The Patient Nurse. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ she called angrily. “Don’t stand out there like a shadow!”

      Ramon’s hot glance told her what he thought of her and her usual, off-duty attire. She was the soul of neatness on the job, in her ward, but she still dressed like a farm girl when she was off duty.

      “Honestly, Norie, haven’t you got any other clothes?” Isadora asked angrily.

      “I don’t need any others,” she replied, refusing to supply her relative with the information that her salary barely covered her apartment rent and gas for the car, much less fancy clothes.

      “How economical you are,” Ramon purred.

      Isadora had glared at him, jerking up her purse and cashmere sweater. “You should have married her!” She threw the words at him. “She can cook and clean and she dresses like a street person! She probably even likes children!”

      Noreen had colored, remembering being with Ramon in the soup kitchen downtown at Christmas.

      “How would you know how street people dress?” Ramon asked his wife coolly. “You won’t even look at them.”

      “God forbid,” she shuddered. “They should round them all up and put them in jail!”

      Noreen, remembering the woman and two little children who’d accepted their meal with such gratitude, felt sick to her stomach and turned away, biting her tongue to keep it silent.

      “Spend what the hell you like,” Ramon told his wife.

      Isadora’s eyebrows had risen an inch. “Such language!” she’d chided. “You never used to curse at all.”

      “I never used to have reason to.”

      Isadora made a sound in her throat and stalked out, motioning curtly to Noreen to follow her.

      Just a week before Isadora died, she was taken with a mild bronchitis. Ramon had promised to accompany a fellow surgeon to Paris for an important international conference on new techniques in open-heart surgery. Isadora had pleaded to go, and Ramon had refused, reminding her that flying in a pressurized cabin on an airplane could be very dangerous for someone with even a mild lung infection.

      Typically Isadora had pouted and fumed, but Ramon hadn’t listened. He’d stopped by Noreen’s station in the cardiac unit at O’Keefe’s and asked her to stay with Isadora in their apartment and take care of her in his absence.

      “She’ll find a way to get even, if she can,” he’d said, curiously grim. “Watch her like a hawk. Promise me you won’t leave her if she takes a turn for the worse.”

      “I promise,” she’d said.

      “And get her to a hospital if there’s any deterioration at all. She has damaged lungs from all that smoking she used to do, and she’s very nearly asthmatic,” he’d added. “Pneumonia could be fatal.”

      “I’ll look after her,” she’d said again.

      His dark eyes had searched hers relentlessly. “You’re nothing like her,” he’d said quietly.

      Her face had gone taut. “Thanks for reminding me. Are there any other insults you’d like to add, before you go?”

      He’d looked shocked. “It wasn’t meant as a insult.”

      “Of course not,” she’d replied dryly. She’d turned back to her work. “I know you can’t stand the sight of me, Ramon, but I do care about my cousin, whether you believe it or not. I’ll take good care of her.”

      “You’re an excellent nurse.”

      “No need to butter me up,” she said wearily, having grown used to the technique over the years. “I’ve already said I’ll stay with her.”

      His hand, surprisingly, had caught her arm and jerked her around. His eyes were blazing.

      “I don’t use flattery to get what I want,” he said curtly. “Least of all with you.”

      “All right,” she’d agreed, trying to loosen his painful grip.

      He seemed not to realize how tight he was holding her arm. He even shook it, having totally lost his self-control for the first time in recent memory. “Make her understand why she can’t go on the plane. She won’t listen to me.”

      “I will. But you should be pleased that she wants your company so much.”

      His grip tightened. “One of the men who will be at the conference is her lover,” he said with a short laugh. “That’s why she’s so eager to go.”

      Noreen’s face was a study in shock.

      “You didn’t know?” he asked very softly. “I can’t satisfy her,” he added bluntly. “No matter how long I take, whatever I do. She needs more than one man a night, and I’m worn to the bone when I get home from the hospital.”

      “Please,” she’d whispered, embarrassed, “you shouldn’t be telling me this…!”

      “Why not?” he’d asked irritably. “Who else can I tell? I have no close friends, my parents are dead, I have no siblings. There isn’t a human being on earth who’s ever managed to get close to me, until now.” He searched her face with eyes that hated it. “Damn you, Noreen,” he whispered fervently. “Damn you!”

      He dropped her arm and stalked off the ward, leaving her shaken and white with shock. He really hated her. That was when the mask had come down and she’d seen it in his eyes, in his face. She didn’t know why he hated her. Perhaps because Isadora had said something to him…

      She’d gone to their apartment that night, confident that Ramon had already left, to find the maid hysterical and Isadora sitting out on the balcony in a filmy nightgown, in the icy cold February rain.

      She’d been out there, the poor maid cried, ever since her husband had left the apartment. She didn’t know what had been said between them, but she’d heard the voices, loud and unsettling, in their bedroom. There had been a furious argument, and just after the doctor had gone, the madam had taken off her robe and gone to sit in the rain. Nothing would induce her to come inside. She was coughing furiously already and she had a high fever that she’d forbidden the maid to tell the doctor about.

      Noreen had gone at once to the balcony and with the maid’s help, had dragged Isadora back inside.

      They’d changed her clothing, but the effort had made Noreen’s heart, always frail, beat erratically.

      While she was catching her breath, the maid announced that her husband had already phoned twice and was furious. She had to leave.

      Noreen was reluctant to let her go, feeling sick already, but the poor girl was in tears. She gave permission for her to leave, and then went to listen to Isadora’s chest.

      Her cousin was breathing strangely. She wasn’t conscious, and her fever was furiously high.

      She had to get an ambulance, she decided, and went to phone for one. But when she lifted the receiver, there was a strange sound and no СКАЧАТЬ