Molly Toombs
Ever since Dr. René Jacobs showed up at St. Lukes, Molly Toombs has disliked him.
He's never done anything to her to deserve this. It was unwarranted, but strong enough that after a few weeks worth of sharing shifts and space with her Dr. Jacobs has noticed it none the less. She didn't smile around him, but instead held a tight and stern expression. She didn't smile often at work anyways, but glimpses in passing would prove that her neutral expression was far less severe looking otherwise. One time, when coming into one another's way while tending to a patient, she had barely contained her huff of frustration and gritted her teeth at him.
The poor man. He'd done nothing to her. It surely wasn't his intention to inspire a wave of twittering, tittering, clucking nurses that Molly had to spend solid fourteen to twenty hour shifts with, given the night.
Did you see--?
Yeah! With that beard--
And those eyes--
A wedding ring, though--
No, no, I heard that he's a widower--
Oh! How tragic!
They sound delighted all the way through. Molly was fucking sick of it.
So, when Dr. René Jacobs entered the breakroom at 3:24am on a midweek morning, Molly Toombs hastily straightened up at the table she was sitting at. She seemed to be dozing while waiting for something-- certainly not sleeping on the job. Molly Toombs was renowned for her work ethic. She didn't get along with her coworkers and made no active attempts to, but her work and knowledge were top notch and she was reliable, rarely missed a shift and always picked up work. He's already heard one joke from one paper pusher that no one's told the poor idiot that she's paid too little.
Now, though, in this scarce-populated hour, she had her hair in a ponytail that was doing a good job of falling out and her make-up was flaking and worn. She nodded briefly, hastily to the new doctor, but nothing more.
René Jacobs
Everyone knew in advance that a new doctor would arrive at the hospital sometime mid-February and that in and of itself was more than enough of a stimulus to get the hens clucking. One of the oldest doctors in the department was retiring not from practice altogether but from hospital work and was going to be focusing exclusively on teaching. The hole that would have festered in Dr. Sunit's absence did not even have a chance to bleed out before the board announced a René Jacobs would be taking his place.
The name itself was enough to draw attention but then they found him on the Internet.
And then he showed up for his first day.
That's about the time that Molly had to have realized she was going to hate this guy. It wasn't anything he specifically did but he came out of the woodwork like so many other troublesome people have come out of the woodwork and he did so in a very debonair European fashion which is to say he would have been tall dark and handsome without even trying but he combed his hair and dressed well and when he opened his mouth to speak the first time it was all over.
He isn't from France. He's from Belgium. He speaks Dutch, French, and German and was at Mercy Hospital in Chicago for over a decade before deciding to come to Denver and now he's walking into the break room to get something out of the vending machine when Molly Toombs happens to be in there and wouldn't you fucking know it - he barely even acknowledges someone else is in the room.
All she gets in response to her nod is a glib "Hello."
It isn't until he's actually at the vending machine moving through the various refrigerated sandwich options that he says something that makes it sound as if he recognizes her.
"Missus Delacruz," he says, priming her recollection without turning around.
Not this again.
He has been fighting with the insurance coordinator all goddamn night over getting one of his - and Molly's - patients moved upstairs for overnight observation on the grounds that she has a probable aortic aneurysm and he doesn't want to send her home before she can have an angiogram to rule it out. The patient is understandably amenable to spending the night in the hospital if it means she won't die in the parking lot because her aorta unzips on her. But her husband is arguing that they can just come back in the morning to have the angiogram done.
It's not like the X-ray they took earlier even shows anything. Even Molly who has been doing this for several years can't see anything ominous in the imaging they already have for her. Jacobs and Diaz, the trauma attending, already stood in front of the light board and argued about it for ten minutes earlier. It was entertaining at two o'clock in the morning but then Diaz had to go deal with a teenage gunshot wound and leave Molly and Jacobs on the medical side of the ward where nothing but heart attacks and kidney stones were happening tonight.
Diaz just doesn't want to admit that Jacobs is right and if this woman walked out of here tonight she could be dead before she left the parking lot and they'd have no prior warning.
This is going to be one of those stories with the sort of outcome that makes the dayside nurses swoon even harder. Dedicated doctors are the worst.
"Do we have a bed for her yet?"
Molly Toombs
Molly Toombs was still in her scrubs, but then most everyone who came and went to and from work only wore their scrubs-- didn't bother to change into street clothes before leaving. The only indicator that she would soon be gone was the tote bag in the chair beside her at the table. That was obscured, though, pushed in so the tote was hidden under the tabletop. Her scrubs were light gray with black thermal sleeves hugging her arms down to the wrists beneath.
She had started to stand up, so when Dr. Jacobs first spoke up his words were partially muted by the scraping of chair legs on tile floor. She still recognized the name, though, and knew what he was going to ask. Her mouth pressed into a displeased line, but she finished rising anyways. As she pulled her cellphone from her pocket out of habit to check the time rather than glancing at the wall.
"The last I'd heard, we were waiting to hear back from the coordinator. Mr. and Mrs. Delacruz are right where we'd left them."
Her sentences were short and clipped, her tone still a little tight despite the fatigue that carried in it. She seized her tote bag and placed the strap over her shoulder, across her chest, so the bag could rest at her hip. While she was doing this, she continued to speak, eyes casually unfocused, left on some corner of the table rather than on the doctor. He couldn't be bothered to turn to address her, and apparently that sentiment went both ways.
"I spoke with her husband about fifteen minutes ago. He agreed to stop pushing his wife to just leave, but a man's word is just that." She meant to say that she doubted the husband was actually going to stop anything, he probably started back up as soon as Molly was out of earshot.
"This keeps up, though...," she'd added after a moment's pause with a bit of caution to her voice, "--we'll still be pushing for an overnight bed by the time the angiogram's scheduled anyway."
René Jacobs
Once the machine takes his currency and starts to spit out whatever godawful excuse for sustenance he'd talked himself into yamming down so his blood sugar doesn't tank in the next five hours before his relief shows up Dr. Jacobs plants one hand on a hip and the other on the corner of the machine. Stands there like both he and the machine are holding each other up. It's been a long night and it isn't about to get any shorter.
Given the terseness of their interactions thus far he seems to be under the impression that all he's going to get out of her is that the husband and wife haven't left the room. What more could he possibly want out of her? She was only supposed to work a swing shift tonight.
Then Molly goes on to say that she spoke with Mr. Delacruz earlier. That grabs Jacobs' attention. Not enough for him to release the machine at first. The sandwich he'd purchased drops into the receptacle as he glances over at her like to gauge what new information is about to come to him.
A man's word is just that.
Jacobs snorts and stoops to retrieve his dinner.
He peels open the cellophane and uses the triangle-shaped plastic container to catch crumbs as he paces over to the sink and takes a large bite out of the first half of his sandwich. That moment's pause gives him enough time to complete his destruction of the wedge of sandwich before turning to the second. Her assessment of the situation makes him flick his eyebrows as if to say Yeah, no shit and then chucks the plastic container into the garbage can.
"After she has the angiogram," he says, "and the results come back, yes? They'll admit her. Guarantee it. Immediate surgery. Ah, but no, the insurance does not want to cover the observation and the husband does not want to pay out of his pocket and I have run out of tests to keep her down here."
A huge sigh before he takes a killing bite of his sandwich and turns back to the sink to wash his hands.
Molly Toombs
Molly gave Jacobs the feeling of somebody who wanted to leave but was stuck up on some thorn of social conduct that forced her to stay and hear what he had to say.
It was understandable if he was inclined to just let her go. It was never pleasant being in a room with someone who obviously didn't care for you, and it probably stood out as all the more apparent against the background of other nurses and clerks that he worked with. He was a television doctor come to life, after all.
Molly Toombs herself was not an unattractive woman necessarily, so long as you didn't require trim bodies. She was thicker in the waist and hips, but this same build contributed to a flattering bust to balance things out. Returning to her natural hair tone had helped-- the black had washed her out while with the red she seemed brighter, more pink and healthy. Scrubs seldom flattered anyone and her make-up was present but often worn down through the night, her hair pinned back in practical ways rather than pretty ones. She'd be a hell of a lot easier on the eye if she relaxed out of that frown and was being friendlier, though.
Her weight rocked on her sneakers and she looked to the door, or more specifically the window in it. Searching for the face of the coworker who had said he might give her a ride home, but failing to find it. She doubted he was showing. She was well prepared to start her walk home, but found herself glancing back to the doctor and paying more active attention to what he was saying to catch his lament about this patient and the trouble he's having getting her in for an overnight.
He'd concluded by finishing his sandwich and turning to wash his hands at the sink. Molly had started to walk toward the door, this announced only by the faintest, whispered scuff of her shoe on the tiles. Her shift was over, and she didn't need to hang around to work this out with him any further. Her shift had been relieved. But a thought occurred, a vein of consciousness and searching knowledge that happened down the right path this time when she considered the scenario. Like she'd finally spied the words on the spine of the correct book in the library of her mind.
The nurse stopped with her hand on the door, frowned down at the space in front of her chest, then turned back over her shoulder to say:
"Just call an abdominal CT."
He was smart enough to earn his paychecks. She didn't have to explain the logic for him.
René Jacobs
[Let the record show that the NPC previously rolled 5 successes to figure out why Miss Toombs is acting like an asshole.]
René Jacobs
As
the physician is toweling off his hands the nurse aborts her escape in
order to turn around and offer him the perspective that she knows is
difficult for doctors of his experience and caliber to attain at three
o'clock in the morning when they've seen upwards of a hundred patients
during the course of their shift and have been caught up on the same
goddamn X-ray image for the better part of an hour.
His response
to her duh moment is to visibly relax as the answer to his conundrum
cuts a cord of tension in his shoulders and exhale something in French
that has the same cadence and tone as a musing Son of a bitch.
"Abdominal CT!" he says as he holds his hands out to her in a clear gesture of gratitude. "Thank you, Molly."
But
the moment of revelation isn't what makes him pause and stare at her a
second longer. That certainly isn't what makes him push away from the
sink and walk himself over to the same door that she's standing next to
in order to watch the nurse's station through the cheap blue vinyl
blinds hung up over the inlaid glass.
Though he does invade her
personal space it's only to nudge open the door so that he can slip out
again. So he can park himself in a free chair and tap at the computer to
input an order. Molly does not have supersonic hearing but she can see
the charge nurse, Marcy, turn away from the dry erase board to see what
he's doing.
It's a good thing Molly has red hair. It makes it
easier for people to spot her in crowded places. It helps if the person
in question has sharp eyes. That doesn't make it any less unnerving when
one moment Molly is alone in the corridor leading to the parking garage
and the next she hears the slip-resistant footfalls of someone who has
managed to follow her this far when earlier he was engrossed in proving a
patient's condition is what he claimed it was based on nearly
nonexistent physical evidence.
Jacobs is about thirty feet behind
her when he calls out, his tone like his pace level and unhurried, his
volume only so high as is necessary to reach her across the distance,
"Miss Toombs? Before you go, please?"
Molly Toombs
The
gesture of gratitude would have coaxed a smile from many others, even
if they were as surly as Molly Toombs was being. If nothing more, her
pride should have been stroked along its spine for the fact that her
contribution was so appreciated-- that she has given the right answer,
and it was an answer that the doctor hadn't come around to on his own.
When this happened with other doctors, Molly would at least look
pleased.
The way that she's still flatly looking at the man when
he extends his hands in her direction is apparent enough that is causes
pause in the man, and prompts him to seek her out later.
In the
corridor of unfriendly lights and old tile floors, Molly is now wearing a
coat overtop of her work clothes. The coat itself was a black peacoat,
cinched at the waist to be kind and flattering to her figure even when
the clothes underneath wouldn't do the same kindness. She was walking
with a hand in one pocket, the other on the strap of her tote bag. Her
pace was one of someone who had a long ways to walk, refusing to meander
or take time, but still automatic and without the direction of
determination of someone who had places to be. She walked like she's
walked this path countless times before.
When an accent-flavored
voice came up the hallway to call her name, Molly stopped and turned
around to look over her shoulder. Her spine straightened when she
confirmed the face that went with the voice, and her mouth pressed to a
reluctant line for a moment before relaxing neutral again. Back still
straight, Molly turned around and stood in the middle of the hallway to
wait for the doctor to catch up.
She looked like she wasn't
excited for the conversation-- like she was expecting confrontation but
was going to see where this went before making the assumption.
"Yes, Dr. Jacobs?" Her tone is as drab as her expression.
René Jacobs
He
does catch up with her. And his pace implies that he can not only keep
up with her but does not intend to hold her up longer than is necessary
by standing in the hallway having a personal conversation. For all she
knows he needs to go this way anyway. Not that anything is open this
time of night. Even the pharmacy shuts down at some point. That's why
they have an electronic dispensary in the emergency department.
If
he was expecting her to be excited by the prospects of speaking to him
they wouldn't be having the conversation they're about to have but Molly
is willing to keep an open mind. That will learn her.
He jerks his chin to indicate she ought to keep walking if she does not get to stepping once he's abreast of her.
"It's going to be very difficult to work together if you're going to avoid speaking to me. Have I done something to offend you?"
Like he doesn't know exactly what he did wrong.
Molly Toombs
The
gesture to keep walking is interpreted correctly, and Molly rolled one
shoulder in a moderately receptive shrug before turning about and
starting to walk once more. She was a woman of average height, but Dr.
Jacobs was taller all the same. While she may have adjusted her pace to
keep up with taller companions regularly, she offered no such effort
for the good doctor. Her pace was the same as it had been before, and
she left it to Jacobs to alter his instead.
He's the one that wanted to have this conversation anyways.
Then,
forthright and to the point, he asks what he did to deserve her scorn.
Molly's expression tightened and her posture stiffened, this a reaction
to confrontation. She looks absolutely defensive, metaphorical hackles
a'prickling. But she kept her eyes forward, didn't turn her face or
shift her eyes to glance up at him, and kept looking forward instead.
Kept on walking, too.
"Frankly, doctor, I'd rather leave this
be." Her tone was cool and calm and controlled despite her body
language. "Mrs. Delacruz will be taken care of instead of sent home
with us working together, so I don't see how it's impacting work."
René Jacobs
That
defensiveness doesn't go unnoticed. He seems content to keep his hands
in the pockets of his coat and keep his gaze aimed forward. Standing a
head taller than her as he does it is not difficult for him to keep pace
with her. As they move he does not grow winded even though she knows
for a fact that he goes outside and smokes when nothing else is going
on.
He isn't the only healthcare provider here who smokes. Medical personnel are capable of astonishing levels of hypocrisy.
"Of
course you don't see it," he says. "You aren't aggravated at yourself.
Miss Toombs, earlier when I asked you to redo the vitals on that
nineteen-year-old overdose you acted as if you hadn't heard me, or as if
I was insulting your intelligence. You're defensive at best and, if we
are being frank, yes, it is impacting work."
Molly Toombs
"Then I'l be better about it."
The
woman all but snapped at the doctor there walking beside her. He
insisted that her attitude toward him was impacting her ability to
work. He said he was defensive, and the played right into that by being
defensive toward him right here and right now.
She could think of
a fistful of nurses, enough names for the fingers on her hands, who
would fantasize over the scenario Molly was in now. Walking up a
corridor in the hospital alone except for the company of the tall,
handsome, dark and European doctor from Chicago. From somewhere else
before that. Molly herself would much rather be left alone to her
thoughts, and wished she'd had headphones so she could have plausibly
denied even hearing the doctor call for her to wait in the first place.
"It's
late, I'm off shift and on my way home. You couldn't have thought of a
better time to try and have this discussion with me? Like when I'm not
running on the night's burnt coffee and nothing else?"
René Jacobs
He
has no sympathy for her plight it would seem. He had already been here
ten hours by the time she showed up for her swing shift. How he still
has anything remotely resembling energy when he isn't going to be
leaving until 8 o'clock is anyone's guess.
"When would be a better time? Tomorrow morning when we are up to our elbows in heart attacks and kidney stones?"
Molly Toombs
Having
a temper when born a redhead was something that Molly Toombs ground
teeth at as well. Hating cliches as much as she did, the fact that she
herself could actually be one was frustrating. She tried to keep cool
and calm, and generally did a good job at this. But Molly Toombs was
tired and aggrevated, this didn't change no matter how worse off for
rest the doctor with her was. That she felt she was being backed into a
corner on this subject made her snap a little.
She stopped
walking and brought her hands out into the air beside her so she could
gesture with them. They curled into defensive hooks, gesticulated the
impatience she felt, and then relaxed to fall to her sides. They didn't
retreat into pockets again, though, but stayed loose. Her blue eyes
flashed hot at him, and her voice was far sharper than she wanted it to
be.
"Jesus Christ, Jacobs. What the hell do I have to say to get you to just leave me alone?"
She
stumbled at 'leave me alone'. Almost said 'leave me the fuck alone',
but clamped down and rerouted away from cursing in time. She hadn't
forgotten the original question, though, his asking what he did wrong,
so she pushed from there before he had the chance to reiterate his
original question.
"I don't want to insult you and jeopardize my
job, but I don't like you. People just don't get along sometimes, it
happens. Can't force everyone to be compatible. Isn't outside of the
norm anyways-- there's a ton of people here that don't get along with
me, but patients don't die left and right on account of it. So I'll
stay the hell out of your way, but let me be."
René Jacobs
Anyone
else would have grown flustered and chagrinned at finding himself
having a redheaded wunderkind nurse's ire hurled at him with such force.
It would have certainly wounded anyone else's pride to think that there
is someone in this hospital who - horror of horrors - does not find him
absolutely charming and wonderful even though she obviously finds the
assessment of his physical appearance to be the same as the other
nurse's.
They're at the junction of the hallway where she has to
continue on to reach her destination and he's about to double back into
the waiting room. It's here that she tells him to just let her be.
"Okay," he says. His accent doing something to that word that would make the other nurses' hearts flutter.
And
then he opens up the door and walks into the waiting room as easy as if
they had just been talking small about the weather. When next they work
together it will be just the same as it ever was. Only difference now
is he knows how she feels and she knows that he knows.
Son of a bitch.
No comments:
Post a Comment