Kisska tried to remember that.
Especially now.
“Well, I got the job,” she told her sister.
Fame coughed out a laugh. “And?”
“I already had everything packed. I was coming whether I got it or not, Fame. I’m here to help.”
Whatever that meant.
Finally, the crack of her sister’s facade started to show when she glanced away to stare at the hanging pots of flowers that lined the front eave of her cute, pale yellow home. Fame waved a hand Kisska’s way when she turned for the front door, saying, “Well, get out of the driveway, then. I was just sweeping up the shop. I don’t have any more appointments today. Did they tell you when you start at Valleyview?”
“Next week—night shifts in the ER.”
“You always were a night owl.”
Yeah.
The last time she had stood where she currently did in her sister’s driveway, Fame had been shouting at her. Kisska could still hear those words slamming into her retreating, eighteen-year-old back, too.
Don’t let them run you out of this town. This is your home, too.
She promised not to come back.
She meant it.
Apparently, she also lied.
Here goes nothing.
“It’s not the same, is it?”
Kisska glanced over at the older RN who sat beside her behind the reception desk of the Valleyview Regional Hospital’s small Emergency Room. Nearing her mid-fifties, and one of six nurses now including Kisska, who rotated the night shifts in the rural ER, she liked to be called Miss Lee. She laid eyes on Kisska her first night a week earlier and told her she remembered the night she had been born in the labor and delivery ward of the hospital that was now unused and defunct due to the flooding ten years earlier.
“What do you mean?” Kisska asked.
Miss Lee, with her name badge hanging from her scrubs to tell her full title, Marie Lee, RN, grinned wide. “Going from the city hospital to here. It must be boring.”
Kisska thought about that—the hustle of a night shift in an ER in the city was … interesting. What could be considered a good and quiet night there was a busy, chaotic night for a small town ER with only two nurses on staff between twelve AM to twelve PM every night of the week. Their one, thirty-minute break was just enough time to make a run to the twenty-four-hour gas station and coffee shop to grab food. Even the doctors on call for Valleyview ER stayed at home, sleeping in their beds until a nurse called to say there was a patient with an emergency that required a doctor because the nurses couldn’t handle it.
“I don’t take it for granted,” Kisska told her companion. “And I get to read more here, too.”
Miss Lee laughed as she stood from her chair and gave the glass window overlooking the waiting room a look. It was empty, and it had been that way for most of the night. Now, they were closing in on six in the morning. Lunch for Miss Lee, and Kisska’s would follow in a half-hour when the older nurse retook her post.
“I’m gonna head up the highway and get coffee, do you want one?”
“Extra-large.”
“Triple-triple,” Miss Lee returned with a wink. “You like it too sweet.”
“The sugar gives me an extra boost, that’s all.”
“Mmhmm, so you say. I say all that sugar is gonna come back and bite you. I’ll let the security guard know on my way out the front. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.”
Kisska was able to watch the headlights of Miss Lee’s old Honda Accord pull away from her designated parking spot through the ER’s bay windows where it overlooked the parking lot and the river. Knowing the lone security guard was probably all the way on the other side of the hospital and only now making his way over to be at the doors to let Miss Lee back in when she returned, Kisska went back to her open book on the desk.
The night was quiet.
A six-month-old baby boy with a bad ear infection. An elderly woman from her assisted living apartment just up the hill behind the hospital who had fallen and needed a bed before she could be transported to a larger hospital in the morning slept in a private room off to the left of the nurses’ desk. The most excitement had come from a hospital in a larger town forty-five minutes away who had planned to divert a moose-involved vehicular accident to Valleyview but ended up being able to stabilize their patients long enough to get them through to the larger hospital in Three Falls where they were more equipped to handle the situation.
Kisska expected the rest of the night to be the same. Little to no activity. Her first two weeks at the hospital had proven rather easy, and the twelve-hour shifts—four days on, three days off—kept her busy when she wasn’t helping Fame in the salon.
Sleeping a good portion of the day away probably helped, too. At least, the town had yet to catch up with the fact that the runaway Matthews sister was back and working in the hospital on the night shift. Or maybe the town had caught up, but news just hadn’t worked its way back around to Kisska yet.
That was possible.
The Valley worked in funny ways.
“That ain’t Miss Lee,” came a familiar voice in the hospital’s darkened corridor.
Between the two metal doors that separated the ER from the rest of the hospital’s facility, the lone security guard had finally made his appearance. Lucas stood in his dark blue uniform—the yellow SECURITY—across his back the only badge he was allowed to wear other than his nametag. Even the weapon tucked into the holster at his waistline was only a stun gun. She was sure it was Lucas’ large size that intimated people into behaving during his shifts at the hospital because the man was a giant teddy bear.
“Too many lights,” he murmured after a moment.
Kisska lifted her head a bit higher to see what the guard was talking about. It didn’t take her long to spot the stream of headlights coming up the road for the hospital’s ER through the front windows. The six lights, three on each side, made her pause.
It wasn’t unusual for people in the rural communities to outfit their vehicles with light systems that could flood an entire highway with lights for what seemed like endless kilometers. it helped for hunters and loggers who traveled the woods’ roads, anyone who wanted to avoid collisions with large animals at night, and it was also illegal.
But as long as they didn’t get caught, well …
“Are they pulling in here or going up the hill?” Kisska asked, knowing the land behind the hospital had been developed for more than just elderly homes for those who needed assisted living. Homes had been built there for doctors, and even some of the main street Victorians that hadn’t been damaged in the flood had been moved up the hill with the help of professional transporters.
“Pulling up,” Lucas replied, glancing over his shoulder just long enough to say he recognized the vehicle. “Damn, better close that book up, Kisska. You’ve got a good one.”
What?
There were two entrances to the ER. The one at the front where the windows overlooked the river, and the one at the back where a smaller parking lot was reserved for ER use during the day so the larger parking lot in the front could be used for everyone else. She expected the vehicle with the bright lights to pull up to the front, but instead, she watched the flash of lights approach through the window of the private doctors’ office behind where she sat at the desk.