After Hours (InterMix)(26)
Audra told everyone to improvise techniques for single-man restraints, stalling would-be attackers as best we could while we waited for theoretical backup. After a sloppy, slow-motion struggle, I wound up straddling Kelly’s ribs, pushing down on his arms with all my might. He smiled up at me. “You’ve done this before.”
“Oh sure,” I panted. “All the time.”
“Not last night.”
I shot him a withering look. “I reserve my man-pinning skills for deserving parties. Not just whoever turns up with some old lady’s stolen lilies.”
“Ooh, you go right for the groin, don’t you?”
“In your dreams.”
My wrist hurt and I shifted my weight. Kelly took the opportunity to grab my arms and flip us over, him suddenly pinning me, though surely not in the way he’d prefer. I tried using the arm-hold-escape trick, but it was useless in this position. In an instant I felt angry and helpless, my face burning, sinuses welling.
Kelly must have seen the tears glossing my eyes. He let me go and I sat up, rubbing my arms where he’d grasped them. I eyed Kelly’s biceps, at the unmistakable finger marks there and a faint, shiny scar. Would my arms look like his after a few years here? I didn’t know how I’d ever make it that long. Not as a nurse. Maybe as a patient, if I kept up this exhausting pace and gave myself a nervous breakdown. I felt real tears brewing and stood, dusting myself off and praying Kelly hadn’t noticed. He was the last person I needed catching me crying, twice in my first week.
“That’s why prone’s always better than face-up,” he said mildly, getting to his feet.
“Clearly.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He leaned close, poised to impart some wisdom.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, stepping back when he went to touch my shoulder. Just a minute ago we’d been borderline flirting, now I was a panicky mess again. Big men made me feel weak and unsure, and with Kelly the sensation seemed to fluctuate wildly between distress and . . . well, some kind of perverse attraction. The man gave me mood swings. Clinical strength.
Audra began explaining the next drill, the perfect excuse to ignore him.
“Rotate!” Audra called, and I made my escape.
* * *
To his credit, Kelly behaved after that. Leave it to female tears to accomplish what a perfectly articulate rebuffing hadn’t. The next day at training he didn’t toss a single provocative murmur my way, not even when he had me on my knees in a headlock.
I spent the afternoon at my sister’s, playing on the floor with Jack, enjoying more than my share of belated birthday cupcakes, and hearing all about how Amber’s ex was late with his child support payment and apparently “banging some total skank from the lake who must be, like, seventeen.”
That’s what you got, chasing after meatheads with big arms. I pictured Kelly’s big arms, and told myself I was completely over the temporary insanity known as lust.
If Kelly had been suffering from a similar lapse in good judgment, it seemed he was over it as well. We were both back at work on Friday, and though he didn’t ignore me, if felt like we’d never met before. Certainly not like we’d ever flirted, or like he’d ever shown up at my apartment, hoping to get laid.
The infatuation had been fun while it lasted, but this was better. Wiser. Safer.
In the late afternoon, Don had some kind of incident, Jenny told me, and I didn’t see Kelly for the rest of our shift. By the time I was signing out, I’d started to wonder if maybe I’d dreamed all that sexual tension. Dreamed that he’d smiled at me at the bar, sat on my bed and informed me there was something brewing between us, and that I’d once been fool enough to agree with him. Whether it was a dream or not, I was awake now. Wide f*cking awake, and steering way clear of Kelly lest I ever lose my mind again. My sister and mom were welcome to his type, and all the pleasurable mistakes those men offered. As for me, no thank you. All set. If you want me, I’ll be at the coffee shop, looking for a nice boy of manageable proportions with no scars and a basic grasp of feminism.
And if you’d asked me at eight o’clock that evening if I still had the hots for Kelly Robak, I’d have told you with perfect conviction that no, I did not.
I was rereading a book from one of my certification courses, cramming for an imaginary quiz on the various disorders of Starling’s patients. My patients. I wasn’t learning anything new, but going through the motions of preparation soothed me. Kelly was the furthest thing from my mind, until a curt knock jerked my head up from the page.