Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy

by Hughes, Jill Elaine

  Billy scoffed and headed for the door. “Okay, I think we’ve heard enough,” he snarled. “No way will I allow you to use Dana as a guinea pig in some crazy mad-scientist experiment. C’mon, Dana, let’s go.” He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, expecting Dana to follow him.

  But Dana didn’t follow him. Something seemed to change markedly inside her; her face took on a strange calmness, serenity even. Her eyes went darker, and she seemed deep in thought. After a long moment, she glanced from Dr. Marx to Billy, then back to Dr. Marx again. “What exactly does this immersion therapy involve?” she asked in a small voice.

  Dr. Marx coughed and cleared his throat. “I’m very glad you asked, Dana. It’s simple, really. You would be brought into a secured room with the patient, who will have already been placed in restraints ahead of time as a precaution. The patient would also have a guard standing by, as would you—Mr. Hartzell here, if he wishes, or someone else who meets your approval. You would just sit quietly, a safe distance from the patient. Those first few sessions would likely only last a few minutes. If all goes well, I might have you read aloud to the patient, perhaps even make small talk with him. That’s assuming we start seeing a positive response to the treatment.”

  “What if you don’t?” Billy asked, his voice still marked with hostility.

  “Then the experiment would be aborted,” Dr. Marx said. “And Miss Johnson—and you as well, Mr. Hartzell, should you choose to participate—would of course have the right to stop participating at any time.” He paused, wrung his grizzled hands together. “However, neither of you would be entitled to the three-thousand-dollar bonus unless you completed the full course of treatment.”

  “And how long would that take?” Dana asked.

  “Four weeks, give or take.”

  Dana took a moment to think it over. It was an intriguing proposition, to be sure—and for more reasons than one. Dana understood what it meant to have an irrational fear of the opposite sex, after all. She’d never committed a violent act because of it, but it had had plenty of impact upon her life—and the lives of others—just the same. Perhaps by helping another human being overcome his fears, she could overcome hers, too. After all, meeting Billy had given her plenty of reason to finally grow up and become a real woman, in every sense of the word.

  “I’ll do it,” Dana said. “And I want Billy to be my guard during the sessions.”

  Billy’s jaw dropped. “But Dana—“

  “My mind is made up,” she said. “Now will you guard me or won’t you? If you won’t do it, I’m sure I can find someone else.”

  Dr. Marx stood and walked over to where Billy was standing. “Well, Mr. Hartzell?”

  Billy sighed, then nodded.

  The bearded doctor clapped his hands together, obviously pleased. “All right then. We’ll get started tomorrow. I’ll send an orderly down to Maryam Malone’s office to collect you both when we’re ready to start, probably in the early afternoon.”

  Dr. Marx’s desk phone rang. He answered it on the first ring. “Dr. Marx here. Yes. Yes, they’re both here. What? Oh, dear. Yes, of course. Yes, I’ll send them both right down.” He hung up. “You both need to get down to the Geriatrics nursing station right away. There’s been some sort of emergency.”

  Nine

  Maryam Malone stood in front of the Geriatrics nursing station, her arms folded tightly across her chest as she tapped her thick-soled Nurse Mates against the linoleum. The flatline alarms on at least six different patients were still blaring up and down the hallway as every available nurse and doctor dashed in and out of patient rooms, surveying the damage and trying to save who they could.

  Two patients were already beyond help. Two were in full cardiac arrest, with teams of doctors and nurses trying desperately to revive them, while two more were on the verge of going over the edge. Maryam tried her best to maintain control, directing the cavalcade of rushing nurses and doctors to where they were most needed, but she feared that it was too late to do much of anything at this point.

  Maryam had seen her share of medical mistakes in her forty-odd years as a nurse, but this was by far the worst thing she’d ever seen. She could deal with patients occasionally getting the wrong meds, or having their charts switched. She’d even seen her share of operating-room mistakes—Maryam remembered a surgeon who’d been fired for leaving a pair of surgical scissors in a patient. But this was even worse than that.

  Somebody had delivered IV bags to the Geriatrics unit that were the wrong size. Twice as big as the usual size, in fact. They were to be used only for morbidly obese patients. And all the patients in Geriatrics were very old, very frail—and underweight. The duty nurses hadn’t paid attention to the how much bigger the IV bags were than usual, and instead of reading the dosage meters on the bags, had just filled up the medications up to the top, like they always did.

  As a result, all the patients on the ward got two to three times the dose of whatever medications they’d been prescribed. It wasn’t a big deal for those patients who were getting saline or glucose intraveneously—but it was a big deal for the six patients now in flatline. One of them had overdosed on blood thinners, another on morphine. A third had gotten a triple dose of heart medication, sending him into instant cardiac arrest. Two more had gotten double doses of diabetes medication, sending them into hypoglycemic shock. It wasn’t entirely clear what the last patient—who’d already been declared dead—had OD’d on. His chart was missing. Maryam had sent two nurses’ aides off in search of it.

  Things couldn’t get much worse. That is, they couldn’t until Billy Hartzell showed his face around here. Maryam knew in her gut that this whole mess was probably his fault. The head duty nurse for the ward had already told her that it was Billy who’d delivered that batch of oversized IV bags here in the first place.

  Not that it was entirely his fault—oversized bags or not, the shift nurses should have read the IV dosage meters instead of just filling the bags up to the top without looking at the amounts. There was plenty of blame to go around. But the fact remained that all the shift nurses in Geriatrics were regular salaried staff, and Billy Hartzell was an hourly contract nurse. An hourly contract nurse who was making an insane amount of money just for emptying bedpans and making deliveries. It was no secret that the regular staff nurses resented how much contract floaters were paid for doing grunt work. Four of them had already threatened to quit if they didn’t get raises soon.

  Maryam couldn’t afford to lose her regular staff nurses, but she could sure as hell afford to lose Billy Hartzell. When it came to assigning blame for this whole mess, it would be an easy choice for her to make.

  Two medical teams emerged from two separate patient rooms. Maryam could tell from their slumped shoulders and hanging expressions that she’d just lost two more patients for good. The jury was still out on the last two, but Maryam wasn’t getting her hopes up. All the patients on the Geriatrics ward were fragile and close to death to begin with. It didn’t take much to fatally tip the balance.

  Billy and Dana stepped off the elevator and rushed up to where Maryam was standing. They were both shocked at the chaos on the ward. “What’s going on?” Dana asked.

  “Don’t ask questions,” Maryam snapped at her. “Just get over to Room 223 and see if you can help. Morphine overdose.”

  Dana’s eyes widened and she dashed off to Room 223 at lightning speed. Billy started to follow her, but Maryam grabbed his elbow, her surprisingly firm grip stopping him in his tracks.

  “Don’t you go anywhere, son,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me.”

  ****

  Billy sat in Maryam Malone’s office, staring at the wall clock, his palms sweating buckets. The nurse administrator had locked him in there while she waddled off in search of a senior HR staffer.

  Billy didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it seemed whatever it was, he had something to do with it. And that probably wasn’t a good thing.

  After seve
ral painful minutes of waiting, Maryam returned with a tall, gray-haired man in tow. An angry middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and a polyester suit soon followed. Billy recognized her as the cougar who had leered at him in the break room earlier in the week. She and the others sat down across from Billy, all wearing matching frowns.

  The tall, gray-haired man started things off. “Mr. Hartzell, I’m George McGill, head of Patient Safety for the hospital. We had a serious medical incident occur in the hospital, an incident that we believe was your fault.”

  Billy felt his mouth go cotton-dry. “What do you mean?”

  George McGill brusquely brushed the question aside. “You delivered a batch of IV bags to the Geriatrics department today, did you not?”

  Billy nodded. His stomach tied itself in knots. He already knew what must have happened. Those IV bags that he dropped off—he’d honestly thought it wouldn’t matter that they were twice the usual size. But he’d thought wrong.

  “Those IV bags were designed only for use with morbidly obese patients, not frail, underweight elderly,” the gruff older man went on. “You made a very careless mistake, Mr. Hartzell, and I’m sorry to say that mistake cost several lives.”

  “But—“ Billy stammered, his heart pummeling in his chest. “But those were the only IV bags available in Supply,” he stammered. “Everything else was out of stock. And those bags were clearly marked with dosage meters. Why didn’t the nurses just read the dosage meters?”

  McGill and the redhead exchanged looks, but said nothing.

  Billy’s stomach bottomed out. “Are you saying the shift nurses just filled them all the way up like they were regular size? Anybody could have seen how much bigger they were! Anybody!”

  The administrator raised his hand to silence him. “I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Hartzell. But our shift nurses are very overworked. We can’t expect them to pay attention to minor changes in medical dosing supplies.”

  “But I’m not in charge of ordering supplies for the hospital! Why don’t you go after the person who let the regular bags go out of stock?”

  “This isn’t Supply’s problem,” McGill said curtly. “You were the nurse assigned to the delivery. If a supply was out of stock, you should have notified someone instead of substituting.”

  “But—“

  McGill held up his hand. “I’m afraid, Mr. Hartzell, that the hospital will be terminating your employment contract, effective immediately. You will leave the premises immediately, and you will no longer be permitted to reside in the hospital dormitory. If you go quietly, you can collect the rest of your week’s pay, and we won’t pursue further legal action against you for the accidental deaths. Though I can’t say the same for the patients’ families.”

  Billy gasped. They were really going to lay all the blame on him? The nurses that actually administered the fatal overdoses were getting off scot-free? And the Supply department wasn’t getting blamed, either? It wasn’t fair. “But—“

  The redhead spoke up for the first time. “If you’re going to argue, Mr. Hartzell, I’m afraid the hospital will have no choice but to pursue charges against you.”

  “Charges?” he sputtered. “What kind of charges?”

  “Manslaughter,” the redhead snarled. “Perhaps even second-degree murder. I have pull with the local chief of police—and he has pull with the district attorney. Now, can we count on your cooperation? I’ll escort you to the dormitory so you can collect your things, but then you’ll have to leave the hospital premises, and you’ll never be permitted to return—not even as a patient.”

  Not even as a patient? That was absurd. What if Billy got hit by a car walking out of the hospital parking lot? Would they just leave him there bleeding?

  “Well?” the redhead said, her voice dripping with hostility. She’d never given her name, and Billy figured she’d done that deliberately.

  He sighed and shrugged. The two administrators stood and headed for the door; they motioned for Billy to follow them. He glanced back at Maryam, who gave him a sympathetic look.

  “I’m sorry, hon,” she said. “But I had no choice. Good luck to you.”

  “Tell Dana I said goodbye,” Billy said, his voice cracking. It was all he could do not to break down on the spot.

  Ten

  Joanna sat in the Covington Community Hospital cafeteria, staring into her cup of weak hospital-issue coffee. She dumped spoonful after spoonful of cheap imitation creamer into it, but didn’t take a sip. The cheap paper cup was getting soggy. She was tired and desperately needed the caffeine before returning to the OR for yet another operation, but she just couldn’t bring the soggy paper cup to her lips. The scent of it made her stomach turn. She got up and tossed it into the garbage.

  She picked up a plastic cafeteria tray and went to stand in line for some food. Nothing looked at all appetizing to her, but her empty stomach growled, begging for something to eat. She selected a cellophane-wrapped bowl of Jell-o and a half-sandwich at random, not even checking the label to see what that sandwich contained. She grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and took her tray to the cashier. She swiped her employee meal card through the reader and sat down with her tray to eat.

  Joanna was exhausted and hungry. A typical feeling after weeks of sleepless nights and long shifts in the OR. But today it all seemed different somehow. The air had a thickness to it that made Joanna feel as if she were moving through water. The edges of everything seemed harsher, more sharply defined. Food tasted strange, almost metallic. And she felt spacey—almost as if her head was full of air.

  Joanna picked at her Jell-O, taking only a few bites. It tasted like cherry-flavored cardboard. She tried the sandwich next—she unwrapped it, lifted up the corner of the bread to see what it contained. It looked to be egg salad on rye. She gingerly took a bite, and no sooner did the food hit her stomach, her entire digestive system went into reverse.

  Joanna clapped a hand over her mouth and made a mad dash for the bathroom.

  She barely made it there in time. Joanna vomited up the entire contents of her stomach into the toilet in one violent heave. Just when she thought she was totally empty, even more came up, followed by bile, followed by painful dry heaves that left her reeling.

  When her body finally seemed to settle down, Joanna’s head began to spin. The whole room tilted and swayed around her, then her vision began to cloud and blacken. Before she knew what had happened, Joanna keeled over backward, the hard thud of her skull hitting the tile floor the last thing she remembered.

  When she came to, she was stretched out on a gurney in the ER. A green hospital curtain was draped around the gurney, but it provided little privacy against the mad hubbub of the emergency department. She heard doctors shouting orders, nurses running up and down the halls in their thick-soled shoes, the blaring of a television, a ringing telephone left unanswered. Her vision was still blurred, and the back of her head throbbed.

  She lay on the gurney for several minutes, unable to move. Her limbs felt like heavy lead weights, her mouth was dry, and she was tremendously thirsty. Her left forearm itched; she moved her head to glance at it with great effort and saw that it was attached to an IV drip. Her skin itched underneath the adhesive tape used to hold the plastic tubing in place.

  After a while longer, Joanna’s vision began to focus and movement returned to her limbs. She managed to sit up, and pressed the button on the side of her gurney that raised it into an upright position. She rang the nurse call button, and waited for a response.

  A moment later, she got one. And instead of one of the regular, overworked ER duty nurses, it was Maryam Malone.

  Joanna was shocked. Maryam never set foot in the ER unless it was for a major emergency. Or for a major piece of juicy gossip. Or both.

  “Well, well, well,” Maryam clucked. “Just when I think it can’t possibly get any more crazy here today, my best nurse winds up a patient in the ER. Looks like you’ve managed to get yourself knocked up, little missy. My, my, tha
t didn’t take long.”

  Joanna blinked, not understanding. “Excuse me?”

  “Let me be the first to offer my congratulations,” the older woman said. “Though I’ll be happy to keep mum about it until you decide to make your official announcement.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Maryam? Congratulations for what? Whacking my head on the floor and passing out?”

  “Well, it might be news to you, hon, but generally speaking it’s appropriate to congratulate women who are expecting. When are you due, hon? Your chart doesn’t say. Looks like it just came up on the routine blood tests they ran while you were out cold.” Maryam tapped the patient chart she carried on a clipboard. Joanna’s chart.

  All at once, Joanna understood. “Oh my God,” she whispered, falling back hard against the gurney.

  Maryam rushed to her side. “You all right, hon? You just went white as a sheet. You’re not about to faint again, are ya? Wouldn’t be surprised if you do. Fainting’s real common in the first trimester, ya know. “

  “I’m pregnant,” Joanna said in a tiny voice. “Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. This can’t be happening. Oh, no, no, no, no no.”

  Maryam sucked in her breath. “You mean to tell me you didn’t know?”

  Joanna shook her head.

  The older nurse pulled up a chair and sat beside the gurney. She reached out and took Joanna’s wrist, as if to take her pulse. But she didn’t. Instead she clasped both of her wrinkled, arthritic hands around Joanna’s smooth pale one and squeezed. “Aw, hon. I take it this ain’t welcome news, then?”

  “I—“ Joanna trailed off, not knowing what else to say. Under any other circumstances, it would have been wonderful news. But her marriage to Harlan was on the rocks, and it hardly seemed the best time to bring a child into the mix.