Full Rigged (Lost Creek Rodeo #4) - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,12
shape, and color of your pills will depend on the manufacturer. Why don’t you take your pill bottles over to the hospital pharmacy and have them help you out? I’ll send a note down that you’ll be coming.” She nodded, starting toward the door.
“And my samples?”
“They’ll be at the desk with your lab orders,” Brynn assured him, forcing another smile. “Come on out.”
She started down the hall, her pulse thudding in the sides of her neck, her face growing hot. She scribbled down the labs she wanted done and handed the note to Katie. “More labs. And give him samples. And tell the pharmacy he needs help telling his medicines apart.”
“Can do,” Katie said with a firm nod. “You’ve got three messages, two of them urgent. Also, Dr. Halliday at the ER would like you to call her at your convenience—something about a patient of yours showing up there with complications.”
Brynn started to shake, even as she took the memos. “And how many patients are in rooms still?”
“Four in rooms, last one in the waiting room.”
She’d never make it.
Biting down on the inside of her lip, she turned away. “Thank you, Katie.”
She heard her assistant greet Mr. Walsh, taking care of his needs, and she passed her office quickly, going to the one two doors down. “Melanie? What’s your schedule like right now?”
The nurse practitioner looked up in surprise, but smiled widely. “Just finished. You need me?”
Brynn nodded, swallowing as she felt the shaking within her intensify. “I’m so backed up. Could you help with a few patients?”
“Of course!” Melanie was on her feet at once, straightening her white coat and coming around the desk. “Any preference?”
“Nope, I just need a minute, so if you could jump in . . .” Brynn tightened the clamping of her teeth, which were now chattering freely.
Melanie nodded and patted her arm. “Gotcha. I’m on it.” She grinned and moved around her toward the patient rooms with a bounce in her step Brynn hadn’t had in a long time.
Releasing a barely contained, unsteady breath, Brynn backtracked to her office as fast as she dared, closing the door behind her.
“No,” she groaned low, trailing off into a whimper and squeezing her eyes shut.
“Dr. Kershaw?” someone asked from the other side of the door.
“Just a sec, I need to call the ER back,” she replied, somehow making her tone neutral.
The steps retreated, and Brynn immediately put both hands over her mouth.
Then she let go, releasing a roar barely muffled by her palms, curling up against her boiling fury. Her arms and legs seemed to catch fire, and her head pounded at a furious pace. A frantic edge suddenly found its way into her thoughts, and she looked around her office, wide-eyed. She needed to throw something, squeeze something, tear anything and everything.
She needed some actual release to this madness.
The phone at her desk rang, and she turned to it, unable to consider adding one more thing to her plate. She raced around the desk and yanked the cord from the back of the phone, then hurled the phone against the wall with a growling hiss lashing against her clenched teeth, some ounce of sanity reminding her that she was at work and others might hear her. She stared at the remains of the phone on the floor, her chest heaving, ears pounding.
It wasn’t enough.
She whirled and knocked everything nearest her off the desk: a cup of pens, her nameplate, reports for the afternoon patients, an office dish of paperclips, and a stapler. All of them crashed to the floor, and none of them gave her relief.
Rage gave way to shame, and shame buckled her knees, sending her limply to the ground, every breath tearing at her lungs and draining her. Then she couldn’t control it, gasping and rasping at an inhuman pace, sobbing without tears, her head swimming in air that did nothing for her body. She curled her fingers into the carpet, her nails gripping hard, trying to count to ten, or hold her breath, or ground herself in some way to her present rather than float on the tossing waves of her uncontrolled emotions.
She was going to die here in this office. Amid her mess and her rage, she was going to die. Minimus would get everything he hadn’t gotten in the settlement, and he would win. He’d break her, at last.
She didn’t want to be broken. Didn’t want to be under his thumb. Didn’t want . . .