“What have you been telling her?” Dr. Martin asked.
“I haven't been telling her anything – we've never actually spoken to each other before this evening,” Jones insisted.
“Never spoken? Jesus, Jones, we've talked more than any two people have ever talked! How could you say that? Why are you acting like nothing happened?”
“What exactly happened between you and Nurse Lund, Ms. Reins?” Dr. Martin asked.
“Jones is my ... he helped me. He took care of me. He protected me,” Adele tried to explain as best she could. “He loves me.”
It was like she'd dropped a bomb. She could immediately feel the change in the room. Both the doctor and Jones went completely still for a second, then they started moving again all at once.
“Doctor, I don't even know her,” Jones asserted, jerking his arm free from her and putting several steps between them.
“How can you say that? After everything that happened between us?” Adele asked, her eyes filling with tears.
“What happened, Ms. Reins? Do you remember Nurse Lund speaking to you, or touching you?” her doctor asked.
“Of course I touched her, I was her nurse, for christ's sake! But I don't know what the hell she's talking about,” Jones insisted. Adele stared at him, feeling sick to her stomach.
“What about those last moments?” she breathed. “We loved each other. I've never felt that with anyone before, ever.”
“What the fuck are you talking about!?” Jones yelled, shocking her. He'd never once before spoken to her in anger.
“Alright! Enough! Clearly something happened. Nurse Lund, I'm going to need you to head to the nurse's station and wait there.”
“I swear to you, Dr. Martin, I don't know what she's talking about. She was just a patient, I never touched her inappropriately.”
“This will all be discussed with a rep from HR, after I speak with Ms. Reins.”
“But doctor, I -”
“Leave, Nurse Lund.”
Jones leveled a stare on her that almost stopped her heart. She'd never seen him look so mad. It was almost like ... like she was looking at a different person. A different person who didn't like her very much.
A person who maybe even wanted to murder her a little.
It doesn't matter. It's him. I know it's him.
“Now,” Dr. Martin sighed as soon as Jones left the room. “These are some serious allegations, Ms. Reins.”
“Allegations?”
“Yes. If Nurse Lund ever touched you inappropriately or behaved inappropriately, we need to know about it. What did you say about him touching you? Can you remember the first time it happened?”
“Inappropriate?” she echoed. The adrenaline high she'd been running on was quickly going flat, and she felt the shadow of her headache coming back.
“Nurse Lund told you he was in love with you?”
Why was this so astonishing to everyone? She was an attractive young woman, he was a ridiculously good looking young man, they'd been trapped in purgatory together with literally all of time at their disposal.
“I'm so confused,” she moaned, finally sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Of course, dear, of course. Let me go see if your brother is here, and then we can get a hospital rep to come in and ask you some questions about Nurse Lund's behavior.”
She nodded, then watched as he hurried out of the room. About five minutes later, another figure stepped through the doorway. She smiled when her brother Ocean gave her a small wave. He smiled back, then came to sit beside her.
“I hate to nag,” he sighed. “But you have got to stop scaring us like this.”
They both chuckled.
“Sorry. I didn't plan on fainting.”
“Understood. But from now on, less self-pity, more hamburgers, okay?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“The doctor said we had to wait because there was some issue with your nurse? That Lund guy?” Ocean asked. He was keeping his voice passive on purpose, she knew, but there was a tremor of unease under it.
“No. No, I think I'm the issue. I think ... god, I think I screwed up, Ocean,” she groaned, dropping her face into her hands. “I screwed up so bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were here a lot, right? While I was away, you came to the hospital a bunch.”
“Yeah, all the time. Why?”
“Did you meet Jo – uh, Nurse Lund?”
“Of course, he was here all the time, too. He and two other nurses had rotating shifts taking care of you – turning you, moving your limbs, making sure you were getting enough food and oxygen, stuff like that,” he told her.
“Do you think he was in my room every day?”
“Yeah, just about. Why?”
“Did you ... did you ever see him alone with me?” she asked. Ocean narrowed his eyes.
“What is this about? Did he do something to you while you were asleep? I swear, I'll rip off his arms and beat him -”
“No no no, nothing like that. I just wanted to know,” she waved his anger away. He glared for a second longer, then swept his hand over his hair.
“Then I guess yeah, there were lots of times he was alone with you. He seemed like a great nurse, he took great care of you. He would yell at all of us whenever we started acting like assholes. From what the other nurses told me, he spent a lot of time with his coma patients, talking to you all before and after his shifts, or during his breaks. I'd catch him babbling away to you all the time,” Ocean told her.
Babbling away ...
“Shit, I really think I screwed up,” she breathed.
“What?”
“C'mon, we gotta get out of here,” she said, abruptly hopping off the bed.
“Seriously, what is going on? The doc said you had to file a report or something,” Ocean told her as he followed her out of the room.
“No, no reports. We just ... I have to leave. Right now. I think I did something really bad, and I just need a minute to calm down and figure shit out, and I can't do that here. This place feels like a grave to me,” she explained.
“Okay, fine. Follow me.”
Ocean was able to successfully sneak her out of the hospital. She was being a coward, she knew, and she'd be getting a call from her doctor, she also knew. But she had to take a step back and really think things over. She was silent during the car ride home, going over everything in her mind.
When she'd first seen him, had first realized it was really Jones, she had figured that meant her coma dream had been real. It had to, right? And if it had been real, then he must remember it, too.
Clearly, that was not the case. Here, in this plane of existence, Jones was Nurse Lund – her nurse. A man who had been at her bed side and talked to her and taken care of her while she'd been unconscious.
The moments that had happened between them in the dream world, were they all in her head? Jones had said she would find him again when she needed him, but he'd never said anything about the how or why or where.
Jesus, what was the point of finding him again if he couldn't remember everything, or worse, didn't even know her at all? The sick feeling was back in her stomach. The most amazing experience of her life, and her other half didn't know anything about it. It was like being stuck in some form of hell.
Well, then. Adele would just have to make him remember. If he could spend a lifetime in her dreams making her fall in love with him, then she could sure as hell spend some time here in the real world making him fall in love with her.
Of course, that would have to be after she made sure he wasn't fired over her psychotic ramblings.
23
“C'mon, pleeeeease?”
Adele pouted her bottom lip out and batted her eyelashes.
“Uh uh, don't flash those violet babies at me,” Nurse Monica snorted. “They don't work on female nurses.”
“Ug! Do bribes? C'mon, what do I have to do?” Adele groaned.
“You have to turn around and go home, that's what you have to do. You've caused enough trouble around here.”
Just as she'd predicted, Adele's doctor had called her almost immediately after she'd snuck out. He hadn't been happy, but she'd managed to postpone any meetings at the hospital until the next day, thankfully. She'd wanted time to calm down and practice what she was going to say to everyone.
What she should say to Jones.
When she'd gone to the hospital the next day, though, he hadn't been present. Early on in the meeting with her doctor and the hospital's rep, she'd been informed that Nurse Lund had been put on administrative leave pending an inquiry into his behavior with her.
She'd assured everyone that she'd been confused. That it had all been fever-coma dreams, or whatever. She'd been disoriented from her faint, she'd thought he was someone else. After all, hadn't she called him Jones? And wasn't his name Johannes or something? No, as far as she knew, and according to all her family members, Nurse Lund had been the sole of propriety. A living saint. Worthy of having whole hospital wings named after him.
Once everything was cleared up, she wanted to find him so she could apologize to him, herself. That proved very difficult, though. No one would tell her anything about him. Her name and number could be taken down and left in a message, she was assured, but she had a sneaking suspicion he'd never call her back. She had thought maybe she could talk another nurse into giving up his info, but it turned out his coworkers were annoyingly loyal to him.
Adele had been at it for twenty minutes, begging and pleading, and she didn't seem to be getting anywhere.
“I swear,” she tried again. “I'm not a stalker. I'm just a former patient who screwed up. My brains are basically scrambled eggs right now, take pity on me. I want to apologize, that's it. Can you call him right now? I'll talk to him on the phone here.”
“You almost got him fired,” Monica stressed. “Do you think he's gonna want to talk to you?”