I slowly crept through the doors like a timid sixth-grader who was scared of walking into the wrong classroom. The hallways formed a big square that surrounded the nurses’ station that was decorated with fake plants and cardboard cut-outs of apples and rulers for Back-To-School time.
“Help me, help me, help me!”
I spun around to a woman walking my direction, balancing a stack of file folders two feet high in her hands that started slipping out of her hands. Dropping my lunch bag and purse where I stood, I lunged forward and caught the manila tower before it spilled all over the floor.
She sighed. “Oh, thanks. That would’ve really sucked.”
“No problem.” I smiled at her.
I guessed she was in her early forties, though her face was youthful and could’ve passed for a twenty-year-old. She was a little chubby with a bright, contagious smile.
“I’m Darla.” She grinned as she set the files on the counter. “You are?”
“Oh, I’m Kacie Jensen.”
“You’re the new girl, huh?”
“That’d be me. Am I in the right place?”
“Yep, this is it. Fancy, ain’t it?” She rolled her eyes.
“Where should I set my stuff?” I looked around.
“Come back here, we call this the Square. Everyone has a shelf to put their crap on.”
I followed her into the nurses’ station and set my bags down in an empty space.”
“Kacie Jensen?” A woman bellowed as she came around the corner.
“Yes.” I spun around nervously.
“I’m Maureen, you’re with me. Let’s go.” She waved as she strolled past the Square.
“You’re with Maureen?” Darla whispered as I walked past her.
I nodded.
“Good luck,” she mouthed.
I quickly stepped in behind Maureen. “Hi, Maureen. It’s nice to meet you. I’m very excited to work with you,” I said to the back of her tight gray bun as she continued walking.
“No chit chat, we’re very busy today. Just follow my lead.” She didn’t even turn her head when she spoke to me. “Don’t expect me to coddle you, this is the real world. If I tell you that you did a good job, it’s because you did. If you need someone always telling you how great you are, call your mother.”
Whoa, she was tough.
My first day was filled with cleaning up puke, changing out bedpans and perfecting the art of blood pressure taking. What it lacked in excitement, it more than made up for in how fast the day flew by. Before I’d even had a chance to look at the clock once, Maureen was telling me to go sit down for a thirty-minute lunch break. I didn’t know exactly where I was supposed to go, so I grabbed my lunch bag and sat at the desk next to Darla while she continued transferring all the files she almost dropped into the computer.
“You married?” she asked, staring straight ahead at her computer screen.
“Nope.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yep.”
“He got any cute single friends?”
I giggled when I thought of Viper, the only single friend of Brody’s that came to mind. And he wasn’t exactly single … it really just depended on the day and Kat’s mood, from what I understood.
“Nah, not any good ones.”
“Bummer. By the time I leave here at night, I’m too damn tired to go out and all these damn doctors are married. Maybe I’ll become a lesbian.”
I chuckled and chewed on my carrot sticks while I people-watched. A young girl came in needing stitches from a dog bite, a construction worker shot a nail through his hand with a nail gun and a little old man was severely constipated. The day was not quite as eventful as I’d hoped it would be.
“Break-time’s over, Jensen,” Maureen called out as she went from room to room. “A woman with chest pains is being brought in by ambulance any minute, can you prep Room 4 and get her vitals for me?”
Hopping up eagerly, I tossed my carrots in the trash. “I’m on it.”
I went into room 4, turned on the monitors and got the blood pressure cuff ready. There wasn’t much else to do.
A minute later, the curtain pulled back, startling me as a young man with curly black hair pushed a stretcher into the room. Another EMT who wore a baseball cap over his blonde hair, had his back to me as he pulled the other end of the stretcher and called out stats.
“Female patient in her early sixties complaining of chest pains. BP is 220 over 130, temp is 99.2, pulse is 110.”
I awkwardly tried to stay out of the way as they swiftly transferred the patient from the stretcher to the bed. My pulse was probably as high as hers at the moment because I was so damn nervous.
The curly-haired paramedic smiled at me and left the room as quickly as he came in.
“Okay, she’s all yours,” said the blonde EMT as he turned around.
I locked eyes with him and stopped breathing, my body grinding to a halt.
Oh. My. God.
Zach.