Sugar (34 page)

“Rest? In this madhouse?” She rolled her eyes, the unhurt one conveying amusement.

She had a point. Neon lighting, nonstop scuttling back and forth from the various medical staffers, and callouts from the ubiquitous intercom hardly made it a napping zone—unless, of course, you were an exhausted intern. Back then, Marcus could have slept standing. Once or twice, he had.

For the first time that night, he felt a smile tugging at the corners of his flat lined mouth. “Right, I know. Do your best.”

The next several hours whizzed by. The gunshot victim from Spanish Harlem with the gang tats was joined by a NYU student goaded by his buddies into sticking a light bulb up his butt, and a fast food worker burned by boiling cooking oil when the deep fryer malfunctioned. By the time Marcus took a breather, it was nearly 1 AM. Hoping Ms. Gladwell might have had a change of heart—and story— he grabbed her chart and went to check on her.

Only she was gone. Shit! Marching over to the nurse’s station, he demanded, “Who discharged this patient—
my
patient—without my knowledge?”

The nurse behind the desk looked up from the computer screen and shrugged. “She AMA-ed.”

Left against medical advice, fuck! Incredulous, Marcus revved up to rip into her. “And nobody came to find me?”

“It’s okay, I signed off.” Dr. Denison, his attending, walked up. “Let it go, Marcus.” Dropping his voice, he wrapped a fatherly arm about Marc’s shoulders and steered him away from the station. “You’re an excellent clinician, Marc, one of the most gifted trauma interns I’ve had in some time, but if you don’t monitor your intensity you’re going to burn out.”

“Yes, but, sir—”

“To make it in medicine, emergency medicine especially, you need to accept that you can’t save everyone. The sooner you make peace with that, the greater an asset you’ll be to me, this hospital, and above all, your patients.”

Knowing he was beat, Marcus backed off with a nod. “Duly noted, sir. Thank you for the feedback.”

Thank you for the feedback
—Jesus, what a brownnoser he’d become. He’d been attracted to trauma as the area of medicine where he could do the most immediate good, help the most people, but the past several months had punctured all kinds of holes in his dream bubble.

“You’re welcome.” Denison dropped his arm, muscular and dusted with white hairs, and stepped away. “Now do yourself and everybody else here a favor and go home and get some sleep. You’ll need it. You’ve got to be back here in nine hours.”

Marc nodded. “I will. Thanks.”

Watching Denison turn away, he raked a hard hand through his hair. He couldn’t save or even help everyone, he got that. But he might have helped her, Honey Gladwell or whatever her name was, if only he’d had more time.

Then again, maybe he did. Forty-one Park Avenue wasn’t more than a few short blocks from the hospital. And he had, if not all the time in the world, the next nine hours.

Note from the
Publisher

[TK]