Chapter 8 Deborah
DEBORAH
“It’s been a week. I don’t understand why she isn’t responding.
” Deb tossed her phone down onto her desk, frustrated and annoyed.
Grabbing the Styrofoam box it landed next to, she picked up a birria taco from the taco truck out in the Oakridge parking lot, and bit ferociously into it.
“We had a great time,” she mumbled through her mouthful.
“Good dinner, good conversation, a little bit of a fight. Fucking hot dancing, incredible sex all night long.”
“Please,” Paige said from the other side of the desk, a pained look on her face and a massive fajita chicken burrito held uneaten in her hand. “I have to actually work with Hayley a lot more often than you do. I don’t need details.”
“I didn’t give any,” Deb replied irritably. “Just simple facts. But listen, if you’d had a night like that, would you be ghosting your date?”
Paige sighed. “She works in this hospital, remember? You can go find her and talk to her!”
“You think I haven’t tried?” Deb threw her hands into the air. “It’s like she’s psychic. She is never there when I go. I never see her in the cafeteria. I know she’s not playing hooky, because I see her sign off on admits in patient records.”
With a shrug, Paige bit into her burrito at last. “Dunno what to tell you,” she said as she chewed. “For the record, no, I wouldn’t be ghosting anyone if I’d had an incredible date. And it does sound like it was pretty damn good. Sorry, Deb. I’d date you if I liked women.”
“Really?” Deb perked up. She’d always thought Paige was too damn hot for her own good.
“I mean… okay, sorry, no. I’ve just known you too long, Deb. But maybe if I hadn’t! Maybe then.” Paige tilted her head, clearly contrite and sorry that she liked men.
Deb slumped back into her chair and poked listlessly at her tacos with a wooden spork. “I just wish I knew what I did wrong. Even the morning after was great.”
“I’m sure it’s not you.” Paige shook her head, setting her ponytail to bouncing. “Maybe something spooked her.”
“Maybe. I mean, in the end, we don’t know each other that well.
And until a few days ago, we could hardly stand to be in the same room with each other.
” She shoved her taco box away and crossed her arms over her chest. “Damn it! I hate this. Her ass was exactly as amazing as I always thought it would be.”
Paige dropped her burrito into its box and covered her face with her hands, letting out a muffled scream. “Deborah, please, oh my God.”
“Sorry! Sorry.” She sat back up to reach for her Diet Coke and took a long pull while she thought about the whole messy situation. “I just don’t get it, though. I really don’t.”
“Like you said, you guys don’t really know each other,” Paige pointed out, picking up her burrito again and resuming eating it, though not without a wary look fixed on Deb. “Maybe there’s something that spooked her.”
“Maybe,” Deb said again. She wished she knew for sure. Wished Hayley would give her a chance to listen, and a chance to explain if she had anything that needed explaining. She’d even apologize, if she had to, and boy, was the idea of that sticking in her throat.
But she just didn’t know what was happening. And that was driving her up a wall.
“Have you done a total 180?” Paige asked, curious. “From hate to something kind of nice and wholesome?”
“No! Or… yeah. Maybe?” The word maybe was starting to sound weird, she was saying it too much.
“No, come on, Paige. Wouldn’t you want to know if it were you?
You’re telling me you wouldn’t be curious at all about what might have gone wrong?
I mean this thing, whatever it is, it barely got off the ground and it already seems dead. ”
“Never known you to get so stressed out over a lady before. Interesting.” Paige looked like she was going to say more, but then her pager buzzed at her waist. When she checked it, her eyes went wide.
“A 911 page. Damn. Sorry. Chief. I’ve got to go.
” She pushed up to her feet, picking up her lunch with a slightly regretful look on her face.
“Only got a few bites. Man. But that’s emergency medicine life for ya.
At least Ana Luisa’s stuff is as delicious as a cold leftover as it is when it’s hot. ”
“I’ll come with you.” Deb closed up her own lunch box and pushed it away.
She’d eaten even less than Paige had, but she had no appetite, even though the food from Ana Luisa’s taco truck was indeed divine.
In fact, she hadn’t eaten more than a few mouthfuls in the last couple of days.
Well, I’ll make up for it later. “It’s a 911; I’m sure you could use some extra hands. ”
Paige paused at the door of Deb’s office and looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You’ve been spending a lot of time on the ED floor lately.”
“I’m the Chief,” Deb pointed out. “I’m supposed to.”
“I mean more than usual, and you know it.” Paige tilted her head and looked at Deb more closely. “Are you sleeping well? Drinking water? You didn’t eat much today, either.”
“Hey, you’re a doctor, but you’re not my doctor.” Deb shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat and fidgeted with the pens and tiny sticky notepads and hair ties she always had in there. “I’m fine, Paige.”
“If this thing with Hayley is really getting to you—”
“It’s not,” Deb lied smoothly, reaching past Paige to open her office door. “Come on. Patients are waiting for us.”
She felt Paige’s eyes on her back as she walked briskly to the central desk and wondered how long she was going to have to keep up this carefree facade. If Hayley kept dodging her, it could be a long, long time, and Deb wondered if she had the strength for it. She had no idea.
This was the first time she’d ever found herself so invested in connecting with another person, and she felt very out of her depth. She didn’t know what to do with it, but she did know how to work.
So, she was going to work.
A basket of fries hit the table in front of her. Deb squinted at it over her double whiskey. “I didn’t order anything.”
“I’m aware.” Sasha’s voice was dry as she sat down in the other booth seat. She waved a hand towards Ruby at the bar before folding her hands together atop the table and leaning forward. “But that’s your second double whiskey. Ruby sounded the alarm in the kitchen. You have to eat something, Deb.”
Ruby arrived and slid into the booth next to her partner. “Everything okay, Deb?” Smartly, she didn’t ask about Hayley, but Deb could see her wide green eyes were full of questions and concern.
She sighed and waved a dismissive hand at the happy couple on the other side of the table. “I’m fine.”
“Two doubles and no food does not exactly back up the statement.” Sasha, too, was concerned, her dark eyes searching Deb’s face for answers.
Deb ignored both Sasha’s concern and her observation, simply pulling her motorcycle keys out of her jacket pocket and sliding them across the table. “I’ll call an Uber later.”
“Deb, come on.” Sasha’s voice was frustrated, but she did take the keys and slipped them into her apron pocket. “What’s going on?”
“Work.” A lie, but with a grain of truth. Hayley did, after all, work at the hospital. So technically, a problem with her was a work problem, in its way.
Sasha and Ruby exchanged glances. “Can we help?”
“Just keep yourselves from getting into accidents,” Deb advised. “I’ve got enough paperwork to do.”
When she didn’t volunteer any further information and simply requested a third double, Sasha threw up her hands and motioned to Ruby that they should leave.
Deb didn’t touch the fries.
“Another banana bag?” Paige’s face reflected both worry and incredulity. “Your second one in a month or so. Deb, that’s concerning.”
Deb pulled the needle of the expended bag out of her arm and tossed it into the biohazard bin mounted on the wall near her desk. “It would be concerning if I were making it a habit.”
“For you, twice in about a month is getting to be a little habit-y. You do usually have some sense of responsibility around your drinking.” Paige pushed herself off the doorframe and took a step into the office, closing the door behind her. “You look like hell. Have you eaten?”
“Sure, sure I have.” She waved a hand and got to her feet, ignoring a mild wave of dizziness. “One of those good protein bars from the juice shop by my apartment. Oh, hell, what’s going on out there?”
The emergency department had exploded into a buzzing hive of frantic activity. Without another word, she darted past Paige to yank the office door back open and hurl herself out into the fray.
Her Uber bill was getting to be astronomical. But she hadn’t felt up to riding her motorcycle to this icky little dive bar, and she wanted to do her drinking far away from her home, from Oakridge, and from the Indigo Lounge.
Today, she’d seen Hayley in the ER during the boiling pot that the department had become in the wake of a huge house fire.
Four houses on a nearby block had gone up in flames one after another when a backyard gender reveal with fireworks had gotten out of hand.
There were dozens of cases of burns and smoke inhalation to deal with, and Hayley had come over from the ICU with some of her team to lend a hand.
And she’d made very sure to stay far away from Deb.
Not that there would have ever been an appropriate time then for Deb to corner her and ask what the hell was going on, but she’d seemed to be doing her level best to give Deb zero opportunities to even try.
When things slowed down, Hayley had glanced at Deb right before she’d all but run out of the emergency department.
Her eyes had seemed a little regretful, at least.
Deb spent a few hours knocking back tequila shots before bumbling home and passing out with Cory snuggled up in her arms. At least she was off tomorrow.
Her next day back at work turned out to be a Spaghetti Day. She still wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, but Paige had started to get nosy again. Deb made a big show of getting a huge box of pasta and garlic bread that she took up to one of the Reflection Pods in the Derm lounge.
That was a mistake. As soon as she stepped in, she remembered the last time she’d been in here.
The panic attack, Hayley’s hands on hers, the moments of connection.
The time before that, also a Spaghetti Day, the moment she had wanted to kiss Hayley and didn’t.
Memory hit her like a freight train, and she almost dropped her box of food.
Woodenly, she made her way over to the farthest back pod and yanked at the handle of it without looking inside first. A tiny, familiar gasp caught her attention, and she jerked her head up from her fixed gaze at the floor.
Hayley. Blue eyes wide with shock and a bit red-rimmed, the tip of her nose pink. She looked like she had the day she’d been crying over that dead patient. Deb’s mouth dropped open. “Hayley—”
“I have to go.” Scrambling to her feet, Hayley pushed frantically past Deb to get out of the pod, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. She bolted out of the lounge at top speed, leaving Deb aghast in her wake.
What the hell had happened between them?
What had Deb done? Why was Hayley acting like this?
Deb’s chest began to get that squeezing feeling, and hastily, she climbed into the pod Hayley had just vacated, throwing her unwanted lunch onto the tiny table and wedging herself into the seat.
She started in on breathing exercises and counting herself through the incipient panic attack, determined to head it off at the pass.
I didn’t do anything wrong. This is all her. I’m not going to let her do this to me.
Within ten minutes, she was breathing freely again, but her brain was foggy and spinning in circles.
The pod felt too tiny, too tight and confined.
Pushing the door open, she let herself back out, abandoning her lunch in favor of heading down to the emergency department to see if she could find some good, complicated case to focus on.
Another night, another dive bar, another pair of Uber charges and a string of double whiskeys.
This bar’s whiskey selection was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not as good as the Indigo Lounge’s.
In fact, every whiskey she’d tried here tonight had been awful, but this one was the best of the lot.
Still, Deb was going to have an almighty hangover in the morning.
A message lit up her phone. Sasha. It’s been a while. You okay?
“Dandy,” Deb mumbled before shooting back her double rotgut and signaling for another.
“You and your family members have been in here a few times this year with food poisoning,” Deb observed, reviewing the chart on her tablet.
She had to squint to read it. It was late in the night, and her vision didn’t seem so great today.
Plus, the seemingly endless reports in the medical record of the extreme gastrologic distress this family had been experiencing were making her dizzy.
“All of these occurrences happen after you dine at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. Have you all considered not eating there anymore?”
The mother and son before her, both dehydrated and slightly green around the gills, rolled their eyes. “It’s fine,” the mother said with a sneer. “Just a little upset stomach. The medicine and fluids always fix us right up.”
“Okay, but it’s concerning that you all need fixing up so often.
” Deb gestured to where the rest of the family, a pair of twin daughters and the husband, were curled up groaning in beds of their own.
“At this point, I can’t believe we haven’t done some kind of test of mercury levels on you all.
I’m ordering one now for all five of you, plus the Zofran and your fluids.
And I am begging you to please stop eating at that buffet. ”
“It’s fine,” the mother said again, with another roll of her eyes.
Then, with no warning, she projectile vomited all over the ER floor. Deb jumped back just in time to avoid getting hit, and her own stomach did a slow tilt and roll to the left, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything.
The teenage boy grabbed a basin and hurled into it himself. Behind her, Deb could hear the rest of the family losing whatever was left in their stomachs as well.
“I’ve got to,” she began, stepping backwards to get out of their way and out of earshot of the hideous gagging sounds. “I’ve got to…”
She didn’t know what she had to do, and it didn’t matter.
Overwhelmed by the sound and stench, her stomach too empty, her body too overworked and flooded with too much alcohol and not enough sleep…
Deb keeled right over, as frantic shouts boomed over her head, and a pair of hands caught her before her head could hit the floor.