The First Time Ever chapter seventeen
Hi guys! Sorry, again, for taking longer to update. Life has been cu-ray-zee. But I've set a challenge to write 500 words per day, and I've had this storyline planned for a long time.
I highly suggest that you read You're My Star by ImSoCoolIPissIceCubes, who has a hilarious username. I've read it loads of times and I love it. Also, Dead or Something Worse by MaybeIShouldGetACat, who also has a great username. Very dark but very good :)
Anyway, hope you guys enjoy this! Happy existing!
It was 9:24pm and I had been in the hospital for close to forty-eight hours. I loved my job, I loved the opportunity to save people's lives, but when you work for forty-eight hours straight, you find yourself praying to go home. Even if I could just catch a chance to sleep, even for just an hour, I would be grateful.
The paeds department was relatively quiet around this time of night. While the younger kids were slowly falling asleep, older kids were turning their TVs down and long term patients who had made friends visited each other's rooms and hosted quiet conversations. Their quietly recounted stories accompanied by the gentle whir and the informative beeping of machines made for a dull buzz which resounded through the whole department. I found it comforting, my own subtle anaesthetic.
The past forty-eight hours had been loaded with cases, one particularly catching my attention. Four-year-old Ellie Crane and her fourteen-year-old sister Maya had come straight to the hospital from their foster home. Ellie had type one diabetes and had passed out after refusing her insulin shot. We didn't suspect abuse, just that she was a kid who hated shots. They were both great kids, with great manners and great personalities.
"Their mom left just after Ellie was born, no explanation." The social worker, Jane, had explained to me. "And now Maya won't leave without Ellie."
This I understood. When I was four I would never have gone anywhere without Timothy by my side. Although he was only two years older than I was, he always seemed like an adult to me. Someone who could protect me from the bad guys, from the kindergarteners who pulled my hair to the homophobic ex-friends in high school. He was always by my side, and I could tell without a doubt that if we were ever put into foster care, that we would not leave each other's sides.
Pushing the on-call room door shut carefully, I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes tightly, exhaustion taking over my every feature. Sleep hadn't been as much of an issue as of late- opening up to Callie had proven to the catalyst for my mental recovery- for the most part, anyway.
Just as I was laying down and resting my head on the pillows, there was a soft knock at the door. "Come in." I called out, throwing my arm over my face to block out the intruding rays that came flooding in from the hallway. I peeked my head out from behind my elbow, smiling when I saw Callie's figure leaning over me. "Hey! I didn't know you were here." I said, greeting her with a kiss.
"I just got paged in, car crash. Quite a few broken bones, but everybody's going to be okay." She said, climbing into the bed beside me. I gladly sunk into her warm embrace.
We were silent for a few minutes, neither of us falling asleep. Although tired, my mind was still running a thousand miles per minute.
"I can practically hear the high-pitched buzz of neurons flying through your brain." Callie chuckled. She knew that I was never one for falling asleep- it wasn't until every last conceivable idea had been thought of that I could finally drift off into dreamland. "What are you thinking about?"
I bit my lip and smiles. Before she had spoken, my mind had been flooding with images of sweet cherub babies. "Babies." I revealed.
"Our babies?" Callie asked, and I could hear the hope in her voice. I smiled at how warm she was to this idea.
"Our babies." I confirmed. "I can imagine them in a big back yard, running around when we chase them. Playing together in a big treehouse." I told her, the images running around my head.
It was quiet for a few seconds. "How do you wanna have kids? Like do you wanna adopt, or…?"
I laughed. "That's the hard part. I can imagine a little you and a little me running around, but I can also imagine all of those poor kids that don't have families." I told her, my mind casting to Ellie and Maya.
"Yeah, I agree." She said. "Well, I guess we'll just have to have ten kids." She said with a note of finality, making me laugh.
"I can't wait for our ten kids." I said, placing a soft kiss on her lips. "You can deal with the diapers, though."
"Hey! Not fair!"
"Hey guys!" I exclaimed as I walked into Ellie's room. I was in a considerably better mood after a good chunk of sleep, plus Callie's… cure for my headache. The conversation about kids had left me in a great mood.
"Hellooo." Maya greeted through a yawn, making me laugh. It was 9:30am, it wasn't like I was waking her up early.
"It's not that early." I pointed out.
"It's also not that easily to get to sleep in hospitals." She retorted with a sly smile.
"There are on-call rooms everywhere. Just sneak into one of those." I advised her. "They're meant for doctors but patients sleep in them all the time. Just make sure you knock before you enter."
Ellie took her opportunity to pipe up. "You came back!"
Both siblings, Ellie in particular due to her naivety, had been dubious about being in a hospital. She seemed scared that I was going to leave. I left my name tag with her every night so that she knew I would come back and get it.
"I did! I told you. I have to get my name tag so I can be a doctor all day." I reminded her, and she handed me the laminated badge that she had been clinging to tightly. I took and clipped it neatly to my lab coat. "Now we can begin. Dr Crane, giggle factor?" I asked Ellie.
"Seven." She replied, making me frown.
"Hmm. We need to work on it. I think some chocolate pudding cups will bring your numbers right up."
It made me sad- no, it made my heart break- to know how much love these two girls possessed. Innocence emanated off of their bodies and left me dumbfounded as to how anybody could simply abandon them. However, I knew that it couldn't possibly be that simple. Maya had mentioned their mother on spontaneous occasions and no bad memory seemed to linger with her.
"My mom used to do cartwheels on the beach with me." She had once revealed, rendering me unsure of how to reply. "And now no one knows exactly how to treat us. What to say when I mention her, whether to ask about her or not."
And then she had walked away.
The hustle and bustle of the hospital cafeteria was just as I expected when I entered it during my lunch break. I knew that I could be paged away at any second so I opted to head straight to the lunch line instead of finding a table first.
"Henry wants to move in together." Teddy exclaimed as she approached me, with no greeting or friendly smile. She collapsed against the counter and began rattling off the story about Henry's proposition. I smiled as I saw her growing gradually more excited about it.
"Did you say yes?" I asked, interrupting her rambling.
"Not yet. I kind of freaked and told him I needed to think."
"Theodora Altman!" I exclaimed, slapping her arm. "You left the poor guy hanging! You love him, right?"
"I do."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
She nodded fiercely and ran off, and Alex Karev came sauntering up to replace her. "What's got into Altman?"
I laughed. "Nothing, it's nothing. What's up?"
"Well, I see you're doing a fundoplication later…" He trailed off, making his intended question clear. I narrowed my eyes, considering this possibility. My mind flicked to the stack of charts lying untouched on my desk.
"There's a stack of charts on my desk." I told him, handing him my key. "If you get them done and can give me a full run down of the surgery, then you can scrub in." I said and he nodded.
"Thanks." He said, before walking off. I smiled as he went. Alex Karev may seem like an asshole from the outside, but I had come to see the sensitive side of him, the amazing surgeon and great with kids side. His babies would be so foul-mouthed and cute.
Finally, I made it to the end of the lunch line and I picked up a salad, which I had learned was the only safe bet in terms of cafeteria food. My mind flashed back to Callie and I's dinner date that night and I smiled. If, on that night, someone had told me that that amazing woman would one day be my fiancé, I would have laughed. The idea that I could be so lucky seemed inconceivable to me. The diamond ring on my finger still stood out to me every time I looked down at it.
Sitting down at a table in a corner, I absently ate my salad while sifting through some paperwork. The change of scenery from my office was nice. However, I couldn't make myself concentrate and found myself people watching, listing all the gossip I knew about each person that passed my table. I frowned when I saw Maya sitting alone, absentmindedly picking at her own food, clearly in another world. Deciding to say hello, I picked up my own tray and paperwork and made my way over.
"Hey, mind if I sit here?"
She looked up in surprise, the dazed look evaporating from her face, and nodded nervously. "Sure."
"How's Ellie doing?" I asked her, sifting through my salad and putting all the tomatoes to the side. I hated tomatoes with a passion- the very thought of them made my skin crawl.
"She keeps asking if we can go to the playground. She hasn't refused any more shots." She told me cheerfully.
"She should be discharged soon." I said. "As soon as Jane figures everything out."
Maya frowned. "I can tell she's losing her patience with me. I've had three families offer to foster me, one even offered to go straight through with adoption, but I can't leave Ellie. She's so small and innocent and I might not get to see her again."
I could tell she was getting emotional. I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, I get it. It's completely understandable. I would have never been separated with my brother when I was fourteen."
She nodded, seeming relieved that I understood. "Do you have kids?"
I smiled, thinking about the conversation Callie and I had last night. "Not yet, but it's definitely in the cards."
"Your kids will probably talk like rainbows are coming out of their asses, too."
I laughed. "Language." I reprimanded.
"Sorry." She said sheepishly, twirling the straw of her soda cup around nervously. Wat I had learned from my time with Maya is that she was very confident on the outside, not afraid to ask questions and speak up, but on the inside, she was a naturally nervous person, which I noticed through her little nervous habits. Nail biting was the most prominent one.
"You're fourteen, right? Any plans on what you want to do after school?"
"Nearly fifteen." She said, smirking. "I kinda wanna do music, but I don't play an instrument any more. The foster home doesn't fund it, apparently."
My heart broke for her. "Isn't there some kind of bursary you can get?"
She shrugged, not looking me in the eye. "Maybe, but I haven't been told about any."
"I would ask about it. I got one for piano in high school."
Her eyebrows shot up into her bangs. "You played piano?"
"Yeah. Didn't really do anything with it, though." I admitted. Finishing my salad, I closed she box and folded my arms across my chest.
"Literally nobody I know is musical." She complained. "They just think that sharps are hashtags."
"My fiancé, Callie, has an amazing voice. It's a shame she doesn't know the difference between a sharp and a hashtag." I said, making us both laugh. Just then, the high-pitched beeping of my pager started screaming for attention. Consult in the ER. "I gotta go, but I'll be by to check on Ellie once I'm done, so I'll see you then."
"Okay. Have fun." She said with a smile before I walked off with a smile on my face.
So what d'you guys think of Maya? Please leave (preferably nice) reviews!