Chapter 9 #2
“Appreciate it.” Mike rolled his eyes. “And now, back to Kyle.”
Kyle shrugged. “I’m really happy if you want to talk about Mike. Like, are those retirement rumors true?”
“No, so that’s not news.”
“Are you sure—?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. We want to know more about what’s happening with Gen.”
Looked like there was still no getting out of it. “Nothing’s happening.”
“What?” Ryan looked confused.
“I saw her, and she told me there’s somebody else.”
“Whoa.”
“That sucks,” Drew said.
“That sucks big-time,” someone else muttered.
Sure did. His heart still felt raw. It had been hard enough to accept that Gen had someone else, but now to admit he’d lost the only girl he’d loved to these guys, nearly all of whom were either married or in a steady relationship, felt like he was parading around naked.
“To be honest, I’m kinda struggling with how to process this. So if you can pray that I know how to let this go that’d be really good.”
There were various murmurs of affirmation, then Jai spoke up. “You know one of the best bits of advice I got was to pray a blessing over her. When Allie and I were going out—”
“Also back in the Stone Age,” Ryan muttered.
“—we had some challenges that made it hard to know what was really real. But when you pray for that person’s good, I think it’s like God sees that it’s an act of faith and He responds to faith.”
“Is she a Christian?” Tom asked.
He blinked. “Um, wow. I don’t know.”
A sea of winces met him. Okay.
Ryan shook his head. “Speaking from experience, it’s better to make sure that gets sorted out first rather than plunge into a relationship that’s only gonna leave you both frustrated, if you know what I mean.”
Oh, he knew. And saying to these guys that he’d already been there, done that, didn’t seem to be the right thing.
He knew they weren’t all saints, but they all seemed a lot holier than he was.
Maybe Dougie not so much, he was still a little rough around the edges, but the others sure wouldn’t understand.
“Ryan’s advice is solid,” Franklin said. “You don’t want to fall for someone who’s not on the same page.”
Zac nodded. “Maybe God does want you and Gen to be together, just not yet.”
“That’s right,” Ryan said. “It might be that He needs to work in her heart to get her ready for you.”
“I don’t know if it’s as simple as that, but maybe.”
“Well, sounds like we’ll be praying for your Doctor Gen to find Jesus, huh, then find you again?” Jai said.
Kyle’s chuckle held no humor. “You’ll have to pray about more than that, but that’s a good start.”
“Why? What else?”
He shook his head. “You’ve heard enough from me tonight.”
“I don’t actually think we have. Especially when you put it like that.”
“Fine. You remember that Shakespeare story about Romeo and Juliet?”
“‘A plague be on both your houses’,” Mitch quoted, to a barrage of catcalls.
“Seriously, Mitch?” Doug asked. “How do you of all people know that line?”
Mitch shrugged. “Britta and I watched that movie last month. Pretty epic, but still pretty sad.”
“Well, that about sums it up. My parents hate Gen and I’m pretty sure her mom hates me, so we’d really need a miracle for this to ever fly.”
“Good thing we have a God who does miracles, huh?” Mike said.
His throat thickened and he nodded, unable to speak.
The guys took turns praying for Kyle, for Gen, for their parents, then for JT’s widow, and various other things, and Kyle soon felt a sense of peace nudge his soul.
Things might look impossible right now, but he believed in a God who knew what would happen in the future. Nothing took God by surprise. And just as God was here in what felt like a holy moment, so God would be with him every step of each day that lay ahead.
He exhaled. Opened his palms, stretched out his fingers.
Lord, I don’t know why You’ve brought us back into each other’s lives if it’s not to somehow see the past reconciled. If it is, then help me to be patient, and bless her and help her find faith in You. If it’s not, then bless her and help her find faith in You.
He swallowed. And help me to let her go.
* * *
Saturday passed with rounds, then the usual parade of arrivals in emergency, with everything from chainsaw accidents to strep throat to general aches and pains.
The chainsaw incident was the most serious, carelessness resulting in the accidental amputation of a grandfather’s little finger, which had somehow been salvaged from the dog’s mouth by the grandson, and now needed to be reattached.
Gen had internally shuddered, and the man had been packed off immediately to the OR where skilled surgeons would do their best to reattach the finger.
The incident drew stories from the staff of other things they’d seen over the years.
One about a pianist whose woodchopping incident had gone awry, who had needed two fingers to be surgically reattached.
The middle finger of her left hand was a little shorter, but she had returned to playing piano six months later.
Another story involved a man who thought he would save himself from buying a hedge trimmer by using the lawnmower to mow the hedge instead.
Of course this had not ended well, and he’d presented at emergency with a missing digit or two, which hadn’t been able to be saved.
Then, in a bizarre move, a man who turned out to be his neighbor, had also presented at emergency with similar injuries.
“Turned out he’d seen his neighbor cutting his hedge with a mower and thought that was a genius idea,” Marcie had said.
Gen had shaken her head. People could be so optimistically stupid about things.
Like she had.
Expecting to see Kyle again. Being disappointed when yet another week went past, and she didn’t catch sight of him. She’d expected—okay, maybe hoped—that he’d call by for a checkup, but no. Nada.
The answer was there. She could reach out.
But just like someone should only use a mower for mowing the lawn and not trimming a hedge, so she knew there were certain things that should not occur because they could be—would be—dangerous.
So in this case, it was a lot easier and definitely wiser to not stir the pot.
Everything was calm on the Bella and home front.
She didn’t need to introduce a distraction that would only lead to chaos and drama.
Even if at night she couldn’t stop dreaming about Kyle, about their kisses, about him holding her.
Which she knew made her as pathetic as any of those dumb Disney princesses who seemed to sit around waiting for a man to rescue her, but she couldn’t help it.
It was like at night her thoughts escaped from the cage-like control she used during the day.
It was just as well no one could see her dreams. Her mom would likely banish her forever to the roof’s crawlspace, seeing they had neither basement nor attic.
And honestly, Gen couldn’t really blame her, because it was crazy to think that she and Kyle could have a second chance.
For a second she imagined what life could look like: she and Kyle and Bella, all happy together in a nice home.
A proper home. One that didn’t leak during rain or make them shiver in winter.
With more than an ancient poky kitchen, and a non-mold-infested bathroom, and room for trees in the backyard and flowerbeds in the front, and a dog.
With Mom living somewhere nice nearby, happy for them to be together at last, and even his parents—
Nope. She couldn’t imagine that.
The ED phone buzzed, Nancy listened, then turned to them. “Doctors Singh, Rivas, Visek, we’ve got a three vehicle pileup with multiple casualties.”
Dr. Singh assigned the second most serious case to Gen, which drew an impatient huff from Goran, and mutters of favoritism she pretended not to hear.
Dr. Visek’s attitude probably contributed to why Dr. Singh preferred Gen as the resident he trusted; in the past he’d even murmured about putting her name up for senior resident next year.
She stuffed in the last of her sandwich and swallowed it quickly as she rushed to the toilet. These kinds of incidents meant they’d likely be working solidly through the next few hours, so it was best to deal with every contingency now.
Over the next hour she treated a man’s near-severed arm, and supervised her intern, Francis, who was working on a child’s lacerations, while Dr. Visek worked on a sweet-faced older woman with internal bleeding.
Working in the ED meant collaboration, assessing, directing, working in tandem with the other trauma teams. Rooms one, two, and three were filled with teams working to keep the victims alive.
She’d just sent the arm victim to OR when Dr. Visek called, “Quick! I need help in here! This one’s coding!”
Gen stripped off her gloves, tugging on new ones as she rushed inside trauma two. “What’s happened?”
Dr. Visek looked hapless as ever as the team rushed about. “She was fine, talking one minute, complaining about her legs, then she just went into cardiac arrest.”
The woman already had a breathing mask on, and Marcie was in boss-mode, directing the others to their roles like Goran should’ve done. And while Gen didn’t want to overstep, if she didn’t step in, then this woman might die.
“You need to start compressions,” she said to Goran.
But when he didn’t move, she elbowed him out of the way.
“Here.” She started chest compressions on the woman, then they had to use the defibrillator to shock the poor lady’s heart to respond. “Clear.”
This happened another time. Two. Her arms were getting sore, while Dr. Visek stood there, looking helpless. “Go get Dr. Singh.”
Dr. Visek shook his head. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“This woman—”
“Geraldine,” Melanie, another ED nurse, murmured.
“Geraldine is going to die if you don’t do something now.”
“This is my patient, not yours.”
“Then you should be the one doing something!” she snapped.