The Unexpected Hero. Rachel Lee

in the army. Iraq mainly.”

      The light in Krissie’s brain began to come on.

      He looked down at the folders in front of him. “Ms. Tate, I know what we had to do in those field hospitals. Medicine gets invented under those conditions. And before medical school, I was a medic. I…just know that kind of experience can affect how we practice in the civilian world. Sometimes we do things that could cost us our licenses under normal conditions.”

      At that Krissie gave him a nod. No more, just a nod. He was looking at her now, his dark eyes steady.

      “The transition can be difficult. I know from personal experience. I should have handled this better, but sometimes…” He left the sentence dangling.

      She understood a lot of the freight he was referring to, stuff that just stayed with you like coal dust in a rail car. She decided to meet him halfway.

      Rising, she held out her hand. “Let’s start again,” she said. “Hi, I’m Krissie Tate. Nice to meet you, doctor.”

      “Just call me David,” he said with a crooked smile, and shook her hand.

      “Krissie,” she agreed. She even managed a smile. “Part of the reason I came home was because I don’t want to have to invent medicine anymore.”

      He nodded and finally, finally, his face fully relaxed into a pleasant, even attractive, smile. “It can still come up to bite you. Take it from me.”

      And there it was. He had been reacting to his own difficult transition and to his expectation she would have the same problem, perhaps even make the same mistakes. And he might be right, she admitted honestly. While time with the VA had helped ease her back, she hadn’t come back all the way, because VA hospitals were woefully underfunded and understaffed. She’d had to “invent medicine” there sometimes, too.

      “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take the warning the way it was meant, not the way it was given.”

      At that, a chuckle escaped him. “Fair enough,” he agreed. “I was heavy-handed about it, as if you’d already done something wrong.”

      “I haven’t had time to mess up yet,” she said on a humorous note.

      “And you probably won’t. It’s just that I know how long it takes to come back from all that adrenaline.”

      “Meaning?”

      “You walk in, you smell the antiseptics, the other things that you identify as hospital, and after years of experience in wartime conditions, the adrenaline automatically kicks in. We’re like Pavlovian dogs in that respect. We go up the instant the smells hit our noses.”

      She nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right. But I spent the last year and a half at the VA in Denver.”

      “Still stressful, even if it’s not as bad. Anyway, you and I learned trauma medicine under the worst imaginable circumstances. It’s not something you can shuck easily like worn-out clothes.”

      “No, it’s not,” she admitted. “I felt it when I first walked in here tonight. I had to remind myself this is different.”

      “Exactly. Anyway, I guess I was harsher and more critical than I needed to be by far.”

      She pursed her lips. “You might say that.”

      He flashed another smile, quickly. “The thing is, like it or not, we become adrenaline junkies after a while. That can affect our judgment. So just watch out for it. I found when I first came here that I had a tendency to magnify every symptom. If you’re not careful, every cold can look like pneumonia or lung cancer or TB. I know that sounds like a stretch, but I’ve run that course. Sometimes still do. Where we’ve been, nothing was ever as simple as it looked at first glance. Now we’re in a place where it most often is that simple.”

      “I can see that.”

      “I’m sure you can. Just remember, you’ve been conditioned to see things otherwise. Don’t run on automatic. Ever.”

      With that, he picked up his charts and walked away, leaving her feeling as if, despite their friendlier conversation, she’d just been scolded again.

      He had the most unfortunate manner, she decided. And was probably hypercritical, to judge by the way Julie and Nancy were trying to avoid him.

      It was kind of funny, when she thought about it. Dr. David Marcus might have a bark, but at least he had the good grace to realize when he had crossed the line. And there were four other doctors in the joint practice that served the county and the hospital, so it wasn’t as if he was the only one she’d be dealing with.

      That was the point at which she realized that peace could have another downside. With only six patients on the ward, she actually had very little to do. There were only so many times she could disturb them by entering their rooms, only so many treatments and checks to be administered, and with a twelve-hour overnight shift yawning in front of her, she would need to make work to occupy herself.

      Quite a change. Quite a change indeed. One thing Dr. Marcus had been right about: she was used to being on adrenaline most of the time. The cases on this ward shouldn’t elevate her stress level by so much as a molecule.

      A doer by nature, she decided to check the linen closet and supply closet for the routine needs of any hospital ward. She expected to find everything well-stocked, though. She wasn’t the only night shift nurse to have time heavy on her hands.

      As she was approaching the linen closet, an orderly emerged from the nearby cleaning closet with a cart, pail and mop. He seemed startled at her approach, then took a wide stance, as if planting himself firmly. A young man with tousled blond hair, a too-thin body and a narrow chin, he watched her approach almost warily. He looked to be fresh out of high school, which would have put him well out of her milieu when growing up, and the kindest word anyone would apply to his appearance was “ordinary.” Poor guy probably had trouble getting dates.

      “Hi,” she said as she approached. “I’m Kristin Tate, the new night nurse.” Something about him looked familiar, but then darn near everyone in the county looked familiar, even after all her time away.

      “I recognize you,” he said. Then, as if making a decision he added, “Charlie Waters. You probably don’t remember me. We only talked a couple of times.”

      She smiled. “Sorry, I’m still getting to know everyone again. Nice to meet you. I was just wondering what I’m going to do all night. Any suggestions?”

      A shy smile lit his face. “I play cards.”

      “Now that’s an idea. Maybe the four of us can play.”

      “After I finish,” he agreed.

      “Do you have a deck of cards?”

      He looked down at his scrubs as if to say, “Where would I be hiding them?”

      “Good point,” she said in response to his gesture. “I’ll look through the drawers at the nurses’ station. We can’t be the only folks who have wondered how to get through a quiet night.”

      “Probably not,” he agreed. “But I have a lot of work to do. Bathrooms and floors before the patients go to sleep. After that?”

      “It’s a date.”

      Julie and Nancy joined Krissie in her tallying of the supply closets, then returned to the nurses’ station with her. No call lights, no monitor warnings. All the patients were happily watching TV or sleeping and, for the moment at least, experiencing no problems.

      “It’s awfully quiet tonight,” Julie remarked.

      Krissie perked at that. “You mean it’s not usually like this?”

      “Absolutely not,” Nancy said. “We usually have a few more patients than this. More injuries, for one thing. And in August it’s strange to have only one dehydration case.”