Wake for Me (Life or Death Series)

by Irons, Isobel

  Viola raised an eyebrow. “Right.”

  “Anyway,” he continued, unperturbed, “according to my medical dictionary, there’s no take-backs on pre-surgical promises of unswerving devotion. So, yeah. Sorry about that, but it looks like you’re stuck wearing it for a while. Because see, I’m kind of crazy in love with you.”

  The heart monitor skipped a beat. Viola’s eyes started to mist, but she sniffed back the tears and smiled instead. Because damn it, Viola Bellerose wasn’t the sort of girl who cried at happy endings.

  One eyebrow raised in challenge, she reached out to grab hold of Sam’s starchy white lapel. She pulled him close, until his face was level with hers. Her heart monitor chirped happily.

  “What did I tell you about apologizing, Dr. Philips?”

  THE END

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  APPENDIX

  Acknowledgements

  “Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.” ― Sigmund Freud

  My name is Isobel Irons, and I am a gigantic liar.

  As a child, I used to entertain my friends with stories of ghosts in the school bell tower. Of princesses who played with swords and talking ponies. Of course, I wasn’t being intentionally dishonest. I just often forgot to tell them that the stories I told were made up. After a few phone calls from angry parents and the occasional teacher, my parents started to suspect that I wasn’t quite normal. That there was something wrong with me. But I didn’t see my behavior as wrong; I saw it as improving the truth. So the bell tower wasn’t actually haunted. (Not that anyone could prove, anyway.) Telling stories made the mundane seem a lot less boring, and for me, the truth wasn’t enough. When life wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, I changed the narrative.

  As I grew, I started to realize that most people aren’t like me, and that’s okay. As they say, it takes all kinds. The day I finished my first novel was the day I found my kind. I started poking around the online writing community and almost instantly, I realized: I wasn’t alone.

  I can’t possibly begin to describe how liberating that was. How much your support has meant to me. How the knowledge of our shared strangeness somehow managed to heal so many years of self-doubt. Honestly, if I tried to name all of the incredible people who have impacted my life by simply having the courage to be themselves? Well, we’d all die of old age before you finished reading this.

  So instead, I’ll say this: don’t ever let anyone tell you there’s something wrong with you, just because you don’t ‘fit in’ easily, or because you choose to see the world differently.

  It’s okay to march to the beat of your own drum, or whatever instrument you prefer.

  It’s okay to make shit up, as long as you’re not at the altar or under oath.

  It’s okay to wear mismatched socks on purpose, or dye your hair whatever color you want.

  It’s okay to spend your freshmen year of college in the library studying, instead of partying.

  It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and especially if they result in hilarious stories.

  It’s okay to hate math.

  It’s even okay to fail your driver’s test, or get rejected to your top choice college, or get laid off from that day job that—let’s be honest for a sec—you probably hated anyway.

  Life will go on, and because it’s your life, it will be amazing. If you let it, life will amaze you. Especially the parts that don’t go the way they’re supposed to.

  These days, I’m all about using fiction to expose and enhance the truth, as well as to entertain. Like Freud said, words are magical. Words can do anything you want them to do.

  (Except pass calculus or get you out of detention, apparently.)

  To the writers and bosom internet friends who have inspired and encouraged me with their words (whether you knew it or not): Elle Lothlorien, Jenna Gines, Brian Heil, Rhiann Wynn-Nolet, Christy Schragal, Dahlia Adler, Brenda Drake, Kristina Perez, Veronica Park, Suzanne Brockmann, Jennifer Armentrout and Cora Carmack, I can’t thank you enough.

  To the incomparable Christy—aka “The Red Editor”—from Red Thread Manuscripts, who taught me that an em dash is the punctuation equivalent of a cock-block—and other such hilarious and captious observations about the English language—I basically owe you like, a million thanks. I can’t even…seriously. (Sorry, bit of an inside joke there. Let’s just say I have a lot of bastard darling words.)

  To the classy, yet sassy ladies at North & South Wines, thanks for keeping me ‘in the red’ so I could hole up in my house like a hermit for a month and finish this book.

  To my family: thanks for letting me be the black sheep, and loving me anyway.

  To the handful of school teachers who allowed me to write the most bizarre essays imaginable, and still gave me passing grades: my largely decorative fine arts degree thanks you.

  To the person who is currently reading this, thank you for taking a chance on a stranger. I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of a long and beautiful, yet slightly twisted relationship.

  Lastly but never least-ly, to my very own real life Sam: you’re my very favorite noun. Thank you for always being the person I can share with, the place I can feel at home, and the thing I couldn’t dream of living without.

  ***

  About the Author

  As you might have already guessed, Isobel Irons is a pen name.

  In real life, I am (among many things) an indie film director and TV producer with a deep–some might even say obsessive–appreciation for onscreen storytelling and a lifelong book habit that I just can’t seem to kick.

  In film, there’s nothing I like better than a JJ Abrams “show, not tell” character reveal, or a Joss Whedon banter session. Or an Erik Kripke-level “bromance.” And of course, I’m a die-hard fan of the “will they/won’t they” trope, where the fans start “shipping” two characters agonizingly long before they share their first kiss.

  In my novels, I use my visual storytelling skills to show the reader an entire menagerie of hidden worlds. When it comes to imagination, there is no production value and no budget. But if there was, I would spend it all and then some. To me, my characters are real people, who just happen to live in my mind. Before I write, I scout locations to set the scene, I hold exhaustive casting sessions to find the perfect quirks that will ignite the maximum amount of conflict. Then, I throw in some tricky, but believable situations that allow my characters to expose themselves–sometimes in a figurative, emotional sense, other times quite literally. Rawr.

  Finally, I sit back and let the story unfold. If a scene sucks, I cut it. I tell my characters to reset and do it again, but this time give me MORE. Show me MORE. Make me laugh or cry or want to hit something MORE. And then, when I start sobbing during the umpteenth re-read, that’s when I know it’s ready to be unleashed into the world.

  Vivid characters. Vibrant settings. Relatable issues. Combined, these elements form the Ultimate Literary Crack. Or, as I like to call it, “Promoting Literacy through Shameless Addiction.”

  Join me in Shameless Lit & Film Addiction here:

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  WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  SAY ANYTHING by Isobel Irons – Available Now!

  Love means never having to say you’re sorry…for all that other stuff you said.

  After being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome when she was eight, Traci Tanner went on to graduate from Johns Hopkins University medical school at the top of her class, then land a coveted residency at Our Lady of Mercy, one of the best hospitals in New York.

  As far as Traci is concerned
, her condition is like a superpower that allows her to focus on only the important things in life, and ignore the rest. Unfortunately, that superpower fails when it comes to dealing with her super-humanly obnoxious coworker, Dr. Brady. The fact that Dr. Brady has a way of getting under Traci’s skin—metaphorically speaking, of course—disturbs her on levels she didn’t even realize she possessed.

  ER resident Conrad Brady is tired of not being taken seriously by his fellow doctors. Is it his fault that his father is Hollywood’s most famous soap opera doctor? No. Can he help it if he’s unintentionally hilarious, and a walking, breathing chick magnet? No, he cannot.

  And okay, so maybe he’s slightly irked at his best friend Sam, for settling down in the prime of his wingman years—and seeming disgustingly happy about it, to boot. Brady doesn’t have time to wallow in self-pity (much), because he’s about to go up against his most hated colleague—the overachieving and quite possibly cybernetic ice queen, Dr. Tanner—for a dangerous and totally awesome career opportunity.

  One way or another, Tanner is going DOWN. Even if Brady has to sleep with her to make it happen.

  Scratch that. Especially if he has to sleep with her.

  CLICK HERE TO READ A SAMPLE OF SAY ANYTHING

  SAY ANYTHING

  a Life or Death Novel by Isobel Irons

  CHAPTER ONE

  The World According to Traci Tanner, M.D.

  A Blog About Medicine, Asperger’s, and Life

  February 12th, 2014

  “The Woman in White”

  Today was abnormally strange.

  Of course, for me, every day carries with it a certain element of strangeness. But today was exceptionally bizarre.

  It began with the woman in white.

  I was standing in front of Trauma Room 4, putting the finishing touches on an MVA patient's chart—though why hospital administration persists in calling them 'motor vehicle accidents,' when so many are caused by intentional or avoidable human error, I can't imagine. Across from me, the secretary was talking on the phone to her boyfriend—at least, I assumed it was her boyfriend since she was referring to the person as 'Baby.’ I opened my mouth to ask the secretary if there were any new patients…but then I saw her, and I forgot what I had been about to say. Because what I was seeing was so anomalous and so stunning that I couldn't quite reconcile it with the rest of my surroundings.

  Her dress was so dazzlingly white, it seemed to be glowing. Layers upon layers of diaphanous, cobweb-like chiffon surrounded her, like a princess in a Disney film. As she came toward me, she seemed to float without touching the floor. Even though I knew it wasn't possible for her to be floating, she was. For a brief moment—just a few heartbeats, really—I remembered what it felt like when I could still believe in things that weren't strictly true.

  Of course, once my perspective improved, I realized that this beautiful woman was much too short for her body to be proportionate, unless of course, she were an amputee bride. She couldn't possibly be standing, let alone floating.

  In the end, she was just a patient, in a wheelchair, wearing a very opulent wedding dress with a very full skirt.

  And the expression on her face—which had, at first, struck me as ethereal—was nothing more than the countenance of a woman in the throes of a ninety-minute orgasm.

  The ER technician who was pushing the woman's wheelchair hurried her into a waiting exam room, and as I followed, I caught snippets of social exchanges—muffled bits of laughter, followed by hushed dialogue and shielded glances—from my fellow employees.

  "No way," one registrar said. "She has to be lying—maybe she's on something."

  Soon after I had been assigned the patient—Hennessey Wilcox, age 25—I realized that my fellow residents were also suffering from the same lapse in professionalism.

  "What I wouldn't give," Dr. Grayson kept saying, over and over, to the nurses at the desk.

  The male technician—Brian, I think his name is—who was supposed to be drawing Ms. Wilcox's blood for labs, didn't even finish. He came out of the exam room and began aimlessly circling the nurses' station. It wasn't until I'd stopped him and asked him what he was doing that he explained the patient made him leave. When I asked why, he wouldn't meet my eyes. His face reddened, and he looked down at the floor.

  "I think she liked it," he said.

  I then asked the charge nurse to assign another technician, but she said it would take at least forty-five minutes to get a female tech from another department. I asked her why we needed a female tech—any available technician with a phlebotomy certification would do. She looked at me for a long moment, and then she repeated the patient's complaint.

  "She's been climaxing for two hours straight," the nurse said.

  "And?"

  "And that's going to make a person a little jumpy, wouldn't you say?"

  I nodded in agreement, because that seemed like the appropriate thing to do, but in all honesty I was at a loss. Deciding it was imprudent to wait, I went into the patient's room and finished the blood draw myself. The patient had her eyes closed the entire time, and she was shivering uncontrollably. I asked her if she needed a blanket to cover her shoulders—since her multi-layered wedding gown appeared to be doing the job of insulating her legs and feet. She said no, she wasn't cold.

  When I asked her to tell me how and when the symptoms began, she became suddenly taciturn, and I was forced to resort to short-form interrogation.

  "What were you doing when the symptoms began?"

  "Getting married, obviously."

  “Can you describe how you were getting married?”

  Her eyes had narrowed. I noticed that her eye makeup was smeared around the corners, as if she’d been crying—or perspiring, very heavily. I made a note on her chart: Cardiovascular?

  “I was standing at the altar, at my church.” As I watched, her eyes became considerably moister. “In front of my whole family, my fiancé’s family, and oh…God….” Ms. Wilcox covered her face with both hands. “My grandmother was in the front row—she’s ninety-one years old! God is punishing me, I just—unhhhh….”

  At that point, the patient began convulsing. If it hadn’t been for the nature of her complaint, I would have suspected a seizure. As it was, I patiently waited for her to regain some semblance of composure. When she didn’t open her eyes after a few more minutes, I lightly tapped her on the arm. She made a loud yelping sound, as if I had pinched her. I held my breath, to keep from echoing her noise of alarm, and silently counted to three. Then, when I was certain my own composure was firmly back in place, I resumed my questioning.

  “And before your symptoms began, what were you doing?”

  “I was walking…unhhh, down the aisle…ahhh…to get married.”

  “And before that?”

  “I was in…in my hotel room….” Her next words were cut short by a pained choking sound.

  The patient squeezed her eyes shut again, and let out a long string of curses. Her left hand was clutching the safety bar on the side of the gurney, and her right hand was balled in her skirt. The bountiful mass of chiffon seemed to vibrate with unspent energy, as if there was a pent-up explosion waiting to happen. For the first time, I found myself wondering why she was alone. Clearly, she had been about to enter into matrimony, and she had mentioned a fiancé, but said fiancé had yet to make an appearance. Though it would likely make no difference to the patient’s diagnosis, his absence struck me as odd.

  “Would you like me to have the secretary call someone for you?” I asked her, using my best impression of a sympathetic person: eyebrows drawn together, earnest eye contact, a light touch of my hand to the fabric of her skirt, where her knee should have been. I was careful not to apply too much pressure, so she wouldn’t yelp at me again.

  Ms. Wilcox had furrowed her forehead back at me. “What the hell do you think?”

  I had no idea how to respond correctly to her challenge, or if there even was a correct response.

  After that,
facts only continued to disintegrate into nonsensical observations. Irrational responses. Sudden strings of expletives. And of course, the ongoing expressions of sexual euphoria, which seemed to only aggravate the patient further, making her less cooperative.

  Then, not even halfway through my attempt at a patient history, Dr. Brady came in. As usual, he didn’t simply enter the room like anyone else would have—he arrived, he barged, he erupted into the exam room. I was so startled, I nearly dropped the patient’s chart.

  “Dr. Tanner, your break started five minutes ago, and…also, you have an urgent phone call in the doctor’s lounge.”

  Dr. Brady’s tan, angular face seemed to have a slight flush to it. His eyes, which were usually a deep brown, looked a few shades brighter than usual. Also, he was panting slightly, as if from exertion.

  “Thank you, Dr. Brady,” I said, because he must have come a long way to tell me, and from that I deduced that it must be an emergency. My first thought was for my parents, who are in Honduras for the next month. I worried that something terrible had happened—maybe my father’s angina had worsened, or my mother had been bitten by a mosquito that carried malaria.

  But after I’d excused myself from the patient’s side and made my way to the doctor’s lounge as quickly as I could, I couldn’t find a single person who knew about a phone call for me.

  I returned to caring for Ms. Wilcox, and after consulting a few databases of published medical precedents, I discovered a way to cure her. Yet, for the rest of the day, I felt as if most of my colleagues—particularly Dr. Brady—were operating on a completely different social plane.

  Because of my condition, I’m used to feeling this way. When I was eleven, my father told me that my Asperger Syndrome was like a super power that protected me from a whole level of pain that other people—those who weren’t as lucky as I was—would be forced to deal with their entire lives. Based on my observations of others, I can usually appreciate the truth of my father’s words. Like Superman, I am aloof, unaffected. Almost alien, in some ways. And that makes me stronger, in many ways.