Nancy Wilson was a brand spanking new Registered Nurse recently graduated from a faith-based school of nursing with splendid credentials for the highest of moral ethics. She was a bit young for a fully certified nurse with a specialty of emergency room and surgical support for hospitals in large urban centers.

She was the product of an odd marriage between a Puerto Rican musician and an Irish bride who spoke English but could only be understood in an area within a fifty kilometer radius of Galway Bay. Nancy's father also had some difficulties in grasping the complexities of English grammar and was known to revert to his native Spanish whenever his emotions were running high. At home, Nancy was treated to a combination of barely understandable Irish brogue and Puerto Rican spoken with a heavy sprinkling of dirty words to emphasize a point to be made.

Looking at Nancy head-on, it would be difficult to pinpoint where the Irish left off and the Puerto Rican began. In fact, she looked more like a diet-conscious French model than either Irish or Puerto Rican. Despite her home environment, the nuns at Saint Veronica's had done a good job in instilling a sense of English syntax with liberal applications of a ruler on the back of her delicately formed hands.

She didn't advertise her heritage much to her friends and associates because it seemed like such a matter was her own personal business. It was not that she was ashamed at all; it just created a situation in which people started asking her too many personal questions. He hid the fact that she could speak the Puerto Rican brand of Spanish and knew more slang words than any decent young girl would care to admit to.

As she was growing up, Nancy was taken to Ireland each summer by her mother who insisted she retain her Irish roots no matter how much it pissed off her volatile father. It was in Ireland that she actually learned about the birds and the bees from a constable who was delighted to give her special tutoring to toughen her up for the "real world". Her sessions in the back of the jail were informative and covered every contingency. She was disappointed that the police constable was already married and with three babies at home. It was that statistic that forced the young man to concur with his wife's insistence that he have a vasectomy to preclude any new additions to the already financially stressed household. It was that perk that led her into the affair because she liked having the liquid deposits splashing around in her female openings and not inside a silly looking piece of latex. The ability to copulate without fear of procreating was so comforting to her at this stage of her young life just barely eighteen. Unfortunately, the terrible sin of having a vasectomy was a burden to the Catholic family and they kept it well hidden from friends and neighbors.

Nancy was so besotted with her handsome Barry that she even schemed to stay in Ireland and try to work out a deal with the wife to share the virile constable in a fair arrangement. Before she could propose the silly idea to either party, her mother suffered a sudden stroke and she buried her in the church behind her grandparent's home with a heavy heart. Her father was heartbroken but was unable to conclude a contracted gig in Chicago to make it to the funeral. It was probably for the best because Nancy was certain he would not be well received in the small reclusive town that sort of shunned outsiders, especially of the Puerto Rican variety.

Now that she was officially a nurse, Nancy jumped into work with a determination to do the best job possible and show everyone around her how good a nurse she really was.

The hospital was located on the edge of the fast running river that effectively separated the two parts of the city right in the middle. She happened to live on the other side of the river still living with her often absent father who traveled wherever the music gigs took him. She had been thinking about rooming with one of the other nurses closer to the hospital to make the commute easier at odd hours and avoid the terrible traffic across the bridge.

The head nurse assigned her to the fourth floor ward which was reserved for the patients recovering from a serious operation and needed some rehabilitation before returning to the world outside the hospital doors.

The ward was well organized and that was good because they had a full house which was unusual in the summer season. Since she was new to the job they only assigned her three primary patients and a back-up on four others who all had highly experience nurses tending to them. Room 210 was an elderly gentleman with a herniated disc and he seemed to be resting comfortably due probably to the pain killers liberally dispensed to get him through the initial stages of post-operative care. She could tell he would not be much problem, just needed watching and changing of drips in the middle of the night. The patient in room 213 was a different story. He was a forceful business man and he was quite demanding in every regard. She answered his bell constantly until he finally fell asleep giving her some respite to do paperwork and give more attention to the other patients and help her fellow nurses. Her last patient in room 219 was in a leg cast and had his neck in traction to prevent any further damage to an already injured neck vertebra. His name was Nick Thomas and one of the other nurses told her that he was a well-known Canadian hockey player who had been roughed up in the final game of the series.

Since everything Nancy knew about hockey would not fill a thimble, she just shrugged the news off and tended to his needs. It came time for his bath shortly before her shift ended and she knew that it had to be done so the oncoming nurse would not give her a bad mark for shirking her duties.

"Excuse me, Mister Thomas. I am Nurse Wilson and I have to give you a bath now and check you for any other skin problems that crop up when you are in a prone position for so long."

The young man opened his eyes and took her in with a critical once over. He was obviously not happy about being awakened from a nice dream because his man-stick was poking up almost through the hospital gown with a wicked look to it that made her blush with concealed excitement.

"Sure, Nurse, sorry about my big boy. I always wake up with it like that and those pills actually made it worse than ever before"