One (Bar Dance) (13 page)

Chapter Fifteen

I made sure that I left Bray’s studio by six Monday night. I had set an alarm like Rand had asked. I managed to get a couple loads of laundry done this morning and I had another one going. I was sadly behind with it and apparently Rand didn’t think of doing it. I didn’t mind right now but we were going to have to talk about it since school started tomorrow. I had opted for a cross between comfort food and eat it with your finger food. Breaded chicken tenders ready to be fried and rice in my little rice cooker.

He came home a little late. Seven twenty. Nothing to worry about except the look on his face. He gave me a kiss hello then went directly to the fridge and grabbed a beer. “Tough day? I asked concerned.

“Weird as hell day. I had to work around the guys who were installing extra cameras. They also put in a different scanning system.” He shook his head. “I don’t think that it was just for the hospital. I mean it has to be since it is in the hospital but it was just weird.” He looked at me. “Everyone was calm but kind of wired.”

Wow. Adam’s friend works fast. What I said out loud was just. “Wow. They added a step for every scrip that leaves the place?”

He took a slug of beer. “Yeah. I’ve never heard of that before.”

I kind of deflated.

“They said that it will only be for the first month though. After that it will just be the opiates.”

“Did they say why?” I genuinely wanted to know the answer to that.

Rand eyed me. “That was the weird and wired part. Nobody said anything.” He kept my eyes. “Nothing. Nada. Not even hand me a screw driver. Nothing.”

I held his eyes for about three seconds. “Keiley’s sister.” I stared at the ceiling. Then I took a deep breath. Then another. “You can’t know this Rand.”

“I already have a good guess Terra.”

I went to sit by him but had way too much nervous energy so I just got close. “One of the name of the fake ID’s th
at Keiley’s sister had rang a bell with me. I did a search and the first name I hit was one of my patients.”

Rand nodded at me.

“One of my patients that is dead Rand.
Dead
.” I stopped pacing. “I found six within fifteen minutes that have had numerous refills on oxy. After their deaths.”

He hung his head with his hands between his knees. “And you printed it out while you were logged in under your name on hospital time.”

“Worse. I copied full patient files to a flash drive.”

His head popped up and fear filled his eyes.

“I still have that. I gave Adam patient names and refill dates. Nothing more.”

“You could
get fired for that.”

I nodded.

“That stick could get you jail time if you disclose anything on it.”

I nodded and blinked back tears.

“Six in fifteen minutes?” His eyes let me know that he needed the truth.

“I don’t think that it is from the hospital but it could be. I’m hoping it is Hospice.” I was hugging myself. My arms were wrapped around my elbows and my stomach started to hurt. I knew that I was going to have a raging headache shortly.

He stood and came to me without touching me. “At best you are going to get a hand slapped. Worst case you face jail time.”

I nodded again. I wanted to throw myself at him. I wanted to cry. I needed to cry.

I didn’t do either. I just stood there frozen in place.

“You didn’t tell me why?” He asked quietly.

All I could do was whisper now. “I was afraid that you would try to look into it too. One of us needs to keep their job.”

“I will be guilty by association Terra. They will assume that I already knew.”

I fell to my knees guilt consuming me. “Leave Rand. Leave now.” I went from fear for myself to absolute fear for him. “Call one or all of your brothers and have them move you out now!” I yelled at him. I knew that he had kept talking but I couldn’t hear anything over the beating pulse in my ears.

He came down on one knee in front of me. He was calm and my world was collapsing around me. “No. I didn’t know until right now. I won’t lose my job.”

“But you do know.” I had the palms of my hands on the pressure points at my temples. “You saw me hand over the files to Adam. You have too much invested in your career to throw it away on me.”

He started working the pressure points on my face. Between my nose then over my brow. He worked under my eyes and back up. He moved my hands and worked the hair line. “You have been carrying this for almost two weeks by yourself haven’t you?”

He was now working my neck. “Angie knows.” I whispered with panic in my blood and tears on my face.

“Does Bray?”

I shrugged as best as I could with his hands against my neck. “I only told Adam and Angie. I don’t know if they told anyone else.”

He stood me up and walked me towards the couch. He sat
down and pulled me against him so that I was straddling his lap. He wiped what tears he could off my face. “Let’s break this down and look at it realistically.”

I was so worked up I had given myself the hiccups. I took a deep breath and held it.

“You looked at patients files after you had been to a memorial of one of your favorites. Correct?”

I nodded and released my breath wiping my own face.

“That is not illegal or immoral. You printing out the information probably wasn’t the smartest thing and verges on immoral,” He really looked at me, “But hardly even worth a wrist slap by the hospital.”

“Oh.
” I bit my lips. “I gave them to Adam.”

“You gave a list of names to Adam for him to check
on. You wanted to make sure some of your old patients were okay.”

“He told you he couldn’t do anything about it, right?”

“He actually did kind of say that.” I thought about it for a minute. “What about the flash drive?”

“Hide it. Destroy it? Doesn’t really matter. You didn’t do anything with it.”

Now I was just feeling stupid.

Not a little bit. A lot.

“So now we are going to talk about the really important stuff.”

My only thought was, oh no. “I kind of over reacted.”

It was his turn to nod his head. “You just told me to leave you. Why?”

I looked in his eyes. I had hurt him deeply. Again.

“Temporary insanity? Because I am stupid and irrational?” This was not fixing it. I bit both my lips again.

“Do you want me to leave because.
..”

I didn’t give him time to say anything else. “No. I don’t want you to leave. Did I mention that I’m stupid?”

“Terra. I swear to God if you say that again I’m going to tan your ass.” He huffed out a breath.

“Okay, I’m acting stupid. I’ve been scared out of my mind since I did it.” One tear leaked out. “I know what I did was wrong. I do. But I had to do something.”

“I get that but why all the secrecy. If you and I are really going to try to make something out of this, you need to share with me? Why didn’t you.”

“I told Angie that I was afraid that you would try to do something about it and get fired. She told me to keep my mouth shut. So I did.”

“She living here with you and me?”

Now I knew that I was not only stupid, I was cosmically stupid. “No.”

“She get to make choices for you and me? What we do about important stuff?”

I really hate
d when I make wrong choices. I hated it more when it is pointed out to me. I hated it the most when I have to admit that I did it all wrong. “No.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.” I had my head against his chest but I sat up straight as I said those words. It was lame but it was all that I had right at the moment.

He pulled me
back against his chest and wrapped his arms around me. I put my head to his neck and let the tears just run out of my eyes. “How can someone who has it so together get in such a mess?”

“That’s where you are really wrong. I
don’t have anything together. I am a mess.” I sniffed.

“Yeah
, I can tell. It’s running into my shirt collar.”

I sniffed and rubbed my hand under my nose. “I really am sorry Rand. I don’t know how to do this.” I whispered to him.

He rubbed my back and spoke quietly to me. “I don’t know how either.” He lifted my face up. “Let’s make a deal.”

I nodded slightly.

“Let’s learn together?”

He said it as a question but I decided to take it as a statement.

“Deal.”

He stood me up. “Good. Now
finish feeding me. I’m starved.”

“That
, I do know how to do.” So I did. Somehow I hadn’t ruined everything. Including us. Maybe we could learn together.

I’d heard of weirder things happening.
Like men doing their own laundry.

Chapter Sixteen

I made sure that I took my lunch with Rand every day. Unfortunately, it is kind of an unwritten rule that while you are at the hospital you don’t discuss what you are doing at the hospital. So I had no clue what was going on with him. He also had no clue what was happening with me. Which was nothing out of the ordinary. After my melt down over the weekend it was quite nice to not be looking at everything with fear in the back of my mind.

I would also send him a text on my way to school so that he knew that I was thinking of him.

Every night when I got home he was waiting for me. Usually lounging on the couch in front of the TV. Surprisingly, watching some kind of baseball game every night. How he found that many games first off surprised me. Secondly how he found that many games interesting was beyond me. I found the whole thing odd. It didn’t really matter to me because I was usually asleep, cuddled up to Rand, within minutes of plopping myself on the couch to watch the game with him.

Rand would come with me in the mornings to Bray’s studio on the weekends. If he found it boring he didn’t show it. Well at least not much.  Angie would sometimes come in. I think it had more to do with entertaining Rand than watching Bray and I work together.

Bray did have one amusing thing that he did. My stomach would growl and he would immediately stop. Pull out his wallet and hand Rand money. Rand would kiss me and somehow, somewhere find food for the three or four of us.

This morning I woke up with Rand curled up behind me. He leg between mine and arm around my middle holding tight. Not
an unusual position for me to wake up in but Rand holding me tight was unusual. He was normally quite relaxed. I was always the first to wake up so I wasn’t quite ready when he spoke quietly in my ear.

“Been waiting for you to open those eyes of yours.”

I started giggling quietly and looked at the clock. It was barely seven in the morning. The sun was up and peeking around my heavy drapes.

“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.” It was morning and morning when you first wake up there is always the call of nature to pay attention to.

When I walked out of the bathroom Rand was right there. “Go start coffee. I’ll be right down.”

That was a disappointment. I was hoping for some one on one time. That must have shown on my face.

“We’ll get around to that before we go to the studio.”

What he said made me blush but it also made me smile. I gave him a quick kiss
before me smiled back at me. “We’ll definitely get around to that.”

I threw on my robe and went to make coffee. When he wandered down to the kitchen he had on a pair of old running shorts and not much more. I had two cups poured and he sat down near me at the kitchen bar. “Did you see the memo that came out about preferred hospice changes?”

“I saw it but didn’t really read it. We had three new admits yesterday.” I shrugged.

“Well I probably got a different one than you did. Three doctors associated with Morning Grove were apparently arrested. We can’t take or fill any scripts that were written by them.”

I knew that my mouth was open. My eyes shot to him. “Really?”

“Really. Talk was that six nurses were also taken in for questioning. Obvious
ly talk was quick and quiet but,” He smiled widely, “Nothing about the hospital. Somebody I know can now breathe easy.”

I threw my arms around his neck giving him a huge hug. I pulled back grinning.
I was so excited that I was nearly dancing in the chair. I finally settled with a fist pump in the air with a, “Yeah!”

Rand chuckled at my excitement. “So you want to go for a run or a shower with me.”

I should probably say yes to the run but a shower with him sounded like a lot more fun. I had found out he could be very creative with a scrunch and body wash in a way that I liked. A lot.

The sound of his phone ringing on the coffee table kept me from answering. A phone call at seven thirty on a Saturday wasn’t as bad as middle of the night call. But close since he normally slept in and anyone who knew him knew that.
He answered with a, “Hey.” Which meant that he was close to whoever was on the line. I would have listened in, unashamed, but my phone started ringing. It was in my bag that was sitting right next to me on the counter. I barely got to it before it ran to voice mail due to the black hole that always appears in purses and bags for keys and phones.

I also answered with a, “Hey.” It was Bray.

“Hey.” He answered back. “Can you be here by ten, ten thirty at the latest?”

I did quick mental aerobics of a shower with Rand and then an actual shower for us and came up with a number. “Yeah. Why?”

“A friend of mine in going to come in and I want you to hear a couple songs with her. She only has today until two. I would really like you to hear her.”

I did another mental list of shower time. If we were quick and kept it to the shower we could be there by nine or nine thirty. “Do you need me earlier?”

“If you could that would be great.”

How could I resist the excitement in his voice at that? “I’ll try for nine but it will probably be nine thirty. I haven’t eaten or showered yet.”

“I’ll let you go. Get a move on girl.”

“Bye.” I said on a smile as I disconnected. Rand was walking towards me with his phone out.

“Adam.” He said as he held it out towards me.

“Hey.” I answered again.

“No blowback towards you at all. I just talked to my friend. You did good Terra. Great in fact.”

“Thanks Adam.”

“By the way, the papers that you gave me seem to have made it in to a shredder. I think that they look like confetti personally.”

My smile widened. “Confetti is
for a celebration. Sounds appropriate to me.”

“Yep. That it is.” He hung up with that and a chuckle.

Rand was putting the coffee pot back in the machine as I sat his phone next to mine. “Bray wants me at the studio earlier. He has a friend there he wants me to hear.” I figured he already knew what Adam was going to say to me.

“Okay. How much earlier?”

“Nine, nine thirty.”

He looked at the clock on the microwave. You couldn’t trust the one on the coffee pot. It seemed to set itself or reset itself as the case may be. Especially if you set the timer. “Looks like take away breakfast.” He said with a heated look at me.

I grabbed my cup and sashayed up the stairs as best that I could in an old ratty robe and bare feet. I must not have needed to because Rand was hot on my heels.

He was also hot
in the shower. And on the bed.

We made it b
y nine forty five still eating take away breakfast sandwiches as we walked in the studio.