Chapter 2
GRANT
This nurse loathes me, and I can’t figure out why.
Animosity radiates off Kendall in waves as she preps a patient’s skin for surgery, a knee replacement on a fifty-nine-year-old woman. She’s scrubbing in today instead of circulating. She hums as she preps the OR and offers pleased smiles to everyone else in the room.
She turns to the physical therapy student who’s observing the surgery. “Let me know if you start to feel hot,” she says to him, “because it’s not hot in here, and if you’re warm you might be about to faint.”
He salutes her, and she mimics the gesture, chuckling to herself as she continues her work.
When she nears me, though, she clenches her jaw. Her shoulders stiffen if I so much as speak a word to her, like the very idea of my presence sets her on edge. I don’t get it. We’ve barely had any interaction. What have I done to earn such ire?
It’s not an exaggeration to say she’s nice to everyone but me. I would go so far as to call her gregarious, her laughter given easily and her voice carrying down the hallways of our workplace.
And look, she’s also beautiful, not that it matters.
Today, her bronze hair lies in a braid down her back, though she has it tucked under her scrub cap for the surgery.
She’s tall, only a few inches shorter than my own six foot one, with long legs and delicious curves.
I’ve always kept things professional and appropriate with my coworkers, but it’s hard not to notice how pretty she is, and I’ve snuck a few glances at her over the week we’ve been working together.
Something about her provokes a familiar itch in my brain, a memory just beyond my reach. Have I met her before? Pissed her off somehow? But no, I would definitely remember her. I’m sure of it.
“It’s really cool that you get to work in two different settings here,” I tell her, aiming for some semblance of amicability. “I’ve never met another nurse in your position. You must have really impressed Dr. Planck.”
She grunts. Fucking grunts at me, like she can’t bear to utter words in my direction. She eyes Dr. Gambill, or George, as we call him, one of the other third-year residents and the most unrepentant asshole I’ve ever met.
“Does everything look okay here?” Kendall keeps her gaze on him, not offering the same courtesy to me.
George nods but doesn’t smile. I really don’t like the guy. Why is Kendall being nice to him and not me? Of the two of us, I’m much more polite to nurses. Hell, I’ve never had a complaint from any staff members about how I treat them.
Dr. Planck, the attending, a tall, solid man with a trimmed beard, scrubs in and positions himself across from me. He looks at me and George in turn. “Questions?”
I shake my head. “I’m ready.”
George responds in kind, and Kendall dips her chin. Even her mask doesn’t hide her frown as she maintains eye contact with everyone but me. She stands near me, but I’m surprised the side of my surgical gown hasn’t frozen with the force of her frigid disdain.
I shake off the concern. I’ve got a job to do, and I plan to be competent at it.
Dr. Planck allows me to have a lot of responsibility, given how routine the procedure is, with his occasional guidance.
The scents of the operating room almost soothe me: antiseptic, surgical smoke, a little sweat.
The sound of the drill whirring reminds me of the one on my tool bench at home.
People joke about orthopedics being carpentry for the human body, and there might be truth to that.
Some chatter rises up around me as I drill into the femur, and I get pulled into a conversation or two about weekend plans—being a resident, my response to the “what are you doing this weekend” question is usually “working,” but I provide a comment or two, anyway.
One of the things that surprised me as a med student was the amount of talking going on during routine surgical procedures.
The suite quiets during the more focused or sensitive parts of surgeries, or when someone’s life hangs in the balance, but otherwise the staff might as well be having lunch together. I’ve learned to tune things out.
Kendall, for her part, assists me with more wordless scorn.
If I didn’t know better, I’d worry about her stabbing me with a scalpel.
She’s all good-natured cheer with Dr. Planck, though, and she’s a phenomenal scrub nurse, anticipating my needs and talking through a few details of the surgery with Dr. Planck.
I can see why the attending’s impressed with her.
“Thank you,” I tell her when we’re washing our hands at the scrub sink after the procedure. “You were amazing back there.”
She turns her head toward me. The little twitch of her lips makes me think she might be about to smile at me, but then she rolls her eyes. She rolls her eyes.
“You’re welcome, Dr. Wyndham.” Her husky voice curls around my name like a boa constrictor squeezing the life out of something, like she wants to crush it with the force of her hatred.
What is wrong with this woman?
I corner Dr. Planck at the end of the day.
“I’ve done something to make Kendall mad,” I say, “and I can’t figure out what it is.”
Dr. Planck lifts his bushy brows. “If she doesn’t like you, then it would have to be something you’ve done. I haven’t seen that from her before.”
I hold back from huffing out a breath. That’s exactly what I said. “Should I try to clear the air?”
“I’ll talk to her about it.” The doctor thumps me on the shoulder, then walks away.
And what will I do if that doesn’t get us anywhere? I can’t work well with a nurse who hates me. Frankly, it’s pissing me off. What the hell is her problem?
By Friday night, I’m a zombie. Though the joint replacement rotation isn’t as grueling as some of my other rotations, I spent the night at the hospital last night, and I’m running on caffeine, protein bars, and fantasies involving my pillow and a solid five hours of sleep.
It’s the life of a resident: eighty hours or more each week, sleepless nights, and work conditions that should be illegal but are designed to harden you in the face of the realities of being a surgeon.
Unlike my trauma rotation, which still haunts me, this one mostly involves patients who aren’t in mortal peril.
I shudder as I think of an eleven-year-old I treated in my second year of residency who nearly lost a leg in a car accident.
We managed to save him and his leg, but the kid nearly lost his life, and I picture the faces of his parents at least once a week.
The heat of the late evening air swamps me on my way from my car to my front door.
It’s the part of summer that drags on, each week closer to the promise of cooler, drier days in the fall, but it still feels endless by the time September rolls around.
I open my front door and stroll into the kitchen, where the sight of a woman’s nearly bare ass under a threadbare T-shirt greets me.
“Hello?” I stand in my own house, looking anywhere but at the woman in front of me.
She squawks and rushes to stretch her, or more likely my roommate’s, shirt over her ass. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Adam told me you wouldn’t be here yet.”
“Ah. Yes. Well, I guess I’m here earlier than he thought.”
She hurries back to my roommate’s bedroom before slamming the door. I chuckle to myself.
Adam strolls out into the common area and stops by the kitchen, where I’m pulling a beer out of the fridge.
One would think I would go straight to bed after an almost sleepless night, and even I don’t understand why I don’t just go collapse.
All I know is that I’ll toss and turn if I don’t have an hour to sit and relax.
Adam’s paramour walks out behind him, and he plants a quick kiss on her cheek before she scurries to the door. He scratches at his bearded chin, aiming a sheepish look in my direction.
“Sorry,” he says.
“She didn’t have to leave, man,” I reply. I walk to our worn couch and he settles in the recliner next to me.
“Nah. She had somewhere to be early in the morning.” He pulls his hair out of its low ponytail, letting it fan out around him.
“I don’t know how you have time for that, anyway.”
I met Adam—an internal medicine resident, a third year like me—through a roommate matching service.
Even as a resident, he manages to make time for hookups.
Between my arduous schedule, precious gym time, and hurried meals, my sexual satisfaction comes mostly in the form of perfunctory sessions in the shower.
I had a steady girlfriend back in med school, but now the effort involved in meeting someone seems nearly insurmountable.
“For sex?” He scratches his scruffy jaw. “I find it really sad that you see that as something you’d have to set aside time for. Like it’s a dentist appointment or something.”
“I don’t have time for those, either.”
“Sounds like a healthy setup.” He props one ankle over his opposite knee. “How’s it going in the joint replacement world? You get to use any big saws this week?”
“Yes, yes. I know. Bone broke, me fix.” Besides the carpentry comparisons, the stereotype assigned to orthopedic doctors evokes dude-bro types, former jocks, and gym rats.
Neanderthals, basically, before science figured out that Neanderthals were actually smart.
“It’s good, though. It’s something I can see myself doing long term.
” I take a big gulp of my beer. “There’s something super weird, though. About a nurse I work with.”
“Weird like the one I worked with who ate her lunch with gloves on?”
“No, like she absolutely despises me. Either I’ve fucked up really badly without knowing it, or she’s just nuts. I don’t know which.”
Adam sits forward in his chair. His smile widens, like my misfortune might be the best gossip he’s heard all year. “She one of those nurses who hates residents on principle? You know, wants to put us in our place?”
I shake my head. “She’s super nice to the others.”
“Hmm.” Adam taps his chin. “You must have met her before, then. And you’ve forgotten. College, maybe?”
“Nah. At first I thought she was familiar, but I would have remembered this woman.” I know I’m missing something, though—the thought burrows into my brain and won’t leave. Am I just an idiot? How could I have forgotten something that big?
“In a good way?”
“She’s gorgeous.”
“Aha. So you like her, and it’s bothering you that she doesn’t feel the same way.”
“I’m just being objective about her looks.
I can’t like her when she won’t give me the time of day.
” I toss my bottle cap into the air and catch it.
“And she’s not shy or anything. She’s loud.
Boisterous. Jokes around with everyone but me.
” She’s completely uninhibited, actually—she would make me laugh if she wasn’t busy staring daggers at me all the time.
“She’s also from the same part of the state as me.
If one of the docs hadn’t told me, I could have heard it in her accent. ”
“She has to know you from somewhere, then. Did you dick around with one of her friends?” He sits up, snapping his fingers.
“You played football in high school, right? Could she have heard of you then? You were the star of her rival school’s team.
” He scrunches his nose like a rabbit. “That’s dumb though.
She wouldn’t care about that ten years later. ”
I shudder. “I hope to fuck it’s not from high school.”
I was a holy terror in high school. It horrifies me in ways I’ve yet to come to terms with despite several years of therapy.
Memories come flooding back sometimes—how I tormented those I deemed inferior and stepped on anyone in the way of my quest to be the best at everything—and I lie awake at night, shame crawling like ants all over me, fantasizing about the wrath I would bring down on my former self.
I wonder sometimes if medicine is a subconscious way for me to redeem myself. It doesn’t really work that way, but I can try.
“Yikes.” Adam’s voice brings me back to the present. “High school was that bad?”
I squeeze the bottle cap in my fist. The rough edges dig into my palm. “Yeah.” I don’t elaborate. I’m not getting into that with him right now.
“You can’t just ask her?”
I shrug. “I’m working up to that. It’s starting to piss me off, though.” I rub the back of my head. “Maybe I shouldn’t even care.”
Adam doesn’t say much other than a grumbled “I don’t know, man,” so I get up to make myself a sandwich, figuring I should at least nourish myself before I go to sleep. My phone chimes with a text as I slice a tomato.
Mom
I saw Rachel getting coffee with her mama today. She just got out of law school. Did you know that?
I roll my eyes.
Me
No thanks. I’m not dating anyone from home, anyway.
Mom
She’s really pretty
Me
I’m sure she is. Still not interested.
Mom
And she’s from a nice family. Well mannered
Me
You sound like you’re talking about farm animals
Mom
stop that! I told her you’d be happy to hear from her.
I lift my eyes toward the ceiling. Jesus. The cords in my neck tighten.
I do remember Rachel from high school. She was a nice girl, and pretty, like my mom says, but I’m serious about avoiding anyone from home.
Anyone who knew me then would know what an ass I’d been at that time.
Besides that, I’m never moving back there.
Blacksburg is the sort of place you leave behind in a cloud of dust on your way out.
Mom
She got a good job right out of school, her mama said. Making lots of money right out of the gate
That is impressive, I guess, but I can’t entertain the notion.
I don’t respond to my mom’s text. Instead, I finish my sandwich and my beer, brush my teeth, and crawl under my covers, where I think about how to handle confusing and hateful nurses until I fall asleep.