by Holly Rayner
Breaks and mealtimes were rarely marked into anyone’s schedule as a cold, hard fact. Too much was always going on, and accidents were called accidents for a reason. They were not planned, and they happened at the absolute worst time for everyone. While you worked your shift, you were expected to be on call, no matter the time.
“Geez, Hallie, you signed up for an extra eight hours tonight?” Tony, taking a great gulp from his bottle of iced tea, was perplexed. “You are really a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”
Balling up the remains of her lunch to put into a recycling bin, she shrugged. “Well, Anna asked me if I could, since a couple of people are out sick. And she sort of guilted me into it…”
Tony laughed.
“Yeah, she’s good at that. Well, lemme know if you need some help. There’s a home game at the stadium tonight, so there’ll be lots of traffic, and accidents, and people gettin’ sick on too much beer and too many unwatched kids. Mark my words: we’re gonna get slammed.”
Exchanging a glance with one of the other LPNs, Hallie smiled.
“Okay, Tony, I’ll certainly mark your words.”
“Leaving the kiddo at your mom’s, then?” Natalie asked, as she stood and shoved her chair into place.
“Yes, I already called to check. She’s fine with it. She didn’t see Aaron for several days, so it’s like she’s been deprived for too long. Kinda goes into withdrawal.”
The rest of the afternoon, and part of the evening, zipped by without anyone even noticing the movement of the clock from one hour to the next. Another vehicle accident—this one involving a school bus loaded with forty students and six adults returning from a field trip—brought all hands on deck. Many minor injuries needed to be treated; those cases more severe were rushed immediately to trauma and special care, with several surgeons being called down to the main floor for assistance.
Everyone was scrambling. The scene appeared to be chaotic, yet was surprisingly controlled. Each staff member—doctors, nurses, aides, clerical, even janitorial—knew what to do. And did it. Or sought someone with more experience and authority to take over.
Once the crisis was contained, once patients were settled or transported or released, the team could grab a few breaths of relief and discuss some of the ramifications. Charts needed to be updated, phone calls to families must be made, all the important details of people picking up the pieces of their lives again had to go on.
A few other people straggled in. There were the two homeless people, looking for a place to camp out in air-conditioning during a hot night. There was the alcoholic, a regular, unsure of where he was or what he wanted. There was a lady looking for her son, who might or might not have been brought to Cranston, who might or might not have been admitted. All those out and about, drawn in for care and compassion by the well-lighted sign blinking refuge above the entrance.
Hallie had returned to the front desk, where the stockpile of those waiting had been temporarily diminished, to check on the status of a young woman brought in who had collapsed at the curb.
“BP is closer to normal,” reported Anna, speaking over her shoulder where the phone receiver rested. On hold again, reaching out for information. “Dr. Nelson is seeing her now.”
Suddenly, the ambulance bay filled up with brilliant red flashes, reflecting around the walls, as the paramedics pulled in. A clatter of the gurney and voices rattling off statistics preceded the group into the hall.
“Male, early sixties. Suspected heart attack,” the lead EMT reported as the procession made a turn and swung toward home base. “Got him stable; pain is radiating. Wife’s coming along behind; someone’s driving her.”
Hallie, stethoscope already on and ready for business, moved forward.
“Curtain 2. I’m right behind you.”
There was the usual jockeying into position, and the huffed, “One, two, three!” as the patient was transferred from wheeled stretcher to bed. Always a matter of motility, and a problem of causing as little extra trauma as possible. An oxygen mask was already in place across the man’s mouth and nose, rendering speech difficult.
“Sir, can you hear me? Can you understand me?” Searching for a heartbeat, Hallie moved the instrument over his chest, still neatly dressed in a formal white pleated shirt. “Can you tell me where the pain is located?”
Abruptly, there was movement. The patient managed to pull himself up on one elbow to tear away the mask. His blue eyes widened in shock and disbelief.
“Hal—Hallie?”
She looked up and let out a gasp.
The patient in the bed was none other than Chip Griffin.
Chapter 16
Whether it was five of fifty minutes later when she made her escape, she wasn’t sure. She had fled to the break room—thankfully empty, at that hour—poured a cup of coffee with shaking hands, and paced while she consumed it. Her thoughts might have been a series of aircrafts in a crowded flight plan, buzzing around overhead, so flustered was she; her veins felt filled with ice water, and she was light-headed from her irregular breaths.
What were the chances?
She plunked herself down at the rickety table, head in hands, trying to remember how the conversation had ensued after that first ghastly moment of recognition.
Medical treatment must necessarily come first; she could not deal with the personal aspect of her surprise meeting with Chip Griffin until she had determined just what was going on. Blood pressure readings, pulses, monitors, this check and that one; information immediately detailed to the attending physician who had just made an appearance.
After a thorough examination, Dr. Nelson had given the opinion that this was probably not a heart attack but anxiety, heartburn, or both. A lot going on? Ah. Celebrating a wedding anniversary, eh? And a supposed retirement, as well? Possibly this was just the result of too much partying. But the pain had eased for the present, yes? Well, good. He wanted Mr. Griffin kept in bed, and he would return a little later to follow up, after the patient had had time to rest.
And that was when Chip Griffin had ripped into her.
“What the hell!” he’d roared.
Hallie winced, now, remembering his expression and his tone.
“Please, Mr. Griffin—Chip—it isn’t what you think,” she’d tried to plead, all the while attempting to quiet his fury and keep his condition—whatever it might have been—from worsening.
“You don’t know at all what I’m thinkin’, young lady,” he had snarled back at her. “A nurse? You’re a nurse in this hospital? Can you kindly explain your position?”
“I’m—well, yes, I’m a nurse, in this hospital, actually, and I’ve—”
“And what about Karim Al Ahsan? And your position as a society wife? Are you married to him, or ain’t you?”
Closing her eyes in despair, Hallie had swallowed hard and tried to answer.
“Well, I’m not exactly what you—”
“Ha!” He’d pounced. Figuratively, of course. Were it possible, and he physically able, she’d feared he might have leaped over the rails and attacked her, so purple was he with rage.
“A lie. That whole show you put on Saturday night was a lie!”
“Sir, please don’t get yourself upset. You’re here for medical care, and we’re doing our best to provide it, but you mustn’t—”
“From right here in this bed, things are not lookin’ too damn good for you and your—and your—exactly what title should I give that lying snake you passed off as a husband, anyway?”
The curtain surrounding his hospital bed had provided a semblance of physical privacy. But sound carried, and she’d known everyone who could was probably listening with avid interest to every word.
“Oh, don’t be that way, I beg you!”
Poor Hallie had been miserable. Supposedly, the contract had been signed, the deal was done. But what if…? Oh, dear Lord, what if?
The old mind might have been clairvoyant, reading her mind to yank every swirling thought rig
ht out of her brain so he could pore over and dissect them to his satisfaction.
“Everything has been signed, Hallie Whatever-Your-Real-Name-Is. It’s true that we’ve finished our business, the Sheikh and I.” Griffin had leered in a manner that had struck terror into her wobbly heart. “But only to a point. You ever hear of the right of rescission? Yeah? Then you know I’ve got me three days—three whole days—to cancel the whole damned shebang.”
“But, Chip—Mr. Griffin—you can’t blame Karim for this mess. I beg you to reconsider.” She had wrung her hands until they were nearly red.
“Well, who the hell should I blame, missy? You?” the patient had demanded. “No, he lied to me all the way through, claimin’ he was such a family man, all gung-ho about buyin’ my company and doin’ somethin’ good with his project. Well, he ain’t pullin’ the wool over my eyes any longer. I have had it with such rotten cheap tricks. I’m done, do you hear me? Done! Consider the sale canceled, for all and good!”
She had caught her breath on a deep surge of pain. All that Karim had worked for, all that he had hoped, snatched away at the very last second, all because of one basically harmless falsehood which should have had no impact in the midst of some business transaction, anyway.
Hallie had tried to tell him that. He had refused to listen. Turning his head away, he’d merely clutched the sheet up over his chest and ignored her imploring words.
“Oh, don’t use this threat again!” she’d finally cried. “It isn’t fair. Where is Annemarie? Is she coming here? She’d understand. She wouldn’t let you do this!”
His cold blue gaze had shifted back to her, glaring like a hawk.
“She’s my wife; she’ll take my side on anything I decide. Which you can’t affect any more, because you’re as much a liar as he is. You must’ve had a lotta fun, laughin’ at me behind my back. Well, no more. Not in this lifetime. Now, go away, and send me someone else.”
And there it had been left.
Now, here she was, slumped in utter defeat in the break room, wishing some miracle might be worked to save this awful situation.
“Man,” said Tony, entering suddenly on a mission for food. “Sure a ruckus out there. Any idea what was goin’ on, Hallie?”
She was staring bleakly down at her empty cup on the table, unable to find enough energy even to move. The world she knew had just crashed down around her, and lay at her feet like a heap of dead ashes.
“Not a clue.”
Chapter 17
“Oh, Mom, I’m such an idiot.”
Hallie hadn’t been able to wait until that promised dinner at her parents’ home in order to unburden herself. Exhausted, with her shift and the extra hours finally over, she had collected her things from the break room locker, stumbled to where her trusty car waited in the hospital lot’s outer limits, and managed to find her way home.
But it wasn’t until she had kicked off her clogs and stripped out of her scrubs for a long, cool shower that her clenched muscles could finally begin to relax. Even then, it took a change into lightweight cotton pajamas and a plop down upon her sagging couch, staring at the rough walls surrounding, before she realized that it was time to talk.
She needed her mother’s sympathetic ear; she needed her mother’s perspective on what had happened, before she could make sense of things.
She needed…well, not closure, really, since, thanks to her accidental bumbling, the connection binding Hallie Jameson to Sheikh Karim Al Ahsan remained in place. But something. She needed something. Absolution, perhaps.
The hour was late. Normally, she wouldn’t try calling, when it was so close to midnight. But Joanne never slept soundly when her little grandson slumbered in his bedroom in her home. The slightest little creak, and she was up to check on him. So, Hallie had felt little hesitation in dialing the number.
“What do you mean, honey?” came the quiet question.
She sighed, took a sip of her decaf iced tea, and twirled a loosened strand of hair around one finger.
“Got a few minutes to listen to my whining?”
“Always, dear. Just let me get to the living room, so I don’t disturb your father.”
For the next half hour, Hallie related the story of everything that had taken place during the last few days, beginning with the fateful chance meeting at the coffeehouse. Haltingly. Reluctantly. Even with a few tears. (For who wants to admit to her own mother, supportive though she might be, that she, a mature adult woman could still fall for the twists and turns of a fairy-tale romance?)
Joanne listened, without comment or question, till the end, when the confessional was at last finished, and Hallie could sag back against the enfolding couch. Until she felt the almost palpable relief of collapsing, she hadn’t even realized that tension had held her so upright and uptight.
“And now it’s all fallen apart, around us,” she concluded, with a heavy sigh.
“Any story built on a lie often does,” her mother said. There was neither judgment nor censure in her tone; it was simply a statement of fact. “Somehow, the truth always comes out.”
“The worst of it is, poor Karim doesn’t even know what happened. He’s not aware that the whole deal has completely blown up, thanks to me.”
“Oh, you take too much credit for yourself, Hallie. It’s hardly your fault that this man—Chip?—came into your ER looking for help, and you were there working at the time. It’s just one of those terrible coincidences. But, sweetheart, it is your fault for saying yes to begin with, and getting involved.”
Hallie slumped. From babyhood on, her mother had always been able to see through her actions. She was suddenly feeling as guilty as the worst criminal who had ever lived.
“This is an awful mess,” she admitted, in a low voice.
Silence hummed across the line for just a bit. Then, there came the sound of water briefly rushing from a faucet, and the muted dings of their microwave being turned on. Joanne was brewing herself a cup of tea.
“So what’s the next step, honey?” Joanne asked. “Will you wait for this Mr. Griffin to break the bad news that he’s reneging on his contract?”
Another point taken. There was that: the shipbuilding magnate had given his word, and now he was going back on it. How honorable could that be, even in a dog-eat-dog business sense? Wasn’t that worse than Karim’s original false story of marriage and fatherhood? Hallie pondered.
“I’m not sure, Mom,” she answered slowly. “But you’ve certainly given me a new perspective—something to think about. Multiple wrongs have been done here; no party is innocent, when you come right down to it. Thanks. Thanks, a lot. You always get right to the heart of the matter.”
“It helps, talking things over, even it isn’t face to face. Hearing a different viewpoint can make you see things in a whole fresh light. Think you can sleep now?”
A rush of gratitude warmed Hallie’s voice.
“Soon. I have another call to make first. Thanks again, Mom. Are you the wisest woman in the world, or not?”
“If you think so,” Joanne chuckled. “Good night, sweetheart. Love you.”
Hallie said goodbye, then sat and thought. It was nearly one in the morning; a car’s headlights reflected off the opposite wall and then swooped away into nothingness as some vehicle drove slowly down the street. Only a dog’s bark could be heard, and the wail of a siren somewhere in the distance. Most residents in the area, needing to arise early to start another work day, were sleeping in their respective beds.
Not Hallie. She wasn’t due back at Cranston until mid-afternoon, so a few hours spent now with eyelids refusing to close wouldn’t really hurt her. She was young and foolish. She was also strong and tough. She could handle being short on sleep.
It was just that her schedule had been so topsy-turvy lately. Her poor body hardly remembered when it should be in bed and when it should be up, working or caring for Aaron.
Even if, physically, she was feeling okay, emotionally, she was a wreck. Too much goi
ng on, too much to deal with. She was comforted by the loving kindness of her mother and she was bereft by the absence of her son—two sides of the same coin. Add one more emotion to the mix: dereliction of duty when it came to the baby. In her need to provide a living for the two of them, had she abdicated too much responsibility in his care?
A vagrant breeze slipped through a screen of the front window, open despite cautionary tales about burglars and break-ins because of the heat. It carried with it the dust of Philadelphia streets and the faint scent of exhaust fumes.
Propping both bare feet upon the shabby coffee table, she reached for her cellphone yet again.
This time, he answered. On the first ring.
“Hello, Hallie.”
At the warmth of his tone, coming over the miles from who knew where, Hallie felt the rush of prickling to her nose that always preceded tears. How soon that warmth would change, and all due to what she must tell him!
“Hello, Karim. How are you?”
“I am well, thank you. And yourself? And Aaron?”
They might have been two strangers, barely connected by some invisible wire strung out through tree branches and summer air. Polite, yet distant. Hallie couldn’t restrain a small shiver.
“Oh, I’m…fine.” Certainly, that was debatable. “I tried calling you last night.”
Worry entered his tone. “Indeed. But I did not know. I had no message that—”
“I didn’t leave one.”
“Ah. I see. Was there some reason you didn’t?”
“I—I wasn’t sure I should. You—well, you didn’t answer anywhere, and I thought I might be intruding…”
Silence for a moment, a pregnant silence, seemingly filled with empty air and lost words.
“Hallie. I regret that we could not talk if you needed to talk. Should there be anything—”
“I didn’t need to talk,” she cut across his words. “I just—well, I thought—”
More silence. Tense, uncomfortable silence. Karim cleared his throat and tried again, in a quiet voice. “I apologize, Hallie. I was…unavailable. Had I known—”