by Cara Malone
“There’s probably going to be a huge line,” Megan said. “I bet everyone else from our class and the EMT class will be there.”
Including Alex. The possibility of seeing her again intrigued Megan, but if she was being honest, that was another good reason to put off the task until tomorrow. She’d already missed one important milestone in her medical education because she couldn’t pull herself away from that girl—she wasn’t going to let herself get further entangled with her. It would be best if she just never saw Alex again.
So Megan decided to play into Chloe’s delusion that she was deathly ill and asked, “Can you please just drop me off at the apartment on your way so I can get some rest? I’ll go in the morning.”
“Oh,” Chloe said, looking disappointed. “Well, if you want, I can stay with you. I could make you some soup, or get you a cold compress–”
“It’s a headache, not the plague,” Megan said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Chloe answered, and Megan felt guilty for not letting her be helpful.
She and Chloe had been living together for a little over a year, after Megan posted an ad on the university’s housing website the summer before med school began, and in that time she learned that being helpful and nurturing were two of Chloe’s favorite things. She was always going out of her way to do Megan little favors and help her out, and it felt cruel to be so unreceptive. On the other hand, Megan had also discovered that Chloe could be a real pest sometimes with all that heavy-handed nurturing, and she really just wanted a few hours to herself.
“Thank you, though,” she said to soften the blow of her refusal. “I appreciate it.”
When Chloe pulled up in front of the apartment building, Megan opened her door to get out and Chloe stopped her by asking, “That EMT student, the one that caught you–”
“Alex. What about her?”
Chloe narrowed her eyes at Megan for a moment, studying her, then asked in her usual chipper tone, “What did she follow you outside for?”
“She didn’t follow me,” Megan found herself lying, not entirely sure why she was doing it. “She just needed some air, same as me.”
Chapter Seven
Alex
Alex headed straight home after the autopsy was over, driving with the radio off—something she almost never did. Ever since she first started driving, taking lessons from her endlessly patient father instead of her anxious mother, she always had music playing in the background to keep her company. Today she wanted the silence, though. She wanted to commit every aspect of the past few hours—and her unexpected encounter with Megan—to memory. She wanted to sit with those feelings, something she hadn’t wanted for a long time.
The autopsy hadn’t been what she expected, and it hadn’t elicited the uprising of emotion that she’d been afraid of. Alex found it sad to watch Paul Goulding being moved around the autopsy suite, examined and analyzed as if he had ceased being a person and was now a puzzle to be solved. But it didn’t break her.
What almost got to her was the ambulance pulling into the driveway and the way Megan had said, “It’s safe now,” like she could see right through Alex. How could she read her like that when Alex couldn’t even read her own muted emotions most of the time? She pushed the thought away and took the slowest route, trying to think of things she could do besides going home.
Her mother would certainly have a dozen questions for her about her field trip, and there wasn’t a lot Alex could do to avoid them. She had no other classes today, and she’d already gone to the grocery store over the weekend. She’d done a thorough job of pushing away all of her old friends after her father’s funeral, so she didn’t even have someone she could call to meet her for a cup of coffee. She thought about Sarah, but they were class friends, not going for coffee friends. Alex would have to go home eventually, and she might as well get her mother’s comments out of the way. She’d been very vocal all week about how she didn’t think Alex should go to the Medical Examiner’s Office, saying over and over that she could probably get a note from her therapist to skip it, but Alex told her it was part of the curriculum and she was going.
Her mother was sitting in the living room when Alex got home. She would have been surprised to find her anywhere else—Dana McHenry had not moved voluntarily from the couch since the day their lives stood still last year.
“Well?” she said as soon as Alex poked her head into the room.
She was wearing the same saggy black sweatpants she’d been in yesterday, and she had her laptop on the couch cushion beside her, a sure sign that she’d just finished ordering yet another useless item from the Home Shopping Network.
“Well, what?”
“Was it awful? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, ma,” Alex said, and for the most part, it was true. She wasn’t about to tell her mother about the panic that had risen in her throat when she saw the ambulance doors opening, or how that sight had dragged her instantly back to the moment when she had to watch the same scene in reverse, her father being loaded up and taken away in an ambulance whose sirens remained off as it pulled onto the street. She just said, “It was fine.”
“Okay,” her mother said in an unconvinced tone. Then she turned her attention back to the television, where a too-chipper sales woman was demonstrating the durability of a silicone baking mat.
Alex wondered if it was what her mother had just finished ordering. If it was, she could pretty much guarantee that it would never get any use in the McHenry house. Her mother had taken a leave of absence from her department store job last fall, and that leave had turned into a permanent state of motionlessness on the couch. Now she spent her days slowly feeding the money from Alex’s dad’s life insurance policy into the Home Shopping Network.
Alex couldn’t be too critical of her mother because she’d spent the last year in a similar fashion, and in some ways her mom had a right to the skepticism she showed about Alex’s field trip, but suddenly Alex felt the need to defend herself—gently. She ventured, “You know, you’re the one who encouraged me to go back to school. That’s all I’m doing.”
“I encouraged you to go back to the program you started at the university,” her mother said. “I wanted you to finish your bachelor’s degree, not enroll in this paramedic program. Alex, honey, it’s a morbid fixation and it’s not what I want for you.”
Alex let out a little laugh before she could stop herself. They’d had this discussion several times before, and she’d never been able to properly explain to her mother how pointless her previous studies had become to her after what she’d gone through.
“It’s not morbid. Paramedics save lives,” Alex said, and then as she turned to go to her room, she called over her shoulder, “You should get changed and take a shower, ma. I’ll make us lunch soon.”
She always had to sound casual and off-handed about her mother’s hygiene, trying not to give her the impression that she was judging her, but if Alex didn’t say anything then her mom would stay in those same baggy sweatpants until they became threadbare and stretched out.
With a sigh, Alex headed down the hall to her bedroom at the back of the house. It was a teenager’s bedroom, something she hadn’t cared to redecorate since she moved away to live in the dorms her freshman year of college, and which she didn’t have the energy to deal with now. The walls were a bubblegum shade of pink, the curtains were obnoxiously purple and glittery, and her bedspread was vividly floral. Every time she walked into the room she thought that something with muted tones and minimalist vibes would fit her new mood more than the cluttered femininity that it actually reflected, but she never got any further than thinking it.
Alex dropped her backpack on the floor beside her desk and turned on her computer so that she could play some music. In the last few months, she’d graduated from the angry vocals of bands like Mindless Self Indulgence and Nine Inch Nails to the lullaby melancholy of Coldplay and Twenty One Pilots, and she wasn’t quite sure if this was a good change
or a bad one.
Turning the music up just enough to drown out the cheerful, consumerist drone of the Home Shopping Network coming from the living room, Alex sat down in a worn old armchair by the window. It had once held pride of place in her father’s makeshift hangout spot in the garage, and it was the only thing Alex had changed about her room since moving back home. She watched cars go lazily down the street outside and let her mind drift back to Megan.
She had been interesting in a way that Alex hadn’t found anyone to be in a long time. There was nothing in particular that made Alex follow Megan outside, except maybe for the vulnerability she saw in her eyes when they’d been on the floor together. Megan seemed just like all the other cocky doctors-to-be until that moment, and she’d even given Alex a hard time after she went outside to check on her, but there was something soft beneath that coarse exterior.
Alex could relate to that.
She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes, allowing herself to imagine what it would have been like to work up the courage to kiss Megan while they were sitting alone on that bench.
Alex had been out of the dating game for a while—if she’d ever truly been in it—and she could have been imagining the tension between them just because Megan was so stunningly pretty, with those emerald eyes and that fiery hair… and those curves. In the five minutes or so that they were alone together, Alex couldn’t even decide if Megan was gay, let alone interested in her. But she could dream.
Alex opened her eyes.
There was no point in indulging this fantasy. It had been a nice diversion from the emotional strain of the autopsy, but her path would almost certainly never intersect with Megan’s again.
Alex heaved herself up from the comfort of the overstuffed chair and went into the small bathroom connected to her bedroom. She opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed a prescription bottle, flipping the top off with her thumb like she’d done a few hundred times already. The little blue pill that she shook into her palm had become a symbol of comfort to her over the past year. They kept her most unmanageable feelings of grief at bay and allowed her to exist in a state of comfortable numbness, observing but not participating in the world around her. Her mother had the Home Shopping Network, and Alex had anti-depressants.
She shook the bottle and about ten pills rattled in it. She had a week and a half before she’d have to go back to the pharmacy and get another refill, but lately Alex was beginning to wonder if the pills were still helping more than they were getting in her way. Most of the time she liked being numb—it was like a secret weapon that the unfortunate folks who had to feel their emotions didn’t have access to—but every once in a while, it got in the way.
Like today.
She wondered what it would have been like to sit on that bench next to a gorgeous woman without a persistent undercurrent of apathy running through her. Alex could say all the right things, and know on an intellectual level that she found Megan attractive and wanted to flirt with her, but Alex wasn’t really feeling the chemistry between them in the way she wanted to.
Alex reached for a glass sitting next to the sink, using it to wash down her daily dose of numbness. When she got back to her room, she noticed that her phone was vibrating in her backpack. The music playing on her computer nearly drowned it out, but she managed to fish out her phone before she missed the call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Alex,” said Sarah. “You ran out of there so fast I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.”
“What’s up?” Alex asked, a little confused. She’d see Sarah again the following day, and the only reason they’d even bothered to exchange numbers was to ask each other to take notes in case one of them couldn’t make it to class.
“I wanted to make sure somebody told you about the antibiotics,” Sarah said. “Did Mr. Chase talk to you?”
“No,” Alex answered. “What antibiotics?”
Sarah explained the big excitement over the autopsy, the meningitis diagnosis, and the infectiousness of the disease. She told Alex that the whole class had to be tested and treated with a prophylactic course of antibiotics to prevent it from spreading further.
“That brain was so nasty,” Sarah said, wrapping up her report. “I thought I was gonna puke.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to see it,” Alex said. “Where are we supposed to go for the antibiotics?”
Sarah gave her the details and then Alex hung up to call Lakeside Hospital and schedule an appointment. Most of the class had already done so and the earliest they could fit her in was the following morning. Alex noted the location and time in her calendar, then opened her bedroom door to shout down the hall, “Hey, ma, can you fix your own lunch? I’ve got some studying to do.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” her mother called back, and Alex closed the door again. There was no reason to worry her over something with such a low probability—Alex hadn’t even been in the room when Dr. Markovich autopsied the brain—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to take every precaution until she was immunized, and that included isolating herself for the night.
Chapter Eight
Megan
Megan woke up the following morning feeling much better than the previous day. The last lingering effects of her migraine had dissipated, and she’d gotten more sleep than she had on most nights since she began medical school. She was a little behind in her studying and her readings since she’d opted for a mid-day nap instead of studying like usual, but that was a small price to pay to be clear-headed once again.
The apartment was empty like it always was on Tuesday mornings, when Chloe had an early morning lab and Megan didn’t have anything scheduled until noon. Ordinarily, she liked to idle in the silence of the apartment in those rare moments when she had it to herself. Living with Chloe was often like living with a Tasmanian devil, but it was nice to have someone to split the rent with.
Getting ready in a leisurely fashion wasn’t in the cards today, though. Megan had an appointment at the hospital lab in one hour to be tested and treated for her meningitis exposure. She threw on a pair of jeans and a cozy sweater to keep her warm in the brisk fall air, then packed her bag with textbooks and headed out the door. She would take the bus to the hospital and use that time to do a little reading, then she’d walk from the hospital to campus and spent the rest of the morning catching up in the library before her classes began.
When Megan arrived at Lakeside Hospital, she was no further along with the chapters she should have been reading, but she was much more knowledgeable on the diagnosis and pathology of bacterial meningitis. When she reached into her bag to pull out a textbook on the bus, she’d found her phone first and her curiosity got the better of her—she wanted to know more about the disease that had taken out Paul Goulding so fast, and which she had a chance of contracting.
By the time she stepped off the bus, she knew that viral forms of the disease were much less deadly, and that the strain of bacterial meningitis Paul had could be lethal in as little as twenty-four hours. She learned that the most likely setting for contracting the disease was a high school or college campus where people lived in close contact with each other, thus heightening their exposure in the event of an outbreak. Megan had memorized all the common symptoms, which perfectly fit the overview that Dr. Markovich had given of Paul’s case yesterday, and she read about the typical progression of the disease.
The bus dropped her closer to the Emergency Room doors than the main entrance of the hospital, and Megan could have walked down the sidewalk a little way and entered through a large lobby with helpful receptionists pointing her exactly where she needed to go, but she entered through the Emergency Room. She was becoming more and more intrigued by Paul’s case, and she wondered if a quick trip through the place where he died might yield further insights.
Part of her expected to find that everyone in the ER was wearing surgical masks and had been immunized against the disease. She expected some kind of cha
nge in standard operating procedures indicating that something significant had happened there.
Instead, it looked like any other Emergency Room.
There were a lot of tired and unhappy-looking people sitting around in the waiting area, in various states of illness and injury. There was a nurse’s station where people came and went constantly, answering phones, responding to codes, and checking in new arrivals. Patients who had been given priority by the triage nurses were laying in beds that were lined up against two walls, privacy screens pulled between each one, and a group of doctors and nurses were clustered around one of the beds at the end of the hall, resuscitating a patient while his monitors went crazy.
Megan was standing in the middle of the space, frozen about halfway to the nurse’s station while she took everything in, when a pretty brunette in a long white coat stopped in front of her.
“You need help?” she asked, looking Megan briefly in the eyes as if to assess her mental state or the dilation of her pupils, then glancing back down at the tablet in her hands where she was hurriedly typing notes into an electronic chart.
“No,” Megan said, amazed at the girl’s speed. She wondered how long she’d been a doctor, and whether her velocity was a byproduct of working in the ER, or if she was always like this. “I’m just looking for the lab.”
“Third floor. Go down the hall, turn right, elevator bank is on the left,” the girl rattled off, then started to walk away.
“Wait,” Megan called after her, and when the girl turned back she glanced at her badge. Krys Stevens, M.D. Megan figured that this multi-tasking wonder probably didn’t have time for her, but the most she could do was tell her to get lost, so she decided to go for it. “Dr. Stevens, I’m a medical student and I was wondering if you remember a patient who was here earlier this week. I’m interested in the case.”
