Chapter Three
Taylor spent the rest of the evening keeping busy as her shift slowly drew to a close, trying to purge all thoughts of Bishop from her mind. Her mortification at having been accosted in front of the entire staff had faded significantly. It was hard to feel embarrassed when there were so many other things to think about, especially now that Bishop seemed determined to stay out of her way, and since the incident she'd barely seen or had reason to converse with him. At seven, she was exhausted. Having been on her feet for the entire day, the only thing she wanted to do now was sit down. She spent half an hour finishing up with her patients and giving a change of shift report to the oncoming night nurse, and then clocked out.
Austin was probably still at the office, pulling overtime on editing articles for the Times' online pieces and the relaunch of their new and improved mobile app. She called him to let him know that she was on her way home, and almost immediately she heard him shuffling around, his chair scraping against the floor before he was telling her that he was already on his way.
"I'm sorry, I lost track of the time," he apologized. She smiled to herself and told him she'd be waiting. He knew she hated taking the cab, especially at night when it was dark, and he wasn't thrilled with the idea either and preferred picking her up himself, regardless of what he was doing or how late it was.
She fell asleep within minutes during the car ride home, too exhausted by the day's stresses to talk about it with Austin. She didn't wake until he had unbuckled her seatbelt and was sliding one arm behind her knees and another under her back, lifting her out of the seat and carrying her bridal style into the house.
In the back of her sleep-deprived mind, she felt ridiculous for letting him carry her, and her scrubs probably reeked, but she didn't have the strength or the energy to resist.
"I can walk, you know," she mumbled into his neck.
"I know."
He smiled as he felt Taylor press a tender, sleepy kiss to the column of his throat.
Inside, the house was dark, and the light in kitchen beneath the stove cast a soft, muted glow. She made Austin put her down once they were inside, much to his protest after he'd insisted he could carry her up the stairs. She unlaced her sneakers by the door as he stood by, watching with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He looked tired, too.
"Are you coming to bed?" she asked him, toeing off her shoes and bending to put them in the hall closet.
"It's a bit early yet. I need to organize some paperwork." He placed his hand on her lower back and kissed her mouth. "You'll have to tell me about your day when we're both more awake."
"It's a deal."
In the bedroom, she robotically shrugged out of her clothes, too exhausted to shower or brush her teeth before slipping under the covers. She fell asleep instantly, grateful for the overwhelming tiredness. Sometimes after coming home, her mind would be so wired that she couldn't get to sleep for hours, even if physically her body was exhausted. Tonight, thankfully, that was not the case.
Morning arrived too soon, and the alarm on Austin's phone chimed loudly in greeting. It took her a few moments before she was able to force herself to roll over and turn it off. He was already in the shower—she heard the water running through the half-open bathroom door—and figured he must have forgotten to turn the alarm off. She rolled over onto her side and let her eyes flutter closed again. She felt guilty for sleeping while he was in the shower, preparing to leave for work. She thought maybe she should make him breakfast, or at least put on some coffee, but before she knew it she was drifting off to sleep again and Austin was kissing her cheek, whispering goodbye for the day.
She could hardly open her eyes to look at him. He smiled at her as he knelt by the side of the bed, pushing back the strands of hair from her forehead and kissing her there.
"I'll call you at lunch," he promised. She nodded and then watched him leave as he closed the bedroom door softly behind him.
It was almost twelve thirty when she woke for a second time, and it wasn't to Austin's phone this time, but to the sunlight streaming in through the window.
She yawned as she pushed the covers back from her legs and stretched her arms over her head. In the kitchen, she put on a pot of coffee, knowing it would be done by the time she got out of the shower.
Fifteen minutes later she was dressed in her bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her wet hair. She padded into the kitchen to pour herself a cup and spread cream cheese over a bagel. She ate at the counter in silence and watched a few minutes of TV. Nothing good was on since it was the middle of the day, and, uninterested, she flipped through a few more channels before turning it off. Austin called shortly after, as promised, and they briefly talked about yesterday's work day, Taylor ranting about what a jerk Dr. Bishop had been, and Austin complaining about an awful and pointedly biased political piece he was editing that was "utter garbage". They took comfort in agreeing that both their days had sucked before saying their goodbyes and hanging up the phone.
After she dressed, she washed some of the dishes that had been piling up in the sink over the past few days. There weren't many. She rested her back against the counter for a moment when she finished, drying her hands with a dishtowel while thinking about all the chores that needed to be done. She knew she had to go grocery shopping since they were out of milk, and she also needed to get a pack of light bulbs since the one on the front porch had burnt out.
She didn't particularly feel like running errands so soon after waking up though, so she decided to call her father to see how he was doing. They talked for half an hour, and Taylor could hear the TV in the background the entire time, occasionally followed by the familiar clink of a beer can against his wristwatch or the coffee table.
She felt herself smiling sadly into the phone. She could tell he had been crying again today.
"Dad," she said softly, "do you want me to make you dinner on Friday night? Austin and I could come over and cook a nice meal for the three of us." As an afterthought she added, "Or maybe we could go out somewhere." It was a longshot—he hadn't left the house in years—but she felt herself holding her breath nonetheless as she waited for his response. The house was suffocating him, and they both knew it wasn't aiding his health for him to be cooped up inside all day, mental or otherwise.
"Yeah," he agreed halfheartedly, and she wasn't sure if he was agreeing to the first option or the second. For the rest of the conversation, they talked mostly about the TV shows he'd recently watched, since that was all he ever did, and when he finally got around to asking Taylor about her day, she told him about things at the hospital and how Asher had resigned from the board a few weeks ago, how Taylor had been relocated to the ED, and about how Austin was doing well at work, though desperately wanting to cover bigger stories. She added lastly that the garden they'd been nurturing in the backyard was really growing. She promised to bring him some tomatoes and squash. He seemed to like that.
After agreeing to dinner on Friday night, she spent the rest of the morning reading, doing laundry, and otherwise trying to stay as un-busy as possible on her day off. However, it always seemed that something needed to be done, and later in the day she sat down to work through the pile of bills. By far their largest bill was their combined student loan debt. Taylor's was almost paid off—she'd been able to receive a few scholarships, as well as some help from her father to get her started during her first year—Austin, on the other hand, had several years left to go and had procured the most debt. His parents could have easily paid for his schooling—as they had originally intended to do—but when he had chosen to go into journalism instead of law like his father and his father's father had done before him, that had been the genesis of their eventual falling out, the disillusionment of their decades-long tumultuous relationship that eventually led to Austin's disownment. It was never explicitly stated, of course—his parents had too much pride, and disownment would indicate failure on their part. As it were, they were too preoccupied clinging to the hope that their prodigal son might soon realize his mistakes and return to them—but the three of them knew disownment was what this was, without anyone having to put a name to it. There were no phone calls on the holidays, no invitations to Thanksgiving dinner, no happy birthday postcards, no phone calls in the middle of the day "just to chat" or to ask when the grandbabies would be coming along.
Marrying Taylor had been the final nail in the coffin; they had made it known very early on their true feelings for her, their blatant, loud disapproval over their coupling. In the beginning, Taylor had gone to a few family dinners—they had to feel her out, after all, and Austin had all but begged them to give her a chance despite her profession, her upbringing, her past—but it turned out to be for naught. The last time she'd spoken to them was when they'd publicly humiliated her at their lavish summer dinner party—in front of all their friends and esteemed business partners, in front of her soon-to-be-husband—doing everything in their power to embarrass her, to prod and poke fun at her lack of etiquette, her upbringing, her prospects, as if they were determined to emulate the sordid class distinctions of the 17th century, and they were proud noblemen and she a peasant. It was as if his parents had planned their party with the sole purpose of humiliating her in front of everyone—and that probably wasn't far from the truth.
Where Austin's father was generally impassive and blasé—quiet in his disapproval, his anger—regarding Taylor as nothing but an annoying yet persistent mosquito that intended to leech from him his only son and thus rob Austin of the bright future that had been carefully mapped out since his infancy, his mother was less backhanded in her exploits and had been particularly malicious in her jabs to prove to Taylor that this was a society, a rite of passage, in which she simply did not belong.
She and Austin married soon after. His parents had not come to the wedding, and she had not exchanged words with them or seen them since.
Around five thirty, she began preparing dinner, deciding to pull out a cookbook that'd been given to her as a wedding gift and had been gathering dust ever since. She flipped it open and found a recipe for chicken Milanese with spaghetti. Austin arrived home at a quarter till seven, and the two of them settled in at the table where Taylor had laid everything out, even pulling out a bottle of Riesling and two wine glasses.
"What's the special occasion?" he asked.
Taylor shrugged. Working night shift meant she didn't always have time to prepare dinner for the two of them to share, and it was something she had missed.
"I just thought we could do something nice," she said.
"Well, I'm glad you did." He bent down to plant a kiss on her neck before moving to sit across from her. "Everything looks delicious."
The room was silent for a moment save for the clinking of their forks against their plates. Taylor was buttering a slice of Italian bread and licked the tip of her thumb when she'd accidentally buttered that instead. She did not notice that Austin had yet to pick up his fork.
He cleared his throat, less to get her attention and more to prepare himself for what he had to say. "I received a call at work today," he began.
Taylor was too preoccupied cutting up her spaghetti to look up. Austin used to tease her about that, the fact that she'd cut them instead of twirling them around her fork.
"Who from?" she asked.
He bit his lip and shook his head, a small smile playing on his face. It wasn't the kind of smile that indicated pleasure, but annoyance, and disbelief, and it gave Taylor pause when she noticed it. She did look up at him then, wondering what could have him so agitated.
"What is it? Who was it from?"
Austin removed his glasses and set them next to his plate, his elbows on the table as he folded his hands over his plate as if in supplication. "My mother."
Taylor straightened. "Oh." She studied his face, trying to gauge how he was feeling. "I can't even remember the last time you spoke to her. It's been years."
Austin frowned. "No, actually… I'd called my father back when—well, when you were in the hospital. She didn't say anything, but my mother was on the line too. I could hear her."
Taylor stared at him, feeling unease settle in her stomach, not because of the memories of her suicide attempt, but at the knowledge that his parents now knew of it. "You told them about that?"
He nodded. The forthcoming, "I didn't think you were going to make it" didn't need to be said. She could hardly blame him for calling his parents then. Of course, she could only imagine how they must look at her now—not that their opinion of her carried much weight. She loved Austin, and he loved her, and their opinion of her would not change that. But she did used to take their offenses personally. She'd always been such a people pleaser, and it hurt that the parents of the man she loved were less than enthused with their coupling, and had attempted numerous times to separate them. But life liked to throw you the occasional curveball, and you could dodge them and move on, or you could stand immovable in the same spot, the same line of thinking, and take the brunt of the impact and have no one to blame for it but yourself. She refused to subject herself to such abuse.
There was a time when she had wanted desperately to prove herself to them, to make right with his parents the many grievances she had inflicted upon them just by being born, by falling in love with their son… but she'd come to realize that no such feat was possible, that approval wasn't always something you could win no matter how hard you tried, no matter how much effort you threw into the cause.
"She called to ask about you."
Taylor eye's widened in obvious surprise, her meal now entirely forgotten. "She what?"
"Well, specifically she called to ask if you were still 'sad', and wanted to know if our relationship was on the rocks."
Taylor shook her head in disbelief but didn't have the energy to comment. "And what did you say to her?"
"When it comes to my mother, I know never to take anything she says at face value, so I asked why she wanted to know."
"And?"
"And she was calling to tell me about an 'eligible and beautiful young single woman' who'd just moved to the area and started working for dad's firm… she's unbelievable sometimes. I can't wrap my brain around what the hell she is thinking." Taylor was silent, letting Austin work out his frustration. She watched the ways his fist clenched and unclenched on the white tablecloth. He looked up at her, his expression softening. "I wasn't going to say anything, babe. I didn't want to give you another reason to despise her more than you already do—which is completely deserved, by the way—but this really ticked me off. I had thought… I don't know, I feel like an idiot now. When I saw her name on the caller-ID I thought she was calling to clear the air, invite us to dinner or something."
Taylor didn't know what to say. It was appalling, to be sure, but she couldn't say that she was surprised. She looked at Austin, in all of his righteous fury, and reached across the table for his hand, holding it gently.
"I can't believe she referred to my depression as me being 'still sad'." Taylor smiled, trying to make light of the situation.
Austin squeezed her hand. "She's so ignorant and rude. I'm sorry."
She shook her head. He didn't need to apologize for that. "I'm glad you told me." She squeezed his hand a final time before letting go and returning to her plate. "After all, do we know anything about this eligible bachelorette?" she wondered. "I mean, is she a solid eight, a ten? I think this might be something to seriously consider. Thoughts?"
Austin took a sip of his wine. "Over my dead body," he said. His cup hit the table with a soft thud. He picked up his fork and gestured to her with it. "And besides, I don't want a ten when I've got a one-hundred sitting right across from me."
Taylor rolled her eyes, but was flattered. "There is no such thing."
"Says you, you're the one who broke the mold."
Taylor had to bite her lip to hide her smile. "Now you're just trying to get yourself laid."
Austin grinned at her. "I don't have to flatter you with pretty words to get laid."
She smiled and ducked her head. "No, you don't," she agreed.
She was late getting up for work the next morning. Neither of them had remembered to set an alarm before dropping off to sleep, and the morning was rushed as she scrambled to find a clean set of scrubs and pack a lunch, and Austin laced his dress shoes and stuffed papers into his messenger bag before running out the door to meet the cabbie waiting in the driveway; he left Taylor the car so he wouldn't have to pick her up later in case he needed to stay late.
She was seven minutes late clocking in, but the on-duty nurse she was assigned to switch with was so swamped that they didn't even get to do a change of shift report until half an hour into Taylor's shift.
Tyresa, a tall African-American around Taylor's own age, tossed her rubber gloves in the trashcan beneath the nurse's station where they landed with a wet thwap. She took a few seconds to tuck a stray braided cornrow back into the bun that rested at the nape of her neck.
"Last night was nonstop," she said, letting out a heavy gust of air from in-between pursed lips. "Doesn't look like today's going to be much better. You'll have your work cut out for you," she huffed, plopping herself down in the rolling desk chair in front of the computer so she could log into the hospital system.
"What happened last night?" She hadn't heard anything on the news this morning on her way to work. Then again, she'd been so preoccupied about being late, she thought that even if she had heard something, it would have gone right through one ear and out the other.
"Some kind of stomach flu's going around, that's my guess. One patient after another, all complaining of the same thing—and all of them puking their guts out." Taylor grimaced. She had noticed the dried dark spot on the right pant leg of Tyresa's navy blue scrubs. "Anyway, give me just a second to discharge this patient and then we can go over everyone." She was already walking away. "One of your patients is being admitted to overnight stay, but the rest should be discharged within the hour," she called over her shoulder, disappearing behind the closed curtain of the patient's room.
Taylor logged into the computer and scanned the necessary info on her patients quickly but thoroughly, noting their chief complaint, past diagnoses, medical history, current list of medications, and allergies. When Tyresa returned they were able to do a change-of-shift report.
The rest of her shift was hectic, but it went by fast. She'd seen and discharged five patients in one hour alone. Taylor was sitting behind the nurse's station to document on one of her patients with a urinary tract infection when Lisa came and plopped down in the empty seat next to her.
"Good grief," she sighed.
"Rough day?" Taylor asked.
"You know, I don't often say this, but everyone is so mean today. You'd have thought everybody was just diagnosed with a terminal illness—and I was the one to directly inject it into their bloodstreams."
Maya, who was sitting on the other side of the nurse's station also documenting, raised her hand above her head, as if reaching out to God and asking for penance for her sins. "Lord help me if that isn't exactly what I want to do," she said, briefly closing her eyes.
That earned a chuckle from Taylor and Lisa both.
Maya briefly looked up from documenting to glance over the top of the counter as a new patient—a middle-aged male—was being led into one of Taylor's assigned rooms by the CNA. Taylor caught a glimpse of him as well.
"Wasn't he in here just a few days ago?" Maya wondered.
"He was," Taylor agreed. "I had him. He was here for a broken wrist."
"Well hon, he's all yours again."
"Yep, I got it."
She finished typing and then pulled up his record so she could see what had brought him here this time. When she finished, she reached for her stethoscope, coiled up like a snake in the pocket of her scrub pants, and strung it over the back of her neck.
The patient, a short African-American man, old enough to be her grandfather, had been jovial and polite on his last visit—despite the broken wrist—and had always referred to her as "ma'am", and thanked her profusely for caring for him.
He was sitting on the side of the bed, and he offered her a friendly but worn-out smile as she entered. She smiled back as she hauled her computer on wheels into the room behind her.
"Mr. Frederick," she greeted, "what brings you back here so soon? It says here you've been having some pretty severe migraines?"
"Yes, ma'am, they're just awful." He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "Tylenol doesn't even touch it."
"I'm so sorry… do you remember when the migraines started?"
"Seems like…" he paused for a moment to consider, "the night I came home from here, after I got my cast." He held up his arm to show her the white cast, which, judging from the Finding Nemo and Frozen stickers covering every available inch of free space, appeared to have been decorated by his grandchildren. "Haven't been able to sleep much, had to miss work today, and yesterday. I've never had headaches before in the past." He paused to heave out a sigh. "I feel silly for coming here for a damn headache—if you'll pardon my language—but my wife insisted."
"Not at all," Taylor assured him. "Better to be safe than sorry. The doctor will want to put in an order for a CT scan to see if there's anything abnormal going on. You haven't suffered any trauma recently, correct? No motor vehicle accidents, even a minor one?"
He shook his head, and then winced, the action having caused him a considerable amount of pain.
"In that case I'll let you know when they're ready for you over in X-ray, it shouldn't be long," she said, signing out of her computer. "I'm going to go ahead and have you lie down." She helped ease him onto the cot and covered him with a blanket. She instructed him how to use the call button, and when she turned to leave he called out to her once more.
"Ma'am?"
"Yes?"
"I'm not sure if this is related, but I've been having these… well, frightening dreams, I guess. I'm not sure what you would call them."
"Nightmares?"
"No, not that… they're more real than that. I was awake when it happened. Like… like a hallucination, maybe. Do you think that could have to do with the headaches? I haven't told my wife about it. Happened while she was out. Didn't want to spook her," he said, chuckling lightly as if to downplay his concerns, although Taylor could tell that it had really spooked him, too.
Her brows furrowed together. "I'm not sure," she said honestly. "What is it that you saw?"
He didn't immediately reply, seeming to turn it over in his mind He scratched a phantom itch on his arm. "That thing everyone's afraid of underneath their bed, except—"
The shrill cry of a woman's screams suddenly tore through the department. Taylor heard the bang of a metal gurney as it crashed into the double doors of the ED, forcing them open, and the shouting from other nurses—Lisa's distinct voice among them. Taylor was already on her feet and heading towards the door.
"I'll be right back!"
She opened the sliding glass door and then threw back the curtain, where it skated across the metal partition, opening up the room to the frenzied scene currently unfolding.
There was an elderly woman on a gurney trying to tear herself out of her restraints, surrounded by various EMTs and nurses. There was blood streaked across her face in four jagged lines. Her legs thrashed and kicked violently, her screams never ending. The woman was able to free a hand, where it immediately formed a claw and she brought it down over her own face, screaming in agony as she drew more blood. Taylor had never seen anything like it, she was clearly having some kind of psychotic breakdown.
"Someone get me some Haldol STAT!" one of the nurses was shouting. There were four of them, two EMTs, and a doctor working to hold the woman down and get her strapped to the gurney.
Jason was the first to react, already having gone to the crash cart to retrieve the needle.
The patient was quickly wheeled into a nearby empty room, Jason entering at the same time Taylor did, where they both helped maneuver the screaming woman on her side so the Haldol could be injected into her backside.
It took several moments, but eventually the woman's screams withered, and her body twitched, gradually becoming lax as the medicine took effect. The room seemed to grow smaller suddenly with everyone standing so stationary in it, as if it were a giant balloon that had just expanded and then deflated with everyone's collective sigh of relief. Staff began shuffling out of the room, and one of the EMT's whose glasses had been knocked to the floor during the fray carefully retrieved them and cleaned them off.
It was only as everyone stepped away that Taylor took stock of the woman, shocked to realize that she recognized her, and that it was Miss Crawford, the patient she'd seen only days ago whom she'd been so reluctant to discharge because of her heart condition. Now she appeared to have had some sort of psychotic break.
Taylor looked up and caught Lisa's eye from across the room, a loaded glance full of unspoken questions. Lisa looked like she was going to mouth something to her, but Taylor's attention was diverted when someone bumped shoulders with her, an x-ray technician, judging from the color of her scrubs, who mumbled a quick apology before disappearing. When Taylor turned back, Lisa was already hurrying around the small room, preparing to start and IV and discuss the plan of action with one of the doctors who'd rushed in to help. She wondered where Dr. Bishop was in all of this, but most of all she wondered what had caused this in the first place.
At the end of her shift, Taylor was exhausted, and not in the best of moods. The stomach bug Tyresa had mentioned was wreaking havoc—leaving the waiting room packed, with a three and a half hour wait time—and a bank robbery attempt in Columbia Point had left six injured, one of them a cop, and two others who had to be transferred to the ICU. She was more than relieved to finally end her day and go home.
After she'd given a change-of-shift report to one of the oncoming nurses and clocked out, she and Jason both gathered their things from the communal breakroom. Jason was quieter than usual, and he looked as tired and worn out as she felt. She was tempted to leave the car in the parking garage and hail a taxi to take her home instead, but she didn't like the idea of leaving the car sit overnight.
Despite how busy her shift had been, all that was running through her mind now was the unfinished conversation she'd had with Mr. Frederick. Something about it nagged at her, some thread in her brain she couldn't let go of. She'd been sympathetic initially, thinking that he suffered from recurrent nightmares—she was all too familiar with the lingering destruction they left in their wake—but then he'd said it was more real than that, that he'd been awake when it happened, and he'd said something… something about monsters, hadn't he?
She was all too familiar with those, too.
They'd been unable to finish their conversation when she'd returned from the fray of having to sedate Miss Crawford, and after that her shift had become even more hectic. He was eventually discharged without any significant findings of note.
"Did you see the patient I had in 14, the older black man?" she asked Jason as she spun the combination for her locker.
Jason was digging out his leftovers from the fridge. "Yeah, I think so. What about him? He got discharged, right?"
"Yeah, but I keep thinking about something he said about… having hallucinations or something."
He stuffed his leftovers into his backpack, zipped it up, and slung the strap over one shoulder. "Was he high?"
"No, no, not at all. Came in for a nasty migraine." The lock unsnapped with a click and Taylor unhooked it so she could open her locker and grab her wallet and car keys. Her bag was too large to fit inside, so she'd stuffed it on the shelf about the coat rack.
Jason hummed in acknowledgement and had knelt to tie the laces of one his sneakers. "You know, I had a patient yesterday who said something similar. She was talking to her boyfriend about it—I didn't think much of it at the time. Kind of weird, though." He stood up and scratched a phantom itch on his arm.
"Yeah… weird."
They parted ways outside the hospital doors, and she couldn't wait to get home. However, any hope she had of making it home within the hour were dashed when she realized she had to make a run to the grocery store, and then was hindered by the accident on Carlise Street, forcing her to divert near Colgate Park, where there was a concert that night. The traffic on Carter Bridge, of course, was at a standstill because of it. She could do nothing but wait patiently and try not to fall asleep at the wheel.
It was a quarter till ten when she pulled into the driveway; the yellow headlights illuminated the garage door and then disappeared when she shut off the car. She sat in the dark with her hands in her lap, keys in one hand. One of the pockets of her scrub pants was bulging with a handful of antiseptic wipes and an unused IV starter pack she'd forgotten to empty out before leaving. The lone streetlamp hanging over the cul-de-sac—which some of the more vocal neighborhood mothers had viciously petitioned for—had burnt out. They thought it might help to ward off criminals—as if criminals were the sort of predators who could be deterred by a single streetlamp.
In the rearview mirror, the sky bled ribbons of purple and blue, the color of day-old bruises, where the light pollution from the city had reached out its dirty fingers and infected the sky.
She sighed as she reached over the console for the grocery bags and her backpack lying in the passenger seat. She closed the car door with her hip and fumbled with her keys on the sidewalk and on the porch stairs, trying to find the house key. She felt a slight annoyance that Austin had forgotten to leave the porch light on for her, but she pushed it aside, knowing she was just irritable because she was getting home much later than planned.
Inside, she toed off her sneakers and saw the light was on in the dining room. She left her backpack and the groceries on the kitchen counter and peered around the doorjamb to see Austin sitting at the dining room table, surrounded by his laptop and usual mess of papers covering every square inch of free space. His glasses were askew, and the white glow from his laptop only served to highlight the bags under his eyes.
"Hey," she greeted. She held onto the doorjamb, unsure if she should come in and interrupt.
He looked up, startled to see her. "Hey, I didn't hear you come in. C'mere," he said, sensing her hesitation and pushing back his chair, offering his lap as a seat. She settled into him with a heavy sigh, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He curled his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. "Long day at the office?"
"You have no idea," she groaned. "But I could ask you the same thing. I thought you'd be in bed by now."
"I am worn out," he admitted. "But I wanted to talk to you."
Taylor bit her lip. Austin only ever looked this solemn whenever he brought up her illness or her past. She tried to feign easiness. "About?"
He sighed, reaching forward to close his laptop. She caught a glimpse of an open Microsoft Word document full of highlighted yellow text, but that was nothing unusual. Austin removed his glasses, folded them neatly and set them on his laptop. Looked up at her.
"I've been applying for a new job."
That was not what she had been expecting. Her brows rose in surprise, but then she smiled, glad for him.
"Wow, I… Austin, I think that's great." She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. She pulled away so she could look him in the eyes. "They're not utilizing your talent at the Times, you know you're a fantastic writer, and if they can't see that, then they don't deserve you."
Austin smiled, but it was weak, as if weights had settled on either side of his mouth.
"That's not really… that's not all. I've been offered a job in Washington."
She frowned. "Washington… D.C.?"
"State, Taylor. Washington State."
Taylor brought a hand to her head, confused. Angry. Hurt. "Austin, that's… that's on the other side of the world practically. Why would you… I mean… what inspired this? What's in Washington that we don't have here?"
Austin scrubbed a hand over his jaw, where day-old stubble was beginning to form. "Taylor, you're not understanding me. This isn't for me, it's for you."
She frowned at him, removed her arm from around his shoulders. "What do you mean?"
"I think we should move."
Taylor stared at him. This wasn't a new conversation by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one she thought they had already come to a definite decision on. That he would bring it up again—that he had gone so far as to search for a job—felt almost like betrayal to her.
She didn't know why panic settled in her gut so sharply this time around, but it was there, pushing and shoving against her insides, poking holes, unbothered by the contents leaking out. Maybe it was because she could sense the insistence in Austin this time, that she knew he wasn't going to be so easily dissuaded. He'd made up his mind and this was what he wanted, to leave Gotham, to start new somewhere else, and he wasn't going to take no for an answer without first putting up a wall of resistance, a well-worded fight.
She didn't know how to process this. She stood up, needing to put space between them, looking anywhere but at him. All she could think about was how the ice-cream sitting on the counter was melting. She said as much, and went to the kitchen, where Austin was at her heels, following right behind her.
"Your nightmares are getting worse, Taylor. I know you're barely sleeping… and I'm not sleeping either and it's really starting to affect me, both here and at work. You understand that, don't you?"
Of course she understood. She was filled with guilt every time she woke in the middle of the night screaming, or drenched in sweat, or thrashing so furiously that Austin had to hold her down until she came back to her senses. Each night Austin was there, dutifully at her side to get her a fresh change of clothes, to hold her while she sobbed, to stroke her hair against the pillow until she drifted back to sleep, to bring her back to reality and assure her she was safe, he was there, that nothing was going to hurt her.
It wasn't easy on him, she knew this. She knew he was exhausted in the mornings from dealing with her. There were nights where neither of them slept at all. And she knew that not only were her nightmares occurring with more frequency than ever before, but also with increased intensity, too, unlike any nightmares she'd ever experienced in the past. It was getting harder for Austin to calm her at night, to pull her back to reality. There were nights that she fought him so violently that she'd left bruises on him.
She knew something had to be done, that a change needed to be made… but she also knew she wouldn't—couldn't—leave Gotham. Before, they had been able to talk about it with relative ease because she knew in the back of her mind that nothing would come of it, that it was just a thought to entertain, a brief form of escapism when things got tough and they wanted to feel proactive, like they were actively searching for a solution instead of simply hoping one would appear and Taylor's problems would magically begin to resolve themselves.
"I know this has been hard for you," she had her back turned towards him, where she had just closed the freezer, "but please don't act like I'm not immune to the way my behavior affects you," she said, quietly. She could feel tears stinging at her eyes. "I hate keeping you up at night. I hate that all my sessions and the pills I used to take has cost us so much money… I'm filled with so much guilt every day," she choked.
Austin came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and put his head on her shoulder. This time it was him who was filled with guilt. "Taylor, I know you feel badly, I know. I just want us to be able to talk about this—seriously, this time; something has got to change." Austin had a way of echoing her feelings, even if she hadn't stated them aloud. "I'm so proud of you for seeing that psychiatrist a few weeks ago." He squeezed her tight, talking low and close to her ear. She wasn't ready to turn around and face him just yet. "I know that wasn't easy for you. But at what point do we admit failure? When are you going to admit that this city is toxic? You just… there's too much history buried here."
Taylor felt her shoulders slump, more tears springing to her eyes. That was exactly why she couldn't leave. Her origin story was here, the reason for why she was the way that she was. It was all here. It felt wrong to leave all of that behind in favor of chasing greener pastures. What difference did location make, anyway? It was her mind that needed fixed, the one thing she could never escape. The miles she put between herself and Gotham didn't matter… there would always be pieces of this mephitic city tucked away inside of her—shards, really—thousands of them, all wedged like splinters inside her bones, piercing her veins, racing through her bloodstream, wreaking havoc in their wake. Gotham had made its home inside her, had built its nest, and it would not so easily be vacated.
There was something that felt almost immoral about leaving, like breaking a holy sacrament. She'd never been very religious, she'd said prayers in the past, could count the times she'd gone to church on the fingers of one hand, had pleaded fervently with God more times than any child should ever have to… but leaving felt against a set of unspoken rules, somehow. She couldn't possibly explain it, least of all to Austin, who was convinced that a change of scenery could cure her afflictions, or at the very least, help keep them at bay.
But it wasn't as simple as that. These nightmares… she couldn't help but feel like they were part of some bigger picture she wasn't yet privy to, that Gotham held the missing piece of her story but was keeping it of sight, in a clenched up fist she couldn't uncurl the fingers of.
There was something keeping her here in Gotham, a magnetic force she couldn't explain. Those moments before a storm where static electricity seemed to hang suspended in the air… she felt those moments all the time, moments of some unnatural calm before a razing storm that never came. Moments that made the hairs on her arm stand on end for no reason, that made her look over her shoulder even if she was home by herself, moments where she had to get up during the night to make sure the windows and doors were locked, even though she knew she had already checked them twice.
What, exactly, was she so afraid of? Only Gotham knew, held up tight in that giant clenched fist.
"Tell me it doesn't sound awful, Tay." He was pleading with her, his voice full of earnest hope. "Wouldn't you like to live somewhere else? In a quiet neighborhood in a small town, or maybe close to the water?"
She did not like the ocean, she didn't know if Austin knew that about her. Too vast and unpredictable, too many things lurking beneath dark waves you could only see the shadows of. The ocean was violent and cruel, with the capacity to raze entire cities in one fell swoop. She never understood how people could enjoy the sound of waves at the beach, who wanted to listen to the gentle lapping of the tide as they sunk into sleep. It was all smoke and mirrors, a false allure.
Austin's hands smoothed the angry goose bumps that had burst over her arms. She shrugged him off, hating herself for how hurt he looked when she did it.
"I can't leave my dad here. You know that." She thought about saying, 'Maybe in a few years, after he's passed,' but she didn't want to plant seeds of false hope. She knew—deep down she knew—she could never leave Gotham. She was already too tangled in this city's monstrous web to ever hope for escape. She would die here. And maybe that was an odd thing to be so sure of—she was only twenty-five—but she'd witnessed more death than most, had even tried her own hand at it, albeit unsuccessfully, and it was the sort of thing you couldn't help but think about it in the quiet moments after someone had coded, or taken their last breath, or had been pronounced brain dead, even despite the rising and falling of their chest via artificial ventilation.
"Why not?" Austin challenged. He had his hand on the counter, the veins in his arm seemed to bulge in his anger. "He's already left you."
He knew immediately he'd struck a nerve. It was a callous thing to say. He wished he could've cast a net and scooped the words back into his mouth as soon as he'd said them. The worst part was the way she looked at him, like she wasn't surprised that he'd said it, only that it'd taken him this long to do so.
"Taylor… " There was an apology on the tip of his tongue that wouldn't come. He was sorry he'd said it the way he did, but they both knew there were too many threads of truth in his statement for there to be any merit in an apology. He'd spit gunfire, and there was no way of patching up the bullet holes.
"I'm going to bed," she replied. She was too tired to be standing in the middle of the kitchen at ten thirty at night after having been on her feet for almost thirteen hours. She had to be up again in the morning to do it all over again.
Austin didn't join her until two hours later, a little after midnight. She laid awake, pretending to sleep. The door to their bedroom opened with a gentle creak, and she heard him shucking off his pants, unbuttoning his shirt, and the gentle thwap of his tie as it met the dresser.
The sheets rustled as he settled between them. For a moment, he seemed to lean close to her, as if to wrap an arm around her, or give her a kiss. In the end he turned away, and the distance that settled between them might as well have been the size of that ocean that she hated so much.
The next morning, Taylor hid her yawn behind the back of her hand as the huge, looming stone walls of the hospital came into view. Gotham Medical was stout at only four stories high. It was compact, square, and practical, with no added architectural finesse or pretty landscaping.
It was one of Gotham's oldest hospitals, its inception having been funded by the Wayne family—Kenneth Wayne, to be exact, Bruce Wayne's grandfather—a mark the hospital proudly bore at its epicenter, where a four-foot tall stone plaque sat in the center of the circular lobby, baking in the heat of the sun from the paneled skylight above. The angled, rectangular windows for the skylight had been added when the building underwent massive renovations, a two-year project which had been completed just a month after Taylor was hired. It was a little sad how outdated the hospital still looked despite the facelift. With limited subsidy from the state, most of the funds had gone towards purchasing new equipment and cutting-edge machinery. However, during the renovations, an enclosed walking bridge had been placed over the street, connecting Gotham Medical to its newly built lab, freeing up precious space within the hospital, allowing the ED to be relocated into a larger, more spacious area, and a stroke unit to be built in its former home.
Her cab driver—an old, quiet Chinese man with leather skin and an intersecting map of wrinkles and scars—seemed content to forgo both the radio and any attempts at small talk, keeping his tired, baggy eyes on the road and the road only, and for that she was grateful.
She'd woken that morning to find the bed empty and the car gone. There was a note on the kitchen counter in Austin's quick, neat print that said, "Ice-cream melted. I'll pick up more on my way home". Sure enough, when she opened the lid of the trashcan, she saw a wad of milky green paper towels and the crumbled box of mint chocolate chip.
She sighed as she paid the cabbie and hurried to get inside and start her shift. She didn't have time to think about the ramifications of their argument from the night before, and, to add insult to injury, she'd had an awful nightmare last night too, one of the bad ones. She could only vaguely recall Austin holding her down because she'd been thrashing so wildly, his voice trying in vain to pierce through the veil of her dream, to bring her back down to earth.
She shook those memories away. She couldn't focus on that now. She only had two patients so far—both of whom were stable and being held for observation until their blood results came back—but a third one was just being admitted. She skimmed his file briefly and then went in to see him.
The new admittance—a thirty-three year old male, Isaac Billings—had complaints of nausea and vomiting, and hadn't been able to keep food down for several days.
"It's going around," she told him, shooting him a sympathetic glance as she assessed his vitals on the computer, which the CNA had just taken and documented for her. By the way he'd been dressed, he looked as if he'd just come from work. "The doctor's going to want to start you on some fluids to make sure you don't become dehydrated, and I can put in an order for Zofran which is an antiemetic to help with the nausea, but otherwise there's not a whole lot to do but wait it out."
The man nodded, and she left him with an emesis bag and gave him privacy to change into a gown while she conversed with Dr. Bishop, who was, unfortunately, the attending physician she was assigned to. After informing him about the patient—making it as succinct as possible—she went back to the man's room and started an IV and hooked him up to a bag of normal saline. He was on his cell phone the whole time—work related, from the sounds of it—and having a heated argument with someone on the other line.
When the order for Zofran came up on the Pyxis Medstation, she retrieved the bag from the fridge and set it up with his IV that was already running. He had finished his phone call and was looking at her apologetically.
"Sorry if I was shouting earlier," he said. "My boss thinks I'm trying to skip out of work." At her questioning look, he went out. "I was just here a couple of days ago." He held up a bandaged index finger on his left hand. "Slammed it in the car door. Had to get the bone reset."
"Ouch," Taylor pulled a face.
He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the pillow while she set up the IV pump. She glanced at his face as she did, noting the dark circles and heavy bags gathered under his eyes.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" she asked when she was finished.
"Yeah, actually." He shifted in bed, grimacing in pain for a moment before it seemed to subside. "Is there any chance you could ask the doctor to give me something to help me sleep? Like, a prescription or something?"
"You're not sleeping at night?"
"Well, I mean, sort of… it's not really like that."
"What's it like then?" Taylor prodded, not unkindly.
She could see the gears turning in his head, to tell or not to tell. He shrugged his shoulders. "Nah, it's nothing." He laid back down and closed his eyes.
Taylor was curious to know what it was he had been wanting to say, but she let him be, promising to check back on him in a little bit.
Later, during her lunch break, she went upstairs to the third floor, wanting to surprise her coworkers whom she hadn't seen in awhile.
They were, as predicted, thrilled to see her. Elizabeth wrapped her in a bear hug. "Our prodigal daughter has returned," she gushed, holding a hand over her heart when they had pulled away.
"Just for a lunch break," she said. She was happy to see her friends again, and being on the unit made her realize just how much she had missed it.
While Elizabeth didn't have the time to take a full thirty minute break—"You should have told me you were coming!" she groaned—she was able to sit down for fifteen minutes, periodically poking her head around the breakroom door to make sure the old woman in the room across the hall wasn't trying to take out her IV.
"She's confused," Elizabeth said, with an accompanying eye-roll. "I've had to stick her three times today. She screams bloody murder every time." She resumed her earlier chair. "And believe me, that woman's veins are not easy to find."
Taylor smiled. "I believe you." She'd missed her friend. She knew she was lucky to get along with the staff in the ED, but she did miss her old coworkers, and the laughter, the slower pace of working at night as opposed to the frenzied pace of the ED during the day.
After Elizabeth left, she chatted with Sarah and another of her old coworkers, Bethany, who had just gone on their own lunch breaks.
When she finished her lunch, Taylor said her goodbyes to the unit, promising she'd come back to visit soon, and was heading towards the elevators when she noticed the familiar face of Miss Crawford in a nearby room. Taylor had forgotten about her after that night at the hospital, and was surprised to see that she was still here. She cast a glance around her to see if anyone was approaching before slipping into the room, leaving the door only a little ajar behind her so their conversation wouldn't carry.
"Miss Crawford?" she said, approaching slowly, "My name's Taylor, I was your nurse a few days ago when you came to the emergency department for chest pain?" She framed her statement like a question, wondering if the old woman would recall given the trauma she'd just been through.
She was sitting upright in bed, raised in the high fowler's position, and the local news on the TV was quiet in the background. White blankets were tucked neatly around her waist, and on the bedside table there was a vase full of fresh flowers—an arrangement of gerbera daisies—as well as multiple "get well soon" cards. It would have been a perfectly normal picture of someone recovering in the hospital if not for all the bandages covering her face, one wrapped around her head, covering the top of an ear, one over her eye, two others on her cheeks. There were visible teeth marks on her lower lip and chin from where she had bitten down too hard. Other bandages covered the various parts of her upper and lower arms. She smiled gently.
"Of course I remember you, it's hard to forget such a kind face. Please, come in." She gestured to the chair near the side of the bed, and Taylor took it, knowing she didn't have much time to spare, but too curious to let the invitation slide.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Oh, much better, I suppose. They said I had a 'short-term psychotic episode'—I'm not quite sure what that means, but I'm feeling much better now. My daughter's been staying with me—she's just gone to get us a something to eat. I'm afraid I'm not terribly fond of what they serve in your cafeteria."
Taylor smiled. "It's not much, no."
Miss Crawford let out a sigh from between pursed lips. "I am ready to go home, but the doctor says they want to keep me for a few more days for observation. They also say I should be doing everything possible not to get my heart going too much, so I guess I shouldn't be watching the news," she chuckled. She paused then, looking at Taylor. "I wanted to thank you for what you did the other day, for advocating for me. We—my daughter and I… and if I'm honest, the whole hospital, probably—heard that horrid doctor yelling at you. I feel quite badly that it was on my account, but your efforts did not go unappreciated. When you came back in, you did your job and put on smiles for both of us and acted as if nothing was wrong."
Taylor hadn't stopped to consider that Miss Crawford had overheard her and Dr. Bishop's spat, but then again, there was very little that wasn't heard in the ED.
"That's very kind of you to say that." She really meant it. It wasn't often she was applauded for putting on a neutral face and maintaining professionalism when all she wanted to do was cry and shout about the injustice of a given situation. "Can I ask you something, though? The day you came back to the emergency department… do you remember it?"
"Oh yes," she said. "In startling detail." Her chest rose and deflated. "I saw things, that day. It was like my worst nightmares had come to life. The monster…. "
Taylor frowned, drawing closer to the edge of her chair, something sparking inside her. "Monster? What did it look like?"
Miss Crawford smiled sympathetically, the kind you offered to a child who believed that wishes on stars always came true, or that dandelions were flowers, not weeds.
"No, dear, you don't understand… I was the monster."
For once, she didn't know how to immediately respond. She was startled to discover that she knew a bit about what that felt like, that sometimes she wasn't being chased by monsters in her nightmares, that when it came to the most frightening ones, she was the monster. It was others who suffered at her hands, it was her who performed the most despicable acts.
She swallowed. Gathered her voice. "That sounds terrible."
Miss Crawford nodded and was about to speak again, but just then, her daughter entered, holding a paper bag of from Burger King and a cardboard cup holder.
"Sorry mom, I know it's not your favorite, but it was the closest." She set down the items on the adjustable bedside table and wiped her hands on her slacks. "Taylor, isn't it?" She smiled warmly. She looked just like her mother. "It's a pleasure to see you again."
"Likewise, though I really have to be getting back to work. I was just checking in."
"I'm glad you did, dearie," Miss Crawford said. "I'll be just fine, so don't you worry about me," she added, as if she knew that was just what Taylor was going to do. "Take care of yourself."
"Same to you," Taylor nodded and smiled to both women as she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Alone, in the quiet hum of elevator, she was struck by Miss Crawford's depiction of the events that had transpired, how she had been the monster. She remembered the way the woman had clawed at her own face, how wildly her body had writhed, like she was burning from the inside out, like… like whatever thing she saw herself as being, it was living inside her, and she was literally fighting to tear it out of her with her own bare hands.
But there was something else that gave her pause, too, something that Mr. Frederick from yesterday had said to her, about his hallucination, about… that thing everybody's afraid of underneath their beds.
Monsters?
She felt a chill run through her, goose bumps bursting over her arms.
And her patient downstairs she had just been talking to, hadn't he said something about not sleeping? Could he possibly have been talking about hallucinations, too, though perhaps been too embarrassed to say? And what about Jason's patient? Was this all just some weird coincidence?
She couldn't help but feel like she hanging on the thread of something much larger, she just didn't know what it was.
She drove home that night with her mind in a fog, at least until she came to a stop at a traffic light and checked her phone, realizing she had three missed calls from Austin. She'd been so busy she'd barely thought about him all day, save for once, when Elizabeth had suggested that the two of them join her and Christian for dinner soon. His comment about her father from the previous night still stung, but significantly less so than it had in the heat of the moment. She knew he hadn't meant to be so cruel—he never did anything with the intention of being cruel, she could honestly say that—and his frustrations had only stemmed from the fact that he wanted a better life, for the both of them. She couldn't blame him for what he'd said; the sharper the dagger, the deeper the cut.
She found him sitting at the counter when she got home, half asleep with his chin propped in the palm of his hand. He startled when the door opened, his chair scraping against the floor as he stood.
"Hey," he greeted, a little tentative, unsure if she was still mad at him or not.
"Hi." She carried her backpack into the kitchen and set it next to the barstool, stopping when she was in arm's length of him.
"I got you ice-cream," he said.
"And flowers?" Taylor nodded to the colorful bouquet of wild flowers that he'd already trimmed the ends off of and arranged in an old vase he'd found under the sink.
"And flowers," he confirmed. "I feel like a jerk for what I said last night. It was uncalled for. Will you forgive me?"
Taylor stepped forward to put her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry, too. The conversation… it caught me off guard."
"We don't have to talk about it now." He pulled away from her, holding her by her shoulders. "How was your day?"
"Tiring," she said. "Long." She bent down to unlace her sneakers, noticing that he seemed antsy for some reason. She looked up at him when he hadn't said anything, unable to help but crack a smile at his behavior. "What's going on with you? Why do you look like you've done something you weren't supposed to?"
Austin laughed. "Is that what my face looks like?" When she'd slipped out of her shoes, he took her by the shoulders and turned her towards the stairs. "Go on up, I have a surprise for you."
Taylor smiled at him. "Does it involve bringing me ice-cream in bed?" she asked over her shoulder.
"Don't ruin it!" he cried, melodramatic. "Now hurry, go." He impatiently flapped his hands at her.
She laughed as she climbed the stairs. "You are so predictable."