The Doctor's Undoing

“Can you have the bracelet restrung?”

“I’ll restring it myself when I have time. Kris gave it to me. The stones are hematite—supposed to be calming and grounding.”

“Oh.” He dropped the stones he held into her open hand as if they’d suddenly turned hot. She knew he’d never cared for Kris. She’d always assumed it was simply a personality clash.

“Okay, I’m off. See you Monday. Have a good weekend.”

“You, too.” She caught the door when he opened it, preparing to lock it behind him.

Ron turned on the step outside her ground-floor apartment, the familiar look in his eyes warning her that he was going to say something outrageous. “Hey, Haley?”

Her lips twitched. “Yes, Ron?”

“To make it clear—I find your bones totally jumpable. Just don’t want to do anything to mess up a good friendship, you know?”

“Um—” She had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that.

Laughing, he turned and walked away.

After a moment, she shook her head, then shut the door with a bit more force than necessary.

Trust Ron to make such an odd joke out of a situation that had already been awkward enough, she thought with a sigh of exasperation.

She spent the rest of the evening wondering at random times if Ron really found her “jumpable.”

Rounds on Monday morning went very well. Haley and Hardik had no difficulty with their patient presentations, and Ron sailed through his. To Haley’s relief, Ron was his usual self, cutting up with everyone equally, treating her as he always did. There was no more talk of bone-jumping or self-consciousness. Georgia McMillan had been released on Saturday, so they weren’t subjected to her blatant matchmaking. Telling herself it had been only a temporary glitch in their friendship, Haley was assured they could put it behind them and go on as they had been.

She was very busy that afternoon, practically running from one assigned task to another, taking only a half hour for a lunch break. She didn’t see Ron until late in the afternoon. She had just stepped into the students’ room to type up some notes when he walked in.

“Hi, Ron, how’s your afternoon…oh, my gosh, what happened?”

Though she remembered that he’d worn a white shirt, red tie and gray slacks beneath his white coat that morning, he wore blue hospital-issue scrubs now. His expression was so grim she knew something must have gone very wrong for him.

The spots of dark color on his cheeks indicated either anger or embarrassment, maybe a mixture of both. He spoke from between clenched teeth. “I screwed up. Big-time. Damn it.”

Pushing herself out of the computer chair, she took a step toward him. “What did you do?”

“Dr. Cudahy let me remove a patient’s central line. I’ve done that a couple of times before with my preceptor, so I felt pretty confident. Thought I’d impress the attending and the resident. Like an idiot, I pulled out the line—and forgot to put pressure on the site.”

Haley winced, imagining the arterial blood spurt that would have resulted. “I hope you and the patient were the only ones in the vicinity?”

“Oh, no. That would have been bad enough, of course, but Drs. Cudahy and Prickett were standing close enough at the time that we all got splattered. Prickett and I were wearing paper gowns, so only our collars and pants were hit, but Dr. Cudahy thought she was standing far enough away to be safe. She wasn’t. She got sprayed. She had to go change into scrubs.”

Haley could imagine how humiliated Ron must be feeling right now. It was bad enough to make a mistake in front of a resident, but even more galling to have the attending be both a witness to and a victim of the error.

She was tempted to remind Ron that she’d warned him to be more serious and resist his natural inclination to perform. But this wasn’t the time for I-told-you-so. Right now, he just needed a friend.

She rested a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Ron. I know that must have been embarrassing. But everyone makes mistakes. Dr. Cudahy and Dr. Prickett know that. I’m sure they’ve made more than a few, themselves.”

Her words didn’t seem to help much. She could still see bitter self-recrimination in his expression. “It was such a stupid thing to do. Any moron should have known to apply pressure. They probably all think I’m an idiot.”

“They don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“I am an idiot. Damn it.”

He was taking this relatively minor setback much harder than he should. Haley knew Ron had a streak of insecurity hiding behind his wisecracks and devil-may-care attitude. It had made an appearance during an outburst in the study group when he’d accused himself of holding the others back, implying that they’d all been carrying him through the first two years of classes and exams. He’d even offered to leave the group if they’d thought he wasn’t up to their level, to everyone’s shock.

They’d firmly assured him that he was as valuable a member of the group as any of them, and that not one of them had ever considered him a liability. Not even Haley, even though she’d occasionally complained that he didn’t take his studies seriously enough and that he was too willing to accept the possibility that he could wash out before the end of medical school. She’d challenged him to be more positive, to stop playing the clown and be more serious and more determined to succeed against all odds, but she’d never even suggested he didn’t belong among them.

She’d wondered ever since what lay behind that deeply buried self-doubt. From the very few remarks he’d made about his family, she strongly suspected the lack of confidence had been instilled years earlier. Setbacks like this, though more galling than significant, just seemed to reinforce his own self-doubt. What he needed more than the sympathy she’d already offered, she decided, was a metaphorical slap to rouse him from the self-pity party.

“You screwed up, Ron,” she said, keeping her tone matter-of-fact. “It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last. Suck it up and get over it. You won’t make that particular mistake again.”

He blinked a couple of times, then frowned. “Yeah, you wouldn’t be so casual about it if you’d given Dr. Cudahy and your resident a blood shower.”

“I’d want to find a deep hole and climb into it,” she admitted frankly. “But then I’d tell myself to keep going and do better next time. It’s what I always do when I make a mistake—and I’ve made my share.”

He nodded, his expression hard to read. She wondered if her words had really made an impression or if he was just placating her when he said, “Yeah, okay, thanks. You’re right, of course.”

“Ron—”

His mouth tilted into his usual cocky grin and he shrugged, cutting in with a dry laugh. “Hey, I got a good story out of it, right? Connor and James are going to love this. Hell, by the time I embellish it a little, it’ll be hysterical. Wait until I tell them about the looks on Prickett’s and Cudahy’s faces.”

She knew he would give no further insight into his feelings about the incident. She’d just happened to see him before he’d had a chance to erect his usual barriers, to hide his true emotions behind what she thought of as his jester’s grin. Had she run into him a couple of hours later, she’d have heard the funny story and completely missed the distress beneath it.

It bothered her that he still felt the need to hide those feelings from her. From all his friends, she corrected herself quickly. There was no reason to think he’d be any more forthcoming with her, in particular, than with the others.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” she felt compelled to ask.

There was no reading the expression behind his eyes when he replied, “Oh, sure. I just need some clean clothes and a big ol’ chunk of chocolate cake. Wouldn’t have any on you, would you?”

She forced a little smile in return. “Not at the moment. But I’ll make you one later, if you like.”

“A pity cake?” He gave a short laugh and patted her cheek in a gesture that made her go from wanting to comfort him to wanting to punch him. “That’s our Haley. Always there to boost the morale.”

Before she could answer, he dropped his hand and moved toward the doorway. “I’d better go finish my assignments. See you tomorrow, Haley.”

He was gone before she could respond.

Ron parked in the lot of Haley’s apartment building Wednesday evening, then sat looking at her window for a few minutes. He was there to study for the shelf exams they would take at the end of their medicine rotation. They’d invited Hardik to join them. He’d agreed, but he’d said he might be running a little late and urged them to start without him.

It annoyed Ron that he was oddly hesitant to be alone with Haley until Hardik arrived.

A few days earlier, he’d been irritated with Haley for letting her matchmaking patient’s teasing put awkwardness between them. Now he was the one feeling awkward because he’d let her see his chagrin at the careless mistake he’d made in front of his resident and attending.

They hadn’t discussed the incident since, though there had been some ribbing from his resident during rounds Tuesday morning. Haley had not joined in the teasing, and she’d been quick to change the subject as soon as she was able. She’d considered herself rescuing him, he supposed.

He shouldn’t be so perturbed that Haley knew about his gaffe. As she’d reminded him, they all did something wrong at some point in their training. Not that he’d heard of her doing anything as stupid as he had that afternoon. What galled him the most was that she’d seen him before he’d had a chance to hide his embarrassment and resulting self-doubt.