Topaz Heat (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) (15 page)

Tony grinned. “The good thing is that now there is at least a reason for her animosity toward you.”

Derrick laughed again, knowing that Tony spoke the truth.

SARAH
tried to focus on the chart in front of her, but her mind kept wandering. So much at one time. For three days now, she had thrown herself into work, working overtime, extra shifts – anything to keep from thinking. She didn't want to think about her dad. She didn't want to think about her past. And she certainly didn't want to think about Derrick.

"Nurse!"

She whipped her head up and focused on an older woman. Mrs. Martinez. Her eyes were wild. "
Ayudame, por favor. Mi hija!
"

She knew enough Spanish to get by in this hospital with partial ease. She threw down her pen and ran to the room where Victoria Martinez lay curled into a fetal position. She clutched a bed pan, obviously feeling very sick to her stomach.

Sarah touched her shoulder and was surprised at the heat on her skin. She felt the young girl's muscles contract and rubbed Victoria's back as her body dry heaved.

"Have you been sick already?" Sarah asked, opening a drawer to get the thermometer.

"
Si
," Victoria said. "My little brother was sick two days ago. I have been sick since last night." She opened her mouth to take the thermometer. In seconds it gave a reading of 101.6. Victoria gasped and gripped her stomach.

Sarah glanced at the contractions readout coming out from the machine next to the bed. A pretty hard contraction hit the seventeen-year-old. She felt so bad for her. Labor was bad enough, but labor with a stomach flu would just be miserable. "Let me go call the doctor," Sarah said, holding her hand up to her ear like a phone. "
Teléfono médico
."

Zofran in her system, Victoria started feeling a little better, though very weak. She lay back with her eyes closed, opening them only to grab her stomach and moan with each passing contraction. The anesthesiologist finally arrived and Sarah groaned inwardly when it was Dr. Benson.

She intended to call him out about the weekend jaunt with his wife up to New York, but her father's death had interrupted her personal life to such an extent that she hadn't even thought of Dennis Benson the entire time. In fact, he had slipped her mind to such a degree that she hadn't thought of him until just this moment.

"Nurse Thomas," he said by way of greeting.

"Doctor."

After that, they both tended to the patient. Once the epidural was in place and the IV dripping, Sarah followed him from the room.

"I'm sorry to hear about your father," he said by way of preamble.

"Yes, all your phone calls, cards, and flowers were so encouraging," Sarah said sarcastically.

He put his hands in the pockets of his white coat. "I've been meaning to call you," he said warmly, leaning his shoulder against the wall.

Sarah cocked her head, as if studying him from a new angle. He looked like a plastic Ken doll. He had his perfectly sculpted hair sprayed into place. His fake tan looked wrong in Boston in October. The perfect starchiness of his clothing just added to the air of plastic facade. She wondered how she had ever found him attractive. She wondered how that saccharine charm had ever appealed to her. "What would your wife say to that, I wonder?" Sarah asked.

"My wife? I'm not sure I understand."

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. "Listen, Doctor Benson. I have to work with you. But that's the end of our relationship. I don't really understand what you thought you would get from me, but go look elsewhere. Take your wife on another romantic weekend to New York. Or find some other nurse to butter up and deceive. It's not going to be me."

He visibly flinched back when she mentioned New York. His reaction alone informed her that Derrick had spoken truthfully, though she hadn't really doubted him. As much as she wished he had been mistaken, Derrick never forgot a name or a face and he had never lied to her. She knew that much about him.

She left the doctor leaning against the wall and went back to work. She made the notations she needed to make in the Martinez chart, answered a call from another room, and glanced at the clock. All of her patients were in good places right now, so she decided to go ahead and take her dinner break.

With an apple in one hand and her small purse-sized Bible in the other, she went to the hospital chapel and decided she would spend her hour regaining some focus.

SARAH
spread her Sunday School material on the table in front of her. Freshly showered after working out with an exercise DVD, she swallowed half a bottle of water before sitting down to study the material. She hadn't led the class in weeks. When she read the e-mail from a friend who had been substituting for her asking if she should plan to teach the class this week, Sarah realized how much she missed her class, and her students. She realized how much she needed that back in her life right now.

Her table sat in the corner of her kitchen, looking out into the back yard. Ice rain pummeled the neighbor's swing set. Sarah looked out into the gray wet, worried about how dangerous the roads would be by nightfall, thankful she didn't have to work tonight. She wondered if there would even be church in the morning to teach.

The tea pot on the stove whistled and she flicked the burner off as she poured herself a cup of spearmint tea. Food didn't sound good to her. She figured she was way too tired to eat. Maybe after preparing her lesson, she could curl up on the couch with Jane Austen and hide from the real world for a few hours.

As she put together a lesson on positive body image, she got caught up in the research on college age eating disorders, suicide attempts, and emotional health matters as they related to a media driven world that projected a false god of ideal body shape. She thought of the eighteen girls in her class and wondered how many of them fell into the statistics she read. Her stomach rolled at the thought of purging meals, cutting skin, and anguish over normal, healthy weight.

A light sweat covered her body as she took another sip of spearmint tea, remembering how Maxine used to obsess about eating and exercising until Barry took her under his wing and taught her the healthy way to balance exercise with diet and fitness. She wondered if she could get her brother-in-law to come lecture her class about how to do it the right way.

Her stomach rolled again, making it hard to swallow her tea. Sarah suddenly realized the physical discomfort she felt might not have as much to do with her emotional reaction to the state of the world today as with the gastroenteritis suffered by her young patient, Victoria Martinez, two days ago.

She tossed her pencil down and pushed away from the table. As she rushed from the kitchen to the bathroom, one hand over her stomach, one hand over her mouth, she was certain she had diagnosed herself correctly.

SARAH
felt certain she was going to die. She didn't think her body would take the violent dry heaving another time. Yet even as she thought that, she felt her stomach muscles rolling and felt the cold sweat break out all over her body. She laid half on and half off the couch, clutching the mop bucket she'd brought in with her. As her body wracked with the effort to dispel absolutely nothing from her stomach, her doorbell rang.

Heaving session over for the time being, she rolled over on her back and covered her eyes with her arm. She just wanted to sleep. The doorbell rang again and she moaned.

Muscles shaking with sickness, she barely made it to her feet. The room swirled around her and her vision started to gray. Drenched in sweat, she stumbled to the door. Leaning against the wall, she turned the doorknob and barely got the door open and saw a blurry half of Derrick's face before she collapsed.

The wind blew icy rain inside, reviving her as Derrick rushed in and knelt above her. "Sarah?" The concern on his face, the panic in his eyes, caused her heart to give a little tug even as her stomach rolled.

"Sick," she whispered. She rolled to her knees, arms shaking as she pushed herself up. Derrick knelt by her, putting an arm over her shoulders just as her stomach muscles started spasming. "Bucket," she got out just as the heaving started again.

He moved so fast, lifting her and taking her to the bucket instead of bringing the container to her. She sat on the floor, in between the couch and her coffee table and wished that death would just be quick so that she wouldn't have to face this man when she felt well again one day. As soon as she thought she could move, she pushed herself back onto the couch and lay down again.

"Please ... go away." Despite her whispered plea, she heard him shrugging out of his coat.

"Where's Melissa?"

"Work."

"Do you know when she'll be home?"

"Tomorrow morning." He didn't speak again, so she let herself drift away, dozing until she startled awake with the feel of a cool cloth covering her forehead.

"Think you can try some ice chips?"

Sarah pried open an eye, surprised at how dry her eyes felt, how much they ached. Derrick sat on the coffee table next to her, wearing a dark gray suit with a dark green shirt. His gray tie had green diagonal stripes and carefully camoflaged the three crosses at calvary in what looked like a repeating houndstooth pattern to a casual observer.

She always saw that tough kid in the sweat pants making that disgusting tuna sandwich whenever she looked at him. She realized now that the kid was long gone, and in his place lived a very successful, very cultured man. Not a boy full of cocky attitude, but an accomplished man of God.

She closed her eyes again, curious as to the direction of her thoughts and certain that the reason must be because she currently ran a high fever. "Not yet." She ran her tongue over her dry lips. "Let me make sure my stomach will behave."

She heard him move, but didn't open her eyes again. Instead, feeling oddly secure, she slept.