by Callie Hart
“Urgh. Meatloaf today. Why does it feel like every day is meatloaf day in this canteen?” The interns in front of me, two young women clutching their trays to their chests, whine about the food while I flick through my patient list on one of the electronic tablets the hospital purchased for the ER earlier in the year. One pelvic fracture, one mystery rash and fever, one gunshot wound to the chest. The last guy was brought into the trauma center under lights and sirens, barely breathing, pulse thready and close to non-existent. He’s Italian, some kid whose brother owns a bunch of fresh produce markets downtown, or at least he had before his head had been blown off. Gang-related, they say. Mob bosses, they say. I have problems believing that, though. Seattle is hardly known for its seedy criminal underbelly. Either way, the kid’s brother was killed and the kid himself had almost died. Right now he’s sleeping off the anesthetic upstairs in the ICU with a phalanx of cops guarding him at either end of the corridor. They’re either afraid that he’s going to escape, or they think someone will be along shortly to try and finish off the job. Either way the police presence is making me anxious. It always does. That uniform. I associate it with one thing and one thing only: Alexis. When she went missing, my parents’ house was crawling with cops for days. At first they were serious and determined, assuring my mom and dad that Alexis would show up, that they would find her. But as the days ticked by less and less cops showed up at our house, and when they did they would come bearing a different story each time.
Manpower has to be reduced to ensure officers are dealing with all open cases.
We still have good leads, there’s no reason to give up hope.
These things take time, Mrs. Romera.
It’s been well over a month, Mr. and Mrs. Romera. Alexis’s file will remain open but until we have any fresh leads there isn’t a lot we can do right now. Keep us apprised if you should hear from your daughter.
“Vanilla pudding? Sister, tell me you did not just take the last vanilla pudding.” The voice cuts through my thoughts. I turn around to find one of the fresh interns glaring at the pudding cup in my hand, the one I just took from the refrigerated cabinet in front of me. She looks up and I gain a perverse sense of pleasure when I witness the realization dawn on her face—ahh shit! Resident. I know the girl, Jefferies. She’s a loudmouth; thinks she’s a contender for a surgical placement. But then again these walking, talking morons all think they’re in the running for a surgical placement.
“Problem, Jefferies?”
She shakes her head. “No Dr. Romera. Definitely no problem here.” She squeezes past me, grimacing, hightailing it before I can give her morgue rounds with Bochowitz for the rest of the week. They hate that punishment. Bochowitz has been working the morgue for the last thirty-eight years. He’s impossibly cheerful all the time, like all the time, and he has this unnerving habit of talking to his patients. Of course, they’re all dead so they don’t respond, and Bochowitz, somewhere along the line, developed a habit of replying for them. It is creepy, yes, but despite all of his peculiarities there isn’t a single thing Bochowitz doesn’t know about the human body. As an intern, I’d voluntarily spent a lot of time down in the basements underneath the busy hub of St. Peter’s keeping Bochowitz company, keeping my head down. It was best not to involve myself in the politics and factions formed by my contemporaries. But more importantly, I’d been learning.
I catch sight of Dr. Patel on the other side of the canteen, eating alone. I haven’t seen him since the night Zeth brought Lacey in. He looks up, sees me approaching, smiles…
“Hey, Sloane. What’s cracking?” He kicks out the chair on the other side of the table opposite him with his sneakered foot. “Heard you got stuck with the mafia kid with the GSW.”
There was a time when a gunshot wound was an exciting case we would have fought over, but now, having seen so many, we all know they’re just liabilities waiting to happen. The outcomes on them are so bleak that a lot of residents do their best to pass them off to whoever’s standing closest at the time. “Yeah, I know. Guy circled the drain for a moment there but we pulled him back.”
Suresh nods, swallowing a mouthful of food. “That kid’s got a rap sheet longer than your arm. My mom shops at that store. Keep telling her not to. She used to like chatting to the woman there—what’s her name? I can’t remember. Anyway, it was her husband Frankie that got shot there couple of weeks ago. Both her and the brother, the kid you have upstairs? Both of them know who killed Frankie but neither of them will breathe a word to the cops. Apparently they’re scared shitless.”
This all sounds like something that would go down in New York or Chicago to me; I open up my pudding, spooning some into my mouth. “I don’t really wanna think about any of that. I wanna think happy thoughts,” I tell him, grinning. “When’s your wedding again?” I received an invite months ago and mentally filed the event away under the heading happening too far in the future to worry about. But now that date is creeping up and half the hospital’s buzzing with gossip about it.
“Two weeks,” Suresh tells me, winking. “A married man. It’s just unfair really. I’m in my prime. The world’s women shouldn’t be denied this.” He gestures with his fork down his own body, waggling his eyebrows. He isn’t what you could term classically handsome, but he has something about him that women really do go crazy for. I laugh off his silliness and shrug.
“You’re gonna love it. Rebecca’s so excited.”
“I know,” he says, his voice turning serious. “She told me to tell you that you have to bring a plus one. Mandatory, I’m afraid.”
I haven’t even thought about a plus one. I cower into my seat, eyes down on my pudding. Maybe I could bring Pip as my plus one. People do that, right? Bring friends as dates to weddings? I ask Suresh this and he just gives me a look.
“No. It has to be someone you’re sleeping with.”
Ha! Yeah, right. Like Zeth Mayfair is plus one material.
“Or someone you intend on sleeping with after you get shitfaced at my wedding,” Suresh continues, winking again, just as one of my colleagues, another resident, Oliver Massey, hurries into the canteen. He looks harassed. He spots me and my stomach sinks when he hurries in my direction.
“Need you upstairs, Sloane. The cops are demanding a play-by-play with the doctors working on the Monterello guy.”
Great. I throw my plastic spoon back into my pudding cup. Lunch break over.
“Remember, Sloane,” Suresh calls after me. “Someone you’re fucking!”
The entire canteen, full of people, turns to watch me scurry away, red-faced.
*****
“This patient is witness to a murder. He’s under protective custody. It’s incredibly fucking important that this guy doesn’t get shot to death while in this hospital. You people know what that means?” The fat detective in the bad suit is talking down to us like we’re degenerates of the highest order. He’s short and bald and walks like an angry Rottweiler. The slender female detective—his partner, I assume—is patiently waiting for him to shut up so she can speak. Finally she gets her chance.
“I’m Detective Cooper. I’ll be here nights, so I’ll be your point of contact. If you see anyone you don’t recognize walking the halls, then you can come to either myself or any of the duty officers and report it. This is a big place and a lot of people come and go, so we understand that it might be hard to gauge whether you think someone is out of place here. Especially when you’re trying to do your jobs as well.”
The nursing team, who were previously standing, arms folded, glaring at the fat detective, nod their heads, their expressions softening. The three doctors who are treating Archie Monterello—myself, Hendry, and Oliver—stand at the back of the ICU family room, taking everything in. “What exactly are we looking for here, Detective? I mean, is this some Italian mob thing or what?” Oliver sounds as incredulous as I felt downstairs in the cafeteria. This just isn’t something that happens here.
“No, not Italian. We’ve
been investigating a high-level crime boss for some time now. He runs a lot of rackets in the city. Drugs, guns, gambling, counterfeit money. Word has it Frankie Monterello dropped the ball on a business deal this guy had in the works and he paid the price. We know that our P.O.I ordered the hit; we just need to pin it on him. Frankie’s brother, Archie, is the key to doing that. We have mug shots of people known to associate with our P.O.I. There are only a few faces on here that you really need to be worried about. I strongly doubt any of them will be stupid enough to come down here.” Detective Cooper nods to an armed, uniformed officer who begins to hand out sheets of paper bearing the mug shots to the nursing team.
“Can you give us a better indication of how dangerous this situation is please, Detective?” Hendry asks. “Are we likely to get shot trying to do our job is what I’m asking.”
“No. We’re here to ensure that doesn’t happen. At this stage we’re banking on the fact that our POI doesn’t even realize he’s being investigated. He thinks he’s an untouchable, but he’s very wrong. We’re gonna make sure he goes away for a long time.”
Hendry nods, accepts the paper from Oliver, studies it momentarily and then passes it on to me. “Where do we stand with regards to self-defense? If one of these fuckers does come here and attacks us…are we allowed to shoot them up with sedative? Use the defibrillator on them? “
The nurses titter. I glance down at the paper, already halfway to handing it on to the next person, when my breath catches in my throat.
Oh.
Oh.
My mind just keeps on saying it. My throat begins to swell shut as it repeats itself over and over.
Oh…
On the paper are a mosaic of nameless mug shots, eight of them on the first page and more on the other side. They’re numbered down the page, and at number one, in prize place, Zeth Mayfair’s face stares grimly out at me.
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
If you stand on the roof of St. Peter’s of Mercy Hospital at night, the things you can see are kind of incredible. Back when Alexis and I were kids, my father used to bring us up here sometimes when his shifts were quiet. The doctors would turn a blind eye—Jacob Romera was a beloved employee, a radiologist for thirty-five years in the very place where I now work. He moved out to private practice in L.A. long before I ever showed my face here as a clueless intern, but his name still means something in these hallways. He could get away with anything.
His favorite time to bring us up here was when it snowed, an event infrequent enough that it would have us jumping out of skins with excitement. The soft white flakes spinning dizzily from the vast expanse of sky overhead, the thick blanket of cloud that incubated the world, used to thrill Alexis and me beyond words. We would stand for hours, necks burning from craning them back for so long, until our bodies went numb and Dad would usher us inside before one of us got sick. Memories like that rush at me, knocking the wind out of me every time I come up here.
I push them down tonight, though. It’s not snowing, it’s raining, and we’re waiting on a trauma to come in. It makes me feel sick, the waiting. The adrenaline I need to think, act, move quickly is already pulsing around my body, useless until I can actually see what we’re dealing with. The wind howls, driving the rain sideways, lashing at our bodies, soaking surgical gowns. Oliver is with me, waiting patiently. He’s a good friend, a good man. Funny, smart, attractive, a terrible flirt. It’s a miracle he’s single.
In the distance the volley of something mechanical reverberates off the city’s high rises. “Hear that? The helo.” Oliver nudges me with his elbow. “Can’t be more than a mile out. Hit the elevator.”
I don’t have a problem grabbing the elevator doors. It’s been held on this floor for the past ten minutes with the doors closed, and the nursing team waiting with a gurney and life-support gear inside are nice and warm and dry. Time for those bastards to get wet, too.
I jog back to the steel doors and hit the call button just as the powerful gust of wind blows at my back, hurling freezing cold water into the faces of the three young nurses laughing and joking inside. Mikey the intern stops what he was doing, frozen in place. His hands are locked behind his head and his hips thrust forward, bottom lip trapped between his teeth.
“You auditioning as a male stripper, Hoxam?” I yell over the wind and rain.
“No. No! Sorry, Dr. Romera, it—”
“Won’t happen again?”
“No! No, ma’am. Never.”
I hate being called ma’am. I am twenty-six years old yet these interns seem to think I’m some sort of ancient, all-powerful being. “Well when you feel like pretending to be a doctor again, maybe you can move your ass. The helo’s on approach.”
I’ll give him one thing: Mikey Hoxam is a bag of nerves most of the time, or otherwise a complete goof-off, but he gets ten out of ten for enthusiasm. He’s the first out of the elevator, guiding the gurney onto the rooftop. The helicopter’s wheels are on the tarmac by the time we all reach Oliver.
“You ready?” he yells to me.
“Yes, sir!” Mikey yells right back. Oliver gives him a look that would strip paint clean off wood. The intern realizes his mistake and has the common sense to blush. I can’t help but smirk.
“Yeah, I’m ready! Let’s go!” We rush the helicopter doors. Two paramedics clamber out, carefully lifting a backboard behind them, its cargo small and fragile.
“Maisie Richards, seven years old. Hypothermic, deep laceration to right thigh. Found seizing face down in the bath. Unconscious, pulse is still tachycardic. Coded en route, shocked twice.”
“Okay, let’s get her inside!”
Oliver and the crash team hunker down underneath the whipping rotor blades of the helicopter as they take charge of the patient and rush back toward the elevator. I turn back to the paramedics who are gathering their stuff from the medevac. “Where are the parents?”
The first paramedic, a young woman with a severe expression, frown lines already developing between her eyebrows, gives me an exasperated sigh. “Who knows? Neighbor was dropping food round for the kid; let themselves in when Maisie didn’t answer. Found her in the tub.”
“What? She was on her own?”
The medic shakes her head like she can hardly believe it herself.
“Romera! Come on!” Oliver is holding the elevator door open. I run, almost missing the ride down as the doors slide closed.
*****
“She’s stable. It’s a miracle she survived.” I sign off on the paperwork that needs to be completed for Maisie. I’m furious as I stab my pen into the paper, marking that the little kid is allergic to latex, penicillin and anesthesia. She’s actually allergic to everything. She nearly died four times when we had her on the table, struggling to rescue her leg. The wound was deep. Horrible. And if Maisie’s mom or dad had been here, we would have known not to touch her with our gloves. We would have known not to give her regular anesthetic, and not to give her anti-viral penicillin after she’d been dragged back into the land of the living. As it stands I’m baffled as to how her little heart has coped with all the stress it’s been under.
Oliver watches on with a bemused expression as I slash my signature into the bottom of the chart and add it to the towering pile of clipboards for the interns to file. “I’m calling CPS,” I tell him.
“Whoa, don’t you think you ought to wait for her parents to show up before calling Child Protection Services?”
I have no words. “Did…did you just work on the same seven-year-old girl I did? Because a child, a little baby, nearly died just now. She should never have been left on her own.”
“I agree with you, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying, you don’t know what the circumstances are yet.”
I start walking toward the residents’ locker room, Oliver following behind me. I slam through the door, tugging my scrubs off over my head as I go. Blood has soaked through them to stain the long-sleeved shirt I’m wearing underneath. Great. I o
pen my locker, using the door to provide a little modesty as I take that off too and then slip on a clean sweater. When I turn around, Oliver is shirtless, his scrubs top hanging from where he’s tucked the removed garment into the waistband of his pants, smirking as he types something into his cell phone.
“I can’t believe you’re even smiling right now,” I grumble, pushing past him. Many a resident has been paralyzed by the sight of Oliver Massey’s washboard abs, but not me. Not since bearing witness to Zeth Mayfair’s stomach. And definitely not today. He grabs me as I try to make my escape.
“You’d smile too if you’d been invited to the intern’s party.”
“The interns are having a party?”
“Of course the interns are having a party. How many times did we get fucked up when we were in their shoes?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, I do not want to spend a night drinking with those walking liabilities. And frankly I have absolutely no idea why you would, either.”
“Think about it,” he says, grinning. “How uncomfortable are they gonna be with their bosses drinking all their beer and dominating their share house. It’s gonna be classic.”
“Oh, come on!” I laugh. “Which one are you screwing, Olly?”
He looks a little stunned. “None of them!” He does a really bad job of disguising the horrified look that develops on his face. “I’m not…” He shakes his head, letting go of my arm, which allows me to realize how close he’d been standing. “Never mind, Sloane. Have a good night, huh.” He steps back, quickly snatching up a dark shirt from the bench and pulling it on over his head. Well. I somehow managed to really piss him off. Should I say something else? Apologize? Tell him I was only joking? Probably a terrible idea—just make matters worse no doubt. He’s still getting changed, back to me, as I exit the change room.
I slump against the wall, closing my eyes. I need a moment. I’m not good at this. Not good at being friends with people, understanding what I can or can’t say to them without offending them. I was only joking just now, but Oliver probably thinks I consider him unethical, fucking his way through his subordinates. I should just keep my distance from here on in. Keep myself to myself. Focus on saving lives. That would be the smart thing to do. When I open my eyes, I get the fright of my life.