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“I told her I didn’t want to go through that. She understood.”
He gave a nod. “If that’s what you want, then we’ll respect it.”
“Thanks.”
He found his page then looked up to stare at me.
I knew something was coming. I could read that look pretty well.
“I’m happy the two of you made up because you’re a good man for my daughter. You make her happy, you’re her equal, a very selfless person. But don’t fuck this up again.” His voice suddenly turned sinister. “Because if you hurt my daughter…I can’t exactly see straight.”
“Yes, I’ve picked up on that.”
He looked down at his notebook again. “Then let’s get back to work.”
Once the labs popped up in the system, I printed them out and dissected them at the pod in the hospital. Doctors weren’t supposed to print patient information and take it home with them, but we were exempt from the policy after a couple signatures from our patients and the hospital administration. I pored over this information, day in and day out. Wasn’t going to come to the hospital every time I wanted to check something.
Dr. Hamilton left a room, sanitized his hands outside the door, and then rubbed his palms together as he walked to the desk with the two computers. “Her condition is getting worse. Had to increase her oxygen. If she gets any less of it, she’ll suffocate…”
“It’s only been a day. She might improve.”
He fell into the chair, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. “We’ll see.”
I continued to examine the labs, a specific number standing out to me the most. “It’s strange…”
“Hmm?” He looked at the room he’d just left, his eyes clouded over in a haze.
“Patients who show the least improvement have the highest level of B cells…”
Dr. Hamilton turned to me. “That could be for a number of reasons, none of which are relevant to what we’re doing.”
“Maybe, but…”
“Some of the patients with diabetes are improving, so it has nothing to do with that.”
I continued to stare at the lab results.
“We’ll find it. We’ll just keep looking.”
I flipped through the papers, checking everything I came across. But in the back of my mind, I felt like I was missing something…or I’d found something.
“So, I got the ‘I’m gonna kill you if you hurt my daughter’ talk today.” I sat across from her at the bar, in my blue scrubs because I’d been at the hospital all day.
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Ignore him.”
“Kinda hard…when his eyes look like that.”
“Well, I have the same intensity in my eyes.”
“It’s cute when you do it, though.”
“Cute when I get mad?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah, like right now. It’s pretty cute.”
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance, and she dug her hand into the basket of fries. “I’ll give you cute…”
I got my drink and chugged it back, needing to cleanse the sterile air and monitor beeps from my body.
She’d also ordered a plate of tacos, so she ate one and smothered her face with guacamole and sour cream.
She was adorable no matter what she did, so it didn’t bother me.
“How was your day?”
I shrugged. “Being around sick people all day takes it out of you.”
“I’m not sure how my dad has done it so long.”
“He cares more than he aches.”
“I wonder if he’ll be less intense when he retires.”
“Doubt it,” I said. “He’ll probably go crazy being home all day. Maybe he’ll teach or something.”
“I can see my dad being a professor. How’s your research going?”
“Some of our patients are responding well. Others are not. About forty percent of our patients from the first trial reached remission.”
“That sounds awesome.”
“I’m still trying to figure out why the others didn’t respond at all.”
“I mean…that could be anything. It could be a gene in their DNA, for all we know. A protein that can’t be synthesized. Literally anything.”
“I know. But I’m going to find it.”
“I’m sure you will.” Affection filled her eyes, looking at me like she loved me with her whole heart.
“I noticed that the patients who aren’t doing well have higher levels of B cells…” I didn’t usually talk about my research with her because it was specialized medicine, but I missed collaborating with her, picking her big, beautiful brain. It was nice just to talk about everything, to share the thoughts that were always in my head.
“As in, they have diabetes?”
“That’s the thing. There are patients with diabetes who are responding well.”
She ate a few more fries, thinking. “Maybe the other patients are pre-diabetic and don’t even realize it, so they aren’t getting the insulin they need. That makes sense. But it may not be relevant to their response to the medication.”
“Yeah. It’s just strange to me that they all have the same elevated numbers.”
“Could that be a side effect to the medication?”
“I mean, it’s possible. Could be changing their blood glucose levels.”
She continued to eat, thinking quietly.
