Doctor Steamy

by Kristen Kelly

  I nodded, wondering what it must be like to do exactly what it is you’re called to do, instead of what your family has planned for you.

  By the time we reached the hospital, Mattie had invited me for Sunday dinner with her family. Sunday dinner for God’s sake! Sunday dinner with about a bazillion relatives I was told. I should have hesitated. I should have said it was too soon, but she was so easy to talk to. When she asked me about Sunday, my answer came quickly, I surprised, even myself because I never did anything spontaneous. Hell, I didn’t even know if I was working on Sunday. Didn’t matter. I said yes anyway.

  When we reached the Emergency entrance at Rochester General, the medics carried Mattie off the ambulance on a stretcher with me hopping down right behind. The air was crisp, the wind blowing fiercely. So much so that her blonde hair flew up in a swirl. I saw her stiffen from the cold. I took off my jacket, rested it upon her shoulders.

  “Thanks. I can’t wait to get off this thing,” she said, trying to unbuckle the straps that held her down. “I feel like an invalid.” The sliding glass doors rolled open and they pushed her through. Mattie’s date and a woman I’d never seen before rushed to her side. “Oh my God, Mattie! I came as soon as Kyle called me.”

  Kyle. His name is Kyle.

  “Izzy, it’s nothing to worry about. I just sprained my ankle is all. Tell me you didn’t call Mama. You know how she’ll blow this whole thing about.” She turned around on the gurney to look at me, throwing the top straps of the belt over the side and leaning up on her elbows. “This is my cousin, Izzy. Izzy this is Doctor Russo. He took care of me.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, extending my hand. “She’s going to be fine.”

  “Oh. Oh, good,” Izzy said.

  Mattie grabbed my hand. “Since my father’s death, Mama has been trying to fill Father’s shoes. She does not have time for this, but don’t tell her that, or she’ll make time.” She made air quotes in the air.

  “She’s busy. I get that but under the circumstances...”

  “No, Steven. You don’t understand. See, my father, God rest his soul, owned Goldwater Packaging. Also one of the biggest Subaru dealers in the country. Co-ownership with my Uncle that is. And when Mama inherited all that, she threw her whole self into both businesses. See, when Mama does something she does it big. Right now she’s in the middle of restructuring the whole Goldwater company but let me tell you, she’d drop everything if one of us needs her. And I don’t need her, but of course she won’t listen to anything I have to say.”

  “That’s because you’re the baby,” Izzy said.

  Mattie rolled her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t tell her, Isabella.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh thank God.”

  “But I did,” said Kyle behind us. “I’m sorry, Mattie. I thought she should know.”

  “Oh God.” She took a deep breath. “It’s okay, Kyle.”

  “How’s the ankle?” I asked.

  “Awful.”

  “Understandable.” I took her elbow and helped her off the gurney when one of the nurses showed up with a wheelchair. “Don’t step down,” I warned.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.” She winced as we lowered her into the wheelchair. She held my hand as I wheeled her down to X-ray. “Soon, you’ll meet my family. Brace yourself. My mother can be...a bit much.”

  “So you keep telling me.” I searched left and then right.

  “Oh she’ll be here. You can count on it,” Mattie said. “And she’ll call the whole family too. Get ready for a wild ride.” She leaned her face into my hand while I laughed.

  Chapter 6

  Mattie

  I didn’t know how long I’d been sleeping, but when I woke to the whooshing sound of a blood pressure cuff on my arm and a full-figured nurse standing over me, I prepared myself mentally.

  I hated hospitals. The familiar smell of antiseptic, the hard sound of shoes on tiled linoleum floors, and plain green walls devoid of any artwork made me nauseated. I hadn’t stepped foot inside a hospital since the day my father died three years ago.

  You can do this, Mattie.

  “I was wondering when you would wake up,” said the nurse with a kind smile. “Hi, I’m Eileen. I’ll be your nurse this morning.”

  “Morning?”

  “Yes, honey. Although you only have an hour left of it. It’s eleven o’clock.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been asleep for nearly thirteen hours.” She stuck the buds of a stethoscope in her ear and placed the diaphragm on my chest.

  “Thirteen hours! And they just let me sleep?” Memories of my clinical rotations where patients seemed to be hustled out of the hospital in record time to make room for someone else. Apparently that hadn’t happened here.

  What in the world would make them keep me overnight for a sprained ankle?

  “I know what you’re thinking but believe me, there is nothing wrong. Not really.”

  “I know that,” I spat.

  “Oh,” said the nurse, sounding stunned. “We should have and could have sent you home, but then the swelling didn’t go down fast enough. Doctor Russo was concerned.”

  “What are you talking about?” I sat up in my bed, stared down at my bandaged foot with a huge ice bag perched on a pillow.

  “There was a lot of bruising. Sometimes that indicates a fracture.”

  “Only on rare occasions,” I said staring at the IV in my left hand. “And is this really necessary?” I gave her a scathing look.

  “Oh,” said the nurse. She shook off my request. “You were also complaining about pain in your leg.”

  “So he was thinking of the possibility of a dislocated joint,” I said evenly. “Not likely.”

  She fiddled with the dials on the IV pole then turned back to me. Her face screwed up, apparently trying to figure out if I had any medical training. “Anyway, I guess he wanted us to watch you for a bit and now here you are.”

  “And here I am,” I said, not bothering to hide my annoyance. “Sorry. It’s not your fault. I just don’t see how me taking up a bed unnecessarily helps anyone. There are sick people I’m sure. Really sick people.”

  “I wouldn’t know. You should be grateful for the extra care, Miss Goldwater. Obviously, you’re someone important. Doctor Russo is very dedicated to all of his patients but you...” She lowered her eyes at the morphine drip and laughed. “No one gets this kind of treatment for a simple sprain.”

  “You know Doctor Russo pretty well?” Suddenly I wished I hadn’t spent so much time talking about myself the ride over to the hospital.

  “Oh yes. Doctor Russo and I go way back.”

  “Can I ask you about him?”

  “What do you want to know?” she asked, sounding suspicious. “Because I can only tell you the basics.”

  I sat up further in the bed, wiggled my toes under the sheet. Damn that morphine was good. I felt awesome.

  “Um...” I searched for a way to ask her if he was married, had a girlfriend, what kind of women he preferred, did he wear boxer briefs or ... Was he a Naked-Reading-the-paper every morning kind of guy? Okay, so I couldn’t ask her any of those questions.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Is he single?”

  “I...I didn’t...”

  “You didn’t need to. All of the women want to know that. All the young ones—and a few of the older ones too. And not just the patients. I’ll bet every nurse that works here has fallen in love with Doctor Russo at one time or another. The older Doctor Russo that is.”

  “Older.”

  “He has a cousin who is a pediatrician. Nice man. Great with kids. Not great with adults sometimes.” She checked the IV in the top of my hand.

  “I don’t need to be here. If you could just take out my IV, I’d be ever so grateful,” I said sweet as could be. “Oh and find my clothes please.”

  “I have to get Doctor Russo to sign your discharge papers first. He’s pretty busy but I’m sure he’ll do it quick
ly when I say it’s for you.”

  She held a piece of gauze on the top of my hand, then slipped the needle out from under it. She walked over to the wall and dropped the whole thing in a sharps container.

  She turned to me and smiled. “By the way, the doctor is married. To his work, that is.” She approached my bed and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Dedication doesn’t even begin to explain how that man thinks. He works every holiday, comes in on his days off and picks up whenever and wherever he’s needed.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve been a nurse for a long time,” she continued. “And they don’t make doctors like him anymore. He’s a one-of-a-kind that man is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t leave room for a relationship. Oh, he was married once. A long time ago. Didn’t last long though.”

  She took my clothes out of the closet, set them on the bed. “There. Now all we need is Doctor Russo’s signature. Like I said, shouldn’t take long. Soon, you will be on your way.”

  “Thank you.” Part of me was sad at how lonely the nurse made Steven sound, but the other part was excited to possibly fill a much needed void in his life.

  I didn’t know how, why, or anything else, but I’d felt....some sort of connection from the first. Was that crazy? Of course it was, but I was all about crazy I guess. I was born into it.

  Chapter 7

  Steven

  I’d resisted checking on the battered wife. As a cardiologist, she wasn’t my patient and I couldn’t do anything for her anyway. Not that it hadn’t stopped me before with patients who were not my own. I still didn’t trust myself around the husband. Whenever I thought about the bastard, I wanted to punch something. Or someone. Not good. Luckily, Doctor Carver, our Hospitalist assured me she was stable. Hadn’t woken, but stable.

  I came around the corner on the second floor, but had to stop when I noticed how many people were in the hall outside Mattie’s room. Directly across from the nurse’s station, several were chatting up the nurses as well. Hovering outside Mattie’s room had to be a minimum of twenty-five people, more kids than I’d ever seen on this floor in my life and a large pink teddy-bear that half-covered some guy’s face. The place was chaos. Absolute chaos and kids were running up and down the halls. One on roller skates.

  “Doctor Russo! Oh thank God,” said a portly woman all dressed in black and white checks.

  Who the hell was this?

  “Doctor Russo! Where in the world have you been? Never mind. You’re here now.” The woman took hold of my arm.

  “And you are...” I began, already calculating in my head. Same sharp nose. Same almond-shaped blue eyes. The mother. This had to be Mattie’s mother.

  “Mind if we take a little walk first? No. Of course you don’t. I am so parched with this dry air around here.” She placed a hand on mine and motioned toward the other end of the hall. Something told me that not many people gave this woman no for an answer.

  Intrigued by her boldness, I let her lead me toward the water fountain since that was where I assumed she wanted to go. “You’ll be happy to know I was just about to sign Mattie’s—I mean Matilda’s discharge papers just now,” I said, trying to break the ice.

  “Hmm,” she said beside me.

  “Yes, she can go home.”

  It was as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. She took a drink from the water fountain. Wiping her mouth with the back of her arm she said, “We’ll see,” as if it were all up to her. That brought me a chuckle although I didn’t voice the absurdity of her intentions out loud.

  For all her bravado, the stress on her face was palpable. She took a tissue out of the black handbag looped over one arm. Wiping an imaginary tear, she said, “Oh, Doctor Russo, you have no idea how worried I’ve been. I was up all night because I hadn’t heard from Mattie in two days. Two whole days, Doctor Russo! What kind of a child doesn’t call her mother for two whole days? So I did what any good mother would do. I called the police.”

  “The police!”

  “Of course.” She sighed dramatically. “They assured me there were no shootings or car crashes in the area. At least in the last two days.. And then...And then I get, the call early this morning.”

  “There’s no need to...” But she was still talking.

  “Oh but where are my manners? I’m Mrs. Goldwater. Matilda’s mother. And you, Doctor Russo pulled my sweet, sweet Matilda from the jaws of death.”

  I stifled a laugh. “I suppose you could call it that.”

  She threw her hands up in the air. “If it weren’t for you, dear man who knows what would have happened?”

  “There wasn’t really anything to be done,” I admitted. “I simply rode along in the ambulance. The nurses did take good care of her though. They’re the ones you should be thanking.”

  She hung onto my arm. “Not the way I see it, Doctor Russo. If not for her falling into your arms—oh yes—I heard the whole romantic story—my Matilda may have been left there for dead! A shattered broken woman lying at the bottom of dangerous and probably illegal shabby stairs. We’ll see what management has to say about this when my lawyer gets involved.” Her face brightened. “You are Jewish. No?”

  “I’m afraid not and there weren’t any stairs, Mrs. Goldwater.”

  “You know she could have broken her neck.”

  By falling off a bar stool?

  Had she heard me about there not being any stairs?

  “I have to say, I’ve been a very worried woman since Matilda moved out of the family home. Imagine. A single woman living all alone. Why in my day, my mother wouldn’t hear of such a thing. I imagine you have a very nice home, Doctor Russo?”

  “What?” I was caught completely off guard by her questions.

  “Your home. Is it nice?”

  “Er. I guess,” I said uncomfortably. Most patients had no desire to know anything about their doctors. Especially where they lived.

  “And many bedrooms?”

  “Bedrooms,” I repeated stupidly.

  “Of course. Where else would your guests sleep?”

  “I don’t have many...”

  “Of course not. Doctors work so much. Don’t they?” She appeared to be pondering this information then changed tactics. “Do you have many bedrooms for say...children?” There was a hint of inflection on the end of that one.

  “Four bedrooms, Mrs. Goldwater. Plus a den, a finished basement and a fenced backyard with a tire swing.” All true, minus the backyard with the tire swing. I figured I may as well give her something to salivate over.

  She placed her hands together as if praying, then shook them for emphasis. She peered up at the ceiling. “Thank you Lord, for sending us Doctor Russo.”

  This time a laugh did escape my lips. “The bar was all on one floor, Mrs. Goldwater. No stairs.” It was important that I assure her that the bar was not to blame for Mattie’s accident. I guess I shouldn’t have been concerned about them being sued but for some reason, it bothered me.

  “Oh but there must have been stairs somewhere in that place.”

  “I don’t...”

  “Perhaps in the back. Where they take deliveries.”

  “’don’t know about that.”

  “Perhaps she would have stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Oh God! My baby could have stepped off the curb right into a bus!”

  “We were indoors Mrs. Goldwater.”

  “Because you know how those buses are these days. Drivers just look straight ahead. They don’t care about anything else. If a person happened to cross at just the wrong time. Smash! And you know our Matilda... Well, I guess you don’t. Or not very well. Yet.” She gave me a wink. A freaking wink!

  “She’s a bit headstrong. Our Mattie. Hence her living on her own against her mother’s advice.” She looked over her glasses at me.

  Reaching the end of the hall, we turned around. As we reached the nurse’s station, Mrs. Goldwater unhooked her arm from mine. “I’ll leave you to your work,” she said.

  “Doctor
Russo...”

  “Hello Eileen. Can I have the chart for Matilda Goldwater?” I’d been whisked away so quickly by Mattie’s mother, I hadn’t had a chance to grab it although I couldn’t think of any reason why a sprained ankle would need more than a day’s worth of care. I’d think of something however.

  She handed me the file.

  I thumbed through the nurse’s notes watching out of the corner of my eye as Eileen cornered our little roller-skater—a girl of about eleven years of age with a nose ring and long hair parted down the middle, one side blue and the other pink. Seated on a chair and frowning, she removed her skates.

  As I entered Mattie’s room, the scent of flowers, steaming coffee and... Holy shit! Was that prime rib I smelled? It indeed was and Mattie was carving it with a knife. With a knife and fork in her hand, she looked up, curls bouncing over her shoulder, and then back down at her plate.

  “Food not to your liking, Miss Goldwater?” I was all business when in my domain. I had to be.

  “My uncle owns a butcher shop,” she said between chews. She motioned to an older gentleman wearing an apron over a dark suit with a traditional black hat. He was bent forward. It appeared he was still unpacking a cooler. Three men dressed in dark suits stood beside him.

  “He thinks meat is healing,” said one.

  “Of course it is,” said the man rising.

  “Oh what do you know?” said the other man. “You don’t even know if it’s kosher. You aren’t the one who prepared it. You’re a salesman.”

  “It’s kosher,” insisted the man. “Do you not trust me, brother?”

  “Like I trusted you with that veal?” asked the third man.

  “Leave him alone,” said Mattie’s mother. “We have more important things to discuss here.”

  Mattie is being discharged. What is there to discuss?

  “Simon... Take that apron off.” Mattie’s mother said.

  “You told me come, so I come,” said the man as if this explained why he still wore an apron with meat stains all over it. Untying the strings at the waist, he crumpled it up. He handed her the apron which she stuffed it inside a bag.