I looked at Hunter. “Ready?”
“Yeah, let’s go.” He followed me as I walked away.
“What does Jameson get if you’re doing this?”
“James is taking the new nurse in pediatrics on a date.”
I looked up at him as I dodged an orderly rolling a giant cart of bedding. “You know that sleeping with the interns and nurses isn’t in your job description, right?”
“I know, it’s just an added bonus.” He nudged my shoulder with his. “Anyway, how come you never told us who your brother was?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never hidden it, he’s been here plenty of times. You just don’t pay attention to anyone who doesn’t want to sleep with you.”
“That’s not true. You wanted to sleep with me once.”
“I did sleep with you once.” I placed my hand on the scanner pad allowing us access to the operating wing, pushing through the doors.
“That was eight years ago, and I’ve learnt some new moves since then.”
My mind flashed back to the night Hunter and I had performed our first surgery together, a car accident victim and we’d been tasked with holding limbs. We didn’t actually get to cut or fix anything, but it was still incredibly cool. And in the aftermath of excitement, we’d ended up getting in a tangled mess ourselves.
But, like many things in life, it didn’t bear repeating.
I may as well have sucked on a lemon by the way my body convulsed. “Save them for your fan club.”
He laughed loudly.
We turned, hearing the doors swing open and watched as Felix’s bed was wheeled down the corridor, en-route to the operating room. I stopped it from passing us, peering down at his face as he blinked up at me through very glazed, but no less piercing, eyes.
“Mol?”
“Hey.”
His perfect forehead creased in confusion. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m going to fix you.”
“Okay.” His eyes closed.
I stood back and watch them wheel him off. One of the surgical nurses was walking toward us, carrying a large envelope.
“Are those Felix Cleverly’s x-rays?”
“Yes Doctor,” she replied as she handed them to me.
I took out the film and held it up to the light, Hunter looking at it with me.
“It’s good. It’s a really clean break; this is a simple mend.” He leaned in closer, squinting, before pointing to a barely there mark on Felix’s left patella. “But look at that.”
I brought the film nearer to my face. There was a hairline fracture on the bone, but underneath, I could just make out a tiny tear in his Anterior Cruciate Ligament, or ACL, the ligament which helped keep his knee stable, connecting his femur to his tibia. This was almost worse than the break and easily just as painful. It would definitely require surgery to fix.
“Fuck, Hunt.”
“Mol, we can fix that another time. We’ll get a camera in, check it and stabilize it for now. He won’t be moving much anyway, and then we can fix it properly in six weeks or so.”
That he was right didn’t make it any easier.
“Yeah, okay.”
