Mine at Last Read Online Free Page A

holding a bleeding nose.
    As usual, Shauna steeled herself from the emotional trial of empathy. Instead, she remained completely objective and distant to those around her. She barely blinked an eye hearing a child crying or seeing a bleeding wound. She pulled out her computer tablet and began working. Names were called and people got up and disappeared behind a secured door accessed only by the nurse at check-in desk or a swipe of a key card. For the next hour and a half, she watched and wrote what she saw and didn’t see. She noted suggestions and remarked on various situations.
    Her job was the last step before finalizing the buyout, and so far, she wasn’t impressed. Midway through a reference to expedite the triage process, her cell phone vibrated. She pulled it out and glanced at the caller ID. “Hey, Pearl,” she said quietly as she looked around. “How are you? Everything okay?”
    “No, everything’s not okay. I’m losing my mind and I’m bored out of my skull. This retirement thing is for the birds. I’m up early because I’ve gotten up early every day of my life since I was fourteen years old. And what do I do? Twiddle my thumbs all day. Where’s the sense in that? When are you getting here?”
    Shauna smiled and chuckled to herself. Pearl Tyson was a heavyset woman with long, thick black hair that she proudly told everyone took years to grow and she was never cutting. She grew up in foster care and became extremely successful on her own terms. She was Shauna’s mother’s best friend years ago. They lived next to each other before all the craziness started, and out of all her mother’s friend’s, she was the only one to stand by her side when the trouble came. “I’m here now. I got in late last night. I was going to call you this weekend.”
    “You should have called me last night. I’m going crazy here.”
    “Why don’t you watch some television?”
    “Yeah, right,” she said sarcastically. “Five hundred TV channels and there’s not a single thing worth watching on any of them. I swear if I see one more reality show or one more morning or afternoon chitchat talk show yapping about mindless celebrity and want-to-be-celebrity nothing, I’m going to throw the TV out of the window.”
    Shauna chuckled and shook her head. When said by most people, the comment would be just an open, empty threat. But coming from Pearl Tyson, it was quite possibly true. Pearl was the only person she knew in Key West now. All of her old so-called friends from high school had long since shown their colors. But Pearl had stayed by her family’s side for years. Because both her parents were gone, Pearl, a childless orphan herself, had stepped into the role as Shauna’s pseudomother and had been at her side ever since.
    She was there through college and when Shauna opened her own successful medical consulting business. She was Shauna’s biggest fan. She even helped her land one of her company’s biggest clients, Cura Medical Group. The Cura Group bought medical facilities. Their newest potential acquisition was the Key West Medical Center. This brought her full circle back to Key West. “No, don’t toss the TV.”
    “All right, enough of this. So, what are you up to today?”
    “Right now I’m sitting in the E.R. checking the place out.”
    “Don’t you usually do that earlier in the mornings?” Pearl said.
    “Yes, I do and I did, but...” she hedged.
    “But what?” Pearl prompted.
    “I was interrupted and then it got a little complicated.”
    “Complicated, what do you mean, ‘complicated’?” Pearl asked.
    Shauna took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. This wasn’t exactly what she wanted to talk about, but she knew Pearl would understand. “It’s no big deal. I got thrown out, that’s all,” she said, saving her document and exiting her file.
    Pearl chuckled. “What, you got thrown out? What did you do?”
    “Nothing. It was a mistake. They thought I was a reporter.”
    “Why did they