Where to start (6/?)
Chapter 6
There was one time in Erica’s life, when she thought that she would never operate again. When she finished her residency and moved to Seattle she had a dangerous car accident. When she woke up after two days of coma, one of the doctors said that her left hand would never fully recover.
For Erica, it had almost been the end of the world. She had been working so hard all those years and she already had a great reputation. And in a few seconds when she had not been able to stop her car, all of her dreams and hopes were buried with the man who had hit her car. A few days later, her hand started to get better, and after two weeks she was fine. Her doctor had been wrong.
Now she herself was going to be that doctor. But there was a difference. She wasn’t wrong. She had to go and tell Thomas Caine that he would not return to his work. In the morning, the first thing that she saw when she came to her office, were Caine’s tests results and the new MRI pictures. His lung wasn’t healing well. He would be breathless after a few minutes of running.
She knocked and entered the room.
“Good morning doctor Hahn.” Tom smiled at her.
“Morning.” She quietly said.
“So, how are things going? Can I go soon?”
“Mr. Caine.” Erica cleared her throat. “You will have to stay here for at least one more week.”
“Is everything alright?” He nervously asked.
“Your lung isn’t healing well. I’m afraid that you won’t be able to go back to work.”
“So, how much time do I need to be fully recovered?”
“No, Mr. Caine. You won’t be able to go back to work at all.” She took two steps further. “The damage was too big. We are lucky that we managed to save this lung. But after a few minutes of running, you’ll be breathless and after that there will be a huge risk of heart attack.”
He was staring at her, speechless. Erica knew exactly what he was thinking. For him, she was the person who just took something away from him, that he loved so much.
“Can you leave me alone?” He asked coldly.
“Mr. Caine…”
“Just… leave me alone!”
Erica nodded and left his room. She walked to the nurses’ station and wrote a few things in his chart. After a few moments, her pager went off and she walked quickly to the ER. She finished her surgery just in time for lunch.
One of the many things that Erica hated was when someone was staring at her. She felt uncomfortable then and she always knew when someone was doing it, even when she wasn’t able to see that person. And now, during her lunch, when she was hoping for a few peaceful moments, she felt someone’s gaze on her face. She immediately located the owner of that annoying look.
Kevin was standing in queue to pay for his lunch. He was standing there and staring at her. Last night had been great. They’d talked and laughed. She felt like none of the love drama had happened. She sighed deeply and tried to ignore him. She didn’t want to, but it was self defense in some way.
Her phone vibrated and she answered without looking to see who was calling.
“Hi, it’s Julia.”
“Hi.” Erica answered, surprised. “How did you get my number?”
“I work with the police, remember?!” She laughed. “I’m kidding. I’ve asked Kevin. He gave it to me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s ok. So, what can I do for you?”
“I know you probably have had enough of my company, but Kevin was supposed to go with me to the cinema tonight, and he has to stay at work.” She paused and Erica could hear Julia starting the engine of her car. “So, I have a free ticket.”
“Can you tell me what movie it is?” Erica asked putting her fork down.
“I would love to, but I’m afraid that you will reject my invitation.” She laughed.
Erica smiled and looked at her watch. “Ok. What time and which cinema?”
“Umm… wait…” Julia said quickly. “yyy… 7:30 at Grant. Is that ok with you?”
“Yeah. I’ll meet you there at 7:20?”
“Great! So, see you later!”
After she hung up, her pager went off again and she left before Kevin came to her table.
Her shift was supposed to end at 5pm. She left at 7, because of an emergency surgery. It was a bloody mess. Literally! One of the interns couldn’t take that much pressure, and just ran from the OR. Erica had to find him later and yell at him. It was the first time since she was at Johns Hopkins when she had to yell at someone. She had to admit that it was one thing she was missing sometimes. At SGH she yelled at her interns and residents very often. They were lazy, and not so smart. In Yang’s case, too much… Yang. Erica grimaced at this thought. “Great! What I need now is another Yang!” She thought sarcastically and walked into the cinema’s lobby.
“I’m so sorry!” Julia said when the movie ended.
“You’re buying me lots of wine after that.”
They both laughed and left the building. Erica suggested a small restaurant near the cinema. She was hungry, because she didn’t have a chance to finish her lunch. When the waiter brought their orders, the blonde quickly started to eat.
“How can you eat after that movie?” Julia joked.
“I’m a surgeon. How can you buy tickets for a movie like that?” Erica teased.
“Don’t even ask. It’s Kevin’s fault.” She took a sip of her wine. “By the way. Last night, you two were ok.” She smiled.
“We had talked earlier that day. But it’s not easy. I caught him staring at me today. It’s awkward and uncomfortable.” Erica sighed. “I like him. He’s my friend and I still want him to be.”
“Good. I know it would be too difficult for him to not to be your friend.”
Erica just nodded and continued to eat. Julia was watching her for a moment.
“Ok! Just ask and let’s get this over with!” Erica sighed deeply.
“What?” The brunette asked surprised.
“I know you’re dying to ask me about last night’s conversation.” Erica said dryly.
“You should work with the police, you know.” Julia smirked. “Yes, I want to ask you about it, but I don’t have to, if you don’t want.”
“Even if I don’t now, you will ask me later eventually.”
“True.” Julia nodded and chuckled. “Ok. Why you are angry with yourself?”
“Because I walked away from her.” She poked at some carrots with her fork.
“What did she do, that you walked away?”
Erica raised her head and looked at her. “How do you know that she’s done something?”
“Because I think you’re not this kind of person who does something like that without a reason.” She shifted on her chair and sat more comfortably. “After what happened with Kevin and Laura… some people would’ve avoided the problem. You just faced it. You could’ve avoided both of them, but you didn’t.” Julia smiled at her.
“I was avoiding Kevin, but I needed time to figure it out first. I didn’t know what to say to him about Laura.”
Julia nodded. “So, how much time you needed to figure things with… ummm… Calliope?”
Erica nodded. “Callie, yes.” She drank her wine. “I don’t know. That depends.”
“On what?”
“It was on three occasions that I figured out a few things with her. First, when I knew there’s something more than just friendship. The second time was when I discovered that I’m gay. And the third time…” She paused and leaned her elbows on the table. “When she told me that she slept with her friend… twice… the same day she had slept with me.”
“And after that you walked away?”
“No. I said it was ok. I didn’t know why she had done that. I still don’t know. She was talking to him more often than she was talking to me, and we used to be best friends earlier.” Erica waited for the waiter to leave their table so she could continue. “Two days later, we had a fight about what had happened at the hospital. A few years earlier, one of the interns had stolen a heart from my patient and it came out that day. Callie was defending her, and again, I was alone.”
“No bloody wonder you walked away.” Julia shook her head. “I would have done that earlier.”
“I think that that night, I finally realized that I would always be on my own if I was with her.”
“Ok, so again… why you are angry with yourself, not with her?” Julia asked confused.
“Because maybe if I hadn’t walked away that night… maybe if I had let her finish what she wanted to say about this whole mess… this could’ve happened differently.”
“You mean you would still be together?” Julia asked surprised.
“No. I told you that I would be on my own.” She shook her head. “What I mean is, that maybe we could have just talked and somehow, after some time be friends again. I know she wanted to be with me. She told me that when she confessed that she had slept with Sloan. I wanted to be with her more than anything, but not after she left me for the second time.”
“Second time?”
Erica blushed. “One morning after I had spent the night with her, I realized that I’m gay. It was a shock for me. I was a 41 year old woman who, after all this time, discovered something huge about herself.” She sighed. “Anyway. When I told her that, she just left me there alone. She just walked away.”
“So you’re even now.”
“Yeah, but with the difference that she came to me later that day and told me that she wanted to be with me, but…” She paused.
“She slept with that Sloan, right?”
Erica nodded. Nobody besides Callie, her and of course Sloan, knew about all this. She looked at Julia and smiled.
“Thank you.” Erica said quietly.
“For what?”
The blonde smiled. “For the wine.”
Julia laughed, but after few moments she got serious again.
“I still don’t know why you are angry. It’s not your fault that all this happened the way it did. She was the one who cheated on you. She was the one who didn’t speak to you when she should have. And she was the one who didn’t take your side.” She reached for Erica’s hand over the table. “Erica! You had every reason to walk away that night. For the love of God! I even think that you’ve waited too long with that.”
Erica didn’t say anything, maybe Julia was right. Even if she had stayed that night and tried to fix everything with Callie they couldn’t be friends again after that. Callie wasn’t her friend when she left her alone that morning. She wasn’t her friend when she was talking to Mark instead of her. She wasn’t her friend when she took Stevens’ side in that conflict.
Erica smiled at the brunette. “You’re right.”
Julia chuckled. “I know.”
They had been talking for some time when Julia offered a short walk before they went back to their cars.
“You’re still wearing your wedding ring.” Erica said calmly and smiled at her.
“Yes. I will probably never take it off.” She smiled sadly and quickly looked at her ring.
“Do you miss him?”
“All the time.” She laughed shortly. “You know, I believe you two could have been great friends.”
“Why is that?”
“He was very cynical sometimes.”
“I am not cynical!” Erica suddenly stopped.
Julia turned to her. “You are. A little.” She shook her head and chuckled.
“Fine! A little.”
“I didn’t say it’s a bad thing. I liked it in Philip.”
Erica stopped again. “You don’t fancy me, do you?” She asked, scared.
Julia couldn’t help herself, and burst into laughter. “Your face was priceless. You’re a very attractive woman Erica, that’s for sure…” She paused and tried to calm down. “But I’m too straight for that.” She laughed again.
Erica was watching her for a second. She had just made a total moron of herself. Why in the world had she just asked her about that?
“Well, eight months ago, I was too straight for that, too.” She beamed at Julia and started walking again.
After that, the shorter woman finally managed to calm herself and she caught up with Erica.
They were walking in silence for a while, but Julia started to giggle again and after that, Erica was lost, too.
A few days passed quickly. Erica was working on her double shifts because of a sudden trauma epidemic in Baltimore. She had left the ER and the OR only 3 times on those days. She was exhausted. She had to ask one of the senior residents to sign Thomas Caine out. Julia texted her later, to let her know that he would be alright. They had talked about it during one evening. Julia knew it was difficult for him, but she told Erica that he would eventually find the bright side of it. And she had a new partner now. They both laughed at him, because he was a huge fan of Charlie’s Angels and according to Julia, he was perfectly imitating Farah Fawcett.
Erica also received a message from Alice. She wouldn’t be able to come for the weekend. She had to go to Kenya. ‘I hate that job!’ That was the last sentence in her sister’s message. Great! I’m stuck in the ER and she’s going to Kenya, and she hates it. Erica laughed and tried to sneak out to an on-call room, but her pager went off again.
Things didn’t calm down until the end of November. Chief Bradock offered Erica a big clinical trial, which she, of course, accepted. It was a lot of paper work at the beginning, but she had everything under control now. Kevin managed to fly for a few days to Madrid to see Laura, and Julia had been promoted, but she also wanted to finish the training period with her new partner.
“I was talking to Kevin today.” Julia said and took a cup of coffee from Erica. “Thanks.”
They both had the day off and both were too tired to do anything else, besides being lazy in Erica’s living room.
“When’s he coming back?” Erica asked and sat in her arm chair.
“Tomorrow. With Laura.” She gave Erica a quick look.
“What?” She asked, irritated.
“Kevin said that Laura has changed over these months.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s got a job and wants to start another school.”
“That’s good. Right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So, why do you have this face?”
“It’s just… Kevin said it’s obvious that she wants to impress you.” Julia raised her eyebrow.
Erica sighed. “He talked about that with her?”
“Yes. And she told him that she knows that she wasn’t good enough for you. And she knows she will be.”
“WHAT?” Erica shouted in disbelief.
“I know!” She smirked. “Nobody is good enough for you!” The brunette joked.
“Are you mad?” Erica asked surprised.
“What? Erica! I was joking!” Julia shook her head. “You’re unbelievable sometimes. I don’t know how is that you’re funny like no one, and on the other hand you can’t catch a joke?!”
“Maybe because it was a bad one?”
They both laughed and continued with the laziness till Julia’s stomach started to remind her about the lack of food.
“I’m not cooking! We can order in, if you want.” Erica said after few ‘burps’ coming from Julia’s stomach.
They ordered pizza and in an hour, they had already eaten it.
“How’s Farah doing?” Erica asked on her way to the kitchen.
Julia chuckled. “He’s ok. He will be a good cop. Strange, but good.”
“I can try and get her autograph for him.” Erica shouted from the kitchen.
Julia stood up from the couch and came to Erica. “How?”
“I was doing a bypass on her ex agent. He was nice. He wanted to take me to the opera.” Erica grimaced.
“And you refused?” She asked, with fake shock. “A date with Farah Fawcett’s agent. Damn, you’re picky.”
“Her ex agent. And he was older than my father.” She crossed her arms. “If you want, I can give you his number.” She said with a huge grin on her face.
“No, thanks!” Julia answered quickly. “Too old! I don’t want to be a double widow. Besides, I’m waiting for this gay revelation in my life, but for now, it’s still nothing!”
Erica laughed and took two beers from the fridge.
“Maybe we should find someone for you. Maybe you can resist me, but somewhere in Baltimore there is a woman who is waiting for you.” Erica giggled.
“And how would you know where to find her? You never leave this house or the hospital. And when you’re out, you are always with Kevin or me. Or both.” She opened her bottle. “I don’t get it, why are you alone?!”
“I don’t have time for things like that. Now with this clinical trial…”
“Stop making excuses. You have the time to meet me and Kevin. You don’t have to always do it when one of us asks you.”
“I don’t?” Erica asked ironically.
Julia sighed. “Look! All I’m trying to say is that you are gorgeous, smart, funny and an incredibly interesting woman. It’s a shame that you are wasting your time with us when you can waste…”
“Don’t even finish!” Erica pointed her finger at Julia.
The shorter woman laughed. “Do you know anyone here, besides Kevin and me?”
“Laura.” Erica answered quickly.
“And her. Anyone else?” She stopped Erica before she could say something. “I’m not asking about your co-workers. Is there at least one person, you really like?”
“I like Diego, he’s an electrician, but he’s almost 80 years old and only knows five words in English. Good morning doctor Erica Hahn.” Erica said with quite a good Spanish accent. “Maybe that’s why I like him. He doesn’t speak much.”
Julia laughed. “You’re hopeless.”
Erica snorted. “That’s nothing new in that department.”
“See! That’s what I’m talking about. Why you can’t be so self-confident when you are outside the hospital?”
“Because I’m awkward?”
Julia opened her mouth, but closed it after few seconds. “Ok, I give up!”
Erica took a sip of her beer. “I am alone, because I want to be alone. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Wait!” She looked at Erica. “You’re not scared!? Are you?”
Erica shifted on her stool.
“Oh, Christ!” Julia whispered, surprised. “After Callie… was there any other woman?”
Erica groaned quietly and tried not to look at Julia who was literally speechless. How was it possible that this kind of woman had been free all this time and no one, besides Kevin and Laura was interested in her?
“Can I ask you one more question?”
Erica nodded and groaned again but this time louder.
“Since you’re here. Did someone besides the Adams family, want to ask you out or just went ahead and asked you?”
The blonde was watching her attentively. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
“Well I had a patient from Poland once. And he barely knew English; when I was leaving, he always said the same words to me, but I have no idea what they mean. He was nice and always smiled to me.”
“Do you remember what he told you?” Julia asked and took her phone.
“Something like… pokash tzazki… I don’t know.”
“Tzatziki? Like this sauce?” Julia dialed the number on her phone.
“No it was more like tzytzki.” Erica thought for a second. “Or cicki? I can’t remember.”
“Hi Paul, it’s Julia… Thanks, I’m fine. Listen, is your father around?” She waited for a few seconds. “Great. No, I’ll wait.” She turned to Erica. “Mr. Kropski was our neighbor when we moved to Baltimore. Hi Mr. Kropski, how are you?” She asked and waited for the answer. “No, I actually wanted to ask you about something. My friend had a patient from Poland. And this man told her something and we are not sure what it means. He always said that to her when she was leaving his room. He was nice. Ummm… yeah one moment…” She looked at Erica again. “What was it again?”
“Pokash… cicki.” Erica shrugged.
“Pokash cicki.” Julia repeated after her friend. “Yeah, pokash. No, she’s not sure about the second one. OH!” She started laughing. “Ok. I’ll ask her. Thank you, Mr. Kropski. Take care.”
“What?” Erica asked after Julia hung up.
Julia was laughing again. “Well… he was definitely hitting on you. Mr. Kropski told me that this guy probably said to you pokash cycki*. And it means show me your tits!” She burst into laughter again.
“See? Only perverts, male friends or their annoying sisters. It’s better to be alone!”
*pokaż cycki - show me your tits.
