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White coat clad 'Doctor Wannabes' as they were referred to, gathered around the patient's bed. In a monotone voice, an ER doctor stood to the side and read from the patients chart
"Patient is a 54 year-old female who complains of upper abdominal pain, fever, nausea and cold sweats. Any guesses people. She looked around the group and shook her head in disgust. "Come on this is something I learned when I was five." She narrowed her eyes and pointed to a young man hiding in the back. "You back there hiding, you heard the symptoms, tell me something! Before the patient seeks out a veterinarian!"
The young internist wiped sweat from his upper lip and stuttered. "Appendicitis?"
"How would you determine this?" She put a mark next to his name on her list. "Come on over here and examine her, how else are you going to figure this out talk to her stomach?" He squeezed through the other frightened doctors and pressed on the patient's stomach. He shook his head and stepped back. "OK, then talk to her stomach." She pointed to another person and watched the woman flinch. "You're next, talk to me."
"Uhhmm take blood for testing?"
The doctor rolled her eyes and groaned. "Now listen to me people, this clipboard is not gospel! Triage writes down just the basic things here, you need to ask the patient more questions. Now pay attention to me." She closed the clipboard and turned to the patient. "Ma'am when did this pain start and is it a constant pain or does it come and go?"
"It started yesterday morning right after breakfast, about an hour later it was gone."
"Does it get worse or better if you lay down?"
"It seems to help if I lay down."
"OK, now do you get this pain every time you eat or just greasy foods like bacon or sausage?"
"No, it happens every time I eat."
"Which side of your stomach hurts the right or left and does it spread from there?"
"The right side and it sometimes goes under my shoulder blade."
"OK, people any guesses now?" She pointed to a man who was cleaning his fingernails with his hospital badge. "You there pretty boy."
"Ulcers?"
"You know what people; I wouldn't let you work on a cadaver! This patient is showing all the signs of Gallstones. Do we treat the patient for them? It depends on if the stone is too large to pass through the bile duct whether we operate to remove it. If it is a repetitious problem, we usually remove the gallbladder and all is well. What happens if we don't remove the stone? It ain't pretty people, and the ME hates us that day, the relatives hate us forever and we end up in court for malpractice."
She waved to next patient, and pulled the chart. "72 year old male complaining of shortness of breath, coughing up grayish phlegm, fever, pain in upper chest worsens with coughing spell and wheezing. Come on people this is text book." She looked around and growled at their unresponsive faces. "Forget it! If I were teaching your class's you,'d all flunk and end up at Taco Bell. The patient has acute Bronchitis that is treatable with antibiotics. Now get outta my sight before I go off and smack the shit outta ya!" She hung the clipboard in the end of the bed and walked out of the room cussing up a blue streak.
"Stupid God damn people couldn't treat a God damn hangnail!" She pulled off her white lab coat, threw it against the wall and strode out the front door of the ER. Anyone who was within ten feet of her turned and headed in the opposite direction. She pulled her stethoscope from around her neck, flung it up into the air, and watched it sail across the parking lot, hit the ground and got run over by someone pulling in. She ran her finger's through her short blonde hair and screamed at the top of her lungs before going back in to face the fast pace of the ER.
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The ER Chief Besom, sighed and ran his hands across his bald pallet, he had just heard the umpteenth complaint against Dr. Shay Gerard. When she first came to the hospital, she was a shinning star on his staff. Now she was a black hole that sucked the very life out of the medical students that came to the hospital on rotation. He had two choices, either fire her or turn it over to the one person who could find out the deepest secrets of a spy. He hated to loose Dr. Gerard, she was an excellent surgeon and never panicked in the worst of cases. She thrived on the fast pace of the ER and treated the patients better than most overworked ER docs did. It was the staff that wanted to hang her from the nearest flagpole, tree, bridge or anything handy. Even the paramedics were afraid to come within spitting distance of her, especially after she dumped a full bedpan on one of them for running her over with a gurney. He couldn't really blame her, the patient weighed over 300 lbs and the wheel broke all the toes on her right foot. The bad part was that the paramedic needed sutures in the top of his head after she bent the bedpan over it. He had tried to speak with her and received the 'talk to the hand' motion from her on countless times.
Now his only real problem was getting the sick individual back to the hospital to take on Shay the terrible or what the others called her The Ice Princess. He had made more than a dozen phone calls and finally found someone to pass the information on to Pez. He made it a simple message that was self-explanatory. One word 'HELP!' He just hoped that the arrival of Pez was soon, if not he may be the one to coil the rope. And hang the five foot four terrorist all by himself.
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Pez got out of her Humvee and looked under the front wheel to see the rubber ends of a stethoscope. "And people wonder why it costs two million dollars for a trip to the ER." Flipping her Pittsburgh Pirates hat on backwards, she clipped her keys with its Teletubbie keychain to the clip on her chained biker's wallet and walked towards the doors to the ER. The sound of her unlaced combat boots clunked against the tile floor, the chain on her wallet and the jingle of keys sang out with each step. Her long strides taking her down the hallway to the door of the stairwell was noticed by two of the staff members. They stood in the small Doctor's lounge with their jaws hanging open and watched her disappear through the door. As soon as it closed, they wrapped their arms around each other, jumped up and down and howled like a pack of wolves. When a nurse came into the room to inspect the noise, she looked at them as if they had lost their tiny little minds.
"What's your problem today you two, too many snorts off the O2 tank again?"
"Ahh come on we only do that when we have hangovers." The stocky dark haired ER doctor slid across the floor and wrapped her arms around the older nurse. "Come on granny give me some sugar." Betty was the oldest nurse on staff, the head nurse for the dayshift hours, her pure white hair was always a mess, and she looked like Phyllis Diller in every way.
"Get off me Roy before I smacked the shit outta you." She stomped on the doctor's foot and grabbed her by her dangling silver feather earring. "You wait until you're sleeping in the call room, I'm gonna tie that wild ass mop of yours in knots!"
"Better yet," Roy's cohort in insanity said. "Brush it for her, everyone including the hamsters living in there know that would kill her." Hazel eyes narrowed at Roy. "Wait a minute, is my cell phone hidden in there somewhere, the last time I had it, we were in bed." She pulled Roy's head down and started searching through the thick mass of dark tangled hair. Betty rolled her eyes and disengaged thick muscled arms from around her waist. "Griffin, do something with her and tell me what all the hollering and jumping around was about."
Two voices rang out and they jumped around the floor chanting "PEZ!" Betty covered her ears and prayed that they were not saying the nickname of the most insane Chief of Surgery she had ever had to work with. Walking from the room, she looked up and down the hallway and saw that it was clear of six-foot of trouble making Pez.
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Besom pulled the icepack from his eyes and dropped it to his desk when he heard a soft knock on his office door. He hoped that it wasn't another resident coming to complain about Gerard. "He checked in to the nut ward go away!"
"Is it a single or double occupancy?" The door opened to show six-foot of smirking thug.
"I don't care how you got my message but I am the happiest damn man in the world. Get in here Pez and help me save myself from a jail cell."
"Hey when I get such a lengthy message full of details I just couldn't help but fly clear across the street to see what you needed."
His green eyes blinked in confusion. "Across the street, you mean you were over at the Day Care Center?"
"Yep, had to stop over and give the ladies over there some Pediatric drug samples and rubber gloves. Ya know how snot slingers are, gross little beasts. So what's the problem?" She stretched out her tall frame in the chair in front of his desk.
"When are you coming back to work, I really need your help here." He slid the file with all the complaints in it across his desk to her. She opened the file and with each one she read, a dark brow rose higher over the frames of her navigator sunglasses.
Pez slipped into a Brando accent and used a Godfather like hand gesture. "You want me to do a hit and take this bitch out or what?"
"Oohh I wish it were that easy!" He slid another file across his desk. "This was her file up until six months ago; all of a sudden she changed. I've tried to talk to her but got?" Pez held up her hand towards him. "That's what I got alright." He shook his head and smiled.
"What about my girls, what do they say about her?"
"You mean your two little Amazonian Psychopaths Griffin and Roy? HAA! They see her and look for the nearest closet to hide in and tell me that's not a feat for those two."
"My girls hiding and you think I can do something with this? What's this doctor look like?"
"Ohh about five foot four, 105lbs, blonde, green eyes and vampire teeth."
Two dark brows buried themselves into dark shaggy bangs. "Are you telling me what she really needs is a good dentist or a few victims a night to make her happy?"
"Ohh she has all the residents to drain, what I want is my old Shay back. She belongs in your little group of misfits if you get my meaning, so you're perfect for the job because if she's having personal problems?"
"You mean like the staff accepting her life style, she could see that it doesn't matter around here just by watching Grif and Roy." She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her wide chest and looked over the frames of her glasses. "Or are you suggesting that it maybe drug or alcohol abuse?"
He shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands. "I don't know what it is, she just changed over night or so it seemed to me."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"I'm about to assign the residents to the other doctors, can I assign you to her?"
She showed her perfect white teeth in a huge grin. "Ohh I get to play stupid and get away with it more than usual?"
"As dangerous and stupid as it is, yes that's what I'm saying." He rubbed his temples and moaned. "I know I'm going to be sorry as soon as you hit the ER but if this saves an excellent surgeon, it's worth it."
"Better let everyone else know that I'm not here as and never have been the Chief of surgery. If she finds out then there's not much I can do."
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Shay finished up all the patient files, threw her lab coat in her locker and slammed it with enough force to shake all the others. Grabbing up her backpack and files she was taking home with her, she pushed the door open to the locker room and shoved past a startled intern.
"Get the fuck out of my way!" She barked and shoved him in his chest again hard enough to bounce him off the opposite wall. All the others in the hall jumped out of the permanently pissed off doctor's way and just watched as she went out the doors. Sighs of relief were heard through out the ER, and then everything was back to normal. Until Pez showed up, then the place was like the streets of New Orleans during Mardi gras. Griffin and Roy were the first to jump her and take her down to the tile floor.
"Where have you been!?" Griffin mumbled into her ear and planted a kiss on her cheek. "We've missed you Pez."
Roy lay on top of her tall friend with her face snuggled against her breasts. "Me more than you, she takes me to chucky cheese and lets me play the games."
Pez gave Roy a hug, pulled Griffin's head down and kissed her forehead. "Guys can I get up now, this floor is cold as a witch's tit."
They got off her and pulled her to her feet; she wrapped her arms over her much shorter friend's shoulders and walked them down the hall to the doctor's lounge.
Roy looked up to see her reflection in dark sunglasses. "We know what's colder than a witch's tit. Dr. Gerard."
"She's a real ice princess," Griffin stopped their movement. "Is that why you're back so soon?"
"Sort of, I took care of the other stuff faster than anyone thought was possible and I had planed to just vegetate for another two months. Then I got the distress call this morning from Besom." She dropped down onto a worn couch and stretched out her long legs. "Pass it around that I'm just a last year resident. I don't want the princess to know who I really am otherwise I can't find out what the problem is with her."
Roy handed her a cup of coffee and dropped down onto the coffee table. "It's like the pod people were here and stole the real Shay."
"Why are you two so afraid of her?" She looked between the couple with a smirk on her lips.
Griffin traced Roy's jaw with a fingertip. "She may be little but she can punch like you wouldn't believe! She hit Roy so hard that she fell back on her ass in the middle of the ER. My poor baby was stupid the rest of the day." She leaned sideways and kissed her lover's jaw.
Pez snorted at her and nudged Roy's leg with the toe of her boot. "You're still stupid, alright what did you do?"
"Nothing much, I just told her she needed to get laid and she popped me one." She tapped Pez on her knee. "You should tell her that, I would love to see her jumping up and down trying to punch you."
"Ohh believe me, she'll wanna kill me within the first two seconds of meeting me."
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Shay walked through the front door of her apartment, dropped her backpack on the floor near the door and headed to the kitchen for a beer. Pulling out a Black and Tan, she drained half the bottle before she sunk down into a wooden chair at the table. Placing the cold bottle against her forehead, she closed her eyes and moaned from the slight pain it caused. She stiffened in her chair when she heard the front door close and heavy footsteps come towards the kitchen.
"Shay you in here?"
Shay wished that she could have at least a couple minutes alone each day to unwind before she had to face her lover. The sound of the heavy Sam Browne belt hitting the table made her jerk her head up.
"I paged you, called your cell phone before I let the precinct." A heavy baton dropped to the table along with a long bladed pocket knife. "Why didn't you call me back?"
"They were in my backpack, I didn't hear them. I'm sorry, was it important?" She was pulled out of her chair and pushed against the wall hard enough that her head bounced. Shay's lover placed her large hand around her throat and pushed her against the wall harder.
"It doesn't matter if it's important or not, I call you answer!" She slammed Shay against the wall and then punched her in her stomach. When Shay hit the floor on her knees, her lover drop kicked her in the ribs.
"Please Jenny stop." She rolled into a fetal position and covered her head. Three kicks caught her in her lower back and then she was yanked by her arm off the floor.
"Now make me something to eat and none of that shit you throw in the microwave, I want real food!" Her parting shot struck Shay between her shoulder blades and made the breath from her lungs burst forth. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she gasped for air and held her stomach. The sound of the shower coming on told her she had exactly ten minutes before Jenny would be done and back in the kitchen wanting food. Wiping her mouth, she saw blood on her hand and knew that the punch to her stomach had caused the bleeding.
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Griffin, Roy and Pez sat around her small apartment six miles from the hospital in Charlestown West Virginia. Even though she had been away on special assignment for a year, she had kept her apartment and arranged to have it cleaned once a week. Barren of food, they had stopped at Taco Bell and ordered 30 soft tacos and side orders for supper. Now with the coffee table covered in wrappers and empty Pepsi cups, they lay on the furniture moaning, groaning and holding their aching stomachs.
Griffin rolled over and looked into her friends blue eyes. "So where you been for the last ten months?"
"I can't tell you where but I tell you it wasn't fun." She knew they would leave it at that, she was often needed other places and had to be away for extended times. Because of Besom, she was able to maintain her position as Chief of surgery.
Roy yanked on her foot, wiggled her eyebrows and tongue at her. "Any good looking women where you were, midnight creeping or anything?"
"I wish! Hell the only good looking woman I saw was yours truly." She sat up and leaned against her couch. "Tomorrow I want you guys to keep an extra close eye on Dr. Gerard."
"Pez what are you gonna do?" Griffin asked with narrowed eyes.
"Do some snooping in the locker room."
"Are you nuts or what?" Roy slapped her foot. "What happens if she comes in while you're searching her locker and why are you gonna do it anyway?"
"To make sure she's not drinking on the job or taking drugs."
"I can tell ya right now she doesn't, I've been in there when she's been in her locker and the only thing in her locker is her lab coat, stethoscope and nasal spray."
"Then I guess that I'll just irritate the Hell outta her and see what happens."
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It was 0430 the next morning when Shay heard the front door slam closed, she tried to get out of bed but the pain in her lower back and stomach brought a low groan from her. Easing to the edge of the bed, she rolled off until she was on her knees. Tears filled her eyes when she tried to take a deep breath, to complicate her injuries more, a sharp pain radiated behind her eyes and across her cheekbones. For the last year, she had continuous sinus problems and without using nasal spray, she couldn't breathe. Shuffling across the floor on her knees, she made it to the bathroom and used the sink counter to pull herself up. Shedding her clothes, she looked in the mirror and saw the dark angry bruises on her body. They were always in places that couldn't be seen; Jenny never damaged her face, neck or arms. She had told her if she ever told anyone about her beating her, she would never live to see the next day. She thought of just running away but with Jenny being a State police officer, there was nowhere she could go without her finding her.
She had met Jenny one night at the ER when she brought in a drunk driver that had been injured when he hit a row of mailboxes. When they first started dating, everything was fine. Until Jenny moved in with her six months later, that's when she had started beating her a couple of times a week. At first it was a slap to the face or a hard shove, as time progressed, she became more violent. Shay had tried to defend herself countless times and found that the beatings became worse and lasted longer. The anger that she felt for being so weak to not get out of the situation at home, came out at work. Every single day she wished that she could turn the clock back to the time of their meeting and change everything. Climbing into the shower, she let the hot water pound on her swore back and wash away the tears flowing down her cheeks.
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Pez was dressed in her worst clothes, ripped and torn Levis, unlaced combat boots, flannel shirt with the sleeves missing and her ever-present sunglasses. The heels of her boots struck the tile floor and brought everyone's attention to her. The sparkle from the chain at her hip sent flashes across the walls and right into Shay's eyes. She cast a glance sideways and caught a brief sight of green eyes and then Shay's back as she went into one of the triage rooms. Stopping at the nurse's desk, she opened a cabinet high above on the wall next to the desk and pulled out her lab coat and other stuff she needed to work with. Clipping her badge to the collar of her lab coat, she filled her pockets with the candy she had brought in, and then was on her way heading into the doctors lounge to get her daily dose of sludge. She turned from the coffee pot when she heard Besom's voice outside in the hallway.
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"Why me, why can't you put that thug with Griffin or Roy, my Gods she doesn't even look human let alone a resident!" Shay paced the floor in front of Dr. Besom, casting glares up at him each time she went past.
"I'm putting her with you because she's a trouble maker; she's been kicked out of every hospital she's attended."
"So I get the trouble making thug on top of every other rotten fucking thing that happens around here with residents. Just great, like I'm supposed to be able to do anything with her."
Dr. Besom shrugged his shoulders, raised his hands out to the sides and walked away. He stopped and spoke over his shoulder. "Use your charisma on her, it might do something." He knew damn well she understood what he said; he just hoped she didn't throw her clipboard at his head.
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"So I'm a badass doc that's been tossed from other hospitals?" Pez chuckled to herself and then pushed the door open and walked out into the hallway to see Shay at the other end. "One badass taking on another, hope the hospital is up for this." She clunked down the hallway towards where Besom had all the doctors and residents gathered around him. Two by two, the hallway cleared until only Pez, Besom and a pissed off Shay stood in the hall.
"Dr. Shay Gerard this is Pez." Besom pointed to Pez and shivered at the sight of her. He didn't expect to see her dressed as if she just crawled out of a gutter. "Pez this is Dr. Shay Gerard, you'll be doing rounds and assisting her in the ER. Have fun." He quickly walked away and disappeared through a door. Pez watched as angry green eyes glared up at her and sent a clear message of 'I will get rid of you'.
"Follow me Dr. Pez, we have work to do."
"It's just Pez, no doctor in front of it." Shay narrowed her eyes at her and walked away.
"Fine, follow me Pez." She strode of with her heels landing hard with each step, the stiffness of her body reminded Pez of the Goose-stepping German solders. She imitated her walk and followed right behind her down the hall. She went as far as swinging her arms straight out in front of her and clicking her heels when Shay stopped to speak to another doctor. Shay looked back at her and shot her a disgusted look.
"What ever you're doing knock it off!"
"Me," Pez tapped her chest and gave an innocent look. "I was just following you, like you said to do." The minute Shay turned back to the doctor who was struggling not to laugh; Pez saluted her behind her back.
"What do we have so far for emergencies?" Shay asked and looked down at the clipboard the other doctor had.
"We have a patient in #2 complaining of constipation, #7 is a deep gash in the forearm from a chisel blade, #9 is a five-year-old with the new record of projectile barfing and the last one we have so far is a homeless man with a case of every parasite you can catch and then some." Shay looked at the list; an evil grin came to her lips and traveled clear up to her eyes, scaring the other doctor.
"We'll take the shin kicker first." She took the folder from his hands and slapped it into Pez' chest. "Hope you're not squeamish." She was silently hoping the tall thug was, and would turn tail and run the second the kid tossed his cookies on her.
Pez looked at the chart and grinned. "Okey dokey, sounds like hide and seek to me."
"Yeah what ever." Shay walked down the hall and stopped outside of room number 9. She looked in to see a small boy with corn colored hair, bright blue eyes and a bucket almost as big as he was next to him on the gurney. His mother sat behind him rubbing his back and murmuring in his ear. She walked into the room, stood to the side of the gurney and waited for Pez to join them. When Pez walked in, she rolled her eyes at the large garbage bag covering Pez' upper torso and hanging down past her knees.
"Hey little guy, not feeling too good today huh?" She stepped to the other side of the gurney and pressed her large hand to his forehead and then cheeks. "I'm gonna check your heartbeat here and some other things, but I need you to do me a favor." She looked down into his pale face and grinned when he nodded his head. "Hold onto my friend here," She paused and looked to Shay then back to the little boy who was taking deep breaths. "Better move doc!" The little boy turned his head, missed the bucket and covered Shay with his breakfast. Pez held back a snort of laughter when a disgusted look came over Shay's face. She looked down at her multicolored lab coat and grimaced.
"Fruit loops huh? My favorite cereal, its better when it stays in your stomach." She pulled a Batman figure from her pocket, handed it to him and then wiped his mouth off with a wet rag. "OK, let's see what we can do for you here." After examining him and watching him hit Shay again with his breakfast, she wrote out a script and handed it to Shay for her to check.
"Why suppositories and not something taken by mouth?" Shay waved the paper in her hand.
""Cuz he's a little guy who's dehydrated, can't hold anything down and the medication will get into his system faster." She turned to his distraught mother and gave her further instructions. "No carbonated beverages, milk or Gatorade. Pick up some pedialite and give it to him at room temperature. If he gets hungry, stick with diluted chicken or beef broth for the next eight hours. I'll have the nurse come in and give him his first suppository and she'll give you a bottle of electrolytes that will help with his dehydration. OK little guy here ya go, be good for your mom and don't throw up in her car." She handed him a Batman Pez dispenser, tousled his hair and left a soggy Shay to follow her.
Pez gave Shay the once over and pointed to her. "Maybe you should go change scrubs, you reek."
"Or maybe I'll just stay this way to remind myself that I hate kids and you." She stomped off down the hall.
"That's fine with me, just to let you know reds not you color." She goose stepped behind Shay and shot a grin to a hiding Griffin. Shay stopped at the second room and slapped the soggy folder into Pez' chest.
"The overweight man lay on his side in a fetal position moaning and holding his stomach. Sweat poured off his face and soaked the small pillow and his hospital gown. The sounds he was making alone made Pez shiver; she grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and pulled a penlight from her pocket.
"Sir I need you to roll over onto your back for me." With difficulty, Pez helped him roll over while Shay stood back and watched with amusement. She had an idea of what the problem was with the man and was glad that she wouldn't be the one to do the procedure. She watched the tall thug palpate the man's lower stomach and cringed when he gave out a howl.
"Sir when's the last time you had a bowel movement?"
"Last week sometime, I can't remember." He rolled back into a fetal position and moaned.
"Has this ever been a problem with you before?"
"Yeah but I usually take some ex-lax and it goes away."
"You wouldn't happen to be a strictly meat and potatoes kinda guy would you?" She grinned down at him when she saw a small smile come to his flushed face.
"I won a contest last week for eating a five pound steak."
"Bet it was cooked rare to huh?"
"Yep, the bloodier the better."
"Mine has to be dead and not mooing when I stab it, just lay there and try to relax for me." She pulled a stress ball from her pocket and handed it to him. "When you feel pain, I want you to squeeze the Hell outta this." She lifted the back of his gown, covered a finger with K-Y jelly and wiggled her dark brows at Shay. "Take a deep breath for me and let it out slow." He let out a scream, squeezed the stress ball and covered himself and Shay with fine sand.
"God damn it!" Shay yelled, wiped the sand from her face and sneezed. "You stupid bitch!"
Pez chuckled and looked up from what she was doing. "Wanna trade places Doc?" She held her hand up and wiggled her dirty fingers at Shay. "Can I speak with you in the hall?" She stripped off the glove and waited for Shay in the hallway.
"What the Hell is your problem Pez?" She shook her lab coat and stomped her feet to get rid of the sand. "In the span of two patients, I've been thrown up on, now I get sand blasted!"
"Hey count it as a good day, no ones pissed on you yet. Anyway, I can't help that guy."
Green eyes narrowed at her, she stepped closer to Pez and kept moving forward because Pez was backing away from her. "Come on now you reek, just stand over there somewhere."
"Too bad for you," She pushed Pez up against the wall. "Now why can't you help him?"
"It's simple, he has so much plaque built up in there that the only way I can help him is if I shove a jack hammer up his ass. I felt three polyps an inch inside his rectum and I know there's got to me more of them and there might be a blockage in his intestines."
"So what do you suggest you do about it?" She couldn't wait for this answer; no one ever got it right so far.
"Laparoscopy, sonogram and a colostomy plus a new diet plan. Might even try a colon wash in six months just to keep after it."
"What about his problem now? What are you going to do for him?"
"Ohh I could sit in there and make faces at him and maybe scare the shit outta him or I can give him an IV of Ringers drip with a shot of Demerol and call for the Gastro Doc to take a look."
She tapped her on the chest with each word. "Why not remove the lower impaction, give him a laxative and send him on his way?"
"You can if you want but I'm not doing anything with those polyps being there." Pez handed the file back to her. "If that's what you want, you sign off on him not me."
Shay gave her a small smirk and nodded her head. "Call the Gastro Dept. and have them come down, order the IV drip and then Demerol. I'll be at the nurse's station when you're done." When Shay stepped up to the nurse's station, not one word came from Betty. She had learned a long time ago not to say anything to Dr. Gerard in the morning. Hell she thought it could be in the middle of the night and the small doc would still be just as nasty.
"Betty do we have any really disgusting, gory, blood splattered victims here today?"
Betty's eyes widened when Shay spoke to her, her mouth worked a few times before she answered.
"No Doc Shay, nothing like that yet. The worst one we have is the homeless guy Pete. He comes in once a month for a bath and delousing."
"Damn where's all the nasty car accidents when ya want one?" She wandered off to the doctor's lounge leaving Betty to scrunch up her nose with the stench coming from the small doctor. No sooner had she left than Pez came up to the desk.
"Hey granny gonna gimme some sugar?"
"Have you come back to make my life a living Hell?"
"Nope and as far as you know I'm the worlds biggest screw-up" She lowered her voice. "I'm doing under cover work to find out whose stealing all the tongue depressors and gyn pads."
Betty narrowed her eyes at her. "Besom has you looking after Shay doesn't he? Try watching her when she leaves here, poor thing shakes like you wouldn't believe."
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Shay had just pulled a clean scrub shirt over her head when Pez walked into the locker room and dropped onto the couch. Ignoring Shay, she closed her eyes and relaxed. The sound of Shay using nasal spray had her open one eye and catch a glimpse of the small doctor massaging her forehead and then the area below her right eye. "That stuff's bad for you, makes your sinuses worse."
"I don't really care if it's bad for me." She slammed her locker closed, stepped to the back of the couch and glared down into dark sunglasses. "Get your lazy ass up, we have work to do. Rounds start in ten minutes and that means that I get to tear you apart."
"Give it your best shot shorty." She rose to her full height and dwarfed Shay.
"Is that a threat Pez, because if it is you're threatening the wrong person. I eat residents for breakfast."
A dark brow rose over the frames of her sunglasses and a corner of her mouth lifted a bit. "I don't let women eat me before noon so come on and let's get this over with." As she followed Shay out of the room, Roy passed her and handed off a colostomy bag. Pez gave her a wiggle of her fingers, eased closer to Shay and hung the bag on the back of her lab coat belt.
Shay was so wound up from stress that she brought from home that it took her a second to realize that Pez may have just made a pass at her. She stopped and spun around so fast that Pez slammed into her.
Grabbing the front of Shay's lab coat, she kept her from falling back on her ass. "Sorry your brake lights aren't working." She straightened Shay's lab coat and got her fingers slapped away when they got too close to her breasts.
"Did you make a pass at me back in the lounge? Because if you did, I'm not interested, got it?"
"If I was making one and you just let it slide by then you have no idea what you're missing out on."
"Some Ego you have, kiss it goodbye because I'm going to knock it to Hell and back."
"Taller people have tried, meaner ones to." She walked around Shay and skipped down the hallway.
"Why me of all the damn doctors in this place I get stuck with her." She followed behind and wanted to drop kick the tall idiot skipping in front of her. They stepped into the first patients room, she lifted the clipboard from the end of the bed, looked over it for any changes before handing it to Pez. "Here take a look and see if anything needs to be changed in the treatments."
Pez looked through the chart then to Shay. She shook her head and pointed to the hallway. Holding a finger up to the teenage girl, she walked into the hallway after Shay.
"Do her parents know the truth about what's wrong with her?" She pointed to what was written on the top sheet and then flipped the pages to the lab results.
"I don't know, I wasn't the initial treating doctor. It doesn't really matter since she's eighteen."
"The Hell it doesn't!" Pez whispered loud enough for only Shay to here. "If she has it then who ever she's been with has it and so on."
"Do you really think that she's going to tell us who she's with? Come on she's a kid, they don't trust adults anymore than we trust them. Forget it Pez, it's a lost cause."
Pez moved in close to Shay and spoke in a soft purr that sent shivers up and down Shay's spine. "If I get the information we need, you buy coffee. If not, I'll buy lunch. Deal?"
Shay stood there and studied the sharp planes of the tall woman's face and tapped her on her chest. "If you lose, not only lunch but you have to take those damn sunglasses off."
"Deal." She held her hand out to Shay and waited. "Ohh come on I washed my hands yesterday and my fingers have only been up my nose no one else's."
"You are really a sick individual."
"Thank you." She shook the small hand and jumped a little bit when she got shocked. "Damn shock therapy, I like it!" She grinned and went into the room to pry information out of the teenager. Pulling the chair near the bed, she placed a foot on the seat and leaned forward so that her arms were resting upon her knee. Dropping her head down, she looked over the tops of her glasses at the girl and locked eyes. "I don't know if you know how serious the infection you have is, it's a nasty bugger that keeps coming back and giving. We can treat you but the minute you go back to who ever you got it from, we'll be seeing you again."
"What do I care, the son of a bitch that gave it to me deserves to get it back."
Pez shook her head at her. "That's not how it works, he or she has it, gives it to you. You get treated, you go back to the carrier that wasn't treated and get it again. I need to know who this person is so that they can get treated. Stop the circle so to speak, there are other things that can come about from this infection and they're fatal. If you get pregnant, your baby can be infected with the STD, would you want that on your conscience, the life of an innocent child. Because you didn't want to nark on some dumbass that's spreading a disease around and doesn't give a damn. You came here because you're sick, it shows more guts than the slug out there passing it around."
Shay stood leaning against the doorway listening to Pez, she didn't know what it was about her but the girl looked terrified and started to spill her guts.
"I can't give you names, all I can say and hope you get the hint is that I get arrested a lot at that new food place called the Spice Garden. It's on RT. 340 it used to be some steak house a while back."
"When you get arrested, do they forget about the charges and let you go?"
"Yep, my records clean and no one knows about this except me and them."
"Are we speaking of either sexes or just male?"
"Gender doesn't count, money does."
"OK, thanks you're doing something that you should be proud of." She left the room and waited for Shay. "Well that was easy, how should we do this, contact disease control or go talk to some cops?"
Shay shook her head, pulled Pez into a vacant room and closed the door.
"Damn I'm getting good, I've hypnotized two women at once! Wanna see my caduceus?"
"Hypnotized my ass, not interested so just knock it off." She moved across the room and ran her fingers through her hair, she knew it would be trouble if Disease control got involved, and if she went to Jenny, it would look like she was accusing her of being one of the officers.
"Shay what do you want to do?" Pez stepped up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, she was surprised when Shay jumped and spun away from her. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sneak up on you."
"If we go to DC, then the families will find out. Maybe if we go to the restaurant we can talk to a few officers and have them pass it around."
"What about at lunch time, would that be a good time?"
Shay nodded her head and sighed. "Better than not at all, if it's the wrong shift, I'm sure the guys will pass it on."
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After arguing in the hospital parking lot and Pez, pointing out that she would be more comfortable riding in the trunk of Shay's little Eclipse than in the front seat. She almost ended up getting her wish when Shay threatened to take her off at the knees if she said one more thing about short people. Giving up, Shay agreed to ride in Pez' Humvee. The vehicle was bigger than her bathroom and she felt like she was swallowed up by the seat.
"Do you run other cars over in this thing?"
"Depends on if they get in my way or not." She glanced sideways to see Shay holding on to the seat for dear life. "Ease up before you rupture something." She patted a small hand and noticed that Shay flinched. "Should we talk to an officer from each force?"
"That would probably be best, they all eat here and I think we should include the employees to. A lot of young guys work here."
"Maybe it would be easier to just stand on a table and give a class on STD's and or soo gently tell the cops their dicks are falling off."
Shay snorted and rolled her eyes. "Ohh that would really make the hospital look good."
It was easier than they thought, when they pulled in to the parking lot, they saw both Ranson and Charlestown city police, State and Sheriffs cars with the officers in them. They each took two cars and spoke to the officers inside, they made sure that the way they worded their little speech that it wasn't accusing in anyway and that they just wanted to put the word out. Shay volunteered to speak with the manager about passing it along to his employees. He wasn't too happy about what was going on in his parking lot but because the police were involved, he decided to forget about it. When she came out from the back of the restaurant, she saw Pez leaning up against the wall waiting.
"I don't know about you but I'm starving, how about we stay for lunch and then head back to work?" Pez waited for an answer and when Shay just gave her a confused look, she took it upon herself. "OK, come on we're eating whether you like it or not." She took her by her hand and pulled her to a table in the corner. Sitting with her back to the wall, she saw the funny look cross Shay's face.
"Problem?"
"You could say that." She reached behind her and pulled the colostomy bag from the belt on her lab coat. Looking at the bag then to a straight faced Pez, she threw it at her. "Had to be your doing, no one else has been near me, asshole!" She threw a napkin at her and what ever else she could get away with and got pissed when Pez batted them all back at her. "Childish behavior for an adult."
"I agree, I stopped throwing sugar packets a while ago." She grinned when Shay snarled at her.
Shay got up and pointed a short finger at her. "Move over and if you so much as breathe on me I'll punch the shit outta you." She slid on to the bench beside her and raised a fist in warning. "I don't like sitting with my back exposed." She sat down and then jumped when she sat on something, reaching under her hip, she pulled on the long chain to Pez' wallet. "You would be the kind to chain your wallet to your body and hold a Teletubby in bondage."
"Never can trust pick-pockets, this way they take me with them." She rattled the chain at her. "And we're a little paranoid aren't we?" She raised both hands in defense. "Both of us I'm saying, I like to see who's coming at me. She held out a hand to the waitress and took the menu from her. "Ever eaten here before?" She glanced over to Shay and saw that her menu was still closed. "Helps if you look at the menu ya know."
"I just want ice tea, I'm not that hungry." She started tearing pieces of her napkin off and setting them to the side. Pez gave her a raised eyebrow and then ordered enough food for a small army. They sat in a comfortable silence until the food and drinks were delivered to their table. Pez could see the look in Shay's eyes; it reminded her of a starving animal whose food dish was just out of their reach. Taking a platter of buffalo chicken strips, shrimp and fries, she put the plate in front of Shay and watched as emerald green eyes looked to the plate then up to her.
"I'm buying lunch and I refuse to eat alone, eat or I hold you down and force you." She picked up a shrimp and started eating while watching Shay out of the corner of her eye. Small fingers played with the food and finally she picked up a French fry and ate it slowly. Taking Shay's small hand in hers, she moved it to a shrimp and wrapped her fingers around it and took it up to her mouth. "Eat Shay; it's not going to kill you."
"I usually only eat when I get home, I'm not used to eating during the day."
"Today you're with me and I live dangerously." Pez ate her food and watched as Shay devoured everything that was on her plate. She wondered what was going through the small doctor's mind. One minute she's throwing sugar packets at her and the next she was cowering in a corner. Taking a sip of her ice tea, she almost had it coming out of her nose when Shay grabbed her thigh in a claw like grip. The small doctor's face paled and she sunk down into the bench as far as she could go without sliding under the table.
"Shay what's wrong are you all right?" She tried to see where her eyes were looking but only seen a couple State police and a Sheriffs deputy a few tables away. Shay started to shake and sweat broke out on her forehead when a female State cop came over to their table. Her breathing sped up and she moved as far away from Pez as she could with out falling on the floor.
"You told me you don't go anywhere for lunch so what are you doing here and not at the hospital?" The cop asked Shay in a condescending tone.
"This was?business, we had to speak to some officers." She looked to where she clutched her hands together so tight that her knuckles turned white. "Dr. Pez decided we would have lunch before going back to the hospital."
Pez saw how scared Shay was and decided to intervene and save the poor woman a coronary. She held out her hand to the cop and was surprised when it wasn't taken. "Right, we came to pass the word out to the officers about an individual who operates out of the parking lot here. She has gonorrhea of the mouth and throat, so we wanted to make sure that if any one had any association with her to come to the hospital and get checked out." She saw that she had wasted her breath on the cop when she hadn't even looked up at her but kept glaring at Shay. "Anyway I guess we should be getting back to work now."
The cop tapped her baton on the table in front of Shay before turning and walking back to her table.
"Who the Hell is she and why are you afraid of her?"
Shay swung her head around and saw her reflection in dark sunglasses. "It's none of your business, lets go before we get in trouble."
More like before you get in more trouble. She said to herself. Laying bills on the table, she waited for Shay to get up and practically had to run to catch up with her. She stepped around to the passenger side of her Humvee and just about got run over when Shay jumped past her, crawled onto the seat and cowered. She had just found one problem the little doctor faced and she didn't like it one bit. Glancing back to the large windows, she saw the cop watching them with a look that could melt steel. Fine with me, I've taken down bigger assholes than you.
On the short ride back to the hospital, she asked Shay if she wanted to talk about what happened and was met with silence.
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When they returned to the hospital, they each went separate ways to catch up on their paperwork from the morning cases. Pez ran everything that had happened at the restaurant and came to one conclusion. Dr. Gerard was involved somehow with the State cop, she went to the next best thing to a data base, Roy and Griffin. She found them sleeping in an on-call room and couldn't pass up the chance to terrorize them. Pulling a reflex hammer from her pocket, she reached up, banged on the fire alarm bell with the handle and yelled fire in the hole. Her friends fell out of the cot to the floor crawled all over each other looking for their shoes and stopped when they saw her standing by the door grinning.
"Asshole! I swear we'll never learn." Griffin grumbled and dropped back down on the cot.
"One day the damn place will be on fire and we'll end up crispy critters and it'll be your fault Pez!" Roy threw her shoe at her and sighed when it was plucked out of the air.
"You guys know any of the State police, female type about five-six thick body and mean as Hell?"
Griffin looked from behind where her arm was over her eyes. "Brown hair, permanent scowl on her ugly face?"
"That's her, who is she to Shay?"
"I think her names Jennifer Osborne, she used to hang around here all the time. Why?"
Pez told her friends about what happened during lunch and how Shay became so quiet on the ride back. "I was ready to pound the bitch for just glaring at Shay. I mean shit, we were having lunch not fucking on the table." She ran a hand down her face and threw it in the air.
Griffin sat up and wrapped her arm around Roy, this was the first time she had seen Pez act this way about anyone. "You sound a little protective Pez."
"Wouldn't you if you saw some big asshole scaring someone half their size? And the damn baton thing, tapping it on the table like she was gonna use it." She knew that she would have to keep an eye out for the cop coming into the hospital. They didn't need her coming in there and scaring Shay witless when so many lives depended on her.
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Shay broke all the laws of the road to get home with enough time to get supper started before Jenny got home. She knew the second she tapped her baton on the table at the Spice Garden that there would be Hell to pay. She never thought that Jenny would be at the restaurant, if she had, she would have let Pez go by herself. Too late now to worry about it, the damage was already done. Throwing the steak in the broiler, she started the water for the potatoes and placed the dish with fresh broccoli in it in the microwave. After setting the table, she pulled a beer out and set it to the right side of the plate and made sure that the utensils were in perfect line with another. At the sound of the door slamming, she jumped and did her best to look busy and hoped that Jenny went straight in to take her shower. Her luck was not with her, she felt her come into the kitchen before she saw her. She tightened her body at the whooshing sound and crumpled to the floor when a sharp pain radiated through her ribs. Gasping for air, she wrapped her arm around herself and cried out when the baton smashed against her knuckles.
"I told you if you ever cheated on me I'd make you pay!" She yelled and brought her baton down on Shay's collapsed body. "You will never talk to that doctor again, if I see you anywhere near her I'll shot her!" She grabbed Shay by her arm and twisted it back behind her back until she heard a loud pop accompanied by a scream of pain. She lifted Shay up off the floor and slammed her into the stove hard enough to knock her into the boiling water. Shay's arm hit the pot and knocked it all over the front of her and down to the floor. She let out a scream and found herself thrown to the floor with Jenny snarling down at her.
"Clean up your fucking mess and get my supper ready!" She stomped out of the kitchen and left Shay sobbing in the middle of the floor.
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Pez lay in her bed starring up at the ceiling, she was trying to piece everything together that she had leaned about Shay from Besom and her friends. The one person she hadn't spoken with was Betty. She reached over to the nightstand and picked up the phone, after three rings, she heard Betty on the other end.
"Betty it's Pez, I need a favor."
"Ohh Gods, when you need a favor it borders on life imprisonment."
"Not this time, just some information on Dr. Gerard. Do you know who she dates or if she lives with somebody?"
"It would be easier to find out where Hoffa's body was than to find out personal things about Shay. She's a closed book, she doesn't speak with anyone here and she sure as Hell doesn't discuss her home life. No one even knows where she lives for that fact."
"What about personnel, they must have an address?"
"Nope just a PO box in town, that's where I sent her Birthday card."
"Why not give it to her at work?"
"She was out for six weeks with a broken ankle, she fell coming down the steps at her front door." Betty paused for a minute, she didn't know if what she knew meant anything or not. "Pez it was a bad break, I've never seen someone's ankle crushed from falling down a few steps."
"Crushed as in pins and rods crushed?"
"You got it babe, she had a Freddie Kruegar foot. Rods coming out the tips of her toes and at the sides of her ankle. Her x-rays are on file if you want to look at them."
"Thanks Betty I owe you one." She hung up the phone and pulled on a pair of Levi's and a half T-shirt. She wanted to look at Shay's x-rays without her knowing about it and now was a perfect time.
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Shay lay on the couch in so much pain that she could barely breathe, her ribs were cracked if not broken, her right shoulder was dislocated and throbbing with her heartbeat and her hand so swollen that she couldn't move her fingers. She tried to get up when Jenny came into the room but didn't bother when she saw her walk right past her without a glance or word and out the door. Tears streamed down her face and soaked into the throw pillow her head rested on. She couldn't go to the hospital and be checked out because there was no excuse in the world to explain all of her injuries. Jenny had hit her more when she came back into the kitchen after her shower and found her food not on the table. So now on top of everything, her left knee was swollen twice it's size and she could feel the knotted muscle in her thigh from where the handle part of Jenny's baton had caught her. Rolling to the floor, she cried out in pain. She had to get her shoulder back in and there was only one way to do it. Walking on her knees, she stopped at the wall, took a deep breath and slammed her shoulder against it. A sickening noise came from the joint ad a thump when she fell unconscious to the floor.
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Pez slipped Shay's x-rays on onto the box and looked at all the pins, screws and rods that held it together. Taking one before the reconstructive surgery, she saw how tarsal had been almost split in two, the metatarsals crushed and four phalanges twisted sideways. "Fell down the steps my ass, more like something really heavy fell on you." She pulled the x-rays down, flipped off the light and went to Besom's office. She would leave Shay's x-rays with him along with a note. She would get to the bottom of this if it killed her.
After slipping the folder under Besom's door, she went down the staircase to the records room to search for more information on Shay and while there she would see if they had a file on Osborne.
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Jenny never came back that night, Shay woke up in the early morning hours on the floor and in extreme pain. Each time she moved, it felt like her body was being ripped to shreds. When she made it to her feet, she went into the bathroom and downed four percodans and drank from the faucet. She laid her head on the cold sink and waited for the pills to work. She knew by the dimness of the room that she had two hours before she had to be at the hospital. Knowing that she would be safer at work if Jenny came home, she left the bathroom, got her car keys and left. She would go to a call-room until her shift started and deal with everything afterward.
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Pez had spent most of the night combing through the records department and was not happy with what she found. Even though they were minor things, no one was that big of a klutz that they needed stitches in their legs and arms. Shay had been to the hospital to have sutures more times than normal. Each time she had the on-call ER doctor take care of her, what she didn't know was that they kept a file on her. Looking at the clock on the wall, she saw that she had some time before shift started. Bacon, egg and cheese biscuits keep calling her name along with hash browns. Stashing the files in a cubby hole on the desk, she left the records room and headed for the fire door to the parking lot.
She had just stepped out of the door when she saw Shay walking towards the ER. She jogged around the corner of the building and intercepted her.
"I'm going for breakfast do you want to come or me bring you something back?"
Tired green eyes made contact with sunglasses, she blinked her eyes a few times in confusion. "Pez it's dark outside and you have sunglasses on, why?"
"It'll be light in a little while so I'll be prepared." She grinned down at her. "I'll bring you breakfast, met me in the lounge and if you see Betty and my Amazon's tell them I'm bringing the chow."
"Pez?I don't want?"
"I'm bringing breakfast don't argue." She gently laid a hand on Shay's shoulder before running out to her Humvee. They were observed from the very back of the parking lot by a pair of angry eyes, they watched as Pez touched shay and then jogged out to her Humvee.
"Not on my watch you don't!" A voice growled into the dark confines of the car.
Pez pulled into the McDonalds parking lot and went in to get the orders, she hated the drive-thru because they always screwed up her orders and never gave her any sugar for her coffee. Hauling five bags out with her, she opened the passenger side, put the bags on the floor and was just closing the door when a car sped past her and shoots were fired. She hit the ground and felt burning in her upper arm and ribcage. She crawled under her Humvee, got in on the driver's side and waited. Not one single person came out to see what the noise was, disgusted, she drove back to the hospital.
Picking up the bags, Pez made her way to the front doors and met Griffin and Roy as they were opening the door. With one look from her friends, she knew she was in trouble.
"What the fuck Pez?" Roy took the bags from her hands, handed them to Griffin and dragged Pez through the doors and knocked her down on a gurney.
"Come on Roy they're just flesh wounds, get me some Band-Aids and I'll be good as new."
Roy pulled her sleeve up and looked at the nasty gash across her tricep area and then saw the gash across her ribcage. "For Christ sakes Pez, only you would get shot going to Mickey D's. What'd you do rob them?"
"I think I stole someone's favorite parking space, they drove by and shot at me."
"Only you Pez, now don't you move or I'll smack you."
Griffin put the bags of food on the foot of the gurney and helped Roy push their yelling friend down the hall.
"Come on guys let me off this thing!" She tried to jump off and got smacked in the head. "Hey that's abusing the patient Roy!"
"You said you weren't one so that means I can hit you."
Shay heard all the commotion coming down the hall, she looked up from the nurse's desk and seen Roy and Griffin fighting with Pez. Thinking they were horsing around, she went back to her paperwork.
"Just get me some Band-Aids or duct tape." She pointed to her ribs. "Look it's not bleeding that much."
At the mention of blood, Shay stood up and watched as a struggling Pez tried to get off the gurney. The sight of blood staining the white sheet brought her from behind the desk.
"What happened you steal some kid's toy from his Happy meal?" She quickly shut up when she saw all the blood running down Pez' arm and ribcage.
Roy pointed to Pez and slapped her on top of her head. "Doc Shay tell her to stop jumping around so we can get her to a suture room."
"That's it! I stole a kid's toy! Told you guys kids are little trolls!" Her voice was starting to slur and for some strange reason she thought everything was funny. Shay pointed to an empty room and grabbed a clean sheet from a table. Pulling it across the examination table, she then went around the table to move the food off the gurney. Before any of them could do anything, Pez was off the gurney and pushing it out the door.
"HEY COME BACK HERE!" Griffin yelled and ran after her. "I'm gonna kill her!" Pez was standing on top of the gurney as it rolled down the hallway, yelling to everyone to clear the way for the Queen and her jesters.
Roy and Shay stood in the doorway watching Griffin pulling the gurney back towards the room with Pez pretending that she was surfing.
"What's wrong with her?" Shay asked a snorting Roy.
"Ohh she's hypoglycemic, you should see what happens when she doesn't eat and looses blood. One word, straightjacket."
When the gurney was close to the room, Pez looked up at the air conditioning vent and pulled a dirty finger down. "Look at all this dirt! They really need to fire the cleaners." She jumped down, kissed Roy and fell over on the gurney. "Hey Buuuuuddy where's my candy?need the woodpecker." Shay gave Roy a strange look.
"Woodpecker, what's she talking about?"
Roy and Griffin started searching Pez' pockets and found her Pez dispenser. Griffin held it up and showed Shay. "The woodpecker." She pulled two of the candies out and dropped them into Pez' mouth. "Now can we get you fixed up so we can all get to work?"
Shay rolled her eyes, it made sense now, the candy dispensers she carried in her pockets for the kids and her nickname. Without thinking, she reached out with her right arm and tried to pull Pez to a sitting position. She let out a loud scream, fell into the gurney with her side and then hit the floor. The sound of her head hitting the tile made a sickening noise, Pez rolled off the gurney to the floor. Picking Shay up in her arms, she cradled her head in her lap.
"Guys this ain't good." Blood was flowing from Shay's nose, Pez tried to staunch it with Shay's lab coat but it was quickly soaking through.
"Ooohh shit!" Roy ran back into a trauma room and came out with a cold pack and surgical sponges, she handed them to Pez and left again.
"Grif help me get her in the room there."
"Once she's settled I'm suturing you up and running a line, you hear me Pez?"
"What ever, first Shay gets taken care of." She picked her up and carried her while Griffin held the sponges and cold pack in place. Roy came running back in the room with Betty in tow, they brought with them the portable x-ray machine and a triage cart. Betty readied the x-ray while Roy placed a cervical collar around Shay's neck.
"OK, lets move out while granny nukes her head and chest. You tall and stupid are getting sutured right now!" Roy dragged her out of the room and over to the one beside Shay's. "Griffy sew her mouth shut while your at it." Roy waited by the door until Betty was done and then went in to examine Shay.
"I'll run these x-rays down and bring them back when they're developed." Betty took the plates and took off out of the room. Other nurses came by both rooms and were asked to bring other supplies and to keep a heads up for incoming patients. Griffin was part way done with the gash on Pez' side when they heard Roy cussing up a blue streak.
"Damn it Pez!" Griffin had to jog to keep up with Pez; she still had the chromate in her hand along with the suturing needle. "I should stab you in the ass with this!" She gave up and let the needle dangle from the chromate. "Stubborn asshole." She froze in the doorway when she saw the ugly bruises covering Shay's body. "Son of a bitch!"
Pez cut the rest of Shay's clothes away, the more of the small doctor's body that was revealed the more pissed she got. "Grif wrap up my arm so I don't drip blood on her." Using one hand while Griffin wrapped the other, she and Roy examined Shay. Betty came running into the room, threw the x-rays up on the board and whistled.
"You guys better take a look at these; I'll call for a surgeon and an anesthesiologist."
"Hold on granny," Roy held out her hand and looked closely at the x-rays. "Get us a room, we'll handle this ourselves and get us a CT setup." She ran her finger across the x-ray of Shay's skull and looked to Griffin and Pez. "What do ya think guys; do we have a tumor at the top of the maxillary sinus or the bottom of the sphenoid sinus?"
Pez looked closer at the x-ray and shook her head. "It's hard to tell with this, it might be behind and pushing against the sinuses or up into the middle turbinate. Lets wait until we see a scan, we'll get her stabilized and prepped. Right now we've got to fix her ribs so she can breathe."
Twenty minutes later, with her ribs bound, knee and fingers splinted, Shay came around and struggled to sit up. Griffin and Roy were bandaging Pez' wounds and saw her move out of the corners of their eyes. "Don't you dare move Shay."
"Why am I naked and on this table?"
"Ohh we picked you to be the pin up of the month. Pez will give you a copy when the pictures get developed." Roy pulled off her gloves, tossed them away and pulled new ones on before she checked Shay. "Do you remember anything?"
"Just Pez coming in and acting like an ass?oohh Gods?you guys saw." She pulled the sheet up that was covering her and closed her eyes. Tears flowed from her closed eyes and coursed down her cheeks. There was no more hiding what had been happening to her now. "You didn't report this did you?" She opened her eyes and all breath left her lungs, the most amazing blue eyes she had ever seen were looking down at her. The dark pupils but pin pricks in the mass of icy blue surrounded by dark black lashes.
"No we didn't but that's not what's important right now. When your head hit the floor you got a bloody nose, the amount of blood was bad enough to cause us to worry. And hitting your head so hard on the floor called for an x-ray. Do you use the nasal spray because of sinus pain and congestion?"
"It starts out that way and then I get a migraine headache behind my eyes. Why?"
"You have a mass in the area of the maxillary sinus, we ordered a CT scan to check it further." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second before reopening them. "We need you to sign the papers."
"To operate, are you three nuts? I'm not going under anyone's knife!" She tried to sit up and Pez placed her hands on her bare shoulders. The warmth she felt from her large hands was calming.
"Shay you're a doctor, if it was a patient with the same thing what would you tell them?"
She closed her eyes and silent tears flowed down her cheeks, Pez wiped them away with a fingertip and caressed her cheek. "Shay?"
"OK, but don't you let that butcher touch me." She tried to raise her right arm and whimpered. "That ear, nose and throat doctor doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground."
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Betty sent in her best nurses to assist the three doctors, she had called Besom and told him what was going on so he had other doctors called in to cover the ER in case anything happened. He was not happy that his best four ER doctors were all in the same surgery room but knew there was no way to stop it.
He made his way down to the operating room, gowned up and stepped in to observe. He saw Roy sitting at Shay's head watching the monitors, Pez prepping her for oral surgery and Griffin prepping her knee for reattachment of the anterior cruciate ligament and the medial collateral ligament. From what he could see, Shay looked like she had been hit by a car. He didn't agree with them performing two surgeries at the same time but the knee surgery would be over quickly and not stress the body. What he was worried about was that Pez would be going through Shay's pallet to extract the growth from her sinus cavity. He watched as the three doctors worked together and was amazed that each one communicated with the other without a single word. Even the nurses seem to anticipate what either Pez or Griffin needed. When not watching the monitors, Roy assisted both her friends by using both hands to hand out specialized instruments. It was like watching a tag team match. With the last suture placed in Shay's knee, Griffin left the nurse to stabilize it while she moved up to help Pez with the final removal of the mass from the sinus cavity. She placed it in a container and handed it to a nurse to take it to the lab for a biopsy.
"OK, guys I'm ready to close here."
"What do ya think caused it." Roy asked from where she was adjusting the IV drip.
"From what I saw in there, she had her wisdom teeth extracted but not all of the roots were removed from the upper jaw. The roots had grown up into the maxillary sinus causing an abscess that eventually formed the tumorus growth. It was pressing on the olfactory nerve filaments coming through the ethmoid bone." Griffin laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
"No more headaches for her, no wonder she was such a bitch at times."
"Ladies fine job you did and I will pay you all back for making me call in over time." Besom stepped up to them and shook all of their hands. "Now why does Shay look so bad?" He looked between the three of them, crossed his arms and waited. Pez finished up with the tiny sutures in Shay's pallet and looked into his eyes.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes, and do you know this is the first time I've ever seen you with out sunglasses on, now I know why you wear them. Are those contacts?"
"Nope, glass eyeballs, pretty good for a blind person huh?" She cleared up all the surgical equipment from around Shay and pointed to the hallway. "Let's talk out there so they can get Shay cleaned up and into a room."
"Hey Pez, we're gonna take her up to a room, you talk to the boss man." Griffin and Roy pulled the gurney and pushed it towards the elevator. She watched until they were gone and then pointed to the waiting room down the hall. "Come on Besom I really need to sit down." She pulled off her surgical gown, cap, mask and scrub shirt. Tossed them into a bin in the hallway and dropped into the nearest chair with a bone weary groan.
"What happened to you?" He pointed to the bandages on her body.
"I pissed someone off at McDonalds so they shot me and my poor Humvee, good thing it's armored or I'd be really pissed."
"Did you report it to the cops"
"Nope, I don't think it would do any good." She looked him dead in the eye. "I have a strong suspicion that who ever shot me is the same one who beat the shit out of Shay."
"You're saying that a cop beat her, you had better be sure about it before you say a word."
"I'll have it if Shay tells me, as far as who shot me, it was a dark car and that's all I saw from where I was laying on the ground." She leaned forward in the chair and ran her hands through her long hair. "We had a case yesterday, an 18 year-old girl with gonorrhea of the mouth and throat. We found out that she's been giving blowjobs to cops at the Spice Garden. So we went there to inform the cops and while we were eating lunch a female State trooper came to our table and scared the Hell out of Shay."
"This needs to be reported Pez, we can't have cops going around shooting at people or beating them up. I'll report it since I'm your and Shay's superior, that way if there's any flack it'll come my way." He stood from his chair and looked down at her. "You take care of Shay and I'll take care of the rest."
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Pez called Betty and found out where they had put Shay, before she went to her room to check on her, she went back down to the ER. What she heard coming from the ER admitting desk sent her running.
"You tell me where Dr. Gerard is or I'll tear this place apart until I find her!" Trooper Osborne was leaning over the desk trying to get a hold of the admitting nurse, from out of the corner of her eye, Pez saw two pissed off doctors come around the desk and force their way between Osborne and the desk.
Griffin's face was a beat red, the vein in her temple pulsed with her heartbeat. "You get out of here, Dr. Gerard doesn't want to see you and if you force us we will remove you by force!"
"Do you really think that you can keep me out of here? I'm a State Trooper, I can go where ever I want so get the fuck out of my way!" She pulled her baton and took a swipe at Griffin, what she was not expecting was for Roy to catch the baton, rip it from her hands and throw it to Pez.
Roy stepped right up to her and got in her personal space. "Get out before I throw you out!" The look that came over Osborne's face should have told Roy she had over stepped, she gave no ground to the larger woman. A right hook caught Roy in her jaw and jarred her head a little, she spit out blood and grinned. "Shay hits harder than you do and that was a big mistake because I'm now filing for police brutality and assault. Wanna try again so I can throw some more charges at you?" Osborne spun on her heel and stomped from the ER, as soon as she was out the door, Roy fell back into her lover's arms. "Dam that hurt, I think she loosened some of my teeth." Pez stepped up next to them and check Roy's jaw; a bruise was forming from the punch.
"Go get a picture of this and get as many signed witness statement as you can." She turned to leave and remembered something. "Roy did you take?"
"Pictures of the princess, yep all done and in a file in your locker."
Pez didn't have a locker; she looked to her grinning friends. "I held granny up and she put it in your little cubby hole cabinet. I figured no one else would be able to get up there."
"Thanks Roy, now go get fixed up. I'm going to check on Shay and then make sure that her name is no where in the system in case that bitch catches someone from another shift."
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Pez sat in a chair next to Shay's bed, on her lap were a pile of reports and tests that needed her signature. She had taken over Shay's rounds and had her reports as well; those could wait until after she did the late night rounds. Giving up on reading the file she had in her hand, she dropped the files to the floor, stretched and got up from the chair to check on Shay. Checking her knee first, she saw that Griffin had only made the necessary incision to repair the damage to the acl and mcl ligaments. She was glad that she had been hurt otherwise; they would maybe not have known how serious Shay's injuries were. Her knee would have given out on her sooner or later and with time, it would have been harder to fix. She checked the straps on the leg brace to make sure they weren't too tight and then checked the bindings on her ribs. Because of the muscle that Shay had across her ribcage, most of the trauma was taken there. She did have two cracked on right side and one on the left. But nothing that wouldn't heal with time and rest, it was the bruises on her lower back that had Pez worried. They were over her kidneys and ran down to her tailbone. She pulled the catheter bag up and checked for blood, seeing none, she made a note in the chart to check for fluid out puts and to notify her immediately if it changed or blood was found.
She had finished with her examination when a soft knock came to the door, putting the chart away, she opened it to see a Sheriff deputy with dark hair with gray peppering his temples and mustache, his blue eyes were dark and showed a kindness she wasn't expecting.
"Are you Pez, Dr. Besom said I could find you here."
"That's me what can I do for you?"
"I'm Deputy Michaels, I came to take your statement about what happened at McDonalds this morning and to see if Dr. Gerard was awake yet."
"I thought Besom would have told you." She was getting pissed; she didn't trust cops of any sort.
"Ma'am I know what you're thinking, don't worry. You see I'm just an auxiliary deputy but I can take reports, serve subpoenas and all the other footwork that needs done. I'm not in with the silent blue wall because they don't think of me as a real cop." He shrugged his shoulders. "Protecting fellow officers is a well and fine but it's wrong when a cop is committing a crime." Pez relaxed and dropped down into a chair.
"OK, I'll tell you what happened from the beginning, but you want to talk to Dr. Roy Carpenter. Trooper Osborne and Roy had an altercation in the ER today."
"I'll find her before I leave and I'll make copies of my reports and give them to Dr. Besom and he can pass them out to you guys." He pulled out a metal clipboard and flipped a few pages in his three-ring notebook before he looked back up to her. "Ready when you are."
As she told the deputy what happened starting from the day before, she found herself caressing Shay's hand and playing with her small fingers. Slight twitches came from her hand at first and then her fingers wrapped around Pez' index finger. She continued to run her thumb across the tops of her fingers as she told her story. She glanced sideways and saw green eyes start to flutter open and Shay moan and try to swallow.
"Hold on Shay don't move around." She looked to the deputy and was about to say something when he held up his hand.
"I'll wait in the hallway, just call me when you're done."
"This should only take a minute, I just want to make sure she's comfortable." She checked Shay's air passage for swelling and removed the nasal tubes from her nose. "I'll give you some warm water to sip but don't go nuts on me and try to gulp it down." She held the cup up to Shay's lips and let her take small sips of the water. "It's going to hurt for you to talk and I know the roof of your mouth feels funny, it's just the sutures." She leaned close to Shay's lips when she tried to talk. It came out a hoarse whisper that she could barely understand. "Let me get you some paper."
Pez handed her a notebook and pen, she waited until Shay handed it back to her.
What were the test results?
"They came back negative, I got all of the mass and?here read your chart it'll make it easier." She turned to get the chart and felt fingers grip her forearm, she turned back to see angry green eyes looking at her. "What's that look for?" Shay pulled the pad back and scribbled hard enough that Pez knew she went through ten sheets of paper.
You operated on me!
"Yep, I did all by myself and only had to look at your instruction manual a couple times." She picked up her hands and looked seriously into green eyes. "I want you to check something for me and tell me if it's normal." She waited for Shay to nod her head and then raised her hands and placed it against her breasts. "Am I lopsided?" She couldn't help but laugh when Shay turned a bright red and slapped her hands away. "Glad to see you're feeling better, there's a deputy outside that wants you to answer some questions. I can have him come back later if you want." Shay shook her head and pointed to the pad. "OK, be right back."
Pez stepped out into the hallway and waved to the deputy. "She can't talk yet but she'll write out a statement will that work?"
"That's even better, that way I don't have to come back and have it done." He followed Pez back into the room and took the seat he had been in earlier. Fifteen minutes later, Shay handed the statement to Pez to read and then she handed it to the deputy. "I'll get copies made and give them to Dr. Besom." He stepped closer to Shay's bed and patted her hand. "I'll get the restraining order for you and drop it by later today. You might want to move Trooper Osborne's personal items from your apartment and change the locks on the doors." He nodded his head and left the two women to think of what he suggested. Shay scribbled on the pad and handed it to Pez, after reading it Pez chuckled at her.
"Shay you just went through two surgeries, so no you are not getting out of that bed." She saw the confused look on her face and the two fingers raised. "Grif had to reattach you ACL and MCL ligaments in your knee, it's in a brace right now. Do you hurt anywhere not including your mouth?" She shook her head no and pointed to her chart. "I wrote in green crayon, I hope you can read it OK." She gave Shay her chart and ran from the room before Shay could retaliate in anyway. Flipping through the pages from both the ER and surgery, Shay felt tears well up in her eyes. She knew that she had been hurt badly but couldn't believe how bad the actual damage was. She had a slight tear in her rotator cuff that would heal if it was not moved to the extreme and she didn't lift anything. Her knee would heal and hopefully rheumatoid arthritis would skip her, what scared her was the tumor that was in her sinuses. She felt incompetent as a doctor and surgeon for not knowing what was going on with her own body. She ran her fingertips over the area below her eye and felt a slight tenderness. One thing that bothered her was that a last year resident had been playing around in her head with all kinds of sophisticated instruments. She reached for the call buzzer and waited for a nurse to come in, she wrote a note that she wanted to see Dr. Besom ASAP. She didn't want to cause trouble for Pez but she needed to know that she was qualified to do the surgery.
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Griffin and Roy were attending a car accident victim when Pez came down into the mad rush of the ER. Paramedics were flowing in and out of the doors bringing patients in.
"What happened and why didn't you page me?"
"Ohh because we didn't know they were bringing everyone here." Roy replied and handed her a pair of gloves. "The ambulances can't get back in the other direction to go to Martinsburg because the police have the entire area blocked off. Some dumbass thought it would be neat to drive on the wrong side of the road; he hit a full school bus and caused a fifteen-car pile up. We're getting all the cases, surprise!"
"OK I gotcha, I'll take the next case."
Working way past the end of their shift, the nurses and doctors for the late shift came in to find just stragglers in the ER and some other patients who were waiting for rides home. Pez and her ragged gang sighed with relief and handed over their pagers to their replacements. Griffin and Roy hugged both Pez and Betty before they went out the front door to freedom.
"Go home and get some sleep Pez, you look horrible."
"Thanks granny, I feel that way too." She ran a hand over her ribs and felt a small amount of pain. "I'm going to check on Shay first then I'll get some sleep."
"And get something to eat before you start doing cart wheels down the hall. I don't want a call at home saying that you're in a body cast."
"Don't worry I'll behave myself, too tired to do anything else." She gave Betty a hug and headed for the staircase. Betty shook her head at Pez; the woman exhausted as she was still wouldn't take the elevator.
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Pez checked on Shay's stats and removed the IV drip and other stuff that she no longer needed. With gentle movements, she adjusted the support under her knee and checked for swelling. Placing a cold pack inside a towel, she put it above Shay's knee and sat down in the chair she had been using earlier. The files were still piled up on the floor so she started to go through them and fell asleep with one in her lap.
Shay woke with discomfort in her knee, in her sleep she couldn't tell what it was until her eyes fluttered open and she saw the towel on her leg. She reached for the call buzzer and then saw Pez sound asleep in the chair. She lay there and watched the doctor fidget to get comfortable in the straight-backed chair, the files sliding off her lap and hitting the floor woke her with a start.
"What are you doing sleeping in a chair?" Shay asked with a hoarse voice.
"I was trying to catch up on paperwork, why are you awake?" She blinked her eyes that felt like they were coated with sand.
"My knee hurts and it woke me up, can you take that cold pack off?"
"Sure, you want something for the pain; you haven't had anything in hours."
"No, I don't want anything; I can handle the pain once the cold pack is gone." She rubbed her eyes and watched Pez toss the cold pack in the trash and the towel into a hamper. "You're not a resident are you?"
Pez stopped picking up the files and took a deep breath before she answered. "You talked to Besom huh?"
"Yeah but he said to talk to you, no resident could have performed the surgery on my sinuses. Why the game?"
Pez sat down on the edge of the bed and took Shay's hand in hers. "Besom called me in because he was worried about you, he was getting complaints from residents and he had two choices. Either fire you, which was not what he wanted or find out the problem."
"And how were you going to find out my so called problem?" Shay's temper was starting to boil, she felt played with and manipulated by everyone involved.
"I have a knack for getting to the bottom of things." She took her sunglasses off and hung them on her collar. Bringing her eyes up to meet Shay's emerald green eyes, she watched Shay push back into her pillow. "Do you see now why I wear sunglasses all the time, from when I was little, all I had to do was make eye contact with someone and ask them stuff they would never normally admit to. They pay so much attention to my eyes that they answer my questions without even knowing it." She went to put her glasses back on but a small hand on hers stopped her.
"Don't, it annoys the Hell out of me when people wear sunglasses. I have to see their eyes, it's a trusting thing." She raised the back of the bed and kept eye contact with Pez. Never had she seen a human with elongated pupils, it was like looking into a cats eyes. At first, it was freakish but with taking in the whole picture, it suited Pez. With her long dark hair, high cheekbones and ice blue eyes it all fit into the image of a large Black Panther. "Is your vision normal, I mean peripheral, colors and everything?"
"Yep and I have better than 20/20 vision. I can see a mouse in high grass in the dead of night 200 paces out." She gave Shay a bright smile. "I'm a medical mystery, one of the reasons I became a doctor."
"About that, why didn't you just play doctor with me??" She saw the wicked grin form on Pez' face and knew her own was turning red. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded; I mean why make me think you were some resident?"
"Because you were eating a couple of them a day for breakfast, I thought that maybe it was them that you had the problem with. Gods know we all do and some of them are just plain ignorant beyond belief."
"Liar, you thought I was a drunk, drug addict or just a plain Ice Princess."
"I'll admit that was some of the possibilities before I met you. I ruled that out after the first day."
"Why, what caused you to rule it out?" She was interested in her detective work.
"Easy, I was with you the entire shift. If you had been either addict, you would have ditched me for a fix. I knew it was something else when we had lunch, how long have you been with Osborne?"
Shay's eyes grew wide; she didn't know that Pez had a name for the Trooper. "Almost a year, we met here at the hospital one night." She wiped the tears from her eyes and lay back against her pillow. "The beatings didn't start until after she moved in with me. Have you ever seen that movie Sleeping with the enemy with Julia Roberts? That's what it's like, everything has to be perfect. When she gets home from work, I have to have her supper on the table as soon as she steps out of the shower. If I don't then I get beat with her baton or she uses her fists and feet. Sometimes it's for no reason other than she had a bad day." She held blue eyes with hers and softened her voice. "I think she's the one that shot you, I didn't get a chance to tell you about her threat and it could have cost you your life." She broke down into soft sobs and covered her face with her hands. She jerked away when she felt warm hands touch her and gave in to the comforting feeling of Pez pulling her against her wide chest.
"It's not your fault, there's no way of telling if someone will go through with a threat or not." She moved a hand in small circles on Shay's back and held her head with the other one. She held her until she drifted off to sleep, laying her back against her pillow; she covered her up and left her to sleep.
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Pez wandered to the doctor's lounge, poured a cup of 10w/80w coffee into the styrofoam cup and waited to see if it would dissolve in her hand. Taking it with her, she went out to the nurse's station and picked up the charts lying on the top of the small bar.
"That's what we have in the triage rooms right now." Betty said from behind her. "And I think you should put them back where you found them and go get some real rest."
"I had rest and I feel fine Granny, I just need caffeine to get my blood moving."
"Uhh huh and all I need is a new wardrobe and I can be Miss America, I checked on Doc Shay and saw you sleeping in a chair, so don't argue with me." She turned Pez towards the call-room door and gave her a small shove. "Now get your ass in the call-room and get some sleep. Roy and Grif can handle what ever comes in and if they need help, I'll wake you up."
Pez lowered her head and nodded, she knew she was beat and wouldn't be any good at helping with emergencies. Gripping Betty's hand, she walked towards the on-call room and disappeared through the door.
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The emergency room became hectic, an accident at the racetrack brought in injured spectators along with the jockey who was thrown against the fence and stepped on when his horse bolted at the last turn and tried to jump the fence. Some were just cuts and bruises others were more serious. Roy and Griffin each took two of the more serious cases and left the others for the residents. The paging system blared in the ER and brought a still half-asleep Pez from the call-room. She stumbled with grogginess to the nurse's station and looked at the admitting board.
"What the Hell happened while I was getting my beauty sleep?"
"Ohh just a rampaging horse and some spectators." A nurse said from behind her and pulled a clipboard from the wall. "We could use your help if you're up to it."
"Lead me to the battle field; I'm about as good as I'm gonna get." Pez rubbed her face and tried to get the cobwebs out of her brain. She took the clipboard from the nurse's hand and scanned the patient's symptoms, she pulled a pen from her pocket and scribbled in the margins and made other notations on the page. "So you're giving me a simple one to start with huh?"
"Yep, just for you." She grinned up into blue eyes and noticed that Pez wasn't wearing her sunglasses. She felt her breath hitch and her mouth drop open.
"Take it easy there we don't need the employees freaking out." She grinned and went into see her patient. With just a glance, she could see that the compound tibia fracture was serious. "Can you call surgery for me and get a hold of our on duty ortho, plus I'll need a full set of x-rays." The nurse with her eyes still wide nodded her head and left the triage room. Moving to the side of the jockey's bed, she checked his stats and placed a BP cuff around his arm. "Looks like you're going to get a little bit of rest from the ponies." She looked down into the brown pain filled eyes of the small man. "I've ordered a room for you and the orthopedic surgeon should be down in a few minutes to take you up."
"How bad is it, I can't feel my toes?"
Pez pulled the sheet away from his toes and saw that they were turning a light shade of blue. Placing her stethoscope at the artery at the top of his foot, she listened and then switched to using her fingers to find a pulse. Not finding one, she left the room to make a call to the ortho. When her call went unanswered, she went in search of Griffin. She knew that she couldn't perform the surgery, it wasn't one of her specialties and with not having enough sleep didn't help her any. Her temper was getting close to exploding, Griffin and Roy were both up to their armpits in blood, the ortho was in surgery and she had a man who could loose his leg at the knee.
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Shay heard all the commotion in the hallway and yelled to a passing nurse.
"What's wrong and why is everyone running around like idiots?"
The nurse froze outside the door and glanced at Shay with freight clearly showing on her face. Doc Shay's reputation was well known through out the hospital. "There was a bad accident at the race track; Pez is going ballistic trying to get an ortho in."
"Where's our ortho?"
"He's in surgery doing a triple compound fracture; Pez has a compound of the left tibia and a compressed anterior tibial artery."
"Help me out of this bed." She threw the covers to the side and tried to swing her bulky leg off the bed.
"Doc Shay I don't think that's wise?"
"I know it's not but they need my help downstairs, now help me."
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Pez sprinted down the hallway and came to a screeching halt when the elevator doors opened and Shay rolled herself out into the hallway. She pointed a finger at her and received the same thing back at her. "Get us some surgical gowns, traction rig and an angioplasty set-up." She rolled past a frozen Pez and yelled again. "Now would be good Pez!" She rolled herself down the hallway until she found the triage room where the compound fracture was located. "Hi I'm Dr. Gerard, I'm going to take a look at your leg and see if I can help you."
"Can you do something about my toes, I can't feel them."
"I'll try my best and as soon as Pez gets here we'll take care of everything." She examined the fracture and could see where the bone poked through the skin in the center of his shin. Palpating the area, she noticed that he showed no pain. She rolled herself backward and searched a drawer for a pinwheel. "I'm going to roll this down your leg and you tell me when you stop feeling it OK?"
"Anything doc, just fix me up. I hate hospitals, no offense to you or Pez."
"Don't worry about it; I have those days where I'd rather be fishing instead of being here." She started at his hipbone and rolled the pinwheel down to just below his knee before he said that he couldn't feel it anymore. "OK, just hang on and let me find Pez so we can get started."
"I'm right behind you; granny's coming to help and one of the residents will do the anesthesiology."
"Good, drag me out into the hall."
Once in the hall, Pez hung up the x-rays that had been taken while she was running around the hospital like a first year med student. She pointed to an area where the tibia was broken close to the metatarsal and where it pushed through the skin. Shay rolled herself closer and pointed to an area to the left of the break. "I think this area here is pressing down on the superficial peroneal nerve and then up here we have some swelling that's causing the tibial nerve ending to be deadened. With the way the bone has come through the muscle tissue, it may be causing the patellar ligament and the soleus to press down on the tibial artery." Pez rested her hand on Shay's arm and looked into her vibrant eyes.
"Can you do this surgery?"
"Nope but you can." She waved her swollen hand and then squeezed Pez' fingers. "I'll be right there and I'll talk you through it, now let's get in there and get this over with."
After the surgery and other patients, Pez dropped down into the chair in the triage room and let her head drop down onto her folded arms. She stayed that way when she heard the wheelchair wheels squeaking on the floor. She felt Shay's hand come across her back and start massaging her tight shoulders, she groaned when she hit a sore spot. "That really hurts but don't stop."
"Did you get any sleep once you left my room?"
"An hour or so, I'm alright." Her body relaxed and she almost fell out of the chair onto her face.
"I bet you haven't eaten either have you?"
Pez pulled her woody woodpecker out of her pocket and showed it to Shay. "Ohh that's real nutritious and ohh soo filling." She tugged on Pez' scrub top. "Come on let's go down to that little deli across the street and get some real food."
"Shay you have sutures in your mouth?"
"And a monster in my gut that wants real food, I'll risk it."
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They ordered subs along with a platter and took everything back to the on-call room. Pez placed the platter on one of the tables and let everyone know that when they were finished with everything to help themselves. She returned to the room to find Shay setting their subs on one of the small tables by an old recliner. She grinned when she saw her folding a napkin and placing on the arm of the chair. "Come over here and sit down and eat, I don't have the mobility to chase you down the hallway when your blood sugar drops and you become infantile."
"I don't become infantile unless I'm sick; I like to think of my episodes as playful." She dropped down into the chair and picked up half of her sub.
"And what do you do in your infantile state?"
"I curled up on my couch and whimper for a few days out of every month." She took a bite out of her sub, moaned when her sinuses cleared from the horseradish and spoke with her mouth full. "I've been trying to donate certain internal parts to the science lab for years but they don't want them."
"Bad cramps and what else?" Shay knew that most of the time there was some underlying problem with extreme menstrual cramping.
"You name it, I get it. Nausea, sweats, weakness and few pints of blood in the refrigerator for replenishment."
"And why haven't you had your plumbing fixed?"
"Same reason why you didn't have your head fixed." She grinned and went back to eating.
Shay looked over when Pez became quiet and saw that she was sound asleep with the remains of her lunch sitting in her lap. She wrapped up her sandwich, covered her with a blanket and pushed on the handle for the footrest.
She finished her sub and got as comfortable as she could in her wheel chair. A few minutes later, she was snoring softly.
Griffin and Roy dragged their weary bodies into the lounge and made sandwiches from the platter, when they were finished they dropped down onto the couch and watched Pez and Shay sleep.
"Looks like the mighty have fallen." Griffin mumbled around her sandwich. "About damn time though, I thought they would drop over in the ER somewhere."
"I can't figure out why Shay was down here anyway, she just went through surgery yesterday." Roy opened a Coke for her lover and picked up another one for her self. "If it was me, I'd still be trying to milk the sympathy thing. In fact I think her little ass should be back in bed, her toes look a little blue."
"Now you know baby we make the worst patients." She leaned over and kissed her lover's cheek. "We'll take her back to her room after we eat, then maybe we can play doctor in the call-room." Their short break was interrupted by the paging system spitting out that they had multiple traumas coming in three minutes. "Ohh great, guess we get to play real doctors." Griffin slammed her Coke and pointed to Shay. "What about tater tot there?" She rolled her eyes when she saw a wicked grin cover her lover's face. "Hope you have your will filed, 'cuz she's gonna kill us if I'm thinking what you are."
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Pez woke up when she felt warm breath blowing in her ear, at first, she thought it was either Roy of Griffin but changed her mind when her breast was caressed. Opening one eye, she saw a splinted leg hanging from an IV stand and knew who was in her lap. In Shay's lap was a handwritten note, lifting it up she read it and snorted.
Happy B-day
We found something for the person who has everything. Hope you like it, we call it a Tater tot.
"Tater tot huh? It fits you." She wrapped her arms around Shay and went back to sleep.
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Trooper Osborne pushed open the apartment door and walked in; she still hadn't found Shay and was pissed. She had placed a tire boot on her car in the parking lot and knew when Shay found it she would have to call for an officer to take it off. What Shay didn't know was that she had put in the computer that she was wanted in connection with drug trafficking and was to be arrested on sight. After being arrested, she would call Jenny to straighten everything out.
"Then I'll have you back and make sure you never pull this shit again." She stomped through the apartment to Shay's bedroom and checked to make sure none of her clothes were missing. Finding everything the way she had set them up, she checked the bathroom, straightened the hand towel on the rack, threw the month old toothbrush away and put out a new one. "I've told her about her unhealthy habits! Germs collect in toothbrushes and cause sickness!" She washed her hands for exactly three minutes with antibacterial soap, used a clean hand towel from the closet and threw it in the hamper for the white clothes. "I'll find you Shay even if I have to put out an APB on you." She used her elbow and flipped off the light to the bathroom.
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Shay stretched out her legs, heard a horrible clatter and felt her bed jump beneath her. She reached out and grabbed the nearest thing and a yell of pain deadened her ear. Her eyes shoot open and she saw Pez trying to pry her fingers off her breast. Struggling to get off her lap, Shay fell towards the floor and was caught mere inches from extreme pain. She looked up into a strained face and wrapped an arm around Pez' neck.
"How in the Hell did I get on your lap and will you put me down?"
Pez' voice was strangled from stress and the fact that Shay was cutting off her air way. "I don't know and this is gonna hurt." Her arm that was bracing them gave out and sent her head first into the floor. She rolled over just missing Shay's leg and lay sprawled out on the floor.
"Owww that hurt." She rubbed her forehead and turned her head to see pissed off green eyes looking at her. "Whaaaat? I didn't do it really."
"Can you help me up, my ass is freezing." She looked around the lounge for her wheel chair and groaned. "Some asshole stole my wheel chair!" She reached over and slapped Pez on her stomach. "Come on Pez before I get frost bite."
"If you do I'll thaw it out for?Ooowww! That was my stomach, do it again and I'll barf on you!" She rolled to her knees, put her arms under Shay and picked her up in her arms. "Uhhmm problem tater tot, my legs are numb from?never mind."
"Tater tot, are you having one of your episodes?"
"No, it's what's on the note. You're my birthday present, first time I've gotten something I didn't know what to do with."
"Here's something you can do, get me a wheel chair before I smack you for playing with my ass."
"I wondered what that cold thing was." She walked on her knees towards the door and then out into the hallway. "Granny I need a wheelie chair for the frozen tater tot!"
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Shay was back in her room after Pez caused such a commotion in the ER, she couldn't help but chuckle. The ER was abandoned of personnel when they went in search of a wheel chair; everyone was outside watching the paramedics try to get a naked woman in her 50's off the roof of their ambulance. Pez still on her knees and yelling Stella at the top of her lungs went out the door. She almost fell over from shock when the naked woman started yelling Stanley and held her arms out to her. She handed Shay off to Roy and walked out to the ambulance with her arms out stretched yelling Stella to the naked woman's Stanley. When she got close to the ambulance, the woman jumped off and landed right on top of her. When the paramedics picked the woman up, Pez just lay on the ground gasping for breath and mumbling something about being smothered by saggy tits.
"The woman's insane; still don't know how I ended up on her lap?" She lay back against the pillows and smiled. "Not like it was unpleasant or anything."
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It was 7pm when Pez got back to her apartment; she stepped through the door and felt the floor moving under her feet. She shook her head, reached for her Pez dispenser and grumbled when she found it empty. After popping a nuker meal into the microwave, she went into the bathroom for her shower. When she came out, she found her apartment filled with black smoke and a charred mass inside the microwave. "Son of a bitch!" She pulled the mess out and threw it into the sink. "So much for supper, can't even cook nuker meals with out causing a three alarm fire." She pushed the window open wider and turned on the fan over the unused stove. "I need food, cookies, crackers, moldy bread." She closed the pantry and dropped down into a chair. "Pez you have no food because you haven't gone to a store, no store no food, me in a pine box." Slipping her feet into her worn out ducky slippers, she grabbed her keys and headed for the door dressed in her PJ's. "If I get arrested they'll feed me."
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Shay picked up the phone from the table and was about to call for take-out food when a pale face and shaky Pez walked through the door carrying bags of what smelled like hamburgers.
"Hey hope you don't mind but I thought you might be hungry." She slurred and weaved where she was standing.
"Pez sit down before you pass out, you look like shit." She watched Pez set the bags down and then start to fall forward towards her. She moved to the other side of the bed and caught her before she rolled to the floor. Holding onto her, she hit the buzzer and held it down until a nurse showed up. "Can you help me get her up here and I need a shot of Glucagon and some hard candy."
"What happened, I just saw her walking down the hall?"
"She hasn't eaten in a few hours; bring me a cold pack too." She moved a pillow under Pez' head and wiped the sweat from her face with the sheet. "You really need to take care of yourself better." She brushed the dark hair from Pez' face and looked down into her pale face. "Damn dummy what would have happened if you hadn't made it up here?"
"Here you go Doc Shay, do you need anything else?"
"No, if I do I'll just hit the buzzer." She looked up at the young nurse and smiled. "Thanks."
"No problem, should I get a hold of Dr. Roy or Griffin. They can come and get Pez and take her home."
"No that's OK, she's fine right here." She gave Pez the shot and waited a few minutes, she saw her skin start to pink up and her sweating stop. Brushing her fingertips across her cheek, she saw her eyes start to flutter open. "Don't you ever do that again, you scared the Hell outta me."
"What happened?" She looked around the room and realized where she was. "How did I get here, I don't remember coming?"
"You passed out two seconds after coming in here. You need to eat more often and where's your candy?"
"In my cubby hole in the ER, I forgot to take it out of my lab coat." She started to get up and felt a hand push her back down.
"Just lay there, I just gave you a shot of Glucagon but you need to eat. So reach down there and get those bags."
"I brought food with me? I must have really been out of it." She handed one of the bags to Shay and kept the other for herself. She had stopped at Sheetz and had them make four hamburgers with everything on them along with orders of boardwalk fries.
"The people at Sheetz must have thought you were a nut." Shay said around a mouthful of food. "Do you always run around in your ducky slippers and Superman PJ's?"
Pez grinned and winked at her. "Only on special occasions, usually it's my Mickey Mouse underwear and the 7-11 down from my apartment."
"If you went home, why didn't you get something to eat before you got there? Or cook something instead of running around risking your life and other peoples."
"I can't cook and my smoky apartment can attest to that. I killed a nuker meal and didn't have anything else in the refrigerator. I've only been back a couple of days so the place is barren."
Shay rolled her eyes and groaned, Pez was just like a man. Completely helpless when it came to domestic things. "You really need to be careful with your hypoglycemia; you could have gone into a coma."
"It's usually not this bad, the last seven or eight months have been stressful. I burn more energy when I'm stressed." She threw her trash in the bag, opened a can of Coke and drank half of it before putting it on the small bedside table. She looked sideways at Shay and saw her start to speak. "I can't tell you what I was doing except that it concerned the fatalities from 9/11. Guess I should be heading home so I can get some sleep."
"You're not going anywhere until your blood sugar levels are up, so just flip on the TV and lay there." She hit the buzzer and waited for the nurse to show up, when she did she asked her to bring her a Glucometer. By the time the nurse arrived, she had finished her meal and Pez was sound asleep.
"Do you want me to wake her and get her into a call-room?"
"No I'd rather have her where I can keep an eye on her, after her passing out I want to make sure her sugar levels don't drop off."
"OK, I have some orange juice here and another shot in case you need them." The nurse put them on the bedside table and stopped right outside the door. "Just to warn you, a Trooper Osborne has been trying to get the medical staff to tell her where you are. Doc Griffin passed around that you're on special assignment in Maryland for the next week and that's what Osborne's been told."
"Thanks I appreciate it." After checking Pez' sugar level and seeing that it was 82, she dropped back into the pillows and lowered the back of the bed so that she and Pez were lying flat. She slipped the curved pillow from under her leg and carefully turned onto her left side and watched Pez sleep. Now with Jenny trying to find her by going through the hospital employees, she would have to call a locksmith and arrange to have the locks changed when Jenny was at work. The biggest problem was getting all of Jenny's clothes and stuff packed and out before she got home from work. There was no way in Hell that she wanted to be anywhere near Jenny right now and it would be dangerous to be caught moving her stuff. Afterward, she would pack a bag and stay in a motel for a week or so and hope in that time Jenny would get the hint and leave her alone. She had no idea why Jenny thought she owned her or had the right to abuse her. They had only slept together once in the last year and had separate bedrooms. They had no relationship except for a brutal commanding one. Pez and her Amazons had been kinder to her in the last few days than Jenny had been in the last six months. And that's saying something since most of the hospital employees hated her. As strange as the woman in her Superman PJ's was, she found herself liking her more than she ever had Jenny. She just wished she knew why she had let Jenny take over her life like she had. Maybe it was insecurity of being alone. Turning the light off and moving her arm so that her shoulder didn't hurt as bad, she arranged her pillow and closed her eyes. The sound of deep even breathing lulled her to sleep minutes later.
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Besom walked down the hallway towards the doctor's lounge in the ER, he had been trying to reach Pez all night and into the early morning hours. He had checked the locker room and all the other hiding places she was usually in so the lounge was the last place. When he walked in, he found Roy, Griffin and Betty getting their morning coffee but no Pez.
"Has anyone heard from Pez this morning?"
Betty rolled her eyes and snickered at him. "Doc B how can you possibly be the head of this department and put your clothes on inside out and backwards?" She pointed to his scrub shirt with the square part against his throat and his lab jacket inside out.
"I wondered why I couldn't find my pockets. Hell, it's been a long night and morning; I really need to find Pez. I've been getting nasty phone calls from the State police and Sheriffs office about her; disturbing the peace, reckless driving and the DWI she got last night in Martinsburg."
The three women shook their heads at him; Griffin pulled the chart off the table and handed it to him. "She checked out her last patient at 1850 last night and I know she went right home because we were behind her. Her Humvee is parked at the back of the lot and if they had given her a DWI, she would be in jail and her Humvee would be in the impound lot."
"You said her Humvee is out there, then that means she's in the hospital, but where?" He rubbed his baldhead and looked between the three of them. "I've checked all her hiding spots, where else would she be?"
"Doc B did you check Doc Shay's room, that's where I found her the last time." Betty walked over to the wall phone and called the nurses station on the floor where Shay's room was, after a few seconds she hung up the phone a waved to Besom. "Come on and let me get you straightened out on the way to Doc Shay's room."
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Betty helped him out of his lab coat and turned it right side out while he struggled with his scrub shirt on their way to the elevator. Betty often wondered about him and the way he came dressed to work. "I really have to get an alarm clock." He pulled his scrub shirt on the right way. "I got up late and just grabbed clothes out of the laundry basket." He grinned at the older nurse. "My wife is trying to teach me not to take my clothes off inside out, the way I put them in the wash is the way I get them back."
"Well it's not working and your shoes don't match either." She pointed to his brown loafer and tennis shoe. They walked out of the elevator and went down the hall towards Shay's room. Besom stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder at Betty.
"I told her to keep an eye on Doc Shay but I didn't mean literally." He moved out of the way and let Betty see around him. A bright smile came to her face when she saw that Pez was spooned against Shay's back with her arm wrapped around the smaller doctor protectively.
"I don't think they can get much closer than that and check out her PJ's." She chuckled at the blushing Besom and walked over to the bed, reaching out she shook Pez' shoulder to wake her. "Pez it's time to play doctor and not with the one you're wrapped around either." She leaned over, blew in the tall woman's ear, and grinned when her hand came up and covered her ear. Grabbing the elastic on her PJ bottoms, she pulled them back and let it snap. A low growl and then one blue eye opened, Pez rolled her head and saw Betty ready to terrorize her some more.
"What time is it granny?"
"Six o'clock, Besom's here, he needs to talk to you."
"What'd I do this time?" It dawned on her where she was and who she was with. "This looks really good doesn't it?" Her hand was cupping Shay's breast and her arm was being used as a pillow. She eased her arm out from under Shay's head and swung her legs around until she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Seeing Besom in the hallway, she waved him in and looked at him with blurry eyes. "What's wrong Doc B?"
"What time did you come back here last night?"
She rubbed her face, thought for a few minutes and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know I was kinda out of it, why?"
"Where you anywhere near Martinsburg?"
She gave him a raised eyebrow and jumped when Shay rolled against her and wrapped her arm around her waist. "Why would I be in Martinsburg, I left here and I got home at around seven. I took a shower and I have no idea what time I got here."
"7:30 on the dot." Shay mumbled from behind her and then used Pez' shoulder to pull herself up. She rubbed her eyes and then blushed when she saw not only Besom in the room but granny giving her a wicked smile. "What's going on anyway?"
"You said she got here at 7:30 but I was told she was getting a DWI in Martinsburg at 7:40."
"Check the night nurses log book, I asked for a shot of glucagon a few minutes after she got here." Betty raised her hand and went to get the night nurse and her logbook. "Doc B what's this about a DWI?"
He sat down in the chair and looked between the two women. "All last night I kept getting calls from every police branch complaining about Pez." He looked to the door when Betty came in with the night nurse.
"She's been here since 7:25 last night Doc B and she hasn't left the room." The young nurse said and handed him her logbook. "If that's it I'll be going, I have my kids to get to school."
"Thanks I appreciate your help." He handed her the logbook and waved as she left the room. "Who ever it is that's causing the problems just got shot down. Any ideas who it is?"
"Trooper Osborne, she's been trying to find me by going through the employees. Now she's trying to get to Pez again, has it been reported that Osborne's the one who shot Pez?"
"I spoke with the State police and they said that they would look into it but they wanted proof."
Pez placed a hand on Shay's hip and nodded her head. "I'll do what ever needs to be done, if it means testifying in court I'll do it. I need to get her stuff out of my apartment and the locks changed; I have a restraining order against her that should be delivered hopefully today."
Besom pointed to Pez. "You take today off and help her get the stuff done; I don't need some nut case Trooper trying to cause problems for my doctors. If you have any problems you call me and I'll help anyway I can." He started towards the door and stopped. "And Pez, sign Shay out and Shay make sure she eats today."
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Continued In Part 2