Chapter 4
Even with an injured knee, still bleeding through its bandage too, Chelsea couldn’t really take time off work—particularly not when she was as close as she was to finishing and not when she had a supervisor already unimpressed with what had happened to her.
So, she headed into work early the next morning.
It wouldn’t make up for being late yesterday, but at least it would seem that she took the issue seriously.
The fact that she was even in this position was irritating, frustrating, and, at the same time, concerning.
If this was what nursing was all about, how would she ever manage it?
It wasn’t how she thought school would have been either.
However, when everything had gone to hell with her mother, it had been a great distraction for her.
And Chelsea was still quite happy to have it.
Yet she could only handle so much shit at one time.
Maybe that was it. Maybe Gladys knew her mother.
Chelsea had no idea and just wanted to stay out of trouble long enough to finish this successfully.
By the time her shift was three-quarters done, she had barely even had a chance to breathe. The other students in training looked over at her with a commiserating smile, and she just shook her head and kept at it. Nobody wanted to cross the super. Gladys was the rock that no one could move.
And yet how is it that one person had that much power?
Small towns and all that, Chelsea guessed.
However, she didn’t want power. She just wanted to help sick people.
Exhausted, Chelsea finished the day and slumped in the changing room, then changed out of her uniform.
Nobody was here, and, for that, she was grateful.
She could sit down and actually have a moment to herself, which she hadn’t had all day.
When the door opened beside her, she stiffened and got up and quickly grabbed her things to leave.
Sure enough, it was her super.
Gladys frowned at her, but Chelsea just smiled, didn’t say anything, and quickly made her escape.
The last thing she wanted was to have a heart-to-heart over anything with her supervisor today.
Chelsea wasn’t sure that anything had gone wrong today, but she would still do her best to avoid the woman as much as she could, without getting on her bad side.
Outside, she stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to calm down the nervous energy that had been buzzing through her all day.
She hadn’t had a chance to release it, and that was a bad sign too.
Still, she was out of there, and she would take that as a win.
She walked slowly to the parking lot, keeping a wary eye on the vehicles, knowing that it wouldn’t take much for her own attention span to deteriorate and her reflexes to slow, as tired as she was.
So, she was hypervigilant right now just because of what had happened last night.
She managed to get to her vehicle with no issues and, with a sigh of relief, got into the driver’s seat and turned on the engine.
She locked all the doors, even though she wouldn’t have even considered that not so long ago. Now, it was almost second nature, almost locking her into the nightmare she was in. With that, she pulled out her phone and called Sterling to see if she needed to pick up anything.
“No. Any problems?”
“No, … not yet.” And then she winced. “Sorry … about the not yet, I mean.”
“No, it’s better to be aware and to stay safe. Be careful driving home.”
“I will,” she muttered. “I guess there’s no update, is there?”
“No, not that I’ve heard. Have you talked to Joel?”
“No, I haven’t,” she replied. “Should I?”
“Well, he’s been asking to make sure you’re okay all day.”
“Right, and I probably should have checked in with him. It’s just been such a shit day at work that I’ve not had an extra second.”
“That same woman?”
“Yeah, that same woman. I didn’t realize until I got reprimanded yesterday that it was such a bad deal for me. I don’t know if she hates everybody or if I’m just special.”
He laughed. “We already know you’re special,” he said affectionately.
She sighed. “It’s such a strange feeling knowing that somebody out there is after you, and now I feel like I’m looking at everybody sideways.”
“Of course. How can you not? You don’t know who or what’s after you, so it seems prudent to assume everybody is.”
“Which is a really crappy way to go through life,” she muttered.
He groaned. “I know. Really I do. I hated everybody for a very long time myself.”
She winced. “And then there’s that. No matter what I’ve been through, it always seems minor compared to your situation that was way worse.”
He laughed. “This isn’t a competition, and we don’t want anybody’s to be the worst,” he noted. “We just want to know that everybody is okay and not get in any worst-case scenario.”
“I know. I know,” she muttered. “Anyway, I’m in the vehicle. It’s locked up, and I’m driving out now.”
“Okay, just be careful. If you run into trouble, I’m here. And,” he added, with an afterthought, “apparently so is Joel.” Then he disconnected.
She wasn’t sure of his reasoning for adding that last bit at the end, but she wasn’t against Joel being there. He’d been here for her in some way or another for the bulk of this last little while, and she did enjoy his company.
She just couldn’t really focus on anything else until she was done with her schooling.
She had underestimated how intensive or stressful it would be.
She’d been so focused on getting the academic part done that she’d not given much thought to this part—when she would be working full shifts in a hospital setting.
And yet she knew perfectly well that everybody else was much more relaxed and just happy that they were almost done.
They seemed more confident and capable, which she would have thought she was too—right up until the reprimand and then almost getting wiped out by that truck.
It wasn’t something that was easy to walk away from, but neither was it something that she should be so paranoid over.
Driving carefully, she made it home in record time.
Sterling’s eyebrows shot up when he saw her. He laughed. “Did you go the speed limit at all?”
“I actually did go over the speed limit,” she admitted, “more or less because I was petrified of anybody following me. And yet”—she shrugged—“I didn’t really have any reason to go fast, but something just didn’t feel right.”
“It’s important that you follow those instincts.”
“I’m following them all right,” she muttered, “but it seems to me that these instincts aren’t necessarily working in my favor.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure they work well in anybody’s favor all the time,” he pointed out. “However, as long as they work relatively well some of the time, you’re doing okay.”
She smiled. “I’ll go grab a shower.”
“Sure, and Joel called … again.”
“Oh shoot,” she muttered. “I meant to call him on the way home.”
“Well, maybe give him a quick call right now and put him out of his misery,” Sterling suggested, with a note of humor.
She turned to face him. “I really do like him,” she began, “but I just can’t think of anything past getting through these messes—my mother’s trial, my last two weeks at the hospital, my supervisor on my ass, people trying to run me down.”
Sterling nodded. “And he knows all that, but he also knows you came close to having an incident that could have had permanent consequences.”
She blinked and stared for a moment, then realized what he was talking about. She slowly nodded. “Honest to God, even the thought of somebody after me is enough to make anybody panic.”
“Well, Joel’s not one to panic, and I don’t want you panicking either,” her cousin explained. “Yet obviously somebody out there is up to no good, and, whenever that happens, we have to deal with the fallout.”
“God, why can’t people just be decent for once?” she muttered. “I mean, why can’t they just … get a damn life?”
He laughed. “I’m with you there, but that doesn’t change the reality that, right now, we don’t know who we’re dealing with, or what’s going on, so we have to pay special attention and do the best we can.”
She just nodded, pulling out her phone. She called Joel on her way up the stairs. “Hey,” she greeted him. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back. I just got home, and I’m about to head up for a shower and then crash,” she shared, knowing her fatigue was evident in her tone.
“You sound like you need a good night’s sleep.”
“Because of Gladys and her reprimand yesterday,” she shared, “I just couldn’t ever really relax today, and it felt like she was watching my every move.”
“Interesting.”
“Not necessarily,” she argued, “since it could just be hypervigilance on my part because I’m so close to finishing. I just want to be done and to get my credentials.”
“Of course,” he said. “Just give yourself a break.”
“I would love to. I would love to give myself lots of breaks,” she stated, laughing almost hysterically. “But that will just have to wait until I’m finished.”
“And you have what?”
“Two more weeks. … Two long weeks.”
“In that case,” he replied, “go get your shower, relax, grab some dinner. You made it home safe. That’s what I was worried about.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Sterling did tell me that you’d called a couple times. However, when I’m at work, it’s busy, and I don’t even have a chance to breathe.”
“And that’s fine. I’m not checking up on you in that way. I’m just confirming that you’re okay. As long as one of us knows that you’re doing fine, it doesn’t matter who.”
“No, but I don’t want to cut you out of the loop either,” she added. “That’s not what I’m trying to do at all. I’m literally just trying to get through some rough days.”
“And you will get through them,” he stated. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
She snorted. “I really have no other option when it comes to this stuff.”
“Are you enjoying the work at least?”