Tempted by Her Hot-Shot Doc

by Becky Wicks

  Madeline appeared traumatised enough in this moment for everyone, but Abigail was still latching on to her like a leech.

  ‘Crap!’ Mark exclaimed from the doorway. ‘Lady out here with a hip fracture—we need you, Maria.’

  ‘Now?’

  Jake was having a field-day, zooming in on their expressions, Ryan could tell.

  ‘Evan’s tied up...’

  ‘It’s urgent,’ Mark told her. ‘I’ll meet you next door.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Maria protested.

  ‘You guys get on it. Madeline’s here,’ Ryan declared, reaching behind him quickly and grabbing some scrubs from a box. He threw them at Madeline.

  Her eyes widened in terror. ‘Ryan... Ryan, listen... I really can’t do this...’

  ‘Yes, you can—you’re just helping me. Wash your hands.’

  ‘I can’t just help you.’

  ‘You’re a trained nurse—of course you can. Wash your hands and put those scrubs on.’

  He’d made the decision on the spot. He knew she could do it. Whatever fear she’d convinced herself she had about being in a set of scrubs around an emergency was all in her head; he was sure of it.

  ‘I need you, Madeline,’ he said calmly as he prepared the cannula and reached for the girl’s hand. ‘Abigail needs you.’

  ‘I don’t want to do this,’ she protested again, panic causing her voice to shake. ‘This isn’t why I’m here. I’ve told you this. Stop trying to—’

  ‘If she can’t do it, Ryan, she can’t do it,’ Maria said, flustered. Beads of sweat were glistening on her forehead and she looked exhausted.

  Ryan put the cannula down. ‘Madeline is going to help me,’ he said firmly, in a tone that made them both fall silent. He turned to her and fixed his eyes on hers. ‘I have every faith in you. You’re a nurse, Madeline. You know it and I know it.’

  Her eyes narrowed in silent defeat. She did as she was told—scrubbed her hands, let Maria tie the scrubs at the back. Then Maria squeezed her shoulder and hurried out of the station quickly with Mark, leaving them alone with the camera.

  ‘Trust yourself,’ Ryan said, as soon as they were gone.

  He heard her take a deep breath, seemingly psyching herself up. He watched her place a hand on Abigail’s forehead.

  ‘I won’t leave you. I’m here,’ she said in Spanish, and Abigail looked relieved, smiling weakly and muttering her thanks before Ryan administered the anaesthetic into the back of her hand.

  ‘Muscles are relaxed, breathing is depressed, eye movements slowing,’ he told her after a moment, wheeling the laparoscope closer. ‘I’m going to make the incision right here.’ He pointed to a spot below Abigail’s belly button. ‘Once the tube’s in you’re going to pump the carbon dioxide in for me, OK? It’s really simple. I’m setting it all up. You just move your hands, slow and steady, OK?’

  Madeline nodded, but didn’t make a sound.

  He turned the monitor around and pulled his mask up over his mouth. Madeline did the same, leaving only her eyes visible. He tried not to register the fear he saw in the wide green pools—his job right now was to make her feel as much of an expert as he was, so they could help this girl as quickly as possible.

  Forty-five minutes passed, with Ryan explaining everything he was doing to the camera and making his usual trademark comments—the ones that never ceased to win him thousands of tweets from touched and inspired fans, and from wannabe medical prodigies around the world.

  He could almost see them already.

  Who’s the new staff member? New romance?

  #DrRyan #MedicalExtremes.

  He couldn’t exactly tell them to edit this scene out as he had with the tumbling tarantulas. He blocked it from his mind. Having the camera lens on them meant he couldn’t talk to Madeline either—not in the way he would have done without it—but slowly, as they worked together, he watched her fears seem to drain away, until all that was left was a determined young woman doing everything she was asked to do quickly, efficiently, in a way that made him proud.

  Finally, after he’d closed the incisions with neat stitches, Madeline applied the dressing without flinching and by the time Abigail came round, groggy and confused, seemed completely calm.

  Madeline pulled her mask down around her neck, stroked the girl’s forehead again and held her hand, letting out a sigh.

  ‘Ahora está OK,’ she whispered. ‘Dr Ryan fixed you up.’

  ‘Nurse Maddy helped, too,’ he added quickly, placing a hand on Madeline’s arm.

  Their eyes lingered on each other’s perhaps a little too long, and when he turned to the camera he didn’t miss the fact that it was directed straight at them.

  Abigail was speaking now—softly, woozily. He could understand some but not all of what she said, and as she continued breathily Madeline’s face was a picture of concern and fresh heartbreak.

  She looked up at him, translating for his benefit. ‘She says she got pregnant at fifteen, too. She went into labour for three days before coming for help, and then laboured for two more days before delivery.’

  ‘What happened?’ Ryan asked, remembering what Maria had said about Abigail’s difficult past.

  Madeline smudged a tear as it trickled down her cheek. ‘She was induced, and then told that the baby had already passed away. A doctor from another village performed surgery, like you just did, but he wasn’t a professional. So awful...’

  A strange part of Ryan wanted to reach for Madeline suddenly, but he kept his hands firmly at his sides. He couldn’t bear the misfortune this poor young woman had endured. Abigail was still a child herself.

  ‘She couldn’t walk for three months and was taken to the hospital in Saint Elena for physiotherapy,’ Madeline said, still translating. ‘She didn’t know she was pregnant again, but she still wants a baby.’

  Sympathy and despair for Abigail, and so many others like her, passed from Madeline to him like a secret note. Madeline’s emotions were as tangible and hot as the jungle air. Her openness was rubbing off on him and she’d felt so good in his hands.

  So good that in spite of being swept away again into another emergency, and trying his best to maintain focus, he still couldn’t shift the image of her floating topless in the lake...of himself just moments away from making a mistake.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MADELINE HAD NEVER brushed her teeth so many times in one day. In the fading light, with her view polka-dotted by fireflies, she was sitting under the trees by the unlit fire, trying to demonstrate to the eight kids sitting around her how best to reach the backs of their mouths with their new ‘toys’.

  They seemed to think her sticking the toothbrush in her own mouth and making funny faces was the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. It literally never got old. But they were learning fast, eager to impress her.

  Truth be told, she was glad of the distraction, because every moment she wasn’t busy she was back in that lake, being tenderly, sensually washed by Ryan.

  Her cheeks flamed just at remembering, and she turned her attention back to helping the youngest child, a boy of just four, navigate his way around getting the paste out of a closed tube of toothpaste.

  Her morning swim that had quickly turned into a semi-naked cleansing session at the hands of the infamous Ryan Tobias had been only marginally overshadowed by the surgery she’d helped him perform on Abigail.

  Madeline was still shaking from it—picturing the blood, reliving the flashbacks that had struck like thunder as she’d pulled on those scrubs and put that mask over her face. How could she have stood there at that operating table and not remembered in vivid detail the last time she’d tried to help a child and failed?

  She’d been so angry with Ryan that she’d almost stormed out, but the look in Abigail’s eyes...it had been almost unbearable. That combined with the steel grip she’d
had on her hand had given Madeline no other choice but to suck it up and follow his orders.

  Ryan had forced her to face her pain today—even though he had no idea at all of what had caused it in the first place.

  ‘Madeline, Madeline!’

  One little girl called Alina was showing her a set of pearly white teeth and Madeline clapped her hands, then directed her to rinse her mouth out with bottled water and spit onto the grass.

  She was annoyed with herself for being distracted. A small part of her was also annoyed at being putty in Ryan’s hands after the way he’d handled her in the lake, but another part—a stronger part—was impressed that he’d called her out on her fears and, as a result, had shifted something inside her, somehow.

  She smiled to herself as she watched a volunteer in knee-length denim shorts walk up with sticks and cardboard for the night’s fire. Now she could think of Toby. Now she could compare the look of relief and thanks her young friend and patient had so often given her with the look of Abigail, a girl she’d been able to help. And now she could see that both times she’d done everything she possibly could have.

  ‘Dinner!’

  Someone called out the magic word from up at the camp, causing all the kids to start scrambling up, commencing their nightly routine of hugging her one by one, tightly. It was their cue to head back to their families and Madeline’s to collect her boring rice and beans—not that she ever complained.

  Seeing the way people lived in the Amazon, on whatever they could catch, or grow, or fetch in small supplies from towns after days of rowing upstream, was doing wonders for her gratitude levels in general.

  ‘Night!’ she said to the kids one by one, hugging them in return and watching them run off giggling into the twilight.

  She was starting to forget she’d ever lived a life in which all thoughts of kids—of being around them, interacting with them—had been torture. Maybe she’d quit nursing too soon...

  Ryan came in late to the dining room. Madeline was sitting beside Maria, finishing a second banana, when he walked in, grabbed a plate, filled it with food and walked back out again. He looked as though he was in a rush. Was there another emergency?

  ‘Did he see another tarantula?’ she joked with Maria, scanning the ceiling for a moment.

  Maria smiled and shrugged, digging her fork into a boiled egg.

  Disappointment, then annoyance swirled in Madeline’s belly when she realised that Ryan might well be ignoring her after what had happened between them.

  She couldn’t help reliving the image of his well-endowed lower half, exposed to the sun on the deck right in front of her, the feel of his expert hands trailing the soap around her navel and down towards... Well... A mistake. Surely they both knew that?

  She put down her banana peel, pictured having an early night—another torturous one with Ryan in a silent tent so close to hers—but to her surprise, when she walked outside through the usual flurry of buzzing insects trying to get to her flesh, she saw him sitting by the fire with Evan, unpacking what looked like a box.

  Madeline stopped in her tracks, but Maria beckoned her forward. She was carrying two cups of tea for them in metal cups.

  ‘Come on, honey—come and sit down. It’s been a long day,’ she said kindly.

  Evan was playing the guitar that she remembered Ryan talking about. They each had a beer on the ground beside them.

  Ryan stood up when he saw her, holding out another beer which he’d pulled from the box on the ground. ‘For you,’ he said, eyes twinkling.

  He’d taken his hat off and his hair was sticking up crazily again, as though he’d wrestled with a bush. He looked as rugged and wild and ridiculously handsome as the first time she’d seen him on television—except that now, of course, she’d seen parts of him his regular audience never got to see.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the lukewarm bottle from him as Maria put her tea on the ground. ‘I’ll drink that after,’ she told her, and Maria winked.

  ‘We had it delivered especially,’ said Ryan, offering Maria one. She declined. ‘Figured we had a few things to celebrate.’

  The light from the fire was playing in Ryan’s hair, and although he looked tired he seemed relaxed, for once. He moved across the log he was sitting on so she could sit beside him.

  ‘A few things to celebrate?’ she said cryptically, and he raised an eyebrow in silent acknowledgement of their secret.

  Madeline felt hot—and not just because of the fire Mark was now prodding with a long stick. She noticed Ryan’s Boston Red Sox T-shirt, more casual than anything she’d ever seen him in, and his jeans as he stretched out his legs and feet towards the fire. He was still in his trusted British boots.

  Others joined them as they trickled over from the dining hall. She felt Ryan’s eyes on her every now and then, as hot as the sparks bouncing from the burning sticks, until eventually he leaned in to whisper in her ear.

  ‘You did good today. You made me very proud.’

  She turned to him. His face was so close she almost brushed his nose with hers, and the movement sent a familiar flight of butterflies coursing through her.

  ‘What exactly are we talking about, here?’

  He smiled, brushing her ear with his nose. ‘You back in scrubs.’

  She rolled her eyes, but he nudged her with his elbow.

  ‘And out of them, of course.’

  Madeline tried not to smirk as she took a sip of her drink. No one was looking at them, but she was more than aware of Jake, the camera guy, lurking not far away, no doubt waiting to catch anything juicy. She’d seen him zooming in on her before.

  ‘That was a mistake,’ she whispered, wishing she didn’t have to say it.

  ‘I know,’ he said, brushing her ear again—with his lips this time.

  She leaned away, her limbs growing weaker. ‘I should thank you for what you had me do in surgery,’ she managed after a moment.

  Ryan took a swig from his bottle. Evan was strumming another song now and one of the volunteers, a lady in her thirties with straight red hair, had started to sing.

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to do what you did,’ he said, ‘if I hadn’t thought all along that you could.’

  ‘Well, you have more faith in me than I do,’ she said, and sighed. ‘But, seriously, you really helped me today, Ryan—more than you know. You’ve made me think about...things.’

  ‘Like the thing that made you quit nursing?’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’

  ‘Whatever it was, Madeline, you have to let it go. It’s in the past.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, nodding. ‘Maybe you should remember that, too? Leave some things in the past?’

  Ryan looked at the floor for a moment. A faint smile crossed his mouth as he shook his head. ‘So what was it? Who was it that made you give up?’

  ‘A boy called Toby,’ she said, letting the words leave her mouth without giving them a chance to get stuck like they usually did.

  She gripped her beer bottle in both hands, started picking at the label with her too-long nails.

  ‘He was the first patient put in my care when I qualified—we got really close, you know? I would take him books and games, and I would tell him everything would be OK. Really, he was helping me as much as I was helping him. I was nervous, I was new, and he would say the right things... Like, “You’re the best nurse, Madeline. I trust you, and I’m so glad you’re here.”’

  ‘Sounds like a good kid,’ Ryan said, putting his empty bottle down on the ground. ‘What was wrong with him?’

  ‘Leukaemia. Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia,’ she said, feeling the familiar pang. ‘He was strong for months, but one night on my shift he had sudden respiratory distress and I couldn’t do anything...’

  She trailed off, emotions rising.

  ‘There was nothing
I could do... He went into cardiac arrest and I couldn’t even call his mother in time—’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t,’ Ryan cut in, putting a big hand around her shoulder on impulse.

  His voice was firm, as it had been in the medical station when he’d thrown her the scrubs. He pulled her in against him.

  ‘You couldn’t have done anything.’ He shuffled closer to her on the log, moved his other hand to her knee. ‘Toby never blamed you, Maddy—not for anything. And it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, putting a hand over his automatically in response. ‘I know that now. But I didn’t want to hear that for a really long time.’

  ‘Because you missed him. And you felt like you’d failed him when you hadn’t. You made his last few months so much better, and that was a parting gift he never would have had otherwise.’

  Ryan’s words were making her eyes turn to hot, wet pools again, and she blinked, not wanting to make a scene.

  ‘Sometimes you want to feel the pain,’ he whispered, ‘because you don’t believe you’re entitled to feel anything else. Am I right?’

  She could hear his voice crack just a little bit as he continued to hold her against him. He’d never touched her in public before. She was equally moved and afraid.

  ‘You’re so right,’ she whispered back.

  He looked down at his boots and after a while removed his arm from around her. She half expected him to stand up and walk away from his own feelings and the cameras yet again.

  ‘Sometimes you think you’ll just wallow in it for ever, because you don’t know how else to be any more,’ she murmured.

  He didn’t get up. Instead he pressed his hot palm against her palm and laced his fingers through her own.

  ‘God, Maddy,’ he said on an exhale, ‘I know exactly how that feels.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN