by Gina Ardito
“Do you have somewhere to stay once you’re discharged from here?”
The non-sequitur shook me back into the present. “Yes, my roommate here at the hospital, Margie, is going home today. She’s offered me the spare bedroom in her apartment until I decide what to do next.”
“You have no other family nearby?”
“No. I have a brother in Minnesota, but we haven’t talked in years. My mom lives with my aunt in Tennessee.”
“So, aside from your husband and this friend, Margie, what kind of support structure do you have?”
I hesitated, dropping my interest in the upholstered garden. “What do you mean?”
“Who else will support you emotionally when you leave your husband and children? Everyone needs a strong shoulder once in a while. For example, what was the worst day you experienced in the last three months?”
This time, I didn’t even pause to take a breath. “The night Freckles died.”
“Freckles?”
“Our beagle. He’d been sick, and I brought him to the vet last week. Dr. Herrera wanted to keep him overnight for observation. He died in his sleep a few hours after I left him there. Freckles had been a member of our family since Roy and I were newlyweds.”
“I’m sure that was difficult for you. When you learned that Freckles had died, who did you want to talk to first?”
Roy. My heart slinked up into my throat, and I swallowed hard. “I wanted to call my husband, but he and I had just argued…”
“Mmm-hmm. Who did you finally call?”
“No one.”
Those shark eyes bored into me, attempting, no doubt, to see my soul. “You told no one about losing your beloved pet?”
I instinctively folded my arms over my chest. “I told the kids the next morning,” I replied. “And I called a neighbor to cancel plans we had for Friday night, and the kids’ guidance counselors in case they got upset in school.”
“I mean for you. Who did you call for you? Someone to comfort you.”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody,” she repeated. “Aside from telling your family and taking care of your family’s emotional needs when you heard the news, you didn’t tell anyone about your dog.”
“No.” Memory struck like a lit match, and I held up a hand. “No, wait. Sam. I told Sam.”
“And Sam is…?”
“My boss. Well, more than my boss. He’s a friend. We’ve known each other since elementary school.”
“Any romantic feelings between you two? On either side? Even if not reciprocated?”
A laugh escaped before I could stifle my amusement. “God, no. He’s been head over heels in love with Paige since he was sixteen.”
“Is this Paige a friend of yours?”
My lips twisted. “Hardly.”
“Why not?”
“You’d have to meet her to understand. She’s blond and pretty and thin and successful.” I glanced down at the navy sweatpants with the frayed hem I wore, my scuffed sneakers. God knew what my hair looked like after five days without a shower. “Paige is everything I’m not.”
“You don’t consider yourself pretty, thin, or successful?”
I tugged on my chestnut hair. “I notice you didn’t hone in on the blond comment.”
“You could dye your hair, if you wanted.”
“Blond? Me?” I snorted a laugh. “No way. Besides, my hair color is the least of the differences between me and Paige.”
“You don’t see yourself as successful in your own right?”
“Not like Paige. She’s an accountant and worked for the governor’s office or something.” My skin itched, and I repositioned myself in the chair, my hands clasped in my lap. “Besides, what difference does it make? I’m not interested in Sam, and he’s not interested in me. Not in a romantic way. We’re friends. We work together. That’s it.”
She jotted more notes on her pad. Part of me would have loved to take a peek at what she was writing, but another part of me warned against it. My mother always said, “Only eavesdrop if you’re prepared to know what someone really thinks about you.” I wasn’t ready to see that Dr. Calderon thought I was a delusional freak, so I sat still.
At last, she looked up. “I think that’s enough for today.” She rose and smoothed her pencil skirt with one hand, never losing her grip on her steno pad and pen. “I’ll see you and your husband together on Sunday afternoon at two, in this office. Once you’re discharged, your joint appointments will be at my regular office on Main Street. Your husband said you’d prefer those sessions occur on Tuesday nights at seven. Will that work for you?”
Ordinarily, no. But since I was on disability from work for a while, the seven o’clock slot would suit me fine. Rising to my feet, I nodded. She held out her hand, and I shook it.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Emily.” Her grip warmed me and transferred a jolt of confidence.
I actually stood taller, looking the shark in the eye. “Same here. Thank you.”
“You know, everyone needs a support system.” She pulled a business card from the breast pocket of her suit. “If you need to talk before next Tuesday, give me a buzz. In the meantime, I’ll send an orderly to come get you. ‘Til then, sit tight.”
“I could walk—”
“Technically, you can. Legally, you can’t. Not on your own, anyway. It’s that whole support system thing.” She opened the door and stepped out. “Don’t worry. You’ll be back in your room in no time.”
I forced a smile. “Oh, goody.”
Her chuckles faded as she disappeared down the hallway.
****
Francesca
I was in remarkably high spirits when I went to work that night. And while I hadn’t actually dreamed about Josh, thoughts of him kept me smiling. Even the staff noticed my newfound sunny disposition.
During a break, Gerald, asked me, “What’s up with you?”
I leaned against the back counter, sipping from a cup of tepid tea. “What do you mean?”
“You’re more human these days.”
I knew what he meant, but couldn’t help needling him, nonetheless. “Gee, thanks a lot.” I narrowed my eyes to snake slits.
While his face bloomed with red, he stammered out an apology. “I’m sorry. I...umm...I didn’t mean...”
I waved him off. “Relax, it’s all good.”
“I bet that smile has something to do with a certain hunky construction worker who spent a lot of time in the E.R. last month,” Ana interjected with a sly smile. “Rumor has it he finally asked her out on a date.”
I veered my attention to the heavyset R.N. with the pageboy haircut and chipmunk cheeks who routinely wore Winnie the Pooh scrubs. “How do you know about that?”
“Helena.” She shrugged.
Of course. I should have known. The nurse grapevine probably sizzled with that hot tidbit mere minutes after I’d first agreed to go out with Josh. In fact, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear it aired on the local cable news: What Snug Harbor doc has been linked romantically to a much younger wood jockey heartthrob? Despite the ridiculousness of my imagination, my joy intensified, and I danced a hip shimmy in the narrow aisle between the table and the counter in the break room.
“So it’s true,” Ana confirmed. “You and Josh Candolero, huh?”
I stopped dancing and quirked a brow over my teacup. “Problem?”
“No. Not at all.” Her soft brown eyes widened to pools of honey. “In fact, I can totally see you two together.”
“You can?”
“Sure.” She poured sludgy coffee into a Garfield ceramic mug with a striped orange and black cat tail for a handle. “Did you ever look at two people and wonder what they see in each other? Like Sandra Bullock and that Jesse James character? You just knew that wasn’t going to work out. Or Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.” She sat at the table and added artificial sweetener to her sludge. “But then you see Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. They were together for like…
fifty years or something before he died. On paper, they seem like one of those fizzle-out-fast kinda relationships. I mean, they were total opposites. Yet, when you saw them together, you got it. You and Josh may seem like Ashton and Demi on paper, with less of an age difference. But in the long run, you’d be like Paul and Joanne all the way.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Gerald scoffed from his seat in the corner. He flipped open yesterday’s newspaper and scanned the top stories. “You should stop reading the tabloids in the waiting room.”
I would’ve come up with some kind of snarky reply eventually, but our admissions nurse’s voice thundered over the loudspeaker, “Dr. Florentino to E.R. one, Dr. Florentino, E.R. one.”
I set down my tea—again—and offered my fellow workers a tired smile, relieved to escape the love life spotlight. “Duty calls.” I left my two co-workers there to squabble on their own and strode down the florescent-lit hall toward the first exam room. According to the admission summary stuffed in the plastic sleeve outside her door, a nineteen-year-old female had presented to the E.R., incoherent and dazed after a blow to the head. Inside, I found a girl with coffee-colored shoulder-length hair, head bowed to shield her face, weeping softly. She wore a purple and silver slinky dress, one strap torn at the left shoulder, the hem a ragged mess. On a slow intake, I noted grass stains and scrapes on her knees.
Uh-oh. Her condition didn’t bode well. I’d have to go gently. I took another look at the patient information sheet to familiarize myself with her name, and my heart stopped. Desiree Candolero. Josh’s youngest sister.
I bent to get a closer look at the girl’s injuries, noted the same stains and scrapes on her palms as on her knees. “Desiree? It’s Dr. Florentino. What happened to you, sweetheart?”
Her head shot up, eyes shimmering with fear and regret. “Don’t tell my parents. Please.”
“Easy, Desi.” I placed a hand close enough to grab her should she try to leap from the exam table and take off on me. “Just talk to me, okay? What happened?”
“I was at a party.” She sniffed. “We were just goofing around, you know? Having a few drinks, listening to music.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“A couple of friends and me.”
“Any adults around? And by adults, I mean anyone over the age of...say...twenty-five?” I pulled out my penlight and checked her eyes, which were not only red-rimmed, but bloodshot and glassy. A few drinks, my curvy butt. Her breath reeked of alcohol and vomit, and the sickly sweet odor of marijuana clung to her tighter than the shiny dress.
“No. It was at a frat house.”
Terrific. The state university had a local campus two towns over. A lot of my college-age patients came from the frat houses where binge-drinking, illegal drugs, and stupid human tricks resulted in serious injuries on a regular basis. Why on earth would someone as smart as Desiree Candolero be hanging out with a bunch of baboons?
“Tell me exactly what happened, okay? I’m not going to judge or lecture—yet. What did you drink and how much?”
“Vodka, I think. It was in a flask.”
“A big flask or a little flask?”
“A little flask. But we kept refilling it.”
Great. Meaning, she could have been drinking arsenic and wouldn’t know. “Uh-huh. Did you do anything else?”
“No.”
The denial came a little too fast, and I cocked my head at the teen. “Desiree, it’s just you and me in this room. By law, I can’t tell your parents anything that you confide in me without your permission. But I need to know the truth if I’m going to give you proper treatment. So, let’s start over. Do you know what was in the flask?”
“At first, we had vodka and cranberry juice. I know because my friend, Casey, swiped the booze from her dad’s liquor shelf, and I bought the juice at 7-11.”
“After that?”
“After that, I had a couple of beers, and the next thing I know, someone was passing the flask around again.”
“And you didn’t think to ask what was in it, did you?”
“No.” Her cheeks bloomed rosy, and her voice grew husky—with shame, I hoped. “I was pretty well hammered by then.”
“What else did you do?”
“A little pot.”
“How much is a little?”
Whatever shame I’d imagined evaporated beneath the heat of her carefree attitude. “Like half a joint. Between three of us. No biggie.”
“And how’d you hit your head?”
“It was an accident. He didn’t mean it.”
Alarm bells rang in my brain. “He who?”
“Garrett D’Amico. He’s a senior at the university. We were sitting outside, on top of this stone wall near a rock garden. Just fooling around, you know? Just some kissing and stuff. But then he...” She stared at the floor. “...he stuck his hand inside my dress in front of everyone, and I panicked. I pushed him away, he pushed back, and I fell. I landed on my hands and knees on the rocks. When I went to get back up, it was dark, and I hit my head against the stone wall. That’s all it was. It wasn’t a big deal. He feels really bad about it. He even drove me here.”
I sighed. If I had a dime for every time a woman told me “it wasn’t a big deal” when a man pushed her or hit her or verbally abused her, I could fund the local battered women’s shelter for a decade. Now, Desiree Candolero was hero worshipping an idiot who not only put his hands on her; he compounded the danger by driving stoned and drunk.
For the moment, I didn’t reply. Seeing to her care took priority over the lecture she clearly needed to hear. A fantastic egg-sized lump had formed above her left eye.
“Let me get a better look at that kiss on your noggin,” I said and tilted her chin so her forehead caught the overhead lights. “You’ll need an icepack,” I decided. “Any other details you need to share with me? Did you pass out at all—even for a minute?”
“No.”
No. Succinct. To the point. And a total evasion. I looked her square in the eye, my expression piercing. “Anything you’re not telling me, Desi?”
She squirmed. “Not really. I got a little dizzy, but I didn’t black out. I swear! Although...” Her gaze shot past me to the counter where medical staples such as tongue depressors and cotton balls waited inside apothecary-style jars.
“Although...?” I prompted.
“I might need a...umm...” Her voice lowered to a hush. “...a pregnancy test.”
Oh, Jeez, Louise. “Have you taken a urine test? One of those over-the-counter ones?”
“No. I didn’t have any place I could do the test without someone nosy finding out.” She clutched my hands, her desperation nearly crushing my fingers. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? Not even Josh? Especially not Josh!”
A shiver of apprehension ran through me. Oh, boy. Legally, I couldn’t tell anyone about Desiree’s appearance here or the circumstances that brought her to me. Not unless she gave me written authorization to do so. But if she were my sister or my daughter, I’d certainly want to know.
“I’d like to recommend that you tell at least one adult in your family. And I’d be willing to stand beside you when you do so.”
“No!” She squeezed even harder. “My mom’ll kill me. She thinks I’m still just a dumb kid.”
You are still a dumb kid, I wanted to say. Instead, I pried my fingers from her grasp. “Let’s take this one step at a time, okay? How late are you?”
She waved a hand. “Oh, it’s cool. My parents think I’m sleeping over Casey’s house tonight.”
“No.” This was the way today’s teenager’s mind rambled? My heart wept for the future. “I meant, how late are you? When was your last menstrual period?”
“Oh! Right. Duh. I’m such a goof.” She rolled her eyes at me. “August third.”
In other words, she could already be as much as six weeks along and she was still drinking and partying. “Just out of curiosity,” I said with a casual air far from the distres
s shattering my insides, “if your parents think you’re sleeping at Casey’s, where were you really planning to spend the night?”
She dipped her head. “With Garrett.”
“Where is he now?”
“In the waiting room.”
Fabulous. Well, I’d have to find a way to keep these two from reuniting tonight. No way I would send her back into the arms of some lout who’d pushed her off a wall and bruised her a mere hour ago. I just needed more information for my arsenal first. “And what happened with Casey?”
“She told her mom she was sleeping at my house.”
“I take it she’s still at the frat house?”
“Uh-huh.” The panic returned in her widened eyes and blanched complexion. “But you can’t tell anyone. Casey will kill me if her parents find out. And they’ll tell my parents. Please. You can’t tell.”
I really resented the emotional blackmail, but she had my hands tied—even though I had already pulled my fingers out of her grasp. Desiree was legally considered an adult, and I couldn’t release any of her medical information to a parent, guardian, or significant other without her written authorization. Still, there had to be a way around the HIPAA guidelines that would allow me to protect this “adult” from making an impulsive, childish decision. First things first. I had to oust Sir Garrett the Cretin from our waiting room. “I’m going to get an icepack and a pregnancy test. Stay here until I get back.”
I stepped out of the room and signaled to Ana, who happened to be coming down the hall.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Keep an eye on the patient in this room, please. She’s in some trouble. I need to figure out how best to handle her case, and I don’t want her slipping out in the meantime.”
“You know her?”
I nodded, but said nothing more.
“Okay,” Ana replied with a shrug. “I can restock the crash cart right here.”
“Thanks.” Now what? I knew enough about confidentiality guidelines and the health information protection act to understand I couldn’t just call Mr. and Mrs. Candolero and say, “I know it’s three in the morning, but why don’t you two take a stroll around my E.R. for a little while? See what pops up...” Ditto for me calling Josh to tell him I was lonely and could use a spontaneous visit. And I had no guarantee the kid wouldn’t panic and take off for fear her friend or her parents might “kill” her if they found out where she was and why. Even with Ana stationed outside her exam room, if Desi hopped up and decided she wanted to go back to the frat house with drunken Garrett, I couldn’t legally stop her.