Page 44 of Scorned Beauty

Then we kissed, gentle, and then deep. I unzipped my trousers and freed my cock, then lifted Sloane against the window and fucked her.

Chapter

Twelve

Sloane

Spring

Today was nota day when I was thrilled about landing my preceptorship in the emergency department at New Jersey Medical. In lieu of a Capstone project, I’d been offered a stint in the ER. Making friends during my last semester of clinical rotation was at the bottom of my list because my life was an oxymoron, if not hypocritical.

I went to school to save lives, but I worked for the mob to erase evidence that they had taken one.

It was not enough that I had to downplay my looks, but I had to dumb down my skills, too. But the instructors had noticed my deftness in drawing blood, my aptitude in making patient assessments, and my calm when dealing with surly relatives and had suggested I would be a good fit for the ER.

I couldn’t tell them I had a lot of practice with the mafia.

Nurses weren’t allowed to do sutures. They were considered minor surgeries only doctors should do. Nursing studentsweren’t allowed to run IV lines on patients without close supervision. Procedures I had vast experiences with and were second nature to me. That was one reason I didn’t make friends with nursing students. I didn’t want them to be comfortable enough to ask me why I was so skilled with techniques which even a newly registered nurse would struggle with.

I made connections with the instructors and charge nurse who mattered to my goals. I didn’t care if that didn’t make me well-liked among my student peers. Because no one liked someone who was a know-it-all and made them look bad. And even when I dampened my skills, I wasn’t one to wait around like my classmates who stood idle and complained of boredom because of nothing to do. There was plenty to do. The nurses were just swamped. So instead of wasting time, I hustled and asked the nurses who looked like they needed help. I was proactive in reading the patients’ charts, so I’d already figured out what had to be done and all I needed was their approval. And I carried my clinical handbook at all times and memorized what I could. I drew blood, changed bedpans, fixed the beds, and familiarized myself with vitals. Grunt work, but a vital step to become a nurse.

But being in the ER surrounded by the aftermath of violence, the conflict of my two worlds was colliding.

“GSW to the chest,” the EMT yelled as a gurney was wheeled in. “Suspected hemothorax.” Unlike most of the GSWs coming through here, the man was dressed in an expensive suit and I spotted the equally pricy watch on his wrist. Dom had a similar one, and I was guessing it was the same brand that cost three times as much as a nurse’s annual salary.

ER personnel swarmed. Nurse Addy was one of them, and she was my preceptorship mentor. Her shift was my shift. Instead of my six to eight hours, I’d been going eight to twelve.

I was still confined to patient intake and drawing blood. But just to be exposed to the rush of the ER and the variety of cases that came in made the grueling hours worth it.

But tonight was different because I spotted Anton walking in. When our eyes clashed across the room, he spun around and exited.

“Did you hear me, Sloane?” Nurse Addy asked.

I dazedly looked at my mentor. All the blood had drained to my toes. “Uhm…I’m sorry.”

She frowned at me. “Here, finish taking the patient’s information.”

We burst into an ER exam room where X-rays were quickly taken.

But there was extensive damage. The patient coded, and after a few minutes of trying to revive him, the nurse called the time of death at ten twenty-four p.m.

This wasn’t the first death I’d seen during my shifts, but somehow this one hit me the hardest because there was a part of me that felt responsible. That I was part of the problem.

Later I would find out that the patient was a lawyer. He’d been shot outside his office building and the police who’d come in considered it a mugging. So many questions. The people responsible had taken his wallet but left his expensive watch?

I was a zombie for the last few hours of my shift. Finally, in the locker room, Addy and I were preparing to go home.

“You did good today, Sloane,” Addy said.

“Thanks.”

“I noticed this last GSW hit you hard,” she said. “We see all kinds of injuries in the ER and some deaths hit us harder than others. But there was nothing we could have done for him. His heart had too much damage.”

“I know,” I whispered, closing my locker.

“Take a break this weekend and recharge, all right?”

“Thank you, Addy.”