Graveyard Shift Read online

  LG landed, keening, on her ass.

  "Get out of here, Hope," called Dr. Chia.

  "I can medicate her. Haldol and Ativan." What the hell. She'd been asking for drugs. We could give them to her, only not the refill she wanted.

  "A nurse is on it. You get out. You're making her crazy."

  She was already there. Still, I reluctantly backed away, iPad blocking my chest (and nipples) as the security guards rushed in. There's a security guard posted right by the ER entrance, maybe another 30 feet away if you cut through the small triage room, so you'd expect them to arrive immediately, but most of them look 200 years old. Speed is not their forte.

  We got younger ones this time, a grey-haired, sixtyish white man and a tall, young white guy with glasses and an Adam's apple that seemed to jut from his throat.

  "Slow and easy does it," the older guy was saying. He had a pair of handcuffs in his right hand, already open for business. "They've got her. We cuff her wrists, and then we can get her feet."

  He was talking instead of moving.

  Go for it, I silently urged him.

  Instead, he gestured at the young guard to open his own set of cuffs. The young guy's hands trembled, and he said, "I don't want an incident."

  Dear God. This was not a teachable moment.

  "It's not an incident, Patrick. It's our job," said the old guard.

  I backed further out of range and muttered, "Make them tight." Lori Goody was so skinny, I bet they could use child-sized cuffs on her.

  The young security guard opened the cuffs, but he didn't place them over her wrists, even though she pummelled the air and nearly made contact with the orderly's shoulder.

  The old guard gestured for Patrick to hurry up, waving his own handcuffs in the air instead of using them.

  "Come on," I ground out between my teeth. If it took any longer, I’d have to knock her out with the iPad.

  "I've got her, Patrick!" called Julie, who clamped Lori Goody's wrists, like a champ.

  "We got her. Move in," the old guard said, but neither of them had managed to touch the patient. "Don't let New Year's get you down, Patrick. We got this. It's our job."

  A new, young nurse yelped.

  "She bit Amber," Dr. Chia called. "Amber, you get out and wash the bite. I'll write you some Clavulin afterward."

  "I'll do it," I said. I hated hanging back helplessly. Writing a prescription was lame, but better than standing at the sidelines and calling, Olé, olé!

  The mound of people on the floor started writhing in earnest as Lori Goody ululated once more, and Dr. Chia said, "Hope, you don't do anything except get out of here."

  I stood rooted. If this were my fault, I'd do what I could to get them out of it.

  "Out. Now!" Dr. Chia roared, and I beat my way back through the growing crowd to the acute side and set the iPad on the counter where I'd found it. At least it had met a gentler fate than Amber, who blinked back tears as one of my favourite nurses, Roxanne, cleaned the bite with Chlorhexidine.

  "Make sure you wash it with tons of soap and water," I told them. As we used to say in medical school, the solution to pollution is dilution. Amber needed fewer fancy cleansing products and more old-fashioned scrubbing. Human bites were dirty, and who knew what (or whom) Lori Goody had last eaten.

  Roxanne, a petite, fine-boned RN who often joked about her Italian grandmother, had lost her usual grin. She gave me a quick nod, making her wavy brown bob bounce.

  Take home lesson: do not mess with nurses. They will stick together and mess you up.

  Take home lesson number two: if you're a doctor, even if someone tries to strangle you, keep on truckin'. No one will kiss it better.

  Sad. I shook off the melancholy. My phone buzzed in the pocket over my right bum cheek. I'd missed a few texts during the madness, and now someone was calling me.

  I reached for my phone, but someone grabbed my elbow.

  I jerked back, ready to wallop him.

  A surprised Tucker stared down at me. "You okay, Hope? You weren't answering my texts, so I—what happened to your neck?"

  3

  I gasped.

  My hands jerked toward my neck.

  Now that Tucker had mentioned it, and my adrenaline was dying down, just plain breathing scoured my throat. My scalene muscles had seized up. I could hardly speak.

  And forget how I must look. I probably sported wild horse eyes and a red-purple necklace of bruises as wide as my stethoscope.

  Talking would hurt more, so I did a pantomime for him, pretending to tighten a cord around my own neck.

  "You tried to...hang yourself?" he said, eyes widening.

  That almost made me laugh. Tucker called us soul mates, and I'd agree 80 percent, but sometimes he got things hilariously wrong. I shook my head and, to save my voice, opened up the Notes app and wrote it down for him on my phone: Patient tried to strangle me.

  "Are you serious? I mean, of course you're serious, but—"

  I rolled my eyes to convey my thoughts, namely, Why would I joke about this?

  Tucker's fists tightened. "Where is he? Please tell me he's out of here so I don't have to kill him."

  I shook my head and pointed at the tangle of people, led by the security guards. It looked like Patrick had finally, finally managed to handcuff her, and now they were working on her ankles.

  "That's—it looks like a woman."

  I nodded.

  "And are the police even here? Is she sedated?"

  I shook my head no and no.

  "And you're going to do this night shift, even though someone tried to kill you? Again?"

  I held my hands palms up at shoulder level in a joint move that meant both "Back off" and possibly "I surrender." If the night doc excused me, I'd probably leave. But if the doc wanted all hands on deck, I'd stay. That was my job. Although how much good I'd do working mute, I couldn't say.

  My phone buzzed and buzzed in my hand. Someone really wanted to talk to me. I almost never answered my cell in the emergency room, but what if something had happened to my parents or my little brother, Kevin?

  "You're going down, bitch!" Lori Goody hollered as they rolled her past me, strapped onto a stretcher, into our psychiatry room. Unfortunately, that placed her in the acute side's room 14, almost directly across from me and Tucker. "You think you can get away with it?"

  Get away with what? A night shift?

  "I'm gonna tell Guillaume about you! He'll squish you like a—like a Chinese cockroach!"

  Ugh. I doubted she'd wrestle her racist butt out of her five point restraints and make a phone call. Why hadn't they placed a face mask over her nose and mouth? It wasn't for every Code White, but when they started trying to stab you, surely we had to break out every defence available. Not only would a mask prevent her from spitting on them and discourage biting, but it might muffle some of her braying, too.

  I was more worried about my persistent phone caller. The 613 area code number looked familiar enough that I answered the next call, even though it wasn't my parents, and I was trying to save my vocal cords.

  A woman said, her voice taut with fear, "Hope. Is Ryan with you?"

  My hand tightened on the phone. Tucker's my man now, but I'll love Ryan Wu forever, even after I'm dead and I'm nothing but sun-bleached bones. I forced my vocal cords to adduct. "Hi, Mrs. Wu. No, I'm working. He's not here."

  "He's not—but where—Rick, he's not there!" She hung up.

  I stared at my phone's flat, black screen in shock. I'd never heard Ryan's mother so panicked. She was a peaceful piano and voice teacher who volunteered at church and made better dumplings than my own grandmother. Ten days after Ryan and I broke up, I ran into her in the grocery store. She hugged me and said into my hair, "I'll always want the best for you, Hope," while her husband nodded awkwardly and stood three feet away.

  She shouldn't have spoken to me at all. Ryan had cut me off. He'd blocked my number and my barely-used social media accounts. His friends Terry and Malcolm had
immediately unfriended me on Facebook, and I'm sure everyone else did, too. So Cheryl Wu wouldn't call me in the middle of the night unless it was urgent.

  And she had told me why.

  Ryan was missing. The other half of my heart had vanished.

  I knew that anyone who jumped in here on a TV series of my life would wonder what in the blue blazes was going on and why I couldn't pick one team, Tucker or Ryan.

  It’s complicated. I love both Ryan Wu and John Tucker more than my own soul. Ryan was my first boyfriend, and I will go to my grave loving him. But Tucker and I have been through absolute hell together, including 14/11, a hostage taking on November 14th so excruciating that I can only refer to it by a number. Even flying home from Los Angeles nearly killed us—and Tucker and I ended up sort of engaged.

  Which means I'm monogamous with Tucker now. I know it doesn't compute, but neither does anything else I touch.

  In response, Ryan slashed me out of his life. Totally understandable.

  He's the perfect man. Well, perfect except that I'm agnostic and he used to be the World's #1 Christian. That meant he wanted to marry me and have two to four kids. He already had a loving foster dog, Roxy. So he was mega-trustworthy and he was so hot that it hurt to look at him. It doesn't get any better than that.

  I still ached for Ryan every day, every minute. Tucker took me out for Indian food one night, and all I could do was cry because the pakoras reminded me of Ryan.

  I'd assumed Ryan would be okay. Destroyed like I was, yes. But fuelled by righteous fury and surrounded by dozens of pure and lovely church girls, he'd mend faster than I would.

  Instead, he'd now disappeared so thoroughly that he'd panicked his own parents.

  I called Mrs. Wu back, ignoring the nurse printing an electrocardiogram on one side of us, the clerk paging ICU on the other, Lori Goody threatening to report us all to the College, and Tucker's eyes drilling a hole into my profile.

  My call went to voice mail. "Mrs. Wu. You know I haven't heard from Ryan in two weeks—" And three days and twelve hours. My throat spasmed. I missed him so much that I could hardly speak, even before Lori Goody tried to take me down. "He, uh, blocked my number." He wouldn't even pick up when I called from my friend Tori's phone, or a pay phone. He probably refused to respond to all numbers from Montreal's area code, 514. "But if he shows up, I'll call you right away. Let me know how long he's been missing, and if you have any leads, and..."

  Most people wouldn't rocket into 911 mode when their ex-boyfriends melted away. But if you were Dr. Hope Sze and had barely survived a gun to your temple, you’d go nuclear.

  "...tell him I love him."

  My voice broke again. Why did I say that?

  Because it was true.

  I could delete that message, but fuck it. It was true. If nothing else, I told the truth.

  I hung up instead, my heart banging like a rabbit trying to kick its way out of my chest.

  I couldn't look at Tucker.

  He swore until he ran out of breath.

  What could I say? I love you, too. Insanely, insatiably, but not exclusively. All of it was true, but it wouldn't help.

  Tucker threw back his stool and started pacing. I wouldn't blame him if he ditched me, too.

  I felt like a toxic waste dump.

  I poisoned everything and everyone I loved. Tucker would be better off without me.

  Bebe Rexha's "I'm a Mess" rang in my ears. I had it on my phone on replay during my crying jags.

  Unfortunately, I needed to get back to work.

  "I love you. I'm sorry," I whispered, and turned to the rack of charts. At night, they consolidated the patients’ charts, both ambulatory and acute, on the acute side.

  Tucker watched me, simmering with rage.

  I said over my shoulder, "I'm sorry. I love you."

  The rack of clipboards blurred before my eyes. Because St. Joe's SARKET computerized record system was so new, they had a hybrid system where they printed out a sheet with each patient's ID, health card number, and chief complaint, but you had to type up the complete history and physical and enter orders on either a desktop computer or a WOW ("workstation on wheels"). It was originally called a COW, or computer on wheels, until they decided that was insulting to our bovine friends.

  I made my way toward the ambulatory exam rooms. They were so small that you couldn't wheel in a WOW. You had to use the computer within the room or write or dictate later at the desktops. The nursing station counter was so miniature, only two people could fit comfortably on the main part of the L.

  If Dr. Chia returned to work on these desktops, Tucker would have to move, or slide over to a third stool. And if the big male nurse, Bill, happened to work ambulatory, the rest of us would end up crammed on the other end. Maybe that was why he never came over here.

  I stared at my next chart, a 24-year-old male with a sore throat. My eyes blurred. Dude, I know all about sore throats.

  I tapped on the escape key, waking up the desktop computer to register myself as the MD looking after this patient. Because of the computerized system, I now had to wait until Amber was triaged and registered as a patient before I could prescribe her Clavulin.

  When I walked to exam room 1 for the sore throat, Tucker reappeared by my side.

  "Hope," he said.

  I turned to him, blushing already.

  "It's not okay," he said, struggling to control his face and his voice. His brown eyes burned with hostility. "But I know something's up. What happened to Ryan?"

  I closed my eyes, trying not to let the tears out. Tucker still loves me.

  He immediately reached for my hair, sweeping my bangs off my forehead. We didn't even brush hands at work, because all he had to do was look at me, and Roxanne would hoot, "Get a room!" But we both craved that brief touch.

  "I don't know," I whispered. My throat felt like Lori Goody had taken a cheese grater to it.

  "Hope, we said no more secrets."

  I exhaled. Transparency. That's what Tucker had said, actually. One hundred percent transparency. And I'd told him that was unrealistic. Everyone needed some privacy, a bit of mystery, for heaven's sake.

  He'd gazed at me with those brown eyes—such a marked contrast from his wheat blond hair—and he'd said, "I don't."

  Maybe that was true because he truly wanted to mind-meld with me. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, tonight I was stuck in the emergency department until at least 8 a.m. If I told Tucker what was going down, maybe he could start searching for Ryan.

  Which Ryan would hate. He was proud. He was the opposite of Tucker, more like a panther.

  Quiet. Private. Stalking his prey. A beast in bed.

  Tucker was a party in your face. Woo hoo! I brought the beer! Not Molson’s, but a microbrew called Minot, made in tiny batches in my new friend's basement! Best beer of your life!

  I said, "Ryan's missing."

  Tucker's body turned rigid.

  "His mom called me. Shows you how desperate they are." I leaned into him and pressed my eyes into his scrub top, letting the tears soak in, even though I'd probably get conjunctivitis from his work clothes. I felt like I deserved it.

  He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, kissing my forehead. Although he'd been working for the past 16 hours, he still smelled like soap and deodorant, along with the faint note of his sweat. I inhaled his scent, which gave me the courage to say, "I'm working. Could you—"

  Tucker exhaled. He and Ryan had been fighting over me since, mmm, August. So less than six months. Not that long, but very, very intense.

  "Unless you want my emerg shift?" I joked into his chest. Both of us had missed too much work since we were taken hostage November 14th. The faculty was working with us to make sure we graduated on time, but Tucker was out of action for two months after two surgeries. He wrote a paper and made one month a research block, but neither of us could miss any more clinical time without Serious Consequences.

  Tucker didn't reply for an agonizingly long moment, makin
g me hold my breath.

  At last, when he exhaled again, his core muscles contracted so much that his abdomen no longer made contact with mine. He was withdrawing from me.

  My eyes spewed some more tears, but I didn't dare wipe them on him. I pulled away and let them fall down my face.

  Tucker's rough voice cut through the air, stopping me. "Do you have any more details about him? When was the last time they had contact with him, what was he doing, did he leave a note—"

  "Nothing," I whispered, and I was crying in earnest. Ryan had sliced me out of his life. It was like an exorcism.

  Tucker placed his fingers on my back with excessive care. He loathed my longing for Ryan, but he knew he couldn't excise it. At long last, he said, "Don't worry."

  I leaned back to stare into his eyes and examine the lines of his face.

  His brow furrowed, his eyes staring into mine. "I'll take care of it."

  Ryan was a him, not an it. I opened my mouth.

  "He's not allowed to become a martyr." Tucker stepped away from me.

  "Thank you," said the clerk, who made a show of squeezing around us to scoop up a paper on the counter behind us.

  We walked away from the desk, not speaking, but he'd picked up on my fears exactly. What if Ryan was so destroyed by me/us that he'd killed himself?

  Not that I considered myself so crucial, but Tucker and I weren't the only ones damaged by 14/11. Ryan lost his faith. In a way, it worked for me, because it meant he gave up abstinence and fell into bed (and into the car, and into the shower) with me.

  But now that I'd chosen Tucker again, it had left Ryan with nothing. No woman, and no faith to hold him back from the abyss.

  I knew I had to get back to that sore throat patient. I knew that tonight's evaluation was already in the toilet, and that I could fail my year or even my entire residency.

  But Ryan was more important. He was one of the human beings I loved the most in the world, even if I could never have him again.

  If I had to, I would leave medicine to search for him right here and right now.