California Girl's

Grayson stumbled through the doors of the large medical center as she quickly pulled her long dark blonde hair into a pony tail. She was running late and completely exhausted. Her bright pink scrubs contrasted harshly with the white walls that she was practically running past.

The night before she was up all night with a vomiting five year old and had to call into work to take Annabelle to the doctors. The little girl appeared to only have the twenty four hour bug, which was proven this morning when she was up before Grayson was.

Grayson had never met anyone with as much energy as Annabelle had had this morning and she left a path of destruction through her beach house. Grayson was furious with the little girl for not only waking her up, but also making a complete mess of the house. She had managed to contain her anger and forced the little girl to her room to get ready for school.

Once Annabelle was out of Grayson’s hair for the day she spent over an hour cleaning up the mess the little girl made. Once she was finally done she sat down on the couch and turned on the television. Next thing she knew she was waking up and it was almost noon and her shift started at twelve thirty.

Grayson managed to clock in only five minutes late and sighed knowing that she wasn’t going to get shit for a measly five minutes. She said ‘hi’ to the other nurses that where sitting around the desk area and grabbed the clip board off the hook on the wall and checked over the day’s schedule.

She was happy to see that there weren’t many patients occupying the many rooms of the third floor of the medical center. She scanned the list of names quickly before stopping on the name ‘Barakat’ and checking his information. Scanning through the files she found his and headed to room 312.

Grayson knocked once before entering the room where a guy who appeared to around her age was watching television. Scanning through the paper work she learned that he had been admitted early this morning because of a concussion and the doctors wanted to monitor him for the day. She rolled her eyes; figuring alcohol was involved in why the guy was here.

“Good afternoon Mr. Barakat.” Grayson said politely and the guy turned to look at her revealing a stitched up gash on the side of his forehead.

“It’s Jack,” he said as a goofy smile spread across his face, “And who may you be?”

“I’m Grayson,” She stated politely, “How are you feeling?”

“Like I have a really bad hangover,” He moaned dramatically, “But part of it probably is a real hangover.”

“Figures,” Grayson mumbled as she walked towards him and checked the fluids in the bags on the IV poll. “Well, I just need to get you the discharge papers and some pain medicine and you will be good to go.”

“Hell fucking yes!” Jack exclaimed, his excitement startling Grayson slightly so she quickly made her exit and headed back to the nurses’ station to get all the necessary paperwork.

“Hey Gray,” Melissa, another nurse started, “How’s Annabelle?”

Grayson turned to face her brunette friend and sighed dramatically, “Driving me nuts”

“She’s five, what more can you expect.” Melissa shrugged and turned to answer the ringing phone. Grayson rolled her eyes and made sure she had all the proper paperwork and the prescription for Mr. Barakat’s pain medicine before she headed to his room.

This time when she entered it wasn’t as quite as there were four guys now in the room, all of whom were laughing and talking loudly. Grayson stared at their backs for a second before knocking on the open door. Simultaneously everyone turned to look at her which made Grayson feel really uneasy.

“Nurse Grayson!” Jack screamed. “Guys this is Grayson, my hot nurse.”

Grayson snorted slightly as he continued, “Hot nurse, this is Alex, Rian, Matt and Zack.”

“Nice to meet you,” Grayson mumbled as she waved slightly. Three of the four smiled back at her and said there greets while the fourth just stared at her. She gave him a strange look but walked past the boys and over to the other side of Jack’s bed.

“I’m going to take out the IV, okay?” She started as she went for Jacks arm.

“No!” He shouted and Grayson withdrew her hand quickly. “It’s going to hurt!”

“It wont hurt,” Grayson reassured him like she was talking to a little kid, “It won’t even be half as bad a getting it in.”

“I think I was passed out for that part.” Jack stated as his friend held back there laughs.

“Mr. Barakat,” Grayson started which sent his friends in another fit of laughter, “The sooner you let me take it out the quicker you’ll get out of here.” She sent his friends a warning glance and the three that were laughing shut up quickly.

“Okay!” Jack shouted and held out his arm for Grayson who rolled her eyes before gently pulling the IV out from where it was attached on the inside of the bend of his elbow. She discarded the needle in the proper bin and cleaned the area before putting a dinosaur Band-Aid on it. She was going to go with the plain tan Band-Aid but after seeing the way he was acting she figured he would appreciate the dinosaur one.

Jack clapped happily and sprung from the bed and grabbed the clothes that one of his friends must have brought in and ran towards the bathroom. Grayson ignored the rest of the boys and began making sure everything was cleaned up and Jack’s paper work was filled out correctly.

“Do you live here?” One of the boys asked.

“Yeah,” Grayson answered as she looked up from Jack’s file.

“Cool, we are from out of town,” Whom she thought was Alex started, “Any good places to hang around here?”

“Yeah,” Another one started, “Zack lives here and we’ve been asking him for days but he’s being a party pooper!” The guy shoved Zack who looked at his sneakers.

“Oh, well,” Grayson started telling them all about the cool bars and clubs as Zack watched her intently.

He wasn’t interested per-say, more like annoyed. When he first saw her he could tell the girl was exhausted which he immediately assumed was from a night of drinking. She was young and worked the afternoon shifts, what reason was there to not believe that?

His suspicions were confirmed when she was able to name almost all the hot spots here in Los Angeles without even thinking. She was just like her, right down to the dark blonde hair.

Zack knew it wasn’t necessarily fair to be judging this girl as harshly as he was, but he couldn’t help it. She was just a typical California girl and in Zack’s mind they were all the same.

“You should come out with us tonight!” Jack exclaimed as he reentered the room now fully dressed. Zack cringed and turned to face Grayson as a smile started to spread across her face, of course she was going to say yes.

However, as fast as the smile started it stopped and was quickly replaced with a frown. It happened so quickly that if Zack hadn’t been staring so intently at her he probably would have missed it. None of the guys seemed to notice as Grayson quickly smiled politely at them.

“Sorry, I can’t” She said, as she showed Jack where he needed to sign and handed him the prescription. “Make sure you get this filled, it will help with the splitting headache you probably have.”

“Please come out with us!” Alex whined. Zack watched as Grayson’s smile faltered slightly as she turned to face Jack again.

“Sorry, I really can’t,” Grayson shot down politely, "How long are you guys in town for?"

"Two months," Jack answered quickly.

"Okay," Grayson started, “Before you leave make sure you make an appointment to get those stitches out in about two weeks.”

“Will you be here when I get them out?” Jack pouted at her and Zack rolled his eyes at his friend’s stupidity.

“Depends,” Grayson mumbled as she excused herself and headed out the door.

“Damn, she’s hot!” Jack exclaimed as the other guys agreed, but Zack was still staring at the door Grayson had just left through.

He was intrigued by her. He suddenly cursed himself in his head and scrunched his features up in distaste at that though. That was the last thing he wanted.