Alicia was asleep in the doctors’ bunk when her beeper had suddenly went off. Groaning, she quickly sat up, almost too fast. Grabbing her beeper, she pushed the button so the thing would stop its annoying beeping and quickly read the message. A man had just come out of insensitive care and was on his way to the recovery room and she was paged to get the room ready.
Wasting no time, she struggled with putting on her white nurses’ jacket while making her way to the elevator. She repeatedly pushed the button hoping that it would somehow make it go faster. When the shiny doors finally slid open, she let out a breath of relief finding that there wasn’t any one else there to go to other floors. She quickly moved walked into the elevator, pushing the button at the same time. As the doors closed, she stared at the small lights above the door, trying to make them go faster. The doors finally opened and she nearly flew out of the elevator and down the hall, dodging a few slow moving people, then breathlessly opening the recovery room door.
Although the room was always kept clean, she was to double-check everything. She had just begun opening drawers and cabinets and counting assorted items before about ten people surrounding a stretcher suddenly burst into the room.
Alicia always tried not to look at the person that were moved into the recovery wing for they were usually in bad shape and not a pleasant site to look at. She kept loosing her count on the items as doctors and nurses’ voices kept rising, trying to talk over each other. She finally had got an accurate count and left the room, leaving the doctors to the man.
Leaving the chaos of the room, she wandered over to the nearby nurses desk, chatting with the nurse on duty for a few minutes before the doctors hurried out of the room, all of them looking at their beepers. One doctor had stopped by the desk and quickly told the nurse that Alicia had been talking to find someone to watch the man since they weren’t sure that he had been given enough anesthesia to keep him unconscious. The two nurses watched as the doctor hurried off then looked back at each other, smiling at each other as they said their good-bye’s before Alicia went to the room she had just left.
She opened the door slowly and was greeted by the sound of the man’s pulse on one of the machines. Gulping and preparing herself for a gruesome sight, she pushed the door open, stepped into the room, and quietly closed the door behind her. She kept her eyes glued to the floor as she walked to the nearby desk to pick up the doctors’ clipboard and quickly read the reason why the man was in the hospital.
"Severe blow to the head." she read aloud then looked up at the man . . . and promptly dropped the clipboard to the floor.
The man on the bed, although he was asleep, was the most handsome man she had ever seen. His long black hair was pulled away by the white gauze that was wrapped around his head. Her breathing slowed and eventually stopped as her eyes traveled over his face, lingering on his parted lips, before traveling down to his bare chest that the thin hospital blanket failed to cover. It had to be the most well developed chest she had ever seen! Thick and muscular that narrowed down to a trim waist. She refused to let her gaze go below that. Her eyes slid back up his chest, this time something caught her attention, something that scared her half to death.
One limp arm that hung off the edge of the bed proudly displayed the maze of tattoos that it was covered with from wrist to shoulder. She went around to the other side of the bed and saw that his other arm was the same. She had never liked tattoos. She shook her head a bit to get all of the thoughts out of her mind so she could concentrate on her job. She went around to the side of the bed which his arm had slipped off the edge, and took his arm in her hands, lifting it back up and placing it next to him on the bed. She turned and went to the room’s bathroom, grabbing a plastic wash tub from under the sink and filling it up with warm water. Dropping a sponge in the warm water, she carefully picked the tub up and slowly walked back into the room. After setting the tub down on a table next to the bed, she pulled a nearby chair to the man’s bedside and sat down. She was about to reach for the sponge before she realized that she was too small to reach him if she was sitting down, so she stood back up and moved the chair away from the bed. Again returning to his bedside, she reached for the sponge. Wringing the sponge out, she carefully placed it down on the man’s over heated skin. She started at his waist, slowly working her way up to his chest.
She jumped slightly when the man had suddenly moved and mumbled something in his sleep before settling back down. She knew that some people had that reaction to anesthesia and it was nothing to be worried about, so she continued to bathe his flushed skin.
She was gently sponging off the sweat on his face when his eyes suddenly flew open and he looked up into her eyes as his mouth curved into a small smile.
"My angel has come to me . . ." he said heavily before his eyes closed and the smile faded away.
Alicia froze when the man suddenly awoke, and even more surprised that he had enough energy to speak. She remembered the color of his eyes. Green . . . pale green.
And she had never been called an angel before.
Copyright 1999 by Lady Serria