Диана Палмер – The Patient Nurse (страница 3)

He glanced around him at the beautiful city skyline, ablaze with colorful lights, and remembered how that elegant glitter used to remind him of beautiful Isadora. She was sweetness itself to him, but he remembered vividly walking in on her once when she was cursing Noreen like a sailor for not putting her sweaters in the right drawer. Noreen hadn’t said a word in her own defense. She’d rearranged the clothes and left the room, not quite meeting Ramon’s eyes.

Isadora had laughed self-consciously and murmured that good help was just so hard to find. He’d thought it a cold remark for a woman to make about her own cousin, and he’d said so. Isadora had laughed it off. But he’d watched, then, more closely. Isadora and her parents treated Noreen much more like a servant than like a member of the family. She was always fetching and carrying for someone, making telephone calls, arranging caterers and bands for parties, writing out invitations. Even when she was studying for exams, the demands from her family went on without pause.

Ramon had remarked once that exams called for a lot of study, and the other three Kensingtons had looked at him with blank faces. None of them had ever gone to college and had no idea what he was talking about. Noreen’s duties continued without mercy. It wasn’t until she left home, just after Isadora’s marriage, that the Kensingtons hired a full-time housekeeper.

He went back to his apartment and made himself a cup of coffee. It disturbed him that he should think of Noreen so much, and especially on her uncle’s birthday. There had been parties for Hal, and Mary Kensington before, but Noreen had rarely been included in the celebrations. It was as if her presence in the family was forgotten until something needed doing that only she could do, such as nursing Isadora through flu and colds and nuisance ailments.

That reminded him of Isadora’s pneumonia and Noreen’s neglect, and he grew angry all over again. Despite his wife’s faults, he’d loved her terribly. Even though Noreen had been badly treated by her aunt and uncle and cousin, it was no excuse to let Isadora die. He might feel pity for her lack of love, but he still felt only contempt when he remembered that Isadora had died because of her.

He spent six days in the Bahamas, alone, enjoying the solitude of the remote island where he had a room in a bed-and-breakfast inn. He’d walked along the beach and remembered painfully the happy days he’d spent here with Isadora on their honeymoon. He still missed her, despite their turbulent relationship.

He noticed gray hairs now and felt his age as never before. He should remarry; he should have a son. Isadora hadn’t wanted children and he hadn’t pressed her about it. There had been plenty of time. Or so he thought.

The sunset was particularly vivid, as if it were a canvas worked by a madman in fiery colors with black highlights, slicing down to the horizon like a bloody knife. He sighed as he stared at it and listened to the sweet watery whisper of the surf near his bare feet. How poignant, to hold such sights in the heart and have no one to share them with. He was alone. How he longed for a loving wife and plenty of children playing around him on the beach. Perhaps it was time he started thinking of the future instead of the past. Two years was surely long enough to mourn.

He went back to work with a vengeance, taking on a bigger workload than ever before as time passed. He was operating on a private patient at O’Keefe City Hospital, across the street from St. Mary’s. It was just after a particularly rough operation that he was called to the cardiac care ward to check a patient the night nurse wasn’t too happy about. He had three patients in this hospital, in addition to patients at St. Mary’s and Emory.

He wasn’t happy when he discovered who the night nurse was. Noreen, in her usual white slacks and colorful long jacket, with a stethoscope around her neck, her hair in a bun, gave him a cool look as he paused at the circular nurses’ station.

“I didn’t think this was the night you worked at O’Keefe,” he said shortly, still in his surgical greens.

“I work whenever I have to, and what are you doing at O’Keefe?” she asked.

“I had a patient who requested that his surgery be performed here. I’m on staff at three hospitals. This is one of them,” he replied, equally coldly.

“I remember,” she said. Her hands went into the pockets of her patterned jacket. “Your Mr. Harris is throwing up. He can’t keep his medicine down.”

“Where’s his chart?”

She went to the doorway of the patient’s room and produced it from the wire basket on the wall, handing it to him.

He scowled. “This nausea started on the last shift. Why wasn’t something done about it then?” he demanded.

“Some of the nurses are working twelve hour shifts,” she reminded him. “And there were four new cases added to the ward this afternoon, all critical.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Yes, sir,” she said automatically, handing him a pen. “Could you do something about it now?”

He scribbled new orders, and then went in to check the man, who was pale from his ordeal.

He came out scowling. “The catheter was taken out last night and put back in this morning. Why?”

“He didn’t void for eight hours. It’s standard procedure…”

He stared her down. “He’s been throwing up and not drinking very many fluids. The longer that catheter stays in, the more risk there is of infection. I want it taken out and left out until and if he complains of discomfort. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Who had the catheter taken out?” he asked abruptly.

She only smiled at him.

“Never mind,” he said heavily, knowing that torture wouldn’t drag a name out of her. His eyes went over her oval face. Her cheeks were red but the rest of her face was pale and rather puffy. He scowled. He’d never noticed that before. It was the sort of look he often found in heart patients.

She put the chart back up. “The technicians are run off their feet on this shift. I wish we had someone staying with him who could give him cracked ice. That would stay down.”

“Hasn’t he any family?” he asked, touched by her concern.

“A son, in Utah,” she replied. “He’s on his way here, but he won’t arrive until tomorrow.”

“Tough.”

“Very.”

He glanced toward one of the patient’s wives who was trotting down the hall with a foam cup and a plastic pitcher. “Where’s she going?” he asked.

Noreen actually smiled, her eyes lighting up. “The Jamaican technician, Mrs. Hawk, told her where the ice machine and the coffee machine were. She’s been saving everyone steps ever since. She even gets towels and washcloths and blankets when she needs them, instead of asking anyone.”

“This is unusual?”

“Well, there are three other women who come to the door and ask us to give their husbands water when they’re thirsty—about every five minutes, after they’re brought in here after surgery.”

“Nurses used to do those things,” he reminded her.

“Nurses used to have more time, fewer patients, less paperwork and not as many lawsuits to worry about,” she returned, and sighed.

He searched her face and the frown came back. “Do you feel all right?” he asked with evident reluctance.

Her face closed up. “I’m a little tired, like everyone else on this shift. Thank you for seeing about Mr. Harris, sir.”

He shrugged. “Let me know if he has any further bouts of nausea.”

“Yes, sir.” She was polite, but cool, remote.

His dark eyes narrowed as they met her gray ones. “You don’t like me at all, do you?” he asked bluntly, as if he’d only just realized it.

She laughed without humor. “Isn’t that my line?”

She turned without meeting his gaze and went back to work, apparently dismissing him from her mind.

He left the ward, but something was nagging at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was uneasy, and he didn’t know why. Vacations, he thought, were supposed to relax people. His seemed to have had an opposite effect.

Behind him, Noreen was trying to calm her renegade heartbeat, forcing herself not to look after the tall, dark man to whom she’d secretly given her heart so long ago. He’d never known, and he never would. Isadora had brought the tall man home and Noreen’s heart had broken in two. Not for her, the dark warm eyes, the sensuous smiles. Isadora, the pretty one, the flirting one, married the man Noreen would have died just to kiss. She’d kept her painful secret for six long years, through the four years of Ramon’s marriage, through the past two searing years of accusation and persecution. Her heart should have worn out by now, but it kept beating, despite its imperfection that grew worse daily.

The time would come when she might not have time to get to a doctor. Not that it mattered. Her life was one of sacrifice and duty. There had been no love in it since the death of her parents. She’d felt lost going to the big, lonely house that accepted her only reluctantly. She’d been Isadora’s private servant, her aunt’s social secretary, her uncle’s gofer. She’d been alone and lonely most of her adult life, hopelessly in love with her cousin’s husband and too proud to ever let it show.