Maybe I was fragile as fuck but I required a full night of sleep and a protein-packed breakfast before daring to look her in the eye. I had to be prepared for her.
The exam room curtain clattered along its rod as Shapiro whipped it back. "Dr. Stremmel. I'd like a word with you."
With a quick glance starting at the floor, I took in her yellow sneakers, navy scrub pants, and t-shirt announcing Vaccines Cause Adults.
That much we could agree on.
I returned to my charting. "By all means."
"Did you staple a facial laceration?"
"I've been here since eight yesterday morning. I've stapled a lot of skin in that time. I'm going to need you to be a hell of a lot more specific."
She let out a huff, like the aggravated little noise that puppies made when you didn't give them the precise form of attention they wanted. "Female, age twenty-eight, orbital fracture and—"
"—a perforated bladder and internal bleeding from an MVA. Yeah." I'd worked on her and another case from that motor vehicle accident twelve hours ago. It felt like it'd been twelve days. "What about her?"
Sara's grip on the curtain tightened. "You stapled her face."
I pecked at the keyboard for a moment. I was shit at dictation and I didn't believe in using interns as scribes so that left me to write up my cases, which I did with the most specific, detailed notes to minimize the risk of a resident calling me in the middle of the night with a question. When I walked out the door, I was gone, and I wasn't letting anyone pull me back in until it was my time. "Sure did. She wasn't in a position to lose any more volume and it was my call to address the lac pre-operatively."
Sara huffed again, and though I didn't see it, it certainly sounded like she'd stomped her foot. I watched her push her black-rimmed glasses up her nose. She didn't wear the glasses too often which was for the best, it really was. They made her look like she was inspecting something and never pleased with her findings. Her blonde hair was up in a ponytail with a few loose tendrils trapped behind the arm of her glasses. Those wisps were darker than the hair swept up into the ponytail, almost brown. And curly. I went back to the keyboard.
"Do you have other questions or is this it?"
"You stapled her face," she repeated.
This time, a metallic whine sounded from the curtain rod. She was still yanking the damn thing, her knuckles shining back at me, bony and white, as her fist tightened on the fabric. Her hands were petite, her fingers slim. Perfect for plastic surgery, I was sure. She was the substantial, sturdy kind of small—short, compact, could probably beat the shit out of a punching bag—and she needed a step stool to reach the table in the OR.
I'd never noticed her hands before. We saw each other in passing all the time though it was usually her big, messy, blonde bun that caught my attention. Couldn't miss it. We moved in the same group of friends too though we rarely talked. I could tell she was a bruiser behind all that outward sunshine. She'd be nice as hell but she'd cut you if you crossed her.
Not that I cared.
I spared her a glance as I returned to my notes. One last case and this annoying conversation to get through before I was done with this place for three whole days. "I suppose this is an inefficient way of telling me that—as far as plastics is concerned—staples are not the standard of care for such a case."
"I'm telling you that your staples were clumsy and careless."
I jerked my head up. I wasn't annoyed anymore. Now I was pissed. "I doubt that."
"You doubt—" She stopped herself, her lips pressed tight together and her shoulders sharp like she wouldn't tolerate my response. She stood tall—or as tall as a little bit like her could—her feet anchored a shoulder's width apart in a stance that said fuck around and find out.
I gave her a solid minute to finish that sentence. When she didn't, I said, "I staple lacerations all the time. If we're able to clean it up, we do, but we're also aware they can wait until we've saved the patient from dying on the table to make their superficial injuries look nice. I'm sure you can agree it's more important to stop a hemorrhage or preserve organ systems than wait for plastics to put a face back together."
Her eyes flashed as she drew in a breath. "Do you know anything about skin? Or suturing? Or healing? Because—"
"Especially when there's an orbital fracture involved," I continued. "Isn't that the entire reason for plastics and reconstructive surgery? To put things back together after the life-threatening priorities have been sorted?"
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Many things, but my treatment prioritization has never been one of them."
She would've continued her tirade, of this I was certain, if she hadn't delivered another feral yank to the curtain. Instead of further debate as to the hierarchy of interventions with trauma cases—and whether I knew my shit—she tore the curtain from its clips and dislodged the rod from the ceiling in the process.
What came next was pure instinct. I didn't think about my actions at all. Maybe I should have, but if stopping and deliberating over split-second decisions was part of my brain's wiring, I wouldn't be a trauma surgeon. If I wasn't a trauma surgeon, I wouldn't be hiding out in this exam room, arguing about treatment plans with this screech owl of a plastic surgeon.
I wouldn't have sprung off the gurney and pushed her out of the way as the rod fell, along with two ceiling tiles.
I wouldn't have flattened her to the floor when the rod hit a metal procedure tray and sent it cartwheeling into an interior window, wheels first, while the supplies stationed on that tray rained down over us and the unmistakable sound of slowly shattering glass filled the room.
I wouldn't have stayed there, in that small, half-hidden exam room, with my body curled over Sara Shapiro's and a hand holding her head to my chest while the glass crumbled from the window casing.
And I definitely wouldn't have yelled, "What the hell is wrong with you?" while a half dozen emergency department employees rushed into what was left of the exam room.
Chapter 2
Sara
No one could keep a good bitch down…but that didn't mean she wouldn't end up on the floor.
The two-hundred-odd pounds of man on top of her, well, that was not part of the plan.
The code green lockdown of the emergency department wasn't on the list for today either.
Neither was the formal reprimand from the Chief of Surgery or the oversized, unnecessary consequence he dished out.
Sometimes, bitches overshot the mark. Sometimes, they made a mess.
The problem with being a savage-hearted bitch who was also a recovering people-pleaser was that I still had the "pleasure to have in class" good girl wandering around inside my head. On days like today when she couldn't decide whether to sit in the corner and panic or drown me in a highlight reel of my all-time worst moments until I was forced to admit I was a giant fucking fuckup, it was tough to find the truth.
Reprimands and consequences, those things didn't happen to me. No truly compulsive people-pleasing perfectionist ever found herself in the kind of trouble that came with finger wagging and deeply disappointed frowning. People like me, we'd sooner condense ourselves down into smaller and smaller particles and disappear altogether than land in a situation where we were straight up told to our fragile little faces we weren't good or right or enough.