Read an Excerpt
A Dose of MurderChapter One
"Open wide." If I had to repeat that order to this kid one more time, I'd stick my head into the autoclave and roast my brain until it popped like a kernel of corn. Of course, first I'd have to remove all the instruments that are sterilized in the darn thing. That's how my day was going. That's how this damn career was going.
No, that's how my life was going.
I glared at the closemouthed kid sitting in front of me in the pediatrician's office I'd offered to work in for a week -- and groaned.
What the hell was I thinking?
I had a permanent job at the Hospital of Saint Greg's. I didn't need this. Why did I insist on doing favors for others all the time?
Stinky Lapuc, the little boy sitting in front of me with his mouth clamped shut tighter than a clam facing a pot of boiling water, glared at me from his perch on the examining table. I called him "Stinky" because the dear must have eaten beans prior to his visit at the office. His real name on the chart was John. Boring. I liked "Stinky" better. It had character. He had gas.
I waved the throat swab in front of his beady, watery eyes. "Open wide, my dear," I repeated in my best Cinderella's Fairy Godmother voice. "Open wide and let Nurse Pauline Sokol take a peek at those handsome tonsils you have." If not, kiddo, this swab gets poked into your tummy until you open. Okay, I'd never poke a five-year-old, but the way I felt right now, I enjoyed a moment of thinking I was capable of child poking.
Today while my feet hurt worse than Stinky's possible strep throat, I stood there and looked at the swab in my hand. Before I stuck it into his bacteria-laced throat, I wished, for a second, that it was a magic wand and I could whisk myself away to Club Med.
Because, although I don't have a mercenary bone in my body, I also didn't have any money in my savings account, and a magic wand was the only way I'd get there. Admittedly, I'm a shopoholic, but hey, I'm single -- not something I'm proud of by the way, and don't get my mother started on that -- and could shop till I dropped. But not today. Today even shopping didn't pique my interest. Hell, I was tired of taking odd jobs on my vacations. I was tired of my regular job as a unit director in Labor and Delivery who hired and fired staff. I didn't have the stomach for the firing. Frankly, I'd been considering the fact that I was ... burned out.
Nursing had been my life, yet now ... I needed a change. But I couldn't afford to just quit with no future plans.
Stinky looked as if he needed to cough or yawn or something, so I aimed my swab. "Open wide, sugar-doll."
His mother, Mrs. Lapuc and cousin to Andrea Lapuc, who went to high school with me and stole my boyfriend Stephen, gave me an odd look. "You think you could get him to open?" I asked in my most professional voice, although that poking thing wouldn't leave my thoughts.
She took the boy by his collar. "Do what she says or no dessert tonight."
Amazed that the old threat was still used by parents today (My mother had used it as her dinner mantra until I was about thirty. No, wait, she still uses it on me), I stood at the ready.
Stinky hesitated. Then, as if watching a drawbridge go up in slow motion when you're the last car in line and you have to pee, I took the swab from the holder, held it at the ready, and saw his little lips part. It wasn't enough yet, so I gave a pleading look to his mom.
"Dessert."
That did the trick.
Or so I thought, until he bit down on the swab, leaving half of it in my hand. "Don't swallow!" I reached toward his lips. "Open."
He looked at me, then the remainder of the swab shot out with the force of his tongue clearly behind it. I looked down. The swab was stuck to my left breast. "Excuse me." I walked out of the room, screamed inside my head and promptly went to get another one.
"Don't do that this time," I said, giving another pleading look at his mother when I came back in.
"He doesn't feel good, you know."
And I hated my career.
"That's why he's behaving like this," she said, then grabbed his arm. "Open!"
He did, and the swab hit its mark before he clamped shut like Jaws again, and I had my -- hopefully -- last patient taken care of. I gave the mother instructions about the test and turned to go.
Mrs. Lapuc bundled Stinky up although the office had to be a hundred degrees. Outside was snow covered and maybe in the thirties, but this wasn't Alaska. It was Connecticut, for crying out loud.
Babies cried. Toddlers ran rampant. Older kids, I'm guessing by the colorful language, yelled words to the nurses that even I didn't use in the privacy of my home when alone, and the odor of diapers, full and ripe, mixed with medicine that no kid in their right mind would take unless under threat of mother.
The soreness in my feet spread to the tips of my shoulderlength blonde (natural, I swear!) hair, which was wrapped, nurse-style, upon my head. When I got to the nurses' station and had given the swab to Maryann, the full-time nurse who'd know better what to do with it, I collapsed into a chair. Thank goodness it wheeled itself into the counter with the weight of my fall and not out into the hallway where I could have bowled over one of the little patients ...
A Dose of Murder. Copyright © by Lori Avocato. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
