I try to schedule my time so I can pop in to see what Elizabeth thinks of her baby shower. With the increasing number of cases Dr. Redman has assigned me to, it’s been harder to spend the hours per day I was spending with her just a week ago.
I’m happy my attending has decided to quit punishing me for my father’s indiscretions. But at the same time, being sentenced to spend my days with Elizabeth was the best kind of resident torture.
I’m relieved when I hear nothing but delightful conversation and laughter as I make my way to the end of the hallway. I was worried she’d be upset by the outpouring of their generosity.
“Did you know about this?” Elizabeth asks with a smile when I walk into the room.
“I plead the fifth,” I say with a wink. “Plus, baby showers are for chicks.”
Several small stuffed animals are thrown at me by my sisters-in-law.
“They are not,” Baylor says. “You should have seen the combined shower our friends and family had for Skylar and me.”
“It was epic,” Piper says, laughing at the memory. “They even hooked some guys up to a machine that simulated labor. It was hilarious.”
I shudder thinking of it. Definitely for chicks.
I look around the room to see what they’ve brought her. I know they were only planning on bringing a few things to the hospital. They didn’t want her to have to take much home. They told me they were hoping to have the rest delivered to her apartment.
I just wonder if that will happen. Will she tell them where she lives? Will she tell me?
I see several small outfits that could be used for either a boy or a girl. There is one of those Snugli things that allows a woman to ‘wear’ her baby on her chest. The largest thing in the room is an all-in-one car seat/stroller that looks like the Cadillac of all strollers.
I’m glad they didn’t overwhelm her with gifts. All in all, everything they brought her could easily fit in the under-compartment of the stroller. But Elizabeth is smiling. That must mean they haven’t yet told her about the garage full of other crap Baylor has accumulated for her.
“You’ve all done so much,” Elizabeth says sadly, looking down to fiddle with her chunky bracelet. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“See, that’s the thing about friends,” Mallory says. “You don’t have to repay them.”
Elizabeth shakes her head. “It’s so much.”
“You realize we were just going to give this stuff away or donate it, right?” Baylor asks.
Elizabeth looks at Mallory, who is about as pregnant as she is. “But Mallory is about to have her first child. She needs all this stuff, too.”
Mal laughs. “Do you know how many baby things Chad’s mom has sent to us? I think we’re going to need to get a bigger apartment just to accommodate all of it.”
Elizabeth nods in acceptance. “Well, thank you all. I’m not sure how I would have gotten through these weeks without you.”
The words she spoke were meant for everyone, I know. But she was looking directly at me when she said them.
My pager goes off. It’s not an urgent page, just some labs I’d ordered that came back. Either way, it’s a good excuse to leave them to their party.
“I’ll check back on you later, Elizabeth,” I say, walking out the door.
She calls me back. “With all your new patients, I bet you haven’t eaten all day, Kyle.” She reaches into a Sal’s container and pulls out an egg roll. She puts it on a napkin and holds it out to me. “Come on, I know it’s your favorite.”
Five pairs of eyes watch as I cross the room to take it from her. Five mouths curve up into a smile as I bite into it on my way out the door.
“Wait,” she says, before I get very far down the hallway.
I turn around and put my hand up to catch the fortune cookie she threw at me before it hits me in the head. I laugh, sticking it in my pocket.
“Seriously?” I hear someone say as I’m walking out to the nurses’ station.
It’s the voice I’ve dreaded, coming from the person I’ve avoided for the past week. I turn around. “Hey, Gina.”
“Do you really mean to tell me your sisters-in-law and their friends are throwing your homeless patient a baby shower?”
I look down the hall and hear more laughter coming from the room at the end. “It looks that way,” I tell her. “And for the umpteenth time, she’s not homeless.”
“Really? That’s interesting coming from the guy who had to list his address on her hospital forms because she doesn’t have one.”
I give her an incredulous look. “How in the hell did you know that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Nurses talk. Abby knows all the admissions nurses. I’m friends with Abby. You should know by now, nothing that goes on within these walls is secret.”
“Whatever,” I say, pulling her along behind me into an empty procedure room. “Gina, we have to talk.”
She crosses her arms, eyeing me up and down. She’s studying me.
“Oh, my God,” she spits out. “Are you in love with your patient, Kyle?”
“What? No.”
“You are,” she says. “I knew you were taking pity on her. I may have even known you were smitten with her, but this? Kyle, you’re not thinking clearly. I mean, she walks dogs for a living.”
“What the fuck does it matter what she does? It doesn’t make her any less of a person, Gina.”
“What are you planning on doing, taking her and her baby home with you like strays?”
My blood starts to boil. “You and I are friends, Gina. We’ve been friends for a long time now, which is why I’m going to let that one slide. But you talk shit about her again and all bets are off.”
She walks around the procedure bed, putting it between us. “If you want to end this,” she says, pointing between us, “that’s fine. I like you, Kyle, but I’ll move on. But falling for a patient? Paying her bills? Bringing your friends and family in to befriend her? That’s crossing the line.”
I sit down on the stool, running a hand through my hair.
“I’m not in love with her,” I say, trying to sound convincing. To her or to myself, I’m not sure. “At first, I guess I was just taking pity on her. But the more time I spent with her . . .”
Gina walks to the door. “Just tread carefully, Kyle.”
“You won’t say anything to anyone about this, will you?”
She shakes her head. “I won’t tell Anders or Redman, if that’s what you mean. But I can’t guarantee they won’t find out. Nurses talk.”
I watch Gina walk through the door, leaving me alone in the room with my thoughts. There is nothing my supervisors can do to me if they found out about all of it, is there? Technically, I’m not doing anything wrong. Maybe, ethically, it’s wrong to pay her hospital bill. But how can it be the wrong thing to do, when it’s saving her from a lifetime of debt?
I took a vow, an oath to help people. How can I be faulted for sticking to it?
As I leave the procedure room, I glance down the hallway to see a couple of the girls sitting on the foot of Elizabeth’s bed as they all admire baby clothes.
I study her. I watch her talk with my friends. Friends who are now her friends. She fits in well with them. She fits in well with me.
Love? I don’t know. Is it possible to love someone you know so little about? Someone you’ve only seen for a few hours a day over the period of a few weeks? Someone who is pregnant with another man’s child?
She looks my way to catch me staring. Our eyes meet. She holds my stare like a tractor beam. An earthquake in New York couldn’t tear my eyes from hers. Damn. I wish I had some Jell-O. Because never have I ever fallen in love.
Not until right fucking now.