Can't Always Get What You Want (5 page)

Don’t yell at your patients, don’t yell at your patients…

“How about this: I give you your pills, and then save your breakfast tray for you until you’re more awake. Deal?”

He begrudgingly opens his eyes, and creases his long, gray eyebrows into a frown.

“Well, all right then.”

—

The next hour continues like that. Most people are very nice and easygoing, but there’s the odd grump, like Mr. Jacobs. I draw up the meds for Rosalie in room 404. She’s a sweet English lady in her early eighties with advanced Parkinson’s disease.

She’s very,
very
particular. She says things like:

“No, dear, put my newspaper forty-five degrees to the
left
of the TV remote.”

Or…

“You know, the ice in this water just isn’t…I don’t know, icy enough. Would you be a pet and get me some more?”

I help her sit up on the edge of the bed. She insists on dumping the entire med cup on her side tray, and swallowing each one individually with several gulps of water.

She has thirteen different pills.

I mentally go over the list of things I still have to do today: seven other patients to feed, wash, and dress. Oh, and take vitals on. And check recent test results on. Let’s not forget to check if there are any new doctor’s orders. Oh, and change the coccyx dressing on the man in room 406. And start charting on them all.

“The last one,” Rosalie says, smiling at me.

Thank God.
I smile back at her.

Rosalie picks up her last pill, and just as she’s about to pop it in her mouth, it slips through her fingers and rolls onto the filthy hospital floor and under the bed.

“Oops,” she says simply.

I have a sudden urge to bash my forehead against the wall.

—

At lunchtime, I collapse onto the couch in the nurses’ lounge, a cup of hot coffee in my hands. Ah, sweet nectar of the gods, how I’ve missed thee!

Checking my phone, I see that I have a new text from Brett. My spirits instantly lift.

Good day so far?

Pfft. How do I respond to that? I like to think that I’m mostly a positive person, so I don’t want to give him the impression that my morning has been a big steaming pile of crap.

Pretty average. And you?

There. Truthful and neutral.

Great. Just bid on a new contract. Exciting stuff. Will tell you more at coffee this afternoon.

I suddenly remember that I’ll get to see him after work today. There’s a fluttery feeling in my stomach again. Sophie, get a grip! It’s just a coffee date.

Oh, wait. Is this a date?

It is a date, isn’t it?

What if I don’t want to go on a date? Does he think it’s a date?

I mentally slap myself. Calm down, Sophie.

Sounds awesome! Looking forward to coffee.

Me too. Which unit do you work on? I’ll wait for you by the front desk or something.

I bite my nail, contemplating. If I tell him where I work, the other staff will notice him. Because, quite frankly, he’s very noticeable. That sandy blond hair, those shimmering blue eyes, the perfect smile that makes his eyes crinkle, those pectorals…
Ahem.

And, he’ll be especially noticed if he asks for me. Everyone on the unit knows I’m single. I’m not sure I can take all the attention and catcalls.

Ah, what the hell.

I tell him my unit number.

—

The rest of my day is a blur. I’m halfway through changing the pad of a bed-bound patient when I notice yellow and red discharge seeping through his coccyx dressing.

Neato.

I feel bad for Nils. He’s a skinny Dutch guy who was paralyzed from the chest down several months ago in a skiing accident. We try to reposition him every two hours, and off-load any bony areas with pillows, but it still doesn’t seem to stop him from getting sores. He’s only thirty-two years old.

“Nils, I just want to change your dressing. It’s starting to leak a bit.”

“Okay, Sophie,” he trills. For being so young and so broken, he’s quite cheerful. And, his accent is cute, so talking to him is fun.

I lay new gauze and saline on the bedside table and start taking the old dressing off.

“Is Inga coming by today?” I ask. He and his wife immigrated to Canada a couple of years ago and have a nine-month-old baby.

“Yes, and she’s bringing Henry,” he says happily.

Aww. Such a proud papa. I contemplate all the things he’ll never get to do with Henry. Never run after him, never teach him to ride a bike…

I push past the lump in my throat, and focus on work.

It takes me a while to get the old dressing off. It has been taped up like a Christmas present, and none of the edges are easy to grab.

At long last, it’s off and I can get a good idea if it’s healing or not.

It’s not.

The wound is very infected, with yellow, foul-smelling discharge. It looks deep. I think we’ll be able to see bone soon.

I go about cleaning and redressing it. It’s kind of tricky, as the new gauze I’ve packed inside tries to fall out as soon as I take my gloved hand away. Let’s just say, it’s a long time before I’m done.

Thankfully, Nils doesn’t feel any of this. Any other patient would’ve had sensation in this area, and would’ve needed some heavy-duty painkillers before I started prodding around.

“Thank you, Sophie,” he says when I finish.

“You’re welcome, Nils. Say hi to Inga and Henry for me.”

An hour later, I discover Nils lying on his side in bed, the dressing ripped apart.

“Nils, what happened here?”

“Dr. St. Luke was here, and wanted to see how I was healing.”

Ah, yes. St. Luke.

Dr. Ignatius St. Luke.

I call him St. Puke.

I sigh and hit the call button. “Hi, this is Sophie. Can I get some help in Nils’s room, please?”

—

As we near the end of our shift, some of the other staff and I melt into chairs around our unit’s front desk while the afternoon nurses take report. I think the last time I sat down was lunchtime, three hours ago.

I’d just asked a coworker what she has planned for the week when a deep, brusque voice startles me.

“Good afternoon, ladies.”

Ugh. St. Puke.

He’s middle-aged, has curly brown hair, and has an intelligent, quiet air about him.

A few months ago, I was tempted to believe that he had a good side. It was Valentine’s Day, and I was at the front desk reviewing a chart when he settled into a chair near me and picked up our unit desk phone.

“Good morning, sweetheart. Happy Valentine’s Day,” I heard him say.

Aww, that’s a surprise! I had always pictured him living like a lonely hermit.

“I’ll be home later. Yes, I can pick the kids up from soccer. Okay, gotta go. Love you too.”

Huh. Go figure, St. Puke has a wife and kids. Maybe I shouldn’t refer to him as St. Puke in my head anymore? After all, he’s a human being too, worthy of respect just as much as anyone else…

“Sarah,” he snaps, forcing me out of my reverie.

“Actually, it’s Sophie,” I say.

He responds with a forced, tight smile. “Could you look at the vitals on Mr. Evans please.”

It sounds more like a command than a request.

“Sure.”

I’m not even sure why I’m doing this. He could easily look it up himself. But, a teeny, tiny part of me wants his approval, and to look like a team player. So I retrieve Mr. Evans’s chart.

“Has he been febrile?” St. Puke asks.

“Umm…”

Febrile, febrile.

What does “febrile” mean again? Come on, Sophie, you know this! It’s basic terminology.

He lifts his glasses to his forehead.

“You do know what ‘febrile’ means, don’t you?”

“Of course I do!” I say, my voice high and pinched. “It’s, umm…”

He sighs, snatches the chart from my hands, and silently reviews.

“Yes, he has been febrile.”

He leans toward me, looks right into my eyes, and whispers with great enunciation, “Febrile. F-E-B-R-I-L-E!”

I just want to crawl into a hole and die.

“It means, Sarah, that he’s had a fever.”

He snaps the chart shut, and frowns at me. “Maybe you and I should review my basic terminology textbook. I can explain the big words to you.”

He stands before I can say anything (not that I could—I’m frozen to my chair) and marches away.

—

I subtly shake my head, bringing my thoughts back to the present.

“Good afternoon, Dr. St. Luke,” replies our unit clerk.

“Well,” he says, after taking good, pointed looks at all of us, waiting to go home. “It seems that we have too much time on our hands.” He motions to us to sit down.

Bastard.

I get up when he’s not looking and walk to the end of the unit.

All the way down, I take deep, calming breaths and try to focus on the positive. Like, seeing Brett soon. I’m in the middle of fantasizing about his biceps just begging to be freed from the confines of his T-shirt when I notice a woman crying on the couch we keep in the common area.

It’s Larry’s wife, Lorna. They really are cute together. Larry and Lorna, until death do us part. Only for them, death is coming all too soon. Stupid cancer.

I approach quietly. “Hi, Lorna.”

She looks up at me, her face pink and puffy. I sit down beside her on the couch.

Lorna rubs at her nose. “Sorry for blubbering.”

“No need to apologize,” I say. “You love him.”

Her eyes well up with fresh tears, and she nods vigorously.

“Do you want to talk about Larry? Share some memories, maybe?”

She seems surprised at first that I’d want to know, but it doesn’t take her long to get into it. She tells me about their first date (she threw up twice due to the flu, but it must’ve been love because he asked her out again the next day), their wedding, their vacations, their kids, their hopes and dreams, their struggles.

She smiles at some memories, cries at others.

She eventually talks about Larry being sick.

“I just wish this wasn’t happening. Sometimes I feel like it’s a dream, like I’ll wake up and it will all just be a horrible, terrible nightmare.”

A shiver passes through me.

I know the feeling.

We visit for a while, and I glance at my watch. I was supposed to meet Brett half an hour ago! I give Lorna a hug and tell her I’ll see her tomorrow. The unit clerk calls out to me as I pass the front desk.

“A tall, blond piece of man candy was here looking for you,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows up and down.

“Do you know where he went?”

“He said he’d wait for you in the cafeteria.”

—

I reach the cafeteria and spot him reading a weather-beaten magazine.

“Those are probably the dirtiest things in the hospital,” I say.

He looks up and smirks at me. And then, realizing that I meant the magazines, he grimaces and drops the magazine like it’s on fire.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I say. “I lost track of time.”

He shakes his head. “No need. In fact, it was nice to catch up on my reading. I’m behind in my issues of”—he glances at the discarded magazine—“
Good
Housekeeping
.”

He stands up and offers me his elbow. “Shall we?”

I gratefully take it, and away we go.

Standing this close to him, I can smell him. And he smells really,
really
good. A mixture of cologne, sweat, wood chips, and something else I can’t place.

My brain tells me it’s probably pheromones.

My inner sexpot doesn’t care if it’s pheromones or not, just knows that he smells sexy as all getup. I’m feeling a little dizzy and weak in the knees.

I hope I can walk across the parking lot without tripping.

Chapter 5

Gimme Shelter

Brett and I are about five steps out of the hospital when the sky opens up, hurling sheets of rain onto us. He takes off his windbreaker and holds it above my head as we race through the parking lot. I can feel the water squishing in between my toes with each step.

We finally reach the cover of that most beloved, glorious Canadian coffee house called Tim Hortons (just say the words “double-double” to a Canadian sometime—s
he’ll love you on the spot), and Brett reaches for the door and holds it open for me.