Lightening flashed across the darkening skies and the air crackled around them as Peters leaned down and, after several tries, managed to get ahold of the harness strap on Grave’s shoulder. Working together, the two men hauled the master chief up and into the helo. He collapsed onto the floor next to Stefan, both breathing heavily. Stefan hesitantly moved his shoulder, making sure it was still in its socket.
After a moment, Graves burst out laughing and slapped Stefan on his uninjured, left shoulder. He yelled to be heard. “Thanks, LC! Good to know you’re still quick on the draw! Drinks are on me tonight!”
Stefan chuckled as he rolled to his knees. He massaged his aching shoulder and arm. “I’m holding you to that, Master Chief! And it better be the good stuff!” Up front, both pilots were looking over their shoulders at the rest of the crew and the survivors. Stefan gave them a thumbs up. “Let’s head home!”
Thirty minutes later, they were back on land and the Fischer family had been loaded into two ambulances and had probably already arrived at Largo Medical Center to be checked out. The mechanics at the air station had pulled the helicopter into a hanger, out of the rain, so they could try to figure out what’d happened to the winch. Several officers had arrived and started the investigation process. Each member of the SAR crew and Stefan would have to give detailed reports. Hopefully, the incident wasn’t due to human error. Every inch of the SAR helicopters and the equipment on board were routinely checked for wear and tear, but nothing was ever one hundred percent safe. Shit happened, and all they could do was pray no one was hurt or killed as a result.
While talking to his superior, Captain George Lowe, the Sector Commander, Stefan rubbed his left shoulder and arm. They ached, and he felt a tingling in his fingers. Oddly, his right arm and shoulder were the ones he’d strained to the limit, saving the master chief. Maybe he’d hurt his left side when he’d landed on the floor of the helo. Some Tylenol or Aleve should help.
“Stefan, you okay?” Lowe asked suddenly, eying him in concern. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine, Captain.” Actually, he didn’t feel fine. In fact, a wave of dizziness came over him, and he swayed on his feet. A crushing pain flared under his ribs, to the left of his sternum, and Stefan clutched his chest. He heard shouts, however, they sounded far away. He tried to focus but found it impossible. A buzzing noise started and intensified in his ears as sweat beaded on his forehead. Stefan took one, maybe two steps before his legs gave out. He hit his knees a moment before his world faded to black.
6
Cassandra pushed the portable electrocardiogram machine out of the elevator and down a long hallway. As part of her job description as a cardiac rehab tech, she was scheduled to cover one Saturday and an alternate Sunday shift per month, doing the daily EKGs doctors had ordered for their patients who’d been admitted. She was also on-call for any emergencies, which was why she was heading to the ER right now. Her beeper had gone off when she’d been finishing up in the surgical ICU, signaling they needed her on the first floor. Once she was done there, she’d return to cardiology and leave the stack of EKG printouts for review by the on-call doctor, who would be in around 1:00 p.m. She would need to go through the hospital’s computer system to see if any of the patients had had the tests done at the hospital before for any reason. If they had, she’d pull the file for the cardiologist, so he could compare the past readings with the current one. If the patient had never had an EKG at Largo Medical Center before, then she’d make a new file for them. The paperwork and data entry could be mundane, but she liked the other aspects of her job. Interacting with patients was what she enjoyed the most and was what had influenced Cass to return to school to get her nursing degree. Between work and school, the next two years were going to be hectic, but she was looking forward to it. Thankfully, she’d already gotten her associate degree in liberal arts a few years ago, so the basic classes needed for her bachelors were already taken care of.
Entering the ER, she found it bustling, busier than usual for 11:00 on a Saturday morning. It’d been quieter when Cass had been called down earlier for an elderly woman who’d been having trouble breathing. However, right before she’d left to finish her rounds upstairs, two ambulances had pulled up with a family of four who’d apparently been in a small plane that had crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully, none of them had seemed badly injured—just some bumps and bruises. Now, Cass could see the parents sitting in chairs in the isolation room where their children lay on gurneys. The ER staff had probably put them in the rarely used two-bed room just so they could be together.
Meanwhile, nurses, doctors, techs, and orderlies were either taking care of the numerous other patients they had or tackling the massive amount of paperwork and computer data entry that was required for each one. Currently, there was a lot of activity in the trauma room, but Cass wouldn’t go in there unless they requested her. Checking the nurses’ station, she found three orders for EKGs in their assigned slot in a file sorter. Two patients were in the general, non-critical section while the third was in the Urgent Care room. The latter would be her first patient.
She had to wait for two EMTs with an empty gurney to pass before pushing her machine into Urgent Care. There were five beds in this area, and only two of them were occupied. In the last cubicle on the right, through an open curtain, she noticed the woman she’d tested earlier that morning was still there. Cass was glad to see she seemed to be breathing much easier and was either sleeping or relaxing with her eyes closed. Cass’s current patient was two cubicles over.
Two men were standing outside the closed curtain, talking in low voices so no one could overhear them. One was wearing the Coast Guard’s Operational Dress Uniform—ODU—of navy-blue cargo pants and a matching button-down, short-sleeved shirt. The other man had on an orange jumpsuit that Cass knew the Search and Rescue team members wore. Both men stood over six-feet tall and were quite handsome, but they didn’t come close to how hot Master Stefan looked in his CG uniform. She’d seen him wearing his ODU on a few occasions and once in formal dress. The man was drool-worthy in whatever he wore, but never more than in his uniforms. Okay, scratch that. His club leathers topped everything. His bad-boy Dom look made her heart beat faster than his clean-cut, military look. And, damn it, now she was daydreaming about Sir again—the man she loved who didn’t love her back. Get a grip, Cass. You’ve got work to do.
She steered her machine toward the two men, who stopped talking and eyed her. Pasting on a smile, Cass said, “Hi, I need to take an EKG, if you don’t mind waiting in the hallway. It’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Sure,” the man in the ODU responded with a smile. “Take good care of the LC. He’s a bit grumpy at the moment—he hates hospitals—but having a pretty woman like you working on him will have him feeling better in no time.”
His kind expression and tone told her he’d meant the compliment in a good way and not salaciously. He wasn’t hitting on her, but, instead, just making conversation, probably out of worry for his coworker or friend.
Cass looked at him quizzically. “LC?”
“Lieutenant Commander.”
“Ah.” Actually, she’d known that. Master Stefan was a lieutenant commander in the Coast Guard, and, in informal settings, people sometimes called him LC or just Commander. They couldn’t call him lieutenant, anymore, since his promotion, even though it was part of his title, because that was a lower rank. A few people had made that mistake at the club and had been corrected by those who’d been in the military or still were.
“Okay, well, I’ll do my best to have the LC in a better mood before I leave. Does he like knock-knock jokes?” She’d added that last part after realizing her comment could have alluded something inappropriate would be happening behind the closed curtain.
Both men chuckled, and the one in the jumpsuit pulled the curtain back for her. “Give it a shot—you never know.”
Lying on the gurney was a man with a sheet covering his legs and hips. A hospi
tal gown lay on top of that, as if he’d taken it off and thrown it there. An oxygen mask concealed his mouth and nose, while an IV catheter had been inserted into his right hand. A monitor above him beeped steadily as it displayed his oxygen saturation, respiration and heart rates, and blood pressure. Three EKG leads were attached to stickers on his chest—his very well-defined chest that was just as taut as his washboard abs. Damn, the man was fit.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t move when Cass closed the curtains. His eyes were shut, and there was a good chance he was sleeping, so she moved quietly around the cubicle. After plugging the portable machine into an outlet in the wall behind him, Cass found the order for his EKG among the three she’d set aside. She glanced at the name so she could compare it to the one on the wristband he was wearing, to make certain she had the correct patient.
“Oh my God!” Her gaze flew to the man’s face. It couldn’t be . . . but now that she really looked at his face, it was him. Just to be sure, she eyed the tattoos on his left upper arm. Her heart clenched when she realized they were the ones she’d seen every time he’d gone shirtless at the club or at his place. The top one was an eagle, American flag, and anchor montage with USCG in block lettering. Below that, over his thick bicep, was another tattoo of a knotted rope that encircled his arm. Her gaze returned to his face as she gently set her hand on his right forearm. “Master Stefan?”
His eyelids lifted, and he blinked a few times. He had been asleep, and she’d woken him. “Cassie?”
His voice was muffled from the mask. Reaching up, he pulled it away from his mouth and nose and tucked it below his chin. Despite the extra oxygen, there was an ashen appearance to his skin she hadn’t noticed right away. “What’re you doing here?” His voice was raspy, and he cleared his throat.
“I was just going to ask you that, Sir. W-what happened?” Even though they weren’t in a D/s situation, Cass had immediately reverted to using the proper title with him, since she’d rarely seen or spoken to him outside of the club or his townhouse when they were playing. Old habits die hard.
Sir shifted on the thin mattress. “Can you lift the back of this thing up for me?”
“I can, after I do an EKG, but tell me why you’re here? What’s wrong?” Without waiting for him to answer, she scanned the paper she still held. Under his name, date of birth, and some other information was the section that said why the test had been ordered.
Possible MI.
Oh shit. MI stood for myocardial infarction, otherwise known as a heart attack! Master Stefan was too young and healthy for that, wasn’t he? But Cass knew from experience that cardiac disease didn’t discriminate. Her father had died from an MI at the age of thirty-nine. Her uncle had passed away from the same thing, three years later, at the same age his older brother had been. A shiver shot through her. The thought of the handsome, vibrant man in front of her dying scared the hell out of her.
When he’d opened his eyes, Stefan had experienced a fleeting thought he was dead, and a stunning angel was welcoming him into the afterlife. Even in hospital scrubs, with her hair up in a ponytail and wearing minimal makeup, Cassandra Myers was still one of the sexiest women he’d ever known.
After moving to Tampa and passing the background checks to join The Covenant, he’d spent over a year or so playing with different submissives, getting to know them and seeing how they responded to his ropes. Cassie had been his favorite, even though it’d been understood there would be no strings attached—no pun intended. They’d always played at the club or his townhouse. In fact, he’d never gone to her apartment nor out on a date with her. No dinner in restaurants or movies or non-sexual things other couples did. The closest they’d ever come to an actual date was dinner at his place, then some playtime with a few orgasms, followed by aftercare while watching TV. And, now, for the first time since they’d signed their initial contract, he was regretting keeping her at arm’s length. He missed his little pixie.
Fear flashed across her face when she read something on the paper she was holding, and he tried to reassure her he was perfectly fine. Rolling his eyes, he sighed. “It’s nothing serious, Cassie, just indigestion or something. No big deal. I’m sure I’ll be discharged as soon as the doctor gets a chance to fill out the paperwork.”
The expression on her face told him she didn’t believe him any more than the emergency room doctor had during his examination, when he’d basically told him the same thing. It hadn’t helped that Stefan’s blood pressure had been 210/130 at the time—far higher than his average 110/70. The physician had ordered a nurse to give Stefan a tiny nitroglycerin pill, and it hadn’t been long before the pain shooting through his chest and down his arm had dissipated. His blood pressure had dropped to more reasonable numbers, as well.
Stefan wasn’t stupid. If his symptoms hadn’t been cardiac related, the nitro wouldn’t have done a damn thing to relieve them. He just didn’t want to face what that meant. If he was having heart trouble, his career was at stake.
“Sir—”
“It’s Stefan while we’re here, Cassie, and I’m fine. Do what you have to do.”
Her lips pursed, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she turned toward her machine and proceeded to set up for the test. As she put stickers with silver knobs on them onto specific spots on his chest, he studied her and tried to ignore how good it felt to have her touch him, even though she was being professionally clinical about it. Not knowing the difference, his cock twitched, and he willed the bastard not to respond.
“How’s nursing school going?” Yeah, he was making routine small talk, but he really did miss her. While he’d paid for her membership at The Covenant, he hadn’t seen her there since her last shift as a waitress a little over a week ago. Mitch, Devon, and Ian had gotten a good-luck cake to celebrate her last night and new adventure. They’d also given her an eyebrow-raising monetary gift to put towards her tuition.
She glanced at him in surprise. “Um . . . it’s going well. I like it.”
“What courses are you taking this semester?”
“Since I’m going at night, I only have three classes—Intro to Biology, Intro to Nursing, and Biochemistry. A lot of my basic courses are out of the way from my associate degree, but there are a few I need to take before I can start clinicals because they would’ve been part of my first year if I was starting from scratch. I’ll be able to start clinicals next semester.”
“Great. That’s—that’s good to hear. I have to admit, I miss—”
His pretty pixie spun back toward the machine on wheels. “Sorry, Sir—Stefan—but I need you to be quiet for a moment—breath normally and don’t move.”
“Uh . . . sure.”
If he hadn’t been mistaken, there had been a flash of pain in her eyes before she’d pivoted away from him. He wondered what was bothering her, but when she glanced back at him, her expression was blank. Maybe he’d been mistaken. After letting out a sigh, he did as she’d requested.
Cassie pushed a few buttons and the machine began to spit out a paper copy of his EKG. After it stopped, she tore the paper at the perforations and stared at it a moment. He asked, “How’s it look?”
She gave him a weak smile. “Sorry, but the cardiologist gets to decide that. I just run the tests.”
For some reason, he didn’t think that was the whole truth, otherwise she wouldn’t have been looking at it so intently. But he doubted he could say anything that would get her to admit that. She probably couldn’t tell him, anyway. He’d had plenty of X-rays, and the techs always told him they couldn’t read them—the orthopedist had to. Most likely, it was hospital protocol. They couldn’t have a technician saying one thing, only to have the doctor’s diagnosis be something completely different.
After unhooking the wires, she removed the stickers from his chest. “Um—Sir—I mean, Stefan, can I call someone for you? Family? Friends? I know there are two men from the Coast Guard here, but I—”
Stefan groaned. She had to be referring to Captain L
owe and Master Chief Graves, who’d followed his ambulance to the hospital. He’d regained consciousness to find Graves, Jacoby, and two paramedics working on him. He hadn’t stopped breathing, he’d only fainted. Once they put an oxygen mask on him, he’d come around. The pain in his chest had still been there, but far less intense than it had been moments earlier—it’d become more of an ache than anything else at that point. It wasn’t until after he’d arrived at the ER that it’d flared again, prompting the ER physician to order the nitroglycerin. “They’re still here? I told them I was fine, and they could head back to the station.” Of course, it’d been a suggestion, not an order, since Lowe was Stefan’s superior.
When he shifted again, trying, to get comfortable, Cass squeezed a handle underneath the top of the bed and the upper half of his body rose until it was at a forty-five-degree angle or so. “Is that better?” she asked. “Or do you want to go higher?”
“A little higher, if you don’t mind.”
She did it again, and he told her to stop when the position was to his liking. “That’s good. Thanks. As for calling someone—no, you don’t need to—shoot. Damn it, I forgot. I’m supposed to do a demo tonight at the club, and I left my phone in my truck at the air station. Can you call Mitch Sawyer and let him know I’ll have to reschedule? I probably won’t be up for it, even after they release me. Tell him I’m fine and there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Knot a Chance: Doms of The Covenant Book 3 Page 5