Draculas Read Free Page A

the
birthday princess
got squirted, she locked her precious little birthday chompers onto my hand." Benny the Clown leaned closer to Jenny. "You can't tell because I have a smile on my face, but I can feel the wire digging into my bone."

    Jenny nodded, trying to appear sympathetic. "I wish I could help, but I don't work at this hospital. I'm just here with one of my hospice patients." She pointed toward the gurney where doctors and nurses swarmed around Mortimer. "You'll have to check in at the front desk."

    Even with the painted-on grin, Benny the Clown looked suicidal.

    Jenny hated to turn away any patient in need, but she could be sued for administering care in a facility she'd been fired from. She watched them trudge off, then turned her attention back to the phone.

    Just do it. Get it over with.

    Jenny picked up the receiver and dialed Room 318. She knew it was 318, because every one of the thirty-eight messages she'd received from Randall had begun with, "Hi, Jen, it's Randall, I'm in Room Three-One-Eight."

    Before the first ring ended, Randall was on the line. "Jen, is that you?"

    The last thing she expected--or wanted--to feel was comfort at the sound of his voice, especially with all the chaos going on around her. But it was so familiar, like they'd just spoken yesterday. The comfort died in a surge of anger at the memory of all the heartache his drinking had put her through.

    "Hello, Randall. How are--?"

    "You coming to visit?" Randall interrupted. "I'm in room Three-One-Eight."

    Jenny sighed. She watched Dr. Lanz charge the defib paddles. "Yeah, I know. You said it on every message you left for me."

    "You listened to them? All of them?"

    "All thirty-eight, Randall."

    "Thirty-eight? It couldn't have been anywhere near that many. But I wasn't sure you were getting them. You been having a problem with your phone?"

    Yeah, you keep calling me.
"I've just been busy. So how are you doing?"

    "Dry ninety-seven days now. I don't even
want
to drink anymore, I swear. I'm a changed man, Jenny."

    So he'd said in all thirty-eight messages. She was impressed if it was true, but he'd done a lot of lying in his drinking days. And even if it were true--too little, too late.

    "I meant your injury, Randall."

    "Oh." His voice suddenly lost the excited, almost child-like tone. "I got seventy-seven stitches. Everyone thinks it's real ironical that I cut the back of my leg."

    "You mean
ironic
, Randall," Jenny corrected. She'd been the one to teach him the meaning of the word, but he had yet to get the pronunciation right.

    Winslow--a wisp of a woman who became head nurse when Jenny was fired--squirted conductive gel onto Mortimer's bare, hairless chest. Jenny's patient was convulsing--v-fib or v-tach. Even from across the room, she could see that Mort's eyes had rolled up into his skull, the whites protruding like two eggs. Flecks of foam and blood still sprayed from her patient's mouth, dotting Dr. Lanz's face and his pristine, white lab coat. Lanz's expression twisted in disgust as he wiped his sleeve across his lips, and the fastidious, meticulous doctor actually spat over his shoulder.

    Should have put on your face mask, Dr. Jack Ass.

    Jenny spotted Shanna, looking a little green, scurrying through the doors into the main hospital. Everyone in the ER looked on as Lanz applied the paddles, even Benny the Clown, Oasis, and her mother.

    "Jenny? You there? Hello?"

    Jenny only turned her eyes away for a second, trying to gather herself, not ready to see Mortimer die. Rude and self-important as he was, she'd found things about the old man to admire, and even like. She also wondered when she would work again. This was a small town, and hospice nurses weren't in constant demand.

    Full of shame at the selfish thought, she forced herself to look back, to say a final, silent goodbye.

    She was shocked to see Mortimer--
standing--
on top of the gurney, restraints broken off and dangling from his ankles and wrists, his