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“You have no right to talk to me like that, sheriff. I’m going to make a formal complaint about your behavior. This is my patient, and I—”
“What is going on in here?” another voice asked. A handsome, fit-looking man walked into the room. He was dressed in a shirt and pants. There was something calming about him. He had an air of authority, same as Ed.
“Doctor Marson, this patient attacked me. She hit me. I believe we have to sedate her. Or restrain her,” the nurse said.
“No!” she protested. Her heart started racing. She couldn’t be restrained.
“It’s all right, no one is restraining you,” Doctor Marson soothed. Something started beeping and he looked over at a monitor.
“Okay, sweetheart, my name is Xavier. Your heart is going a bit faster than we’d like. I want you to try and calm down for me. Take a breath in and hold it.”
She did as instructed. Her head was thumping and every so often her heart would skip a beat making her feel ill.
“That’s it. Good girl.”
For some reason she felt ridiculously proud of having pleased him. What was wrong with her? How did she end up here?
“What did you do, Greg?” Xavier snapped at the nurse.
“I didn’t do anything,” Greg whined. “I came in here to check her vitals. She was screaming, so I went to shake her awake before she woke up all the patients, then she attacked me.”
“So a patient was having a terrifying nightmare that was making her scream, a patient who is much smaller than you and female, and you thought the best idea was to shake her? To loom over her? Then what? Did you try to hold her down?”
“She was attacking me!” Greg defended. “And the sheriff acted aggressively towards me.”
He sounded so whiny.
The doctor turned his gaze towards her. The hard look softened as he took her in. “He is whiny.”
Oops. She’d said that out loud, huh?
“Whatever drugs you have got me on must be good. Because I never just blurt out what I’m thinking,” she told Xavier.
“That so?” Ed drawled, raising an eyebrow.
She had no idea what he was trying to imply. She was the queen of keeping things bottled up. Her mother had taught her how to do that.
“Greg, leave,” Xavier said firmly.
“I want to file a complaint against the sheriff. I think we should call security on him.”
The doctor snorted. “Security isn’t going to throw Ed out. Now you, on the other hand . . . “
The nurse grew pale and almost stumbled over his own feet to get out the door. “I’ll be speaking to HR and Mary-Lee about this.” He practically slammed the door behind him, making her jump.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Xavier said kindly. “Greg’s bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired.”
“Did he hurt you?” Ed asked in a low voice, staring down at her. “If he did . . . “
“No, umm, no.” She realized then that she was basically clutching onto Ed’s shirt like a lifeline. “Oh, sorry.” She forced herself to let go and with a trembling hand, reached out to smooth the wrinkles. “Sorry.”
“Been wearing this shirt for nearly twenty hours now. A few wrinkles aren’t going to make anything any worse.”
“That’s gross, man. Why don’t you go home and get changed?” Xavier asked
“I’m fine.”
Yeah, he didn’t look fine. In fact, he looked like he was about to explode.
