Healer Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I slept for almost two hours before Natalie found me again. I guess one of the EMS guys had seen me and told her where I was when they brought in a woman in labor.

“There you are. A couple of patients asked whether you were still here.”

“Huh?” I stretched. “Do they want to see me?”

“No, they just wanted to thank you for visiting. Mrs. Jones in 201 wanted to tell you that your visit was the highlight of her otherwise miserable stay in this hospital. And she wants to invite you to Thanksgiving this year since you told her that you have no family. She said that after the treatment her son has given her, it’ll probably be just the two of you this year.”

I laughed. Mrs. Jones’ son was going to be living in the dog house until he got rid of that dog…and possibly his wife.

“Oh…on a sadder note, Sarah Mahoney’s family called us to tell you that the viewing is tonight, the funeral is tomorrow. They want you to know that you have no obligation, but thought that you might want to know.”

“Oh yeah, thanks.” I don’t go to viewings or funerals, preferring to remember people as they were when they were alive. “I’ll send a card or something.” I made a note in my appointment book to buy flowers.

“Well, now that you’re thoroughly depressed, how about we go to the nursery and make funny faces at the babies until they laugh?”

 “Sounds like fun. Oh, how are the babies that I helped Saturday?”

“The four you helped were discharged yesterday. Little Johnny, whose parents declined help, will probably go home tomorrow.”

“Good, good. I love happy endings.”

We spent two hours in the nursery playing with the babies. I love giving babies their bottle because they cuddle and love you unconditionally just because you have food. Unfortunately, there are rarely babies that need strangers to feed them in hospitals since there are mommies and daddies who do that to bond with their new babies. But we did change a few diapers and made lots of funny faces.

“Scarlet?” Natalie asked as we walked out of the nursery.

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you can tell if a coma patient will ever wake up.”

“Uhh…I don’t know. I mean I can always try. Is there someone you want me to check out?”

“Yeah, there’s this guy who’s been here for about three months. His family is really stressed about what to do.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

The ICU is located on the third floor, in a very bright wing. Since most of the people in this ward are unconscious and need constant attention there is just one large room with curtains attached to the ceiling to provide privacy when necessary.

Mr. Gregory Strickland was in the bed farthest away from the door, I guess so that visitors wouldn’t notice that he was still there months after he was first admitted. He was a handsome man, about thirty-five with blond hair and strong bone structure.

Natalie moved to take his pulse, though with all the monitors attached to him, it didn’t seem necessary. I noticed that her thumb rubbed the back of his hand slowly. I had a feeling that Natalie might have a bit of crush on Mr. Strickland.

“What happened to him?”

“Car accident.” Natalie wasn’t looking at me.

“Nat…before I do anything, I need to know whether you have a personal interest in Mr. Strickland.”

She sighed. “I’ve developed a crush on him,” she admitted. “At first he was just a patient, albeit a cute one. Then when I started talking with his family I learned that he is a pretty awesome guy. I know it’s silly since I’ve never seen him with his eyes open, but he totally sounds like someone I would date, and you know how few of those exist in this town. Plus his mom and sisters are very nice, too.”

“I’m not a miracle worker and I don’t even know if I can be of any help. He could still die.”

“I know. It’s just a crush, and even if he wakes up there’s no guarantee that he’ll like me, or even that he’ll be the great guy that his family describes. You know as well as I do that family always speak highly of the sick and dying, no matter whether they were detested pigs when they were healthy.”

“Okay, well, here we go.” I put my hands on Mr. Strickland’s head and started searching for injury. I found swelling deep within his brain and it appeared that that was causing the coma, but I scanned the rest of him looking for other injuries. There were none.

“I can’t help him.”

“You can’t?” Natalie looked stricken.

“I can’t take away illnesses and injuries that put my own life in jeopardy. Or well, I can, but it might kill me and that doesn’t help the rest of the people in this world who are sick.” I told her about the swelling and that if I were to take it away, I could end up in the coma.

“So what can we do?”

“Well, if he’s stable, then I don’t see why you can’t keep him here until his family makes a decision. He’s still registering brain function, so I see no reason to do anything drastic. The swelling could go down and he’ll wake up…or he might not. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Thanks for looking at him. I think I’ll keep this new information to myself, though. His family is stressed enough already.”

“Do you want me to look at anyone else?”

“No, everyone else up here is in a medically induced coma or improving. It was just him.”

“I’m hungry,” I told Natalie as we got back to the first floor. She was just opening her mouth to probably tell me that we’d go to the cafeteria when a nurse called her over to a patient.

“You go eat; I’ll grab something out of a vending machine. I’ll see you later,” she called to me as she rushed across the lobby.

I went to the cafeteria by myself for a sandwich and entertained myself with the book I found in my purse. I hadn’t finished Fahrenheit 451 yet, so I sat at the table in the cafeteria engrossed in my book. The ending surprised me, but the essays the author had written for the copy I had were very interesting. It’s quite ironic that there are people who succeeded in censoring the ultimate book on censorship.

My butt had fallen asleep while I was reading so I went for a walk around the hospital to stretch—half looking for Natalie to tell her bye before I left for the night. I had just entered the emergency wing when the doors to the ambulance bay burst open and people started calling for the crash cart. I pressed myself against the wall to get out of the way of the gurney being pushed towards the operating room. I recognized Nathan, who was straddling the patient on the gurney forcibly giving compressions while a partner worked the resuscitation bag.

I was a little shaken by the scene. I don’t often see people in a situation like that—my clients are always stable in one way or another. I knew Nathan and the rest of his crew would go to the EMS lounge before they left, so I went in there to wait. Okay, maybe I am a glutton for punishment—I wanted to see Nathan.

He walked into the lounge about fifteen minutes after I’d seen him on the gurney. He didn’t notice me at first, going straight for the mini-fridge and getting a Coke before he even realized that there was someone else in the room with him.

“Hey. Oh, hi!” he said when he recognized me, his tone improving immensely. “What brings you here?”

“Just helping out, since I had the day off.”

He came over to the couch I was sitting on and sat next to me, putting his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. It was wonderful to feel the solidness of him. I laid my head against him.

“You need a life.”

“Why does everyone say that to me?” but I wasn’t angry. I knew it was true.

“Because the only difference between what you do for work and what you do on your day off is whether or not you get paid.”

“It works for me. And what about you? When you aren’t helping people as a cop, you help people as an EMT.”

“Yeah, but both jobs have plenty of down-time where I socialize with my co-workers.”

“Hey! I spent a lot of time socializing with Natalie and spent 3 hours talking with some of the patients here. And don’t say that I need to make friends outside of work, because you know that isn’t fair. I don’t want to drag anyone into the Brown’s wrath with me.”

“Sorry.” He did sound chastised and he squeezed my shoulders in half a hug.

“What happened with that guy?”

“Shot. You saw me?” I looked up at his face and his eyes twinkled. “Did I look dashing while trying to save the guy’s life?”

“I wouldn’t say dashing, but you did look intense. Are you often the one giving CPR?”

“Whenever I can manage it. The crew I work with has an agreement that whoever does the least amount of work to save the patient does the paperwork. I get to ride on the gurney while doing compressions and they get stuck trying to remember what all we did.” I felt his fingers gently stroke my arm.

“Did he make it?”

“I don’t know—I just handed him off to the doctors in the ER and changed my shirt before I came in here.”

“I’m sure you did everything that you could.”

“Yup.” He took a long swallow of soda. He didn’t speak further on it. We sat in silence for awhile, his arm sliding to wrap around my waist. I put my hand on his and caressed his fingers.

“Nathan! Come on man, you need to sign this so we can go. Oh!” a tall, gangly guy who looked just out of high school barged into the lounge. “Sorry. I didn’t realize your girlfriend was here. Hey.” He waved at me.

“Hi.” I was feeling awkward about being found cuddled next to Nathan. He extracted his arm from around me, standing up and throwing the Coke can into the recycling bin. He didn’t bother with introductions, but took the clipboard from the kid and read through the report quickly before signing it. I stood up and started collecting my things to leave the hospital.

I followed the two of them out of the lounge where they picked up the third member of their crew, a girl who looked about my age. Nathan stopped and looked at his crew and at me and suddenly realized that he was being distant. The look that crossed his face was priceless and he shook his head.

“Sorry. Not sure where my head’s been. Fred, Dalia, this is Scarlet.” He didn’t elaborate, but I shook hands with Fred and Dalia.

“You’re his girlfriend?” Fred asked. I guessed that Nathan’s moods were well known, since Fred hadn’t demanded an answer to his earlier supposition until after Nathan had finally made introductions.

“Uh…”I didn’t know how to answer.

“Not yet.” Nathan supplied, but the look he gave Fred said that he shouldn’t push for more information.

Dalia turned towards me, “Well, girlfriend or not, I’m glad that he’s found someone finally, because he’s been really moody the past few months and I’m tired of trying to figure him out.” The look she shot at Nathan told me that she was the one in charge of mental health on their crew.

I smiled at her. “Well, I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try to make him keep his moodiness to a minimum.”

“Good. It’s nice to meet you, but we should get back to the station before the captain wonders where we’re at. Bye.” Dalia grabbed Fred’s arm and dragged him down the hallway towards the ambulance bay. I thought it was a weird exit until I turned to Nathan and he caught my mouth with his in a goodbye kiss.

“Drive safe.” He murmured before following his partners out the door.

Natalie had seen the kiss (as had everyone at the nurse’s station) and she came over to me with a large grin on her face. “You two are adorable together!” she actually squealed.

I was embarrassed and told her a quick “bye” before I left in search of my car and went home.