Invisible String

Chapter 7: God's Honest Truth

"And the God's honest truth is that
the pain was heaven"

🦷

On the days that followed that dreaded encounter with Robert, Lizzie became more and more distracted. All of the work she spent weeks doing to get him out of her head was suddenly going down the drain as her mind played the most ridiculous and terrible tricks on her. One morning, she thought he was a patient in the waiting room and almost jumped at Will as they were walking in on the ED. Then, Lizzie could've sworn she saw him again, watching the vending machines in the cafeteria. Each time she felt more and more ridiculous.

At first, she thought it wasn't noticeable. That she was doing a good job in pretending nothing was out of the ordinary. But she was constantly spacing out and her hands were shaky most of the days, it was only a matter of time before someone noticed.

The nurses that knew about or witnessed the altercation between the two of them were continually shooting suspicious stares at her. Dr. Montgomery was too nice of a woman to outright point a finger at Lizzie when she was obviously going through something, giving her simpler procedures and more research work instead. Connor had been gracious enough to not press her any further about it, keeping it to watchful glares and an offer to talk if she wanted. Her brothers were avoiding direct questions, with Will often asking little things like Have you eaten today? or Do you need anything? while Jay texted her multiple times a day "just to see what she was doing".

Lizzie was trying. She really was. And so, that day, she was convinced she had gained her balance again. The bruise his fingers left on her wrist were starting to fade. There was no shadow of Robert in the hallways. Her boss was both surprised and happy when Elizabeth asked to take the lead on the procedures they had scheduled that morning.

Until she accidentally sliced the palm of her hand with a scalpel.

"Well, thankfully it was a sterile scalpel." Dr. Montgomery said while holding a bunch of gauze over the cut, blood starting to trickle down to her arm.  "But you may need stitches. Why don't you go down to the ED and get that cut checked out? Fill in an incident report and take the rest of the day off, Elizabeth."

"Oh, I'm fine, Dr. Montgomery. I can keep working on that case report..."

"Get that cut cared for, and go home. I'll see you tomorrow." Her resident's voice was gentle, but firm. "You seem exhausted."

Lizzie guessed that it was her polite way of saying she looked terrible and was scaring the patients. With that, the conversation ended and Lizzie made her way down to the Emergency Department, earning a few weird looks as she walked around with a bleeding hand.

Maggie was the first one to notice her when she walked out of the elevator. "Elizabeth! What happened?"

"I, uh, had an accident with a scalpel." Lizzie explained. "My resident wants me to get it examined."

"Okay, darling. We'll get someone to take a look at it." Maggie looked around for a moment. There were a few trauma patients that just came in, and most residents seemed to be busy. "Hey, Dr. Sexton!"

"Ooh, that looks like a nasty cut." Noah said as soon as he saw the bloodied gauze.

"Yeah, I cut my hand with a scalpel. I'm an idiot." 

"Treatment 4 is open." Maggie pointed for them. Noah redirected her to the treatment room, where she reluctantly climbed onto the bed.

Once Noah put gloves on, he motioned for her to take the gauze out so he could inspect and clean the cut.