Chapter 4
Chapter Four
HARPER
“ A re you ready for your first day?”
My head comes up in surprise, and I grin at Ava, who’s standing in the kitchen, holding two to-go cups of coffee from Buzz, our favorite coffee shop in Silver Springs . Ava knows the code to the front door, and it’s pretty standard for us not to knock when we visit.
“I’m ready.” I ignore the nervous butterflies making a mess of my stomach and take one of the offered cups. Taking a sip, I sigh in happiness. “You didn’t have to bring me coffee, but I’m glad you did.”
“Are you kidding? I finally got my bestie to move back home permanently. I’m going to be kissing your ass for the foreseeable future.
” She eyes the few boxes I own currently sitting in the foyer of the gigantic house I’m staying in, thanks to Ava’s brother, Xander.
Xander is a hockey superstar who’s rarely home.
He usually just spends a month or so in the summer in Silver Springs and most holidays.
Otherwise, he’s living the celebrity life in Denver, where he’s basically a god.
I mean, Xander’s hot. And talented. I get it. And I’m grateful he bought this mountain mansion. Because when he found out that I was moving home, he called me and essentially forced me to live here.
Not that it’s a hardship. This place is huge. Six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and a view of the mountains that makes my heart hurt, it’s so gorgeous. There’s no way in hell I could ever afford this on my generous nurse’s salary.
So when Xander told me to housesit for him until I figure out where I want to live, I didn’t resist too hard.
“Which room did you pick?” Ava asks.
“The green room.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Is it weird that I decorated every room in different colors?”
“No, it’s pretty.”
Ava is a highly sought-after interior decorator, so of course she sank her teeth into this place after her brother bought it.
“And you didn’t go too crazy. I like the green rug and pillows against the white and natural wood of everything else. It’s not precious. It’s … classy.”
“Okay, good.” She sighs dramatically and pushes her auburn hair over one shoulder. “Also, the green room has that excellent balcony with a view of the mountains.”
“That’s why I chose it,” I reply, tying my sneakers. I’m already dressed in my pink scrubs. I had orientation last week, where I got my badge, signed a contract, and had a tour of Bitterroot Valley General.
My only hesitation at taking the job as charge nurse in the NICU in that hospital was the very real possibility of running into one Dr. Blackwell.
It’s not a huge hospital.
It’s very likely I’ll see him.
But dammit, I’ll figure it out if and when it happens because I needed to come home. Ava’s dad was diagnosed as a diabetic, and the whole family has been turned on its head. Greg Hendrix raised me and gave me a home, so of course I came back to help. I need this family as much as they need me.
Besides, it feels good to be back. I missed the mountains and everything familiar to me. I was ready. And I refuse to stay away from my home simply because a man I once had the best sex of my life with also lives here.
I’m an adult. I can handle this.
“You’re going to kill it.”
I glance at my best friend. “What’s that?”
“I think you’re quiet because you’re nervous, but you don’t need to be. You’re the best , Harpsichord. The best baby nurse ever. The hospital is lucky to have you.”
“I love that you’re so good at being a best friend.” I pull her in and give her a smacking kiss on the cheek. “What do you have going on today?”
“Clients, meetings with a couple of contractors. The usual.” She lifts a shoulder. “Then I’m coming over here tonight with some vodka and olives, and we’re going to pour us some dirty martinis and talk about your first day.”
“Deal.” I grin and grab my coffee, my sack lunch and purse, and we leave Xander’s house, lock the door, and head for Ava’s pretty little Lexus. “Thanks for the ride, by the way. I’ll buy something sooner or later.”
“You could drive Xander’s car,” she reminds me as she fires up the engine.
“He drives a Maserati ,” I remind her. “No way. With my luck, I’ll get in a fender bender that costs more to fix than I make in a year.”
She smirks at that as we pull away from the house and toward the highway that leads us to Bitterroot Valley.
Silver Springs is a neighboring town, less than thirty minutes away, and Xander lives roughly halfway between the two towns, so it’s extra convenient for me to live at his place. Much less of a commute this way.
And Ava’s office is in Bitterroot Valley too, so I’m on her way to work.
Super handy.
“When do you start the night shift?” she asks.
“I have three days of days, three days off, then four nights on, then two days off. That repeats. I’ll be a zombie, but it’s fine.
I don’t mind the night shift. I’ll do my best to have a car by then, though, because there is no world where you should have to get up at, like, five to pick me up from work. ”
She nods and reaches over to pat my leg. “Thank you. Not just for the car thing, but for coming home when I told you I needed you. ”
“You should have told me months ago. I’m your family, Aves. If you need me, I come home. That’s the rule.”
She lets out a gusty breath. “Well, there wasn’t a position open at the hospital that you’d want.”
“Are you telling me that you kept an eye on the want ads so you could talk me into moving home?”
“I’m not not telling you that.” She laughs and puts on her blinker to turn into the parking lot. “What will you do if you run into Dr. Big Dick?”
I choke on the coffee I just sipped and do my best not to spill all over myself.
“Ava!”
“What? It’s an honest question.”
Ava’s the only one in the world who knows what happened last Thanksgiving, five months ago. As soon as I walked into her condo, she started drilling me because she said I had freshly fucked written all over my face.
“I’ll say hello. I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about it. Besides, he’s in the ER, and he works in his clinic. We’re in separate parts of the hospital. I probably won’t run into him.”
“Famous last words,” she mutters, then smiles sweetly. “For what it’s worth, I hear the Blackwell family is nice. Tucker knows their oldest brother, Brooks.”
Of course, he does.
Because this is a tiny community, and we were destined to have some overlap somewhere.
“How does your brother know his brother?”
“Brooks owns the auto shop here in Bitterroot Valley. I guess Tuck uses that shop. And they’d probably be about the same age.” She shrugs a shoulder. “Also, sidebar, there’s a new bookstore in town. We need to check it out. It’s all romance.”
Okay, that grabs my interest.
I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I hike, and I always have my e-reader on me at work for when the night shift is quiet, and I’m just making sure all the sleeping babies are safe and happy.
“Yes, please,” I reply as she pulls up to a stop. “On my first day off, it’s happening. Okay, have a good day, dear.”
“I’ll pick you up when you’re done,” she says with a grin. “This is so fun .”
With a shake of my head, I climb out of her car, wave, and walk inside. I head right up to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and set my personal things in the locker assigned to me last week, then walk out to the nurses' station, where my supervisor, Liz, grins at me.
“You’re here,” she says. “Welcome. You can set your water right here. This will be your computer today.”
I nod and sit down, and a half hour later, I’ve been shown pretty much everything there is to know, along with current patients, doctors in house and on call, their numbers, and I’ve met my fellow nurses.
Thankfully, I already know the computer system, as I’ve worked with the same one several times before, so there won’t be a learning curve there.
“We rotate duties,” Liz says. “Some days, you’ll be on grower duty, watching over the little ones who need to get bigger before they go home. On other shifts, you’ll be with the sick babies. Today, I have you flexing between the two, along with any issues that come up from L&D.”
I nod but internally roll my eyes. I am not a labor and delivery nurse. Some people are excellent at that, and I respect them, but it’s just not my calling.
But I’m not officially in charge of anything for two weeks while I get my bearings. And that’s okay.
“We have a baby in room 9, on the delivery floor, who will need a peek,” Liz says. “I’ll let you handle that. He’s a couple of hours old, and we just got a call that he’s breathing a little fast and doesn’t want to latch onto Mom.”
“On it.” I nod and gather my stethoscope, loop it over my head, and head to the elevator. “See you soon.”
L&D is one floor down, so it only takes me a few seconds to make my way to the room, where I see a dark-haired mom in the bed, crying, trying to figure out what to do with her tiny newborn.
And she’s alone.
“Hey there,” I say with a bolstering smile. “I’m Harper, and I hear you might need an extra hand.”
“Oh, thank God. I don’t know why I told my husband it was okay to go have breakfast with his brother,” she says with a sniff. “I’m Dani.”
Yep, the baby is breathing fast and laboring with it, but not horribly.
“Look at all of that dark hair,” I say with a smile as I lean over them. “It’s okay, Dani. You’ve only been doing this for a couple of hours.”
“I can’t get him to eat,” she says with despair. She’s obviously exhausted and worried, and that’s not helping the baby either. “He’s fighting me.”
“Let’s figure this out. May I?” I hold my hands out for the baby, and she immediately passes him over.
Directly in her line of sight, I lay the baby on the bed and unwrap him.
I don’t want to worry her, but I want to watch his ribs and chest while he breathes, and I put my stethoscope in my ears so I can listen to him.
“Is he okay?” she asks, brushing her tears away.