39. Help Action #2
Micah comes through first.
Dex follows.
His eyes are red as he drops into the chair beside me and wipes both hands over his face.
“She made fun of me.”
“That sounds promising.”
“She told me if I cried on her she'd charge me for emotional labor.”
“That sounds very promising.”
His laugh breaks halfway through.
Micah sits on his other side and pulls him in without asking.
Dex goes willingly.
For several minutes, none of us speak.
Then Dex looks at me. “You going back?”
“I’ll wait until Griffin is back.”
“She asked if you were okay.”
Something tightens in my chest. “What did you tell her?”
“That you're weird, but that's baseline.”
“Dex.”
“She laughed.”
I let that be enough.
The elevator opens across the waiting room about five minutes later.
Griffin steps out in sweatpants and a clean T-shirt, hair still damp from a shower.
He looks exhausted.
He also looks more like our friend and Cami's husband and less like somebody who wandered out of a trauma bay.
His eyes go immediately to all three of us. “Everything okay?”
Micah nods. “She looks better.”
Dex adds, “She bullied me.”
Griffin exhales. “Good.”
Then he looks at me. “Go, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I stand.
No tallying minutes.
Just my turn.
Griffin
By four in the morning, Cami is asleep.
Actually asleep.
Not difficult to arouse.
Not drifting in and out because her brain is swimming in acid and dehydration.
Sleeping.
Her breathing is almost normal again, and the latest labs are better.
Not fixed.
Better.
The gap is closing.
Glucose is somewhere in the low three hundreds now and continuing down at the pace they want.
Potassium has started doing exactly what we expected it to do once insulin got involved, which means replacement has joined the collection of bags hanging from the pole.
I know all of that because I asked.
Then I texted it to the guys.
Then Micah asked if the potassium drop was dangerous.
Dex asked how long before she's out of ICU.
Ronan asked what number they need the anion gap to reach.
I answered all three.
Because I know.
Because they expect me to know.
Because somewhere along the way tonight, I became the family's medical interpreter without anybody consciously assigning me the job.
Cami's nurse finally points at my empty water bottle. “Go refill that.”
“I'm fine.”
“That wasn't a suggestion.”
I look at her.
She raises an eyebrow. “Your wife is asleep. Her numbers are improving. Go use the bathroom and get water before I start charting you as a second patient.”
“Hostile.”
She smiles. “Go.”
I go.
The ICU is quieter at four in the morning, but never quiet.
Monitors still alarm.
Phones still ring.
People still move quickly when they need to.
I use the bathroom, splash water on my face, then head toward the small beverage area near the staff workroom.
Someone is already there.
He turns when he hears me.
For half a second, neither of us places the other.
Then recognition hits.
“Griffin?”
Holden Ashford is wearing surgical scrubs under a white coat. He looks tired in the specific way physicians look tired—functional enough that nobody questions whether they're safe to work, but several hours past when any reasonable person would choose to be awake.
“Hey, I forgot this was your hospital.”
His eyebrows pull together. “What are you doing here?”
“Cami is in 14.”
“The DKA?”
I nod.
He exhales.
“I saw the board. Twenty-six-year-old female, Type One, DKA, but I didn’t make the connection.”
“Why would you?”
“How is she?”
“Better. Gap's closing. Glucose is coming down. Potassium dropped, so they're replacing it. She's sleeping.”
“Good.” He means it.
Not reassuring me.
Assessing what I told him and agreeing.
“They're doing a good job, the ICU, that is.”
“I know.” Holden studies me for a second.
I lean back against the counter. “Sorry.”
“Don't be.”
For a few seconds, neither of us says anything.
“I'm not on her case, by the way,” he informs me.
“I figured.”
“Residents have it. Straightforward enough that unless something changes, I probably wouldn't have been involved beyond hearing about her on rounds.”
“That's good.”
“It is.”
Holden watches me. “You're doing the medical person thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you're trying to be the medical person because everybody else needs you to be.”
My eyes move to his.
He gives me a tired half-smile. “I've been in your shoes.”
Something about the way he says it tells me not to ask for the story.
So I don't.
He continues, “Different circumstances. Same basic problem.”
I look down at the water. “The guys keep asking me questions.”
“Of course they do.”
“And I can answer most of them.”
“That can turn into a trap.”
I laugh once.
No humor in it. “Yeah.”
Holden stands and leans one shoulder against the counter beside me.
“You know enough to interpret everything they're hearing.
You know enough to recognize what's routine and what's concerning. You also know enough to come up with twenty things that could go wrong that would never occur to anyone else.”
“Exactly.”
“And what they actually want when they ask you a question is for you to tell them she's definitely going to be fine.”
I finally drink the water. “Yeah.”
“But you can't.”
“No.”
“And you want somebody to tell you instead.”
That one gets me.
I stare at the floor. “Yeah.”
His voice softens. “I know.”
For the first time all night, somebody says it and I believe they actually do.
Not because he knows DKA.
Because he knows this.
“Medical knowledge is occasionally a curse.”
“That's a shitty thing for an intensivist to say.”
He smiles. “That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
That gets a real laugh out of me.
Small.
But real.
Holden folds his arms. “The other problem is that knowing what should happen probably makes you feel like you should be doing something.”
“I've spent the entire night staying out of people's way.”
“Good.”
“Doesn't feel good.”
“It isn't supposed to.” His response is immediate.
“Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is recognize that you're not useful medically. If you start trying to manage the team because you know enough to have opinions, you become a distraction. Then they spend time managing you instead of managing her.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.” He smiles. “I learned that one the unpleasant way too. I was given more access than I probably should've had because of who I was in this hospital, but it came with one rule: if I got in the way, I was out. No argument.”
I look toward Cami's room. “Makes sense.”
“Completely.”
“Still not fun.”
“Also completely.”
Silence settles between us.
I think about the nurse asking if I was Cami's husband.
The way every staff member since then has looked at me first when they needed a decision.
“The marriage thing is weird.”
Holden glances at me. “How?”
“The guys are her family, too.”
“I know.”
“They had to be added to the chart. I didn't.”
“No.”
“Tomorrow night, one person gets to stay. Everybody already knows it'll be me.”
Holden nods slowly. “The paper matters in hospitals.”
“I know.”
“It doesn't mean you matter more.”
“I know that too.”
He studies me for a moment. “I wasn't Alexis's husband when I first learned this lesson.”
The words are simple.
No story attached.
“I'm her husband now. Back then, Ethan was the only one with legal rights because he was smart enough to get a medical POA.
I can tell you the legal part answers one kind of question really well.
It tells the hospital who to call first. Who can consent if the patient can't. Who doesn't need an explanation for why they're standing at the bedside.”
He pauses. “It doesn't tell you how to be less scared.”
I look at him. “That's annoyingly insightful.”
“I hope the twelve years I spent in school means I should occasionally say something useful.”
I huff out another laugh.
Then he straightens. “Go be her husband.”
I glance down at the water bottle. “I am.”
“No. You're currently being the paramedic who happens to be married to her.”
That shuts me up.
Holden nods toward the hallway. “The ICU has doctors. It has nurses. It has residents who would probably love an opportunity to explain an anion gap to your boyfriends.”
Despite myself, I smile. “Partners, metamours, whatever.”
“Whatever your household calls them.”
“Depends which one you ask.”
He pushes away from the counter. “Let them ask the team some questions tomorrow. You don't have to translate every number.”
I look toward Cami's room again. “What do I do instead?”
Holden's expression softens. “Sit next to your wife.”
Simple.
Almost offensively simple.
“Hold her hand. Sleep if they'll let you. When she wakes up, make whatever terrible joke makes her roll her eyes.”
I nod. “That I can do.”
“I figured.”
He starts toward the workroom, then stops.
“Griffin?”
“Yeah?”
“She really is moving in the right direction.”
Coming from him, I know exactly what that sentence does and does not promise.
For once, that's enough.
“Thanks.”
I go back to Cami's room.
The monitor is still there.
The insulin is still running.
The lab schedule hasn't changed because I had an emotional revelation next to a refrigerator.
Cami is still asleep.
I sit beside her and take her hand.
When my phone buzzes with another message from the group chat, I look at it.
Dex
what happens after the gap closes?
My fingers hover over the screen.
Griffin
Ask her doctor in the morning. I'm off duty.
Dex
holy shit
I want to be mad, but that’s growth
I smile and put the phone facedown.
Cami shifts in her sleep.
Her fingers tighten faintly around mine.
I lean back in the terrible chair and close my eyes.
For the first time tonight, I let somebody else be the medical person.
I just stay with my wife.