“And how long ago did it start?”
“It started yesterday afternoon. It’s worse today, so I thought I should come in and get checked out, just to be safe. My regular doctor is in Europe on vacation, and his partner is delivering a baby.”
“Have you lifted anything heavy lately?”
The patient smiled. “I have an eighteen month old at home. She’s a little butterball and spends half the day on my hip.”
Simon placed his hand on her shoulder. “Well, I’m sure that’s it. You’re probably straining a bit too much going into the third trimester. But let’s take a look to make sure. I’d like to do an ultrasound to check in on the little guy, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“I’ll go grab the portable ultrasound machine,” I said, grateful to get even a short reprieve away from Simon. While I went in search of the equipment, I debated sending another nurse back to the examining room to assist. But I was going to have to deal with Dr. Hogue a lot more than this, considering the fact that he lived in my house. After giving myself a good pep talk about how I was a professional, I wheeled the machine back to the exam room with my head held high.
Simon was apparently not as professional.
“Have you ever done a sonogram, Nurse Valentine?”
“No.”
He looked at the patient. “This is a teaching hospital. I hope you don’t mind if we do some of that today.”
She smiled. “I don’t mind at all.”
Of course, the woman had no reason to suspect anything unusual. However, in a teaching hospital, doctors taught med students and other new doctors—not nurses. What was he up to?
I was standing behind Simon, so he could turn around without the patient seeing the way he was looking at me. Which was a damn good thing because the gleam in his eye and that sinister, sexy smile would have tipped anyone off that he was up to no good. “Can you pass me the lubricant, Nurse Valentine?”
Oh my God. He’s such an asshole! “Sure.”
He continued to face me as he carefully gave instructions so that they appeared to sound like true medical teachings. But we both knew what he was doing. “Some people like to just apply a thin layer to the belly, but I like to also apply some lubricant to the probe so that it glides nice and easy.” He took the sonogram wand, squirted on the clear substance, and then looked at me while he rubbed it onto the tip. Grinning, he said, “Why don’t you come around to my side, and I’ll let you take control of my probe.”
What I wanted to do was run out of the room and tell him to stick the probe up his ass. I was so pissed he was going to play games while a patient was with us. But instead, I gave him an overtly fake smile. “Sure.”
Simon flicked on the machine and them came to stand directly behind me as I touched the probe to her belly. The screen illuminated and the patient’s attention was completely redirected to the heartbeat and image of her baby. The good Dr. Hogue took complete advantage of that. He stepped closer to me, so that I could feel his body against mine and then leaned forward, covering my hand with his. His breath tickled my neck. “You don’t mind if I show you how to guide the probe do you?”
I could barely speak. “Of course.”
The sonogram lasted about five minutes and then Simon jumped right back into doctor mode when we flipped off the machine. I, on the other hand, was as useless as the shit he squirted out of the tube that the patient was currently cleaning off her belly.
Simon listened to the patient’s breathing, took her blood pressure again, and then felt around her abdomen. “Everything looks really good. It’s probably just a little muscle strain. But I’m going to ask the lab to come down and draw some blood as a precaution. This isn’t an emergent situation, so I’ll wait on Dr. Evans to decide if he’d like to do an internal examination. That way we don’t have to make you uncomfortable twice for no reason.”
The woman looked relieved. “Okay. Thank you.”
Simon wrote some notes in her chart and then took out his prescription pad and wrote some more. Ripping the script from the pad with a loud tearing sound, he smiled warmly at the patient. “Do you have any questions?”
“No. I feel better already.”
He nodded. “It will probably take Dr. Evans an hour or so to get down here. So, why don’t you try to lie back and relax. I’ll come check back on you in a bit.”
“Okay.”
Simon turned to me and handed me the chart. Then he handed me the prescription he’d written. “This is for the patient with the elevated heart rate.”