Throughout every heave, every gasp of breath in, every apology that I gave my poor neighbor in my head afterward, and even when I was chasing Ranger away from it, all I felt was relief. I hadn’t pushed Rose too far, and this meant interesting things for the future.
There was no way in hell I was going to let her know that, though. So, I shot a glare at her over my shoulder as she got in her car, and then slammed my door, leaning against it with a huge grin on my face. It was time for a plan.
RoseNurses work all the time. I don’t mean that we work every hour of every day, but it didn’t matter what day it was, we were on that schedule for our appointed shifts, regardless. Which was why I was working at stupid o’clock on a Sunday while everyone else was in their beds. Well, unless they were puking in their neighbors dahlias, that was.
Yesterday, when Jose had told me her idea and offered me the bag of dirty diapers - along with the spray she’d bought as a joke, but had then decided against using because she didn’t want her house to stink forever – I’d felt bad taking them, and had planned on putting them in the trash. That had all changed when he’d pulled that stunt with the food yesterday, though.
So in the middle of the night, dressed in black with gloves and a mask, I’d laid them out on top of his garbage, sprayed the entire can in there, and gagged the whole way home. I’d had to bag the clothes I was wearing and throw them in the trash because there was just no coming back for them, but it was worth it. And I’ve got to say, I’d slept like a baby all night after that, and had woken up with a bounce in my step, watching out of the window while I drank my coffee until I saw him taking his trash out.
His reaction was better than anything I’d imagined, and the glare he’d shot me… better than chocolate brownies – something I doubt he’d want to eat after seeing what he had. I was used to it, bodily functions happened. Some were stinky, some were slimy, some were downright dangerous, but you showered and got on with it. Just in case he was immune to it, too, the spray had been perfection, and I didn’t regret keeping my finger on the nozzle until it had run out one bit – even if I was sniffing myself periodically today to make sure I’d gotten it all off my body.
Just then, the huge zit on the ball sack of humanity called Philippa Rosenstein, who was one of my bosses and the head nurse in the ER, appeared.
“Beauregard,” she screeched as she snapped her fingers under my nose. “You’re paid to do your job, not sit around on your fat ass all day. There’s a patient in cubicle four.”
Today she was calling them cubicles, last week it was bays, next week it would be as ambiguous as an area, the week after it would be a curtain, and God help you if you questioned her on it. That’s how petty and inconsistent the woman was, totally caught up in her own self-importance. And, man, I really disliked her.
Picking up the chart, I walked toward ‘cubicle four’, and pulled the curtain back. Lying on the bed was a little boy around the age of six, who looked pale and sweaty as he shivered and held his stomach. Opening my mouth to introduce myself, I looked up at who I assumed was his mom, and stopped when I saw her shining eyes. They weren’t shining with tears, they were shining with excitement and happiness while a little kid lay sick beside her. I’d been doing this job for four years, and in all of that time I’d only come across an excited parent in this situation once, and it had scarred me for life. No exaggeration on that. I still had nightmares sometimes where I’d miss the warning signs, and I’d be standing over a small body on a gurney, covered by a white sheet.
This could be different, though, so I needed to get some more information before I could even go down that route. Checking the name on the chart in my hand, I took a deep breath in, and smiled down at the little boy. “Hey, Oliver. My name’s Rose, and I’m going to be your nurse today. How are you feeling, honey?”
Groaning, he turned his face into the pillow and held his stomach a bit tighter. “He’s sick,” his mom replied, and when I looked up, sure enough she still had a sickeningly happy smile on her face. Oh, fuck a duck. “He’s been sick for days now, so I brought him here to get checked. He says he has a lot of pain in his upper belly, back, chest, and his sides. Oh, and he has a high fever.”