Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Autry followed me into the area that would lead us slightly upstairs where the ER was located.
After guiding him in with me, I took off toward the set of copiers and made a few copies, one to leave for Winston and Crimson, before handing everything over to him.
He took the papers, folded them neatly in half, and looked around.
“Nice,” he said as he took it all in. “You work here all day, darlin’?”
I grinned. “Most of the time, yes. It’s decent.”
It was decent, too.
Probably one of the nicer emergency rooms I’d ever been in. But that didn’t negate the fact that there were people here who could make it ugly.
“Don’t look now, but Big Tits McGentry over there can’t stop staring at you,” Autry whispered.
I didn’t need to look at who he was staring at to know who he was talking about.
Tammy.
It was like her tits got even more and more vulgar as the time went on.
I wasn’t aware that you could make your boobs hang out of a scrub top, but damned if she didn’t accomplish it.
“She hates me,” I said as I hooked my arm with his. “And sorry to have to push you out of here, but I was supposed to be on shift five minutes ago.”
“If you’re quite done, Dr. Drew, we have an abscess in room four,” Tammy called.
Fucking. Bitch.
I gave Autrey a knowing look which he returned, and then said, “Love you, Autrey.”
Then I was heading toward patient room four.
When I came out ten minutes later with labs I wanted run, I approached the nurses’ station to relay the information and came out just in time to hear Tammy say, “First I catch her with our Doctor Kent, and the next she’s saying ‘I love you’ to the riff raff.”
I narrowed my eyes and moved forward until I was standing almost directly behind her, catching everyone’s attention but Tammy’s, and said, very softly, “I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘riff raff’ but I’d love to hear you explain it to me.”
Everyone froze, but it was Tammy who turned around with a glare and said, “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
No, she was right. She didn’t.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t have an attending who should be advocating for me.
I turned and caught Lori’s eyes and said, “Patient in room four needs a few labs drawn. I’m putting those in now, but for now, we need to get a CBC ran. Can you handle that for me?”
Lori nodded and headed toward the room, snatching up the blood draw kit before she left.
I went to the computer she’d been sitting in front of, put in my orders and tests, then got up to find Felix.
I found him in room one, working on stitches.
He was standing with his hips leaned against the bed, while he expertly ran a row of stitches down the length of a young child’s arm.
He was talking to the kid gently, and when he saw me, he smiled a weak smile and said, “Come on in, Dr. Drew. Hey, kid, this girl right here works at a real circus. They have big snakes and sometimes tigers.”
“Sometimes?” the kid asked, sounding hopeful. “Why not all the time?”
I smiled and came farther into the room, noting the tears that were steadily leaking down his face.
I looked into the corner behind the curtain and didn’t find a parent there at all.
“Uh,” I said as I stood there slightly confused. “Well, the cats, Coco and Melon, are really attached to my sister, Tony. They don’t like performing without her, and my sister has issues that require her to hang out at home a lot. She falls asleep like that.”
I snapped my fingers for emphasis.
The kid’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Really,” I nodded. “One time, she was walking a tight wire, and she fell and had to get stiches just like you are getting right now. But it looks like possibly you’re gonna have a few less than her.”
“How many did she get?” he asked.
“Seventy-five,” I answered. “She’s the reason that I want to be a doctor. I fell in love with the emergency room after I had to take Tony to the ER after it happened. The doctors were all really nice to me, and they helped me so much. But they helped my sister even more.”
“Dr. Kent is helping me,” the kid chirped. “My momma was in a really bad accident. She had to go have surgery, and all I have to have is stitches in my arm.”
Well that explained the no parent thing.
That sucked.
It sucked even more that I was seeing the sweet side of Felix.
I liked to pretend he wasn’t the same person, that was why he decided to ditch me.
Sometimes when I lied to myself, I almost believed it.
“He’s the reason I made it through medical school,” I told the kid, who looked better by the second. “He also saved my sister’s life a few weeks ago. You have the best doctor in the hospital putting stitches into your arm right now.”