Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (21 page)

Two

It was Shirley Daniels’ first day on the job at UNC-Raleigh University Hospital, and things were not going well.

Back in Statesville, Shirley had not only been the best nurse-anesthetist on staff at Covington Community Hospital, she’d been the
only
nurse-anesthetist on staff at Covington Community Hospital. One by one, all her fellow nurse-anesthetists had quit in favor of better-paying jobs at urban hospitals, until her only competition for anesthesia jobs was a seventy-two-year old anesthesiologist who’d had his medical license suspended twice for falling asleep in the OR. Compared to him, the spry young Shirley was an anesthesia genius, even without “MD” after her name.

Back in Statesville, Shirley was a big fish in a little pond. Here at this vast, well-funded major research hospital, it was just the opposite. Shirley was an ill-trained, naïve, countrified nurse without a clue about how things worked at a big-city teaching hospital.

She’d made her first mistake within five minutes of arriving at her new job. Accustomed as she was to Covington Community Hospital’s collegial atmosphere between doctors and nurse practitioners, she’d first shown up to work at the hospital’s Anesthesiology department, as she always had back home in Statesville. But no sooner had she crossed the office threshold did four hulking male Anesthesiology MDs practically grab her by the collar and toss her out into the hallway. “This office is for
doctors
only, toots,” one of them had snarled at her. “The nurses’ lounge is in Building A, lower level.”

“B-but—I’m a nurse
practitioner
,” Shirley protested. “I have a master’s degree and more than eight hundred hours of advanced anesthesia training on top of that—“

“Get out!” the three doctors screamed at her in unison. And the door slammed in her face.

Shirley was shocked and bewildered. She’d heard rumors back in nursing school about how some hotshot MD-level anesthesiologists weren’t fond of mere nurses homing in on their territory, but she’d never actually encountered outright
prejudice.
The lone MD anesthesiologist back in Statesville had frequently asked her for advice on how to configure the hospital’s new computerized dosing machine, since he’d never been trained on one when he’d been at medical school almost fifty years earlier. She was used to being treated as a colleague—even an equal—by most doctors she’d worked with over the years. But those three big-city MDs had cast her out of their sight as if she were a leper. And it only got worse from there.

So much for big-city people supposedly being more open-minded and accepting than small-town folk. She might as well be in Siberia.

This was the last time Shirley would ever accept a nursing job over the phone. She knew there was a nationwide nursing shortage, but this was ridiculous.

After wandering the halls for almost half an hour and begging a senior citizen volunteer for help, Shirley finally made her way to the main nurses’ lounge in hopes of inquiring where the nurse-anesthetists’ department was housed—only to find that the rank-and-file shift nurses weren’t too fond of nurse-anesthetists, either.

Shirley walked into the nurses’ lounge, carrying her duffel bag, anesthesia kit, and a slip of paper with her new boss’ name on it. The collected heads of the two dozen or so nurses relaxing in the lounge on their coffee breaks or between shifts all jerked up at once. To her surprise, Shirley noticed that several of the nurses were men. And even more to her surprise, not a single one of her fellow nurses—male or female—said or did anything in greeting, not even a simple nod of the head. In all her days as a gracious Southerner, Shirley had never seen such a blatant lack of manners.

“Ahem.” She cleared her throat loudly, hoping for some kind of response. She got nothing.

Well, when in Rome
, Shirley thought. She might as well just be rude like everyone else. “Excuse me, but what the hell does a gal need to do to get some help around here?”

“Don’t look at us,” one of the female nurses sneered at her. “We don’t help nurse
practitioners.”

Shirley was dumbfounded. “B-but how do you know I’m a nurse practitioner? I didn’t even get a chance to introduce myself.”

“We know your kind on sight,” a portly male nurse snipped. “This lounge is for
real
nurses only. So I suggest you take a hike, little lady.”

By this point, Shirley was near despair. Her shift was supposed to have started almost an hour ago, and she still had no idea what she was supposed to do or where she was supposed to go. At this rate, she’d get fired before she’d even had a chance to do any real work.

So much for making a fresh start in Raleigh. Not even here a full day yet, and she was already a miserable failure.

Just as she was about to burst into tears, an elderly nurse she hadn’t noticed before shuffled up from her spot in the corner. The older woman was white-haired and walked with a limp and a stooped back, but it was clear from her flinty gaze that when it came to nursing, she still meant business. “Don’t ya listen hide nor hair t’ what none o’ them youngsters say,” she said, a deep backwoods accent jarring Shirley’s genteel ears. “Back in my day,
all
nurses were practitioners. We just didn’t call ourselves that. I worked a MASH unit back in Vietnam, ya know. An’ us MASH nurses did everythin’ from give patients ether during surgery to sew up incisions to doin’ bedside psychiatry while the doctors were all out gettin’ drunk. An’ we didn’t git paid extra for it, neither.” She extended her gnarled, blue-veined hand. “Name’s Marla. Marla Crabtree. I been in the nursin’ business nigh on fifty years, an’ I don’t ‘spect to retire til I drop dead.”

“A pleasure, ma’am,” Shirley stammered, still reeling. “If you don’t mind, I was wondering—“

“Ask me any question ya want, little lady. Just don’t ask me how old I am.”

Shirley chuckled. She liked Marla already. “Well, I’m supposed to be working as a nurse-anesthetist. I took the job over the phone via an outside recruiter, and nobody told me where I supposed to go on my first day. I’ve tried asking around, but—“
Marla grinned. “Let me guess. The anesthesiologists knocked ya down on yer ass.”

“In a matter of speaking, yes.”

“Don’t take it personal, hon. Them gas dogs, they hate everybody.”

Shirley frowned. “
Gas dogs
?”

Marla laughed heartily. “That’s what us old-timers call you folks who work the gas in the OR. Back when I was in ‘Nam, some o’ the docs used to snort ether in the off hours whenever the booze ran low. That’s how they got their name, an’ it just stuck, I guess. No offense meant, ma’am.”

Shirley smiled. “None taken.” She followed the gnomelike little woman as she waddled out of the nurses’ lounge and down the hall. Despite her age and apparent lack of mobility, Marla Crabtree moved quickly. Shirley practically had to run to keep up with her.

“What’d ya say yer name was, little lady?” Marla asked as she darted down the hall, ducking this way and that to avoid rushing gurneys and running orderlies.

“I didn’t,” Shirley replied, breathless. “It’s Shirley. Shirley Daniels.”

“Right good name,” Marla said as she dashed into a waiting elevator. “Sturdy. I had me a cousin named Shirley back in Pennington Gap, the little nowhere mountain town that I’m from. Ya don’t meet too many Shirleys nowadays.”

“My parents were old-fashioned,” Shirley said, leaning against the elevator wall as she tried to catch her breath. “My goodness, Marla, you are in very good shape for a lady your age.”

“I do Tae Bo,” Marla said, mock-punching the air. “You gotta love that Billy Blanks fella on them Tae Bo videos. A right good-lookin’ boy, he is. An’ ya’d never know it to look at ‘im, but he’s almost sixty. Hell, he an’ I could date, if he wasn’t already married.” Her wrinkled face spread out in a wide grin. “Tho’ I wouldn’t be opposed to havin’ a nice little bedroom affair with him, no siree.”

Shirley had to work hard to contain her laughter.
Things really are different here in the big city
, she thought to herself. Nobody over sixty even
had
sex back in Statesville, let alone talked about it in public with a total stranger.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open onto the fourth floor. “Nurse-anesthetists’ unit is fourth door down on the left,” Marla said, pointing it out. “I’d walk ya there myself, but your department chair don’t like me too much. I got this nasty habit o’ tellin’ her how to do her job, ya see. I used to be head ether girl back in ‘Nam, put more people under the gas than your new boss’ got hairs on her head. But they won’t let me anywhere near the gas round here ‘cause I don’t got a fancy-schmantzy state certificate.” She clucked and shook her head. “So I’m stuck doin’ bedpans an’ IVs. Oh well. It’s a livin,’ I reckon.” She took an index card out of her scrub pocket, wrote a number down on it, and handed it to Shirley. “That’s my pager number if ya ever need anything. I been workin’ at this here hospital nigh on forty years now, an’ there ain’t nothin’ I either don’t already know or can’t find out about for ya right quick. Ya enjoy yer first day now.”

Marla started to waddle off, then stopped short. She glanced over both shoulders, then leaned towards Shirley, taking care to keep her voice low. “An’ when it comes to yer new boss Beth Peking, don’t say I didn’t warn ya. They call her The Dragon Lady round here, an’ with good reason.”

Shirley wasn’t sure what to say about that, so she just smiled and nodded as she watched Marla Crabtree waddle off down the hall. She took a deep breath and put her best foot forward as she stepped into her new boss’ office.

Beth Peking was a petite Asian-American woman who looked to be in her mid-forties. Instead of nurses’ scrubs she wore a pert little silk suit with a Mandarin collar that was embroidered with red dragons. On her feet were four-inch black spike heels—totally impractical footwear for nursing—and her fingers ended in long, blood-red lacquered talons that would surely break if she ever tried to pick up a needle or turn a dial on a dosing machine. An administrative type, for sure—you couldn’t do any real nursing work dressed like that She was sitting in an easy chair by her office window, totally engrossed in a thick hospital report. Shirley knocked on the doorjamb several times, but Ms. Peking never so much as looked up.

Rude city people
, Shirley thought to herself. It was hard for her to get used to such a total lack of manners from everyone she encountered. “Excuse me,” she said in a loud voice.

No response.

Well, she might as well just start yelling. “
Excuse me.
Are you Beth Peking?”

Her new boss sighed and finally looked up from her report. “I hear you first time you bang on door,” the petite woman hissed in a thick Chinese accent. “I not ready to talk to you yet! You wait!”

Shirley’s jaw dropped. “Well, I never—“

Beth Peking read two more pages in her report, then made a big show of folding it closed and slipping it into a file cabinet. She looked Shirley up and down, peering at her over her tiny red-rimmed reading glasses. When she stood, Shirley immediately understood why her new boss wore such impractical shoes—even with the four-inch spike heels, Beth Peking was barely five feet tall. The tiny, birdlike woman’s contempt for everything and everyone around her was almost palpable. “
Now
I ready to talk to you,” she squawked. “Sit down.”

Without a word, Shirley obeyed. Between the nasty demeanor and the dragons stitched on her coat, it was pretty clear why everyone called her new boss The Dragon Lady behind her back.

“I know who you are,” The Dragon Lady squawked at her. “You Shirley Daniels. Today your first day. And you late.”

“I know—I’m sorry. I had some trouble finding—“
“You no say sorry to me, Shirley Daniels. I no like sorry. You just say you wrong and you move on. Easy?”

Shirley flushed and her eyebrows pursed in bewilderment. She had no idea what to make of this woman. “Umm, I guess I was wrong, then. OK?”

“That better. You ever be late again, you fired.”

Shirley felt her stomach twinge as she stared into The Dragon Lady’s fiery black eyes. “I understand,” she said in a small voice. Suddenly she understood why the hospital had used an outside recruiter to hire her for this job. No nurse in her right mind would choose to work for The Dragon Lady if they knew about her ahead of time.

The Dragon Lady pulled a fat file off her desk and dropped it in Shirley’s lap. “Employee packet,” she chirped. “You fill out. You fill out and bring back to me in one hour.
One hour
only. It take you more than one hour, you fired. Go two doors down to nurse-anesthetist lounge to fill out. When you finished, I take you on hospital tour. OK?”

With a heavy heart, Shirley took the packet and headed down the hall to the lounge, dragging her feet all the way. She’d gotten more than she’d bargained for in moving here, that was for sure. Working in Raleigh wasn’t exactly shaping up the way she’d hoped it would. Even after all the bad things that had happened back in Statesville, it was paradise compared to how her life was turning out in the big city.

On the bright side, she supposed it could only get better from here.

She flipped through the scores of pages of the employee packet. The first part was asking mostly for basic information—name, address, age, social security number—but then she despaired at the reams and reams of pages asking for her nursing school grade transcripts, a complete employment history dating all the way back to her first job in high school, even an essay section where she was supposed to write five hundred words on what being a nurse-anesthetist meant to her. She glanced at the clock and saw that fifteen minutes had already gone by.