Velvet Haven

acrylic nail tips, Mairi knew that Blondie, as she’d dubbed her, wasn’t in it to help the sick and injured.
    Her student crossed her long, shapely legs, not bothering to shove down the creeping hem of her already too short dress. She’d already given Blondie the dress- code rundown, but her student obviously didn’t care. Which made Mairi not give a shit, either. Why should she put effort into someone whose only concern was landing a rich doctor?
    “I bet you’re one of those real nurse types, aren’t you?”
    “I care about people who are hurting, if that’s what you mean.”
    Blondie snorted. “No way am I doing this gig all my life. I hate going home smelling of hospital and . . . people.” Blondie actually shivered in disgust. “I can tell you’ve been doing this forever, though. The shift work shows around your eyes.”
    Mairi actually felt herself snarl, and was about to tell Blondie where she could stuff her inflated boobs and empty brain when the chief of the ER came up to the desk, looking for a head to bite off.
    “Where’s the chart for the MVA in five?” Dr. Bartlett growled.
    “I don’t know,” Mairi replied, refusing to be cowed. “I’m not assigned to trauma tonight. I’m working domestic violence.”
    Bartlett actually growled as he flipped through a pile of charts that lay on the desk. “Is it too damn much to ask you nurses to keep the chart outside the cubicle?”
    “It’s against hospital policy. The privacy act,” she reminded him.
    Bartlett growled, “I need a pen and the chart. Please, ” he said with mock sincerity.
    Beside her, Blondie perked up. “Oh, let me get that for you, Doctor.”
    Rolling her eyes, Mairi went back to work on her book, separating the fragile vellum pages that had stuck to each other. Bartlett, while a good doctor, was an ass to nurses. It’d be a frosty day in hell before Mairi jumped to do his bidding.
    “Here you go.” Mairi saw the student nurse flip her long blond hair over her shoulder and stick out her silicone breasts. Old Bartlett’s eyes almost bugged out of his skull, smacking against his eyeglass lenses.
    “I could use a hand in trauma five,” he murmured, not bothering to look at Mairi.
    “I’d love to help,” Blondie gushed.
    Mairi watched her student leave and laughed to herself. If she was looking to marry a rich doctor, Blondie was barking up the wrong tree. Bartlett was a womanizing snake who was drained by alimony payments to his long-suffering ex- wife, not to mention those hush- hush child support payments he was making to one of the nurses Mairi worked with. There was very little left for the lifestyle Blondie was dreaming of.
    “She know that Bartlett won’t give her anything but a case of VD?”
    Mairi grinned at the department’s secretary. “Nah, I’ll let her figure that one out for herself. All part of the learning curve.”
    “So, got yourself another one of those books, eh?”
    Mairi flushed. “Yeah.”
    “Pretty girl like you should be getting herself a man.” Mairi groaned. She really didn’t want to have this conversation again. Thankfully the phone rang and the secretary reached for it, allowing Mairi to go back to her manuscript. She’d collected the beautiful books for years, and this little gem was a prize. She’d found it hiding behind some books at the bottom of the antique rosewood bookcase in the library of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. Opening it, she realized it wasn’t just an ordinary manuscript, but some kind of diary. It was ancient, written in a language similar to Old English. Mairi knew as she held the worn leather book in her hand that she had to have it. Just to borrow, she had told herself.
    The book had spoken to her. Like Gollum in Lord of the Rings , she would have stroked it and called it “my precious” if one of the nuns hadn’t walked by, forcing Mairi to bury it in her work bag.
    And since that day she’d been all but consumed by it, by the need to translate the story and understand it. And since that day in the library, not only had the book come into her life, but a strange dream had as well.
    “I’m gonna go for break,” Mairi called to Louise, the charge nurse for the shift. “I’ll be in the sleep room if you need me.”
    Stuffing the book into her bag, Mairi picked up her coffee mug and headed to the back room that housed a twin bed and a bunch of extra equipment. The shift was relatively slow and she planned to take advantage of it.
    The