Lara Chapter 1

Lara 1

“You have room 15 today, Lara,” Joyce, the charge nurse, said with a smirk.

“Room 15?” Yesterday she’d had room 16, caring for a patient who reminded her of her beloved grandmother.  As far as she knew, Mrs. Oliphant was still in room 16.

“That’s right.”  Joyce smiled maliciously, her eyes clouded by the light bouncing off her glasses.  “It’s a new patient who I’m a little concerned about.”

As if Mrs. Oliphant didn’t warrant concern, and wouldn’t wonder why her nurse had been changed.  Yet she knew from past experience it was useless to argue with Joyce, who thought she knew more than anyone else, and she typed the room number into her computer obediently

Clint Carrigew, 28 years old, victim of a stabbing.  She swallowed her annoyance and scrolled down the chart.  Caucasian male, separated (no big surprise there), 3 convictions for misdemeanors including a history of assault and battery.  Just the sort of patient she wanted to care for, she thought, and rolled her eyes.

“He may need one-on-one,” Joyce said.  “In case the police put out a warrant on him.  But I’ll keep you posted.”

I bet you will, she thought, but only smiled politely.

Clint Carrigew was asleep when she entered his room.  He was lying on his back with his arm over his eyes, but she could see white blond hair reaching to the edge of his jaw, which was square and uncompromising.  His mouth made up for it, though,being both full and sensuous.  She rattled her stethoscope deliberately as she approached the bed, not wanting to startle him in view of his past history, but he continued to sleep until she touched his arm.  Then he jerked awake, his arm flung aside to reveal eyes like cut turquoise.

“Mr. Carrigew.”  She held up the stethoscope like an ID badge.  “I’m your nurse, Lara.  I need to take your blood pressure.”

“All right.”  He offered her his right arm, and she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around it carefully, noting a long scar that traveled from his shoulder to his forearm.  The chart had said abdominal wound, and there was a sterile wrap around his pelvis slightly stained with blood.

“How are you feeling today?” she asked.

“Okay,” he said, though she could tell he was in pain from his tight-lipped expression.  That, or he really didn’t like being woken up.  He watched without much interest as she took the reading, then pulled the thermometer from its casing on the wall.

“I need to take your temperature, too,” she explained.

“Fine.”  He turned his head to the side, and she carefully placed it into his ear.  He was an astonishingly handsome man, she thought.  It was a shame he had to be so incorrigible.

“It’s a little high,” she said, when the reading came back.  “I see the doctor will be in soon.”

“Yeah.”  He stared out the window at the opposite side of the room, where a white pigeon strutted on the roof.  It was quickly joined by a grey and black one.

“I don’t know why there’s always so many pigeons here,” she said, without thinking.

He glanced at her.  “It’s a tall building.”

“There’s lots of tall buildings.”

“And old.”  He looked away again.  “This city has a lot of pigeons.”

Not knowing how to respond, she dropped the subject.  “Your chart doesn’t list anyone as an emergency contact,” she said. “Is there someone you’d like us to notify?”

“No,” he said.  “Nobody.”

“Not even your parents?”

This time he stared at her harder.  “No.  Not my parents or anyone else.”

“Do you want us to have security watch your room?” she asked.

“For the stabbing?”  For the first time, he grinned, and her breath caught in her throat as she realized he was 10 times better looking when he actually smiled.  “No,” he said.  “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”  She stepped away from the bed, and noted that her palms were slightly sweaty.  “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will, Lara,” he said, and there was something almost caressing in the way he said her name.

She thought about him later that morning when she took her break, downstairs in the hospital cafeteria.  Nursing was something she had gone into because, having been deprived of nurturing during her own childhood, she wanted to be nurturing for other people.  Yet her nursing career had provided her little opportunity for such.  She had started out as a pediatric nurse, where she had been bitten, screamed at (by parents and children), kicked and even had things thrown at her.  Her next position had been in a nursing home, but the utter misery of the patients and their loneliness had kept her awake at night.  Now she was in a university hospital, dealing with patients who were often seen more as experiments than individuals, where the worst elements of society frequently appeared.  None of the jobs had come close to being what she had imagined, yet she felt stuck at a crossroads.

Her childhood had taught her never to give up.  From the time she was 12, she had been on her own, abandoned by her father years before and raised by a mother who was too busy pursuing men and drinking alcohol to care for her only daughter.  She had lived with friends and boyfriends throughout high school and college, until she realized her choices were becoming too close to those of her mother, at least when it came to men, and she had decided to take a break from dating.  Unfortunately, her attraction to Mr. Carrigew proved to her that whatever personal problems had motivated her to date losers in the past were still present.

“Wow, oh wow.”  One of her fellow nurses, Mandy, slid into the seat by her.  “What a hunk.  Too bad he’s such a loser.”

“Right,” she said, attacking her salad with more zest than she really felt.  She took a bite of it and made a face at the sourness of the cherry tomato.  “His wife probably thought the same thing.”

“He has a little boy, too,” Mandy confided.

“A little boy?”  She had always loved children, and the thought of a child being burdened with a father like Clint Carrigew made her queasy.

“Right.”  Mandy bit into her Reuben sandwich.  “He’ll be lucky if he grows up to look like his daddy.”

“As long as he doesn’t act like him,” she said.  

“He’s separated, I think.”  Mandy smiled.  “I read his chart.  Just in case I was lucky enough to get to be his nurse.”  Mandy put her sandwich down and wiped her mouth.  “I guess her family just hates him.”

“I’ll bet,” she said.

“Looks like he’ll be here a while, though.  The doctors are worried he’s getting septic.  So you’ll have plenty of time to look at him and try to resist temptation.”

“I don’t think there’ll be very much temptation,” she said, and then wondered if she was already lying to herself.