Page 4 of New River Gorge(ous)
The nurses frown at each other.
“Do you have his phone number?” the male nurse asks.
“Of course I do.”
She pulls out her phone and, with surprising deftness, locates his contact information. “Here.” She shows them the phone. It reads:Dr. Beckett Whistler (Next-door neighbor).“I will be leaving this place. Andhe’lltell you I can.”
The nurses grimace. Clearly Dr. Beckett Whistler is not June’s grandson. But she doesn’t want to be here.
“Miss June,” the younger nurse says placatingly. “We will call your surgeon in the morning. If your surgeon gives us the ok, you can go in the morning.”
June harrumphs.
“Miss June,” the older nurse says. “You know you can’t walk on that cast, and you can’t drive with it either.”
June sniffs. The younger nurse extends an arm to her, and she leans on it, relieved to take some weight off the heavy cast on her foot.
The older nurse returns to the building and procures a wheelchair. With as much dignity as she can muster, she sits down.
The young nurse takes over wheeling her back into the facility.
The alarms are still blaring from when June pushed open the emergency exit.
No one hears the deep voice crackling from June’s cell phone.
“June? June? Is everything alright?”
2
Dr. Beckett Whistler
When I bought my house, I thought I’d be gaining peace and quiet after busy shifts in the E.R. It’s idyllic, halfway up a mountain with a view of the New River below, and shares a drive with my neighbor. I did not anticipate my neighbor, a seventy-something-year-old woman, to be a source of constant annoyance.
Make no mistake, my dad taught me manners before he passed, and I will not be letting Miss June know how much her antics irritate me, but she is distinctly a thorn in my side.
Is it too much to ask for a neighbor whodoesn’tcall me at two a.m. on my night off?
But she’s also older, and she lives alone, and she tricked me into being her emergency contact when she brought me the absolute best fried chicken I’d ever eaten on the day I moved in. She’s crafty.
As an E.R. doctor, I’m no stranger to long hours and late nights. In the next month, I’m finally transitioning to the dayshift. Maybe then my sleep will become normal. For now, I’m awake.
I slide out of bed and throw on a pair of worn blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a flannel shirt. I take a breath and run my hand through my short beard. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but my conscience won’t let me do anything else guilt-free. I’ll never get any sleep if I don’t.
I pull my phone from the charger and dial the number of Rejuvenate, the inpatient physical rehabilitation center June is staying at after her ankle surgery.
It’s after hours, but someone should be at the desk. I follow the menu of options presented by the entirely too-chipper-for-the-middle-of-the-night recording.Does no one realize no one wants to be in these places?
By the time I’m connected to an actual human—because, of course, that’s the last option and not the first—I’m already in my car and driving down the road.
“Hello, Rejuvenate In-Patient Physical Rehabilitation Center. This is the front desk. How can I help you?”
The woman’s boredom grates on me. I grumble.Must be nice.There’s never been a boring night in the E.R.
My voice comes out more gruff than I intended. That tends to be the way of things, if the nurses are to be believed, and the E.R. manager, and all my medical school evaluations…
I help people in emergencies. I have manners, I just don’t have patience.
“I’m calling because June MacCord phoned me. Clearly there was an incident, and I need to check on her.”
