Page 5 of BillionHeir

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Chloe

“How was your weekend?”

I look over at Cami as we each stow our purses in the lockers at work.

“Long. I worked Friday night for Keisha so she could go to her daughter’s play.

Then again Saturday afternoon for Amanda.

When I got home, I was so tired that I fell asleep and slept all day Sunday.

I just woke up this morning before my shift. How about yours?”

She gets a dreamy smile on her face before answering. “Greg took me out Friday night for dinner and drinks, and we spent the whole weekend together.”

“Shut up,” I say, my eyes growing wide. “It is about time!”

“I know, right?” she says, clipping her badge to her pocket as we walk out of the break room together.

Cami and I were in the same orientation class together here at Sanctuary Springs, and we have been friends ever since.

It has been nice to have her friendship to lean on the last three years.

It helps knowing there is someone here who is always on my side.

We have been through new boyfriends, double dates, and breakups together.

Since Jenna moved to Wyoming, she has become my closest Boston friend.

“Are you ready for this?” I ask her, knowing that we are going to be dealing with all manner of entitled, annoying, and frustrating patients over the next twelve hours. Hopefully, the good will outweigh the bad today, but that is not always a given.

“Ready as I will ever be,” she says with a smile before smacking me on the butt and strolling off in the opposite direction.

I laugh to myself as I walk toward my unit.

The rehab is broken up into six areas. There are the three main units: long term, short term, and psychiatric.

Each of them is then divided by gender. I work on the short-term men’s side, and I find I like it much better than the women’s.

I would much rather deal with the men who undress me with their eyes than the ladies who pick apart everything you say, do, and wear.

I will admit, it was a little difficult to get used to seeing all the flaccid penises at first, but once you have seen a few, you learn not to startle as easily.

Unlike the long-term wing where their patients are here for years, if not the rest of their lives, ours are here more temporarily, anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months depending on the extent of their injuries and how willing they are to be an active participant in their recovery.

So many of these blokes expect that the physical therapists will do all of the work for them.

But as they so often learn, if they want to get back to the real world, they need to put in the work with the therapists, eating well, and getting the rest they need. Muscles and bones don’t heal overnight.

Once our patients get through the initial realization and frustration that getting out of here is going to be harder than they thought, they usually mellow out a little bit. I have met some really nice lads here, though most of them were married.

I am proud to say that I have never dated a patient.

Not that they haven’t tried. But it is one of the things I promised myself I wouldn’t do when I started working here.

It is not only against the rules. It is forbidden.

I would instantly be fired if they found out I did anything inappropriate with a patient.

I have too good of a thing going to jeopardize it for quick sex .

I reach the nurse’s station, just as Tara, the floor supervisor, is walking up.

“Chloe, I am glad I caught you. We have got a new patient arriving today. Looks like it is going to be a doozy. He is arrogant, bossy, and irritable, not to mention rich as all hell. You are going to have your work cut out for you.”

“Thank you for your optimism,” I say sarcastically as I pull up his chart on the computer.

My heart skips a beat when I read his name.

Maxwell Banks.

He is the richest man in Boston, maybe even the whole country for all I know.

I actually met him once before in Wyoming because Jenna’s boyfriend works for him as a lawyer, but I am sure he wouldn’t remember me.

As surprised as I am to cross paths with him again, I am not surprised that he would come to Sanctuary Springs after the helicopter crash that nearly took his life.

I busy myself working on his chart, making sure that all of his intake paperwork is correctly put into the system so his transition from the hospital to our facility is seamless.

I am sitting there, still typing away, when my patient arrives with his entourage of nurses, doctors, therapists, and even some higher-ups from administration who all follow him into the much too small room .

I am done before everyone is finished with him, so I check in on my other patients before coming back.

When I poke my head into the room, I can tell he is just about to fall asleep.

I hate having to wake anyone, but it is better if I get a few things out of the way.

Otherwise, I am going to be back here in thirty minutes and he is going to be even grouchier.

“Knock knock,” I say, trying to be both cheery and quiet.

He opens his eyes, but they are groggy and filled with annoyance.

Even so, I can’t deny how striking they are.

He looks directly into my eyes, and I can feel him peering deep inside me, making my knees weak.

He manages to look distinguished and dignified even in a hospital bed, and I recall just how attractive he looked in a business suit.

This man is dangerous. I need to be careful.

“What?” he barks, his voice scratchy and hoarse, snapping me out of my errant thoughts. That is common with patients who have had a breathing tube down their throats for extended periods of time.

“I am Chloe,” I say softly. “I will be your nurse for the day.”

“And?” he asks impatiently.

“I know you are probably tired from all your travels and what not today, but—”

“What do you want?” he asks, cutting me off .

It takes everything I have not to tell off this oversized man child. But I need this job and can’t afford to get fired by saying what I want.

“I need to check your vitals,” I say calmly, controlling my voice so as not to betray my frustration with this exasperating prick. I shake the small cup in my hand. “And to give you your meds. Unless you don’t want them?”

I raise my eyebrows as a silent challenge to the man staring at me like I am his servant to command as he pleases.

“Fine. Do what you have to,” he says, looking down his nose at me. He is not even slightly apologetic for the attitude he is giving me and honestly, I don’t know what I saw in him earlier.

Rather than give him the tongue lashing he deserves, I swallow my pride and proceed across the room, handing him the little plastic cup with his pills and a separate cup of water.

“I assume this water is flat?” he asks, a look of disgust on his face.

We might be the nicest facility in Boston, but even we don’t give out meds with sparkling water. Where the hell does he think he is? The Four Seasons?

“You assume correct,” I answer tightly, pushing both cups closer to him when he seems reluctant to take them from me.

Finally, he takes the medicine and tosses the pills into his mouth before following them with the water, even if it is flat .

He is quiet as I bustle around taking his vitals to complete the rest of his intake paperwork. When I am done, his eyes are closed and he is quietly snoring.

He must be exhausted after such a long day, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. I can already tell he is going to be one of my most difficult patients yet.

* * *

“He can’t be serious.”

“I can assure you, he is.”

Mr. Bank’s pretentious assistant peers at me through his glasses as though he is unable to get a read on me.

I just finished one of the longest shifts of my life, in large part due to the man we are discussing. I just want to go home, not be cornered by some pencil pusher who has no clue just how much he is asking me to do.

“But the doctor said—”

“The doctor,” he says, cutting me off, “Has been persuaded by Mr. Banks. He agreed to let him receive all his treatments at his estate in Maine. That is, if he is under the care of a licensed nurse. Mr. Banks feels that since you two know each other, it would—”

It is my turn to interrupt him. “We don’t know each other, Mr. Wilson.”

“Well,” he says with a condescending look. “Your best friend and his lawyer are dating, are they not? ”

“They are,” I answer.

I don’t know how he knows that about me. I didn’t think that he remembered me. If he did, he certainly didn’t say anything to me. You would think a man with his amount of wealth and privilege would have better manners, but I guess not.

“Then you know each other,” the assistant says simply. “You know he is not a serial killer, and he knows you are not going to cut a piece of his hair off to try cloning him in your secret laboratory.”

“That seems oddly specific,” I mumble mostly to myself as I shake my head. “Okay, so we are slightly connected. But that doesn’t mean that I am going to quit my job to take care of him for weeks in Who-knows-where, Maine.”

“It is just outside Portland, actually. On the coast. It is beautiful up there this time of year.”

“That is not the point,” I object, wondering why on earth I am still sitting here entertaining this man. It is bad enough that he caught me fresh off a shift. I haven’t even had time to change out of my filthy scrubs, and he has the audacity to ask me for a favor?

“You would be compensated handsomely for your time, Ms. Shepard,” the assistant says to me, his face still as bland as when he asked me for a brief conversation. But his words hold the hint of promise in them .

I shake my head again. After the last few hours of taking care of the most impossible man I have ever met, I have a pretty good feeling that if I were left alone with him, I would be more likely to push him down the stairs than help him up them.

“Money is not the issue,” I respond, grabbing my bag and preparing to stand up. My brain pulls up an image of my depleted bank account and rising stack of bills at home, but I quickly tamp it back down.

The assistant arches his carefully plucked eyebrow at me. “Is that so?”

By the tone of his voice, I know he has done his research on me. I don’t like that one single bit. My financial situation is no one’s business but my own.

I narrow my eyes on the bland man in front of me and stand as I give him a dismissive look.

“I think we are done here.”

Just before I walk away, the man produces a piece of paper and hands it to me. “This is the offer, and the number to call when you decide to take it. Please, do be quick about it.”

I roll my eyes, not bothering to look at what is written on the note before stuffing it down into my bag with every intention of throwing it out as soon as I get home. Then I turn and storm out of the lobby in a huff.

The nerve of that man, acting like he knew me and my motivations.

Like money can solve any problem if you have enough of it.

Like I am so desperate that I would quit the only source of income I have and put all my eggs into the basket of some megalomaniac billionaire who has the disposition of an evil villain from a kids’ movie.

No. Just no. Not for all the money in the world.

I consider calling a friend to come hang out with me tonight, but I don’t think I would be very good company. As I ride the T home, I try to forget about everything that just happened. Better yet, I would like to forget the whole day.

I stop by the Chinese restaurant that Jenna and I used to frequent regularly when she was still living with me.

I long for the past when she was my flatmate and we would spend our evenings commiserating about our jobs.

Back when she worked for Jackson and hated his guts.

My job wasn’t so bad aside from working around the clock to pay my bills, but Jenna was miserable.

A Chinese takeaway and a bottle of wine always seemed to cheer her up.

Maybe it will do the job for me tonight, even if my bestie isn’t here to listen to me complain.

I take the food back to my apartment, trudging up three flights of stairs when the lift doesn’t respond to my repeated attempts to call it. It must not be working again, along with most things in this old building.

“Of course,” I mumble to myself as I slowly ascend the steps.

When I get into my blessedly quiet apartment, I let out a huge sigh of relief.

I dump my bag and the food on the table then go straight to the kitchen for a bottle of wine.

I uncork it and leave it on the table to breathe for a minute.

Jenna left this particular bottle when she and Jackson moved the last of her stuff out of here.

Since then, I have been waiting for a nice occasion to drink it.

I am just desperate enough tonight to say ‘screw it’.

If I keep waiting for a nice reason to drink it, it will probably go bad.

I head into my bedroom and take off my nursing scrubs.

As far as uniforms go, they are really not that bad.

I remove my bra and panties and leave the dirty clothes in the hamper before heading into the en-suite bathroom.

I turn the shower tap on to warm up the water and turn to look at myself in the mirror as the steamy mist starts to swirl around me.

I hardly recognize myself. The woman looking back at me is thin and stylish but getting older and much more tired and haggard than ever before. When did that happen?

Life has been difficult lately. While my mum is in remission, the years of illness have taken their toll on her, and apparently on me as well. All the worry and anxiety has started to show on my face, and it hasn’t been kind.

I miss when Jenna and I would stay up late, eating and drinking way too much, giggling about boys, complaining about anything and everything. I crave her friendship sometimes, but I know that she is happy in Wyoming. If I wasn’t so broke, I would book a plane ticket to go see her .

I get in the shower and wash off the day, doing my best to cheer myself up. When I step out, I am feeling refreshed and in a slightly better mood. It is amazing what some hot water can do for a girl.

I find my phone and send Jenna a text asking if she is available tonight. My phone dings in response almost immediately after. I cross my fingers for a yes, and squeal with delight when she says she will be available in twenty minutes.

Chinese food, wine, and a video chat with my best friend? What could be better?