I was sleeping on the couch in a back room of the school that acted as a students’ lounge. It was placed there by some awesome members of the administration who understood the needs of nursing students.
I always took a quick nap on Tuesdays and Thursdays before I had to go to work at the gas station. I had exactly an hour and fifteen minutes between eleven and twelve fifteen to get some rest before I had to be to work by twelve thirty.
Today, since I’d finished my test before class normally ended, I had a few minutes longer.
“I did?” I asked, rubbing my eyes in confusion.
I felt the couch depress at my side, and I turned to look at Dr. Tommy.
He was holding my test.
Well, he was holding all of the tests, but mine just happened to be the top one.
“Have you told any of your other teachers that you have test anxiety?” he asked.
I looked at him.
“What would they do about it?” I asked him sardonically. “Nothing.”
He snorted.
“Actually, they’re required by law to give you another testing environment and more time if it’s found to actually be a real problem for you. They’re also allowed to alter the way the test is administered, giving it to you orally or in essay format if the standardized test causes you anxiety,” he enlightened me.
I blinked, then blinked some more.
“You’re shitting me,” I finally settled on, then immediately cursed myself for cussing in front of my teacher.
The only thing my words got me was laughter, thankfully.
“No, I’m not shitting you,” he promised. “Come to my office with me, and then go to lunch with me. I want to go over a few things with you.”
I wanted to do nothing less, but I got up anyway.
“I have to be at work by twelve thirty,” I told him. “That’s two hours.”
He nodded.
Grabbing my bag, I shouldered it only for him to take it from me and carry it by the handle.
“I noticed that you weren’t overly freaked out until I passed the Scantrons out.”
I nodded my head, following at his side as he led me down the hall to the teachers’ wing where you rarely, if ever, saw students.
“I think I would’ve been okay if I didn’t have to fill those bubbles in, but every single time I do the bubbles, my eyes cross.”
He grinned.
“I had to take all my tests throughout school on the computer because the act of looking and writing down ‘A, B, C, or D’ made the letters all float around in my head. I failed three tests like that my first year in college before one of my teachers realized what was going on.”
I didn’t say anything.
The man at my side, the strong, tall, dark, handsome, tattooed badass (yes, I could go on for days listing his virtues!) didn’t look like he had any weaknesses. No way. So it surprised and elated me to learn that he wasn’t quite the model of perfection that I had originally thought he was.
And over the next two hours before work, I realized that he really wasn’t perfect. He smoked the occasional cigarette (when he had a really bad day at the hospital he said), he cursed, he was loud when he drank, and he had a dog that should really be put on a diet but he didn’t have the heart to force him to slow down on his food.
All of that caused me to fall even more for him, which inevitably would end up with me being hurt and sad because Dr. Tommy hadn’t made one single move to exhibit that he felt the same.
Chapter 6
Women remember stuff that hasn’t even happened yet.
-Fact of Life
Tommy
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought I told you not to come to clinicals today?”
The woman who hadn’t strayed far from my thoughts winced.
“I don’t have clinicals today. I have a shift,” she reminded me. “Remember?”
No, I didn’t remember. I tried not to think about her at all, but that was becoming harder and harder to make happen.
Just yesterday I’d gone out to lunch with her, and I had thought of nothing but her for the last eighteen hours. If it wasn’t her fucking eyes, it was the way she parted her lips while she was listening intently, or the way her teeth would worry the inside of her cheek while she was thinking.
“Did you hit any water on your way?” I asked.
It’d been raining for days, and the entire freakin’ county had been under a flood warning for the majority of the week.
She winced.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Though most of it was by my house. My mom and dad own a few dogs that they breed, and they live out in kennels. The kennels were starting to flood, and I had to stop and help, which is why I’m late.”
I looked at the time, realizing that if she was on shift, she should’ve been here over an hour ago.
“The dogs okay?” I asked as I picked up a chart and started to jot down my orders and notes.
“Yes,” she said. “Though, I’m glad we found it when we did, otherwise they would’ve had a ton of water in their kennel with nowhere to lie down. It was about halfway up the plastic pool they use to drink out of.”
My brows rose.
“That’s not good,” I told her. “They ever need any help again, let me know. I got a few guys that have soft spots for dogs.”
She smiled timidly. “Thank you. I’ll let my dad know.”
I wanted to laugh. Her father was a freakin’ judge, and though he knew of The Dixie Wardens MC, knew that most of us were public servants, he also wouldn’t call upon us to help him in any way unless it was truly bad.
We were known as the Rejects because we were all a little bit broken and sometimes skirted the edges of the law.
“Who’s watching your girl?” I found myself asking, wanting to hear her voice a little too much.
She grinned, her face taking on a wistful look as she thought about her daughter.
“She’s at daycare,” she smiled. “My dad will pick her up on the way home from work, and I’ll get her when I get off.”
“Your dad watches her a lot?” I asked.
“Mom and dad,” she nodded. “My sister and brother take turns, too. I wouldn’t have been able to make it through nursing school without them.”
I couldn’t see how she’d done it, either. If my math was correct, her child was around six to eight months old. That would mean she had the kid in between breaks, and then had an infant throughout her school year—while getting her bachelors of nursing. Now that was impressive.
I had a damn dog during med school, and I’d forgotten to feed him multiple times. How she was able to get her schoolwork done while caring for her child, not to mention holding down a job, was fucking amazing.
“You’re with me today,” I said. “Dr. Wild is on call, but he’s spending time with his wife who just had surgery on her thumb that she broke two days ago.”
She frowned. “That sucks.”
My dick hardened in my scrubs, and I cursed myself for wearing the snug ones.
This was going to be a long goddamned day.
***
The day continued to get longer as the flooding got worse.
The water was getting higher everywhere, and roads were now starting to flood.