The Nurse Ravenna Chose

JoAnn Mercer had never been so proud of herself as she was on the afternoon she signed the contract with Saint Marcellus Medical Center, one of the most prestigious private hospitals in the city, because she had survived three interviews, answered every clinical question perfectly, impressed the nursing director with her calm confidence, and secured a salary nearly fifty percent higher than the one she had earned at the overcrowded community hospital where she had spent the previous four years working herself half to death without ever getting ahead. “There will be occasional schedule changes,” the director had explained, sliding the contract across the polished conference table. “New nurses must sometimes accept swing shifts or cover unexpected shortages.” “I understand,” JoAnn said eagerly. “I’m flexible.” Her initial schedule looked almost too good to be true, with mostly daytime hours and nearly every evening free, and when she was introduced to the staff, assigned a locker and shown through the immaculate wards, she believed she had finally found the place where her career would begin properly. The only unpleasant moment came when she met her assigned adviser, Doctor John Patton, a handsome, silver-haired surgeon with a wedding ring and a way of looking at her that made JoAnn feel as though he were mentally undressing her. “You’ll do very well here,” he said, allowing his eyes to linger before offering his hand. “Very well indeed.” JoAnn told herself she had imagined it. She was scheduled to begin at ten the following morning, so that evening she put on a new dress while her boyfriend Andrew searched for his car keys, both of them excited about meeting friends for a celebratory dinner, but just as they were preparing to leave, her telephone rang. “This is staffing from Saint Marcellus. We need you at ten tonight.” “Tonight?” JoAnn looked at the clock. “My first shift is tomorrow morning.” “We have an emergency shortage. Your contract states that you may be reassigned as needed.” JoAnn covered the receiver and looked at Andrew. “Go,” he said with a disappointed sigh. “It’s your first day. You can’t say no.” She arrived at ten, worked through a brutal night of emergencies and demanding patients, left shortly after seven in the morning, and had barely removed her shoes when she checked the scheduling application and discovered that her ten o’clock shift had not been removed. When she called staffing, the woman answering sounded almost bored. “You are still expected.” “I’ve just completed nine hours.” “Then I suggest you drink some coffee.” That became the rhythm of JoAnn’s new life: double shifts, sudden changes, nights that became mornings, mornings that became afternoons, and increasingly rare stretches of sleep interrupted by calls informing her that another nurse was unavailable. At the belated celebration with their friends, JoAnn fell asleep halfway through dinner with her head resting against the restaurant wall. Andrew shook her awake in the car afterward. “This can’t continue.” “I’ve only been there a week.” “You’re never awake, Jo. We don’t go anywhere, we don’t talk, and when you come to bed, you’re unconscious before I can even kiss you.” “I’m trying to build a career.” “And I’m trying to have a girlfriend.” Desperate for help, JoAnn went to Doctor Patton’s office the following afternoon. He listened while leaning back in his chair, his expression sympathetic until he placed one hand slightly above her knee. “The beginning is always difficult,” he said quietly. “But schedules can be improved for nurses who demonstrate the right attitude.” JoAnn stared at his hand. “What attitude?” His thumb moved once against her uniform. “Loyalty. Cooperation. A willingness to make the lives of senior physicians more comfortable.” JoAnn stood so quickly that the chair struck the wall behind her. “I need to return to the ward.” She hurried through the doorway, her heart pounding, and heard him call after her with a soft laugh. “You’ll be back soon.” A week later, Andrew warned her that he was ready to end their relationship, and another nurse named Sandra, who somehow worked only comfortable morning shifts, explained exactly how the system operated. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be,” Sandra said while applying lipstick in the staff restroom. “Be nice to your doctor and you’ll have a perfect life.” “What does ‘nice’ mean?” Sandra glanced at her in the mirror. “Occasionally you close his office door and take care of him. Sometimes you accompany him to conferences. Doctors work harder than we do, or at least that is what they like to believe, and they expect certain considerations.” “But Doctor Patton is married.” “His wife knows when he has a weekend symposium.” “You’re engaged.” “And I’ll be head nurse before anyone else in this department.” Sandra slipped the lipstick into her pocket. “Now excuse me. My doctor is on his break, and he’ll be expecting my services.” By the end of the month, JoAnn was too exhausted to be angry and too frightened to quit, because leaving a prestigious hospital after only a few weeks would stain her résumé, while remaining seemed certain to destroy every part of her life that existed outside it. She returned to Doctor Patton’s office. He smiled before she had even closed the door. “I told you that you would come back.” “What do I have to do for a reasonable schedule?” This time, when he placed his hands on her waist, she was too tired and frightened to immediately pull away. “I have a medical conference beginning Monday,” he said. “You will accompany me through Friday. If you are as accommodating as you are attractive, you’ll have whatever schedule you desire when we return.” “I need to think.” “No, dear. You need to decide. There are others waiting in line.” JoAnn closed her eyes. “All right.” “Good. Come to my house Sunday evening at eight. I’ll prepare you for the week, we’ll spend the night becoming better acquainted, and we’ll leave early Monday morning.” When JoAnn told Andrew that she had been ordered to attend a seminar, he stared at her as though he no longer recognized her. “Sunday is my parents’ anniversary party.” “I know.” “You promised you would come.” “I can’t control the hospital.” “You don’t control anything anymore.” He packed a bag and left that night. At midnight, with another shift beginning at ten the following morning, JoAnn crossed the street from her small apartment to the luxurious Bellweather Hotel, intending to sit in its bar and drown every thought she possessed, but the bartender looked at her wrinkled nursing uniform and shook his head. “I’m sorry. We have a dress code.” “She is with me.” The voice came from the far end of the bar. The woman who had spoken appeared to be in her early thirties, with extraordinarily pale skin, dark auburn hair falling over the shoulders of an elegant black dress, and gray eyes that seemed almost silver beneath the amber lights. “She is the Vale Foundation’s emergency medical consultant and came directly from the hospital.” the woman continued calmly. The title was completely invented, but Ravenna delivered it with such effortless authority that the bartender immediately apologized. “My apologies, Ms. Vale.” JoAnn was escorted to the empty chair beside her rescuer. Once JoAnn had been seated beside her, the woman extended one pale hand. “Ravenna Vale.” “JoAnn Mercer,” she replied, still bewildered. “And I’m not really a medical consultant.” Ravenna smiled. “No, but you looked as though you urgently needed someone to believe you were important.” JoAnn ordered whiskey, but Ravenna quietly replaced it with sparkling water and lime. “You are too tired to drink safely.” “You don’t even know me.” “I know that your hands are trembling, your eyes are red, and you have looked toward the door seven times since sitting down, as though you expect someone to enter and demand something from you.” JoAnn attempted to laugh, but instead began to cry. Ravenna said nothing unnecessary, asked no careless questions, and never once told her what she should have done differently; she simply listened while JoAnn described the hospital, Andrew, Sandra, Doctor Patton and the approaching Sunday evening she could not bear to imagine. When the bar closed at two, Ravenna walked her across the street. At JoAnn’s door, embarrassment returned. “My apartment is very small.” “I did not ask how large it was.” “It’s a mess.” “I did not ask whether it was clean.” JoAnn wanted desperately to invite her inside, yet fear and confusion overcame her. “Thank you for listening.” She unexpectedly wrapped both arms around Ravenna, felt the other woman’s cool hands settle gently against her back, and remained there longer than any stranger should have been permitted to remain. Then she went inside alone. For the next two hours, she lay awake thinking not about Andrew or the hospital, but about Ravenna’s patient eyes and the sensation of being held without anyone demanding payment in return. By Sunday morning, after another double shift, JoAnn had slept scarcely four hours in two days, and with her appointment at Doctor Patton’s house approaching, she dressed carefully, crossed to the Bellweather Hotel and entered the bar thirty minutes before closing. Ravenna was not there. “She left fifteen minutes ago,” the bartender told her. JoAnn sat in the lobby, suddenly overwhelmed by the certainty that she had lost the only person who had made her feel safe. A security guard approached. “Madam, loitering is not permitted.” “I’m sorry. I’ll leave.” The guard’s expression abruptly changed, his eyes becoming strangely unfocused before he touched one finger to the earpiece beneath his collar. “Ms. Vale is expecting you.” JoAnn was escorted through a private corridor to an elevator without visible buttons, and when its doors opened, she stepped into a penthouse of glass, dark wood and candlelight, high above the city. Ravenna stood before the windows. “I was beginning to fear you wouldn’t come,” she said. “I was beginning to fear the same thing.” This time JoAnn told her everything, including the agreement she had made and the address she was expected to visit at eight. “You are not going,” Ravenna said. “I’ll lose my job.” “No.” “You don’t understand what he can do.” Ravenna crossed the room, touched JoAnn’s cheek and answered softly, “You don’t understand what I can do.” Their first kiss was slow, almost cautious, yet JoAnn felt the entire exhausted month fall away beneath it, and when she kissed Ravenna again, it was with the hunger of someone who had been overlooked, overworked and untouched for far too long. She remained in the penthouse throughout Sunday, sleeping against Ravenna’s shoulder, waking to food waiting beside the bed, talking until the city lights appeared beneath the windows, and discovering during the night that tenderness could be more overwhelming than passion because Ravenna watched her, listened to her and made every touch feel like a question JoAnn was allowed to answer freely. At eight, Ravenna dressed in black. “Stay here.” “You’re going to his house?” “Yes.” “What are you going to tell him?” “Very little.” Doctor Patton was surprised when he opened his door and found Ravenna standing there instead of JoAnn, but surprise quickly became interest. “JoAnn sent a substitute?” he asked, looking her over. “You could describe me that way.” He invited her inside. The door closed. Several minutes later, Doctor Patton lay asleep in his study, two small marks concealed beneath his collar, while Ravenna knelt beside him and whispered instructions his waking mind would never remember receiving. “JoAnn Mercer will receive the best assignments in the hospital. Her schedule will be protected, her salary increased, and she will never again be threatened, touched or harassed. Within six months, she will become head nurse because she deserves the position, not because she surrendered anything to obtain it. You will apologize, and you will believe the apology was your own idea.” When Ravenna returned to the penthouse, JoAnn rushed toward her. “What happened?” “Tomorrow morning, you will go to work as usual.” “That’s all you’re going to tell me?” “For tonight.” Monday morning, Doctor Patton apologized for what he called a terrible misunderstanding, the nursing director presented JoAnn with a permanent daytime schedule, and every senior physician in the building suddenly treated her with remarkable respect. That evening, JoAnn returned to her tiny apartment and cried for an entirely different reason. Ravenna visited briefly, sitting beside her on the old sofa while JoAnn apologized repeatedly for the cracked walls, mismatched furniture and narrow bedroom. “I have lived in palaces,” Ravenna said, taking her hand. “Very few of them contained anyone I wanted.” When Ravenna left later that night, claiming she had business to conduct, JoAnn lasted less than an hour alone. She pulled a coat over her nightgown, crossed the street and entered the Bellweather lobby barefoot except for a pair of hastily chosen flats. The security guard smiled as though he had been expecting her. “Good evening, Ms. Mercer.” The private elevator opened. JoAnn found Ravenna standing in the penthouse doorway, her pale face newly radiant, her hunger satisfied, though another kind of longing remained in her eyes. “I couldn’t stay away,” JoAnn admitted. “I know.” “I don’t want to return to that apartment tonight.” “You never have to.” JoAnn stepped into Ravenna’s arms. “I don’t only mean tonight.” Ravenna’s expression softened. “Neither do I.” Far beneath them, Saint Marcellus Medical Center glowed against the darkness, still filled with ambitious doctors, exhausted nurses and secrets hidden behind respectable doors, but JoAnn no longer felt trapped by any of it, because for the first time in her life, someone powerful had looked at her vulnerability and chosen not to exploit it. Ravenna had found her meal elsewhere. JoAnn, willingly and joyfully, had become her dessert.