“Janie? Janie where are you?” Emma Riley whispered as she searched the pediatrics floor for the 6-year-old patient during their night-time game of hide-and-seek. “Janie Wanie, this isn’t funny any more.” Emma whined, as she searched high and low not knowing how small of a space the young cancer patient could squeeze herself into. “It’s almost ten o’clock and you have a four hour chemo session tomorrow.”
“What! That’s not fair!” Wailed the frail, petite girl, already weak from lack of sleep and much radiation therapy. “You never told me that I had chemo therapy tomorrow!” Janie yelled as she jumped out from behind a receptionist’s desk where she had been hiding for over an hour.
“Well you do and if I don’t get you back to your room, Dr. Whitten is gonna have my head.” The young intern spoke matter-of-factly.
“But I don’t want to go to bed. Sleep is so boring.”
“You need your sleep and so do I, but with all the complaining you do I barely have time to close my eyes for a minute, let alone go home to get a few hours sleep.”
“You’re just mad because you couldn’t find me.” Janie stated mockingly.
“Well I can’t help it that you are such an expert at playing hide n’ go seek” Emma whispered as to not wake the other sleeping children.
“No. I’m not an expert. You’re just the worst seeker in the entire universe!”
Janie ran towards her small room in the hospital knowing that if Emma caught her, she would be in for a tickling attack.
“You’re asking for it Ms. Janie Jude!” Emma giggled as she held the little girl to her bed, tickling her under the arms until she begged for mercy.
“Mercy! Mercy!” Janie screamed as she wildly rolled with laughter off of her hard gurney.
“Night-night Janie Wanie and .....” She said as the tickling had come to an end and Janie was snugly tucked under her covers.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Janie finished off Emma’s sentence as Emma walked out the bedroom and down the hall for a cup of coffee. She could tell that it was going to be a long night.
*Beep, Beep* Danielle Martin gave out a low groan, then throwing the pillow over her head and taking it back off again. She began fumbling for her beeper. *Smack!*
“Shit!” Sleepy eyed, she turned on the lamp next to her bed. Her feet dangling over the edge. Danielle eyes were still adjusting to the light as she peered at her bed side clock, 10:30 at night. she complained to no one but herself. She picked up the phone, hearing the dial tone in her ear and then slowly punching in the seven digits that would connect her to her work place. *Ring...Ring...Ring*
“San Francisco General ER.”
“Hi Doug. I got a page.”
“Yeah Dr. Martin. Over dose on tequila. ETA fifteen minutes.” Said Doug as he filed some medical charts on the receptionist desk.
“Who’s on call?”
“Riley, Carter, Willis, and Whitten are on tonight” He answered boisterously so that the young residency ER doc could hear him over the shrill of patients.
“I’ll be there in ten.” And with that her 5-hour sleep was cut short to only 2 hours. Throwing on a pair of dark blue scrubs, she was out the door in three and a half minutes. She started brushing out her jet-black hair through her fingers. Danielle searched through her bag and with no trouble, she found her car keys.
On nights like these she always turned up the radio real loud so that she would be awake enough for whatever awaited her at the hospital.
“ETA!” She screamed over the commotion in the lobby.
“Two minutes and to be delivered in trauma two Dr. Martin.”
“Thank you Doug.” She said with a pessimistic tone. With a slow jog, Danielle went into the lounge for her lab coat and ran out through the hospital doors into the San Francisco cold, crisp, early morning air.
“What do we have?” Danielle shouted to the paramedic over the choas in the parking lot outside as the ambulance drove up, two minutes early.
“Brandon Wilkins. 21 year-old male, unconscious at the scene. BP 80 over 120. Doing a little too much happy birthday drinking.” The paramedic informed Dr. Martin as he unloaded the patient from the back of the large emergency vehicle. Four scared college kids followed their friend in, close behind.
“Susan, put him on IV fluid and put dialysis on hold,” She instructed the nurse. “I’ll go see the other party animals and find out what he did.”
With a stern look on her face, she approached the four frightened college students. “I’m Dr. Martin. I’m Brandon’s doctor tonight. What did he do?” They all looked at Danielle with weary eyes and then at the floor with shame. “I can’t help him if I don’t know what he did.”
A very blood-shot-eyed blonde said, “A couple of beers.”
“A couple of beers wouldn’t have put him where he’s at. Now what did he take?” Danielle asked harshly.
The same blonde decided to talk, “He did some ecstacy and downed four beers. I told him not to take so many pills, but he said that he needed to loosen up.”
“Anything else? Marijuana?”
“No!” The four ‘kids’ nearly shouted with wide eyes.
“Any of you party like he did tonight? Popping pills in your mouthes?” They all nodded no in sequence.
“Is he going to be okay?” The buffed guy quietly asked.
“He’ll live if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Thank you.” They all murmured looking at the floor.
Danielle got up from her seat, images of her father came into view. She then turned around, “He’s lucky, very lucky.” She reassured the group of college students. Danielle walked down the hall in the hospital, she always hated cases like these. College Parties, she said to herself as she walked into trauma two to treat her patient.
“Damn! It’s midnight already!” Nick groaned as he placed the coffeepot down and sipped his now room temperature beverage. "I hate working the night shift." He threw himself on the couch, tired from a grueling evening as the senior residency paramedic for the County Hospital. He was just about to doze off when the break room doors burst open forcing him to peek open his dreary eyes.
“Oh, sorry Carter.” Emma practically yawned.
“They workin’ you to death too?” Nickolas asked, raising an eyebrow and sitting up to get a closer look at her flawless face.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s just that that’s your fourth cup of coffee in the past two hours and you still look like you’ve been dragged through hell and back. Plus, I know you only drink coffee when Dr. Whitten has been on your butt all day.” Nick stated matter-of-factly.
“Well that’s not entirely true.”
“No?”
“No, it isn’t. I also drink coffee when the parents of my patients don’t want to do what is the safest and easiest thing for their kids. They just want to do what’s easiest for their paychecks.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” He could tell that she didn’t want to go into detail, but then again Emma never seemed to want to talk to him about anything, or any of the other staff members for that matter and that bothered him a little. He didn’t try to get her to talk about anything tonight. He was exhausted and so was she.
The two of them were just about to fall unknowingly to sleep in the break room when the voice over the intercom rung, “Dr. Riley to room 402 in Pediatrics. Dr. Riley to room 402.”
“That’s you Em.” Nick informed his groggy colleague.
“I’m coming. I’m coming” Emma whined, facing up towards the ceiling as if the voice that had already disappeared could hear her. She used all her strength to push her limp body up from the couch where she had been peacefully recollecting her tangled thoughts of the day’s events.
Just when he thought that he would no longer be interrupted from his so-called sleep, the doors swung open again, only this time they were slammed open, so hard in fact that the chairs and couch in the room vibrated.
“What the hell?” Nick yelled as he jumped off the couch looking as white as a ghost.
“Sorry Nick.” Mark Willis said, full of frustration and a little less than concerned. Mark was Nick’s roommate and colleague. They bought a house together right outside of San Francisco, twenty minutes from where the hospital was located. Although they worked so much at the hospital that they barely had time to go home to it.
“No prob. Just don’t do it again.” Nick said as he laid back down on the couch and shut his eyes, only to sit back up again and ask, “What are you doing here anyway? Wasn’t Emma supposed to take over your shifts today?”
“Yeah but there was another car accident in Millbrae, only this one had four cars involved, and the Mills hospital can’t take anymore patients. Big Saturday night I guess.” Mark proclaimed rolling his eyes and mumbling something under his breath that Nick couldn’t hear.
“What do you mean another car accident?”
“Didn’t Emma tell you?” Mark asked not giving Nick time enough to answer. “Most of her patients were from the three-car pile-up off of El Camino Real.”
“No, she didn’t tell me.” He uttered, responding to Mark’s earlier question.
By this time Mark was already in another room scrubbing up and didn’t hear his friend’s response.
“I’m signing off now.” Emma announced to no one in particular as she removed her white coat and threw it in her locker. Peering at the clock bolted to the wall, she could see that it was already 1:37 am and she let out a sigh of relief at the idea that she would actually get some sleep. Cocking her head to the side, she questioned Nick’s strange expression.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just kinda wondering why you didn’t page me if you were backed up on patients and needed my help.”
“Well I didn’t need your help today,” Emma bluntly lied. “there were a lot of med students here today to assist with things.”
“Oh come on Em,” He argued getting frustrated with her, mainly because he had gone without sleep for the past few days but still mad at the fact that she needed some help and didn’t bother to ask anyone. “You know as well as I do that med students can’t help worth crap!” Emma knew this was true but she decided to let the argument drop. She could tell that Nickolas was fed up with her cold shoulder act but she didn’t like to talk to, let alone, ask for help from someone that made her feel so uncomfortable.
Why does she brush me off like she does? What did I do to make her so uncomfortable around me? Nick thought as Emma picked up her purse and walked out of the break room in a furry.
It wasn’t Nick that made Emma uneasy; it was her past. She wasn’t about to tell him what had happened to her, but perhaps she would have if she could have only remembered herself.
