Chapter Two
Taylor was reluctant to pull herself from bed the next morning to start her day.
She hadn't slept well last night, and for once it wasn't because of any nightmares, which had been blessedly absent. Instead she had been up all night replaying memories from her childhood, thinking about all the things she had told Dr. Graham and all the things she hadn't.
She'd spent much of the night tossing and turning, for some reason thinking about the day of her mother's funeral, the way the house had felt so empty and cold afterwards, like the walls and everything in it had been painted in grayscale. She watched her father walk numbly up the stairs and heard the gentle click of his bedroom door as it closed. She watched Terrence do the same a few seconds later, shrugging out of the sleeves of his black suit with the sort of robotic motions that could only be attributed to his current detachment from the present, like he wasn't even aware of his own body mechanics.
She stood alone in the foyer for several long, heart-stopping seconds, suddenly overcome with the thought that this was the end, that the Tanners were going to send her back to the orphanage, that she'd have to find another new family, that she would have to start all over. She'd have to spend years waiting again, praying, hoping, wishing on every star that someone would want her again. Once again, everything was being ripped away from her and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
And the orphanage. She couldn't go back there. They couldn't send her back, she loved them too much, Terrence and William… didn't they know? She couldn't go back to that place, she couldn't, she couldn't….
She didn't realize she'd worked herself into a panic attack until she was gasping for air she didn't have, sinking to her knees in the middle of the foyer. Terrence must have heard her, because moments later his door opened near the top of the stairs and he looked over the banister to see her on the floor.
"Shit," she heard him say, like his voice was a thousand miles away. She could hear him coming down the stairs, heard the way his dress shoes sounded when they hit the tiled floor as he jumped the last three steps. He knelt down and grabbed her so she wasn't bent at the waist, forcing her to sit up straight, allowing precious oxygen to flow back into her lungs.
"Hey, come on, come on, just breathe," he instructed. "In through your nose, out through your mouth, come on, do it…. " He watched her, wide-eyed, afraid, and Taylor shook her head 'no' as more panicked gasps escaped from her. He nodded his head. "Yes, you can, come on, look at me, just breathe. Watch me breathe." He took a deep breath to demonstrate, and Taylor, after a moment, mimicked the movements of his chest. He kept deep breathing until Taylor had calmed. Her face was streaked with tears.
She felt his hand rubbing her back. "Hey, it's gonna be alright," he said softly, "we're going to—"
"Please don't let him send me back," she sobbed, looking up at Terrence through eyes that were blurred with tears. "Don't let him give me away. I want to stay here with you. I want—I need to stay—"
She was working herself into a panic again, and Terrence pulled her into his arms to hug her. "Hey, you're not going anywhere, okay? Dad wouldn't do that. We love you. You're staying right here. Nothing's changed," he said, "Nothing's changed."
Except that everything had changed, and that day was the catalyst.
Taylor pushed the memory to the back of her mind and rolled onto her back to gaze at Austin's empty side of the bed. She missed him. Her shifts were at complete odds with his, but she made more money working nights, and right now they needed every dollar they could scrape together. Since her shifts started at seven in the evening and she didn't get off work until seven or eight the next morning, it left little time for them to spend together. When she returned in the mornings from work, Austin was already gone.
They'd both spend their weekends curled up at home if they could get away with it, she knew. But more often than not the weekends were too jam-packed with other activities to allow for such indulgences—get-togethers with friends, parties for coworkers, volunteering or staffing events and fundraisers at the hospital, mandatory seminars for work, running errands, the occasional odd editing job Austin could scrounge up for some online website—the list was never-ending. Sometimes she worked on the weekends, too, and that was the worst, knowing that Austin was at home on a Saturday by himself while she had to work.
It was hard not to entertain thoughts of leaving Gotham when she felt like this, when she missed Austin so much, and when spending any significant amount of time together had become such a rarity.
But it was also hard to imagine leaving, too. Gotham was her home, and it had been for as far back as she could remember. She'd long-since given up hope of ever being reunited with her real parents—and perhaps that was for the best. But even despite that, there were too many memories here, too much history—not to mention her father. She couldn't leave him, couldn't leave him to rot in his own self-pity and grief. He was the only family she had left, and she wouldn't allow him to waste away to nothing, even if she couldn't stop him from cutting himself off from the rest of the world like he'd being doing for the past thirteen years. Part of her still held out hope that things might get better for him, that he might one day decide he wanted to be a part of society again, that he might want to pursue old passions, get his old job back, and help children as he had once loved to do.
The reality of the situation was that William would never get better, that the hole he had dug for himself was too deep to ever climb out of, but it didn't stop Taylor from hoping, from wanting to be there for him in any way that she could.
There were other reasons why leaving Gotham would be hard. It would put a definite strain on Austin to find another job. And while nurses were in high demand, and Taylor knew that wherever they went, it would not be difficult for her to find work, the same could not be said for Austin, who, after seven years of working for The Gotham Times—two of which were spent interning and following one of their top reporters around like a puppy trailing its owner's heels, juggling stacks of folders and iced coffees in cardboard trays—was still trying to climb the corporate ladder and be given an assignment that wasn't going to wind up on the back pages of the Times.
Austin had talked about leaving Gotham before, particularly when money was tight and the bills began to pile up, but in the end, Taylor always made made it clear that she did not want to leave, that she couldn't, and that was that. After a while, he stopped bringing it up, realizing it was a dead end.
She was relieved when he did. She loved Gotham with the same amount of passion that she hated it with. It was a complicated relationship they shared, to be sure, but it was also undeniable the pulsing, magnetic force with which she felt drawn to this city, like she couldn't leave even if she wanted to. Almost as if she had a story that had to be finished here… or like she was being kept on a very short leash whether she liked it or not. It was a feeling she couldn't explain.
Later that evening, she took her time showering and changing into her scrubs. She'd already prepared a small meal for Austin, and had it waiting on the stove for him for when he got home from work. She received a text from him a few minutes later explaining he was running late and wouldn't be home in time for her to take the car to work, and that he had already called a cab for her that was on its way.
She was already exhausted thinking about the long twelve hours ahead of her, and after a moment she resolved to simply relax and try not to feel overwhelmed by it. In the back of the cab, she took a deep breath and leaned her head against the window. Traffic was at a stand-still and the cabbie seemed resigned to it, rolling down his window and lighting a cigarette to ease his nerves. Taylor looked away and caught the last beams of sunlight as they flickered and curled between dark, glass skyscrapers. When the hospital came into view, she paid the driver and got out to walk the rest of the way, knowing she'd be late if she didn't.
When she arrived, she was almost glad that Austin hadn't returned from work in time for her to take the car. The parking lot and adjacent parking garage looked full to bursting. That wasn't unusual during the day when the outpatient clinics were open, but after five, the parking lot tended to thin out. She decided to skip coming in through the lobby and instead wound her way through one of the back entrances that dumped her out onto the lowest floor, where the laundry, maintenance, and OR were located. She took the elevator to the third floor and made her way into the nurse's breakroom to squeeze her cooler into the fridge and put her purse in her locker. Her friend Elizabeth—also a nurse, though a much more seasoned one—was there to greet her.
"Evening," she said as Taylor joined her by the lockers. Elizabeth was pulling on a disposable lab jacket that some of the nurses liked to wear when it was cold in the hospital and they hadn't worn long sleeves that day.
"Hey," Taylor greeted. "You heading out or did you just get here? I haven't had a chance to look at who's on tonight."
"Just getting here," Elizabeth said, "much to my dismay because Christian and I had plans."
Taylor removed the elastic tie she'd been holding between her teeth as she pulled her hair into a ponytail. "Oh?"
"We had reservations at The Glades," she said, nodding at Taylor's surprised look as if to say, yeah, I know, "and I'm covering for Latonya's shift instead."
Taylor clipped her badge to her breast pocket and frowned. "Again?"
"Her mom's back in the hospital again, at Regional. She's probably going to hospice soon."
Taylor's frowned deepened. Latonya had been working at Gotham Medical almost for as long as Taylor had been alive. The woman had taken Taylor under her wing—just as she did with every new graduate nurse who joined their floor on the east wing—and walked her through every task she needed help with, as well as lending herself as a solid form of both physical and mental support whenever Taylor needed it. She was like a mother to Taylor, and it pained her to know that Latonya's own mother was not going to be around for much longer.
"That's such a shame. And I'm sorry about your plans."
Elizabeth shrugged. "We'll reschedule. I'm sure there'll be an opening six months from now," she joked.
Taylor bit her lip and studied her friend as she tucked her belongings into a locker that was already overflowing with personal items. Her short, curly hair was pulled into a messy bun at the base of her neck today, and Taylor noticed she looked less put together than usual; the under-eye circles were a dead giveaway.
She raised her brows in question. "You hanging in there?" she asked, not unkindly. "You look like you could use about ten cups of coffee right now."
Elizabeth laughed. "You're too sweet. You know you're not going to offend my sensibilities by saying that I look like shit. I can handle that."
Taylor laughed too. "Well you don't look that bad," she teased. She turned to switch off her cell phone and finish closing up her locker. She felt Elizabeth's eyes on her back in the silence that followed. When she turned around, her friend was still staring at her.
"How about you?" Elizabeth asked. "How are you hanging in there?"
"Me? I'm fine," Taylor lied, not really sure why, not when the word "exhausted" was hanging off the tip of her tongue instead. It felt easier not to tell the truth sometimes, like she was being less of a burden somehow. Her combination lock clinked against her locker as she closed it, and Elizabeth followed her out of the room. "Hey," she said, wanting to change the subject before Elizabeth could call her out for lying, "is something going on tonight? The parking lot was packed when I came in."
Elizabeth gave her a curious look. "Yeah. The press is here, you didn't notice all the cameras and photographers in the lobby?"
"No, I came in through the back," she said, holding open the break room door so Elizabeth could exit first. "What's going on?"
"Asher is stepping down from the board today."
Taylor's brows rose in obvious surprise. John Asher was the chief administrator of Gotham Medical, and had been a large contributing factor in donating a hefty sum of money into building a brand new wing for the hospital It had been built in record time in order to accommodate all the patients from Gotham General after the hospital had been demolished by the Joker, almost twenty years ago; Asher had been hailed as a hero for donating so much to speed up the construction process.
"I'm judging by your expression that you had no idea about this," Elizabeth said as they rounded the corner to pick up their assignments from the nursing station.
"No, I didn't," she said. "Why?"
Elizabeth shrugged. "Don't know. What I do know is that the lobby is swarming with photographers and journalists. There's a lot of folks from the mayor's office and city council. The farewell was supposed to be low-key, but you know the press." Elizabeth waved to the charge nurse across the room, Betty, who was coaxing the printer to life and signaling that their assignments would be ready in just a few more minutes. Elizabeth leaned her hip against the counter. "I heard he's moving to Cuba."
"What?"
"Pretty bizarre, isn't it?"
Taylor frowned. "You can say that again." She paused to chew on her bottom lip. "You said he's 'stepping down'—so this isn't retirement?"
Elizabeth shrugged again. "Could be, I'm sure he has the money for it. There's been some talk that he hasn't been getting along with the other members of the board though. Something about this pharmaceutical rep coming in and rolling out some new drugs here. Could be related to that."
Taylor thought about it in silence for a moment as she watched Betty staple their papers together. An ominous feeling settled in her stomach. "What does this mean for us?"
Elizabeth smiled knowingly, though it was grim. "Ah, now that's the million dollar question." She took a moment to run a hand through her untamed curls, already escaping from where she had attempted to trap them in a bun. "New management, most likely. That's gonna shake things up a bit."
"You really think so?"
"When power shifts hands like this it always does. Some new guy comes in and thinks he knows best and starts moving things around and reassigning people to new departments under the guise of it being more cost effective when, really… it's just a way to cut corners."
Taylor stared at her friend. "How do you know all this?"
Elizabeth chuckled. "I've been through this too many times to count. That's how the system works, unfortunately for us." All the nurses for the oncoming shift were starting to gather near the front of the nurse's station to be handed their paperwork for the evening, and Elizabeth went to join them so she could help Betty hand out the assignments. She gave Taylor's arm a reassuring squeeze before she left. "Don't you worry about it." She offered a reassuring smile. "Everything will be fine."
The following Saturday evening, when the new week's schedule was out, Taylor was surprised to find she had been moved to the dayshift, without her consent. She stared at the schedule splayed out on the counter of the nurse's station where her elbows were propped.
Elizabeth came up behind her glanced over Taylor's shoulder. She shook her head.
"Would you look at that," she said, "it's already starting."
Dayshift was paid less than nightshift. Taylor hung her head in disbelief and wondered what else she and Austin were going to have to cut from their monthly budget to make ends meet.
The most difficult thing about switching to dayshift was trying to adjust to a new sleeping schedule. It was hard getting up at five in the morning to make it to her shift by 6:45. On the plus side, she was getting up with Austin now and they could get ready for work together and usually sneak in a quick breakfast. It also meant that he could join her at work and they could share their lunch breaks together. She did love having him bring her food everyday instead of being forced to eat whatever the cafeteria was serving.
On this particular day, Austin stopped by around two to surprise her with lunch from Panera Bread, and they ate in the bustling cafeteria, sitting at a table in the back as other health care staff, visitors, and patients bustled in and out.
"… So they have me writing this article on the new housing developments in the Narrows and it's been really frustrating, you know? I thought by this time I'd be writing about current events or crime… I'd even take politics over construction, and you know I hate politics."
Taylor sifted her fork through her salad as she listened, frowning. "You're a good writer, Austin. Don't let them tell you any differently."
"I know I am. I mean, I've written some really great articles in the past… I just wish they'd see that and give me the opportunity to write an article that isn't going to appear in between the obituaries and the wanted ads.
Taylor smiled softly and reached her hand across the table to cover his. "It'll get better. As long as you keep working hard and putting your best effort forward. They'll see that eventually, they have to."
"It's been seven years, Tay. I'm still at the bottom." He paused to watch a young woman help a wheelchair-bound older man with Parkinson's steady his fork. "Guess I just thought things would be different by now."
"Hm," Taylor said. She crossed her forearms on the table and leaned over them to be closer. "Want me to cheer you up by telling you a rousing success story? Like how J.K. Rowling was rejected twelve times before someone finally gave Harry Potter a chance."
Austin laughed a little. He was secretly a huge Harry Potter fan—had been since he was a freshman in high school—and was a little bit embarrassed by it. "I'm not J.K. Rowling, you know that, right? I mean, I'm not exactly trying to write what could potentially become the next best-selling fantasy novel."
"That's not the point," Taylor groaned. Austin grinned at her. He loved exasperating her.
"I know, baby. You're just trying to help." He grabbed her hand and planted a kiss atop her curled up knuckles, doing a poor job of hiding his smirk. "Your rousing success story did cheer me up. Promise."
Taylor pretended to eye him warily as if assessing if he could be trusted, and then, deeming that he was okay, leaned back and trapped a piece of fruit from her salad on the tines of her fork.
"For that, you may have one of my strawberries," she said with her best aristocratic voice, as if she were royalty and he a lowly servant who she was bestowing a great honor upon. She held out her fork for him. Austin also loved strawberries, which he was not at all embarrassed about.
He laughed at her and leaned forward to bite it off the proffered fork. "Such a gesture of genuine kindness. You're too good to me."
It was quiet for a minute or two after that, both of them content to enjoy each other's company in silence and bask in the glow of the sunlight coming in through the skylight and the tall, angled windows that overlooked a small courtyard.
Taylor was the first to break the silence. "Hey… have you thought more about what I said the other night? About asking your parents if they'd chip in for this month's payment?" Taylor watched him carefully, trying to gauge his reaction.
Austin's parents had bailed them out only once before, when she and Austin had first gotten married and were both blissful and young and too naïve, thinking they could afford an upscale apartment in the heart of the city. When the bills came at the end of the third month, it was all Austin could do but to call his father and explain the situation. His parents were, of course, skiing in the Alps in Switzerland, and despite their distance, it didn't stop Austin's father from lording the situation over him and launching into a twenty-minute speech shaming him for marrying beneath him and pursuing a career in journalism. It was such a humiliating experience for him that he vowed never again to come crawling back to the parents who had all but disowned him and removed him from their will.
However, they both knew that no matter what happened, Austin's parents would send him money if he needed it, no matter how broken the bridge was between their family bond, or the lack thereof. And that, for Austin, was perhaps the thing that infuriated him the most. They'd happily chip in and help, so long as Austin got on his knees and begged for it every time until his father felt he had been properly humiliated and debased enough to grant his son's request.
"I can't say I thought about it too much," he said honestly. He was staring at some unidentifiable spot on the table. "I was thinking we could take out another loan."
Taylor shut her eyes in annoyance. "From what bank?" she asked, not meaning to sound so derisive, but unable to stop the sarcasm from spilling into her voice. She sighed. "I just meant… they've probably barred the doors to everyone with the last name 'James'," she said, attempting a feeble smile to offset her previous tone. She didn't say anything for a few moments, hoping the tense moment would diffuse in their joint silence.
She stared at the condensation sliding down her Styrofoam cup and gripped her straw with her forefinger and thumb to swirl it around amidst the melting clump of ice cubes. She wondered how different things might've been if she'd known where her real parents were, if they were somewhere out there in Gotham, if she could have met them; maybe they could've formed some kind of relationship, maybe they could've helped her and Austin out when they needed it. Sure, maybe they hadn't wanted her when she was younger, or maybe the time wasn't right back then, but what if things were better now? She wondered often—she couldn't help it—if they ever thought about her, if they ever wondered where she was, or what she had made of herself. If she was happy.
She tried not to linger on it. She didn't know the circumstances of why her parents hadn't want her, or if they were still alive, and it was hard not to want to pin so much blame on them for the circumstances of her early childhood. The orphanage, the abuse, the trauma from her past she couldn't quite remember but had left its lasting mark on her nevertheless. It was better that they were not a part of her life; she did not want to think negatively of them, did not want to blame them for all the bad things that had happened to her. They couldn't have known all the horrible circumstances that would befall her when they had given her up for adoption anyway. Or maybe that was just what she liked to believe.
Austin could see that Taylor was buried deep somewhere within her own thoughts, and he reached across the table for her hand. "Hey," he said, bringing her attention back to him, "it'll be alright. Maybe we could ask your dad for—"
"No," she said, pulling her hand away. "I mean… no," she said, this time with less bite. "I couldn't do that to him. He still has years left before the house is paid off and—"
"Taylor, he needs to sell the place. It's way too big for him anyway. Maybe this will be the thing that finally pushes him in the right direction, you know? That finally gets him out of the house and into the world again."
"Us forcing him to move out by asking for most of his retirement money?"
Austin hung his head. "Baby, that's not what I said."
"It's what you meant, though." She bit her lip and tried not to let her frustration seep into her tone. It was so easy to get worked up when they talked about this; it was a conversation they'd had too many times before.
"It's not like we wouldn't eventually pay him back."
"That's beside the point. I can't force him to move out. You know he's clinging to that house because it's the only thing left of my mom that he has."
She watched Austin wrap up the leftovers of his ham sandwich as he spoke. "That's exactly why I think he needs to get rid of it. Move on."
She shifted in her chair and frowned. "That's a lot easier said than done," she said, knowing how defensive she sounded. "It's not always a bad thing to hold on to the past."
Austin looked up at her in a way that told her he knew she wasn't just talking about her dad anymore. "Isn't it?" he asked.
She couldn't bring herself to reply, mostly because she still didn't know the answer to that. She wondered if she should bring up the conversation she'd had with Dr. Graham. It's okay to not always know the truth, she'd said. She supposed that was a bit different from blatantly not acknowledging it though, wasn't it? From living in denial?
Austin sighed, knowing their conversation had reached a dead end. After a few moments had passed, he stood, leaning across the table to plant a chaste kiss on her forehead.
"I have to get back to the office. I'll pick you up later tonight." He kissed her again, this time on the mouth, holding her chin in one hand as he did. "We'll figure something else out, okay?" he said, aiming to sound hopeful. "I promise."
Elizabeth was right about the shift of power and the sorts of changes it would bring.
Only two weeks later, Taylor was moved from her medical-surgical floor to the emergency department under the guise of the ED being "short staffed". She knew that was bullshit, but wisely chose to keep her mouth shut in the event that her raising questions might cost her her job.
She had received the letter explaining the details of the hospital's decision yesterday—her and several other nurses—and had spent all of her lunch break today in a meeting with the nursing supervisor of her floor, discussing the changes that were about to come.
She'd been working on the medsurg floor at Gotham Medical ever since she'd graduated and gotten her RN license at twenty-one. It was where all new graduate nurses were placed until they had gained a year or two of experience. Most nurses moved onto other specialties or practices—like working in the operating room or ICU, working in a doctor's office, or going back to school to become a nurse practitioner—but some, like Taylor, stayed on the medsurg unit because they liked it or had grown used to it; Taylor enjoyed caring for multiple patients over what usually amounted to a couple days' worth of time. She liked being able to learn about her patient and talk to them and form relationships with them due to how often she tended to them and because of their prolonged stay. The ED would be so different. She'd see her patient for a couple of hours at most and then they'd be discharged or transferred to another unit or a different hospital entirely. There would be no time for bonding or getting to know her patients on a personal level. Any patient teaching she'd do would most likely be done in a hurry. There was also the fact that she'd have to deal with life-threatening conditions on a daily basis, and that the ED, as a general rule, was fast-paced and would be stressful in a much different way than working on the medsurg unit was. Just thinking about the sorts of changes she would face was overwhelming.
Taylor found herself in the private staff bathroom sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, her elbows digging painfully into her knees and her head in her hands. She loved her job. She loved what she did and how she did it, and she especially loved the people she worked with—and now she was being uprooted to a whole new department. It was almost like moving to a different hospital entirely.
She leaned back to pull the folded-up piece of paper out of the pocket of her scrub top and re-read it. It was a list of classes she was going to have to take at the hospital, exams she needed to pass—including a telemetry exam—and specific topics she might find beneficial to study in her free time.
She startled at hearing a gentle tap on the door and instinctively looked up, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"Sorry, almost done," she called. She folded the paper away and got up to wash her hands.
"Taylor?" It was Elizabeth. "Your patient in 204 is asking for you. Are you alright? You've been in there a long time."
Taylor splashed cool water over her face and then patted it dry with a scratchy paper towel. It left her skin looking blotchy and red. She sighed into the mirror.
"I'm fine," she lied.
When she shut off the water and opened the door, Elizabeth was still there, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. "You didn't have that Flamin' Hot Bacon Chalupa from Taco Bell, did you? It's giving everybody the runs."
Taylor chuckled despite her best efforts. Elizabeth grinned, too. "See? That wasn't so hard." She wrapped her arms around Taylor in a tight hug. "I am gonna miss that smile though."
"So you heard?" Taylor asked as they pulled away.
Elizabeth kept her hands on Taylor's shoulders. "I think the girls are already planning a 'going away' party for you, Teresa, and Amanda."
Taylor hung her head in exasperation, but was actually quite flattered. "That's really nice of them. Unnecessary, but nice."
"We are really going to miss you."
"Promise to come visit me in the ED?"
"You know I will find every available excuse to do just that," she promised. "Now," she spun Taylor around and towards the door, "I wasn't exactly joking about the runs. 204 is waiting."
Working overtime, Taylor managed to have her classes and tests completed within two weeks. Her first day, surprisingly, wasn't as miserable as she had thought it would be. Within the first seven hours of her shift, she had handled two patients complaining of chest pain, a diabetic ketoacidosis case and newly diagnosed patient with Type 1 diabetes, a patient with a COPD exacerbation, and three patients with colds, all of which the doctor prescribed Z-Paks for and sent them on their way. It was also nice having four patients instead of six, though she was still running around all over the place trying to complete her tasks, as usual.
By the time late afternoon had rolled around, there was a lull in patients, and most of the nurses were either sitting around catching up on documenting, or chatting amongst themselves, talking about their kids or plans for the upcoming weekend. Taylor was still unfamiliar with most of the nurses and doctors in the ED. There were a few familiar faces, people she had seen in passing when transfers were made from the ED to the medsurg floor, or when Taylor attended charity or volunteer events at the hospital or out in the community, but most of them she did not know. She found most of them were welcoming and friendly, however, and she had especially taken a liking to two of the nurses, Lisa and Jason.
Lisa was a forty-something with a foul mouth and even fouler-smelling scrubs; she was a chronic smoker and tried, in vain, to hide the smell of stale cigarette smoke with copious amounts of something cheap and fruity smelling from Bath & Body Works. By the way she looked and dressed, it was obvious the majority of her paycheck went towards maintaining her nicotine habit and supporting her three kids (perhaps not necessarily in that order). Her Sketchers tennis shoes and faded scrubs all pointed to the fact that she was not one to spoil herself on material indulgences. She was also one of the few employees who got away with not adhering strictly to the dress code policy (she was almost always wearing a lavender zip-up hoodie over her scrubs when she was cold) and took more smoke-breaks than Taylor had patients in a day.
That being said, she had more clips and special pins on her badge than anyone Taylor had ever worked with before, and she wouldn't hesitate for a minute to drop everything she was doing to lend a helping hand or walk you through how to do something. She was an amazing teacher. You always knew when she was around because you could hear her raucous laughter from halfway down the hall. Patients loved her though, that much was undeniable. She particularly struck a chord with overdose patients and those who were brought in from unsuccessful suicide attempts. Taylor suspected there was a story behind why she was so good with patients like that, but if there was, she suspected Lisa, as open as she was about her personal life, might share that story with her one day. She was good with kids, too. She had a way of putting them at ease when it was time to take their vitals, and the blood pressure cuff and thermometer were suddenly very scary. She also gave them way more lollipops and stickers than anybody else on the unit, and the kids loved her for it.
Jason, on the other hand, was easy-going, lax, and handsome in a quiet way that some men tended to be. At thirty-two, he had a lot more to prove than a single mother of three with twenty-six years of experience in the field did. He worked fast and methodically when he needed to, but was friendly and precise on most other occasions, always striking up conversations and establishing a quick, personal relationship with each patient regardless of their age, gender, or circumstances. He cared deeply about people and was always on hand to share his sympathies or go out of his way to do something nice for his patients. From what Taylor had gathered about his personal life, he was single (which he got teased relentlessly for), spent his free weekends outside of Gotham climbing rocks, white-water rafting, or otherwise doing something adventurous, and loved spending time with his family. Taylor thought that if she had a sister, she would definitely be trying to set her up on a date with Jason.
After her first day, he'd taken Taylor's picture, written a short blurb about her, and posted it on their bulletin board just inside the entryway to the ED.
"There," he'd said, pinning up her picture where it joined the other pictures and blurbs of the ED staff. "You're officially part of the family now."
Between the two of them and the rest of the staff she had met on her first day, she realized that being moved to the ED might not be so bad, not when she was surrounded by such great coworkers.
Of course, not everyone was as friendly and welcoming as Lisa and Jason.
There was one doctor Taylor was familiar with, purely through word of mouth, that she had never seen before prior to coming to the ED. She knew instantly who he was when she spotted him looming over another nurse as he spoke in a cool, collected tone. There was something arrogant in the way he was even standing.
Dr. Bishop had been working at Gotham Medical for much longer than Taylor had, and he had the water-cooler reputation to prove it. Staff from all corners of the hospital knew of the condescending emergency department doctor and how insufferable his behavior was. There wasn't a single person, patient or otherwise, who had interacted with him and had ever come away with a positive experience from it. He was notorious for treating everyone below him like incompetent idiots. He looked down on everyone, and was never satisfied that a job had been done well unless he had done it himself. Staff went out of their way to avoid him, and nurses dreaded the shifts where their patients were under his care—even if the care he did administer was exemplary. He was intelligent, brilliant, even—though no amount of intelligence could make up for his icy personality.
Now that Taylor was working in the ED, she knew she'd have to deal with him on a much more frequent basis than she would of liked; the horror stories she'd heard over the years were enough to make her feel intimidated by the mere proximity of his presence, just knowing that he was on the other side of the room.
She couldn't help drifting from the conversation she was having with Jason and a few other nurses as they sat behind the main desk in their rolling chairs. Bishop had stepped into their spacious, crescent-shaped cubicle a few moments ago and was still conversing with the same nurse as before, a discussion that looked slightly heated on the nurse's part. Taylor, however, found herself unable to look away from the tall, lithe man with pale blonde hair and hard blue eyes. If she had to guess, she would say he was in his early forties, his skin slightly weathered in the way that time had the tendency to do, yet without any blemish or trace of a shadow. There was something almost inhuman about his appearance, something robotic and machinelike about his unblemished skin and gelled hair, not a strand of it out of place. When he turned and caught her staring, she averted her gaze and felt heat rising to her cheeks, like a child having been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Another two weeks passed—it was June, now—and Taylor was starting to feel more at home in the emergency department. She felt fortunate that in her first couple of weeks, Bishop was not once assigned as her doctor. In fact, for an entire week, he was not even around, as he had taken leave. Where he'd gone, nobody really knew, and he was not one to divulge details about his personal life. What she did know was that he was unmarried and without kids, which didn't at all surprise her. From what she'd heard and the very little she'd seen, he did not seem like the paternal type, or even someone who could illicit much of an emotional response to a significant other. He struck her as someone who did not have the emotional range necessary for cultivating a meaningful and loving relationship—that is to say, she'd never once seen him crack a smile, not even with a patient. He didn't appear depressed, just stoic and apathetic. He seemed unaroused by the things that normal people smiled about on a day-to-day basis, like greeting a coworker or receiving a compliment.
She got her first real taste of him when he returned from his week-long absence, and she learned that for the following four weeks, her patients would be under his care—meaning that shewas under his orders and would thus be conversing with him frequently.
Jason offered her a look of sympathy when he handed her the schedule. She was able to sneak a glance at it for herself before it was snatched out of her hands by a nurse named Maya. Maya was middle-aged with black dreadlocks she always wore in a fat bun on the top of her head, and used every shift as an opportunity to showcase her accessories and model a different pair of loud, gaudy earrings; today they were sparkly, silver hoops the size of Taylor's fist. She had also worked on almost every floor and specialty in the hospital, and knew every bit of breakroom gossip that went on in it to prove it.
"Oh, don't give her that look." Maya whacked Jason on the head with the clipboard she'd just taken from Taylor before turning to face her once again. "Hon, you are gonna be just fine. He ain't so bad. A bit chilly, but you just let him do his thing and you do yours. Ain't no one gotta make your day miserable but you, so don't."
Taylor couldn't help but smile. "Thank you," she said. "That is good advice."
Maya nodded in agreement, like she had just doled out her first slice of positivity for the day on a silver platter. "That is damn good advice if I don't say so myself." She raised her hands to the heavens in supplementation. "Thank you, Jesus!" she hollered, earning more than a few pairs of eyes cast in her direction.
"Hey lady!"
The three of them looked over to see a nearby patient in his bed looking at them.
"Can you tell 'Jesus' to hurry it up with my pain meds?"
Maya tsked loudly and marched towards his room. "Well not with that attitude he sure ain't!"
Taylor chuckled to herself and smiled when she noticed that Jason was still rubbing his head.
"She hit you with that clipboard pretty hard, didn't she?" she teased.
"Yeah, she did," he soberly agreed.
There was a moment of silence between them as Jason sat down at one of the computers and logged in to begin charting—he had a patient complaining of severe back pain and was waiting for an order for a CT scan—leaving Taylor to lean her hip against the desk, with no patients yet and nothing to do.
"Think I should just bite the bullet and introduce myself?" she asked, letting it all out in one big breath, like even the suggestion of it was enough to leave her physically exhausted.
Jason glanced behind him. It was just the two of them at the nurse's station. Bishop was at the other nurse's station on the opposite side of the wall where he had his own designated computer station and desk.
"Well, you're going to have to eventually. I would just—"
Jason didn't get to finish when a nurse rounded the corner and interrupted. Taylor hadn't learned her name yet, and only knew that she was barely able to ever catch a decent glance at the woman because she was always on the move and never in one spot for more than a few seconds.
"Taylor, you have a patient in 17 waiting for you."
"Thank you," she said. She sighed and gave Jason a look that said, here goes nothing.
As it turned out, all of Taylor's fears about Dr. Bishop were for naught; that wasn't to say the rumors had been false—on the contrary, in fact—but that he was so preoccupied with his work and otherwise so disinterested in her that he barely gave her the time of day.
It was nothing she couldn't handle. She was used to doctors looking down at her and treating her like a lesser human being—simply for being a nurse—the only difference was that Dr. Bishop somehow managed to take that haughty and self-entitled behavior to levels otherwise previously unseen. Instead of treating her with the annoyed but resigned behavior that many doctors tended to adopt towards nurses—as if they were children and the doctors the exasperated parents on the verge of losing their patience—Dr. Bishop paid her almost no attention at all, as if she wasn't even worthy of his time, like he couldn't even be bothered to waste his breath on answering her questions, especially the ones that required more than a "yes" or "no" response.
His rude behavior extended far beyond his treatment of the nurses, even if they did receive the brunt of it. With patients he was clipped and to the point; Taylor pitied the patients and family members who were forced to receive terminal diagnoses from him. She could just imagine him telling a patient that they'd been diagnosed with lung cancer, or telling a wife who'd been sitting in the waiting room for her now-deceased husband that he'd died of a heart attack, said in the most perfunctory voice and without an ounce of feeling, as if he were merely commenting on the weather and not announcing the death of a loved one to a grieving wife.
Doctors he treated as equals, of course, unless they had proven themselves otherwise by doing something that Dr. Bishop felt dismantled them from his list of persons held in high esteem.
The only nurse he actually seemed to like was Lisa, and that was because she asked the least amount of questions and could anticipate an order before it was given. She didn't speak to Dr. Bishop or even look in his direction if she could help it, and Taylor guessed he respected her for it in a weird way.
She'd spent two weeks now under Dr. Bishop—and aside from his annoying habit of referring to her as "Miss James" in the most condescending lilt on the occasions where he did deign it upon himself to address her—she had successfully managed to avoid any altercations or transgressions, even on days where she was swamped and two of her patients were coding at once, while a third was vomiting up blood.
"He sounds like a real dick, if you ask me," Austin said to her later that night in a surprising show of brazenness. She guffawed at the insult as they lie in bed, curled up close with the air conditioning on full blast. For someone as laid back as Austin tended to be, it always sounded foreign to her ears when he said things like that. But she knew he meant it, and that the thought of Bishop treating her that way angered him. "People like that get a free pass because they're in a position of power. If a nurse acted that way, they'd get fired."
Taylor nodded, but didn't feel like saying anything else on the matter. She thought it was nice they could lie here in bed at the end of a long day and talk like this. There had been so many missed nights of not getting to sleep together—they couldn't with Taylor working nightshift—and she promised herself she would never take sleeping together for granted again. She wound herself around him and in response he slid a leg in-between hers, pulling her closer.
"Your hair smells like hospital," he said after a moment, kissing her forehead before she tucked it into his chest and groaned.
"Yeah, well you smell like ink and… and newspapers," she shot back, trying to sound pouty about it.
He laughed, skirting his fingers up and down her back from under her t-shirt, leaning in to kiss the top of her head. "I love you, too."
The next morning, Taylor found herself several minutes late to work due to an accident on Carter Bridge. She sheepishly squeezed into the morning huddle the charge nurse was holding in their tiny break room as she tied her hair into pony tail. She received a few glances, and a confused "What happened?" eyebrow raise from Jason, to which she mouthed "traffic" in reply as her coworkers shifted around so there was room for her to join in the back.
There was a man standing next to the charge nurse that Taylor had never seen before. Dressed in a white ribbed polo that was tucked neatly into tan slacks, he was tall with dishwasher blond hair, and could not have been any older than Taylor herself. Upon closer inspection, she noticed the words "Andromeda INC" sewed in navy script in the upper left-hand corner of his shirt.
Taylor leaned in close to whisper in Lisa's ear, who was standing next to her.
"Who's this?" she asked, nodding towards him.
"Pharmaceutical rep," she whispered back, keeping her voice low, though no one was paying attention to them. "The hospital allows one in here every year to do trial studies, as long as they partner with the research team at Gotham University. It's not a big up-to-do. All of our generic meds will come from them now." She paused for a moment to hear the tail end of Kathy introducing the man as "Evan Godric", and then leaned towards Taylor again to whisper as Evan took the floor and flashed everyone a smile that looked like it belonged in a Colgate commercial. "It's a different company every time, and yet they always send the same perky, caffeine-hyped reps to deliver the big speech. Seen and heard it a million times."
"Hey everybody! It's a pleasure to be here," Evan said. His smile had not dissipated, and his blue eyes were flitting around the circle with such a pleased and excited expression that you would have thought there was nowhere else in the world he would rather be. "I'm going to try and keep this short as I know you all have things to do, and far be it from me to steal your time. As Kathy just said, my name is Evan Godric, and I'm with Andromeda as a pharmaceutical representative to work exclusively here with you all at Gotham Medical. We have several new medications that are going to be launched statewide in the next couple of years as we introduce our products up and down the East Coast and as Andromeda expands its reach, and we want to do some evidence-based practice study trials first and foremost here at Gotham Medical. The only thing we ask from you as nurses is to go about your work as normal and continue charting as you have been. We will be gathering no personal data in the study, so your patient will remain anonymous."
Taylor looked around to assess everyone's reactions. It became apparent almost immediately that this was, as Lisa had said, not at all a big deal. One nurse had her head bowed and her brows furrowed as she intensely studied a chipped nail, Maya was sipping her coffee and staring at some unidentifiable spot in space, her gaze lingering somewhere between the floor and the space in-between it and her, and Jason was covering a silent but wide-mouthed yawn with the back of his hand. Everyone else seemed to be in varying states of boredom and general sleepiness due to early hour of the morning.
"If anyone has any questions or concerns, they can be answered here." Evan reached behind him to grab a stack of blue folders and handed them to the nurses in the front to pass around to the nearest person around them, until everyone had a folder in their hands. "In your packet you'll find information about us—Andromeda—as well as the classes of drugs we'll be monitoring. Rest assured they are all FDA approved and 100% safe. Our drugs contain different biological fillers than our predecessors, and what we're doing here is simply gathering information through bloodwork, vitals, and your patient's overall condition on whether these cheaper, more cost-effective fillers are equally if not more effective than our competition." Evan laughed good-naturedly, seeming to sense everyone's lack of interest. "I'm sure you all are familiar with the drill by now. Inside your packet you'll also find a list of our drugs so you can familiarize yourselves with the names. If there are any additional questions, I'll be here until three to answer them." He clapped his hands once in front of him in a 'let's get down to business' manner. "Alright! Thank you guys all so much for your time."
Everyone grunted their thanks. Chairs scraped against the floor and there was a low murmuring as everyone shuffled out of the tiny break room.
Jason caught up with Taylor just as she was squeezing through the doorway. "Well that was completely uneventful as always," he remarked. Taylor smiled at him in sympathy.
It was a busy morning for her—apparently the accident on the bridge had set off a chain reaction of accidents all over the city (or maybe it was just one of those days)—and currently there were six patients in the department who had been involved in car accidents. None were in critical condition, but even so, it was a while before Taylor had discharged or transferred her three patients and was able to sit down and get a moment to herself to look through the folder that Evan had passed out. Upon opening it, the first thing that got her attention was the glaring, silver logo that read 'Andromeda' in sleek, industrial-looking font. She'd never heard of the company before, but that wasn't surprising since she wasn't really familiar with many drug companies to begin with. She skimmed through the first couple of pages with minimal interest—they explained the company's origins, how they would be conducting the trials and how the nurse's role through thorough assessments and documentation was so important—and finally got to the last few pages that introduced the drugs. They were nothing she hadn't seen before. She supposed it really wasn't a big deal after all.
As she was about to close the folder, she noticed the list of meds for a class of drugs called SSRIS, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, drugs typically used for treating anxiety and depression.
She couldn't fend off the accompanying images that swarm to the forefront of her mind then, like suddenly stumbling upon a nest of angry wasps.
Memories such as bolting upright in bed after waking up from a nightmare, drenched in a cold sweat night after night, or all those days she had spent in a restless state of half-sleep, only to spend the following twelve hours of her nightshift barely able to hold herself together, wanting to cry because she was stressed and tired, and how could she care for patients on the brink of collapse if she herself was, too? Or all those countless appointments with therapists and psychologists, spending hours alone in her room due to her worsening depression, so angry with herself for not being able to figure out a cause for her sudden downward spiral, or why she couldn't just "snap out of it". She knew better than anyone that her depression wasn't just "in her head", wasn't just something she could turn on and off with the simple flip of a switch, but it wasn't immediately apparent that her depression was a side effect of her many medications. How could it have been? She wasn't thinking straight, and all the antianxiety meds only served to fog up her brain even more.
There was also the memory of Austin sitting with her in the psych ward right after her suicide attempt, perhaps the most painful memory of all. She couldn't stand to think about how hurt he'd been, as if she had done it callously and without any regard to him. He couldn't understand that this wasn't about him, it never had been. It had been about her and needing to escape from her mind, from herself. He had taken it so personally… a part of her couldn't blame him, but she also felt that he hadn't fully understood.
She was reminded of the time she had found Terrence cutting his wrists over the bathroom sink, how confused and upset she had been with him. It was almost a little jarring to her how the tables had turned since then, how she had found herself in the exact same position and could now understand how Terrence had felt. He hadn't wanted to hurt her, or their father, she realized that now. He had only wanted to escape in the only way he knew how.
Their attempted suicides hadn't been intentionally selfish, but Taylor saw now that that's exactly what they had been, that in their desperate need to take their own lives, they hadn't considered the lives of those around them, those who would be directly affected by the consequences of such an irreversible action.
Taylor took a deep breath and forced herself to relax, momentarily closing her eyes.
"Hey." She looked up to see Maya watching her. "Girl, you look like that folder's gonna grow a pair of fangs and jump up and bite ya."
She forced a half-hearted chuckle and closed the folder. "Do I?"
Maya nodded.
"I'm fine. Just got distracted."
Maya looked at her doubtfully. "Mhm," she said. "Well, get un-distracted, darlin'. You got a patient in 32."
Taylor nodded her thanks and got up to quickly flip through the patient's paperwork, seeing that she was a woman of seventy-two years, had a history of hypertension, atherosclerosis, and elevated LDLs. She was self-admitted due to shortness of breath and chest pain. She had been seen in the emergency department just a few days ago for the same complaint.
She wasted no time getting to her patient. The nursing assistant had just finished taking a second set of vitals when Taylor pulled back the curtain and wheeled in her computer. Upon pulling up the treatment tab, she saw that Dr. Bishop had ordered an ECG, blood to be drawn for CK-MB and troponin levels (to see if there was cardiac muscle damage) and had prescribed two four-milligram sublingual Nitroglycerin tablets PRN, or as needed. She had already taken four chewable baby aspirins at home before arriving.
The woman was diaphoretic and moaning in pain, and since her blood pressure was stable Taylor administered one Nitro tablet and waited for her to calm down before asking any further questions. She helped the CNA attach the leads for the ECG, a process that took less than a minute. The woman's daughter, in her mid-thirties, was there also and anxiously looking on.
When all was said and done, the ECG reading revealed sinus tachycardia. In other words, the rhythm was fine, but her heart rate was 124 beats per minute, twenty-four more beats a minute than was considered within the normal range of sixty to one-hundred. It was nothing major to be concerned about. She did have a history of atrial fibrillation, though, and that was concerning because it put her at risk for potential blood clots.
After Taylor answered some questions the middle-aged daughter had posed about her mother, and had assuaged both of their worries, she finished documenting her assessment, and then tended to her other patients while she waited for the blood results to come back. In the time it took for her to do an EKG, draw blood, answer questions, and chart in between all of that, the department had become swamped—there was a six-car pile-up in Fort Clinton on 4th Avenue, an accident involving nine people and a massive tractor trailer. While three had been taken directly to ICU, four others were waiting to be seen in the ED with varying degrees of minor injuries. The wait time to be admitted—which was listed on the front page of the hospital's website for ease of access and on a large digital clock mounted above the entrance to the ED—was three hours and twenty-seven minutes.
She checked on the mother and daughter one final time and her three other patients before reporting her findings to Dr. Bishop. He was engaged in a discussion with another doctor, and Taylor stood patiently off to the side and out of the way until he was done. When he finished, he briefly looked her over as if he were already exasperated by what she was about to say. She felt a pang of annoyance at that but managed to shove it aside; she'd experienced that same look from more than few doctors during her time. He turned his back to her and began rifling through some papers on his small work desk.
"Yes?" he intoned, as if her standing there waiting for his prompting was a waste of his time.
"Miss Crawford is stable and the CK-MB levels are normal. She is still anxious though and says she is still experiencing chest pain. Rated it at seven out of ten."
If at all possible, Dr. Bishop appeared even more annoyed. He turned around and took the proffered paperwork from her revealing Miss Crawford's lab values, scanning them quickly from behind his thin, square glasses. "Her bloodwork is fine," he stated, as if she hadn't just said that. "Give her 1 milligram of Lorazepam and discharge her."
Taylor bit her lip, feeling that she had to say more. "Dr. Bishop… she's incredibly anxious. I'm a little worried that if she leaves now she might throw herself into a heart attack. Her daughter is concerned and said her mother's not normally like this. She was here almost a week ago for the same complaint—"
Dr. Bishop fixed her with a narrow-eyed glare. "Miss James," he said, closing the space between them in a way that made Taylor feel small and allowed him to look down at her even more than his stature already allowed. "I should think a qualified attending physician with a fellowship from one of the leading hospitals in the country would know what's best for the health and safety of his patient." He stepped closer still, lowering his voice. "Furthermore, I know you wouldn't dare question my judgement and cause a scene, especially in front of everyone where you would no doubt deliver an emotional yet needless performance enviable of some sort of TV accolade. I do think my instructions to you were more than abundantly clear, wouldn't you agree?"
Taylor gaped at him like a fish out of water, unable to speak or breathe. She could feel the many pairs of eyes their conversation was drawing due to his heated tone. "Dr. Bishop, I—"
"Miss James," he said again, this time loud enough to draw more than several pairs of eyes in their direction. She felt her cheeks heating in embarrassment. "I know you might be used to engaging in this sort of insubordinate behavior in your previous department, but here that is behavior I find intolerable. Now, either you can discharge the patient, or I can." He stared at her, straightening himself. "And let me assure you, you will not like it if I have to do it. Have I made myself clear?" When she didn't say anything, he straightened himself and clicked his pen closed, hooking it onto the breast pocket of his lab coat with the ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times. "I'll sign the discharge paper once you are done."
Taylor stared after him, bristling with anger and yet wanting to shrink in on herself in her humiliation at the same time She looked around—most bystanders and those who'd overhead made a point to quickly look away—and caught the eye of Lisa, who was shaking her head. The woman waited until Dr. Bishop had disappeared before coming over.
"I usually don't like to comment when our good doctor feels the need to deliver his authoritarian speech," she muttered, "but he can be a real sonofabitch sometimes." Lisa patted her on the back. "Don't take it personally, honey. Just get out there and do your job."
Taylor felt rooted to her spot, like vines had come up from the floor and wrapped themselves around her ankles, holding her in this position. The buzzing of the department seemed too loud all of the sudden. "But my patient… this is—" She embarrassedly wiped away the oncoming tears she could feel stinging at her eyes. She felt humiliated and stupid. It wasn't so much the patient's situation that frustrated her, but the way she'd been accosted—the way in which Dr. Bishop had so callously dismissed her concerns, the way he had reproached her in front of all everyone, patients, staff, her colleagues.
Lisa pulled her off to the side, away from the eyes and ears of everyone else. "Honey, I'm telling you, let this one go," she said in a firm whisper. "If she comes back here it falls on him, okay? I'm telling you from experience, you do not want to raise hell. Not with him. Your license will be gone before you even have a chance to fight for it. Do you want that?"
"So I am just expected to… to bow to him and accept whatever—"
"We all are," Lisa interrupted. She let out a heavy-laden sigh, like she'd been saving it all day just for a moment like this one. "I know you feel like you want to do the right thing and stand up for your patient, but you have to let this one slide. I've seen too many nurses get sacked because of that sanctimonious prick—and don't think he wouldn't. He'd love nothing more than to get you fired just because you had the balls to disagree with him. I don't want that to happen to you." Lisa squeezed Taylor's upper arms in a comforting gesture. "Come on now, pull yourself together. Don't let him get under your skin, okay?"
She nodded and wiped away the tears that hadn't yet spilled, hating her emotional response to the situation. She retreated to the nurse's station where she sat at her computer and printed the discharge sheet. She hated being made to feel like a child who'd done something wrong, like she'd back-talked a parent after being told not to; she hated even more having her concerns for a patient dismissed so rudely—and all for what? So he could talk down to her and consequently stroke his own ego?
Her hands were shaking as she logged onto her account. In all her years as a nurse, she had never had a doctor so blatantly disregard her concerns for a patient. He expected for her to just pop the patient a pill and send her on her way when the woman was practically working herself into a panic attack and possibly cardiac arrest?
But if what Lisa said was true—and she had no doubt that it was—then standing up to Dr. Bishop truly wasn't worth putting her entire career on the line, not over this.
She'll be fine, she thought. Taylor had always erred on the side of caution—she felt it was her duty as a nurse—and she knew with the waiting room so full, Dr. Bishop probably wanted to discharge as many low-risk cases as possible to make room for the others.
Still, she could not shake the way he had accosted and so pointedly humiliated her in front of everyone. She clicked on the print button with a bit more force than was probably necessary, feeling tense and tight-lipped. She could feel the humiliation blossoming inside her, morphing into something else, something quiet and simmering, anger that she did her best to mask.
She filled out the paperwork and did what she was told.