Chapter Seven
The Emergency Department seems to have two scenes. The first is the storm, and the second is the calm before the storm. When it’s slow, we all stand around, trying to keep ourselves busy. I find myself constantly looking at the doors, waiting for the next person needing our help. It’s an anticipatory anxiety that doesn’t go away. And then there is the storm. And somehow, even after the waiting, no one ever seems to be fully prepared for it. Today has been one of the slower days.
Lately, I’ve been assigned to Dr. Lanson, and today, Raven is as well. We follow him down the long hallway, his two students, eager to learn everything he’s willing to teach us. Myles walks toward us, holding several charts in his hand, his remaining hair standing up in all directions.
“What hour are you on?” Myles slows when he reaches us.
Raven and I look at each other, and I hold back a yawn. “Fourteen. You?”
He scrunches up his face and then rubs his eyes. “Sixteen. And I barely slept all night. There was a steady flow of people. I’m about to get cut, though.”
“Please sleep for the both of us.” Raven grips Myles’ arm. “If I’m here much longer, I will turn back into a pumpkin, and no one wants to see that.”
“Will do. It’s been a day.” Myles turns back one more time to look at us before walking off in the opposite direction.
“Okay, Dr. Oliver. Dr. Craik.” Dr. Lanson stands with his arms folded over his chest, waiting for Raven and me. “There’s been a shooting. The patient’s stable but will need a bullet extraction.”
We enter the space where an emergency room physician and team are assessing the male patient’s vital signs. He’s in distress with a gunshot wound, and the care team quickly works on him. The bullet entered through the back without an exit wound.
“Let’s get him to CT,” Dr. Lanson says as a nurse inserts an IV. “We need to see what we’re dealing with.”
Dr. Lanson has me contact the radiology department to schedule a CT, and the care team prepares the patient for surgery.
Dr. Lanson glances at us. “Who wants to scrub in?”
Our hands both shoot up at the same time, and he points to me. “Okay, Oliver. You’re in. Craik, see if Dr. Parse can use you.”
Raven lets out a defeated sigh and then leans into me. “He always chooses you.”
“Not true,” I whisper back. “My hand was a tenth faster than yours. That’s it.”
“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.” Raven rolls her eyes in my direction and then leaves the room.
Once in the operating room, I assist Dr. Lanson with inserting the chest tube, and we study the CT film. In medical school, when I did a surgery rotation, my time in the OR was usually spent looking at the back of the surgeon’s head. I smile beneath my mask, happy that I’m finally at the table.
“A million-dollar wound,” Dr Lanson says. “Look, Dr. Oliver. The bullet entered his lower back, traveled north, and got lodged in his rib, while somehow missing every major organ.”
He opens up the patient and navigates to the bullet using fluoroscopy. I study the monitor, which is a map of the patient’s insides, and when Dr. Lanson reaches the bullet, a surgical assistant hands him forceps for the extraction, and with precision, Dr. Lanson removes it. The intact bullet clanks against the metal bowl when Dr. Lanson places it in there. I can smell burning skin as he cauterizes around the wound, as the patient has some bleeding from where the bullet tunneled through his body. Dr. Lanson closes the patient up, and then the care team watches him in recovery.
Following the gunshot wound victim, a woman presents with a severed thumb from a cooking injury. We promptly treat her and stabilize the wound, and then the care team preps her for the vascular surgeon. Raven hasn’t reappeared, so I end up getting some unexpected one-on-one training with Dr. Lanson. Before I have a chance to take a breath, I accompany him as he advises a patient on the general surgical floor about their hernia surgery that will occur later in the day.
By hour nineteen of my twenty-hour shift, I’m running on pure adrenaline and coffee. There’s a lull in the action, and I go into an empty exam room and sit on the edge of the bed. I put my head in my hands, and rub my eyes, willing them to stay open.
“Hey.” I look up to see. Dr. Lanson, and he closes the curtain behind him. He massages his temples and then brushes his hair back. “Another long day.”
I unclasp my hair, shake it out, and then run my fingers through it. At the end of my shifts, my head hurts from the tension of my ponytail. “It gets easier, right?”
Dr. Lanson barks a laugh. “I haven’t figured out if it gets easier, or if we just fall so deeply in love with it that it feels like it does.”
“So, there’s hope?” I try to smile, but even my facial muscles are tired.
I sit up straighter, and my legs dangle off the edge of the exam bed. Dr. Lanson walks toward me. I take a long blink, and when I open my eyes again, he’s even closer. I study him, in his scrubs, curly, dark chest hair peeking out, and his hair slicked back on his head.
“Please don’t call me Dr. Lanson when it’s only the two of us. That’s my dad.”
He moves between my dangling legs, and my breath catches in my chest. He puts his hand on my knee as if I’m a woman who consents to the touch. He opens the top drawer of the bed, pulls out gloves, and stuffs them in the front pocket of his scrubs. My body stiffens under the touch.
“It’s Ian.”
I glance at his hand, still touching me. I want to tell him to remove his hand, but instead, my mind flashes to the night I was attacked. I freeze, unable to articulate how uncomfortable I am.
“Luna.” Ian’s hand stays on my knee, and he’s close enough to me that I can smell the coffee on his breath. “With a patient as large as our gunshot victim, don’t be scared to go a little deeper with the chest tube.”
“Yeah, okay.” I nod, repeatedly.
“But I liked your confidence,” he says.
“Yeah.”
That’s all I can say. My eyes move up to his, and I wonder if he’s even aware of the placement of his hand. My brain starts to hurt as I think through all the options to put space between us.
“Dr. Lanson.” I know the voice as soon as I hear it, and the curtain is thrown open. Dr. Lanson backs away from me as Keegan walks into the room.
Keegan’s gaze meets mine first, and then he briefly glances at Ian before returning his attention to me. A sudden surge of adrenaline courses through my veins, and I hastily jump off the exam bed. Keegan scrutinizes me with his eyes before he clears his throat.
“I was paged. You have films you wanted me to look at?” Keegan folds his arms over his chest.
“Yes. Of course.” Ian looks down at his pager. “Blunt force trauma to the chest.”
Keegan nods and walks out of the room with Ian. I rush to the changing room, feeling like I need to shower. Tonight, the storms brewed from all directions. My mind spins with all the patients I saw and touched today, but I also can’t stop thinking about Ian, as I process what just happened. I second-guess myself and wonder if I’m overreacting. I open my locker to grab my stuff and slam it closed, and then I sit on the bench, head between my legs, and take deep breaths.
The adrenaline I feel coming off a shift always takes me by surprise. It reminds me of my dad who coaches high school boys’ basketball back home. After games, whether his team wins or loses, he paces the hallway of our home, studying stats, and waiting for his mind to shut off. That’s how I feel after a shift at the hospital.
After several minutes, I change into my street clothes and force myself to stand. I’ve been at the hospital for twenty hours, and I need to get home, shower, and sleep. I glance at my phone, and Raven texted me over an hour ago letting me know that she was cut and heading home.
When I get outside into the evening darkness, my shoulders stiffen when I see Keegan standing there, watching the door, waiting for me. He stuffs a hand into the front pocket of his pants, while his other scrapes the sharp corners of his jaw.
“I figured you were finishing up, so I waited.”
I pause but then walk forward. “I thought you had films to look at.”
Keegan slowly blinks, never removing his gaze from me. He looks as tired as I feel. “I looked.”
His voice is low, like he’s trying to keep something between the two of us. I catch up with him, and we walk in the direction of my place. When he finds his stride, I have to take quick steps to keep up.
Even the sound of the ambulances headed toward the hospital, the horns honking at a car double-parked in front of a restaurant, or the line of people outside of the ice cream shop don’t drown out the noise of my breaths, slowly going in and out.
I glance at Keegan who continues to look forward. “Are you going to say anything, or do you plan on walking me home in silence?”
Keegan’s head slowly turns in my direction. “You don’t like the silence?”
“I don’t always mind it,” I slow my pace and point at him. “But not when you’re over there with those judgy eyes.”
“I’m not judging you, Luna.” Keegan stops walking and squares his body to mine. “I wanted to see if you’re okay.”
Someone behind me curses as they almost run into us as we block the sidewalk, and I can’t find the words.
Keegan turns his head slightly to the side and says, “I was thinking about women in medicine. And how hard it must be for you, especially as a surgeon, because the field is so male-dominated.”
Emotions of the day start to catch up with me. I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m so sick of men. You’re everywhere. Almost every leadership position in this hospital is held by a man. I’m so tired of the entitlement of some of you.”
“I agree.” Keegan pulls his lips into a thin line and his chest expands. His blue eyes pierce into mine, but I refuse to get lost in them. “I’d avoid Dr. Lanson. As much as possible.”
“There it is,” I chuckle. “The judgment. You don’t know what you saw. I did nothing wrong.”
Keegan’s hands abruptly leave his pockets, and he clenches them tightly into fists. Without a word, he begins to stride purposefully toward my apartment, and I follow, swallowing the surge of frustration that continues to bubble to the surface. I try to regulate my breathing, knowing that I need nothing more than to get inside my little apartment, where I can close my eyes, maybe have a good cry in the shower, and start fresh in the morning.
“You know how my dad died when I was ten?” Keegan’s words surprise me so much that my head jerks in his direction.
“Vaguely,” I say. “I was really young.”
I look at him, but he continues to face forward. “He had picked me up early from school because we were planning to drive to the Twin Cities and go to a baseball game. We stopped home to pack our overnight bag, and he was taking forever, so I went into my parents’ room to check on him, and he had collapsed. I called 911, and in the minutes it took them to arrive, I’d never felt more alone in my life.”
The details are new to me, but not that his dad died. That was something I grew up knowing. But I’ve never heard Keegan speak about it.
“It seemed like it took forever for the ambulance to arrive, and I tried my best to give him CPR. I was so young. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
My eyes widen, and part of me has this overwhelming need to pull Keegan into a hug, but I don’t. Keegan continues, “My dad was rushed to the hospital, but there was nothing they could do for him. My mom arrived shortly after the ambulance, but he was already gone. He had an aortic dissection. The best CPR in the world wouldn’t have saved him.”
We reach the door to my apartment building, and I lean back on the hard, brick surface, and it’s cool against my flaming skin.
“Very few believed in me when I said I wanted to be a doctor. I was a small-town boy. But my dad was my why. Anytime I felt like giving up, I thought of him.” Keegan takes a long blink, and a glow from a streetlamp catches between each one of his long, dark lashes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I am. But I don’t understand why you are telling me this. I’ve known you—”
“Luna.” He says my name slowly, elongating every syllable. “We all have an answer to why we chose medicine. Remember yours.”
“What?” I rub my eyes, and Keegan comes into greater focus. “You don’t think I know why I’m here?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Keegan reaches toward me, and with two fingers, clasps them around my wrist. His hands are cool and comforting. “There are assholes like Ian Lanson everywhere. Insecure, entitled assholes. I’ve seen men like him step so far over the line, that they can no longer see the line.”
Keegan stops talking and unclasps his fingers from my wrist. He looks down for a long beat and then glances back at me.
“I know you did nothing wrong. But don’t let men like Ian Lanson ever make you question the fact that you deserve to be here. You belong. You are here because you earned it. Don’t let anyone make you feel inferior.”
“Okay, Eleanor Roosevelt,” I say under my breath, and a boisterous laugh escapes Keegan, and he covers his mouth with a hand. I continue to look down at the pavement, because hot, wet, and tired tears start rolling down my cheeks without my consent, and I refuse to let Keegan see them. I wipe them away before looking up at him again.
“Kiddo.” Keegan uses Forest’s moniker for me. He lowers his face and speaks into my ear. His breath smells like mints, and it’s so reassuring after smelling the horrid coffee on Ian’s. I feel safe. “Everything always feels better after some sleep.”
I squeeze my eyes, making sure no more tears are a threat to spill out. “You’re right. I’m exhausted. I’ve been up for too many hours and am about to lose all of my shit, and if you stay for a minute longer, I’m going to use your sleeve as my snot rag. I’d suggest you leave immediately.”
The corners of Keegan’s mouth turn up. “You’ve earned your right to be here. Never forget that.” Keegan kisses the top of my head, pausing a moment. His warm lips against my skin. He pushes me through the door and then walks in the direction of his apartment.