Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Gray
I was in bay two when I noticed, through a crack in the curtain to the hall, which I might or might not have left intentionally, Patrick emerge from bay one and walk out of view.
"Excuse me for just a moment," I told Mr. Condon, the elderly man who had been explaining about his GERD and his wife's eggnog in detail for long minutes. "I'll be right back."
I ducked out in time to see Patrick exit through the lobby doors to the street.
His puffy winter jacket was on his good arm and just clutched around the other arm in the sling.
I moved quietly toward the lobby and went through a door marked 'PRIVATE' to get to a small coffee room for staff.
It had the advantage of having windows that overlooked the circular driveway in front.
I saw Patrick get into a plain brown sedan with an Uber sticker in the front window.
The car drove away, and I sighed with relief.
I was just making sure my patient was safe, I told myself. After two incidents in one night, it was perfectly reasonable to be concerned that the guy had a ride home, I told myself.
But as I stood there in the room where I hadn't bothered to turn on the light—because I didn't want Patrick to notice me playing nanny—I knew this wasn't normal.
It also wasn't normal for my patients to flirt with me quite so blatantly. Or for me not to shut it down abruptly and thoroughly.
Another time, another place. I still cringed at the memory.
But. I did like Patrick. That wasn't a crime, was it?
I was a healthy, not yet decrepit male. And Patrick was lovely and smart and funny.
And the attention was flattering. Yes, I was interested.
Objectively. But I hadn't acted on it. I hadn't done anything wrong, nothing to embarrass myself or the hospital. Everything was still okay.
My gut clenched in the way it did whenever I felt like I was failing or hadn't done something up to my own exacting standards. But this time, it didn't seem as strong, nor my inner voice as loud. It was as if my red line when it came to Patrick was already fading.
My fingers itched. Would it be bad to get his number off his intake form and text him just to make sure he got home OK? Purely a professional courtesy.
Leave it alone, Gray. I told myself.
No. No texting Patrick. Because, if I started, I wasn't sure I'd stop.
With a sigh, I went back to work. I treated Mr. Condon's GERD, a woman who'd been hit in the face with a turkey leg during a family argument, a hand sliced open when a glass ornament broke, and two drivers who'd been in a fender bender due to one of them having too much holiday cheer—fortunately neither of them were badly hurt.
I went to the duty station to update the register. There were two computers for the ER doctors in a recessed standing desk near the nurse's station.
Maggie, one of the nurses, was organizing prescriptions. "Not as busy as it could be for a holiday," she commented, glancing my way. "I guess everyone has better things to do than get sick or hurt."
"Knock on wood," I replied.
"You off soon?"
"At nine."
"Got plans?"
I smiled at her. "I plan on a good night's sleep. How about you? I bet the kids will be anxious for you to get home."
She got a goofy soft look, so unlike her usual, efficient self. "Oh, they'll be asleep when I get there. But hubs and I have Santa work to do tonight. Can't wait to see them open their presents in the morning."
"Sounds delightful."
It did, actually. How fun it would be to have little ones around. I had a pang in the gut and sighed it away.
"You're not seeing family tomorrow?" Maggie asked.
"They're in Florida," I said. "I'd have to fly on Christmas day, and that's not my idea of a holiday treat."
"You got that right." She eyed me, as if wanting to say more. I could practically hear the don't you have a girlfriend? on her lips, so I busied myself on the computer.
I opened up the duty register and started typing, but something caught the corner of my eye.
It was a small framed photo that sat on the counter next to the keyboard.
My first thought was, is there a new ER doctor on staff?
Because the station was shared with all the regular ER physicians, and the photo was new.
Then I realized… the photo was of me.
It was a photo of me and Jace at the top of Laguna 69 in Huascarán National Park in Peru.
That had been right after I'd gotten my undergrad degree.
I rubbed my eyes, and my brain had a momentary glitch.
I looked around for someone who could be pulling my leg, but no one was paying attention.
I looked at the other photos around the station.
We didn't have offices, not in the ER, we just had these shared stations.
But the doctors all put up something. This station was generally shared by me, Dr. Everett Madsen, and Dr. Joan Cordial.
Everett had a photo of himself, his wife, and two little kids.
Joan had a photo of herself walking on a beach with her beloved dog, Bower.
So I'd felt obliged to put up a photo too.
I'd chosen a small one of me at med school graduation standing and smiling with Mom and Dad.
Or, as I secretly called it, the perfect son photo.
That photo was gone. In its place, in a strange little frame that looked like a design of metal sticks, was the photo of me and Jace in Peru.
What the ever-loving hell?
I could not make it make sense. The last time I'd seen that photo, it had been in a photo album at my mom's house in Jacksonville.
A digital copy was probably on my computer drive somewhere under the 'pictures' folder, but that folder was a black hole.
Things went in and never came out. Plus, I never brought my laptop to work.
So how had the photo gotten here?
Had Mom framed it and sent it? But why? And, even if she had, she would have sent it to me, in a package, which I'd have to open. She didn't even know my current colleagues well enough to send it to one of them as a surprise. Did she?
I'd have to call her later, when I was off duty. It had to have been her, even if I couldn't quite make the connection right now.
I tried to get back to making the register entry, and managed, with a supreme effort of will, to finish the log.
When I was done, I took the photo of me and Jace and stuck it in a pocket of my long, white medical coat.
It wasn't that I was ashamed of it. It was more that it felt so… personal. No, that wasn't it either.
The photo made me think about things I didn't want to think about; feel things that weren't pleasant to feel.
Because I didn't recognize the guy in the photo anymore.
The photo seemed to say: You're not just a doctor, you're a man.
And there's a whole life out there to be lived. Remember when you knew that?
I did remember. And it made my heart ache. When had I gotten into such a rut?
But I knew. It was sometime between the Peru photo and the med school graduation photo, after Jace had moved to Paris and school got so damned hard.
In those four years, I'd had to study so much and push myself so relentlessly to earn the degree I wanted—the degree my dad wanted for me—that I'd had to put parts of me away in a box.
And then my residency was brutal too. And here I was, almost thirty-five, and those parts of me I'd put aside had never been brought back.
The thought was deeply unsettling, like realizing that life was passing you by, and you hadn't even noticed.
"Doctor? Severed finger in bay two!" Maggie announced.
I shook my head. It was time to get back to work.