CHAPTER SIX
VANISHING ACT
October 1998
Gracie leaned in close to the restroom mirror, carefully applying an even slick of lipstick. It was awkward positioning, having to lean over the sink, but she took her time applying the makeup. It was nurses' night, and the attendings were buying. Everyone was meeting at a bar down the street, and Malik was waiting for her to sign out her last patient so they could walk over. Unfortunately for him, she could not do that until she landed her guy a bed in Telemetry. Telemetry was taking their sweet time getting back to her, so Gracie had decided to change and get ready before taking matters into her own hands.
When she stepped out of the restroom, she wore a black pea coat over dark jeans, gold hoops dangling from her ears, boots clicking down the hall as she walked. She moved down that hall with every intention of chasing down a bed for her patient and completing his transfer, so she could get out of there.
But then her patient crashed.
Gracie was forced to remain behind and code her patient. Malik was long gone by the time they finally called it, and when Carter stopped in the doorway to the trauma room, Gracie was the only one who remained behind, completing the death kit. She was still all glammed up for her night out, one of those flimsy yellow gowns over her jeans and blouse, contrasting starkly with the shade of her lipstick. She looked lovely, he thought. Even with the gown and bloodied gloves.
"What happened?" Carter finally spoke up from just inside the door, clearing his throat. Gracie seemed surprised by his presence, evident by the way her shoulders jerked at his voice.
"What? Oh. My PE started coughing up blood and crumped."
"I'm sorry." He stepped further into the room, hands in his pockets. He was wearing those suspenders he had gotten so fond of lately. "Aren't you off?"
"Yeah, but Malik already left. Besides, it's my patient, I should see it through."
"I could give you a lift."
Gracie found it hard to resist a smile as she continued her work over the body. "That's all right, Carter, I'll be a while."
It was quiet for a moment. Then, "Why don't you call me John?"
Gracie's hands paused over the body. She glanced at Carter, standing there in his white coat, the corners of her lips curving. "John," she echoed, her eyes dancing with amusement. It was one of those moments that he would remember years later. It would be the moment he remembered as knowing.
"Gracie," Carter tipped his head to her in a bit of a mock bow. "I guess I'm off then."
"Hey, John?"
Her words made him stop in his tracks. "Yeah?"
"See you tomorrow."
He smiled. "See you tomorrow," he said, and walked away. He would exit that night into a crisp fall evening, and ponder the way her lipstick enhanced her pout. It would still be on his mind hours later, even with another woman in his bed.
STUCK ON YOU
November 1998
"It's just wrong."
Thunder cracked outside. Gracie drew labs on an unconscious male patient in Exam One, safe from the inclement weather. She watched the guy's blood drip into assigned tubes, shaking her head wearily. It was approaching daylight hours, and Gracie had been on all night. She had reluctantly taken on a double, a twenty-four hour shift, since five p.m. the previous day. She had another twelve hours to go before she was free, and Gracie was grateful (to say the least) when Malik clocked in for the day shift. He would provide a much needed breath of fresh air after the insanity that had been the graveyard shift.
She glanced up from underneath dark eyelashes at Malik, who stood across the room hooking up a banana bag to a deeply snoozing drunk. "How is it wrong?"
"Men and women can't relate to each other," Malik replied. Gracie snorted, withdrawing the needle from her guy's intravenous line and tossing out the biohazards. "What? It's true! They live such different lives."
"I don't get why people make it such an issue," Gracie laughed, stripping off her latex gloves. "Only really weak guys can't be friends with girls."
"I'm just saying, any woman who has a guy as a good friend is either a tease, or living in denial."
She rolled her eyes playfully. "That is terrible," she stated amusedly, not necessarily taking his words to heart. She snatched up her tubes of blood and the corresponding chart. "I gotta get these to the lab."
"Think about it!"
Gracie just shook her head as she made her way out into the hall. She dropped her samples off at the lab before finding her way back to admit. She arrived just in time to find Carter arriving behind the desk, with Roxanne at his side. Gracie had always genuinely liked Roxanne, an affable insurance broker, and it was for this reason that she smiled when Roxanne greeted her. She had no reason to dislike her. "Hey, Gracie!" Roxanne exclaimed. She was holding a section of the Sun-Times in her hands. "Would you ever live in a commune?"
Gracie blinked with confusion, making a note in one chart and exchanging it for another. "What?" was all she could manage to say.
"There's an ad here for a communal vegetarian household."
Carter snatched the newspaper out of Roxanne's grasp, shooting her a wry look. "And I do enjoy steak, thank you very much."
"Now, John, let's not be picky."
"Looking for a new place to live, John?" Gracie asked conversationally, looking over Weaver's notes on her nineteen-year-old in Exam Three.
"Yeah…" Carter blew out a slow breath as he checked the board.
"John lost the RA job," Roxanne supplied helpfully.
"What?"
Carter did not look thrilled, and Gracie could not blame him. Carter had been working as a resident advisor in the dorms. After the legend that was the medical school's Halloween party, she would have been less than thrilled to have been fired too, were she in his position. "You can thank Lucy for that," he sighed.
"I don't think it's necessarily Lucy's fault—"
"Yeah, but she certainly didn't help."
"Oh, here's one," Roxanne announced suddenly, her faze focused once more on the newspaper. "Furnished apartment in old townhome," she read aloud, "access to full kitchen, many amenities…"
Carter perked up. "That sounds promising."
Roxanne leaned her elbows against the counter and agreed, "Yeah, and not too far from the hospital… look, I can talk to my realtor and set up an appointment for you after work?"
"All right," Carter agreed with a smile. "See you later."
Gracie watched him lean in to give Roxanne a quick kiss. "Bye," she told him, and Gracie glanced awkwardly back to her chart. She knew Roxanne had left when Carter joined her side, removing his coat.
"Yeah, I was up half the night packing," Carter told Gracie. "They want me out today."
"You wanna talk late nights?" She quickly retorted, as if this were a challenge to see whose night had been worse. "I'm about ready to staple a seatbelt to the forehead of every teenager that comes in here."
He was bubbling with chuckles before she even finished her sentence. "What happened?"
She tapped the chart in her hand. "Nineteen-year-old, not wearing a seatbelt while riding in the car with his buddy. When they wrecked, the car folded around him." While his attention was directed at something on the computer and not at her, Carter was actively listening, and he winced at these words. "Unconscious, tubed, and no breath sounds of the right. I kid you not, the flight crew darted his chest three times, and he'd still drop his sats. He crumped in trauma. When they cracked his chest in the OR, both of his lungs were destroyed. He's either gonna die, or be a veggie."
"Damn."
"Oh, and the driver? C1 fracture. Promptly told me to go fuck myself rather than touch him. But I whispered sweet nothings in his ear, he shut up pretty fast."
Carter shook his head and turned to face her. "Sounds magical," he said with an amused tone, watching as she made another note in her chart.
Gracie snorted, all worked up. "I'm tired of telling people to wear their seatbelt. They just don't listen. I give up. I'm on strike."
"Didn't Florence Nightingale have some kind of pledge?"
She leaned in close to his side, catching a hint of his aftershave in the process. "By the way, ICU's backed up 'cause of my veggie kid." Carted groaned, and Gracie chortled loudly as she took off to tend to another patient. His reply drifted over her shoulder in passing, and all she could do was smirk as she went.
"Viva la strike."
Later, Gracie heard about a trauma that came in involving two carpet installers, covered in glue; but she was too caught up with a patient in radiology to come assist. As the rain died down and morning pushed into afternoon, she admitted an asthmatic and took advantage of fifteen blissful minutes to head up to the cafeteria, grab some food, and call to check up on Oupa. When she finally returned to the department, she walked so fast she ran into a familiar form.
"Hey now—"
His hands pressed down on her shoulders to steady her, and Gracie looked up to find a baby-faced, clean shaven John Carter. Her jaw dropped. "Where'd Sasquatch go?" She asked breathlessly.
Carter flashed her an unamused look. "As with everything in my life today, I blame Lucy."
"Carpet glue?"
All he could do was nod, and Gracie laughed before sweeping around him. "That was smart," she noted. She made her way into the lounge, and he followed.
"How much longer are you on?"
"Off at five," Gracie replied absently, reaching into her locker and pulling out a blood glucose monitor. "Two hours, twenty minutes, and thirty-six seconds to go."
Carter collapsed on the couch, watching as she pricked her finger to test the sugar. "At least it's not a thirty-six hour shift."
"You'd have to bury me alive before I offered to take on a thirty-six hour shift."
"Bury you alive?"
"I hate the thought of it."
He crinkled his forehead, a mix of amusement at her words. Then he shook his head and sighed. "Yeah, I wanted to sneak out of here a bit early, go look at that apartment; but I don't think I'm gonna be able to get out in time."
She pondered this. In truth, she had been thinking about his housing search ever since Roxanne pointed it out this morning, but a part of her shifted uncomfortably over the idea of saying anything about it at all. She was not sure why — perhaps because now she considered him a friend, and she only wanted to help. But another part of her wondered about Roxanne, and what that would mean if either of them thought this was a good idea. So she said nothing, instead focusing on her pending glucose reading. "Everything good?" Carter asked.
It was a decent reading. Gracie shrugged and put her supplies back in her locker, saying, "Can't complain." He murmured something positive and nondescript, and it was this that somehow drove her to spoke. "—Hey…" She began, almost too casually, her gut churning. "You know… if your search doesn't pan out. I mean, you know. We have a spare room at home. Actually, it's more like a fold-out couch in a creaky old basement, but the price is right."
He watched her with a steady gaze and a small smile on his lips. He says, "Yeah, that sounds nice. We'll see."
Gracie smiled in return. She shut her locker, shifting the conversation in a natural way as she bustled towards the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go personally thank Lucy for singlehandedly eliminating the threat of cryptids in our workplace."
And that was all that could be said.
Darkness had long settled over Chicago by the time Gracie finally heard a knock at the front door. Having been home for hours, unable to sleep, exhaustion settling deep in her bones, she walked around now in a warm, hooded sweatshirt and flannel pants. She surreptitiously straightened the living room of Oupa's many puzzle boxes as she moved towards the door. When the knock came, she hurried towards it before the caller resorted to ringing the doorbell. Gracie did not want to wake her grandfather. He did not sleep well.
Standing on the front porch, was Carter.
Gracie greeted him with a quizzical look, wrapping her sweatshirt-clad arms around herself in a subconscious attempt to shield herself from the cold outside. He took a moment, hesitating to state his purpose for visiting so late. But finally he said it, more a question than a statement.
"Does your offer still stand?"
