Chapter 12

Be a nurse they said. It’ll be fun they said. Fuck what they said. Nursing sucks.

-Freya’s secret thoughts

Freya

“This is where you’ll be working for the next few days…hopefully,” the woman showing me the ropes, Iliana, showed me.

I smiled at Iliana.

She was nice, but she had no clue what she was doing.

Like literally.

She was the supervisor for the nursing staff; however, all she really did was schedule the staff and deal with problems that arose.

She wasn’t a nurse. She had no clue what it took to run an ER. She’d never actually been into this half of the building until today, according to her.

“Thanks,” I said softly. “When will everyone else arrive?”

My mind took in the huge area I was currently standing in.

It was eerie how quiet it was.

It looked like, at one time, it was an incredibly busy place, but then the nursing strike had happened, and with no one to run the ER, the place had shut down.

Even the doctors had refused to show up.

Apparently they didn’t want anyone to think that it was okay to treat them like nurses, or whatever their reasoning was.

“There are four that are supposed to be here in less than an hour. Two more nurses are set to arrive later today, and one more tomorrow. We’ll open the doors tomorrow morning, but since you’re here so early, if you don’t mind, will you take stock of what’s here?” Iliana asked hopefully.

I nodded absently.

I’d arrived early because I’d had nothing better to do.

It’d been two weeks since the best hour of my life.

Two weeks since I’d spoken to him.

I’d sent multiple texts and called four times, but all of them had gone unanswered but one.

So, I’d gone about my life and quickly realized that I just wasn’t cut out for it anymore.

I’d changed everything, and it all centered around the one and only text reply I’d received from Ridley.

I pulled out my phone and went to the text message in question.

Freya (10:33 AM): My boss seriously just poured blood all over my clothes on purpose. I swear I’ve cried more in the last few weeks than in the last twenty-eight years combined.

Ridley (9:12 PM): Then do something about it.

So I did something about it.

I paid the houses off with my check from the shooting event, packed up my bags, and took Sharpy with me to a small town right outside of New Orleans.

I’d instantly regretted taking the contract when I’d arrived at the hospital in Slidell.

Not because it wasn’t a nice place, but because the hospital was in chaos.

Apparently, new owners had taken over the hospital, and with the new ownership, they’d changed a lot of jobs around, cut the pay of all the nurses, and had even cut quite a few senior staffing jobs.

Now all of the nurses were on a strike, and it didn’t look like it was going to end anytime soon, regardless of what Iliana hoped.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down at the calendar alert that’d just popped up.

Corey’s birthday!!!!

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Here’s the supply room,” Iliana continued oblivious to the fact that I was dying a little bit inside. “This is the linen room. And here’s one of three drug administration stations.”

I rolled my eyes at her not using the correct lingo.

“That’s a Pyxis,” I said. “Where are the other two?”

She pointed all the way across the hall at the very end near the trauma rooms, and then in the opposite direction.

The three Pyxis Medstations set up made a triangle formation throughout the room, and I nodded.

“Do our badges work yet?” I asked.

On she went, explaining this and that.

By the time I’d arrived back at my temporary apartment, courtesy of the hospital, I was exhausted.

Another nurse, Tillie, had arrived about an hour after I did. Together we’d learned, restocked and had a genuinely good time.

Tomorrow, though, the hospital was reopening, and I already knew it was going to be a long, hard day.

The hospital had been on divert for well over a week, and the community was in chaos without its ER.

The other floors of the hospital had been affected as well, but none anywhere near as bad as the ER had.

I looked at my phone, smiling this time when it alerted me about the party I’d planned for my brother.

I’d canceled it, of course, for obvious reasons.

But the idea of my brother realizing that I’d thrown one was funny, to say the least.

He hated parties.

He hated surprises even more.

And the image of the look on his face had the first genuine smile splitting mine in well over two weeks.

Sighing with exhaustion, I fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

It had brown stains on it.

Grimacing, I rolled to my side and stared out the window.

It overlooked a bayou, and about forty yards away was an alligator sunning himself on a log laying along the opposite bank.

Shivering, I rolled over once more to face the opposite wall.

The mirror on it showed my pitiful state.

I was a mess.

My eyes had bags under them, and I looked terrible.