Page 14 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

I do not ask what else he said. I take three butterscotch out of the bag, put them back in the drawer, and leave before my face does something unprofessional.

***

The face doesn't get to stay soft for long.

Two o'clock, I come around the corner to the nurses' station and there's a wall of firefighter standing at my counter with Kessler's discharge folder open in front of him like he owns it.

"—needs home oxygen for at least two weeks," Owen is saying to Trish, who is twenty-three and looks like she wants to climb into the chart rack. "And somebody checking on him daily. He lives alone, the house is a mile off the road, and if y'all send him home with a pamphlet and a prayer—"

"That's my discharge, and you're reading it wrong."

He turns. Sees me. Squares up like we're about to arm wrestle.

"Nurse Greer."

"Practitioner." I take the folder out from under his hand. "I wrote the plan you're standing there second-guessing. So, let's do it properly."

"His discharge plan is a joke."

"His discharge plan is home oxygen. Already ordered. Home health three times a week, and a follow-up with me on Thursday. I'm the one signing his orders, Peterson. Not a pamphlet. Me."

I flip it open to the page he never got to. "His niece from Abilene moves into the spare room Friday. It's all right here, on the page you had upside down."

A beat.

His jaw works. I watch him reload.

"The niece. Anybody vet the niece?"

"Did anybody vet the niece."

"People say they'll show up. Then they don't." His voice drops on it. Goes somewhere else for a second. "Then he's alone on a floor waiting on help that's across town."

And there it is again. That door slamming shut behind his eyes, same as when I asked about Chicago. Whatever is back there, it's load-bearing.

I should be kind about it. I'm a professional. I have training.

"Peterson." I keep my voice pleasant, which anyone who knows me knows is the danger setting. "You ran into a burning building for that man, and it was the bravest thing this town has seen all year. But you carried him out. My job starts where yours ends — and I'm better at mine than you are at guessing at it."

Trish makes a sound like a teakettle.

"I'm not guessing, I'm—"

"You're reading a chart out of order and diagnosing from the hallway." I close the folder. "You want to actually help Amos? Stop bringing him butterscotch. Diabetic patient, Peterson. Room 214. Every disc you smuggle in there lands on my follow-up on Thursday."

His ears go red.

"He's seventy-two, let the man—"

"He's seventy-two and I intend to get him to eighty-two." I tuck the folder under my arm. "I've got his chart. I've got his orders. What I don't have is a reason you're still at my counter."

The whole floor has gone quiet. Two orderlies have stopped pretending to move a bed. Somebody's family member is filming us on her phone, I'd bet my license on it.

Owen looks at me. Long. There's a muscle jumping in his cheek, and underneath all of it, way down where he thinks nobody can see, something that is not anger at all.

"Thursday," he says. "You follow up personally."

"Every time."