Chapter Eight
Dean
I was cautiously optimistic about our date plans. I’d asked Ivy out on four separate occasions for dinner, and each time she’d turned me down. But when she messaged me out of the blue during my double-shift at work, I’d been so elated to hear from her that I said ‘yes’ without even thinking. I wanted to take her to dinner. I wanted to see her again. I wanted to spend time with her and talk with her face-to-face and listen as her voice filled my ears. We bantered back and forth all the time. Stayed up until late hours of the night texting back and forth. I felt connected with her, even though I’d only seen her once. There was something brewing between the two of us and I wanted to explore it.
But four ‘no’’s?
It kept me cautious about the situation.
Still, I was excited. I got off from the hospital and went home to get some rest. And all night, I dreamt of her. Of those long legs wrapped around my waist and my hands running through that beautiful blonde and green hair. I felt her lips on my neck and her skin against mine. I felt the way her hands massaged my chest. My abs. My back. Indulging in the muscles I cultivated in the gym. My mind took me to places I didn’t dare think about on the job. Places that forced me to wake up with a throbbing groin against the mattress of my bed. I saw my body pressed against hers in all sorts of positions. On my lap. With her legs over my shoulders. Against the wall as she desperately clung to me. I saw her hanging over the balcony of my apartment, my cock driving in and out of her as the sun set for my viewing pleasure.
I got up and took a cold shower to try and get my body to calm down.
I was looking forward to dinner with her that night. But I wouldn’t be able to take her home. Which was fine. Ivy didn’t strike me as the type of woman to sleep with a man on the first date. The plan was to pick her up at six and take her out to what was apparently her favorite hibachi place. Those places where they cooked in front of you. Then, maybe I’d take her on a walk through the park. Hand in hand. Maybe dance with her a little bit underneath the stars. I enjoyed romance. I enjoyed doling out romance. I enjoyed the sparkle in women’s eyes whenever they were romanced.
And I really wanted to romance Ivy.
But I had to make sure I packed a pair of scrubs, because my shift at the hospital was a midnight shift this weekend. Dinner at six, walking and dancing at eight, then I had to be into work by ten. It gave me enough time to really treat her right before leaving her to want more.
And if I was lucky, I’d get to feel my lips against hers once I dropped her off.
A woman like Ivy deserved that type of evening. The kind where the man was respectful of her wishes and did nothing but make her smile. She wasn’t paying for a thing, either. I knew she was independent and had a career of her own, but that didn’t mean I couldn't treat her to something. And a nice evening out was what she wanted.
Needed.
It’s what I needed, too.
I ate a little bit of breakfast, then I headed back to bed. If I was going to be up all night, I needed all the rest I could get. My mind left me alone this time, choosing to sleep instead of to dream. And I woke up more refreshed than ever. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and I had more than enough time to get ready. I took a long, hot shower. I took my time shaving. I pulled out my tailored gray suit and paired it with all black. I had to make sure everything was in place. It was the only way I’d be able to keep up with a fashionista like Ivy. I could only imagine what she’d be wearing tonight, and as I tightened my slim black tie, I looked over at the clock.
It was five, and I hadn’t heard from Ivy yet.
I walked over to my phone and sent her a text message. She was supposed to get me her address by now. Worry pooled in my gut as I sat on the edge of my bed and I wondered if she was okay. If she was having second thoughts about our date. I watched my phone as the seconds ticked by. I felt suspended in midair. Floating in space without a way to breathe. Her name popped up onto my phone, giving me an ounce of relief as I opened her message.
Then, my stomach sank.
I’m so sorry, Dean. I’ve tried everything. But I can’t come out tonight. I’ll explain when I get back into town, but I’ve got to go. My flight’s about to take off.
Her flight?
Where the hell was she going?
It’s okay. Have a safe trip.
It was all I could think of to say. Disappointment hung in my gut as I tossed my phone onto the bed. I looked up into the mirror in front of me and scoffed. I looked like an idiot. I got up from the bed and started peeling my suit away. The tie. The black shirt. The coat. The pants. There was no use for it any longer and now I had time to burn. I slipped back into a pair of sweatpants and a comfortable shirt, then grabbed the scrubs I had packed for the night.
I was hungry.
I drove around town until a restaurant called to me. There was a small wings and beer place tucked in a back alley that called to my stomach. I parked and grabbed my wallet, then went inside and picked a table in the corner. I didn’t want to be disturbed. I didn’t want people to come up and talk to me. That was the thing about being featured in a prestigious article. People always came up and talked to me.
And I didn’t feel like talking.
“What can I get you?”
I looked up at the waiter before my eyes glanced down at the menu in front of me.
The menu I hadn’t touched yet.
“Um… your best bottled beer and twenty hot buffalo wings. And a double side of fries.”
“Anything else?” the waiter asked.
“Got any desserts?”
“We have a great molten lava cake. We have it in salted caramel, too.”
“The caramel sounds good. Never been a fan of chocolate.”
“Me, neither. And it’s great. You want it all together?” he asked.
“Sure. Why not?”
I handed the menu to the man and relaxed back into the booth. I didn’t know why I was so disappointed. It was just a date. And she’d rejected me four times already. I wasn't sure why I’d convinced myself this time would be any different. I closed my eyes and tried to rid my mind of everything. Tried to block out the hurt I was feeling for no fucking reason. This was stupid. No woman should have a hold on me like this. All we did was text for a few days after meeting once. This was bullshit.
And yet, the disappointment continued to multiply.
I ate my meal in silence. Twenty hot wings, four beers, and one very luscious dessert. And it was all fantastic. I’d have to tell the nurses about this place when I got into work. Nurse Mary loved herself some wings, and I bet she didn’t know about this place. I wouldn’t have known about it had I not been actively looking for restaurant signs. Their sign hung off the side of the building and was hardly illuminated.
But the place was packed with people.
I paid my tab before I pulled my phone out of my wallet. Another pang of disappointment rushed through me when I saw I didn’t have a text message from her. But why would I? She was on a plane headed to fuck only knew where. It was probably for work, but I had no way of knowing that. For all I knew, she was taking some impromptu trip with friends and leaving me high and dry.
It’s happened before.
Before I could catch what time it was, my phone lit up with one simple name. A name that would free me from the lonely dinner I was having and thrust me into the chaotic life of an overworked doctor.
Work was calling.
“This is Dean.”
“Hey, Doctor Anderson. I know you’re slated for ten o’clock tonight, but is there any way you could get in here sooner?”
“Mary?” I asked.
“Yep. It’s me. We’ve had throngs of pregnant women come into the E.R. and they’re all experiencing a lot of the same complications. We’re swamped and we need all hands on deck.”
“I’ll be there soon. And remind me to tell you about this wing place I found tonight.”
“Oh, I’ll definitely remember something like that. See you soon.”
I pulled out some money and tossed it onto the table. I needed to get out of there. I rushed to my car and cranked it up, then peeled out of the parking space and sped to the hospital. Pregnant women with the same symptoms? This should be interesting.
This also meant my crash-course in obstetrics would finally come in handy.
I pulled into the hospital parking lot and reached for my work clothes. I changed in the front seat of my car, making use of the tinted windows. I popped my trunk and pulled out my white jacket, then locked everything up and took off towards the emergency room doors.
And the second I walked in, chaos ensued.
“Doctor Anderson! Over here!”
I ran towards Mary’s voice and saw a woman with blood between her legs lying on a gurney.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’ve got twenty women in labor in our hospital right now and they’re all experiencing the same symptoms. Elevated blood pressure, anemia, placenta previa, and their children are all in distress. But we don’t have enough operating rooms to get them all into surgery at once,” she said.
“We have to figure out where these women came from,” I said.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
The woman on the hospital bed rose up and began to push. I flipped her gown over as her husband grabbed her hand and tried to evaluate her as best as I could.
“What’s the time stamp on the O.R.’s?” I asked.
“They’re all full. The next one won’t be open for another hour,” Mary said.
“Okay. Ma’am, I need you to listen to me as best as you can,” I said.
“AAAAAAHHHHHH!”
“What is it, doctor?” the man asked.
“Both your wife and your child are in distress. I’m going to use every intervention tactic I can, but if I have to knock her out to do this, I will.”
“Don’t… do that,” the woman said. “Please.”
“Then listen to me, ma’am. I need you to try and stay as still as possible, and I know that’s hard. But your life and the life of your child are at stake here. Okay? So grip onto Mary’s hand as well as your husband’s and try to stay put.”
“Doctor Anderson?”
“A little busy!” I exclaimed.
“I think I know how the women are connected.”
I looked back at one of the male nurses that usually staffed the NICU department.
“Can it wait until this woman delivers?” I asked.
“It can. Do you need assistance?”
“I need you to prop her leg up and help her onto her side,” I said.
The woman screamed and her body did what it knew it needed to do. But her vitals and the vitals of the child were very worrisome to me. I straightened her body out as much as I could and grabbed a pair of forceps, trying to gently guide the child out of her body.
Until I realized the child was coming out feet first.
“The baby’s breach. Change of plans,” I said. “Get me a local anesthetic and a scalpel.”
“What are you doing?” the husband asked.
“Getting your child out alive. Now let me do my job,” I said.
I numbed up the woman’s perineal tissue and began to slowly cut away at it. I tried to widen her birth canal as much as I could before I put my hands anywhere inside of her. The baby’s feet were coming at me as a very fast pace, and I could tell the mother was already growing tired.
If she could keep pushing until we got to the shoulders, I could do the rest.
Push after push, and the baby slowly descended to me. But its vitals were getting worse. The child’s blood pressure was dropping while the mother’s skyrocketed, and I wasn’t sure I was going to get the child out in time. I gripped onto the hips of the child and gently began to pull. I eased the child out of the mother until nothing but the child’s head needed to be birthed.
And then the mother collapsed.
“What’s happening? Laura? Laura!”
“We need a crash cart in here!”
“Doctor Anderson, you need-”
“I’ve almost got this child,” I said.
The crash cart was wheeled in and the husband was shoved off to the side. After a few delicate twists, the child finally dislodged from the woman’s body. The placenta was right behind the child and the cord was twisted around its neck.
His neck.
The small child was a boy, and the cord was wrapped around his neck.
I rolled away from the woman while they tried to revive her and began cleaning up the child myself. I removed the cord and quickly detached the child from the placenta. I did everything I needed to. Suctioned the throat and nostrils. Thumped the feet of the baby to make sure blood flow was good.
“Come on,” I said with a whisper. “Cry for us, little one.”
“Why isn’t he crying?” the husband asked with tears in his eyes.
“We have an O.R. open! Who’s next?” a nurse asked.
The mother’s body was thumping and crashing and the child wasn’t crying. Women were screaming in the waiting room and begging for medicine in the hospital rooms of the E.R. I heard the woman’s vital signs leap to life and I whipped around with her baby boy in my arms. Her eyes ripped open and she gasped for air as I slid back her gown.
I placed her child against the beating of her heart and prayed for one of those miracles doctors could never explain.
Tears were rolling down her cheeks as Mary stitched up the wound I had created. The husband was kissing the side of her head as she held her lifeless child in her arms. I closed my eyes. I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in. We needed a miracle. We needed one of those things science couldn’t explain. We needed-
One small hiccup caused the room to fall deathly silent. The chaos outside of the room fell into the background as we all watched the small child curl its toes. One hiccup turned into two, and two turned into three. And when the mother began to cry tears of joy and the father placed a kiss on top of the child’s head, that marvelous sound was heard.
He finally started to cry.
“Thank you,” the husband said breathlessly. “Thank you so much.”
I looked over at the male nurse as he wiped away his tears.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Follow me up to the NICU,” the nurse said.
I walked alongside him as O.R.’s and emergency rooms were turned over faster than I’d ever seen them before. We walked in silence until we got up to the where all of the children were who shared the same birthday. Infant boys and girls of every color, shape, and size, all wrapped up and nestled into their rolling bassinets as the nurses performed tests to make sure they were all right.
“What’s the connection with all these women?” I asked.
“Lettuce,” the man said.
I furrowed my brow and slowly turned my head to face him.
“Lettuce,” I said.
“You know the CDC has been warning the entire country about that romaine lettuce out of Yuma, Arizona.”
“I’m aware. But even if all of these women ate tainted lettuce, it would take weeks for anything of this magnitude to occur,” I said.
“Not if you add sushi into the mix,” the nurse said.
“Sushi?” I asked. “Can you spit it out, please?”
“There’s a place downtown that guarantees a sushi for every kind of sushi lover and ‘sushi for those that don’t’.”
“Uh huh. Fun little marketing ploy. So what are they claiming and how are these women involved?”
“They’re claiming that they have sushi that’s safe for pregnant women. No mercury, high iron content, fresh vegetables to make it both yummy and healthy for mommy and baby. I talked to some of the women in the E.R. when they first started coming in. I asked them what they’d been eating lately, and that’s how I found out. I haven’t asked all of them, but if nine of them have that connection-”
“Then the rest of them probably do as well. Okay. You need to go downstairs and write this up with Human Resources. They need to file a warning with the CDC and get that restaurant’s marketing ploy pulled. They’re making medical claims without understanding that’s what they’re doing and it’s pouring women into this E.R. with massive complications. I’m sure tainted lettuce is in this somewhere, but I wouldn’t be shocked if all of these women had high mercury levels in their bloodstream as well. In fact, test the placentas. I want to know how bad this is.”
“I’ll get on it,” the nurse said.
I walked into the NICU and told the nurse what was going on. About the theories me and the nurse had. I wanted pin pricks done on all of the infants to make sure none of them had something floating around in their bloodstream that could cause complications further up the road.
Then I headed back down to the E.R.
Twenty women within the span of two hours delivered beautiful, healthy children. The mothers were finally stabilized, the infants were under a close watch, and the CDC was being informed of the issue we’d encountered. I sat down in a chair in the corner and put my head in my hands, drawing in deep breaths before letting them out through my nose.
The only good thing about something like this was that it usually signaled a boring rest of the night.
But outside of that, there was nothing good about any of it.
“So,” Mary said. “You found a wing place?”
She sat down beside me before handing me a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. You were a rockstar tonight.”
“Hardly.”
“All the children are alive. The mothers are stable. Families are happy. You’re a rockstar.”
“Yes, I found a wing place,” I said. “It’s over there by… uh…”
“Is it the one in the alley?” she asked.
“So you do know it.”
“Come on. There isn’t a wing place in this city I don’t know about. But when everyone finds that one, they always want to tell me about it. You should try their dry rubs next time. My favorite is the garlic parmesan.”
“Got a vampire problem?” I asked.
“You make jokes, but it’s great. Did you get a dessert?”
“The salted caramel molten cake.”
“Oh, yes. You did it up right,” she said.
We clinked our coffee cups together before we sat back into the wall. The E.R. was finally dying down and women were no longer crying. The waiting room was empty and the nurses were finally getting a break. I sipped on my coffee and closed my eyes, preparing myself for a very quiet night.
But in the back of my mind, I wondered what Ivy was doing.
Where she was going.
And if she had gotten there safely.