In His Angel's Arms

by Lynne Marshall

  Being in vacation mode, it occurred to him that he enjoyed watching her. If he was honest with himself, he’d admit he’d always enjoyed looking at Mallory Glenn.

  “Studies show that increasing the number of RNs on any given ward doesn’t appear to increase hospital costs. In fact, it may even decrease costs when you factor in the extreme expense of adverse patient outcomes with lower nurse-to-patient ratios requiring more extensive treatments.”

  So his latest debate opponent had come prepared. He liked a good sparring partner—they normally made good lovers. And he’d always had a soft spot for redheads—his very first girlfriend had been one. There was something fragile and alluring about Mallory he couldn’t quite put his finger on, though when it came to nursing she was a diligent and competent nurse, anything but fragile. He’d always seen her give expert patient care on the wards. And he’d also always enjoyed watching her walk from behind.

  If his mind was wandering to her face and figure, he must be losing the debate. Either that, or it had been too long since he’d had a woman in his arms. His lips almost twitched into a smile. Maybe he was losing ground—he’d use his best defense. “OK. We’ll do a study on your ward. I’ll get on it the minute I return from my vacation.”

  “But we need extra help now, not next month.”

  “I’ll approve overtime. If anyone wants to work extra shifts, they may.”

  He felt the need to shake out his feet. He’d been sitting in his chair for so many hours, having meetings and doing last-minute paperwork, that they’d gone to sleep. He tried to stretch out his legs, but his feet moved like dead weights.

  “Well, when you do your study,” she said with clear frustration in her voice, “I suggest you consider both nurse and patient satisfaction surveys. We’re slipping in patient satisfaction, and we’re losing perfectly good nurses to our competitors because of better working conditions.” She swept a long, milky-white arm through the air, making an exasperated gesture. “And in case you haven’t noticed, there is a nursing shortage in California. Quality of patient care is an issue that can’t be ignored.”

  With fire kindling in her eyes, Mallory wouldn’t leave without being invited. He’d have to use the old stand-up-to-announce-this-meeting-is-over trick. He rolled back his chair and pushed himself to stand. His feet and lower legs felt like dead tree stumps. He eased himself back into his chair, attempting to hide his concern.

  “Is something wrong, Dr. Prescott?”

  “I’m fine. Just getting antsy to leave for my vacation.” He’d try his male charm to lure her out of his office. “May we pick this meeting back up in, say…” he looked at his watch “…three weeks and one day?” He cocked his head, raised his brows, and smiled.

  She disguised her disappointment with grace. Her glance swept downward toward her lap, as though she was weighing up the proposition. Thick brown lashes almost touched her cheeks. She pursed pink gloss-covered lips while she thought.

  He felt compelled to offer a crumb of hope.

  “Mallory, I promise to give the staffing issue my undivided attention as soon as I get back. I’ll be rested and raring to go. In the meantime, you have an opportunity to make some extra money.”

  Priding himself on knowing his staff, he knew that once upon a time Mallory Glenn had been a teenage single mother. And now, barely looking over thirty but having to be several years older than that, she had a child ready for college and no husband to help defray the costs. Surely she could use the extra hours and overtime pay.

  She’d caught his drift and prepared to stand. She nodded at him and stretched her mouth into a satisfying smile—the nicest thing he’d seen all day. “I’m going to hold you to it, Dr. Prescott. For old times’ sake.”

  He grinned as she nervously played with her braid. “It’s a deal. For old times’ sake. If my feet hadn’t gone to sleep on me, I’d see you out, but…”

  “That’s fine.” She turned to leave, and he watched her slender legs walk toward the door, legs that could be downright striking given sexier shoes than those dowdy crêpe-soled nurses’ clogs. A narrow waist and shapely hips filled out the uniform skirt in a most intriguing manner. At least something he’d always considered pleasant on the job hadn’t changed.

  Get a life, Prescott. Better yet, find a date.

  *

  Disappointed, Mallory closed the door to Dr. Prescott’s office and leaned on her hands against the wall. The time had been they could chat and make jokes with each other. Now he’d become so far removed that she hardly recognized him.

  Had she made any headway? He’d changed so much since he’d become the medical director. They used to be on the same team. Now she was sure his allegiance went to the business side of medicine instead of patients. She bit her lip and thought how she’d word the lack of progress for her co-workers.

  “He has promised to look into it next month.”

  Yeah, that would go down well.

  A loud thud from inside his office caught her attention. It sounded as if furniture had been upended. The scuffling continued, and she heard a strained curse.

  Curiosity drove her to knock on the door. “Dr. Prescott? Are you all right?” Without waiting for a response, she swung the door open and found him on the floor with a baffled look on his face.

  Mallory rushed to him. “What happened? Did you pass out? Are you OK?”

  He shook his head and alarm radiated from his face. “I can’t walk.”

  She gasped. “Shall I call the code assist team?”

  “No! I’ll probably be fine. I just need to get the circulation back in my legs. A few minutes ago they felt like pins and needles. But now they’re completely dead.”

  Lifting the legs of his slacks, she felt his skin. It was warm. She felt the popliteal pulse behind his knee, then pushed down his sock and felt the pulse on the top of one foot, then the other. They both checked out fine. She flicked her finger on his shin. “Can you feel that?”

  He lifted a brow and shook his head, concern in his eyes.

  She scanned the room and considered helping him back into his rolling desk chair and taking him to the ER for evaluation. Realizing how ridiculous that would look, she said, “I’m going to find a wheelchair. Wait right here.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She tore down the hall, heading for the employee elevator bank where extra equipment was often left behind. Thankful to find an unclaimed wheelchair, she pushed it back to his office and right up beside him. She locked the brakes.

  “Here, let me help you up.”

  Being a tall and sturdy man, she knew the lift would be difficult without his help.

  “Easy,” he said. “Don’t hurt your back.”

  As inappropriate a time to laugh as it was, a soft chuckle escaped her lips. “Don’t worry, I’ve attended the annual body mechanics update. It covers everything.”

  He tossed her a deadpan stare. “Point well taken.”

  He turned to a hands-and-knees position with his hair falling into his face. “I can get myself into the chair.”

  Mallory fought the urge to brush the hair out of his eyes, but instead let him struggle to help himself up. When his legs wouldn’t co-operate, she used her own strength and pushed against his rear end to help him move into the wheelchair. He climbed up, twisted and turned, then sat, noticeably out of breath, as though he carried a sack of bricks. One by one, she lifted each leg to place them onto the footrests.

  “Come on, Dr. Prescott,” she said. “Let’s get you down to Emergency.”

  *

  They rolled through the emergency-room doors in record time. When the staff ER doc saw who the patient was, he jumped to action.

  “What happened, JT?”

  “He can’t walk,” Mallory blurted out.

  Dr. Prescott scrubbed his face with a hand, then studied it with a surprised look in his eyes. “Now my hands feel tingly, like my legs did earlier.”

  “Let�
�s get him on a gurney. Oxygen. Get him some oxygen.”

  A nurse appeared from across the room and swept open the curtain to one of the ER cubicles. Mallory rolled the wheelchair beside the bed.

  With a sudden spurt of energy, JT made a desperate gymnast’s attempt—using straightened arms, as if mounting a pommel horse—to lift his bottom halfway out of the seat. Mallory grabbed and supported his legs. The other nurse held him around the waist and pulled him across the wheelchair armrest and onto the gurney.

  Mallory hooked him up to the oxygen on the wall, then stood back to allow the ER nurse to take over. The doctor hit him with a barrage of rapid-fire questions.

  “When did the symptoms begin? Any recent injuries? Any unexplained fevers? How has the blood pressure been? Any relevant family history for similar symptoms?”

  JT kept shaking his head in a bewildered manner and answered, “Just today. No. I don’t know. Fine. I don’t think so.”

  Having done her duty for Dr. Prescott, and considering the short-staffed nursing team on Five West, Mallory decided she’d better return to her ward. She walked toward the bed, took his hand and looked him straight in the eyes with a worried glance.

  JT held her gaze, and gave a stoic nod.

  Who knew where he’d be or how he would have gotten down here without her?

  “Thank you, Mallory.” His palm pressed over her hand. “I’ll be fine.”

  She blinked and gave him a reassuring smile, then tried to convince herself she believed what she was about to say.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine, too.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  HOW DEPENDABLE was the hospital grapevine? By the time Mallory returned to work the next day, rumors about JT were running wild. Could she believe them?

  “Did you hear about Dr. Prescott?” one of the nurses at report asked Mallory.

  Respectful of patient privacy, she hadn’t mentioned what had happened yesterday to anyone. “I know he wasn’t feeling well. Is he OK?” She dreaded what the nurse’s response might be.

  “He’s in the ICU on a ventilator.”

  Stunned, she blindly grasped for a chair and sat. “What?”

  “They think he has Guillain-Barré syndrome.”

  Wasn’t that an inflammatory disorder of the peripheral nerves? If she remembered her pathophysiology correctly, it usually occurred after a viral or bacterial infection, and had a rapid onset of weakness or paralysis of the legs and arms, but under extreme circumstances could also spread to the breathing muscles. Looking back, he’d had all of those symptoms. And now he was on a ventilator.

  “GBS? How did he get it? Did he have flu recently? Or an intestinal disorder?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s hanging on for dear life right now.”

  Feeling as though she’d been kicked in the solar plexus and the wind had been knocked out of her, Mallory gasped. “Oh, my God.”

  A nest of anxiety lodged in her chest and kept her distracted during change of shift report. With sincere intentions of stopping by and checking on him later, if for no other reason than to ease her mind, she prepared for her work day. But a long and grueling shift ensued, and soon becoming completely distracted with another kind of stress, the hospital bedside visit she’d planned to Dr. Prescott never happened.

  Yet she worried about him daily. Knowing the ICU only allowed family members to visit, she made a habit of stopping by each morning before starting work to chat with her friends. The sketchy updates on the doctor were never good. And the rules on patient confidentiality remained strict. No visitors. No specifics about his condition could be given. Though with quick glances into his room when she passed, she could see he was still on a ventilator.

  As the days went on Mallory had time to put their relationship into perspective. Just because she had been the one who had found him in his office, JT wasn’t really any of her business. Since he’d changed jobs they no longer had a daily working relationship. Fact was, she had nothing to do with his life whatsoever, and the only thing he had to do with hers was to sign her paychecks.

  Besides, Mallory had realistic worries of her own to deal with, such as how was she going to pay for her daughter’s college tuition in the fall?

  Over the next two weeks she allowed herself to become consumed with her life. One day, she forgot to ask about Dr. Prescott, and the next she heard he’d been transferred home.

  *

  Mallory’s daughter—seventeen-year-old Morgan—sat across from Mallory at the breakfast table. Pale and delicate, she’d pulled her dark blonde hair back into a stretch band, and without an ounce of make-up on looked closer to fourteen.

  “You’ve done your part. You’ve taken the tough classes and maintained straight As.” Mallory sipped her morning coffee and tried to think how to phrase what she was about to say. “I knew this day would come, but I haven’t prepared the way I should’ve.”

  With large hopeful eyes Morgan spoke up. “But I got those two scholarships to help.”

  “I know, sweetie, but that college back east is way out of my budget.”

  At thirty-five, and being a single mother, Mallory knew how to work hard. She’d done it all her life, but this dream of her daughter’s was going to cost a lot more than she’d ever imagined.

  The disappointed look in Morgan’s eyes when she handed back the college application made her throat tighten. Did she want to stomp on Morgan’s dream the way she’d ruined her own? Not on her life. She grabbed back the application.

  “Look, you keep saving your part-time job money and keep applying for those scholarships. I’ll work more and look into loans. We’ll get you there.”

  Morgan jumped up from her chair, rushed to Mallory’s side and threw her arms around her neck. “I love you, Mom. You’re the greatest mom in the world.”

  Loving every second but not wanting to come off as a pushover, she kept a stern look on her face. “You’d better keep your grades up in college. I don’t want to hear anything about wild parties or binge drinking or…”

  Morgan kept kissing her cheeks and squeezing her shoulders. Mallory pretended to get annoyed. “Stop it, you’re messing up my hair. I’ve got to go to work.”

  “I can’t wait to tell my friends I get to move to Rhode Island for college!”

  *

  After Mallory had eaten lunch at work, she perused the bulletin board in the nurses’ lounge. She feared the prospect of her daughter moving across the country and leaving her with an empty nest. What would it be like to live alone? She was also in need of extra money—a lot of extra money.

  Seventeen years of doting on Morgan were coming to an end. Mallory wouldn’t have any more excuses for her near non-existent social life. An extra job seemed like the logical solution.

  Her eyes came to rest on a typed notice, which read, “Seeking a qualified registered nurse for weekend relief; bedside home care. Twelve-hour shifts preferred, 9 a.m. or 9 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, or both weekend shifts. $50.00/hr.”

  She did the math and rushed down the hall to Personnel. When she arrived, one major dilemma almost kept her from applying for the job.

  The patient was none other than J.T. Prescott, the man she’d had a major crush on for years, and beside that he was her boss.

  But the money was too good, and she knew how to care for ventilator patients, so she signed on for both weekend days, every weekend.

  When she got back to her ward, Jenny, the newest RN, sat beside her to do some paperwork. “You look worried. Is everything OK?”

  Mallory sighed. “I’ve just applied for a weekend job.”

  “This place doesn’t wear you out enough?”

  “My daughter wants to go back east for college, so I’ll need all the money I can get my hands on.”

  “But what about the quality of your life? You can’t work twenty-four seven.”

  “I don’t exactly have a life anyway. In the last three years I’ve gone on, let’s see, one, two, three dates. I’ll spare you the details.�
��

  Jenny laughed. “I could tell you some horror stories myself.” She grew serious and patted Mallory’s hand. “But as far as nursing goes, you’re my role model. I really look up to you. I just want you to know that.”

  “Thanks, Miss Green-Behind-The-Ears. I wish you’d tell Administration that, so they’d give me a raise.”

  She grinned then grew serious. She put down her pen and thought about her fifteen-plus years in the nursing profession. It hadn’t been such a bad haul. At eighteen she’d had a daughter to be responsible for, so she’d taken the quickest path to cash and became a licensed vocational nurse. When most of her friends had been going to frat parties and cramming for finals, she’d planned Morgan’s first birthday party and got her first job. When supporting her and her daughter on an LVN’s salary hadn’t cut the budget, she returned to nursing school when Morgan had started kindergarten.

  It felt gratifying to know that her nursing peers respected her. She loved patient care—it seemed to come second nature to her. She loved being a mom, too, but times and things had changed. With a million little thoughts threatening to keep her distracted from her work, she scrubbed at her face. And before she could indulge in one more, a patient call light went off. She jumped up to answer it.

  Walking across the ward, she wondered if she could handle both her regular job and the home-care job, not to mention working seven days a week. Did she have a choice?

  It was a very tough route that she’d only be able to sustain for a limited time.

  She entered the patient’s room.

  Maybe Dr. Prescott wouldn’t make it. What a horrible thought. Could she handle it if he didn’t? Or maybe he’d get better. Who knew? She preferred to focus on the positive.

  *

  The room felt like a cave, cold and dark—something she’d imagined in a Dickens novel when she’d read it in seventh grade. The hospital-style bed and extra equipment cluttered the room and took up half of the space. A single brown leather chair and ottoman with a floor lamp and small table sat tucked in the corner for the caregiver. The ventilator hummed and clicked and stammered each time the patient hacked.