Page 22 of Storm Bound
We still had to sanitize the treatment room and also log the last couple of patient files, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle myself. Everything in this new life might be alien to me, but the job was the one thing that wasn’t.
“It’s okay. I’ll stay and help.”
“Y-you don’t have to,” I said.
“But I want to. It wouldn’t be fair to leave you to clean my mess,” he said.
I looked around the treatment room and then at him.
“What mess?”
“This. The filing. Everything that’s left to do is my job. I’m the nurse. You’re the doctor. Remember?” he smirked.
I turned to Ava and she shrugged, pursing her lips.
“He’s right. It’s his job,” she said.
“Nonsense,” I told both of them. “We’re all a team. We’re not a hospital. This is as much my mess as it is yours.”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed and he pushed his lips to one side in a sneaky, amused way.
“Is it my mess, too? Because I need to relieve my nanny,” Ava said.
I made a decision right then. I was going to show them that I wasn’t like my uncle or anyone else they’d worked with before. I grabbed both of them by the arms and pushed them to the door.
“I’m good on my own. Go home. Be free. Enjoy life. And then I’ll see you both first thing in the morning,” I said.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Ava said and opened the door.
It blew open and the wind knocked some of the paperwork on the desk to the floor.
“It doesn’t look too great out there,” Charlie said.
Ava nodded and looked at the papers on the floor.
“It’s fine. Go. I’ll pick it up,” Charlie said.
She smiled.
“Thank you. My daughter is scared of storms, so I really need to go home to her,” she said.
“Then go. Go,” Charlie said, shooing her out of the door.
“And now you can follow your own advice and go home,” I said.
Charlie crossed his arms and stared at me.
“Sure?”
“Sure,” I confirmed.
He opened the door again and left. I got to work picking up the paperwork that had fallen off Ava’s desk and securing it under the weight of a book.
My phone gave a piercing tone.
I took it out of my pocket, unsure what was happening. Had I changed my ringtone and didn’t know it?
“Tornado Warning issued for your area. Please seek shelter immediately.”
