Page 8 of Stone Vows

I climb off her and lay on my back next to her, knowing we’d better get dressed soon. There is only so long we can keep the door locked before another resident pounds on it. This is only one of two on-call rooms available to residents, and it’s heading for midnight.

We pull on our clothes but don’t get up. It’s dark in here. Quiet. And we take a beat to enjoy the peace.

In a matter of minutes, I realize Gina is asleep. I laugh. The girl could fall asleep anywhere. Before she went to med school, she volunteered for the Doctors Without Borders organization. She spent a year in Uganda observing and helping medical personnel. She had to learn to sleep through all kinds of shit. Guess it stuck with her.

I look down at her and study her face in the sliver of moonlight shining through the window curtain. Her hair is messy and coming out of her ponytail. Her makeup is smudged from the sleep I woke her out of. She has a long, elegant nose. One that I know has a small smattering of freckles across it even though I can’t see them now. She is beautiful by anyone’s standards. Gorgeous even.

I think back to the day we started all this. This, whatever it is. Friends with benefits. Fuck buddies.

We were a few months into our intern year when Gina fell apart after telling a patient’s family he had died. Doing that was supposed to be the attending’s job, or the resident’s at the very least. Interns are there to learn from them. Typically, they don’t let us do shit our first year. But Gina had a douchebag resident she was working with who decided to throw her head-first into the deep end. Without warning, the prick walks Gina over to the family and tells them Gina has news for them.

She was a wreck. The patient was sixteen years old and died in a car accident. I was sleeping in the on-call room when Gina ran in and broke down. She was almost in hysterics. She knew she’d have to do things like that. It was part of the job. But what the asshole resident didn’t know when he threw her up the goddamn creek without a paddle, was that her younger brother was killed in a car accident when she was in med school.

As interns, she and I had barely gotten to know each other, as our rotations were not on the same schedule. But when she came in the room, it was clear she needed something to help her through it. She needed someone. She needed me. So I gave her the only piece of me I could give.

I don’t even think we spoke a word. We just tore each other’s clothes off and had sex. Raw animal sex. Totally free from emotion. Quick and dirty. Then she went back to work and I went back to sleep. We never even spoke of it.

Then a few weeks later, I had my own crisis. A four-year-old kid came into the ER in anaphylactic shock from a bee sting. She was all but dead when the child’s Hispanic mother carried her in, screaming things in broken English, with the girl’s lifeless body in her arms.

We worked for forty-five minutes to try and get the small beautiful brown girl back. I was given point, which surprised me since I was wet behind the ears. I intubated her, which was no easy feat considering her throat was swelling up like a balloon. I performed CPR until my body simply gave out. We pushed drug after drug, pulling any and all stops to try to work a miracle.

In the end, I was told she was gone from the start, but that it was a good teaching case for me.

I was livid. I threw a procedure tray across the room and cussed out my attending and my resident supervisor. I stormed out, sure I’d be fired after my display of insubordination. Gina saw the tail end of my tirade and pulled me into the on-call room where she ‘helped’ me just as I’d ‘helped’ her a few weeks before.

After that, it just became a thing. When one of us had a bad case or a stressful day, we’d summon the other to an on-call room. It’s been almost a year since it first happened. It’s the ideal situation for two second-year residents owned by the hospital. No messy relationship. No complicated feelings.

I carefully climb over Gina, trying not to wake her. She’s on until morning. She can use all the sleep she can get. And I’ve got a six-pack of ridiculously expensive craft beer waiting for me at home.

~ ~ ~

Next shift, I’m finishing up a chart behind the nurses’ station when a familiar face walks through the ER doors. I smile when I see her, but then I realize she’s got someone with her and she looks worried.

I drop the chart and push through the doors into the waiting area. “Skylar, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, Kyle, I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “This is Jorge, my head chef. An accident in our kitchen caused some burns on his arms.”

I quickly assess the deep red flesh on both of his forearms and escort them into the back.

“Where can I put him?” I ask the charge nurse.

“Curtain two,” she says, before directing one of her nurses to take the case.

I find one of the new interns and have her follow me. This isn’t a complex case and she can easily handle it.

“How did this happen?” I ask Jorge.

“I was stupid,” he says. “One of the strings on my apron got caught on the pasta pot on the stove, and I instinctively reached out to try and keep it from falling.”

A senior resident comes in to take a look and then lets me continue with my assessment. “It looks like second-degree burns mostly. We can give you some pain relief and salve the wounds, but they may take a few weeks to fully heal.”

While my intern, Hannah Clemens, gathers the supplies, I talk to Skylar. She manages a restaurant a few blocks over that bears her maiden name, and that of her parents who own it—Mitchell’s. Skylar grew up with Ethan’s wife, Charlie. She and her sisters, Baylor and Piper, were like sisters to Charlie. They are one big family into which I’m fortunate enough to be included.

“He’ll be okay,” I assure her. “Give him a few days off and make sure the burns stay covered with a non-stick dry bandage while working and he’ll be good as new.”

She breathes out a sigh of relief before she hugs me. “Thank you.”

I laugh. “I didn’t do anything. Looks like you did all the right things before you brought him in.”

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