Lucy Elkins reached across the small breakfast table for the salt and her inside wrist touched the hot scrambled eggs her roommate Lottie had just set before her. Lucy flushed and pulled her arm back, startled.
Lottie looked up from pouring a glass of milk.
“What? They aren’t that hot are they?”
Lucy massaged her wrist, embarrassed, “No, it’s just- it just reminded me of something, that’s all.”
Lottie looked curious, “Something that happened at work?”
Lucy nodded, “You could say that.”
Lottie settled into her breakfast chair, excited, “You always have such interesting stories to tell these last 3 weeks since you’ve been at the Knickerbocker.”
Lucy looked sad. She was not comfortable with lying. It was Sunday after all. She was preparing to go out this morning to the small Baptist church that she had found in Manhattan, amazingly. It was not the type of preaching she was used to with her charismatic father, but it was good enough to make her feel like she was not betraying her Christian duty to go to church every Sunday.
But how could she possibly tell Lottie that she had fallen in love on Friday?
“Well, the temperature of these eggs is about the same as a man’s penis.”
Lottie dropped her fork and it clanged onto the plate.
“What do you mean?”
Lucy perked up, “You see, I have to handle all sorts of body parts at work – men and women both. It’s a nurse’s duty. I had to inject a man’s penis on Friday. And it was warm, like these eggs.”
“Really?” Lottie looked shocked, “Why did you have to do that?”
Lucy looked pleased with herself. The story was not really a lie after all.
“This patient was very ill and he was shivering all over as he lay in his bed. He was beaded with sweat and he was mostly naked from the waist up. He was having a sort of reaction.”
“Were you alone with him?” Lottie gulped down her eggs, wide-eyed.
“No, there was a doctor with me.”
“Which doctor was that?”
“The one I told you about who snapped at me last week over the dressing I did wrong. Doctor Thackery.”
“That one? The one with the moustache and the dark hair that you’re scared of?”
“I never said I was scared of him, did I?”
“You said he was sort of intimidating.”
“Well, he is in a way.”
Lottie reached for her milk glass, entranced, “Then what happened.”
“Doctor Thackery instructed me to inject this patient in his penis since we could not find any other veins that would work. We tried his arms and even his toes – but no veins were big enough for me to use. You see, the man was close to dying.”
Lucy winced. Okay, that was an exaggeration surely, not a lie.
“Poor man – but why his…” Lottie couldn’t say the word “Why that of all places?”
“Maybe the doctor was testing a little bit to see if I had the stomach for it. You see there is a vein on the penis, on the underside, that’s very visible, but we could have checked the legs or stomach too.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“I think Dr. Thackery was trying to see if I had the courage to do what he asked.”
“So, you held it?” Lottie made a sour face
“Yes, I had to hold it in order to put the needle in, silly.”
Lottie covered her mouth, aghast, “Lucy, that’s so…”
“Nurses do worse things than that, Lottie, “Lucy chided, finally picking up her fork to eat her eggs, but then pausing, “But it surely did have the same temperature as these eggs. There I was, with this man’s sex in my hands- his perfect manhood. And I was the one who saved his life. He needed me.”
Lottie looked at the clock on the wall, her reverie broken, “I just noticed I need to run.”
Lucy glanced over her shoulder at the same clock, “I need to get to church as well. I’ll see you later.”
“I love your stories, Lucy.”
Lucy smiled as Lottie gathered her handbag and scarf and hat and paused by the door, “Have a good time at church.”
“Bye Lottie.”
Silence reigned for a while after Lottie had left and Lucy finally started to eat her eggs. It seemed like Monday could not come soon enough. She felt that Sunday might take forever. Her heart skipped a beat when she thought about what Doctor Thackery might say to her next time they met in the hallway or in the patient wards or in the surgical theater.
Would he think of her differently now? She hoped so for she could not get her mind off him.
“And then the craziest thing happened, “Lucy spoke out loud to herself, “Lucy Elkins fell in love – with a Doctor!”