It was a weird feeling, setting foot in the hospital for a different reason than working. This time, I was on a mission: finding a way to reach out to Michael Jackson.
We took the elevator to go to the third floor where the Pediatric Service was, and once there, the look on the nurses' faces reminded me that I shouldn't be here. Indeed, when you leave a five days coma, people don't expect you to be on walking freely on your two feet the next day.
"Act a bit more sick," Al advised in a whisper, as she was walking next to me. "And walk slower."
"This feels so wrong," I hissed, a this was all a part of our plan. "Do we really have to do this?"
"You want to find him or not?" Al asked back, but I didn't have time to answer, as Carl was approaching the both of us.
"Hayley! What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay home for a week!" he exclaimed, as he stopped just in front of the both of us. He looked at me from head to toes, and started to stare like I was some kind of alien.
"I'm going to find Baker," Al whispered next to me.
She didn't even look at Carl, and just acted like he wasn't here. To be honest, this was the wisest thing she had to do. Knowing Al, she would have beat his ass if he tried to talk to her, and my boss knew it. However, if she did or said something inappropriate to him, Alice knew she could get some trouble, and she loved her job too much to ruin everything because of him.
"Always a pleasure, Ms. Garner," he rolled his eyes, after he watched her leave the hallway where we were standing.
"It's best this way," I assured him, and he simply nodded his head.
"And what is wrong with you?" he asked in a harsh tone.
"Uh, excuse me?"
"You left against medical advice after you've been through a five days coma? Are you sure you're a doctor?" he asked, and I cool feel the anger in his voice.
"I felt fine, and I am fine. As you said, I'm a doctor, I know what I'm doing," I retorted in that same harsh tone he used.
"Come with me," he commanded, walking passed me to an examination room. I rolled my eyes and followed behind him in the room in question, and he closed the door behind the both of us. "Sit here."
"What do you think you're about to do?"
"I'm doing my job. Don't ask questions, and sit there while I examine you," he commanded again, and I sat on the hospital bed. "Any vomitting? Head spinning? Nausea?" he asked, as he put his stethoscope over my heart.
"Nope."
"Any trouble with your speech ability? Any signs of cerebral palsy?" he continued questioning me, and asked me to follow his little flashlight with my eyes.
"No, I told you, I'm fine! I just came to check on the kids," I half-lied.
It was true that I wanted to check on them before being on a break for an entire week. I knew Tom, the little one who had a craniotomy, was leaving soon, and there was no way in hell I wouldn't see him before he is discharged from the hospital.
"How can you be fine? I—I don't understand. It's not common," he said, confused, as he sat in front of me on a little wheeled stool.
"I'm lucky, I guess," I shrugged, getting uncomfortable. "Did the kids ask about me?"
"Yeah, they'll be happy to see you," he said with a certain evasiveness. "How about your reflexes? Are they intact?"
"They are. Look, Carl, I'm fine, okay?" I told him the nicest way possible. "I guess I was just a die-hard fan of Michael Jackson but I didn't know it until I saw him and fainted like a fangirl would."
"How can you be so relaxed and joke about this? I thought you'd never wake up, and we still don't know what happened to you."
"But I did wake up, and I am okay," I repeated for what seemed like the thousandth times. "Really, I don't know what happened. Maybe Michael Jackson shook my hand too tightly."
"Girl, come on," he said, and I could see he was trying not to laugh. "Can't you be serious? We're talking about some real shit here. You could have stayed in that coma for more than five days, and we wouldn't have been able to know what was wrong with you."
"You worry too much. The worrying kind doesn't really suit you. I prefer the bold and heartless bitch in you," I smirked, and he shook his head at my behavior. "I'm joking, come on! I've always been like this with you, calling you names and stuff."
"But I thought you'd change, now we were somehow friends," he shrugged, and I could have sworn I heard sincerity in his voice.
"The difference now is that I'm joking, okay? Take a chill pill," I rolled my eyes, and got off of the hospital bed.
He snorted, and shook his head a little before looking at me with a skeptical expression on his face, "it's like nothing happened. I'm really gonna believe you just fangirled over the guy, and that was it."
"Told you," I shrugged, walking around the room. "Didn't you freak out when you got to shake Michael's hand?"
"Michael, huh? Now you call him by his first name?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
"Most people call him that, shut up," I said, but mentally slapped myself for calling him by his first name.
"I don't see why people love him so much, though. He's just a guy," he shrugged, crossing his arms on his chest. "He's super talented, but he stays just a guy."
"He's much more than that," I rectified, but again, the words came out of my mouth without my approval. "I—I mean, for a lot of people, he's more than that."
"He's just a weird guy, then?" Carl said, and chuckled at his own words. "I talked to him, and he speaks like a child."
"He's not weird," I said in a cold tone.
I wanted to punch myself in the face for being like this. It's like I couldn't control my emotions when someone was saying mean things about him. It hurt me, but at the same time, it got me mad, like I wanted to protect and defend him.
"The guy sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber, and you don't find this weird? As a doctor, you should know—"
"You're so naive," I shook my head. "As a doctor, I know that it's bad to judge people as you do," I cut him off, and I could see by his demeanor that I took him off guard.
"Why are you so bitter today? It's like you don't want me to worry about you!"
"No, I'm bitter because you're just an ignorant fuck who doesn't know what he's talking about," I harshly said in his face. It's like I was in a kind of trance, for I didn't want the words to come that harsh. "I—I'm sorry," I stuttered immediately, confused by the overwhelming feeling I had in my guts. " I uh, I gotta go."
I got out of the examination room in a kind of hurry, and tired to look for Alice. I looked over my shoulder to see if she was there, but she didn't seem to be around. As I looked in front of me again, I bumped into a cart with medicines on it. I nearly fell along with it, but instead, all of the pills bottles fell on the floor. Natalie, a nurse I worked with, came rushing in the hallway, as I took the pills in my hands to put them back on the metallic cart.
"Dr. Thames, is everything alright?" she asked with concern filling her voice, as she gently helped me up.
"I'm fine," I simply said, as I let go of her and put the pills back on the little cart.
At the second I put a bottle of painkillers in the cart, my head started spinning so much that I had to put my hand on the wall to get some support. I shut my eyes tightly as visions came flooding my mind. I tried to fight them, I tried to keep them away from my head because they were too painful to see, but nothing worked. The flow of animated images started in my head, without me being able to put an end to it.
This time, the visions were painful, for what I saw caused my blood to run cold. I could see pills. I could see Michael taking pills.
"Dr. Thames! Are you alright? Somebody help, please!" Natalie called, which brought me back to reality.
"Fuck," I cursed, and walked away, holding onto the nearest wall.
"Hayley!" I heard Carl's voice called, but I didn't turn around and kept on walking.
With my left hand holding my head and the other one holding the handrail, I stumbled aimlessly across the hallway. A couple of nurses looked at me weirdly, but I couldn't care less at this instant. Flashes kept on invading my mind, causing more and more pain to my head.
When I recognized my surroundings, I turned on the right and found another hallway which was leading to Baker's office. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my breathing quickened as the pain wouldn't stop. I felt like I wanted to jump out of my own skin to get rid of this horrible feeling I had. To get rid of this suffering.
"Brit!" a familiar voice called, but I kept on walking. "Brit, wait! What's going on?" Al asked as she was now next to me, and put my arm around her neck to support me.
"Did you find Baker?" I managed to say, out of breath.
"No, apparently he's in the meeting room or something. You're scaring me, what happened?"
"Stay here, and keep Carl busy," I commanded, and let go of her to enter Baker's office.
"Brit, no! It wasn't part of the plan, you could lose your job if someone finds you in there!" Al hissed, and grabbed my forearm to prevent me from moving any further.
"I need this to stop," I simply said with a trembling voice, and soon enough, her grip on my wrist loosened.
I opened the door of the chief's office, and came in, still stumbling. Carefully, I closed it behind me, and opened the different drawers of his desk. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for. I was just searching. All I found was different pieces of paper concerning budget restrictions or bills, but also the charts of the different doctors and nurses working at the hospital.
I checked every piece of paper, lifted every useless ornament the chief had in his modest office to see if nothing was hidden underneath them, but still I couldn't find anything.
"Fuck it," I hissed, frustrated at that point, as I slammed the drawers shut.
I sat on Baker's large leather chair, and sighed heavily, not knowing where to search anymore.
As I looked at my surroundings, my eyes laid on a agenda, which was open on his desk. In a quick move, I flipped the pages to go back to the date Baker and Carl announced us that Michael was coming to the hospital: January 27th.
And as I hoped it would , this agenda gave me the answers I was expecting.
Among other annotations, one of them caught my attention, and immediately, my eyes widened a bit as I found what I was looking for.
"Call back F. Dileo about Jackson's visit" was written on the paper, followed by a phone number.