Back at the hospital, Emily was awake, and Andy and Cadell showed Emily the marriage license. Andy let the child look at and feel her wedding clothes before she went to change into scrubs in the on-call room.
She stopped partway down the corridor to grab a tablet and pull the chart for Boyd Westerfield, the eight-year-old who was back on the floor yet again. She flipped through the paperwork on the door, noting that his tests were still out at the lab. His parents seemed like worrywarts, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t worse. Indeed, when she glanced into Boyd’s room, the kid sitting in the bed looked distinctly more lethargic, and his skin tone was yet more sallow.
Yikes, Andy didn’t like that at all.
Dr. Taneshia Jackson strolled down the hallway, coming toward her. Dr. Jackson was evidently guiding a tour of the floor for an incoming medical student doing his rotations, as the kid wore a short, hip-length white coat.
“Ah, Dr. Kumar,” Dr. Jackson called down the corridor. “This is Braiden Rowland. He’ll be rotating with us for a few months.”
The kid gawked at Andy in her red silk lehenga choli, thickly embroidered all over with real gold thread and glittering stones, and her hands stained with red mehndi lacework.
“Hello, Braiden,” Andy said. “It will be nice to work with you. I usually wear the white coat.”
Dr. Jackson said to Braiden, “You asked how much time was expected of you? Dr. Kumar is getting married today, and yet here she is, in her wedding dress, doing rounds and checking on her patients.”
The kid’s brown eyes widened, and he gulped.
“Actually,” Andy told him, “there is an interesting case on the floor that I want to follow, so I’m skipping my wedding entirely.”
The kid whitened three more shades of pale.
Taneshia Jackson looked at the floor and bit her lip to hide her grin.
“Speaking of which,” Andy said. “Taneshia, are you still a registered minister in that internet church of Modesto, California?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Displaying the clergy placard in my car gets me out of more parking tickets than just the doctor one.”
“You can marry people, right?”
“Yep. I’ve done three friends of mine.”
“I’m going to marry Emily Glynn’s father tomorrow. Could you officiate in the atrium cafe about three o’clock?”
“Is there going to be a cake or something?” Dr. Jackson asked.
“I was thinking about a tower of Danishes.”
“Sure,” she said, “but I have to give grand rounds at four, so it has to be short.”
“Oh, jeez, yeah. That’s on my schedule. I’ll toss you some softball questions. I was thinking something around fifteen minutes?”
“Sounds great. I’ll text you.”
Andy said, “Dr. Jackson,” and tapped the tablet to close out Boyd Westerfield’s chart.
Dr. Jackson said, “Dr. Kumar,” and walked away with the kid. Braiden’s eyes had practically popped out of his face at that last bit.
Good God, another poopy-butt third-year med student would be on the floor. Andy expected that she would need to explain PELD scores yet again.
In the on-call room, Andy shucked the heavy dress, released the damn corset, scrubbed her face, picked the pins out of her hair, and locked the twenty-two karat gold in her locker for the rest of the day. She twisted her hair up into a scrunchie to get the mass out of her way.
Ah, scrubs. Soft, breathable, cotton, drawstring scrubs.
Andy breathed deeply to forestall pneumonia and considered collapsing on the couch in the on-call room, but she went to finish her rounds and then sit with Emily for the rest of the day. Andy had technically taken the day off, what with getting married and all, so she didn’t have to do anything.
But she was there, so she did.
She and Cadell played with Emily the rest of the day and left around six to have some supper and go home for the night.
“You know,” Cadell said as he folded his long legs into the passenger seat of his BMW, “that marriage license is valid for sixty-five days. We don’t have to get married tomorrow. You can think about it for a month or two to make sure this is something that you want.”
“Do you want to think about it?” she asked him, sitting in the driver’s seat and throwing a shopping bag full of gold jewelry in the back seat. When it hit the seat, the bag clanked like it was full of iron chains. She had already shoved the miles and miles of the red silk of her skirt and blouse onto the back seat.
Cadell said, “I want to find a minister, marry you now, and have him post-date it for tomorrow, but I think that you should think about it.”
“I already got us a minister,” Andy said, tapping the ignition button to start the car and reversing it out of the spot. “I would hope that maybe you don’t want me to think about it. I might change my mind.”
“Well, that is true,” he said. “Okay, let’s stop discussing it. Who’s the minister?”
Andy put the zippy little sports car in gear and tried not to bolt out of the parking garage. “Dr. Taneshia Jackson, the surgeon who scrubbed in and finished Emily’s surgery with me.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Oh, yeah. You did have some memory problems coming out of the anesthesia.” But not, it seemed, cognitive problems. Everything he said seemed to be true. Andy smiled. “And it’s going to be at three o’clock. Is that all right?”
“Sure. Think we can get Emily a wheelchair and get her up there?”
“Oh, of course. Otherwise, we would have it in her room.”
“I never really proposed. I feel like I should.”
“I’m cool. You don’t have to.”
“And you don’t have a ring.”
“I have the one Mahadavan gave me.”
Cadell growled, “I will shove it up his—.”
“I’ll give it back to his family.”
“We could go down to the diamond district and buy a ring.”
“It’s Saturday afternoon. Nothing’s open down there.”
“Oh. Right. We could get one somewhere else. We’ll need rings for tomorrow.”
“I don’t even know if I want a ring. The thought of yet more damned jewelry just sickens me right now. All that gold and glittery stuff on the lehenga choli and what it all means, that I wasn’t good enough, that my father literally had to bribe the groom to take me off his hands, just makes me want to puke. I just want to pick up food and go home. I’m so tired.”
He ran his knuckles down her shoulder while she drove out of the parking garage and into the setting sunlight. “I’ll think of something.”
Andy mused aloud, “We should invite your band mates to the wedding.”
Cadell looked out the window, smiling, too. “Yeah. We should.”
“You want to call them now?”
“I don’t think we should tell those guys tonight. They’d want to take me out for a bachelor party. Touring with Killer Valentine has been a five-year bachelor party. I would rather stay home with you. Tomorrow morning, I’ll mass text them where and when to be there.” He grinned.
“But men are supposed to want a bachelor party. Mahadavan had a bachelor party last weekend in Atlantic City.”
“Nice. He got a bachelor party and didn’t have to get married. I guess he’s one—” Cadell looked at Andy’s face. “—pathetic bastard. He’s one pathetic bastard.”