A short story romance a couple days late for Halloween…hope you enjoy it!
“Costume optional”
Marina chuckled, reading the last line in italic print on the invitation to the retirement party on Halloween. Would anyone in the department even need a costume? Every day was some version of Halloween in the Department of Neurological Surgery. Every day she put on her research scientist costume, a lab coat, safety glasses, gloves, and a biohazard suit. And every day her clinical counterparts donned their own version of a costume, rainbow colors of surgical scrubs and masks.
So she roamed the halls of university hospital like a young starlet on a Hollywood set for a medical show. Only hers was real, with antiseptic fumes snapping her out of her sleep in the mornings and with life-threatening trauma in the brains to witness on close circuit TV in the OR. The last thing on her mind was romance.
Except when it came to the new attending neurosurgeon.
She didn’t have much to go on. His mask and cap hid his face and hair, and OR green covered the rest. Only the few centimeters between the mask and the cap gave her a hint of what was underneath, eyes rimmed with dark thick lashes long enough to brush up against his safety glasses.
And there was his accent. An Australian accent. His deep voice, twisting regular English words into long form prose, filled the surgical suite, knowledgeable and commanding, like a famous news anchor, or Thor from the movies, never breaking into a panic. Just the word “water” she wanted to record and put on repeat to get her through the day.
The administrative staff had composed the invitation, daring the overworked physicians and scientists of the department to prove they were still human. Marina took up the challenge. Were they serious? She didn’t know, but she had only something to gain, even if she was the only adult wearing a costume in the middle of the day. Creepy Halloween costumes, especially creepy clowns, not for her. Or any form of horror. She didn’t want to carry a knife, even a fake one. No, sarcasm and humor made for the best Halloween costumes. Like the kid who came to the door as a grocery list. Or an aluminum foil Viking costume at a Norwegian party.
The molecular biologist picked up a 4 inch x 4 inch piece of gauze, drew a large red dot with a marker on it, and taped it to her forehead. Voilà, a head wound for a neurosurgery department Halloween party.
Marina took the stairs up to the celebration held in the top floor meeting space, double its usual size after opening the folding wall in the center of the room. The unhindered view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the top of the building was still worth climbing the stairs for, even after living in San Francisco for several years. A cursory look around the room registered the paper pumpkins decorating the tables and a few black bats and witches on brooms hanging from the ceiling. And the dim sum. The revenue-rich department had the party catered by an off-campus restaurant, an Asian eatery in San Francisco known for the best dim sum in the city. Bagels and cream cheese, or Happy Donuts, was the most she could expect at the events put on by the research departments in the university.
Her advance across the room to the dim sum was interrupted when one of the older attending neuro-oncologists she knew well, stopped her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, and asked, “Marina, what did you do to your head?”
She looked at him, “For real, Dr. Sun? Take a closer look.”
So many years of training. Yet she had fooled even Dr. Sun.
“Oh gosh, I just saw the gauze. Like Headwound Harry on SNL?” he said. “On the positive side, I’m glad it’s just a costume. So Marina, how is your work going?
“I’m doing OK. We’re getting close to submitting a paper.”
“Good job. I’m happy to take a look before you submit if you need another pair of eyes.”
“Thank you Dr. Sun. I appreciate that.”
Dr. Sun was one of the few physicians who reached out to her to collaborate on her molecular studies. Working with clinical people was a dance. Marina knew the game, and was OK with it, except for the people who made it difficult for her to do her job, but showed up when it was time to decide co-authorship. The truth was patient tissue samples and clinical data were essential to her experiments. She couldn’t perform her studies without the work of her clinical counterparts.
Marina restarted her mission to reach the table filled with the dim sum and loaded up her plate with her favorite, mango shrimp fritters. When she turned around, another attending, one who never spoke to her, stopped her, and asked, “What happened?”
Her plate tipped, and one of the fritters dropped.
“It’s Halloween!”
“Clever. I like it,” he said.
Twice she had been stopped in the first ten minutes because of a 4-inch square of gauze she had almost forgotten was taped to her forehead.
“I mean, how can people be fooled? I had no idea it would work this well. The spot is red red,” she said to her lab mates who showed up as her lab mates. “Not blood red.”
“It’s just subtle enough to make it appear real.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” another said. “You’re gonna love this.”
The Australian attending appeared in the doorway, his brown, muscular arms exposed. His shiny black hair curled out from under his surgical cap embellished with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and a mask dangled below his chin around his neck. The top half of his scrubs were tied into the long-legged pants, revealing the fine cut of his upper body. Unlike the chairman whose belly stretched his XXL scrubs to their ripping point, the consequence of a former football player who forgot to stop eating like a 20-year old professional athlete. Marina took a bite of one of the shrimp fritters and then stuffed the rest of it into her mouth when she realized he was heading across the room towards her.
He leaned down and smiled, revealing a pair of vampire fangs.
“What happened to you?” he said, lifting her chin with two long slender fingers, fingernails clipped and immaculate, moving her bangs to the side with the other hand to inspect the bloodied gauze on her head. Like he was trained to do. “They’re fake by the way. If you were wondering.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” she blurted out. “A knife fight in the Tenderloin a few hours ago. I had to go to the ER where they cleaned up the wound and put a band aid over it.”
Marina held her breath to keep from laughing, her nervous laugh to fill in what she didn’t know to say, with his deep brown eyes and soft brown skin so close. That one rogue hair that grew right between her eyes, did she pluck it this morning? Whose idea was it to be out and proud and make-up free? On second thought, the simple gauze without a scary Halloween face had been an error. Some lipstick, she thought to herself, I could have at least put on some lipstick before I came to this party.
“Ha, I recognize your voice. You’re the one who comes into my OR always wearing the scrubs cap with flamingos on it. Marina, right? Marina Bianco? To collect the samples for the tissue bank?”
“Uh, yes. You noticed me? Um, I mean, you know who I am?”
“Of course. It’s my OR. I know everything that happens in there. Do you think I would let just anyone in there?”
“So you haven’t found a reason to bar me from it yet?”
“You’re definitely on the “in” team now.” He stepped back and crossed his arms. “Well, I guess you tricked me, Dr. Bianco?”
“I suppose. No treats for me. This has to be the best costume I’ve ever made. It took me all of two minutes and cost me nothing to make. I put it together in the lab before I came to the party. I mean I drew a red circle on a piece of gauze!”
“Ouch! Don’t say it so loudly. Don’t advertise my fail. Patients might wonder what kind of place we’re running here.”
“You’re not alone. Two other attendings beat you to, ah, a misdiagnosis.”
“You just blew my confidence today right before my last surgery of the day. I gotta go, but good to know you are OK. I have your number, right? To check back on that wound.”
He winked and grinned once more before removing his fangs, and exited the room.
“His accent,” Marina said after he left.
“His accent? Sheesh. What about the rest?” another woman from her lab said. “What a waste of time looking for love online. When all it takes is a fake head wound to get a guy’s attention? Who knew.”
“Yeah, forget the mini-skirt. Go out and buy yourself a box of gauze and tape.”
Books…
Norwegian Lessons in Indonesia (2023)
An Accidental Artist: Discovering Creativity through Scuba Diving (2018)
Art for sale at AnemoneWatch on Square
Janice Nigro 
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