After Hours (InterMix)(77)
I saw Lee Paleckas on the ward for the first time that morning, bright and early, for breakfast meds. He wasn’t on the roster—Dr. Morris would be supervising his pharma regimen personally for the first week or two—but I offered a smile as he eyed me through the booth’s window. I thought maybe he returned it, sort of a grudging twitch of his lip, but for all I knew, it was a side-effect tic.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I got a chance to talk to him. I was done with post-lunch meds, free to mingle with the patients during their short free period between sessions. I found Lee staring out the rec room window and walked over.
“Hi, Lee.”
He turned and offered a guarded assessment. “Hey.”
“How are you finding everything so far?”
“It f*cking sucks,” he said, with a sneer like he might hawk a loogie, but thankfully didn’t. There was more lucidity in his eyes today, and his color was better.
“I hope it won’t suck for too long. You play cards at all?”
“You let us play cards? Didn’t know we were allowed to do jack-shit on our own time except veg out to the f*cking soaps.” He jerked his thumb at the TV.
“Until somebody comes up with a way to assault themselves or someone else with a worn-out pack of Hoyles, yes, cards are allowed. You want a game? I’ve got nothing to do for the next half hour.”
“Yeah, fine. Whatever.”
As we walked to the games shelf I said, “That wasn’t a challenge, incidentally. I’m not looking to be proven wrong about cards making lousy weapons.” I kept all the suspicion out of my tone, and it earned me the faintest shadow of a smile.
“Poker?” he asked. “That’s the only kind of cards worth playing.”
If I’d had the time, I would’ve consulted with Dr. Morris and found out if Lee had any known issues with gambling. We weren’t playing for money, but still. At the moment, though, my primary concern was getting him to engage, so I took a gamble myself. “Sure. Five-card draw? That’s all I know.”
“We got anything to bet with?”
I scanned the shelf and grabbed the checkers box.
“Red can be one dollar, and black can be five.” We sat at a free table and Lee shuffled while I divided the checkers between us. Kelly passed by, smooth and silent as a trolling shark.
Lee dealt. “You’re a lot nicer than the other nurses.”
“I’m new. Give it a week,” I said with a smile, stealing Dennis’s line.
“Well, you’re still miles nicer than that Jenny bitch.”
My professional coat slid over my shoulders with ease, no reactionary bits of me tempted to take his bait and get defensive. Clearly I saved those lapses in self-control for real grade-A douchebags like Marco. “It’s not any of our jobs to be nice, sadly, not unless being nice explicitly helps your treatment.”
“Can’t hurt,” Lee said, dealing the cards.
“No, happily you’re right. What’s wild?”
Lee snorted, shooting me this funny little coy glance with his face cast down, a taste of how charming this guy might’ve been, if his life weren’t so terribly complicated. “Wild cards are for babies and pussies.”
“Fine,” I said, arranging my hand then setting a red checker between us. “Ante.”
Lee did the same. “And maybe she’s not such a bitch, that Jenny chick. I was giving her a hard time.”
“She’s used to it.”
“I’m not giving you a hard time, though. ’Cause you’re pretty.”
I gave him a cool look. Nothing about the comment came off as skeezy, but I wouldn’t be setting any permissive precedents with patients where attractiveness was concerned. “It’s not my job to be pretty, either. If you give me any reason to suspect my appearance is becoming a distraction to your treatment, I will arrange for our paths not to cross.”
Lee laughed silently, shaking his head at his cards. “So you’re a bitch, too.”
“When it suits me,” I said, and plunked two red checkers beside the antes. “When it benefits your—”
“Yeah, my f*cking treatment,” he finished for me, still grinning. “I got it.”
After a few hands, I was up eight facsimile bucks and Lee asked, “Where’d you learn to play poker?”
“One of my mom’s old boyfriends,” I said, stacking my ante on his.