Love on the Night Shift

by Radclyffe

  “Well, to hear Blake talk, absolutely. Since Bill is home from Afghanistan for good now and assistant coaching again, it’s kind of a double celebration.”

  “At least we know if they’re at the Homestead, they won’t be getting into trouble,” Blaise said.

  “It’s after the after-after-party I’m worried about,” Abby muttered. “You know how these things morph and spread out like an amoeba.”

  Blaise grimaced. “Nice image, but yes. I’m sure you said what I said—straight home when the party at the Riverses’ breaks up. No changing locations.”

  “I did better than that—I’m going.”

  Blaise snorted. “I bet that went over well.”

  Abby gave her a look. “Well, someone has to help out with half the junior and senior classes showing up. I volunteered me and Flann.”

  “Did you get around to who’s driving the kids?” Blaise asked.

  “Absolutely, and it isn’t going to be Mark Chavez.”

  “We made it that far too,” Blaise said. “Mark drives just like his brother Phil did, and I’m afraid we’re going to have him in here some night too. Taylor knows she’s never to ride with him. Day or night.”

  Abby’s expression turned grim. “I’m not sure Mark doesn’t drive that way just to prove that he’s as big a man as his older brother, who was probably trying to prove he was every bit as tough as their father.”

  “How about we divide and conquer,” Blaise said. “I’m off tomorrow night—I can drive them to the game. You’ve got party detail.”

  “Sounds fair to me. Although you might want to swing by the party yourself—Ida’s baking.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Blaise said as she and Abby walked down the hall toward the ER. “Although Taylor will die of mortification if she sees me there.”

  “Gotta love teenagers.” Abby rolled her eyes.

  “How’s Blake doing? He’s made so many friends this summer—it’s hard to remember this is a new school for him.”

  Abby was silent for a moment, but Blaise wasn’t worried that she’d offended her—they’d gotten to be good friends since Abby had taken over as chief in the ER, being about the same age and with teenagers who they’d raised alone for a long time. Of course Abby wasn’t alone now, and Blaise…well, her life was the way she wanted it.

  She got that Abby was protective of Blake, as any parent would be whose child had to struggle against prejudice and ignorance. Even so, Abby let Blake make his own way in the quagmire of drama and angst and shifting friendships that seemed to typify teen life, which took more courage than Blaise believed she might have in the same circumstances. She’d thought about gender identity issues when Taylor started growing up, in a sort of theoretical way, letting Taylor know it was okay to talk about how she was feeling if she ever had questions or uncertainty. She’d been clear—she hoped—that no matter how Taylor identified, she would be loved. But she’d never before seriously considered what it might be like if one day Taylor told her she identified as trans. Since Abby and Blake had become part of the community, and Abby had become a friend, Blaise thought about gender in a much more personal way.

  Blaise touched Abby’s arm. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s private.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Abby said. “He hasn’t said anything. He might not, of course, unless something really serious comes up. Having friends like Margie and Taylor and Dave will really help him if…” She sighed. “He’s always been strong. I wasn’t certain moving up here would be the right thing to do, taking him out of Manhattan to…here.”

  Blaise laughed at Abby’s tone. “You mean here, as in the middle of nowhere?”

  Abby smiled and pushed the big square button on the wall that opened the automatic doors to the ER-Trauma wing. “It isn’t, you know. The middle of nowhere. In a lot of ways it’s the middle of everywhere. Big cities are more the anonymous places that could be anywhere. This—this land, this life—has history. People can sink roots.”

  “Oh my God,” Blaise said, “you’ve been converted. Next thing you know, you’ll be living on a farm and raising goats.”

  Abby smiled. “Well, you know, we will have fifteen acres, and there’s a nice big barn already there. And look who’s talking—you’re a local, right?”

  Blaise nodded. “True enough. But I live in the village and I don’t have any livestock.”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it,” Abby said as they reached the central nurses’ station. “Ever lived anywhere else?”

  “Not really,” Blaise said. Six months in New York City hardly counted and weren’t worth mentioning—or remembering. “It’s almost eleven, Abby. You should go home.”

  “I will. I just want to be sure there’s no loose ends before Mari takes over.”

  Blaise glanced at the intake board on the wall which had until recently been a whiteboard that the charge nurses updated with colored markers, but which, following the new expansion, had morphed into a digital display. She hadn’t liked it at first, and after one of the PAs rightly dubbed it the train station board, she realized why. The modern ER-Trauma wing was state of the art but had lost some of the charm inherent in the original Rivers hospital building. Still, she couldn’t argue with having everything she needed when a critical case arrived. At the moment, only four patients occupied the board, listed by cubicle number, name, provisional diagnosis, and pending tests or consults. She scanned the list on autopilot until she reached the last entry, and for just a second, her brain stuttered to a standstill.

  The last patient, whose name she recognized—a common occurrence in their small community—was waiting for a surgical consult. The name of the surgeon she recognized too, and the jolt of shock sent her heart racing. “Who’s that up there on the board for room eleven?”

  Abby gave her a quizzical expression. “Wilbur Hopkins? He’s a sixty-two-year-old white male complaining of a cold foot. We’re waiting—”

  “No, not Wilbur. I know Wilbur—I went to high school with his youngest.” Hearing the edge in her voice, Blaise took a breath to dispel some of the tightness in her chest. “The surgeon. McClure. We don’t have a McClure.”

  “Oh,” Abby said. “We do now. McClure just started this afternoon and, of course, like all newbies, got first call.”

  “I didn’t know there were new residents starting this time of year,” Blaise said, because that’s what it had to be, right? Just a coincidence. Coincidences happened all the time.

  “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t clear. No, Grady’s staff, not a resident. The state took since July to process all the paperwork.”

  “Grady McClure.” The tangle of nerves in Blaise’s midsection unknotted but left her slightly nauseous. “Where’s he from?”

  “She—not he. Flann knew her from training in Baltimore. She was really happy to snag her.”

  “I can just imagine.” Blaise turned away from the board as if that might magically make the McClure in red block letters disappear too. She was way past being rattled by ghosts. “I better let Sean know I’m here.”

  “I hear you!” Sean Durkee, the evening charge nurse, came around the corner. Tall, ginger-haired, and still as fit at forty as he had been when he’d been the star center who’d led the high school basketball team to the state championships, he sported his usual good-natured grin. “Hey, Blaise, let me know when you’re ready for report.”

  “You two go ahead,” Abby said. “I’ll go find Mari and let her know what’s happening.”

  “I just saw her headed to the conference room,” Sean said.

  Blaise forced a smile and grabbed the chart on the patient in one and motioned to Sean. “Ready when you are.”

  “Not all that much doing tonight.”

  Blaise kept her smile in place. If only that was true.

  * * *

  Grady ran the ultrasound probe over the top of Wilbur Hopkins’s right foot for the third time, trying to convince herself she heard a pulse. There might’
ve been a whisper of something running through the posterior tibial vessel, but his cold dusky foot was a pretty good indicator that not much blood was getting down there. She moved up and listened again around the back of his knee and then the inner aspect of his thigh. Certain, she straightened and rested the probe back on top of the portable ultrasound machine. “Mr. Hopkins—”

  “You can call me Wilbur, Doc,” the bewhiskered man said with a smile that had probably turned a lot of hearts in his younger days. Maybe still did despite the slight sagging of his cheeks and the hint of a belly beneath the faded green T-shirt. The square outline of a cigarette pack in the chest pocket of his T-shirt accounted for the huskiness in his voice, and almost certainly for the lack of blood flow to his leg.

  “Okay, Wilbur,” Grady said. “You’ve got a blockage in the artery to your leg and it needs to get opened up.”

  “You can do it with one of those balloon things, right?”

  Grady waggled her hand. “Maybe. It depends on where the blockage is, how old it is, what the vessels look like—”

  “That’s a whole lotta maybes and depends.” He didn’t sound angry, just resigned. “What’s your best guess?”

  “I’d rather not have to guess. That’s why we need some special X-rays. I’m going to make some calls so we can do that and get a better look at things. We’ll call in another surgeon too, depending on what the X-rays show.”

  “I guess I better call my wife,” Wilbur said good-naturedly.

  “One of us can do that if you want,” Grady said, “but let’s wait just a bit until I get a good look at what’s going on inside.”

  “Well then, let’s do it. Tomorrow?”

  “Tonight.”

  Wilbur pressed his lips together, his smile disappearing. “I don’t suppose I could step outside for a while. While, you know, you get everything ready.”

  Grady narrowed her eyes. “Step outside to look at the moon or to have a smoke?”

  His sweet grin flashed again. “I never have been much of a stargazer.”

  “I can’t let you do it,” Grady said. “It could make things worse, and I don’t want you to lose your foot.”

  “That could happen?”

  “It might.”

  “I can’t drive a truck without my foot.” Wilbur sucked in a breath. “If I can’t drive, I can’t make a living.”

  “That’s why we’re not going to take any chances, and we’re not waiting until tomorrow.”

  “All right then,” he said, letting out a long breath. “I guess you ought to get to it.”

  Grady laughed. “Good idea.”

  She turned, grabbed the white, yellow, and green striped curtain, and whipped it aside. The woman standing an inch away was about her height and flinched as their eyes met.

  “Whoa! Sorry,” Grady blurted. The startled eyes staring back at her were an unusual hue of gray-blue that reminded her of the Pacific in winter. Not cold, the way you might expect, but depthless, as if all the secrets in the world were hiding below the surface.

  “Who—” The blonde with the storm-blue eyes continued to stare at her. “Are you the surgeon?”

  “That’s me.” Grady grinned and held out a hand. “I’m Grady McClure.”

  When she got no response from the woman wearing navy blue scrub pants and a scrub shirt with tiny iridescent fish all over it, she tapped the plastic name tag pinned to the lab coat she’d been given after her nickel tour of the hospital eight hours earlier. “Dr. Grady McClure. Says so right here.”

  Still no smile. Grady tilted her head, trying to determine if the fish were all going in one direction or not. “That is one seriously strange scrub shirt.”

  “I’m Blaise Richelieu,” the woman said abruptly, as if she’d just now noticed Grady and wasn’t all that happy to see her. “Charge nurse on the night shift. What do you need?”

  Grady felt her eyebrows rise. Something about the cold shoulder turned in her direction for no good reason irritated her more than it should have. “Well, that’s a loaded question.”

  Richelieu’s lips pressed together. No-nonsense attitude. No sense of humor, either.

  “I was referring to your patient, Doctor,” Blaise said in a voice as icy as her now chilly expression.

  “Okay.” All business it would be, then, since friendly was definitely off the table. Grady strode toward the nurses’ station. Blaise kept pace with her. “I need to know how to reach someone in interventional radiology. I need an arteriogram.”

  “Tonight?” Blaise asked.

  “Yes, tonight.” Grady leaned against the counter. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  Blaise swallowed back the retort forming on her lips. Grady McClure, all tousled black hair and unholy blue eyes and angular planes in a face too damn handsome for words, came on strong and was probably used to getting what she wanted on the basis of sexy good looks alone. Not very generous of her, Blaise admitted, but she wasn’t used to being so off-balance. And that was not acceptable. She had a patient to think about. “No, of course not. Well, it might be a bit of a problem if Mary Anne Okonsky’s on call. Because she does not like getting out of bed in the middle of the night.”

  “Who does?” McClure said with a devil’s smile.

  Blaise gritted her teeth. Was everything that came out of her mouth innuendo? She probably got a lot of mileage out of her sexy, teasing grin. That wasn’t. Sexy or charming. Most definitely not. Not as far as Blaise was concerned.

  “Some people choose specialties so they won’t have to get out of bed in the middle of the night,” Blaise said. “So I understand.”

  “Well, tonight is not that night,” Grady said with a careless shrug. “You want me to deliver the bad news? I just need to know who to call.”

  “No, I’ll handle it. You can take care of the chart…or whatever.” Blaise turned away and slowed when she sensed Grady right behind her. “Something else?”

  “I need a cup of coffee. Can I get you one?” Grady asked.

  Blaise schooled her expression to hide her surprise. Doctors and nurses didn’t have the kind of hierarchical division that had existed even ten years before, but they weren’t always easy colleagues, either. “I just had one, thanks.”

  “Well,” Grady said, “I’ll be in the…” She shrugged, grinned again. “I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be. Where do you hide the coffee down here?”

  Blaise blew out a breath and pointed down the hallway to her right. “Break room is down there. I can’t vouch for how old the coffee is.”

  “Coffee is never too old, kind of like women that way.”

  Blaise spun on her heel. Way, way too charming to be anything but trouble. Luckily, she’d been cured of susceptibility to sexy and charming a long time ago.

  Chapter Two

  The ER break room was nicer than a lot Grady had seen. The furniture wasn’t twenty years old, the floor had yet to acquire layers of scuff marks and ground-in particles of indeterminate origin, and the appliances didn’t look like they’d been pilfered from a rummage sale. But then, the whole ER-Trauma complex was new. State of the art. Somebody had put a lot of bucks into it. That’s part of the reason she’d come. That and the fact she wasn’t likely to be the other McClure here, the way she might be in a lot of places. The coffee, though, looked a little more lethal than she wanted to chance. She looked in the usual places and found the premeasured packets of generic coffee and filters and, after running hot water in the pot to dislodge the sludge, put a fresh batch on to brew. While she went through the motions on autopilot, she considered Blaise Richelieu.

  Blaise bugged her, or rather, the clear No Trespassing sign planted firmly in Blaise’s metaphorical front yard bugged her. Grady wasn’t used to keep-off messages. She usually had no trouble connecting with people, male or female. Maybe she put a little extra effort into the women—that just came naturally—but she hadn’t even had a chance to open her mouth before Richelieu froze her out. Now, if she’d been meeting someone new
in a different ER six months ago, she might suspect her reputation—deserved or not—had preceded her, but hell, no one here knew her. No one had a chance to form any kind of impression…yet. But the icy blonde sure acted like she had a grudge going. The disdain in Blaise Richelieu’s eyes bugged the bejesus out of her. What the hell had she done to put the storm clouds in Blaise’s eyes?

  She’d just finished pouring a cup and was rummaging in the refrigerator for those little take-out containers of half-and-half when someone said over her shoulder, “They’re in the bottom drawer on the right.”

  “Thanks.” Grady grabbed a couple and turned around. The dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in the flight suit held out a hand.

  “Brody Clark. You must be the new guy.”

  “Grady McClure.” Grady grinned. “It shows, does it?”

  “Well, I don’t know you and you’re on call, which usually spells new guy, and you made a pot of coffee. Doubling down.”

  “That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to live through the night, and whatever was in the pot looked poisonous.”

  “I know what you mean. I was planning on making some new stuff myself.” Brody ambled over, helped herself to a mug of coffee. “I heard you were starting. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thanks—it’s good to finally get going. I’ve been cooling my heels all summer waiting for the red tape to get cleared out.”

  “Where you from?”

  “How far back do you mean?”

  “You can skip grade school.” Brody grinned. “How long is the rest of the story?”

  “Not all that long, really.” Grady didn’t mention it would be longer than either of them had time for if she picked up where the story really started. And she really didn’t want to get into the McClure family saga if she didn’t have to. “I grew up in Southern California, went to Stanford, came east for med school, trained in Maryland, and here I am.”

  “Short and sweet.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Brody narrowed her eyes. “Maryland, huh? Shock Trauma?”