Dark Heart (DARC Ops Book 3) (14 page)

“You still watching me?” Fiona asked Chelsea.

“Uh-huh.”

“Good,” said Fiona. “You’ll have to do this someday, too.”

Him and his perfect body . . .

Jasper was setting up some pretty unrealistic expectations for what the typical bed bath was like. He knew it too. He played along.

“Thank you,” said Jasper, his voice so faded and relaxed it almost came out a whisper. “This feels so good.”

That bastard . . .

She was soaking his body. And he was doing something similar to her. She could feel it. She wanted to touch herself, even just over her pants. She wanted to—

“And then, um, you do his legs next?”

“That’s right,” said Fiona, scrubbing down his thigh. “Wash, rinse, and then dry, every step of the way.”

She tried not to notice how the towel above his crotch had begun lifting, a small peak emerging ever so slightly. And under her touch she could feel him tensing up, and heating up, the air between the towel and his body getting considerably warmer. Jasper coughed a little bit, and then tried to adjust his lying position. Finally, he might have been at least somewhat self-conscious about something. Perhaps even embarrassed, smiling and looking away. Finally showing some emotion from how fucked up this was. It
was
fucked up, but also, oddly, hot as hell. Giving a patient a bed bath was usually one of her least favorite activities, right up there with catheters and enemas. Would he have made those sexy, as well?

No, no. There was no amount of hotness possible for that to—

“Um,” Chelsea held back a giggle. “Yeah, so um.” She turned around, facing away from the tent that Jasper had kept erecting.

Poor Chelsea was reaching her breaking point.

“You okay, Chelsea?” asked Fiona while she rubbed the warm, moist towel from kneecap to ankle.

“Yeah,” Chelsea said, turning around, her face as red as ever. “Oh, my gosh . . .”

“Sorry,” Jasper said with a pained expression.

But Fiona knew he wasn’t sorry at all. She still wanted to be in charge of that, of how sorry he’d be.

“Chelsea, do you think you can take over?”

“What?” Chelsea yelped. The word came out quickly, the fear unguarded. “I mean, excuse me?”

Fiona caught Jasper’s glance, holding it. She winked at him. “Chelsea?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to finish?”

The whites around Jasper’s eyes glared up at Fiona.

“Finish . . . ummm . . . finish what?”

“Finish his leg.”

“Oh, um . . .”

His eyes turned crazy, mad almost. He didn’t seem to want Chelsea to finish.

“No, um.” Chelsea laughed very quietly. “I’m okay, thanks. I’ll just watch you.”

Jasper seemed to not be enjoying his bath as much anymore. He kept fidgeting, and then finally saying, “Excuse me, Fiona?”

Fiona stopped drying his leg for a moment to look back up at her patient. “What can I do for you?”

Jasper smiled. “I think I can handle the rest.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

She started rubbing again, moving higher up his inner thigh. “You sure about that?”

“Yes,” he said, struggling to lean up on his elbows. “Yes, thank you.” He seemed to be inching away from Fiona’s hand. How strange . . .

“Are you sure?” said Fiona. “You can do it just fine with your sore wrist?”

Jasper smirked. “Yeah, thanks. I can do it just fine.”

“Your behind?”

“Excuse me?”

“You can wash your behind okay?” she asked with that polished, annoying nurse tone.

Jasper looked at Chelsea for a half second, and then back to Fiona. “What? Yeah.”

“With your bad hip and everything? It’s no problem for us to do it. Right, Chelsea?”

“Umm, right.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” said Fiona.

Jasper was lying on his side now, his knees curled up a little bit so that his erection—if he still had one—was hidden from view. “I’m okay,” he said finally. “Really.”

W
hat began
as a simple joke turned into much more than he’d bargained for: blue balls.

He’d been left alone, by his own choice, but left alone with one of the firmest erections he could remember. It was almost painful. Not since he’d been a teenager had he felt so absolutely full and ready to explode. And now he was left to deal with it himself.

But what were his options? The alternative would be to have allowed Fiona to continue her bed bath, and if she’d gone ahead and carried out what she threatened him with, he would be, right now, rolled onto his side and probably staring at Chelsea, his audience, while his ex-lover and potential future girlfriend wiped his ass for him.

And if that were to indeed happen, then all would be for naught. For, after she’d finished, there wouldn’t be anything left to take care of. He would’ve probably shriveled up faster than he would during a winter swim in the Potomac.

Jasper, still lying, still naked, knew for a fact that he had not jumped into any icy water. Though at this point, he wished he had. He shifted his weight under the towel and rolled onto the side of his hip. He could feel the pressure of his cock still fully erect, the tip poking into and rubbing against the towel.

It would be hilarious, if he hadn’t been so turned on.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself.

He felt like such an idiot.

It was awkward, and embarrassing, but that seemed to make it hotter. Even the fact that he had an audience, and that Fiona had no choice but to at least attempt to stay professional throughout the procedure. He thought back on how she looked, his view from below her breasts. How her hand, more than a few times, came within inches of his manhood.

His own hand slipped down there now while thinking of her. It seemed to have happened automatically, his fingers wrapping around the base of his shaft and slowly massaging the skin. The head was still full and large and he was rubbing a little harder now. He needed to. There had been such a buildup . . .

A few coherent thoughts finally crossed his mind as he lay there naked in his hospital room, bringing himself to completion. A disbelief at how he’d arrived in such a position. And rational objections to what he was now doing: mainly, jerking himself off harder and faster under the towel, hoping and praying that no one would walk in. And then harder now, hoping that Fiona would walk in.

He’d never dreamt of masturbating in a hospital, in his workplace. But, then again, he’d never imagined he’d be in such a position that he’d simply
had
to. How likely had it been that he’d ever see Fiona again, let alone be given a sensual bed bath by her delicate, soothing touch? And her naughtiness, the way she teased him about Chelsea, the way she teased him in general . . .

She had teased him before, too, back in training. That first time, in a most public and crowded hospital elevator, backing up into him to make room for a patient in a wheelchair. She made sure to make as much room as possible, her plump ass grinding back into his crotch and then holding there, as if she was waiting for him to respond. The response he wanted was to wrap an arm around her and pull her in closer, maybe kiss the nape of her neck. But that would have been too obvious.

The less obvious response, and what actually ended up happening, was his cock firming up against her body. All this after only kissing once before. It was the start of a fun final month of rotations. And then she left, in a rush, not too differently than how she’d just left him today. She had left him hard and diabolically frustrated. Such cruelty, however, was perhaps deserved by the way he’d carried himself during the bed bath. He’d been a bad boy.

And he was still being a bad boy, the towel above his crotch fluttering now like a flag in the wind as his fist pumped faster, as he approached some sense of relief that had long been required. He edged closer, and closer, just needing to finish. No matter the insanity of it, his task needed to be completed—with or without Fiona’s touch.

Of course he preferred for that touch to return, by any means necessary, some miracle bringing his nurse back to her patient. What he wouldn’t have given for just a little more “bathing,” even with a gloved hand, even with an audience. It could have been Dr. Wahl watching for all he cared. It could have been—

And then the door creaked open.

And then his brain scattered into a panic, an electrical storm, his quick deliberation of whether or not it was worth it to continue toward his goal.

He had turned to check the door, watching it open wider.

Fuck!

Fuck it, he had to stop.

No orgasm, at least one that was self-administered, was worth getting caught and humiliated and fired.

He kept watching the door while he reluctantly dropped his hand, praying that the emergency would subside. And in walked a wine-colored shape. A nurse’s outfit. And the most beautiful face he could imagine. That smile . . . And then the voice he’d wanted so badly to hear, saying his name. A question. “Jasper?” She asked it with a quavering voice. “Jasper . . .” A quiet, nervous inquiry.

She closed the door behind her, shutting it carefully and silently, before walking up to his bed.

He was out of breath from his activity. But maybe more so now that she had returned. “Hi,” he said quietly, trying to make his voice sound normal. But it came out high and tight.

Upon entering, she had looked nervous and fidgety, but after he spoke, she seemed to relax. She softened up, moving with more fluidity, her hands now propped up on the bed and feeling their way toward his thigh as he rolled flat onto his back.

“You’re still under your sheet,” she said.

“Yeah . . .”

“And you’re still . . . naked?” She looked down at his bulge. With how close to orgasm he was, the tent was even bigger than she’d seen earlier. “I see you’ve been washing yourself.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”

“And have you finished?”

He took a deep breath.

“Have you?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Her hand had slipped under the towel, moving toward and climbing up his hip, and then onto his stomach. No glove this time.

“I was waiting for you.”

Fiona bit her lip and nodded. “You need help.”

He nodded too.

He needed help.

And her bare hand was sliding down lower, him moaning and sliding around underneath her touch, his breathing getting faster as she approached, as she wrapped her hand around him. She started tugging him immediately, in a slow and deliberate rhythm, the motion of her wrist bringing him back to the edge.

“Yeah,” she said. “I can tell you need some help here.”

Jasper groaned as her other hand slid under the towel, finding its way over his leg and under, wrapping itself around his balls, massaging, playing. “Oh, yeah,” she said breathily. “Yeah, you definitely need some help.”

Her hands felt wonderful. They were smooth, and capable, and slightly cool against the heat of his body.

“Thank you,” said Jasper, feeling weak and dizzy and completely surrendered. And so completely thankful. Somehow, his prayers had been answered. She had returned—without an audience, or an official hospital-sanctioned task to perform. This was extracurricular. Pro bono. And the way she performed made his toes curl up, his back arching off the bed, his hands grasping the sheets as a type of warm and fuzzy madness took over.

Finally, in that moment, everything was right in the world. He wasn’t stationed in a hospital. There were no hackers to worry about. No job to do but to lie back and relax and release. Oh, God, he was so close to exploding . . . then an alarm sound sounded through the room’s intercom. Loudly.

“Fuuuuuck.” Jasper groaned.

Hands immediately stopped working. Her head whipped around.

“Fuck,” he said again, sitting up.

“Get dressed,” she ordered him.

“I already am.” He sat up, grabbing the first pair of pants his fingers touched, reaching under the bed for his gun when Fiona turned her back. She had already spun away from the bed, washing her hands. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Fiona, turning back around and straightening up her clothes. “But finish getting dressed and meet me in the hall.”

He struggled to fit his still burgeoning erection in his pants. “In the hall?”

“Find me,” she said as she stormed out of the room, leaving the room with the door open.

Bath time had ended.

I
t was good
, in a way, this sudden emergency. It caused such a frenzied response that she had no time to recap the events of the past hour. She wasn’t yet forced to loathe her depravity, to question it, to ask why she could so easily cast aside any semblance of rational thought when it came to Jasper. That was their dynamic, exciting yet completely fucked, him drawing things out of her that she never thought existed.

When would she have ever done something so impulsive and stupid? And to whom? Who else but Jasper would have her just about commit a sex act in front of a trainee nurse? And then, despite finally coming to her good senses—as brief as it was—returning to the scene of the crime. Worst of all, she had been determined to do a lot more, a lot worse, the acts ranging far more intensely than a simple bed bath. At least until she was saved by whatever emergency had just sounded.

She only hoped now that her returning to Jasper hadn’t come at the cost of someone else.

“Fiona!” someone called. “Go check on 413!”

The lights in the hallway dimmed and almost completely faded to black, which was followed by a wave of nervous cries from patients and hospital staff alike. The power had never gone out like that before. Patients could be heard calling for nurses, asking the question du jour, “What’s going on?”

The emergency lights flickered on seconds later, the voices calming somewhat by their return. The hallway was once again fully lit, but there still remained a seething undercurrent of tension.

Along her way to room 413, she heard currents of nervous chatter wafting about like a poisonous gas, infecting everyone they touched. Deeply troubling concerns. Rumors about life-support machines in the ICU shutting down. A terrorist attack on Washington’s power grid. Everything grave and apocalyptic.

Fiona, herself, assumed that room 413 housed some dire circumstance that hinged on tragedy. Someone suffocating on fluids that could no longer be pumped out of their body, the lack of power choking off an air supply. She expected, with such an alarm, to meet death head-on. Or at least someone knocking on its door.

She entered the room to find an elderly gentleman who was perhaps close to that door on his own. He was sprawled out on the ground like a drunken cyclist. There had already been a nurse there, trying to speak with him, asking him questions, calling his name. Was this her emergency?

It looked slightly precarious, but certainly not enough for a full-scale alarm.

“What’s wrong with him?” Fiona asked the nurse.

“Slip and fall.”

The man started mumbling, then garbling something louder as he struggled against the nurse.

But she kept talking over him. “He might have gotten scared about the alarm and then got out of bed too fast.”

He was clearly disoriented, looking like he wouldn’t have been able to stay standing if it were even possible for the nurses to get him there.

“Are you sure he didn’t have a stroke?” asked Fiona.

“Well, how can I be sure about that?” asked the nurse.

Fiona thought of her training, the questions to ask a potential stroke victim. An acronym: FAST.

F – Was his face drooping, could he smile?

She asked if he could smile. And the question, probably because it sounded so absolutely ludicrous to everyone involved, was swiftly ignored.

A – Could he raise his arms?

The man struggled to raise his left arm. His right followed suit.

S – Speech difficulties. Could he talk?

Fiona asked him for his name and he replied, not with his name but instead something that sounded more like, “Why the fuck am I doing this?”

T – Time. Get help immediately.

In this case, there was no need to call for a doctor, or anyone really. If the curse words he was still muttering through his dry, cracked lips were any indication, the man was old, but just fine.

“I think he just fell,” said the nurse.

“I fell,” said the man. Finally, he could speak.

They had lifted the man to his feet and pretty much carried his weight to the lowered bed, propping him up on top of the mattress—all while Fiona couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been needed elsewhere. Despite the need for two people to lift the man, his emergency seemed to pale in comparison to whatever was happening across the hospital.

Fiona left 413 as soon as she could, racing down the hall toward the nurses’ station. The scene there had been just as frenzied. Phones ringing. Staff running about.

She saw Wendy.

“Do they need me in ICU?” she asked.

Wendy, sitting at the desk, held the phone away from her face for a moment and said, “It’s a false alarm.”

“What? What kind of alarm was it?”

“It’s fine,” said Wendy. “Just see if anyone needs help.” And then she returned to her call.

Fiona hardly noticed that the alarm had stopped. She looked back at Wendy, who gave her a big wide-eyed stare as if to say, “Get a move on!”

So Fiona got a move on, walking back down the hall, a little slower this time, a little more methodically than her initial blind rushing. She stopped at Jasper’s room, finding him sitting at a table by the window. He was dressed and working on a laptop.

“Any idea what’s going on?” Fiona asked him from the doorway.

“Not yet,” he said, keeping his back turned, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an attack.”

She kept moving down the hall, checking in to each room that didn’t already have a nurse inside. With the emergency gone, her new mission had shifted into damage control—which was more or less just reassuring her patients that the world wasn’t ending.

Mr. Dawes was particularly grumpy about the situation. But not because of any apparent threat to his well-being, but because his internet service had been interrupted. “It’s how I read my news,” he kept saying. “And my horse betting. I keep my eye on things here and then email my son over at Pimloco.”

“But you’re okay, otherwise?”

“Fuck no,” he barked. “It’s three minutes to post.”

Nodding as she walked out, Fiona moved on to other rooms where there might be more serious issues than how a grumpy old man’s quasi-illegal hobbies had been affected. Where there any patients on this floor hooked up to medical devices? And of those, which had life-threatening conditions? She spun around in the hallway, looking back to the nurses’ station, when she saw Jasper bolting out of his room. He crossed the hallway in a flash and was gone. Where had he gone? A service closet?

She began walking toward whatever room he had disappeared into, when she suddenly remembered. Marva!

How could she have forgotten to check on Marva?

Her room was eerily quiet, lacking the usual fanfare that would greet Fiona upon entry. The nice old lady would usually have something extra sweet to say, some exuberant exclamation of how glad she was to see Fiona. Or at least a hello. But the lack of anything was strange, especially since Marva was lying wide awake and starting at Fiona. Rather, starting past Fiona.

“Marva?”

No response. Not even movement.

“Marva, can you hear me?”

She looked very pale.

Fiona’s stomach tightened into a knot, one all too familiar that occurred with some grim discovery. Over the years she had found several patients this way, lying peacefully dead. Marva indeed looked peaceful, more so than any other time.

“Marva,” she called again. This time her hands were at the woman’s shoulders, shaking them gently, her silver-topped head rocking loosely against the pillow, her eyelids still open. But the eyes weren’t looking at anything in particular.

Fiona was so accustomed to feeling their warm, purposeful gaze, the energy of her consciousness relayed effortlessly into Fiona’s heart. She was also accustomed to the playful, if not practical-joking Marva. But the reality and conviction of this act seemed beyond the old woman’s repertoire of jokes.

And then something happened that, to the untrained eye, might appear as a joke. But Fiona had seen enough seizures to know the truth, to know that she was looking at a grand mal. Marva’s face grimaced tightly, eyebrows jumping up and down with each pulse, each wave of energy flowing through her body like electricity and blowing her limbs outward with a sad but impressive force. It was like some great motor had been turned on at the base of her spine, a rambling, gyrating mess of shocks that rocked the bed back and forth like the woman had been possessed by some demonic entity.

It took Fiona a split second to find and press the emergency button, and then scream into the hallway for good measure, screaming for help, anyone.

Jasper.

And then she refocused her attention back to poor Marva, her body still blasting against the bed, the locked wheels at the bed’s feet scraping loudly across the tile floor. From somewhere deep in the woman’s frail body, Fiona could hear tiny groans escape with each gyration, puffs of air rasping through clenched and chattering teeth.

Instinct, or perhaps myth, would dictate that you stick an object or even your fingers into the victim’s mouth to prevent them from choking. The classic pencil between the teeth. It was something that crossed Fiona’s mind every time she’d witnessed a seizure, that split-second impulse of wanting to jam the side of her hand in the person’s mouth lest they swallow their own tongue.

But if someone had done that with Marva, or anyone else having a seizure, they’d likely suffer some real damage. It was like a saying she’d once heard about separating two fighting dogs. Never put anything in the way that you wouldn’t want to lose. So instead of losing anything, including her head, Fiona calmly rolled Marva onto her side. Until help arrived, that was all she could do.

Marva’s convulsions had lessened by the time Jasper ran into the room. Like a passing storm, the jolts became softer and more spaced apart. She was still unconscious, but at least now the bed had stopped moving. And then there was Jasper, taking control of the situation. His fingers were at Marva’s neck. And then the back of his hand in front of her nose and mouth. And then he suddenly did something out of character, though perhaps more like an Army Medical Sergeant than the doctors she was used to. He spat out, “Oh, fuck,” before rolling her over onto her opposite side.

Fiona tried to ask what he was doing, or if he needed help. But his actions became obvious with a quick tug of his hand on something. The insulin pump. It was dangling in his hands like a broken MP3 player.

The fucking insulin pump . . .

How could she have forgotten about it?

He ran out of the room, gone for just seconds before returning with a glucagon syringe.

“Just to be safe,” he said while injecting Marva, his voice returning to his usual sure and smooth cadence.

But he was probably right. It was a good guess. A seizure like that, especially for someone with no history of such, could easily be explained by an unplanned and uncontrolled dose of insulin. An overdose. Thanks, perhaps, to Fiona.

“Oh, my God,” she cried. “Can that thing be hacked?”

He nodded, grimacing, his eyebrows pinching together. “Anything can be hacked.” He kept inspecting the device, turning quickly when the sound of Marva’s sudden snoring filled the room. It came on quickly, and frighteningly loud, a deep rattling snore like that of an overweight, middle-aged truck driver.

“Marva’s really blue,” said Fiona.

“That’s okay,” Jasper said, tossing the device aside. “It’s all going to her brain.”

By “it,” he’d meant her blood, all of it rushing to her brain and leaving her furthest extremities—her hands and feet—a deathly shade. But that was a natural after-effect. As was the snoring.

“She’s still breathing,” said Jasper. “So let’s just keep her steady and breathing, and she’ll come around.”

Marva’s coming around wasn’t a guarantee, no matter how strong and confident Jasper sounded about it. But the good news was that her tremors had ended and she was now lying still, her chest heaving with long, even breaths.

“Okay,” Jasper said, rolling Marva onto her back. “That’s good. You’re doing well, Marva.”

Her eyelids were closed, but there was eye movement beneath them; her lids vibrated with each twitch.

“I think she’s gonna make it,” said Jasper. “But she should still get checked out by a doctor.”

Right on cue, a gang of footsteps pounded into the room.

Nurses and doctors entered the room. Wendy was one of them, asking Fiona to describe the event.

Fiona gave a quick glance at Jasper, who seemed to look away and hide from the attention. Then she turned back to Wendy and said, “I came in here and she was totally unresponsive. I went to check vitals and that’s when she had a seizure. Tonic-clonic, the whole works. And then, uh . . .” She tried to get Jasper’s attention again. “And then
he
came in, and he—”

“I came in and I saw her holding that thing in her hand,” said Jasper, pointing to the detached device lying on the ground next to the bed.

“What is that?” asked Wendy.

“An insulin pump?” said Jasper, looking at Fiona as if for affirmation. “Right?”

“My God,” said Wendy. “She might have overdosed. The injector . . .”

Jasper nodded dumbly, his mouth open. He had moved out of the way of the hospital staff as they prepared to wheel Marva out of the room. “And then I just tried to help Fiona,” he said. “Doing whatever she told me to do.”