After Hours (5 page)

He shook his head. “I’ve never been married.”

“Well, your ring is misleading. Is it to keep female patients at bay?” I teased.

He teased right back, the shadows of a smile playing about his lips as he leaned closer.
“Female patients and half-drunk nurses.”

I rolled my eyes, but a hot flush crept up my neck. “Work Kelly” had clearly clocked
out, and I wasn’t sure who this man was. “I’m not even a quarter drunk.”

He straightened, looking at his hand. “It was my grandfather’s ring. Same one I’m
named after. My mom gave it to me when he died. That’s the finger it fit on, and I
was wearing it around for a while after I got it, thinking I’d buy a chain to put
it on or something. Then I wound up in a grapple with a resident and got my hand slammed
against a metal door. Finger swelled up, haven’t been able to get it off since.” He
presented the finger in question as if he were flipping me a lesser bird. I gave it
a tug, but his thick knuckle kept it from so much as budging, corroborating his story.

“Ouch.”

“It’s either keep it on or have it cut off. And I haven’t been able to bring myself
to get it clipped.”

“Understandable. Though it’s a liability. Safety-wise
and
romance-wise,” I said, instantly regretting it. But I’d gone there. May as well commit.
“Have you had any girlfriends take issue with it?”
Had or currently have . . . ?
Oh God, who was this woman in my head who even cared?

“The sorts of issues I offer women tend to overshadow concerns about misleading jewelry.”

I frowned at his cryptic answer. “You mean like ordering them drinks without even
asking what they like?”

He eyed my glass. “All women love white wine. White wine and salads with cut-up chicken
on them.”

I scoffed. “That’s so sexist.”

“If it offends you, get your fellow females to quit ordering it all the time.” He
narrowed his eyes. “What did you want to drink?”

White wine, probably.
But it would’ve been nice to be consulted, what with this being the twenty-first century.
“Whiskey,” I lied, wanting to sound tough.

“I stand corrected, then.”

To my dismay, Kelly flicked his hand at the bartender and ordered me a double shot
of Bushmills, no ice. With this morning’s four thirty wake-up call, a twelve-hour
shift, a banana for lunch, and a single bite of pizza for dinner, I’d be under the
stool before I finished wincing my way through the first sip.

“Um, thanks.” I held up the shot when it arrived and Kelly tapped it with his bottle.
I drank just enough for it to wet my lips and tingle against my tongue.

I set the glass down with a blasé clack, hoping I looked like I did this all the time.
“What else do women find so troublesome about you?”

Kelly shrugged. “Just general bossy assholery.”

“Ah. Well, nice that you’re self-aware, I suppose.”

“I’m real my-way-or-the-highway. Got no patience when things don’t go how I want them
to.”

“How so?”

He leaned his elbow on the bar and looked me square in the face. “I got exes who might
try to tell you I treated them like servants. They were all fond of telling me as
much, anyhow. But I work hard. I’ve got needs. If they don’t get met to my satisfaction,
I get grouchy.”

“Charming.”

“Don’t get me wrong though—I’ve never shouted at a woman during an argument. Definitely
never hit one. I’m a dick, not a piece of shit.”

“Gotcha.” I took a sip of my whiskey. My ludicrous attraction cooled as quickly as
it had warmed, but good that he was telling me himself, I supposed.

“My sister and mom have both dated their share of your type, but none of those guys
ever had the decency to own up to it.” Weird to think Kelly was one of those men who’d
put my family through so much grief. Suddenly I was having a drink with the enemy . . .
though it still didn’t feel that way. “You don’t seem impatient or bossy at all on
the ward.”

“And I’m not. But I spend forty to fifty hours a week at everybody’s beck and call.
When I’m off, I want what I want, the way I want it.”

“Understandable.” If not particularly appealing to even the most middling feminist.
“Sounds very old-school. Was your dad a factory guy? Twelve-hour shift, and dinner
better be waiting when he gets home?”

“The only place my dad ever spent twelve hours at was sitting on a stool, like we
are now. Though if alcoholism was a paid gig, he’d have built himself an empire.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t offend easily. Save your ‘sorries’ for somebody who’ll appreciate
them.”

So he’d grown up with a drunk for a father and spent his days keeping order in a ward
full of unpredictable, violent men. I guessed I could understand Kelly wanting a bit
of control when he punched out. I decided to concede my annoyance over the wine.

“How did you get into nursing?” I asked. “Well, being an orderly, I mean.”

“It was real random. Or maybe not. Maybe it makes perfect sense, now that I think
about it . . . By the time I was fifteen I must have been about six-two. And big.
Like somebody had slipped me growth hormones at puberty. I spent so much time at this
shady bar in my neighborhood, hauling my dad’s drunk ass home, they wound up giving
me a job, bouncing. Years before I could even drink, myself.”

“Ah.”

“When I was in my early twenties, somebody told me about a job in prison security,
so I did that for a while. Long while—nine years, I think. I got along real good with
the unstable inmates. Guess I got my old man to thank for all the experience dealing
with irrational, belligerent assholes. Eventually somebody hooked me up with my job
at Larkhaven. Pays better than being a prison guard, and it’s less depressing. Sometimes
it can feel like people are just wasting away on the ward, but not the way they do
in a cell block.”

“I’ll bet.”

“What’d you do, before you came here? You said it’s your first clinical job.”

I told him about caring for my grandma. “I lived with her for about six years, and
I got my LPN certification while I was doing it.”

“What’d you do before that?”

“Worked a bunch of retail jobs, saving up for when I figured out what I wanted to
study,” I said with a shrug. “I’m only twenty-seven.” Twenty-eight tomorrow, actually,
but I decided to round down.

He blinked, clearly surprised.

I laughed. “Oh, great. How old do I look?” How many miles had the day’s stress put
on my formerly munchkin-like face?

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, after today I feel about fifty, so no offense taken. How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

I nodded. Ten years’ age difference wouldn’t bother me, had I been interested in Kelly.
Which I didn’t want to be. I’d been heaped with at least a decade’s more adult responsibility
than most of my peers. I had more to talk about with a guy Kelly’s age than some twentysomething
dude. The years most people dedicate to getting wasted, I’d spent changing my once
so strong and sharp and independent grandma’s diapers, soothing her night terrors.
Trying to simultaneously support my mother and distance myself from her self-manifested
drama. Then my sister and her chaos, her pregnancy . . . Just thinking about it, the
whiskey in my hand took on a new appeal.

“You’ll do okay,” Kelly said after a long lapse. “Give it a week or two. You’ll scab
over quicker than you think.”

“Ew. I’m not sure I want to, when you word it like that.” And the thought scared me,
the idea that I’d get numb to the ward. I’d end up all hard and detached like Jenny
and the other older staffers, not jaded, but . . . yeah, all scabbed over. Skin like
tree bark. I sipped the liquor, suddenly appreciating how soft I usually felt.

“I’m not sure I want to stop feeling stuff,” I told Kelly.

“You still feel stuff. You just get good at choosing which provocations are worth
getting upset over. And in the end, hardly any are. Your BS filters will be industrial
grade. Month from now I guarantee if you get cut off in traffic, you won’t give half
a shit.”

I pictured the guy he’d just run off, some stranger whose only crime had been trying
to order Kelly’s coworker a drink. This philosophy clearly had some macho nuances
I wasn’t grasping.

“Why won’t I care?” I asked. “Because I’ll know it’d be so much worse, getting my
ear bitten off by somebody in the midst of a psychotic break?”

Kelly laughed and his smile caught me off guard. It changed his face, like clouds
had broken and a big beam of Jesus-light had shot down from heaven to paint the world
gold. Heat pooled between my legs, some latent bad-decision gland kicking in, one
I’d always assumed I hadn’t inherited from my mother.
Shit
.

“Just trust me,” he said. “I know nothing I say tonight’ll make you feel anything
but more freaked out, but you’ll be fine. You’ll find a balance.”

“Maybe I’ll find out I’m not cut out for this.”

“Maybe. But if you had the balls to see your grandma at her worst, probably take her
to the toilet and bathe her and watch the woman you knew go away, years before she
actually died . . .”

Get out of my head, Kelly Robak.

“You could be good at this,” he said. “And it takes about three good nurses to balance
out the damage a single shitty one can do, so I’m hoping you’ll stick it out.”

His flattery warmed me like a blanket, draping me in the strangest sense of comfort.
This gigantic, hardened man thought I had what it took to do his job.

And right then I decided, I hoped I did, too.

Kelly drained his bottle. “You signed up for restraint training tomorrow morning?”

I nodded. “Jenny said you teach it.”

“Nah, not really. They just use me ’cause I’m huge. Prepare you for the worst.”

“You’re really good at it, though, aren’t you? That’s what Dennis told me. He said
they call you ‘the Disorderly.’ The best man to have around when there’s an incident.”

He smiled his panty-shredding smile. “And here I thought it was because I’m a bad
housekeeper.”

My ability to string words together had abandoned me the second he grinned, so I took
a final sip of the whiskey before sliding the not-quite-empty glass across the wood.

“Better get you back,” Kelly said, standing. Fuck me, he was tall.

“Can I give you some money for the drinks?”

He narrowed his eyes like I’d called his mother a rude word, and I dropped it.

I slid from my stool, feeling woozier than I should from two drinks. One glass of
wine, a shot and a half of whiskey, twelve hours of work, little food and even less
sleep . . . crippling, ill-advised infatuation.

“Thanks for bringing me out,” I told him as he held the door. The night felt good.
When we’d left work it had been warm and humid, and now in the streetlight’s glow,
with a breeze cooling my skin, it felt like a new day, like I’d left Monday behind
me.

“No problem. If you’re feeling like you’re not cut out for this, don’t. Not yet. I’ve
seen people fall to way worse pieces after their first days in Starling.”

“I don’t feel nearly as awful as I had when our shift ended, anyhow.”

“Nothing like a change of scenery to hit the restart button.”

I watched Kelly’s triceps twitch as he unlocked my side of his truck, thinking,
yes, nothing like a change of scenery.

But I hated myself, a little, for being so attracted to him. He wasn’t quite like
the men who’d turned my mom and sister’s lives inside out. He was hardworking and
seemed honest, and unless he made a pass when he dropped me off, his intentions were
harmless enough. But he’d painted himself as a cousin of those men—aggressive and
admittedly selfish, admittedly a bit of a bully. I’d always been so determined to
never fall for one of those types; now it felt like my body had turned traitor.

Just because your body’s interested doesn’t mean you’d ever do anything with him.

Good point, brain. Plus he was my coworker. But there was no harm if, say, I maybe
hypothesized about what he’d be like in bed as I put myself to sleep, right? Though
to be honest I didn’t have the first clue. The few guys I’d been with had been selected
for their gentleness, all trusted friends slowly transitioned to lovers. And I’d never
gotten hot over the idea of being with a hulking thug of a man, so I couldn’t even
imagine what I might want to do with one. Or have done to me.
If I’d even get a say,
I thought, remembering the white wine.

As we drove I pictured tomorrow’s restraint training, trying to imagine Kelly’s huge
arms locked around my neck or bear-hugging my middle, his deep voice at my ear, barking
orders.

Fucking hell.

Chapter Three

I woke on my birthday with more of a hangover than I deserved, peeling my eyes open
at the sound of my alarm clock. I’d been waking to that same bleating for fifteen
years, but once I shut it off, all the familiarity of the world abandoned me.

Strange room, windows in the wrong places. Wrong-color paint on the walls, wrong temperature
as I sat up, slipped on my flip-flops in the morning chill and dug in the open suitcase
propped by the foot of the bed. Wrong, wrong, wrong that I had to put on a robe, lug
my towel and shampoo three doors down, and punch in a security code to get into the
women’s communal bathroom, wronger still that someone else already had steam rising
from one of the shower cubicles.

As I adjusted the water and hung my robe on the hook outside the stall, I decided
I’d find an apartment, a real one. Soon. They’d be cheap in Darren, even without roommates,
and in a way, a twenty-minute drive would be preferable to a stroll across campus—a
clear, physical delineation between work and home. Maybe I’d find a place and discover
I lived near Kelly Robak, and we could carpool.

My hands paused mid-lather. Where had that stupid thought come from?

Though if I
did
live near Kelly, I’d probably worry a lot less about the town’s least savory characters
hassling me. People wouldn’t fuck with Kelly Robak’s woman—

Oh God, where had
that
one come from?

Definitely not his woman,
definitely
not, because for one, he would totally say something like that.
Going to see my woman, tonight,
he’d say. And all his meathead caveman friends would probably call me that, too.
I have a name,
I’d say.

Then I realized I was getting bent out of shape over the way I might be treated by
a man who quite possibly had no designs on me, in a theoretical romantic relationship
I didn’t even want to share with him.

Clearly, I was still drunk. Only possible explanation. First thing I’d do on my day
off would be to find a shiny new water bottle and make it a point to stay more hydrated.
Yes, that’d solve my Kelly problems. Stay hydrated, stay sober, stay free of horny
thoughts about my coworker.

It wasn’t long before that resolve was tested. I saw Kelly an hour later in the hand-off
meeting. He said good morning to me, nothing in his expression or tone suggesting
we’d forged some profound bond the night before. Since of course we hadn’t. He was
firmly back in work mode, a big gray human wall of calm. If only parts of me didn’t
have such a distracting urge to climb him.

The morning went smoothly enough, and I spent the first couple of hours shadowing
Jenny again. Then at ten I headed across campus to the Warbler building for restraint
training.

The class took place in a small gymnasium, a nice little setup with a basketball hoop,
yoga balls, a weights set, sports equipment. A large senior nurse named Audra was
leading the three-session course.

A stocky fortysomething, Audra proved herself surprisingly spry, kicking off the class
by having a male orderly pretend to attack her, then breaking forcefully from his
choke hold. I found the display more unnerving than reassuring, as all I could imagine
afterward was being violently attacked from behind.

“Everyone awake now?” she asked through a laugh, face pink from the performance. “Good!
I’m Nurse Audra, and I’ve been at Larkhaven for sixteen years, not a one of them as
a patient, if you can believe that! I’ve worked in every single building and on every
single ward, including the locked unit. Anybody here this morning from Starling?”

I was alone in raising my hand.

“Excellent, excellent. You’re all here for one reason—restraints. And if you came
hoping this’ll be about straightjackets, well tough beans! We’re talking about the
act of physically restraining a patient in order to sedate them. Lemme say first and
foremost, de-escalation is always preferable to a takedown—safer for us and the patients,
and you can imagine it makes for a more harmonious environment. But restraints are
still skills we all need for those worst-case scenarios.

“Now the key to effective restraints and breaks is all in the technique, and I’m going
to show you all how even a tiny little woman like . . .” She prompted me with a nod.

“Erin,” I supplied, annoyed by how many diminutives she’d employed.

“How even a tiny little woman like Erin here can protect herself from attacks by a
resident, even one twice her size and suffering from a psychotic episode. Of course,
ideally, none of you will ever find yourselves in that position without fellow staffers
on hand to come to your aid . . .”

My attention wavered then, as Kelly and two other men entered from a side room, one
of them carrying an inflatable dummy, the kind you might knee in his plastic groin
in a self-defense class. Kelly and the third orderly were lugging what looked like
a wrestling team’s worth of blue gym mats. Then Kelly’s eyes met mine for the briefest
second and I snapped my attention back to Audra.

“We’ll start out gentle,” she was saying. “Let’s break into groups of four, three
new recruits and one instructor apiece.”

I wound up in a group with two RNs, a perky young one and middle-aged maternal one.
Audra was with another group, but shouted to the instructors to show us some “arm
breaks.” Naturally, I imagined someone breaking my arm.

My team’s instructor—a far warmer and more reasonably sized orderly than Kelly—had
us take turns grasping his arms, then showed us in slow motion how he could swoop
his hands up between our elbows to get free. We did it ten times apiece, quicker each
time, then he made us put him in headlocks. It was almost fun. Though I sort of wished
I got to put Kelly in a headlock. Probably be my only chance to feel like I had the
better of him.

After twenty minutes of drills, Audra gave a lecture about the importance of proper
technique, horrifying us with statistics about how many patients wound up with dislocations
and fractures and sprains from panicky staffers not restraining them properly.

“Let’s switch up those groups,” she said with a clap, “and I’ll take you through the
basics of a prone restraint.”

Two junior nurses and I ended up in Kelly’s group. He gave me a reassuring little
nod that said,
You’ll be fine
, a taste of the more personal side of him from the night before. It was the last
thing I needed, that wriggly feeling upsetting my middle when I was trying to learn
skills for avoiding maiming people and getting maimed myself.

“The goal for a restraint is always to have three staffers on hand. One for each arm
and one for the legs.”

Audra and Kelly and the two other instructors walked us through a demo—Audra pretended
to attack one of the orderlies, and he broke free of her grasp. Then Kelly and the
other guy rushed over and eased her to the ground on her belly, one man pinning each
arm and another her ankles.

“As you can see,” Audra said from the floor, speaking mainly to the gym mat, “I’m
completely immobilized, and no longer a danger to myself or others.” Her feet wiggled
and her hands flapped, and I had to bite back a giggle. Then I glanced at Kelly’s
flexed and forceful arm and my body swapped in a few other inappropriate reactions.
The southerly migration of my blood gave me a head rush and I quickly shoved the thought
aside, lest I pass out and look even more incompetent than I felt.

They ran through a few other demos: a restraint mid-attack, a two-man restraint, a
restraint with Audra flailing like a windmill.

For such a large man, Kelly had a certain grace about him. Most men his size would’ve
lumbered, but his movements were measured and controlled, yet fluid. A ballet dancer
he was not, but dexterous and quick. I imagined him fucking, and the grunting, frantic
caveman I might’ve previously conjured was replaced by a picture of elegant, filthy
labor.

Oops.

Thankfully I didn’t get any more time to fantasize, as it was the new recruits’ turn
to try the moves. The first few were easy, slow motion. But after a half hour, Audra
had rotated to our group, and we struggled to “gently but assertively” wrestle her
to the ground while avoiding her kicks and thrashes. The woman didn’t fuck around.

By that time she’d worked up quite a sweat, and she stood from our latest successful
attempt, red-faced. “Okay! Let’s try a few two-staff scenarios. One on arms, one on
legs. Rotate!”

She bounded off to assist the next group, and Kelly strode to mine. I swallowed.

“You and you,” he said, pointing to a nurse and an orderly. They both looked a bit
wary, but surely they didn’t share the fear that had me so unnerved—the fear of enjoying
touching this brute far too much.

I watched as they ran drills with Kelly, and tried very hard not to think about getting
drilled
by
Kelly. Then it was my turn, me and another young LPN.

“Legs,” she said. We’d been taught to “call” our intended target, much like shouting
“I got it!” in a baseball game to avoid colliding with one’s teammate. It meant I
was on arms. Big huge scarred-up Kelly Robak arms. When the moment came to grasp them,
my hands were nowhere near big enough to get a decent purchase on his obscenely thick
biceps. Lordy me.

He went down pretty easy the first time, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he smiled at me.
With the side of his face pressed to the mat, it was tough to tell.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, like he’d come upon me reading on a park bench.

“I am. Maybe I’ll order you a white wine, while you’re down there,” I said, too quiet
for anyone else to hear.

Now he was definitely smirking. “With a straw, I hope.”

“A funnel.”

“Touché.”

Audra shouted her approval of our technique and we let Kelly go. We switched legs
and arms, then it was time to rotate again. I was tiring, my back achy from all the
bending, shoulders grinding in their sockets. This was a hard-ass job. A decent workout,
though, if dampened by the possibility of bodily harm.

“Let’s try some headlocks,” Audra said after a water break, some time later. We’d
just rotated back into Kelly’s tutelage and I eyed his arm yet again, imagining it
clamped around my windpipe.

“Trainees, attack your trainers, and trainers, break free in slo-mo.”

I swallowed as Kelly turned to me first. With me at five-three and him at least a
foot taller, it was easier said than done. I’d look less like an attacker than a scarf.

“You want a stepstool?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not
that
short,” I said as I circled around him. “You’re just way too tall.” I looped my arm
around his neck, having to press my chest flush to his back to reach. Goddamn, he
was warm. And hard. And huge.

I felt his hand on my forearm, demonstrating for the other trainees in my group. His
fingertips seemed to dawdle at my wrist as he spoke, casual as a woman might caress
a garment at a store, admiring the fabric. Surely I was imagining that.

“Basic move,” he said, and I felt each word vibrating in his throat. “She’s using
her right arm, so I’m going to use my left to get free. This isn’t the time to panic.
Erin and I aren’t a great example, but usually your head’ll be pretty close to your
attacker’s, and thrashing around is a great way to concuss yourself or the patient,
or pull a tendon in your neck. Steady and calm’s the name of the game.”

Steady and calm. I could feel the muscles in Kelly’s broad back, feel his heat and
his breathing, smell his perspiration.
Steady and calm,
I repeated to myself.
Bet that’s not how you fuck.

“Pretending she’s got a good squeeze on me,” Kelly went on, “I’m going to turn my
head just slightly, to keep blood flowing through the carotid artery.”

He said some other stuff, stuff I really ought to have been paying super-close attention
to, but it was hard with us pressed together . . . even in the incredibly unerotic
setting, with potentially lifesaving information being imparted, even with a hangover.
My body was pretty sure that its very existence balanced on its chances at rolling
around with Kelly’s body in a non-training situation, and told my brain to fuck off.

He got free—who knew how—and when the next person’s turn came to put Kelly in a headlock
I tried to take mental notes. But his expression was nearly as distracting as his
body, his mean face strained from the exercise and reminding me of how it might look,
other times.

The drills went on for another full, sweaty, awkward hour, then we took a five-minute
break before switching to self-defense basics.

What if a patient grabbed your clothes? Your hair? Your arms, legs, throat, waist,
or tried to gouge your eyes? We learned tricks for all these terrifying scenarios,
then got teamed with a fellow trainee or trainer to do some improvisational drills,
with Audra patrolling, correcting people’s form. To my equal pleasure and annoyance,
I got paired with Kelly. If I wasn’t mistaken . . . had he picked me? We’d been standing
fairly close together, but I felt pretty sure he’d chosen me. It’d be just like him
to lay claims. And it’d be very
un
like me to take such perverse enjoyment from it.

I eyed him as we faced off. “Who’s attacking?”

“We’ll trade. You start.”

“Fine.” I was tired and stinky, and so far the course had left me more overwhelmed
than empowered. I circled Kelly and looped my arm around his neck. Again, I felt way
more like a dangling kitten than an assailant.

“You’ll never take me alive,” I told him, exhaustion making me punchy.

He nearly laughed, a huff with a smile behind it, though I couldn’t see his face.
“You make a lovely psychopath.”

I squeezed his neck a bit harder, and he broke my hold, twisted around, and grasped
each of my arms above the elbow. I was relieved to recall the technique without even
thinking, but Kelly had a real grip on me, not a loose one like we’d done in the drills
at the start of class. He was holding me tight enough to hurt . . . though surely
not as tight as a raging patient might. Lonnie’s face flashed across my mind, dropping
my stomach to my feet but focusing my energy. I looped my arms up inside Kelly’s.
It took four spirited tries to break his hold.