We got to the room and stopped in the door.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
I shrugged. “It was nothing.”
He caught my arm, and I stopped my forward momentum. “It’s not ever nothing. So thank you.”
I nodded once, throat thick.
“This happen a lot?” he asked as he leaned his shoulder against the wall right outside the patient’s room.
“You mean, where they talk about you like you’re a piece of meat in front of me?” I asked. “Yes. They ‘just don’t understand’ how I could ‘leave you when you’re so perfect.’”
His lips twitched, but I could see the sadness in his eyes when he said, “I mean, I am perfect.”
I shook my head. “I hate it here. I’m glad that I’m done in three weeks.”
My complete disgust with this job must’ve shown on my face because he looked worried all of a sudden.
I waved it off. “I’m not leaving Bear Pass. I am, however, getting the hell out of this hospital. There’s a freakin’ reason why they’re always short-staffed when it comes to nurses, and four of those women right there are why.”
He squeezed my shoulder and I looked at him with what I was sure was a surprised look on my face.
He hadn’t touched me since the day he’d saved me from Mario’s brutality.
“What?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
Pushing off the wall, I slid the patient’s privacy curtain to the side.
It was the magic action that had the man in the room leaping off the bed.
He didn’t get far, because he was restrained to the bed with arm and leg restraints.
Which meant, as he launched himself off the bed, the restraints caught him, and he was dangling over the side by both arms and legs in a really awkward hold.
I groaned. “I hate the ER. They always give me the worst patients that they don’t want to deal with.”
I did, too.
When he was done, he turned and looked at me before saying, “Hey, you know there’s another doctor in town. Maybe you can go work with him?”
I tapped at my lip with one blunt fingernail. “That might be too boring.” I thought about it. “And not the kind of pay that I’m used to. I am pretty materialistic.”
He snorted, eyeing my makeup-free face, my slicked-back ponytail, my natural nails, normal-sized eyelashes and my white Crocs.
I was probably the least high-maintenance woman he’d ever met.
“Okay, so maybe I’m not materialistic, but I am having to purchase special dog food once a week because Neo has to have a shiny coat.”
He chuckled. “That makes more sense.” He eyed me from beside the patient. “Maybe I should’ve offered child support, since I brought him into your world.”
My eyes rolled at his words. “I can handle buying food for my dog.”
“I don’t want to go to the fuckin’ jail! They’ll probe me there!”
I scratched at my head with one fingernail. “It was mentioned he thinks he was abducted by aliens, right?”
