Page 51 of Liquids

On Tuesday, I drive half an hour to the employment agency and learn that the hospital is really short-staffed; if I can work weekends, then there are jobs. In fact, they are desperate for people. So desperate you’d take on somebody who drinks on her own late into the night and you fired? I don’t say. I mention the hospital problem again, and the lady behind the desk narrows her eyes at me like she can sense the commission for finding someone able-bodied and qualified slipping away.

“What kinds of problems?”

“An attending put a hand on my ass, and I decked him.”

She’s taking a sip from a can of Coke when I say this, and she snorts, inhaling the wrong way, and she starts wheezing and coughing, her face turning red as her eyes stream. I hurry around to help her and nearly get my ankles bitten by a tiny Chihuahua hiding under the desk. I rub her back, trying to help her inhale air. Eventually, the coughing fit dies down.

I sit back down and smile at her. “I have to say, he went down like a sack of potatoes.”

She snorts again, fortunately not into her Coke this time.

“And what happened?”

“Somehow, I was the one who got fired.”

She sits up straight, bristling. “Fucking hell! Why do we always pay the price for some guy with wandering hands? It makes my blood boil. You wouldn’t believe the stories I hear sitting on this side of the desk. Most of it is legally actionable. I’m thinking of retraining as a lawyer.” She huffs out a breath, and I give her a wan smile.

She waves a hand. “Let’s think positively here. They’ve had a lot of staff changes at the hospital; I’m willing to bet they’ll barely remember you. It’s years ago, right? I might not even have to mention it on your application. How many years now?”

“Five.”

“Let’s see what we can do.”

“Maybe we should check if he’s still there.” Because running into him again might really upset the apple cart.

“Good idea. What’s his name?”

“Dr. Kline.”

“Leave it with me.”

She doesn’t confirm or deny whether Dr. Kline is still around, but she must work her magic, because when I go to see them at the hospital, the HR lady almost bites my hand off, she’s so eager to have me working there. I’m half expecting that to change when she finds me on their database, so I’m amazed when she comes back and says that my references on the system are fine, and there’s a job offer coming through to me as we speak. “I really hope you take it,” she adds with a smile, taking my hand before adding, “Welcome on board.” And sharp relief sweeps through me. If I can stall Luis for a bit, what with this and my caregiver’s paycheck, I can pay one month’s rent at least. Who cares if Dr. Hand-on-My-Ass is still there? I can brazen it out. For a beat something sweet and potent swoops through me.

When the paperwork arrives attached to an email, the pay’s much better than I make doing daytime visits to my little old ladies, but I’d never leave Marge, Agnes, and June. So I say yes to two days a week at the hospital, and it means no time off, but goddammit, I can do that to pull myself through a few months, can’t I?

So instead of sitting and drinking, I work on the geriatric unit. It’s a job nobody wants to do, and it’s hard work, but at least it tires me out. I’m too exhausted to think about Rig, or Charlie, or anything else my tortured brain conjures up when I lie in my bed alone at night. But sometimes I do think about Rig’s warm chest and his big hands, and how Marni might be right: Maybe I should have ridden the wave of how awesome it all was until he destroyed me later on. It’s not like I haven’t been destroyed before. But something about his directness and the way he helped me—I know that losing him would be a blow I’d struggle to come back from. Places don’t ever recover from two tsunamis, do they? So I try to harden my heart, not altogether successfully.

I do a long shift on Saturday, working like a maniac giving bed baths and checking vitals and meds. There’s something about old people that I really like. The itch to draw their interesting faces and wrinkled skin trickles through my bloodstream. I pair up with one of the other nurses on the ward, Debbie, and as we jabber away, I end up telling her about Dr. Kline and his wandering hands. She screws up her face.

“Oh, God! I’ve heard about him from other nurses,” she says, and I gape at her. It wasn’t only me? But, God, I’ve only just got this job, and I really can’t afford to lose it this time.

“Keep it quiet, though,” I say. “I don’t want to get into any trouble.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that; they got rid of him ages ago. There were loads of complaints, from patients and staff.”

I blink at her. Oh wow, maybe that’s why my references were okay.

“Whenever something bad happens to a woman, it’s always a man’s fault,” Debbie grumbles as she tucks in a bedsheet. And as we change beds and load up the cart with meds, she tells me a long story about how her husband lost his job because he got into a fight with a guy at his work, and how now he sits around all day doing nothing. Sounds a lot like Dave, the asshole. But the whole fighting thing makes me want to laugh. This place … honestly. Would I say everything bad was down to guys …? But … fuck … I lost my job because of this goddamn doctor, and then I lost Charlie because of Mark. Jesus. How many men are there out there treating women like shit?

Over the next few weeks, I manage to get into a routine. Rig’s gone, and Marni starts seeing some guy who works for the county who she describes as “actually decent.” So it’s a rare Saturday night that I’m home alone with the opportunity to veg out and watch trash TV, but this is exactly what I’m doing—sipping gratefully on a weak vodka and orange like it’s holy nectar because it’s all I can manage these days with all the work—when my phone buzzes with a text. When I peer at it, there’s a message with a link from an unknown number:

Made me think of your drawings.

The only person who’s seen those is Rig. When I click on the link, it’s a video of some animated art, and I sit transfixed as the smoky shapes evolve into pictures of people walking and dancing. How the hell did they do this? There must be some amazing software out there if they can create stuff like this.

Is this Rig?

He doesn’t respond, and I’m just about to put my phone down and restart the football I was watching when another clip drops into my messages of a man in a yellow oilskin trying to stand in a gale-force wind. Holy shit. The screen moves to a view down over some railings to water miles below, full of ice. Then it jerks and swings around for a few minutes. Crap. Is he all right?