Page 101 of Fighting For You

I kept moving. I needed to pull meds for the bystander in Bay Two, so I headed for the Pyxis.

Kip was at the workstation tucked behind the column around the corner instead of his usual spot on the main floor.

"Kip."

He flinched. His hand went to the mouse and the screen changed before I finished saying his name. He turned around with an expression I had never seen on his face.

"Hey." He recovered fast. Smiled. The warm, easy smile everyone on this floor trusted. "Crazy day, right?"

"Crazy day," I said.

I looked past him at the screen. He'd minimized whatever he'd been in, but the task bar still showed the chart application open. The patient tab read Burnham, J.

Jen's patient. A patient Kip had no reason to be in.

The monitor alarm went off in Bay Four.

I ran. Lori was already at the bedside. The bystander was flat on the bed, gray, the monitor screaming. Harlan was at the head of the bed.

"Push one of epi. Start compressions."

I locked my hands over her sternum and pressed. One, two, three, four. After enough codes, the rhythm lives in your body. You don't count. You just go.

"Hold compressions. Checking rhythm."

I lifted my hands. A line on the monitor. Then a blip. Then another.

"Sinus. We've got her back."

I peeled off my gloves and went to find Kip.

He was in the break room with a coffee he wasn't drinking. He looked up when I walked in. The smile started, and then he saw my face and it stopped.

I closed the door.

"Burnham, J," I said. "Jen's patient. You were in her chart changing entries in the medication administration record."

"I was double-checking something for Josie."

"Josie's on the phone with LVMPD. She didn't send you to check anything." I sat down across from him. "Why were you in Jen's chart, Kip?"

He looked at his coffee. Then at me. "They're poison, Nora. You know that. You've seen what they do to people on this floor. What they did to you. What they did to Lori. Someone had to do something."

"So you tampered with their charts."

"I made their work look as bad as they actually are."

"And Lori almost lost her job because of it." My voice was steady, but the heat climbed in my chest. "Lori. Not Liz. Not Jen. Lori had a lab result suppressed in a chart that went through your hands, and Sullivan tore into her in front of the entire floor. Josie had to pull audit trails to prove it wasn't her fault."

He already knew. I could see it on his face.

"If they were your targets, there were better ways to handle it. You could have documented what they were doing. You could have gone to Josie. You could have filed a complaint. Instead you compromised patient charts and put everyone around you at risk."

He stared at the table.

"I'm not going to sit here and pretend I like them. I don't. You know I don't." I leaned forward. "But what you've been doing isn't fair, Kip. Not to them, not to Lori, not to the patients whose charts you compromised."

He didn't look up.