Washed Up (Bayside Heroes)

“Just wait until you go deep,” I say, stretching out my legs.

“Go deep, eh?” She waggles her brows.

“Perv,” I tease. “I mean when you reach this crazy kind of calm, and you feel so relaxed and focused at the same time that the time flies by, and before you know it, the bell is ringing.”

Amanda’s lip curls. “You mean I have to do this again?”

I bark out a laugh at that, standing and reaching a hand down to help her up. “That is kind of the point. But if you hated it, I won’t force you. You tried it once. That’s enough for me.”

Her eyes find mine through the dim lighting when she’s standing. “Is this why you’re always so calm?”

“I’m not always calm,” I tell her. “But yes, it’s helped. Especially in the OR. I don’t have time or space to be anxious there, you know? I need that focus, that calmness, that clear-headed ability to think and make decisions.”

Her eyebrows raise. “I never even thought of that, the pressure you must feel when you’re putting someone under.” She pauses. “Is it scary?”

I grab my neck. “It used to be, when I was first learning. They drill it into you how important every minute detail is, how one small thing being off could be catastrophic. Imagine if you were put under enough to where you couldn’t verbalize or move, but you could still feel pain?”

“That’s like everyone’s worst nightmare.”

“And it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t ever become a reality.” I nod toward the kitchen, and Amanda follows me over as I pour us both a tall glass of water. “But really, once you go through school and residency, it all starts to become routine. As crazy as that sounds. Car accidents, people missing limbs, bleeding or barely alive… you run through the motions, so to speak. It’s all protocol, like an algorithm.”

“Does it stay that way?”

“For the most part.” I hand her a full glass of water and take a sip of my own. “The scariest thing now is when you think you’re going in for something that should be pretty standard routine, something easy, and then it unexpectedly goes wrong. The patient might not be getting enough oxygen and I have to figure out why and how to fix that. Or when a woman comes in to give birth, for example. That’s usually a situation where everything goes smoothly. But now and then, you have something go terribly wrong — preeclampsia or a uterine rupture or worse — and suddenly what should be one of the happiest moments of a woman’s life is a terrifying life-or-death situation that I play a huge role in.”

Amanda sets her water down on the island, her eyes wide. “That’s so much to have on your shoulders, Greg.”

I swallow but shrug it off. “It is. But this is what I love to do. It’s what I’m trained to do. And ninety-nine percent of the time, I feel confident that I’m doing everything exactly as I should. But that’s exactly why meditation is so important to me, because me second guessing myself, or letting any kind of anxiety or self-doubt creep in doesn’t just affect me. It affects another human being. A human being trusting me to keep them alive and okay.”

“You’re incredible,” Amanda breathes, shaking her head.

“I’m just a guy.”

She snorts at that. “Okay, Mr. Humble.” She sips her water then, eyes trailing over my dark apartment. “Your place is so fancy. I love the windows, how you can see the whole city and the river.”

“Well, that’s about the only decoration I have,” I say, leaning a hip against the kitchen counter. “Unless you count the plants you helped me with that I’ve managed to keep alive so far, and the paintings I got off a generic website that likely sells to mostly hotels.”

Amanda chuckles. “I didn’t want to say it, but it does lack any kind of personal touch. Why no pictures of you, of your friends or family?” She assesses the room again. “It looks like an Airbnb, like no one actually lives here.”

I know she doesn’t mean anything by those words, but they hit me in the chest like a baseball bat, stealing any response I have.

I drain the rest of the water in my glass. “Well, with how much I’m at the hospital, that’s not far from the truth.” I set my glass in the sink, smiling and hoping I can avoid the deeper, underlying implications of my impersonal condo. “We should probably get going. Let me change real quick.”

I duck out of the kitchen and head back to my room before she can answer, changing into my scrubs and grabbing my briefcase. When I rejoin her, she’s got her backpack slung over her shoulder, a pensive gaze cast out one of my floor-to-ceiling windows as the first bit of dawn begins to break.