“Shelly?” Babs said. “You wanna play with us?”
“I can’t right now, sweets,” she answered. “But I’ll come back when I get off work, and I’ll play a game with you then. Or maybe read a book?”
“Yeah!” Babs and Charlie cheered.
The biological clock was ticking so loudly sometimes it deafened her. But then she came here, and saw these incredible little kids, and it helped. Maybe she didn’t have any of her own—might not ever if she couldn’t find a suitable mate before it was too late—but she had these three to visit with, play board games with, and hold when they got scared or lonely.
“Goo,” Neil said.
“Yeah, it’s good, isn’t it? Cherry. My favorite.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled at him as she brushed his hair back from his forehead.
Chapter Two
Wednesday at noon, Shelly couldn’t wait to escape the therapy room. Her morning had been filled with appointments, and everyone was in a pissy mood. Had to be the weather. The atmospheric pressure was super low while a blizzard brewed. She felt as if her skin was too tight, and it would seem everyone she came into contact with was the same way. She couldn’t wait for it to actually start snowing and get over with.
One older man who’d had hip replacement had yelled at her, a middle-aged woman with a shoulder injury had called her a cunt for making her do her stretches before beginning the exercises, but this last patient had been the worst! A seventeen-year-old girl with a chip on her shoulder the size of Wisconsin who broke her foot during cheerleading practice six weeks ago and had just gotten her cast off. Wow. Shelly had forgotten just what little bitches teen girls could be.
As soon as the little witch teen had hobbled out of the therapy room in her walking cast, Shelly locked her office and headed for the doctor’s lounge where lunch would be waiting, if delivery was on time.
She saw the half dozen white coats through the lounge’s window before she entered. Pushing the door open, she said, “If anyone touched my ham and Swiss on rye, I’ll have your head.”
Doctor James Sidhu chuckled and stepped back from the table with his hands up. “I just want my tuna salad. Don’t shoot.”
“Looks like someone’s had a bad morning,” Nurse Jane Clarence said around a chuckle before she took a bite of a pickle spear.
“Is it just me,” Shelly said as she grabbed a mug from the shelf and poured herself a cup of not-so-fresh coffee from the pot on the side table, “or is it a really bad day to be dealing with people?”
“I had one patient tell me he was going to sue my ass off because I made him wait a whole ten minutes past his appointment time,” Doctor Nancy Pierce said as she held out a Styrofoam container to Shelly. “I think this is yours.”
Shelly took the container with a smile. “It’s been a hell of a morning. Thanks.” She went to one of the round tables scattered around the room and slid into a seat, then took a sip of her coffee, closed her eyes, and sighed.
“Needs to start snowing, break the tension. Two days of this low is making everyone a little crazy.”
“Full moon tomorrow, too. That doesn’t help.”
The conversation went on around her, but Shelly concentrated on her food.
“Hey, I forgot to leave the bag of condiments.”
She glanced up to see Ricky Santana step into the room. She smiled at him. He’d been one of her first patients when she came to CVMH. “How’s it going, Ricky?” she asked around a bite of salad.
“Good.” He grinned and set a paper sack on the table. “I think the deliveries to the hospital will put me through college.” He chuckled a little nervously as a couple of the doctors extracted bills from their wallets to tip him.
“Be a surgeon,” one doctor said.
“No way, man. You wanna go into orthopedics,” another piped up as he dug into the condiment bag.
Shelly laughed. “Yeah, you want to stick with a field where you can knock them out so you don’t have to talk to them.” She winked and lifted her sandwich. “Take care of yourself, Ricky.”
“Thanks, Dr. Newman. You too.” He gave a wave to the room in general and said, “Thanks,” before he walked out.
“Cute kid,” Jane said as she sat down across the table from Shelly. “I see him around here a lot.”
Shelly nodded and swallowed her bite of food. “Good kid. Bad childhood, but good kid. And we do tend to order out a lot, and seeing he’s the only delivery boy working at the only deli in town…”
Jane chuckled. “So true. We’re little piggies.”
“Speak for yourself,” Dr. Sidhu said as he took the remaining empty chair at their table and opened his green salad with a blob of tuna salad in the middle.
Dr. Pierce, sitting at the next table said, “I’m on my feet ten hours a day.” She lifted her not-so-healthy hoagie dripping with sauce. “I can afford a few calories for lunch.”
“Unlike you lazy asses, I have to take my food to go,” Doctor Brian Manning—the hospital’s only orthopedist—said as he grabbed his mug of coffee and food container. “Later!”
Shelly waved, since her mouth was full, and the other doctors and nurses called out jibes and farewells. It was nice working in such a small hospital where everyone knew everyone else enough to be this friendly. They shared a nice camaraderie, but again, she considered none of them real friends. Celeste was her only real friend, and usually their lunches didn’t coincide. Besides, poor Celeste, being an ER nurse, didn’t always get her lunches on schedule unless she booked off the time.
Shelly looked forward to lunch with her friend on Friday. They didn’t get together enough outside of work. And although it’d only be an hour-long lunch, at least they could run to the local pub instead of cold deli food or cafeteria food, which while not bad, was still hospital food.
When her lunchtime was over, she was the only one left in the lounge, and she didn’t have to get back to the therapy room quite yet. She didn’t have another patient until two. But she did have paperwork to fill out, file, fax, mail off, etcetera, etcetera. She got up from the comfortable chair, threw away her trash, refilled her coffee mug, and then, just because it had been such a rotten day so far, picked up the last glazed donut from the box by the coffee machine.
Okay, she wasn’t the healthiest eater in the world. She readily admitted that. But four out of five lunch hours a week, she spent half of that hour using the exercise equipment in the therapy room. She had no complaints about her curves, and besides, there wouldn’t be any shorts and tank tops for another few months.
She put the donut between her teeth so she had a free hand to open the door to the therapy room. Because her mind was on the pile of paperwork ahead, a loud grunt made her jump and drop her donut. It was only due to years of coffee drinking that she maintained her hold on her mug, but she did yelp and turn toward the sound.
Across the room, standing between the parallel bars, stood Pete Dexler.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded. “Our appointment for today was canceled. You’re supposed to be resting your back.” She scooped up the donut and frowned at the pieces of glaze left on the rug. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. She tossed it into the garbage and headed toward him. “You could really hurt yourself being in here without supervision.”
He turned those gorgeous eyes on her and glared. “I didn’t hurt this morning, so here I am. I don’t exactly have these things at home to work with.”
“You wouldn’t be honest about your pain level with me if your damn life depended on it.”
“Got that right,” he muttered and worked on his steps.
She didn’t see any real signs of strain from him. Definitely better than the other day. But he still shouldn’t be here. She’d told him not to come.
“And I don’t need supervision. I’m not a child, and I’ve been living alone since I got back to Cooper Valley.”
Oh, she hadn’t known that. She just assumed he had someone around to help. Parents, a
girlfriend…
Shelly stood back and sipped her coffee. What was the use arguing? She’d been fighting with this man for months now, and it never got her anywhere. He did what he wanted, when he wanted. Period. Probably came from his almost two decades in the Marine Corps.
His stubbornness didn’t, however, sit well with this civilian.
“So tell me,” she said conversationally, “were you this bad at following directions in the military?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t look at her. Just concentrated on his steps.
She noticed he was using his arms less and less to hold him up. And he was straining much less than he ever had up to this point. Either he’d taken it easy since their last session, or he was taking some major painkillers. She didn’t believe he took drugs, though. From what she’d read in his V.A. file, except for the first couple of weeks after the surgery to remove the shrapnel from his back, he’d refused every painkiller other than over-the-counter stuff.
And then like flicking a switch, it all changed. He reached the end of the bars closest to her, adjusted his grip, and turned. Only he turned his body before his feet. The sound he gave was a soft gasp, but she saw the agony cross his face. She dropped her coffee mug and leaped forward, barely getting her arms around him before he lost his balance.
They tumbled onto the mat with her shielding him from the impact the best she could, trying to lower their combined weight instead of dropping, with him coming down on top of her.
“Fuckingsonofamotherfuckingwhore! Arggghhh!”
His whole body tightened up, and all Shelly could do was hold onto him. She could only imagine the pain shooting through him right then, and bit her lip to keep from making a sound as his weight squished the breath out of her chest.
But then he rolled to the side and shoved her away, his hand planted on her shoulder. “What the fuck is wrong with you, woman? What are you trying to do to me?”
“I…”
He rolled onto his back, his face scrunched in pain and beet red once again, his breaths coming in pants. He slammed a fist against the blue exercise mat and let out a shout filled with more frustration than pain. “Fuck!”
Shelly got to her knees and sat back on her heels, waiting to see what he needed. She hoped he wouldn’t leave the room on a stretcher instead of in his wheelchair.
Damn herself for acting like the bitch he accused her of being and not paying attention to what he was doing.
His breathing slowed, the look of agony slowly lifted from his expression, and he opened his eyes. “Don’t ever grab me like that again,” he said. His voice was low, almost lethal sounding.
“Sorry,” she whispered. If she hadn’t caught him, he would have hit the floor at full impact.
“Help me up,” he demanded.
“You need to rest a minute. I know that hurt.”
“I said,” he said through clenched teeth as he rolled onto his side and used his arms to lift his upper body, “help me the fuck up. I’m not lying here all day.”
Shelly got to her feet, grabbed his wheelchair to push closer, and he shouted, “On my feet, goddamn it! Not in that fucking chair!”
“You can’t stand up right now, Dex. You’re in pain. You—”
“Fuck this shit.” He pushed up onto his knees and growled.
“Stop it!” She rushed around behind him. “Stop pushing yourself so damn hard.” The catch in her voice and the sting to her eyes pissed her off more than anything.
He got up on his knees and grabbed the parallel bars. Using his upper body only, he dragged himself to his feet, but he grunted and growled like a wounded animal. The sound tore at her heart, but it infuriated her too. She shoved the chair right up behind his knees.
“Sit your goddamn ass down before I get a tranquilizer and use it on you!”
“If you hadn’t been standing there mouthing off—”
She pushed the chair against the backs of his knees.
“Fucking bitch, what’s wrong with you?” he shouted, but he finally lowered himself into the armless chair by holding onto the parallel bars.
“You are what’s wrong with me,” she said as she shoved his chair out from between the bars and toward the door. “You and every other patient that comes in here and thinks they know more than I do. I’m a fucking M.D. with ten years of experience in this field. I know what the human body can take and what it can’t!” She slapped the button on the wall so the door opened automatically and shoved him into the hallway and toward the elevator.
“Where the hell are you taking me?”
Doctor Saunders was just exiting the elevator, so she rushed Dex in and hit the button for the third floor.
“Answer me,” he demanded.
She narrowed her eyes and glared at the button panel. She’d had enough. If he didn’t stop this shit, she’d drop him, and he could go the twenty miles to the nearest physical therapist.
The door opened on the third floor, and Shelly pushed his chair out, past the pediatric nurses’ station, and into the room where her three kids were.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
“Shelly!” Charlie cried and jumped off his bed, grabbing his IV rack and pulling it along as he ran to her and threw his little arms around her waist in a big hug.
“Hey, sweet thing,” she said, forcing her voice into one of calm happiness—the only emotion she showed these beautiful kids.
“You play now?”
“Not just now, hon. I want to introduce someone to you guys.”
Charlie, holding onto the hem of her scrub top leaned around to look up at Dex. “Who is he?” Charlie asked in a stage whisper.
Babs came out of the bathroom shaking drops of water off of her hands. “Hi, Shelly,” she called.
“Hey, sweets. Come over here a sec, would you?”
Babs came over and gave her a hug.
“Babs, Charlie, this is Master Sergeant Dexler. He’s a Marine. You know what that is?”
Both Babs and Charlie nodded. Babs said, “Were you hurt in the war?”
Dex stared at the two little kids a long moment, glanced up at Shelly, then slowly nodded.
“Wow. Are you okay?” Babs asked.
“He’s going to be fine. He just needs time to heal. Why don’t you tell him why you’re here?”
“I have leukemia,” Babs said very matter-of-factly. Then she reached up and pulled the Sponge Bob bandana off her head. “See. My hair fell out cuz they put poison in my body. I probably won’t live another year, but I stay here and take my medicine. Shelly says that there’s hope until the end.” Babs grinned and tugged her bandana back into place. “Shelly’s really nice. She visits us every day.”
The vulnerability that she saw every so often was slapped across Dex’s face right then. Maybe she was making her point. “How about you, Charlie? You want to tell him why you’re here?”
“I got hole in my heart,” he said rather proudly, puffing out his chest. “Too big to fix, too.”
Shelly heard Dex swallow hard.
“I have stomach stuff too.” He lifted his shirt and showed Dex the feeding tube that was needed when he became too ill to eat. “And sometimes I have to sleep with a machine so’s I don’t stop breathing.”
Shelly patted Charlie on the head. “Tell Sergeant Dexler what the rule in this room is.”
“Always keep a positive thought in your pocket,” Charlie and Babs said loudly, then they both giggled.
“That’s right, and why do we do that?”
“Cuz sometimes life sucks,” Babs said.
“Yeah, sucks,” Charlie added.
“What’s your positive thought, Babs?” Shelly asked.
“If I make it ten days without being really sick, Shelly takes me to the arcade at the bowling alley for an hour.”
“And yours, Charlie?”
“Pizza!”
Shelly laughed, even as tears blurred her vision. “That’s right. Charlie gets pizza if he can make it ten days without
needing the feeding tube.
“We all get pizza when he gets it,” Babs said. “Sometimes it’s better than the arcade.”
Shelly gave Babs a quick hug. “Thanks, you two. I’ll be by after I get off work.”
“Nice meeting you, Mr. Dexler,” Babs said.
“Yeah, you too,” Dex said softly, in a tone Shelly had never heard before. Could it possibly be humility? She didn’t ask, she just pushed his chair across the room to Neil’s bed.
“Hey there, sweetpea,” she said, leaning over the railing and brushing the hair back from his face. “How you feelin’?
The little boy grinned. “No feel.”
Shelly turned to Dexler and didn’t bother to hide the tears swimming in her eyes. She leaned down and whispered in his ear. “His stepfather beat him so hard he broke his neck while his mother watched. He’s a ward of the state now, paralyzed from the neck down, and has the mental capacity of a two-year-old when he’s actually five. Now, Master Sergeant Dexler, I’m fairly certain any of these three would gladly trade places with you. You’re a fucking adult. Act like one.”
She stood and, without looking back, left him there in the middle of the children’s room and got out of there before she lost it. As it was, she barely made it into the women’s restroom down the hall and shut herself in a stall before the tears came in earnest.
When she was with those three, she did her best not to think about their situations. Babs got a little sicker every month, not better. Charlie had no hope of survival without a heart transplant, but he was AB negative blood type, the rarest in the world, so it didn’t look very promising. He was on constant blood thinners, which made it impossible for him to live a normal life out in the world. One small cut could cause him to bleed to death. But because his mother didn’t have medical insurance, here he was, in this little nothing hospital without much hope, barely surviving on state aid.
Both kids’ parents rarely came to visit any longer, maybe stopping in once or twice a week. Babs had a little brother who got the attention. Charlie’s mom was a single mother who worked outrageous amounts of hours to try to pay a minimum of the long-term medical bills the state didn’t cover. She, at least, came when she could. And then Neil. No one really knew what to do with him. The state footed the bill for him to stay in the hospital only because there wasn’t enough room in the state-run, long-term pediatric wards. He’d been there when Shelly had started.
Dangerous Intentions Page 2