The Legend of the Overworked Nurse
Marisol Novotny pushed against the bouncy, good vein in the man’s arm. The portly fellow’s sweat had smeared his eyeliner into raccoon eyes. He yanked at the handcuff around his thick and freckled wrist, seething. “I was chasing a robber.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t how the police saw it when they found him trespassing.
Marisol arched an eyebrow toward the gauze, as bulky as an old school maxi-pad, covering the stitches on the man’s forehead. “Promise not to fight a dumpster with your head next time.” Though next time, he shouldn’t lead the police on a chase wearing a Halloween costume in February.
The other cuff scraped against the bed rail. “Listen here, Nurse. Something big is coming, and I’ll send it to the gutter with all the other vermin.”
Right… Shadowhaven always had some guy in a mask pretending to be a crime fighter. Grown men playing dress-up in sweatpants and ski masks came with the city’s charter, and a lot of them ended up in the ER of the Varian Family and Research Hospital during her third shift. With a quick stab, she drew a vial of blood and released the tourniquet from his arm. She passed the vial to the arresting officer hovering nearby. The bloodwork most likely would come back positive for B’Lee, the city’s own new and improved brand of heroin.
The officer said, “You’re good at tapping a vein on a moving target. Did you serve?”
She wrapped the patient’s arm with medical tape and forced a laugh. “No, but I suppose I’ve seen combat. Westside Shadowhaven, born and raised.” She threw away her gloves and ran her hands under the faucet.
Her city wasn’t exactly a war zone, but outsiders compared the Westside to some bombed-out pile of rubble. Nothing so epic happened there, just the slow-detonating bomb of poverty. If a similar squalor riddled a city abroad, someone powerful would send forces, but Shadowhaven, the world’s forgotten city, handled it on its own.
The police officer took the patient away. Bed one cleared. Marisol dried her hands and bemoaned her ragged cuticles. They were long overdue for a manicure. She’d make time for that on the eighth day of the week.
She barely had time to adjust the dark hair of her ponytail before the patient in her second bed hit the call button. A shelf had fallen and crushed his leg earlier that night. Screwed and stitched together, he rode high out of trauma surgery, screaming, “An angel saved me!”
She checked his vitals and administered acetaminophen. As soon as she finished, the old man grabbed her hand. His eyes shined, and he repeated, “An angel saved me.”
“I’m sure.” She dismissed the assertion. More likely? Some guys came to rob his place, ransacked the register, and then called 911.
“It was the Patron Saint. The real one. Not those foolish pretend ones,” the old man said.
She patted his wrinkled hand. “I bet your surveillance cameras captured good footage of him for the news.”
The old man waved a crooked finger as if giving a lesson. “My shelves are strong. I only wanted the best. No one man can lift my shelves. That’s what the forklift is for. But the Patron Saint? He single-handedly lifted the shelf. He saved me.” The man grimaced, breathed in, and the floodgates opened, unleashing sob after sob.
Occasionally, a kook would come into the ER claiming a man in all black rescued or attacked him. A favorite account came from some strung-out mobsters who said a masked man, the Patron Saint, jumped out of a sixth-story window in a hail of gunfire and ran off. These stories served as Shadowhaven’s brand of fairy tales like The Man-Eating Mega Rats of the Sewers or The Immortal Cockroach. But an official Patron Saint never existed. Only imitators of imitators who needed as much stitching and stapling as the people they saved. Actual heroes—let alone super ones—were just another piece of fiction.
Marisol lowered her voice and gently shushed the old man. “You’re going to be fine.”
He blinked, his expression tense with lucidity. “You remind me of my wife.”
She rolled her shoulders back, readying to quash a potentially horny old patient. With his tears fresh along his laugh lines, she caved. What about her reminded him of his wife?
She imagined a woman like her abuelita in sensible heels and a shirtdress, heading off to Mass. And the fictional wife would look at Marisol’s chapped lips and tired eyes and balk at the comparison. “She’s a lucky woman with a husband who only gets the best shelves.”
“She died a couple of years ago. Cancer. Had a personality like boxed chocolate. Hard shell, soft and sweet center.”
All these described her abuelita. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you married?” He barely finished the question before she shook her head. “Your boyfriend needs some sense knocked into him.”
“No boyfriend to knock. Or anyone for that matter.” A relationship was like a manicure—an indulgence that didn’t fit in her life. If someone wedged themselves in, her life shoved them back out.
“With those gentle doe eyes? What’s wrong with these men?” the old man asked.
The explanation that, most days, singlehood was the better option would take too long. College guys split as soon as the “urban” lifestyle lost its novelty, and the few Westsiders, who her gangster brother hadn’t chased off, would inch out the door when their typical macho bag of tricks failed to impress her. She was too much work, and if it wasn’t for her best friend, Annie, doomed to be alone. “I guess they don’t make them like they used to,” she said.
She didn’t dwell on her lack of a love life for long. Another patient arrived. A middle-aged woman raced into the ER, pushing her elderly mother in front of her in a borrowed wheelchair. The mother moaned, “Estoy muriendo” amid bouts of coughing.
As soon as she heard the woman moan about dying, Marisol took over the wheelchair. She soothed into the patient’s ear, “Señora, no morirá. Lo prometo.”
A weak smile crept across her pale face, perhaps holding on to Marisol’s promise that she would not die. But it did not last long. Señora’s shoulders heaved with another cough attack.
Dr. Foster, who looked like a princess but was definitely the ogre of the ER, popped through the partition curtain with her laptop precariously balanced on one forearm. She already tapped her foot as she clicked through the standard questionnaire. Maybe tonight her microaggressions would become full-on macro. Trading in “You speak English so well!” for “Those people always exaggerate their symptoms.”
The patient’s daughter explained that her mother had recurring bronchitis but insisted her recent cough was the worst yet. On top of that, a bad hip limited Señora’s mobility, and she always ached. The patient’s stark white hair, in contrast to her crepey brown skin, reminded Marisol of her abuelita, so Marisol lingered in the treatment room. Dr. Foster needed to be careful with a too-quick diagnosis. The cough and sedentary lifestyle could mean deep-vein thrombosis developing into a pulmonary embolism. Though it had been a few years since dropping out of med school, Marisol never shut off her wanna-be doctor. Dr. Foster would probably order a CT scan and put Señora on a blood thinner.
Dr. Foster wiggled her upturned nose like a bunny while staring at her laptop. “Bronchitis. We’ll prescribe a nebulized steroid,” she announced without looking up.
The daughter whispered to herself. She appeared to be translating the words before she said, “Mamá, necesitas un inhalador.”
Marisol’s tightly drawn brow wasn’t going to stand much against a patient’s wrongful death, so she opted for her own professional suicide. “Steroid? Are you sure, Dr. Foster? Señora’s daughter said her cough is worse than before. Might be good to rule out a blood clot traveling to her lungs and—”
“And?!” Dr. Foster finally looked up from the screen.
“If we are wrong, it could be deadly.”
The daughter translated Marisol’s words to her mother.
“Are you questioning me in front of a patient? Nurse?”
Marisol swallowed. “I’m pointing out information important to her diagnosis, Doctor.”
Dr. Foster wiggled her nose again. “Go get me the steroid.”
“No!” Then a flood of words rushed from the elderly patient. Her daughter patted her shoulder and repeated, “Yo sé,” only when the patient took a breath between her sentences. Both actions seemed to be feeble attempts to calm Señora.
The daughter asked, “Can we please check if it’s a blood clot?” She looked at Marisol as if she was the one in charge.
Dr. Foster sighed. “Very well. We’ll order the CT scan and give her an infusion of heparin.” She shut her laptop close with a clap. “If the scan is clear, it’s off the blood thinner and home with an inhaler.”
Marisol pursed her lips together, holding back her smile, which she couldn’t hold for long as Dr. Foster snatched her into the hallway. The doctor guided Marisol around the corner, away from patients’ prying ears. “Are you trying to make me look bad?”
“I’m just advocating for my patient–”
“My patient. You are aware that we follow a chain of command here.”
“Yes, Dr. Foster.”
“If every nurse made diagnoses, there would be chaos. For the safety of our patients, if you can’t contribute to the order of my ER, I will have you removed. You’ll be taking nothing but blood pressure and temperatures in the clinics!”
Marisol stared past a tendril of Dr. Foster’s blonde hair, focusing on the wall. There was nothing worse than the predictable routine of the clinics.
“If you wanted to be in charge, you should’ve received the proper education like the rest of us.” Dr. Foster stormed down the hallway.
And beliefs like that chafed Marisol’s butt raw. She had received the proper education: college, a couple years of nursing, the MCAT, a year-and-change of medical school, and throughout, jerks would ask, “How did you know that?” or any other loaded but superficially innocuous expression that said Marisol had no business knowing what she knew because she didn’t go to the best schools... because Mom was a first-generation immigrant... because Dad lost his stevedore job... because she grew up on the Westside in row housing... because her brother, Caz, wound up in prison.
She wrongly figured entering a third decade would get her the respect she deserved. Nope. More time on the planet meant she knew more jerks, but dammit if she didn’t hold on to the fantasy of one day calling the shots.
Marisol ducked into the linen closet to release a string of curse words, only to find Nurse Rossi there with an armload of sheets. Rossi greeted her with, “Want a good laugh?”
Not now. Marisol grunted, straining the tendons of her neck. “What’s up?”
“Check out the thread count on these bed sheets.”
The tag read 1000 count, a little fancy for absorbing a third of the city’s mucus, sweat, blood, vomit, urine, feces, and whatever else the human body squeezed or spurted out.
“The man posed for photos during the first shift to promote his fundraiser. Apparently, he brought a set decorator and left behind an ample supply of these.”
The man was Vincent Varian, Shadowhaven’s golden boy. If he wasn’t on some exotic adventure, with or without his companion of the month, he’d make brief appearances at the hospital with cameras in tow. Luckily with working the night shift, Marisol never had to be sickened from witnessing the pageantry. Instead, she experienced it secondhand, happily recycling worn magazines and tabloids scattered all over the cafeteria, waiting room, and treatment areas. Cover after cover displayed his square jaw, dusky blue eyes, and stylish dark golden coif. Occasionally, he’d pose with a sick child to “raise awareness.” Awareness of what was beyond her. In Shadowhaven, children still got sick, and their parents still struggled to pay the bills. The only thing people remained aware of was Vincent.
That inflamed her anger further. The urge to curse escalated to needing to punch something. “Are your beds full?”
“Almost, but I have a discharge coming up. Why?” A mousy brown lock of hair had escaped from Rossi’s elastic headband. She tried to flick it back out of her face.
“I have half occupied. Could you watch my beds for a moment?”
“Is it Opposite Day?” Rossi shifted the load in her arms like a squirming toddler to free one of her hands. She touched Marisol’s forehead. “You’re not coming down with something?”
“I’m fine.” A lie. Marisol had better mix it with the truth, so Rossi would buy it. “Just haven’t eaten much.”
“Get going.”
Then Marisol ran. Ran past the treatment rooms. Ran down the winding hallways. She burst through the double doors and continued into the closed portions of the clinics.
In the cover of darkness, she punched the wall. Ow! It didn’t make things better. And now she needed a bandage for the broken skin on her knuckle. She’d swipe one from a treatment room.
She bound into the treatment room, flung open the cabinets, and groped around the lower shelf for—voila!—bandages. As she taped her finger by the murky outline of streetlights, she realized the motion sensors hadn’t turned on the lights. Strange. She’d better let maintenance know of an electrical issue.
She closed the cabinets. An inky splotch near the cabinet handle shimmered, reflecting the yellow glow from outside. Upon further inspection, the splotch was a handprint.
In fresh blood.
Her stomach muscles tightened. She spun around to see an empty, undisturbed exam table.
However, on the floor next to it, a beam of light landed on a pulsating black heap.
“Hello?” Marisol called out a greeting fit for de-escalation rather than I know where the scalpels are and how to use them.
The heap struggled to stand and collapsed back onto the floor.
“You’re injured. I’m a nurse.” The job had a way of overriding the typical fight-flight response.
It grabbed the exam table and hoisted itself up. An impossibly tall figure stood wearing all black, resembling the Patron Saint. Or rather a Patron Saint. He wore a molded suit that hugged his heavyweight form. He flicked back his cape, caught by some unseen wind. At last, his head tilted upright. A leather half-hood encased his face, emphasizing his square jaw. But the most remarkable sight was his eyes. Even in the darkness, they were a penetrating blue, like the sun through stained glass. His gloved hands glistened with blood. His blood?
Marisol pressed her back into the cabinets. “I can help you. If you follow me to the ER–”
“I can’t do that!” He groaned and immediately hugged his wound. An object stuck into his injured side. He gripped it and breathed through his teeth. “People can’t... know about... me. They’ll want to... know who... I am.”
Even straining, he had a velvet-rich baritone voice. It soothed her enough to release her white-knuckle grip from the counter edges. Marisol reached toward the light switch above the counter. Click. In the light, she saw his blood pool around a large gash. Like trauma surgery, ruptured organs, and rapid infusion gash. She couldn’t let a patient bleed to death on an account of his pride. “Seriously, man. You need to come with me. It’s pretty bad.”
The man recoiled. “Forget it. I can do this myself.” He grunted and fidgeted with the object in his side.
“Not by the looks of it.” Marisol touched his arm. “You can’t do this on your own.” The physical contact between them crackled like static electricity, standing the hair on her arm on end. Her eyes caught onto his, and those blues seared into her. She went rigid.
What was it about him? He was different. Taller and fitter than the other dressed-up patients. And he added an electric charge to the air? How authentic.
She held his gaze, and his breath quieted to a calm and even rhythm. “I got you,” she whispered. The tension in his body relaxed under the pressure of her hand; their breathing synced. As she rubbed her lips together, her fear subsided.
Time to get to work.
Marisol washed her hands, keeping the man in her view. She pulled gloves from the boxes lined against the wall and snapped them on. “I need to remove your shirt... thing.”
He unclasped his cape and nodded toward his back. Marisol ran her hands over his back in search of the zipper. His costume seemed like an enhanced wetsuit. Once she found the hidden zipper, she undid the top half. She pulled it away from his body, careful not to hurt him more. He helped her by shrugging the layer off.
The suit was heavy with what looked to be Kevlar, neoprene, and metal plating. All those major layers practically doubled his size. Compared to a pair of sweatpants and a ski mask, this costume was official.
More impressive than the suit, his naked upper body revealed him to be both a weapon and a thing of beauty, with broad, sinewy shoulders and muscular ridges carved into his torso. Unlike the other masked loons, this one had worked out. A lot. She’d have to grab some paper towel to wipe the drool from the corners of her mouth.
The metallic object protruding from his side yanked back her focus. Buried in his side was a large pair of forceps.
A renewed sense of urgency sucked the moisture from her mouth. She plucked the forceps from his side and kneeled, studying the wound closer. The forceps failed to grip on to a sharp piece of metal. “If I pull that out now, I’m afraid you’ll bleed out. At the ER, a surgeon could—”
He put his hand on top of hers. “It digs... in deeper... when I move. If you get… it out... I will... go to... the ER.”
She needed to help him soon, or the shard would bore a hole through him, and he’d bleed out of two places rather than one. Marisol turned around, gathered gauze and antiseptic, and removed a skinny pair of forceps from sealed plastic, placing the supplies ceremoniously out on a stainless-steel tray. Returning to her mysterious patient, she dabbed the wound with the gauze and antiseptic. Marisol grabbed the smaller forceps and hovered them over the gash. Another wave of doubt hit her. “Sure you wouldn’t like some topical anesthetic?”
He clenched his teeth. “Get it out!”
Let’s hope he keeps up his end of the bargain. Marisol dug the smaller forceps into his side. “Okay. Here...” She gripped the metallic object. “We…” Then she leaned her weight on her right leg, pressing her foot against the table. “Go!” Marisol pushed her leg against the table, pulled the forceps, and–squelch!–yanked out the blade. The man collapsed onto the exam table. Marisol dropped the broken blade into the metal tray, where it landed with a clank. The hilt was missing.
Marisol pressed more gauze against his side, and her eyes met his. Her head rushed with warmth. Adrenaline. That had to be adrenaline. She parted her lips, inhaling and exhaling.
He turned up one side of his mouth; she realized he mirrored her own awkward smile. Between ragged breaths, he said, “Thank you, Nurse Novotny.”
Her fixation broke. “You know my name?”
He pointed to her badge clipped to her shirt. M. Novotny, RN was barely discernible in the room’s limited light.
Of course. “People who owe me big favors call me Marisol.”
He repeated her name, and it sent a tingle of dopamine throughout her body. Marisol’s chest heaved. “Hm.”
He echoed, “Hm.”
She shifted her weight, rubbing her thighs together as the tremors of his low voice rumbled through her. Too muchdopamine…
“You hurt your hand,” he said.
Her busted knuckle appeared as a slight discoloration in her gloves, practically lost in the angry red of his blood. How did he know? She blurted, “I’m fine.”
“Swiping a single bandage in the dark because you’re fine.”
A chill like a sudden nakedness whispered over her. Most people failed to pry past her half-truths. She looked down, concentrating on suppressing the bleeding. “I will call someone to bring a gurney, and we can look at you in the ER. Can you keep the pressure on the wound?”
He nodded.
When she moved her hand, the gauze fell away. The gash didn’t seem that deep or wide, more like a paper cut. As she held fresh gauze against the wound, she attempted a second look at it, but the Patron Saint snatched the gauze and took over once again.
She turned around and whipped her bloody gloves off into the trash. While she washed her hands, he slipped the top part of his costume back on. She held her hand up for him to stop. “Keep pressure on it!”
Without the knife in his side holding him back, he zipped his costume with ease. But with an admonishing look from her, he cradled his side again and nodded his head.
Marisol turned around again and pressed the call button. She waited for a click and a beep. A voice returned, “How may I help you?”
She looked over her shoulder. The sight squeezed the air from her lungs. He was gone. “Never mind.” She ran to the window, opened it, and stuck her head outside. Nothing but an empty alley. He couldn’t have jumped and sprinted, not with that wound. She sighed and shut the window. “I’m having a weird night.”
Before returning to the ER, she remembered what he had said. People couldn’t know about him. For some reason, those eyes earned her loyalty. She pulled on a fresh set of gloves and wiped the blood from the cabinet, cleaned the forceps, dispensed them in the bin to be sanitized, and emptied the bio-waste. She gave the room another scan. No sign of a break-in or a clandestine treatment. All traces of this Patron Saint converted into a memory, a tale—The Sexy Vigilante and the Mysterious Knife Wound.
