Prescription Endangerment

Chapter One- Hospital Coffee Headaches and Chest Tubes

PRESCRIPTION ENDANGERMENT : A novel by Hannah Dean

This book and all of its characters are the intellectual property of Hannah Dean.

Dedicated to all the strong doctors, nurses and law enforcement officers. Could never express enough gratitude. Thank you.

"There is no such thing as being an infallible doctor..." –Edward E. Rosenbaum

CHAPTER ONE: The smell of stale coffee, and hospital disinfectant tickled my nose. The cries of children and the sniffles of sick patients filled my ears. My scrubs rubbed against my skin in a way that made me want to strip right where I stood- audience and all. Being a doctor was hard and I've worked a 6 hour grave shift and was beyond ready to go home.

I sighed.

At this time of night it was usually pretty slow and nothing usually happened but as I learned when I was a med student all it took was a couple of minutes for the ER to go into complete and utter chaos. I took a big gulp of my stale, bitter hospital coffee and rubbed my temples hoping that the horrible headache that has graced me with its presence ever since my shift started would go away.

I took another gulp hoping it would help pull up the haze of heavy drowsiness over my eyes as well.

"Laura!" My best friend Christine called as she jogged over to me.

Her hospital mask draped under her neck and her surgery cap was still tight on her head, holding all the loose bouncy ringlets of unruly curls in place that usually stood out around her heart shaped face. Christine was a beautiful woman, she had luscious chocolate brown skin, big melted golden brown eyes that bored holes into your soul, and she had a sophisticated, elegant look to her but with a certain youth air about her as well.

As she ran up to me I could hear her tennis shoes squeak on the newly mopped white hospital floors and grimaced.

"Yeah, I'm here!" I called back, not looking at her and raising my pen in the air with one hand while rubbing my temples with another. Her shoes stopped squeaking and I looked up at her through my tired eyes.

"How was the appendectomy?" I asked her softly.

"Oh you know typical boring appendix removal. You look like shit Laur... you okay?" She asked, putting a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah I'm good just ready for my shift to be over. It ends in about 2 hours and I have had a migraine that has been killing me ever since my shift started. It's been really slow. But other than that I'm good just ready to go home." I told her.

She nodded and smiled knowingly. Then her eyes drifted up to the television that was playing news reruns.

She pointed to the TV.

"So sad about those murdered girls and did you hear about the girl that just went missing 3 days ago?! I hope they catch the sick son of a bitch who did it." She said practically growling.

I nodded and looked up at TV just as a picture of the most recent picture of the girl who had been kidnapped came on. She looked a lot like me with the fair skin tone, honey golden blonde hair that fell in waves down slender shoulders and ice blue eyes.

The only difference was that I had a freckle above my lip.

Christine always told me how beautiful I was and how she would love to have a beauty mark like that but I don't like it and usually try to cover it up with makeup but to no avail.