Lakeside Hospital Box Set

by Cara Malone

  “Well, you must have made an impression,” he said, and that made Darcy feel bashful. Luckily, Russell seemed to move with the same lightning speed that she’d observed in Krys and the conversation didn’t linger on any one subject for long.

  First, he asked her in more detail about her qualifications and Darcy told him what it was like to be a combat medic in Iraq. She went over the most common types of injuries and illnesses she encountered there, and the certification process for becoming a combat medic.

  She also made sure to tell Russell more about her own injury, pointing out the cane that she’d leaned up against his desk. He assured her that they could find plenty of work for her where mobility wouldn’t be an issue, and then he offered to show her around the clinic.

  “It’s not much,” he said, “but we treat about fifty patients a day most of the time so we’re doing a lot of good in this humble little building.”

  There were a couple other rooms in the hall – a medical supply closet and a locker room for the volunteers to leave their street clothes and lunches. At the back of the building, there was a large treatment room with five beds lining one wall and file cabinets along the opposite wall. Two of the five beds were occupied and at one of them, there was a nurse applying liquid stitches to a gnarly cut on a teenager’s elbow.

  Russell walked Darcy around the room, introducing her to the nurse (whose name was Aisha) and showing her the ins and outs of the treatment room.

  “We treat a mix of acute and chronic cases here,” he said as they walked. “Most of our patients come here because they can’t afford to see a general practitioner or go to the hospital for care, and we do get a lot of referrals from the area ERs when they’re backed up and the patient’s issue isn’t a true emergency.”

  Russell told Darcy that he could use her as a medical assistant, taking vitals and triaging patients as they came through the doors and waited to see the clinic doctor on duty. “There’s usually only one of us on the floor at any given time. You’ll be working with me or Krys primarily, and we have a few other doctors who volunteer less frequently. How does all of that sound?”

  “It sounds like just what I’m looking for,” Darcy said, pleased at the prospect of working closely with Krys. She couldn’t wait to figure out what she was all about.

  “Great,” Russell said, and he sounded genuinely pleased to bring her onboard. “When can you start?”

  “Whenever you need me,” Darcy said, then shrugged and added, “Today, even.”

  Her father was currently flying over the west coast and he wouldn’t be back for a couple more days. Daniel was indisposed because of a weekly dinner date with their mother that Darcy would certainly not be going to, so the only one who would miss her if she stayed for a while was Harvey – and she had a feeling he’d forgive her if she plied him with a biscuit or two.

  “Super,” Russell said, patting Darcy on the back. “Let’s get your paperwork filled out, then I’ll put you to work.”

  “Thank you,” Darcy said, following him back up the hall to his office.

  “No, thank you,” he answered, finding a few forms in the mess on his desk. He left Darcy with them as he headed back to his waiting patients. Darcy picked up a pen, smiling as she noticed that it was the same style as the one she’d used to intubate Freddie in the restaurant.

  She popped the cap off, then started writing.

  5

  Krys

  It was about eight o’clock when Krys arrived at the free clinic after a long ER shift.

  For most of the clinic patients, the night was winding down. They’d come to see the doctor on call about injuries they sustained at work or illnesses their kids came down with at school, but now that it was getting late, they had practical matters to attend to. Meals, homework, and family responsibilities didn’t stop just because someone got sick.

  As a result, evenings in the clinic were usually pretty quiet, with just a few patients trickling in here and there until closing time at eleven. It was a good time to get caught up on the mountain of paperwork and medical supply orders that needed to be done to keep the place running smoothly.

  Krys enjoyed the lull because it gave her a chance to catch her breath after a hectic day in the emergency department, and being here was preferable to her empty, endlessly boring apartment.

  “Hey, Krys,” Mary said from the check-in counter when she walked through the door. “How’s your day going?”

  “Good,” Krys answered. “I got to see first-hand why it’s a terrible idea to leave potato salad sitting out in the sun at a picnic.”

  “Food poisoning?” Mary asked with a cringe.

  “A whole family,” Krys said, rolling her eyes. “They won’t make that mistake again. How’s it going here?”

  “Fine,” Mary answered as she got up to let Krys into the back area. As she pushed open the door, she said, “It’s been quiet this afternoon, and you know what that means.”

  In unison, they said, “It’s gonna get crazy.”

  Mary was about ten years younger than Krys, in her mid-twenties, and she’d been volunteering at the clinic for about two years, making her one of its senior staff members. It didn’t take long before a new volunteer could start to predict the ebbs and flows of patient traffic, and sometimes they entertained themselves by taking bets on the types of cases they’d see.

  “Malik’s mom called earlier,” Mary said. “She’s bringing him in for a breathing treatment after dinner, so that should be any time now. Oh, and your friend’s here.”

  “My friend?” Krys asked, furrowing her brow. All her friends worked in the hospital with her – why would they come to the free clinic for treatment?

  “Darcy,” Mary said, and Krys’s feet suddenly felt a little heavier. She lingered in the hallway with Mary instead of going back to the treatment room.

  “Oh, right. Russell told me she’s worked a couple of shifts,” Krys said. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s really good,” Mary said. Then she smiled and added, “She might even give you a run for your money when it comes to ruthless efficiency.”

  “No one works more efficiently than me,” Krys said with a smirk. Then because she couldn’t think of any more reasons to delay going back to the treatment room, she said, “I’ll talk to you later. Let me know when Malik and his mom arrive.”

  As she walked down the short hall to the treatment room, she wondered what kind of crazy superpower Ivy had to make her get this flustered at the very idea of being in a room with Darcy again. She was just a woman with a wild streak when it came to medical interventions.

  Two of the beds in the treatment room were occupied. Krys’s eyes went immediately to Darcy, wearing a pair of plain navy scrubs and removing a blood pressure cuff from her patient’s arm at bed three. She flashed Krys a smile when she saw her – she looked genuinely happy to see her, probably because Krys had gotten her out of those horrible meet-up groups.

  Krys could think of nothing more mortifying than trying to make friends by showing up to do activities with a group of strangers. Luckily, she didn’t have to worry about that because she had the emergency department, the free clinic, and very little time for anything else.

  Russell was standing at bed number one, wrapping a bandage around the ankle of a teenage girl in a field hockey uniform. Krys waited near the file cabinets along the opposite wall and heard the final part of his conversation as he explained to the girl’s worried mother that it was just a sprain.

  “There’s a lot of swelling but no break,” he said. “Just stay off it until the pain subsides – that should only be a couple of days – and you should be ready to hit the field again at full capacity in about a month.”

  The girl put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and hopped off the bed, keeping her injured foot up. Russell helped them out of the treatment room, then came back and Krys flagged him down.

  “Hey,” she said. “I’m here to relieve you. Anything I need to know?”
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  “Nope,” Russell said. “It’s been a pretty routine night. Your girl over there is a great addition to the team – thanks for recommending her.”

  Krys glanced over at Darcy, who was taking great care with her patient, an elderly woman who seemed at ease with her. “I’m glad she’s working out. I better get to work, huh?”

  “Yeah, get to it, lazy bones,” Russell teased her.

  Then he headed out of the treatment room and Krys went over to Darcy and her patient. She smiled at Darcy from the other side of the bed, then addressed the elderly woman. “Hi, I’m Dr. Stevens. What brings you in tonight?”

  “I can’t stand these summer allergies anymore,” the woman said, her eyes watery and her nose red.

  “Yeah, you don’t look so good,” Krys said sympathetically. “Do you mind if I listen to your lungs?”

  Krys ended up confirming the allergy diagnosis and she prescribed the appropriate medication for the woman. She’d seen patients like her plenty of times before and knew that a recommendation for the more common over-the-counter stuff would go ignored simply because of the expense of the pills. They came to the clinic to get a prescription so that their insurance could pay for the medicine – and this woman was one of the lucky ones who actually had insurance.

  Krys walked the woman to the door, and then realized that she was alone in the treatment room with Darcy. Where the hell is Malik when you need him? she thought to herself as she checked the time. It was a quarter to nine and Krys felt anxious about the idea of being alone with her MacGyver.

  Fortunately, Darcy didn’t seem to be anxious at all. She picked up her cane from the end of bed five and walked over to Krys. Her limp seemed a little less pronounced now, or maybe that was just down to the aid of the cane.

  “I haven’t had the chance to thank you for telling me about this place yet,” she said. “And for putting in a good word with Russell for me.”

  “I only told him you’d be calling,” Krys said. She might have forgotten her initial horror at the sight of the Bic pen sticking out of that patient’s neck and gone on an enthusiastic rant about how impressive Darcy was, but she let that remain unsaid for now. She loosened up a little bit and asked, “So you like it here?”

  “Very much,” Darcy said. “If I were at home right now, I’d either be on my third consecutive hour of Dancing with the Stars reruns, or maybe paragliding with strangers. So thank you for saving me from that.”

  Krys cracked up.

  “I’ve never been to a meet-up,” she said. “Is that really an option?”

  “Probably,” Darcy said, grinning at her. She had the most gorgeous, expressive dark eyes. “I’ve only been doing it for about two months but so far we’ve done yoga by the lake, participated in a drum circle, learned how to play pinochle, and in a couple of weeks we’re going to be painting nudes.”

  Krys laughed again. “You’ve got to be making some of those up.”

  Darcy just shrugged. “Nope. I mean, I didn’t do very well at yoga on the lake on account of my leg, but it happened.”

  “I would never be brave enough to try all that stuff,” Krys said.

  “You don’t strike me as a shy person,” Darcy said. “I watched you working on Freddie in the ER – you were the loudest person in the room.”

  Krys’s cheeks colored and she wasn’t sure whether to take this as a compliment or a criticism. She decided to ignore it altogether and just say, “I’m at home when I’m working. It’s been so long since I’ve had time for life outside of the hospital, I’m afraid my social skills have atrophied.”

  “Well, maybe you can come paint with me, then,” Darcy said. She tapped her thigh and said, “Consider it physical therapy for your social skills.”

  “I don’t think so,” Krys said, and she was sure that her cheeks were a bright crimson by now. “Painting’s not really my medium.”

  “It’s not mine, either,” Darcy said. “I wasn’t crazy about the idea at first, either, but it’s sort of fun to do things that are totally outside your comfort zone. If nothing else, I’ve got a lot of crazy stories to tell now.”

  Krys smiled – she was on the verge of telling Darcy that she admired that, but then the treatment room door opened and Mary came in with Malik and his mother, saying, “Look who we’ve got here!”

  “Hey, buddy!” Krys said, happy to see him because he was one of her favorite patients and because it was a welcome distraction from her conversation with Darcy.

  Malik was eight years old and he had an advanced case of cystic fibrosis. Krys had known him ever since he was five and his mother would bring him to the ER, or else to the pediatrics department to see Lily. Malik’s mom worked two part-time jobs and had two other kids to care for, so the free clinic turned out to be a godsend for her and Malik.

  Krys saw him here at least once a month for breathing treatments and other non-emergency issues, and even though she didn’t like the idea of playing favorites with her patients, she had a soft spot for him. Everyone did.

  “How are you feeling today?” Krys asked as she met him and his mother and guided them to bed two. She waved Darcy over as Malik scrambled onto the bed, his mother holding his nasal canula out of the way and setting his oxygen tank at the foot of the bed.

  “I’m okay,” he said. His voice was thick with mucus and Krys could actually hear him struggling to fill his lungs. But he met her with a smile and said, “We’re learning about space at school right now and my solar system was the best one in the class.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty cool!” Krys said. She snapped on a pair of gloves to examine him and Malik pulled up his t-shirt to let her listen to his lungs as if it were completely normal behavior.

  For him, it was – he’d been sick his whole life and the fact that it never dampened his spirits was what she loved about him. He would chatter about whatever interesting things he was learning and the fun stuff his older brothers were getting into throughout his entire visit every time he came to the clinic, and by the time he left, everyone would have a smile on their face.

  “Mom, did you bring it?” Malik asked as Krys tucked his shirt back down.

  “I did, baby,” she said, reaching into her purse. While Krys pointed Darcy to the nebulizer in the storage closet, Malik’s mom, Chantal, passed him a small blue orb about the size of a walnut.

  He grinned as he handed it to Krys.

  “I brought this for you,” he said. “It’s Neptune.”

  She took it, inspecting the little white streaks that Malik had painted onto the wooden ball.

  “Neptune’s a cold planet,” he explained, his small chest rising and falling with effort. “I want you to have it because it reminds me of how I feel after I leave here.”

  “Cold?” Krys asked with a frown.

  Malik looked to his mom for help and Chantal said, “He told me his lungs feel chilly and cleared out after his breathing treatments, like what it might be like to breathe on Neptune.”

  “That’s great,” Krys said, tucking the little orb into the pocket of her white coat. “I’m going to find a special place for it. Thanks, Malik.”

  Darcy came back with the nebulizer and Krys showed her how to load it with medication that would help clear Malik’s airways of the mucus that collected in his lungs. They sat with him and his mother for about an hour, periodically checking the nebulizer and switching out the sequence of medications to complete his breathing treatment, and Chantal told Krys that they were getting closer to the top of the lung transplant list.

  Malik was looking more energized by the time his treatment was finished and he gave Krys a hug after he hopped down from the bed. Then he hugged Darcy, too, and thanked her for helping him with the nebulizer.

  After they left the treatment room, Krys showed Darcy the planet he’d given her and said, “He’s a great kid – I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone with a more positive attitude about a terminal condition. If he gets that lung transplant, it could extend his life ten y
ears or more.”

  “I hope he does,” Darcy said.

  Krys went over to the file cabinets to grab a clipboard and take a few notes on Malik’s visit and Darcy changed the sheets in the beds where patients had been that evening. It was about ten-thirty by the time they both finished, and the chances of another patient coming in the last half-hour before closing was slim.

  So Krys pulled up a couple of rolling stools, shoving one in Darcy’s direction and watching as she caught it with grace and sat down.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Krys said before she lost her nerve. “You turn into MacGyver in a crisis and you have excellent bedside manner. You got injured on a tour in Iraq and you have an affinity for public humiliation in the form of meet-up groups. I think that’s all I know about you.”

  “Isn’t that a lot?” Darcy asked with a grin. “All I know about you is that you work hard and you seem to like keeping the focus on other people. Am I wrong about that?”

  “No,” Krys said. “The hospital just keeps me really busy and I’m not sure there’s very much else that’s interesting about me.”

  “I find that very hard to believe,” Darcy said, those dark eyes drawing Krys in. “So all your friends work at the hospital or here. What about romantic interests?”

  Krys was shocked at Darcy’s forwardness – she’d been more than curious about Darcy’s romantic situation, but she never would have come right out and asked. She looked down at her hands folded in her lap and tried not to fidget.

  “What about them?” she asked.

  “No time for love?” Darcy asked, feigning horror. “Not even a tryst in the hospital call room?”

  Krys rolled her eyes. “That’s so stereotypical. You watch too much television.”

  “I bet it happens,” Darcy said, and Krys was forced to relent.

  She laughed and said, “Yeah, it does. Just not to me.”

  “That’s very professional of you,” Darcy teased, and Krys had just about enough of sitting in the hot seat, so she flipped the conversation – again.