I tune it out, because this is my life, and if I don’t harden myself to it, I’ll go insane. I’ll become a whimpering basket case who rocks in a corner because I see this kind of thing every damned day. Chicago is full of accidents and crimes and sickness.
“Do you know where my phone is?” Tyler asks as I’m almost to the door. “It’s got the video on it. It’s the last time... I mean, it’s the last time Jason was alive. Maybe his mom will want to see it.”
His mother will want to see the exact moment her son crashed into a stone median at a hundred miles per hour and died? I seriously doubt it.
“I’m not sure where it is, or if it even survived the crash,” I tell him. “You’ll have to check with the police. They’ll be here later to question you, anyway.”
He gulps and I take my leave, relieved to escape his pain and fear. Sometimes I can’t help but allow those things to leach into me, and the emotions of desperation and grief are exhausting.
Lucy meets me at the nurses’ station, and she’s cleaned up now and wearing a fresh top. It has pumpkins on it. She thrusts a yogurt and an orange at me.
“You haven’t eaten all day.”
She’s right. I forgot. It happens a lot around here on busy days. When lives hang in the balance, who has time for eating?
“Thanks,” I tell her, taking the food gratefully. I hate yogurt, and the orange isn’t ripe yet, but it’s better than nothing.
“You’re going to get too skinny,” Lucy tells me, standing in the middle of ringing phones and overflowing stacks of charts. “And your husband probably likes your boobs the way they are. Also, he’s on line four. You forgot to call him back earlier.”
Damn it.
Jude called around noon. Almost six hours ago.
Son of a bitch.
I grab the phone.
“Babe, I’m sorry,” I tell him, without bothering with hello. “It got crazy here today. There was an accident on the Dan Ryan, two kids drag racing... It’s been one thing after another...”
“Corinne, it’s okay,” he interrupts, and his voice is warm and patient. Like always. I feel a pang of guilt, because he really is patient with this stuff, with my schedule.
“I couldn’t save one of them,” I tell him, and my voice is suddenly small, so very quiet.
“It wasn’t your fault,” my husband tells me seriously. “You know that.”
I imagine Jude’s eyes getting warmer with his words, the golden notes flickering amid the depths, almost like the moss in Lake Michigan on a sunny day. His eyes are like honey, various shades of golds and greens, all swirled into one color. That’s always been one of my favorite things about him.
“I know.” Because I do. I always try my best. I took an oath to heal and protect, and I take that very seriously.
Jude sighs.
“Somehow, I wonder about that. What time are you coming home? Should I wait dinner?”
I eye the orange and the yogurt next to me, and the patient board that is lit up like a Christmas tree.
“No,” I answer tiredly. “The board is full, and it’s only Brock and me here tonight. I can’t get away until later. But I’ll be home before bed.”
“You need some sleep tonight, Co,” Jude points out. “You’ve been running on fumes this week.”
“I know.” And God, do I know. I feel a hundred and five lately, instead of thirty-five. “I’m starting to look like the Crypt Keeper.”
Jude laughs, a sincere bark. “You are not. You’re beautiful and you know it.”
I examine myself in the silver coffeepot next to me. My reflection is distorted with the curve of the carafe, but I get the gist. My blond hair was neat this morning, but now the bun at the nape of my neck is falling apart. There are bags under my eyes, and Lucy is right. I’m going to look haggard soon if I don’t watch it.
“You’re partial,” I point out to my husband.
“Maybe. Just come home sometime today, okay?”
I agree and hang up, and before I can take even one bite of the yogurt, a nurse is calling for me from an exam room.
I yank at my stethoscope so that it doesn’t pull my hair as it drapes my neck and walk into exam room five.
“Whatta we got?” I ask the nurses, and I dive into work.
Concussion.
Chest pain.
Neck pain.
Bowel impaction.
At 8:00 p.m., Lucy pokes her head into the room I’m in.
“There was a bus accident,” she tells us. “A bus full of kids coming back from a basketball game. No fatalities, but...”
But I’m going to be here awhile.
Abdominal pain.
Kidney stone.
Ankle sprain.
One patient turns into another, from bus accident victims to the geriatric. As always, the clock ticks faster and faster when I’m on the floor, and by the time I take another breath and catch up on charting, it’s 11:00 p.m.
Damn it.
I do my charting quickly, scribbling in the pages until my sight blurs.
“You ready, Doc?” Lucy smiles tiredly at me as I grab my purse. She’s holding her own. “I’m heading out. We might as well go together, right?”
“Sure.”
We’re too tired to chat much in the elevator, and I’m so exhausted as I trudge across the parking garage that I feel like my legs won’t hold me up. It’s dark, and as usual, I keep close watch from my periphery. There is a parking attendant, but he circles the entire garage, and I seldom see the orange lights flashing on top of his car.
“God, I hate this garage,” Lucy mutters, her gaze flitting along the secluded shadows.
“Me, too,” I agree.
It would take only a second for someone to jump out, for someone to grab me.
“They should film horror movies here,” she adds. I chuckle but flinch away from the dark edges of the concrete. I keep moving, one foot in front of the other.
Lucy peers ahead of us. “What the hell?”
There’s new graffiti painted on the wall in front of my space.
CUNT.
The hateful word drips in neon-blue paint, dried now. In my opinion, that word is the worst thing in the world to call someone. Worse than bitch, worse than whore. I don’t know why. It just is.
I look over my shoulder quickly, scanning the entire dark garage. Shadows move, the wind whistles, but no one is there.
We’re alone.
This is just graffiti.
It’s not directed at me.
This is Chicago. Vandalism is to be expected.
Calm.
Calm.
Calm.
“That’s charming,” Lucy says wryly. “I’ll call someone tomorrow to have it cleaned, Dr. Cabot.”
“Corinne,” I correct her. “We’re outside of the ER now, Lucy.”
She smiles. I wouldn’t care if she called me by my first name always, but she’s a stickler for the rules.
“Where are you parked?” I ask her. She motions to a few rows away.
“Get in. I’ll drop you off.”
We get into my car, and we both lock our doors.
Thirty seconds later, she gets out at her car. “See you tomorrow.”
“’Night, Lucy. Drive safe.”
I’m so tired that I wish I wish I wish in this moment that I lived in a house closer to the hospital, instead of a suburb outside of town. I just want my bed. And my husband. I want to be away from the graffiti and the crime and the noise.
I nose out of the garage, into traffic and toward home.
The lights of the city turn into the tree-lined streets of the suburbs, and somehow I manage to hold my eyes open for the duration of the drive. I punch in our gate code, and the wrought-iron gates swing open, granting me entrance.
Our home is at the back, and it’s the only one in the neighborhood that doesn’t have jack-o’-lanterns or witches adorning the lawn.
That’s okay by me.
I don’t do Halloween.
The house standing in front of me reminds me of why I live here, though, and of why I work so hard.
It’s for normalcy, for happiness.
For this.
Jude and I work hard for this life, for the pleasures and comforts that we have. Our home is proof of that. It’s large and renovated and lush. It’s four thousand square feet of the American dream, nestled deep in an expansive subdivision away from the bustle and noise of the city. This is why I make the drive every day. This home is my quiet sanctuary, my respite from the chaos of my life.
I pull my car into the garage next to Jude’s Land Rover and walk quietly into the house. My husband left a light over the sink on for me, but other than that, the house is dark and so silent that the quiet almost seems to buzz.