“You’re late,” said the charge nurse. “Again.”
“Sorry.”
“Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean you can break the rules,” she said. Are you stupid?
“Yeah.”
I made my way back to my assigned room. Luz saw me and glared. I sighed and proceeded to ignore her through my next assessment of Javier. He’d only lost a quarter of a centimeter of feeling this time. Maybe the swelling in his spine was going down. The dots down his side hadn’t always been regular up to this point. Who knew.
I bided my time until shift change. Luz tried to get the next nurse to let her spend the night, like I thought she would, and was refused, much to both their chagrin: my replacement’s, that Luz was still there to ask, and Luz’s because she hadn’t gotten her way.
I listened to their heated argument as I co-signed the chart. Tonight was going to be long for everyone.
The thought of holiday pay was no longer enough to sustain me as I walked back down to Y4. Between being tired, being hungry, and being disgusted with myself over Gideon, Dren, and Jake, I had no strength left to hold up my head.
I slouched into the locker room and changed my scrubs quickly, so I wouldn’t bring strange germs back down. As if anything I’d seen in trauma could be stranger than my job here.
Gina came in, all coats and cold from the outdoors. I was surprised to see her. “You do realize there’s no holiday pay after midnight?” I asked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Um. So how was the thing with the thing?”
Gina hissed out air through pursed lips, hauling off her outdoor gear. “Spent Christmas with my folks. Avoided Brandon entirely. I got called into work, and here I am.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were exhibiting classic avoidance behavior. Or oppositional defiance disorder. I always get those two confused.”
Gina snorted as she opened her locker. “It’s a good thing you don’t know better then.” I headed toward the door of the locker room. “Hey, Edie.” Gina called after me. “Thanks for asking.”
“Sure.”
I went out to Y4. Meaty was nowhere to be seen, but there was a ton of talking from the were-corral side of the room, around the bend. I found my name on the assignment board—I was with Gina again, and Winter, same as last night.
Meaty came back from the corral side of the floor just as Gina came up behind me. “Spence, Martin—break room consult now,” Meaty said and lumbered off the floor.
“Marteen?” I said, pronouncing Gina’s name with the same accent Meaty had given it. “I always thought it was just Martin.”
“Yeah, because you’re white.”
“Why didn’t you ever correct me?”
“Because I’m lazy.”
“Which is clearly why you’ve gone through more schooling than I have, Ms. Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “All those extra letters mean is I get to be the one standing nearer the teeth.”
We reached the break room door together. Meaty already occupied the far side of the table, waiting for us.
“We all need to be on the same page here,” he began. “First thing—we’re trying to set boundaries on visitors, but day shift was a freaking circus. Between family members, gawkers, and people paying their respects—” Meaty made a disgusted sound. Each of us knew gawkers/family/respectors were often the same thing. “We’ve told them visitors have to leave for the night, but I expect it’ll start up early this morning again. Second thing—they’ve started posting guards at the door.”
“They don’t trust us?” Gina asked.
“Deepest Snow doesn’t trust anyone. Don’t take it personally. Just know they’re going to look at your paperwork and watch you with the eyes of a hawk.”
Gina hissed in disappointment. “I knew I should have ignored that call tonight.”
“Do we have to talk to them?” I asked.
“Only to answer their questions. Don’t go looking for additional topics of conversation.” Meaty looked from one to the other of us. “Last but not least, the family’s produced a DNR.”
“Oh, fuck,” Gina cursed, and I groaned.
At this late stage in the game, Do Not Resuscitates were slippery fish. Unless you had yours on you, say tattooed on your chest when you collapsed, by the time you got to the hospital it was usually too late. Tubes had been installed to make you breathe—it was one thing for everyone to make an informed decision about not putting tubes in in the first place. It was another thing, after that, for family members to agree on disconnecting them.
“Does everyone agree?” I asked. The other thing about DNRs was that anyone could tell you to ignore them—from a wife or firstborn, right on down to a distant cousin. Anyone who had any need for closure could say stop, and pull the brakes on the death train.
“The nephew is recusing himself. The daughter is undecided. We’re having a family conference tomorrow. I suspect they’ll want to hold off until the full moon.”
“Shitty way to spend the day after Christmas,” I said.
“Shitty way to spend the next eight hours,” Gina said, giving me a glare.
She was right. We would spend the night keeping him keeping on, but not have much room for error. If he crashed and we did extraordinary things to save him—all our good work might be undone tomorrow. And who knew how long he’d hang on afterward? We would drive his body right past death’s station, and who knew when the next stop would be? I’d seen people with DNRs continue living for weeks, not just days.
Or if he did die, and the family hadn’t come to a resolution yet, they’d be looking at us firmly. People experiencing sudden tragedy usually wanted someone to blame. Couldn’t punish death or fate, but you could definitely punish staff.
“This is the latest MRI from this morning.” Meaty flipped open a folder on the table, revealing a brain scan. I didn’t need to be a neurologist to know that it wasn’t right. A huge white spot took up space where normal brain matter should be. “After the accident and bleed, there’s no room in his skull for anybody to be left home inside there. But not everyone in the family is ready to hear that. Got it?”
“Guards at the door. Shaky DNR, bad bleed. Got it,” I said.
Gina put her hand out, like we were in a high school football huddle. “One two three, don’t get mauled. Goooo team!”
I could get behind that. I put my hand on top of hers, and we pounded them together onto the table.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I gathered supplies for any and all assorted tasks we’d have to do tonight while Gina got report. Pleths, dressing change kits, biopatches, line labels, one of everything, putting them into a pillowcase like a demented Santa. Less running around if things went bad—and with all these extra supplies, I’d be better able to exploit any opportunity I had to get some blood.
I realized I should have felt bad about it, or at the very least torn—but were-problems were not my problems. Jake and Dren were. Besides, how much harm could one drop of blood really do?
As I rounded the floor, I spotted something near Winter’s door, in addition to the nurses exchanging report outside. A small black wolf curled up in the doorway, tail-to-nose. It had a puppy look about it, with too-big feet, too-fuzzy fur, and copper-yellow eyes. Beside it, taped to the wall, was a handwritten note that said, My mom said I could spend the night.
“Oh, my God, it’s a wolf puppy!” Its eyes opened up and focused on me.
“It’s a wolf person,” Lynn corrected me. She and Gina finished their chart checks, and the P.M. shift nurses exited the floor.