by Tracy Ewens
“To?”
“Los Angeles. Hello. My brother’s wife had the baby. Remember? I told you I was going down there for the weekend.”
Somewhere Ella did remember, but all the hours and days were dancing around in her memory. Sort of like how Bri was dancing while she waited to confirm that outside of their friendship, it was all right for her to leave a doctor without an attending nurse and with a patient waiting to be seen. Bri mouthed sorry, still dancing in place. Ella laughed and shook her head, now fueled by caffeine.
“Go.”
Her friend, who suddenly morphed from Nurse B to Baby Annie’s excited aunt, leaned forward and hugged her. Ella wasn’t a hugger, but the give-and-take of friendship won out and she allowed her arms to be pinned to her sides as Bri got it out of her system.
“When I get back, we’re getting you some hugging lessons.”
“Really? Is that something they’re now offering at the community college?”
“It should be.”
Ella pointed to the clock. “The airport, Bri. Fly safe. You can resume Operation Cuddle after you’ve seen your niece.”
Bri hefted her bags one more time and was gone.
After a few brisk pats to her cheeks that Ella hoped restored some color, she pushed the cold metal handle of Exam 4. The caffeine humming through her bloodstream, followed closely by a serious longing for the egg-and-cheese bagel she was going to pick up on the way home as soon as she took care of Mr.—She glanced at the piece of paper, a sad substitute for a chart.
“Mr. Boyd McNaughton,” she said and glanced up to find a bear of a man. He was tall, broad, and scarcely teetering on the edge of the narrow bed. Dark jeans and a flannel rolled to his elbows, he presented in what was pretty much the standard uniform for March in Petaluma. When she’d first arrived in town, she’d wondered how long anyone could live in a place so consistent, but it had grown on her and now, despite the occasional craving for superior sushi or an opera, she found she didn’t miss Dr. Ella Walters, Head of Trauma, or all the drama that went along with that life. She was settling into being one of four full-time ER docs, plain old Dr. Walters. Ella had been raised to never accept being one of many and while she wasn’t ready to say it out loud, she was content in the clean air of smaller.
“Yeah.” Her patient shifted farther onto the metal frame as if he were sitting up taller in class, then flinched and cursed under his breath.
Full beard, but his brow was damp and what she could see of his face was pale. The guy was in pain.
Is that duct tape?
“Great. We at least have your name right. I’m Dr. Walters.” For an instant, Ella moved to shake his hand, which was her usual rehearsed greeting. That was not happening with his injury, so she defaulted to what she knew. She washed up and snapped on gloves.
“Tell me what happened,” she said, grabbing a folded blanket and gently lifting his forearm. She needed to get what seemed like an entire rag collection off his hand before she could tell what she was dealing with. Quite a bit of blood and yes, it was duct tape. Wonderful. She began carefully unwrapping his hand.
“Okay, well I tried to tell one of the nurses out there, but she ran off and stuck me in this room. Does anyone work here?”
Ella raised her hand, met his eyes.
“Right.” He huffed and instead of releasing a breath, some of the tension, it all seemed to rattle around in his lungs. “I cut my hand.”
“I can see that. On what?” She opened the rags to find a nice-sized laceration, about 53 millimeters from the side of his hand into the palm. After asking him to carefully test range of motion, Ella was confident she was dealing with a cut. A nasty one, but there were no particles embedded in the tissue, no broken bones or damaged tendons. She grabbed the saline and four-by-fours.
“A keggle.”
Ella met his eyes. Dark green, thick lashes, and pupils normal. All good signs.
His expression indicated she should know exactly what a keggle was. Ella’s stomach groaned. Bagel time was well over an hour out now.
She inhaled. “What is a keggle, Mr. McNaughton?”
He was seething, presumably at someone or something that had nothing to do with her. His attitude did not improve while she manipulated his hand, but suddenly the reluctant patient had an answer. Amazing what a little cold saline could inspire.
“I make beer.” He winced but didn’t pull away. “I was working on a small batch, trying to get the lemon under control because I’m using Sorachi Ace, which I haven’t tackled since 2010.”
Right when Ella thought he might be delirious and speaking gibberish, he huffed again.
“You don’t need to know any of that. Point is, my candy-ass brother barged into my happy space with his ‘we need this yesterday’ bullshit. A keggle is a metal vat. You’ve seen a keg, like at a party or something?”
Ella nodded, tossing the soiled rags and holding fresh dressing to his hand now. She’d seen a keg in some movie she could no longer remember. He cut his hand on metal. That was all she needed.
“It’s that thing, a keg. But mine is cut out on top. It’s not finished off because it doesn’t need to be. I like to get in there when I’m working. It’s a huge pot. I don’t cut myself on the edge. Ever.”
“Until today,” Ella said, meeting his eyes again.
“Until today.” Frustration finally spilled off his shoulders.
He exhaled as she peeled back the compress. Things were looking better already, Ella thought. Jagged, but clean. He’d need stitches, sixteen or seventeen from the looks of it. She was approaching that glorious moment, in most emergency rooms, when the all-important doctor wished her patient well with a smile before handing him off to a nurse for stitching and after-care instructions. Any other ER and there would be no need to chitchat or put the patient at ease. She’d be less than fifteen minutes away from fluffy egg whites and melted Swiss on a toasted bagel, easy red onion, and avocado. But Trina had not even poked her head in, so to the disappointment of Ella’s stomach, she was on her own. Which could be productive, she told herself. It had been awhile since she’d stitched anyone up. “Practice and patience are the keys to good medicine” was her first-year professor’s motto. Right now, that certainly rang true.
Chapter Two
Boyd scanned the white walls hoping he could concentrate on something other than the antiseptic smell and the glint of all that metal on the tray next to her.
“Okay,” Dr. Walters said, finally done with what Boyd prayed was the last round of poking and cleaning his hand. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and turned to a computer jutting from the wall.
“Was there alcohol in the keggle when you cut your hand?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m assuming everything in your… happy space is sterile?”
He nodded.
“Even better. When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
He tried not to squirm at the mention of a shot, but his son’s last immunizations were years ago and it had been even longer since Boyd had been near a needle himself. Tetanus? Was that the big painful one or the one where they put the bubble under the skin? Christ, that one was nasty.
“No idea,” he said, going for aloof.
She washed her hands again and with her back to him, Boyd noticed where her hair gathered at the base of her neck. Long. Her neck was long. In fact, everything on her was long. Even though Petaluma wasn’t a small town, per se, it was a close-knit community. He was used to seeing familiar faces. Ever since he was a kid, anyone out of the ordinary was intriguing. That’s why he was noticing her, he rationalized; she was unfamiliar. She might have lived here forever, he thought. How would he know? It’s not like he hung around with the hospital crowd.
“Are you new?” He heard his voice before realizing his mouth moved.
“I’m sorry?” She was still typing.
“Nothing. How much longer do you think I’ll be?”
She turned to him, a
strained curve to her lips, and pushed the glasses up again. She was pretty. What the hell? Had she given him something for the pain already?
“I’ll get you out of here as fast as I can. To be safe, I’d like you to have a tetanus shot and then I’ll stitch your hand. I’m going to numb it first because I’ll need to trim the skin.”
That time, he did squirm. She noticed and placed a hand on his shoulder. She seemed almost awkward at the physical contact. Wasn’t physical her business?
Whatever was going on with her, Boyd felt awareness. That was the only way to explain it. The sugar on her breath, the way her hair managed to look messy but contained at the same time. Her short nails and her narrow shoulders. Everything was in clear focus.
Obviously, he was in pain and she was a medical professional.
“Right, that explains it,” he said out loud again.
“Explains what?”
“I… was saying it’s great that you explained about the skin.”
“You won’t feel me trimming, but the cut is pretty jagged,” she continued.
“Great. Less information is better.”
“A couple more questions. Do you drink?”
“A little.”
Dr. Walters’s expression said she didn’t want to be asking the questions any more than he wanted to answer. He guessed some guy with a cut on his hand was not the most exciting thing for an ER doc. They both wanted this over with, a common goal.
“Smoke?” she asked, eyes back on the monitor.
“Used to.”
She closed her eyes and rolled her neck. Now that was hot. Boyd gave up trying to understand the sudden interest. All he knew was looking at her was more constructive than freaking out like a kid over some impending shot.
“Okay, Mr. McNaughton.”
“Boyd.”
“Okay, Boyd. I’m going to level with you. Connect, if you will. I’m tired. I’m sure a business owner such as yourself can appreciate exhaustion. I have no nurse, and I desperately need a bagel sandwich. It’s clear you are the guy who rarely uses Band-Aids. You hate hospitals and the people who work in them. I get it, believe me, but I’d really like to stitch up that hand before the caffeine wears off and I get loopy and forget all the fun stuff I learned in medical school. I think you’d like that too. So, maybe you could help me out here by being a little more forthcoming?”
She attempted to mask her impatience with another strained grin, but Boyd recognized the look. He was on “thin ice” as his mother used to say.
“Maybe you should sit back, make yourself more comfortable?” she said.
“That’s not going to happen until I’m out of here.”
“Noted. On a scale of one to ten, one being a nuisance and ten being excruciating, can you tell me your pain? Minus your anger at the candy-ass.”
“Six.”
“So, pretty painful.”
“I said a six, that’s middle of the road.”
“Yes, it is.” She appeared to tab through a few more fields on the computer. “But men tend to feign a high threshold for pain, so your six is closer to an eight.” She put the buds of her scope into her ears and took them back out.
“This is only a suture,” she mumbled, seemingly going through a mental checklist. “I do need a temp though, so open up.” She pulled a stick attached to a curly cord from a box on the counter. Right when Boyd thought he couldn’t feel any more awkward, she placed what he now recognized as a thermometer under his tongue. Holding the thermometer secure in his mouth, she checked her watch. She smelled like vanilla, or maybe pralines. She’d recently had a Coke, he could smell the syrup. Fancy watch, he noticed. Definitely not a local.
The stick beeped. She took it from his mouth, ejected a plastic piece into the trash, and returned to the computer.
“Are these questions for the pain medication? What if I don’t need the meds?” he said.
“I’m sorry?” Ella hit the enter button and returned her attention to him.
“I don’t need anything for pain. Can someone stitch me up?”
Ella nodded. “That someone will be me and these questions should have been asked when you first arrived. I’m sorry, we’re playing catch-up here. Everything has steps. We don’t have to like them, but I need to do them.”
Boyd took in a breath and let it out slowly. He was rushing her, and he hated it when people rushed him. It wasn’t her fault he’d cut his hand or that for some reason she didn’t have a nurse.
“Brett’s Bagels, is that where you get your bagel?” he asked, hoping to change direction.
She smiled, a completely unplanned smile, and holy hell they were suddenly somewhere outside the sterile walls of the hospital. Pretty wasn’t the right word. Her face was sunshine peeking through pine trees on the best camping trip. The creases at her eyes spoke to her long nights but took nothing away from her flushed cheeks. She was beautiful and he wasn’t making her job any easier.
“Best bagels in town,” she said, as if he’d handed her one wrapped in their signature white butcher paper.
“Only bagels in town,” he finished Brett’s tag line. That almost curved his lips into a smile too. Almost. “I brew beer, so I do a fair amount of testing on the job, but I don’t drink more than eight ounces a day socially, maybe sixteen on weekends. I smoked a pack a day from sixteen until the baby… until I was twenty-three. I want to smoke every day, but I don’t. Better?”
He was rewarded with an even deeper smile. He must have lost more blood than he thought because he could not remember the last time he’d noticed the specifics of a woman.
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be right back and we’ll get you stitched up.”
He scooted farther back on the bed. He would be here for a while and that was all there was to it.
True to her word, Dr. Walters returned and gave him a quick shot, the needle not nearly as long as he’d imagined. When she started stitching him up, or “trimming the skin,” as she’d put it, Boyd looked away.
Curiosity got the better of him a few minutes in and when he glanced over, his eyes met hers over her dark-rimmed glasses. She was probably checking to make certain he hadn’t passed out. Lights now brighter, he figured out the color of her eyes at last—stout. That last detail arrived unwelcome. It hit too close to home, too close to his life’s work as their worlds somehow meshed for a moment.
Boyd knew his place and he turned away, bringing his attention back to the water safety poster on the opposite wall instead of the stitches or the contrasting flecks in her eyes. His hand was numb, but the tug of the stitches was unnerving. He might have to kill Patrick with his left hand when he finally made it back to the brewery.
There were half a dozen shades of stout, and his thoughts betrayed him again. It was one of his favorite brews. Her eyes were more of an oatmeal stout, deep brown with a hint of amber, kind of like last year’s Golden Polish. That was a good year. Great beer. Great eyes. He allowed himself one more look.
Dr. Edwin Campbell finally showed up for his shift looking rested and tan. The big jerk. After hurried rounds of the whopping two patients they had, and returning a phone call from one of the guys in radiology, Ella changed out of her scrubs and threw the wide strap of her bag over her shoulder before backing out of the emergency room into the filtered light of an overcast afternoon.
Petaluma was special. For months after she’d arrived, she had missed the buzz of San Francisco. More accurately the buzz of Zuckerberg San Francisco General’s Trauma Center, but she’d come to appreciate the recurrent flapping of the flags overhead and the hum of shop owners and locals readying for the day or closing for the evening, depending on which shift delivered her back out into the fresh air.
If San Francisco was a five-lane freeway during rush hour, Petaluma was a small country road. A detour, she thought, which was exactly what she had needed when her ordered and methodical world had tilted on its side. Until that tilt, she couldn’t remember a time after graduating from UCLA Medical
School when she hadn’t been at General. She interned there summers while she was in school and served her entire residency under the talent of their trauma team. The training and experiences had made her “one hell of a doctor” according to any of her colleagues. The accolades should have bred arrogance, but Ella grew up in a family that caused her to question her every move. There was little margin for error as far back as the second grade, so she was more than prepared for the rigors of medical school.
Ella was practically born to lead a trauma center until the day, 9:53 in the evening to be exact, when what she’d known for certain turned fuzzy. Once the dust settled, she retraced all the pieces to understand how she’d arrived at such a place in her life. After some time and distance, she’d come to believe it was difficult for anyone to see around a lie, but even two years out, her conscience still hinted that she’d played a part in keeping the deceit alive.
Ella possessed a lifelong need to dissect the “how” and “why” of things. She’d been born with what her high school biology teacher termed “intellectual curiosity,” but the day she left for Petaluma had nothing to do with intellect and everything to do with getting out from under the weight of disgust before the shame swallowed her whole.
She paid the girl behind the counter at Brett’s Bagels and dug into the brown paper bag before she started her car. The first bite was heaven and when she washed it down with strong coffee, all was right with the world. Closing her eyes, she allowed the warmth to ease her exhaustion, but in the next moment, she put her seat belt on and drove home before she fell asleep in the parking lot.
Everything about her life in San Francisco had suited her. Her work was intense and rewarding. Cherry on top, she was in a relationship with an exciting man who was equally as committed to his career. On the surface, a full and accomplished life stretched out before her and when one of her pillars crumbled, she realized the whole thing was interdependent. That, and all her adult years had been spent sterile and cold. She was a name tag, a curriculum vitae and predictably, she drew those same types of people into her circle. Once Ella had examined all the pieces, the shock that she was made of the same material as her father nearly brought her to her knees.