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bothered to read the entire contract. She promised herself she would read the
entire contract before she signed on with Satco. . . .
Satco? The name hadn t set off any alarms before, but it did then.
She finished the portion of Walt s morning care that he required help with and
went out to chart vital signs. After she wrote down her morning assessment,
she dialed information, and requested the street address listed with the phone
number for Satco. She decided she d stop by her favorite florist on the way
home, get herself a few flowers, and see if whoever was there could show her
how to find the place.
Florists could find anything.
She thought she loved Adam D Agonostis. She wanted to believe that he loved
her. That kiss it had been real. At least, she wanted to believe it had been
real. The attraction between them wasn t just him leading her on was it? She
would have bet almost anything that he cared as much about her as she cared
about him.
Was she willing to bet her soul? What if she d signed the contract. In
nursing, contracts and consent forms signed without informed consent weren t
valid so she spent a great deal of time making sure that her patients
understood the meaning of each section of every piece of paper they signed.
She felt almost certain that most businesses operated under the same informed
consent restrictions.
Hell, though . . . Somehow, she didn t think Hell would be concerned about the
Earthly legality of the contracts it signed. And it probably had quite a cadre
of legal talent available to call on should someone raise questions. As much
as anything, the fact that Adam hadn t insisted on going over the contract
with her made her wonder who and what he really was.
The phone rang, and Roxanne got it. She handed it over to Dayne with a grimace
and said, Emergency
Room.
Dayne sighed. That would be her new admission. She got out her notepaper and
said, Hi, there. This is
Dayne. Who am I talking to?
And she took report on her new patient he was a seven-year-old boy who d been
involved in a car accident and who hadn t been wearing his seatbelt. He d been
riding in the back seat, and the car had been involved in a slow head-on with
a drunk. Mom and Dad were both fine; they d had their seatbelts on. But the
boy s diagnosis was head trauma with skull fracture and internal bleeding, and
his prognosis was lousy. E.R. had just shipped him into surgery, but he was
scheduled to go to Dayne when he got out of the recovery room. It was going to
be a while before she got him, the E.R. nurse said, but she d wanted Dayne to
have some idea of what to expect.
Dayne hung up the phone and closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples.
A seven-year-old kid. Dayne had a hard time being objective about children.
She d been pregnant once, though she had miscarried in the sixth month. Her
doctor had suggested stress as a possible reason;
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Dayne had just found out about another of Torry s affairs at the same time
that she was working extra hours in the hospital because he was between jobs.
Her baby, a boy, had survived for a single day in the Neonatal Intensive Care
unit. For one day, she had been a mother.
Torry died before they could try again. She didn t know if there would have
been any other children for the two of them had he lived. Probably not; he
hadn t made the best parent material in the world. But she would have thought
about it, just because she d wanted that baby so much.
This child s parents had been given a son a perfect son and they hadn t been
careful. Such a simple precaution; a seatbelt. She couldn t help but be angry
at them, even as she felt sorry for them. They d had a responsibility, and
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they d failed to live up to it.
Mary looked at her over the top of her glasses. You okay?
Not really. I m getting a little kid in, after he gets through surgery . . .
if he makes it. He was in a bad auto accident.
Oh, shit.
Worse than that. E.R. said he was profoundly unresponsive at the scene, and
he never responded to anything. Apparently he quit breathing not too long
after the squad picked him up. They re having really bad internal bleeding,
and increased intracranial pressure.
That will turn him into a vegetable even if they manage to fix the internal
bleeding, Mary muttered.
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