The Patient Nurse

“Don’t talk nonsense,” he murmured deeply, and sipped his coffee. He glanced at the clock. “I thought you went to lunch at half-past noon.”

She crossed her long legs in their white knit slacks. “I usually do. But you weren’t supposed to be operating at O’Keefe today,” she explained.

His black eyes twinkled a little. “You avoid me, then?”

“Of course I avoid you,” she replied tersely. “That’s what you want me to do. You don’t even have to say it.” She stared into her black coffee, idly noting that he took his coffee black, too.

His gaze ran over her averted profile. She wasn’t pretty, as Isadora had been. But she was slender and had a nice shape, even though her features were ordinary. Her hair was neither blond nor light brown, but somewhere in between. Her eyes were more gray than blue. She never wore makeup. In fact, she seemed not to care how she looked, although she was always clean and neat in appearance. She might be quite attractive with the right hairstyle and clothes. His eyes narrowed on the thick bun at her nape. He’d never seen her with her hair down. He’d wondered for a long time what it would look like, loosened.

She caught his speculative glance and her cheeks colored. “I feel like a moth on a pin,” she murmured. “Could you stop staring at me? I know you think I’m the nearest thing to an ax-murderess, but you don’t have to make it so obvious in public, do you?”

He scowled. “I haven’t said a word.”

She laughed, but it had a hollow sound. Her gray eyes were full of disillusionment and loneliness. “No,” she agreed. “You never have. You may be Latin, but you don’t act it anymore. You never explode in rage, or throw things, or curse at the top of your lungs. You can get further with a look than most doctors can with arm-waving fury. You don’t have to say anything. Your eyes say it for you.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “And what are they telling you?”

“That you blame me for Isadora,” she said quietly. “That you hate me. That you wake up every morning wishing it had been me instead of her in that casket.”

His jaw clenched, to keep the words back. His eyes glittered, just the same.

“You might not believe it,” she added heavily, “but there are times when I wish I could have taken her place. None of you seemed to realize that I loved her, too. I grew up with Isadora. She could be cruel, but she could be kind when she liked. I miss her.”

He tried unsuccessfully to bite back the cold words. “What an odd way you had of showing your concern,” he muttered curtly. “Leaving her alone in an apartment to die.” The minute the words were out, he regretted them deeply, but it was already too late.

Noreen’s eyes closed. She felt faint, as she did so often these days. Her breath came in short little shallow breaths. She clenched her hands in her lap and fought to stay calm, so that she wouldn’t betray herself. Ramon was an excellent surgeon. She wouldn’t be able to hide her condition if he looked too closely. He might say something to administration…

She lifted her head seconds later, pale but more stable. “I have to go,” she said, and slowly, carefully, got out of her chair, holding on to it for support.

“Have you had any sleep?” he asked suddenly.

“You mean, does my guilty conscience keep me awake?” she said for him, smiling coolly. “Yes, if you want to know, it does. I would have saved Isadora if I’d been able to.”

She was fine-drawn, as if she didn’t eat or sleep. “You never told me exactly what happened,” he said.

The statement surprised her. “I tried to,” she reminded him. “I tried to tell all of you. But nobody wanted my side of the story.”

“Maybe I want it now,” he replied.

“Two years too late,” she told him. She picked up her tray. “I would gladly have told you then. But I won’t bother now. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her eyes were empty of all feeling as her gaze met his, betraying nothing of the turmoil he kindled inside her. “It doesn’t matter at all what any of you think of me.”

She turned away and went slowly to the automatic tray return to deposit her dishes. She didn’t look back as she went out the door toward the staff elevators.

Ramon’s dark eyes followed her with bitter regret. He couldn’t seem to stop hurting her. It was the last thing she needed. She moved more slowly these days. She didn’t seem to have an interest in anything beyond her work. The hospital grapevine was fairly dependable about romances and breakups, but he’d never heard Noreen’s name coupled with that of any of the hospital staff. She didn’t date. Even when she was living at home with Isadora’s family, she was forever walking around with her nose stuck in a medical book, studying for tests and final exams. She’d graduated nurses’ training with highest honors, he recalled, and no wonder.

He sipped his coffee, remembering his first glimpse of her. He’d met Isadora at a charity dinner, and they’d had an instant rapport. Isadora’s date had been appropriated by his boss for a late sales meeting, and Ramon had offered to drive the beautiful blonde home. She’d accepted at once.

She lived in a huge Georgian mansion on the outskirts of Atlanta, in a fashionable neighborhood. Her parents had been in the living room watching the late news when she’d introduced Ramon to them. They were standoffish at first, until Isadora told them what he did for a living and how famous he was becoming.

Noreen had been at home. She was curled up in a big armchair by the fireplace with an anatomy book in her hands, a pair of big-rimmed reading glasses perched on her nose. He remembered even now the look in her eyes when he and Isadora had approached her. Those soft gray eyes had kindled with a kind of gentle fire, huge and luminous and full of warm secrets. He’d made an instant impression on her; he saw it in her radiant face, felt it in the slight tremor of her small hand when they were introduced. But he had eyes only for Isadora, and it was apparent. Noreen had withdrawn with an odd little smile.

And in the weeks that followed, while he courted Isadora, Noreen was conspicuous by her absence. She hadn’t been invited to be part of the wedding. Later, it shamed him to remember how insulting Isadora had been about her cousin. She hadn’t wanted to include Noreen among her entourage. Isadora had been viciously jealous of her cousin. She seemed to delight in looking for ways to put Noreen down, to make her feel unwelcome or inferior.

Isadora had been beautiful, socially acceptable, poised and talented. But she was empty inside, as Noreen wasn’t. That jealousy had led to a bitter argument before Ramon’s trip to Paris just before Isadora’s death. He closed his eyes and shuddered inside, remembering what had been said. He’d blamed Noreen for everything, even for that, when the blame was equally his.

The movement of people at the next table brought him back from his musings. He glanced at his watch and hurriedly finished his lunch. It was time to go back to work.

Noreen was anxious to get back to her apartment after she finished her day’s work. She was feeling weaker by the minute, breathless and faintly nauseous, and her heartbeat was so irregular that it bothered her.

She got into bed and lay down. She was asleep before she realized it, too tired to even bother with so much as a bowl of cereal for supper.

But by morning, she felt better and her pulse seemed less erratic. She had to continue working. If she lost her job, she could lose her medical insurance, and she had to depend on it for the valve surgery she needed. It was an expensive operation, but without it she might not live a great deal longer. She knew that the damaged valve was leaking, the specialist had told her so. But she also knew that people could live a long time with a leaky valve, depending on the amount of leakage there was and the level of medical care and supervision she had. Until now, she’d had very few problems since Isadora’s death.

She sipped orange juice and grimaced as she recalled how sick Isadora had been and how desperate she’d been to get help. Ramon wanted to know all about it now, and that was tragic, because she wasn’t going to tell him a thing. She had no place in his life at all, nor did she want one. She’d paid too high a price for her feelings already. She wasn’t going to fall back into the trap of loving him. Loneliness was safer.