“Stay out of my ward in the future,” Bishop tossed over his shoulder as he rushed out the door.
Lance curled his lip. “Be fuckin’ glad to.”Not that it’ll be yours much longer, Gav.
Chapter twelve
Clocking Out
Lynnette knew in hergut that being summoned back to the nurse manager’s office barely halfway through her scheduled shift could only mean her day was about to get worse. Somehow. She paused outside the closed door, drew a deep, steadying breath, and tapped.
“Enter,” Gayle called immediately.
Lynnette held tightly to the stupid clipboard with her other hand and let herself into the room. She maneuvered with practiced ease out of the door’s swing so that she could swiftly close it again, her mouth opening to offer a greeting before she noticed Claire sitting in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Her entire body stiffened and the words she’d intended died on her tongue.
Claire offered her a cold smile.
“Step closer, Garver,” Gayle said without rising from her desk. “I don’t feel like shouting across the room.”
I don’t particularly feel like standing within arm’s reach of a woman who’s decided to make an enemy of me.But she couldn’t say that. More than likely, Claire was playing another bullshit game. Lynnette would have to be calculated with her pushback. So, she strode forward. When she was facing Gayle more directly, able to meet the older woman’s eyes from over the top of her desk items, she came to a stop. Not quite centered enough to be able to drop into the open chair. “What did you need from me?” She spoke the words directly to Gayle, not looking at Claire or in any other way acknowledging her.
Just as Claire had demanded.
Gayle held out her hand. “Clipboard.”
Alarms ringing in her head, Lynnette passed over the clipboard. It wasn’t like it was hers to keep, anyway.
Gayle set it down without looking it over. “It’s come to my attention that one of our patients threw you out of his room today.”
Nerves twisted Lynnette’s stomach, but she didn’t flinch or allow herself to avert her eyes. “He did,” she confirmed. It wasn’t a secret. “I reported it to the nursing desk as soon as it happened, so the note could get into his file more quickly. But it’s also documented there.” She dipped her head to indicate the stack of ignored papers.
Gayle’s expression didn’t crack. “And do you know why he did that?”
Lynnette gave a small shake of her head. “No, ma’am. It caught me completely by surprise.”
Claire scoffed roughly. “Sorry, excuse me,” she said, a smile in her voice, when Gayle cut her a look.
She shouldn’t be here for this conversation.Still, Lynnette held her tongue. Accurate though the fact was, it wasn’t an argument she gave enough of a crap about to make more waves over.
“Hm.” Gayle leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowed up at Lynnette behind her glasses. “Do you have anything else to add to that?”
Lynnette hesitated. “Anything else?” Again, she shook her head. “Other than my concerns about his mental state, which are documented, there’s nothing elsetoadd. That’s all that happened.”
“So, you’re telling me that a patient we’ve had in our care nearly two weeks, without incident, suddenly went senile and threw you out of his room as if you were some sort of … how would you describe it? Threat? Did he seem as if he felt threatened?”
Chest tightening with anxiety, Lynnette replied, “That could be a word for it, yes. He recoiled from the sight of me and insisted I leave, insisted he would comply with another nurse but not me, and declared if I did not leave, he would press his call button and scream for security.” All of which she’d noted, but Gayle hadn’t bothered to look. “He was definitely frightened, for some unfathomable reason.”
Gayle tapped one trimmed nail against her arm. “Thank you for answering my questions, Garver.” She paused, her tone and expression as inviting as a shell of armor. “Unfortunately, we have a very different story from the patient.”
Lynnette’s brows flew up her forehead.
“Claire herself took the complaint,” Gayle continued, motioning to the woman who had no business in their conversation. “We have an elderly patient, too frail to leave his hospital bed, specifically accusing you, Nurse Garver, of making inappropriate advances toward him and violating other patients’ privacies by gossiping to him in what he believed was an attempt to wear him down.”
Horror washed over Lynnette as Gayle’s words assaulted her ears. No such thing had ever happened. It was appallingly ironicthat such an accusation was coming from the man who couldn’t keep his dick covered—which all the nurses on the floor were aware of—but suddenlyshehad made inappropriate advances?
Gayle’s glare sharpened to a razor-fine point. “He even said you put hands on him, over his gown, and offered to ‘relieve him’.”
Lynnette would have gagged at the mere suggestion if she weren’t too busy struggling to breathe beneath the weight of the unprovable lie. The notion, the mere suggestion, horrified her. It infuriated her that anyone would even entertain the thought that those words were true.
She’d never done anything to offend the man so terribly as to prompt him to destroy her in such a way.
