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She opened the dishwasher. Empty. She looked in the drying rack by the sink. No luck.
Maybe someone had borrowed it. Left it at the nurses’ station or in another staff lounge. Maybe someone accidentally broke it and threw away the evidence, hoping she wouldn’t find out.
Still…she didn’t like the feeling unfurling in her gut.
So much for her pep talk. Either her imagination was working overtime, or something was seriously wrong in her life. If she only understood what that wrong thing might be.
Her mug wasn’t anything fancy—just a white ceramic cup with bold black letters that read Don’t Make Me Use My Nurse Voice. Her sister had given it to her as a Christmas gift last year, and her coworkers had laughed over it more than once. Yes, she could be firm with patients who needed to listen, but it was also ironic because she tended to be soft-spoken in nonwork situations.
It didn’t matter why the mug was funny. It was gone.
And she didn’t like what that might mean.
The break room door swung open. Polly pasted on a smile just as fellow nurse Tate Emery stepped inside, yawning into his sleeve. Charlotte “Charli” Brewer, with her messy bun and eternal supply of lip gloss—she could detect the scent of watermelon on her pink lips this morning—trailed behind him.
“Morning,” Charli chirped, heading for the coffee pot. “Thank goodness.”
“It still needs a minute,” Polly warned. “The last shift didn’t do us any favors. I started a fresh pot.”
“It’ll be worth the wait.” The other woman opened the cabinet and pulled down her pink mug. No problem there.
Tate gave Polly a sleepy salute. “Didn’t expect to see you back already. Thought you covered a late shift?”
“I only worked four hours of it. They called in a sub to replace me so I could get a few hours of sleep before my regular shift.”
He reached down to squeeze her hand. “You look like you had a rough night.”
“Gee, thanks,” Polly said, pulling away and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her sweater. “A mug of caffeine ought to revive me.”
Charli chuckled. “That’s the spirit.”
Polly grabbed a cup and filled it. She stirred in a packet of sugar before tasting it. The acrid brew burned down her throat, and she quickly added powdered creamer, hoping to cut the bitterness. Oh. That wasn’t good. Guess cleaning the pot hadn’t helped. No wonder the pot had been abandoned by the night crew.
“You okay?” Tate asked, his smile looking bemused at whatever face she’d made.
She couldn’t help but compare how the angles of his clean-shaven face compared to the sandpapery stubble that always shaded Daniel’s jaw and neck. Tate was a handsome guy in that boy-next-door kind of way—dark hair, blue eyes, an easy smile and a jawline movie stars would kill for. But the word pretty came to mind, whereas manly seemed to better suit Daniel—and apparently, her tastes in what she found attractive in a man.
“Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “You look, I don’t know…tense? Exhausted? Did you get any sleep at all?”
Polly hesitated. She wasn’t about to mention to her coworkers her feeling that something wrong was going on around her. They already worked in a big city ER. They had plenty of things to worry about already. “Not enough, apparently. I just need caffeine.”
He nodded, but his gaze lingered. He lifted his hand as if he was going to brush something off her cheek and Polly flinched, instinctively leaning away from the anticipated touch.
Fortunately, Charli bumped his hip with hers, nudging Tate beyond arm’s reach. “Leave the poor woman alone. Some of us are antisocial until we’ve had our morning coffee.”
Polly laughed, grateful for the cover, and sipped from the cup. It tasted like sweet sludge, and it seemed like she could feel every granule of the creamer on her tongue.
What she wouldn’t give for some real coffee.
And her missing mug.
And the sense of security that seemed to have eluded her these past few weeks.
The break room slowly filled with more chatter, and footsteps sounded in the hall. Polly nodded and answered when someone asked about a patient follow-up, but inside, something still crawled along the back of her neck.
Her fingers tightened on the warm cup.
