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An orderly helps me wheel the bed to the X-ray room.
“I want a doctor to see my daughter,” the mother shouts, grabbing my arm to stop me from moving further.
I face this every day—parents or patients dismissing me just because I’m a nurse. My colleagues and I are highly trained for these kinds of situations, but unfortunately, a lot of people think we’re just PAs to the doctors.
“Mrs. Chelsea, I understand.” I try to calm her down. “The doctor will be here soon. But right now—”
The little girl convulses. We haven’t even left the hallway.
“What’s happening?” The woman howls, trying to handle her daughter.
“Mrs. Chelsea, please step aside,” I assert. The girl can’t even cry anymore. I’m towering way above her—sometimes, being tall can be a challenge when your patients are kids—but she keeps extending her arms to me as if adamant that she’ll need to be as high as me.
Ignoring the mother’s curses, I take the little girl in my arms, resting her on my shoulder, stroking her back to help her vomit. Her stomach contracts, her mouth gapes, and—
I’ve never been so happy to have vomit spewed all over my clothes. And soon, what she had ingested becomes clear.
The girl spits out whatever is left in her mouth, half crying, but she looks at me with wide eyes, and her face has brightened up already.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’ve done well.” I wipe her mouth.
“What have we here?” A doctor finally takes over, to the delight of the mother. He studies an object among what looks to be the little girl’s dinner or breakfast. “Is that a pom-pom?”
The mother drops her stare to the wet clump of fluff. “Oh, my God!” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Yes. It’s from her sock.”
“We’ll take X-rays anyway,” the doctor states. “As a precaution, in case there’s something else in her system.”
The mother peers at my puke-covered uniform. “Thank you. Sorry for earlier. I was just panicking.”
“It’s okay. Your daughter will be all right. That’s all that matters.”
Another nurse joins us, and my supervisor gestures to me to wrap up my shift.
Every case in the ER is tense, some stay with me for a long time, but the girl has made a different kind of impression on me. Not the impression of her puke on my uniform, but the way she held me and the way she almost begged for me when she lay in bed convulsing. She was beautiful and courageous.
That’s how I imagine baby Caili would be.
I head to the staff room and take a shower. My feet are aching, and my heart is still pumping. In saying that, the ten hours have passed in a flash, and I’m looking forward to lounging around at home until I need to pick up Raffi in the afternoon.
Yet, I dread to think about what the day has in store for me. Because once I’m out of the hospital, I’m in prison.
Don has officially broken up with his girlfriend following our Kenya trip, and that’s bad news for me. He has been demanding more of me, and time spent with him never flashes by—it drags on like a never-ending nightmare, and I’m exhausted.
On the bright side, though, the more he expects my presence, the more slack he gives me when we’re not together. And the brightest side of all, his attention on Raffi seems to have waned.
Despite having almost no time for myself, somehow, I still manage to keep Clayton Hartley on my mind. Our story is over, but more than two weeks after our insane encounter, I’ve failed to unlearn him.
The stranger in the dark turns out to be one of America’s richest men, co-owning a yachting empire. He officially became California’s most eligible bachelor after the previous title holder, his older brother Robson, got married three years ago.
I don’t know how God works, but the Hartley brothers are certainly blessed with premium genes that ninety-nine percent of the earth’s male population can only dream of. Better still, they’re apparently well-known philanthropists.
Go figure.
According to gossip, though, the younger Hartley has dated some of the most beautiful women on the planet. The fact that he was prepared to defend me makes me wonder what he saw in me.
“What was that about?” Pippa approaches me as I open my locker. “Another angry mother?”
“A mother in panic, that was all,” I reply. “Her daughter swallowed a pom-pom from her sock.”
