Shelter from the Storm

The best cure for loneliness was hard work and she had never shied away from that. And perhaps she ought to stay away from Daniel, since spending any time at all with him only seemed to accentuate all the things missing in her life.

Her gray mood had blown away with the storm as she drove through the predawn darkness the next day through town. Her clinic hours started at nine but she figured if she left early enough, she could make it to see Rosa at the hospital in Salt Lake City and be back before the first patient walked through the door.

She felt energized for the day ahead as she listened to Morning Edition on NPR. The morning was cold and still, the snow of the night before muffling every sound. She waved at a few early-morning snow-shovelers trying to clear their driveways before heading to work.

Most of them waved back as she passed, but a few quite noticeably turned their backs on her. She sighed but decided not to let it ruin her good mood.

This area was settled by pioneer farmers and ranchers and for years they had made up the bedrock of the rural economy. But for the last decade or so Moose Springs had become more of a bedroom community to workers in Park City and Salt Lake City who were looking for a quiet, mostly safe place to raise their families.

She was glad to see newcomers in town and figured an infusion of fresh blood couldn’t hurt. Still, she hoped this area was able to hang on to all the small-town things she had always loved about it.

The interstate through the canyon was busy with morning commuters heading into the city, but the snow had been cleared in the night so the drive was pleasant.

As she had promised, she stopped at her favorite bakery not far from the hospital to pick up a dozen doughnuts and several cups of coffee for Kendall and the floor nurses.

Juggling the bag, the cup holder and her laptop, she hurried inside the hospital and went straight for the E.R., hoping she could catch the nurses who had helped with Rosa before their shift changed in a half hour. She had learned early in her career that nurses were the heart and soul of a hospital and she always tried to go out of her way to let them know how much she appreciated their hard work.

She found several nurses gathered at the station. They greeted her with friendly smiles.

“No sexy sheriff with you this morning?” Janie Carpenter, one of the nurses she had worked with before, asked her.

If only. She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m on my own. But I brought goodies, if that helps.”

“I don’t know.” A round, middle-aged nurse grinned. “Between doughnuts or a hottie like that, I’d choose the sheriff every time. I was thinking I just might have to drive to Moose Springs and rob a bank or something. I certainly wouldn’t mind that man putting me under arrest.”

“Or under anything else,” Janie purred. “Think he might use handcuffs?”

Lauren could feel herself blush. She wanted to tell them Daniel was far more than just chiseled features and strong, athletic shoulders. But maybe he enjoyed being drooled over. She pulled one of the doughnuts out and grabbed the last cup of coffee in the drink holder.

“I owe this to Dr. Fox. Is he around?”

Janie rolled her eyes. “Haven’t seen him for a while. He’s probably flirting with the nurses on the surgical floor. I’ll be happy to set it aside for him, though.”

She handed over the stash, not believing her for a second. Oh, well, she tried. It was Kendall’s own fault for being such a player.

She waved goodbye to the nurses and headed up to Rosa’s floor. Nobody was in sight at the nurse’s station on this floor except a dour-looking maintenance man haphazardly swirling a mop around.

Served her right for coming just as the nurses were giving report. She could hear them in the lounge as the night shift caught the fresh blood up on their caseload.

She smiled at the janitor but he still didn’t meet her eye so she gave up trying to be nice and began looking for Rosa’s chart. Probably in with the nurses, she realized, and went to the lounge to ask if they were done with it.

“Here it is. She had a very quiet night,” a tired-looking nurse said, handing over the chart. “No more contractions and I peeked in on her about an hour ago and she was sleeping soundly.”

“Thank you.”

When Lauren returned to the desk, the janitor was gone. She spent a moment flipping through the chart, pleased with what she saw there. Her vitals were stable and her pain level seemed to be under control. The few times she had awakened, she had seemed calm and at ease.

Lauren didn’t want to wake her patient, but she also didn’t want to leave after coming all this way without at least checking on her.

As she paused outside the door to her room, a strange whimpering noise sounded from inside and her heart sank. Despite what the night nurse had charted, maybe the mild painkillers Rosa had been treated with weren’t quite cutting it.

She pushed open the door to check on the girl, then gasped.

The horrific sight inside registered for only about half a second before Lauren started screaming for security and rushed inside to attack the man who was trying to smother her patient.

Chapter 4

After that first instant of disoriented, stunned panic, everything else seemed a blur. She rushed the man, almost tripping over the mop and bucket on her way toward him as she yelled for him to stop and for security at equal turns.

With no coherent plan, she slammed into him to knock him away from her patient. The force of her movement knocked them both off balance and they toppled against the rolling bedside table, sending it crashing to the floor and the two of them after it.

The man scrambled to his feet to get away and Lauren lunged after him, barely registering the coarse fabric of his janitor’s uniform as she grabbed hold of it. For some wild reason she was intent only on keeping him there until security arrived, but he was just as intent on escape.

He shoved her to get her away from him, hissing curses at her in Spanish as he fought her off. Finally he just swung his other beefy fist out and slugged her, the blow connecting to the cheekbone and knocking her to the ground.

White-hot pain exploded in her skull. In an instant he was gone. She couldn’t have stopped him, even if she hadn’t been forced to release him when she fell.

Lauren’s vision grayed and her stomach twisted and heaved from the pain. She wanted to curl up right there on the floor, but Rosa was clutching her throat and still gasping for air. Lauren forced herself to keep it together for her patient’s sake. Using the bed for support, she pulled herself to her feet and hurried as fast as possible to the terrified girl’s side.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Lauren urged, grabbing the oxygen mask from the wall above the bed and placing it as gently as possible over Rosa’s mouth at the same time she hit the emergency call button.

“Take deep breaths. That’s the way. You’re fine now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Though she forgot all about the language barrier and spoke in English, Rosa seemed to understand her. The shaken girl made a ragged, gravelly sound deep in her throat and Lauren handed her the water glass by the side of her bed just as the first nurses rushed in.

“What is it? What happened?” the first one asked. “Are you okay?”

Lauren was shaking, she realized, and her head throbbed like it had been crushed by a wrecking ball. “No. I’m not okay. A man just attacked my patient. Call security. Have them block all the exits and entrances. They need to look for a Latino male in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a maintenance worker’s uniform but it was too short for him so I’m guessing it wasn’t real.”

“You’re bleeding!” the nurse exclaimed.

“Forget about me,” she said harshly. “Just call security!”

The nurse rushed out and Rosa gave a strangled whimper. Lauren saw she was inches away from hysteria. She slid onto the bed and gathered the girl to her, as much to comfort her as to find a safe place to sit for a moment before her legs gave out.

“You’re okay. You’re safe now.”

“Mi bebé. Mi bebé.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll check everything out but I’m sure your baby is all right.”

As the adrenaline spike crested, Lauren had to fight to hold on to her meager breakfast. It wasn’t easy.

She had been physically attacked only once before in her life and finding herself in this situation again brought back all those long-dormant feelings of shock and invasion she thought she had worked through years ago.

She didn’t know what was stronger, the urge to vomit or the urge to crawl into a corner and sob.

“Rosa. Is that the same man who hurt you?”