Jeff was not talking; he wasn’t joking; he was not doing anything else than attending to the repair of this man’s leg. His precision and attention to the smallest detail showed his expertise. I had to admire him. Never mind our “common past”, the man I saw working on this human being was to be admired and respected for his exquisite craft.
Two hours later, it was all done. We had attended our first operation up-close-and-personal, as it were. I was impressed and so was Tiffany. She couldn’t stop talking about every step of the procedure. She was totally into it. As for me, let’s say I was halfway there. The fact that it was Jeff on the other side of the table distracted me, whether I liked it or not. He encumbered my thoughts. And I didn’t like it.
We were taking our gowns off and slipping the hairnet off our heads when I saw Jeff come in the scrub room. He didn’t say anything but our eyes met. I turned red as a beetroot and quickly turned toward the washroom. Tiffany took the time to congratulate him and thank him for a fantastic demonstration of dexterity. I didn’t hear the rest of what they said and was grateful for Tiffany’s chatty mouth.
The rest of the morning was spent in between attending two more surgical procedures from the enclosed viewing room above the theaters. Jeff performed one of the operations while another doctor – an oncology surgeon apparently – performed the other. We then rejoined our first patient–the man with the sliced ligaments in ICU while he was waking up.
He didn’t recognize any of us, of course, and was visibly taken aback to see a dozen doctors standing about the room or surrounding his bed. He smiled and asked Dr. Kerry where Dr. Aldridge was.
“He’ll be coming up as soon as he’s done repairing someone else’s injured limb,” she joked. “Don’t worry; he’ll be along any minute now.”
And I silently wished I would be somewhere else when he would come in.
As he did, I tucked myself away in the farthest corner of the room where I was almost sure he wouldn’t look at me or even question me. Yet, I was wrong. His eyes soon found me and focused on me. He smiled briefly while I cringed. Tiffany pulled on the sleeve of my lab coat. I bent down to hear what she wanted to say.
“What’s the matter with you? The man is smiling at you and all you can do is grimace? You and I better have a talk–and soon.”
I couldn’t argue with her at that moment. Besides, she was right, I was behaving very strangely. Trying to hide from him wasn’t going to work. The only thing I would accomplish by doing so was to risk my career. And Jeff Aldridge wasn’t worth it. No one was, truth be told.
When lunchtime came around, I was famished. Tiffany and I made a beeline for the café terrace on the top floor of the building. The fall days were not upon us yet, so we still had some sunshine to enjoy. We got a tossed salad each, some cheese and a few crackers. For dessert, we each had some fruit and Tiffany got herself a small cut of gelato ice cream. We both made a dash for the only empty table under a parasol and plopped down in our seats.
As we began eating, Tiffany opened the conversation with, “So, what’s up with you and Dr. Hottie with a nice body?”
I thought I was going to choke on a slice of radish. I giggled my way into a blurted lie. “Nothing really. I guess…”
“Don’t give me that crap, Hattie. I know the signs. You’ve met him somewhere before, haven’t you?”
“Okay, okay, yes, we’ve met.” I stopped there. I wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to spill the beans to my new friend.
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing,” I continued lying.
“Please, Hattie, don’t cast me in the role of the circus clown. Something happened between the two of you, didn’t it?”
I chewed on a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato concertedly, weighing the consequences of my revealing our secret night to Tiffany. Finally I decided to come out with it.
“Okay, Tiff, I am going to tell you the whole truth, nothing but the truth, but you’ve got to promise me not to breathe a word of this to anyone. Promise?”
“Alright, I promise. Who am I going to talk to anyway? All of the interns are from someplace else. Apart from you, I really don’t know any of the others. So, you don’t have to worry. I’ll have a padlock on my lips.”
“Right,” I said, smiling at my new friend. Yes, Tiff was going to be a good friend of mine, I decided. Besides, once you’ve revealed anything of your intimate life to another person, that person better be or become a friend or you’re in deep trouble. “It was the week before Christmas. I promised to visit my parents for the holidays. As it happened, the night I was due to board the flight to Omaha, a storm saw me stranded at the airport. I couldn’t find a hotel to stay–no room at the inn sort of thing. That’s when Jeff Aldridge proposed sharing a suite with him. We just had a casual chat in the departure lounge as people do in these circumstances, and I didn’t see any harm in accepting his offer–much better prospect than the one I was looking at. Sleeping on a carpeted floor isn’t my thing. Besides, with a suite, he could close his bedroom door and I would have the pull-out couch all to myself.”
“And did you?” Tiffany asked. “I mean did you spend the night on the couch?”
I shook my head and lowered my gaze in my near empty salad bowl.
“You didn’t!” Tiffany exclaimed as quietly as she could. “You slept with Dr. Hottie? Good God, Hattie…I never…I mean I never imagined.”
“Imagined what?”
“That, that you would fall for him.”
“Come on, Tiff. You’ve seen him. You yourself call him Dr. Hottie. What if he offered you to share a suite with him when there’s nothing else in town but the airport floor; what would you do?”
“I guess I would share the suite. But how did he manage to get you in his bed?”
“He didn’t manage anything, Tiff. I was truly seduced. No question about it. I fell for the guy hook, line, and sinker. You have to admit, he’s hard to resist, isn’t he?”
Tiffany nodded and then smiled. “You brat! You’re really something, you know. But I must say you two are a perfect match.”
“What are you talking about? There’s no match here. No relationship–nothing. It was a night of hot sex and that was all it was.”
“If that’s true, why are you avoiding him or even averting your gaze from his eyes. You are acting as if you’re an “ex-something”, not just an acquaintance or a passing fling. You’ve been bitten, I tell you. And I’m not surprised. The guy is totally irresistible–as hot as they come, for sure.”
All I could do was to drink my juice quietly. I knew Tiffany was right. Jeff Aldridge had left a very long scar on my heart, no use denying it.
As we both sat pensive, Corey Walker came to our table.
“Doctors,” he said, “do you mind if I sit down with you two?” He didn’t wait for our answer and just took a seat. His tray was filled with everything I didn’t want to eat–ever. Hamburger, fries, milkshake and even a piece of apple pie do not make for a healthy staple diet in my book. What’s more, the guy was a doctor. He should have known better.
He noticed my gaze traveling over his tray.
“Never mind, Doctor Williams, I enjoy a hamburger once in a while, like any red-blooded, American man. As long as I don’t make a habit of it, I’ll be fine. Besides, after a morning as boring as the one we’ve just had, I thought a little “pick-me-up” was in order.”
“Did you really say, “Boring”?” Tiffany inquired, goggle-eyed. “I thought it was very interesting myself. Seeing that sort of delicate surgery on a man’s leg was quite impressive I thought.”
“Well, not really my cup of tea. I am here only to learn about the hospital’s inner workings. That’s all.”
“Oh, you’re not interested in performing surgery of any kind then?” I asked. Some doctors are really true GPs at heart. Maybe this guy was one of them.
“No, not at all. I mean I have to know what surgical procedures entail, but I am more interested in the people who are
not going under the knife. My thing is infectious diseases. I want to finish my internship anywhere in North America and then get myself a post overseas. I want to be where people really need a doctor. Where I can do the most good.”
“And you think you’ll always have a surgeon at your disposal to perform even minor surgeries–like an appendectomy?”
“Well, no, I don’t expect to have anyone at my disposal as you said, Dr. Williams,” Corey retorted, taking his first bite of hamburger. “I…hum…I want to perform as many minor operations as I can, but I hate this watching business. I feel…hum”—he took another bite—“I feel like I have to try it for myself rather than watching Dr. Wonderful do it.”
“In that case,” Tiffany put in, “you’ll have to wait another month before you’ll be authorized to try it for yourself.”
Chapter 10
The afternoon, I admit, dragged on. I must have been tired, or some sort of routine was settling on my mind perhaps. We visited the rehab center and assisted a couple of people in taking their first steps after spinal operations. It was hard to see these perfectly healthy human beings being incapable of putting one foot in front of the other. Not only was it hard for them to force their legs to move as directed, but it looked excruciatingly painful. Encouraging their efforts was going against the grain. You feel better if you can alleviate or even eradicate pain rather than forcing the person to endure more of it. I could not say that I enjoyed that session, but it was a session I would not have missed for anything. Perhaps one of the reasons for it was that I knew the hurt the patients experienced now was only payment for the freedom they would enjoy later. They would be walking again in a few weeks or months.
Tiffany, for her part, seemed to take it all in stride. She looked unaffected by the struggle these patients went through. When we exited the rehab center, Dr. Kerry invited all of us to gather on the fifth floor for our daily powwow session. It was still early by hospital standard, but I was glad this day had come to an end. I was an emotional wreck.
Dr. Kerry nailed it in one when she told us that emotions have no place between doctors and patients. I silently reminded myself that emotions better not be present between surgeons and doctors either. Dr. Kerry insisted on the point.
“There is a lot you can do, and a lot you will do for each of your patients if you display the detachment necessary to do the job perfectly. If you get involved with a patient, emotionally or otherwise, you better remove yourself from his or her care immediately.”
“What about relationships between doctors and other medical staff?” Tiffany asked.
Although I didn’t appreciate her posing such a delicate question in my presence, I was all too ready to hear the answer.
“If you mean having any sort of relationship–sexual or platonic–with your fellow doctors or the nursing staff,” Dr. Kerry replied, “the hospital administration frowns upon it. It is distracting to say the least. Yet, what you do on your own time is none of the hospital’s business. Nevertheless, don’t be fooled by the relaxed attitude you may have observed between medical staff and even between surgeons and doctors. If these relationships are not sanctioned by marriage or a common-law union, you’ll find yourselves in heaps of trouble if something were to go wrong during an operation, for example.”
“You mean that you can’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?” Corey, the hamburger boy, asked.
“Did I say that?” Dr. Kerry retorted. “I don’t think I did. I said what ever you do outside this hospital is your business. But if you happen to have an affair of any sort with one of your colleagues, be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
Everyone in the room nodded. We all knew how pre-occupying a relationship in the workplace could be. And having one’s mind on something else than your patient’s well-being during surgery could lead you to make an irrevocable mistake. Then, it’s bye-bye to your MD career for good.
Dr. Kerry went on discussing each of the sessions we had in rehab and how to alleviate the feeling of helplessness accompanying such experiences.
“The human body is a marvelous machine,” she said, “which generally takes time to adapt to our repair and maintenance interventions. It’s difficult for the brain to register what you’ve done to its body. There’s no mouse you could click or finger you could slide from one screen to another. There is nothing that we can do to tell the brain, ‘come on now, move!’ It will not accept the command and it will not even acknowledge the change.”
“You’re talking about phantom pains, are you?” I venture to ask.
“Exactly. Our amputees and other patients from whom we have taken a limb or an organ can tell you their missing leg is itching or they have cramps in an arm that is no longer there. As for organ removal it is not as often that you will hear a woman complain of menstrual pain when she had a hysterectomy–but it does happen.”
Two coffees later and a few more pages of notes to be studied that evening, we were all ready to go home. Everyone made their way to the locker room, chatting about the day. Tiffany and I had a neighboring locker. She was faster than I was in most things. That night she was even in more of a hurry, saying that she would not wait for me, given that she wanted to bring her car to the garage and get an oil-change before the weekend.
I brushed my hair out of its chignon and was looking forward to having a long, leisurely bath before bed. I wasn’t used yet to all of the walking around we had to do every day. But I was pleased to be where I was. Except for Jeff’s presence in the same hospital, the internship seemed to be as I had expected: a J-curve of learning.
As I closed the locker door, I turned around only to find myself face to face with Jeff.
“Good God! Do you always scare your interns that way?” I blurted. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“And you floored me when I saw you this morning.” He looked at me, peering into my eyes. I was melting. “What on earth are you doing here, in this hospital?”
“I applied for doing my internship here, why? Is this hospital reserved to your choice of doctors perhaps?”
“Couldn’t you have applied somewhere else?”
“Listen, Dr. Aldridge, you should know how it works. We don’t choose where we want to work. Unless your daddy is head of surgery, you just have to accept what’s given to you.”
By this time, I had my back glued against the locker’s door. He was inches from my body and his lips even closer to mine. If I didn’t suffer from palpitations before, I was close to fainting then as I ever had been.
“Okay, now that we’ve got to work together, what are we doing about our feelings?” he whispered, brushing his lips against my earlobe.
Suddenly, I thought of what Dr. Kerry had told us. A relationship of any sort between medical staff could endanger our careers if we were to make a mistake in the operating theater. It’s too distractive.
Using all the strength I could muster and all the courage I could amass, I pushed Jeff away from me. “I think you need to get your mind out of my pants, Jeff,” I said, groaning the words with all the boiling passion that was menacing to erupt into his face.
He regained his balance with no problem. He saw how mad I was. I didn’t care. I didn’t want him and his handsome body to blur my vision at every turn.
“Alright, alright, I hear you. But can we, at least, talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Jeff. We spent a fantastic night together eight months ago. We needed each other’s company, each other’s loving touch, but after all that, you left me stranded. You ran out on me and I truly didn’t appreciate being used for the night.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to leave. Now you can understand why, can’t you?”
“If only you had made mention of you being a surgeon, I would have been the first to open the door and pack your bag, Jeff. But as it were, it felt as if you had no need for me anymore and after a bowl of cereal, you just…”
He had his body against mine again. God, please tell
me what it’s going to take for me to get rid of this guy? “Jeff, please. Don’t do this. I don’t want to have any more to do with you. From now on, let’s just be colleagues, working in the same hospital, okay?”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked as he stepped away from me.
I nodded twice. “Yes, I’m sure. I will always admire you. Your skills as a surgeon are something else. But we can’t have a relationship. An affair of any kind would not work–you know it and I know it.”
“Alright, Dr. Williams, I’ll take your word for it–for now.” He turned on his heels, ready to leave the locker room. Then, in second thought I suppose, he turned to me again. “But if you change your mind, be sure to let me know, okay?”
I had to smile. “You’ll be the first to know, I promise.”
When the weekend burst in our faces, in all of its late August splendor, Tiffany and I were already up and working to ensure her bedroom was empty and ready to receive her furniture. The movers were on their way.
She had told me that she only had a bed, a dresser, a night table, a couple of lamps, and a TV coming. That was fine with me. The bedroom was large enough to accommodate everything on the list. What I didn’t expect was the chest of drawers, the stand-up mirror, the rocking chair, and the eleven boxes that came with it.
Tiffany was as surprised as I was to see all of the extras making their way on the trolleys to her bedroom.
“My mother is truly impossible, Hattie. I swear to you, I did not ask for all this. I wanted to keep a few things in my room at home for when I go back for a visit maybe.”
I believed her. It was clear that Tiffany had lived with an overprotective mother for far too long. Her requests, choices or decisions were always vetoed by her parents–her mother in particular. Now, we were lumbered with more furniture than we needed and with more kitchen stuff than we would ever want–five of the boxes were full of small appliances, dishes, flatware, towels for the kitchen and bathroom, and so forth and so on. The movers even brought up an ironing board and a new iron, still in its box. Who’s ironing clothes these days, I asked myself.
Destroy (A Standalone Romance Novel) Page 7