Page 24 of Doctor Enemy

My lips purse. “She didn’t?”

Lori just sniffs at me. Bruised and swollen, she’s still beautiful. And I must confess, it’s a relief to see her up and talking again.

“Alright, that’s fine.” I grab a handful of tissues and move over to the bed, slowly. It feels a little bit like I’m approaching a wild animal, and not just taking care of a patient. Our history together has tainted the situation. “You’re recovering well. Do you remember the accident?”

“Parts of it.” Lori takes the tissues when I offer them to her. “Your tag’s upside down.”

The corner of my mouth twitches upwards. “I know. I’ve got a ninety-three-year-old that I’m heading to next. She likes to feel helpful, so I try to give her something to fix. I was heading there when Maddie buzzed me that you were up.”

“Oh.” Her voice is thick and rough. “That’s… Nice of you.”

“I’ll have Maddie bring you a cup of ice chips. No water yet. I don’t want you trying to use a straw.” I lean over her, tugging gently at the tape on her forehead and peeling the gauze pad that it’s holding still backward, so I can get a better look at the stitches.

Clean, neat, and only as inflamed as stitches this early on should be.

“No signs of infection. You got lucky,” I say.

Lori snorts and then winces. “I don’t feel lucky.”

“That’s just the curse of being a patient at Mercy,” I insist. The pale blue of the patient gown that she’s wearing washes out her skin tone. It’s up high enough that the patients don’t have to worry about feeling indecent. “No one ever feels lucky until they leave.”

“You say that like you’ve been one before.”

“I was. Knee surgery, about seven years ago. Just a minor deal, but let me tell you, it made me feel like a drowned rat.” I put a new piece of paper tape on the gauze and press it back into place.

Lori goes silent. She stays that way while I finish checking through her charts and making sure that there aren’t any irregularities in her readings.

Everything looks good.

Except for Lori. She looks like she’s going to start crying again. And that thought makes my heart get heavy, in a way that it shouldn’t.

“We can’t up the dosage of painkillers that you’re on without risking its effect on the thinness of your blood,” I tell her, moving to prop a hip against the side of her bed. The blue fabric of my scrubs bunches up at the action. “But I can see about getting you some extra blankets and warming the room up. That should help relieve some of the tension in your muscles. If nothing else, it’ll make your legs feel better.”

“How bad are they?” Lori asks, thickly.

“Bruised and lacerated, but nothing broken.” I pause, looking her over. It’s a lot easier to get past her usual sharp tongue than I was expecting. “This isn’t about the pain, is it?”

She swallows, hard. The neck brace stops her from turning her head. She has to wear it three more days, just to be on the safe side as the whiplash that she’s dealing with was pretty severe. Lori’s eyes scrunch shut. “No.”

“Did you call your parents?”

“No. Not yet. I will call my mom. But she’s out of state. In Florida,” Lori says. “I don’t think she’ll be able to drive up. Money’s an issue.”

That strikes me as odd. Lori’s only a resident, but she should still be making enough cash to send home.

As though sensing my thoughts, Lori mumbles, “My mom’s really prideful. She doesn’t like taking help. And my stepdad doesn’t work. They probably aren’t going to come.”

“What about your biological father?”

“We haven’t heard anything from him since I was a kid, and he took off with the nanny.” The bitterness in her voice is enough to drown in. Under that though, there is still the underlying fear.

I’m silent for a moment, thinking that over, my tongue passing over my front teeth. I ask her, a little haltingly, “Would you like me to come back later?”

Lori’s eyes snap open. “What?”

There is a pile of scrunchies on her bedside table, and some get well soon cards. I reach over and pick one up. The bright purple scrunchie is covered with glittering silver stars, and a funny-looking purple hippo head has been hooked to it. “Did Olivia bring these up for you?”

“They were there when I woke up. I can’t reach the cards,” admits Lori.

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