A Gambling Heart: A BWWM Billionaire Romance (2 page)

My body heaved and I suppressed the desire to puke as I tasted the bitter bile climbing up my throat. I didn’t think the man standing beside me would take it kindly if I embellished his uniform with speckles of vomit.

I brushed aside the rivulet of sweat rolling slowly down the side of my face as I clung tightly to the handrail of the subway train.

I wished this goddamn train didn’t sway like a whore turning tricks, but it was probably just my imagination. My knees were shaking and the handrail was my only lifeline.

I gripped it even tighter, stretching my neck upwards, hoping for a whiff of fresh air above the heads of the daily commuters. I could have waited for the next train, but goddammit, I didn’t have that luxury. Not today.

This was all my fault. I knew it. I should have listened to my instincts last night before I succumbed. Fuck Chantal. If not for her I wouldn’t be here now feeling sick as shit, sweaty and miserable. All I wanted was to crawl into a dark hole, curl up, and die.

Thankfully the train finally came to a stop at my station and I joined the throng of bodies heading toward the nearest exit. The hospital was only a block away and I had a few precious minutes to splash some cold water into my face. I dashed through the few remaining steps towards the back entrance and headed for the locker room.

“Sienna Miller to the Emergency room. Stat. Sienna Miller to the Emergency room.”

What the fuck? I have never been called through the public intercom before. I was still in my street clothes and hadn’t had the chance to put on my scrubs. Glancing at my wristwatch, I knew I had another seven minutes before my shift started.

I didn’t know why I was being paged but had an inkling who called for me through the intercom.

Entering one of the nurses’ restrooms, I hurriedly donned my green scrubs while pulling a hair tie to gather my hair into a pony tail. My supervisor, Nurse Silva, was a stickler for the ‘professional look,’ as she called it, insisting that all her nurses have their hair tucked under a hairnet, rolled in a bun, or pulled back into a ponytail.

I made sure my ID was pinned properly into the left side of my breast pocket as I kicked off the sneakers and donned the white rubber-soled nursing shoes. I knew I looked terrible. To be honest, I looked like shit and felt like it. My eyes were red-rimmed and strands of hair escaped down my neck. Shit.

I wish I had some hair gel to manage it back into place. I cupped my palm over my mouth and blew hard. I hoped my breath didn’t stink of alcohol. I then made my way to the emergency room which was located on the south wing of Mary Johnston’s Hospital.

I immediately spotted a group of nurses huddled around Nurse Silva, who had a stern look on her face. She has been under a lot of stress lately because of the flu virus causing many of the regular nurses to call in sick.

It was her job to make sure every floor of the hospital was staffed, and that was getting next to impossible. One of the nurses was crying, while another cringed against the wall, a look of defeat written all over her face.

Nurse Silva had a stack of patients’ charts in her hand and she was distributing them like a card game of poker. She handed me three of those charts.

“Stay!” she barked.

I felt like a dog handed a juicy bone but wasn’t allowed to taste it. I hoped she would interpret my hangdog expression as fatigue. God forbid she found out one of her nurses was smashed out of her mind just a couple of hours ago.

I must have gotten less than three hours of sleep. Thankfully my alarm clock was always set for 5:30 in the morning. It was one of those antique bell and hammer types that could awaken the dead. For once I have never been more grateful for the racket it produced; otherwise I would still be oblivious to the world this very minute.

Nurse Silva castigated the crying nurse. I thought her name was Melinda. She was new and always managed to get her patients’ meds all mixed-up.

“It’s alright, Mel,” I whispered sympathetically as Nurse Silva turned to another nurse.

“I’ll never get it right,” Mel replied as fresh wave of tears swamp her cheeks.

“You’ll learn,” I reassured her as Nurse Silva returned her attention back to me. It was show time as I strived for a professional look on my face.

“You look like shit, Sienna,” Nurse Silva declared. Not exactly the effect I was aiming for as I managed a brave smile to hide my guilt.

“I know you must be exhausted and I’m grateful you still showed up,” Nurse Silva said.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank you, Jesus! She thinks I’ve been working too hard and not out gallivanting the night before with my traitor friend Chantal, who, by the way, was still missing when I woke up this morning.

“It’s quite alright, Nurse Silva,” I replied, faking a bright smile and a martyred-look. I knew the nurses were in for a performance review in the next few days. It wouldn’t hurt if Nurse Silva put in a good word for me with the board of directors.

“I just need you to look in on three of those patients’ charts this morning. You can take the rest of the day off after you do your rounds. I don’t want you falling sick. Are you sure you feel alright? You look different.”

I assured her in my best victim voice that I could manage half a day’s work. I was part of the team and glad to put in my share of work for the patients’ sake, and she could always depend on me, blah, blah, blah.

I was just so relieved she thought I was tired and not drunk out of my mind. I vowed never to let this happen and be grateful for this liberty pass. I wouldn’t always be this lucky. And the thought that I could finally catch up on actual sleep gave me the adrenaline I needed to make it through the morning.

I inspected the charts and decided which patient I would check in on first. The first patient was a 59-year-old male who came in three days ago complaining of stool in the blood.

Since this was the first episode the doctor in charge was concerned about bleeding in the lower GI level. I needed to check on his lab results to see if his CBC, platelets, urine dip, and stool WBC were within the normal range. The results should be with the nurses at the floor station.

I made a quick stop, chatted with the shift nurse to see how the patient slept through the night. Everything looked normal, except for the WBC count. I wrote down my recommendation for the doctor before I knocked on the patient’s hospital room door.

“Good morning, Mr. Taylor,” I greeted him cheerily. Even to my own ears my voice sounded shrill. He looked at me listlessly as I checked on his IV and pulse monitor.

“Did you have a restful sleep?” I asked while thinking how sleepy I was. I wished I could switch places with the guy even for half an hour.

Since he didn’t seem inclined to talk, I filled the silence by saying, “Well, your lab tests look fine except for a slight decrease in your white blood cell count. Your doctor will be monitoring that. I’m sure your next procedure will show that it has normalized and then you can be discharged.”

Silence.

This was starting to feel awkward. Well…I did what I came here for, no need to stay longer if the patient was feeling surly. I turned and make my way out the door when he said, “I don’t want to be discharged. I want to stay here.”

What? I turned back to face him, pushing my lethargy aside. He looked despondent. I normally wouldn’t have missed that, except I was performing on reserves of energy.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Taylor? Do you have any pains aside from what you came in for?”

I wished he would open up and tell me if there was. Sometimes a patient’s physical disability is just a symptom of something psychological.

“I don’t wanna go home. It’s lonely there.”

My years of training kick in. I pulled a chair and brought it near his bed. I put on a sympathetic smile and reached for his hand.

“Damien died and I’m all alone. There’s no one to talk to and I feel lonely.”

Damien? Who the hell was Damien?

I took a quick glance at his chart. There was no mention of any family. Son, maybe? Or a brother? I kept silent while pressing his hand. Tactile contact, I learned, was sometimes more effective than words.

“I’ve had him for a long time. He was okay when I left for work. When I came back after a few hours, he was just lying there. I thought he must have gone to sleep. He was getting on in years and sometimes he doesn’t hear me coming. But when I went to pick him up, he just stayed limp in my arms.”

Okay. Damien was someone who stayed at home when he went out. Getting on in years and turning deaf. A Pet?

“Is Damien your dog companion?” I asked softly.

“No, Damien is a cat. He belonged to my brother, and when he died, I sorta adopted Damien. We’ve been together for almost fifteen years.”

My heart went out to this man. I wasn’t a cat person. They gave me asthma attacks. I loved dogs and when my dog died when I was 12 years old, I was heart-broken. I could empathize with his feelings.

“I’m sorry to hear about your cat. I know how you must feel. Sometimes they’re so much better than people. So accepting and loyal. Tell me about Damien,” I prodded him gently.

When I left him half an hour later he was feeling more animated. I convinced him to get another cat. He was hesitant, saying that no other cat could ever replace his beloved Damien. But I argued that he wasn’t getting one to replace the cat he loved. Another cat meant a totally different personally and he may just fall in love again with it.

“Thank you, nurse,” he called out before I left the room.

I gave him my most sincere smile in response. I was feeling pretty good about my deed as I wrote down on the chart that ‘patient may need some psych evaluation.’ If it weren’t for this migraine that had begun to form in my temple, being a nurse could be one of the most fulfilling jobs in the world. That is…if the nurse wasn’t out drinking Satan’s brew the night before.

I winced at the memory.  The next patient was a young girl of 16. She was brought in last night thinking she had food poisoning. She was vomiting and said she felt dizzy.

She was initially diagnosed with adenomyosis, or abnormal vaginal bleeding. Turned out she knew she was pregnant and went to some hole-in-the-wall clinic in town to have an abortion.

I knew that meant we had to monitor her for sepsis or blood poisoning. I sighed at the thought. Why didn’t she just go to the nearest drugstore and gotten hold of birth control pills? That would have spared her the trouble she was in now.

The patient was sleeping when I came in. Her mom, who I mistook for an older sister, was distraught and wanted reassurance that her daughter was going to be fine. I told her she would be. I couldn’t help but add that she should bring her daughter to a medical practitioner who could educate her about pregnancy prevention.

“Are you saying my daughter is some kind of a slut?”

Whoa. I pacified her as I gave her a breakdown about her daughter’s condition. Blood poisoning could cause death, I told her. And if she didn’t want her daughter to go through the same situation in the future, taking birth control pills were her best option.

After a few minutes she admitted she herself never had any kind of information about birth control when she was a teenager. She had her daughter when she was just 17. I stayed around for a while until I was certain that the mom was alright.

She ended up asking for a referral for a practitioner they could consult after her daughter was discharged. Good idea, Mom. I’d done her a favor.

As I headed for my last patient I tried to collect what little energy I had left. My headache was now a full blown migraine as I imagined elves drilling a hole in my head.
Last one, Sienna. Just make it through this and then you can rest.
I needed that boost as I plodded towards the elevator to get to the upper floors. I glanced at the chart to get an idea about the patient.

John Smith, 32 years old, single. Nothing written under occupation. What could be more common than John Smith… unless it was an alias? I smiled at the thought until I realized I was headed for the floor where most VIPs were confined.

It was never discussed in public because hospitals were supposed to care for all patients equally and without bias, but we all knew that there was a special floor where celebrities were typically accommodated. We referred to this floor as the BHH – the Beverly Hills Hotel. There were five huge rooms on this floor and they were more luxury suites than hospital rooms.   Hmmm…this was intriguing.

“Vehicular accident, probable soft tissue damage, back and neck injury, brain trauma, broken and fractured bones…” I read the doctor’s diagnosis with mixed feelings. Bad for him, but great for me. He should still be in morphine heaven and all that needed checking were his vitals. God, I hoped I didn’t need to go through another lengthy conversation with a family member. My compassion quota was depleted.

I walked the hallway leading to the room, my feet hardly making a sound on the lush carpet. Even the walls were decorated with mirrors and paintings lit gently by wall lamps that cast a soft glow. There was nothing here to suggest that this floor was located in a hospital. Even the console tables separating the rooms were adorned with fresh flowers.