by Cherise West
crackle CRACKLE!
"We've got one back here," comes the voice over the static-filled radio set at the nurse's station. "Nobody here to pickup - where's nursing staff?" My ears perk; only a few of us float around the ER tonight, and neither Lynne nor I had thought about the side entrance, where only a few of the ambulances carry patients.
"Are you going to get that?" Dr. Ryan asks nonchalantly. Skittering along the floor, nearly tripping over my own feet, I grasp for the radio; searching franctically for a button to call back to the EMTs, I don't find one. "All the time you're spending there, you could be rolling the patient in yourself. Time is of the essence in the ER, Dr. Blankenship."
"Y-yes, right, can you please," I gulp, stumbling towards the hall leading to the side door. "Please, Dr. Ryan, prep--"
"Get the patient to room 4-R," he responds calmly. So calm, it's eerie. I trip my way through the corridor, breathing hard; the red-painted doors swing open in a blur and two EMTs push through, with a main strapped to a stretcher, its wheels squeaking harshly as it slides lopsidedly through the corridor. A man with a bulging gut, his t-shirt cut open, eyes wide and dillated; no rise of the chest, no breathing.
"What's the--" I start to speak, before a burly EMT with a crop-cut and navy-blue gear interrupts loudly.
"Where's nursing staff? We've got to get CPR, an intubation -- it's a cardiac event, and he's not breathing," he roars. My head feels heavy, and it starts to creep into my senses again - the fear, Lynne called it. I shake my head, trying to loosen the terror setting in.
"We're short-staffed tonight-- Lynne!" I shout across the hall, searching in vain for her. "Lynne!"
"Doctor, we need to get him to a room, get him set up now," the EMT urges. "You're a doctor, aren't you?"
"Yes!" I'm tired of hearing that question, especially now! "Room 4-R, Dr. Ryan is assisting, this way!" I turn the wheels down the sharp corridor - the whole ER feels like a winding maze, and I scurry through like a terrified rat, sweat at my temples as I scour room numbers and pastel-colored door plaques for those magic letters.
"4-R's this way, sweetie," I hear Lynne's voice and breathe a gusting wind of relief. She directs the stretcher around a corner and I see the number on the doorway. "We've got it from here, guys, thanks a lot," Lynne reassures the EMTs, the two of us pushing the stretcher through the door, into the cramped room, its corners arrayed with heart monitors, IVs, and a variety of machinery, tubes and cords all strung together like some massive spider's web. Dr. Ryan stands in a corner, a clipboard clasped in his hands, stringing a pen along with the other. So calm, unmoved. I can't believe him; it's almost insulting now, how little he seems to care.
"We've got to get him intubated," I plead, breaking away to the cabinet full of supplies, setting aside an apparatus for the mouth, lengths of tube and a pair of gloves. "Lynne--"
"Nurse Travers, we're going to need a defib and a blood pressure booster," Dr. Ryan interrupts, tapping his pen against his clipboard. We both look in silence his way.
"Dr. Ryan,” Lynne protests, “I'm going to--"
"Dr. Blankenship, what drug should Nurse Travers get?"
"Epinephrine," I spit the answer out, though I'm completely vexed by his attitude.
"Nurse Travers, epinephrine and a defib, please?" Dr. Ryan requests, his voice almost patronizing. Heart heavy Lynne gives me a nod and rushes into the hall, and I fumble with the tube, bag and mouthpiece, trying to click then together in the proper order.
"The heart monitor, Dr. Blankenship?" Dr. Ryan asks.
"I'm just-- I'm sorry, I'm trying to get--"
"We need to have that heartrate monitored - especially if we're going to be defibbing," Dr. Ryan states pedantically. I can feel tears welling at the corner of my eyes but I fight them, assembling the tubes and rushing back to bedside.
"Can you help?" I ask, full of scorn.
"The heart monitor is a simple procedure, Dr. Blankenship--"
"I know how simple it is, Dr. Ryan, but I'm doing this on my own, since you just sent my nurse away to get a drug for a man in the midst of a cardiac arrest," I spit venomously, pulling the patient's mouth open. "Please."
"Dr. Blankenship, the ER is going to be a difficult place--"
"PLEASE!" I shriek, trying to slide the breathing tube into the patient's stiffened throat. "We've got no breathing, no heart--"
"Yes," Dr. Ryan sighs, shuffling to the stretcher, slipping the small metal clamp onto the patient's finger and flipping a switch. Suddenly the shrill, painful noise of a flatlined EKG hums to life and panic strikes my nerves. Stuffing the tube deep into the overweight patient's throat, I give a squeeze to his chest and to the bag, pumping air into his lungs and forcing blood through his stunned veins. Hands pressed to his chest, I feel the faintest squirm beneath his ribcage, and an erratic beep beep starts up on the heart monitor.
"Please, please," I mumble, suddenly drunk on glee. He's alive! I squeeze the intubated air bag again, forcing another gust into the dying man's lungs; a few more pumps on his heart and the jumpy beat starts to steady. My eyes flash towards Dr. Ryan, who stands... and watches. Pen scribbling along the clipboard he observes; unmoved, without a flinch, while a man's body hums on the edge of life.
"I've got the epinephrine," I hear Lynne exclaim, pushing into the room with a handful of medication and a defibrillator stuffed under one arm. "And the--"
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP- BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
"No, no," I stammer, squeezing hard on the bag of air stuffed into my patient's mouth, and I pump, pump, pump on his chest, but nothing happens. I don't feel that squirm of a heart, begging for help, and the sound of a dead heart monitor deafens me. "No," I scramble for the defib, for the medicine. "No, no, no."
"I'm not certain the defib is much help at this point, Dr. Blankenship," Dr. Ryan comments casually. "Nurse Travers--"
"GIVE me that," I scream, tearing the small briefcase-sized device from under Lynne's arm and laying it on the table next to the bed. Pulling the electrodes out, one by one - one strapped to the man's gut, the other to his chest on the opposite side - I hit the button; the machine warms up, one of those automatic defibs, that detects electric activity in the body to respond to. "C'mon, c'mon," I whimper, feeling the warmth well in my cheeks.
"Defibrillation not required," I hear, over the deafening drone of the empty EKG.
"No!" I exclaim, jamming my finger in the button anyway. With an electric BEEP the machine sends a jolt through the patient's heart. I wince, begging for the heart monitor's tinny howl to stop.
It doesn't.
"No," I murmur, feeling the tears at my cheeks. "No, no, no," I babble, "no. NO," I squeeze the air bag again, pumping on the patient's heart.
Nothing.
"Just one more," I swallow, clicking the button to warm up the defib again. Lynne grasps my wrist, her expression pleading with me to stop.
"It's over, sweetie," Lynne sighs. "It's over."
"It's not over," I cry out, a stream of tears falling onto my cheekbones. "Give me the epinephrine, please, Lynne," I beg. She hides the drugs away from my grasping palms.
"I'm going to let the EMTs know. The man's family rushed in behind them," Lynne says. "It'll be fine, sweetie. It'll be fine."
"I let him die," I sob.
"It'll be fine, Katie. I'll be back," Lynne hugs me, squeezing hard, before hustling to the door. My head drowning in emotion, I look at his face; I feel a tear pool at my chin, dripping down along my neck. I see now why doctors get the fear; why it struck me like an arrow that first day. Suddenly the drone of the heart monitor stops; I glance across the patient's body and see him, pulling the electrode clamp off the man's thumb.
"Call it, Dr. Blankenship," he demands.
"I almost saved him," I murmur, voice wavering.
"Call it, please," he repeats his unemotional request. "We have a lot of paperwork to get to."
"Paperwork? Is that all you care about? There's a dead man here, on this table," I respond
, incredulous, through my tears.
"You're a doctor, aren't you? You're going to be seeing a lot of dead bodies, a lot of people are going to die," he says coldly. "Some you may even know; care about. Call it."
"I could have saved him. You could have helped me save him," I snarl, feeling a rage building from my toes to my stomach.
"This man is obese, over fifty, and he's been in cardiac arrest for long enough that brain death is inevitable," Dr. Ryan declares, in a manner more patronizing than I even thought him capable of. "It's commendable that you tried, but he died, and he was going to die before he even got here. People die, Dr. Blankenship."
"How can you be so blase about this? About a man dying in front of you, a man YOU could have helped?" I shout, my voice cracking in tear-riddled fury.
"If I responded this way every time I watched a patient die in my ER, I'd never make it anywhere in this career track, Dr. Blankenship. CALL IT," he roars. "Call it. Are you a doctor at this hospital, or are you not--"
"YES! I'm a doctor!" I shriek, "I'm a doctor, and sometimes I think I'm the ONLY doctor in all of Our Lady, because since the very first day I got here all I've seen, all I've felt and heard, every day, is this callousness, especially from YOU! Being a doctor isn't just memorizing charts, learning symptoms, it's about the PATIENTS, about the PEOPLE!" I snap, my voice hoarse, my body exhausted, my mind replacing grief with pure ire. "I've heard that every day, since I started - am I a doctor? I wouldn't be here, and I wouldn't CARE as much about this dead man, who's on my conscience, if I wasn't a doctor!"
"I'm only going to ask you one more time," I feel a distinct discomfort flowing from Dr. Ryan now. "Call it--"
"You know, I wanted to apologize to you today, James," I sneer out his name, "because I had a kind of a respect for you. Lynne, the others, they've told me you're different, but what have you done since I met you?" I'm consumed by a flurry of emotions, and though I still feel tears staining my eyes and reddening my cheeks, it doesn't stop the anger from pouring like scalding-hot water through my voice. "You mocked me during introductions, in front of everyone, and I could take some mocking - you certainly weren't the first doctor here to mock me, and I've taken it fine, every step of the way."
"I wasn't mocking--"
"Shut UP! I've dealt with three days of this, of watching this carelessness, this callousness, and it's MY turn!" my voice hurts in my throat now, my chest quakes from the pain of exerting myself more than I have in... maybe, ever. "You've mocked me, you've set up me up, in Q&A, in the ER, and why? Because I care? Because I can't stand here and watch men die because of me? Is that why? Yes, I'm a doctor, and yes, I learned in med school, believe it or not - people are going to die. But my job is to care, to reduce the number that die, to make their last moments pleasant, comfortable, calm, anything I can do. THAT'S what being a doctor is!"
"Dr. Blankenship," he tries to get a word in, but I'm not letting him.
"You know, I was right," I add, a blubbering heap of vitriol by now. “I shouldn’t have apologized. Or, excuse me,” I correct myself facetiously, “tried to apologize, since you refused to listen to my apology at all, just like you refused to give me a hand trying to save this man, just like you refused to to give me a break, needling me at Q&A,” I huff, out of breath and out of steam; my muscles ache from all the screaming.
“Doctor—”
“No! I tried to apologize, because I respected you, I wanted to work with you, and everyone around here, Lynne, and Dr. Steward, the residents, think you’re the best doctor the hospital’s got, and I wanted to learn from the best. I’m glad I didn’t apologize,” I bitterly roar, “because I had nothing to apologize for. I meant what I said last night, liquor or no. You are an irritating, arrogant asshole.” After a silent, speechless moment, I watch a series of emotions shift across Dr. Ryan’s face; stunned confusion, and an… eerie sort of calm. Not the intolerable, emotionless calm he wears so often. No, a different kind of calm; a dazzled calm. Awe.
“What did you say?” he asks, his voice shaken.
“You… you heard me,” I waver briefly, my voice softening. I almost feel guilty, but the emotions flow like molten steel. “You heard me. You’re an asshole. An irritating asshole, a—”
Before I could speak another word, I felt him upon me; soft, but gripping; a strong arm across the small of my back, a warm breath pressing against my lips as he cradles my tear-stained cheek with a rough, steady palm. I shake, a feather battered by a hurricane wind; I gasp for air, and it’s him I taste; he smells like a sweet, fresh rain poured across musky pine. My eyes wide at first, when I feel the smooth, consuming warmth of his kiss, my eyelids droop, and my pained muscles fall slack in his grasp. His lips parting he consumes mine, and I can feel his heart thump hard in his chest, breaking a tension rising since the moment I first saw him in that ER; since the time I heard him say that one word, interesting.
He stops and I catch my breath and my head spins and I writhe in his grip, looking for an explanation, even if it came only through a fresh kiss.
“I definitely hope you liked that,” Dr. Ryan says, his voice a strong, commanding murmur.
“Please, do it again,” I beg breathlessly. He obliges, but only for a second; our lips meet, and that fire burns harder, but we hear the door squeak half-open and Lynne peaks through. I yelp, covering my mouth; seeing our bodies close, she immediately spins back behind the door to give us space.
“Lynne,” Dr. Ryan breathes hard, “call Dr. Anand, please, Dr. Blankenship and I have some— some charts to—”
“I’ve got it, Dr. Ryan,” Lynne responds; I can hear the quiet amusement in her voice. Before she’s gone I reach up to find his lips again; he’s too damn tall, but he’s eager to lean back down and meet me halfway.
“We’ve got to get out of here— come with me,” he huffs passionately into my lips.
“Please,” I whimper, body heaving with want. “Please.”
Be sure to sign up for Cherise's MAILING LIST for more updates on her next book, His PERFECT Medicine, a steamy forbidden romance between a sexy, powerful, irresistible doctor and his prized student!
Excerpt from "Three Sexy Minutes"
I’m drunk. I’m lonely. I’m starved for a man’s affectionate touch. It’s been too long. And he’s so fucking hot.
That’s just me, taking inventory of all the excuses I’m going to have to come up with to justify doing this tonight. I know I shouldn’t touch Donovan Kelly with a hundred-foot ladder; I know I’ll probably never see him again after this, and even if I do, I doubt he gives me anything beyond a smirking glance and a bawdy line to his friends about how he fucked me.
But right at this moment I don’t care about any of that, because he’s hot, he’s hungry, he’s rough and he wants me. Not Stacy Petersen, or any of the other groupies. He wants Haley Andrews, the dorky grad student with room at home full of Star Wars Funko-Pops. And he wants me now.
His kisses rain across my neck, little bitemarks left in their wake; he grasps at my ass, squeezing with skilled palms that I want to feel all over my body. He pushes me against the door to Annie’s bedroom; I quietly gasp from beneath his lips, flowing across mine with lewd want.
“This is… Annie’s room,” I huff, heated. I moan the trailing letters of his name when I feel his palms run up my sides and cup my chest, squeezing my full breasts; I effortlessly throw my coat off, revealing the skimpy top from my dance, which I’ve been barely-in for most of the night. He lunges to my neck and bites me deep, marking me; I squeal, first in a shrinking pain, and then in erupting pleasure. It feels good for him to mark me - for me to call me his own, even if it’s just for tonight, that I’ll be sleeping with the hottest fucking guy from Martin High.
The door flings open behind me; I stagger back, almost falling onto Annie’s bed. Having dove face-first into the mattress, Annie snores loudly; our clattering intrusion hasn’t even forced a stir from her. His palms squeeze the insides of my thighs and my lungs shiver, my
breath a throaty song of want; I almost collapse onto the bed behind me before warning him again.
“Donovan, it’s…” I snicker, the pleasure forcing a reddened blush across my pale skin. Messy burlesque makeup smeared across my face from slowly building sweat and the intense kissing, I glance at myself in the mirror - a red-hot mess, I hop my rear onto Annie’s dresser; in a flash too quick for my mind to process Donovan falls to his knees, his kisses trailing between my breasts, down my stomach and to my hot, soaked folds, his hands pushing my legs apart as his tongue runs in slow circles along the inner crease of my legs.
“Oh, god,” I mumble, shivering, “we shouldn’t…” we should, Haley, what are you even saying?! He kisses along my flushed skin until his lips and talented tongue meet my soaked lips and my clit, swirling in quick little motions that make my body jitter and my voice moan louder and louder for him in ways I didn’t even know I could. My fingers slip into his long, wild mane of blond, tips squeezing against his scalp as I lift my fluttering eyes to the ceiling, my lips parted and crying out for him.
“Donovan, please, don’t stop,” I beg, wrapping my legs around his shoulders, pressing my heels into him to spur him on. His tongue plunges into me and teases against my sensitive insides, his fingers stroking quickly at my bead, making me breathe in fire and exhale steam. I’ve never felt so good with a man, my limbs like rubber and my body melting as pleasure surges across every nerve. With every lick and twitch of his tongue I move, I moan, I squeeze his hair and buck my hips against his mouth so much that the dresser starts to rock loudly against the wall.
“We’re going… god, we’re going to wake Annie up,” I giggle, my voice heated, lifting into a breathless moan. He doesn’t care; I guess, neither do I, because I don’t want it to stop, as I push closer towards my climax, he tongues me faster, kissing from one end of my hot slit to the other, before his tongue dips deeper inside of me, the heat filling me up and opening up every sense until I feel manic. I stroke his head and clench my hips tighter and he obliges me, pushing his tongue deeper and hotter until I’m so wet and so devoured by want that I cry out his name as loud as I can, until my throat hurts, my orgasm gripping me and sending lightning along every muscle and vein.
