The next hour was a busy one, as bed after bed was rolled through the unit doors. Hayley felt like a train conductor, directing orderlies this way, her nurses that way, rattling off instructions and medication names as smoothly as song lyrics. It was a point of pride for her that she didn’t break a sweat whileall of the activity raced around her, that she didn’t feel her blood pressure rising even a little bit.
That was, until Deborah Morales appeared behind a bed. Then, Hayley’s pulse rate doubled.
Deborah, too, seemed unsettled, actively not making eye contact with Hayley.That’s how it is? Okay.Hayley shrugged internally and directed the ER chief and her team to the room designated for her sepsis patient, one of the only patients coming in today who hadn’t been in some kind of catastrophic accident.
It had been several days since Hayley had talked Deborah through her panic attack, and for the life of her, she could not figure out exactly why the chief had reacted so negatively towards her afterwards. She had ideas, of course, but since she didn’t really know the woman, they were only ideas. And trying to pin her down to talk about the whole thing? Forget about it. Deborah was avoiding her even harder than she had after the whole apology incident.
The back and forth that had been going between them since that first mess was driving Hayley crazy. To say nothing of her shocking desire for Deborah to pin her against a wall and kiss her senseless. Where hadthatcome from? Hayley was avoiding thinking about that as much as Deborah was avoiding even looking at her.
The sepsis patient had been the last one in the wave of new admits, and she was alone at the charge desk while her team and the ER team did their jobs. Hayley sat down at her desk and chewed at her thumbnail while she thought.I detest her. But I want her to kiss me. I want… more than that.Admitting that to herself sent her heart rate up again.But I don’t like her! Why do I want any of this?
“Nurse Milton?”
Hayley jerked her head up, startled right out of her thoughts by Deborah’s husky inquiry. “You want me, uh, you want something from me?” she asked, her face immediately flushing fire-hot at the Freudian slip.
Fortunately, Deborah hadn’t seemed to notice. In fact, she seemed quite ill at ease and distracted. Her fingers drummed on the charge desk. “I… yeah. Listen.” The hand that wasn’t tapping the desktop was fidgeting away in the pocket of her white coat. “The other day… thank you. And I’m sorry.”
Hayley knew by now to proceed with extreme caution. She kept her reply simple. “You’re welcome. And thank you.”
“No, please.” The fidgeting intensified. The hand in the pocket emerged to tug at the end of Deborah’s long ponytail. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. It was uncalled for.”
It took some work, but Hayley wrestled down the urge to snapGee, you think? “I mean, I definitely appreciate your apology, but it seemed like a very bad time for you. Given how things usually are between us…” She trailed off, uncertain how to go on.
Deborah took a long, deep breath. “Right. A time like that, I don’t usually want to share with anyone. Let alone you. But…” She tilted her head back for a moment to think. When she faced Hayley again, their eyes met for the first time, and there was an unusual clarity in hers that Hayley was surprised to see. Like a wall had come down, if only for a moment. “You helped me. Regardless of any bad blood between us, you helped me. You knew how to help me. I could have been a little more gracious about it.”
Hayley looked down at her desk, where her hands lay flat, almost braced against the smooth surface.Careful, careful, she said to herself. “We all have our moments, Doctor Morales.” She looked up again and met that oddly open gaze. “I’m happy if I helped. It’s okay if you feel like you didn’t react well.”
There was an unmistakable gratitude casting a gentle light on Deborah’s face, and for once, the tension between them was slack. Hayley held her breath as Deborah opened her mouth. What would she say?
“Boss Lady.” Mirenda’s urgency interrupted the moment. “That new sepsis patient?—”
“Oh, God.” Deborah pushed herself away from the desk and sprinted towards her patient’s room. Hayley jumped to her feet and followed, Mirenda at her side.
“What’s going on?” she asked as they raced down the corridor. “That woman was stable coming in.”
“You know what sepsis is like. We were getting her situated, hooking her back up, and she crashed.” Mirenda’s face was grim.
The three of them burst into the room together, entering into a chaotic situation with frantic voices and noisy alarms filling the air. “Push fluids,” Hayley barked, headed to the patient’s right. Deborah split off and headed left. Mirenda went to retrieve the IV fluids they would need. In the bed, the patient Deborah had brought in was convulsing, her skin grayish and moist.
“Georgia O’Brien. 24 years old. Came into the ER yesterday reporting pain, difficulty urinating. Went downhill fast. Toxic shock. She was prepping for her thesis defense, got stressed, forgot her last tampon.” Deborah had a penlight out and was checking Georgia’s eyes as she rapped out the details. “It took all night to get her stabilized enough to come here. I was afraid of this…”
“Sepsis is a bitch,” Hayley said briskly, checking Georgia’s blood pressure. “You know that as well as I do. Let’s get this back under control.”
The next forty minutes was so touch and go, there were too many moments where Hayley thought they might lose the woman under their hands. Yet there was a smooth teamwork between herself and Deb as they worked. It felt as thoughthey were reading each other’s minds, anticipating each other’s next movement almost before they could speak. She’d never experienced this kind of easy cooperation with any other colleague in all her years of nursing.
There were other ICU and ER team members in the room with them, but they were secondary. Hayley and Deborah were leading the charge to save Georgia, and it was like a graceful, intense dance. Everything seemed to fall into place as they needed it, no matter what challenges Georgia O’Brien’s embattled body tossed up.
At long, exhausting last, they wrestled the situation under control. The alarms stopped going off. Georgia was breathing, though under ventilator assistance for the moment. Her skin was returning to a more normal, if still pale, tone. When Mirenda toweled away the sweat, Georgia stayed dry.
They waited a few more minutes before Hayley felt she could finally leave the situation in Mirenda’s capable hands. Suddenly wrung out and exhausted, she trudged out of the room, aiming herself towards the ICU on-call for a quick nap.
She didn’t realize that Deborah was still behind her until she turned to close the door and the ER chief was right there. “Jesus!” she yelped, leaping backwards almost entirely across the room. She collided with a bunk bed and a flash of pain went through her left hip. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“Sorry! God, I thought you heard me behind you.” Deborah closed the door and darted across the room. She looked contrite, which was not something Hayley was accustomed to seeing on her. It threw her off, and then she was further off-balance with Deborah suddenly being so close, Hayley could smell her perfume.
She had no idea what it was, but it smelleddivine. A bit spicy, ever so slightly musky, and some delicious deep floral note in there too. Whatever it was seemed like such a natural way forDeborah to smell that if she’d told Hayley she just sweated like that, Hayley would believe it.
“Hayley?” Deborah’s brown eyes were wide with concern.
