Claire sucked in a breath, turned from the room so noone could see the color mount on her face. “I didn’t knowshe wasn’t going to show up until seven-thirty—when shedidn’t show up.”
“That isn’t my problem,” the administrator snapped. “Ihave twenty-nine divisions to take care of. You know what kind of chaos there would be if we didn’t follow some basicrules here. And you know the rules as well as anyone,Claire.”
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She held her breath againstthe sudden, blinding fury that had just exploded in her.Keep calm, she commanded herself. You can’t do any goodif you don’t keep calm. Even so, she heard the tremble in hervoice when she answered.
“But I know that surgical isn’t full. It’s just a tech, Marianne, not a neurosurgeon.”
“Claire, if you want to hold a supervisory position,you’re just going to have to handle these problems better.”
And then, without warning or goodbye, the supervisorhung up, and Claire was left holding the phone and listening to the maddening buzz of failure.
She shook. She backed against the wall so nobody wouldsee her. She let go with a stream of obscenities no one inCenter Memorial had ever heard from her, repeated, vile,foul. Spit them out like a terrible litany, aimed them at thebrainless, spineless squid-for-guts supervisor. At all thebrainless, spineless, squid-for-guts supervisors who had evermade stupid decisions that jeopardized patients’ lives.
Claire couldn’t hold still. She couldn’t breathe past thesudden, stunning rage. A rage that swamped her so that she couldn’t think past the four-letter words that poured out hermouth without stop.
“Claire?”
It was Nadine. Claire heard the hesitant worry in her voiceand struggled to regain control. It took her too long, andthat scared her more than the unreasoning rage itself.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Claire almost couldn’t stop cursing, her voice low and harsh and furious. She did, though. She opened her eyes,hung up the phone. Did her best to face her friend, when allshe wanted to do was wrap her hands around Marianne Parkinson’s throat.
It scared her. She hadn’t done this in so long.
She deliberately turned to the other nurse, whose eyeswere blank with shock at Claire’s vocabulary.
“Do me a favor,” Claire asked, struggling hard to keepher voice neutral even as the rage built up like thick steamin her chest. “Have Theresa stay overtime just a little whilelonger. I’ll okay it. I have to go beg a tech from surgical. Ihave to, uh, I have to...”
She had to get out of there. She had to find fresh air andsunshine and space.
Nadine didn’t understand, but she cared. She patted Claire carefully on the shoulder and shooed her out thedoor. “You go right ahead, honey. We’ll be okay.”
Claire wanted to thank her. She wanted to drop her headon her friend’s shoulder and sob and scream. She simplynodded and walked stiff legged and silent from the unit. Sheignored greetings from co-workers as she walked throughthe hallways and rode the elevator. By the time she reachedthe lobby of the impressive white six-story hospital with its flourishing planters of chrysanthemums and dieffenbachia and the walls with signs about caring and commitment, she was almost running.
The sun was out. Claire could see it through the high glassdoors. She could almost feel it on her face. She hurriedthrough the doors and just came to a sick halt because shesimply couldn’t go any farther.
Her heart was galloping so hard, it hurt. Her palms weresweating. She had a wad of anxiety stuck right behind hersternum where it hurt like ground glass, and she couldn’t getrid of it.
She was so afraid. So very frightened that she’d simplysplinter apart right here at work where she couldn’t hide.She was afraid to talk to anyone and afraid to go home tothe silence, and she was afraid to stand there in the cornerwhere she prayed nobody could see her.
Damn him. Damn Tony Riordan with his strong jaw andfather’s hands and ancient eyes for doing this to her.
For just a moment, Claire had been attracted to him. She’d turned from laughing with Jess to find a man gathering himself to his feet at her table with all the comfort ofa bear at a picnic. A big man, all shoulders and chest andjaw line, the wild thick brown of his hair tamed just a littleby the gray. She’d seen those eyes, so pale it seemed as ifthey hadn’t been real in his ruddy, well-used face. She remembered that she’d reached down to iron her skirt with herpalms, the instinctive gesture of a girl greeting a gentleman caller, her first reaction to his tentative smile the hope that he wasn’t really there for tea after all.
Well, he wasn’t. Somehow, in that moment when he announced he’d come to thank her, he’d betrayed her. He’dbreached her refuge with his heartfelt thanks and assailedher with barely suppressed memories.
And yet, as she stood with her back to the hospital wallpraying to get through to the end of the day, she found herself wanting to call Tony. To talk to him. To salve herselfwith the gentle green of his eyes.
She wanted to hide in his arms and let him tell her she wasall right.
And that was stupid.
She’d gotten through before without him. She could certainly do it again. So it had been getting harder to do lately.It wasn’t any surprise with the way things were going. Shehad a lot of stress. A business still struggling to take wing.Children who were attacking their teens like dedicated warriors. A world around her that seemed intent on self-destruction, whether she watched it on the news or not.
She could manage if she could just get through the nighttonight, even if tonight Tony Riordan wouldn’t be there withhis sudden laugh and his harmless anecdotes.
He wouldn’t be there with his old eyes, either.
