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The thought of his ‘girl’ crying for months at a time made my lips twitch. It was possible, of course, but likely she had courage enough to stop and get on with her life while he was away.
Most Army wives did. They were a different breed.
Luckily, I wouldn’t be leaving a wife and child behind like some of my friends did each time we were sent out.
Yet, my brain replied silkily.
Talking had us both turning toward the entrance, and I grinned when I saw Conleigh making her way out. She was speaking with Pru’s sister, Phoebe, and gesturing wildly with her hands.
They both saw me at the same time and grinned like loons.
“Well hello there, Hoax,” Phoebe drawled. “What brings you here?”
I patted my saddlebags. “Brought your sister some dinner, and I’m hoping she’ll invite me to her place.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will,” Conleigh replied, looking amused. “She’s been…”
“Obsessed I think is the word you’re looking for, Conleigh,” Phoebe supplied helpfully. “Obsessed, and not able to talk about anything else but you.”
That made me insanely happy.
“And where is Pru?” I flipped my gaze up to look behind them.
Both of them grimaced as one.
“She’s with Kelley Lowe,” Phoebe muttered. “There was an incident today that she needed to discuss with a supervisor. Unfortunately, the only person available was him. We were going to wait out here for her to make sure that he didn’t keep her too long, but since you’re here…”
“Since I’m here, you can leave,” I added. “What’s wrong with this Kelley guy?”
I was fairly sure Phoebe’s lip couldn’t curl any farther in disgust if she tried.
“Kelley’s on the board of directors. He’s also the one above this one’s mom.” Conleigh gestured to Phoebe with her hand. “He also fancies himself…”
“God,” the security guard, whose name I hadn’t caught yet, replied.
I looked over at him in surprise.
“He’s a dick,” he continued.
Conleigh snorted. “That’s an understatement. He’s awful, and to make matters worse, he has the hots for both Pru and her mother.”
That set my blood on fire.
“Really?” I asked. “And does your dad know about this guy?”
Phoebe nodded. “Hates his guts, but since he’s my mom’s boss and the man that controls whether Mom has a good day at work or not, he’s nice. Even though he’d rather skin him with a pair of pliers—those are my dad’s words, not mine.”
I liked that she had to clarify that.
“She coming out here or am I going to have to go in there?” I wondered.
“You can go in there,” the security guard added. “I’ll take you to his office. You can hurry him along.”
I looked at Conleigh, who nodded in agreement. “He’ll try to keep her there for an hour. That’s why we weren’t going to leave, so she’d have a reason to blame her need to go on.”
I stood up off my bike and said, “Lead the way.”
I didn’t like that she was having to talk to some man that she didn’t like, nor was she particularly comfortable being around.
“Have a good night, ladies,” I rumbled as I passed.
“You, too!” they both chirped.
The security guard walked surprisingly fast for his old age, and I found myself in a long hallway just off the side of the ER. “First one on your left.”
I heard her before I saw her. She sounded annoyed as she explained something.
At first, I couldn’t hear what was being said, but as I got closer, I realized that something had happened that had put someone’s life in danger, and it’d all been because of some protocol that the dumbass had refused to support.
“…If we’d just had a sitter in the room with the psych patient, he wouldn’t have been able to gather anything to try to stab Rachelle with. As it is, she had to have four stitches because he stabbed her with a sharpened tongue depressor. If someone had been in there sitting with him, he wouldn’t have been able to do that.”
“Listen, Prudence…”
“Pru. My name is Pru. It’s not shortened. It is what it is,” she said.
She didn’t snap it, but she might as well have.
“Pru,” the man who I assumed was Kelley said. “I realize that this was a bad experience…”
“A bad experience?” Pru sounded like she was about to lose her shit on the man. “This could’ve been awful. He could’ve stabbed her in the heart and not her arm. He could’ve done some serious damage. Then what would’ve happened?”
Kelley sighed.
“Good luck,” the guard whispered, turning and walking away.
I waved him off and stopped just outside the door.
“I’ll discuss new protocol measures with the board when we meet next month. In the meantime, maybe you should have a nurse sit with them,” he suggested.
“You’re kidding, right?” She sounded incredulous. “I’m short two at least once every shift. I never get the chance to eat, let alone use the bathroom. My nurses are run ragged, and we wouldn’t have any spare time to sit in a patient’s room and keep watch on him seeing as you want our times to see patients so low. To make those low we have to be able to utilize our staff, which we can’t do when one of them is tied up watching a patient when you could easily have a sitter down here doing the same thing for less pay.”
