Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
The worst part was that I had no clue just how bad it would get. Nor how badly it would hurt when Tommy refused to talk to me.
Chapter 18
When someone asks you what you like most about your job, answering with ‘Sometimes people bring birthday cake for employees on their birthdays’ is not a good answer.
-Words of Wisdom
Tommy
I was able to stay mad at her for all of two days.
And really, I couldn’t count the first day as being able to stay mad at her, because I’d spent the first three quarters of it hungover as hell and trying not to move or think.
Apparently, at thirty-three, getting drunk off your ass wasn’t the best way to get over a bad day.
I’d proven that fact over the last two days, and even now, two days later, I was still just as ragged and worn down as I’d been before this episode started.
Note to self: Spending all day in bed trying not to throw up after binge-drinking the night before is not nearly as restful as it sounds.
The first hour that I worked with her, we circled each other like opponents about to start fighting.
The second hour, she tried to get me to start an IV for her on a child, and I gave her a look that would wither a lesser man’s heart.
She just took my glare and continued to stare at me until I got up and did it.
Why I did it, I didn’t know. It might’ve been the pout that she gave me right before I accepted, though.
However, I would neither confirm nor deny that the pout was effective.
I couldn’t very well give her the ammunition that would work on me…every single time.
“What’s that look for?”
It was now hour three, and I was sitting at the table in the break room, contemplating ordering a pizza.
“I’m hungry,” I replied tiredly. “I’m trying to decide if expending the energy to order a pizza, something I’d need to move in order to do, is actually worth the effort to not be hungry any more …and I’m not sure which one is better at this point.”
“Don’t you have another nine more hours?” Tally asked as she went to the fridge in the small break room and pulled out a brown paper bag that looked like it came from the local barbeque joint, Piggies.
My belly growled loudly as she popped the lid off of what I assumed was their famous sloppy joes, and she looked at me over her shoulder.
“Want some?” she asked. “I’m willing to share.”
I swallowed, and then shook my head.
No, I was still mad at her.
“No,” I grunted, then completely ruined any and all credibility when my stomach growled so loudly that there was no way she could miss it.
She sighed and turned to stare at me.
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest once she put her food in the microwave.
And I was right. It was Piggies, and it was also their world-famous sloppy joes.
I wanted them badly…but I was a proud man. I wasn’t giving in to her on this one.
No, she’d have to crawl back to me and grovel to convince me that she was truly sorry for what she did, making me feel like I was nothing at all to her.
In answer to her question, I got up and walked out the door.
I was sitting in my normal seat at the nurses’ station when she walked out of the breakroom, stopping behind me just long enough to place three sloppy joes down in front of me before heading back to her own seat, two down from mine.
I would like to say at this juncture in time that I had enough willpower to throw the damn sandwiches in the trash…but I didn’t like to lie.
I ate those bitches.
Every last one of them.
But I didn’t say thank you.
That was how I convinced myself that I wasn’t a complete sellout.
Hour five I found myself with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs.
I’d seen Tally make her way around the corner towards the bathroom.
However, I realized at the first hint of raised voices that something was wrong. Tally.
“What?!”
I turned at the shriek I heard in a voice that I would know anywhere, and watched as some woman I’d never seen before tried to calm her down.
The man at the woman’s side, however, I knew.
Russell, her ex-boyfriend, and baby daddy.
My feet started moving me in their direction before I was even conscious that I’d made the decision.
“This is not happening,” Tally seethed. “You’re not going to do this. And no, I do not care that you went to all this trouble to do this.”
“It’s a normal thing,” the woman insisted. “This used to be done all the time back in the medieval…”
“Don’t,” Tally hissed, taking a threatening step in the brown-haired woman’s direction. “I don’t care what you think, or why you think it. I don’t care whether you want to see her. I know that he,” she pointed at Russell, who’d hooked an arm around the woman and started to pull her back. “Doesn’t want her. The only reason he’s pursuing this is because you have created in your mind some fucked up reason for suddenly wanting to play a role in my daughter’s life. You, not him. You are behind all of this.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So let me tell you something,” she growled. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need his help. I don’t need anybody’s help.”