A Bad Case of You

by Taylor Holloway

  Part of me knew that it was only a matter of time before my desire for Eric outweighed my sense of self-preservation. Especially when I was already paying the price for sleeping with him through the silent treatment of the other nurses. If I had to pay the price, I should at least get to sleep with him, right?

  13

  Eric

  Myra didn’t try to contact me again after I blocked her. I did, however, hear from my old ex-friend Toby, aka the guy that Myra had cheated on me with. He sent me a message on Facebook, apologizing for how things went down between us and asking if I ever wanted to talk to him again. I blocked him, too.

  I could forgive a lot, but fucking my girlfriend was beyond my powers of forgiveness. At least he probably got chlamydia from Myra just like me. Unless he was the source of the chlamydia. I tried not to think about that too much.

  I wasn’t the sort of guy who had a lot of friends. With my hours, I was honestly too busy for regular friendships. Still, the other residents and I did get together once a week for a drink at the Lone Star Lounge, a bar not far from St. Vincent’s. For the first time since Faith and I had made our decisions to give this whole marriage thing a go, I had to answer questions about it.

  “So, what’s married life like?” Dr. Emery asked me. Kyle Emery was about my age, had similar interests, and in other situations we might have been friends. As it was, we were more like casual-but-friendly acquaintances.

  “Not that different from unmarried life,” I answered honestly. “Just with more rings.” I found out long ago that if I was going to tell lies, I should keep them as close to the truth as humanely possible. Otherwise, I’d forget things later on and need more lies to make up the difference. Plus, the truth was that Faith was avoiding me like the black plague. So nothing there had really changed.

  Kyle laughed. “I’m not sure if I believe you.” He shook his head. “You know, I didn’t even realize you and Faith were dating. You two kept it a secret really well. I just thought you had a huge unreciprocated crush on her. Shows what I know.”

  I smiled externally and winced internally. Kyle was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. I always knew he was snarky, but apparently, he was snarky and perceptive. “Gee, thanks.”

  “Hey, credit where credit is due,” he replied. “Although I’m not going to lie that I’m pretty jealous.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. He had better stay the hell away from Faith. She was a married woman. My married woman.

  “About your promotion,” he clarified, taking one look at my expression and spreading his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I’m not after your wife, dude. I’m just after your job.”

  That mollified me somewhat. “Oh. Well, I suppose that’s ok.” I couldn’t very well blame him for being after my job. That was normal in the world of residents. We’re always after one another.

  “Leave it to Dr. Koels to get all sentimental right before he retired,” Kyle added with a roll of his eyes. “I should go get hitched and see if I get a promotion, too.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good plan,” I said sarcastically, although guilt bit at me.

  “Maybe not,” he amended with a little laugh. “I am jealous though.”

  “At least you’re honest about it. The others have been giving me the stink eye for the past week.” There was a reason I was sitting over here at this table, alone (well, except for Kyle). My promotion had definitely created a bit of a wedge between me and the other residents.

  “They’ll get over it,” Kyle replied. “It’s not your fault that Koels likes you better than us.”

  “I guess.”

  “You know Faith has it about a thousand times worse,” he said.

  I blinked. “You think?”

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Dude, haven’t you noticed?” He paused. “She hasn’t said anything?”

  I shook my head. “What do you mean she has it worse?”

  “The other nurses will barely talk to her now. She just leapfrogged over a lot of pretty bitter personalities. I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve it, she does, but you know nurses are pretty damn cutthroat. They seem all nice, but they aren’t.”

  I frowned. It was true that the hospital rumor mill was run primarily by the nurses. I had noticed instances in the past where nurses could be pretty judgmental, petty, and cruel. But I wouldn’t have thought they’d go after Faith. Faith was the most innocent, gentle, kind person in the hospital. If there were anyone I would have thought to be off-limits, it would have been her.

  “Faith deserves a promotion more than any of them.” That I could state with absolute certainty. Even if I did have what Kyle described as a ‘massive unreciprocated crush’, I knew it was true.

  Kyle nodded in agreement. “I know. She’s a better doctor than most residents, and she’s a nurse.”

  “Are they really being mean to her?” My tone was worried.

  Kyle’s expression shifted. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t think you should do anything about it, you have to let her work it out for herself.”

  I wanted to rush to her defense. I wanted to find whatever hateful person was being cruel or unpleasant to Faith for winning a chance at bettering her career and make sure they got permanently reassigned to the morgue. I wanted to lodge a formal complaint with HR and make sure they got fired. I wanted to key their car in the parking lot. But even though I wanted to do those things, I knew it would all be counterproductive (if not unethical or illegal).

  “Anything I would do would backfire,” I said after a moment. It was true. If I waded into the fray to defend Faith against her colleagues, they would just view it as more proof that she was getting special treatment from a doctor. Even if that doctor was her husband.

  Kyle nodded. “It’ll die down in a little while.”

  “I guess.” I’m sure my expression betrayed how distressing I found this situation.

  “I’ll let you know if I see the nurses hassling Faith doing anything that would compromise patient care. That we can do something about,” Kyle offered.

  “Thanks man.”

  Worry about Faith, and anger that she was being isolated or mistreated for being selected for a promotion made my beer taste bitter. I hated the idea that she would pay a social price for being married to me, when I was reaping nothing but benefits. I was loving my new position. Already, I was learning things I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn before.

  “Sure,” Kyle said, “no problem. Just keep my help in mind when they expand the program you’re in, ok?”

  I nodded. “You’ve got a deal.”

  14

  Faith

  “Sorry,” I told the creepy guy with the STD. “I’m married.”

  The patient in front of me didn’t know he had an STD yet. I technically didn’t know if he had an STD yet. But he still definitely had an STD. By the look of his unhealthy dick, he had a couple of them. The kinds that came with lots of pus and sores. It was a good thing I had a very strong stomach.

  “That’s too bad,” the man replied, pouting at me in a way that was entirely repellant. Grown men shouldn’t pout like thirteen-year-old girls. It’s not a good look.

  I nodded distantly and kept a polite expression on my face, but it wasn’t too bad at all. My patient had just finished regaling me with the tales of his meth head ex-girlfriend while I swabbed his nasty dick. One of the side benefits of being married to Eric was that, well, I was married to Eric. I didn’t have to come up with some sort of lie about why I didn’t want to give STD guy my number.

  “You aren’t wearing a wedding ring,” the guy said after a moment.

  “I don’t wear jewelry at work,” I replied. “It’s unhygienic.”

  That, at least, was true. I still refused to wear Eric’s grandmother’s enormous emerald ring, but even if I wanted to wear it in general, I definitely wouldn’t want to wear it while I was swabbing herpes dicks. It was too pretty for that.

  For his part, STD guy wa
tched me package and prepare the rest of his samples with a sad look in his eyes and a resigned silence. I was grateful for the reprieve. Sometimes the really creepy guys didn’t want to take no for an answer. I then washed my hands aggressively. I told him that the doctor would be around shortly—another white lie since I knew for a fact that it would be at least an hour—and went back to business. I couldn’t wait for this shift to be over.

  I wished I was upstairs in obstetrics. I’d gotten my least favorite type of shift today, filling in for a sick emergency room nurse. My new promotion came with all sorts of great benefits and one huge drawback: now that I was a manager, it was my job to pick up the shifts of the nurses who called out sick. And the nurses that were reporting to me seemed to be calling out at an alarming rate.

  I knew it was probably still retaliation for my promotion. They’d get over it in a couple of weeks. The only upside to spending so much time outside of obstetrics was that Eric was never down in the ER, especially these days. It was easier to avoid him— and all the temptation he represented—if I was down here.

  I’d successfully avoided him for two entire weeks. Now that I was a manager, I had access to the duty rosters. It was relatively easy to make sure I was never in the hospital with him at all. Did it mean I was working all sorts of weird hours? Yes. But I wasn’t yielding to my hormones and jumping him in a broom closet either, and that’s what I wanted to do.

  “Hey Faith, Dr. Ford needs you to go insert a catheter for bay thirty-six,” Lucy chirped, sweeping up behind me. Since so many of the nurses weren’t talking to me now, poor Lucy had become the go-between. This time, however, she was bringing news from Dr. Ford. Dr. Ford was much too busy to participate in bitchy nurse politics, so I knew it must be important. “The new baby-doctor was supposed to do it, but he chickened out. Apparently, he’d never done one before on his own? She’s talking with him but asked if you could just go do it.”

  Damn physicians-in-training. The freshly graduated residents sometimes required so much help they were more of a hindrance than anything else. I didn’t envy Dr. Ford her job of coaching them into real doctors, although picking up the slack was almost worse. Especially when it required me to touch genitalia.

  “Great.” One of my very least favorite procedures. “Male or female?”

  “Male.”

  At least that was easier for both me and the patient. “Ok.” I was just up to my elbows in dick today. And not the sexy kind. I hadn’t seen Eric all day. In fact, that reminded me, I needed to wriggle out of Eric’s latest lunch invitation. I fired off a text.

  Faith McNamara [1:30 p.m.]: Sorry, something really unexpectedly came up. An emergency. Some other time, ok?

  Getting a catheter definitely qualified as an emergency for whoever’s day I was about to ruin, and this was unexpected. Eric accepted my excuse without complaint, although I’m sure he knew it was a lie. It was a white lie. A good lie. A lie that would protect me more than it hurt Eric. If I just stayed away from him, maybe there was a chance I could survive this marriage until Easter without getting my heart crushed.

  I rounded the corner to bay thirty-six to discover that my unlucky patient was a seventeen-year-old boy named Matthew. He looked appropriately miserable about being in the ER, and one of his legs was in a fresh plaster cast. His chart said he’d been admitted for the leg but was being prepped for surgery on his ass. The lower half of his tailbone had been shown to be highly irregular on the x-rays and needed to be removed because there might be cancer in the bone. It was lucky we caught it (even though it was probably just bone spurs), but the poor kid would be sitting on a hemorrhoid pillow for the next few months. His parents were at his bedside.

  “Hello Matthew,” I told him as cheerfully as I could. “I’m Faith and I’m a nurse. I’m going to be prepping you for surgery and doing your catheter.”

  His eyes went huge in his pale, acne-covered face. “I thought Dr. Marsh was going to do it.” His adolescent voice cracked.

  “He had to go attend to an emergency, but I assure you I’ve been doing this for a long time.” According to Lucy, Dr. Marsh was being ‘talked to’ which was probably code for Dr. Ford yelling at him to man up, but whatever. I’m sure that was an emergency for him.

  “We’ll step out,” Matthew’s mom said, grabbing her husband and pulling him away. She paused and looked at her son. “Unless you want us to stay?” Her expression said she very much hoped that he didn’t.

  Matthew shook his head vehemently. He looked no happier about the idea of his mom watching his catheter insertion that she was. “No thank you.” They exited the room, looking relieved. Especially John’s dad. No man liked seeing a catheter insertion. Many of them winced at the mere mention of one. It was a fact.

  Matthew blinked and then stared in horror at the catheter tube I was pulling out of a sterile package. “You’re going to put the catheter in?” Even in his pale, weakened state, a pink blush spread across his face. “You? Right now?” He sounded terrified.

  I felt bad for him. I really did. First, he broke his leg and then he found out he had to have surgery on his ass? And then someone was going to shove something up his dick? The kid was scared. “Don’t worry, I’ve done plenty of these before. It’ll be quick.”

  I came over to his bedside and did my final check of all my equipment. Yep, I had everything. Time to shove a rubber tube up this kid’s urethra and straight into his bladder so he wouldn’t leak urine all over the operating table.

  “I don’t think this will work.” Matthew stuttered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It doesn’t hurt that much,” I said, not sure why he was apologizing. I turned to grab some gloves. “I know it’s scary looking, but it’s really not as bad as it seems.”

  “No, no, it’s not that.” He sounded absolutely terrified.

  I looked up. He was hiding an erection—still thankfully covered by fabric—with his hands, but not very well.

  Oh geez. That was a new one. I’d never had anyone get hard at the prospect of a catheter before. His face was beet red.

  “Um, I’m going to have to wait until…. I’ll come back in a little while,” I managed. I was used to seeing men get erections, you get over that really quickly as a nurse, but this was a problem. It was physically impossible to insert a catheter into a hard dick, and you definitely wouldn’t want to try.

  “I don’t think that will help.” He was staring at me with a variation of the same look that STD guy had been wearing a few minutes ago. Teenage boys always liked me, I should have known. I hid a smile.

  “How about I come back in a few minutes?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry!” he blurted out. His face was now going from red to purple. “I just don’t think I can… with you and then you’ll be touching my… Could you just get one of the ugly nurses to do it?” His voice was plaintive.

  I looked at the tent his hard-on was making from his hospital gown. That thing wasn’t going anywhere. “Let me see what I can do.”

  I ran into Dr. Ford and Dr. Marsh just as I was exiting poor Matthew’s room.

  “Did you get the catheter for him done already?” Dr. Ford asked in surprise. “You’re way too efficient.” Matthew’s parents were also looking at me curiously. I hadn’t been in there long enough to do anything.

  “I’m afraid not,” I said in a whisper. “At the moment he’s, um, too excited for the insertion. I think I might not be the right choice for this one. Dr. Marsh might have better luck.”

  Dr. Ford looked at me and visibly fought a smile. Matthew’s mother blanched, and his father doubled over laughing. Although I couldn’t see it, I knew Matthew was probably dying of embarrassment inside the room. I kept my voice quiet enough that he wouldn’t hear it, but his dad’s laughing was impossible to miss.

  “Ok, well Dr. Marsh can do it then,” Dr. Ford said. Dr. Marsh, a husky guy with a big beard, looked less than thrilled.

  “Alright. Thanks.”

  Matthew’s dad
couldn’t stop laughing and it had extended to his mother and Dr. Marsh.

  Even Dr. Ford couldn’t stop her smirk. She shook her head. “I think Lucy was looking for you at the station, Faith,” she said after a moment.

  I left that situation to work itself out. Dicks. They were everywhere today, and so inconvenient.

  “You were looking for me?” I asked Lucy, praying that my next patient would not have a dick-related ailment.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I wanted to ask you if I need to order a new badge for you. Are you changing your name now that you and Dr. Carter are married?”

  My dick problems were just never-ending today. “Um, I’m not sure.”

  Her expression was interested. “Really? I’m surprised you aren’t changing it. Isn’t your family really conservative?”

  I shrugged. “But I’m not that conservative.” In reality, I’d always disliked my last name and couldn’t wait to be rid of it. The number of people who couldn’t spell ‘McNamara’ was astounding. Come to think of it, Carter was pretty darn easy to spell… “I’m just not sure if I want to change it, yet,” I forced myself to focus and reply.

  I needed to be careful around Lucy. She was the hospital’s biggest gossip. I liked her, but I didn’t want her blabbing to everybody about me.

  These past few weeks had been a barrage of questions, particularly from women. Were we having a real wedding? When would we go on our honeymoon? Was I going to keep working now that I’d married a doctor? And on, and on, and on. Eric probably thought it was easy to avoid talking about his personal life. It’s different for men in the workplace. They’re allowed to be reserved. Me? I’d come off as bitchy and conceited if I kept to myself. I probably had to field fifty questions a day.