Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (25 page)

“I don’t envy you that job,” Shirley said.

Dr. Simpson sighed, shook his head and left, glancing back at her over his shoulder as he did so. There was a glint in his eye, Shirley noticed—but she couldn’t be sure if it was because he was interested in her, or if like her, he was just blinking back tears.

Seven

Shirley stood under the scalding shower in the postop locker room in a daze. She still couldn’t get her mind around what had just happened. Dr. Randall Hamm, superstar hotshot head of University Hospital’s Anesthesiology department, had bailed in the middle of an operation, and then disappeared when his patient went into cardiac arrest. It violated every rule Shirley knew existed about operating room and hospital procedure. If Dr. Hamm weren’t head of the Anesthesiology department, he’d be thrown out on his ass.

Then again, he might be thrown out on his ass anyway. Bailing on a dying patient wasn’t exactly good form for a hotshot young department head—whether in a small country hospital or a big-city one.

Shirley turned the water up even hotter and buried her head in the spray. Her mind raced with unpleasant thoughts. Who was the woman who died? Shirley had glanced through her file before the operation according to hospital procedures, but she couldn’t even remember the poor woman’s name. Did she have children, a husband, grandchildren? What would happen to her family now that she was gone?

And more important than that, what had killed her? Was Dr. Hamm somehow responsible for her death? Or even worse, what Shirley herself responsible? Her stomach churned at the thought.

Even worse, Shirley was embarrassed by her own behavior. She’d walked into work this morning focused on nothing but getting laid. She’d spent time dolling up her face and batting her eyelashes at Dr. Hamm that she should have spent reviewing the patient’s file and preparing for the procedure. She’d let her love life interfere with patient care, and now the patient who’d been under her care was dead.

A sobering thought, indeed.

But even despite all that, Shirley just couldn’t get Dr. Randall Hamm and his smoking-hot bod off her mind. Which made no sense whatsoever—considering the fact the guy not only didn’t know she was alive, he just might have killed somebody this morning.

Talk about falling for the wrong guy.

What the hell was the matter with her? Shirley might be relatively new to the casual dating scene, but she usually had a much easier time seducing men. Take last night, for example. Ed Main—who was hot, younger than her by several years, and had shown up at her door half-naked to boot—had eaten right out of her hand within minutes of meeting her. (And he’d eaten
her
, too—literally and figuratively.) And yet she couldn’t get Dr. Hamm to notice her no matter how hard she tried. What was her problem?

The problem was, Shirley could get laid any time she wanted. Just not with the
man
she really wanted.

She supposed there were worse problems to have. But that didn’t exactly comfort her. If anything, it just made her feel worse.

The heat that had burned in her belly and crotch this morning had just gone cold.

And the wild sex romp she’d had with Ed last night might as well have never happened. All that was left in its place was a lump of frigid remorse.

Shirley switched off the shower and reached for a towel. She wasn’t sure how fast gossip traveled through the miles and miles of hallways of her new employer, but she had a feeling she was about to find out.

****

Shirley was standing in line at the OR suite elevator when she ran into Marla Crabtree. Or rather, Marla Crabtree ran into her.

Marla was walking backwards while talking to someone down the hall when she slammed right into Shirley. “OH! Pardon me, ma’am!” Marla exclaimed without even looking up, then stooped over to pick up the stack of bedpans she’d just dropped. (Fortunately, they were empty). Marla stood back up and seemed surprised to recognize Shirley. “Well, if it ain’t the woman of the hour,” she clucked. “Mm, mm, mm. So yer first patient died on the operating table, huh? I’m tellin’ ya, hon, that’s gotta be a hospital record.”

Shirley’s heart sank. “So you’ve already heard.”

Marla’s wrinkled head bobbed up and down. “Good news travels fast ‘round here, hon. Bad news, too.”

“So is what happened to me good news or bad news?” Shirley asked, not even trying to hide her sarcasm.

Marla looked thoughtful. “Well, guess it depends on how ya look at it, hon.”

“What do you mean?”
“Well, it
is
sad that she passed away just from havin’ gall bladder surgery. But it ain’t like she had any friends. She was one of the meanest folks I ever run across.”

Shirley was incredulous. “You
knew
her?”

“Why sure, hon. Didn’t you?”

“Well, I read her patient file, but I didn’t
know
her. Honestly, I can’t even remember her name.”

Marla laughed and slapped her knee with a bedpan. “Aw, hon, I keep fergittin’ ye ain’t from around here. That lady who died was Enola Higginbottom, the nastiest old hen ever to walk this here earth. She ran the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Well, I wouldn’t call it much of a
chapter
nohow, since she was the only member left. Wouldn’t let nobody else in unless they swore an oath to destroy all things Yankee until their very last breath and all sorts of other evil nonsense I won’t even repeat. She was a mean, snotty old racist.”

Marla spat. Actually
spat
. “Her husband did time in prison fer his Klan activities. Died in Leavenworth, as I recall. Meanness ran in her family. Oh, I don’t think anybody ‘round here is sorry to see the last o’ her.”

Shirley was stunned. She’d had no idea she’d monitored the vital signs of a sleeping racist and modern-day Confederate sympathizer. A suddenly very plausible idea crossed her mind. “I wonder if that’s why Dr. Hamm left the OR in the middle of the operation?”

Marla shrugged. “I guess anything’s possible. Tho’ if I was a bettin’ woman—which I ain’t, mind you—I’d say the gallbladder surgeon was to blame. Who was it, Dr. Hampton?”

Shirley paused to think back. “I’m not sure. My job was to keep an eye on what Dr. Hamm was doing with the anesthesia, not the surgeon.”

“Was he a short fat guy, balding, with a gray goatee? Deep voice, Northern accent?”

Shirley nodded.

“Yep, that’s Dr. Hampton, all right. Had his license suspended a couple years back fer leavin’ a scalpel in somebody. Made all kinds o’ other mistakes over the years. I’m surprised the hospital even lets him anywhere near here.” She scoffed. “Then again, he’s probably the only doctor fer miles around willin’ to lay a hand on that nasty old Enola Higginbottom anyhow. Lucky fer him, she don’t have no relatives or friends left to sue him fer wrongful death.”

Shirley gasped. “Wow. I don’t even know what to say about that.”

“Probably best to keep mum then,” Marla said matter-of-factly. “When you’ve been here long as I have, sometimes ya learn when to keep yer trap shut. I’d say now’s one o’ those times fer
you
.” She glanced over both her stooped, crooked shoulders, lowered her voice. “An’ keep on yer toes ‘round the Dragon Lady. She loves to fire people, nursin’ shortage or no nursin’ shortage. She could use Enola Higginbottom as an excuse to fire ya on yer second day. That’d be a record, even fer her.”

“I’ll watch my back,” Shirley said, her stomach knotting. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Any time, hon,” Marla replied, tipping one of her empty bedpans up to her temple in a mock-salute as she waddled down the hall.

Shirley sighed and shook her head as she stepped onto the waiting elevator. She wasn’t sure what to make of Marla Crabtree. She liked the woman, sure—Marla Crabtree was a hard woman not to like. But could she be trusted? Or was she just a harmless, eccentric old busybody? Given all that had happened her first two days on the job, Shirley wasn’t about to let her guard down with anyone.

****

Shirley tiptoed into the Nurse-Anesthetists lounge, trying not to arouse any attention. She gingerly dropped her procedure report in Beth Peking’s inbox, hoping that the soft
swish
of manila folder against plastic mail tray wouldn’t be enough to distract The Dragon Lady away from her pile of paperwork.

Unfortunately, The Dragon Lady had the eyes and ears of a hawk in flight. The instant Shirley dropped the file in the inbox mounted on her half-open door, her head jerked up so fast that the Dragon Lady’s red cats’-eye reading glasses flew off her head and landed on her desk with a
thunk.
“Ah, Shirley!” she shrieked. “You back! Come sit down! We need talk! Right now!”

Shirley pasted on a fake smile and forced a spring into her step. She would not let this woman intimidate her. The Dragon Lady was in for a healthy dose of good-old-fashioned Southern sweetness and charm. “Good morning, Ms. Peking,” she sang. “And how are you today?”

“Not good! I hear from downstair your patient die! You kill your first patient? Who you think you are? Jeffrey Dahmer?”

“It is my understanding that the patient died as a result of surgical complications, not from anesthesia,” Shirley replied, cool as fresh cream.

The Dragon Lady looked down her pert little nose at Shirley, suspicious. “How you know that? They no even do autopsy yet.”

“Oh, a little bird told me,” Shirley replied. She had a feeling she knew exactly how to draw the attention away from herself, too. “And I think if anything bad comes up on how the anesthesia was handled on that operation, it’ll be on Dr. Hamm’s head, not mine. He bailed in the middle of the operation and didn’t even bother to come back with the emergency team when the patient flatlined.”

That got The Dragon Lady’s attention, all right. “You don’t say,” she chirped. “Oh, I like to see that Dr. Hamm get in trouble. Somebody really need to bring him down to size. He got big bug up his ass. Hmph.”

Shirley laughed despite herself. The Dragon Lady really wasn’t half bad, once you knew how to press her buttons. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so,” she said. Which was the truth.

The slightest indication of a smile tugged at Beth Peking’s pointy features. “You know Shirley, I like you. You pretty smart for dumb country girl.”

“Thanks,” Shirley replied. It was a backhanded compliment, but a compliment all the same.

Even The Dragon Lady had a soft spot when it came to Dr. Randall Hamm, it seemed.

There were no more routine surgeries scheduled for the day, so Shirley spent the rest of her shift in the nurse-anesthetists’ lounge finishing up her human resources paperwork and catching up on the latest issue of
Anesthesia Nursing Today.
Just before her shift ended at three, she heard faint footsteps just behind her. She glanced up and was stunned to see Dr. Randall Hamm standing just behind her chair.

“Interesting article,” he commented, reading over her shoulder. “Though I disagree with the author’s assertion that ketamine is a better inducer for anesthesia than sodium pentothal. Ketamine is slow-acting and can cause hallucinations.” He took a sip of his coffee and chuckled. “Just goes to show why nurses have no business going it alone at the anesthesia machine, let alone trying to write research papers.”

Shirley stood up abruptly and crossed to the other side of the room. “I already know how the doctors at this hospital feel about nurse-anesthetists, Dr. Hamm. You don’t need to rub it in.”

He blinked. “I think I already explained yesterday that I don’t share the draconian opinions of most of my colleagues. At least, not all of them.”

“Maybe so, but you never explained why you bailed on Ms. Higginbottom’s surgery today,” she hissed. “She’s dead now, you know. What the hell are you doing up here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be getting interrogated by hospital management right now, or filing a serious incident report or something? That’s what happened at my old hospital back in Statesville whenever somebody died on the operating table.”

Dr. Randall Hamm sucked in his breath and frowned. “That’s already happened, I’m afraid. And I’m not done yet. I came up here to take a breather from all that,” he said, and sighed. “Plus I wanted some coffee. And maybe some company, too.”

Company?
As in, hers?

Well, that was exactly the last thing she’d expected him to say.

Even with as livid as she was at him, Shirley still couldn’t help feeling attracted to the man.
Very
attracted. To the point that her crotch was on fire and her belly was doing backflips, in fact. Though the wild party that had just erupted in her lower half did little to assuage the shock and misgivings that had accumulated in her brain throughout this increasingly bizarre day. After all, it wasn’t every day that one of your patients died—let alone on your second day on the job. It was all so much to take in.

“I’m afraid I don’t make very good company when I’m upset,” she admitted. “Though my shift’s over now, so if you wanted to maybe go get a bite to eat or something—“

“I’m afraid I can’t leave hospital grounds right now,” he said, his voice gruff and strained. “I’m on duty until midnight. Plus I’ve still got a ton of meetings with management over what happened this morning. Maybe some other time.”

Well, so much for that,
Shirley mused. Her disappointment was palpable. What the hell was this guy’s idea of “company”, anyway? “Some other time, then,” she muttered.

“Right,” he replied. And dashed out of the room before she could say another word.