Dark Heart (DARC Ops Book 3) Read Free Page B

bin, she returned to the blood bag, peeled the cover on a new hole, and then inserted the new tube in the bottom. She returned it to the hang, hanging it upside down like usual, remembering too late that the bag was now opened on both sides.
    Blood rushed out, immediately coating her whole arm, her sleeve wet and red, with the rest of the blood splashing onto the tile floor in a loud slapping sound. She gasped in horror, her instincts making her flinch away from the red liquid. And then she realized that she was supposed to be a professional, a nurse, and she had just made a huge mistake. Fiona tried to block out the sounds of Mr. Higgins, and reached up to stop the gushing blood. She grabbed the bag, which only pushed more liquid out, and then flipped it upside down so that what little was left went coursing through the tube.
    “Fuck,” she finally had time to say, her fingers dripping.
    “Get back” came a voice from behind. “Fiona, back away from the patient.”
    She turned to see Wendy Welsh, her supervisor. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know—”
    “Fiona. You need to go and wash up. Right now.”
    Fiona looked back at the blood bag and at the pool of blood sliding and expanding over the white tile floor. She looked at all this as if there was still something she could do. Something she could—
    “Fiona, just go .”
    She left without saying another word, speedwalking past Wendy and into the hallway, holding up a bloody arm as if it had been wounded.
    The other nurses knew, by her expression, what had happened.
    “Trouble with the blood bag?” one of them asked, fighting laughter.
    Fiona might have found it funny, too, if she weren’t already under the microscope of Wendy Welsh and the other supervisors. She’d been having a terrible month. A rough patch. It seemed to be facilitated by a brain fog that had settled and thickened with every day of bad news she received about her sister’s condition. There would be good days, of course. Good news. Sometimes. But for the other days, when her sister’s health would take a step backward, it seemed to directly correlate to things such as spilling blood all over herself.
    The fog today was especially thick. She’d woken up surrounded in it, the dark mist crawling up over her bed when she first opened her eyes to a text on her phone. It was still with her on her drive to work, a clinging, damp, soul-sucking fog that seemed to have covered up a traffic signal. It cleared at the last second to reveal a red light. The car came to screeching halt, the seat belt almost leaving a bruise on her chest. And then there was the police car that similarly came out of nowhere, out of the fog.
    But he was nice. Nice, at least, about checking her out to make sure she wasn’t driving drunk or high. He’d let her off with a warning about careless driving.
    She hoped Wendy would be as forgiving about her careless nursing.
    Fiona was stripped down to her bra and standing over a sink in the women’s room, scrubbing her arms with a thick lather, fighting back the tears. It was ridiculous to be crying. She knew that. And she knew it wasn’t such a big deal.
    But the culmination of it all was getting to her.
    “It’s not a big deal,” said Wendy from behind her. “It’s happened to me before.”
    Fiona turned away from the mirror and looked at her supervisor. She had just entered and was holding a fresh towel. “Thanks.”
    “What are you thanking me for?” She walked up and handed Fiona the towel.
    “The towel,” she said, trying to smile, but she couldn’t. She ran the soft cotton up and down her arms, drying them. Even after years of being a nurse, it was off-putting to be covered in someone else’s blood. It was nice to be clean again. “How’s the patient doing?”
    “He’s fine. He didn’t get any on him.”
    “That’s good. Looks like I’ll have to get another bag, though.”
    “No, it’s okay,” Wendy chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s already