Lakeside Hospital Box Set

by Cara Malone

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Do you think I’d be going to movies with strangers if I had a girlfriend?” Darcy asked, not breaking Krys’s gaze as she spoke. Krys felt a flutter in her stomach as the implication of Darcy’s words sank in, but if anything, it made her want to flee the conversation all the more. It meant the suspicion that Darcy was flirting with her earlier wasn’t just something Krys had pulled out of thin air.

  It was possible that she really did want to paint nude models with her.

  Krys could feel the palpable distance between them, a matter of just a few feet between their rolling stools, alone in the treatment room. Was it just her, or had the air grown hotter by at least ten degrees?

  “Hey,” she said, looking at the time again. It was fifteen minutes til close and they still had a lot of work to do. “We need to finish up the night’s paperwork and get the floor mopped. Can you file Malik’s patient chart while I get the bucket?”

  Darcy smiled as if she could see right through Krys and her transparent topic changes, then said casually, “Sure.”

  6

  Darcy

  Maybe it was the stir-craziness of being home alone all the time, or the dubious success of Darcy’s meet-up attempts, or the fact that she hadn’t fallen for anyone since her last girlfriend left the service at the end of her deployment three years ago.

  Maybe it was simple curiosity, or even chemical attraction at play, but Darcy was curious about Krys.

  She was ambitious and driven, and even though she seemed to put a lot of emphasis on work and very little on her personal life, Darcy could tell she had a big heart. That much was obvious when she interacted with Malik and the way she took time to make sure every single patient got what he or she needed before they left the clinic.

  Plus, she was drop-dead gorgeous, with long, silky hair and high, elegant cheekbones. Darcy could stare at Krys all day as she moved gracefully around the clinic from patient to patient, and sometimes she had to stop herself from doing just that.

  They worked together a couple more times and Darcy made it a goal to pull a few bricks off Krys’s walls with every interaction. On their second shift together, she found out that Krys was from Denver and that she talked to her parents on the phone religiously once a week.

  On their third shared shift, she learned that Krys enjoyed painting when she was younger, but she hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in years.

  On their fourth shift, Krys volunteered the fact that she, too, took guilty pleasure in Dancing with the Stars, although she usually only caught snippets of it when it happened to be on in patient rooms or the television mounted near the ceiling in the ER waiting room.

  And on their fifth shift, Darcy decided to take a leap of faith and ask Krys out.

  She had no reason to believe it would work – Krys made it abundantly clear that her work came above everything else, and the speed with which she moved around the clinic said she didn’t have time for dating. Darcy hadn’t made a single genuine friend in the meet-up groups since she came home, but she felt a connection with Krys. One that couldn’t be ignored.

  When Darcy arrived for the start of her evening shift around eight p.m., Krys was already there and Darcy hoped that her eyes weren’t telegraphing her intentions. She wanted them to say hello and not I’ve been thinking about you all week and praying you don’t turn me down when I ask you out.

  She’d have to wait for a good moment to ask, though. The clinic was busy tonight and Darcy had to jump right in to help out. Krys pointed her to bed four, where five-year-old twins were scratching their arms and legs relentlessly from playing in a patch of poison ivy. Darcy didn’t need to wait for Krys to treat them – she’d seen plenty of that particular rash in her own childhood and knew what to do.

  After the poison ivy, she saw a diabetic woman who needed her insulin level checked and then a man who’d given himself a second degree burn while tinkering with his new grill. Darcy took pride in each patient that she was able to treat without calling Krys away from the more severe cases, but it would have been nice to have a slow night like she’d grown accustomed to.

  It was the weekend, though, and Russell had told her to expect busier shifts on summer weekends.

  So she worked around Krys all night, crossing paths with her but not meeting for more than a minute here and there. All Darcy wanted was about five minutes alone with her to settle the debate that had been raging in her head all week.

  Interested or not?

  It was almost ten o’clock by the time the steady stream of patients finally died down and she got her chance. There was one other staff member at the clinic, a nurse named Aisha that Darcy had met on her first day, and she offered to hold down the fort for Krys to take a quick break.

  “You look exhausted,” she said. “When’s the last time you ate?”

  Krys looked a little taken aback by this, and actually had to do some mental math to come up with an answer. Darcy smiled at this – it was cute even if her determination to focus on her work to the detriment of all else was a little scary. Then Krys said, “Dinner last night. I had chicken and it was very filling.”

  Aisha just rolled her eyes. “It’s ten p.m. – it can’t have been that filling. Go eat. There’s no one here and Darcy and I will call you back immediately if we need you.”

  “We’re almost done for the night,” Krys objected, but Aisha insisted.

  That seemed to be a trend – Darcy had noticed the other clinic volunteers looking out for Krys and Russell both, making sure that they didn’t overextend themselves. Perhaps there was something in their personalities that made them go into emergency medicine and then push aside everything else.

  “Fine,” Krys said. She rolled her eyes, but sounded genuine when she thanked Aisha. Darcy watched her walk out of the treatment room, going into the little volunteer locker room to grab a granola bar out of her bag, and then she went out the side door that led to a small courtyard behind the building.

  “She’s going to eat that granola bar and it’s going to be all she has today,” Aisha said, rolling her eyes as she turned to the bedsheets that she had been changing. “That girl is going to collapse someday simply from forgetting to eat properly.”

  Darcy saw her window of opportunity and she lunged at it.

  “I brought a sandwich just in case we weren’t busy,” she said. “I’m not hungry but she might want it. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Good,” Aisha said. “Force-feed her if she tries to refuse it.”

  Darcy laughed, then walked out of the treatment room as quickly as she could without betraying her eagerness. She retrieved the turkey sandwich from the lunch bag she’d packed – one of her father’s, with his airline’s logo on the outside – then went to meet Krys.

  She found her sitting at a picnic table in the small, fenced-in courtyard. It was dark except for a streetlamp a few yards away, and there was actually a pretty nice view of Evanston. The clinic sat on a slight hill so the picnic bench looked out over a main road that led downtown.

  Krys looked expectantly at Darcy when she let the door shut behind her. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No,” Darcy said, her voice coming out a little higher-pitched than usual.

  A part of her wanted to chicken out because she was pretty sure this gorgeous workaholic was about to turn her down cold. But if she could run through an active battle zone with bombs going off a few yards away to save her friends, she could buck up and do what she came out here to do.

  “How’s the granola bar treating you?” she asked.

  Krys wiggled the empty wrapper at her and said, “It kind of just made me hungrier.”

  Darcy came over and sat down on the same side of the picnic table, pretending to be there for the sake of the view, and then she held her sandwich out to Krys. “I made this in case we weren’t busy tonight. It’s turkey and provolone - do you want it?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I’m not
hungry after that blistered second-degree burn I treated,” Darcy lied. It had the intended effect, though, as Krys took the sandwich out of her hand with a laugh.

  “Amateur,” she said. “I could eat a sandwich off of a second-degree burn. That stuff just doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “Tell me that after you’ve seen what a landmine can do to the leg of a guy you spent six years eating next to in the mess hall,” Darcy said, and then immediately regretted it. So much for setting a romantic mood – she’d intended to come out here and make her intentions known, not talk shop.

  “You must have seen a lot of ugly stuff in the war,” Krys said. She set down the sandwich and then Darcy felt like she was failing at everything she’d set out to do.

  Time to switch tactics.

  “I have, but that’s not really why I came out here,” she said.

  “Thanks for the sandwich,” Krys said, picking it up again and taking a big bite. Around a mouthful of turkey, she said, “I don’t remember the last time I ate anything that didn’t come from a vending machine or go in the microwave, so I thank you and so does my stomach.”

  “It’s nothing,” Darcy said. “Just some cold cuts.”

  “It’s more than I would have bothered with if I’d just gone home after my shift,” Krys said.

  “Well, I’m glad I did it, then,” Darcy said. Then she turned to Krys and pumped herself up for rejection. “Krys?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you like to get together outside the clinic sometime?” she asked. It had sounded a lot smoother in her head, but now that it was out there, it would have to do. She hurried to add, “I mean, if free time is a thing you ever actually experience, I’d love to take you out.”

  Then she waited. The darkness made the moment stretch on for far too long, and the longer she had to wait, the more certain she was that it would be a no. A hell no. A what were you thinking? Maybe even an Umm, I’m straight, actually.

  Then Krys said, “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “I’m sorry,” Darcy said quickly. “I didn’t mean to assume anything-”

  “I just don’t date,” Krys said, interrupting her. “I don’t have the time.”

  Then before Darcy had a chance to process the rejection that she’d known all along was coming, the back door flew open and Mary from the front desk yelled, “Krys, I need you!”

  “See?” Krys said to Darcy with a wry smile, then she got up and practically flew back inside the clinic. Darcy grabbed the remnants of her sandwich and threw it away in the garbage can at the end of the picnic table, then ran inside to find out what was going on.

  “I was getting ready to close the clinic,” Mary was saying as she led Krys up to the waiting room rather than the treatment room. “I sent Aisha home because there was no one here, and not five minutes later this woman came in with her son. He looks bad.”

  “Shit,” Krys said when she saw them. Darcy wasn’t far behind, and she would have chosen a similar expletive.

  There was a young-looking mother sitting on the floor in the middle of the waiting room, cradling her pre-teen son in her lap. He looked to be between eleven and twelve, and his clothes were drenched with sweat. He was coughing uncontrollably and his color was pallid. Darcy wasn’t used to sickness like this – most of what she treated in the line of duty was injury, and she did okay with that kind of thing in the clinic.

  But this…

  Krys didn’t miss a beat, though.

  “Mary, go call 911. We need an ambulance,” she said. “Darcy, go in the back and get me gloves, some ice packs, and a portable oxygen tank.”

  Darcy ran to the back of the clinic as fast as she could, forgetting about her limp entirely as she moved single-mindedly to retrieve the things Krys needed. Her thigh ached but she ignored it as adrenaline pumped through her veins. By the time she got back to the waiting room just a minute or two later, Krys was talking to the boy’s mother.

  “No habla ingles?” she asked. “Does he speak English?”

  “Si,” the mother said, pointing to her son and looking utterly helpless. But the boy was sliding in and out of consciousness, and it was clear that Krys wasn’t going to be able to talk to him, either.

  “Ambulance is on its way,” Mary called from behind the counter. “Three minutes.”

  “Good,” Krys said. She pulled Darcy down to the floor beside her and Darcy held the supplies she’d asked for in her lap to keep them from being contaminated by the floor. Krys grabbed a pair of gloves and said, “We have to get his temperature down. Start putting ice packs on him.”

  She tried to put the oxygen mask over the boy’s mouth, but he had a prolonged coughing fit and Krys moved the mask away while his mother massaged his back. The cough was wet and sounded painful, and Darcy did her best to keep an ice pack steady on his forehead. He was burning up, his skin hotter than seemed possible.

  When his coughing subsided, the boy slipped into unconsciousness again and Krys leaned forward to attempt to place the oxygen mask. The boy coughed again, hard, and Darcy felt wet droplets spraying her face.

  “Dios mio!” his mother cried, pulling him tighter into her arms, and when Darcy looked at Krys, she saw little blood speckles all over her face.

  “Shit!” Darcy said, trying to still the panic rising in her throat. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Krys said. “Probably not good, though. Mary, stay behind the glass in case it’s contagious.”

  Darcy could feel her heart in the back of her throat and she wanted to ask Krys what she was thinking. Surely she had a theory, but with the two of them looking like something out of a horror movie, she probably didn’t want to say anything more that might scare the boy’s mother, especially if she only caught snippets of their conversation.

  The boy stopped coughing and slipped into unconsciousness once again just as the ambulance sirens began to wail in the distance. Krys told Darcy to meet the paramedics at the door and she led them into the waiting room while Mary stood in the window behind the check-in counter, looking horrified. It wasn’t until the EMTs loaded the boy and his mother into the ambulance that Darcy remembered the blood on her face.

  She grabbed the bottom of her scrub top, intending to wipe it off, but Krys grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll only be smearing the germs around.”

  “What do you think it is?” Darcy asked.

  “It could be tuberculosis,” Krys said.

  “I thought that wasn’t really a thing anymore,” Mary said from behind the glass.

  “It still happens,” Krys said. “It’s most common in indigent populations with close quarters where it can spread easily, and among immigrants who bring it from countries where there’s higher prevalence. We’ll all need to be tested to make sure we didn’t contract it.”

  “Oh my god,” Mary said, sounding panicked.

  “The likelihood is very slim,” Krys said. She sounded as steady as a rock, and Darcy wasn’t sure she’d ever heard her sound less than confident, even when the clinic was at its most chaotic.

  She appreciated that soothing influence now, as it kept her calm. As long as Dr. Stevens is around, nothing too bad can happen. That was the message that Darcy had seen her convey to her patients time and again through her bedside manner, and she was working her magic on Mary and Darcy now.

  “We should all go to the hospital now,” she said. “Mary, I want you to drive yourself separately because you didn’t have much contact with the patient. Darcy, you should come with me so we don’t contaminate two vehicles when one would do, okay?”

  “Okay,” Darcy said.

  She followed Krys out of the clinic and suddenly it felt like she was floating. That was what it felt like when she was on the battlefield, a zoned-in but detached presence that helped her get through the most difficult situations.

  “Is the boy going to be okay?” she asked as they climbed into
Krys’s little Honda parked out front.

  “I hope so,” Krys said. “I’ll get an update at the hospital.”

  7

  Krys

  Krys had never been on this side of the ER before, as a patient instead of a doctor. She drove behind the ambulance while Darcy sat nervously beside her and Krys did her best to calm her nerves.

  “Even if we test positive, it’s very unlikely that we’ll end up with an active strain of tuberculosis,” she said. “And that’s assuming the kid actually has it. I could be wrong.”

  “You’re not often wrong,” Darcy pointed out, and Krys had to admit she was right.

  When Krys pulled into her customary spot in the Lakeside parking lot, she paused for a moment and asked Darcy, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Darcy said. “I’ve been in plenty of crises before – although they’re usually physical threats instead of viruses. I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” Krys said, growing bold and putting her hand on Darcy’s shoulder to steady her. She could feel the firm muscle beneath her scrub top and the little car felt even smaller in that moment. Then she glanced into her rearview mirror and said, “Oh, there’s Mary. Let’s go meet her – I bet she’s freaking out.”

  Indeed, she was.

  Krys kept her distance from Mary, aware of the fact that her face was still splattered with the patient’s blood. She did her best to provide comfort to her as they walked to the ER because that was where Krys was at her peak, focusing on the medicine and thinking of everyone as patients to be treated and soothed. It was much easier to worry about Mary and Darcy than to think about herself.

  When they walked through the ambulance bay doors, the doctor on call – Whitmore – was already working on the boy. He was intubating him while the boy’s mother stood to the side, looking helpless with her hand over her mouth.

  She looked so scared and lost. Krys wanted to go to her and explain what was happening, but she couldn’t risk further exposing the people in the ER to a potential contagion. So instead, she called one of the nurses over.