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)
Val offered a hesitant smile, and I felt it in my heart.
That smile.
Man, what I wouldn’t have given to be on the receiving end of that smile two years ago.
Now it was like rubbing my heart against a cheese grater.
I gestured toward the woman who had once meant the world to me, then said to Tammy, “Bring her back to room two when you get a chance.”
Then I was gone, heading toward the patient’s room I’d been about to go in when Tammy had waylaid me on what I was doing for dinner.
“Aye, aye, captain,” Tammy called out.
Seconds later, just before I’d gone back into the patient’s room, I heard Tammy snarl.
“You can call me Nurse Wilkes,” Tammy snapped.
I could just picture Val blinking at her, a deer caught in the headlights, and a note of sympathy rolled through me.
I immediately squashed it.
No, there would be no sympathy from me.
No, sir-ree-Bob.
“Mr. Fletcher,” I said as I walked into the room. “What brings you in today?”
Mr. Fletcher was a sixty-two-year-old farmer who had been brought in via private vehicle by his wife. His wife said that Fletcher’d had issues all morning long and had been ignoring them until he’d fallen off his tractor and had nearly been run over by it.
Only the quick thinking of Fletcher’s son had saved him from being maimed by a hay bailer.
“Well,” Fletcher said. “It’s not really…”
“He was having chest pains.” His wife interrupted his downplay of what was happening.
The sound of the door opening behind me made my heart start to pound.
I turned only my head to find Val standing in the room, face white as a sheet, staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.
“Ah, Doctor.” I nodded. “Dr. Drew, this is Mr. Fletcher. He’s complaining about chest pains. What do you suggest next?”
Val looked terrified but seemed to rein it in with such force that I visibly saw her jerk.
She turned her head to survey Mr. Fletcher.
“Has his blood been taken, and has an EKG been run?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said, testing me. “All yours, Dr. Drew.”
Val looked at me with blank eyes, and I felt a twinge of remorse for letting her find out I’d be her attending like this. Then I squashed that thought, too.
Because fuck her.
Fuck Valhalla ‘Drew’ and fuck what she made me feel.
The next ten minutes let me know just how bad the torture was going to be over the next few years. That is, of course, if I continued to be her attending physician. I could leave and go back to where I’d come from.
But then Tammy would have to move with me once again. Pops would have to find a new retirement hangout. I’d have to buy another house and sell the one I was in.
“All right, Mr. Fletcher,” Val said quietly. “We’re gonna get these tests put in, and we’ll be in here ASAP.”
I waited until we were out of the room before I said, “We already ran all the tests. Twelve-lead was clean of any issues that we could see. Blood tests should be back any second.”
She stopped with her hand on the knob as she closed the door.
“Then why did you let me talk to him like I was about to do the same thing two times in a row?” she asked.
“I wanted to see what you’d do,” I said simply. “You have been out of the game for years.”
And she had.
She wouldn’t find this to be easy.
She may be a smart cookie—God, tests and studying had just come so easy for her—but you forgot when you didn’t practice.
And there was no way she’d kept up with all of that as she should have.
“I’ll need to see the results so I can help you with the next step,” she said stiffly.
“Actually, he’s mine. I’ll handle everything that comes up with him. You have a case in room four that you can get started on,” I suggested.
She walked away without another word, and I nearly laughed.
She’d fuckin’ hate what she was about to find in room four.
“Where’d you send her?” Tammy asked curiously as I made my way back to my seat.
I did a quick check for Fletcher’s blood panel but came up empty.
“I sent her to room four.” I grinned.
“That’s just a dick move,” Rose murmured. “First day back and you’re giving her that?”
‘That’ was actually a frequent flyer in the ER.
He was a sixty-one-year-old male who lived on the streets, and when it got too cold like it was today, he’d make up something that was wrong with him and he’d get a free night in the hospital where it was warm.
Today was no different.
He was complaining about back pain and right flank pain, but that was nothing new for him.
We’d done a smorgasbord of tests on him years ago when he first started doing this. At first, we were all convinced that he was hurt in some way—because man, could he come up with some crazy stories—but eventually we just found that he had nothing wrong. He just wanted a place to stay and a warm meal to eat.