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“We’ll clean it up and make sure there’s no risk of infection,” I say, trying very, very hard not to laugh at how ridiculous she looks with the eyebrow Band-Aid. “We don’t want any scarring on your face.”
After her, I encounter a lovely middle-aged couple with ruddy cheeks and hearty builds. The man is lying prone on the exam table, his hospital gown held shut by the tie around his waist.
He and his wife are arguing so loudly as I approach that I deduce what happened to land him in here before I even have to ask. It’s your classic sexy hot wax mishap. Apparently, they were experimenting in the bedroom.
“—not pour molten Yorkshire Candle Company all over my backside, Janice! It fused my damn butt cheeks together.”
I introduce myself without laughing, and the first thing the patient asks is for me to give it to him straight. “Will I still be able to poop?”
After doing a brief examination, I tell him what he’ll need to do to treat the superficial second-degree burns.
My last patient is a college-aged guy who spent the day out on a boat in the Boston harbor with his friends and made the ill-fated decision to fall asleep in the sun. He’s not the first person who’s come into the clinic with a severe sunburn. He is, however, the first person I’ve seen who got a sunburn on their face while wearing those Kayne West slat sunglasses. It’s utterly ridiculous. How am I supposed to look him in the eye and tell him he needs to be more careful next time without totally losing it?
I diagnose him with superficial second-degree burns (Have you caught on to the trend yet? First-degree burns don’t usually warrant a trip to the clinic, and anything worse than second-degree gets sent straight to the BICU). After, I head over to the nurses’ station and plop myself down in a swivel chair. I haven’t sat down all afternoon. My feet are killing me. I want nothing more than to go home, draw a bubble bath, and drag Connor down into it with me, but I still have work to do. Now that I’ve inspected all the coffee-stained crotches and candle-wax-covered butts, I have to sit down at my computer and dictate all my notes. I know it will be impossible to make it sound like I’m not joking. Whoever reads these patient files after I’m finished is in for a real treat.
Even with the clinic zapping all my energy, I still manage to finish everything up back in the call room in the BICU by 6:30 PM. It’s a rare gift to get off this early, especially on a Friday. I’m itching to get past the hospital’s doors and run straight into the weekend. I close my laptop and gather my things, daylight beckoning, but then I stop short out in the hall when I see Connor at the nurses’ station talking to Lois. All day, we’ve missed each other. It’s nothing new. In the past, we only ever crossed paths in the hospital on rare occasions—in the hall or during rounds or if we were paired up on the same case—but now I’ve spent my day acutely aware of his absence. It feels like an achievement that I’ve survived this long without him.
He turns his head and sees me frozen there, looking at him.
My stomach squeezes tight with anxiety. I want to ask him how he slept last night without me in his bed, how his surgeries went today, what he plans on eating for dinner. I want to tell him about my morning sickness and how a croissant from Boston Beans seemed to help (buttery carbs, imagine that) and I want to tell him about Gina’s tea. I think it’d make him laugh. I want to tell him all that and more, but then, how can I?
“Are you headed out?” he asks, eyeing my bag.
I muster up a small teasing smile. “Yeah. Running for it while I can.”
He gives me an approving nod. “Good.”
The forced formality is for the best. Even if everyone in the unit knew our personal business, we still wouldn’t walk around making a show of it. Discretion is key for maintaining respect in the workplace. So, I give him one last tip of my head and then breeze past him like it doesn’t leave me physically aching.
On my walk home, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I wanted time away from Connor to gather my thoughts and really know for sure where my feelings lie, but it’s only been twenty-four hours and it feels like an insurmountable task to repeat this again tomorrow and the day after and so on. All for what? So I can conclude with one-hundred percent certainty that I’m head over heels in love with him? I already know that.
