Round 10
ROUND TEN
OLLIE
“Paging Doctor Douchebag. Doctor Douchebag?”
My sister’s voice plays over the hospital’s speaker system.
Her giggling breath. Her tormenting tone.
But I firm my gritted jaw and maintain my perfect, schooled expression in front of the board.
And by the board, I mean Mr. and Mrs. Schumaker, Ken Formascio, and Grant Pasken, four of Plainview’s wealthiest folks who fund the hospital on a shoestring budget and spend their time at brunch and on the golf course.
We’re not a research hospital. We’re not even a teaching hospital, excluding the unlucky intern or two sent our way once a year.
Our board members don’t care that we have no real cafeteria, and they’ve never sat in the lumpy, shitty chairs my oncology patients do, in full view of anyone walking by, as I pump poison into their veins.
But they hit the golf course regularly, and they have other rich, snooty friends who sometimes write a check in exchange for a room, wing, park bench, or a parking slip with their name on it.
Hell. I sold my parking space years ago, because I had a sweet little girl sitting in that aforementioned crappy, lumpy chair, and all she wanted was a vacation with her family before her time was up.
Somewhere with a log cabin, a place to go fishing, a swimming hole she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to swim in anyway, and a week—just a single week—where she didn’t have to visit a hospital.
I don’t own a log cabin anywhere, in any state. But someone else did, so we made a deal and shook hands on it. That baby girl got her vacation, and three months after the best trip any kid could ask for, her family returned and spread her ashes amongst the trees, just like she asked them to.
All for the price of a parking slip a little closer to the front doors of the hospital?
Easiest choice I’ve ever made.
“She has less than a week until we have to move her along.” Mr. Schumaker sits back at an eighteen-man table, his hands interlaced on his rounding belly and his red-splotched cheeks advertising a blood pressure issue he really should look into.
Beside him, the tiny Mrs. Schumaker takes up the equivalent space as his thigh.
Just one of them. “She’s uninsured, Oliver.
Unidentified, and she’s sucking this hospital dry.
She’s been here for eight days already, with no significant recovery to speak of. ”
“She remembered something this morning! She dreamed of someone from her past. That’s new!”
“The bleed in her brain is clearing up,” Mrs. Schumaker argues. “Which should come with remarkable improvement to her memory. But that’s not what’s happening.”
“Doctor Douchebag?” Eliza tries again. “You’re needed on the wards.”
Frustrated, I clamp my lips shut and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Who knows, maybe she was already cracked even before the incident,” Mr. Schumaker continues.
I drop my hand and sneer. “Cracked?”
“It would explain her transience. Her clothing choices. Her physical state. We know nothing, Oliver, except that she was where she wasn’t meant to be, doing things she wasn’t meant to be doing.
We must face the possibility that she may never regain her memories, and if she doesn’t, she may never discover her identity.
If both of those are true, then we will never be paid. ”
“We’ve invited the press in. Today, in fact!
” I cast my eyes to the clock on the wall, knowing I have just minutes, five at the most, to get back to her before I break my promise.
“They’ll interview her, get her talking.
We’ll appeal to the public and stir something up. Surely someone will recognize her.”
“Doctor Douchebag? To the wards, please.”
Disdain drips from Mr. Schumaker’s dark expression. “Do you have somewhere else to be, Doctor Douchebag?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! “I do, actually. I’m sorry.
” I take a step back. “But don’t toss her out yet.
Please. She’s medically fragile and has a right to help.
And she’s not a transient nobody. She’s a somebody, and that somebody will have insurance and money and a way to repay you for your kindness. You just need to be patient.”
“That’s quite the gamble,” Mrs. Schumaker titters, staring down at her perfect nails. “If she simply leaves town?”
“All the more reason to keep her exactly where she is. It would be an entirely different story if we were bursting at the seams and needed the bed, but we don’t.
” I grab the boardroom door and drag it open, but I stop and meet four bored stares.
“Please. She has nowhere else to go, no one to go with, and not a single cent to get her there. If we boot her now, you’re sending her to the streets and signing her fate.
But if you give her just a little more time, let us do the interview and get her face on the news, things will turn around and you’ll get your money. Her dream this morning gives me hope.”
“Doctor Douchebag? We have a code purple on level three.”
“We’re not running a charity here, son.” Ken sits forward at the table, his balding head gleaming under harsh lights. “Hospitals cost money to run. Doctors cost money to hire.”
“I’ll work the whole month for free to offset what she’s costing. Even if—even when,” I correct. “We figure this whole mess out and make a claim on her insurance, I won’t ask to be reimbursed. Take my salary and apply it to her account. Consider it a deposit. We’ll get the rest back later.”
“Oliver—”
“Sorry! I’ve gotta go for now.” Jane’s probably freaking the fuck out. “I’ll make myself available later if you have more questions.” I spin and dart through the door, skidding around a corner and dodging a wheelchair some asshole never put away.
It was me. I’m the asshole.
I sprint across the hospital, through the atrium on squeaking shoes, then around another corner until I burst onto the main wing, my home away from home, and lock eyes with Eliza fucking Darling just as she was preparing to call for me again.
“You!” I point and stalk in her direction, drawing eyes as I pass rooms, and eliciting a squeak of terror from my sister as she plops the phone back in its cradle. “Are you serious right now, Eliza? I was with the board, you dick.”
Alana leans against the nurse’s desk, one foot kicked over the other, and a million teasing secrets glittering in her eyes. She peeks at Eliza, then back at me, locking down on her smile because she knows her ass is in trouble, too, if she laughs.
“Well, to be completely and insanely fair…” Eliza wanders around the desk, her cheeks flaming with amusement, “I thought you were in the ER. Being with the board was an unforeseen circumstance I swear to consider next time.”
“There won’t be a next time, you little shit! I already talked to you about this! I—”
“Snitched to Dad?” She snickers. “Yeah, it’s so weird and weak how you narked like a little baby. Also,” she tips her chin toward Jane’s door. “The camera folks are in there. They’re setting up.”
“Shit!” I spin to dart away, but she jumps forward and grabs my arm, yanking me to a stop and pulling me back around. I try to tug my arm free. “Eliza!”
“I told them to do it quietly,” she murmurs seriously. “And I threatened their lives and promised a slow, extremely painful death if they so much as looked at the bathroom door.”
“You… What?”
“Jane’s in the bathroom getting changed. She knows they’re in her room, and they know she’s in the bathroom. It’s a tenuous relationship. But it’s working, because she’s behind a locked door, and I told her you’d tell her when it’s time to come out.”
“You spoke to her? You spoke to J—” Fuck. Jane. Her. “When? How?”
“When we invaded her room about an hour ago and introduced ourselves.”
“You what!?”
“Brought her some stuff, since a stolen jacket and suede boots do not make a wardrobe. She needs something to keep her brain active. Something to do with her time that isn’t counting watermarks on the ceiling.”
“We brought her a bunch of books to read,” Alana explains. “Markers and a coloring book to doodle in.”
“And clothes. Because owning one pair of sweatpants is offensive.”
“And she just…” My pulse thunders against the side of my neck as I glance over my shoulder and peek into her room. “She just accepted all this? The camera crew in her room while she’s in the bathroom? And the stuff you bought her?”
“No. Not at all.” Eliza snickers. “She freaked at first. Probably thought we were gonna yeet the baby at her and run. Then she realized the maroon coat was mine, so she tried to give it back.”
“How did she realize?” I snarl.
“Eliza told her,” Alana quips. “But in her defense, it formed part of her argument for how we weren’t yeeting babies or hurting innocent patients. She was explaining who we were, which is when the jacket thing came up.”
“And then we hung out for a few minutes and I showed her all the things we bought her.”
“But what things? She already—”
“Underwear, for starters.” Eliza stabs her hand forward and pops me in the belly with her sharpest knuckles.
“Poor girl’s been free as a bird for a week, Oliver!
And sure, some people like that, but ya know what?
Some don’t! The right thing to do is to provide her with the underwear and let her decide. ”
“Oh, sure, because bringing my patient clothes wasn’t already crossing a line. I totally should’ve gone underwear shopping for her, too.”
She gasps, beaming and bouncing her shoulders. “You like her!” She glances across to a smug Alana. “See that blush? We mention her undies, and he’s redder than a tomato.”
“It’s cute,” Alana nods. “Wholesome as hell.”