Rushing Waters (13 page)

By Tuesday night, the seriously ill and injured had gone to other hospitals, and the moderately ill as well, due to their lack of enough generators to function fully, and having to rely on battery-operated equipment. And the less seriously ill patients were starting to go home. They still had overcrowded conditions in the ER, as people continued to come in, but it was a little less insane than it had been. And they were still operating at full staff, with everyone's time off canceled. Juliette had been there since before the hurricane, sleeping in the supply closet, usually with another resident or one of the nurses on the second cot. She would have slept on the floor in a train station by then. It no longer mattered, and she could have slept standing up. The few hours of rest she was able to grab in the supply closet were enough, although she missed the dog when Peter took him home. She had been sad to see him so distraught when he got the news that his friend had died, but it wasn't surprising. There had been too many other stories like it, and she knew that it would take Peter a long time to recover. More than likely, he would be traumatized by the memory of it forever. She and her medical colleagues could treat their injuries and their bodies, but how the survivors' minds reacted to what they had experienced was harder to treat or predict.

She was on a dinner break at ten o'clock that night when Sean Kelly came by to check on things at the ER and get a sense of how many patients they were treating and for what, to add to their statistics for a federal report to FEMA. More fatalities were being discovered every day, and bodies were turning up in apartments, on streets, and in basements and garages, particularly old people and children who had drowned, but there were many adults too, people who had tried to swim for it, stayed too long in their homes, or tried to rescue others without the resources, expertise, or equipment to do so. And as always, heroes had emerged, and remarkable stories were being related by the media. Juliette had begun to feel as though there had never been a time when Hurricane Ophelia wasn't a part of their lives. It was all they talked about or thought of.

“Have you been home since the hurricane?” Sean asked her as they walked down the hall together, while she described her caseload to him for his report.

“No. I haven't been out of here in days,” she said. “It doesn't matter. I'm sure the place is a mess if it got flooded, but it wasn't so great before that.” She smiled at him, and he laughed. He could easily guess that homemaking wasn't her strong suit. She was too dedicated to her work and too focused on it to care about much else, or her apartment, and residents in the ER had crazy schedules and more important things on their minds. He could sense the kind of doctor she was.

“I feel the same way,” he admitted. “If my apartment got bombed, I'm not sure I'd notice.” She laughed at what he said—they had that in common. “Where do you live?” he asked, curious about her.

“A few blocks away, on Twentieth Street. I got the place for convenience, not its beauty. I'm never there anyway, except to sleep.” She didn't seem to mind it.

“That's what I meant. You're a crisis junkie. So am I. We all are in this business. It's not a crime. Do you ever think about having a personal life?” She laughed out loud at the question.

“Yeah, like when I retire. Even my father was never around when we were kids. He was always delivering babies. And ER is even crazier. I figure I'll have kids maybe in my fifties or sixties.” He smiled as he looked at her. She was a pretty woman and would have been even more so in street clothes, makeup, and combed hair, which he suspected she never bothered with either.

“You can manage to do both, or so I'm told,” he said ruefully. “You can actually have a life and work in emergency services.”

“Really? Let me know how when you figure that one out,” she said, although she knew that some of the residents were married, usually to doctors who worked as hard as they did, and then they never saw each other. And she also knew that a lot of the regular ER docs cheated on their wives with the nurses, or other doctors, and she didn't want to be a candidate for that life.

“Do you date?” he asked her when they got to the cafeteria, even more curious about her. She didn't seem to care that she didn't have a life, and had made her peace with it. He thought she was too young to do that. But so was he. At thirty-five, he hadn't had a serious relationship in four years. He just went from one natural disaster to the next, with little time to breathe in between.

“Sometimes. I dated the chief resident on the ER service for about five minutes. He was a jerk.” She didn't know why she was telling Sean that, but he was easy to talk to, and he'd asked her.

“Oh, that,” he said, smiling. “I've had my share of those too. What we do doesn't give one a lot of time to shop around.” And then he surprised her. “After you grab something to eat, do you want to take a ride to your apartment, so you can have a quick look around and see how bad the damage is, if you have time? I can get you back here pretty fast, and lend you a hand if you need it.” It was a kind offer, and she was touched by it.

“That would be nice. I'm a little scared of what I'll find.”

“You might be able to save something you couldn't otherwise if you go now. And you'll probably be on double duty for a while.” She nodded her agreement, said she'd run in and grab a sandwich, which was all the cafeteria had for the moment anyway. They had brought in more generators to keep the refrigerators running so they could feed the staff and the remaining patients. And she said she could be ready to leave with him in five minutes. He waited for her, and with her sandwich in a bag in her pocket, she followed him outside. His OES truck with the light on top was parked at the curb, and she got in next to him and gave him her address.

“So what brought you here from Detroit?” he asked, as they drove the few blocks to her apartment. She had told him in a conversation earlier and forgotten about it.

“I didn't get the residency I wanted in Chicago,” she said honestly. “And I got a great one here, so I took it. It's worked out fine. I like New York. What about you? Where did you grow up?”

“In New York. In Queens. I'm a local boy—maybe that's why I care so much about the city and the people in it.” She knew they both had to care about people to do what they did, and care for strangers who were in distress or extremis.

They were at her apartment by then, and she took her keys out of her wallet. He parked the truck and followed her inside. It was a depressing building, and her apartment was on the ground floor, which didn't bode well for possible flood damage, although she was far enough from the river that she might have been spared.

He had brought a powerful flashlight with him so they could look around, since the whole lower part of Manhattan was still without electricity, and he could see clothes and clogs on the floor, a stack of medical books on the table. Her bed was unmade, and there was nothing on the walls.

“Ah, I see Martha Stewart is your decorator,” he said, teasing her. She had a large fruit bowl on the table with two stethoscopes in it, and a salad bowl full of medical samples to give away, as Juliette looked around, surprised at the lack of damage.

“It looks pretty much the way I left it,” she said, gathering up a pile of hospital scrubs in embarrassment and tossing them on top of the hamper in the bathroom, and she tried to make order of the clogs.

“Do you spend any time here at all?” Sean asked her, startled by how spartan it was. It was worse than he'd expected. It looked like a crash pad, which was all it was to her. They checked the fridge, and there was nothing in it except a shriveled lemon and a Diet Coke.

“Not if I can help it,” she said, laughing, in answer to his question. “All I do is sleep here, and change the sheets when I have time. Sometimes I sleep at the hospital, if my breaks between shifts are too short. And I never eat at home.”

“You're actually worse than I am,” he commented. “I have two Classic Cokes in my fridge and a Pellegrino. You beat me on the lemon. But I think I might have a three-year-old frozen pizza in the freezer.” And then he startled her even more. “Any interest in having dinner with me sometime? A real dinner, not my antique pizza. It looks like we both need it.” He was smiling at her in the eerie light from the flashlight.

“That would be nice,” she said softly, although she couldn't see how either of them would maintain a relationship. It wasn't in their job descriptions, but maybe they could be friends.

“Do you ever dress like a girl, when you're off duty?”

“Sure, at my first communion. I had a white organdy dress. And my sister-in-law gave me Victoria's Secret underwear for Christmas.” He laughed at what she said. “It still has the tags on it.”

“I think we'd be good for each other,” he said bluntly, as they got ready to leave. There had been nothing to do in her apartment, but he was right, she'd been relieved to see that it hadn't flooded, and she hadn't lost the few things she had there. She would have hated to lose her medical books and even her favorite clogs. It had taken her two years to break them in.

“How do you figure that? Wouldn't you rather go out with a girl who wears real clothes, high heels, and makeup? I've been kind of saving all that for when I finish my residency. I don't like being distracted from my work.” That much was true, and dating had never seemed as exciting to her as her medical studies.

“Maybe we both need more of a life,” he said, looking at her intently.

“True,” she agreed with him, and she liked him. She liked his honesty, the career he had chosen, and his apparent lack of ego, unlike egomaniacs like Will Halter at the ER. “But why me?” What was it that he saw in her? She couldn't imagine. She never thought of herself as a femme fatale, or even particularly attractive to men. She was so used to working side by side with them that she no longer thought of them as potential romantic partners, just as colleagues and buddies, and she knew all their failings and flaws.

“Easy answer to that one,” he said as she locked her front door and put the keys in the pocket of the doctor's coat she wore over her scrubs. “You're beautiful and smart, and kind. That's an unbeatable combination, and hard to find,” he said, as they got back in his SUV.

“Yeah, nice guys are hard to find too, and smart ones.” She smiled at him as he turned the key in the ignition. “And most doctors have such huge egos. It's hard to take them seriously, or want to spend five minutes with them.” Sean wasn't like that, she could tell, despite his good looks. But like her, he was oblivious to his own attributes.

“So what do you think? Dinner sometime when things calm down?” he asked as they drove back toward the hospital.

“Sure. Why not? Just give me enough warning to borrow a dress from one of the nurses,” she teased him, and he shook his head.

“No, I like you fine the way you are. Don't bother. You look great in scrubs,” he commented. “Just wear the underwear your sister-in-law gave you, if we get to know each other better.” Despite the baggy hospital clothes she wore, he could tell that she had a great figure.

“Maybe I've been saving it for you and didn't know it,” she said playfully, and then turned to him after he parked the truck outside the ER. “Wouldn't it be weird if something nice happened to us as a result of this fucking awful hurricane, which has done terrible things to so many people? Maybe there's a blessing in it somewhere. I haven't thought about my personal life in years.”

“Me neither. Meeting you the other night woke me up, and reminded me that I'm thirty-five years old and we're not dead yet. We help people survive catastrophic events, but we have a right to some joy ourselves. Do you ever think about that?”

“No, but maybe we should,” she said seriously. “It's their catastrophes, not ours. It would be nice to have some fun together.”

“Now you're talking.” He smiled at her and had an overwhelming urge to kiss her, but he didn't. When and if it happened, he wanted it to be special and meaningful to both of them, not a casual throwaway, which it would have been then. “I'll come by to see you tomorrow,” he promised, as she hopped out of the truck and turned to smile at him.

“Thank you. I had a great time. And thanks for letting me check on my apartment. I'll try to remember to buy a new lemon the next time you come by.”

“Fantastic!” She waved at him, and walked back into the hospital as he watched her. He had never picked up anyone he had worked with before, but there was always a first time. And he had known the moment he laid eyes on her that there was something special about her, and now he was sure he was right.

“Where have you been?” Michaela asked her when she walked back into the ER. She was twenty minutes late coming back from her break, which was rare for her.

“I went to check on my apartment,” Juliette said as she took the sandwich out of her pocket and took a bite before she went back to work.

“How was it?” Michaela asked, looking concerned, ready to offer sympathy for flood damage in her home.

“About as bad as it was before the hurricane. But no worse. It was dry as a bone. I really have to do my laundry when we get some time off. I must have fifteen sets of scrubs lying on the floor.” The head nurse laughed and shook her head.

“Why don't you just throw them away and take some more? No one will know or care.”

“Great idea!” Juliette said, tossing the rest of the sandwich away as she grabbed a chart and headed down the hall. She was smiling to herself, thinking about Sean, and looking forward to their date, if they ever found the time and it ever happened. But suddenly she hoped it would. He was cool. It made her wonder where the Victoria's Secret underwear was, and if she'd given it away. Or hung on to it and buried it somewhere. She'd have to look, just in case.