wrapped in white
Charlotte loves her work. She loves the clean white walls, the smell of disinfectant, the moments of calm between patients. She loves the nurse she works with, Davy, with the big smile and floppy hair. He makes her smile on the worst days, the days when there’s even more blood, the days when she loses people, loses children, loses young girls with families waiting outside. It only happens one or two times a week, but when it does it’s like all hell has been let loose in Charlotte’s mind. Everytime she does she locks the door to her office, takes out her siddur and says the mourner’s kaddish for the person who's died. Technically she shouldn’t, but it calms her. She has to stay calm, she’s a doctor.
Her shift is fourteen hours today, from twelve to one. The afternoon is fairly quiet, a few broken legs and a couple of sprained wrists, but it becomes more hectic as the night begins. Alcohol poisoning at ten pm? Crazy. A coke overdose at eleven? Mad. She saves them all. She saves a kid who ran his car into a wall. She feels fine. Then, at midnight, Davy bursts in and tells her there's a kid who's heart’s failed in room sixteen so can she get up there as soon as possible, please? Charlotte speed walks up there. Heart failure…She’ll pump whoever it is with beta blockers, if this is the first time. They'll be alright. Probably an anorexic. She’ll prescribe blockers, food and therapy, get the kid to a clinic and check up in two months. She’s well practiced in that, and saving anorexic kids matters to her after growing up with five sisters in a household where insecurity equaled normality. She takes a deep breath, puts on a smile and walks into room sixteen.
She stifles a gasp when she sees who’s lying on the gurney with the iv in their arm. It’s Whizzer. She feels sick. He looks drained. Like all the life’s been sucked out of him. His skin is still dark, but there’s somehow no colour to it. His hair has been neglected so much it’s nearly curled back up into its natural ringlets. His brow is furrowed, even in his sleep. Charlotte doesn’t let her shock show. She’s a professional. She asks Ally, the junior doctor, what’s up with him. She says they’ve done some scans and it was a murmur, not a failure. Charlotte thanks HaShem under her breath. She checks him over. It’s weird, lifting his arms up and down like he’s a doll or something. Like he’s not real. She feels sick but maintains composure. She deduces that the murmur was a one-off, probably due to a mix of his anaemia and the dangerously high fever he’s running. His heart will be okay, but they have to break his fever or else. She tells Ally and Davy to get some ibuprofen into him and put as many compresses, takes a moment to breathe and watches them work.
His fever breaks after half an hour. She mumbles ‘baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam, hatov vehametiv’ to herself when it does. They pump him full of morphine to sleep the rest of the danger off. Charlotte calls Cordelia and tells her there’s an extraordinary incident and she has to stay on until it's in the clear. She doesn’t tell Cordelia that it’s Whizzer. She won’t be able to work if she knows her girlfriend’s scared.
She stays sitting up for hours, treats a few more poisonings and overdoses, asks Davy for news about the hyperthermia buy every five minutes, taps her foot with worry. At four am he wakes up. Charlotte wants to rush in, but she has to wait while Davy does the routine checks. She stands in the doorway until the nurses leave, then walks in. He’s sitting up, looking tired and bewildered. He hears her steps and looks over. When he sees her his jaw drops slightly and she half-runs over. Pulls him into the tightest hug possible. She can feel his bones when she does. He’s shaking, apologising profusely. She hugs him even tighter, leans her forehead on the top of his head, tells him it’s okay, mumbles that he mustn't ever do that to her again into his ear.
The next afternoon Whizzer moves back in with Char and Delia.