“For you, twice in about a monthisgetting to be a little habit-y. You do usually have some sense of responsibility around your drinking.” Paige pushed herself off the doorframe and took a step into the office, closing the door behind her. “You look like hell. Have you eaten?”
“Sure, sure I have.” She waved a hand and got to her feet, ignoring a mild wave of dizziness. “One of those good protein bars from the juice shop by my apartment. Oh, hell, what’s going on out there?”
The emergency department had exploded into a buzzing hive of frantic activity. Without another word, she darted past Paige to yank the office door back open and hurl herself out into the fray.
Her Uber bill was getting to be astronomical. But she hadn’t felt up to riding her motorcycle to this icky little dive bar, and she wanted to do her drinking far away from her home, from Oakridge, and from the Indigo Lounge.
Today, she’d seen Hayley in the ER during the boiling pot that the department had become in the wake of a huge house fire. Four houses on a nearby block had gone up in flames one after another when a backyard gender reveal with fireworks had gotten out of hand. There were dozens of cases of burns and smoke inhalation to deal with, and Hayley had come over from the ICU with some of her team to lend a hand.
And she’d made very sure to stay far away from Deb. Not that there would have ever been an appropriate time then for Deb to corner her and ask what the hell was going on, but she’d seemed to be doing her level best to give Deb zero opportunities to eventry. When things slowed down, Hayley had glanced at Deb right before she’d all but run out of the emergency department.
Her eyes had seemed a little regretful, at least.
Deb spent a few hours knocking back tequila shots before bumbling home and passing out with Cory snuggled up in her arms. At least she was off tomorrow.
Her next day back at work turned out to be a Spaghetti Day. She still wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, but Paige had started to get nosy again. Deb made a big show of getting a huge box of pasta and garlic bread that she took up to one of the Reflection Pods in the Derm lounge.
That was a mistake. As soon as she stepped in, she remembered the last time she’d been in here. The panic attack, Hayley’s hands on hers, the moments of connection. The time before that, also a Spaghetti Day, the moment she had wanted to kiss Hayley and didn’t. Memory hit her like a freight train, and she almost dropped her box of food.
Woodenly, she made her way over to the farthest back pod and yanked at the handle of it without looking inside first. A tiny, familiar gasp caught her attention, and she jerked her head up from her fixed gaze at the floor.
Hayley. Blue eyes wide with shock and a bit red-rimmed, the tip of her nose pink. She looked like she had the day she’d been crying over that dead patient. Deb’s mouth dropped open. “Hayley?—”
“I have to go.” Scrambling to her feet, Hayley pushed frantically past Deb to get out of the pod, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. She bolted out of the lounge at top speed, leaving Deb aghast in her wake.
Whatthe hell had happened between them? What had Deb done? Why was Hayley acting like this? Deb’s chest began to get that squeezing feeling, and hastily, she climbed into the pod Hayley had just vacated, throwing her unwanted lunch onto the tiny table and wedging herself into the seat. She started in on breathing exercises and counting herself through the incipient panic attack, determined to head it off at the pass.
I didn’t do anything wrong. This is all her. I’m not going to let her do this to me.
Within ten minutes, she was breathing freely again, but her brain was foggy and spinning in circles. The pod felt too tiny, too tight and confined. Pushing the door open, she let herself back out, abandoning her lunch in favor of heading down to the emergency department to see if she could find some good, complicated case to focus on.
Another night, another dive bar, another pair of Uber charges and a string of double whiskeys. This bar’s whiskey selection was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not as good as the Indigo Lounge’s. In fact, every whiskey she’d tried here tonight had been awful, but this one was the best of the lot. Still, Deb was going to have an almighty hangover in the morning.
A message lit up her phone. Sasha.It’s been a while. You okay?
“Dandy,” Deb mumbled before shooting back her double rotgut and signaling for another.
“You and your family members have been in here a few times this year with food poisoning,” Deb observed, reviewing the chart on her tablet. She had to squint to read it. It was late in the night, and her vision didn’t seem so great today. Plus, the seemingly endless reports in the medical record of the extreme gastrologic distress this family had been experiencing were making her dizzy. “All of these occurrences happen after you dine at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. Have you all considerednoteating there anymore?”
The mother and son before her, both dehydrated and slightly green around the gills, rolled their eyes. “It’s fine,” the mother said with a sneer. “Just a little upset stomach. The medicine and fluids always fix us right up.”
“Okay, but it’s concerning that you all need fixing up so often.” Deb gestured to where the rest of the family, a pair of twin daughters and the husband, were curled up groaning in beds of their own. “At this point, I can’t believe we haven’t done some kind of test of mercury levels on you all. I’m ordering one now for all five of you, plus the Zofran and your fluids. And I ambeggingyou to please stop eating at that buffet.”
“It’s fine,” the mother said again, with another roll of her eyes.
Then, with no warning, she projectile vomited all over the ER floor. Deb jumped back just in time to avoid getting hit, and her own stomach did a slow tilt and roll to the left, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything.
The teenage boy grabbed a basin and hurled into it himself. Behind her, Deb could hear the rest of the family losing whatever was left in their stomachs as well.
“I’ve got to,” she began, stepping backwards to get out of their way and out of earshot of the hideous gagging sounds. “I’ve got to…”
She didn’t know what she had to do, and it didn’t matter. Overwhelmed by the sound and stench, her stomach too empty, her body too overworked and flooded with too much alcohol and not enough sleep… Deb keeled right over, as frantic shouts boomed over her head, and a pair of hands caught her before her head could hit the floor.
9
HAYLEY
“Hayley.”
