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A Wedding for Brianna

By Seralynn Lewis

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November 23, Thanksgiving Afternoon

Surgical nurse Brianna Malone kicked the car tire of her archnemesis, Doctor Liam McNamara, also known as Doctor Grump, by her colleagues on the surgical floor. “Why is he here? His roommate was scheduled to volunteer at the free clinic tonight.”

She stomped to the front door just as another nurse stepped outside. The frosty November air whizzed by Brianna as her colleague stopped and waved. “Doctor Grump is in rare form tonight. Watch out.”

Brianna snorted and made her way through the clinic’s reception area. Her best friend, whose husband started the free clinic in their hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, almost a year ago was a veritable Christmas elf.

By the looks of it, her friend bought and hung every decoration known to man. Garland swags draped on every wall in the reception area glistened with specks of glitter under the fluorescent lights. Clumps of shiny bulbs of gold, blue, and red hung from where the chains of fake pine joined one another. The tree in the corner exploded with ornaments and twinkling lights, and looked to be real, but she didn’t have time to investigate or to admire her friend’s decorating prowess.

The volunteer clerk waved her through the security door into a long hallway. Framed Christmas pictures lined the corridors, festooned with big red bows. All the decorations increased her melancholy as the holiday season got under way.
Brianna shook her head. It was over the top, but she’d never hurt her best friend or stifle her joy. Despite her sorrow, she admired her friend’s enthusiasm for a holiday that had lost its appeal for her over a decade ago when she lost her mother a few weeks before Christmas.

A deep sigh went through her as she took off her coat and hung it in the tiny locker adorned with holly branches on the front of the laminated door. Her friend must have decorated every blessed room in the place. She’d begun her countdown to the end of the year and crossed off days until the decorations were gone and she could bury her sadness for another year.

Thankful she had switched with another nurse that night, it released her from the awkward hours at her aunt and uncle’s house and away from their festive season joy. Her aunt loved her in her own way but nothing like her best friend’s mom, who enveloped Brianna in hugs whenever she saw the woman.

“It’s about time you got here. The other nurse anticipated your arrival so she could leave.”

Doctor Grump struck again and shook her out of her melancholy. One point for him.

With an impatient tap of her foot and a glance at her watch, she scrunched her lips. “Good evening to you too. I’m on time, Doctor McNamara. If the nurse wanted me to be here early, she should have texted.”

His deep frown and sourpuss infuriated her. “We have a set of howling twins in room six and a man with a nasty cut in room seven. Can you keep the kids quiet for ten minutes while I get the guy stitched up? I can’t concentrate with their shrieking.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” she called out as he turned his back and made his way along the corridor to the last room on the right.

He raised his hand in acknowledgment but didn’t answer or even turn his head as he opened the door and stepped inside. Typical Doctor Grump.

Brianna grabbed a tablet and scrolled through the electronic form. She squinted as she opened exam room six to find a harried mother and two toddlers who were about three years old. Fat tears fell in waves on one of the little girls’ cheeks. Her braids bounced as she bawled. Both girls had cherub-like faces, but the screeches of the crying child deafened her. The unhurt child hugged her, and she screamed even more.

She sat on the doctor’s roll around stool. “What seems to be the problem?”
“I think she broke her arm,” the mother said. “I just got off work when it happened, so I brought her here.”

Exhaustion etched the poor woman’s features. She could have done without a child yelling at the top of her lungs while the other child ran in circles and then squeezed the tearful tot.

“What are their names?”

The mother pointed to the crying child first, then the other. “Rashida and Vella.”

“Why don’t you hold Rashida so her sister doesn’t do more damage to it? Don’t let her move it around. It may be why she’s screaming.”
When the mother had the child in her arms, she still cried, but it wasn’t the pain-filled caterwauling that broke the clinic’s peacefulness before Brianna entered the room.

She knelt on the floor near the other child. “Hi. My name is Brianna. Do you know Rudolph’s song?”

Her dark eyes widened, and she nodded with a charming smile.

“How about we sing it until the doctor comes in?”

As they sang the song, Rashida joined in amidst her sniffles and hiccups and sang through her sniffles.

Brianna and the children had just started the fifth round when Doctor McNamara stepped into the room. “Enough with Rudolph.”

His voice boomed, and the mother flinched. Brianna got up off the floor and stood against the wall while the injured child let out a scream. “Her mother thinks Rashida broke her arm.”

Doctor Grump sat on the stool but didn’t smile and keyed something into the tablet she had left on the counter. He had frightened the tiny tykes and alarmed the mother. His poor bedside manner hadn’t eased in the year she’d worked with him.

His gaze never left the device. “What happened?”

“I think she might have fallen down the stairs,” the mother said.
Liam’s head snapped, and a furrow creased his forehead..

The mother’s eyes shifted, and she held the child closer to her chest as if she were afraid the doctor would take away her children.

“Why don’t we get an Xray and see what we have?”
His face remained expressionless, and her fingers itched to slap him silly.
Brianna stepped over to the child in her mother’s lap. “Will you let me hold you so we can fix your arm?”

The child nodded and reached for her, then let out a bloodcurdling scream.
She immobilized the arm, placed the child on her hip, and turned to the mother.

“Stay here. We’ll be back soon.”

Doctor Grump grimaced as the child screamed in agony and led the way to the Xray room. “Put on a vest. I don’t think she’ll stay still without you right there.”

“Right.”

After the Xray, Liam stared at the film while Brianna soothed and cradled the child. “Definitely broken.”

“She’ll need a cast and some pain meds,” she mumbled.

Liam tilted his head at the child, but never cracked a smile. “Can you tell me how you hurt your arm?”

Despite his atrocious patient care, his words were so soft, Brianna could scarcely believe he could summon an ounce of compassion, but he had an ulterior motive. He wanted to find out if the child had been abused.

The child looked away. “My sista said it would be fun to jump off the table and fly like superman. I went first and hurt my arm.”

“Who took care of you?” Doctor Grump prodded.

“My uncle.”

“Where was he?”

“Playing video games.”

At his look, Brianna shook her head. She smiled at the tiny tot. “We’ll put a pretty pink cast on your arm so it won’t hurt. Would you like that?”

The child’s eyes lit, and she nodded.

Liam blinked. “I’ll go tell the mother. Get her prepped for the cast.”

“On it.”

Once the cast was in place, Brianna gave the tots Christmas suckers and handed the mother instructions and a prescription for pain to be given as needed. Rashida waved her pink arm as her mother held both children with the sweet treats stuck firmly in their tiny mouths, then they left.

Brianna stepped into the corridor and glared at Doctor Grump. “I hope you don’t plan to report Rashida’s mother to child services. She’s exhausted and doing the best she can.”

“You must really think I’m an ogre.” His calmness rankled. “It was an accident. Kids do crazy stuff all the time. And no, I won’t report her,” he said as he walked away.

“Good.”

He turned and narrowed his gaze. “Stop singing to the patients.”

She stomped over to him and got within inches of his personal space. She’d had enough of his awful attitude. “You wanted them to stop screaming so you could stitch up the other patient. I did what you told me to do and got them to stop.
Deal with it.”

“Right. No more singing tonight.”

She huffed and stalked out to reception to call the next patient.

Neither of them referred to her musicality for the rest of their shift. The steady stream of patients flooded in until the clinic closed and left little time to even take a sip of water between patients. They needed another doctor and nurse for holiday shifts. She’d be exhausted when she got home but, it was an oasis of sorts and gave her an excuse to leave her relatives’ presence and allowed her to hide her hurting heart.

When the clinic closed and the clerk left, Brianna hummed with the strains of What Child Is This as she prepped the exam rooms for the next day. She sniffed. They all smelled like peppermint, and she shook her head. Her friend had gone too far.

With the unseasonably frigid temperatures and the Christmas season upon them, an influx of patients would overrun the clinic with colds, fevers, and the miscellaneous cut or broken bone.

When she finished her closing tasks, she readied herself to tackle Doctor Grump about what had been on her mind since she kicked his tire earlier that evening.
She stalked into the doctor’s office and glared at Liam with hands on her hips. “I want to know why every time I volunteer for a shift here you seem to be on too. Your roommate was scheduled.”

Liam looked up with what appeared to be sheepishness, but he was quick to mask it. “He had a family emergency, and I stepped in to cover.”

She moved closer to the desk. “It doesn’t explain all the other times it has happened. Isn’t it enough I have to listen to your grumpiness at the hospital? I have to put up with it here too?”

He rotated his neck and continued to work without a glance in her direction. “Get over yourself, Nurse Malone. Emily sets the schedule every quarter. You should check it once in a while to see who else is on when you are.”

He used her formal title every time he wanted to make a point, and it galled her since they’d worked together for almost a year now. She could have sworn his cheeks took on a tinge of red, but maybe it was the reflection of all the darn Christmas decorations. What was his problem?

She gritted her teeth and turned away. “I’m leaving.”

At reception, she flipped the switch to cancel the lively sounds of Mannheim Steamroller’s Faeries. She grabbed her coat and bag and slammed the door on her way out.

As she made her way across the parking lot, she noticed it was darker than usual, and when she got closer to her car, the crunch under her unisex sneakers caused her to look down, then raise her head just in time to see a guy dressed in black with a ski mask race toward her.

She dropped her backpack and struggled against his burly body. The smell of alcohol and something else wafted around them. She kicked, shouted, and landed crazy punches to the gut. Where had her self-defense training gone? A kick missed the mark as she grappled with a guy who was twice her size.
“You won’t hurt anyone else at this miserable clinic. You hear me?” the man grunted as he pulled away from her and swung his fist in her direction.

Quick heavy footsteps sounded on the pavement and her screams filled the air before the wild blow to her jaw knocked her flat.
 

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