Kissing My Dad's Friend

I slam into the locker rooms and shove my bag into my cubbyhole. My phone dings, and I check it, still trembling from my anger, assuming it will be a message from Dad demanding that I get my ass to his office right now.

It’s not. It’s a photo message from Julia, one that makes me still in my tracks, my fists unclenching. She’s in Thailand right now, I think, helping with a yellow fever outbreak. She sent the text to our group chat, since some of our friends have different placements on the other side of the globe. We’re all over the place now, scattered to the four winds, but we still do our best to keep in touch with one another whenever we can.

I open the photo and have to suppress a smile at the sight. It’s Julia with her arms wrapped around a couple of her colleagues out there, all of them beaming. A few patients stand with them too, and one holds a sign. All Better. Julia added a caption beneath it.

Hope you’re all having as good a day as I am. Had a few tough cases here who pulled through this morning. She adds a series of kissy emojis.

I quickly type a few back, along with some hearts. A couple more messages ding in from other friends, congratulating and celebrating with her. I breathe in deep, smiling, even despite the pang in my heart. That should be me. I should be out there with her, doing real good. Helping. It’s what I was trained for, what I did all those extra late night hours of studying for. It’s what kept me going through all the years of school. The knowledge that one day, I’d do my part to make the world healthier.

Instead, I’m stuck here, catering to rich patients and their spoiled kids.

With a groan, I slam my locker shut, my folder tucked under one arm. At least Dad didn’t follow me here to continue our argument. I wouldn’t put that kind of behavior past him—he’s done the same and worse in the past. But the locker room is fairly quiet today, just me and Heather and Lionel over at their lockers on the far wall. I wave to them both and scurry from the room, not up for Heather’s bright and bubbly conversation or Lionel’s morose summary of every contagious disease within the hospital today. It’s forever shocking to me that a hypochondriac like him ever went into nursing as a career.

Luckily, he seems distracted, deep in a conversation with Heather. I catch the words cholera in the air and scurry out before I can be drawn in deeper. Out in the main hallways, the fluorescent lighting makes my eyes sting, and the rooms smell like disinfectant and antiseptics. I flip open my folder and spot the first name on the stack, the ones Dad highlighted as a child of the board members. I skim their case file. Nothing serious ailing them, just a flu most likely. Their IV drips will need changed, but not for another half an hour, which gives me time to check on another patient first.

I skim to the back of the file, to a man who was found on the street frozen near to death last night. He didn’t have any ID on him, and nobody could find an insurance card or anything. He’s warming up in one of the communal rooms in the back of the hospital, near the stairwell, where we stick the patients we aren’t sure have insurance or even Medicaid.

Squaring my shoulders, I snap the file shut and make my way there first. Screw Dad’s orders. I’ll do what I think is proper, as a nurse. It’s my job, after all.

If he wants to fight me, well, then I’ll put up a fight. I might not be able to help away from home, not yet anyway, not until I’ve paid off my school debt to my father. But in the meantime, I can sure as hell do what I can here.

2

I’m still angry by the time I finish making my morning rounds. Angry enough that when the buzzer overhead beeps and my name is read out: “Margaret Owens, please report to the directorial office, Margaret Owens,” it’s enough to make my blood boil.

“He has got to be kidding me.” I slam my file folder onto the top of the tray I’ve been pushing around all morning. The whole thing rattles, but I don’t care. I storm away from it, fists balled.

I did what he told me to. Yes, okay, I visited a couple other patients before his precious “priority” ones. But I visited the board members’ kids’ rooms, one after the next, making sure to triple-check everything going on. I went to the Yale friend’s son too, and lingered for extra minutes, even though the guy kept checking me out and making less than appropriate comments about how well my scrubs suited my figure.