I smiled at her. “Nothing at all,” I said.
“Really? Strange, since I see the two of you whispering together in hallways.”
“It’s almost as if you’ve never seen two colleagues speak to each other before.”
Mary snorted as she walked back toward the desk. “You act like doctors treat nurses as equals.”
I sighed and turned away. I didn’t need to get into that argument. I knew I’d lose, some way or another, and it’d only lead to Mary getting pissed, and more rumors on top of it. Doctors and nurses were always somehow at odds, and I never quite understood why—we both did important jobs and had our own roles. Society placed more emphasis on doctors, but nurses saved as many lives, if not more. I had nothing but the utmost respect for what the nurses did day in and day out, doing the hard work of keeping bodies alive, being there even when times were rough.
But it wasn’t worth having a conversation about it. I wandered back toward the elevators, and lingered there, waiting for Fiona to come back out of that room, but she never did. I imagined her standing at the girl’s bedside, speaking to her softly—and I realized I didn’t even know the patient’s name.
That was the difference between doctors and nurses right there. I was willing to bet Fiona knew that girl’s name, and her story, and a host of other details about her. Patients tended to be collections of descriptive factors and symptoms on a chart for doctors, but they were always people, flesh and blood, for the nursing staff.
I left that floor and headed back to my still half-ruined office.15FionaThe day felt like it dragged on and on, and the only thing that kept me going was constant coffee, and Mary’s insistent nagging.
“I know you two have got something going,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Come on, Fiona, spill it. He all but admitted it earlier.”
“No, he didn’t, because there’s nothing to say.” I sighed and closed my eyes, rubbing them with my heels of my hands. “You’re obsessed.”
“I need the truth.” She pounded her hands on the desk. “The truth, damn you.”
“You can’t handle the truth.” I grinned at her.
She laughed and stretched her arms. “I get it, you don’t want to talk about him, and I don’t blame you. But I’ve got to admit, Dean’s one of the decent doctors.”
I snorted. “That’s not what you said before.”
She waved me off. “Sure he is. I like him anyway.”
“What changed your mind?”
“You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“It’s the way he looks at you.”
I laughed a little like she was joking, but stopped when I realized that she was very serious. “What’s that supposed to mean? He doesn’t look at me like anything.”
“Someone sounds defensive.”
“I’m just saying.”
“He looks at you like you’re some kind of prize. It’s hard to explain. It’s like he can’t help himself.”
I frowned a little, looking away and down toward Morgan’s room, the young girl with epilepsy. I thought of him coming in and helping, no questions asked, no hesitation, and I knew most doctors would do the same thing—and yet a lot of them would linger, and get involved, and try to start prescribing everything under the sun. He didn’t, he left when the crisis was over, when he realized I didn’t need his help.
“I haven’t noticed,” I said.
“Come on, you have to have noticed.” She grunted and stood up. “Think about it then, you know it’s true. He’s a good one. You should go out with him.”
I shot her a glare. “I don’t date doctors. You know that’s a bad idea.”
“Sure, sure, but you should anyway.”
“Why, so you can tell everyone?”
She barked a laugh. “Sure, that, and I think you’d get along with him. I’m not always thinking about number one, you know.”
“Hard to believe,” I muttered.
She laughed again and waved a hand as she went off to check on a patient.
I thought about that for the rest of my shift. I kept thinking about the time we’d spent together, trying to imagine the way he looked at me, and couldn’t see what she meant. I was probably too close to it though, unable to see the truth of what was happening right in front of me.
A couple hours later, he showed up right on time, like always, and waited for me to get my stuff. He smiled as I fell into step next to him in the hall, our shoes making a soft thump on the linoleum, and the sounds of beeping, of voices, followed me along. I smelled antiseptic and saline drip, and the walls were a soft teal, dull and smudged with dirt and grime from years of abuse and neglect.
In the elevator, he leaned toward me. “I don’t think your friend Mary likes me very much.”