Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Then I was being shoved up against the door again and a mouth was once again on mine.
There was no audience this time—at least I didn’t think there was—as Gentry’s mouth came down on my own.
I’m not sure why, or how, or when this change came over Gentry, but I might or might not be taking advantage of it.
I was grabbing life by the horns and then…
“Excuse me.”
I ground my teeth and latched onto the Kevlar vest straps up by Gentry’s collarbones with both hands.
Gentry reluctantly pulled away and looked behind him. I looked over Gentry’s shoulder and saw my supervisor staring at me.
For the life of me, I couldn’t remember her name, though.
My brain was short-circuited.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” I stuttered.
Gentry moved me away from the door.
My supervisor smiled and slipped out, leaving us actually alone this time.
I reached up and pulled his stupid glasses off his face, likely getting tons of fingerprints on them.
His eyes were full of excitement as he said, “I get the feeling Tanny is a bitch.”
“More than.”
He opened his mouth to reply when the door was slammed open, hitting Gentry in the side.
He barely reacted as he moved to shield me from any blow.
When the door stayed open and my name was called, this time by a much less amused supervisor, I knew that I’d just fucked up.
Tanny was top dog here, and everyone seemed to love her.
Even the supervisor.
Which likely made my life infinitely harder than it needed to be.
Son of a bitch…
Sixteen
I hate it when my kindness doesn’t kill anybody.
—Sage to Gentry
Gentry
“Ms. Ryan…”
“Mrs. Ryan,” I found myself correcting the angry-sounding woman.
“Could you come to my office, Mrs. Ryan?”
I pulled back and winked at Sage, then grabbed my shades from her hand and put them back on my face.
Her fingerprint smudges made my lips twitch as I stepped back and pointed at the microwave. “I’m just going to heat this up.”
Sage shot me a look, her cheeks heated, and left.
I watched that perfect ass of hers walk out of the room and into the office next door.
Tanny watched with a smug smile on her face.
I used the microwave instead of making it worse and telling this Tanny bitch what a cunt she was.
The door next door didn’t close, which was why I and everyone else in the hallway got to hear exactly what was said by the supervisor to Sage, and Sage to the supervisor.
“Would you like to tell me what just happened?” the supervisor asked.
I popped the lid half off my enchiladas and stuck them into the microwave.
Pressing the two button, I walked toward the breakroom wall and leaned against it, listening.
Not bothering to hide it, either.
“What do you mean?” Sage asked. “The kiss?”
“The kiss is fine,” the supervisor said, making me snort. That kiss was anything but fine. It was everything. “I’m talking about what I heard from the other nurses that you said to Tanny S.”
Tanny S.
Why not just call her by her last name? As far as I was aware, there were no other Tannys in the hospital.
Hell, I wasn’t aware of any in the entire county.
Tanny was an odd name.
“What I said was that she needed to back off,” Sage grumbled. “I have to listen to her acidic diatribe every single day. Let me tell you something, ma’am.” Sage’s accent thickened. “I can tell you why you have retention problems at this hospital. And it’s all because of her and her posse of asshole friends. From the moment that I got here, I hated it. That hatred has everything to do with her. She’s mean, vindictive, and disgusting. Let’s talk about the fact that she has her friends assign me all of the bad patients. I’ve had literally every single patient you never wanted assigned to me, which is understandable. I know it must suck that I’m making more than they are doing the same thing. But I get the bad patients that are hard to take care of one on one, let alone five to one. I’m also getting the leftovers that no one wants to take care of. Like that farmer today that I was assigned. They treated him as non-emergent. They looked at him, saw a man sitting there waiting patiently and thought, oh, he’s not that bad. But he was. He had half his freakin’ arm hanging off. I was the one to go out there to find a patient and see him waiting there so patiently. I was the one to take him back and get him assessed by the doctor. And who was in triage with a friend today? Tanny.”
Silence.
The microwave dinged, letting me know my lunch was done.
Great, dinner and a show.
I gathered my food while I listened to Sage continue to go off.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” Sage continued. “Let’s talk about the work environment here. I have spoken to six people in town that have seen me in my scrubs. All of them came up to me and asked me where I worked when they found out that I was travel nursing. All of them were previous workers here, and every last one of them told me that they quit because of Tanny. Which I’m sure you know,” Sage pushed. “I mean, it’s not like everyone’s not aware of her atrocious behavior. Just today, I had to hear all about her love for married men, and how she gets such a high when she can get those married men to pay attention to her. But no, today she fucked up. She went after my married man.”