[Georgia 03] Fallen

an entire month he took the long way to the kitchen just so he didn’t accidentally brush against the shelves.
    As she sat in the living room that morning, Faith looked up at the shelves to find that all of thirty-six globes had been turned around to face the wall.

CHAPTER NINE
     
    S ARA WONDERED IF IT WAS A SOUTHERN PECULIARITY FOR little children to get sick in the half hour between Sunday school and church services. Most of her early patients that morning had fallen into that golden time period. Tummy aches, earaches, general malaise—nothing that could be pinned down by a blood test or an X-ray, but was easily cured by a set of coloring books or a cartoon on the television.
    Around ten o’clock, the problems had turned more serious. The cases came in rapid succession, and were the kind Sara hated because they were largely preventable. One child had eaten rat poison he’d found under the kitchen cabinet. Another had gotten third-degree burns from touching a pan on the stove. There was a teenager she’d had to forcibly commit to the lockdown ward because his first hit of marijuana had pushed him into a psychotic break. Then a seventeen-year-old girl had come in with her skull split open. Apparently, she was still drunk when she drove home this morning. The girl had ended up wrapping her car around a parked Greyhound bus. She was still in surgery, but Sara guessed that even if they managed to control the swelling in her brain, she would never be the same person again.
    By eleven, Sara wanted to go back to bed and start the day over.
    Working at a hospital was a constant negotiation. The job could suck away as much of your life as you permitted. Sara had agreed to work at Grady knowing this truth, embracing it, because she didn’t want a life after her husband had died. Over the last year, she’d been cutting back on her time in the ER. Keeping regular hours was a struggle, but Sara fought the uphill battle every day.
    It was really a form of self-preservation. Every doctor carried around a cemetery inside them. The patients she could help—the little girl whose stomach she’d pumped, the burned toddler whose fingers she’d saved—were momentary blips. It was the lost ones that Sara remembered most. The kid who’d slowly, painfully succumbed to leukemia. The nine-year-old who’d taken sixteen hours to die from antifreeze poisoning. The eleven-year-old who’d broken his neck diving headfirst into a shallow swimming pool. They were all inside of her, constant reminders that no matter how hard she worked, sometimes—oftentimes—it was never enough.
    Sara sat down on the couch in the doctors’ lounge. She had charts to catch up on, but she needed a minute to herself. She’d gotten less than four hours of sleep last night. Will wasn’t the direct reason her brain would not turn off. She’d kept thinking about Evelyn Mitchell and her corrupt band of brothers. The question of the woman’s guilt weighed heavily on her mind. Will’s words kept coming back to Sara: either Evelyn Mitchell was a bad boss or a dirty cop. There was no in-between.
    Which was probably why Sara hadn’t found the time this morning to call Faith Mitchell and check on her. Technically, Faith was Delia Wallace’s patient, but Sara felt an odd sort of responsibility for Will’s partner. It tugged at her the same way Will seemed to tug at her every waking thought these days.
    All of the tedium. None of the pleasure.
    Nan, one of the student nurses, plopped down on the couch beside Sara. She scrolled through her BlackBerry as she talked. “I want to hear all about your hot date.”
    Sara forced a smile onto her face. That morning when she got to the hospital, there’d been a large bouquet of flowers waiting for her in the doctors’ lounge. It seemed Dale Dugan had bought out the entire city’s supply of baby’s breath and pink carnations. Everyone in the ER had made a comment to Sara before she’d even managed to change into her lab coat. They all seemed caught up in the romance of the widow being swept off her feet.
    Sara told the girl, “He’s very nice.”
    “He thinks you’re nice, too.” Nan gave a sly grin as she typed an email. “I ran into him at the lab. He’s super cool.”
    Sara watched the girl’s thumbs move, feeling three hundred years old. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever been that young. Neither could she imagine Dale Dugan sitting down and having a nice gossip with this giddy young nurse.
    Nan