[Gina Mazzio RN 01.0 - 03.0] Bone Set

by JJ Lamb

  “You may be the sexiest man alive, Harry, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get over being in that creepy mine today.”

  “If you’d only go with the flow, you might even find it exciting.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  When the waitress asked for Gina’s order, she pointed at a breakfast combination plate of eggs, pancakes, and bacon. Harry nodded for the same.

  “This last week exploring the area has been fun. I could even use another seven days,” she said. “But reality says this is our last night before we start work.” She handed her menu to the waitress. “I’m a little nervous. I’ve never been in charge of a prenatal clinic. I wish I were going with you.”

  “Yeah. That would have been the best-case scenario. But we’re still within shooting distance of each other.” Harry’s hand advanced farther up her thigh. “And there’s always the nights in our own little condo in the sky.”

  “Sex.” Gina laughed. “You’re always thinking of sex.”

  “Not all the time. That whopping sign-on fee also got my attention.”

  “Twenty grand between the two of us!” Gina let out long whistle. “Now we can really plan for that trip to Italy.”

  “And you needed to get away from Ridgewood Hospital and all that, what is it you call it, cacca?”

  “I know,” she said. “But I love living in San Francisco.”

  “It’s only a three-month contract,” Harry said. “It’s not forever. And if we don’t like it … we’re out of here.”

  The waitress set their orders in front of them, pulled a bottle of syrup from her pocket and set it on the table. The tempting aroma of bacon and coffee was almost lost in a battle with the casino’s heavy smell of tobacco smoke. Still, they grabbed their silverware and started eating. An overhead announcement shouted a $50,000 progressive slot winner along with dah-dum music. A chorus of wild cheers blasted the place.

  It didn’t slow either of them.

  When the volume dropped, Gina said, “That Comstock auxiliary unit where you’re assigned sounds … I don’t know, strange. Why isn’t it part of the hospital campus here in town?”

  “I asked the same question and never got a real answer. All they said was it’s basically an internal medicine facility and they wanted someone with extensive experience.” Harry buffed his nails on his shirt. “You know, someone like me.”

  Gina’s cell rang out Madame Butterfly’s Un bel di. She pulled the phone from her purse and gave Harry a puzzled look.

  The inquiring voice was pleasant. “Hello. Is this Gina Mazzio?”

  “Yes, this is Gina.” She nodded.

  “Welcome to Carson City. This is Katie Velick, the staffing supervisor for Comstock Medical. There has been an unexpected change in your assignment. Of course, you’re under contract, so there’s no question about using your services. But we won’t need you for the prenatal clinic after all. I hope this doesn’t disappoint you too much.”

  “Well … what happened?”

  “Nothing we need go into. It was an administrative glitch. But I think you might be pleased to know we have a sudden vacancy at our auxiliary unit. I believe your fiancé is starting there tomorrow. Is that something you might be interested in?”

  Gina’s face broke out into a wide smile. “Yes, of course. It sounds perfect.”

  “Fine. I’m glad this is working out. They’ll expect you on site tomorrow at seven.”

  “Yahoo!” Gina tossed the phone into her purse, reached out, and threw her arms around Harry.

  Chapter 2

  The moment Harry turned the Jeep Wrangler onto the narrow mountain road, he was forced into quick steering maneuvers to avoid huge potholes that could have sent them into free-fall. Gina gripped both sides of her seat to keep from being flung into the metal door with each swerve. She rubbed hard at what was sure to turn into a colorful bruised shoulder.

  So much for seatbelts.

  She saw the look of concentration on Harry’s face, but knew he was happy. He was a car freak, a truck freak, a vehicle freak. If it had wheels, he loved it. She held her tongue, caught up in his excitement as he manhandled the wheel through the many switchbacks that climbed toward the tiny town of Nugget—barely a spot on the map.

  With the top down, Harry’s long hair was defenseless against the wind; the top strands stood straight up as though someone was yanking him into a sitting position. Her short curly hair barely riffled in the breeze.

  She glanced at her watch. “Maybe we should have left more time for the trip. Not too cool to be late on our first day.”

  “Nugget is probably only another mile or two,” he said with a smile. “The Comstock facility’s supposed to be right outside of the town. We’ll be fine.”

  Fine. The universal lie. Now she knew they were in trouble.

  To distract herself, she surrendered to the gods, let go of her seat, and held a hand out. With her fingers spread, she imagined riding the wind stream as it turned warmer and warmer with the rising sun. The air was so dry she could feel the moisture being sucked from her body with every breath, but the land was beyond parched; it looked lifeless. Even the gray-green sagebrush, had all but disappeared.

  “Oh my God, look!” Gina pointed ahead of them—the road was covered with a spread of black crawling creatures. “Harry! Stop!”

  He came out of his road warrior trance and hit the brake. “Tarantulas,” he said, chuckling. “I’ve heard about their migrations in the fall. Don’t worry about them. They’re not going to hurt us.”

  “Yuck! They’re big and creepy and look like they could eat us in one bite. What are we going to do, just sit here and wait for them to get out of the way? They’re everywhere. It’ll take forever for them to cross the road.”

  “Close your eyes, doll.” He hit the accelerator and the Jeep sprang into action, leaving behind them a heavy spray of rocks.

  “You’re not going to run over them, are you?” She screamed. “Oh, this is too gross. I want to go back to San Francisco.”

  “No you don’t. Remember, this is supposed to be an adventure. Chin up.” He gave her another brilliant smile. “Especially since they’re out there and we’re in here.”

  “I don’t care. They’re hairy and they’re jumping around. What if one gets in the Jeep?”

  Loud crunching sounds sent chills down her spine as a whole slew of spiders gave up their lives so the two of them could get to Nugget and their new job.

  “First you drag me into the bowels of the earth, now we’re riding over creepy-crawlies … even New York cockroaches aren’t this scary.”

  “We’re almost there … check the map.”

  Before she could unfold it, they made a sweeping turn that brought them onto a cluster of weathered wood buildings that looked like they could have been lifted from a movie studio’s back lot. A battered, tilted sign said, “Nugget. Pop. 83”.

  “Do you think they have a Walmart?” Gina said.

  “Hell, I’d settle for finding someone who’s alive.”

  “I’m glad you don’t want to stop—the town looks ghoulish to me.”

  “And we really don’t have the time,” Harry said.

  “Thank God!” She’d no sooner spoken and they were back into the emptiness of the high desert.

  “Okay, I think the turn-off we’re looking for should be coming.”

  Gina pointed. “There’s the sign: Comstock Medical Auxiliary Campus. That’s what I call minimalism. It’s tiny and covered with dirt, to boot.” She pointed to a turn-off that looked more like an overgrown bike path.

  “Good thing you spotted it. We could have easily driven right past it.”

  Harry made the sharp turn onto a dusty trail between two huge boulders. It was so narrow that ribbons of paint would have scraped off the fenders if they’d been driving something wider, like a Hummer. Gina smiled at the image of one of those ugly heaps of metal wedged permanently between the rocks.

  Harry checked his watch. “Okay, we’re n
ow officially late. You’re right. This is not a good way to start a new assignment.”

  The poor excuse for a road started out straight, but suddenly there was a tight curve, almost 180 degrees, and then they were into a small clearing. Gina cried out, “Look! We made it! There’s the building.”

  A tall man dressed in pressed jeans, white short-sleeve shirt, and a bolo tie, was standing in front of the three-story building. His smile was welcoming, but Gina’s eyes were drawn to the second level, where a line of windows were recessed behind iron bars.

  The ground floor was a wall of adobe brick that appeared to have no windows at all, at least on the side they were facing. To top it off, the entire place was surrounded by the same kind of huge boulders lining the road they’d just traveled.

  They couldn’t possibly have been placed there deliberately, could they?

  “This building is pretty strange looking for a hospital,” Gina said under her breath as the Jeep rolled to a stop. “Why are there bars on the windows?”

  The man walked over to the driver’s side and held out a hand, which Harry shook. “I’m Ethan Dayton. You must be Harry Lucke.”

  “That’s me.”

  “And you’re Gina Mazzio,” Dayton said, looking over at her.

  “Sorry we’re late,” she said. “Didn’t expect it to take so long to get here.”

  “No one ever does.” He looked at his watch. “You’re closer to the appointed hour than most people. Come on in, I’ll show you around.” When Harry didn’t move, Dayton said, “Leave the Jeep here. No one will bother it.”

  Harry still didn’t budge. “There’ll be no room for anybody else to park.”

  The moment became awkward—Harry and Gina staring at the administrator, who was becoming perturbed, but shrugged it off and smiled widely. “Really, not to worry. We don’t get many visitors here.”

  Gina shifted in her seat.

  Mmmm. This is pretty weird.

  Harry opened the car door and Gina watched Dayton’s gaze shift to her. She could feel his eyes crawling all over her body as she lifted her purse from the rear seat and hiked it onto her shoulder.

  * * *

  Seated in Ethan Dayton’s office, Gina studied the administrator’s steely gray eyes and his skin that was as white as the day he was born. His smile seemed forced, pasted on his face. But with her employee history, she wasn’t known for her love of people in administration.

  The only picture on the office walls was one of the facility, and, whenever it was taken, there were no bars on the second-story windows. His desk was neat and clean, except for his name plate: Ethan Dayton, Administrator. There wasn’t a single family picture on his desk, not even one of a dog. It was as though he’d rented all the office furnishings, like props. The man was a blank slate with no real information to flesh out Gina’s initial impressions. She shifted her attention to the window behind him; it looked out onto another huge boulder.

  Imagine that. A view without a view.

  Dayton followed her eyes. “Our plants out here are beautiful rocks. They are beautiful, don’t you think?”

  Gina smiled, didn’t say anything.

  “We get tremendous wind storms,” Dayton continued. “Those boulders are a protective barrier … they keep us from blowing away.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Harry said. “So, can you give us a run-down on our assignment? The agency really didn’t give us much more than a bare-bones job description.”

  The administrator stood. “First, why don’t I take you on a tour, then we’ll go to the lounge and talk about what you’ll be doing at Comstock.”

  * * *

  “There are three floors to the facility,” Dayton said, as they rode up in an oversize elevator.

  Gina wondered about the warehouse-size lift, but at least she wasn’t forced to stand too close to Dayton. He continued to make her feel restless. He looked like an average person, maybe a little stern, but that wasn’t it. There was something not quite right about his white buzz cut and his flinty gray eyes that strangely matched the rocks outside his office window. He was friendly enough, but humorless, and about as parched as the landscape they’d driven through. Yet, Harry seemed all right with him, obviously relaxed with his lets-just-move-on-with-the-job attitude.

  The elevator stopped at the second floor; two guys in scrubs, guys that Gina wouldn’t have wanted to come across in a dark alley, stepped aboard. Their almost expressionless faces morphed into leers when they saw Gina. She cringed inside.

  “Ah,” Ethan said. “These are our two orderlies, Rocky and Peter.” He introduced Gina and Harry to them.

  “Which wing you gonna be on, Ms. Mazzio?” the one named Rocky asked.

  “That hasn’t been decided,” Ethan said. Rocky gave him a noncommittal shrug.

  When they arrived at the third floor, everyone got off. A bright, modern lounge lay straight ahead, with a long corridor on either side of it. Ethan pointed to the right. “That’s where my apartment is.” Then he pointed to the left. “That’s where your living accommodations are.”

  Rocky and Pete walked away down the corridor on the left.

  It took a moment for it to sink in; Gina and Harry looked at each other and said in unison, “What living accommodations?”

  “That’s where our staff stays. Let me show you your place.”

  Gina and Harry again spoke at the same time. “No!”

  Ethan’s pasty face turned a bright red. He looked first at Harry then at Gina. “You mean they didn’t tell you about living on the premises?”

  “Not a word,” Harry said. “They only told us about the company digs, and we’ve rented a condo in Carson. That’s where we’re planning on staying for the next three months.”

  Gina was floored. She sure as hell wasn’t going to spend twenty-four hours a day on site. She’d rather go back to San Francisco’s Ridgewood Hospital, or someplace else, and maybe fight with an administrator who didn’t keep looking at her chest like he needed breast feeding―and not the maternal kind.

  “I don’t know,” Harry said, taking Gina’s hand.

  “Well, let’s sit down and have some breakfast, a cup of coffee, and talk about it. I don’t think you’d appreciate driving that road twice in one day.”

  As they followed Ethan, Gina squeezed Harry’s hand until he winced.

  Chapter 3

  Ethan Dayton served them a full breakfast of scrambled eggs, French toast, and bacon, all of which arrived via dumbwaiter from a kitchen somewhere in the bowels of the building. Although they’d had juice and toast before leaving Carson City, Gina and Harry ate as though they hadn’t been fed in days.

  While the administrator refilled their espresso cups from a thermos, Gina took in a deep breath of the aromatic Italian coffee and looked around the eating area. They sat at one of two small Formica-topped tables near a mini-kitchen that was equipped with a small fridge, microwave, hotplate, and sink. At the other end of the room was a lounge, with a large flat-screen TV, a sofa, and a couple of leather arm chairs.

  It was a fairly pleasant room, with a window that offered more of a view than just monstrous boulders. In the distance, she could see mound after mound of dirt, probably tailings from some kind of long-abandoned mining operation.

  Bright sunlight filled almost every corner, but she wondered how long she would feel this sense of relaxation if this was where she had to eat three times a day, almost every day of the week for the next three months. Thinking about it made her antsy—she just wanted to leave even though Harry had one of his let’s-wait-and-see looks on his face.

  “Look, Mr. Dayton,” Harry said.

  “It’s Dr. Dayton, but please call me Ethan. We have a small staff and we’re very informal here.”

  “All right, Ethan. I’ve been involved with travel nursing for several years, but I’ve never once been required to live in company-supplied housing. And if I had, I would have refused the job, for obvious reasons—I need time away from my work, and any
thing connected with it.”

  “This may be my first travel assignment,” Gina said, “but I certainly agree with Harry.”

  “We’ve tried it your way … where the staff lives off campus. Our experience is that because of the region and the roads, people were either late or didn’t make it to work at all—cars broke down, roads were blocked by landslides, casino nightlife was too addictive. It was always something.”

  “Still, this is not what we expected when we took the job,” Gina said.

  Ethan tapped his gold Cross pen on the table. “Our work is very specialized here. We can’t run a facility under the conditions I’ve mentioned, no matter how small or efficiently planned it is … we’ve had to establish strict protocols.”

  “Did you say specialized?”

  “This is a research facility, Gina.”

  “A research facility?” Harry’s face turned bright red. “I can’t believe it. This is like being hijacked. You lied to us to get us out here?”

  “And you never wondered why the sign-up bonus was especially generous?”

  Gina and Harry shifted in their seats, looked at each other, and remained silent.

  “It’s been extremely difficult to get nurses out to northern Nevada, and twice as hard to tempt them to live on site. I’m sorry if we weren’t completely straight forward with you.”

  It was a long moment before Harry said, “Suppose you tell us about the job before we settle the living arrangements thing, or even decide to stay?”

  Harry Lucke, what the hell are you getting us into?

  “I can’t do that unless I know you will abide by our rules, and agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement. We are a cutting edge research center and everything we do is highly confidential.” He paused, looked at Harry for several seconds, then turned and did the same with Gina. “Our greatest concern is industrial espionage. It’s a crucial factor we can’t afford to ignore.”