Deadly Dosage
Authors: Cheryl Richards
DEADLY DOSAGE
A SUNNY KRAMER NOVEL
CHERYL RICHARDS
This work is fiction. Creative
liberties were taken incorporating fact with fiction. Any similarity to actual
persons, places, or events is strictly a coincidence. Any trademarked products
or companies mentioned throughout this work are meant to add realism to the
story and should not be considered an endorsement of such.
©2012 Cheryl M. Schultz. All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, scanned, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of author.
Cover Design by John Schultz
This is dedicated to my best friend and sister, Jill,
who is always there for me. Thanks for your never ending support and
encouragement.
Prologue
My name
is Summer Alexandria Kramer. I grew up in a middle-class subdivision in
southeastern Milwaukee County, much like any other in the Midwest. Summers were
spent playing bloody murder or kick-the-can after dark with my friends in our
large backyard, which proudly displayed more weeds than grass. To those in the
neighborhood, it was home to jump rope, badminton, and tetherball.
Friends however, were not allowed inside the house—ever. Not
even to pee. Luckily, my friends’ parents felt the same way. I remember my
friend Terri; she wasn’t even allowed to open her own refrigerator door when
her parents weren’t home. Compared to her, I was spoiled.
Back then, we usually hung out until the street lamps came
on, which was precisely at nine. Once, my younger sister Autumn and I stayed
out way past this time. Not because we were having too much fun to go home. It
was out of fear. Fear of Skippy. You see Skippy was our neighbor’s son who
spent most of his time in a hole he dug in his backyard. He stayed in there for
hours at a time. We never found out what he did in there, but he scared the
hell out of us just the same.
Anyway, we saw him ambling towards us on our way home one
night. With some quick thinking, we jumped behind a semi-trailer parked in
front of a new construction home and waited holding our collective breath until
he passed us. We ran all the way home.
Unfortunately, our dad was waiting with his belt in hand,
ready to refresh our curfew-forgotten memories. Fortunately, Skippy spooked him
as well, so he let us off with a stern warning.
I’m much older now, but I’ll admit I’m still freaked out
about Skippy.
My family and friends call me Sunny, although stormy better
describes my life. I trip going up the stairs, I have rotten luck, chaos
follows me, and I don’t have a lot of patience. This lack of patience is a big,
reoccurring problem in my life.
I discovered early on that I didn’t have the patience needed
to achieve my lofty goals. Therefore, when I turned ten, I decided I would be a
princess. It required no effort on my part. I already had dark brown hair and
fair skin like Snow White. I could marry a handsome prince, live in a castle
with turrets, have tons of jewelry like Elizabeth Taylor, and wear fancy gowns.
Maybe even have a longhaired, white kitten named Duchess.
Then my mom had to go and ruin everything. She told me either
I had to be born into royalty, which I wasn’t, or I would have to marry a
foreign prince and live in a different country. She took me to the library and
showed me pictures of real life princesses. Not exactly Disney beautiful.
Liars! So much for my easy, luxurious future.
Years later, my parents split. With my fairytale life
forsaken, I turned my depression into a new career goal, songwriter. I wrote
lots of sorrowful lyrics that weren’t all that good. In fact, they didn’t even
rhyme. Oh, well, there was always college. Right?
College. Not only was it a waste of time, it tried my
patience. Big time! Ignorant admissions people, freaking professors with thick
accents, unbelievable amounts of reading were all frustrating as hell. Not to
mention dealing with the obnoxious, pretentious students, especially those who
kept insisting my deep green eyes were not natural, but the result of colored
contact lenses. I swear to this day only my family members and boyfriend
believe they are not color enhanced!
To deal with my impatience I did many things including
swearing, consuming alcoholic beverages, and sleeping on my books, hoping osmosis
would work. It didn’t. It took me around six years to finish college. I must
say though I put a lot of effort into that final year.
So, there you have it. That’s the reason I’m sitting at a
desk at 6:55 a.m. this February morning, drinking lousy, lukewarm coffee,
freezing my butt off at Ageless Grace Nursing Home. Suddenly being an ugly
princess is very appealing.
Chapter 1
Friday,
February 10th
This is
my first job as a bookkeeper and I have already been here three years too long.
Let me tell you, on the inside, it’s no picnic. The only grace in this place is
the Admissions Director, Donna Dombrowski. She keeps me sane and focused.
Granted it is a tough assignment. Both of us are single, and not always loving
it. Donna is a young thirty and I’m an old twenty-eight. Some days I feel like
fifty.
We have a lottery going to see who weds first. That would be
kind of cool, except everyone else in the office wanted in on it. Odds on
favorite is Donna. Okay, so she is blonde, has much bigger breasts, and is
three inches taller than my five foot, two. Fact is, she has only been with her
auto mechanic boyfriend, Chuck Nolan, for three months. In two months’ time,
Sam Sheridan and I will have been together for three years! Exactly why we are
still together puzzles me. I’m thinking it might have something to do with the
fact he looks like an Abercrombie model and can be pretty amazing in bed. Other
than that, he drives me crazy, and not in a good way. Our relationship is much
like a faulty shower with surging water—very hot and very cold. If we could
compromise on a pleasing temperature, everything would be great but I’m not
even sure if that’s possible. So, not being a particularly optimistic woman, I placed
my bet on Donna to win.
I started mornings manning the reception desk. I hated this
more than cabbage rollups, and they make me want to vomit. The front door
opened and trouble walked up to the window separating the reception desk from
the lobby.
“Is Summer Kramer in?” a tall, gaunt woman in her sixties
rudely inquired. She looked like she reached the point of death and kept on
going.
“I’m Summer,” I said with my usual Friday morning cheer.
She cleared her throat and shoved an envelope at me. “I don’t
agree with this bill.”
I opened the envelope and pulled out last month’s statement.
The current statement went out two weeks earlier. I looked up at her expecting
her to continue but she did not. The phone rang. I let it ring out to the
floor. I ignore the phones before 7:00, if I can get away with it. I think the
inventor of the multi-phone line should be drawn and quartered. Two more lines
rang simultaneously and I waited until the green lights turned red before
responding.
“What don’t you agree with?” I asked as politely as I could
for this ungodly hour.
“The amount,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“This is last month’s statement. You should have received
this month’s statement a week ago.”
“Oh, because I already paid this amount,” she said tapping on
the paper I was holding.
“Uh-huh. Now you owe,” I took a moment and called up the
account on the computer, “Ah, $5,689.”
She opened her purse and took out her checkbook. It took her
fifteen minutes to write the check and then she shoved it in my face. I took
the check and read it. She made it out for $568.90. I wanted to slap her silly.
“You wrote down the wrong amount,” I told her, trying not to
sound bitchy.
“Oh. Well, I don’t like to waste checks, so I’ll pay the
difference next month.”
She turned and swiftly left the building before I could
dispute her reasoning. Great, I would have to answer for that in next month’s
meeting. I saw Donna waltz through the front door. She was wearing two
different colored pumps, a blue one, and a black one. The colors may have been
overlooked, however one was a closed-toe pump, and the other was a peek toe
version.
“Hey, what’s with the shoes,” I cajoled.
She looked down and her mouth dropped open. “Oh crap! I have
a family coming in, in ten minutes to sign an admission packet. I had a late
night. Chuck stayed over and I dressed in the dark.” She opened her office door
and disappeared inside.
The front door ding-donged obnoxiously, as it does anytime
anyone nears the entrance. This is a precaution, installed to warn staff that a
resident is trying to escape from this hellhole. I looked up and saw a sober
looking man of forty approaching my window. He was wearing a tight knit cap,
holding in greasy, peppered-colored hair. I cringed involuntarily. Last month
his mother had lice and I was reasonably sure she had gotten it from him. Her
hair was now six inches shorter and free of nits but my head still itches just
thinking about it.
“May I help you?” I asked, sliding my chair backwards.
“Which room is my mother in? Mrs. Maples.”
I looked up on my cheat sheet on the wall, which was never
completely accurate. Nurses weren’t great on communicating room changes;
therefore, I always did a quick bed check, at least in the Medicare wing, after
I worked the phones.
“Looks like she was moved to room 110A,” I said, sliding back
even further, hitting the copy machine sitting directly behind me. He nodded
and walked down the east corridor and I breathed a sigh of relief. I pulled my
sleeves down further over my hands and went back to work on the computer,
rapidly typing in numbers on the keyboard, increasing my risk for carpal-tunnel
syndrome with every stroke.
At 7:30 a.m., I packed up and was ready to leave the desk for
my closet-sized office. Shantel, the receptionist, was late and the phones were
maddening. Shantel’s life made mine look fantastic. She left home at fifteen to
move in with her twenty-year-old boyfriend Leroy, had her first baby, a boy, at
sixteen, and at seventeen, gave birth to a girl. Leroy went out one night for
some smokes, and decided they weren’t quite enough. He held up the 7-Eleven
with a stolen gun. With Leroy serving time in the Milwaukee County Jail for
armed robbery, Shantel convinced her mother to take her back in, along with her
two small children, Randy and Sharese. That was ten years ago, and rumor has it
that Leroy will be out soon and Shantel is worried he’ll come around.
Five phone lines lit up at once. I punched the button on
line 2. Some doctor wanted me to page someone. God help me but I couldn’t
understand a word he said. I put him on hold and prayed for Shantel. Line 3 was
for me and I put it on hold. Line 4 was for me and I told the person I wasn’t
in yet. Line 7 was an irate family member, which I passed off to the
administrator, who wasn’t in. Line 10 was for me and I hung up on them. Just as
line 2 was ringing impatiently with the foreign doctor, Shantel strolled
through the doors. I got up and left the mess for her, telling her I had to
take the call on line 3. A narrow escape indeed.
The day went by quickly and before I knew it, it was time to
clock out. I straightened my messy desk, tossed my three empty cans of diet
soda in the overflowing garbage, and pushed in my chair. I grabbed my hooded,
wool coat and put it on as I walked to the time clock. The clock never read the
same as my watch. I think they set it backwards in the middle of the day so the
employees have to work longer. I tapped my foot until the clock read 3:30 p.m.
and I slid my card in.
I couldn’t wait to leave. Snow was approaching. I could tell
because my knee ached (old roller skating accident) and it was already quite
dark outside. I pulled my hood over my head, my scarf over my mouth and rushed
out the door. In doing so, I collided with a man on the sidewalk near the
entrance. He automatically reached out to grab me as I slid on the ice.
