DR. DEVASTATING Read online

  Christine Rimmer

  Dr. Devastating

  * * *

  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

  Epilogue

  * * *

  The Pledge

  Graduation Day

  We, the undersigned, having barely survived four years of nursing school and preparing to go forth and find a job, do hereby vow to meet at Granetti's at least once a week, not do anything drastic to our hair without consulting each other first and never, ever—no matter how rich, how handsome, how funny, how smart—marry a doctor.

  Katie Sheppard, R.N.

  Dana Rowan, R.N.

  Lee Murphy, R.N.

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  Chapter One

  ^ »

  Gold-shot hair gleaming, sky blue eyes intent and serious, Dr. Derek Taylor materialized on the other side of the clinic's front desk. Lee Murphy looked up from the computer screen on which she'd been trying to call up dear old Mr. Kelsey's prescription and lab records.

  For a moment—a split second, a wrinkle in time—she saw the good doctor in a cocked hat and a blue military jacket with gold braid at the shoulders, his hand tucked inside the jacket right below his heart.

  And instead of sitting in a creaky swivel chair, she imagined herself stretched out on a brocade divan, wearing an ankle-length Empire-style gown that showed a lot of pale, luscious bosom—bosom she didn't have in real life, to be honest, but what's a fantasy for if a woman can't look her best in it?

  Her fantasy lover gazed at her through the brooding eyes of a conqueror of continents. "Come here, Josephine…"

  She saw herself sighing, deeply enough to expose even more imaginary bosom than her daring gown already revealed. "Ah, Bonaparte, you ask too much."

  "Come here."

  She sighed again—more deeply than before. And Napoleon Bonaparte took his hand from under his heart and held it out to her…

  "Lee?"

  Later for Bonaparte. Lee blinked to banish the fantasy. "Mmm?"

  Dr. Derek Taylor smiled. Lord, he had a beautiful smile. A mouth to die for and beyond those perfect lips, two even rows of incredible teeth. All of him was perfect, actually. From that sun-shot hair to those blue, blue eyes to the five-o'clock shadow that sprouted in such manly fashion from his sculpted jaw.

  For the past six months, since he'd taken over as attending physician at Honeygrove Memorial's Outpatient Clinic, Lee had been getting a lot of mileage out of all that perfection—harmlessly, of course, in her secret and wonderfully stress-reducing fantasy life.

  He asked, "Didn't we get in some of those z-pack azithromycin samples last week?"

  She nodded.

  "Let me have a pack, will you?"

  "Sure." Lee spun her chair around and wheeled it to the cabinet beneath the counter a few feet away. She worked the combination lock and came up with the antibiotic he'd requested. He moved around the end of the counter just as she straightened up with the card of tablets in her hand. Now, she could see all of him. In a blue shirt and maroon tie, gray slacks and white lab coat, the inevitable stethoscope slung around his neck, he looked good enough to eat—figuratively speaking. "Here you go."

  He took the card from her. "Thanks."

  Lee blew her bangs out of her eyes and smiled right back at the good doctor, a strictly professional, no-nonsense smile. "You're welcome."

  He started to walk away. But then dear old Mr. Kelsey, who always got nervous when Lee left him alone in the examining room, poked his sweet, age-spotted head out the door of Room 3. "Lee? Where'd you get off to, Lee?"

  Lee waved to him. "I'll be right there, don't worry."

  The old man peered doubtfully in Lee's direction. She knew he couldn't see her. He was extremely myopic but would never wear his glasses. "You sure?"

  "Positive."

  Still frowning, but apparently somewhat reassured, Mr. Kelsey retreated into the examining room once more.

  And Dr. Taylor spun back to face Lee. His gorgeous smile had vanished, all those perfect teeth were hidden from sight. "How long has that patient been in that room?"

  "Well, Doctor," Lee hedged. "I only left him a few minutes ago. I'm just checking on his—"

  "He's been in there for over an hour, hasn't he?"

  She gave in and confessed, "Yes."

  He demanded, "Why?"

  Very patiently, she explained, "We talked, after I examined him. He's eighty-four and has developed some cognitive difficulties lately. Most worrisome, he's having some trouble getting his meds straight. There seems to be a small discrepancy concerning the various medications listed on his chart, so I was just looking them up here to—"

  Those fabulous bronze brows drew together over the Paul Newman eyes. "Lee. We're getting backed up."

  Doctor, she thought, "backed up" is the nature of the beast. But she didn't say that. She only said, "I'll do my best to move things along."

  "Thank you," he said for the second time in five minutes, though he didn't sound the least bit grateful. Lee did not lose her smile, though she did shake her head when he turned away and headed for Room 4.

  A truly gorgeous man, she thought. And he took the lead role in all her fantasies lately. But in real life, Dr. Derek Taylor was just like nearly every other M.D. Lee had ever known. He had a thing about control. He was very, very organized. Very time-conscious. And he wanted the rest of the staff at the D.P. Wiley Outpatient Clinic at Honeygrove Memorial Hospital to be organized and time-conscious, too.

  Well, Lee Murphy was organized and time-conscious. In her own way. Lee Murphy knew how to prioritize. And sometimes rushing a patient through the clinic just to keep on schedule helped no one. Sometimes a patient needed advice, or a referral—or just someone to listen and care. And that was her job as she saw it, to deal with the whole patient.

  Lee pushed the swivel chair under the counter and returned to Room 3 where Mr. Kelsey waited. Ten minutes later, she was showing the old man out, reminding him to keep up with his daily walks and to use the new tricks she'd shown him to stay on top of his meds.

  She turned to slip behind the front desk again—and almost ran into a tiny dark-haired sprite of a child.

  "Mama's lost." Huge brown eyes looked up at Lee expectantly.

  Lee set Richard Kelsey's chart down and knelt before the child. "Where was your mama the last time you saw her?"

  Instead of answering, the sprite stuck her thumb into her mouth and began sucking furiously.

  Lee said, "My name's Nurse Lee, what's your name?"

  The sprite removed her thumb long enough to provide, "Maweeah."

  Lee rose to her feet again. "All right, Maria. Come on. Together, I'll bet we can find that mommy of yours." She held out her hand. Maria looked at it doubtfully for a moment, still sucking her thumb as if her life depended on it. Finally she took it. Lee led the child around the end of the high counter, where the clinic's clerk/medical technician could see her. "Jack."

  Jack Yellowhand spun in his chair, tucked the phone under his chin and looked from Lee to little Maria.

  "Mother missing," Lee said.

  Before Jack could answer, Terry Brandt, one of the clinic's two L.P.N.'s, spoke up from over by the door to the copy room. "Lenora Hirsch. Head trauma and facial injuries. She's in Room 5, waiting on Dr. Taylor to go over her X rays."

  Lee looked down at Maria. "See? I told you we'd find her."

  Lee led the child down the hall, where she tapped on the door with the big number 5 on it. A small voice on the other side called, "Come in."

  Lee pushed the door open and guided Maria over the threshold. "Someone's been looking for you."

  The woman was sitting on the examining table, facing away from the door. She turned. Her righ
t eye was purple. Multiple lacerations circled her ear and a number of angry-looking, swollen bruises distorted her face. She glanced dully at the child. "Maria. Sweetheart, stay here." The woman forced a smile for Lee. "Thank you. I'll watch her better."

  Lee closed the door and led Maria to the chair in the corner. "You sit right here." Someone had left a picture book on the windowsill. Lee scooped it up. "How about a little reading material?"

  Maria's thumb made a popping sound as she pulled it from her mouth. "I like to wead."

  "Good." Lee handed the book over. Maria bent her dark head. Tiny ankles crossed and dangling above the floor, she began studying the pictures.

  Lee turned back to the mother. "Dr. Taylor should be in shortly with those X rays."

  The woman nodded, still facing the door, not looking at Lee.

  Lee asked gently, "What happened, Mrs. Hirsch?"

  The dark head whipped around. Sable brown eyes as big as Maria's seemed to grow even darker with stark fear—before they once again shifted furtively away. "I … tripped. I fell. I am a clumsy person, that's all."

  Right then, following two imperious taps on the door, Derek Taylor appeared, holding Mrs. Hirsch's X rays. At the sight of Lee, he looked distinctly perturbed. "Lee, could you help Paul with the phone triage?" Paul Uhana was their other L.P.N. "He's backed up again. There are a lot of patients on hold."

  "Sure." Lee pulled a card from the pocket of her lab coat and handed it to Lenora Hirsch. "Those are my phone numbers. Both here at the clinic, and at home. You call me if you feel like talking. Anytime."

  Those big dark eyes grew moist. "Yeah. All right…" And then she looked away again.

  "Lee. Please."

  "Yes, right away, Doctor." Lee headed for the door but pulled herself up short before she got there. "I'd like a few words with you, in private, before you leave today."

  Those fabulous eyes were like a pair of blue lasers, burning right through her. "A problem?"

  "I'd prefer to discuss it then."

  He shrugged. "Good enough."

  The minute the phone situation was under control, a patient had a seizure in the waiting room. They ended up rushing the poor man over to the ER. And then Lee had some exams to perform, a couple of injections to give and two pap smears to take care of. She even wrote a few prescriptions. That was the nice thing about being a nurse practitioner in the state of Oregon; Lee was actually considered qualified to perform many of the duties only doctors could carry out in some other states.

  Katie Sheppard, an R.N. in Memorial's telemetry unit and Lee's friend since high school, dropped by the front desk at three-thirty.

  "Granetti's," Katie said in a voice that brooked no objections. "Five-thirty. Dana's already said she'd be there. We're going to settle on dates for good and all." Dana Rowan, another R.N. and also a friend since ninth grade, had moved up recently to administration. She was in charge of Memorial's OR.

  Both Katie and Dana were planning to marry soon. And that was the problem. They wanted to be in each other's weddings—and still get married at almost the same time. This created some difficulty with honeymoon scheduling that Lee had yet to totally comprehend.

  "Dates," Lee muttered gloomily.

  Lee would dance at their weddings, not to mention spring for two more bridesmaid's gowns to wrap in plastic and stick in the back of her closet. But she saw no reason she should have to be there while they argued over who would get married when.

  Katie said, "Oh, come on. It won't take long, I give my word. I'll be eating and running as usual, since I'm on duty at the clinic tonight." Katie volunteered her services at a free women's clinic a few nights a week. "And Dana's having dinner with Trevor." Katie put on her most pitiful expression. "Lee. We need you. We have to get this problem solved."

  "You and Dana can solve the problem yourselves. You're the brides. I'm only the bridesmaid. You tell me the dresses you want me to buy. And you tell me when to show up at which church. And I'll be there. Both times."

  "It's not that simple and you know it." Katie blew out her cheeks with a frustrated breath. "Please."

  Lee looked away, out toward the waiting room, where several patients caught her eye and stared back at her pleadingly. She thought of a remark she'd heard a med tech make last week: You know you're in the medical field when you believe that the waiting room should be supplied with a Valium salt lick. "Katie, we're backed up."

  "Granetti's," Katie said, undeterred. "Five-thirty." What could Lee answer but, "All right, all right. I'll be there."

  She managed to get a minute with Dr. Taylor before he left to make rounds of his hospital patients at four-thirty. "I'm worried about the Hirsch woman."

  He looked at her blankly.

  She spoke in terms he'd understand. "Head trauma, lacerations around the right ear, multiple contusions—all over the face?"

  The light dawned. "Ah. I remember now. And I can tell you that her X-ray was negative and the wounds are clean. There shouldn't be any problems."

  "I can tell you that I think there's more to it than that. I brought up her records."

  He looked bleak. "And?"

  "She's been treated for various injuries here five times in the past three years. Each incident had a different supposed cause. She fell down the stairs. She tripped on a toy. She ran into a door…"

  "You suspect spousal abuse." He didn't even try to make that a question.

  "I do."

  "What do you want to do about it?"

  "Let me take care of her, when she comes in to have the sutures removed. I'll see if I can get her to open up to me a little. If it turns out that what I suspect is correct, I'll give her some referrals where she can get help."

  He granted her one of his gorgeous smiles. "All right, Lee. I can do that."

  "Good," Lee said with satisfaction. This, after all, was why she'd pushed to get herself on staff here from the day she'd completed the extra two years of training that had made her a full-fledged N.P.

  The clinic at Memorial had been established by a grant from a very rich Oregonian named D.P. Wiley. D.P. Wiley had had a dream, a dream of a clinic that would serve all the branches of Honeygrove Memorial, from cardiac care to oncology. A clinic where a supervising family care physician would work hand-in-glove with a top-notch nurse practitioner, providing every patient who entered the clinic's doors with the most thorough kind of primary care. Also, the clinic was to serve the indigent; no one could be turned away just because they couldn't pay.

  D.P. Wiley was now deceased. But his dream lived on. On any given day, Lee saw patients of all ages, for any number of ailments. She loved her work. Here, she felt she really contributed to people's lives on a longstanding basis. She worked with obese people, helping them to establish diets they could live with. She caught respiratory problems before they developed into pneumonia. She helped people like Mr. Kelsey find ways to remember to take their meds.

  And maybe, every once in a while, she could help save a life just by pointing someone like Lenora Hirsch in the right direction.

  Lee worked until five-thirty—only a half hour after her shift was technically over. And then she hung her lab coat in her locker in the tiny dressing area off the staff rest room. Minutes later, she entered the back door of Granetti's Pub, which could be reached via a short walk through the hospital's parking garage.

  Her friends were waiting for her. Both of them were grinning.

  "We ordered you a Diet Coke." Dana indicated the drink that waited in the empty space next to Katie. Lee slid in behind it.

  "And we've come to a decision," Katie announced, as Dana pushed the basket of complimentary cheese garlic bread across the table toward Lee.

  "Eat some of that," Dana instructed. "Please. Katie and I each had one already. And someone has to protect us from eating any more. We do have our wedding gowns to get into, you know."

  One piece, Lee thought, reaching for a big one and biting down. As usual, the bread was heaven. Sheer heaven. She chewed,
swallowed, took a sip of the Coke her friends had so thoughtfully provided, then asked, "What decision?"

  Dana caught Katie's eye. The two of them beamed at each other. Katie said, "We're going to have a double wedding."

  Lee took another bite of that incredible bread and chewed thoughtfully, looking from one friend to the other. For some crazy reason, she found herself remembering the day she'd met them both.

  It was the first day of school, freshman year, at Honeygrove High. In the cafeteria.

  Lee had gone through the food line and then turned with her tray and looked out at the roomful of kids, all talking and laughing. All kids who belonged. She knew a lot of those kids from junior high school. And she knew that none of them liked her. She was uncool Lee Murphy, whose mother worked at the Valley Dry Cleaners. She didn't dress right and she wasn't good-looking and she never could bring herself to invite anyone home to the tiny run-down house she and her mother shared. The house that had no father in it. Really, there was nothing about her to make someone want her for a friend.

  "You can sit here if you want to." The voice had come from her left. Lee glanced over.

  A blond girl smiled at her, a slightly wavery smile. The girl was pretty, with blue eyes and clear skin. But her clothes were almost as tacky as Lee's. And Lee could see that she was scared—scared that Lee would turn her down. The girl lifted her chin. Defiance sparked in her eyes. "Well. Are you gonna sit down?"

  Lee felt dizzy with gratitude. Not to have to sit alone for once…

  She took the chair beside the other girl.

  "I'm Dana. Dana Rowan," Lee's new friend said.

  They started talking. Just like that. About who they had for homeroom and how much they liked biology and hated algebra. How they were both already thinking about careers in the medical field.

  "Is it okay if I sit here, too?"

  Lee looked up. A girl with curly hair and brown eyes stood next to their table. She had a gold bracelet on her wrist and she wore a skirt and knit shirt that were simple and smart and expensive. The kind of clothes that said her parents had money. The kind of clothes that should have meant she wouldn't waste her time on a couple of nobodies like Lee and Dana. But those brown eyes were soft. "My name is Katie."