PMC Hospital, early evening one week later
Ren got a soda from the machine in the OR lounge, flopped down into the corner of one of the well-worn leather sofas, and propped her feet on the coffee table. She took a long swallow of the wonderfully cold liquid, leaned her head back, and let out a long sigh. Her entire body ached, in a good way. She’d been standing for the last six hours, doing a complicated bowel resection and reconstruction. Buzby, the attending surgeon, had nodded absently when she’d walked into the OR, and when she’d stepped up to the table opposite him had asked, “What year are you again?”
“Fifth.” She’d met him the day before when she and Zoey had rounded with him, and they’d been introduced. He’d directed most of his questions to Zoey.
“You’re one of the Franklin transfers, right?”
“No,” Ren said, taking the sterile sheet the scrub tech handed her to drape out the surgical area. Her first year resident crowded as close to her side as he could. She hip-checked him before he could cramp her arm movement. “PMC regular.”
“Huh.” He glanced over the drape at the head of the table. “Can we start?”
“He’s good,” the anesthetist said.
“Fifth year?” Buzby repeated, his eyes above his mask drifting over hers. Relaxed. Appraising.
She looked back steadily. Answer what she was asked—make no excuses where none were needed. “Yes.”
“Well then, go ahead.”
Ren hesitated a millisecond—not long enough for him to notice, just long enough to register the meaning. She held out her right hand. “Scalpel.”
Buzby made the procedure easy—easier, Ren knew, than it would have been if she’d been doing it alone. He had a way of directing the dissection without actually saying anything, just moving tissues and lifting organs into the field for Ren to expose, cut, suture, and repair. When they finished, she had learned something and taken note of what else she needed to know for next time. And she’d had a very good time.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Nice job,” he said. “I have a splenectomy day after tomorrow. You should scrub.”
“I’ll try,” she said, pleased that he wanted her to scrub with him but wary of committing to a case that ought to go to Zoey or a third year. Attendings always wanted the most senior residents to scrub with them. And as much as she needed as many cases as she could get, she wasn’t going to take them away from the junior residents.
Happily, she’d done more surgery in the last week than in the last six months. The elective service schedule was full, and summer in the city kept the ER busy with recreational and home improvement injuries as well as routine surgical illnesses. Trauma alerts sounded steadily with vehicular and violent injuries, and since she hadn’t left the hospital for more than a few hours, catching as many cases as she could, the days and nights had been a blur. She’d slept in between cases, grabbed food in the cafeteria, showered in the OR locker room, and pretty much had the most exciting week of her life. What she hadn’t done was spend any time in the lab. She should’ve missed it, but she didn’t, not really. She did miss the quiet and the solitude. But the trade-off was worth it. The residents on her service had been strangers a few days ago, but she was coming to think of them certainly not as friends, but as people whose names she knew and who knew hers. People whose priorities she understood. They knew almost nothing about her past and didn’t have the time or energy to care. What they cared about was how she ran the service—whether or not she allotted the work fairly, gave them a chance to do the cases they needed or wanted to do, and got them out of the hospital at a reasonable hour whenever she could.
She hadn’t appreciated right away how important it was for most of the residents to be able to get away from the hospital for a few hours when they weren’t on call. She’d never cared very much about being anywhere else. Everything that interested her had been here. That was still true but, she’d quickly realized when Zoey subtly suggested they start sign-out rounds every night around six, not for everyone. Oh, they were all hard-working, competitive, and would’ve stayed if it meant they would’ve missed out on something. But most of them also wanted, needed, something else in their life.
She set her soda on the coffee table and rolled the tension out of her shoulders. She’d never had a particularly balanced life, but she did have one thing that took her away from the pressure of constantly needing to succeed, that gave her a space to unwind and replenish her mind and spirit, if not necessarily her body. She checked her phone for the first time since early that afternoon and saw the text from Axe.
You around?
The time stamp said the message was three hours old. That often happened. She would text Axe or find a text waiting for her, and sometimes they would be able to connect, and other times it would be another day. She hoped she’d get lucky this time.
Ren answered, Just got free. What are you doing?
Dying of boredom.
Really? Why?
Long story. Paperwork, sort of.
Ren couldn’t remember Axe ever complaining about anything before. Work?
Sort of. Special project, Axe came back.
Bad time?
No. Was hoping you’d save me.
Ren laughed. She’d never heard her voice, but she felt the smile in her words.
Time to play then
For sure. Always
Ren smiled. She knew that wasn’t true, but she’d come to count on the comeback. Like a secret code. Perfect. I’ll see you.
Ren opened the app to the game site, logged in, and sent the invite. She watched the screen, waiting with anticipation. Twenty seconds later, Axe’s icon popped up. A stylized warrior, gender indeterminate, with a shield and sword. Hers, of course, was a raven perched on a branch, waiting, watching for prey. They started a new game, and she quickly moved into the alternate reality, her senses alert and her adrenaline flowing. She loved to flex her mind, meeting the new challenges Axe always came up with, reveling in the competition. They didn’t chat while they played, but she sensed Axe with every probing move, every rapid block and parry.
When the game ended, this one going to Axe, she typed, Nice one. I didn’t expect that countermove
Wouldn’t want you to get too confident.
Oh, of course not
:-)
Ren laughed again.
“Hey.” Zoey plopped down beside her. “You busy?”
Ren flipped her phone over and pressed it against her thigh, shifting to face Zoey. “No, is there a problem?”
“Nope. All the rooms are done. I was just getting ready to check the post-ops, and a couple of us were going out for pizza. You want to come?”
Ren stared. “I’m sorry? What?”
Zoey half smiled and shook her head. “Dinner, Ren. You know, food. You want to come out for pizza?”
“Oh.” She was just finding her way on the new service, establishing herself. Starting to fit in. Things had gone easier than she’d expected, but that had been about work. She understood her role there even if she needed the practice. Socializing wasn’t a necessary skill. Going out with the residents crossed boundaries, moved her into a zone where she might lose all the progress she’d gained. For something she didn’t need. “I have some reading I need to do later, but thank you.”
“Okay then.” Zoey stood and stretched. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“If you’re making post-op rounds,” Ren said, “I’ll come with you.”
“Great. We’ll get done twice as fast.”
Ren clicked on her phone as she followed Zoey through the locker room to the hall and texted quickly, Sorry, have to go.
Me too—thanks for the company
Ren hesitated. Always
Flushing a little, wondering if that had been the right thing to say—even though it had felt quite right to her—she slipped her phone into her back pocket. Part of her wished she’d said yes to Zoey—perhaps she would be a more effective resident if she attempted to integrate more. But her success had always been rooted in what she did best, using her drive and determination to excel. She could hardly take credit for her brain, after all. Those things had gotten her this far, and she only had this year to prove herself. Pizza, and everything else, could wait.
* * *
“If you change your mind,” Zoey said as she and Ren left the intensive care unit, their last stop on evening rounds, “we’ll be at Big Dom’s for a few hours.”
“Thank you,” Ren said.
Zoey waved and disappeared down the stairwell. Ren walked to the opposite end of the hallway and went down one flight to the bridge that connected the clinical floors to the newer section of the hospital that housed the research offices, animal facilities, and labs. She crossed the bridge that spanned the staff parking lot and glanced down at the steady stream of vehicles, mostly residents and medical staff, leaving for the night. Some were undoubtedly going home, but many, like Zoey and the other residents, were going to take advantage of the few free hours they had to socialize. Ren’d made the walk hundreds of times, had looked at the same scene just as many, but tonight for some reason imagining everyone setting off to enjoy the other parts of their lives, parts she didn’t have, touched off a pang of melancholy.
She’d barely ever thought about what she might be missing. She was lucky. She’d discovered early what she wanted and had been happy in the pursuit of those goals. She still was. But every day she spent in her new role outside the lab, some small experience, like Zoey’s invitation or a passing remark from one of the residents about a party or barbecue, reminded her of what she hadn’t done. She wasn’t given to introspection, and now was definitely not the time to worry about that, or even think about it. Not when she had challenges on every front.
She pushed through the fire doors at the far end of the walkway, leaving her ruminations and regrets behind. As was the norm, the research building was quiet at midevening. The administrative staff and many of the researchers kept normal business hours, though PhD students were often coming and going, setting up experiments, checking data, or working late to finish a paper. As she walked toward the lab, light would occasionally splinter into her path from beneath a closed door or illuminate a section of the hallway through an open one, but for the most part, her footsteps echoed through the deserted building. Larry Weatherby’s lab—what she thought of as her lab—was at the far end of the right wing of the T-shaped building. As she passed the open door of the library that sat at the junction of the three corridors, she heard a familiar voice say quite clearly, “I’ll be a hundred before I get through all of this.”
Ren stopped abruptly in the doorway and stared into the long narrow room. Two large windows filled the center of the wall opposite the door. Several oak tables, each with six navy-blue chairs around them, occupied the middle of the room. Floor-to-ceiling dark walnut bookshelves lined all the available wall space.
Dani sat at one end of the closest table with several stacks of charts in front of her. A wire cart stood next to her chair, laden with more.
“Dani?” Ren couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d looked through the door and seen a snowman.
“Hey, Ren,” Dani said with just a hint of dejection in her voice.
“Um…” Ren raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the charts.
“Yeah, I know.” Dani surveyed the stacks. “I don’t know what I’m doing here either.”
“Oh,” Ren said quickly, “I didn’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t be here. I’m just used to seeing people from the lab in here. It’s perfectly fine for anyone in the complex to come in here.”
“Well, it’s a first for me.” Dani pushed back in her chair, looking at the charts as if they were radioactive. She wore a scrub shirt and jeans with running shoes. Her hair was mussed but somehow still looked attractive, with a few strands hanging over her forehead and others drifting over her neck to the collar. The short-sleeved scrub shirt left her arms bare, and well-defined muscles rippled beneath her tanned skin.
Ren had only vaguely thought of Dani as slender, but she wasn’t at all. She was quite toned and…well-built. Ren imagined if she touched her, she would find her solid and strong.
“Something wrong?” Dani asked quietly.
When Ren pulled her gaze upward to meet Dani’s eyes, Dani gave her a lazy smile. Ren jumped, her heart suddenly pounding. How very odd. She swallowed, her throat unusually dry.
“You looked…bothered?” Dani added when Ren didn’t answer.
“No, I…no. You look awfully busy,” Ren said, embarrassed to have been staring. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“Oh, please, do. I could use a reason to escape.”
Dani sounded so frustrated and forlorn, Ren couldn’t help but laugh. Dani grinned, and the moment of worry that Ren might have given the wrong impression disappeared. She took a step closer, indicating the charts with one hand. “What are you doing?”
“Now, that’s a very good question,” Dani said. “I’m supposed to be making sense out of these cases.” She waved at the pile. There must’ve been a hundred folders.
“You’re doing some kind of study, I take it. I can’t think of anything else to be doing with all those charts.”
“Well, in theory, yes, I’m doing some kind of study. That’s about where I am right at this point. Theory.” Dani stood and stretched. Her jeans, faded blue denim with a ragged quarter-sized hole in the center of her left thigh that did not appear to be a fashion element but a real sign of wear, outlined sculpted thighs and calves.
Ren marveled at how different Dani’s body was from hers, even though they were roughly the same size. She never thought about her body, which she supposed she’d have to describe as soft and slightly curvy, so why in the world was she so fascinated by Dani’s?
Nonplussed, Ren tentatively backed up. “I am interrupting, then. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“No, don’t.” Dani sprawled in the chair again, her legs stretched out before her, and motioned to the chair beside her. “Stay, unless you have to be somewhere. You’re the best distraction I can imagine.”
“Well, I…I have some things in the lab, but they’re not urgent.” Feeling the flush start again, Ren shut it down with a firm mental hand and sat down next to Dani. Research papers were her comfort zone, even if talking to women she hardly knew wasn’t. “You must be going back a ways—pre-digital conversion?”
“Yep,” Dani said.
“It looks like you’re just getting started.”
“I wish that was the case. I mean, yes, I’m trying to get started, but basically you can think of me as someone who is learning how to swim by being tossed off an ocean liner into the middle of the Atlantic. Without a life preserver.”
“I remember the feeling,” Ren said.
“You do?”
Ren nodded. “When I was working on my master’s, the first time I showed up in the lab, my advisor informed me that he was leaving for a meeting and would be gone for two weeks. He handed me the research proposal and said I could get started while he was gone.” She shook her head. “I didn’t really have a clue.”
“That’s it? No instructions or anything?”
“Oh no—we were expected to be able to design our own experiments to address the research question.”
“Wait…you have a master’s degree too?”
Ren sighed, knowing what would come next. The surprise, the faint suspicion, the inevitable distance. “No, I actually have a PhD. The master’s was just the midpoint.”
“Oh—you’re one of the MD PhD people.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Dani said, “that sounds worse than what I’m doing.”
Ren stared for a beat and then laughed. No one had ever simply brushed that aside without even a question—or a comment. Relieved, intrigued, she said, “What’s your study about?”
“I’m looking at the impact of nutritional regimens on outcome in surgical treatment of cardiac atresia in preemies.”
“Oh,” Ren said, trying not to sound as surprised or disconcerted as she felt. “With Dr. Carducci?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize that you were in her lab.” Ren would’ve preferred to be in Allison Carducci’s lab for her surgical research, but when she’d arrived at PMC, Allison hadn’t yet been on staff. Larry Weatherby was an excellent surgical researcher, and she’d done interesting work in his lab, but that wasn’t where she wanted her career to focus. She wanted to focus on pediatric cardiothoracic surgery. Allison Carducci’s specialty. “I didn’t realize you were interested in cardiac surgery.”
“I’m not.” Dani shrugged. “Well, I don’t know, I suppose, technically, I am now. But not really. I’m doing a project with her, looking at patient outcomes. Dr. Carducci was looking for someone to do this project, and I could use the research experience.”
“I see,” Ren said, and she thought she did. There weren’t a whole lot of reasons that Dani might want to get a publication at this point in her residency. In fact, the only one she could think of was to enhance her chances at winning the Franklin. And Dr. Carducci would almost certainly lobby in support of her when the voting occurred. And unlike Ren, Dani would be well-known to most of the clinical staff too. A clear advantage.
“Anyhow,” Dani went on, oblivious to Ren’s consternation, “that’s the project. Honestly, I’ve read everything about the clinical end of things, and I pretty much know what I’m supposed to be looking for, but then”—she indicated the piles of charts—“how do I know what’s important and what isn’t?”
“You’ll figure it out after you get familiar with the cases,” Ren said noncommittally. She could have said more, could have offered to help her set up the study parameters and data tables, but she wasn’t responsible for helping Dani. But Dani wasn’t likely to ask Dr. Carducci for help. Ren wouldn’t either. That wasn’t the way to impress staff about anything, and the first thing every resident learned. Ask your fellow residents for help—not staff. But Dani’s research project was not her problem.
Dani grimaced. “Never mind. I’m just complaining. It took me three hours to pull all these charts, and I missed dinner.”
“I know, that happens to me a lot when I’m busy with a project. The forgetting to eat.”
“So, what are you doing here tonight?” Dani asked. “Isn’t it way after lab hours? This place is deserted.”
“Oh. I’ve got some samples I need to run in the lab. I’ve been so busy with the surgical service, I’ve been putting it off.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to juggle, isn’t it.”
“Well, it’s a lot more fun to be in the OR,” Ren said.
“Tell me about it.” Dani leaned forward, pushing the charts aside with her elbow. “You want to grab something to eat? I don’t know about your samples, but these charts aren’t going anywhere.”
“I really should get those samples running…” Ren hadn’t wanted to join a group of people when Zoey’d invited her out just a short while before, but now she considered it. Why did this seem different? And harder to say no to. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“There’s a tapas place two blocks away, San Pedro’s—you know it?” Dani said.
“No, I don’t eat out much.”
“Service is fast, and the food is great. You’ll be back here in an hour.”
Dani watched her, a glint in her eyes, as if she was trying to persuade Ren to say yes by sheer willpower. And it was working.
Ren surrendered to the urge to step outside her routine. The lab would still be there in an hour, and Dani was surprisingly easy to talk to. “Okay. Yes.”
“Great!” Dani jumped up and strode over to the door. When Ren joined her, Dani’s hand lightly grazed Ren’s elbow as she reached past her to switch off the light, leaving the library and the piles of charts in the dark. She said softly, “Ready?”
Ren caught the gleam in Dani’s eyes even in the semidark. “Yes.”