Bedside Manner (Love Under Lockdown)

As though on cue, my phone went off again. At least this time it was after I had finished eating my omelet. After getting the plate into the sink to soak, I fished the buzzing rectangle from my inside pocket.

“This is Booth,” I said, putting the phone to my ear, already knowing what the person on the other side was going to say.

The hospital had been short-staffed for the past couple of days. Close to a quarter of the staff was in self-isolation as they waited out lower level Covid cases. That left those of us remaining to pick up the slack.

Some people didn’t even have places to live because if their family members or other household residents caught Covid, they were to quarantine separately from them. Yet it wasn’t as if there were open hotel rooms or a lot of extra apartments on the market. The whole thing was insane but it all energized me in a strange way.

I rarely slept anyway and barely felt the sting of these crazy hours. It was hard to explain— the pediatricians called into the case early in my life were certainly baffled— but I’d never gotten more than three hours’ worth of sleep a night. That was, if I was lucky.

Everything in medical science agreed that it shouldn’t be possible. At least not if I wanted to stay alive. Yet, there I was, not only alive but also usually functioning at a high level. Not everything could be explained by science, after all.

Within minutes of easing my baby blue Jag onto the road, I hit the dreaded morning gridlock. I wasn’t happy to be stuck on my commute as usual, but at least I would soon be back to helping out with this monstrous pandemic, and that made the bumper to bumper traffic more bearable.

Chapter Three - Julia

The fortunes must have been smiling down on me today, because I got to the bus circle across from the hospital in near record time, especially for this hour of the morning. Every car-owning citizen in the city seemed to be migrating in roughly the same direction and I was glad I didn’t have to be a part of that mess.

The hospital was a bit out of town, and the bus was headed away from the worst of the gridlock. That was one of the advantages to not living in the core of the city. The downtown dwellers still had to get through the worst of the morning rush to get anywhere near where they were trying to go.

Once I got to work, I saw that it was going to be another hectic morning, which wasn’t surprising. Floods of patients came in. It was almost impossible to tell where one line ended and the next began. Most were only in for tests, just to be sure their cough or headache wasn’t Covid. But a few needed treatment for their symptoms.

I could only thank my lucky stars that none of them needed a respirator. All four of the ones available on the floor were in use, and the other wards were kind of funny about sharing. Even though it was all part of the same hospital, the different departments might as well have been separate nations, with little overlap of communication between them, except at the congregation of department heads during the board meetings.

It was like our own, miniaturized versions of the United Nations, where alliances were made and grievances were aired, sometimes rather enthusiastically. There was a reason the meeting table was so big, as if making sure the participants far enough apart to avoid any fist fights. Emotions could fly high during stressful times.

Just before my legs had the chance to really give up the ghost, my back already starting to belt arias of agony, I was allowed to take a break. It was perfect timing for lunch.

As the clock neared one, I made it to the cafeteria. After claiming a tray, I joined the line, which I was happy to see was shorter than it usually was.

“Keeping things light?” one of my friends and co-workers asked, as she came up along beside me.

“Oh, hey, Tanna. I hadn’t been trying to, actually.”

I looked down at the salad on my plate, but that was my standard fare.

“I’m told the steak is good today.”

“Apparently,” I said, looking at my friend’s meat laden plate.

“Yeah, I’m trying the carnivore diet.”

“Is there any bandwagon on which you won’t jump?” I joked.

“Not so far,” Tanna admitted, “but no, I wouldn’t jump off a bridge if all my friends were doing it, too.”

“Good to hear.”

After paying the steely-faced guardians of the cash registers, we set out in search of appropriate seating.

“Patio?” Tanna asked.

“Sure.”

After being certain that we were at least six feet apart, we took off our PPE so we could actually get the food to our mouths, which was always a helpful part of eating.