Chapter Three
From: Keegan Baldwin [email protected]
To: Luna Oliver [email protected]
Date: September 20
Are you okay??? I just got off the phone with your mom. Then Forest. Luna, you aren’t in Cherry anymore. If you study late at the library, ask a security guard to walk you home. Or study with someone. Please let me know if you’re fine, as I’ve been worried sick. It’s all I can think about.
From: Luna Oliver [email protected]
To: Keegan Baldwin [email protected]
Date: September 20
I’m fine.
When I walk into the hospital the next day, it’s like I didn’t even leave. I change into my scrubs, pull my hair into a top bun, and wait for orders from Dr. Parse. Raven stands to my left, and Myles to my right. I already know the winding hallways of the emergency room and adjacent operating rooms. It feels like I’ve worked here for years, instead of this only being my second day.
“Dr. Oliver.” Dr. Parse points and summons me over to the nurse’s station of the emergency room. “Today you will be with one of our attendings, Dr. Ian Lanson.”
As if on cue, a physician walks toward me. He adjusts the pager on the waistband of his scrubs, and he scratches his chin, which has about a day-old shadow. Dark hair escapes the deep V-neck of his top. He narrows his eyes, studying my face.
“Let’s go,” he says.
He walks quickly down the hallway, and I jog to keep up with his long legs, while the other seven residents wait to get their assignments for the day. “Dispatch called. A father and daughter are about to arrive. He lost control in the tunnel. The daughter is stable, but his injuries are critical.”
We stand at the ambulance entrance, and when it arrives, we rush to the gurney of the man, and another team goes to the next ambulance to assist the child. Everything happens fast, and I feel like I’m floating above my body. Dr. Lanson tries to ask the patient questions, but he’s unable to speak.
“Dr. Oliver. Intubate our patient.”
My eyes shoot to my forehead like the release of a slingshot. “Me?”
“Now, Dr. Oliver.” He looks on impatiently.
I rush to the patient’s side, and don’t bother to tell Dr. Lanson that I’ve only ever intubated a cadaver and a pig. He talks me through it though. I open the patient’s mouth and insert the blade to the right of his tongue. Don’t hit his teeth, I remind myself. I see the tip of the epiglottis, then the larynx. I can feel it when I arrive at the trachea, and I gently pull out the stylet.
“Good work, Dr. Oliver.” Dr. Lanson looks at the screen with the patient’s vitals. “And now what should we do?”
Presbyterian Cornell is one of the best teaching hospitals in the country, yet in the two days I’ve been here, I’m still caught off guard that these trained surgeons ask my opinion. Everything is trial by fire, and I’m still transitioning from medical student to actual doctor, and I’m nowhere near having the instincts that it takes with this level of trauma.
He raises an eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”
“Umm. . .” I pause, looking around the room, but then find my voice. “He has a weak pulse in one arm, and the EMT said he was complaining of chest pain before he lost consciousness. Let’s start with a CT. Rule out internal bleeding or damage to his aorta.”
There are always so many things happening at once. Two nurses are in the room, and Dr. Lanson continues his physical examination of the patient.
“Okay.” Dr. Lanson nods. “Call down to CT. Tell them our patient will be there, stat.”
We go with our patient, and a nurse is instructed to contact his next of kin. I ask after the daughter, who I’m told is doing well.
Dr. Lanson flies by me. “Luna, it’s an aortic dissection. I just paged the on-call cardiothoracic. If he’s going to survive, he needs to get into surgery. Now.”
Our medical team, led by Dr. Lanson, takes the patient to the operating room where he’s prepped for surgery. Keegan rushes around the corner and stops when he sees me. He looks surprised as his mouth hangs open. Dark hair peeks out from his black surgical cap, full of red hearts, with the words the heart matters etched on the front.
My mom made his cap for him. I’ll never forget her hands sewing all the hearts. She gifted it to him, as well as a couple of others she sewed when he got accepted into a six-year integrated residency program. I shake away these thoughts because it’s not the time.
“Ah, hi.” Keegan’s mouth opens to say more, but he stops himself and concentrates on scrubbing up to his elbows.
Dr. Lanson glances at me, and then Keegan, and starts giving him the details. “Dr. Baldwin. Our patient is a thirty-seven-year-old male who lost control of his car in the tunnel. He has a partial tear in the ascending aorta.”
We hand our patient’s care over, and I watch through the window as Keegan preps for surgery in the scrub room and then pushes through the double doors. Dr. Lanson grips my arm at my elbow.
“Do you want to watch the surgery from the viewing area?”
“Yeah.” I tuck my thumbs into the waistband of my scrubs. “That’d be great.”
He nods. “Let’s go.”
We aren’t the only doctors in the viewing room. Other surgical residents also fill the space. I lean forward, looking at the big screen display, watching the precision of Keegan’s first cut. And then the aorta comes into view.
“Do we always page the specialist surgeon when we know the issue?” I turn to face Dr. Lanson.
“The advantages of a large institution like Presby.” He folds his hands behind his head and then looks at me. “I could fumble my way around the aorta, but why risk it when I don’t have to?”
“Do you know Dr. Baldwin?” Dr. Lanson’s elbow brushes against me. “When he saw you, I thought I saw recognition on his face.”
Thoughts flood my mind. There are so many reasons, nepotism included, that I don’t want to share that I know Keegan or let it be widely known that my brother is a cardiologist here at Presbyterian. Luckily, I don’t have to answer, because Dr. Lanson turns back to the screen where the dissection is being fixed.
“Dr. Baldwin is the surgeon you want on call when anything cardiac comes to the ER that can’t be handled by general or trauma surgeons. He’s the best in the field.” Dr. Lanson leans back and crosses a leg over another.
My eyes dart to Dr. Lanson, and I try to keep a neutral face. Keegan was always in such a hurry to grow up and get out of Cherry. We watch the surgery for about thirty minutes before Dr. Lanson’s pager goes off. “We’ll check on our patient later.”
The rest of the day is less dramatic as the cases that come in aren’t as emergent. At the end of my shift, Dr. Lanson asks if I want to go to the ICU to check on our patient. We get to his room, and Keegan is in there, monitoring the patient’s vitals and graft effectiveness.
“There was a lot of damage,” Keegan says, first looking at me, and then Dr. Lanson. “I was hoping to be able to do this endovascularly, but because of the location of the dissection, a sternotomy was required.”
Our eyes meet, but then I move mine lower, taking him in. My brain continues to be misaligned. There’s a huge disconnect between the boy I grew up with, and the man standing in front of me. He’s authoritative and confident. The coat hides his arms, but I can still see the outline of them. He catches me staring at his surgical cap.
Dr. Lanson coughs. “I’m sorry. Dr. Oliver, this is Dr. Baldwin. Dr. Oliver is a general surgery intern.”
Keegan opens his mouth to say something, but before he has a chance, I extend my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Baldwin.”
“Call me Keegan. Please.” He clears his throat and then swallows, causing his Adam’s apple to bob up and down. His massive hand envelops mine. “Welcome to Presbyterian.”
“Thank you.” I pull away and tuck my hands into my white coat, stretching out my fingers that were just touching his. “And call me Luna.”
Dr. Lanson’s pager goes off, and he holds a finger up. “Wait here. I’m going to see what this is.” He walks out of the room and heads down the hallway, his heavy feet noisy against the hospital floor.
Keegan turns his back to the patient but then holds my gaze. Back home, he never went anywhere without glasses, but now he must opt for contacts, and I can’t believe how light his bluish-gray eyes are. He then looks at the chart.
“Our patient is lucky to be alive. It was almost a full dissection.”
“I’m sorry—” I begin, but then a nurse walks in. She shoots me a look like not only does she know me, but that she disapproves of me too. She narrows her eyes and then shakes her head.
“Dr. Baldwin. I was hoping you’d be on call today.” The nurse pats his back and then adjusts the patient’s IV. “You are a breath of fresh air.”
“Thank you, Lex.” Keegan smiles. A real, actual smile. And I can see his white teeth. He rarely smiles. “You know you’re one of my favorites, too.”
The awkward man that I knew all those years ago disappears in front of my eyes, and this handsome, talented, easy-to-converse with doctor appears in his place. I don’t know why it takes him talking to a nurse and not the lifesaving surgery he just performed for me to further recognize the transformation.
“Okay, Dr. Oliver. Let’s get back to the ER.” Dr. Lanson waves me over, and I once again follow him. Keegan looks away from Lex the nurse and nods at me as I walk out of the room.
When Dr. Lanson finally releases me for the day, I’ve been at the hospital for more than fourteen hours, which means I’m already trending toward being over the allowable eighty hours a week a resident is permitted to work. I change into my street clothes, stand at the hospital exit, and look at the dark summer night outside. As strong as I try to be, the darkness at night still scares me. I hesitate. Maybe I should call a car service to bring me the short distance home.
“Hey.” The words are low, and I know it’s Keegan’s voice before I even turn around.
“Hey.” I glance back as he emerges from the hospital doors. His hair is dripping wet, and he’s now out of his scrubs and back in pants and a button-down shirt.
“Please tell me that you weren’t contemplating walking home alone.” Keegan stands next to me, and a backpack hangs off him. “I don’t care if this is the Upper East Side.”
“It took me less than fifteen minutes to walk from my apartment to the scrub room this morning.” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m sure I can get home by myself too.”
But Keegan grips my elbow and nudges me forward. “Come on. I’ll walk you.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, but find myself walking beside him and breathing a little easier. “Do you even live in this direction?”
Keegan glances back. “I live five minutes from the hospital. In the other direction.”
We walk in silence for the next minute. He’s always been a man of few words, except when he emails. Keegan was a perfect fit in my family because most of us never stop talking. But the quietness between us doesn’t bother me. Maybe I’ll get to know him better through the silence.
Keegan tucks his hands into his pockets. I glance at him at the same time he turns to me. “Your brother would kill me if I let you walk home alone in the dark.”
I go to take a right, and at the same time, Keegan tries to go left. We brush up against each other, and I almost lose my balance. He squeezes my upper arms to steady me.
“I find Forest’s need to control everything very antiquated.” I turn away from Keegan and we start down the sidewalk again. “I’m going to have to walk home alone sometimes.”
Keegan raises an eyebrow. “He’s not controlling. He just cares.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know Forest pretty well too, thank you very much. Why would he care if I walked home alone?”
A car honks at someone running through the street, and the pedestrian starts yelling obscenities at the person in the car. The smell of ice cream reaches us as we walk by what’s become my favorite shop which has over a hundred flavors of ice cream called Icy New Yorkers.
“Because of what happened to you in college.” Keegan’s voice is soft as he peers down at me.
I stop walking, so Keegan does too. He stands so close to me that I need to strain my head to look into his eyes. “I forgot that you knew about that.”
“He—”
“I can’t have a chaperone every night here, so I may need to invest in some pepper spray and stay on well-lit roads.”
“He was really shaken up when he found out.” Keegan’s body stiffens. “Whether you realize it or not, he’s always felt protective over you.”
I raise my hand to stop him. “I know.”
It’s not something I think about much anymore. Yet the trauma lives in me, and hearing the words come out of Keegan’s mouth brings me back to that night. That’s the hold that PTSD has on me.
Nothing happened. Not really. But it could have. It almost did. I was on campus, studying at the library until it closed at eleven like I had done so many times in the past. As I was walking back to my dorm room, someone hit me from behind and then got on top of me. I screamed and fought like my life depended on it, and campus security arrived before it progressed—before anything was taken from me. I escaped the entire ordeal with bruises and a bad headache. And a very real and paralyzing fear of the dark.
“Just promise me you’ll be safe, Luna.”
My building comes into view, and Keegan runs his hand across his face in one large, downward motion. I study his blue eyes, a contrast against the darkness of his hair and olive complexion. I squint, trying to figure out the answer to the most ridiculous question I’ve ever asked myself. Has Keegan always been kind of hot, or is this a new thing? I shake away my thoughts.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I blurt out, coming back to the present. “About pretending to not know you. I just, well, I don’t want people to know about our connection because they may think I’m trying to gain favors or something.”
Keegan presses his lips together and begins rubbing the back of his neck. “If you want to be strangers at the hospital, we’ll be strangers.”
“Well, we’re not strangers anymore,” I say. “Because I got introduced to you today. So now I know you. But you’ll have to act like you don’t know how I got the scar on my chin when I was seven. Or that I broke my arm in sixth grade during math class, or that you and Forest scared away my first crush when he came over with cookies he’d baked, and that I secretly still harbor resentment toward both of you because of it.”
Keegan grips my chin lifts it toward him, and runs his thumb along the three-inch scar. The touch causes my heart to hitch in my chest. “Got it.”
He squares his body to mine, and I point at the building behind me. “Well, this is me. But you know that already because you were fortunate enough to get to help move me into the shithole that is my apartment.” I glance at the door, and Keegan scrunches up his face, confirming that he doesn’t think too highly of it either.
“Luna.” He opens the door for me, and I walk through it. “Don’t walk home alone at night. Please promise me that.”
I press my finger against my bottom lip and tap it. “I’ll consider it.”
“Luna.” Keegan stares at me. “Why are you always so stubborn?”
“Fine,” I give in. “I promise.”