16. Matty
Chapter sixteen
Matty
The morning was a blur. Heavy rains turned Atlanta’s Perimeter highway into a parking lot—but only after a brief stint as a ten-lane bumper car rink. There was nothing like a bit of moisture falling from the sky to make already questionable drivers morph into fifteen-year-old rookies with keys.
And that meant a very busy morning in the ER.
Ambulance after ambulance delivered crash victims, one after the other after the other. By lunchtime, I’d given up any hope of getting coffee or lunch—or breathing—without having to focus on IV lines or pulse rates.
Around two o’clock, Atlanta’s reckless driving club had apparently made it to work, and life in the ER returned to our usual level of insanity, which, by any objective standard, was still insane and fast paced. Despite the chocolate box waiting room filled with who-knew-what-next, I slumped into a chair at the central nursing station and popped open a Coke. As a general rule, I didn’t like carbonated drinks. They gave me a burst of speed that helped propel me through an hour or so, but the crash that followed made me wish I’d made different life choices. More importantly, they also made me feel—and look—bloated, and that was not a good look on one as fabulous as me.
“Mi Dios,” Sierra said, dropping into the chair beside me, firing up her PC screen, and typing furiously.
“Did that keyboard do something to piss you off, Highness?”
Her eyes narrowed in a very “don’t fuck with me right now” way, but she kept her focus on her screen. I suppressed a chuckle.
“Two hours. That’s all we have left,” I said, more to encourage myself to get back in the ring than to measure time. “How many are there in the waiting room, and where are we on time?”
She grunted. “I don’t think the system can measure either of those things. We’re so far behind we broke the clock.”
“The next shift is going to hate us. Every patient will come back grumpy.”
“Grumpy isn’t even the right word,” she said. “Those people are about to storm the triage station, sick children in arms.”
“Guess I’d better get off my perky little butt, then,” I said, finally earning a quick look and even quicker grin. “You can finish my Coke if you need a little pick-me-up.”
I set the half-finished can beside Sisi and patted her arm. “Remember, we trained for years to do this shit. We love our jobs. We love our patients. Everything is sunlight and butterflies.”
She abandoned her typing and turned to face me. “That may be the stupidest thing you have ever said to me—and you say a lot of stupid things, Matthew McConaughey Martha Stewart After Jail Vance. Now, go mend a limb or something. I have a year’s worth of notes to finish.”
“Aye, aye, cap’n,” I said, snapping to attention and giving her a sloppy salute.
She shook her head and groaned, returning her full attention to her work.
I wasn’t sure if the two hours that followed flew by or crawled. It was strange how time could feel a bit like hurtling forward through space and slogging through a bog of quicksand mixed with honey. By the time my shift ended and reinforcements arrived, my whole body felt wrung out, my mind was shot, and my hair was disastrously limp. If I’d had a cap or hat—or, hell, a ski mask—I could’ve escaped without anyone seeing my unfashionable departure. Alas, I had nothing but a moppy mess and my sparkling personality to defend my gay honor.
They would have to do.
I finished changing out of my scrubs into street clothes and stepped out of the locker room. Sierra had finally finished the last of her mind-numbing documentation and was about to enter the women’s locker room to change. Spotting me in the hallway, she changed direction and headed my way. In the handful of years we’d worked together, I wasn’t sure I’d seen her look so exhausted.
“Do this again tomorrow, minus all the wrecks, hopefully?” Sierra slumped against me as though her whole body had lost its will to stay upright. I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
“My poor Sisi. We need a drink.”
She squeezed my waist. “I need a hot bath, candles, a glass of wine, and a good, smutty romance novel. You can have all the rest.”
“That sounds like heaven,” I said.
She looked up, still attached to my torso. “What’s going on with that NICU boy? You haven’t talked about him lately.”
We’d been so slammed over the past week that personal chats had been a rarity. Time to see my burgeoning boyfriend had been even more so.
“He’s good,” I said, grinning at the thought of him. “We’re going on our sixth date tonight. No, seventh. I’m losing track.”
Her tired voice asked, “And still no dick?”
I laughed and squeezed her again. “We’re being responsible adults and getting to know each other and—well, fuck me if I know what we’re waiting for, but we’re waiting.”
She made eye contact without letting go of my waist. “This isn’t like you, Matty. You see a bike, you hop on and ride.”
I tried to act surprised or offended, but it came out amused. “I have no idea what you mean. I’m a proper lady.”
She finally released me and stepped back, crossing her arms. “Sweetness, you have never once dated a boy without sex in the first week. I think your record was date number three, and that was with a guy who’d had surgery and had been ordered not to have an orgasm for three months. You broke doctor’s orders just to get a cock up your ass.”
Jesus, she was crude.
And I loved her for it.
“Well, maybe Omar is different,” I said, a little too defensively. “Maybe I am.”
She pressed fingers to her chin and stared like she was looking at some animal that was close to extinction.
“What are you two doing tonight?” she asked, a note of suspicion or caution—I wasn’t sure which—threading her words.
I shrugged. “It’s my date to plan, but there wasn’t time to breathe today.”
“Well, tell me about it tomorrow. I was serious about that bath-wine-book thing. I’m going to turn my phone off and sink beneath bubbly, steamy water and read some even steamier smut. If it’s good, I might even rub one out—”
“Okay, ew, no bringing lady parts into the sacred circle. It violates every color of the rainbow to which I pledge my allegiance.”
She laughed and hugged me again. I kissed the top of her head before we parted.
“Enjoy your man,” she said, reaching for the locker room door. “I mean it. It’s time to pop the package. Even a Twinkie has an expiration date and needs to be eaten.”
I pressed my palms in prayer and lowered my head. “Mary, Mother of Elks and Antelopes and Badgers and Shit, please make her stop. And help this unwashed heathen as she takes her rabbit in hand and does vile things to her vile lady parts.”
Sisi’s snorts echoed against the cold hospital walls as the locker room door slammed behind her. How I had been so lucky to make a friend like Sierra was beyond me, but I was grateful in my soul for her kinship.
A steady stream of nurses passed in and out of the locker rooms, either ending or beginning their shifts. The dichotomy of fresh and ready men and women versus those who looked like they’d been run through an old-timey rinsing roller was amusing. I felt like a used towel that had just been cleaned, strained, and hung on a line to dry.
I checked the time on my phone.
Omar still had thirty minutes on his shift.
Ugh.
With nothing else to do, my feet decided to drag the rest of my body up to the NICU. If there was any luck left in this world, Omar might be winding down and get to leave a little early.
Stepping through the double doors into his section, I was reminded that hospitals were not casinos. Luck played no role, and if it did, generally worked against forces for good. Omar was running as fast as an ER nurse, a bottle in one hand and a stack of diapers in the other. He paused long enough to flash me a smile and nod but immediately turned away to do something to an infant. Peering through the window to watch him work, I was surprised to find every bassinet in his room filled, giving him six babies to tend.
And from the looks of things, all six were wriggling and wailing.
A flash of blue at the door caught my eye, and I watched Carlie enter. Omar introduced me to her briefly a few weeks earlier, but we had had little time to socialize. I hoped to correct that soon. The pair of them working was like watching a beautifully choreographed dance. Omar heated bottles and cradled babies, while Carlie checked vitals, changed diapers, and created tiny mummies with the blankets.
A few minutes into watching their action, music began playing in my head to their motions. At first, it was playful and fast paced, mirroring the rapid steps and gestures the pair made. Then it shifted into an odd lullaby, as each of them cradled and rocked a restless charge.
When a woman with a steel bun and stern gaze entered and scanned the room with a scowl, the Wicked Witch theme song from The Wizard of Oz began chirping in my mind.
That made me laugh.
Omar glanced up, furrowed his furry brows, then cocked his head.
Twenty minutes later, he stepped out of his room and greeted me with a hug and a peck on the cheek.
“Hey you,” I said. “I like watching you work.”
His face flushed beneath my praise. “What were you laughing at?”
I briefly debated whether or not I should tell him about my mental musing, then decided, why not?
“Did you ever see the TV show Ally McBeal ?”
He shook his head.
“Well, they did this thing with theme songs for characters. Anytime this one character, the supposed antagonist, walked into a room—or walked anywhere, really—they played the Wicked Witch song. It was hilarious.”
“Wicked Witch? From Wizard of Oz ?”
I nodded. “And when that woman, the one with the gray hair and cherry Danish on her head, walked in, I heard that song.”
Omar spit laughing. “Cherry Danish? You’re talking about Olivia, our boss. I am certain she would call that a bun, not a Danish.”
“Whatever. It’s a pastry, not a nursing cap.”
Grinning, Omar asked, “What do you want to do tonight?”
I ran a hair through my limp hair, afraid to look at what might be left on my fingers as I pulled them free of the tangled mess.
“Can we do something low-key? My candle’s burned pretty low.”
Omar squeezed my arm and nodded. “Why don’t you come over to my place? I can cook while you drink wine and relax?”
“This sounds like a ‘pamper Matty’ night, and I’m all in.”
“We have three more episodes in the first season of Legacies to watch.”
“Hot teenage boys with magic, you’re my hero.” I feigned a swoon.
“Excellent.” He grinned. “Meet you there in, say, an hour? If you beat me, the spare key is in a magnet box attached to the back of the gutter. Pour a glass and make yourself comfortable.”
“Are you trying to win my heart?” I quipped, then pecked his cheek. “I’ll grab some wine for us. See you in a flash.”