I could feel them bubbling on the other end of the line. Damn. They’d never let this go now.
“Listen,” I said, putting the phone to my other ear. “I am okay with this wedding. I have moved on, and I am happy for them.”
“Will you bring your girlfriend to the wedding?” Gwen asked, a smile in her voice.
“Uh…I guess. If we’re still together, yes.”
More squealing.
I heard Jewel sigh dramatically. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. I guess, since you’re okay with it, I hate it less. But I’m still not excited.”
“I do like weddings, though,” Jill said. “But you’re right, I’m still mad at them,” she added quickly.
I shook my head. “Don’t be mad at them. Look, I gotta go. I’m on shift.”
“Will we see you on the nineteenth for dinner?” Mom asked. “I want lasagna, but your father might smoke a pork roast.”
“Yes, I will be there for dinner,” I said.
“Can you bring a bottle of wine?”
“Yes, I will bring wine.”
“Okay. Love you!”
They all said good-bye in unison and hung up. I set my phone on my thigh and put my palms to my eyes.
I’d have to say I broke up with my imaginary girlfriend when it came around to it. But hopefully it would take the pressure off in the meantime. Maybe everyone would finally stop looking at me like I was going to crumble into dust.
Granted, it had been a bad breakup. But at least I got the dog.
I dragged myself up and let myself out of the supply closet—and someone crashed into me. I let out an oomph, and my phone flew from my hand and went skittering across the hard floor.
The doctor who hit me didn’t stop. She launched off me and continued running down the hallway toward the patient rooms.
“What the hell?” I muttered, picking up my phone. The screen was cracked.
“Watch where you’re going!” I shouted after her, annoyed.
She didn’t even glance back. A nurse gave me a dirty look like I was the asshole.
Was everyone rude like this here? What the hell was wrong with this place?
I peered forlornly at my cell. It still worked, but the corner was shattered. The perfect ending to the worst week ever. I gritted my teeth.
I stalked down the hallway in the direction the woman ran. I didn’t know exactly what my plan was. Give her my thoughts on running in the halls? Demand she cover the screen repair?
I poked my head into the rooms one at a time until I spotted her. She was bedside, her back to me, talking to a young man.
The patient was gray. He had a dialysis catheter in his chest. The skin around it looked red and swollen.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked the man in the bed. “This is totally infected.” She fluttered around him, looking at his vitals. “You could have gone septic. This is so dangerous.” She took a thermometer out of his mouth and shook her head. “You can’t let things get this bad, Benny. You need to tell me when stuff isn’t right.”
I realized then that I was intruding on something and was about to make my exit, but a nurse came up behind me with a huge dialysis machine, forcing me fully into the room. I stepped aside and stood next to the wall as she wheeled it to the bed.
“It hurts…” Benny said quietly.
“I know,” the woman said, a little softer now. “I’m getting you on some antibiotics and pain meds.” She put a hand on his head. “In a few minutes you’ll be sixteen again, passed out on J?ger in a cornfield.”
I snorted from my corner, and she twisted and noticed me standing there. “Uh, can I help you?”
My God, she was beautiful. She was so beautiful it disarmed me. For a second I forgot what I was even doing there.
Long brown hair tied into a messy bun. Wide brown eyes, full lashes.
Then my anxiety lurched—some violent combination of a throwback to tenth grade, me nervous talking to a pretty girl, coupled with the stress of meeting a new coworker in a hostile work environment while I was in a room I shouldn’t be in. I froze.
This didn’t normally happen while I was on the job. My anxiety was well managed at work. I was assured and confident in my interactions with my peers and subordinates. I was an excellent physician. But she had me flustered just by looking at me—the way she was looking at me, annoyed and impatient. I felt my social skills drop off like a heart-attack victim flatlining.
I cleared my throat. “Uh, you bumped into me back there,” I said awkwardly.
She blinked at me like I was telling her the most unimportant thing in the world. “Okay. Sorry?”
“You, uh, shouldn’t run in the hallways.”
She stared at me.
My mouth started to get dry. “It’s just, I used to be head of emergency medicine at Memorial West and I know how easy it is for accidents to—”
Her eyes flashed. “Yeah, I’m aware of your résumé, Dr. Maddox. Thanks for the hot tip. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone with my patient?”
She cut daggers through me. Benny was staring. Even the nurse was glaring at me.
I stood there for another second. Then I backed out of the room. Hot embarrassment seared up my neck. What had I been thinking going in there like that? Jesus Christ, Jacob.
I went back to my side of the ER, running the whole awkward encounter through my head over and over, obsessing about what I should have said or should have done.
So stupid.
I shouldn’t have broached it when she was with a patient. That was the first thing. Maybe I should have led with the fact that she actually broke my phone, so she knew I wasn’t just there to give her a hard time about the running.
Maybe I should have just let it go.
Letting it go would have been better. Because then there would have been no encounter at all. I should have just said “Wrong room” and left.
God, I was a jerk. I was effortlessly succeeding in making myself the most hated person at Royaume Northwestern.
I knew from years of therapy that I was ruminating. That the encounter had probably been nothing to her, but to me it felt like the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened. A decade from now I’d be lying in bed and my eyes would fly open and I’d remember the incredulous way she’d looked at me—me, the guy who had the audacity to walk into her ER room and talk to her about running toward a critical patient, one she obviously knew and cared about.
I cringed through the second half of the day. My anxiety felt like electricity. A low, humming current under my skin, a survival instinct triggered and gnawing at me, telling me to flee. I couldn’t escape it, and I couldn’t calm it down.
Usually my anxiety meds leveled me out. But there was only so much meds could do. I had to manage stress, use the coping skills I’d learned in therapy. Most importantly, I had to live a lifestyle conducive to wellness. That’s what I thought I was doing coming here, getting myself out of the unhealthy situation at Memorial West with Amy and Jeremiah, making a choice that was best for my mental health.
But now this.
I knew I was being quiet and taciturn and this wasn’t helping to endear me to the already-cold nurses on my shift, but I was so in my head I couldn’t stop myself. I’d managed to trade seeing Amy and Jeremiah every single day for a whole team of people who hated my guts instead.