“You what?” Cameron asks in disbelief as we grab some coffee and a bagel the next morning after rounds.
I blow on my hot coffee, taking a needed pause to gather my thoughts after telling him what I did. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him. But Cameron is probably the best friend I have, not counting my brothers. He’s been with me through thick and thin this past year of residency. He, more than anyone, would understand why I did it.
But then why do I feel guilty? Like I’ve done something wrong? Why do I feel like I have to hide the fact that I’m helping my patient? If Redman knew . . . well, I don’t even know what she’d do. She seems to have it in for me. Maybe giving her ammunition to use against me is not a very good idea at this point in my career.
Shit. Did I just screw up in a monumental way?
Then again, I’m not sure I would take it back even if I could. Elizabeth isn’t just any patient. She’s different somehow. I could sense from the very beginning that she doesn’t want help, but that maybe she needs it anyway.
“You think I crossed a line,” I say, prematurely agreeing with him.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve come to expect shit like that from you, but paying for an entire hospital stay? She could be here for weeks, Kyle. That’ll be expensive.”
I stare him down until he realizes the obvious.
“I know, I know,” he says. “It’s not like you can’t afford it, Warren friggin’ Buffet, but just because you can pay for it doesn’t mean you should. If you do it for every patient, eventually you will run out of money.”
“I don’t intend on doing it for every patient,” I say. “She’s pregnant. And she might be homeless. And even if she’s not, there’s something going on there. I mean she doesn’t have anybody. Literally. She has nobody. Who has nobody?”
“She obviously had somebody,” he says, making an obscene gesture with his hands by putting a finger inside a hole he made with his fist.
I roll my eyes at him as I toss back some much-needed caffeine.
“Maybe that’s why she got knocked up,” he says. “So she’d have someone.”
“Hmmm. Maybe,” I say, pondering that possibility.
“Are you going to tell your patient what you did?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I should. She doesn’t seem like a person who wants a handout.”
“So, you want to be the anonymous white knight,” he says. “You could always tell her the hospital decided to take her pro bono.”
I raise my brows at his suggestion. “Good idea,” I say. “Plus, I wouldn’t want it getting back to Red.”
“Red?” he asks.
“Dr. Redman. It’s my new nickname for her. She got red in the face when I called her ma’am last night. Plus, the name fits.”
He laughs. “Ah, the English rose of the vagina squad.”
“More like the British bitch, I’d say.”
“Yeah, but she’s hot.”
“She’s our parents’ age, Cameron.”
“Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do her in the on-call room,” he says.
The visual gives me a bad taste in my mouth. “You are seriously twisted,” I say.
“Speaking of on-call rooms, you tell Gina what you did?”
Oh, shit. I completely forgot to page Gina last night. I got pulled in to help on a few cases and then snuck in a few hours of shuteye. “No.”
“Why not?” he asks, pensively.
I shrug an unknowing shoulder.
“Maybe you didn’t tell her because you think she’d be jealous,” he says, eyebrows raised in inquisition.
“Why would Gina be jealous? It’s not like I haven’t done something like this before,” I say.
“Not on this level,” Cameron says. “And not for a beautiful young woman.”
“How do you know Elizabeth is young and beautiful?”
He smiles deviously. “I didn’t. But now I do.” He looks down at his beeping pager. Then he gets up and tosses what remains of his breakfast into a trashcan. “And maybe the fact that you want to keep this from Gina means you’ve crossed the line even more than paying the bill does.”