14. Dalton
14
DALTON
I do not get a full eight hours of sleep before I have to return to the hospital for work.
But Nadia is home and comfortable. I was able to keep checking on her and make sure we didn’t miss anything in the ER.
And I slept some, a handful of hours.
Catzilla curls up behind Nadia’s knees as I ease the door open to leave for an overnight shift. “Watch over her,” I whisper to the kitty.
The cat lifts her head to acknowledge me, then sets it down again.
I stand in the open doorway, taking a moment to look over the space. The kitchen is softly lit by the bulb over the sink, sending a glow that almost, but not quite, reaches the bed.
Nadia’s hair is spilled over her arms, only her face visible above the ruffled edge of her blue comforter. Catzilla’s ears twitch as if she’s annoyed I’m still there.
It’s a peaceful scene compared to the chaos of the bar, then the hospital. We took an Uber to my car, which thankfully hadn’t been towed or even ticketed yet, and came home.
If we were going to have a first disaster together, at least this one resolved easily enough.
I quietly close the door.
When I arrive at South General, Farraday, who was the attending with Nadia last night, is on his way home.
“You have your hands full with that one,” he says, slamming his locker closed.
“She’s just a roommate.”
“That you literally gave your shirt for.” He shrugs out of his white coat.
“I thought she’d been drugged.”
Farraday shoulders his bag. “She’s lucky she wasn’t. Or else there’s something else out there that doesn’t show on a panel.”
“She’s not a big drinker. She had a lot. I think she was pressured by some new companions.”
“Shitty companions.”
“Probably.” I do have a bone to pick with her cousin, but I’m not going to tell Farraday that.
“See you around.” He heads out of the room.
Harrington peeks around the row of metal lockers, only his buzzed black hair and glasses visible. “What’s going on?”
Right. My intern group has been off, so they haven’t caught up on the latest news.
I reach for my badge and tug it off the hook. “Nothing important.”
Fitz, short for Fitzsimmons, a perennially sunny intern from SoCal, drops onto the bench. She pulls off her cap to an explosion of blond curls. “I heard Sonya is fit to be tied that Dalton here has a live-in when she planned to sink her talons into him.”
That was fast. “How did you hear that?”
Fitz unzips her bag. “I went to the cafeteria for coffee. Jessica R heard it from Jessica G who got it from Sonya herself before she went off shift.”
“So glad to be the source of hospital gossip,” I say, closing my locker with less of a slam than Farraday did.
Fitz playfully sweeps out her foot in pink crocs to trip me as I go by. “It’s hard being the most eligible intern at South General.” She stuffs her bag in her locker.
“Hey!” Harrington says, clipping his badge to the pocket of his scrubs. “I’m single!”
Fitz forces a smile at him, then puts an arm around each of us as we head out to the unit. “Harrington, we need to get you a makeover.”
He pushes his glasses higher on his nose. “Really?”
“Really. We need to make you less Urkle and more Idris Elba.”
“You think it’s possible?”
Fitz laughs. “Anything is possible.”
When we enter the back hall of the ER, it’s chaos. Typical Saturday night.
Booker, our supervisor, starts fanning us out. “Harrington, take the broken arm in Bay 3. Fitz, we have a respiratory in Bay 5.” She smirks at me before she says, “Murphy, I hear you’re good with the binge drinkers. You have a puker in Bay 9. Go!”
We scatter, but not before I realize maybe I should have had the ambulance take Nadia to any hospital other than South General.
When I open the curtain to Bay 9, Dr. Clemons is in there with a nurse I don’t know. “Good, you take over. Order the standard panel for high blood alcohol. You do know what that is?”
“Yes, sir.”
The nurse glances up, holding a long, narrow vomit basin next to the man. “Your turn. I have six patients I’m behind on.”
I take the basin.
The man leans over and vomits violently. I shift the basin to catch most of it, but some hits the floor.
“And clean that up!” the nurse says as she closes the curtain.
It’s good to be an intern.
Things finally calm down in the wee hours. It’s been a night, even for LA. Four car accidents, and at least twenty people presenting with some stomach flu. Plus, my alcohol case. Six others came in, and every single one was given to me.
I sit with Harrington and Fitz in the break room, none of us really eating what is technically lunch, even though it’s four a.m.
“So much puke tonight,” Fitz says. “Do you think we’ll ever get used to the puke?”
“I’m ready to have more clout than an orderly,” I say.
Fitz rests her head on her hands. “With great power comes great responsibility.”
“I’ll be nice.”
“Unlike eighty percent of the attendings.” Fitz closes her eyes.
“We do seem to have a lot of egos on our floor.” Harrington takes off his glasses and wipes them on his scrubs.
“So tell us about your woman,” Fitz says with a yawn. “Other than she’s a party animal who hangs out at dive bars.”
I had a feeling this was coming.
“It’s a roommate thing. She needed a place. I needed a place. We’re sharing an apartment.”
“That’s boring,” Fitz says. “Surely you’ve got something you can confess about her.”
That I like being around her? That I think she’s ungodly beautiful, even laid out on a bathroom floor? That I know she’s smarter than I am, despite her working at a deli with an MBA and me in a med program?
I’m not saying any of that.
“She can cook. She lets me eat the leftovers.”
“Marry that girl,” Harrington says. “Marry her now.”
Fitz flicks a balled up straw wrapper at him. “Women are more than personal cooks.”
“I know!” Harrington says. “Most of them don’t cook at all anymore. Marry this one! Act fast!”
I manage a short laugh. “I think I need to be more financially solvent to marry anyone.”
“Right. You pay for mom back home.” Fitz closes her eyes. “Wake me when our phones go off.” She lays her head of unruly curls on her arms.
Harrington looks at her longingly. I don’t say anything about it. I get the whole unrequited business.
Not that I have unrequited feelings for Nadia.
I don’t.
Fitz gets approximately ninety seconds of rest when her phone dings. Then Harrington, then me.
“There’s lunch,” Harrington says, belatedly cramming half a sandwich in his mouth.
I force a couple of bites of noodles down and return my lunch bag to the fridge.
Then we’re off again, ready to handle another round of emergencies.
And hopefully done with the gossip about my roommate.