She was one of our frequent flyers. She was a widow and often came into the emergency room because she was lonely. There was never anything seriously wrong with her. She was one of the healthiest eighty-one-year-olds that I worked with, but she came in every few weeks convinced that she was dying. This time, she complained of throbbing leg pain and was terrified she had a blood clot.
She smiled up at me from bed, wrinkles moving underneath her eyes. She motioned for me to come closer. I leaned in to give her the customary hug she’d grown to expect from me. The familiar scent of vanilla musk and baby powder filled my nose. She squeezed me tightly before pulling away to arm’s length while still holding on to my forearm. “Hi, dear. I don’t mean to keep bothering you, but do we have any of my results back?”
I shook my head and moved above her bed to adjust the drip on her IV. “We’re still waiting to get them sent down from the ultrasound tech. Sorry. It’s probably going to be a few more minutes because we’re pretty slammed tonight.”
As if on cue, the sound of police scanners interrupted our conversation. Eloise peeked around her curtain, trying to catch a glimpse of the police. “What’s going on out there?”
I smiled. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
She leaned forward, trying to get a better view. “There are just so many officers. Why are there so many? Am I in danger?”
“You’re fine. I’d never let anything bad happen to you.” I patted the top of her hand. I could tell by the doughy feel of her skin that she was dehydrated again. “And you, Miss Thing”—I shook my finger at her playfully—“need to drink more during the day. How many times have I told you that?”
She hung her head but couldn’t hide the smile tugging at the corners of her lips. I checked her vitals, noting them in her chart. “I’ll keep my eye on your reports and let you know as soon as I know anything. Deal?”
“Deal.” She crossed her arms on her chest, settling in comfortably. She closed her eyes, and some of the lines in her face relaxed. She had told me once that she didn’t sleep well by herself and spent hours each night terrified of someone breaking in to her house while she slept. It was no surprise that her hospital visits were only at night. She didn’t even open her eyes as she spoke. “And see if you can find out anything about what’s going on with all the police officers.”
“I will,” I promised as I headed out to check on my other patients, knowing I wouldn’t be able to tell her even if I did.
The night grew busy as it wore on, and I didn’t get a chance to sit down until after four o’clock. I poured myself a cup of coffee and logged on to the computer, eager to get started on my notes while I had a brief reprieve. Stephanie grabbed a chair and slid down next to me. “Did you hear anything about what happened?” she asked.
I’d forgotten all about the officers earlier. I shook my head. “I haven’t had time to even breathe. We ended up doing a lumbar puncture on bed 6.” I pulled up my first patient and scrolled through their blood type results, searching for the one I needed in my report. “What’d I miss?”
“The police brought in an abandoned toddler. She’s pretty beat up. They found her wandering around a parking lot. She was only wearing a diaper and some kind of weird collar thing around her neck. How sad is that?” She talked fast, eager to get out the story before she got called to the next crisis. “She wouldn’t let the police anywhere near her. It took three officers to coax her into the car. She’s filthy, has blood all over her hands and arms, but we can’t clean her until they’ve gathered all the evidence that might be on her. They have no idea who she is or where she’s from.”
The angry knot of unfairness lodged in my stomach. Why did the universe allow people who hurt kids to have them? Why couldn’t it give them to people like me, who wanted them?
My husband, Christopher, and I had tried to get pregnant for years, but it was one disappointment followed by another. We got a second opinion after our doctor diagnosed me with an inhospitable uterus, but he agreed with the first doctor—birthing a child of my own was impossible. I swallowed down the bitterness. Some days it was better than others. Today wasn’t one of those days.
“Do they have any leads on her parents?” I asked.
“Nope. Not a thing. They think either she walked over there from the trailer park across the street or she was dropped there by someone.” She wrinkled her face in disgust. “She’s so skinny, looks like she hasn’t eaten in days.”
“Poor thing. Hopefully, they’ll find her parents, and it’ll turn out to be some weird accident or misunderstanding.”
Stephanie raised her eyebrows. “Misunderstanding? What kind of misunderstanding leads to your toddler being lost in a parking lot wearing only a diaper? And blood. Did you forget that part?”
“Someone’s got to be an optimist.”
I wished I were as optimistic as I pretended. I used to be. Not anymore.
Stephanie burst out laughing and squeezed my arm. “That’s what I love about you,” she said before hurrying off.
Christopher was waiting for me with a cup of chamomile tea when I got home. He held his cup of morning coffee in one hand and my favorite mug in the other—the one that said PUG LIFE on the front even though I’d never owned a dog. I’d been working swing-shift overnights for the last two years, and he worked days unless there was an emergency, so we were on opposite schedules, but it worked for us. It gave us an opportunity to miss each other, and sometimes you needed that in a relationship even when you loved each other as much as we did.
I grabbed the mug from his hands while I slipped off my shoes and followed him into the living room. I plopped down on the sofa beside him and sank into it, the down feathers contouring around my body. It was the piece of furniture we’d fought over the most when we had decorated the house shortly after we’d bought it. The living room was one of the first rooms you saw when you came inside, and he had thought we should have a formal couch so that it would look pristine and nice. But our house was too small to have another main living area, so I’d known we’d spend all our time there and wanted it to be comfortable. In the end, I had won, and he’d said on more than one occasion that he was glad I had because he couldn’t imagine coming home to a stiff couch.
He sat on the other end, and I stretched my feet onto his lap. He peeled off my socks and started massaging my feet. When I’d first told my sister about his foot rubs after work, she’d been sure it was only because we were newlyweds, but he was still doing it after all these years. If he was there at the end of my shift, he rubbed my feet. Period. It didn’t matter if he’d been in surgery for twelve hours.
“Well?” He raised his eyebrows, questioning.
You couldn’t practice medicine and not be affected by it. Over the years, we’d grown into each other’s therapists. We understood what it was like to be responsible for other people’s lives in a way nobody outside the profession could.
“Eloise was in again tonight.”
“What was it this time?”
“Blood clot.”
“And?”
“Negative.”