Page 9 of Will & Patrick's Endless Honeymoon
Patrick frowns. He’s still angry he lost that argument in the last board meeting. It makes no sense not to make it worth it to good nurses to come on full time.
It’s not like Healing has anything else to offer them. Crummy weather nine months of the year, almost-decent schooling for their kids, and becoming the subject of vicious, small town gossip are about it. If Healing Regional wants to make a name for itself, if it really wants to become a first class medical facility, then they need to cough up livable full-time salaries plus great benefits.
Varun deserves to get paid enough to make a home here. But maybe he hasn’t found a real reason to stay yet, since he hasn’t found a doctor to marry him. That’s his self-proclaimed goal in life, and Patrick’s made zero headway in getting him to understand that it’s a dumb one.
“What is it about STAT you don’t understand?” he barks, finishing up the order and stepping away from the computer.
Varun smiles warmly at him. “Good job, Dr. McCloud. I’ll get right on that.”
Patrick snorts as Varun leaves. “Hey!” Patrick calls out to him. “Text me the name of the nurse who charted that dose.”
Varun walks backward as he answers, “You talked with her and gave her the order personally, plus her name was on the chart too. I thought you were a genius. Don’t you remember?”
“I don’t bother remembering the names of people who’re going to be fired by the end of the day.” She had blond hair, though. He remembers that.
Varun sighs. “I won’t text it. But I’ll give you a hint. Ruby Lovell.”
“What’s that?”
“Her name, genius.”
Then Varun disappears around the corner, and Patrick sets out toward Don Knife’s office to make a giant stinking fuss about nurses who chart things they don’t actually do.
But before he makes it there, he’s waylaid by the sight of one of only a handful of people he cares enough about to stop and talk to. “Jenny, what are you doing here?”
She’s parked in a chair outside one of the labs. Her wide smile is as blinding as ever, brightening the fluorescent hospital hallway. “Follow-up from that raging UTI I had last month. Now that I’m down a kidney, they want to make sure everything is cleared up.”
He takes the empty seat beside her as a tall nurse squeaks past them both in her rubber-soled shoes. “Where’s Dylan?”
Jenny tightens her glossy, blond ponytail. “At that new Mother’s Day Out program the Methodist church is hosting.” Her blue eyes grow damp. “Can you believe he’s old enough to go to one of those now?”
“Hmmph.” Hecanbelieve it actually. Dylan isn’t the sweet, drooling six-month-old he first met anymore. He’s a tyrant of a three-year-old, and Jenny’s got her hands full. He’s still a cute little booger.
“Why so grumpy?” she asks, twisting in her seat and stuffing her phone into her mammoth purse.
“Who says I’m grumpy?”
“C’mon. Tell me.”
“Doctor stuff. Confidential. Yadda.”
Jenny rolls her eyes. “Oh, well, if that’s all it is, go on your way. I’d just gotten to the good part in the ridiculous vampire romance I’m reading.” She fishes her phone back out of her purse and opens the reading app.
Patrick almost asks for the title, he needs a trashy read for his upcoming trip, but he says, “I have to go on a honeymoon. For ten days.Ten.”
“Aha!” Jenny pokes him in the arm and stuffs her phone back in her purse. “I knew you were going to freak out about that sooner or later.”
“How am I supposed to do nothing for ten days?”
“We’ve made a great plan, Patrick. There’s plenty of stuff to do at the resorts. And, if you don’t want to do those things after all, you can read. Nap. Have sex. Walk on the beach. Meditate. Take up smoking weed.” She ticks these off on her fingers.
Patrick huffs. “Patients need me. I can’t go gallivanting—”
“It’s your honeymoon.”
“What was Will thinking to ask me—”
“He’s thinking that he loves you and wants to be alone with you in a romantic location for an extended period of time.” She takes hold of his hand and twines their fingers together. “No patients. No family. No drama.”
