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  He told me to hold still, then he positioned the ultrasound probe. After some incoherent mumbles and garbled grunts, he finally reverted to English.

  “Yes, I see the follicle. Right on schedule.” Like I’m a bus station or something.

  “I’m not finished yet,” he said with a hand pushing down my knee to place my foot back into the stirrup that I was eager to vacate. I wanted to sit up, to pull my flimsy paper protection back down around me. “There were some abnormalities in your Pap smear.”

  I lay back down and stared at the ceiling while he pushed the machine to the side. “Abnormalities?” I asked, as one of my hands grasped the other for comfort. They clung to each other on top of my crinkly dress. I tried to breathe evenly. I tried to relax my legs. I couldn’t.

  He fiddled with more equipment. “Oh, don’t you worry.”

  Yeah right. They’re not your abnormalities.

  “So what does that mean? What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’m sure everything will be just fine. Now, you hold still and relax.”

  Hold still. Relax. Sure. Right. Of course.

  “That means I need a biopsy, right?”

  “No need to worry.” He was all scrunched down at the end of the exam table and his voice was low and muffled while he did the procedure.

  About a year later, he finished. A tear trickled down my cheek. But I hadn’t moved. Feet right in the stirrups where they belonged. Bet a man invented stirrups. And speculums.

  What a good girl I was, he said.

  I wanted to kick him in the teeth.

  He told me to lie there and rest and he’d be back after a while.

  I rolled to my side on the narrow table, tucked the stiff gown around me, and curled up hoping to get comfortable. I focused on going back to my happy place with George. I had to pretend he was still a bachelor. (In my fantasy, I get to make the rules.) Once I forgot I was wearing origami and could conjure images of the two of us on a tropical island, I fell asleep.

  When I jerked awake, I looked around trying to figure out where I was. I wasn’t on any island. I got up, put on real clothes, and peeked out the door. The lights were low and the only sounds were the bubbles from a humming fish tank. I left the exam room, wondering if I’d been forgotten and locked in for the night.

  An alcove at the end of the hall had a desk weighted down with towers of stackable plastic in and out trays packed with haphazard piles of charts, all illuminated by a goose neck desk lamp. Behind one particularly high pillar of records, Dr. “Sh-omething” sat, scribbling away in a notebook. I walked over to him and he snapped his head up in what looked like surprise.

  He stammered a second, then gathered his composure.

  “Kathleen? Oh, well, then. If you’re feeling better, I think it would be fine to go now.” Like he hadn’t totally forgotten me in the other room.

  “Did you look at the biopsy?” I asked, wondering if my voice conveyed the frustration I felt.

  “Biopsy? Yes, yes. Everything’s fine, Kathleen. Nothing to worry about. You go on home now and get some rest. Take it easy for a couple days. You’ll need to stay off your feet.”

  I scowled at him. I couldn’t help it. Off my feet?

  “Call me if anything happens. If your period starts, call me.” Now he was totally himself again, talking as if he’d planned all along to give me the instruction once I decided I was ready to go home. Sheese.

  “Didn’t you do a biopsy?”

  “All fine. Nothing to worry about.”

  “But the Pap smear. Wasn’t it abnormal?”

  “Normal on recheck.”

  “What about the cyst?”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Perfect?” As in, Perfect, that’s the best, perfectly formed cancer tumor I’ve seen in years?

  “It’s exactly what I like to see. Approximately fifteen millimeters in diameter. Right on schedule for development fifteen days post LMP. A functional follicular cyst. Nothing’s wrong, nothing to worry about. You go on home now, Kathleen.”

  After all that, nothing to worry about? Criminey. He was sh-omething all right.

  He ushered me out, re-locking the door with a loud crack.

  Test this piece of me, analyze that slice of me, rip that chunk out of me—just to be told, It was nothing, Kathleen, nothing to worry about? I go from having cancer with three minutes left to live to It was nothing, Kathleen. Creeped me out the way he kept saying my name like that.

  The whole mess was probably some lab error all along and he just wouldn’t admit it. Or some scam to get my co-pay.

  Next time I needed a doctor, I’d be better off giving Ollie’s vet a call.

  Chapter 5

  Two days later, General Hospital and I were spending the afternoon together when the phone on the credenza jingled. I was lucky I still had my landline, since my cell still hadn’t recovered from doing the backstroke in the john. Charge Sarge wanted me to work the day shift instead of Nights. Staffing was messed up. I agreed to do it. It was nice to work like the rest of the world once in a while.

  Before I hung up, Charge Sarge said, “And Johnston, there’s a note here taped at the desk for you that you’ll need to take care of.”

  “Note?” I asked. I traced a scratch along the top of the old sideboard with my fingertip, hoping this didn’t mean there was a problem.

  “Yup. You need to take care of it.”

  “Who’s it from?” Notes taped at the desk on my unit were rarely a good thing.

  “Take care of it tomorrow when you come in.”

  “Did I win something?”

  “Nope.”

  Uh-oh. “Hope it’s a nice note.”

  “Doubt it.” She hung up.

  Great. It seemed I was in trouble. They always taped up notes when we did something wrong. A sour burn started in my belly that maybe I’d crossed the wrong line by helping Nikki. I needed a Tums.

  When I arrived at work the next day, I found my note. It was screaming from the counter’s edge, folded over and taped up with my name emblazoned on the outside. Very subtle. The staff was going to eat this up. Not all the nurses on my floor had a Bachelors of Nursing degree, but every single one of them had a Doctorate in Gossiping.

  I used the few minutes before my shift to read the mysterious dispatch. Uh, boy. Administration wanted me to go upstairs and report to the hospital’s new head honcho, some doctor administrator character. Lucky me. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with Nikki and adopting out hospital babies that weren’t mine, and he’d tell me I’d been chosen as employee of the year and give me a special parking place.

  The upstairs offices weren’t open yet, so I got Report and started with my patients, trying to keep my mind off what could be the cause of my summons to the pinnacle of the power structure. I was popping orange flavored Tums like they were M&M’s.

  Finally by ten, I took my break and hoofed up the stairwell to the seventh floor where the administrative offices were.

  I forgot how out of breath I was when I saw the extravagant suite of offices. Nice. I meandered over the plush carpet, sinking into the deep pile, past all the framed art prints embellishing the taupe walls. Very swanky. We never got taupe downstairs. Only gray down there. They’d really refurbished the floor, to a point you wouldn’t even know the rest of the main building was a hundred-year-old monstrous relic that could fall apart any minute. At the end of the vast hallway at a desk in a spacious reception area sat a woman as wide as a bus. A grand picture window back-lit her, making it look more like the corporate headquarters of a well-off financial district tower. The obese woman was chewing something. She aimed her pinched nose at me and watched me with suspicious eyes.

  Beneath her intense scrutiny, I approached her desk. Because of her censorious expression, I reverted to Sassy, like I always did when I was provoked.

  “Dead man walking here,” I called out as I traversed the long hallway
.

  Not even a smirk at my joke.

  “I got a note to come to the principal’s office.”

  Her eyes narrowed more. Apparently she didn’t get my kind of humor.

  I held up the note and pointed to it. “It says to come see the chief administrator. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  She swallowed whatever was still in her mouth and picked up her phone to punch a button without so much as a how-do-you-do. “There is a—” She scowled at me.

  “Kate from L&D.” I held up my lovely note again.

  “…Kate here to see you.” She paused to listen, then hung up. “He’ll see you in a moment.”

  I stood there, staring at her, resisting the urge to swipe my hair behind my ear, wondering who could stare the longest.

  I don’t think she wanted to play. She looked away like I wasn’t there.

  The door opened behind me, so I turned to face the principal. There stood the round-faced, lima-bean-eyed Dr. Sh-omething. My stomach flipped and all my Pissy turned to Sissy.

  “It’s you,” he said, opening his lima beans in surprise. “The name…I didn’t recognize…I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “Me neither. I mean, I knew I worked here. I didn’t know you worked here.” Man, I wish I didn’t resort to Stupid when I was nervous. “Why are you here?” I hated seeing him again. He totally gave me the creeps.

  “I’m the new hospital administrator.”

  “But you were seeing patients.”

  “My position is changing.”

  “But you told me your name is ‘Shrader.’ My note says to see ‘Schroder.’ ”

  “That’s how you say it. Shrader.” His look turned grumpier. “Come in and close the door.” He jerked his suit coat closed, buttoned it, and disappeared into his office.

  I trailed behind him, slowing down to delay the inevitable necessity to enter his lair. Before crossing the threshold, I glanced back at the receptionist, hoping she wasn’t paying any attention.

  She was smirking at me over her Snickers bar. I wanted to throw her a heil Hitler salute, but my sane side grabbed my arm and held it down until I turned back around and went in.

  “Sit,” he barked at me when I came in. I wish I could’ve barked back. Instead, I shut the door and lowered myself into an oversized wingback. It swallowed me like a giant bean bag. He stood up from where he sat on the edge of his desk and towered over me. “It has come to my attention that you have handled a situation rather poorly, and I intend to see that it never happens again.”

  I tried to lift myself a little out of the chair gulping me down. I prepared to defend myself and tell him it was what the birth-mother wanted.

  “A few nights ago when you were covering for the charge nurse in Labor and Delivery, you took it upon yourself to discipline a peer and expel her from the unit.”

  Oh brother. You’ve got to be kidding. Was that all? I tried to relax. “You mean Sheila Langley.”

  “What you did was unacceptable.”

  I braced myself to contradict the guy who practically ran the whole hospital. “Actually, what I did is nursing policy.” I couldn’t believe I sassed at him like that. My Pissy was kicking back in.

  “Humiliating her in front of the entire floor was unprofessional. If you’d addressed your concerns in private, she could have excused herself quietly and no one need have known.”

  He lectured me like my second grade teacher used to.

  “I didn’t say—” I started. He cut me off with his raised hand then mocked me with a whiney voice.

  “I didn’t say… That will not get anywhere with me, young lady.” Young lady? Like he was the only grown-up in the room. “I will not stand here and argue with you. You will not act as charge nurse for six months and if I hear any more, we will no longer require your employment here.”

  Sheila, that bitch. She was going to pay for this. I got so mad, my brain started exploding. I shouldn’t let this guy push me around. I’d come a long way and I wasn’t about to curl up like a whipped dog and let him have control over me.

  “Sheila told—”

  “You may go.” He moved toward the door to see me out. I was dismissed.

  I swallowed my retort and wrestled out of the crater in the chair. My reasonable side had broken through and told me to shut the hell up already. She reminded me that I really needed my job.

  Smoldering, I went to the door and he swung it open. The rotund secretary had positioned her fat ear right outside the door. The better to hear your bawling-out with, my dear.

  “Hello, Dr. Schroeder,” she said when the door opened, all innocent like, as though she hadn’t just been caught eavesdropping. I squeezed past her, working hard not to bump her flesh. She didn’t even try to give me room, just ignored me and started babbling, covering for getting caught. “I was just about to knock. I see you’re finished, Dr. Schroeder. Um, the floor, your floor, Ms. um,” she couldn’t even remember my name, “Labor and Delivery called to say Nichole Trent is back on the floor and wants to see you.” I heard her in my peripheral hearing, around all the cussing going off in my head. I realized she was talking to me.

  She stammered again, as though she hadn’t even thought about what she was saying, just spewing the first thing that came when we caught her lurking outside the door.

  I dismissed her and started for the elevator. I couldn’t wait to get away.

  Dr. Schmarmy grabbed my arm and pulled me around to face him.

  “Nichole Trent?” he said. “You know her?”

  “Maybe.” I shook his arm off.

  “Why? How do you know her?”

  “That’s confidential.” I turned again to leave, hoping I irritated him.

  Apparently I did. He yanked me back. My hair fell in my face. “Tell me,” he demanded.

  His touch nearly undid me that time. Clamping my teeth like I had lockjaw was the only way I could keep from yelling. I pulled a deep breath through my nose, brushed my hair back, and looked as squarely as I could into those little lima bean eyes of his.

  I had a choice. Would I stand up to him? Or would I collapse in fear, incapacitated at the confrontation? Things had crossed a line. My usual bravado, my façade of defiance and contention, was in serious jeopardy. If I let him intimidate me, break me, then all I’d fought to forget would win. I didn’t want to give in. I didn’t want to go back. I had to rally, had to gather all my courage, strength, and contempt to not let him take me down again.

  I tightened all my muscles. “Why do you suppose, Doctor?” I hawked out doctor as though I had a bad case of sinus drainage.

  “Were you her nurse? Did she have a baby?”

  I jerked out of his grasp and stepped a safer distance away, still struggling to keep my composure. Why was this so important to him?

  “Why do most women come to L&D?” I answered, letting my anger do the talking, quashing all thoughts of my own discomfort.

  “Stop this insolence and answer me!”

  “She had a baby. Yes. Can I go now?” I couldn’t maintain it too long. I needed to get out of there.

  He stepped toward me again. I backed away. “When did she deliver? Was she full term?”

  “That’s confidential.” Of course he couldn’t just leave it at that, couldn’t just leave me alone.

  “She was my patient. Answer me.” He reached again for me, his face turning red and his forehead’s vein getting bigger. But he checked his movement when I spun farther from his grasp.

  I huffed. Maybe it looked like fury more than the attempt to breathe that it really was. “She was full term. She had a girl, six pounds, some-odd ounces. Mother and baby are doing fine, if you care to know.” The words gushed out of me like water from a fire hose.

  He ran into his office and slammed the door.

  I stood there panting, hunched like I’d been hit in the gut. The secretary had backed away. I didn’t even look at her before I turned and walked away like a drunk trying to walk the yellow line without f
altering.

  I took the elevator. My legs wouldn’t have held up on the stairs. While I rode down, I stuffed all my anger and shame back down deep, where I always put it. Where it belonged. I didn’t need it. I’d put it behind me, put some steel back into my spine, and go on.

  I took the long way back to my unit. My breathing resumed a normal rate as I went out through the ER, walked around the outside of the hospital then reentered via the main entrance. No one talked to me on the way, not even my inner selves. They’d all flown into hiding. They wouldn’t come out until I could convince them it was safe again.

  When I got to L&D, Nikki was just leaving the unit on a stretcher. Leonard, the orderly, wheeled her out and told me she was going to the ER for IV antibiotics and maybe to be readmitted. I volunteered to transport her, and he took me up on my offer without hesitation.

  “Hi, Nikki,” I said, going back into nurse mode. She was a convenient distraction for me. “I got a message you were here looking for me. They didn’t say you were sick. What’s going on?” She looked awful, with a flushed, feverish look. Her eyes were circled in gray on white. Not good.

  We rolled onto the elevator. “I feel lousy. So I came back in. They say I have an infection.” She hesitated then asked, “How’s the baby?”

  The transfer had gone as scheduled, and Anna and Joe had Nikki’s baby. They were on Cloud Eleven, two levels up from the normal Nine, though I thought telling her might make her feel bad, thinking of her baby happily in someone else’s arms.

  “She’s fine.”

  “How about the parents?”

  “They’re happy.” Ecstatic. Triumphant. Crazy with joy. Goo-goo gaga over the little thing.

  “They don’t mind that she’s black?” Nikki said.

  “Black?”

  “Mixed race, anyway.”

  “Black?” That was a white baby if ever I’d seen one. “You mean black as in African-American?”

  “My baby daddy was the darkest black man I’ve ever known. His skin was like ebony. Darker.”

  “Maybe she took after you. I didn’t realize she was black.” She wasn’t black.

  “I hope she has his complexion.”

  “Sometimes babies of color have light skin at first. Their complexion darkens as they get older,” I said. This one could live a few hundred years on the beaches of California and still wouldn’t be black. Those violet eyes, her pale skin. She wasn’t black.