Chapter 17
SOLUTIONS
When I go back to Callahan’s that night, I order a beer and pluck up the courage to ask Stu whether he needs any help behind the bar, because that’s way better than working for Marco, right?
But he just smirks at me and says, “Is this really the best place for you to be workin’, darlin’?
” And I curl in on myself and think about what an asshole he is as I sit in the corner of a booth and nurse my beer for an hour.
For fuck’s sake, I don’t drink that much.
There’s no sign of Rig, and eventually Marni flounces in and says that she’s heard he’s gone back to work on the rigs, clearly assuming that I already know.
He did say he was only here for a few days, but what with that, the conversation with Stu, and the fact I still have to conjure up two months’ rent, my heart tightens like a fist in my chest.
“Has Angelo ever asked you to work for him?” I say, and Marni snorts. “He stopped by to check I hadn’t had any more trouble from the goons and offered me a job,” I add.
“Seriously? Take it, hon. Those girls earn good money.”
“You haven’t been tempted?”
She gives me a sly smile. “I get looked after in other ways.”
I bet she does.
“What did Rig say?” she says, tapping a long nail on the tabletop.
“Say about what?”
“Working for Marco.”
“I haven’t told him.” She frowns at me and I suck in my cheeks. “I told him we should just be friends.”
“What! What the fuck did you do that for?”
I scowl at her. “I didn’t think being with him was helping my self-esteem.”
“Self-esteem? You can get a ton of self-esteem from having a huge fighter on your arm with a body built like a tank.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Did you ask him about Sadie?”
After I fill her in, she curls her lip and mutters about how I should have been jumping all over him, not pushing him away, and then launches into a diatribe about how I’m passing up on a good man, and, even if he wasn’t a good man, how he treated me well and fixed my apartment.
She grumbles on about how guys like Rig are like gold dust, and how I’ll never find another one in this shithole.
Somehow, the fact that I’ve let Rig go knocks all her normal optimism right out of her.
And I can feel heat rising through my chest because I’m fucking trying to fix my problems and not get distracted by wide shoulders and amazing sex. “Why are you so disgruntled? Make your mind up. Last time we talked you were going on about assholes who never tell us the full story.”
“Yeah, hon, but I thought you’d straighten things out with him, not pass him up!”
“You should be pleased you’ve still got me to hang around and drink with.”
She scowls at me. “Girl, I was living vicariously through you. If you can’t land a guy in this town, the rest of us haven’t got a prayer.”
“What does that mean?”
She waves at me. “You’re a good-looking girl.”
That’s the first time she’s ever said that. “I’m pretty frayed at the edges, Marn.”
“Aren’t we all?” she mutters into her wine.
And suddenly I feel flattened. I didn’t think I’d miss him as much as I do. “I thought your mantra was that there’s no point in trusting guys.”
She glowers at me again.
The next few nights I chill at home, because I can’t fucking afford to be in Callahan’s night after night.
I can’t face Stu, and I don’t need to be listening to Marni’s rants or watching the door every time it opens, even though I know he’s not going to suddenly appear.
And it’s in the middle of all this dissatisfaction that I get a call from a recruiter who tells me that the hospital is looking for qualified nurses and asks me if I’ve still got my license.
And I’ve been hanging on to it because my pride wouldn’t let me give up something I worked so fucking hard for.
When I tell her I’ve got problems with the hospital, she says to come in and have a chat regardless, that there’s always work, and someone who comes recommended can’t be all bad.
I stare at the dreadful paneling in my apartment and ask who suggested she contact me.
She says Dr. Moreno, and my mouth drops open.
What makes him think I did well enough at the fight to recommend me?
I’d been drinking vodka, and I was so nervous treating the fighters that my hands were shaking.
But it’s a potential job and money, and I’m so fucking thrilled that my hands are sweating when I arrange an appointment to see her the next day.
The hospital won’t take me on given my history with the place, but she might have other jobs, and who needs days off?
With a bit of negotiation with Luis, this could solve everything.
And I’ll have no time to drink or think or whatever else I do to while away the time.
The debt payment on my cards has also gone south.
The reality is that I’ve paid off next to nothing because paying ten dollars a month on a $10,000 debt gets you nowhere, surprise, surprise.
All the payments just keep stacking up. I’m one bad decision away from sleeping with Luis.
Ugh. I head through to the closet and dig my old nursing textbooks out of a box.
On Tuesday, I drive half an hour to the employment agency and learn that the hospital is really short-staffed; if I can work weekends, then there are jobs.
In fact, they are desperate for people. So desperate you’d take on somebody who drinks on her own late into the night and you fired?
I don’t say. I mention the hospital problem again, and the lady behind the desk narrows her eyes at me like she can sense the commission for finding someone able-bodied and qualified slipping away.
“What kinds of problems?”
“An attending put a hand on my ass, and I decked him.”
She’s taking a sip from a can of Coke when I say this, and she snorts, inhaling the wrong way, and she starts wheezing and coughing, her face turning red as her eyes stream.
I hurry around to help her and nearly get my ankles bitten by a tiny Chihuahua hiding under the desk.
I rub her back, trying to help her inhale air. Eventually, the coughing fit dies down.
I sit back down and smile at her. “I have to say, he went down like a sack of potatoes.”
She snorts again, fortunately not into her Coke this time.
“And what happened?”
“Somehow, I was the one who got fired.”
She sits up straight, bristling. “Fucking hell! Why do we always pay the price for some guy with wandering hands? It makes my blood boil. You wouldn’t believe the stories I hear sitting on this side of the desk.
Most of it is legally actionable. I’m thinking of retraining as a lawyer.
” She huffs out a breath, and I give her a wan smile.
She waves a hand. “Let’s think positively here. They’ve had a lot of staff changes at the hospital; I’m willing to bet they’ll barely remember you. It’s years ago, right? I might not even have to mention it on your application. How many years now?”
“Five.”
“Let’s see what we can do.”
“Maybe we should check if he’s still there.” Because running into him again might really upset the apple cart.
“Good idea. What’s his name?”
“Dr. Kline.”
“Leave it with me.”
She doesn’t confirm or deny whether Dr. Kline is still around, but she must work her magic, because when I go to see them at the hospital, the HR lady almost bites my hand off, she’s so eager to have me working there.
I’m half expecting that to change when she finds me on their database, so I’m amazed when she comes back and says that my references on the system are fine, and there’s a job offer coming through to me as we speak.
“I really hope you take it,” she adds with a smile, taking my hand before adding, “Welcome on board.” And sharp relief sweeps through me.
If I can stall Luis for a bit, what with this and my caregiver’s paycheck, I can pay one month’s rent at least. Who cares if Dr. Hand-on-My-Ass is still there?
I can brazen it out. For a beat something sweet and potent swoops through me.
When the paperwork arrives attached to an email, the pay’s much better than I make doing daytime visits to my little old ladies, but I’d never leave Marge, Agnes, and June.
So I say yes to two days a week at the hospital, and it means no time off, but goddammit, I can do that to pull myself through a few months, can’t I?
So instead of sitting and drinking, I work on the geriatric unit.
It’s a job nobody wants to do, and it’s hard work, but at least it tires me out.
I’m too exhausted to think about Rig, or Charlie, or anything else my tortured brain conjures up when I lie in my bed alone at night.
But sometimes I do think about Rig’s warm chest and his big hands, and how Marni might be right: Maybe I should have ridden the wave of how awesome it all was until he destroyed me later on.
It’s not like I haven’t been destroyed before.
But something about his directness and the way he helped me—I know that losing him would be a blow I’d struggle to come back from.
Places don’t ever recover from two tsunamis, do they?
So I try to harden my heart, not altogether successfully.
I do a long shift on Saturday, working like a maniac giving bed baths and checking vitals and meds.
There’s something about old people that I really like.
The itch to draw their interesting faces and wrinkled skin trickles through my bloodstream.
I pair up with one of the other nurses on the ward, Debbie, and as we jabber away, I end up telling her about Dr. Kline and his wandering hands. She screws up her face.
“Oh, God! I’ve heard about him from other nurses,” she says, and I gape at her. It wasn’t only me? But, God, I’ve only just got this job, and I really can’t afford to lose it this time.
“Keep it quiet, though,” I say. “I don’t want to get into any trouble.”