All fucking week, I’ve hated Carter and his goddamn bullshit. Here he’s the boss from hell—one I can’t challenge. At home, I hardly see him because I mostly hide out in my room—something I’m considering a blessing in this moment since I’d likely want to chop him up into small pieces and serve him as dinner to the feral cats that chill in the alley nearby. All Tony said was that I shit-talked him and didn’t like him. And for truth, that’s my damn right as a resident. But does that mean I deserve to be treated like an intern? No. No it does not!
“Fuck, I just hate Carter every fucking season there is.”
“That’s a lie. You just don’t like the way I punish you,” he says from behind me, and I growl.
I can’t even lament my jerk attending without him finding out. I feel him shift in behind me, the corner of his mouth kicks up against my ear and my heart—that should freaking know better by this point—trips over itself in my chest.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
I swallow hard and sink my teeth into my bottom lip. I have been. Because in the week since we had our wild night of hot, dirty sex, I’ve been reliving it. Every night. In my fucking dreams. I wake up sweaty and turned on. My panties soaked. How am I supposed to live with a man, look at him day in and day out as both a roommate and a boss after dreams like that? Dreams that I know are based on reality.
“I haven’t been,” I lie, and he knows I’m lying because I suck at it. “I’ve just been busy. You’re the one who’s been changing the board to move my name off your service.” That and I haven’t been able to stop picturing you naked, so until that happens…
“I was thinking we could have dinner together tonight.”
I’m thinking that’s a horrible idea because I’m liable to jump him for dessert. Ugh!
“Maybe another night, Doctor,” I bit out acerbically. “I have a lot of scut that needs finishing.”
“Where’s your intern?”
“Running damn labs and swabs since you’re making us do them for all of the residents in the department.”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m punishing you so relentlessly, Doctor?”
Yes! But I’m too stubborn, so I’ll never ask.
“Because you’re an evil sadist?”
He chuckles. Bastard. Inching in closer until his chest nearly presses against my back, the scent of his bodywash and heat of his proximity does funny things to my insides.
“I didn’t say you could touch me, Dr. Fritz.”
“I’m not touching you, Dr. Hammond. I’m speaking directly to my insubordinate, smart-mouthed resident.”
“Dick.”
“What was that?”
Before I can tell him exactly what that was, Dylan yells to us from ten feet away. “Dr. Johnson has a patient hemorrhaging. She needs extra hands.”
Carter and I take off at a sprint, following Dylan down the hall and straight into the patient room. Straight into absolute pandemonium. Dr. Johnson is on the ground, her face ashen white, her scrubs saturated in blood, her arm visibly broken, being attended to by a nurse.
Meanwhile, Seliene, another nurse, has her hands on the patient’s abdomen, massaging. “Her uterus is obtunded. I’ve opened up her Pitocin IV and given both buccal (in the inner lining of the mouth) and IM (intramuscular) Misoprostol. Nothing is helping.”
Jesus.
Carter and I immediately gown and glove up. Dad is sitting in a chair up by his wife’s head, holding his newborn baby, a look of pure abject horror on his face. Meanwhile the patient is lying there, calm and quiet, but visibly shaken.
“She needs the OR,” Carter states, as I maneuver myself in between the patient’s legs, inserting my gloved hand up into her uterus.
“I’m able to appreciate retained placental parts,” I state.
“What happened?” Carter asks Janet.
“I slipped,” she snaps, throwing me a scathing look like it’s my fault she fell, and her patient is bleeding everywhere. “I had to pick up extra slack since Grace hasn’t been pulling her weight with patients.”
First, that’s a fucking lie if ever there was one. Second, every time I check the board, my name is missing from it and hers is everywhere. Why would Carter do that to me in favor of her? Clearly she wasn’t capable of handling all he was giving her.
“That’s not what I asked,” Carter barks. “I meant with the patient.”
“The placenta was retained,” Seliene answers for her. “Dr. Johnson attempted a manual extraction, but in doing so, it came out missing a piece and then the patient’s uterus began hemorrhaging. This is Courtney and her husband Brandon.” She points to the patient and her husband.
“I’m Dr. Fritz and the woman whose hand is inside you now is Dr. Hammond. We’re going to take excellent care of you.”
Courtney licks her dry lips and nods her head, her skin tacky and pale, likely with blood loss.
“I’ve ordered some type-specific,” Dylan says. “I’ve arranged for it to be waiting for us in the OR.”
I throw him a grateful look. “Good thinking Dr. Williams.”
“What about me?” Janet barks from the floor.
Carter twists his neck to stare at her, stunned she’s even brazened enough to ask that. “Take her down to the ED,” he tells the nurse helping her. “You need your wrist x-rayed and casted. And get yourself cleaned up too then go home and rest. Come in first thing tomorrow to my office so we can talk.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she says, embarrassment and discomfort staining her features, but I can’t focus on her because even internal massage is doing nothing to slow this bleeding. Nothing is helping.
“Dr. Fritz, we need to move now. Has the OR been prepped?”
“Yes,” Dylan answers. “She’s also already been consented by Dr. Johnson.”
Well at least Janet did that right.
“Okay, let’s move,” Carter orders.
“We’re going to take you to the OR now to stop the bleeding,” I inform the patient. “Don’t worry, you’re in excellent hands and we’ll do everything we can for you. Seliene, will you take Dad and baby…”
“Simone,” Dad supplies, his voice thick with emotion.
“Simone down to the nursery? There’s a rocking chair in there that might be more comfortable, and the nurses can help you feed her.”
Dad stands up, cradling his baby in his arms while the nurses unplug the IV pump and raise the bedrails, ready to move her. I have my hand still inside the patient because I might have found the source of the bleeding and I’m not moving until we’re in that OR.
Brandon kisses Courtney on the lips before shifting the baby so she can kiss her too.
Then we move, me climbing up onto the base of the bed so I can stay in position, us being wheeled down the hall and straight into the prepped OR. There is a scrub nurse already in there waiting as well as an anesthesiologist.
“Grace, don’t move your hand until I’m scrubbed in and ready,” Carter growls at me before turning on the anesthesiologist. “Give the patient a bolus of Fentanyl into her epidural line.”