Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (45 page)

Ten

Joanna sat in the Covington Community Hospital cafeteria, staring into her cup of weak hospital-issue coffee. She dumped spoonful after spoonful of cheap imitation creamer into it, but didn’t take a sip. The cheap paper cup was getting soggy. She was tired and desperately needed the caffeine before returning to the OR for yet another operation, but she just couldn’t bring the soggy paper cup to her lips. The scent of it made her stomach turn. She got up and tossed it into the garbage.

She picked up a plastic cafeteria tray and went to stand in line for some food. Nothing looked at all appetizing to her, but her empty stomach growled, begging for something to eat. She selected a cellophane-wrapped bowl of Jell-o and a half-sandwich at random, not even checking the label to see what that sandwich contained. She grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and took her tray to the cashier. She swiped her employee meal card through the reader and sat down with her tray to eat.

Joanna was exhausted and hungry. A typical feeling after weeks of sleepless nights and long shifts in the OR. But today it all seemed different somehow. The air had a thickness to it that made Joanna feel as if she were moving through water. The edges of everything seemed harsher, more sharply defined. Food tasted strange, almost metallic. And she felt spacey—almost as if her head was full of air.

Joanna picked at her Jell-O, taking only a few bites. It tasted like cherry-flavored cardboard. She tried the sandwich next—she unwrapped it, lifted up the corner of the bread to see what it contained. It looked to be egg salad on rye. She gingerly took a bite, and no sooner did the food hit her stomach, her entire digestive system went into reverse.

Joanna clapped a hand over her mouth and made a mad dash for the bathroom.

She barely made it there in time. Joanna vomited up the entire contents of her stomach into the toilet in one violent heave. Just when she thought she was totally empty, even more came up, followed by bile, followed by painful dry heaves that left her reeling.

When her body finally seemed to settle down, Joanna’s head began to spin. The whole room tilted and swayed around her, then her vision began to cloud and blacken. Before she knew what had happened, Joanna keeled over backward, the hard thud of her skull hitting the tile floor the last thing she remembered.

When she came to, she was stretched out on a gurney in the ER. A green hospital curtain was draped around the gurney, but it provided little privacy against the mad hubbub of the emergency department. She heard doctors shouting orders, nurses running up and down the halls in their thick-soled shoes, the blaring of a television, a ringing telephone left unanswered. Her vision was still blurred, and the back of her head throbbed.

She lay on the gurney for several minutes, unable to move. Her limbs felt like heavy lead weights, her mouth was dry, and she was tremendously thirsty. Her left forearm itched; she moved her head to glance at it with great effort and saw that it was attached to an IV drip. Her skin itched underneath the adhesive tape used to hold the plastic tubing in place.

After a while longer, Joanna’s vision began to focus and movement returned to her limbs. She managed to sit up, and pressed the button on the side of her gurney that raised it into an upright position. She rang the nurse call button, and waited for a response.

A moment later, she got one. And instead of one of the regular, overworked ER duty nurses, it was Maryam Malone.

Joanna was shocked. Maryam never set foot in the ER unless it was for a major emergency. Or for a major piece of juicy gossip. Or both.

“Well, well, well,” Maryam clucked. “Just when I think it can’t possibly get any more crazy here today, my best nurse winds up a patient in the ER. Looks like you’ve managed to get yourself knocked up, little missy. My, my, that didn’t take long.”

Joanna blinked, not understanding. “Excuse me?”

“Let me be the first to offer my congratulations,” the older woman said. “Though I’ll be happy to keep mum about it until you decide to make your official announcement.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Maryam? Congratulations for what? Whacking my head on the floor and passing out?”

“Well, it might be news to you, hon, but generally speaking it’s appropriate to congratulate women who are expecting. When are you due, hon? Your chart doesn’t say. Looks like it just came up on the routine blood tests they ran while you were out cold.” Maryam tapped the patient chart she carried on a clipboard. Joanna’s chart.

All at once, Joanna understood. “Oh my God,” she whispered, falling back hard against the gurney.

Maryam rushed to her side. “You all right, hon? You just went white as a sheet. You’re not about to faint again, are ya? Wouldn’t be surprised if you do. Fainting’s real common in the first trimester, ya know. “

“I’m pregnant,” Joanna said in a tiny voice. “Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. This can’t be happening. Oh, no, no, no, no no.”

Maryam sucked in her breath. “You mean to tell me you didn’t know?”

Joanna shook her head.

The older nurse pulled up a chair and sat beside the gurney. She reached out and took Joanna’s wrist, as if to take her pulse. But she didn’t. Instead she clasped both of her wrinkled, arthritic hands around Joanna’s smooth pale one and squeezed. “Aw, hon. I take it this ain’t welcome news, then?”

“I—“ Joanna trailed off, not knowing what else to say. Under any other circumstances, it would have been wonderful news. But her marriage to Harlan was on the rocks, and it hardly seemed the best time to bring a child into the mix.

“Do you have any idea how far along you might be, hon?” Maryam asked, still holding Joanna’s hand.

She closed her eyes, tried to think backward to the last time she and Harlan had made love—and was stunned when she couldn’t remember. It had been at least a month, maybe even two. Her periods were irregular, so that was no help. And she’d only been married to Harlan for five months, had known him for barely seven. She figured she couldn’t be much more than two or three months along. “I dunno,” she mumbled. “I’m sure I can’t be too far along at this point.”

Maryam patted her hand. “You’ll need to set up an appointment with OB/GYN, then,” she said. “I’ll make a few calls. I might even be able to get somebody over there in Clinic to see you as soon as they discharge you. An’ I think it goes without saying you’ll be off heavy OR duty for a while. No more double rotating shifts for you, hon. You need your rest.”

“But—“ Joanna stammered. “Who will supervise the surgical technicians? Who will handle the complex surgeries? We’re short-staffed as it is—Harlan will be furious!“

Maryam smiled. “Really? You think so? If you ask me, I think he’ll be thrilled. Most expectant fathers are, ya know.”

Joanna bit her lip. She hadn’t thought about what Harlan might think about the pregnancy. His first wife had been murdered while pregnant, and she knew he still carried plenty of painful memories of that around with him day in and day out. Harlan was a walking time bomb these days. She wasn’t entirely sure her pregnancy would be welcome news.

“If it’s all the same to you, Maryam, I’d like to just keep this to myself for right now.”

“What do you mean, hon?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Nobody is to know about this. Not OB/GYN, not Human Resources, and certainly not Harlan. No one.”

“But Joanna—“

“That’s all I have to say on the subject,” Joanna snapped. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “If anyone asks what happened, just tell them I came down with a bad case of the stomach flu. I’ll worry about the rest.”

Maryam sighed and shook her head. “Whatever you say, hon. But I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing. Babies are a precious, precious thing, Joanna. Especially at your age. You aren’t exactly a spring chicken, ya know.”

“Don’t I know it,” she muttered, and stared down at her hands. Tears started spilling down her cheeks.

And Joanna had the feeling there’d be a lot more where that came from.

****

Harlan was locked in his office, staring blankly at his computer screen. He was supposed to be using this spare hour between scheduled surgeries to check email and catch up on administrative tasks, but he wasn’t getting anything done. His mind was elsewhere.

And he had plenty on his mind. His crumbling marriage, for one. The fact he’d just made a complete ass of himself in the OR, for another. Not to mention the fact that as much as he hated to admit it, Harlan was finding himself very physically attracted to Starla Berring.

Very,
very
physically attracted. To the point he had to excuse himself from postop while carrying an empty surgical tray over his crotch.

Chief surgeons did not get wood in the OR. And they certainly did not get wood over slutty, trashy women who were not their wives.

Down, boy
, he ordered his disobedient cock. His cock responded by getting harder.

Harlan loved his wife. He loved her desperately, to the point that he was almost afraid of his feelings for her. To the point that he was pushing her away. To the point that he was checking out other women’s asses—and liking it.

Harlan’s marriage was falling apart around his ears, and instead of finding a way to fix it, he was getting hard thinking about the office whore.

Or rather, he was getting hard trying
not
to think about the office whore. But it seemed that the more he tried to get Starla Berring out of his mind, the more she just took it over completely. He pictured her naked, wondered what it would be like to touch her, touch her intimately, to tread the path that surely dozens—if not hundreds—of men had trod before him.

Harlan found the very notion of sleeping with a woman like Starla Berring revolting. Or at least, the logical part of him did. The part of him between his legs—not so much.

Whether or not he acted on them, Harlan felt that even
thinking
these thoughts amounted to cheating on his wife. His marriage to Joanna was hanging by a thread as it was. It would never survive infidelity. And it seemed no one knew that better than Starla Berring. She was throwing herself at him. The woman had scented blood in the water, and she was moving in for the kill.

Starla had never seemed to notice Harlan before. Which was really saying something, since the woman would fuck pretty much anything with a penis. The fact that she was noticing him now that his marriage was falling apart just proved that much more how cheap and slutty she really was.

But no matter how much Harlan’s brain hated the woman’s motives, his body found them sexy. It was some kind of primitive caveman reflex, something that shouldn’t happen in modern society. Something that proved when it came down to brass tacks, even educated, civilized, married men were nothing more than animals in heat.

Harlan shut down his computer in disgust. There would be no reading of email, no shuffling of paperwork right now. He needed to clear his head. He needed to relax his body.

He needed to go to his private bathroom and jerk off.

Harlan was afforded his own private washroom by virtue of his position as Covington Community Hospital’s Chief of Surgery. It was attached to the rear of his office, accessible through a locked door to which only he and a cleaning person had the key. There was a toilet, a sink, a shower stall, a small lounge area with chairs, and a cot for sleeping. Harlan rarely used the washroom retreat; with his busy OR schedule and long list of weekly administrative meetings. He was rarely in his private office at all, let alone had much of a need for a private bathroom.

Well, he had plenty of need for a private bathroom today.

Harlan’s cock strained against the thin cotton of his surgical scrubs. His groin and upper thighs throbbed with the heavy need for release. He needed to come more than he’d even needed anything before. If he didn’t get his rocks off right here, right now, his head might explode.

It wasn’t that long ago when Harlan would have sought out his wife Joanna when his loins needed loosening. They’d spent most of their courtship fucking in the hospital’s elevators and parking garages. But Joanna wasn’t speaking to him right now. Hell, she wasn’t even
looking
at him right now. It was only a matter of time before the woman served him with divorce papers. He might as well get used to jerking himself off for sex, since it was pretty damn likely that’s all he would be getting for the foreseeable future.

He took the key to his private washroom from the top drawer of his desk and used it to unlock the heavy wooden door. Harlan’s office was in the oldest wing of the hospital, which dated from the 1920s. He had to step up into the washroom, which was raised slightly above the level of the floor of his main office. The washroom had an Art Deco terrazzo floor that had seen better days, but the heavy wood paneling and marble fixtures looked as good as they had the day they were installed. There was a regular porcelain “john” and an antique Art Deco urinal mounted on the wall at just the perfect height for Harlan’s unique needs of the day.

He stood before it, loosened the drawstring on his scrubs, and pulled out Mr. Happy. His cock was hard, hot, and already dripping with its sweet and salty juices. Harlan spat on his palms to lube them, and went to town.

His whole cock began to tingle with warmth, then that warmth began to spread throughout his body. The tension was building faster and faster as Harlan squeezed, slapped, rubbed, and tugged at his cock with one hand, and stroked its sensitive tip with the other. His lips pulled back away from his teeth, his eyes squinted, his breath came harder and faster as he brought himself closer and closer to the edge. Closer and closer, but not quite close enough.