Lakeside Hospital Box Set

by Cara Malone

  “Yes,” Lily said, pushing the library door open before Mercedes had a chance to drive her any crazier. The librarian was sitting with his feet up on his desk and he rushed to put them on the floor as they entered.

  “Hi, Dr. Thomas,” he said. Her name in his mouth had none of the fire-igniting effect that it had when it crossed Mercedes’ lips.

  “Hi, Brian,” Lily said, then smirked as she noticed his I just got caught slacking at work posture and said, “At ease, soldier.”

  She introduced Mercedes to him, then led Mercedes over to a bank of computers in the center of the room. Brian put his feet back on the desk. “We’re closing in forty-five minutes, just so you know. Do you need any help?”

  “I’ve got this,” Mercedes said. “We’ll be out of your hair soon.”

  Brian nodded, then picked up a medical journal he’d been reading. Lily sat down and pulled up a blank document, then looked at Mercedes expectantly. “I’ve never written one of these before – where do we start?”

  Mercedes walked her through it, dictating the format and some options for different wording choices, until eventually she was talking faster than Lily’s fingers could keep up and Mercedes rolled her chair into Lily’s, using her hips to bump her playfully out of the way. Then she took over typing, explaining aloud as she wrote.

  Lily let her work, admiring how easily the words came to Mercedes – left to her own devices, Lily probably would have been so intimidated by the idea of asking for so much money that she wouldn’t have moved past writing down the date by the time Brian came over and rested his arm on the top of the low dividing wall between the work stations.

  “It’s closing time,” he said apologetically.

  Lily looked up, suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that Mercedes’ thigh was still pressed up against hers from when she’d nudged Lily out of the way. How unprofessional! She scooted away and stammered, “Has it been forty-five minutes already?”

  She could have sworn it was only ten.

  “Yep,” Brian said. “But if you two are still working, I could let you lock up-”

  “No,” Lily said quickly. “Thanks, though. That was a good start, right, Dr. Stone?”

  “Yeah,” Mercedes said, sending what they had so far to Lily’s email and logging out. Brian wandered back to his desk to gather his things and Mercedes pulled Lily to her feet. “We’ve got the bones of the proposal in place – now we need to refine it and give it a good polish. To do that well, I’d love to hear more about your plans for the Graft 3D machine.”

  “Sure,” Lily said. “Maybe next week-”

  “How about right now?” Mercedes asked. “I’m hungry, and you need to eat well to keep the baby healthy. Want to come to dinner with me?”

  “Mercedes,” Lily said, lowering her voice. “I told you I’m not in a position to date right now.”

  “Then don’t think of it as a date,” Mercedes said. “It’s a working dinner – that’s all.”

  Lily pressed her lips together stubbornly and tried not to look into those beautiful, dark eyes for too long. They could make her do anything. “Okay – a working dinner.”

  Mercedes grinned, then held out her arm to lead Lily out of the library.

  Lily insisting on driving separately. It made sense because they lived on opposite ends of Evanston, and because coworkers having a working dinner didn’t need to carpool. Lily wasn’t born yesterday – she knew Mercedes wasn’t done trying to seduce her – and she also knew that if she let her guard down and really started getting to know her, it would work.

  They went to a pizza place with a casual dining atmosphere, per Lily’s insistence, and she was relieved to find the dining room packed when they arrived. They got a table and had a brief squabble over pizza toppings – Mercedes was a sausage and pepperoni kind of woman, while Lily had been drooling over the anticipation of green olives ever since the possibility of pizza was brought up.

  “Fine,” Mercedes said. “But green olives are the most disgusting type of olives, right after black olives and every other kind of olives.”

  Lily laughed. “We can order them on half, or we can get personal-sized pizzas.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Mercedes said. “We’ll get them on the whole pizza, that way you can eat your fill and I’ll just pick them off if I don’t like them.”

  “If?” Lily asked, giving Mercedes a confused look.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never actually tried them. They just sound disgusting. Who wants to ruin a perfectly good pizza with such a strong topping?”

  “Just wait,” Lily said. “I’ve only recently become an olive convert, but I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Oh, so this is a pregnancy craving,” Mercedes said. She cracked up and added, “Good, so that means your pizza tastes probably aren’t always awful.”

  Lily narrowed her eyes at her, and before she had a chance to defend her tastes, Mercedes leaned across the table and said, “So, you wanted this to be a working dinner and I’d hate to go back on my promise. Tell me why you specialized in pediatric burn treatment.”

  Lily glanced down at the cup in front of her. It was ice water with a little wedge of lemon, and she’d already nervously squeezed all the juice out of it.

  This subject always came up sooner or later, and she never minded telling her story to her friends, her coworkers, and even strangers when she presented at conferences and did the occasional guest lecture at the medical school. But it never went well when she had to talk about it with potential romantic partners – sooner or later, it became a problem.

  She’d been secretly hoping that Mercedes would go back to Seattle without ever learning about this part of Lily’s past. That way, she could remember her as that insanely attractive hot shot obstetrician who had flirted with her and liked her without ever coming face to face with the ugly side of her that had scared so many other women away.

  And Mercedes could remember Lily as someone who was fun and flirty – the woman she wanted to be instead of the woman she was.

  But nope, everything was about to come out. If this was a working dinner, then Mercedes would need to know the reason why the Graft 3D machine was so important to Lily. It was better that it came out right now and not at the end of the night when Lily had let her guard down and forgotten about the working part of the dinner.

  She took a deep breath.

  “It’s personal,” she said, switching into a factual, almost robotic retelling of the story she’d told so many times before. “When I was eight, my parents took my older brothers and me camping. They never really got to do that kind of thing when my brothers were young because money was always tight. I’m ten years younger than my oldest brother, and by the time I was old enough to camp, my parents had better jobs and they actually had the money to take vacations. We only went camping once, though.”

  “What happened?” Mercedes asked.

  “I was being a bratty kid sister,” Lily said. “My brothers – Conrad and Jace – were playing football and I just wanted them to notice me. I pestered them relentlessly until they finally let me play, and I tried to intercept a throw that was way over my head. I was running backward, desperately trying to catch the ball so as not to confirm what my brothers already knew – that I was an annoying little girl they were too old to play with. I was so focused I didn’t hear them yelling. I tripped and fell into the campfire.”

  Mercedes’ hand went to her mouth. Lily paused, wondering if she’d want to hear more, then Mercedes asked, “How bad was it?”

  “My pants were synthetic fabric. They caught fire and basically fused to my left leg,” Lily said. “I sustained severe burns, mostly on my thigh, and spent two months in the hospital. I most likely would have died if it hadn’t been for the fast actions of one of my doctors.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mercedes said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Why would you?” Lily asked. She tried to shake it off, avoiding Mercedes’ eyes.
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br />   Then the pizza came, hot and oozing with melted cheese, making Lily’s stomach rumble ferociously. She grabbed a slice before Mercedes had a chance to express any more sympathy, then Mercedes surprised her. She took Lily’s free hand from across the table and waited until Lily made eye contact to say, “Thank you for sharing that with me. I think I understand you a little more now.”

  Then she let go of Lily’s hand and grabbed a slice of her own. They’d landed on pepperoni and green olives, and Lily watched as Mercedes took a big bite and chewed for an awfully long time before she finally swallowed.

  Her face was unreadable and Lily had to laugh. “Well? Are green olives as disgusting as you expected?”

  “No,” Mercedes said reluctantly, then took another bite and said, “They’re actually pretty good.”

  “Told you,” Lily said.

  The flirtation was back in Mercedes’ eyes as she looked across the table at her and a wave of relief washed over Lily. Her lungs filled with air and she realized that she hadn’t taken a full, deep breath since she started telling that story. Nothing had changed... yet.

  She took her first bite of pizza, letting out a happy moan as her taste buds came alive. They talked about her pregnancy – everything was going well and her mother was becoming a helicopter grandmother already – and they talked about Mercedes’ life in Seattle.

  “All you ever talk about is work,” Lily pointed out after Mercedes spent about ten minutes talking proudly about her research. “What do you do for fun?”

  “What’s that?” Mercedes joked.

  “Okay,” Lily said, accepting the challenge to break down Mercedes’ walls, “What are your friends like?”

  “Well, my research assistant – Charlie Knowlton – he’s fun when he’s not concentrating on the work,” Mercedes said. Then she frowned and added, “Although he’s basically not speaking to me right now since I had to leave him in charge of the clinical trial. One of the other oncologists and I get drinks from time to time-”

  Now it was Lily’s turn to interrupt. “Do you have friends outside of the hospital?”

  “Do you?” Mercedes asked, and Lily had to smile.

  “Okay, fair enough,” she said. It was true – everyone she saw socially on a regular basis was either a Lakeside employee or the wife or girlfriend of a Lakeside employee. She took another slice of pizza, avoiding Mercedes’ gaze as she asked her next question. “Did you leave someone behind in Seattle?”

  “No,” Mercedes said, her eyes going wide at the idea, then she softened. “I mean, it’s not like I ever had much time for all that – a girlfriend, building a family. My work is more important right now.” She blanched, then added, “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Lily said. “I’ve always wanted both – a career and a family.”

  “And you went out there and made it happen,” Mercedes said. “I admire that.”

  Lily smiled at her. For the first time since they’d met, the confident mask that Mercedes always wore had fallen away – only momentarily, but Lily was sure that she was looking at the real Mercedes in that moment. It gave her the confidence to say, “I’ve been thinking about your proposition.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one about getting to know each other,” Lily said. “It’s not such a bad idea after all – I mean, just while you’re in town.”

  A broad smile spread slowly across Mercedes’ lips and the confidence came washing back over her. “Dr. Thomas, are you asking me out?”

  “I guess so,” Lily said. “I mean, you hardly ever leave me alone as it is, so we might as well enjoy it.”

  Mercedes said, “I accept,” then she nudged Lily’s foot beneath the table and added, “I knew you liked me.”

  “That was never in question,” Lily said. She picked up the last piece of pizza on the tray and said, “Well, since we’re getting to know each other now, why are you in Evanston?”

  Mercedes looked away. Lily thought for a minute that she was going to dodge the question, but then she looked back at Lily and said, “My mother is sick.”

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Lily said, alarmed. “Is… she dying?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Mercedes said. She paused for a long time, then said with great weight, “She’s a hoarder. My sister has been taking care of her but things are getting worse and she asked me to come home and help. I’ve only been in the house once – my mom refused to let me come back in after I moved some newspapers – and her therapy sessions are slow going. I’m skeptical this is going to be solved by December, and it’s so frustrating because the whole problem is just a lot of stuff. If she would just throw it away, we’d be done by now.”

  Lily nodded to show understanding, but it was a hard thing to wrap her head around and she would have had an easier time coming up with a comforting response for an illness she was familiar with – the more common cancer or dementia, or a pediatric disease. Hoarding wasn’t one of the mental illnesses that she studied in school because it didn’t happen often to kids, and certainly not as severely as it had taken hold of Mercedes’ mother.

  “I’m sorry,” was all she could manage, and then Mercedes took a deep breath and all the pain on her face disappeared as she pushed it away.

  “It’s okay,” Mercedes said. “We’re working on it. Please don’t tell anyone about this, okay? I haven’t really told anyone that’s why I’m here.”

  “Of course,” Lily said. She reached across the table and took Mercedes’ hand, glad to be in her confidence even if she couldn’t find anything truly comforting to say. “If you ever want to talk more about it, I’m here.”

  “I know,” Mercedes said. “Thank you.”

  Then her foot climbed a little way up Lily’s calf beneath the table.

  9

  Mercedes

  It took Mercedes’ mother close to a month to forgive her for moving things in the kitchen the first time she was permitted into the house.

  Well, forgive wasn’t quite the word for it. Mercedes had tried everything from apologizing to yelling, begging to threatening, to get her mother to agree to a second visit because the longer she kept her out of the house, the longer Mercedes would be stuck in Evanston. Dr. Silva said none of that would help, and darn if he wasn’t right.

  What finally worked was a compromise brokered by the therapist. Mercedes promised not to ransack her mother’s things like last time, or throw stuff away like Jewel had done when she tried to help in the past. In exchange, their mother would allow Mercedes into the house twice a week so they could go through the mess together and organize, not pitch.

  Whatever’ll get the fire hazards resolved, Mercedes had thought as she went to the hardware store and stocked up on about two dozen large, clear plastic bins. Once upon a time her mother had tried a similar solution – that’s how they ended up with so many plastic bins in the hallway – but she’d had a hard time sticking to the system on her own. Mercedes would need to take point on this project.

  She had two of the bins in the passenger seat of her rental car as she pulled into her mother’s driveway on a chilly Saturday morning in October. It would have been a much more enjoyable use of her one Saturday a month off work if she could have taken Lily out to brunch, or maybe they could check out the art museums in Chicago.

  Hell, Mercedes would even rather take her mother out to brunch. But they’d made a deal – they were going to fill up four bins per week, two on each of Mercedes’ days off, until the clutter was under control and there were no more trip hazards, fire hazards, or any other kinds of hazards.

  Her mother was waiting for her on the porch, her arms crossed in front of her chest before Mercedes had even wrangled the plastic bins out of the car. Great – it was going to be a battle.

  “Good morning, Mom,” Mercedes said, putting on a fake smile as she walked up the steps. “Are you ready to get to work?”

  “No, I’m tired,” her mother said, snatching one of the bins out of Mercedes’ hand.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you and your sister, and that nosy Dr. Silva, I’m fine here. I don’t need help.”

  You’re not fine, Mercedes wanted to say, but that would only throw gasoline on the fire. She’d been doing all sorts of deep breathing exercises that morning to keep from agitating her mother because the more resistance she put up, the longer this would take. The fact that they were cutting into her mother’s sleeping time after her shift could work in Mercedes’ favor though.

  “I know,” she said calmly. “All I want to do is make sure your house is safe, then I’ll leave you alone – I promise.”

  Gladly.

  Her mother let her into the house and it was a little easier this time. Mercedes wasn’t going in blind – she knew what to expect and she’d done her best to mentally map out the problem areas that she’d seen so far. By Mercedes’ calculations, if they filled four bins every week, stacking everything neatly and safely around the perimeters of each room, she could be back in Seattle in December just like she’d originally planned.

  Right about the time when Lily would be entering her third trimester.

  Mercedes smiled despite her surroundings – she and Lily had been seeing a lot of each other since their pizza date-but-not-really, and it was pleasantly simple to think about her life in Evanston in relation to Lily. Lily’s shift ends at six. Lily has dinner with her parents once a week, but likes to get coffee and dessert with me after. Lily usually has time in her day around one p.m. and doesn’t mind if I pull her into a call room for a quick make-out session.

  Mercedes found that it was pretty easy to lure Lily to the obstetrics department when there was a lull in the middle of the day, too – all she had to do was offer Lily an opportunity to listen to her baby’s heartbeat with the Doppler, or show her the growing outline of her child on an ultrasound machine. The baby was a healthy one, growing big and strong already, and Mercedes was the first person Lily ran to when she’d been catching up on patient charts in her office one morning and felt the baby kick for the first time.