Eye Contact Read online

  The day I was beaten up just a block away from our house, Matt was still at school. I had only been at Ms. Hattie’s for a couple weeks at that point, and he hadn’t quite warmed up to me being there yet. We weren’t exactly friends and certainly didn’t consider each other brothers. I did find out days later that Stephan came back to school sporting a casted arm and a broken nose a few days after the incident. He would never say what happened, but I knew who happened. Matt knew who’d hurt me and had stood up for me the only way he knew how—retaliation. That awful beating was the start of our kinship, and we’d been loyal to each other ever since, even to a fault.

  I would have done just about anything for Matt—and I had, really. The weight of the sacrifices I’d made to save his ass were astronomical, and despite being bitter and unhappy with the recent distance between us, I’d have done it all again.

  Knowing I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night, I inclined my uncomfortable hospital bed into a sitting position and reached for the only thing I knew would calm my nerves. It wasn’t the same as having my sketchbook and my charcoal, but the back of the hospital dietary menu and the miniature pencil would have to do in a pinch.

  I put the dull cheap pencil to paper and began scratching out the image that would forever be burned into my soul. Starting with the inner corners, I shaped them and scratched in the lashes and creases, filling in the beautiful flecks of her irises last. I shaded depth and perfected every detail I could remember, as if she were right in front of me, posing for a portrait. Her entire face was in my mind, finally, now that I had seen her and memorized her, but I stopped at her eyes, just as I had done for years. It was comfortable and satisfying, a soothing ritual. It relaxed the chaos in my mind enough that I dozed off a short time later, exhausted from the events of the evening.

  When I woke up the next morning at the sound of my breakfast tray being set down on the bedside table, the piece of paper was gone. The four-inch pencil was right there next to my water pitcher, but the drawing was nowhere to be found. I searched around the table, under the tray, in my bed, everywhere I could reach, even asking the nurse to look for it on the floor in case it had fallen down, but it had disappeared, making me question whether I’d drawn anything at all. Maybe it had just been a dream.

  Chapter 14

  Andie

  “How far did he fall?”

  “From some scaffolding…maybe three stories?” the paramedic estimated as he squeezed air into the ambu bag while he rolled into trauma bay three. “His co-workers initiated CPR and we were able to get a rhythm pretty quickly after getting there.”

  “Construction site? He wasn’t harnessed?” One simple safety measure could’ve prevented this. I couldn’t help but be annoyed.

  “He was in the process, they said. Wearing a hardhat, but that’s it.”

  “Was he ever responsive?” I questioned, physically assessing him as I spoke.

  “No,” he answered, regret clear in his tone. “GCS was three on arrival.”

  The young gentleman before me was strapped to the backboard he’d been put on at the scene, with padded neck support surrounding his head and straps keeping it from moving around. He was alive according to the steady beating of a normal sinus rhythm sounding over the monitors and the men breathing for him by forcing air through a tube leading down to his lungs.

  But, he was dead.

  His pupils were blown wide open and non-reactive to light. No life was behind them in his brain anymore. He had no neurological response anywhere in his body, not even a twitch of muscle.

  “Let’s unstrap him and roll him onto his side. I want to look at his back,” I ordered.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for X-ray and CT?” someone objected.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said with finality.

  Everyone paused and the space got quiet. With the help of the paramedics and another ER nurse, his body was stabilized and rolled onto his right side. His t-shirt, filthy with sweat and the dust of his job, was cut away from his skin and plain as day, you could immediately see what the problem was.

  “We’ll need to notify next of kin and call the organ procurement team if they consent.” My words came out slowly and with melancholy. The visible step-offs in his spine were indicative of a complete spinal cord injury, and the fact that his pupils were blown coupled with no neurological response implied brain death. He would need an X-ray, a CT scan, and an EEG to confirm, but this guy was gone, and I hoped his senseless death wouldn’t be all for nothing. If he was an organ donor, he could potentially help numerous people.

  I faintly heard one of the nurses whispering in the corner of the bay: “I don’t understand.”

  I don’t know what came over me. I wasn’t a good teacher, at least not by actively trying. People learned from me by observation. Any time I had ever tried to show someone directly or engage in any sort of interactive discussion, it was awkward and unproductive, but something was different this time. I felt different. I felt a push to interact, even if it was destined to fail. Maybe it was Vaughn, maybe not. I didn’t know, but I spoke up, addressing the nurse—a recent hire in our trauma unit—who had voiced her confusion.

  “Come closer and have a look. Touch it. You all should,” I instructed, addressing the room. Completely atypical of my normal personality, I used the tragedy as a teaching moment. Adrenaline and the attention of everyone around me were fueling my introverted nature, and I spoke without thinking first. I let my every thought be voiced.

  “Run your fingers along his spine, just like this, lightly palpating the alignment of his vertebrae, and then here…” I stopped my finger when the straight line jutted off to the side, the next vertebrae in the row being displaced, continuing the line of the spine up above it. The man’s back looked as if someone had cut it in half and moved the top segment over slightly.

  “Right here, we have a significant step-off. Even five millimeters of displacement can put the spinal cord at risk, and this looks like almost an inch. Essentially, his spinal cord is dislocated, probably ruptured.” Everyone stood motionless, soaking my words in and taking turns feeling what I was describing. “If the cord isn’t ruptured, he could come out of this alive but be a paraplegic. Unfortunately, there’s more going on here. Something’s broken that we can’t see with the naked eye.”

  “Or his pupils wouldn’t be blown?” the nurse asked with trepidation.

  “Exactly,” I affirmed. “Let’s order the imaging as well as an ultrasound to look at all of his major organs. If they’re unscathed and his lab work is okay, this man can save a lot of lives.” I removed my gloves and tossed them in the biohazard bag as I turned to exit; there was nothing more I could do for the guy.

  I heard a voice speak softly behind me as I was leaving: “Thank you, Dr. Fine.” It made me uncomfortable, but a shy smile formed on my lips.

  The farther from the room I got, though, the more the slight fulfillment felt from teaching my colleagues without clamming up faded away. I felt dismal and somber at the loss of my patient and dreaded having to reveal his fate to his family. My thoughts drifted to Vaughn. I had managed to escape the situation earlier before saying anything worth regretting, but I wasn’t going to be able to avoid him for very long. He was my patient. I had a duty to see him through the remainder of his hospital stay and needed to firmly draw a line in the sand and not toe it, despite my attraction. There was no professional reason for me to enter his room in the middle of the night and chitchat, no reason for me to sit at the foot of his bed and ask getting-to-know-you questions completely unrelated to his care and treatment. There was no reason for me to want to lean into him when our eyes locked, no reason for a kaleidoscope of butterflies to erupt in flight in my stomach, making me lose all logic and judgment. I shouldn’t have been happy at the sound of his increased heart rate sounding through my stethoscope, signaling that he was also nervous, shouldn’t have wanted to go back up to his room again at 5:30 in the morning when I should have been seeing to my
most recent patient’s orders and dictation—yet that’s what I had found myself doing. That’s where my feet had led me. I had officially lost my mind, but my body wouldn’t be stopped from traipsing down the halls of the hospital in pursuit of clarity.

  Clarity was not what I acquired, however.

  Things became anything but clear to me when I entered his room to find him peacefully asleep in his bed. His chest rose and fell with slumber, and soft snores slipped from his mouth as he exhaled. When I looked closer, he appeared to be holding on to something. I carefully and quietly walked forward until I could see that he held a small golf pencil in his right hand and some sort of hospital pamphlet in his left. The piece of paper had a drawing on it. It was barely in his grip, easily slipping away as I pulled it from his grasp without waking him.

  The drawing was of a pair of eyes.

  The talented rendition done with a crude writing utensil was a remarkable composition despite the mediocre materials used and having been drawn in the dim fluorescent lighting of his hospital room in the middle of the night.

  The eyes scared me.

  The eyes looking up at me from the paper were my own.

  I didn’t mean to take it with me when I left the room.

  I didn’t mean to steal his drawing from him, but I couldn’t let go of it. I physically couldn’t release it from my hands.

  Chapter 15

  Andie

  “You don’t understand!” I yelled through the phone, my voice shaky and distressed. “I crossed the line.”

  “That’s a little dramatic, don’t ya think?”

  “No. I don’t think.”

  “Andie, calm down. You had a conversation. You assessed your patient. It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong.”

  “Well, it obviously isn’t how he saw things.” Her dismissal of my concerns was flustering me. “He asked me out, Rowan.”

  “You’re hot—who wouldn’t ask you out?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “Would you stop? I’m freaking out here. I don’t know how to do this.”

  “There’s always the option of actually going.”

  She couldn’t be serious. “Absolutely not. I—I can’t. I couldn’t.”

  “You should. See what happens. See where it goes.”

  “Rowan, that is insane.”

  “Why? This guy could be your happy ever after and you’re just gonna piss away the opportunity because you’re scared.”

  “I’ve worked way too hard to get here. I’m not going to jeopardize my career or reputation for—”

  “Oh, BS!” she rudely interrupted. “Don’t give me that crap. You’ve never had to work hard. You look at a book page and have it all but memorized in ten seconds. Have you ever even gotten a B?” she mocked. “You flew through med school and don’t even have a cent of debt afterward.” Her response was harsh and slightly bitter.

  “Why are you… Don’t you think you’re being a little crude?”

  “Andie, come on! You called me at six in the morning to whine about being hit on by a patient. You know good and well I’m not the friend who’s going to tell you what you want to hear. I’ve always given it to you straight, and right now, you’re being a scared little brat.”

  “Ro, I—”

  “No, seriously. The fact that you’re even calling me about it means something. You’re obviously interested a little or we wouldn’t even be talking about it. Go out with the guy or don’t, but quit freaking out. You did nothing wrong.” She audibly yawned at the end of her statement, obviously done talking about it.

  I hadn’t mentioned the drawing yet. By the tone of her response, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It had unnerved me, but in a way, I liked it. It felt good to be wanted, to be viewed as beautiful and desirable, which was what the art made me feel. It was mine…my little secret. I didn’t need her making fun of it.

  “Okay. Go back to sleep.”

  “Andie, don’t be pissed.”

  “I’m not pissed,” I acquiesced. “You’re probably right. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “You didn’t bother me. I just don’t understand why you’re wigging out about it. Go enjoy your day off. Go to the beach. Get a massage. Do something to take your mind off of this guy.”

  “I don’t even have the day off. I’m staying an extra four hours, covering Bowers until two.”

  “Why?” she asked, scoffing at the thought of me doing him a favor.

  “Because he asked. He’s got some thing to go to for his kid.”

  “He has a kid?” she blurted out, surprised.

  “I guess.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s none of my business.”

  “I mean, whatever. He wouldn’t do that for you, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, stay out of Bennett’s room. He’s obviously under your skin. Get your mind right, girl. You’re Dr. Andie Fine, badass trauma surgeon extraordinaire. You will not be shaken—unless, of course, you want to be shaken, in between the sheets, with Vaughn B—”

  “Aaaaaand we’re done,” I cut in with a laugh. “Thank you, Rowan. You always know just what to say to make me even more uncomfortable than I already was.”

  “You love it. What would you do without me?”

  “I would be a sad and lonely loser, for sure.”

  “Probably true,” she affirmed. “I feel sorry for people who don’t know me. I should be a life coach.”

  “Bye, Ro.”

  I hung up and sat there for a minute, breathing out my frustration. I needed to stay far away from him and give it some distance, but every molecule in my body was drawn to him like a magnet. I wanted to go back up there and demand to know what was up with the drawing. I wanted to know everything about him, wanted to throw caution to the wind and say, Yes! I’ll go out with you, but the thought terrified me.

  I spent the next hour in the dictation room. I started out entering orders into the computer for my spinal cord injury patient, initiating the process for organ procurement and all the necessary lab work and tests. But, as my mind drifted, I ended up logging on to the hospital’s policy and procedure database and found myself searching the rules on fraternization at the workplace and the doctor-patient relationship. Vaughn Bennett was like a song I couldn’t get out of my head, but as I read terms like “zero-tolerance” and “unethical”, I felt an immediate wave of nausea come over me. Quickly bringing my clammy hand over the mouse, I closed the window and logged out, feeling horrible for even considering it.

  What was wrong with me? Why was I even contemplating playing with fire like that? It wasn’t even fire—it was a live nuclear warhead in my nice little controlled world of foreseeable outcomes. My life was routine and patterned; consistency was crucial for me to balance out the unpredictability of the ER. The potential fallout from this circumstance and all that could go wrong was astronomical. I couldn’t possibly risk it.

  As if he were right next to me, my father’s voice came through my mind.

  Perhaps if you can’t get someone out of your mind, they’re supposed to be there.

  Don’t let your brain whisper fear into your heart, Andie. Maybe your heart has a reason your head just doesn’t quite understand yet.

  As if the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees, a chill ran over my entire body and goose bumps erupted all over my arms and legs. I had no idea what to do but I’d heard the voice of my father loud and clear from beyond the grave. He had always taught me that your gut instinct was everything. You had to trust it above and beyond any other thing because God instilled it within us as a trump-all guide that would never fail us.

  The problem was my gut instinct was shouting at me in a completely different language. One minute, I felt like a hormone-crazed teenager needing to be restrained from touching Vaughn, and the next I felt like I needed to pump the brakes and slap the stupid off of my own face. Overwhelmingly, I felt like I needed to brave this issue head on. I needed to confront the feelings and intrigue
this man presented. I needed to know more about what was behind the attraction I was feeling. My gut needed a little more information to go on, and I intended to give it to her.

  I made it through the rest of my shift unscathed from any major disasters. My patient had all his imaging and lab work completed, showing a clean bill of health as far as blood work but an unfortunate significant spinal cord injury. His fall had inflicted T3 and T4 fractures with spinal cord rupture and an atlas fracture at C1. The injuries were inoperable and incompatible with life. We were keeping his heart beating and lungs breathing with machines, but he would never come out of that state. I ached for his family but geared myself up for a tough conversation, hoping and praying they would consent to organ donation. His lab work was impeccable. He was drug free, disease free, and even had type O blood—in other words, ideal for donation.

  It was time for me to clock out before his next of kin was able to make it to the hospital. They were apparently travelling up from Miami and were still hours away. I notified the organ procurement team and case management that although I would technically be off when they arrived, they could call me to come in. It was above and beyond and there were certainly other physicians capable of having the conversation with them, but I felt a duty, a kind of ownership over his case, since I had been the one to receive him in the ER. The need I felt to follow through was intense.

  Driving away from the parking garage toward my house, the exhaustion began to sink in and my need to sleep rang loudly. But, just as I pulled into my driveway and glanced over at the passenger seat in my car, I was again met with the sight of my eyes in the form of a pencil sketch. It was like looking into a mirror. Vaughn had such a gift, and I yearned to see more. My mind was made up that instant and I reversed right back out of my driveway, heading to the arts and crafts supplies store.