Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since I checked in with you, but I am still here and still loving all your wonderful words of praise and suggestion and observation in the reviews! For the record, I'd like to say what happens at the end of this chapter was ripped right out of my life with only two little changes so it suits the story. As always, share the love and enjoy!
'When's Alexis rolling into town?'
'Last exam ends at noon, she will be here at two-thirty pm today. Pass me that metal bowl, right here.'
A little creeped out, Esposito passed Shane the requested bowl and watched the man deposit his current customer's liver in, then hastily set it aside. 'You going to meet her?'
'Yeah, I'm only here until Mister Pasternak is taken care of and his tests are being run by the techs. Cause of death was his severed carotid artery but he needed the full spa package, as it were.'
'You have one sick sense of humour my man,' Esposito told him, then tried to keep a straight face that didn't turn green as he watched Shane remove the stomach and then began uncoiling the intestines. 'Very, very sick.'
Ryan stuck his head in the door of Shane's autopsy theatre, whistled for his other half. 'Come on, bro, time to hit the road.'
'Oh, and since you're both here,' Shane informed the two-headed monster, 'no going overboard for the bachelor party, okay? Something appropriate and tasteful since I've been with my almost-wife for three and a half years.'
'So only one night of strippers?' Ryan asked.
'Exactly.'
'We can handle that.' Esposito went to hold out his hand for a knuckle bump, then thought twice about it as he watched Shane dig into the open chest cavity and remove the lungs. He opted instead for a quick pat on the shoulder. 'See you on the beach tonight bro.'
Shane laughed as they left, then looked at Mister Pasternak. 'You know how excited I am about this weekend bro?' he told the corpse. 'So excited, you have no idea, it's just going to be amazing. Alexis home for three whole days, and then a week of nothing but lectures followed by a whole reading week off. I know she'll be studying for a lot of that time but she'll be home and we can have naked study breaks, strip-tease quizzes and I must be really hard up for her if that's immediately where my mind is automatically going.'
When Mister Pasternak's last details had been taken care of, Shane had never been more happy in recent memory to pull off his protective gear, change out of his scrubs and head for the out-door. He had sweet-talked Faisal into letting him borrow his honey of a ride for the trip out to the Hamptons and couldn't wait to see Alexis' long red hair blowing in the breeze.
Shane checked his watch; he had about an hour before he was to meet Alexis at Penn Station and since it was Friday afternoon of the holiday weekend, he decided to play it safe. Fishing out his phone, he sent her a text - hello my sexy little strawberry, I'll meet out at that little cafe across from the W 31st street Penn Stations Exit. lots of love your horny almost hubby.
The hour went quickly and soon, Shane found himself sitting with a cold drink on the patio of Steam-Whistle, the cafe where he liked to meet Alexis when the crowds at Penn Station were too much hassle for them both. He waited, looking up every so often, until finally he saw her crossing the street and walking towards him at the cafe.
She was ten feet from his table when disaster struck - with no apparent warning, her right shoe slipped in a crevice on the sidewalk and she went down like a bag of bricks, face first to the pavement. Shane was up like a flash, rushing over to help her, though she'd already rolled to her butt and was examining the damage herself.
'Alexis, oh my god, sweetheart, are you okay?' he asked her, then winced when he saw the stark white and the trickles of red along with abraded flesh and pocks of gravel in her knee. 'Oh, Lex, you're going to need stitches on this, baby. Sir, may I have your napkin if it's unused?'
'Of course.'
'Not quite the welcome I was expecting to give you,' Alexis said, trying for humour so she wouldn't focus on the numbing pain in her kneecap. 'I mean, it did involved us on the ground but not like this.'
'That makes two of us, my sweet. Can you stand? Don't try to bend the knee, you'll rip it open further. Here.'
Shane unfastened his belt, wound it over Alexis leg so the leather held the cotton, already spotting with blood, firmly against her injury. 'Come on, girl, we're not too far from George Washington Memorial.'
'I saw what happened there.' A waiter came over, jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'I called a cab, you think she needs an ambulance?'
'No, a taxi is fine,' Alexis replied. 'It's not like my leg was hacked off, it's just a deep cut, but I'm thankful all the same.'
'Here, put your arm around my shoulders, that's the way.' Shane helped her to her feet and they hobbled over to the curb with her bag in hand where a cab just pulled to the taxi-slot. He helped her in, and took the front seat for himself, letting the cabbie know they were heading to the hospital.
The ER at George Washington Memorial wasn't terribly crowded, considering it was the afternoon of a long weekend. Then again, GW wasn't a trauma hospital the way Saint Vincent's or Stuyvesant were, so it didn't surprise Alexis at all. She gave the intake nurse all her information and had her work-up of blood pressure and pulse done, and then it was the waiting game. They were there perhaps forty-five minutes, trying to keep the conversation light as they watched the other patients have their names called until finally a woman with smooth mocha skin called out 'Alexis Castle' in a musical Carib accent.
'Come on there, peg leg.' Shane helped her to her feet, and they were ushered back to a bed in the eight bed common area of the ER, and a trim, Asian doctor yawned widely as he came over to pick up her chart.
'So, Miss Alexis, you took a spill, did you? Let's have a look.'
The doctor, who hadn't even introduced himself, unwound Shane's makeshift compress and clucked his tongue at what he saw. 'Yes, ma'am you did a number on your knee. Nurse Havilland, can you bring me a suture kit as well as some saline and some cotton tweezers?'
'Right away, Doctor.'
'Excuse me a moment.'
The doctor hustled away to find latex gloves and Alexis stared after him. 'Yet another reason I don't want to work in an ER setting or even a hospital setting to start. The difference between nurses and doctors comes with a built-in superiority complex I just don't want to deal with.'
'You have nurses at the counseling clinic, though, right?'
'Yeah, but we don't use terms like nurse and doctor, we use the all embracing 'counselor'. You have to have your APA certification as a counselor to work in the clinics I've worked in, so in a sense we're all on the same playing field,' Alexis pointed out and Shane nodded.
'Similar to how we use the term medical examiner?'
'A little bit. Shane?'
'Yes.'
'I'm scared of needles. Not giving them, getting them. Can you...can you hold my hand through it?'
Shane picked up her hand, kissed the knuckles that had also had a layer of skin taken off. 'Of course.'
'Okay, let's start with a little debris clearing.' The doctor returned, picked up the tweezers and began to pluck out the bits of gravel from Alexis knee; when the wound was cleaned, he picked up the vial of local anesthetic and filled a syringe with a dose. 'Now a little pinch, and then you'll just feel the tugging on your knee.'
'Uh-huh,' Alexis gritted out, then let out a yelp when she felt the suturing needle puncture through. 'Ouch!'
'Relax, Miss Castle.'
'No, you're stitching where there's no freezing!' she cried at him. 'It hurts!'
'Oh, I'm sorry about that,' the doctor replied blandly, and loaded up a fresh syringe with another dose when he injected into Alexis' knee. 'There, let's try that.'
Alexis kept her eyes closed as she gripped Shane's hand, squeezing even tighter when she still felt the nip and sting of the needle. 'Shane,' she said through clenched teeth, 'is he almost through?'
Shane glanced over, saw Alexis was now sporting four stitches in her right knee in the shape of an upside down Nike swoosh. 'Yes, he's done,' he reassured her.
'You'll need to keep the stitches in for about a week, you can make an appointment with your family GP to take them out, if you like or I can do it here.'
'No! No,' Alexis repeated a little more calmly, sitting up to watch the doctor put a square of fresh cotton over the stitches in case of weeping, then wrap her knee in a tensor bandage. 'What about cleansing?'
'No stagnant water, which means no swimming in pools, tubs or oceans. Just showers. And you'll need to keep it elevated when sitting, and of course, no driving and limited physical activity on the knee. If you're in pain, drug store extra-strength Tylenol should do the trick. The nurse at the desk will give you your discharge papers.'
When the doctor took off, Alexis looked balefully at her fiance. 'Great. No swimming, no playing, no sex all on the one weekend I was looking forward to just having some time off.'
'It'll be fine. We can shower together, and we can certainly have sex,' Shane told her, kissing her lightly as he helped her stand up. 'In fact, why don't we go home and fit in a practice round before we head to the Hamptons, just to be sure?'
