Patient Nurse by Diana Palmer

you on intravenous fluids.”
    â€œAll right,” she said heavily. She glanced up and away again. “How’s my kitten?” she asked.
    He smiled, his dark eyes twinkling. “She eats like two cats.”
    She stared at his jacket. “Thank you for looking after her.”
    â€œShe’s no trouble.”
    â€œI can’t believe that. I know you don’t like animals.” Or me, she added silently.
    He scowled. Perhaps she wasn’t quite recovered from the confusion brought on by the anesthesia. He liked animals. He lived alone because he hadn’t had enough time to devote to one, and an apartment was hardly suited to dogs and cats.
    â€œHow’s the pain?” he asked.
    â€œI’m doing fine,” she repeated.
    He hesitated. She wouldn’t look at him and she didn’t seem inclined to talk. He picked up her hand to examine the shunts they’d inserted in her veins to connect to the fluids she was being given. He scowled.
    â€œWhen were these shunts flushed last? Meredith always dates them so they don’t remain in place longer than three days.”
    â€œMeredith didn’t do these,” she replied. “I think Annie did. I know they haven’t been in longer than a day.”
    He made a note on the chart to have them flushed. One seemed to be clogged. The shunts were implanted so that if there was an emergency, a nurse wouldn’t have to scramble to find a vein for the needle. Keeping them free of clogs was essential to postsurgical heart patients. He picked up her other hand, noting the softness of it, the short, clean nails, the silky skin behind her knuckles.
    â€œYou must use hand cream constantly,” he remarked as his thumb smoothed over the back of her hand. “Your skin is incredibly soft.”
    She pulled her hand back from his. She still wouldn’t look at him. “They’re working hands,” she replied, “not model’s hands.”
    â€œI know that, Noreen.”
    He hardly ever called her by name if he could avoidit. Didn’t he know that he was torturing her? She closed her eyes, praying that he’d go away and leave her alone.
    It was all too apparent that she was going to shut him out. She’d been hurt too much over the years to warm to him now. He scowled, because it bothered him that Noreen hated his touch. He remembered her at his first anniversary party, backing away from him in the kitchen. It had bothered him even then, even when he was married.
    â€œI’ll check on you later.”
    â€œThanks, but there’s no need. Miss Plimm is very efficient.”
    Her remoteness irritated him. “Would you rather I sent John on rounds?” he asked curtly, naming an associate in his surgical group.
    â€œThat…might be better, if you don’t mind,” she said in a subdued tone.
    His temper flared, hot and unreasonable. Without another word, he carried her chart back to its tray, slipped it in and left the ward.
    Noreen sighed her relief. Just a few more days, she told herself, and she could get out of here. When she was recovered, she’d look for a job at a hospital in the suburbs, one where Ramon wasn’t on staff. She owed him her life, but not her soul. She wasn’t going to put herself through any more torment on his behalf. She recalled applying for a passport some months earlier, with some half-formed notion of sacrificing her nursing talent in some third-world nation to escape thoughts of Ramon. It seemed ridiculous in light of what had happened to her. At the time, it had seemed very rational.
    She stared blankly out the window, wondering if her aunt and uncle were really out of town. Ramon hadprobably been softening the blow. They’d never wanted Noreen in the first place. They’d only taken her in from a sense of responsibility, not out of love. She’d been an extra person in their lives, always on the outside of the family circle, always