I get two more admissions right in a row after that and hardly have a moment to breathe. There’s one point at about 3 a.m. when I realize that I haven’t used the bathroom in a good eight hours. On the plus side, that means I haven’t had an opportunity to lose anything else in there. Anyway, there’s no time for such frivolous things right now—the nurses are staring at me, all waiting for me to complete my latest admission orders.
“Can you page Dr. Reilly?” I hear one of the nurses say.
My head jerks up involuntarily. S*xy Surgeon hasn’t been by to rescue me once tonight. But I don’t miss him. I swear I don’t.
Well, maybe a little.
“Good luck with that,” another nurse says. “Dr. Reilly never answers his pager.”
That statement is met with a smattering of giggles and agreement. “True,” the first nurse says. She’s a matronly woman in her fifties.
“He’s cute though. I can put up with a lot if they’re cute.” “Yeah, and he’s really cute,” a third nurse chimes in.
I can’t help but feel annoyed. Mostly because I know that there’s no level of cuteness that I, as a female (human), could obtain that would allow me to get away with treating the nurses like crap the way Ryan does.
I finish up my orders, hand them over to the nurse, and race down the hallway to the bathroom. I make it to the stall seconds before any loss of continence occurs. Good thing I’ve barely had time to drink anything tonight.
I’m pulling up my scrub pants, my elbow pressed against the stall door to keep it closed since none of the bathroom stalls have functional locks, when I hear the page booming from the loudspeakers overhead: “Dr. McGill, please call extension 3425!”
Okay, that’s the unit I’d just been sitting on a minute earlier. I probably forgot to sign my orders again, but why would they page me overhead for something like that? I check my pager to make sure I didn’t miss a page. I haven’t. I quickly wash my hands and race out of the bathroom. It’s got to be an emergency if they paged me overhead.
A nurse named Beth is waiting for me when I arrive back on the unit. I double over for a moment, puffing unattractively.
“What’s going on?” I gasp.
“Mr. Chandler asked for a higher dose of Benadryl,” Beth says. I stare at her. “You paged me overhead for that?”
Beth shrugs.
I am so tired. I feel like I’m going to cry. “This is an outrage! You can’t even pee in this place!” I’m almost screaming at this point.
A resident in scrubs sitting in the nurse’s station looks up at the sound of my outburst. Naturally, I had to express my frustration about peeing in front of S*xy Surgeon. He grins at me s*xily.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“You gave him 25 mg of Benadryl,” Beth says. “He says it’s not working and he needs 5O mg. So another 25 mg.”
“Okay, sure,” I say.
I start hunting around for Chandler’s chart so I can write the order. I can just feel Ryan’s eyes watching me, but I try to ignore him best I can.
“I can’t believe you’re giving in to the drug addict,” he says.
I turn around to glare at him. “It’s Benadryl. Last I heard, that’s not a narcotic.”
Ryan stands up to join me at the chart rack. He’s closer to me than he needs to be. “Let me guess,” he says. “The guy has been getting tons of narcotics, and finally your attending or Alyssa made you cut back. So instead, he starts asking you for Benadryl. Like, all the freaking time.”
I frown. “How did you know that?”
“Because, young Medicine Intern,” he says, “Benadryl potentiates the effects of narcotics. All the smart addicts know that.”
I narrow my eyes. “And how do you know that?”
“Because I work at County Hospital,” he says with a shrug.
He’s wrong. He’s so wrong. He has no idea what he’s talking about.
And I really wish he’d wipe that smug grin off his face. “I’m right,” he says.
“This guy is not a drug addict,” I insist as I pull Chandler’s chart off the rack. I’m prepared to give him all the Benadryl he wants, if only to spite Ryan.
Anyway, I’m 1OO% sure he’s not a drug addict. “Yeah? What’s his diagnosis?”
“Shingles.” “How old?”
“36.”
“HIV-positive?”
I feel my fingers ball into fists. “Yes, but not from drugs.”
Ryan raises his eyebrows. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What sob story did he feed to you?”
“His fiancé was cheating on him,” I say, sticking out my chin.
Ryan starts to laugh. “Oh boy, he must have been so happy when he laid eyes on you.”
That is totally untrue. I mean, well, yes, he did look happy when he saw me come into his room in the ER. But that’s just because I was his doctor and he was in pain and he knew I was going to help him. Not because he saw me as some naïve little intern who he could manipulate to get pain meds.
Right?
Crap.
“What room is he in?” Ryan says, looking down at the chart. Before I can answer, he reads it off. “423. Chandler. Got it.”
My stomach seizes up as I watch Ryan stride down the hallway in the direction of Chandler’s room. This is bad. I start to chase him down. “What are you doing?”
“I’m doing you a huge favor,” he replies. Oh no.
I can’t seem to stop him though. He slows down in front of Chandler’s room, and doesn’t even bother to gown up. He pulls on a pair of gloves with a loud snap and strides into the darkened room. I follow a few steps behind, fumbling with the fabric of the yellow isolation gown which doesn’t seem to want to unfold for me.
“Mr. Chandler?” I hear Ryan ask. “My name is Dr. Reilly.”
Alex Chandler struggles to sit up in bed. He rubs his eyes and looks at Ryan. “Hi,” he says. He doesn’t seem thrilled.
“I want to make something really clear to you, Mr. Chandler,” Ryan says, his face impassive. “We are not drug dealers here. You are not getting any more pain meds while you’re here. No morphine, no Dilaudid, no Demerol, nothing. No Benadryl either. You can have Tylenol—that’s it. So I want you to quit bothering poor Dr. McGill here because it’s not going to work.”
Chandler stares at Ryan in surprise. “I’m… you know I have shingles, right?”
“And you’re using it as an excuse to get high,” Ryan says. “Nice job. But it’s not going to work anymore.”
Chandler looks from me to Ryan, finally deciding to address me: “Dr. McGill, I swear to you, I’m not—”
“Don’t bother,” Ryan cuts him off. “She’s not the boss. She’s just an intern.”
My face burns. I want to tell Alex Chandler that I’m sorry, that I didn’t tell Ryan to talk to him this way, but my lips feel frozen.
“I’m going to report you to the patient advocate,” Chandler hisses at Ryan. “You can’t talk to a patient this way, Dr. Reilly.”
“Go ahead,” Ryan snorts. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and she won’t bother to check how many times you’ve been to the ER this month looking for drugs. Or in the ERs of other nearby hospitals.” He raises his eyebrows. “And maybe she’ll be blind too and won’t see the track marks on your arms.”
Oh God. He’s right. How did I not notice that?
Alex Chandler’s face has turned very red. “That’s… you… I’m not…”
“Read my lips,” Ryan says, folding his arms across his chest. “No more drugs. Not here. You’re done.
“Fine,” Chandler says roughly. And then he does something really unexpected, which is that he rips his IV right out of his arm. Tape and all. It must have hurt, but he doesn’t even flinch. “I’m leaving. I’m not going to be treated this way.”
He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands up. He’s a little shaky with his first step, but then it’s obvious he’s not going to fall.
He glares at me. “Thanks for ratting me out to your boyfriend over here. Really classy.”
My mouth falls open. I don’t even know what to say.
Chandler pushes past me, his shoulder jostling mine, and the last word I hear him say before he leaves is: “Bitch.”
I can’t stop shaking.
After I fill out the paperwork for Alex Chandler to leave the hospital AMA (Against Medical Advice), Ryan follows me to a quiet corner outside of the ward and sits with me while I replay what just happened over and over. I feel like a complete idiot. Chandler was manipulating me all along and I hadn’t the slightest clue. I spent the whole day defending him like a fool.
“Don’t feel bad,” Ryan says. “It’s your first week. It happens to everyone.”
“Did it happen to you?”
He grins. “No. But I’m much meaner than you are.” I bury my face in my hands. “I’m terrible at this.” “Yeah,” Ryan agrees. “But so is everyone.”
“No, I’m the worst.”
“I think you’re underestimating how bad everyone else is.”
I’m not sure this line of reasoning is making me feel any better. “That guy’s been doing this for years, I’ll bet,” Ryan says. “He’s a
nice-looking guy so he makes himself look clean-cut just so he can fool some goodhearted person like you. He’s an expert at it. And this is only your first week.”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“Listen,” Ryan says. “Are you done for the night?” I nod.
“Good.” He stands up then holds out his hand to help me to my feet. Ryan’s hand feels so warm and comforting in mine that I feel sad when I have to let go of it. “I’m going to walk you to your call room.”
Hopefully, I don’t end up in the wrong room again and have to make Alyssa’s bed.
He presses the button for the elevator. He tugs absently at the V- shaped collar of his blue scrub top and I again see that tantalizing bit of blond chest hair peeking through. I don’t know if he notices me looking, but he gives me this smile that I can’t quite read.
The elevator comes a minute later and we both step inside. I lean against the back corner, and Ryan presses the button for the seventh floor. As the doors slide shut, he looks at me, no longer smiling. I look at him. And before I know what’s happening, he moves toward me and starts kissing me.
I feel his hands running up my back and into my neck and my hair as his lips press against mine and his tongue penetrates my mouth. The bristles of his golden five o’clock shadow graze my chin hard enough to cause pain, but I can’t get enough of it. I know it’s a cliché, but I feel myself melting against him. S*xy Surgeon knows how to kiss, that’s for sure. For once, I love how slow the elevators in this hospital are.
I hear the ding of the elevator reaching its destination and the doors swing open. Ryan’s hand closes around mine.
“Come on,” he says.
My heart leaps. Even though we’re at work, there are two very reasonable, private bedrooms for us to retire to. Not that I’m going to sleep with Ryan Reilly. Not in the literal or figurative sense of the word.
But I definitely would love to make out with him for another hour or three.
The fates are against me though. As usual.
Ryan’s pager goes off. And the guy who never, ever, ever answers his pager looks down at the number, and says, “Shit, I gotta go, Jane.”
I’m on the verge of tears. “Seriously?”
He sighs and rubs his face. “Yeah, I don’t want to either, believe me. Get some sleep, okay?”
How am I supposed to sleep after everything that just happened? But I reply, “Okay.”
“To be continued,” he says, slipping back into the elevator just before the doors slam shut.
Hours awake: 21
Chance of s*xy time in near future: 25%
