One time.
We’d hooked up one goddamn time.
What the fuck did he do to me?
“Fine. In a mood, then,” she amended.
As if that wasanybetter.
“Perhaps you all would be better off spending less time talking about whatever fictional personal life you think I possess and use that energy to do faster vital checks. It would certainly help get the higher-ups off my back.”
She was quiet for a long moment, not sparing me a glance while she wormed her spoon around inside of the half-eaten cup. She finally said, “Is that an order?”
I held back a deep sigh, nearly dropping my fork to cradle my head in my hands. Instead, I rested my elbows on top of the table and pulled my hands together, letting the fork dangle between them.
She sat quietly while I watched her, not at all concerned with waiting for whatever response she was gearing up to receive. No tense pull to her shoulders, or a worried frown tracing over her features. A calm and collected resignation to whatever scolding she was expecting to hear roll off my tongue.
Disappointing, really, to realize that this was what had come of our professional relationship.
Rarely, did I feel the need to apologize to my nursing staff when they were all well aware of the shortcomings of my personality. They’d all come to know from day one not to take anything I said in an off-handed manner to heart, or let it get to them when it was easily brushed off as something innocent.
Too many times had I needed to pull them aside in the beginning to explain myself and after five years as one of Ellington Medical’s lead trauma surgeons, barely anyone batted an eye anymore.
In Violet’s case, however, I’d been harsher than I meant to be that day. Triggered by Marlow pissing me off with his nagging and the over-present, looming threat of dynamics shifting into something unfamiliar and becoming a terrifyingly new normal.
And now I was doing it all over again—completely weakening internally over Terran when absolutely nothing had happened outside of my own worked up emotions getting the better of me.
Toddler behavior.
Setting my fork down, I slid my tray away from me to lace my fingers together on top of the table.
“I am sorry for snapping at you the other day. I didn’t mean to let my outside problems become internal ones with any of you. I appreciate you keeping up a professional relationship regardless of how I upset you. That was far more than what I deserved. And I do recognize and appreciate you, along with the rest of our team. You all are the hospital’s backbone and should be treated as such.”
I bounced my leg under the table. Sucking up that small amount of pride that shielded my ego from bruising wasn’t exactly pleasant. However, I meant what I said. Despite us not having a deeply intimate relationship outside of work, she was still important and deserved to feel that way. If not by me, then the rest of the surgical staff.
When she finally looked up from her food, she smiled. “You’re welcome. Thank you for saying all of that. I’m glad to see you’ve gotten out of your weird funk. It’s nice to see you perked up again.”
I worked my teeth against the inside of my cheek to keep from correcting her on that last bit since, in the end, it didn’tactually matter what perception they all had about my life outside of this place. What counted was that it seemed there were no hard feelings.
A positive outcome to all of this, seeing as how much time we spent together. Seventy hours a week being stuck with the same people tended to bond a unit together quite intrinsically. It made for an easier work environment, anyway.
My pager buzzed at my hip, causing both Violet and I to lean back at the same time to snag them off of our waistbands. Holding it up in the light, acode 99flashed quickly across the screen before disappearing with the secondary alert reminder.
Incoming trauma. Non cardiac arrest.
“Damn it,” she mumbled. “I didn’t even get to finish my yogurt.”
I pushed up from the table, lifting my tray off of it after hooking my pager back to my scrubs. “Eat it on the way.”
She grunted at me but followed closely behind, taking two large mouthfuls of yogurt before tossing it into the last trashcan at the front entrance to the cafeteria.
Together, we jogged to the other side of the hospital, bypassing staff and other visitors meandering the hallways along the way. While it was quite the trek to get back for any other normal person, Violet and I were used to the long stretch, getting there in a little under two and a half minutes.
An ambulance was already pulled up to the automatic doors leading into the ER, their back half left open with no EMTs or stretcher inside of it.
Behind the vehicle was a police cruiser parked dangerously close, pulled up and abandoned with the lights still flashing on top of it. There were no other signs of anyone sitting on either side of the cab while it idled.
Strange for an ambulance to be personally escorted by officers and not have a code pink flashing across our pagersinstead of a code 99. Usually, that was the only time for a police escort.
