After Hours Read Online Free Page A

some modicum of instinct
     was a relief beyond measure. I got to my feet, shaky but proud, feeling like a part
     of a team.
    “Well done,” Jenny said, once the patient was calm and settled once more and his doctor
     had been paged.
    “Thanks.”
    Back in the booth, she jotted a note on a clipboard. “Dennis said this is your first
     psych gig.”
    “Kind of. I was my grandma’s live-in caregiver for six years. She had dementia. My
     psych hours for school were at an outpatient substance abuse facility. So no hands-on
     experience with . . . you know. Nothing this intense.” Nothing this dangerous.
    “Ambitious,” she said, scribbling.
    Ambitious
wasn’t quite the word. This position was the only one I’d found within an hour’s drive
     of Amber. I’d have far preferred to get work in a nursing home, but I didn’t think
     it’d curry me much favor to tell Jenny I was only here as a matter of complete desperation.
    “I saw on the roster you’ll be doing restraint training the next three days,” she
     said.
    “Yeah.” And I couldn’t for the life of me decide if I was pleased about it. This was
restraint
as in wrestling a patient into submission in order to calm him or administer a sedative,
     not restraints like you’d use to strap him to a bed. Mastering the drill in the event
     of an outburst was essential, of course, but I worried that after I’d completed the
     training, the danger would feel all the more acute. The training would also take a
     bite out of my days off, Wednesday and Thursday, which I could have used to process
     all these changes, get my things unpacked, and explore my new town.
    “It usually takes place in the gym in the Warbler building,” Jenny said. “You’re the
     only new hire from our ward who’ll be taking part, but Kelly helps teach, so there’ll
     be one familiar face, at least.”
    As if I could call anyone’s face
familiar
yet. And as if I’d be able to relax, counting down the hours to when six-feet-several-inches
     of Kelly Robak would likely be pretending to assault me. The thought of his massive
     arm locked around my neck made my southerly lady region flutter to sudden life.
    Oh dear. That wasn’t right.
    Kelly Robak was
not
my type. He was too big, too covered in bruises, and
far
too married—just too
much
. Most worrisome of all, he looked an awful lot like Amber’s type, which meant I’d
     already spent years fostering a grudge against him.
    Still, he drew my eyes from across the rec room, some obscene muscle or other flexing
     in his forearm as he reached up to change the channel on the television. Knowing my
     luck, I’d seize up and faint in his demonstrative choke hold, outing myself as the
     neophyte I was. Though perhaps I’d ought to be more worried that some sexual monkey
     wrench would jam my good sense during a drill and my body would refuse to fight him
     off. In any case, all the logical, northerly regions of my being decided restraint
     training was something to dread.
    * * *
    Things got busy after the morning lull. Lunch meant more meds to organize and distribute,
     then Jenny took me through the exhaustive inventory rigmarole in the various nurses’
     stations. There weren’t any more incidents after the UNO debacle, and by late afternoon
     I’d gotten most of the patients and their diagnoses and treatment plans copied onto
     a mental crib sheet, having spent a couple of hours studying their files.
    Rattling off their histories and dosages couldn’t hold a candle to actually having
     relationships with them, though, and when dinner was getting underway, Jenny suggested
     I join her, eating with the residents in the dining room. I’d scarfed a banana for
     lunch, feeling pokey with my paperwork, so the promise of a sit-down meal was enough
     to steel my resolve.
    Since breakfast I’d been hearing mutterings of “pizza day,” and now I could smell
     it. Ambrosia. I followed Jenny and we got in line alongside patients and staff