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Maisie pulled into the hospital parking lot and immediately pulled her visor down. She hit the button to roll down the driver-side window, shouting a “Sorry,” to the physician she almost ran over. She rested her head on her steering wheel and took in a deep breath before swiping her access card for the parking lot. The arm lifted, and she slowly pulled forward with her hand helping to block the sun.
“Great way to start the day, Maise,” she said to herself as she pulled into the first available parking spot. With her luck, whoever she almost hit was probably one of her attendings for the day. She shut off her car, checked the time on her watch, and grabbed her coffee.
As soon as she got out of her car, sirens echoed. By the cacophony, she knew there was more than one ambulance pulling into the bay. It was times like this when she wished she had a scanner or radio in her car, so she knew what she was about to walk into.
Not walk, but run.
Maisie jogged as fast as she could without spilling her coffee. As soon as she entered the emergency department, she went to the locker room, found her size in scrubs, and changed as quickly as possible. Maisie downed the coffee and tossed the cup before heading into the melee.
Dr. Van Blom, the head of the emergency department, barked orders to the staff. Maisie picked up bits and pieces of what had happened: three car collision, one roll over, but nothing about injuries.
“Where do you need me?” she asked Van Blom.
“Trauma three.”
Now that she was at work, every thought about her body aching, about Rhys and their days together, and about how she was tired, went out the door. Nurse Maisie was in full work mode and ready to save lives.
Long after the accident cleared out of the ED and the adrenaline subsided, Maisie felt a fresh wave of exhaustion hit her. For the rest of the afternoon, she dealt with bumps and bruises, cases of the flu, a broken arm, and some minor accidents.
She sat around the nurse’s station, sipping another cup of coffee and gabbing with her coworkers, when her name sounded over the intercom.
“Maisie Hoffman to bay three.”
“What’s that about?” Celia, one of her counterparts asked.
Maisie shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t have any patients at the moment.”
“Oh great, she’s jinxed us,” someone else called out. The others groaned. It was a well-known fact that emergency staff across all channels were superstitious. And they never ever talked about things being slow or not having any patients because, inevitably, something would change that for them.
When Maisie arrived at bay three, she grabbed the chart and barely had it open when she stepped behind the curtain.
“Who do we have he . . .” the rest of her sentence fell off to the wayside when she made eye contact with Rhys. Instantly, her eyes went to the little guy sitting on the bed, and then to the chart. Rhys Wainwright III. Nickname: Trey.
The lump in Maisie’s throat made it hard to swallow. She looked over Trey’s complaint: fever and stomachache. It was easy to deduce that the little boy had the flu, but she would run the battery of tests, like she did with every other patient, despite wanting to run.
“Hi, Trey, I’m Maisie. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“My head hurts,” he mumbled.
Maisie went to work, assessing the little boy. She listened to his heart and lungs, checked for any tender spots along his abdomen, and took his temperature again.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“My tummy.”
“His day care called.” Rhys quietly informed her. “The flu is going around.”
Maisie never took her eyes off Trey. She never acknowledged Rhys, even though her heart was beating rapidly. He had a son and didn’t tell her. He was rich—beyond rich, in fact—and didn’t tell her. The latter was not as worse as the former, but nonetheless, their relationship wasn’t starting out the best. She had told him everything about her.Everything. And he left out something as important as having a son. What else was he hiding from her?
In that moment, she saw herself through his eyes as nothing more than a hookup.
“Okay, Trey. Give me a minute and I’ll be right back.” She smiled kindly at the little guy, picked his chart up off the bed, and left the bay.
“Maisie,” Rhys called her name, but she didn’t stop. She counted on him not following her out of the bay because hopefully he wouldn’t leave his son alone.
She set the chart on the counter and asked one of her coworkers to take over for her. “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I think I’m coming down with something.”
“You should go home then,” her boss said. Maisie nodded and made her way to the locker room. She changed quickly, and all but ran to her car. Inside, she gripped her steering wheel and rested her head against her hands.
