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CHAPTER ONE
“This cannot count as drinkable,” I muttered, grabbing the coffee pot and pulling it free. The dark fluid moved around sluggishly as I picked it up.
From her place at the break room table, Sheila looked up. “Are you planning on drinking that or just playing with it?”
I poured some of it into a Styrofoam cup and took a tentative sniff. “Oh, God, how long has that been sitting there? Christ, it smells like someone rolled the beans around in shit then burned them.”
“You have such a way with words,” Sheila told me, turning her attention back to the book she was reading. I wasn’t surprised to see the image of a half-naked man clutching a pretty woman. If there was a book in her hand, it was either some romance serial or the latest creepy horror novel.
I had never quite been able to figure out the connection between the two.
My first sip was even worse than the sniff test, and I pulled it away from me with a dry heave. “Holy fuck, that’s awful.”
“Language,” she scolded without looking up.
“Sorry,” I muttered, quietly pouring the ‘coffee’ into the nearby sink and tossing the Styrofoam cup. “But it really is awful.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t drink the swill they force on us here,” she reminded me. “You should make your own at home or get some while you’re out.”
It was great in theory but a little harder in practice. Trying to remember to bring myself a giant cup of coffee meant remembering to make it before I had to leave the house. That was, of course, dependent on whether or not I had recently come off a long stint of shifts or not, which were frequent or sparse depending on how many other employees there were.
Not that I would pretend I didn’t love my job because I did. Palliative care wasn’t the easiest work, and sometimes it could break your heart. Not all patients died, but enough of them did that you felt it like a gut punch. My only consolation was that I could do everything in my power to ensure their final days were as comfortable as possible.
Now, if only I could summon the power to make management order actual coffee.
“Lord,” I muttered, digging through the cabinets and grunting when I found what I was looking for. “Oh, thank goodness.”
“Instant?” she wondered.
“Why would I trade horrible coffee for fake coffee?” I grumbled, showing her the box of black tea and shaking it. “I stuffed this in the cabinet months ago just in case. Almost forgot about it until now.”
Considering the majority of my work took me out of the office, I had yet to have any use for it. My bosses occasionally kept me in the office, generally at the front, where I was the face and voice people were met upon entering. I hadn’t signed up to be a receptionist, but it was a nice break from routine to play secretary occasionally.
“Kevin?” Sheila called. I jerked out of my reverie and immediately began rooting around for the electric kettle.
“What’s up?” I asked, finding it in a bottom cabinet, shoved near the back. It seemed like I was the only person who cared about having properly hot water at hand if the dust was any indication.
“I asked if they were assigning you to a new patient,” Sheila said, and I could tell from her tone she’d put the book down and slapped on her serious pants. “I know you’ve been subbed out a few times already.”
I frowned at the kettle, wondering who had placed a ‘property of Lighthouse Care Inc.’ on it when I was the one who’d bought the thing. “They’re talking about it. I guess they’re tired of sending me all over the place. I am too.”
“You could always request to come work where I’m assigned,” she said, and I could feel her watching me as I thoroughly scrubbed and rinsed the kettle.
I snorted. “I’ve already subbed there a couple of times, and thanks but no thanks. You can have the cranky, homophobic alcoholic all to yourself, thank you very much.”
Well, that and the man’s son was currently staying with him, and since I’d met that same son in a very biblical sense already, it would feel strange to work there. Not that it was technically against the rules to sleep with a patient’s son, albeit before you became a caregiver for the patient. However, it was just strange to think about being professional with a guy I’d seen naked. That and I had a distinct feeling the son would be far happier if I weren’t around.
“And that cute boy living there isn’t reason enough?” she asked, gazing back at me with a knowing smirk when I glared at her.
“You know damn well I don’t mix personal and professional worlds,” I told her as I slapped the filled kettle over its base and flipped it on. I was also choosing to leave out the fact that said ‘boy’ and I had already met. “And I’m fairly sure that ‘boy’ is like, in his thirties…maybe late twenties.”
“If you’re young enough to be my kid, you’re young enough to be called a boy,” she told me, taking a sip from her thermos.
I grinned at her. “Isn’t your oldest in her twenties?”
“The youngest,” Sheila said, beaming with pride that reminded me of my own mother.
“So, based on how you look…”
