Kiss and Tell
Small-Town Secrets: Book 2
Sophia Sinclair
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Sophia Sinclair Books
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Sophia Sinclair
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, or by any electronic or mechanical means, without written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in book reviews.
Cover design copyright Vixen Designs.
Chapter 1
Lori Randall expertly slid the IV needle right into the vein so quickly that her patient, who was turning his head and making a face, didn’t even know she had done it. She held a cotton ball against the injection site and carefully placed a strip of adhesive to hold the needle in place, and removed the rubber tie, which had helped make his veins pop up, from his upper arm.
“All done, Mr. Wright,” she said.
“Eh? I didn’t feel it this time,” said the elderly man. He was what the nurses in the Emergency Room referred to as a “frequent flyer,” so Lori was familiar with the man’s hatred of needles. Still, for someone who purported to hate needles, hospitals and pretty much every other form of medical care, he sure did find enough reasons to hit the Emergency Room. Some of his visits appeared legit. But other times, she suspected, he was just lonely.
“You have good veins. Easy as pie,” she said.
“The last nurse poked me like I was a pin cushion,” he said. “I’m gonna ask for you from now on,” he said.
“It’ll just depend on who is on duty when you get here, Mr. Wright. No guarantees it’ll be me. But any of our nurses will take very good care of you.” She quickly cleaned up after herself and placed her rubber gloves in the trash. “The doctor will be in to see you soon,” she said. Then she was off to the next patient.
It was a Thursday night at Fairview Medical Center. So far it had been a fairly slow night. Mr. Wright, with his endless complaints about everything. A baby with a slight fever, whose first-time mother was worried sick and needed lots of reassurance. A woman with severe stomach pain who Lori suspected would be getting her gallbladder out sooner rather than later. That was pretty much it, and that suited Lori just fine — there were plenty of shifts she was so busy that she could scarcely find time to go to the bathroom or eat dinner. She usually worked days, but they’d needed her to switch her to a late schedule for a few weeks because one of the night nurses was on maternity leave. She didn’t mind much. She wasn’t dating anyone, so it’s not as if she were really missing out on anything by working until late into the night.
She had a new romance novel and an apple in her locker, and her eye was on the clock, just waiting for her break so she could devour both. Part of Lori’s regular routine was an apple and a few chapters of whatever romance novel she was reading for lunch, or, in this case, dinner. It was another pirate novel — her particular favorite in the romance genre. Her best friend, Molly, had recently married a pirate — or so Lori joked. He was actually a textbook editor, but he so closely resembled the pirate on the cover of the book Lori was looking at when she met him that she still teased her friend about marrying the Pirate Man. In turn, Molly often teased Lori that the reason she hadn’t yet achieved her goal of marrying a doctor was that her apple a day kept them away.
Lori wished it were as simple as switching to a banana. Or a cheeseburger. Or anything else. She loved being a nurse, but a big part of the attraction of her profession for her was meeting doctors. As a teenager, she had declared her intention to become a nurse and to marry a doctor. She found doctors dedicated and intelligent and powerful. No lesser male mortal really appealed to her. Problem was, though she’d dated at least a dozen in the past few years, she was still single. She spent a lot of effort on her appearance. Her platinum blond hair was always flawless. At work she wore scrubs, but the rest of the time she took care to dress fashionably in a way that showed off the very good figure she was always careful to keep.
Five minutes, she thought to herself. Then she’d crack into “Sweet Savage Love” and escape from everything for a while. But then another patient came in. He was 36, the chart said. Jake Williams. Good-looking guy, she idly thought to herself, if he’d shave. Tall. Great hair. Blue eyes. Her type, if he happened to be a doctor, and if he weren’t wearing dirty jeans and a flannel shirt. She thought she knew that name. He was here to have a splinter removed. “A splinter?” she thought to herself. No wonder medical costs were so high. Ridiculous. Then she saw it.
“How on earth?” she couldn’t help asking.
“I know,” he said sheepishly. “I’m a real estate agent. I was trying to pull a “For Sale By Owner” sign out of a client’s yard so I could put in my own. New clients. They tried to sell their house by themselves but finally gave up and hired me when they couldn’t get it sold. They had a homemade wooden sign in their yard and it was stuck. So I gave it a good pull and managed to do this.” He held up his hand, which was embedded with the longest splinter Lori had ever seen. It would have given a fit of the heebie-jeebies to the average person: A slender piece of wood several inches long was lodged firmly inside the skin of the palm of his hand, just under his four fingers. Lori visualized him gripping a wooden stake with both hands, jerking upward, slipping, and having a splinter of wood instantly jam into the soft skin on his palm. Ouch.
“The doctor will probably have to cut this out,” she said. “For now, let’s get your blood pressure.” She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm and it automatically puffed up. She read the results and entered them into the electronic chart. “Blood pressure is 122/65,” she said. Normal pulse, normal temperature, no allergies, no other symptoms.
“I believe we’ve met,” he suddenly said. “You’re Caroline’s friend. I just sold her a house. I think you were at her house-warming party, right?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” she said. She remembered him now. Caroline had gushed about what a great real estate agent he was. He’d looked quite handsome when she met him. He was clearly not dressed for the job today. But she had found him annoying at the party. The slick salesman type. He didn’t look so slick now. She mentally shaved him, combed his hair, and switched out the work clothing for a good suit. Yep, same guy. But not nearly as self-assured and arrogant-looking now that he was sitting there with a long piece of wood jammed into his hand. Or so she thought. His next words changed her mind about that: “Hey, if you are interested in buying or selling a home, let me know.” He used his uninjured hand to extend a business card, which she declined to take.
“Sorry, I’m here to help take care of your hand, not to make a real estate deal. The doctor will be with you soon,” she said. She turned and walked out, ready to escape to her apple and her book.
Chapter 2
“Heads up! We’re getting two ambulances. Sounds bad,” Harriet Winslow said. Harriet was the oldest nurse in the hospital, and something of a local legend for her years in the ER. Lori was always grateful to be working with her when all hell broke loose. She braced herself. According to Harriet, there’d been an auto accident out in the country. When injuries were severe, their job was to get patients stable and send them on to the hospital in Springfield by ambulance. Small-town hospitals like Fairview’s weren’t equipped to handle really high-level care, but without initial stabilization, badly hurt people wouldn’t survive the trip to a trauma center.
Harriet was in constant contact with the paramedics and barked ou
t information to the rest of them so they’d be prepared. A girl of 16 and a man of 65. The girl seemed to have a broken arm and would likely only need a cast. The man hadn’t been wearing his seat belt. His head had hit the windshield and he had severe bleeding and was in and out of consciousness. That was not a good sign.
The first ambulance arrived and Lori and her colleagues were ready. It was the older man, and the paramedics rushed him inside. The ER doctor barked out orders, but Lori was an experienced nurse and she already anticipated each of his orders before he gave them. The paramedics had started an IV and bandaged his head on the way, but it was starting to bleed through. He wasn’t moving and Lori feared the worst, but she talked to him as she completed each task. You never knew whether unconscious people might be able to hear you talking, and she always felt it was important to offer soothing information, just in case. She checked his vitals and they rushed him to Imaging to get a CT scan. She could hear behind her that the ambulance with the girl had also arrived, and colleagues were seeing to her. She couldn’t think about that; all her attention was on her patient. They would know more when they had scans to look at; for now her main concern was to help the doctor gather information so they would know what their next step would be. She caught her breath once he was in the hands of Imaging and the CT technologist. The man regained consciousness just as he was being taken from the CT scanner, and she explained to him what had happened. He was confused but she was relieved that he could tell her his name and the date. They stitched up the cut on his forehead, which turned out to look worse than it really was — head wounds always bled a ton. They admitted him to the hospital — no need to transfer him to Springfield, they decided. From there, he’d be cared for upstairs. Lori returned to the ER to see if she could help with the young woman.
Harriet and Dr. Morrissey were efficiently taking care of her.
“What do we have?” Lori asked. The girl answered for her.
“My arm hurts. I think I broke it,” she said.
“We can give you something for the pain soon,” Harriet said. “We want to check a few things first, OK?”
“All right,” the girl said. She was pretty and you could tell, despite the accident, that she’d spent a lot of time on her hair and makeup tonight. She probably had plans for a fun evening with her friends or maybe a boyfriend. “Can you call my mom?”
“Of course,” Lori said. “You got the number?” she asked Harriet.
“Yes, the paramedics already noted it on her chart,” she said.
“It’s …” the girl trailed off, looking confused. She tried again. “I think it’s … ” Her eyes rolled up into her head and she lost consciousness. This changed everything — the doctor palpated her abdomen and looked alarmed. “Internal bleeding. Surgery! Now!” They ran with the stretcher down the hallway, each member of the team doing exactly what he or she needed to do, and then the surgical staff took over and Lori and Harriet were left reeling from the feeling of going from 100 percent engagement to suddenly just standing there.
“I really did not see that coming,” Harriet admitted. “She showed no signs of anything but a broken arm.”
“You never know,” Lori said, feeling how ineffectual that was. Sometimes internal bleeding was so severe that the patients died at the scene; other times it was a slow bleed that didn’t make itself known until days later. She had heard of people in auto accidents declining to go to the hospital, insisting they were fine, only to quietly bleed to death at home in their sleep. In this case, Dr. Morrissey had examined the girl’s abdomen right away and hadn’t felt any indications of severe internal bleeding, and the scan they had planned to do would have told them if there were any at all. For her abdomen to feel soft one minute and firm soon thereafter was a bad sign; it might mean that a small bleed had suddenly worsened into a fast bleed, so quickly that there was no time to do a CT scan. The surgeon would have to move fast to find and repair whatever might be bleeding. She knew they’d give her multiple units of blood and race to find the source of the bleeding, a task made harder when the abdomen was full of blood. That could make it difficult to find the problem. Lori wasn’t very religious but said a short prayer under her breath. The girl was young and healthy and she hoped the surgeon would be able to quickly locate and repair the problem.
Harriet and Lori tended to the other patients. The woman Lori suspected of having gallbladder issues was being admitted; they’d take out her gallbladder the next morning. The mom of the baby was reassured that a slight fever wasn’t necessarily a dangerous sign, still, Lori checked everything over especially carefully. She was always alert to the non-obvious signs that, if missed, could lead to danger, and the experience she’d just had reinforced her determination not to miss anything. However, this was exactly what it looked like — a baby with a slight fever. She counseled the young mother what to watch for and encouraged her to call her own mother when she learned there was no father in the picture. Just about every first-time mother panicked the first time her baby was ill; being young and single probably made it harder, Lori thought. The grandmother had probably weathered any number of childhood illnesses when raising her children and could no doubt help reassure her daughter.
That left Mr. Wright, who often complained of vague symptoms. She knew sometimes he really did not need medical care so much as he needed someone to listen to him, and she decided just talking to him would be the best use of her time just now. Besides, she’d just had a vivid reminder that things were not always as they seemed.
She listened to him talk about a funny feeling in his feet that she knew was probably connected to his Type II diabetes; he didn’t follow his diet and she reminded him again how important it was to keep good control over his blood sugar.
Other patients filtered in; a middle-aged woman with a severe headache and a young man who had cut his hand badly while trying to separate frozen steaks with a knife. Lori and Harriet handled these routine cases, but their thoughts were also on the young woman. The grubby real estate guy with the splinter from hell was cooling his heels, waiting for Dr. Morrissey.
Lori was working on discharge papers for the man with the cut, which Dr. Morrissey had easily stitched up and bandaged. The man would be fine, and Lori made sure he understood how to change the bandage and what signs of infection to look for. Dr. Morrissey had written him a prescription for antibiotics and painkiller and Lori advised him to switch to ibuprofen as soon as he felt he could do without the prescription. He thanked her and she released him to his wife.
Harriet motioned to her as soon as she could see Lori was done with her patient and they stepped into a private area. “That girl …” Harriet paused. “She died in surgery.”
“Oh no,” Lori said. She was too professional to cry at work and blinked away the tears that tried to fall. “Oh, no,” she said again. She and Harriet took hands and a look of understanding passed between them.
“Lacerated liver,” Harriet said. “They just couldn’t stop the bleeding. Gave her something like 27 units of blood but she went into shock and died on the table.”
“Good God,” Lori said. “What was her name?”
“Sarah Andrews. Sixteen,” Harriet said.
“Goddammit,” Lori said. “But Dr. Morrissey examined her initially and didn’t feel anything?”
“No, she seemed fine. I thought we’d check her out and find nothing, set her arm and have her home by midnight. She’d have about a hundred of her closest friends sign her cast and six weeks from now she’d be right as rain. Instead, we put her on life support so her organs can be donated if the family wants.” Harriet paused. “Her parents should be here any minute.”
“I’ll help,” Lori assured her. It was very late at night; the few patients left in the ER could do without her for the time it would take to talk to the parents. Dr. Morrissey would have to be the one to tell them their daughter was dead, but afterward, the two nurses would answer their questions and guide them through making early decisions.<
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“Thank you,” Harriet said. This wasn’t a big-city hospital where ER deaths of young people were a regular occurrence. When they saw death, it was more commonly older people whose deaths weren’t unexpected. It wasn’t usual for them to see a young, healthy woman succumb so suddenly, and they couldn’t pretend to be unmoved.
The parents arrived shortly thereafter. Lori recognized the look of fear and pleading on their faces. They badly wanted to be given reassuring news but just the fact that they were immediately ushered into a private room, they seemed to recognize, wasn’t a good sign. Dr. Morrissey joined them and got right to the point.
“I’m Dr. Morrissey. I saw your daughter when she first arrived by ambulance,” he said.
“Is Sarah OK?” the mother asked urgently.
“I am very sorry. We did everything we could, but your daughter had severe abdominal bleeding and we were unable to stop it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
The girl’s parents clutched each other and began wailing. Lori and Harriet exchanged glances. This was the hardest part of their jobs. Dr. Morrissey looked stricken. They all understood that they needed to give the parents some time to process the initial shock, and then the parents would probably have lots of questions. Lori dreaded the next part. They’d have to ask the parents about organ donation, forcing them to make a difficult decision in the midst of their grief. But there was no other way; if the girl’s organs were to be donated, the decision had to be made quickly.
“I need to ask you about organ donation,” Dr. Morrissey said. “I know this is a difficult thing to talk about, but it’s possible we could save several other lives by donating Sarah’s organs.”
“My baby girl!” the woman choked.
“We don’t want to talk about that right now,” her husband said. He looked about 10 years older than he’d looked when he’d walked in, Lori thought.
Kiss & Tell (Small-Town Secrets-Fairview Series Book 2) Page 1