Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (44 page)

Billy and Dana headed to the elevators, giggling and whispering all the way.

“Well, those two are stuck together like glue,” Maryam mused to herself. “Too bad the hospital’s lookin’ for an excuse to get rid of him.”

****

Dana and Billy stepped off the elevator opposite the Psychiatric unit. It was a lockdown unit, and required all visitors and staff to be buzzed in through a heavy security door. There were two layers of security leading into the psych ward. Once inside the first door, they both had to have their staff badges scanned, then sign a log before passing through the second door, which was even thicker and heavier than the first. Neither Dana nor Billy had ever set foot inside the Psych unit, which occupied an entire floor of the hospital. Dana had only passed by the outside entrance on a staff tour shortly after she was hired, while Billy had never been on the floor at all. Neither of them had done any psychiatric nursing since they were in college. Neither knew what to expect.

A hulking security guard verified their staff credentials with Human Resources and completed some routine paperwork. He stepped out from behind the desk, carrying two small plastic devices that looked like garage-door openers. “These are your panic buttons,” he growled in a deep, intimidating baritone. “Keep them on your body at all times, preferably tucked inside your scrub pocket of your pants. If a patient attacks you or you need backup, press the panic button and one of our on-ward security orderlies will be there to help. And whatever you do, don’t
ever
let a patient get a hold of the panic button.” He handed one to each of them, then made a notation in his security log. “You’ll need to hand these back in to me when your shift is finished. Anytime you’re up here, whether as nurses or visitors, you’ll need to carry one.”

“I’m wondering if we’ll live to regret this,” Dana mused as the security guard fitted them both with special badges and wristbands.

“Aw, it ain’t so bad,” the security guard said. “We just do this as a precaution. Most of our patients here in Psych are harmless. The real bad ones end up in the state hospital, not here. But you never can tell, so it never hurts to be safe. Name’s Julius, by the way. I’ve been security on this ward for four years now, and I’ve only seen three major incidents in that entire time.” He shook Dana’s hand, and patted Billy on the back. “But we do have a couple really touchy ones here on the ward right now, and that’s why they called the both of you up here.”

Dana took a tiny step backward. “What exactly do you mean by
touchy?”

Julius averted his eyes. “I’ll just let Dr. Marx explain. He’ll be waiting on the other side of the door for you. Go on over and I’ll buzz you both in.”

The both stepped cautiously up to the massive security door, and Julius buzzed them inside. The corridor into the ward proper was empty, though there were security cameras everywhere. There were several doors leading off the main corridor, and every single one of them was thick, magnetically sealed steel, with only a small peephole of metal-reinforced bulletproof glass. The whole place reminded Dana of a maximum-security prison.

“This is really depressing,” she remarked. “I don’t remember the psych ward where I did my nursing-school Psych rotation being like this at all.”

“Psych wards can really vary from hospital to hospital,” Billy said. “I worked on two different ones back in Atlanta when I was in school. One was pretty laid-back and homey. That was at a private Catholic hospital. The other one, at the county hospital, was just like this, only a lot bigger.”

Dana squeezed Billy’s hand. “Were you ever scared? ‘Cause to be honest, I’m sort of scared right now.”

Billy squeezed back. “Don’t worry. What Julius says is right. Most of the time, nothing bad happens in these places. The really dangerous ones don’t end up in the local hospitals. At least, not usually. But then again, that may be exactly why we’re here.”

Dana shivered. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

As if on cue, one of the heavy metal doors buzzed loudly, and a grizzled man with a gray beard and a steel clipboard appeared. He was wearing a white lab coat over a rumpled suit and tie. His security badge said “Eugene M. Marx, MD.”

“Hi there, I’m Dr. Marx. You are Dana Johnson and Billy Hartzell, I presume?”

They both nodded.

“Good. Maryam Malone called and said you were on your way. And not a moment too soon. I was hoping you both could help with a couple of difficult cases.”

Billy and Dana exchanged looks. It seemed they were already in over their heads. Dana’s stomach quivered and she fingered the panic button in her pocket. “What exactly do you mean by
difficult?”
she asked.

“Why don’t you step into my office and I’ll explain further,” Dr. Marx said, motioning for them to follow him. They went to the end of the corridor to yet another heavy steel door. Dr. Marx fed his ID card through the security reader and it buzzed open. He held the door open and motioned them both to step inside his private ward office, a spare and sterile room that contained only a desk, two chairs, and a single bookcase containing three textbooks and an empty plastic binder. “Sorry it isn’t much to look at. My regular office is in the main hospital wing. I only use this one to have private therapy sessions with the ward patients who don’t have outside pass privileges. And these days, that’s pretty much every patient I have.” He sighed and shook his head. “Between the HMOs and state budget cutbacks, it’s a miracle anybody gets any kind of psychiatric care these days. Which brings me to the two cases I could use your help with.” He motioned to the two empty chairs. “Please, won’t you sit down?”

They did. Dr. Marx took his place behind the desk, templed his fingers under his chin and frowned. “We have two patients here on the ward that were overflow from the North Carolina State Hospital. They sent them to us because the state wards are completely full, and the state legislature just cut the mental health budget for the umpteenth time this year. The state hospital at Raleigh is coping by sending their so-called ‘less-dangerous’ patients out to community hospital wards. We’re frankly not equipped to handle these types of cases with at least some outside help. But the hospital wouldn’t let me bring in outside help. They sent the two of you instead.”

Billy felt a sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. No wonder Maryam had warned them about coming up to Psych in the first place. Emptying bedpans suddenly seemed like a much more attractive option. “What exactly do you need us to do?” he asked.

Dr. Marx wrung his hands for a moment. “Well, to be quite honest what I need from you both is rather bizarre. I can’t require you to do it, I can only ask. Whether or not you choose to do it is entirely up to you. But if you do, the hospital is prepared to pay each of you a three-thousand-dollar bonus.”

Billy’s eyes widened. “Three grand, huh? Maryam didn’t say anything about that.”

Dana looked afraid. “Three grand to do what? Sedate somebody or put them in a straitjacket? Because that’s what Maryam Malone said we’d be doing up here.”

“Well, what Maryam told you was true,” Dr. Marx admitted. “It just wasn’t the
whole
truth, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“We have some patients here who have some rather strange phobias, which is the main reason they’re kept away from society. I specialize in treating phobias through immersion therapy. Do you know what that is?”

They both shook their heads.

“In a nutshell, immersion therapy is where you treat a phobia by exposing the patient to exactly what they’re most afraid of,” Dr. Marx explained. “In a controlled environment, of course.”

“What exactly are they afraid of?” Billy asked, skeptical.

“Women,” Dr. Marx replied. “Specifically, young beautiful women. Like Miss Johnson here.”

Billy jumped to his feet. “Now wait just a minute—“

Dana placed a gentle hand on Billy’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Billy. Let’s just hear this out.” She nodded at Dr. Marx. “Go on.”

The older man took a deep breath, then blew it out. “Thank you, Miss Johnson. The two patients in need of immersion therapy have committed acts of violence in the past that stemmed from their irrational fear of women. Some call violence against women an act of hatred, but in my opinion, and in many other clinicians’ opinions, it’s actually the result of primal fear. My immersion therapy treats these patients by exposing them to their greatest fear—beautiful young women—and showing them that there is nothing for them to fear.”

Billy scoffed and headed for the door. “Okay, I think we’ve heard enough,” he snarled. “No way will I allow you to use Dana as a guinea pig in some crazy mad-scientist experiment. C’mon, Dana, let’s go.” He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, expecting Dana to follow him.

But Dana didn’t follow him. Something seemed to change markedly inside her; her face took on a strange calmness, serenity even. Her eyes went darker, and she seemed deep in thought. After a long moment, she glanced from Dr. Marx to Billy, then back to Dr. Marx again. “What exactly does this immersion therapy involve?” she asked in a small voice.

Dr. Marx coughed and cleared his throat. “I’m very glad you asked, Dana. It’s simple, really. You would be brought into a secured room with the patient, who will have already been placed in restraints ahead of time as a precaution. The patient would also have a guard standing by, as would you—Mr. Hartzell here, if he wishes, or someone else who meets your approval. You would just sit quietly, a safe distance from the patient. Those first few sessions would likely only last a few minutes. If all goes well, I might have you read aloud to the patient, perhaps even make small talk with him. That’s assuming we start seeing a positive response to the treatment.”

“What if you don’t?” Billy asked, his voice still marked with hostility.

“Then the experiment would be aborted,” Dr. Marx said. “And Miss Johnson—and you as well, Mr. Hartzell, should you choose to participate—would of course have the right to stop participating at any time.” He paused, wrung his grizzled hands together. “However, neither of you would be entitled to the three-thousand-dollar bonus unless you completed the full course of treatment.”

“And how long would that take?” Dana asked.

“Four weeks, give or take.”

Dana took a moment to think it over. It was an intriguing proposition, to be sure—and for more reasons than one. Dana understood what it meant to have an irrational fear of the opposite sex, after all. She’d never committed a violent act because of it, but it had had plenty of impact upon her life—and the lives of others—just the same. Perhaps by helping another human being overcome his fears, she could overcome hers, too. After all, meeting Billy had given her plenty of reason to finally grow up and become a real woman, in every sense of the word.

“I’ll do it,” Dana said. “And I want Billy to be my guard during the sessions.”

Billy’s jaw dropped. “But Dana—“

“My mind is made up,” she said. “Now will you guard me or won’t you? If you won’t do it, I’m sure I can find someone else.”

Dr. Marx stood and walked over to where Billy was standing. “Well, Mr. Hartzell?”

Billy sighed, then nodded.

The bearded doctor clapped his hands together, obviously pleased. “All right then. We’ll get started tomorrow. I’ll send an orderly down to Maryam Malone’s office to collect you both when we’re ready to start, probably in the early afternoon.”

Dr. Marx’s desk phone rang. He answered it on the first ring. “Dr. Marx here. Yes. Yes, they’re both here. What? Oh, dear. Yes, of course. Yes, I’ll send them both right down.” He hung up. “You both need to get down to the Geriatrics nursing station right away. There’s been some sort of emergency.”

Nine

Maryam Malone stood in front of the Geriatrics nursing station, her arms folded tightly across her chest as she tapped her thick-soled Nurse Mates against the linoleum. The flatline alarms on at least six different patients were still blaring up and down the hallway as every available nurse and doctor dashed in and out of patient rooms, surveying the damage and trying to save who they could.

Two patients were already beyond help. Two were in full cardiac arrest, with teams of doctors and nurses trying desperately to revive them, while two more were on the verge of going over the edge. Maryam tried her best to maintain control, directing the cavalcade of rushing nurses and doctors to where they were most needed, but she feared that it was too late to do much of anything at this point.

Maryam had seen her share of medical mistakes in her forty-odd years as a nurse, but this was by far the worst thing she’d ever seen. She could deal with patients occasionally getting the wrong meds, or having their charts switched. She’d even seen her share of operating-room mistakes—Maryam remembered a surgeon who’d been fired for leaving a pair of surgical scissors in a patient. But this was even worse than that.

Somebody had delivered IV bags to the Geriatrics unit that were the wrong size. Twice as big as the usual size, in fact. They were to be used only for morbidly obese patients. And all the patients in Geriatrics were very old, very frail—and underweight. The duty nurses hadn’t paid attention to the how much bigger the IV bags were than usual, and instead of reading the dosage meters on the bags, had just filled up the medications up to the top, like they always did.

As a result, all the patients on the ward got two to three times the dose of whatever medications they’d been prescribed. It wasn’t a big deal for those patients who were getting saline or glucose intraveneously—but it was a big deal for the six patients now in flatline. One of them had overdosed on blood thinners, another on morphine. A third had gotten a triple dose of heart medication, sending him into instant cardiac arrest. Two more had gotten double doses of diabetes medication, sending them into hypoglycemic shock. It wasn’t entirely clear what the last patient—who’d already been declared dead—had OD’d on. His chart was missing. Maryam had sent two nurses’ aides off in search of it.

Things couldn’t get much worse. That is, they couldn’t until Billy Hartzell showed his face around here. Maryam knew in her gut that this whole mess was probably his fault. The head duty nurse for the ward had already told her that it was Billy who’d delivered that batch of oversized IV bags here in the first place.

Not that it was
entirely
his fault—oversized bags or not, the shift nurses should have read the IV dosage meters instead of just filling the bags up to the top without looking at the amounts. There was plenty of blame to go around. But the fact remained that all the shift nurses in Geriatrics were regular salaried staff, and Billy Hartzell was an hourly contract nurse. An hourly contract nurse who was making an insane amount of money just for emptying bedpans and making deliveries. It was no secret that the regular staff nurses resented how much contract floaters were paid for doing grunt work. Four of them had already threatened to quit if they didn’t get raises soon.

Maryam couldn’t afford to lose her regular staff nurses, but she could sure as hell afford to lose Billy Hartzell. When it came to assigning blame for this whole mess, it would be an easy choice for her to make.

Two medical teams emerged from two separate patient rooms. Maryam could tell from their slumped shoulders and hanging expressions that she’d just lost two more patients for good. The jury was still out on the last two, but Maryam wasn’t getting her hopes up. All the patients on the Geriatrics ward were fragile and close to death to begin with. It didn’t take much to fatally tip the balance.

Billy and Dana stepped off the elevator and rushed up to where Maryam was standing. They were both shocked at the chaos on the ward. “What’s going on?” Dana asked.

“Don’t ask questions,” Maryam snapped at her. “Just get over to Room 223 and see if you can help. Morphine overdose.”

Dana’s eyes widened and she dashed off to Room 223 at lightning speed. Billy started to follow her, but Maryam grabbed his elbow, her surprisingly firm grip stopping him in his tracks.

“Don’t you go anywhere, son,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me.”

****

Billy sat in Maryam Malone’s office, staring at the wall clock, his palms sweating buckets. The nurse administrator had locked him in there while she waddled off in search of a senior HR staffer.

Billy didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it seemed whatever it was, he had something to do with it. And that probably wasn’t a good thing.

After several painful minutes of waiting, Maryam returned with a tall, gray-haired man in tow. An angry middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and a polyester suit soon followed. Billy recognized her as the cougar who had leered at him in the break room earlier in the week. She and the others sat down across from Billy, all wearing matching frowns.

The tall, gray-haired man started things off. “Mr. Hartzell, I’m George McGill, head of Patient Safety for the hospital. We had a serious medical incident occur in the hospital, an incident that we believe was your fault.”

Billy felt his mouth go cotton-dry. “What do you mean?”

George McGill brusquely brushed the question aside. “You delivered a batch of IV bags to the Geriatrics department today, did you not?”

Billy nodded. His stomach tied itself in knots. He already knew what must have happened. Those IV bags that he dropped off—he’d honestly thought it wouldn’t matter that they were twice the usual size. But he’d thought wrong.

“Those IV bags were designed only for use with morbidly obese patients, not frail, underweight elderly,” the gruff older man went on. “You made a very careless mistake, Mr. Hartzell, and I’m sorry to say that mistake cost several lives.”

“But—“ Billy stammered, his heart pummeling in his chest. “But those were the
only
IV bags available in Supply,” he stammered. “Everything else was out of stock. And those bags were clearly marked with dosage meters. Why didn’t the nurses just read the dosage meters?”

McGill and the redhead exchanged looks, but said nothing.

Billy’s stomach bottomed out. “Are you saying the shift nurses just filled them all the way up like they were regular size? Anybody could have seen how much bigger they were! Anybody!”

The administrator raised his hand to silence him. “I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Hartzell. But our shift nurses are very overworked. We can’t expect them to pay attention to minor changes in medical dosing supplies.”

“But I’m not in charge of ordering supplies for the hospital! Why don’t you go after the person who let the regular bags go out of stock?”

“This isn’t Supply’s problem,” McGill said curtly. “You were the nurse assigned to the delivery. If a supply was out of stock, you should have notified someone instead of substituting.”

“But—“

McGill held up his hand. “I’m afraid, Mr. Hartzell, that the hospital will be terminating your employment contract, effective immediately. You will leave the premises immediately, and you will no longer be permitted to reside in the hospital dormitory. If you go quietly, you can collect the rest of your week’s pay, and we won’t pursue further legal action against you for the accidental deaths. Though I can’t say the same for the patients’ families.”

Billy gasped. They were really going to lay all the blame on him? The nurses that actually
administered
the fatal overdoses were getting off scot-free? And the Supply department wasn’t getting blamed, either? It wasn’t fair. “But—“

The redhead spoke up for the first time. “If you’re going to argue, Mr. Hartzell, I’m afraid the hospital will have no choice but to pursue charges against you.”

“Charges?” he sputtered. “What kind of charges?”

“Manslaughter,” the redhead snarled. “Perhaps even second-degree murder. I have pull with the local chief of police—and he has pull with the district attorney. Now, can we count on your cooperation? I’ll escort you to the dormitory so you can collect your things, but then you’ll have to leave the hospital premises, and you’ll never be permitted to return—not even as a patient.”

Not even as a patient?
That was absurd. What if Billy got hit by a car walking out of the hospital parking lot? Would they just leave him there bleeding?

“Well?” the redhead said, her voice dripping with hostility. She’d never given her name, and Billy figured she’d done that deliberately.

He sighed and shrugged. The two administrators stood and headed for the door; they motioned for Billy to follow them. He glanced back at Maryam, who gave him a sympathetic look.

“I’m sorry, hon,” she said. “But I had no choice. Good luck to you.”

“Tell Dana I said goodbye,” Billy said, his voice cracking. It was all he could do not to break down on the spot.