, which is why you aren't telling anyone else you're married. I wondered why the nurses had no clue." His facial expression softened. "I will do anything I can to help. I think people are sue-happy. Doctors deserve protection from things like this. Jack's a good doctor and a good man. He doesn’t deserve it."
My shoulders relaxed a little and my first genuine smile directed toward Sam curled my lips. Deep down, he really was a good person, and I hoped he meant what he said. I reached over and touched his hand as a gesture of friendship. "Thanks, Sam. You have no clue how much that means to me. I will owe you big time."
"Uh, Ash.” Sam nodded at the door, and I turned over my shoulder just in time to see Jack there, glaring. He had already turned and was on his way out of the cafeteria with hands fisted at his sides. The look on his face was very reminiscent of the way he looked at me in my father's bathroom during the impromptu barbeque.
"Oh, God," I grumbled when I remembered Jack's harshly uttered command that I was his and his only. If he had seen me touching Sam, he'd be furious. I hoped that it was just more stress from the investigation, but my churning gut told me it was me. " I have to go."
"Jealous hubby?" Sam asked, and I sensed genuine concern in his tone.
"I'm not sure. I just don't want a blow up. I'm sorry. I'll, uh… Maybe I can get your number at some point and you and I can connect on how best to investigate the nursing staff. I have my doubts that it was one of Jack's interns, but something is definitely fishy." I stood and hastily scraped together my trash and the remnants of my uneaten lunch.
"Of course. Go on. If you need me to talk to him, I will. I honestly didn't mean to get you in trouble."
"Thanks, Sam. I will."
I breezed past the busing station to dump my tray on the way out. I had to catch Jack before he went back to rounds and obsessed on what he'd seen all day. Maybe he saw nothing and my nerves were for no reason, but with things so fragile and only just germinating between us, I didn’t want to ruin it. I liked Jack a lot, maybe even was falling in love. I had to protect that burgeoning flame.
The elevator doors had just slid shut when I got there, and my press of the call button didn't bring them back. I crossed my arms over my chest and tapped my toe, waiting. At least Sam understood things now, and I doubted I'd be pressured into dating him anymore. He got the point. If he would ever get another chance with me, it would be after years of groveling because he knew I could hold a grudge. Besides, I felt like I'd finally sold him on me and Jack and he would back down.
Just as the elevator dinged, a nurse I'd seen around the surgical ward rounded the corner. She was in tears, covering her mouth with a tissue. She bumped into me and knocked me off balance, and I gripped her elbow for support as I stumbled a few steps.
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry."
"Hey, it’s okay…” I Looked down at her nametag. "It's fine, Naomi."
She looked flustered as she wiped her eyes and sniffled. "No, it's not okay. I was being careless. Are you hurt? I'm sorry."
Softhearted people like Naomi always got me. They were too kind for a world like this. "I’m okay. Are you okay?" I pushed my worries about Jack to the back of my mind for the moment. Whatever it was could wait while I made sure this sobbing woman was alright. She looked distraught.
"Another patient died, just now… Cardiac arrest." Her lip quivered, and my heart clenched.
"What?" Was it Jack's patient? And was it natural causes or did someone do this too?
"Yeah, just there." Naomi gestured, and I took a few steps so I could see around the corner to where nurses were fluttering about hastily. They had a crash cart, and most of them looked shocked and scared. Dr. Blake was there too, and she seemed calm probably to everyone else, but I knew her better. There was something in her eyes—anger? Malice?
"What happened? Do you know?" I turned back to the nurse who now looked more calm, like telling someone had helped her vent off the strongest of her emotions. She didn't know this person from Adam, but I knew firsthand how difficult losing a patient could be.
"He, uh.” She cleared her throat, and a strange expression crossed her face before she looked sad again. "He was a cancer patient. In remission for the third time, I think. He had a hip replacement and during the surgery, they found his cancer had returned again. I think they think something from surgery caused a clot to dislodge… Embolism or coronary thrombosis."
The cold way she said it made goosebumps rise on my arms. I looked back at the chaos around the patient's room and knew I had to tell Jack. Farah Blake was there with her cluster of nurses and one other attending. It had to have been her patient, or maybe she was just nearby and came to help. Either way, I got a sinking suspicion that she was involved somehow and now my antennae were raised.
"God, I hope they—" I turned back around to see Naomi gone, no trace of her. The strange interaction clung to me even as I rode the elevator up toward Jack's office.
Sam was going to help me, and I had more clues now as to what might have happened to this particular patient, but if they ruled it wasn't a post-op risk that caused it, we were no closer to helping Jack than when I started. If I recall correctly, Jack's patient was an open-heart patient who also had cancer and had been in remission. That made the two incidents a little too coincidental in my opinion, but maybe Sam would have another thoughts.
For now, I had to speak to Jack and make sure he was okay, because I most certainly was not. And the puddle of vomit in the corner of the elevator I'd have to call Janitorial to clean up proved that.