Page 52 of Absinthe Dreams
“What’s the science behindthat?” I asked, mollified.
“The alkaline makes the bladder an inhospitable environment for the bacteria causing the UTI to thrive. Trust meon this one. It works. Take you an Alka-Seltzer from the doctor’s lounge and in thirty minutes that trickle will be a good old-fashioned normal flood, and it’ll help any burning, too.”
“I’ll try it,” I said. “If only to make it through the rest of this shift, but ask Kincannon for me anyway, would you?”
“Ask me what?” The man of the hour swept up to the desk.
“Macrobid script,” I said, and he looked at me.
“UTI?” he asked.
“Yup,” I affirmed.
He grinned. “You’re blushing. You get lucky?”
“Oh, my God! Would you just write the script?” I asked and went to the doctor’s lounge.
He laughed at me. “Already on it,” he said and was clacking away at the keys at his terminal.
“Thank you!” I called over my shoulder, as I swept into the staff lounge to do what ReJeanne had told me to do. I hated the taste of the shit, but if it worked and got me through to when I could pick up the script at the hospital’s pharmacy, then I would suck it down gladly.
God, was it awful, though! Eugh!
I shot it, swallowed and got it down, and suffered for a bit before sucking down some clean, crisp water out of my water bottle back at the central desk while ReJeanne laughed at the expression on my face before I went into bay three to give sutures to a playground accident. Three little stitches and the little girl was admiring her reflection in the hand mirror I let her use. She would have a cool scar through the eyebrow, and she was thrilled. Mom? Not so much.
“I see no signs of concussion, and her TDAP is up to date. Gimme just a few minutes and I’ll have the nurse bring in your discharge papers and you can go home. Tylenol for pain if she complains of anything, but if she starts throwing up or anything like that, bring her right back. I don’t anticipate anything likethat at all, though,” I told her mom who was nodding and far more anxious than kiddo.
“Thank you, doctor,” she said.
“Thanks!” the little girl said brightly, and it was on to the next lucky winner of a no-expenses-paid trip into my ER.
The day went by pretty swiftly, but I was dog tired by the end of it. I hadmaybean hour left on the clock when the doors whooshed open for the ambulance bay and two frazzled EMTs wheeled in a patient who was seizing, head buried in an alarming swath of bandages that were scarily bled through.
“Got a head trauma, patient seizing, and it ain’t good!” ReJeanne called out, and doctors and nurses descended on the incoming patient like a flock of seagulls.
“We got an ID?” Kincannon asked.
“We know what happened?” I asked about the same time.
“Eyewitnesses say he was about to cross the street when a guy on a motorcycle called out to him and swung a big chain or something at this guy’s head,” the first medic said.
I felt myself freeze up on the inside, even while my hands and body kept going through the motions.
“What’s this guy’s name?” Kincannon asked again, looking down his nose through his glasses as LeRoy, one of our veteran nurses, took trauma shears to the bandages around the guy’s head to let us have a look at what was going on.
I was helping Amelia, one of our other nurses, get leads on and another IV started, prepared to push meds when the medic called out, “Got his license outta his wallet. Looks like his name is Lucas Belmar.”
I looked up right into Kincannon’s face, and he looked back. “You gotta go,” he said immediately.
“Yep.” I handed off the syringe of medication to Kincannon, and he pushed the meds. I stepped back, stripped off my gloves, and left the room.
The EMTs looked baffled, and my colleagues looked grim. But I appreciated Kincannon like nobody’s business for recognizing the conflict immediately and letting me get the fuck out of there.
I swallowed hard and went over to the nearest charting station to start covering my ass.
When Kincannon came out of the room an hour or so later, he was shaking his head.
“Well, that was a shitshow,” he said, pulling off his bloodied gown and bundling it into the nearest biohazard bin, stripping off his gloves and letting them follow.
