Until, inevitably, he stepped out of the patient room beside the one she had just exited.
Lynnette came up short, the vase of flowers that particular patient had asked be removed clutched in her hands.
Doctor Gavin Bishop arched both thick, still brown brows up his forehead as he raked his eyes over her. “Nurse Garver,” he said. “This is quite the surprise. What brings you to my side of the dividing line?”
The sound of his voice made her skin crawl, but Lynnette kept her expression calm. “Irene. She has a hard time with being toldhow to run her nurses, it seems.Pleasedo take it up with her.” She took a step to the side, moving out of his path. “If you’ll excuse me.”
His lips twitched in a flash of a smirk. “Your boyfriend pick some weeds from his mama’s yard and bring them to you?”
Lynnette clenched her hand tighter around the plastic vase. “Mrs. Alvers asked me to get rid of these.” She held his stare. “As a courtesy, since it seems I’ll be here for a few days, I’ll remind you that my personal life is none of your business,doctor.” She pivoted on her heel and strode down the hall, moving swiftly out of his reach.
Her heart raced. How the hell was she supposed to put up with that scumbag for a week, possibly a week and a half, when he clearly gave no shits about the agreement she distinctly remembered striking with the chief medical officer?
She found an organic waste bin for the flowers, a recycling for the plastic, and finally trudged toward the break room. Her hours were going to be shit for the day and they didn’t look much better for Tuesday. She needed to try and actually take her breaks when she could, maybe even eat.
She recognized most of the faces in the break room but couldn’t place more than half the names. Maybe she really wasn’t the only one who stuck to a specific area. That was somehow both comforting and not, because it meant she was on her own for a bit.
There are worse things.
Some cool water and one of the simple sandwiches provided by the cafeteria were enough to rejuvenate her. Not ideal, perhaps, but enough.
“Hey, did you hear?” someone whispered at the table next to hers while she was gulping down the rest of her water.
“Hear what?” the male nurse presumably being spoken to asked, not quietly.
“There’s aMarinedown in the ER,” the female said with a scandalized giggle. “I heard they wheeled him in a few minutes ago. My friend Rhonda’s on intake down there, she said his leg’s real messed up. Looks like it went through a human paper shredder.”
“Holy shit,” the guy said.
“A Marine,” someone else interrupted, walking past Lynnette to lean into the conversation. “Like, a real soldier type of Marine?”
Lynnette rolled her eyes and finally pushed to her feet.Because no one in the armed forces ever gets hurt.
“Yeah!” the first woman replied, not even pretending to whisper anymore. “That’s what I was told. And he had a hot friend with him with a GSW, too.”
The male nurse whistled. “Be still my heart. Is the hot friend still downstairs? I might’ve left something in my car.”
Both women laughed.
Lynnette dropped her foodstuffs in the appropriate trash bins and rounded toward them, too irritated to play dumb. Apparently, she wouldn’t be making friends on the east side. “So, there’s a guy downstairs who might be losing his leg, after risking his life for this country, and you’re up here giggling and gossiping about him like school girls?” She paused until they all turned to her with wide eyes, as if they were shocked they’d been overheard. “For his sake I really hope he gets sent to an open bed on the other side, because obviously none of you will know how to compose yourselves if you have to help him learn to walk on one leg. Or get to the bathroom.”
Offense began to show on at least two of the faces, while the third turned in a shameful direction.
Lynnette tacked on one final tidbit, because her father would never forgive her otherwise. “And soldiers are Army. Marines are Marines. It’s not that hard, and they do take it seriously, sobe respectful.” She stalked from the breakroom before the red-faced gossip-starter could open her mouth to retort.
So far, the only person she liked on the east side was Amy, the pink-sparkly-nailed desk nurse.
Chapter two
Intervention
HMLG?
Lynnette smiled at thefamiliar, ridiculous text and set down the blanket she’d just been refolding. The patient room around her was empty, being readied for its next occupant, and she’d been asked to slip in and make sure all the necessities were in place. Which they were not, but it was an easy enough job.
And it gave her a moment to linger.
Several years earlier, her father had first sent a string of letters in a text message that baffled her. He’d insisted that was ‘the thing’ and he was just ‘keeping up’. Ultimately, they’d had a good laugh about it, and she’d mostly gotten him to re-embrace standard English. But, for whatever reason, once a week he still sent this one faux-coded text. Always the same four letters H-M-L-G. His way of checking in on her and trying to keep it light, she suspected.
