Page 102 of Bodybuilders for the BBW

Mandie snorted noisily, trying to cover that with a nervous laugh, but I spoke up before she could.

“What?”

“If these fellas reckon they want to get serious with my daughter, then… I want to meet them.” Dad nodded decisively. “Have a beer with a man and you find out who he really is.”

There were so, so many things wrong with that statement, but when Dad dug his heels in, nothing moved him.

“Bring them around to meet my parents one day after we decided to be in a relationship?” I said, waiting for someone to start talking sense.

“Not one day.” Mum looked at the calendar on her phone. “How does in a week sound?”

Chapter51

Garrett

I made my way down the hall to the unit manager’s office in a series of long strides, but before I could get there, Nora stepped out into the hallway. She crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow, making clear that the ED gossip network had reported to her before I got there.

“Garrett..” Her lips formed a thin line. “So nice of you to join us. Wasn’t sure if you still wanted to work for the hospital?”

Some days I wondered about that too, but my situation was different to people like Gloria’s. I didn’t have a permanent position, having worked here on a series of long-term contracts, waiting for a permanent placement to open up.

Which meant I needed to suck up to Nora.

“So I just want to apologise?—”

“For leaving us short staffed when we had a record number of patients walk in through the door?” she said, and I let out an almost silent sigh. “When we were forced to bring some of the other ward nurses down to cover you?”

“I asked Gloria?—”

“You were assigned to that shift, Garrett.” Her eyes hardened as she looked me up and down. “You were, not Gloria, not the other nurses that had to leave their own patients to come down here to deal with the chaos. You?—”

“Covered at least three shifts this week.” Hell, I hadn’t meant to say that, but the words just came out. There were still more to come. “More during flu season. I’m the first one everyone calls?—”

“Because you don’t have a wife or kids.” Nora shut me down with a reproving look. “I thought you were a team player.”

“I am.” Why the hell was I explaining myself to her? “And I have a girlfriend. She was who I was out with last night. We had a chance…” At something amazing, that’s what I wanted to say, but Nora wouldn’t understand. Didn’t want to, I amended. “To go out with… friends for once, and I didn’t want to cancel on her again.”

“Well, this is new.” By the way Nora crossed her arms, it wasn’t a good thing in her book. “Obviously I can’t advise you against getting into a relationship?—”

“Because that would be a gross overstep and something our union rep would need to look into.” Helen wandered over to come stand by me, the grin she shot my way helping dissipate the tension. “So you finally found a girl to put up with your shit? Thank god. I was starting to think I’d have to ask my son to find some poor girl to take pity on you.”

“Yes, well, be that as it may—” Nora huffed.

“The shift manager is responsible for staffing,” Helen said bluntly. “They schedule and are responsible for ensuring all nurses don’t do more than the agreed number of hours set out in our award. Yesterday was the last day of the week. Garrett not coming in saved you from having to answer some awkward conversations about overtime.” She turned to me. “C’mon, we’ve got a full house and I need a decent set of hands on my end of the ward. That new intern…”

The woman had seen more hours in the ED than I had hot dinners, as Helen often liked to tell me, and in this case, it worked in my favour. She could’ve easily been the unit manager. Only a complete disinterest in management meant Nora got the position. I walked away from our boss gladly and right into the madness of a packed emergency department.

The exhaustion that hung over me like a grey cloud dissipated as I walked over to the first bed, consulting with the chart. Familiarise myself with the patient’s situation, follow procedure, ensure people get the best quality of care possible, and then move to the next person. Rinse and repeat until Helen stepped in some time later.

“Break time.”

“Hang on, I just need to?—”

I was finishing off a set of observations, having taken the patient’s blood pressure, and now I needed to record their heart rate and temperature.

“Sylvia will take over.” Helen gestured imperiously at one of the trainee nurses, who scurried forward, probably glad for something to do. “You need to eat something, drink something, and sit down for a moment.” I sucked in a breath to argue, but she cut me off. “I bought some of that soup you like.”

“OK, you had me at soup.”

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