Page 6 of Nanny for the Doctor

I don’t respond. I’m about to go into the emergency room, and I need my head to be clear if I’m going to successfully help people.

* * *

The ER is slammedwhen I arrive, and I quickly wash up to get started with the worst cases. It’s a bit of work to get out of my head at first; I know I’ve let Henry downagain.

But I won’t disappoint these people. They need a doctor to pull them out of what could potentially be the worst day of their life, and I won’t miss my opportunity to save someone—not again.

I get the details about who needs my attention first, and I’m not surprised to see two of my regulars needing sutures.

“You two again?” I sigh. These teens are reckless on a good day, and today, they’ve managed to both wind up lying next to each other on hospital gurneys.

“You should have seen it! We almost landed a double grind at the same time!”

I roll my eyes as Eric speaks and then look over at his friend, David.

“Almost?”

“Landed on his truck and sent us both flying.”

Their legs are torn up pretty good, and I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if they weren’t wearing helmets and kneepads.

And then I’m thinking about Mae. I can’t believe she wound up here as one of my patients, and after all these years, she’s really grown up.

She’d have her hands full with kids like these, and I remember how much of an idiot I was when I was younger.

Mae never seemed like that. She was always trying to keep up with her brother.

An image of her when I’d visited long ago bubbles up in my mind. I pretended to forget her name, but I didn’t want to admit I’d been thinking about her since Johnny first introduced us.

Girlfriend or not, Mae had been too attractive to forget, and I shouldnothave been thinking of Johnny’s kid sister like that.

That part hasn’t changed. Mae is more beautiful than ever, and I saw her with a fat lip, so that’s saying something.

Focus, Reed. You have work to do.

The sutures are pretty straightforward, and I use the opportunity to show the basic techniques up close to a med student on call. He does well, considering it’s his first time seeing the needle actually go into the skin, and the guy only almost vomits once.

Next up is a straightforward head wound cleaning for an elderly gentleman who fell in a parking lot.

The EMTs that bring him in say a bystander actually helped the guy and gave them a clear rundown of what happened while applying some top-notch first aid.

Sometimes, I’m surprised by how well random passersby can do in an emergency, and I’m grateful someone was there to help this old guy. He’s ninety-three and on blood thinners, so there’s no doubt this head wound bled substantially when it happened.

Another person comes in presenting with a typical case of appendicitis, but apparently, the woman waited a while before coming to the hospital, and her appendix bursts while she’s here.

I rush her in for emergency surgery, and thankfully, I’m able to remove it and stabilize her before she goes septic. She’ll be in for a rough recovery and a healthy dose of antibiotics, but it could have definitely been worse.

There’s a natural lull in the evening, and I find one of the bunks in the on-call room to get some rest. I’ve trained myself to go to sleep in seconds, so I manage to sneak in about an hour of blissful unconsciousness before someone bursts through the door looking for me.

“Car accident. Woman and a child. Kid’s better off, but the woman coded in the bus. Internal bleeding.”

I shoot up off the bed and run to help. They’ll be here in seconds, and I go straight to the surgery suite to scrub in. The team who’s been here with me through the day scrubs in next to me and provides the details.

I’ll be working on the woman while the kid is sent down the hall to the emergency room. He’s got a few bumps and bruises and a concussion.

The woman’s tire blew while she was on the highway. Apparently, she’s the kid’s babysitter and was taking him out for the day. Her airbag went off when she hit the median, but it flipped her car, and she took severe blunt-force trauma to her sternum. Chest sounds indicated a punctured lung and strain to the heart.

She’s brought in, and I get to work checking the internal damage so I can start my repairs. While ninety-nine percent of my focus is on the current moment, I can’t stop the one percent from dwelling on Clara.

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