Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
ELLERY
The ER is eerily quiet when I walk in for my shift. Passing the nurse’s station, I wave and say hello, then I head into the locker room.
“Dr. Wallace,” Dr. Murphy says, putting his stethoscope in the pocket of his white jacket. He’s older than me, and even though he’s new here, he’s biding his time until someone higher up the chain leaves. He’s power-hungry, and the two of us don’t get along that well.
“Dr. Murphy.” I turn my back to him, fiddling with the lock on my locker until it opens.
“I saw your boy’s win on Sunday. Quite a game, but it must be different watching it live.” I look over my shoulder to find him staring at himself in the mirror, fixing invisible strands of hair that have gone awry. “How do you get all his home games off?”
I roll my eyes because my head is buried in my locker, and he can’t see me. This isn’t the first time he’s asked me about Cooper. It’s well known that Cooper is my best friend, but usually people ask me for tickets, and that’s not what he’s implying.
“As soon as the schedule’s out, I ask for the days off.” I toe out of my gym shoes and put on the clogs I only wear in the hospital, then I take out my white coat.
“So organized. So on top of everything. Doesn’t hurt that Daddy is the head of the department, right?”
I turn around and slam my locker shut. “Just say it, Clay.”
He finally stops admiring himself in the mirror and faces me. “You get special treatment, and you know it.”
He has no idea how many times I was reprimanded in front of the other residents about the decisions I made. I got it harder, not easier, because of who my dad is. Other residents would be told “excellent job,” and I’d be told I didn’t go far enough into the diagnosis.
“If you think my dad gives me special treatment, you’re mistaken. You haven’t been here long enough to know.”
The latter part is the truth. Dr. Murphy only joined the team last year when he came to us from another hospital. The only thing he knows is that my dad heads the emergency department.
“I get the same number of days off as everyone else, and I trade shifts all the time. Hell, I’m here way more than you.” I head toward the door, not in the mood to work an entire shift with him.
“Man, you’re easy to rile up,” he murmurs under his breath.
I stop right before opening the door and take a deep breath to stop myself from turning around and stomping back over to him. There are few people I hate in this world, but Clay Murphy is at the top of my list.
I open the door, and my friend and fellow doctor, Alice, stands on the other side. “Whoa, I was just about to come get you.” She must see Dr. Murphy behind me because her smile drops, and she turns away from the door. “Oh, I see.”
“Something must’ve happened because he’s back on the whole ‘daddy’s girl’ thing again,” I say under my breath as we head down the hall.
“Why does he care? I think he might like you.”
I stop and stare at my friend. We became residents the same year and formed an instant friendship. At least if I have to work with Dr. Murphy today, I get to work with Alice too.
We both laugh. “We’re not in the fourth grade anymore, Al. The boys shouldn’t flirt by being mean.”
“He seems like the type though, no?”
He walks by us, his cologne wafting behind him as if we were crop-dusted.
“That cologne is just god-awful.” I cough into my elbow.
“Really? I kind of like it.” She stares at his backside, and I stop at the intake desk, watching her for a moment.
“Oh my god, you like him,” I whisper-shout.
How could she?
Okay, so Dr. Murphy is attractive. He has a runner’s body, but the muscles in his biceps suggest he lifts weights too.
His hair is always styled to perfection, and his skin has this glow to it.
And… his smile is nice, although it’s never pointed in my direction.
I’ll admit, I can see why my friend is attracted to him.
Most female patients go gaga for him when they come in. A lot of the men too.
“No,” she says in a way that I know means she’s lying. It’s the same way she denies she ate the last of the candy in our communal drawer.
“I can see it, liar.”
“Funny,” she says under her breath, sitting down and waiting for the physician’s handover.
“Excuse me?” I sit next to her, staring at the board to see what’s going on in the emergency room currently and where we’ll need to pick up.
“It’s just funny that you can see me crushing on Clay, but you’re ignorant to your ‘best friend’ crushing on you.”
I roll my eyes. As long as I’ve been friends with Cooper, I’ve gotten the same reaction from people—that we can’t just be best friends, there has to be something that we’re denying.
And honestly, it’s weird to have a sex symbol for a best friend.
Of course he’s attractive, there’s no denying it.
In college, it was a tamer version of what it is now with the women and the fame.
But we started to rely on one another, and soon we didn’t want to lose one another.
The only way to ensure he’ll stay in my life for good is for him to be my best friend—not my boyfriend or my lover.
“I’m dating Bradley,” I say, hoping this will shut down the direction of this conversation.
“And tell me why again?” Alice’s eyebrows raise.
I want to ask her when she finds the time to do beauty rituals like wax or pluck her eyebrows. I’d like to cover mine because I’m not sure the last time I looked at my own.
“What do you mean, why?”
The smell of salami passes us, and we turn to see Hayes plop down on a chair beside me with a sandwich. “I don’t want to hear it, I’m working a double tonight.”
We both put up our hands.
“Hayes, why do you think Ellery is dating Bradley?” Alice asks him.
He finishes chewing. If he wasn’t in a bad mood already, I’d tell him to close his mouth. “She’s in denial.”
They high-five one another and I groan, glancing at my watch, wondering when this shift change is happening.
“You guys just don’t understand. I’m friends with Hayes, yet no one says I’m denying some deep-rooted love for him.”
He puts his head on my arm and flutters his eyelids. “I’m yours whenever you’re ready.”
I push his head off me, and he laughs, continuing to devour his cafeteria sandwich.
“You don’t go on vacation with Hayes, you don’t spend holidays with him, you don’t spend the night at Hayes’s apartment, you don’t—”
“I do those things with my other friends too. Doesn’t make Cooper special.”
“Are we done talking about Dr. Wallace’s love life? Which Grizzly is she dating this week?” Dr. Murphy stands by the board, eyes narrowed on me.
I suck in a breath. He’s such an ass.
“How about everyone stays out of my love life?” I look around at all the doctors and nurses.
My father, Dr. Wallace, doesn’t say anything for a moment but nods to Dr. Mendez to start on the rounds.
“Let’s walk.” Dr. Mendez isn’t one for getting into the personal lives of her doctors. She’s all business, all of the time. Rarely jokes or cracks a smile. So I’m sure my love life is of no interest to her. “We’re only at forty percent capacity right now…”
She talks while we listen.
It isn’t until she stops outside a room that her eyes find me.
“Mr. Euing is back. Said he was mugged, and someone hit him on the head. There’s no head injury that we could see, so he’s having a meal and then should be on his way.
” I fight the urge to go into the room, and she must notice.
“Go ahead, Dr. Wallace, we’ve gotten nowhere with him in the past hour. ”
“Okay.” I nod.
“See me after, and I’ll let you know who else you’re responsible for,” Dr. Mendez says in a surprisingly nice way.
I knock on the door and enter the room. “Mr. Euing?” I say, entering the room, and then I run my hands under the sanitizer.
“There’s the beauty.”
I approach the bed. “How are you?” I look him over, but there’s no visible sign of an altercation. He’s a regular and usually finds an excuse to come in here every week or so.
“How’s that big boyfriend of yours? Man, he’s the talk of the town. Making Chicago look good.”
I smile at him. “We’ve been over this. He’s just my friend.” I go to the computer and scan my key card to get access. “What brought you in today? Dr. Mendez said something about a fight?”
He waves his age-spotted hand. “Tim’s an asshole. He thinks he can fight me, but he can’t.”
I run through the bloodwork they’ve done on him and see that no scans were ordered since they didn’t find any sign of him being concussed.
“Did this happen at a shelter?” I pull the stool over to his bedside and take a seat.
“No, he claims he owns the spot under Michigan Avenue by Nordstrom. I’ve been there for ages. Everyone knows that’s my spot.”
I sit with him for another ten minutes, get him calmed down, and tell him I’ll be back.
It’s only a matter of time until we’ll have to send him back to the streets, but at least we’ll get a warm meal in him.
Hopefully we won’t need the bed he’s in today, and I can let him stay a little longer and try to make sure he makes it to the shelter after my shift.
Eight hours later, I’m sitting at the station, looking up shelters to try to get Mr. Euing a spot, when Jennifer, our intake nurse, walks through the doors with Cooper right behind her.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him with a smile.
“I’m here to take you home.”
I flick my wrist to look at my watch. It is almost time, but since I worked the second shift, it’s late for him to come and get me. “You should be sleeping. You have practice in the morning.”
He’s dressed in his joggers and a T-shirt. His T-shirt is slightly damp, and I’m not sure if he came from a workout or if it’s still humid outside.
“I’ll be fine. Just saw Mr. Euing. He saw me walk by and called me in. Said you’re trying to get him into a shelter tonight? Something about a fight with Tom?”
Mr. Euing loves Cooper. Any time he sees him here, he chats him up.
Cooper sits in a chair with his arms crossed. Compared to most of our staff, he’s larger than life. Six foot four, over two hundred pounds, huge hands. He’s a presence.
“Yeah. Said they got in a fight.”
“I thought they were best friends.” He reads my mind.
“Exactly. Something’s wrong, so I really want to get him in a shelter tonight rather than be out there on the streets.”
“You go finish up, and I’ll call around and see if any have openings.”
“Thanks. Go visit him, you know he loves you.”
He stands and heads down to the room I told him.
“Jeez, he’s even invested in your cases,” Alice says, coming up beside me.
“Please, Mr. Euing’s been coming here forever.”
Just as I say that to Alice, I hear Mr. Euing shout, “Coop, my man!”
Alice shakes her head. “Everyone else gets it but you.”
After she walks away, I finish doing my rounds on my patients and hand them over to the next physician.
Before I have the opportunity to go rescue Cooper, Mr. Euing walks out of his room. “I’m discharging myself,” he says, proud as if he said he’s been one hundred days sober. “Coop is driving me to a shelter.”
“He is, is he?” I’ll have to do up the paperwork to discharge him before we leave.
As they approach, Cooper leans in and whispers, “You’d never sleep otherwise. Now you’ll know he’s off the streets for at least one night.”
This man knows me so well.
I do the discharge paperwork, and then we drive Mr. Euing to the shelter on North, drop him off, and Cooper looks at me from the driver’s seat of his Land Rover.
“Thank you.” I smile at him.
“I said you don’t have to thank me. You wanna go for one of our drives?”
I laugh and shake my head. “It wasn’t that bad of a night.”
“Do it for me?” His brown eyes soak into mine.
Usually it’s me who wants to drive after a bad night, so I’m a little alarmed by the sadness brewing in the depths of those chocolate eyes. “Of course. Anything for you.”
He rolls down the windows since it’s a beautiful night in Chicago and hops on Lake Shore Drive. The wind flows through my hair, and he turns up the music, allowing us to both feel as though we’re escaping. Escaping what, I’m not sure.