Title: Play Ball
Author: Pattyanne
Disclaimer: None of the BtVS characters
belong to me.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Hospital smut. Spike Richardson
is the star pitcher for the San Francisco
Demons He's hit by a car, and winds up as
one of nurse Buffy Summer's patients.
Feedback: I'll cry if you don't.
***********************************
The Third Inning: The Pitch
Clinical detachment. It was something that all
doctors and nurses had to practice. Let the guard
down, let the emotions show, and you'd spend
too much time sobbing in an analyst's chair.
Buffy had actually been taught that. It was a part of
her nurses training, and she'd been fairly good about
practicing it the way it had been preached. Somehow,
she had managed to find a comfort zone, a place in
between the points of 'not caring at all' and 'caring
far too much than was good for sound mental health'.
Then, Spike Richardson had landed in her life,
and clinical detachment had flown right out the
window.
His charm, good looks, and blatant flirtation had
completely disarmed her, and mixed in with all
that was a powerful amount of physical attraction.
Simply put....the man was adorable, in more ways than
one. How could she possibly be expected to not notice
it, or disregard it, when it was coming at her like a
freight train?
And she could pinpoint the exact moment her
detachment had taken a powder; when she'd been
called in by him for assistance with the urinal.
The instant she'd moved back the curtain and beheld
his rather charming predicament, it had begun to
slip. When her eyes had moved down to the 'trouble
zone', it had picked up the pace.
For along with all the other goodies he possessed, the
ones visible when he was fully dressed, he also
happened to be extremely well equipped in a way
most men only wished they were.
In order to keep herself from staring like some over-
sexed baseball groupie, Buffy had gone right into
'stern nurse' mode, all business and practical concern.
Quickly deducing that his problem lay in the fact that
he was performing the necessary maneuvers with only
one good hand, and 'spillage' had occurred...not a lot,
but enough to be uncomfortable...she had acted.
After dumping the contents of the urinal into the
toilet, she had filled a plastic basin with warm, soapy
water and cleaned him up, then fetched fresh bedding
from the linen closet and changed the damp bed sheet.
By the time she'd finished with the chores, his pain
medication had begun kicking in and was making him
drowsy. He fell asleep right before her eyes, and she'd
gathered together her belongings and left, briefly stopping
at the nurses station to inform Elena of his output.
It was nearly one in the morning by the time she'd
arrived home, but she'd been oddly hyped up and had
trouble getting to sleep.
Now, when it was nearly time for her shift to begin,
she was nervous.....and a little excited....at the prospect
of seeing him again.
It seemed that clinical detachment had deserted her
for good.
********************************
She pushed her card into the time clock slot, waited for
the loud 'chunk' sound, then removed it and slipped it
back into its place on the board. With one last look in
the mirror to check her appearance, she stepped out of
the lounge.
Without even turning her head in the proper direction,
Buffy knew that there was something going on in room
215.
Loud voices, raised in the tones of affectionate teasing,
rose from the end of the hallway.
"What in the....."
Anything else she'd been about to say was forever
lost when a small hand tapped her shoulder and she
turned to see one of the daytime LVNs grinning at her.
"Elizabeth!" the girl squeaked. "Do you know who we've
got in 215?"
"Um, yeah...." Buffy peeked at the girls name tag. "...Amy."
"Have you seen them yet?"
Buffy frowned. Them?
"Them? Who's them?" she asked, heedless of her poor
grammar.
Without her really being aware they were doing it, her
feet began moving her along towards room 215. She
tuned out Amy's babbling voice and concentrated on
the noise coming from Spike's room.
Once she got there, she had to push her way into the
room past at least a half dozen young men who
looked to be in the same age bracket as her patient, or
maybe just a little older.
Two other nurses were in the room as well, and the
flirtatious banter was being lobbed back and forth like
tennis balls.
"Angel Nurse!" she heard Spike say loudly, and she
pushed her way through the crowd of young men towering
over her. "You're back!"
"Uh, yeah....of course I am." Buffy tried to do a head
count to determine how many of these boys she was going
to have to eject from the room.
"Here." Spike held out his arm, still grinning. "Go ahead
and take my pulse. She does this every time she comes in
the room," he informed his friends.
Absently, Buffy placed her fingers around his wrist and
counted. When 15 seconds passed, she grabbed his chart
and made a note of it.
"Guess who these guys are?" he challenged her.
Buffy's eyes skipped from one man to the next. "Oh, I'll say
that they're probably the rest of the team."
"That's right!" he said brightly. "Yeah....that's Xander...
Xander Harris, he's the catcher. And that one there is Riley
Finn....best first baseman ever. That's Nick Newmar, our
shortstop, Alan Powell...he plays second, and that one there
is Jack Calvin....he's on third. Then there's....hey, where did
Elliott disappear to....he's our...oh, there he is...Elliott Hodge.
We stick him way out in deep left field so he can sleep
through all the games."
"Up yours, Richardson," an amused voice stated.
Loud laughter rang out in the room.
"Everyone....this is B....this is Elizabeth. She's my very
own angel nurse." He pointed one finger at Nick. "You
stay away from her."
"What'd I do?" the shortstop asked, placing one hand on
his chest and trying to look innocent. He made his blue
eyes wide, and gave Buffy a lop sided smile. "Nice to
meet you, Elizabeth," he said, pushing a mop of wavy
blond hair back. "Don't let the kid run you off your feet,"
he added. "He's not as hurt as tries to make out."
"Well, actually...." Buffy began to speak, but was cut
off by the third baseman.
"Probably stepped in front of the car on purpose,"
Jack said. "Just to get a little time off." His eyes, a
deeper blue than his teammates, gave off a boyish
sparkle that was difficult to discount. When you combined
it with medium length sable brown hair, his attraction
factor carried quite a kick. He looked to be a little
younger than the others, and Buffy couldn't help
smiling back at him.
The second baseman, Alan, leaned back against
the wall, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "You
taking good care of our star pitcher?" he asked, his
dark grey eyes moving up and down her body with
frank admiration.
Here was one who knew exactly how attractive he
was, Buffy thought. Those eyes were sharp, and didn't
miss a thing. The other two nurses in the room were
practically sighing as they took in the blond hair, the
nicely built chest and the impressive height. In a room
full of tall men, he was the tallest.
"Well, I'm TRYING to," Buffy replied, placing her
hands on her hips and shaking her head. "I'm not sure
all this racket is helping," she scolded.
"Uh-oh!" the one who'd been introduced as Xander
piped up. "I think we're in trouble, guys."
One of the afternoon aides walked in, dressed in a
white blouse and peppermint candy striped pinafore,
carrying a plastic pitcher of ice water and setting it
down on the bedside table....a table that already had
a water pitcher on it, Buffy noted, to go along with
the one on the other bedside table...and the two
on the small counter by the sink.
Spike Richardson smiled and said 'thank you', even
though the mission of mercy was highly unnecessary,
nothing more than an obvious ploy to gain admittance
to the roomful of handsome baseball players.
Dawn, as the girl's name tag proclaimed her to be,
blushed a light shade of pink and smiled. Her light
brown hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail,
with a couple of wisps escaping the elastic.
Buffy caught movement out of the corner of her
eye, and she turned to see a man she hadn't known
was there stand up suddenly. Although fairly tall, this
one appeared to be markedly younger than the others,
no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and she
wondered what position HE played.
"Hi," he said, gazing at the pretty teenage girl
with an enraptured look in his eyes.
Dawn returned that gaze back at him and murmured,
"Hi.."
Seeing that the two kids were slightly tongue-tied,
Spike helped them out. "Um....this is Sammy," he
said, gesturing at the gawking boy. "He's our bat
boy."
Which would explain his relative youth, Buffy
thought.
"He's a bit older than they usually are," Spike
went on, "but he kept showing up at the park every
day, begging for the job. Drove our coach crazy
until he finally gave in."
Sammy's cheeks flushed a little, but he didn't seem
displeased. With his dark brown curls and eyes like
melting chocolate, the reddish tinge looked good on
him.
Buffy waited a moment, then tapped the girl on her
arm. "Do you think you could start collecting the lunch
trays?" she asked, trying to control her smile. "It won't
be long until they'll need them in the kitchen for dinner."
Dawn's blush increased. "Oh, I'm....yeah, I'll go and...and
do that right now. Sorry...I just...um..."
Sammy practically fell over his own feet trying to
get to the door. "I'll help," he volunteered, making the
guys in the room snicker and nudge each other.
Buffy found the situation very sweet, and if one of them
dared to make any kind of off color remark, she was
fully prepared to box that person's ears but good.
She leaned out the door and watched as Dawn moved in
and out of rooms, sliding the trays back onto the cart that
Sammy pushed along the corridor for her.
Turning back into the room, she saw Spike smiling. "Cute,
isn't it?"
Buffy had to agree.
************************************
Deciding to give them all a few more minutes of visiting
time before she kicked the team out, Buffy went about
tending to her other patients.
Once she had all her medications delivered and treatments
performed she charted the results and then made her way
back to 215.
Although she would have supposed that a young man who
seemed to be so popular with his teammates would garner
a great deal of sympathy for his injury, she was a little
surprised to hear them all treating it like it was hysterically
funny.
It took her a few minutes to realize that this was simply
their way of conveying emotion while letting their friend
know that he'd be just fine, and that they would do what-
ever was necessary to help him along.
Finally, she had to go back and eject them from the
room. Visiting hours were over, and she'd noted on
her last brief stop that Spike was looking tired and
uncomfortable.
They all left, promising to return soon and asking her
where the pretty nurses had all gone off to. Buffy waved
her hand in the general direction of the elevator,
suspecting that they wouldn't be hard to find.
******************************************
She walked back into room 215, and found Spike
had fallen asleep. Making a brief attempt to tidy up
the room a bit, she tossed out paper cups and half
empty soda cans, gathered up the pages of a news-
paper with a leading story on the accident and
frowned when she saw that the driver of the car
had been arrested for being under the influence.
Buffy hated people who got behind the wheel of
a car when they'd been drinking. She'd worked in
the ER long enough to see the horrible results of
such actions, usually visited upon the innocent party
while the guilty one suffered no more than a few
scrapes and a bad hangover.
She was closing the blinds against the glare of the
late afternoon sun when she heard a voice, slightly
slurry from sleep.
"Do you date patients, angel nurse....when they're
all better?"
Every nerve ending on Buffy's body jumped to life.
"Would you date me?"
She had never dated a patient. Not once, and she'd been
asked many times. It was an iron clad policy that she'd
adhered to with strict determination, the same way she
did when it came to dating men she worked with.
No. Never. Dating a patient was a bad idea, and
she never even considered it......
Turning around slowly, she met his intent blue
gaze, opened her mouth, and said....."Yes."
TBC.....
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