The Devil Wears Scrubs (17 page)

“Is that so?” Ryan asks.

“It’s so,” I confirm. “So don’t even think about trying to dump Mrs. Coughlin back on me.”

“I’
d say there’s zero percent chance of that happening.”

“Really?
How come?”

“Because she’s dead.”

I lower my phone and stare at Ryan. He isn’t smiling or doing anything else to indicate that he’s joking. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”
He shrugs. “She died on the operating table.”

“Oh my God…”
I cover my mouth with my hand. “That’s… horrible.”

“I guess so,” Ryan says.
“I mean, it’s not like she was young and healthy. Even if the operation was a success, she still wasn’t going to last long with metastatic pancreatic cancer.”

He leans against the edge of the building, the wind tousling his hair.
I don’t see the slightest trace of sadness or remorse on his face.

“How could you not care that she died?” I ask him.

He snorts. “Are you seriously giving me shit over this? Were you sad over that guy you just pronounced dead?”

“A little,” I lie.

Ryan rolls his eyes.

“Anyway, that’s different,” I insist.
“I didn’t know that guy at all. You knew Mrs. Coughlin.”

“Barely.”

“She liked you,” I say.

“So?”
He grins. “Everyone likes me.”

I
fold my arms across my chest. “
I
don’t like you.”

He tugs on the drawstring of my scrubs and I wait just a beat too long before I swat him away.

“Yea
h, you’re just hot for me,” he says.

My pager goes off again and I realize that if I don’t answer it soon, there’s going to be a SWAT team up here searching for me.
Anyway, I can tell that getting Sexy Surgeon to feel any real emotion over a patient is a lost cause.

Although the scary truth is, I’m not entirely sure how sad I am either.
As I head back downstairs, I seem to be unable to squeeze out even one tear on her behalf. But at least I try.

Hours awake: 20

Chance
of Sexy Surgeon ever growing the hell up: 1%

“How much Lasix is Mr. Sanchez getting?” Dr. Westin asks me.

It’s the twenty-eighth hour. I’m sitting at the nurse’s station with Alyssa and Dr. Westin, near Mr. Sanchez’s room. Mr. Sanchez, the pregnant man, has now reduced his gestation to about four or five months. We’re going to send him home. I’m all set to send him home, and have been surreptitiously writing his discharge summary during every free moment. I’ve gotten to be really good at writing while walking up and down stairs.

“Uh,” I say.
I start shuffling through the stack of papers I’m holding.

“Jane,” Alyssa says, “you have to be ready to answer when the
attending asks you a question.”

Good advice.
Except it doesn’t make me find Mr. Sanchez’s med list any faster.

“I’ll go check
the nurse’s med book,” Dr. Westin says, leaping to his feet.

Alyssa watches Dr. Westin run off.
As soon as he’s out of sight, she leans in so close to me that I can feel her hot breath on my neck: “The attending does not stand.”

I stare at her.
“What?”

“If the attending asks you a question,” Alyssa says, “you get up and find out the answer.
You do
not
let the attending stand.
Ever
.”

Hey, maybe I should just carry the attending on my shoulders during rounds.
Would that be okay,
Alyssa
? And if you’re so gung-ho on never letting the attending stand, why didn’t
you
go look up the medications?

I’ve composed about ten angry replies to Alyssa in my head, none of which I have the courage to say, when Dr. Westin returns.
“He’s on 40 mg twice a day!”

And of course, at that moment, I discover the paper with Mr. Sanchez’s meds on it.
But it’s probably good I didn’t find it earlier, since I had the dose wrong.

“Jane,” Alyssa says in an inquiring tone, and I wince inwardly.
No more questions, please! I am way too tired for this. “How long did you spend yesterday waiting on the phone for the translator for Mr. Sanchez?”

I don’t really understand the point of Alyssa’s question.
I’ve been awake for a long time, and it’s not clear why it matters how much of my life I wasted on hold for the translator. It’s over. Why waste more time on it?

“I don’t know,” I finally say.
“Ten minutes?”

“Mr. Sanchez
speaks English
,” Alyssa says triumphantly.

I don’t know what she expects me to make of this revelation.
All I can say is, “He does?”

Dr. Westin chuckles, “Gina, you didn’t know your patient speaks English?”

“Did you even
try
to talk to him?” Alyssa asks me, shaking her head at disgust at my lack of effort.

I tried.
He doesn’t freaking speak English! “I did.”

“We had a great talk this morning,”
Alyssa says pointedly. “I was telling him about the diet he needs to keep due to his cirrhosis and he asked me all sorts of really intelligent questions. Jane, you really have to make more of an effort to communicate with your patients.”

I swear
, Mr. Sanchez did not speak English when I met him yesterday. The only solution I can think of is that the man somehow learned to speak it within the last 24 hours. It’s a miracle.

The three of us march into Mr. Sanchez’s room together.
He’s showered this morning, his face is scrubbed clean, and his black hair is brushed and slicked back. It’s amazing how so many of my patients look like they just spent a night at a fancy resort.

“Hello, Mr. Sanchez,” Alyssa says cheerfully.

“Hello,” he replies. I swear, if he starts speaking fluent English, I’ll cry.

“Mr. Sanchez,” she says.
“I was just telling the team about our talk this morning. About all the foods you said you’re going to avoid.”

He nods
and a pleasant smile appears on his face. “Ah. Yes.”

She folds her arms across her chest, getting ready to show off.
“Tell the team what you’re going to avoid eating.”

I hold my breath.
Mr. Sanchez looks between the three of us. Finally, he says, “
Qué
?”

Alyssa’s eyes widen.
“Mr. Sanchez, don’t you remember? You’re not going to eat…?”

He keeps the pleasant smile plastered on his lips.
“
Qué
?”

“Salt!
” Alyssa blurts out. “Salt. You’re not going to eat salt, right?”

“
Sal
?” Mr. Sanchez raises his eyebrows. I look over at Dr. Westin, who is trying not to laugh. Alyssa’s face is a shade of bright pink.

I love you, Mr. Sanchez.
Just for that, I’m giving you a few tablets of Percocet to go.

Hours awake: 29

Chance of quitting: 19%

Like I said, I’m not a huge fan of naps.

But when you hardly slept on call, they are a necessary evil. It does feel sort of nice to fall into my bed after being awake for I-don’t-want-to-think-about-how-many-hours. Sometimes I think I fall asleep before my head even hits the pillow.

But no matter what, waking up is always a disorienting experience.
I am never entirely sure where I am and why I’m first waking up in the mid-evening. Especially when what wakes me up is a pounding at my door. That will not stop no matter how hard I stare at the door and silently plead for it to stop.

Finally, I stumble out of bed and throw open the door.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Julia. Also unsurprisingly, she doesn’t look the least bit tired, despite likely being as sleep-deprived as I am. And her ponytail is absolutely perfect as usual.

“Jane,” she
says, her unidentifiable accent nearly a monotone. “You got my note? About the bathroom?”

“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah.”

Is today one of my days to clean?
If it is, then that’s too damn bad. There is no way in hell I’m cleaning any bathrooms right now.

“Did you see the receipt?” Julia says, raising her eyebrows.

I groan inwardly. Right, I have to pay Julia for the stupid cleaning supplies.

“Hang on,” I say.

After a brief search,
I locate my purse, which is under a pile of scrubs. I pull out my wallet, and retrieve two twenty-dollar bills and four ones. I’m now left with only a five-dollar bill to my name. I think I’m going to be mostly eating ramen noodles for a while.

I bring the twenties and the ones over to Julia and hand them over with a twinge of regret.
She counts the money then frowns at me.

“What?” I say.

Julia holds up the bills. “It was 44 dollars and
67 cents
.”

You have
got
to be kidding me.

I take the four one-dollar bills back from her and hand over my five.
Oh well. Ones are better for the vending machines anyway.

When I give Julia the money, she says, “I’ll get you change.”
I almost tell her to forget it, but then I remember that I can use the change for the vending machines too. I’m not nearly rich enough to turn down 33 cents.

Days living with my crazy roommate: A million billion

Chances I will be doing a half-assed cleaning the bathroom in the very near future: 110%

Call #4

My latest admission claims she hasn’t been poisoned but I have good reason to be skeptical.

This is
62-year-old Gloria Vargas’s second admission for chest pain. She’s a tiny, dark-skinned woman who has been rubbing the left side of her chest every few minutes as I talk to her. I have her old chart from her first admission, which I obtained after Alyssa screamed at me for five straight minutes about how it wasn’t possible to see a patient if you didn’t review their old chart first. On her first chest pain admission, Mrs. Vargas’s urine tested positive for amphetamines. It came out that her husband had slipped some meth into her morning coffee. Because caffeine sometimes just isn’t enough to get you going.

The first thing I did was order a urine
tox on her to check for amphetamines again. One thing I’m learning from working at County Hospital is that nobody ever admits to taking drugs. Even when confronted with the results of a positive urine tox, they will stare you right in the eyes and swear on their life they never snorted cocaine. If that’s true, then how did it get in your pee, huh? A visit from the cocaine fairies?

“I didn’t take any meth this time,” Mrs. Vargas swears to me
from her hospital bed, looking me straight in the eye.

Yeah, right.

“My husband had a drug problem,” she says to me, her brown eyes wide and earnest. “But he’s gotten help.”

Sure he has.

“He’s better now.”

Sure he is.

“Also,” she says with a mischievous smile. “I make my own coffee now. Just in case.”

“You know we got a urine
tox screen,” I remind her.

“Rightfully so,” she says.
She laughs. “I wouldn’t trust me either.”

She rubs her chest then.
Her hands are very steady, in spite of everything. I bite my lip. I don’t want to be that naïve intern who keeps getting taken in by the drug addicts. I really don’t.

“I used to be a nurse, you know,” Mrs. Vargas says.

“You did?” I say, looking at her with a newfound respect. And nervousness. Whenever I take care of a healthcare provider, I always worry they’ll figure out I don’t know what I’m doing. They’ll realize that when I’m putting my stethoscope on their chest every single morning, I’m not really listening half the time.

She nods.
“Before my back went out. I worked in pediatrics.” She gets a misty look in her eyes. “I miss it.”

Crap.
She’s actually starting to make me believe she didn’t take meth.

I mean, it’s
possible
. She doesn’t look like she’s high. She’s not shaking or saying bizarre things. And she seems like such a nice lady. I really want to believe her urine tox is going to be negative.

I mean, just because I’m working at County Hospital, does that necessarily mean everyone has to be a drug addict?

Don’t answer that.

_____

I sneak up to the call room to have my lunch because I feel like I need a few minutes of quiet.
The call rooms are incredibly quiet during the day. Nobody goes to that floor in the daytime aside from the cleaning staff. I feel like it’s more peaceful than my apartment, because there’s no risk of Julia pounding on the door and accusing me of, like, stealing a grain of rice or something.

I settle down at the desk with my sandwich of chicken with pesto sauce, which sounds good yet still manages to be
sort of ruined by the cafeteria. The pesto is runny and the chicken is dry, but it’s edible. I swallow my first bite when I hear a knock at the door to the call room. It’s probably housekeeping, come to change the sheets.

“Come back later!” I yell at the door.
“Room occupied!
Ocupado
!”

“No, must change sheets now!” a
n accented male voice yells back.

Bastard.
I put down my sandwich and sprint to the door, and yank it open to give the housekeeper a piece of my mind. Except it isn’t housekeeping.

“Ryan!” As I
swat at him, I can’t help but notice the firmness of his chest. Why does he have to keep being so damn sexy? “You’re an asshole.”

He grins at me.
“Are you saying you don’t want me to change your sheets?”

“I’m eating lunch, you know,” I say, pointing at my sandwich.

“Lunch is for the weak,” Ryan says. I have to admit, I’m not certain if I’ve ever seen him sit down for an actual meal.

“Well, then I’m weak.”

My pager goes off at that moment and I’m 99% sure it’s Alyssa, wanting to hear about Mrs. Vargas and her chest pain. My few minutes of peace are over.

“Go ahead,” Ryan says.
“Return the page. I’ll entertain myself.”

The room is equipped with a phone, so I
sit down on the bed and call Alyssa back. I tell her about Mrs. Vargas, and explain about the prior history of the positive urine tox, but that I actually think she’s telling the truth this time. She really didn’t seem like she was on meth.

As I’m talking on the phone, Ryan
sits at the other end of the bed, takes my left leg in his hand and removes my Dansko clog. He places my foot on his lap and starts massaging my toes, my forefoot, then my heel and ankle. As I read off Mrs. Vargas’s cardiac enzymes to Alyssa, I feel Ryan’s fingers slipping up my scrub pants and massaging my calf. Crap, when was the last time I shaved my legs? Oh, who cares?

“Jane?”
Alyssa’s voice on the phone seems very far away.

“Huh?” I say.

She sighs. “Are you still awake?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” I mumble.
Ryan snorts loudly and I give him a look. “Can you repeat that?”

“I said I’ll meet you in the resident lounge in ten minutes,” Alyssa says.
“We need to do your mid-rotation feedback.”

Oh, joy.

I put down the phone and glare at Ryan, who has an amused look on his face. “Did you get taken in by another drug addict?” he asks me.

“No,” I huff.
“She’s telling the truth. I’m pretty sure.”

“Come on, Jane…”

“Not everyone is a liar,” I say, as I pick up my sandwich and take an extra-large bite. If Alyssa says we’re meeting in ten minutes, she really means five.

“I bet you anything that urine
tox is positive,” Ryan retorts.

I
fold my arms across my chest. “You’re on. It’s a bet.” Mrs. Vargas, don’t let me down! “What are the terms?”

He thinks for a minute.
“If I win, then… I get to second base.”

I raise my eyebrows.
“And second base is…?”

“Full access to boobies.”

I laugh. “Seriously? Okay, and what if I win?”

Ryan’s hand moves up my calf and rests on my bare knee.
“Then
you
get to second base.”

“And what’s second base for me?”

He waggles his eyebrows at me.

“You’ve
got
to be kidding me.” I roll my eyes.

“Fine.
What do you want then?”

I think for a minute.
“If I win, then you take me out tomorrow night for dinner. And not to the cafeteria and not to a bar. It’s got to be an actual restaurant with waiters and real seats.”

“Real seats?”
Ryan makes a face. “Damn, I didn’t know you were so high maintenance.”

“And you can’t wear scrubs,” I say.
Because I desperately want to know what Ryan looks like in real clothes.

“I’m not sure I own anything other than scrubs,” he says.

“Take it or leave it.”

“Okay, deal.”

Ryan holds out his hand to me and we shake on it. I can’t help but feel that either way, I’m going to come out a winner on this.

Hours awake: 9

Chance of
Mrs. Vargas having a positive urine tox: Who am I kidding? Like, 99%.