Chapter 1

My name is Nancy Norris. I'm 18 years old and a senior at Grossmont High School. I've been working as a candy striper at Grossmont hospital ever since I was 16, a little over two years now.

I'm a virgin.

My first sexual feelings were confusing. I guess everyone's are. But my confusion was over which gender I wanted to have sex with. All the boys I knew seemed rough and violent. I heard stories of pain and blood and guys concentrating on themselves, leaving the woman wanting. Plus, the only time my parents seemed to have anything to do with me was when they warned me about boys and what they were like. According to my mother, they were the devil incarnate, only after one thing, ready to discard innocent girls once they got what they desired.

Girls, on the other hand, couldn't be like that. They knew what made them feel good, so they could make other girls feel good. No clumsy, big fingers, fumbling around for a few seconds. No blood, no pain. Tenderness, caring, a loving touch.

At 13, I made the mistake of telling a girl in P.E. how I felt. Somehow I got the idea she felt the same. Boy, was that a mistake. It seemed like I'd hardly dried myself off from the shower when the girls started calling me "The Lezzy." They still do. Not to my face but behind my back. It hurts. I used to cry myself to sleep about it until my mother started complaining about my crying at night. She never took the trouble to find out why. She just complained because it bothered her.

My work at the hospital became my salvation. Nobody there knew or cared about how I felt about the opposite sex. I was there to work and that's what I did. Sometimes I felt that some people felt I was there to be a slave, but I enjoyed helping people, even if it meant cleaning up after them.

I didn't realize how lonely I was until Dr. Bradley started working. He took over the surgery department and immediately started looking for ways to make things better. All of a sudden, I was an expert. Me, the lowly little candy striper. He actually had a meeting with me to discuss how the candy stripers could work with the doctors and the nurses to make the hospital a better place.

It was an actual discussion, not a lecture. The first thing he did was ask what I thought should be done. It was the first time I hadn't been told what to do, where to go or when to do it.

It felt so good to be valued. To be treated as if I meant something. He actually called me Sunshine. He'd come up to me when I was waiting by someone's wheelchair while they were getting an x-ray, put his arm on my shoulder and ask how things were going. And the guy actually wanted to know.

I could have fallen for him if I let myself. I know I had, and still have, a serious case of hero worship. It would have been futile to make the effort to get him to love me, though. His heart was taken before our first meeting. In fact, he set up the meeting while in the cafeteria with the woman of his dreams. Not my words, his.

Her name is Susan Bond, mother of three and wife. Yes, wife. From what I've heard, her husband had been cheating on her for years. It had gotten pretty bad recently with him spending time with the latest of his women, claiming to be out of town, working. Their oldest, a boy, was hit by a car and was in pretty bad shape. He was in a coma, had a broken back, a couple of broken legs and he lost both kidneys. Fortunately, the daughter was a perfect match and volunteered one of hers. Evidently, the jerk was too busy to visit them or even find out how they were doing. I don't know if Dr. Bradley and Mrs. Bond fell in love or she decided to throw the bum out first. But he was definitely smitten and was waiting for her to be free five minutes after he came out of surgery to tell her about her boy.

They eventually got married and are expecting their first child. There was something weird about that whole thing. There were too many stories about him staying away from her until she was divorced and totally free to believe otherwise. But she's way too fat, way too soon if he did. Or somebody else planted that baby in her.

That's all beside the point. The point is, I began to think that maybe all the stuff I heard about men wasn't true about all men. Dr. Bradley, or Jeff, as he had me call him, wasn't a brute, only interested in women to have his way with them and dump them. The way he was with me, his daughter and her best friend, the way he was with Mrs. Bond, neither was the way a brute would behave. Sure, I saw plenty of guys I could believe would behave that way. But not all of them. Maybe the right one could be found.

The Bond family played a big part in my growth. Wes, the boy, was going to be out of it for a long time. Jeff had a theory that he was in a coma to be able to heal his body and that he'd wake up when he was ready. Les, his sister, was an active 15 year old girl who had to take it easy for a while because she'd donated a kidney to Wes. The convention was to keep her in the hospital for a couple of weeks. He would be there until he recovered or died. Even if it took years.

Jeff figured a person could stay in bed at home just as easily as in the hospital. And for a lot less money. Neither of them needed someone around 24 hours a day. So he asked me how I felt about being a guinea pig in an experiment of his. He wanted to send both of them home way before they "should" be and have me go over and keep an eye on them two or three times a day. I'd get trained on how to change an IV and change the dressings on their wounds, as well as how to handle wastes for both of them. He'd make house calls whenever it was needed, so I didn't have to be responsible for putting in an IV needle, giving shots, or any of the more technical stuff. Although I did take Wes' pulse and temperature a few times. Of course, I also got to bathe the two of them.

Leslie's best friend was named Samantha. They had some kind of a falling out, about Wes, I think. It was obvious from the first time I saw her that Sam was in love with Wes. She was at his side almost 24 hours a day while he was in the hospital and she spent most of the time next to his bed when he came home. She lived next door, so could she come by at a moment's notice.

At first, Sam was a pain in the ass. It was as if she was trying to take over my job. But I began to realize it was love for him that motivated her and not anything to do with me. And she eventually did take over, leaving me with virtually nothing to do. By that time, the experiment had been determined a success. Having Sam take over was viewed as a possible solution in this type case. Provide almost constant care while training a loved one (or loved ones) to take over, then ease off until they could handle it.