Every Six Seconds
Her mind was spinning, anxiety crawling up her spine and creeping into her skull. She felt her breath getting short, the halls of the hospital closing in on her. Were the awful fluorescent lights suddenly brighter? She blinked, looking down at the chart in her hands, the letters and numbers swimming in and out of focus.
Shit. She needed to get out of here, just for a minute, to catch her breath. The air was thick and muggy. So many bodies so close together, noises coming from every direction, distraught children screaming, nervously impatient twenty-somethings pacing the narrow halls, worrying about being uninsured, the chuckle of cops flirting with nurses while they waited for their collars to get stitched up. It all clanged against her ears, making her heart beat just a touch too fast. She couldn’t hear herself think.
Taking a deep breath through her nose, she held it for a few seconds, letting it out in a controlled and inconspicuous stream. It worked, at least for the time being, her thoughts jumping back in line, heartbeat steadying.
She passed the chart off to one of the nurses, rattling off a simple course of treatment for a feverish child. The mother glared up at her, eyes narrowing at Karen’s simple command to give the child an over the counter fever reducer. Could the woman tell? Could she see just how overwhelmed Karen felt?
Karen dug her heels in. No, this woman couldn’t possibly know. She was probably just in a bad mood. Her daughter had a mild fever, caused by an obvious ear infection, one that the child had already received medication for. No doubt, the woman had waited hours in triage, getting pushed to the back of the line over and over again in favor of more serious patients. Karen could still see the bloody stump her last patient had been sporting in place of his index finger.
There had been plenty of patients before the screaming little girl.
Not for the first time, Karen slipped her hand down into the pocket of her lab-coat, fingernail tracing the edge of cellophane packaging tucked down deep into its recesses. She turned and made a bee-line for the stairwell, letting the door slam behind her.
-
Frank heard the door slam, his head snapping up curiously. Unexpected loud noises were never a good sign in the ER. He saw a flash of blonde hair disappearing through the narrow security glass, and cursed softly to himself. “Shit.”
No sooner had the word left his mouth, than he felt a hand light on his shoulder. “Pay up, Frankie. I told you she wouldn’t last past midnight.”
Claire smiled, her eyes dancing. She had won the pool, again. She had a sixth sense when it came to these things, had seen so many doctors come through the revolving door of the ER in the past five years that she had it down to five minutes when they would snap. She claimed it was a complicated algorithm involving many variables. Exhaustion, experience, demeanor, what kind of shoes they wore, et cetera… but Frank was pretty sure the woman was just psychic. He’d been working here for two years and not once had he ever gotten closer than Claire.
But there had been something about the new blonde doctor, the way she stood ramrod straight when making rounds, the set of her mouth when listening intently to a patient, the way her hair fell over her shoulder as she looked down to write something on a chart… He shook his head. Not that that particular habit had anything to do with her fortitude. He’d just thought she was made of stronger stuff. Hell, he supposed he’d underestimated the insanity of the ER on Halloween.
Frowning, he slipped a hand down into his scrubs pocket, pulling out a crisp twenty. Claire nearly jumped over the counter of the nurse’s station, snatching it from his fingers gleefully. “I can’t believe you picked 3 a.m.” She eyed Frank suspiciously. “As a matter of fact, you usually lose because you pick too early… Those big blue eyes making you get soft on me, Frank?”
He ignored her gentle ribbing, turning back to finish up his nightly paperwork. His shift was over, the soft pillows and clean sheets of his bed like a siren call begging him to come home. He tucked the files away, grabbing his coat from the back of the wobbly rolly chair, the keys jangling in its pocket. He needed to get home before the sun came up, get some fucking rest before coming in for his shift tomorrow evening.
He yawned as the door banged shut behind him, his footsteps echoing against the plaster as he dragged himself up the stairs in the exact opposite direction he should have been headed. Claire wasn’t exactly wrong about a certain pair of blue eyes.
-
Karen liked it on the roof. It wasn’t quiet exactly, the sound of the city swelling around her still, sirens bouncing off the other buildings as they brought more patients to lay down at her sore feet, but it was peaceful. If she squinted she could even see a few stars in the night sky.
Absentmindedly she traced the lines of the cigarette package in her pocket, pulling the thing out to inspect it more closely. She hadn’t smoked since she was an undergrad, frazzled and needing something to help her decompress, some ritual to signal the official end of an all-nighter as she walked home from the library.
Pulling one of the slim cigarettes out of the package, she held it to her nose, sniffing the faintly sweet aroma of unlit tobacco. Twirling it, she settled the tube in the vee between her middle and index finger. It was like riding a bike, the body language involved. Her shoulders dropped, free hand resting gently on her hip. She smiled softly to herself, remembering how she’d thought it would make her look older when she was a teen, copying the movements of the women on the corner.
She brought the butt to her mouth, gently settling it between her lips. If she had a light, she would definitely smoke the damn thing, for old time’s sake. Maybe it would calm her rattling nerves.
“Haven’t you heard? Smoking kills.” The voice was gravelly, coming from the now open door to the roof.
She jumped, dropping the offensive item to the ground. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Shit, you scared me.”
He stepped closer to her, walking through a pool of yellowish light. He was familiar to Karen, his pale blue scrubs and hospital ID badge informing her that he worked here. She squinted in the dark, trying to make out his features.
He bent down, picking up the discarded cigarette. He shook his head. “One person dies every six seconds from a tobacco related disease.” His actions belied his words, fingers caressing the slim white tube lovingly. “That’s ten people every minute.”
Karen nostrils flared. It was downright indecent how graceful his hands were.
She could make out his features now, the neatly trimmed beard, the dark eyes. He was the frowny raincloud, the nurse who never said anything conversationally to the doctors, just nodded and did his job, and did it well. He was in the ER with her tonight, staunching the flow of blood from her very first gunshot wound. He’d been cool and calm, his very presence helping her keep her head above water.
Self-consciously, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hey, uh, thanks for helping me with that bullet wound earlier… I, uh…” She stammered. Why the hell had she come here after med-school? She should have stayed in Connecticut. She cleared her throat. “I’ve never actually seen —” She stopped abruptly, hysteria suddenly bubbling up. “Oh God, what the hell am I doing here? I’m in over my head.”
Arching one eyebrow, he peered at her. “Excuse me, ma’am, but that’s a bunch of bullshit.“
His words were matter of fact, and he didn’t even look at her, instead focusing on something unseen in the distance.
"Excuse me?”
“You belong here just like anyone else, and so far you’re doing a damn fine job, ma'am. Stabilized that asshole and got him straight up to the OR, didn’t you?”
Her eyes widened, the impending bout of self doubt, halting in it’s tracks. “I’d never even seen a gunshot wound before tonight. I wanted to puke.” She shook her head. “And it wasn’t even the gore, I can handle the gore. I’ve seen everything there is to see on the inside of a human body. It’s just… the idea that something so small could just… end everything. It was overwhelming. That sounds like a fine job to you?”
“Sounds like a start. You got past it.”
She wanted to tell him he was the reason, that having him at her elbow, quietly handing her what she needed, never once looking away from the bloody mess in front of them was why she hadn’t lost her cool. “God, I bet you see that kind of thing all the time.”
He let out a low chuckle, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a lighter. The flame flashed in front of his face. He looked like a villain in a children’s story, ever so briefly. Karen shivered. The smoke curled around the both of them as he took a long drag, blowing it out slowly. “I’ve seen more than a few, myself, ma’am.”
Her nose twitched at the smell. It was pungent and repulsive, and yet… a part of her wanted to snatch it from between his fingers and draw all the poison down into her lungs, to live off of it. She pushed away the craving, focusing instead on his words. “Does it really happen so much here?”
He turned to look at her, something just on the tip of his tongue. Karen waited, the silence stretching out between them until she thought it was going to snap, the recoil violently throwing them apart.
Finally, he spoke. “No, not here… In the army. Plenty of bullets to go around over there.”
Suddenly so much about him made sense. His attention to detail, precisely following orders, the quiet indifference on his face when thugs in the ER tried to intimidate him. There had been more than a few criminals to pass through the doors of the hospital, but nothing seemed to phase Nurse Castle. “Were you a medic?”
He shook his head, taking another drag from the tobacco. “Nah, I was a sniper. In a pinch I could dress a wound, but it didn’t come to that very often. When I got back home there wasn’t much use for my rifle, or anything else I learned over there. So…” Another cloud of smoke drifted off into the night. “… here I am.”
There was more, she could hear it in his voice, something ragged along the edges, a pain and anger that he refused to put into words. It intrigued her, but she wasn’t willing to explore it. Instead, she reached into her pocket, pulling out her phone. She sighed. “Smoke break’s over, back to the revolving door of kids who’ve shoved candy corn up their noses and grown men who think throwing knives at each other is a good way to solve disputes.”
Frank smiled again, this time directly at her. It was borderline devastating, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners just a little, one side of his mouth tilted up just a little higher than the other. Oh, the man was certainly handsome. Karen had the strangest need to brush her fingers along the bristle of his jaw.
He saved her the embarrassment, snuffing the cigarette out against the wall behind them and reaching out to give her something. The cool plastic of his lighter was in her palm before she could say anything. “When you go back down, could you let Nurse Temple know she owes me twenty dollars? She’ll know what it’s about.” He flipped the collar of his jacket up and disappeared into the stairwell, calling out behind him, “See you tomorrow, Dr. Page.”
Karen looked down at the little lighter. It was shiny black, a tiny white skull the only thing decorating it. Her fingers still tingled where they’d touched his palm. The jitters were gone. She took a deep breath and turned to descend back into the madness.