Chapter Fourteen
Alex
My night with Cam ended in the early hours of the next morning. He'd stayed as long as he could, curled up on the couch with me even though I'd offered to make room for him in my textbook-filled bed. He'd had to go home to check on Tesla and get ready for work, and I'd needed to brush up on my anatomy for the practice exam we were taking.
"I want to see you again, soon," Cam said as he stood at the door giving me a look that said he definitely didn't want to leave.
"Then you shall." I smiled. "Call me when you get off work tomorrow, and we'll see if we can't arrange something."
"I don't want to go," he said, pulling me to him for one more kiss.
"All right, I'll be the adult here, I guess." I laughed. "You need to go to work and I need to go to class! So, go!"
He laughed as he stole another kiss, and then headed out the door to his truck. I closed the door and stood leaning against it with my arms wrapped around myself for a few minutes before I shook my head and went to take a shower.
In the shower, I fantasized about what Cam would look like wet and naked, and how his large, strong hands would feel on my slippery, wet skin. It drove me to the edge of distraction as I slipped my hand between my legs and stroked myself to another orgasm. It was official: Cam Connor had reignited my sex drive. I laughed out loud as I thought about how happy Liz would be to hear this good news.
Several hours later, on the way to class, Liz peppered me with questions about the date and everything that had happened afterwards. I laughed as I told her that her gift had come in handy, and she'd demanded a high five.
"I told you it would be a good thing for you," she said with a knowing grin. A few seconds later, Liz tripped and went sprawling onto the sidewalk.
"Liz!" I cried as I rushed to her side to help her up.
"Oh my God, you don't even know how to walk, do you?" Violet said as she passed us on the campus sidewalk. She was alone today, her sidekicks elsewhere as she made her way through the snow to class.
"Shut up, Metzler," Liz muttered as she brushed the snow from herself and stood up slowly. I could see that she'd cut the palms of her hands as she'd fallen on the concrete, so I brushed them off and offered her a tissue to wipe away the blood.
"Articulate this morning, too," Violet said, rolling her eyes. Then with a mean grin, added, "Maybe you should rethink following in the footsteps of your family, Baker."
"You bitch!" Liz hissed as she moved toward Violet. I grabbed her arm and stopped her from getting too close.
"Violet, move on," I said, waving my hand as if shooing away a bad dog. "Go on!"
Laughing loudly, Violet turned and strutted down the sidewalk on her way to class. I turned and looked at Liz and found her standing with her bleeding palms up and tears running down her cheeks.
"Liz! Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?" I asked, worried that something was terribly wrong.
"That bitch is too mean to live," Liz sniffed as she wiped her nose with the bloody tissue. I handed her another one and she gratefully accepted it. "I hate Violet Metzler."
"I know, darling," I said. "We all do."
Liz flashed me a grateful grin as I motioned to her that we needed to get to class, but I wondered why Violet had chosen to go for the throat this time. I knew she and Liz didn't like each other, but to aim so low and invoke Liz's troubled family was low even by Violet's standards.
"Liz," I wondered out loud. "Have you done anything to really piss Violet off lately?"
"You mean besides simply being alive?" Liz asked with a grimace. "Not that I can think of."
"Hmmm, I wonder why she's being so mean," I said.
"No idea." Liz shrugged. "She seems to have just been born that way."
"No one is inherently evil," I scolded gently.
"Don't bet on that," Liz said as she pulled open the door to the building and winced as her hand made contact with the metal door handle. "You haven't met most of my family."
We stopped in the bathroom to clean up Liz's hands before we took the practice exam. She'd ripped off several layers of skin when she'd fallen, and I did my best to clean it up without hurting her, but she inhaled sharply as I applied soap and gently scrubbed away the dirt and debris.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah, fine. It just stings," she said, biting her lip as she ran her hands under the faucet to wash away the soap.
We were late for class and received a stern look from Professor Jackson as we grabbed our exams and sat down. I tried hard to focus on the exam, but the whole time I was answering questions, a part of my brain was back at my apartment with Cam feeling all of the wonderful ways in which his touch made my body come alive. Halfway through the exam, Liz elbowed me and then pointed to the papers on my desk. Having a crush on Cam Connor was not going to be good for my grades.
"What the hell was going on in there?" Liz demanded as we gathered our things and got ready to head to the lab.
"Nothing, why?" I replied.
"You look like a love struck school girl." She grinned. "Cam Connor is going to ruin your GPA if you aren't careful."
"The thought crossed my mind, thank you very much," I said primly. "I've got it under control."
"Yeah, sure you do." Liz laughed. "Just like Violet has her meanness under control. It's snake handling, my friend."
I looked at Liz, wide eyed, not believing that she'd said that, but her roaring laughter pushed away any shocked outrage I was feeling, and we both laughed until we were holding our sides. Our laughter continued as we entered the lab and prepared for the lesson, earning us nasty looks from Violet and her posse.
"Why is she so nasty to you, Liz?" I whispered as the lab assistant instructed us, yet again, on the necessity of proper slide handling techniques.
"I don't know, she's got a bug up her ass," Liz murmured, making me laugh and earning us a stern look from the lab assistant.
Meanwhile, across the room, Violet, Jessica, and Lydia all stared with rapt attention at Robert, the lab assistant, who could really only be described as tall, dark, and handsome. He was attentive to everyone in the class and always cheerfully answered questions, so most of the girls in the class had a crush on him; everyone, except Liz. She treated him as if he were part of the furniture, functional and necessary, but of little real interest.
"Robby, can you help us with our slides?" Violet asked in a sticky sweet voice. He sighed as he walked over to the table and showed her, for the third time, what she was doing wrong, and was rewarded with a hand on his arm and an overly grateful, "Thank you so much, Robby!"
Liz mocked the girls under her breath as she mounted the samples on the slides and put them under the microscope. When Robert walked by and asked if everything was going all right, Liz grunted the affirmative without looking up.
"Why are you so mean to him?" I whispered as I stared at a slice of epidermis I'd mounted on my slide.
"I'm not mean, I just don't care," Liz replied. "There's a huge difference."
I watched her closely, wondering what had happened that had turned her mood from good to sour so quickly, then shrugged as I turned back to my own slides. We worked in compatible silence for the next hour and a half, and by the time we were done cleaning up, Violet and her crew were, again, fawning over Robert.
Liz rolled her eyes dramatically as she walked past his desk toward the door. I waved and said thank you as I joined my friend. Liz suggested we get something to eat before we went to the library to study, and I reminded her that we'd picked up an extra shift in the ER that night.
"Aw, crap!" she swore as she kicked a pile of snow in front of the building. "I forgot about that. All right, well, I'll meet you at the hospital, then."
"You don't want to come over and get ready and go together?" I asked.
"Nah, thanks; I have something I need to do first," she said, taking off in the direction of her apartment before I could say another word.
I watched her moving down the sidewalk and wondered what she was up to -- and whether I'd have to pull her out of whatever it was that she was doing.
#
I met Liz at the door of the ER a few hours later and smiled as I saw that she was in a good mood. She'd brought a bag full of fortune cookies and proceeded to pass them around to the ER staff and nurses. For a while, the department was calm and everyone enjoyed their sweet treats, but around ten things started picking up as a guy with a gunshot wound arrived, followed soon after by a stabbing and then a heart attack.
I loved the swift flow of the ER and the way that everyone played a part in keeping the rhythm going. The admitting people got the information and checked the past history, while the nurses took vitals and got a rundown of what had happened, then the doctors moved in and evaluated the injury or illness before turning the patient's care back over to the nurses. Chicago General's ER was a well-oiled machine, and I loved being a part of it.
Liz, however, did not love the ER, and she took every opportunity to escape it. I often found her hanging out in the pharmacy or in ICU. She had made friends with the people who ran the show there and seemed to enjoy their company more than she did working the floor. I worried that if she got caught skipping out on her ER rotation, she'd fail this portion of her internship and not graduate in June, and I couldn't imagine not having Liz there on the best day of my life.
"Elizabeth Baker! What are you doing?" I exclaimed as I came around the corner and found her lying face down on a gurney outside of the ICU.
"Taking a short nap," she said in a voice thick with sleep. "I'm tired, Alex. I need my rest."
"You're working, Liz! Get up!" I ordered as I pulled at her arm and tried to get her off the gurney.
"I don't wanna," she protested as she turned her body into a dead weight. "I need a short nap."
"Liz, you're being ridiculous," I hissed as I yanked her arm harder, failing to get her up on her feet. "You need to get up! What if Mrs. Rikka..."
"What if Mrs. Rikka what?" said a familiar voice just behind my left shoulder.
"Oh, um, Mrs. Rikka," I stammered as I let go of Liz's arm and turned around to face the nursing supervisor. She was wearing a mustard colored dress with sensible brown shoes and her glasses hung on a pearl chain around her neck. "Liz is sick. I think it's the flu."
"Is it really?" Mrs. Rikka said with a raised eyebrow as she glanced at Liz and then turned her laser like stare back on me. "I wasn't aware that Miss Baker had been sick."
"Oh, she's been throwing up all day." I nodded vigorously, trying to convey the seriousness of Liz's condition.
"I see," Mrs. Rikka said as she stepped closer to the gurney and shook Liz's shoulder. "Miss Baker, is this true? Are you ill?"
"I’m not sick just tired,” Liz mumbled into the pillow under her head. "Just need a nap.”
"Then perhaps you should get more sleep. Or maybe you should be checked by a doctor rather than lying on a gurney in the middle of the hall," Mrs. Rikka said sharply. "Get up, Miss Baker. I want you to see a doctor. Now."
"Liz, get up," I whispered into her ear with an urgency that seemed to cut through whatever fog had taken over my friend's brain. "C'mon, you need to see a doctor."
Liz slowly raised herself up off of the gurney and let me drape her arm around my shoulder so I could walk her down to the ER. Mrs. Rikka stared at us both. Her eyes narrowed as she carefully gave Liz a once over.
"I'm not sure what Miss Baker is suffering from, but it does not appear to be the flu," she observed. "Nonetheless, I want her checked out by a doctor, Miss Pierce."
"Yes, ma'am." I nodded as I helped Liz up. I walked slowly hoping that Mrs. Rikka would let us go without further questioning. The sound of the supervisor's shoes clicking on the floor told me that she was leaving, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at my friend.
"Liz, what have you been doing?" I whispered.
"Nothing, I’m just tired. Get off my back," she mumbled as I kept her moving.
In the ER, Leslie set up a cot to one side and we maneuvered Liz onto it so that the resident could check her out. Leslie let me take Liz's vitals and pronounced them normal as she did a few tests to see how awake and aware she was.
"Looks like she might have taken something," Leslie commented as she pulled up Liz's eyelids and checked her pupil reflexes. "But then again, she might be sick. We’ll run some tests and see what shows up. Do you know of anything she might have taken?”
"No, I don't," I said, shaking my head. I turned to Liz and asked, "Liz, are you on drugs?"
"Drugs? What the hell?" Liz said a little more coherently. "Jesus, I told you, I’m just tired. Would you all back off?”
"She's been saying that since I found her in the hallway." I shrugged. "No idea what it means."
"She'd better be careful," Leslie warned. "If Frau Rikka finds her--"
"She already did." I sighed. "She ordered me to bring her to find out what's going on."
"Aww, shit," Leslie said, shaking her head slowly. "There's gonna be a report about this, and you're going to have to most likely answer a ton of questions. And if Liz has been doing drugs, it’s likely she’ll be expelled from the program."
"Shit," I muttered under my breath.
"Indeed." Leslie nodded. "Rikka is a hard ass about rules, and she rarely does anything that doesn't completely conform to them. She's a bitch in heels, and she runs a tight ship."
"What can I do?" I asked. "How can I help Liz?"
"Well, the good thing is that Rikka has made so may enemies in every department that we'll have a fairly good chance of thwarting her with a proactive approach," Leslie said as she looked out from behind the curtain trying to find the resident. "The second thing is that we've got time on our side. No investigators will be in until morning, so if we can stall the resident, then we can give Liz a chance to recover a bit. I'll hook her up to an IV line, and we'll see if we can't flush her system out a bit just in case she did take something."
"Just tell me what to do," I said as I watched Leslie wipe Liz's arm with an alcohol pad and then quickly slide the needle into her vein. She hooked up the IV and slipped the bag onto the stand.
"You stand guard," Leslie said. "I'm going to clear out the rooms and get things quiet around here again, then we'll see how Liz is doing and get the resident in here to examine her."
I nodded as I watched Leslie disappear into the bustling ER. I turned and looked at Liz. She looked so small lying on the bed and she was unusually pale, even for her. For the next hour, I watched her like a hawk as Leslie did her best to steer everyone clear of the curtain.
"Liz," I whispered. "You're going to have to tell me what's going on when you wake up."
"Back the hell off, Pierce," Liz said in a sharp tone that she’d never used with me before now. “I’m just tired.”
It took Leslie two hours to clear the ER, and by then Liz was back on her feet and declared she felt fine.
"You're kidding me," I said, looking at her skeptically.
"Nope, not at all," she said. "I told you I just needed a nap. Let's get this needle out and get back to work. I'm sure they could use a hand or two about now."
"Liz, you're going to have to be checked out," I said as she tugged on the needle in her arm trying to decide if she was going to pull it herself. "Mrs. Rikka didn't give you a choice. You have to be seen by a doctor."
"Oh, bullshit," Liz said, sticking out her tongue. "That old biddy has no idea what I need."
"Liz, can you at least wait until Leslie comes back and pulls the IV?" I pleaded as I held her arm and hoped she'd listen to me.
"Fine, whatever." Liz sighed. "But get her back here soon to get it out, would you? I can't stand the way it feels in my arm."
I helped Liz back to the cot and to find Leslie who was in Trauma 1 finishing up the paperwork on another gunshot victim. There was blood all over the floor beneath the table, and I asked if she wanted me to clean it up.
"Nah, housekeeping will get in here when it's this bad," she said, waving me off. "You can't clean blood as well as they can."
"Liz is up and around and she wants the IV line out," I said. "She was trying to pull it herself and I stopped her. I...I...I..."
"You what, Alex," Leslie said in calm, kind voice.
"I don't know what's wrong with her!" I said as the tears flowed down my cheeks. "I'm worried about her, but I don't know what to do. She's been acting weird for weeks, but she swears there's nothing wrong."
"Classic addict behavior." Leslie nodded. "If you're not an addict or been involved with one, then you have no idea what it looks like."
"But I've known her for years and I've never seen her take drugs," I insisted. "I'd know if she was using drugs!"
"Oh, sweetie," Leslie said, shaking her head. "No, you probably wouldn't. C'mon, let's go check on her."
When we got back to the cot where Liz had been, we found it empty. The bloody needle was lying on the floor with the IV fluid spreading out in a puddle around it. I shook my head as I quickly stopped the flow and did my best to mop up the mess with paper towels.
"Where do you think she's gone?" Leslie asked, then said, "Never mind, I bet I know where."
Leslie took off without another word, and I stood staring at the mess my best friend had left wondering what in the world was going on with her and why she felt she couldn't tell me.