Reaching out to grasp the woman’s limp thumb, I position her phone under her hand to unlock the device with her fingerprint. I navigate to the recent calls, and I grimace.
“Sexy Babe?” I ask with embarrassment as I press the name. Almost every single call is to this name, so naturally—
“No!” she gasps out, and I quickly cancel the call in a panic.
“Not him,” she says, coughing over her words.
“Um… okay,” I say, with my hand frozen awkwardly in the air. I am trying not to reveal how confused I am, and trying not to raise my eyebrows.
“Huge Fucking Asshole,” she explains weakly. “He’s saved under Huge Fucking Asshole.”
“Oh,” I say, as my lips curl up into a grin—which is thankfully concealed by the masks. I scan through her recent calls to find him. But there are no recent calls…
Puzzled, I go to the list of contacts and scroll down. Asshole, Huge Fucking. There it is. “Video or voice only?” I ask her.
She lets out a struggling sound that is part-laugh, part-snort, part-cough. “I look like a corpse.”
I hesitate, thinking of telling her how weirdly gorgeous she looks while suffering from coronavirus. But there’s no way I can avoid making that sound creepy or jealous, both of which I probably am, so I just nod. “Voice, then.”
Beginning the call, I extend my arm to put the phone beside her ear for privacy. She shakes her head, which seems to visibly cause her pain. “No,” she whispers, almost recoiling from the call with fear. “He won’t talk to me. He hates me.” There are tears gathering in her eyes. “You do it.”
“Uh…”
“Please,” she begs. “Camilla… tell him for me.”
I frown, but I can’t resist the pleading look on her face and the sweet but stern way she says my name. It’s oddly intimate, like we’ve been friends for years. Like I owe her tons of favors that she’s finally coming to collect, not like she just read my freaking nametag ten seconds ago. I somehow feel guilty for not helping her sooner. Damn her… she’s good. I think she could convince anyone to do anything, if she asks like that.
I pull the phone up closer to my face, a few inches away from my mask, and put it on speaker. It’s still ringing. It spends an awful long time ringing, and I’m a little worried that there will be no answer.
Finally, a deep and angry man’s voice is heard.
Cursing and yelling. Viciously. In French.
I took some French in school, but not enough to understand half of what he’s saying. They don’t really teach these types of curse words to students.
My patient, whose name starts with a Y, is rolling her tired eyes, but she looks too exhausted to even roll them properly. “It’s 4 a.m. in France,” she explains hoarsely.
Oh, he’s not in Quebec like I assumed. I couldn’t hear the difference in accent over the unmistakable sound of a childish man-tantrum.
“I can’t take this,” she says, and there are tears brimming against her lashes. She turns her head to the side and presses her eyes shut tightly, looking like she would rather welcome death in this moment than speak to this man.
Heck, I don’t even know her husband and I feel the same. After almost twelve hours on my feet without a proper meal, without anything to drink in ages because I’m dealing with a highly infectious virus and I can’t just easily remove my masks to sip some water… this Huge Fucking Asshole is making me wish I was dead, too. Or at least unconscious so I didn’t have to listen to—
Realizing that my patient’s vital signs are looking even worse since this phone call began, I scowl. I’m still a nurse, and I’m here to make her better, not let someone visibly, intentionally, proactively make her worse.
“Hey!” I say loudly into the phone, yelling over the man’s yelling. He doesn’t even hear me, and I have to yell louder. “Hey! Can you please shut the fuck up? Your wife is sick.”
He quiets down abruptly until there is only silence on the line.
Woops. That came out a bit harsher than I intended. I blink twice, surprised at myself. Did I mention I haven’t been sleeping much? I guess I don’t have the patience for this.
Y has opened her eyes and is looking at me with shock. Like no one has ever told her husband to shut up before. Like he’s some sort of big shot, and if I knew who he was, I would have spoken more respectfully. I really don’t care right now. I’m crazy fuming mad.
Like I said, I’ve handled thousands of calls from sick patients to their loved ones. And I’ve never encountered a more selfish, uncaring, egotistical prick.
“Yvette?” he asks in perfect English. Dammit, so that’s her name. Very pretty and French, just like her. Now, I know.
“What’s wrong with her?” he is asking.
“Covid. I’m her nurse. She’s in a hospital in New York.”
“Shit,” he says, exhaling heavily. “How is she?”
“She’s having trouble breathing and if this continues we might have to put her on a ventilator.” The words just spill out, before I realize that I haven’t mentioned the V-word to my patient. The doctor was supposed to explain it later. I look at her with concern, hoping I didn’t shock or upset her, but she looks too weak to really care.
“A ventilator?” he repeats slowly. “But I don’t understand. She’s 35. She’s healthy.”
“Yes, but…” I hesitate. “It just happens sometimes. It’s a crazy virus.”
“God.” His voice is barely a whisper now.
My stomach does a little somersault. I can clearly hear his hard exterior shell starting to crack, like the first little lines of weakness running across a glass windshield that has been pelted with stones. I can tell that he loves her.
“Dammit, Yvette! Have you been smoking? I bet you’ve been smoking a pack a day or
