The Water Wolf

Rose POV: At 29 years old, I've kind of accepted my fate. I'm a black sheep, not just for my family, but for the world. Not many people have ever wanted to associate with me. Making friends has always been hard. I attract the wrong types of people into my life. People that always end up hurting me in one way or another. My life is one crisis, one emergency, after another. My latest incident was leaving my husband. We have two kids together, one is almost two years old, and the other is eight months old. I've already been acting like a single mom for months. He hated helping around the house and would almost always actually contribute to giant messes and expect me to be the one to clean it up. He hated changing diapers and, quite frankly, just being a parent in general. Don't get me wrong, I know he loves them… He just doesn't want the responsibility of being a father. He never let me work, even when we were drowning financially, and there was always an excuse for it. Then he would add to the stress by spending money on stupid s**t. He also refused to take responsibility for our budget because, according to him, it was just too stressful. He never respected me or how I felt about things and, after fighting for months and things getting physical enough for the police to show up. I finally decided enough was enough. I told him I was done and made him leave. Part of me feels like a huge failure. After all, this is my second divorce, and I'm not even thirty yet. But I've never belonged anywhere anyway, and I've never been good enough. I'm used to being alone and the sooner I can accept that, the sooner I can hopefully find some semblance of happiness. I've never been able to figure out what's wrong with me. Despite asking everyone whose ever decided I wasn't worth their time. It has to be me though, right? There's no way that with everything I've been through in my life, I'm just a victim and I have no role to play in how others have treated me. I have to accept responsibility, even if I still don't understand what it is about me, or what it is I do, to make people not want to be around me and treat me well. So, every day I get up and I try again. Even though I know things won't change. I won't ever feel whole and understood and supported. I have to do what I can for myself and for my kids. Today feels different, though. I can't explain it, but I just feel like today, something big is going to happen. Something that will change my life in ways I can't even begin to imagine. Am I crazy to feel that way? Probably. I'll likely go to bed tonight shaking my head at how insane I was to believe that today would be any different from any other day in my life. "Hey, Rosie. How are you today?" I looked up to see one of my coworkers walking into the break room. Sara trained me when I first started this job. As far as coworkers go, she's pretty alright so far. "Hey, Sara. I'm alright. Looks like we're both on meds today. I'm in memory care, and you've got both hall one and hall two. I don't see any caregivers listed on the schedule for today though. So I don't know if they have found coverage or if they're going to make us do all the meds and all the cares today." "I'm pretty sure that they legally need at least one more person in the building. So, hopefully, someone will be coming in to help." "When has legality ever stopped them before? Remember when they let Carrie go home early that one night and Samantha got beat up with a fire extinguisher, and they refused to send someone in to help her? Plus it's Thanksgiving. I doubt anyone wanted to come in, and we all know admin isn't going to come work the floor." "True. We're probably on our own. Let me know if you need any help today. I'm going to go count night shift out and get started." "Sounds good. I'm gonna head to memory care and do the same." I finished putting the battery in my radio, attaching it to my scrubs and started to walk to the memory care unit. As I'm walking, I see someone standing at the front door. That's weird since it's only 6am. No visitors usually come this early. I had better go see what he needs. As I walk towards the door, I notice the man at the door is extremely tall and buff. He looks like he could be a body gaurd or an NFL player, or something like that. Suddenly, it all seems a bit too suspicious, and I get a little nervous to open the door. As I reach the door I decide to talk to him through the intercom first. "Hi. Can I help you?" "I'm just here to visit my mother. I received a call that she's been put on hospice." His voice was very deep. I didn't know there were actually men with such deep voices. "Okay, sure. What's her name and room number?" "Elizabeth Storm and she's in room 1312" She's in memory care. I hadn't heard she was on hospice. Must have happened over my weekend. I guess I'll get that story in a minute when I go do shift change. I opened the door to let him in. "I'm headed there now. You can walk with me." As he starts to come inside he suddenly sniffs loudly and his heads jerks towards me and he stares at me with piercing blue eyes. "Are you sick? If so, I'll need you to wear a mask in here. Our residents are extremely susceptible to illness and are more likely to have serious complications." I'm a little weary of how he is looking at me. He's looking me up and down, but I know he's not checking me out. I'm not attractive enough for that. "No, I'm not sick. Sorry, it's uh, allergies." "Right. Okay well, it's just this way if you want to come with me. It's a locked unit so if you plan on visiting more we can get you the code to come whenever you want. Let's get going." I motion for him to walk in front of me. As he passes in front of me I catch the strong scent of his cologne. It smells good, like no cologne I've ever smelled before. I want to ask him what he uses but I really need to get to shift change, so we walk down the hall in silence. After I'm sure that he can't see me behind him, I lift my arm and smell my armpit. Smells just like my deodorant, but I had to make sure he didn't sniff like that because I smell bad or something. I take the opportunity to check him out from behind. If he's gonna look me up and down, I might as well look too. Only, I am definitely checking him out. He's hot. I know he would never be interested in me, and it's not really appropriate for me to get together with a resident's son either, but I can appreciate his looks. There's nothing wrong with that. He's so tall. He's got to be at least 6 foot 5. He's got at least a foot on me, and I'm 5 foot 5. He's wearing slacks and a button up shirt, but it doesn't do much to hide his extremely defined muscles. He has tanner skin, maybe part indigenous, brown hair that's tied back in a neat man bun, and damn, he has a nice ass. He's hot, that's for sure. We reach the memory care door and I enter the code. "Your mom's room is just down there. I'm going to go do shift change at the nurses station, and then I'll be the med tech for the mooring shift. Let me know if you need anything." "Thank you. What was your name?" "Rose. What's yours?" "David. Nice to meet you. Thanks for walking me down."