with a club to prove it.
Chapter Thirteen
Ivy walked onto the floor twenty minutes prior to shift change. The pod was busy. A cafeteria worker was gathering the dinner trays that were stacked outside patient rooms, nurses were taking vitals and documenting them, TVs were a constant buzz of chatter and canned laughter. A new patient was brought in on a gurney, a little girl with toffee colored hair. Ivy paid particular attention to her as she was hooked up to a ventilator that was pushed alongside the bed. From the incision site, she knew the girl had had open heart surgery, and this late in the day, the surgery had either gone long and been complicated, or it had been unexpected. Ivy would keep vigil over her through her shift.
She moved to the patient board and noted the children receiving respiratory therapy. She would have seven patients on ventilators tonight, another four with whom she would coach through breathing exercises to expand their lung capacity. The longer the human body relies on artificial respiration, the tighter the lungs when that apparatus was removed. Kids regained quickly, though. Unless there were complications, and Ivy noted one little boy who had developed pneumonia while intubated. He was listed in critical condition, as were all the children on this emergent pod. But the notations next to that indicated that he had arrested once the week before. Orders were to wean him from the ventilator through the night with the hope of extubation in the morning. The sooner he was breathing on his own, the sooner his lungs were working and gaining strength, the better his chances of a positive outcome.
Pneumonia screwed up everything. It put prognosis in a tail-spin.
“Fancy seeing you tonight.” Genny had come up behind her and now they stood elbow to elbow at the board. “I thought you’d be in Mexico sealing the deal with the Marine.”
“Why Mexico?”
“You can get married there in five minutes, no questions asked.”
“Married? Been there done that,” and Ivy’s voice made it clear what she thought of the idea.
“Oooh, really? The secrets come tumbling out of the closet.” She smiled to lighten her comment. “You must have been a child bride.”
“We were both children,” she confirmed. And one of them never grew up.
Genny tskked her feelings about that. “All you can do is learn from a mistake like that.”
“And make sure you don’t repeat it.”
“You’re a big girl now. You’ll know when you’ve got the real thing.”
“How did you know?” Ivy wondered about Genny’s relationship. She’d met the woman’s husband on several occasions. He was laid back but attentive to Genny, and despite the woman’s woes about the loss of romance in her life, Ivy had witnessed her husband’s commitment to the small things—helping her on with her coat, consulting her for decisions; last week he’d arrived on the pod with her dinner.
“It’s different for everyone,” Genny said. “But I can tell you I knew one week in but it took me almost a year to do anything about it. I was still in nursing school. My parents were paying my tuition and they would have skinned me alive if I even thought about marriage. Mel was managing at McD’s—this was before we bought into the franchise—and my parents had a difficult time with that. It was the kind of job a kid picked up in high school, they said. They didn’t know he was on the fast-track to ownership. They wanted him to have a college degree. They settled down when Mel showed them his paycheck and the accrued credit towards a shop of his own.” She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her scrubs and regarded her thoughtfully. “Pay attention to the little things,” she advised. “The grand gestures are usually the first to fall away. And make sure you agree on a lot and can compromise on the rest.” Her smile grew and she arched a knowing eyebrow. “So, how was your run?”
“Amazing.” Every moment with Jake had been so much more than Ivy could have dreamed. Bigger than life, that was the term she was looking for. When she was with him, only the two of them existed. And now that they were apart, and each submerged in their own lives, Ivy was having a hard time convincing herself that it had been real.
“Amazing?” Genny repeated the word like it was an unknown language. Then said, with sudden understanding, “Ah, the afterglow.”
Stan came up beside them. “It’s the endorphins,” he