Chapter 11 #3
She hadn’t seen Deb since the day of the mass casualty event.
And she didn’t really know the woman that well.
She did know she was seeing Hayley Milton, the nurse that had landed Victoria in her current predicament, and she was glad that Hayley didn’t seem to be around.
That little reminder of where things had gone wrong would not have helped her mood in the slightest.
As it was, the look of uncertainty on Deb’s face wasn’t boding well for her, either. “Dr. Ellis, I’m glad I ran into you. Is it possible we can talk?”
“I was about to do rounds…” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything that a nervous-looking ER chief needed to tell her. It would only add one more lit match to the fire.
“Please.” Deb Morales, who routinely rode her motorcycle to work in the Emergency Department, looked so deeply ill at ease that Victoria wanted to run screaming in the other direction as far away as she could get.
But she did find herself following the woman out into the corridor, and around a corner into a quieter part of the busy basement level of Oakridge.
“I don’t like getting involved in other folks’ business, normally. ”
“Well, we can part ways now and pretend you never even tried,” Victoria volunteered with a painfully false cheer. “Problem solved.”
Deb tugged at the end of her long dark ponytail, growing less happy by the minute. “I would, but I do think you need to know this is happening. It’s spreading like wildfire.”
An icy cold finger trailed its way down Victoria’s spine. “What is?”
Glancing around to be very sure they were alone, Deb leaned in, her dark eyes full of worry, her brow furrowed. “There are rumors that you were seen kissing that Staff Wellness therapist. Dr. Monroe?”
Stay calm. “Is that so?”
“I don’t know where it all started.” Deb looked like she was about to start wringing her hands. “Or who started it. But you have a right to know that it’s being discussed.”
“Well, even if I had done this,” Victoria began, her mind racing. “And I’m not saying I did, by the by. But if I had, surely that would be our business between two consenting adults, our own personal lives.”
“On hospital grounds, Victoria?” All pretense was dropped in that second, and the air between Deb and Victoria filled with urgency. “Because that’s what the problem is. That it happened here. In some stairwell near the atrium.”
She felt the blood drain out of her face. But she wasn’t ready to give up the fight. “I think this hospital’s on-call rooms alone have seen more than just a bit of necking in their time.”
Red heat flooded Deb Morales’ face and neck, which Victoria found deeply interesting.
“Maybe. But some people are a bit more careful than others. They don’t get caught.
Hospital HR can turn a blind eye to fraternization if people don’t get caught.
” She began backing away from Victoria, shoving her hands into the pockets of her lab coat.
“I don’t know what might be happening between you and Dr. Monroe.
But now you know that people think something’s going on.
And if a big enough number of folks on the staff know… ”
Then people like Marcus Kinkade would know, soon enough.
As Deb rounded the corner and her footsteps faded, Victoria felt the panic beginning to climb hand-over-hand up her esophagus, closing off her airways.
Left alone in this deserted corner, Victoria dug deep for the grounding techniques Anna had taught her.
She wasn’t going near the countdown technique, not now, but if she tried the others…
She backed up against a wall and slid down to the floor, pressing her palms flat to the cool tile. Breathe. In through her nose, hold, hold, hold, out through her mouth. You are not in danger. Breathe. You can breathe.
Slowly, she clawed control back, bit by excruciatingly painful bit. Each breath she took in was longer, deeper, better able to expand her ribcage. Panic ebbed away, replaced with…
Anger. White hot fury.
Leaping to her feet, Victoria stalked to Anna’s office in the Staff Wellness wing, laser focused, almost unseeing.
There was no more reasoning with herself now.
No sitting with her emotions this time. The threat of losing her job, the exposure of so many people in the hospital knowing she’d kissed Anna…
everything felt raw, naked, tangled together, uncontrollable.
The door was open. She shoved it wider, resenting the air-controlled hinge at the top of the door that kept her from flinging it open to hit the wall with a satisfying bang. Anna looked up from her desk, where she was reading a psychology journal and eating a poké bowl. “Victoria!”
Victoria closed the door and shot forward, smacking her hands down on the desk and leaning in. “Did you know about my job being on the line?” She knew the answer, but she wanted to see if Anna would admit it.
Anna swallowed the bite in her mouth and pushed her desk chair back, holding one hand up. “Victoria…”
“Did you?”
Green eyes darting around the room, Anna was a trapped animal, looking for any way out. But Victoria stood between her and the door, and she wasn’t going to go anywhere without answers. At last, Anna sighed, her shoulders drooping. “Yes. I did. For the record—”
“You knew, and thought it was fine that I didn’t,” Victoria bit out, straightening up.
“No! I wanted you to know!” Anna stood up, the desk chair going flying behind her. “I said you should know.”
“You could have told me.” Stalking forward, Victoria pushed a finger into Anna’s chest, right above the button of her rusty orange cardigan. “At any point this week but especially before we started fucking, you could have told me!”
Anna backed up until her calves hit the sofa and she almost tumbled down. “I couldn’t. I swear to you I wanted to and Elaine and Steve asked me not to. I would have if it were only up to me.”
“You should have, regardless of what they thought!” Victoria managed to make herself stop, to back up a step and stop looming over Anna. “I had a right to know! I should have been aware of Marcus Kinkade and what he’s trying to do.”
Anna froze. “Marcus Kinkade.”
“Yes. I know about Marcus and his little crusade to save the hospital money by firing me.” To her great fury, hot tears began to prickle in her eyes.
“And soon, if he doesn’t already, he’ll know about us kissing in the stairwell, because apparently everyfuckingbody else in this goddamn hospital does! ”
“What?” Anna asked in a whisper, sitting abruptly down on the sofa.
“Someone saw us. I don’t know who.” Victoria began to pace, rubbing at her temples, where a ferocious headache was starting to set in.
“I’ve been going spare all day, convincing myself that I was imagining people staring at me and whispering to each other.
But I wasn’t. Deb Morales filled me in. The whole hospital is talking about us.
” She stopped in her tracks and stared at Anna, who was still a statue of shock on the sofa.
“Have you heard nothing? Noticed nothing?”
“I’ve been in here all day, this is my first hour without patients,” Anna said, staring off at nothing.
“I went out of the hospital to get my lunch. Came right back here. I had no idea, none at all.” She finally turned her head to look at Victoria, but she didn’t seem entirely present. “This is terrible. A disaster.”
“Oh, you don’t say.” Victoria resumed her repetitive little trek around the office. “God, Anna. Why did you even follow me that day? If you’d just left me alone—”
That snapped Anna out of her fog of shock. “Wait. This is my fault?”
“Well, it certainly wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been stalking me.” Perhaps that was a harsh way to put it. But she was so angry right now, she could feel reason slipping away by the second. She only wanted to lash out, to wound. “If you hadn’t followed me to that stairwell, I—"
“I was monitoring the welfare of my vulnerable, visibly panicking patient following an extremely high-stress situation,” Anna said through gritted teeth, her hands balled into tight fists in her lap.
“And I would like to remind you that you kissed me. I didn’t initiate that.
I was there to try and get you through a panic attack.
” Her voice rose as she got to her feet.
“I was working damn hard not to cross ethical lines!”
“I didn’t see you pushing me away immediately,” Victoria sneered. “You were leaning into it until I grabbed your ass. Then you ran like a coward.”
“Like someone who was actually concerned about their job,” Anna countered in a snarl that Victoria hadn’t known she could have in her.
“In a way you haven’t really been for several months, or you’d already be aware that your job could have been in jeopardy for how poorly you were managing your issues. ”
The words hit Victoria in the solar plexus like a hard, disabling punch. She could only stare at Anna, at her green eyes wide and wet with tears, suddenly aware that the two of them were dangerously close to saying things that could never be taken back.
She wanted to lash out more, to wound, to hurt. But somehow she managed to wrestle back the impulse and began backing towards the door. “I…”
“Yes. Please leave,” Anna said, the words emerging in a half-strangled sob. “Please.”
Victoria fumbled behind herself for the brass doorknob. Twisting it in her hand, she stepped aside and pulled it open. She stood still for a moment, watching Anna by the sofa, opening and closing her hands helplessly while tears trickled down her cheeks.
In the end, she could only say one thing. “I should never, ever have trusted you,” she choked out, and then, finally, she did what she’d wanted to do since Deb Morales had dropped the information bomb on her.
She turned and began to run.