Chapter Three
“Do you have rocks for brains?” Patrick snaps, rubbing the ache at his temples.
The other nurse at the station tenses up, but the one he’s talking to just raises a brow.
“Do you have an attorney at the ready to handle the harassment case I’ll slap on you if you keep talking to me like that?” Varun Choudry crosses his arms over the front of his scrubs. “They don’t pay me enough to deal with you.”
“That’s the truth.” And despite Patrick’s best efforts, he hasn’t managed to fix that problem yet. He looks at the computer again, scanning the patient’s chart. “I know you’re not stupid, but you—”
“Careful,” Varun purrs. “That almost sounds like flirting.”
“Ha! As if.”
He’s come to know Varun well since the night the young, handsome nurse hit on him in the bar of the Tallgrass hotel. Luckily, Will likes him too, and once tried to set Varun up with an employee of Good Works, but Varun wasn’t interested.
Varun keeps his brow arched. “Look, I told you. When I came in, five hundred milligrams of Keppra was charted. I can’t give her more if it’s on the chart. And it’s on the chart.”
“But it’s not in her body. This chart is a lie!”
Varun sighs. “Then order more and I’ll give it to her, but I can’t give her more on my own authority if it’s charted that she’s received her dose. You know this.”
“And you know she didn’t receive it.”
Varun scowls at him.
Patrick scowls back. “Fine. Give a STAT one-time dose of oral five hundred milligrams Keppra. And grab some urine beforehand and send it to the labs to test. I want to confirm what I already know. Then you can chart it all.”
“Will do.” Varun bats his pretty eyes. “Enter the order and we’re a go, Dr. McFlirty.”
The brunette ponytailed nurse who’s clacking away on the other computer gasps slightly and turns red. Patrick can just imagine all the ways she’ll misrepresent this interaction with Varun to the hospital administration given half the chance.
Patrick’s one of the only doctors who has the nurses’ backs when salary disputes come up in the boardroom, but they don’t know that. So this one’s probably planning to gab to anyone upstairs who will listen about his supposedly inappropriate behavior with a coworker.
“Oh, can it,” he says to her irritably, holding up his left hand. “I’m a married man. Go be a stick-in-the-mud in room 8-B. She needs her bedpan changed.”
“Yes, Dr. McCloud.” The nurse hustles off, her cheeks still stained red.
“Don’t be a jerk to Lizzy.”
“I’ll be a jerk to whomever I want.”
“Enter the order, Dr. McCloud,” Varun says again, rolling his eyes. “I thought there was no time to waste.”
“I’m a brain surgeon not a babysitter. You enter the order.”
Varun cocks his hip. “As you well know, new hospital policy says you have to enter the order, not me.”
“Fine.” Patrick grumbles under his breath about ridiculous new hospital policies that just waste his time and jerk nurses who’re going to get him written up for sexual harassment, when all he wants to do is saw into someone’s head and fix their brains. “When you’re fired for being a pain in my butt, don’t come whining to me.”
“I’m shaking in my boots.” Varun laughs.
“You should be.”
“Why would you get me fired when you’re always trying to convince me to come aboard full time and give up my travel contract?”
Patrick punches the buttons on the keyboard. “You’ve been here for years. Give up the ruse that you’re still a travel nurse.”
“Not until the hospital gives a livable salary. Once they stop paying their staff nurses less than those on travel contracts, I’ll give it some thought.”
Patrick frowns. He’s still angry he lost that argument in the last board meeting. It makes no sense not to make it worth it to good nurses to come on full time.
It’s not like Healing has anything else to offer them. Crummy weather nine months of the year, almost-decent schooling for their kids, and becoming the subject of vicious, small town gossip are about it. If Healing Regional wants to make a name for itself, if it really wants to become a first class medical facility, then they need to cough up livable full-time salaries plus great benefits.
Varun deserves to get paid enough to make a home here. But maybe he hasn’t found a real reason to stay yet, since he hasn’t found a doctor to marry him. That’s his self-proclaimed goal in life, and Patrick’s made zero headway in getting him to understand that it’s a dumb one.
“What is it about STAT you don’t understand?” he barks, finishing up the order and stepping away from the computer.
Varun smiles warmly at him. “Good job, Dr. McCloud. I’ll get right on that.”
Patrick snorts as Varun leaves. “Hey!” Patrick calls out to him. “Text me the name of the nurse who charted that dose.”
Varun walks backward as he answers, “You talked with her and gave her the order personally, plus her name was on the chart too. I thought you were a genius. Don’t you remember?”
“I don’t bother remembering the names of people who’re going to be fired by the end of the day.” She had blond hair, though. He remembers that.
Varun sighs. “I won’t text it. But I’ll give you a hint. Ruby Lovell.”
“What’s that?”
“Her name, genius.”
Then Varun disappears around the corner, and Patrick sets out toward Don Knife’s office to make a giant stinking fuss about nurses who chart things they don’t actually do.
But before he makes it there, he’s waylaid by the sight of one of only a handful of people he cares enough about to stop and talk to. “Jenny, what are you doing here?”
She’s parked in a chair outside one of the labs. Her wide smile is as blinding as ever, brightening the fluorescent hospital hallway. “Follow-up from that raging UTI I had last month. Now that I’m down a kidney, they want to make sure everything is cleared up.”
He takes the empty seat beside her as a tall nurse squeaks past them both in her rubber-soled shoes. “Where’s Dylan?”
Jenny tightens her glossy, blond ponytail. “At that new Mother’s Day Out program the Methodist church is hosting.” Her blue eyes grow damp. “Can you believe he’s old enough to go to one of those now?”
“Hmmph.” He can believe it actually. Dylan isn’t the sweet, drooling six-month-old he first met anymore. He’s a tyrant of a three-year-old, and Jenny’s got her hands full. He’s still a cute little booger.
“Why so grumpy?” she asks, twisting in her seat and stuffing her phone into her mammoth purse.
“Who says I’m grumpy?”
“C’mon. Tell me.”
“Doctor stuff. Confidential. Yadda.”
Jenny rolls her eyes. “Oh, well, if that’s all it is, go on your way. I’d just gotten to the good part in the ridiculous vampire romance I’m reading.” She fishes her phone back out of her purse and opens the reading app.
Patrick almost asks for the title, he needs a trashy read for his upcoming trip, but he says, “I have to go on a honeymoon. For ten days. Ten.”
“Aha!” Jenny pokes him in the arm and stuffs her phone back in her purse. “I knew you were going to freak out about that sooner or later.”
“How am I supposed to do nothing for ten days?”
“We’ve made a great plan, Patrick. There’s plenty of stuff to do at the resorts. And, if you don’t want to do those things after all, you can read. Nap. Have sex. Walk on the beach. Meditate. Take up smoking weed.” She ticks these off on her fingers.
Patrick huffs. “Patients need me. I can’t go gallivanting—”
“It’s your honeymoon.”
“What was Will thinking to ask me—”
“He’s thinking that he loves you and wants to be alone with you in a romantic location for an extended period of time.” She takes hold of his hand and twines their fingers together. “No patients. No family. No drama.”
No family and no drama. Jenny is selling it hard now, speaking right to his heart.
She smiles. “And there are other good neurosurgeons on staff—”
“Not half as good as me.”
“Maybe not. But you approved their hire so they must be competent enough to care for your patients for ten days.” She squeezes his hand, tilting her head earnestly. “I’ve had a pep talk ready to go for a few weeks now. Do you want to hear it?”
“Why do you think I brought this up?”
“Right. Okay.” She takes a deep breath, smiles at another nurse who trundles past with an empty patient bed, then gives him her “this is serious” face. “Patrick McCloud, you will go on this honeymoon and you will love it. Do you understand me? Will deserves this. He’s been through hell, deals with his crazy family, and, and, and! He’s never been anywhere, despite having more money than God, because he’s never felt allowed to go. Don’t be another person who holds him back. He’s your true love, your sweet, patient puddin’-pop, and he wants this so much. He’s been hinting at it for years before he flat out asked you if you’d be willing. You know it’ll make him happy, right?”
“Yes.”
“And making him happy is your number one goal in life?”
Patrick rubs his nose. “It is.”
She nods. “Exactly. Case closed. You’ll go and have fun. No more panicking.”
“What if something goes wrong while I’m gone?”
“Like with Addison?”
Patrick’s lips tighten. He’s lost other patients since fifteen-year-old Addison died while he was in surgery with another patient, but she still weighs on his mind. Especially lately. Maybe it’s because Caitlin is going to college and it reminds him that Addison should have been on her way too. Or maybe it’s because this is a small town, and every year people put flowers by the tree Addison’s parents planted in her memory. He can’t ever forget.
“You’re not a god,” Jenny whispers as a pair of doctors Patrick vaguely recognizes as being from obstetrics stroll past. “There are no guarantees, whether it’s you or some other doctor.”
Patrick rolls his eyes. Those are his own words being parroted back at him. He says them often enough when outcomes aren’t as rosy as he’d hoped.
“What else is bugging you?” Jenny prods. “Get it out now, so you don’t take it home and spill it all over Will.”
“I don’t do vacations.” He prefers his days structured. He likes to get up, work, eat, watch some TV, screw Will, sleep, and then work some more. If he has to fit in some time with Will’s family somewhere in there, or take a phone call from Dinah, then so be it. The rest of the structure gives him a sense of safety and control. It gives him something to do in the world; it tells him how to be.
“All the more reason to take one, then.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“You and I made a long list of potential activities. Plus there’s always sex. You love that. It’s a fun way to fill a day.” She grins.
“Yes, but Will’s asshole can only take so much screwing.” Though he has a plan for that. The truth is, he’s just panicking because the trip is looming near. He knows, deep down, he’ll be fine. This is just the last-minute tantrum he has to throw to accept the inevitability of it all.
Jenny sighs. “Here you are whining about going on an amazing honeymoon when I haven’t been on a real vacation in forever. Maybe I should go with Will instead of you.”
“That would definitely undermine any hope of achieving my number one goal in life.”
Jenny laughs. “True. I guess I have to stay here with Dylan and my…” Her brow furrows. “I was going to say my man, but I think I broke up with him again last night.”
Patrick catches her eye. “You think? Or you did?”
“I did.” She wrinkles her nose and gives him her patented innocent expression.
Patrick huffs. “Finally. Good riddance.”
Jenny rolls her eyes. “Reverse psychology won’t work with me, buster.”
“No reverse psychology here. This is all going to plan.” Patrick smirks.
“Meaning?”
“The man’s a dreamboat. Now that you’re done with him, he can join me and Will as a third in our bed.”
“Ha! As if you’d share Will!”
Patrick shrugs, but she’s right. He and Will are way too absorbed in each other to want to be with anyone else. “So what happened this time? The D finally stopped being so good?”
Her smile is wicked. “No, the D has always been consistently slamming. Hello, raging UTI, remember?” She goes wistful obviously remembering Jax and his D, but then rubs at her forehead. “I guess that’s over.”
Patrick nudges her. “So he stopped being handsome and funny?”
Her blue eyes cut into him. “Stop being a jerk. You know what the problem is!”
“I do. You’re a snob.”
She sits up straighter. “I am not.”
“You are. You’re a regular old-fashioned snob and you think you’re too good for him.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it really just the barista thing or is it racism too? It’s because he’s Lakota, right?”
“Don’t be a bastard today, Patrick. I don’t feel up to listening to it. And after I just gave you a great pep talk.”
“It sucks when I’m right. Oh, wait, I’m always right.”
She glares. “It’s not that he’s Lakota. I don’t care about that. It’s his lack of ambition.”
“As evidenced by…?”
She counts the reasons on her fingers. “He doesn’t have a college education. He doesn’t want to ever leave Healing. He plans to work in that coffee shop indefinitely.”
“Manage that coffee shop,” Patrick corrects.
“It’s a coffee shop, Patrick.”
“Like I said, you’re a snob.”
“Oh, and you aren’t a snob?” She flips her ponytail pointedly. “Like you’d have found Will half as attractive without his money and career?”
“Will’s a desperate do-gooder.” Patrick shrugs. “He wears the look well. But, yes, I’d have loved him without the money.”
“You only say that because you’re head-over-heels for him now. But if you’re being honest…” She leans forward and narrows her eyes. “The money was literally the only reason you didn’t divorce him immediately.”
Patrick raises his brows. “Well, if you want to be literal about it—something you and Will tell me not to be, by the way—that’s true.”
“It is true!” She jabs a pink-painted fingernail into his arm. “You only came to Healing because you didn’t want him to lose all that mobster-funded Molinaro trust money.”
“No, I came because he didn’t want to lose the money.”
“God, you’re so literal!” she exclaims.
“You just told me to be.”
The money that funds Will’s charitable foundation, Good Works, does a lot of good things in the world, despite its blood money origins. Will’s foundation provides help to kids with cancer and supports LGBT kids in rural areas, amongst many other amazing and ridiculously do-gooder-y things.
Patrick concedes, “Fine. I have a soft spot for kids with cancer.”
“And a soft spot for Will.”
“Sue me.”
“It’s just you don’t understand what it’s like for me.”
Patrick says nothing. He can’t dispute that. He can try to be a good friend, but Jenny is always a little bit of a mystery to him. Most people are.
She sits stiffly for a long second, then turns to him, grips his forearm, and confesses, “I don’t know what to do. Tom’s been calling me. He wants to see Dylan. He claims to want to work it out. As a family. A real family.”
Patrick rolls his eyes before throwing his arm around Jenny’s shoulder and pulling her in close to whisper in her ear, “He walked out on you when you were pregnant. Get real.”
“I am real,” she protests, pulling away. “I’m a real woman with real feelings and I really don’t know what I should do.”
Patrick opens his mouth and closes it again. He should say something helpful, but he has no idea what that might be.
“I think I have to give it a shot.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Okay, then, I want to. I want to see what Tom might bring to the table. For Dylan. And for me.”
“What’s his sign?”
Jenny smirks. “Pisces.”
“Hmm. Well, all right then.” At least the guy isn’t a Sagittarius.
“Glad I have your permission,” she whispers.
At that moment, Patrick spots Kimberly and her twin brother Kevin walking arm-in-arm through the hospital corridor.
Kevin’s wearing a nice-fitting pair of jeans and a plaid, Western-wear shirt, his golden handsomeness in radiant evidence. But his cowboy hotness is marred by a white, bloodstained T-shirt pressed to his forehead.
Great.
Patrick sighs. Now his day has really gone completely off the runners. “Just think. If I’d only let all those cancer kids keel over dead, I’d be working somewhere warm year round right now,” he mutters. “And there would be no Pattersons or Molinaros or honeymoons interrupting my life.”
Jenny frowns. “And no Will either. And no me.”
Kimberly spots him as he groans softly. “Help. I can’t shake them. They’re everywhere.”
“What? Who?” Jenny asks, her brows knitting in confusion, looking around.
“Them.”
“Patrick!” Kimberly calls, waving. Her dress swirls around her cowboy boots. Her face is pale and her blue eyes burn with worry. “Kevin’s had an accident. We need you.”
“Oh.” Jenny’s brows jump up and she tightens her ponytail again. “I see what you mean.”
“Will’s perfect ass makes it all worth it,” he reminds himself under his breath as he rises and grimaces his acknowledgement to Kimberly.
Will’s ass, and his smile, and the way he rubs at his face when his BG is dropping, and how Patrick feels when Will looks at him like he’s something special.
There are all kinds of things about Will that make it worth it.
Before he loses his chance, he turns to Jenny and gives his two cents. “Don’t let your snobbery get in the way of the best orgasms you’ve ever had in your life.”
She snorts at him.
He waves toward his in-laws. “I didn’t and look at me. Happy family.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Happy family indeed.” She laughs.
Patrick doesn’t argue but says, “Tom is bad news. Make up with Jax.” Then he heads down the corridor toward Kimberly and Kevin.
The ponytailed brunette nurse he yelled at earlier is back at the station. He wonders where Varun has scampered off to right when he needs him the most. “Get this man a room and schedule an emergency CT STAT.”
“But he hasn’t been through admitting or the ER, Dr. McCloud.”
“Why would we?” Kimberly says, eyes widening in offence. “My son-in-law is the head neurosurgeon in this hospital! The best of the best!”
Patrick wishes he could record her saying that and then turn back time to play it for her on the day they first met. “You heard her,” Patrick says to the nurse. “The best of the best.”
The nurse’s lips thin but she forces a smile.
“Get him in a room,” Patrick orders. “I’ll deal with the fallout.”
“Hospital procedure dictates—”
“I’m sure you know me well enough by now to know what you can do with hospital procedure.”
“But Varun—”
“You’re not Varun.”
She blanches. “Room 8-F is empty.”
“And now it’s not.”
Let the people in admitting pitch a fit. Let Don Knife tell him he has to follow the rules or get lightly slapped on the wrist. Let his other patients wait an hour for his attention even though it’s not fair.
Life’s not fair.
He has a Patterson to take care of.
He grips Kevin’s arm and steers him toward the room. Kevin’s face is pale and his grayish-green eyes are slightly dilated. He’s also docile as a deer, and obviously disoriented. The idiots should have called an ambulance.
“From what I can tell,” Kimberly starts once they’re in the room, “Kevin was bucked from a stallion he’s been training.” She helps Kevin sit on the bed.
Patrick presses his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. It’s almost like they’re children. “And you didn’t think to call 911?”
“They’d turn us over to just any doctor. He needs you.”
Patrick stares at his mother-in-law. Kimberly’s laying it on a bit thick even for her. He’s not even supposed to treat relatives. Hospital procedure. Regardless, he examines Kevin carefully and asks him questions about the accident.
Kevin grimaces. “I was on Sunburst, my newest stallion. I’d taken him out to work on jumps. I don’t remember what happened. I just know I lost my seat.”
Patrick shines his penlight in Kevin’s eyes, making note of any evidence of injury. “Could be a concussion. We’ll know more after the CT.”
Kimberly nudges in closer. “I found him wandering up from the field with blood all over his face and neck.” Her hand finds her brother’s and grips hard. “I got him in the car and brought him straight to you.”
Patrick grunts. Does she want him to praise her for quick thinking? Uh, no. Her failure to call for an ambulance could have cost her brother his life.
Still, at this point, he can’t read her the riot act because he’s fairly sure Kevin’s going to be just fine. And if he does give her an earful, just for the principle of the thing, she’ll probably panic, decide Kevin is dying, and start them down a whole path of drama-rama that Patrick just doesn’t have time for right now.
“I didn’t text Will about this yet,” Kimberly says. Then a gleam comes to her eye. “Will you do it?”
Patrick doesn’t know what’s up with her. There’s something going on, some convoluted plan, and he can’t put a finger on it. The Patterson-Molinaro family’s machinations are annoying and often ridiculous. “I have other patients,” he snaps. “Text him yourself.”
Kimberly frowns slightly, but then her lips quirk up at the corner. “Suit yourself.”
Patrick jerks open the door to the room, sees Varun passing by, and grabs his arm. “Get in here. I need you to do the intake on this patient. He bypassed admitting.”
“How?”
Patrick waves off his questions. “He has a head wound, probable concussion, and requires a CT STAT, followed by SCAT-2 assessment, neurological assessment, and constant monitoring until he can get down to imaging.”
“Constant monitoring?” Varun asks, acidly.
“Did I stutter?”
Varun glares at him, but doesn’t argue. He bustles in and puts on that great nurse-smile of his that people love, and his dark eyes fill with warmth for Kevin and Kimberly as he greets them.
“Ah, I see!” He shoots Patrick a smart-ass look over his shoulder and then turns back to Kevin. “It’s Mr. Patterson and Ms. Patterson. That explains a lot.”
“How so?” Kimberly asks.
“You’re getting very special treatment, that’s all.”
Kimberly smiles.
“Let me get you comfortable in a gown, Mr. Patterson, and we’ll assess the situation.”
Kimberly relaxes as Varun chats, asks pertinent questions about the injury, and helps Kevin start to undress. This is the exact reason why Varun should get paid enough to come on full time. He’s a dream with patients.
Patrick nods a curt goodbye to Kimberly and calls out, “You’re in good hands, Kevin. Do what the pretty nurse says. And Varun, I meant what I told you. Eyes on this one constantly.”
Varun gives him a saccharine and completely insincere smile. “Anything for your family, Doc.”
“Will’s family,” he corrects. “And damn straight you’ll do anything for them.” He sends a glare Kimberly’s way. “Because I’ll never hear the end of it from him if I let one of these idiots die.”
“Patrick!” Kimberly snaps.
Satisfied that he’s offended his mother-in-law enough, he leaves the room with a flick of his white lab coat.
Stalking toward Don Knife’s office to renew his effort to destroy the career of the drug-withholding Ruby-what’s-her-face, he decides to stir the pot on The Hurting Times gossip forums.
He can’t post that Kevin’s been injured, not without breaking doctor-patient confidentiality, but he has plenty of other things to complain about. Patrick knows exactly how he’ll start his post.
Logging in to The Hurting Times app as Dr. HottieMcBrainSurgeon, he types with his thumbs as he walks:
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the Pattersons of Healing, South Dakota are massive drama queens and total pains in my ass. And, no, I’m not posting about Will this time.