Code Blues (16 page)

I watched him. The way his black hair stayed
still as he shook his head, meaning he was vain enough to use spray
or gel. The brackets around his mouth and across his forehead from
frowning. The way the end of his nose turned up slightly, like a
pig snout. He wasn't a big guy, but he had square shoulders and
thick limbs. He probably packed some muscle under his lab coat. He
might have been able to take Dr. Radshaw on.

Nah. Team leader wasn't worth killing
for.

Still, if I did happen to find info that
nailed Dr. Callendar, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Dr. Callendar's head jerked up. He snapped
at me, "Do you have someone to see?"

I held up my chart. "I'm just waiting to
discuss my last patient of the day. Sir."

He squinted suspiciously.

I smiled back, partly because of a new
brainwave.

I had to search Dr. Radshaw's office before
it became Dr. Callendar's. And before the police decided to seal it
off.

At the end of clinic, I had to stay late to
write up my charts and fill out paperwork. Stan took off with a
"See ya!" tossed over his shoulder. He was the only one. Tori and
Omar's pens scratched alongside mine.

Dr. Callendar cleared his throat. "Just
leave the charts here. I'll sign them off afterward." He grabbed
his briefcase and disappeared. Maybe he'd get stuck in the
elevator.

Omar was printing in his charts, his eyes
wide with concentration. Even so, he finished before me. He closed
the last one with a sigh of relief. "Good-bye. It was nice meeting
you."

And then there were two. After a few minutes
of scribbling in silence, Tori asked, "Are you almost done?"

"Almost." One patient per hour should be
yawningly easy, but after interviewing and examining the patient,
enduring Dr. Callendar's whip once, returning to the patient to ask
reams of questions, conferring a second time with Dr. Callendar
(hit me again, sir!), and then writing out prescriptions and forms,
I was running late. Again.

At least Stan had showed me Dr. Radshaw's
office. Lunch hour was a perfect time to spy.

I considered shoving my forms aside and
saying I'd come back to them, but I didn't want to attract Tori's
attention.

My second patient needed some physiotherapy
for her shoulder. Dr. Callendar had informed me the waiting list
was about six months long, so if I wanted to bump my patient up, I
had to call the physio and personally plead my case. I dialed the
number and left a message, but it was almost 12:15. No doubt she
was at lunch.

I was astonished by the
mountain of paperwork I'd piled up on just two patients. For
anything I wanted—blood tests, ultrasounds, CT scans,
physiotherapy, consultation of specialists,
quoi que ce soit
, I had to fill out
who I was, what I wanted, who I wanted and when, Dr. Callendar's
name and billing number. Then, in the upper right hand corner, I
was expected to write the patient's name, birth date, FMC chart
number, and hospital number. On each sheet!

That's a clerical job. Sure, I'm still
learning, which is the excuse for paying me a pittance as a
resident and charging me tuition on top of it, but why should I
spend my ninth year of post-secondary education filling out
forms?

As a final insult, each chart had a patient
card we could have stamped on to each form and saved ourselves half
the time. "Why don't we have an addressograph?" I asked Tori.

She laughed. "You should ask Stan about it.
He tried to get one last year. They said it cost $1000. It's more
cost-effective to have us fill out the form."

Unbelievable. The entire FMC was an exercise
in mortification. It boggled my mind that they'd rather have a
dozen residents filling out paperwork instead of seeing patients.
There's a shortage of doctors in Montreal. Subtract the paperwork,
and even I, a fledgling doctor, could probably have squeezed in one
more patient in this morning.

No wonder half our orientation had been
devoted to filling out paperwork. Forms, stabbing ourselves to test
our glucose, and a tutorial on how to do pelvic exams in a room
with no running water. I steamed as I filled out the physiotherapy
form. This one had extra sections for medical problems,
medications, allergies, and all that fun stuff.

Tori broke the silence. "Want to go to
lunch?"

"Sure." Maybe I was doing some Asian
stereotyping myself, but she seemed so much quieter and
self-contained than me. Then I realized that if we did lunch, I
wouldn't get a chance at Dr. Radshaw's office.

"Good," she said. "I'm almost done. Are
you?"

"Uh, nah. I have a lot to do. Maybe you
should go to the cafeteria and I'll meet you there." I checked my
watch. It was 12:21. I started in the emerg on the hour. "On second
thought, I might not make it at all. You have fun."

She gave me a level look. "You have to
eat."

"Yeah. I brought my lunch." I pointed at my
backpack. I should have stuck my lunch in the fridge, but there was
only one food-worthy refrigerator for the entire FMC building. On
the second floor, naturally. "It's cool. I can fill out forms with
one hand and eat with the other."

She shook her head. "I'll keep you company."
She pushed her charts to one side and lifted her black shoulder bag
on to the table. "I brought my lunch, too." She ripped open the
Velcro of her purple cloth lunch bag. "Don't mind me."

I couldn't exactly ask for privacy because I
had a room to search. "You know what? It's too hot in here." I
waved at the windows. "You don't have to suffer with me. Seriously.
I feel bad."

She smiled. "I'm fine. Finish your forms.
We'll go outside to eat." She began unwrapping a pita.

My stomach rumbled.

She quirked her eyebrows at me. Now I
couldn't even pretend not to be hungry. "I might be trapped here
waiting for the physio."

She shook her head. "Leave another message
with your pager number. She probably won't get back to you until
you're back in the emerg."

"How did you know I was doing emerg?"

A smile danced around the corners of her
mouth. "I saw it on the master schedule. Dr. Callendar also
mentioned working with you there."

Goody.

She paused. "You'll get used to Dr.
Callendar."

I glanced at her sidelong. "I heard he has a
small penis."

She smiled. "Maybe. Stan would know better
than the rest of us."

I laughed. She was sharp. She'd figured out
how Stan had cheered me up. There was no way I could escape to
search Dr. Radshaw's office in the next twenty minute anyway. I
left a message for the physio, scribbled the last of the paperwork,
and stood up. "Shall we go?"

As we descended the stairs, I wondered how
to bring up Dr. Radshaw and Mireille.

Doctors are not supposed
to fraternize with patients. When I was at Western, we sometimes
giggled over the inappropriate behavior in
Dialogue
, the journal of the
regulatory College. One woman testified that her doctor did a
pelvic exam and spent a long time rubbing her clitoris. "I asked
him if he was digging for gold," she was quoted as saying. Then
there was a psychiatrist who was supposed to treat eating
disorders, but spent more time rubbing his patients' breasts. The
cases weren't really funny, of course. One case, about a doctor who
abused a mute man in a wheelchair, was just horrendous. I guess we
were laughing over how inappropriate the doctors were. In med
school, some people argued that you shouldn't even hug a patient.
"If he or she comes at you with open arms, step back. Tell them you
don't hug. Offer a tap on the arm at the most."

Someone made up guidelines about dating
patients. If you're an emergency room doctor, seeing a patient as a
one-off encounter, wait six months before asking him or her out. If
you're a psychiatrist, never. Other doctors fell somewhere in
between.

We never talked about relationships between
staff physicians and residents or medical students. It's
unofficially frowned upon, but you can do it.

Tori paused outside the main doors of the
FMC. A blue Beetle honked at us before it zipped around the corner
to park. She pointed to the small deck across the road, between the
Annex and the Human Resources building. "Would you like to eat
outside?"

Yes, but not with so many people around. I
pointed at the two smokers on the deck. "Maybe somewhere less
toxic?"

She chuckled. "That's a tall order. Everyone
smokes in Montreal."

"Do you?"

"Never." She pointed to a strip of grass in
the sun, beside the human resources building and across from the
emerg entrance. "Is that okay?"

The grass patch was empty. A second picnic
table, next to the human resources entrance, had a group of people
chatting and one lighting up, but if we kept our voices low, no one
had to hear. "Sure."

She sat right down on the curb without
fussing about dirtying her light khaki pants. I sat on the grass
and stretched my feet out, kicking my sandals off. I enjoy lying
barefoot in summer grass. One of the things I missed most in
medicine was not having a proper summer. We did for the first two
years, but clerkship meant that we'd often rise before the sun and
come home after it had set. While my other friends spent their
glamorous twenties making money or setting their own schedules in
graduate school, I was doing surgery and OB/gyn.

Don't get me wrong, I felt lucky to be
there. But I was conscious of the sacrifice. I was a SSINK.
Actually, a SSINK-NB: Shitty Single Income, No Kids, No Boyfriend.
But the last part might change. And I found joy in smaller
pleasures, like eating barefoot in the sun with Tori.

Some smoke drifted by from the picnic table.
I waved it away and took a bite of my dry peanut butter
sandwich.

I needed a subtle way to bring up Kurt and
Mireille. Tact wasn't one of my strengths. I decided to start off
bland. "So how long have you been in Montreal?"

She held up four fingers and swallowed her
pita.

"Why did you stay here instead of going back
to Alberta?"

She shrugged. "I liked it here. How about
you?"

"Well..." I didn't really want to get into
my messy love life. On the other hand, if I played True
Confessions, maybe she would, too. "I got into med school at
Western. My boyfriend at the time—" I swallowed hard. Ryan's face
flashed into my mind, with its pointed chin and the darkest brown
eyes I'd ever seen up close. I remembered how we used to play
tennis together. He'd beat me but never gloat as I vowed to do
better next time. "—couldn't handle the long-distance thing. I
liked London, but I didn't plan to stay seven hours away from my
family. Ottawa—well. I wanted to try something different.
Montreal's only two hours away. My mother can live with that. So
here I am."

"I see." Her quiet voice and sympathetic
eyes made me feel like she understood.

"So." I tried to lighten up. "How are the
men here?"

She smiled. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

"Oh?" I would have nudged her if she'd been
one of my Western friends. "You've got one?"

She laughed. It was the first time I'd heard
her laugh out loud, a low-pitched rumble. "No. But I've dated."

"How do you meet them?"

She shrugged. "It's hard, you know, with our
schedules. But I went out with an RT I met when I was on surgery."
I nodded. I've met some fine-looking respiratory therapists. Too
bad half of them are female. "And sometimes I meet someone when I
go out. But it's not a priority for me."

"Do you go out with other doctors?"

"Like Alex?" She looked straight at me.

I found myself blushing. So not cool. "Well,
sure."

She shook her head. "I did date a few guys
from our class, or other years, when I first came to Montreal. But
it was too incestuous."

That word again. "What do you mean?"

She brushed a crumb from the corner of her
mouth and stared at the brick wall of the hospital across from us.
"For example, if I were to go out with Alex, it would be awkward
because I know Mireille."

Slam. Bang. "They used to be together?"

She eyed me. "He didn't tell you?"

"No. Well, not straight
out." Inside, I was seething. What exactly had he said?
Not my type
. And she
said they didn't have an "understanding." Not exactly lying, if
they'd broken up, but certainly not wholly accurate and aboveboard.
Why hide it?

A toast to truth. Yeah, right.

Tori touched my wrist. "I'm sorry. I've
upset you."

I looked down and noticed that I'd pinched
the end of my sandwich so hard that my fingers were nearly meeting
through a thin layer of bread. I took a deep breath. "It's okay."
But it wasn't. Why would Alex want me to play detective and then
hide things from me? Why did Mireille come over and warn me off
Alex, only to sic me on him? Was any of this a clue to Dr. Kurt's
death?

Tori said, "I am sorry. But you would have
found out, sooner or later."

"Yeah." I took another deep breath. "It's
fine. I'd rather have it out in the open."

She pushed the last piece of pita in her
mouth. The sun passed behind a cloud, as if it was depressed,
too.

I hated Alex lying to me. After Ryan, I
never wanted another guy to hurt me. So I went on a few dates, but
I kept it light, never got involved. But after two years, the
clamshell act was getting old. A new city, a fresh start, time to
take some chances. I felt a real spark with Alex. I didn't have to
fake interest in his pet wombat or try to ignore his abnormally
prominent gums. I liked him right away.

Which just went to show what a sucker I was.
A little zing and I was ready to commit break and entry for
him.