I shove the last of my salad in my mouth as Linda slides across from me in the cafeteria booth.
I groan while I’m chewing. I know exactly who she’s referring to.
Four years I’ve worked with the woman and I still can’t figure out why she ever became a nurse. Karla Velky is one of the most miserable people I’ve ever encountered. She’s my boss and hates my guts. Also a mystery, although, I have a sneaky suspicion that may have had something to do with me dating Bill Shearer for those unfortunate four weeks.
Dr. Sugarlips, because the man could kiss—for a urologist anyway. Too bad he was all about the hunt for another notch in his stethoscope. Unbeknownst to me, Karla had been his catch du jour before me and had not quite gotten over it. Or him, so it seems.
“What’s she on about now?” I ask, already rolling my eyes in anticipation.
“She was looking for you earlier and wasn’t happy when I told her you were on your dinner break. I thought she’d bust a vein. Said you should’ve been back on the floor twenty minutes ago.” She takes a huge bite of her pizza slice.
“Twenty-five minutes ago I still had my fingers in the entry wound of the GSW that came in off the street. What does she expect? For me to tell the patient; sorry, can you stop bleeding for half an hour so I can take my break?”
Annoyed, I pick up my salad container and my water bottle and shove the chair back as I stand.
“Leaving already?” Linda looks up at me, grinning.
“You know you’re enjoying this way too much, right?” I accuse her, which only makes her grin wider as she nods affirmatively.
“What can I say? It’s been a slow night for me, I could use a good mudslinging to distract me.”
She wiggles her eyebrows and I shake my head, unable to stop the smile on my own face.
“You’re incorrigible. What would your wife say about that?”
“Maggie? She’d be pissed I didn’t tape it. She loves a good wrestling bout as much as I do. Just last night we found a good one on YouTube. Female mud wrestling, look it up.”
Linda and her wife, Maggie, are probably the most unconventional couple I know; unapologetically hedonistic and always up for a good time of one kind or another. In comparison I’m dull and uninspired, which is fine by me; I can find better things to do with my time than watch a bunch of busty women go at it in a tub of sludge.
“I’ll pass,” I tell her, which sets her off laughing again.
That’s another thing about them; they laugh all the time. Somehow, in the sometimes heartbreaking and gut-wrenching work we do, Linda is able to find the humor.
I’m envious of that. I have a tendency to absorb some of the misery around me and find it difficult to shed it at the end of my shift. I’m also more duty driven, my focus always on what I should be doing, rather than what I’d like to be doing.
Now that’s getting a little old. Working two jobs so I can finish paying off my student loans has been my sole focus for the past ten or so years. I’m so close to being free of that burden I can taste it, but as they say, the last mile is the longest.
I’m going on thirty-six, feel at least ten years older most days, and there are times I worry life may have already passed me by. Six more months of working two jobs and then I can tell Karla she can shove her schedule up her ass.
My fairly new second job at the homeless shelter my friend, Rosie, runs is what I’ll focus on full time then. I’ll still be caring for people—something that is ingrained in me—but I’ll be able to see the long-term impact of my work. You don’t really get that kind of gratification in the ER. We patch them up and send them off, rarely seeing the results of what we do.
Karla has her office door open when I attempt to sneak by.
“Where were you?”
The nasal pitch of her voice grates on me, but I try to plaster a smile on my face when I stop and turn. She’s in the doorway to her office, a hand on her hip, and a scowl on her face.
“On my dinner break. Linda mentioned you were looking for me so I