NIGHT DUTY
Chelsea DeYoung is a registered nurse who works for St. Thomas Medical Center. She is thirty-five and has been a nurse for eight years. When she first hired on to St. Thomas she was assigned to the night shift, like most new nurses.
Unlike most nurses, Chelsea liked the night shift. It was mostly quiet with no visitors or doctors around disturbing the patients by bossing around the nurses. There were ten rooms in the ICU where she worked. They were mostly short-term stays and there were usually only five or six occupied at any one time.
The hospital didn't want a patient to stay in ICU for any longer than necessary. Everyone that worked in that unit was paid higher than the rest of the hospital staff, and the longer a patient stayed there, the higher the risk of unwanted outcomes. The hospital HATED unwanted outcomes and did everything they could to avoid them. Normally, a patient wasn't there more than a few hours before they were moved to a regular room. In rare cases a patient might be there for a few days before they could be moved. Chelsea hated having these patients, not just because they brought more doctors and specialists into her ward, but because she didn't want them to suffer anymore than they had to. Many times, there would be family and friends that had to wait in the waiting room, not knowing why their family or friend was being held. She knew the doctors weren't always upfront with the families, and she had to be careful what she said to them.
By then, Chelsea was the highest-ranking nurse in charge of the nurses on the ward. She had requested to stay and not move to first shift when she had the opportunity to do so. The hospital and her co-workers were surprised. She never explained why she wanted to stay on the night shift, and the hospital didn't ask. It was always one of the hardest jobs to fill, and having a competent nurse running the ward at night made them breath better. They would promote her and leave her alone.
There had been a couple of special cases that she watched over. One was Mary Beth Williams, an eighty-five-year-old woman who was the mother of a board member. She had cancer surgery a couple of weeks ago. They believed they had gotten the cancer, but she was reacting badly to the surgery and medications. The hospital kept her there to show the board member they were taking "the best care" possible for his mother. He only came to see her once in a while and she was a confused, lonely old woman. Chelsea spent many a night at her bedside, attempting to calm her and help her get to sleep.
The other long-term patient was Randall Watson. He was thirty-nine and had been in a car accident. His injuries weren't considered life-threatening, but when he came out of surgery, he didn't wake up. After a couple of days, it was apparent something was wrong.
What surprised Chelsea was his length of stay. Normally, he would have been shipped to a long-term facility after a few days. The fact he was still there after three weeks made Chelsea wonder. She was beginning to think there may have been a mistake during his surgery. Money is the only determinative factor in what the management of the hospital did. This man had only his basic insurance. They normally only cover ICU for a day, no more. Why he was still here, she didn't know. The only thing she knew for certain; it wasn't the good heartedness of the board. There was no reason given on his charts for his still being there, or what he was suffering from.
Other than the continuing of the revolving daily rooms that she would sometimes not even meet, these two were the only "regulars" in here care.
She learned from one of the surgery nurses that he was suffering from postoperative cognitive dysfunction from the surgery. The nurse whispered something about a mistake by the anesthesiologist, but that was only a rumor.
In other words, he never woke up from the surgery. These types of cases are very rare, but they can be deadly. Loss of memory and confusion are usually the result of this, even if the patient finally wakes up.
Chelsea decided she was going to help her two "regulars" as much as she could. She began reading and giving Mary Beth warm baths before bedtime. She made sure she rolled her over and got her out of bed, even if it meant Chelsea had to lift her out of the bed and "carry" her around the room as she "walked" around. Anything to give her a little hope. Her son didn't come much, and there was no one else left.
For Watson, she bathed him daily and made sure his tubes were operating properly. She also read to him, and, on the nights they were his only patients, she would spend most of the night with him.
He was a handsome man, but he had no wife or friends that continued to visit him. Only his parents, and they were becoming more and more desperate as the days dragged by. They came during the day, so Chelsea never saw them after the first night.
One night, while she was bathing him, he suddenly had an erection. This wasn't that uncommon, but the sight of his seven or eight inches standing up on a sleeping patient did give her pause.
Chelsea knew she was alone, and before she knew what she had done, she began stroking him. It was lightly at first, but he soon began leaking the pre-cum and she became more excited. She stroked his penis until it fired into the room. It was a healthy amount. Maybe he had been saving it up, but she wasn't thinking about those terms. All she could think about was what she had just done. Many nurses jerk off a patient, either to calm them down, or because they liked the patient, and he had been nice to them.
As she cleaned up the mess, Chelsea decided she just felt sorry for him, and it was an automatic reaction, nothing really personal. She was just being a good nurse.
She went to Mary Beth's room to find her asleep. Nothing else to do for the rest of the night, so she returned to Randall's room.
She sat on the edge of the bed and read him the sports page of the paper. She then read him some of the front page. She decided that night that she was going to help this man wake up.
Every couple of days she shaved his face. Every day she brushed his teeth, gave him a bath and read to him. She began talking to him like he was there. She would carry on complete conversations by answering for him sometimes.
It was a week later that he had another erection. This time, there was no hesitation. She calmly jerked him off as she said nice, sexy things to him.
