Love Trauma: A Lakeside Hospital Novel Read online

  Krys smirked and just before she got out of earshot, she heard Chloe quip, “We haven’t even moved in together yet and she’s already making plans to escape.”

  2

  Darcy

  “Are you still having pain when you wake up?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Darcy Cosgrove said, her words partially obscured with a groan. She was laying on her back on a brightly colored mat and her physical therapist was pushing on the sole of her foot to bend and stretch her leg.

  The pain had slowly transformed over the last few months from a sharp, searing one to more of a dull, annoying ache – both upon waking and during her sessions with the therapist – but it still wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. After eight sessions, Darcy knew exactly what to expect from physical therapy, but she’d be glad when she didn’t need it anymore, along with the embarrassing cane she had to lug around with her.

  “That’s to be expected,” her therapist said, releasing her foot slowly to the ground. “It’s just a result of your muscles tightening while you sleep. Are you doing your exercises every day?”

  The therapist – her name was Amanda but Darcy always called her Miss Blackburn– extended her hand to Darcy and helped her get up from the floor. They’d just spent the last forty-five minutes running through a series of exercises designed to strengthen and restore Darcy’s thigh muscle after it had been sliced open by a large, unfortunate piece of shrapnel in her final tour of duty.

  Darcy was doing everything she could to restore her body to full functionality, but no matter how many times she did the exercises Miss Blackburn gave her, she was never going to be fit for active duty again.

  “Yes,” she said with a little more edge in her voice than was warranted. Darcy was frustrated by the situation and her bad luck more than by the therapy itself, but sometimes intense physical strain caused her emotional strain to rear its head as well.

  She was lucky that Miss Blackburn turned out to be a pretty good shrink as well as a physical therapist, and she was always ready to listen while they worked together.

  “Sounds like you’re reaching your limit for this session,” she said. “Why don’t we call it a day?”

  “Sounds good,” Darcy said, reaching for the water bottle she’d brought along with her. Physical therapy wasn’t exactly like boot camp, but it wasn’t entirely unlike it, either.

  “What have you got going on for the rest of your day?” Miss Blackburn asked as she grabbed a tablet and started jotting down a few notes from their session.

  “You’re going to laugh,” Darcy said.

  “At what?” Miss Blackburn asked.

  “You know how my brother’s been pestering me to get out there and make friends?” Darcy asked. In truth, she’d been the one who had pestered Daniel to help her make connections, but Darcy thought the story was funnier – or maybe just less pathetic – if it sounded like he was forcing her hand. Miss Blackburn nodded and Darcy said, “Well, he suggested I try some of the meet-up groups around Evanston and Chicago. I found some people who call themselves the Adventurers, and they do something different and quirky every week.”

  “Why would I laugh at that?” Miss Blackburn asked. “That sounds awesome.”

  “This week’s outing is rock climbing,” Darcy said, picking up her cane from where she’d rested it against the wall and waving it at her therapist. “How do you think I’m going to do?”

  Miss Blackburn didn’t give her the satisfaction of laughing at her situation. Instead, she responded with a very reasonable therapist’s answer. “People make accommodations for all sorts of disabilities, you know. As long as you’re not in pain, it’s okay to push yourself a little bit, and rock climbing is a great way to work on developing your upper body strength.”

  Darcy smiled and said, “You’re no fun.”

  “You won’t have that cane forever, you know,” Miss Blackburn reminded her. “It’s just a tool – not a crutch.”

  “Very clever,” Darcy said.

  * * *

  The rock climbing group turned out to be a bunch of thrill-seekers. Darcy wouldn’t have been out of place among them before her injury – being a combat medic in the army necessitated a certain degree of affinity for adrenaline – but thanks to her reduced mobility, they left her literally in the dust.

  The group met at an indoor rock climbing facility in Chicago and Darcy recognized a couple of them from the meet-ups she’d gone to before. She found the idea of making friends in this way silly, and so far it had been less than productive, but her brother was right – she had to try something to get her out of the house.

  Darcy had been home from Iraq for three months, living in her dad’s spare bedroom while he flew all over the country as a commercial pilot and was hardly ever home. Going to physical therapy once a week was hardly enough to keep her mind occupied, and being honorably discharged from the military - where she’d built her career over the last decade - was a hard thing to wrap her head around.

  It wasn’t until her leg started to heal and she was able to take her mind off the pain that she realized that not only had her career been ended, but also her friendships. Every relationship she’d built over the last ten years had been severed the moment she was forced into retirement.

  So she went to movie night, played coffee house chess, attended a book club, and now she was sitting at a table pushed up against one wall, watching a bunch of strangers climb up a rock wall that she didn’t feel physically ready to tackle herself. All in the name of getting back out there and figuring out what kind of life she was going to lead next.

  The people in her meet-up group were perfectly nice.

  Amy, the soccer mom who dropped the kids off with a babysitter once a week to try new things, stuck around the table with Darcy for a few minutes to chat. Freddie, who Darcy could tell was absolutely dying to conquer the rock wall the moment they stepped foot inside the building, did his best to keep her company for a while. But in the end, she sent them all away and told them not to worry about her.

  She’d sit this one out and have real fun at the next outing.

  Darcy stayed for about an hour, just long enough to see Freddie spider monkey his way up the wall and then holler in triumph as he repelled back down. Then she said her goodbyes, picked up her cane, and was secretly relieved to head home.

  The little ranch house was empty as usual and as soon as Darcy climbed out of her truck, leaning on her cane to keep her balance, she could hear her dog barking inside. That never failed to put a smile on her face, and Darcy ambled up the stone steps to the front door as fast as she could.

  As soon as she opened the door, a thirteen-year-old golden retriever jumped up and put his paws on her chest as if he was still a spry little puppy.

  “Hey, Harvey,” Darcy said, ruffling his ears. “I’ve been gone three hours and you’re acting like I abandoned you. Don’t worry, I missed you too, buddy.”

  She let him lick her hands – her dad hated that and Harvey took advantage of Darcy’s lax rules whenever he could. She gave him a vigorous pet and told him he was a very good boy, indeed! because everyone needed to hear that once in a while.

  Then she grabbed his collar and led him back into the house. Ever since Darcy came home, Harvey stuck by her side everywhere she walked, and as long as she was home he would be on her like glue. It was a problem at first, when she was still recovering from her surgery and hadn’t graduated from a walker to her cane. She was constantly stumbling over him and trying not to go crashing to the floor on her bad leg, but Darcy couldn’t argue with Harvey’s enthusiasm.

  He’d been her dog when she was a teenager, a gift on her fifteenth birthday that she’d known at the time was an attempt by her father to buy her affections after her parents’ divorce. Not that he needed to make the effort – Darcy had always been firmly on his side.

  When she enlisted, though, Harvey became her dad’s dog and it had been almost as sad to say goodbye to him as it was to leave the r
est of her family for basic training. Well, everyone except her mom, who didn’t even show up to see Darcy off.

  But when she came home, Harvey made it clear that he never forgot who his master was. The first thing he did when Darcy came home from the hospital was jump into her lap and lick her entire face while her dad stood aside and tried not to gag at the sight of it.

  Harvey was Darcy’s favorite part about this new civilian life. He was old, she was infirm, and they were two peas in a pod.

  She went into the kitchen and pulled a dog biscuit out of a jar on the counter, letting Harvey chomp at it and leaving crumbs all over the linoleum for her to clean up later. Then when he was finished, she grabbed the leash hanging on the hook by the side door and said, “Want to go for a walk?”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before he was jumping around her all over again. Darcy clipped the leash to his collar and they headed outside. This was how she spent most of her afternoons when her dad was out of town, taking leisurely walks around the neighborhood with Harvey.

  There was a dog park just near enough that Darcy could make it there with her cane in about twenty minutes, and she took Harvey there a couple of times a week. Now that the summer was coming into full swing, she’d gotten in the habit of stopping at a little ice cream parlor on the way home and buying them both cones.

  “Come on, Harvey,” she said as they headed up the sidewalk. “Let’s go to the dog park and see if we can pick up a couple of chicks. I’m a babe magnet, you know – I could probably help you out.”

  3

  Krys

  Krys had a nice time at the graduation ceremony, but she never felt more at home than when she was in the ER at Lakeside Hospital.

  The week following the graduation went by in a blur of patients, ambulances, and clinic hours. It was early June and that meant all sorts of warm-weather injuries to keep Krys busy. There were bee stings and broken limbs, heat exhaustion and poison ivy. Krys took great pride in her ability to fix it all, moving swiftly from one bed to the next all day long.

  Sometimes she thought of it as a dance between herself, the other doctors and nurses, and the patients - exquisitely choreographed and absolutely vital for everyone to carry out their own steps correctly. There was no room for a misstep here or a stumble there when a kid in bed three had a bee sting that swelled her face to the size of a softball and the teenager in bed twelve was hissing in pain from allowing a firecracker to go off in his hand.

  That was when Krys was at her best – as both a choreographer and a dancer, sending nurses to check on patients and triaging everyone as they came in to assess the severity of their issues. She’d gotten a reputation at Lakeside over the last five years – everyone knew her speed and efficiency, and a lot of the medical students admired her for the way she balanced patient care with bedside manner.

  Of course, sometimes it was a little less graceful than a dance.

  Sometimes there were half a dozen patient monitors going off all at once while doctors and nurses hustled across the floor, bumping into each other as they went and forgetting everything in the world except what it took to save lives.

  Krys didn’t care which was the flavor of the day – she loved it all. There was the feeling of adrenaline in her veins and the responsibility of holding patients’ lives in her hands. Sometimes she didn’t have time to eat or sit down from the moment she hit the ER floor until she clocked out up to twelve hours later, and she barely even felt it until she crashed on her couch at home.

  The ambulance bay doors never stopped opening, and Krys never tired of running over to meet her newest patient, especially when someone interesting came through the doors.

  Krys was standing at the nurses’ station, jotting some speedy notes about her last case, when a set of paramedics came through the door with a man on a gurney and called for help. There was nothing unusual about that, until Krys got closer and saw that he had a Bic pen sticking out of his throat.

  “What the hell?” Krys said as she took her place beside the gurney to assess the patient.

  Her first thought was that he’d been stabbed in an office supply store, but the ink had been removed, leaving a hollow plastic tube, and the pen was meticulously placed two finger widths above the sternal notch. This was an intentional tracheotomy, and it looked like it was straight out of a ridiculous medical drama show.

  “Who’s playing MacGyver with this guy?” Krys barked, then pointed the paramedics to an open bed and snapped on a pair of gloves.

  “Me,” said a tall, trim woman who was following behind the gurney, looking concerned for the man. “He was having an allergic reaction to seafood.”

  The patient’s face was red and his lips were swollen to at least twice their normal size, but he was breathing shallowly thanks to the creative tracheotomy. As ridiculous as it looked, Krys had to admit that it was possible that the pen saved his life.

  “You a doctor?” Krys asked the woman as she took a needle full of epinephrine from a nurse standing at the ready beside her.

  “An Army combat medic, ma’am,” the woman said. Her posture certainly indicated that – it was rigid as a board.

  “What did you do to sterilize the site before you trached him?” Krys asked. Internally, she was praying that this woman had a good answer, because if it was nothing, then the guy would be in for a rough recovery.

  “I used alcohol from the restaurant bar,” the woman said. “I know it’s not perfect, ma’am, but it was the best thing on hand.”

  “Okay,” Krys said. “Go wait by the nurses’ station, MacGyver. I might have more questions once we stabilize him.”

  The woman walked over to the counter at the far end of the ER, favoring her right side, and then Krys turned all of her attention back to her patient. She gave him the epi to stop the allergic reaction, then asked the nurse to call surgery.

  “She didn’t do a bad job all things considered, but he’s going to need some patching up,” Krys said.

  In truth, the more she looked at the incision in the man’s neck, the more impressed Krys became. This was clearly a severe allergic reaction, and if there had been any delay in the paramedics’ arrival, the man could have died of asphyxiation well before he ever got to the hospital. She might have done the same thing if she’d been in this situation.

  “Do you know specifically what he’s allergic to?” Krys asked the paramedics as they transferred the man into the hospital bed.

  “Shellfish,” one of them said. “Guess there was some clam juice in his meal.”

  “What about his family?” Krys asked. She nodded to the woman at the nurses’ station and asked, “Is she it?”

  “I don’t think so,” one of the paramedics said. “Sounded like they were doing one of those meet-up things.”

  “What the hell is that?” Krys asked.

  “You know, when you meet strangers to make new friends,” the nurse said.

  “Oh,” Krys said, glancing over at the woman again. She had short-cropped, dark hair that accentuated her features, and her eyes were expressive as she looked around the ER and took in the wonderful chaos that Krys loved so much. That woman had trouble making friends? Krys turned back to the nurse and said, “Get identification from his wallet and see if you can contact the family.”

  The paramedics packed up and left while Krys placed an IV to give the patient a drip of antihistamines. Then Ivy showed up to assess the cut and decide if surgical intervention would be necessary.

  Her eyes went wide as soon as she saw the pen.

  “Have you lost control of your ER?” she asked Krys. “The hospital buys trach tubes for this, you know.”

  Krys rolled her eyes and nodded in the direction of MacGyver over at the nurses’ station. “It wasn’t me - it was her. She’s a combat medic.”

  “Interesting,” Ivy said as she took a look at the woman. “She’s hot.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Krys asked.

  “Just an observat
ion,” Ivy said as she bent over the bed to examine the patient.

  “Ever since you and Chloe moved in together, you’ve been insufferable. Just because you’re blissfully happy doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to suddenly pair up, too. Did you know that?” Krys asked, to which Ivy simply grinned at her. Then Krys said, “So what do you think of my patient?”

  “He received an impressively clean tracheotomy with unconventional tools,” she said, looking again at MacGyver and nodding her respect. Then she told Krys, “I don’t think this is a surgical case.”

  “Okay, thanks for the consult,” Krys said.

  “You’re welcome,” Ivy said. “You should ask her out.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Krys said. “And unprofessional.”

  “She’s not a patient,” Ivy said with a shrug. “And you know you’re impressed with this. Just think about it.”

  Krys rolled her eyes and was grateful when Ivy headed out of the ER. She brushed aside the thought and called the nurse back over, who had been able to locate the patient’s family thanks to an emergency contact card in his wallet. With a quick glance at the attractive, mysterious woman waiting for her at the nurses’ station, Krys prepared to remove the pen.

  * * *

  By the time the patient was stabilized and breathing on his own again, at least twenty minutes had gone by and Krys was surprised to see the woman still waiting for her at the nurses’ station. She’d asked her to stay, but most people wouldn’t have stuck around the ER on account of a stranger for so long.

  Krys’s heart took a strange leap toward her throat at the idea of talking to her, and for that she blamed Ivy. She’d been right – the woman was hot – but that had nothing to do with this.

  Krys stripped off her gloves and left the patient in the hands of one of the nurses, then went over to the counter and extended her hand. “I’m Dr. Krys Stevens.”