Flight Season: A Novel Read online

  “While it might appear that Mr. Five-O’clock Shadow and a Bed Head is working toward becoming a cologne model,” Richard says, “he actually aspires to be a registered nurse—like me!”

  This is a three-day shadow, I think. And I do not aspire to be like Richard. He’s a heart nurse who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. How is that even possible?

  I run my hand through my hair in a futile attempt to tame it. “Long weekend,” I say. I’m sure that by now I’m looking almost as annoyed as I feel.

  “It’s hard work being chased around all weekend by the ladies,” Sharon says. Well, she actually kind of sings “the ladies” part.

  If Sharon weren’t the sweetest woman I know, I’d tell her exactly what’s on my mind. Instead I look down at my feet—again.

  I love all these people. Really, I do. But they have no idea what my life is like.

  “All right, all right,” Bertrand urges with his honey-sweet voice. “Let’s stop teasing TJ—the poor child looks exhausted.”

  It doesn’t even matter what Bertrand’s saying. Just hearing the cadence of his voice makes my heart rate slow down.

  Bertrand has that effect on everyone. He’s a natural. To be honest, he’s kind of my hero. I know I’ll never be as good as Bertrand, but if I can manage to keep this job and get through school, I hope someday to be that nurse—the one whose simple presence heals.

  * * *

  Seven hours into a quiet eight-hour shift, and things finally have started to look up. Prashanti gave me another scolding for being perpetually late, but I’m pretty sure she’s forgiven me. (She always does.) The new intern has been shadowing Richard all day, so I haven’t had to see much of her. I’m not sure how I’m going to last an entire summer avoiding her, but I guess I’m just gonna have to take it one day at a time.

  I’ve got the good patients today: Mrs. Blankenship in 306 made me give her an extra-long sponge bath, which Sharon—predictably—gave me shit about. But Mrs. Blankenship’s a sweet lady, and her kids are really nice. I mean, some kids treat their elderly parents like total crap, but not Mrs. Blankenship’s. They take turns coming over from Starke. One of them is always here, waiting to give her what she needs. I guess she was a pretty good mom to them. She doesn’t have a husband. Maybe she’s a widow, or divorced. I don’t know. I never ask questions. I just give baths, change sheets, check fluid levels, and make small talk with them if it seems like they might be in pain.

  “Good weekend?” Mrs. Blankenship’s daughter asks.

  “Yeah, it was okay,” I tell her, turning Mrs. Blankenship onto her side.

  “Did you take your girlfriend out?” Mrs. Blankenship asks, teasing. “Dancing, maybe? Or to a beach luau?”

  “You know I don’t have a girlfriend,” I tell her. And if I did, I wouldn’t be taking her to a beach luau. It’s not 1964.

  “I find that impossible to believe,” she says, looking back at me. “I mean, look at you!”

  I can’t look at me. Because I currently happen to be inspecting her bare ass for bedsores. And anyway, I have no idea what she means. Like, if I look in the mirror, I will magically see the invented girlfriend?

  They always ask me questions—especially the old ladies. There are a lot of old ladies on the heart ward. They usually want me to tell them about my girlfriends, which is pretty much a dead-end conversation.

  If I don’t even have time for a shower, then I definitely don’t have time for a girlfriend.

  The patients also ask me where I’m from. I don’t mind them asking, but I hate it when they try to guess—they’re all over the place. Usually, they think I’m half something: half Indian? Half Japanese? Half Arab? Half Hispanic?

  I think it’s the blue eyes that throw them off.

  I always reply with: “Nope. One hundred percent American, born and raised right down the road, in St. Augustine.” Which inevitably is followed by: “But I mean where are you from?”

  My parents are from Brazil, which makes me not Hispanic, and not any of those other things, either. There’s a little Japanese in there, though. My mom’s granddad. And some German, too. And, like most Brazilians, I’ve got plenty of African heritage. But I’m not going to dive into the history of colonialism while I’m giving these people a bath, so I don’t bother to explain.

  “We need you in 311,” Prashanti says, sticking her head into the doorway.

  Room 311. That’s Ángel, aka the biggest pain in the ass in this entire hospital. He’s got a pretty bad case of viral cardiomyopathy, and he’s still a kid. I mean, I guess he’s at least eighteen, since they sent him over here from the children’s hospital, but he’s, like, five feet tall and a hundred pounds. I’m not super-brawny or anything, but even I can pick him up with one arm. For real. I’ve done it before, while using the other one to block him. He was punching me, just for the hell of it. Or maybe because I touched his Johnson while I was bathing him. But damn. I have to. It’s my job.

  Anyway, Ángel is in really bad shape today, so he’s barely even been awake. I only feel a little guilty to be relieved. I know the kid must be in a ton of pain, since his heart is swollen up like a balloon and his joints are all inflamed. They did another biopsy last week, and they’re pumping all kinds of medicine into him to reduce the swelling of his heart, so he’ll probably be back to his pain-in-the-ass self in a couple of days. I’m gonna enjoy the break while I can.

  “Code Blue. ICU-3H, 308. Repeat. Code Blue. ICU-3H, 308. Clear the floor.”

  I hear the code blue over the loudspeakers and head out into the hallway to make sure the floor is clear. Since this is the heart ICU, it’s pretty common to deal with cardiac arrest. But when they want the floor clear, it means they’re heading into emergency surgery, so it’s serious, and maybe ugly.

  Yeah. This one’s ugly.

  Richard’s on top of the patient from room 308—a quadruple bypass with some unexpected complications. Poor guy. Richard has the paddles going, and it looks like some of the patient’s sutures have torn open, because he’s bleeding pretty bad from the chest. Sharon and some resident I’ve never laid eyes on are pushing him around the corner, fast.

  And then that Vivi girl comes sauntering out of the break room, holding a container of yogurt, clueless. Without thinking about it, I reach over and grab her by the elbow, pulling her toward the wall.

  “Watch out,” I say, nodding toward the gurney speeding toward us. She lets out a gasp and backs into me.

  “We’ve gotta deal with this bleeding, people!” the resident calls out.

  They stop in front of us, and Richard yells for Prashanti, who comes out of 304, holding a clamp. Richard tugs on the chest sutures, and Prashanti moves in to stop the bleeding from a busted artery, but not before a bunch of blood spurts from it onto Vivi, who’s still got her back pressed against me, me pressed against the wall.

  It all sort of happens at once: Prashanti calls out, “Go!” Richard hits the paddles again, the resident pushes the gurney hard, and the Vivi girl collapses, her yogurt spilling all over my thigh. I catch her, just in time for her to avoid being run over by a fast-moving gurney.

  And here she is, passed out in my arms. Again.

  At least this time she has her shirt on.

  I pick her up and carry her to the empty bed in 302, trying to ignore the yogurt on my thigh, and call over my shoulder to Prashanti, “We’re gonna need some salts over here!”

  So this girl wants to be a doctor?

  CHAPTER THREE

  VIVI

  BIRD JOURNAL

  June 2, 12:53 P.M.

  Florida sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pratensis)

  Today I shared my lunch with one of Florida’s biggest birds! He was sweet, even though he did steal some of my sandwich.

  Habitat: marshes, agricultural fields, freshwater prairies.

  Unique Markings: adults have red crown.

  Nesting Behaviors: both male and female participate in incubating the eggs. Offspring begin traveling from nest
with both parents very quickly—just twenty-four hours after hatching.

  This bird is enormous! Almost four feet tall.

  “AND HOW DO YOU FEEL about your first week with us?”

  Prashanti is standing in the doorway of Room 308, watching me avert my eyes as Richard changes Mrs. Blankenship’s catheter bag.

  “About my first week?” I ask. “Oh, um…” I look out the window, toward the pine bench on the retention pond. I’ve just returned from a lunch break on that bench, where I shared a tuna sandwich and some peaceful quality time with an enormous Florida sandhill crane.

  I know I shouldn’t feed wild birds, but this one stood so patiently beside me, waiting. He wasn’t aggressive at all. So even though he was one of the biggest birds I have ever laid eyes on, I wasn’t worried about getting close to him, or about reaching out my hand to feed him.

  I’m not easily intimidated.

  He’s gone now, but not too far. I can still hear his loud rattling kar-r-r-o-o-o. They say you can hear the call of a sandhill crane from as far as two miles away. He may not have the most beautiful song (that would be the winter wren, in my humble opinion), or the most elaborate (that would definitely be the mockingbird, who steals and samples from all sorts of songs, like the EDM DJ of avian music). But wow. This crane makes up for it in sheer volume. His incredibly loud call is pulling my concentration from the conversation at hand.

  “Vivi?” Prashanti snaps.

  “Oh, uh, it was pretty good,” I say.

  Richard looks up at me and smiles encouragingly—because he’s nice, and because by “pretty good,” I mean “a total disaster.”

  “Well, that certainly is descriptive,” Prashanti says, deadpan.

  “Maybe a little more detail?” Richard asks, eyes bright, head nodding.

  “I know I still have a lot to learn.”

  Like how to not pass out at the sight of blood, for starters.

  “She’ll be fine,” Richard says, now inspecting Mrs. Blankenship’s catheter tube.

  I turn away, because I can’t bear to watch. I feel woozy just thinking about it.

  Kar-r-r-o-o-o, kar-r-r-o-o-o.

  “Let’s take a break and get a cold drink,” Prashanti tells me, motioning for me to come with her.

  “Absolutely,” I reply enthusiastically. I need some distance from that rattling crane.

  We ride the elevator in silence. It’s afternoon on a Friday, and the cafeteria is practically empty. She buys me a sweet tea and leads me to a table in the corner.

  “It’s time for us to rethink your responsibilities, Vivi, in light of your weak constitution.” She says it before I’ve even had a chance to sit down.

  Yes. As it turns out, I have a weak constitution. In one short week, I have managed to produce sufficient evidence for a brief scientific case study on the topic, the outline for which would look something like this:

  1.  Proximity to any and all bags of fluid elicits in subject an immediate gag reflex. Such fluids include, but are not limited to:

  a)  urine

  b)  blood

  c)  oh God, I can barely even stand the thought—runoff from healing wounds.

  In summary: gag reflex exhibited in cases (a) and (b) results in full-on head-hanging-over-toilet pukefest in case (c). It’s happened twice this week already.

  2.  Observing a broad range of mundane procedures results in both subject’s eyes involuntarily squeezing shut, or, alternatively, in subject’s entire torso turning away from the unsightly procedure. Such procedures include, but are not limited to:

  a)  the insertion of IV needles

  b)  the changing of catheters

  c)  the drawing of blood.

  In summary: Involuntary body motions exhibited in cases (a) and (b) may escalate into full shudder in case (c). This produces significant embarrassment on the part of the subject.

  3.  Contact with the partially or fully naked bodies of sick people appears to result in a sort of wince. Subject’s wince includes, but is not limited to:

  a)  shoulders shrug forward

  b)  neck muscles contract

  c)  eyebrows knit together.

  Subject stresses that such physical reactions occur without her voluntary consent, and to the dismay of the nice patients whose bodies our subject can’t bear to see.…

  “There’s no shame in admitting it, Vivi,” Prashanti says. “All of us must come to terms with who we are.”

  I nod, staring down at the table.

  “But it’s also my responsibility to ensure your safety. To avoid any more … incidents.”

  I prefer not to recall the worst of the incidents—the one that landed me in the arms of an incredibly surly nurse’s aide who is so not my type.

  Which begs the question: Why do I feel dizzy every time he looks at me?

  TJ is buff, and incredibly sloppy. He has shaggy black hair that’s always in need of brushing, and his jaw is stubbly—not in that sexy five-o’clock-shadow way, but more in the patchy forgot-to-shave way. His scrubs are always slightly wrinkled, as if he pulled them from the bottom of a laundry basket (probably still dirty).

  His eyes, though.

  They’re haunting, almost translucent blue. And they’re framed by clear mahogany skin and thick dark lashes.

  I know girls who would auction their firstborn child in exchange for those lashes.

  Despite those incredible eyes set against gorgeous skin, he isn’t the kind of guy I’m usually into. He’s too bulked up, and disheveled. I’m more drawn to willowy artists and musicians, of the skinny-jeans-and-a-buzz-cut variety.

  But still, I feel an inexplicable vertigo every time I look at him.

  When I woke up from the unfortunate incident with the squirting artery, I looked directly into his almost-translucent eyes while he gently wiped my face with a warm cloth. Then I let my own eyes fall shut again, feeling a strange, intense déjà vu and thinking, This must be a dream.

  “Hey,” he barked. “You need to get up. I gotta change these sheets.” He grabbed my forearm and tugged hard. “A real patient is coming up from surgery.”

  I sat up, unsteady, as he thrust the bloodstained cloth into a bin. “You’re cleaned up, except the clothes.”

  I looked down at my skirt. Blood was splattered across it.

  Why did I decide to wear a skirt, again? Oh yes, to impress my boss with my professionalism.

  My head started to spin. But then I felt his warm hand against my back, holding me steady.

  “Put your head between your knees and breathe deep,” he growled.

  I nodded and let my head drop.

  “You can change into those.” I didn’t dare sit up, but I turned my head and saw that he was gesturing toward a clean set of scrubs folded in a neat stack on the edge of the bed.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Just doing my job,” he mumbled, looking away. “Which, by the way, you’re making a lot harder.”

  Ouch. That was cold but probably also deserved.

  He hasn’t spoken a word to me since, which is fine. The last thing I need in my life is to be obsessing over a surly guy. It is strange, though. He doesn’t seem to be particularly surly with anyone else. I always overhear him laughing and joking with Sharon and Richard when he thinks I’m not around. And sometimes I’ll go around a corner and catch him smiling. But his smile falters when he sees me coming, and he always turns away.

  Whatever. It’s a big unit. We’ll keep our distance and things will be fine.

  That is, if I can even keep my internship.

  I take a long sip of my sweet tea and absently watch a cafeteria worker replenish the salad bar.

  “You’re a lovely young woman, Vivi,” Prashanti is telling me. “And you have a bright future ahead, but are you quite certain that you want to spend the summer here?”

  It’s not an unreasonable question. My first week has been an unqualified disaster.

  “I would be happy t
o help you find something more suited to your gifts,” Prashanti says. “Give it some thought over the weekend, will you?”

  I nod and smile, but I can’t seem to produce any words.

  Last August, it wasn’t easy to decide to leave my parents—to travel a thousand miles away for college, when they could have used my help. I made a promise to myself on the day I left home. I promised that I’d do something that mattered, that I’d commit my life to making a difference. I’d heal people.

  I’m starting to wonder whether this is a promise I can keep.

  * * *

  On the way home from the hospital, I decide to stop in at Kyle’s—the fish market on the old Jacksonville highway. I ask the guy to give me the freshest fish he’s got, and then I go next door to the produce stand for what I need to make a salad.

  I’m growing tired of the Bait Shack. I love cold-boiled shrimp, and the Bait Shack has some of the best I’ve ever eaten. I love how it’s served in a red plastic bowl, and how the communal tables are lined with half-full bottles of cocktail sauce and cheap rolls of paper towels. But we eat there every night, and Mom’s not showing much interest in the kitchen.

  Dad was the chef in our family.…

  Go big or go home, Vivi. That’s what my dad used to tell me when I was feeling overwhelmed. My father never did anything halfway. He worked hard; he adventured hard. He somehow managed to turn even the most mundane of activities into an experience.

  You won’t believe this, hon! Vivi and I were heading back from her field hockey practice—out there on 301. We stopped in at a tomato stand that was advertising vine-ripe tomatoes. We picked up some swordfish down at the market, and we were reminiscing on that fabulous trip to Tulum, thinking maybe we could get some good heirloom tomatoes and make a pico de gallo to go with the fish, like we had at that little place down there last summer.

  And this guy, working the tomato stand, shows us some of the most pathetic specimens of tomatoes I’ve ever laid eyes on. I told him I grew up on a farm, and I knew a vine-ripe tomato when I saw one. He looked me up and down and then he told me if I was willing to pay, he’d take us out to the farm himself, and Vivi and I could pick our tomatoes straight from the vine.