Save You.pdf

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4847866/1/

Chapter 1: The Unhappy Triad

EPOV

"Excuse me, Dr. Cullen?"

The high-pitched irritating voice came out in a timid whisper, which I expected.

Every nurse in this hospital was terrified of me, and I didn't give a shit if their

fear was justified or not. It probably was, in this case. I was watching a highly

entertaining episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and this useless lackey

was breaking my reverie. I wasn't going to dignify her presence with a response.

She pretended to clear her throat, which she thought might lighten my mood. Or

no, that couldn't be it. She'd be promoted to chief of orthopedics before that

happened. Ha. Right. I chuckled to myself.

"Dr. Cullen," she said, in a tiny, quivering voice. "There is a patient in Room 4

that Dr. Brandon wants you to see."

What. The. Fuck. Now Brandon was sending me messengers to see her patients?

I'd give her a walloping dose of shit for this tomorrow. She was one of the senior

residents, fairly competent, but also spineless. Brandon was too fucking cheery

and naïve to ever be a successful doctor. She probably knew that, but she didn't

care. She cared only to the extent that I gave her a decent recommendation,

because she was my resident and I was her boss. I singlehandedly dictated the

course of her career.

"Then why doesn't Dr. Brandon," I sneered, "come and get me herself?"

"Her shift just ended, Doctor."

"Jeezus," I said under my breath as I stood up and grabbed the chart from her.

"Since when does anyone around here think their shift ends until I say it ends?"

I was pretty sure Brandon had just worked a 24-hour shift, or something close to

it, but this nurse didn't know that and I wanted to remind her who was boss. Of

course I didn't dictate when people's shifts ended, but again, I wanted to make a

point. Brandon had probably paged me eight times to let me know she was going

home, but I left my beeper in my office and had no incentive to get it at the

moment.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she mumbled.

I glared at her as I stalked out of the room, headed toward Room 4 to see this

patient who sure as fuck better be worth my time. I shouldn't always be taking

my annoyance out on the nurses, but I get irritated when they show up in my

face and tell me what to do. I would deal with this one later.

I walked briskly down the hall, nodding gruffly to the few people that managed to

make eye contact with me. They respected me in a silent, intimidated kind of

way. Hospitals were built on a very hierarchical system, and I was at the top. Or

somewhere near the top. Surgeons had the cushiest offices, because that's just

how it is, but surgery was also for people who wanted to fix the shit that I

diagnosed. And where was the fun in that? I had done a residency in surgery,

kind of for the hell of it, but it was more to prove a point than anything else. I

wasn't intimidated by people who viewed medicine as "art." Bullshit. Medicine

was sick, old, dying people who wanted you to save them. To give them another

day, another month, another year. And for what? To be brutally fucking honest,

most people didn't have lives worth saving.

So, why do it at all then? Why was I on these godforsaken wards at some

godforsaken hour, listening to a goddamned nurse tell me I had to see some

worthless patient in Room 4? I don't know. Sometimes, I really don't fucking

know. If I had to articulate an answer, I'd probably throw in a few words like

power and prestige. Maybe one or two about challenging myself. I saw the

sickest, strangest, most baffling cases, because no one else could solve them. I

could, more often than not. If I couldn't, they died. I was the end of the line for

these people.

And so I approached Room 4 fairly certain I was going to see someone on their

deathbed, bleeding out of their eyes and ears or some other crazy shit. I didn't

bother to knock, as usual. My subordinates knocked; I just did whatever the fuck

I wanted.

"Are you awake?" I bellowed as I strode into the room, which was empty except

for the figure lying on the bed. "Ms…uh, Hale?"

She looked battered and bruised, and the skin around her eye was a deep,

menacing purple. Aside from the massive contusions and multiple lacerations all

over her face, she was a young, striking blonde.

"Well, shit," I said. "What happened to you?"

"Car accident," she managed through clenched teeth. Right. I had heard that

excuse thousands of times from women her age. It took a few trips to the

emergency room for them to give me the truth.

"Are you here alone?" I asked.

"Yes," she mumbled.

"Well, that's step one in your recovery," I muttered, giving her a not so subtle

signal that I knew exactly what had happened.

"It's not what it looks like," she protested.

"Look, I don't care. I'm here to address your medical needs," I said with my

typical sarcasm. "If you want more than that, press the chaplain button."

"There's a chaplain button?" she asked.

I rolled my eyes. Again, I wasn't going to dignify that with a response.

"So what's wrong with you, aside from your face?" I asked. As in, what the fuck

am I supposed to do for a purple face? I couldn't give this bimbo some instant

plastic surgery, although she was probably about to ask for it.

"My knee…" she mumbled, cringing as she spoke. It was almost painful to watch.

Almost.

Ugh. A knee problem? So straightforward. So boring. I felt my valuable time

being wasted with each passing second.

"Can you pull up your gown so I can look at it?" I asked, which came out like a

demand. I tried to grant my female patients some measure of dignity. It was one

of the few lessons in med school I actually put into practice.

"Can you?" she asked. "It hurts to move."

I pulled down the sheets and rolled up the edge of her gown to assess the

damage. Her knee appeared normal to an untrained eye, but I could tell just by

looking at it that she had busted the unhappy triad.

"Meet up with a baseball bat?" I asked. It was an educated guess, and most likely

an accurate one. But she'd never admit that.

"No," she said. "I…hurt it a month ago, and I think it's messed up."

"It is messed up," I said, recycling her words. "It's very messed up." Best to use

kid gloves with this one.

"What's wrong with it?"

"You most likely tore three ligaments in your knee, known in orthopedics as the

'unhappy triad.'"

"Why is it called that?"

"Because your knee is unhappy about the fact that it's totally fucked up."

She sighed deeply. "But it doesn't even hurt," she mumbled.

"If the ligaments are torn, then it won't hurt. Here, let me demonstrate."

I lifted her slightly-bent leg and jerked the calf forward, and for a second, it

looked like the upper and lower parts of her leg weren't even connected. Ah, yes,

a positive Lachmann test: every college football player's worst nightmare. I

thought of this broad playing football and almost laughed out loud.

"That looks like it should hurt," she observed. "Is it bad that it doesn't?"

"No, it's not bad. Look, if you want to fix this, get surgery. Enjoy nine months of

recovery and you'll be back to runway modeling, or whatever you do."

"Nine months?" she exclaimed, and her face fell. "I don't have nine months."

"Then live with a knee that does the weird shit I just demonstrated for you. Your

quads will compensate, although you'll limp. It'll be, like, your trademark."

"I don't want a limp."

"No, most of us don't. But that's your problem, so tell the resident you want an

ortho consult and they'll deal with it."

I pulled the sheets back up hurriedly and let out a disgruntled huff as I started for

the door. Brandon was going to pay for this. Seriously, what the fuck was she

thinking? A battered wife with a busted knee? Precisely the kind of emotional,

messy cases I avoided.

"Wait," came her garbled, agonized voice. "Please, wait."

"What?" I asked in an irritated, rushed tone. Most patients backed down when

they got this tone. She didn't.

"I requested you," she said. Of course she did. I was practically a celebrity in this

place. Every patient wanted to see the best doctor, just like every doctor wanted

to see the best patients. Best as in hot, young, and well acquainted with showers.

Didn't mean I got them.

"A lot of patients request me."

"I've heard about you, Dr. Cullen. A friend of mine told me to see you."

"A friend of yours?"

"Yes, she…went to college with you. Although she was a few years younger than

you, I think."

College was a distant, murky memory, and I remembered approximately three

people from the experience. There was no way in hell I was going to remember

some rando, but if she was as attractive as this one, I might have done her at a

frat party or something. Then again, I probably wouldn't remember her in that

case either.

"Her name is Bella Swan."

"Don't know her," I said. And that was the truth. I had definitely never

encountered anyone with that name, in any capacity.

"She knows you. Well, she knows of you. She's a doctor, too."

"What kind of doctor?" I asked in a bored tone. In fact, I had no idea why I was

even perpetuating this vapid conversation.

"A pediatrician."

Ha. What a waste of time. I put pediatricians on the same level as nurses and

physical therapists. Any decent mother knew more than any pediatrician I had

encountered.

"That's great," I said, the usual sarcasm returning. I really didn't give a shit about

the subpar doctors this flake knew, and I couldn't believe I had wasted so much

time indulging her.

"Anyway, best of luck with the unhappy triad. Enjoy your new limp," I said in a

clipped tone as I turned on my heel and left the room. I was tired and irritated

and it was time to go home, home to my empty apartment and miles away from

these halls that consumed my life.

***

It was almost midnight when I got off the train and walked up the steep hill to

my apartment. The night was foggy and cold, unsurprising for August in San

Francisco. Or Fogust, as the locals called it. I didn't care, though. I liked bad

weather because it kept people indoors and out of my ER.

I walked up the stairs to my apartment on the third floor of one of those picture-

perfect Victorians, which sat on a hill and overlooked the city in every direction.

The view from my windows was a stunning sight, more than enough to keep me

entertained most days. The city lights streamed in through the large, open

windows, and I was reminded, once again, of why I lived here. "Welcome to

paradise," someone had said a few days after I moved to San Francisco. Paradise

indeed.

I stepped out of my shoes and walked over to my piano by the window, my

favorite place to just sit and think and stop giving a shit about my life and all the

sick people in it. Because I really did despise people most of the time. I enjoyed

my solitude and only Brandon was brazen enough to question me about it. She

couldn't process the fact that some people enjoyed their own company and didn't

feel the need to interrupt it with the mindless chatter of others. I endured enough

of that on a daily basis.

But that was the front, the very convincing image I projected to the world. I was

a doctor who treated strangers. I turned away patients I knew and the people

they knew. I did it because I was fucked up, in a way, but it had very little to do

with medicine. Or everything to do with it. The only person I spoke to these days

was my father, and our communication was almost shamefully infrequent. He

understood why, though. He understood, and thankfully, he was the only one in

my life who did. No one would ever get close enough to me to know more about

me than the medicine I practiced and the reputation I had earned. No one would

ever see this place. No one would see the completely empty walls and stark lack

of furniture. I didn't have a home. I had an escape.

Brandon had tried, of course. She had asked me a few questions about my family

and background before I completely shut her down, and she gave up. I knew a

few of the rumors circulating about me, but I didn't give a shit. They weren't

accurate, or even creative. Dr. Cullen was a recluse, a deranged genius, an

anomaly. Or, my personal favorite, a highly functional autistic who couldn't relate

to people. Loved that one. If they knew about my musical talent, people would go

nuts with that diagnosis. An autistic savant. Maybe I should just go with it.

Of course, none of it really mattered anyway. People were self-absorbed and

merely enjoyed the speculation about my private life, rather than the reality. As I

downed the last of my gin and tonic, I placed it gingerly on the wood surface, and

placed my fingers on the worn, familiar keys. I played long into the night, my

fingers dancing in a frenzied rhythm, my emotions spilling out in some fucked up

way that I never bothered to think about. The piano spoke for me. It was all I

needed to escape: a piano and walls and the endless lights of the city below. I

escaped to this place, where my past, my life, my medicine, could never follow.

As the music filled the room, my mind cleared and I felt the familiar fatigue cloud

my thinking and pull me toward unconsciousness. Still sitting at my piano, I

drifted off to the sound of the foghorns in the distance, and the screech of cabs

as they pulsed through the city like the blood in my veins.

***

"Dr. Cullen, did you see Ms. Hale yesterday?"

"What?"

I was sitting at my desk in my office, zoning out while a new day of life and death

started on the wards. I groaned at the interruption. Brandon was standing in my

doorframe, looking too cheerful as always.

"Rosalie Hale? I wanted you to talk to her."

"Yes, I gathered as much. What for, Brandon? She had a torn ACL. You saw that."

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: