Searching for Forever, page 5
The department was small, and avoiding someone
wouldn’t be easy. For the first couple of hours, I managed to
stay at my desk, working on charts, only getting up to see
patients. On the occasions when our paths crossed in the halls,
I would feign looking at my watch, patient notes, my cell
phone, or anything else I could to appear distracted.
My extensive training had allowed me to maintain focus
only on the medicine, when it was required. But the moment I
let my guard slip and the medicine be put aside, there was
Charlie again, in my thoughts, under my skin, and sometimes
in my line of sight. In the moments when she would appear in
front of me, I would allow myself a glance, taking in her eyes,
her lips, and then, I would begin to remember how she felt,
how she smelled, and I forced myself to disengage.
By the sixth hour, Charlie began to hover near my chair—
picking up charts, shuffling through them and putting them
down, talking to anyone around, finding reasons to pass by
whenever she could. It wouldn’t be possible to escape
confrontation.
“Natalie.” She spoke quietly, in a manner that was
completely juxtaposed to her normal persona. “Can you take a
look at this EKG for me?”
“Yeah. Sure. Okay. Uh. What’s the story?” As she handed
me the piece of paper, her fingers brushed my wrists, and heat
blistered up my arms, warming me to the core.
“Fifty-four years old, no history, came in with chest pain
for two days radiating to the back. I wasn’t sure about those
flips there…”
“Looks okay,” I said, unthinkingly looking up into timid
green eyes that had never looked so unsure. “Keep him
monitored, but I’d say as long as the lab work is okay he can
go home.” As long as I didn’t look at her, I was okay.
Without another word, she picked up the EKG and turned
away. “Okay,” she whispered aggressively, turning back
toward me again, “you’ve been avoiding me like the Ebola
virus all day. What the hell is going on?” The anger in her
voice wasn’t as disturbing as the desperation.
“I can’t talk about this right now, Charlie. I’m working.”
“Fine. Then come to the employee lounge.”
I paused for a minute, thinking about the piles of
paperwork that were building up at my desk and, again, about
what people would think if they saw us whispering by the
microwave. But then, I erroneously looked at her again, and
the softness in the lines of her young face, the sharp curves of
her worked hands, the subtle wrinkles at the corners of her
eyes crushed me like a wrecking ball. I was defenseless.
“Okay. Meet me in there in five minutes.”
I finished writing up room 5’s prescriptions, wondering all
the while how I would tell Charlie I could never let what
happened the day before happen again—how I would ever
convince her I didn’t want it to happen again.
Charlie was already waiting for me, sitting at the table,
rhythmically bouncing her leg up and down to an impatient
song inside her head.
“I don’t have much time, Charlie. What did you need to
talk to me about?”
“Really? You don’t know?” Her tone was brash, in a way
that reminded me of the day James Pratt almost died on her
watch.
“Look, Charlie—”
“You don’t have to say it. I’ve heard it before. You’re not
the first straight woman I’ve been with. And you’re not the
first one who’s given me this speech either.” I felt my face fall
in surprise. Until that moment, I’d never really allowed myself
to think of the women Charlie had pined over in the past—or
worse, the ones she would undoubtedly pine over in the future.
“You’re going to tell me that you’re married—that you’re not
gay. And that what happened with us,” she swallowed loudly
and choked back her words, “can never happen again.”
I could do nothing but nod absently.
“I get it. Really. I do. And believe me, I don’t hold it
against you.”
“You don’t?”
“Of course I don’t. These things happen all the time. You
have a lot of shit to deal with, between Sammy, and Peter, and
this job. It’s easy to get confused.” Her empathetic undertones
made her that much more appealing, until the short distance
between our two chairs seemed almost unbearable.
“It is? Yeah. Confused. Right.” I found myself
involuntarily leaning closer to her.
“But we still have to work together. I have to feel like I can
come to you about patients, or whatever else, and you aren’t
going to avoid me.”
“Right…of course…” I said sharply, recoiling into myself.
This wasn’t how I’d anticipated our meeting going. I’d
prepared for tears. I’d prepared for yelling. I’d prepared for
everything…except tolerance. Of course Charlie would take
rejection better than any woman on earth. Of course she would
walk out of the room, never looking back, swing in her step,
making me crave her more than I ever thought possible.
*
Weeks passed, weeks when I was forced to drown myself
in paperwork, and research, and patients, and trauma, and
death, and, if I was lucky, preventing death. Weeks when I did
everything I could to forget about the young paramedic who
seemed to be disrupting my every moment of rational thought.
Peter noticed. I’m sure of it. The distance I’d placed between
us was as subtle as a bullet wound, as I remained in my study,
or occupied my time with Sammy, whenever I was home.
The hospital used to infatuate me, but like an old lover, it
became comfortable and almost listless without the intrigue of
a moment with Charlie. I still enjoyed my work, of course—
that was inevitable. But, much to my chagrin, some of my
passion was gone. Maybe I was just getting old. Or maybe the
burning need I’d always transposed to the emergency room
had finally met its match—and nothing quite satisfied it
anymore.
I lay awake at night agonizing over what should have been
nothing more than a simple kiss. I wasn’t exactly prom queen,
but I wasn’t completely immune to the charms of a first kiss
either.
So why was this one so different? Why did I insist on
playing it over and over in my head, whenever I could, like
some immaculate daydream? Why did my body react so
fiercely to the memory, causing me to ache to relive it? It had
been, after all, nothing more than an irrational, elated reaction
to an intense situation.
Saving a life is sort of like being drunk. Judgment takes a
backseat to passion, and passive thoughts become acute
actions. I’ve seen people scream, cry, sing, dance, even hit
each other in the moments following an anxious moment in
the ER. So why was a kiss so unreasonable? I was attracted to
the ease and grace with which Charlie was able to treat James,
and that was as far as the attraction could go.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was early in the evening, and I was preparing for a long
night, as I always did when working the late shift. Often, it
was quiet enough. But I could never be sure what to expect.
And when the rest of the world was asleep, everything felt a
little more urgent.
“Got one on the flight deck for you, Natalie,” Michelle, the
same young night nurse from the party, with the big, red lips
and a body that belonged in magazines, said cheerfully.
With a diminished degree of interest, I reached up to the
rack and pulled out the chart, eyes still stuck to a previous
patient’s CAT scan. Michelle and one of the other nurses stood
watching, small smiles lingering on their faces.
“What? Is it the president or something?”
“Not quite, no,” Michelle said quietly, suppressing a
childish giggle.
I glanced quickly at the chart—26, female, abdominal pain
for a day, fever, nausea, vomiting.
“Okay. A belly pain. What am I missing here? What’s so
funny?”
The girls glanced at each other. “Just take a look at the
name.”
Hazy, and slightly irritated by the charades, I allowed my
eyes to scan to the top of the page, where the patient’s
demographics sat—a part I usually skipped over until just
before entering the exam room. There it was—Thompson,
CarolAnne.
“Charlie…” I mumbled, more to myself than either nurse.
“Looks like our big, bad resident paramedic is down for
the count,” Michelle said with a wink. “I’ll get labs started…”
She took off quickly.
“Michelle. Be nice. Please?”
I collected myself before entering room 5, unconsciously
smoothing stray strands of my hair and adjusting the neckline
of my scrub top. Skimming the notes, I thought about what
this would mean. For weeks, I’d managed to keep Charlie at a
proper distance, approaching her about patients and smiling
when I passed her in the hall, all the while avoiding dark call
rooms and any situation that might threaten my control.
Now, I faced another kind of situation. Charlie was the
patient and I was the doctor. I didn’t have anyone else to pass
her off to, in order to protect my professional and physical
boundaries, and even if I had, refusing to treat her would
certainly raise an eyebrow or two among the staff. It was bad
enough I lived amongst a constant backdrop of paranoia,
wondering if anyone knew the events of the month before.
This is your job.
Chart in tow, I reminded myself to put one foot in front of
the other, eyes straight ahead, although my heart erupted at a
dizzying rate the closer I got to her room.
“I swear I didn’t know you were on tonight. If I had I
would have tried to hold off a little…” Charlie said with a
contrived smile.
“Stop it. How bad is it?” Even in a drab hospital gown she
looked painfully attractive. The muscles in my stomach
tightened quickly as I realized I was staring.
“Oh, not too bad. Just a little pain in my lower right
quadrant. Started this afternoon…”
“You’re a terrible liar. Just awful. The heroic paramedic
would not have come to her own ER for ‘just a little pain.’
Now lie back,” I said, surprised by the insistent tinge in my
voice.
“Anything you want.” An arresting and overtly seductive
smile framed by flushed cheeks rose on her lips. I froze,
unable to physically pull myself away from her stare and to the
side of her bed for the exam. My mouth hung slack-jawed,
silence filling the small space. “I’m sorry…I…That was…”
“Not cool.”
“Not cool at all.” But I couldn’t help notice the amused
grin Charlie tried to contain.
I hesitated, watching her stretch out on her back, noting the
thin layer of cotton that lay between where my hands needed
to be and her strong body. And for the first time since
residency, I wasn’t sure I could do this.
“I wouldn’t have come in…but, you know…right lower
quadrant…I still have my appendix…for now.”
Charlie’s suddenly professional demeanor strengthened my
resolve. “I’ll get you some Dilaudid. We’ll have to see what
your lab work says, but I’m glad you came in.” Heat rose up
my neck at the sincerity of my own words. “Does this hurt?” I
said sternly, taking a deep breath and pushing gently on the
area just beneath her ribs. The muscles beneath my hands
quivered for a moment as I touched her, and I could feel the
fever working its way through her body.
“No, not there.”
I moved my hands lower, resting my palms on the V-
shaped curves of her stomach, softly pressing down, lingering
longer than I probably should have, as Charlie sucked in a
ragged breath.
“I thought you said it was the right side?” I asked,
perplexed.
“I did…” My resolve waned, my own breath catching in
my throat, a sudden wave of fire crashing over my entire body.
It was amateurish and absurd to lose control with patients—
something I hadn’t done for years, and never like this, but
something I seemed to be doing that night, with my patient in
room 5.
I cleared my suddenly parched throat, trying to dismantle
the fog that had settled over my vision. “Okay. Any nausea?” I
said, stoically, pressing somewhat harder now into the hollow
just above Charlie’s pelvic bone. A small tattoo curled up her
side and crept toward her belly button, creating what
resembled shadows on her level stomach. Her skin was pale
from a Rhode Island winter and as smooth as I remembered.
Abruptly, I found myself wishing I’d put gloves on. She was
soft, and warm. And as she winced slightly under my touch, I
realized she was vulnerable too.
“A little,” she said.
“You’re clearly tender there.”
“Thanks, Doc. Glad you went to medical school for that.”
“Glad to know you’re a smart-ass even when you’re sick.”
Charlie slowly released a heartbreaking smile, slightly less
practiced than others of hers I’d seen. Her eyes glistened with
pain and maybe even a dash of fear. Her broad shoulders
leaned carefully against the head of the bed, the thin gown
hugging her just below her defined collarbones and falling
freely. Another tattoo I’d noticed many times before eclipsed
her right forearm, accentuating the lines that ran adjacent to
gently toned muscle.
Hardly topping five feet three, Charlie always felt much
taller than that to me. But lying in the hospital bed in room 5,
she appeared delicate, and breakable—in need of saving. It
could have been her youth, bundled with the image of
defenselessness, that forced me to fight the impending urge to
sit next to her and hold her. To stroke her hair, comfort her, fix
her. Or maybe it was just the innate part of me I’d never been
able to cure, the part that drew me to what needed to be saved.
“It’s appendicitis, isn’t it?” Her voice sounded suddenly
grave and fierce.
“I’m not sure yet. We have to get your labs back. And then,
a CT…and…”
“Just tell me, Natalie.”
I took in a deep breath and sat down in the small alcove of
space left by Charlie, turning to look at her blunted, beautiful
eyes. “I don’t know. You know I don’t know yet. But it’s
likely. Yes.” She ran a hand through her hair, and I wanted
more than anything to reach out and touch her.
“Okay…” she breathed again, “okay. I can handle that.
Okay.”
If I sat by her another second, I’d finger the hair on the
back of her neck and pull her into me, like I did that afternoon
that felt like so many happy lifetimes ago. Wrong time, I told
myself. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong person. Wrong
gender.
I got up to leave without another word.
“Nat?” she said quietly, a hint of need in her voice so
palpable I turned from the door to make sure she was all right.
“Yes?”
“You’ll be here…right?”
I smiled, struck by the earnestness of her words. This was
the first time I’d seen Charlie exposed, without the cover of
the job to cloak herself in. It was the first time I’d felt she was
really, truly unsure. It was stunning. “Right here…Every step.
I promise.”
I wanted to stay with her, to erase the fear I saw her trying
desperately to hide. But the ever-growing stack of patient
charts was glaring at me from my desk, and it was getting late.
Besides, I couldn’t do any more for Charlie. We would need to
see the lab results.
The night was busier than most, and I tried futilely to get to
the others who needed me. I read through the notes of the five-
year-old with nausea and vomiting in room 2, and then, when I
realized I hadn’t absorbed a word, I read them again, and
again. On my third or fourth go-around, I was stopped mid-
sentence by the sound of laughter coming from down the hall
—Charlie’s laughter.
The curtain to her room was cracked open just enough to
allow me, and everyone who passed by, to see the young,
beautiful Michelle sitting next to her bed, chair pulled up so
close she could rest her hands next to Charlie’s. As I watched,
