Thicker than Blood - Book One (4 page)

She shrugged. “Well, you
look good. Days told me it had been slow. I imagine that it will
carry over. Looks that way, anyway,” Andrea told me as she texted
someone.

“Yeah, Sam told me that if
it wasn't for the call-in down here, I'd be off.”

The pretty little woman
glanced up from her phone. “Bummer.” Her focus went back to the
phone. “Oh well, glad to see you, though!”

I found an empty locker to
store my purse and got a cup of coffee. Leaning up against a
support, I watched Dr. Smith, the ER doc for the night, talk to a
patient about their wounded arm. It made me think back to when I
started nursing school, my thoughts were set on treating each
patient with care – much like I'd treat any member of my family if
they were in the hospital. Most students started school with those
thoughts. (A rare few became nurses because it was a good career
choice only.) However, during the course of school and externing at
hospitals, most of us inevitably were desensitized to the whole
thing. You have enough rude patients treating you like an
indentured servant, family members demanding more be done despite
doing all that you could and seeing enough bodily fluids to paint a
castle... most people would become numb. It's no surprise that a
lot of new nurses only last a couple of years before changing
careers. It was hard work that held people's lives in the balance.
It always amazed me that plumbers and electricians were paid well
beyond nurses, considering lives were in our hands, family member's
well-being was in our hands.

A few hours later, after
helping Dr. Smith examine a child with a broken arm, I went to the
Starbucks kiosk near the gift shop before it closed for the night.
I could always count on the caffeine in Starbucks espresso drinks
to keep me on my toes.

I took the coffee to the
roof of the hospital, where I could truly escape during my break.
The sky was littered with stars, although it would have been much
easier to see them all if there wasn't so much light pollution from
the town. The air was warm, but the breeze had a cool, crisp note
that told me autumn wasn't far. All in all, it was a beautiful
night.

“Kenna.”

I shivered. I'd know that
accent anywhere. Slowly, I turned to face Dr. Amante, who was
standing just five feet behind me. How did I not hear him
approach?

His eyes were the caramel
color I remembered from the first time I saw him. His expression
was guarded; whatever he was thinking wasn't being translated to
his handsome face.

“Hi,” I said.

He stared. Great, this
again. He had to be the most strange and mysterious person I'd ever
met. I shook my head. “Okay...,” and was about to turn around to
face the city lights again when his hand stopped me. I looked up
into his face. Again, I had not heard him come closer.

“We...,” he started and
stopped. “I shouldn't be with you,” he whispered.

Okay...
I stared back at him and then shrugged. “Then don't.”
Seriously, what the fuck? I looked at the buttons on his lab
coat.

He lowered his face as to
catch my eyes. They were ablaze with conflict—hunger seemed to war
with determination. Finally, his shoulders sagged in resignation.
If I'd not been watching him so closely, I would have missed the
whole thing.

“You don't know what you do
to me.”

My eyebrows came together
as I considered his statement. “What do I do to you?” He hadn't
known me long enough to be that infatuated.

A hand ran through his
wavy, black hair as he thought. “You're like... kryptonite to
me.”

“Kryptonite.”

“Yes. I see you... I smell
you... I get weak.”

“Smell me?”

He nodded.

Okay, that's pretty hot
that I have that effect on him. “A lot of people feel that way
about someone -”

“No,
NOT
like this.” He cut me off. Dr.
Amante let out a frustrated sigh and went to look over the edge of
the roof. “Your friend was right about me. You should stay as far
from me as possible. I am toxic.”

I gasped. How did he know
what Matt said? We were in my house. “How do you know about...,” I
started but couldn't finish the sentence. The tiny hairs on the
back of my neck were beginning to stand again. Had he been at my
house? I trembled. Outside of my bedroom window?

“Where you at my...,” I
tried to say, but the fear rising quickly up through my body made
me stop. I suddenly felt very alone and exposed on the roof with
him. “Uh... I should get back to work.”

He turned swiftly to face
me. “Kenna, I'm sorry... it's just that...,” he said, stopping to
stare. As his eyes changed from caramel to black, my pupils grew
larger. Fear made my feet tingle, made them want to run in the
opposite direction.

With one step, Dr. Amante
was standing against me, looking down into my eyes with tremendous
intensity. Quickly closing the distance between us, Dr. Amante
sought out my mouth, kissing me hungrily. I was lost, pushed off a
cliff into a euphoric whirlwind. His touch was like discovering how
to breath for the first time, never realizing that you needed air
but finding you couldn't now live without it.

As we kissed, his hand went
to my shoulder blade, slowly tracing its way to the slight curve at
the small of my back. His other hand moved to gently grasp the base
of my neck.

I knew I shouldn't be in
this strange man's arms, but I couldn't help it. There was
something about him that pulled me to him. It wasn't infatuation...
something different, something that pulled stronger. Could it all
be in my mind?

I became aware of sirens in
the distance. “Great,” I said, hesitantly breaking from the
intoxicating doctor. I moved from his arms and stepped towards the
edge of the roof, looking for the source of the sirens. Yep, there
it was, an ambulance coming our way. I turned back to Dr. Amante...
but he was no longer there. Alarmed, I looked quickly around my
surroundings. No Dr. Amante. My heart thundered in my chest. There
was
no way
I
imagined what happened only moments earlier –
no way
. In glancing down at the
rooftop, I saw that he walked through a puddle while leaving, his
tracks indicating he went to the stairwell. I lifted the collar of
my scrub top to my nose. It smelled of his cologne. I couldn't
believe it happened again.
Man, I need a
drink.

As I went down the stairs
to the ER, I wondered what I should do about the situation. Matt
warned me to stay away from Amante and the man himself warned me to
stay away. Who tells someone to stay away from them only to embrace
them in a smoldering, passionate kiss like he did me? It all seemed
rather bi-polar. As much as I was attracted to and lusted for Dr.
Amante, I had to be logical. If he acted so strangely, so hot and
so cold having just met, how could I expect things to be any
different if we were together? Sure, I was positive we'd have
mind-blowing, earth-shattering sex... but what type of relationship
would that be?

I made a promise to myself
to think about it more during the week as I entered the ER waiting
room, which was now a flurry of activity. There was blood all over
the floor, from the entrance to a gurney, upon which lay an
unconscious man bleeding profusely from the neck. His blood was
flowing off the gurney to the floor, pooling near the wheels.
Andrea was holding pressure to the wound, but it was too large for
her to cover entirely.

Pumping some disinfectant
into my hands and grabbing a pair of gloves, I ran to Andrea's
side. She had a pile of surgical sponges in the man's lap. I picked
up a couple and assisted her in keeping pressure to the ghastly
wound. The skin and underlying tissue was cut and torn, looking
more like fresh hamburger than a person's neck.

“What happened?” I asked as
we pushed the gurney through a set of double doors to an empty
stall.

“I'm not sure, but it looks
like Mr. Fargo was bitten.”

“You think that's a bite?”
I asked incredulously. I looked down at my hands, the sponges and
the blood.

“Yeah. I saw -”

Our conversation was
interrupted by Dr. Smith, who came rushing to the patient's side,
checking the IV. “Keep the O neg coming until we get a
cross-match.” She looked up to the unit clerk, “Call the surgical
team in NOW!”

We all did what we could
while we waited for the surgeon on-call and the rest of his team to
make it in, roughly twenty minutes later. We helped the surgical
team transport Mr. Fargo to the OR.

Finally, Andrea and I were
able to sit down and take a breath. Some thirty minutes after the
patient entered the OR, he passed. It was always difficult when a
patient died. You realize exactly how powerless you are. We did all
that we could, but it wasn't enough.

“That was fucked up,”
Andrea said with a sigh.

“You still think it was a
bite that caused that?”

Andrea nodded. “When they
first wheeled him in, I could see the places where flat teeth had
cut into his neck.”

I snapped my face towards
her. “Flat teeth? You mean...”

“It had to be a person that
bit him,” she nodded. “My guess is someone off their
meds.”

A person had done
that?
Holy shit.
Who ever heard of a person killing another with a bite? I
shook my head. What a crazy world we lived in.

“Poor guy. I wonder where
he was when he was attacked.”

Andrea shrugged, bringing
her eyes to mine. “Well, if you think about it, with a wound like
that, he couldn't have been too far away or he would have died on
the trip here.”

“Yeah, I guess
not.”

“Excuse me, Nurses Kenna
and Andrea?”

We both looked up to find a
slightly-pudgy police officer coming towards us.

“Yes?” I
offered.

“I need to speak to you
ladies individually for your statement on the event surrounding Mr.
Fargo's arrival,” the cop said.

I sighed, coming to my
feet. “Okay.”

He held up his hand,
directing me to one of the empty ER stalls. “Right this way, ma'am,
if you will.”

I entered the stall and the
cop closed the curtain behind us. “In your own words, please tell
me what you saw.”

Was he serious? In my own
words? Who else's words would they be? I shook my head slightly. “I
was just coming back from a break when I saw Andrea holding sponges
to Mr. Fargo's neck. She said that the EMT said Mr. Fargo lost
consciousness almost as soon as they arrived at the scene. I helped
her apply pressure to what she thought appeared to be a wound
caused by human teeth and - “

He cut me off. “Do you
think it was caused by human teeth?”

“Uh, well, it certainly
wasn't cause by a knife or a sharp object. Something tore into his
neck.”

The officer studied me a
few seconds. “I see.” Taking a step towards me, he was directly in
my face, staring hard into my eyes. “That wasn't a bite wound. The
wound Mr. Fargo suffered from was caused by a shot gun blast when
Mr. Fargo attempted to commit suicide. You will forget that this
conversation ever took place and that I was ever here.”

I blinked – my stomach
turning in place. The strange command sounded too much like the one
I had received from Dr. Amante the first night we met. It could
be
no
coincidence.
I wasn't sure how to respond to the cop, so I just stared. I could
feel the fight or flight instinct trying take over, but I managed
to keep it reigned in.

“You may go now. Please
send Andrea in.”

Walking around the chubby
man, I exhaled quietly. What was going on here? I had to get to the
bottom of this.

Andrea was still seated
where I left her, eyes watching me as I approached.

I mouthed,
'
what the FUCK
' to
her. “The cop wants you now.”

Her eyes questioned me as
she rose. “Okay... I'll be right back.”

I sat down and waited for
Andrea to come back. Too many questions plagued my mind. Did that
cop think I'd believe his story and actually follow his command?
That
wasn't
a
shotgun blast. He was talking to nurses, for crying out loud.
We
KNEW
what a gun
shot wound looked like and this most certainly was not. Besides,
who shoots themselves in the neck?