Confessions of a Naughty Night Nurse (19 page)

‘You said you wanted to talk to me, remember?’ I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice.

‘I do, we have some things to set straight.’

‘Such as?’

‘Javier Garelli would be a good starting point.’

OK, so there it was, out in the open. I swallowed and dragged in a breath. Braced for the onslaught. ‘What about him?’

‘You know I like you, a lot, I’ve told you that, but earlier …’ A flash of pain crossed his eyes and it was like I was suddenly kicked in the shins. Damn it, I’d put that pain there. Sweet Carl, who didn’t deserve to be hurt.

‘Earlier,’ he went on. ‘When I was running to the crash call, you, he … you’d been together, hadn’t you?’

I looked away. Unable to hold his stare.

‘Please, answer me,’ he said quietly.

‘Why, does it matter?’

He shook his head. ‘It matters because I’d got some foolish idea in my head that we had something going on.’ He paused. ‘That you wanted me. But then you hooked up with him for a quickie at our very first stumble.’

‘It’s not like that.’ I shrugged my arm. ‘You don’t understand.’

He released me and I sat at the small dining table in the corner of the living room. Nursed my wine and stared at a photograph of my childhood dog, Tinker, which hung on the wall.

He took a seat opposite, setting his wine and the McDonald’s bag between us. ‘So make me understand.’

‘Why are you even here, Carl? If you think I fucked Javier when we had something going? Why are you here, pestering me about it?’

He flinched.

I sighed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m kind of out of practise at the whole relationship thing.’

‘But not with the shag buddies thing?’

‘A girl has needs.’

‘So you couldn’t wait for me to attend to those needs, next Saturday, after dinner, like I said I would?’

‘Last Friday would have suited me perfectly well.’ I shoved my hand through my hair, tried to fluff it a little then sighed when it flopped limply around my ears. ‘I thought there was something between us too, Carl. But I suppose you can’t move beyond the Javier incident.’

He reached out, covering my hand with his. ‘If that was the case I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

My stomach clenched, my throat clogged. He was still here even though he really did believe that Javier and I had been down and dirty in the on-call room. ‘Do you mean that?’

‘Sharon, believe me, the thought of Javier or anyone else touching you makes me feel sick to my stomach. But I still like you, I still … want you.’

I sipped my wine, struggling to swallow the icy liquid. When it had finally gone down I spoke, ‘I didn’t, with Javier earlier, or in fact on any night, or would ever in the future.’

He closed his eyes for a good two or three seconds then blew out a long, slow breath. ‘OK.’

‘What you saw was a mistake.’

‘A mistake?’

‘Yes, I was going to – you’ve had me thinking about sex so damn much, and with all your Victorian ideas of chivalry I was just about ready to combust. So when Javier offered it on a plate I thought, sod it, a bit of nookie might just take the edge off it.’

He released my hand and took a big gulp of his wine. ‘So the condom wrapper had been … he’d got that far?’

‘Yes, and then the emergency bleep went off and he scarpered.’

‘Thank God for Mr Singh’s lousy clotting.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘Transferred to the intensive care unit, Javier should never have passed him for surgery in the first place. Hartley is up in arms about it.’

Yet another slip-up. How many more till he put someone six feet under? ‘That’s interesting.’

‘Why?’ He tilted his head.

‘I don’t know what you think of me, Carl, but I actually wasn’t hanging around pharmacy hoping to spread my legs for Javier. Iceberg had given me a secret mission.’

‘Sounds intriguing.’

I nodded. ‘Eat your breakfast, it’s going cold.’

He reached for the bag and began to pull out various items. ‘You want some?’

‘No.’

He frowned a little but didn’t press the issue. ‘So, are you going to start from the beginning?’

‘The beginning, mmm …’ I sipped my wine. Where to start? Definitely not with Ted’s handjob, that wouldn’t go down well, not when Carl was handling my liaison with Javier so well. The story of a spur-of-the-moment wank for a helpless patient might just put him off his breakfast. Tip the balance of calm sanity to horrified rage.

‘Iceberg has never liked me,’ I said, ‘she’s always threatening to report me to Personnel for ridiculous misdemeanours, like sitting down instead of cleaning out cupboards when it’s quiet, or taking too long on my break. She’s such a cow, I hate her.’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ He munched into a hash brown.

‘Yes, absolutely. Except, that is, for Javier.’

‘What?’ He raised his eyebrows.

I raised mine and nodded.

He looked shocked. ‘Javier and Iceberg are an item? Don’t be ridiculous.’

I managed a twisted smile. ‘Ridiculous, yes, but it’s not what you think. Iceberg has been having a problem with temazepam going missing from the night stock cupboard outside pharmacy. She’s the only one with a key, legitimately anyway, but someone has been regularly helping themselves.’

‘Probably someone from pharmacy. Making a bit of cash on the side by selling onto the street.’

‘No, the hospital did a big investigation into that. Not possible. It was someone else with a key, someone working in the hospital at night.’

‘But temazepam is generally used as night sedation, why would a night worker take it? They need to stay awake.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Night staff who rotate to days are notorious for having trouble sleeping. Their circadian rhythms are all over the place. That’s why I stick to nights and nothing else. I’m in that routine now and it suits.’

‘So someone was taking temazepam to sleep in the day?’

‘Yes, initially I suspect that was the reason. But users become addicted, don’t they? It’s supposed to be for short-term use but if it’s used in the long term you get hooked. Plus it does give a very lovely high.’

‘So I’ve heard, but it’s easy to become tolerant to it.’

‘Meaning you need more and more.’

‘I suppose so.’ He nodded.

‘Which was why someone had gone to extreme lengths to get their hands on it.’ I took a mouthful of wine, warming to my story. ‘So anyway, Iceberg set me a task of finding out who had this other key. I wanted to bang my head against a brick wall. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, literally. She’d been getting more and more impatient for me to feed her information and tonight, she ordered me to hang out by the cupboard and see if anyone came along and dipped into it. Well, you can imagine I wasn’t very impressed with this assignment, but what choice did I have?

‘So I was lurking around when suddenly Javier appears behind me. He was his usual suave self and before I knew it he was smooth-talking me into the pharmacy on-call room and rolling on a condom.’

Carl put his hash brown back in its wrapper. Took a swig of wine and pressed his lips together. He appeared to be struggling to swallow. ‘What does this bit have to do with the missing drugs?’ he managed.

‘Everything.’ I hesitated. ‘We were just about to, you know, and I told him to stop –’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’ I paused as those feelings of need for Carl and only Carl resurfaced. ‘I suddenly realised, that despite Javier’s charm and good looks, which for the record I don’t believe in any more, I really didn’t want him.’ I took a fast sip of wine. ‘I didn’t want to shag him or anyone else. It was like a cartoon, you know, when a light bulb goes off over a character’s head and they get an idea, or an epiphany; that’s what happened to me.’

Carl was silent for a long moment, then, ‘And what was this epiphany?’

I rubbed my fingers over my brow and then in a circle at my temple. ‘I suddenly realised that I wanted to make love, not fuck. That just the physical act of sex wasn’t enough for me any more. I was ready to move on and undo some of the bolts I’d put around my heart.’ Hesitantly I looked him in the eye. I’d laid my soul bare to him. Would he accept it, laugh at me or be disgusted?

He creased his brow. ‘What the hell did some bastard do to you, Sharon?’

‘I’ll tell you another time.’ I rolled my eyes, trying to act as though it had been nothing, even though it had been devastating. ‘So anyway, I came to a swift realisation that I was ready for connection again and it most definitely wasn’t Javier that I wanted to hook up with. So I told him to stop, several times. He was pretty insistent and he’s a big, heavy guy. I was just starting to panic that I couldn’t push him off even though I was kicking and shoving and –’

‘Bastard,’ Carl spat. His fists clenched on the table as he pushed the remains of his breakfast to one side. ‘I should go and fucking deck the Italian piece of –’

‘No. I told you, nothing happened, and I’m certain he would have got the message in another few seconds, but suddenly it was over. His pager went off and he dashed out of the room and up the corridor. That was just seconds before I saw you.’

Carl’s expression was still grim but his fists relaxed a little.

‘And that was when I found it.’

‘What?’

‘The key, to the drug cupboard.’

‘What?’

‘The key, to the drug cupboard, it was in Javier’s wallet.’

‘Jesus. No way!’

‘Yes way. I flipped it open, saw a picture of him and his fiancée –’

‘Fiancée, what a dirty rat. He’s the biggest tart in the hospital.’ Carl was shaking his head in amazement.

‘My thoughts exactly, and it was behind that picture I found a key. It was a bit rough but it worked in the cupboard just fine.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Carl sat back, pushed his hand through his hair making it stick up messily. ‘You have to tell someone about this. He’s not fit to be working if he’s abusing benzodiazepines. Bloody hell, he’s been operating half the night.’

‘I’ve already tried to report him. I went straight to Iceberg, but she wouldn’t believe me. She thinks the sun shines out of his arse. Said I was just trying to discredit him. She told me to go home and expect a phone call from Personnel to tell me that I’m sacked.’

‘What? You haven’t done anything wrong. She can’t do that?’

‘It seems she can.’

‘But there are laws, unions, contracts, things to protect you when you’re innocent.’

I shrugged and drained my wine. There were indeed laws to protect employees, but not if those employees had broken codes of conduct. But I couldn’t tell Carl that.

‘So that’s what I’m doing now,’ I said. ‘Waiting for my P45 while Javier goes home, takes some of the pills he’s been nicking and has a nice little trip at my expense.’

‘I should go to the medical board or Hartley or something.’ He tapped his knuckles on his chin. ‘Trouble is, there isn’t any evidence.’

‘I put the key back in his wallet, but not until I’d taken some pictures of it on my iPhone.’

‘Brilliant.’ His face lit. ‘That’s great.’

‘Not really. I showed Iceberg and she said they were crap quality and it looked like I’d fabricated them.’

‘But why would she think that?’

‘I told you, she’s hot for him, thinks they’re in a “relationship”.’ I made quote marks with my fingers.

‘She’s hardly his type.’ Carl looked bemused.

‘Well, she thinks she is, and I suppose he does too, if by shagging her it meant he got his hands on her keys, amongst other things.’

‘Bloody hell, Sharon. I can’t believe you’ve had all this going on.’

‘It’s been a nightmare that has turned into a disaster. God knows what I’m going to do when I can’t pay the mortgage on this place next month. I was only just making ends meet as it was. We bought this on two salaries.’

‘We?’ He tipped his head.

I glanced down at my ring finger. A ruby set in white gold had once sat there. Now it lived in my jewellery box. ‘Michael,’ I said. ‘We bought it together not long after we got engaged.’

‘You were engaged?’ There was surprise in his voice.

‘Yes, for a year.’

‘What happened?’

My mobile trilled to life saving me from talking of a past best left buried.

‘I should get that,’ I said, reaching it from my handbag that was looped over the back of the chair. It was a hospital number. My heart rate picked up a notch and it had already been going pretty fast.

‘Hello.’

‘Is that Sharon Roane?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hello, this is Felicity Broom from Personnel. I’m sorry to be calling so early but I’ve just had a rather strange call from Sister Stanton about you.’

‘Strange?’ I glanced at Carl. He was unwrapping his McMuffin.

‘Yes, she seems to think you’ve been having some kind of sexual relationship with a gentleman patient.’

Bitch, she’d gone ahead and reported me. ‘Well that’s ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.’ Denial seemed the best angle to adopt at this point.

‘Well, it is rather an unusual situation, especially as it isn’t the patient who has brought the incident to our attention.’

‘I don’t even know what patient you’re referring to,’ I said.

‘You don’t?’

‘No. I work on a different ward every night, I’m bank staff.’

‘Oh, yes, I see. Well I’m afraid Sister Stanton wants to take this matter further.’

‘Tell them,’ Carl said, frowning. ‘About Javier.’ He bit into his bun.

‘What do you mean by further?’

‘She wants you to be suspended and for a formal inquiry to be held.’

Just suspended. I supposed that was better than sacked, for now. ‘Can she do that if there hasn’t been a patient complaint?’

‘Well, it seems she can. Though like I said, it is rather unusual.’

‘So no patient, nor a family member or any other staff have an issue with me; it’s just her word against mine.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Well it’s an outlandish accusation and I completely deny it.’

I looked at Carl and shrugged, widening my eyes as though I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

‘Well, I, yes, it is rather untoward, and given that it is a burn victim, the whole idea is really incredibly unsavoury.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’