Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I left them to it, heading back out to the nurses’ station to see every single one of them staring at me with mirth in their eyes. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Hear what?” Lori blinked her eyes exaggeratedly.
I rolled mine and headed for the break room, finding my lunch exactly where I’d set it this morning.
It was cold. No doubt about it.
When I opened it, I found it soggy and gross, and felt my inner demon start to rise again.
Picking it up, I threw it into the trash, then got on Uber Eats and ordered more food for me and Val that would hopefully arrive just in time for us to eat on our way out.
And it did, arriving at the end of our shift, just like I’d planned.
Val was giggling when I handed over her Taco Bell order after she got her coat on.
“Guess that means no sex tonight,” she teased as she took a large bite.
“Hey, wait!” Rose called out. “We have a mandatory meeting we have to attend!”
I physically felt my entire body deflate at her words.
Fuck, I was tired.
“What’s this meeting about?” I asked, tired as hell and thinking I could just skip it and nobody would notice.
We’d had two back-to-back shifts in the ER, meaning that I’d been at work now for over thirty hours. I’d been on my feet for no less than thirteen, and I was about two meals shy of being a happy camper.
Needless to say, hearing that I now had to attend a meeting after getting off shift was not something I was very happy about.
“It’s okay,” Val said as she caught my hand up in hers. “We’ll make it work.”
Speaking of making it work, I had a meeting with HR to talk about my and Val’s relationship.
To say that my supervisor wasn’t happy would be an understatement but losing me as a doctor was something they weren’t prepared to deal with at this moment in time. So they allowed me to continue doing what I was doing.
Or, more importantly, who I was doing.
Oh, and I’d also had to deal with my Uncle Woody showing up at work to berate me for not getting with him about Pops’s funeral. When I explained that Pops didn’t want one, he then complained that I’d had Pops cremated and not buried. When I’d also explained that Pops had wanted the cremation, Woody had flipped me off and told me he would see me in court for his half of Pops’s money, which I then informed him Pops didn’t have any money—though I wasn’t counting the life insurance policy he’d left me.
And honestly, it’d just digressed from there.
The only saving grace was that he’d been escorted out of the hospital by security, and I got to watch it.
“I know we’ll make it work,” I replied grumpily, not caring that people were getting the end of my cranky stick. “I’m just tired as hell, and I don’t want to go to a fucking meeting.”
“Sorry, bro,” a deep voice said from in front of me.
I looked up to find none other than Quincy Carter.
Quincy was a police officer for DPD—Dallas Police Department—and working in the emergency room, I saw him a whole lot more than we wanted to see each other.
But that was life, and him being here today meant that something was likely pretty shitty.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, hoping that his ‘sorry, bro’ didn’t have anything to do with the hospital meeting.
Sadly, he rained on my parade seconds later with his reply.
“The meeting is with me,” he said as he fell into step beside me. “Who’s that pretty girl on your arm?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but it was Val who said, “You should probably steer clear of the coffee. You look like you’re one cup away from being a live wire. And you don’t have to sound so condescending when you ask about me, or act like you’re surprised.”
I snorted and looked at Quincy, who was double fisting two big ass cups from the Coffee Mill on the first floor.
Quincy laughed, then shrugged. “Whoa there, wee Viking. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was just trying to find out who my friend was with. No disrespect meant at all. To be honest, the very last thing I want to be doing right now is this meeting. But the world won’t save itself. And, since I’m the one who has to be peopling it today, I’m gonna need a couple extra shots of liquid courage.”
That was why I got along so well with Quincy, neither one of us were people persons, and we found that we tended to gravitate toward the sides of the room whenever either of us were forced to attend functions that the other was at.
“This is Val,” I said. “Actually, you’ll get a kick out of her real name. It’s Valhalla.”