by Annie O'Neil
“And what are your parents? Doctors or models?”
“Dead.”
Saoirse felt her face flame with horror. Talk about open mouth, insert foot. Her parents had been just about the only reason she hadn’t flung herself off a jagged cliff edge the day of the wedding-not-wedding. She couldn’t imagine not having them at the end of a phone, at the very least. Video links were even better.
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea, Santi.”
“Don’t worry. You weren’t to know.” His voice had a heavy dose of robot about it now. She didn’t blame him. She couldn’t even say her ex-fiancé’s name without tearing up, and he was alive and kicking.
The look on Santiago’s face said Don’t even think about giving me sympathy, so she swallowed her pity and ploughed on. If they’d both just endured the worst year ever, they’d finally have something in common.
“Recently?”
“No.” He maintained eye contact almost as if he were giving a frontline report to a senior officer that half his men had been killed and the other half had been taken hostage by terrorists.
Her mind reeled back to the intensity with which he’d fought for the homeless veteran’s life yesterday. That hadn’t been about saving a stranger’s life. It had been about something personal. Something buried away deep in his heart.
She nodded for him to continue.
“My parents were killed twenty years ago at our—at the family bodega. A robbery gone about as wrong as they can when there are guns involved.”
He was painting a picture. It was hard to tell whose benefit it was for, but Saoirse clamped her lips tight now that she’d finally got him talking. Not that it made for easy listening. Just hearing the absence of emotion in Santi’s voice was chilling.
“I looked after my kid brother, Alejandro, who got snagged by a bullet while my older twin brothers, the ones you saw, went to med school. You were right about the genius part.” He marked up a point on the invisible scoreboard hanging between them. “The second I turned eighteen I joined the Marines. Pulled five tours. Now I’m back. Boom. There’s your story. Happy now?” His face was anything but.
“Uh...not to be picky or anything, but you sort of left out the part about why you hightailed it out of the ER the second you saw them.”
“It’s been a while.”
From the twitch in his jaw when he clamped his lips tight, Saoirse guessed “a while” would be putting it mildly. She rolled her finger in the “keep it coming” move, surprised she’d already extracted this much information. Too bad she hadn’t been this good at “torture” when she’d told her fiancé she couldn’t have children and he’d said he was fine with it. How could she have been stupid enough to believe him?
“I’ve been stationed overseas for a long time now. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to do my holas after a fifteen-year absence and then...pum!” He exploded his fist into an outstretched hand. “Vamanos. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but my ‘boss’ is a bit of a whip-cracker,” he replied neutrally, although his arched eyebrow dared her to challenge his answer. “Your turn!”
It was pretty clear she’d been given all the information she was going to get. Which, to be fair, was more than she had anticipated. An Irish man would’ve run for the hills if forced to talk about himself. Vegas-style or otherwise. Which was probably why her ex had chosen the moment before he’d been meant to say “I do” to say “I can’t” and had legged it out of the church. It wasn’t like she’d given him fair warning she wouldn’t be able to have children. It was the exact same amount of time she’d been given. A month to wrap her head around the soul-destroying news and decide to go ahead with the wedding. Too late, she’d realized that sort of news was a deal breaker.
“Earth to Sare-shee.”
Why couldn’t anyone get her name right? Sear-shuh, Sear-shuh, Sear-shuh!
She shot him a glare and grabbed the radio mic that was yabbering away for a callback.
“It’s Murphy,” she growled at him, before picking up. “This is Ambulance 23 at Mar Vista, ready to respond.”
They listened to the static-filled voice in silence. “Vehicle 23, we have a three-month-old infant presenting with fever and difficulty breathing.” The address came out in a clear, staccato, lightly accented voice.
“Got it.” She signed out, giving a sober-faced Santi a quick nod as she turned the key in the ignition and he flicked on the sirens.
Sharing time would have to wait.
CHAPTER FOUR
“LOOK, THERE SHE IS.” Santi pointed toward the end of the block where a woman was running down the lawn with a swaddled child in her arms.
Saoirse pulled the vehicle alongside the frantic mother seconds later.
“You do immediate attending, I’ll get the gear ready,” she commanded, before flying out of the cab to open up the back.
“I thought you were the one in training. All experience is good experience.”
“Not today I’m not.” There was an edge to her voice, different from the professional terseness he’d seen the day before. There was definitely a story there. He yanked his stethoscope from around his neck and jumped out of the vehicle. Another time, another place.
“My baby’s not breathing! Please help my little boy!” The mother held the child in her outstretched arms toward Santi. While very pale, the baby boy had streaks of color in his cheeks, so he was clearly getting some oxygen, but even with Saoirse’s high-octane slamming of doors and the growing chatter of onlookers he could hear a rattle in the child’s quick, painful-sounding breaths.
“What’s his name?”
“Carlos—same as his papi. I’m Maria-Rose.”
“That’s a good, strong name for a boy.” Santiago took the child in his arms. Calming the parent was often half the trick in cases like this. “Has Carlos produced any phlegm, Maria-Rose?” he asked, steering the mother toward the ambulance and unwrapping the blanket. Children weren’t his forte, though he’d tended to his fair share of locals on his tours. The humanitarian side of being in the military had always appealed to him far more than treating victims of actual combat. He stopped the memories in midflow, quickly pulling back the child’s blanket and sleep suit. He hoped when he got the child fully unclothed he wouldn’t see a rash. The little boy’s cheek was hot to the touch and he wasn’t crying at all.
She shook her head. “He has been very lethargic, whining more than crying through the night. And then there’s that blue tinge to his tongue. Can you see it?”
He gently opened the boy’s mouth with his fingers and saw there was a blue tinge not only to his tongue but on the inside of his lips as well.
“We’d better get your son some oxygen.” He quickly ran through the child’s medical history with Maria-Rose, immunizations, no problems with the birth to speak of, and onset of symptoms.
“Just the past day or so that I’ve noticed.” She wrung her hands nervously, as if she’d given the wrong answer. Timing was critical with small children. She’d been wise to call for emergency services.
“Only twenty-four hours? Okay. Any trips since he’s been born?” he asked, pressing his stethoscope to the child’s chest only to hear the thick rattle that said one thing: pneumonia.
The mother shook her head.
“Good. What about you? Did you travel at all while you were pregnant?” From what he’d heard, there were lots of problems with women unknowingly affected by the Zika virus. He ran his hand across the child’s scalp—it felt normal size—so nothing to obviously suggest he, too, was a victim of the mosquito-borne affliction.
“Are you kidding?” She threw up her hands. “We’ve been saving all our money to go to Carlos and his education.”
The same as his parents had done. Sacrificed everything so their children could have it all. The closest they’d
come to “returning” to their homeland of Heliconia had been Vizcaya on Biscayne Bay. The tropical gardens had always sent his mother into raptures of homesickness.
The weight of the child in his arms realigned his focus.
“Good. Any problems feeding?”
“In here, Santi.” Saoirse waved him to the back of the ambo, climbing up the steps as he approached.
“What do you need?”
Santi’s brain shot from information gathering to action mode. “High-flow oxygen, amoxicillin—”
“Did you check for allergies?” Saoirse’s tone was sharp but not accusatory. Safety first and all that.
“Yes. No allergies that the mother is aware of.” He took the oxygen tube she offered and gently taped it in place on the little boy’s face. “Can you inject the antibiotics into the saline solution please? Until we get cultures at the hospital we won’t know exactly what we’re dealing with but I’m pretty sure it’s pneumonia.”
“Do you see that?” Saoirse’s voice was low.
Santi narrowed his eyes and nodded after a moment. A rash. “Do you have any slides? It could be nothing, but it could just as easily be invasive pneumococcal.”
“Septicemia?” She handed him a slide, nodding at his diagnosis.
“Maybe, or Zika—but I don’t think the Zika rash manifests like this. Have you seen any cases?” Santi pressed the clear slide against the boy’s skin, nodding as Saoirse said she’d heard about it but had never seen a case. “It blanches. That’s a good thing.”
“Doesn’t mean there isn’t septicemia,” she whispered, aware the boy’s mother was straining to hear everything they said.
“True.” He nodded. “Let’s get an IV into this little guy and hit the road.”
“Yup. I’d just like to test his fontanelle before we head off.”
Santi slipped in the IV, aware of how crucial fluids were for a sick child, all the while ratcheting up a few more respect points for Saoirse. Her experience as a NICU nurse clearly put her miles ahead of your average trainee paramedic. Most wouldn’t know their way around pediatric lingo with the comfort level she was displaying. Or exhibit unerring competency in the crucial tests as she was.
Someone, he thought as he watched her finish the examination of the baby’s head while he secured the IV line, has a bit of a history.
* * *
“What do you feel?” Santi asked after a moment’s silence.
“It’s not tense. No swelling. Hopefully, it’s not meningitis.” Saoirse pressed herself up from the bench, hoping her face bore nothing more than a picture of professional efficiency. “Right, Maria-Rose. Do you want to jump in and we’ll get your little man to Seaside Hospital for some tests, okay?”
As she slammed the doors shut, she saw Santi as the rest of the world might see him. Gorgeous, yes. But there was something deeper than that. A skilled paramedic, body taut with focus, driven to do the best he could for the small child laid out on the gurney.
He cared.
Santi was in this all the way, no showboating. And that was something she could relate to. What you saw was what you got. For the most part, anyway.
She pulled open the driver’s door and flicked on the sirens with a grin. Maybe her new partner wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * *
“Here you are, Murph. One I-survived-a-week-with-Santi Café Cubano.”
Saoirse eyed the small cup warily. “This isn’t going to keep me up all night, is it?”
Santi’s lips shifted into a mischievous grin with a quick lift of his dark eyebrows. “Por qué? Does Mamacita Murphy have a hot date tonight?”
“Quit doing that!”
“What?”
“That whole...” she opened her hand and “washed” it around his face “...Latin Lothario thingy.”
“You don’t like my sexy, sexy talk?” He cranked it up another few notches.
Yes.
“Doesn’t work on me.”
Liar, liar pants on fire.
She avoided catching his eye just to be safe.
“But it has on someone else...” Santi poked her in the arm. “Who’s the lucky guy tonight, Murph?”
Why was he so interested in who she was dating anyhow? Wasn’t quizzing her all day on her emergency medicine knowledge enough Q & A?
She smirked in lieu of swooning, then pursed her lips together and blew a raspberry. “That’s me. A regular ol’ dating machine.”
She continued to give her tiny cup of coffee the evil eye. There had been so much change in her life over the last year. Becoming single. Realizing she was never going to have children. Hopping on a plane with a student visa instead of the fiancée visa, which had expired...about six months ago now. Urgh!
The switch from hot, milky tea to coffee had been hard enough. She’d have to call her mum and have her send some proper tea bags over.
A chill of realization hit her. Even if the tea arrived in a week, she would be gone in a couple of months. April Fools’ Day. The irony! Deported back to Ireland unless, by some divine intervention, she found a man bonkers enough to marry her.
“It’s not going to bite you.”
“What is it again?” She held the small cup up at eye level then gave it a dubious sniff.
“A Café Cubano. It’s the closest thing to heaven after a hard day and, orale—you were on it today, mija!” Santi did that whizzy snap thing with his fingers again and crowed. She nodded, feigning accepting a loud roar of applause from a stadium full of fans. As if.
“Teamwork, Valentino. It all boils down to teamwork.”
And she meant it. They’d only had a week together in the ambulance but already they had a partner shorthand going on that made working together a genuine pleasure. Even if she sometimes had to squint at him and turn his gorgeousness into a blur of caramel features. Santiago Valentino would be far too easy to fall for. And love? That little nugget of complications was well and truly off the table.
“Here.” He handed her an open bottle of water. “Take a swig of this to cleanse your palate and then drink the cafecito.”
“My, my,” Saoirse play-crooned, happy to yank her thoughts away from the thunderstorm brewing in her head. “Isn’t someone Mr. Exotico?”
“That’s rich, coming from the leprechaunette of Miami Beach.”
“Whatever.” Saorise leaned back against the slatted bench and narrowed her eyes. Santi’s good looks screamed exotic, but his accent, when he spoke English, was as American as they came. When he spoke Spanish with non-English-speaking patients and turned on the Latino thing? Mmm-hmm... Hard to shake off just how sexy he was. That beautifully sensual mouth, inky-black hair and a body that would’ve been more than worth watching if he was dancing la vida loca.
Good thing they were just colleagues.
She looked at him again then looked away.
Pah-ha-ha! Try telling that to the judge.
Tentatively, she stepped back into the muddy waters of family history, “Your parents were from...?”
“Heliconia. It’s a little island nation out...” He pointed away from the hospital toward the sea, his sentence tapering off as his hand fell back into his lap.
“And they brought you over with them when you were little?” Saoirse pressed gently.
“Before we were born,” he answered, the life all but draining from his eyes.
“You and your brothers?” She stated the obvious, already preparing her “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that” face, only to receive a quick no-eye-contact nod in return before he downed his coffee in one swift go. He hadn’t said a word about them the entire week and it looked like that would be the status quo.
“Right!” He flicked the paper cup into the garbage can with an ease that told her this wasn’t his first Café
Cubana rodeo. “I think we’ve heard enough about me to last a lifetime. Why don’t we go into the hospital, see if we can rustle up a transfer or something? Maybe over to Buena Vista. The private hospitals always have much better cantinas.”
“Sounds good to me.” Saoirse knew when to stop digging. She had her own full-to-bursting cupboard of secrets so there was no point in poking around someone else’s. She slurped down her coffee in the same quick style as Santi, only to have her body reel from the effects. “For the love of Peter, Paul and Mary!”
Santi wasn’t the only strong, dark thing in town.
“What are you trying to do to me?” She glared at him while stuffing the paper cup into the garbage can. “Put hairs on my chest or something?”
Santi threw back his head and laughed. A rich, warm laugh that never failed to make her smile. Unexpectedly he reached out and ran a finger along her jawline, tipping her chin up to meet his gaze.
“Dulzera, believe me...” Despite the bright midday sunshine, Santi’s voice went all tropical-nights sultry on her, sending little shivers down her spine as their eyes connected. “There isn’t a single thing I would change about you.”
His words set her insides jigging about as if she’d just won the lottery. The last thing she’d felt since her fiancé had left her at the altar had been feminine, but the surge of I-am-woman Santi’s touch unleashed? Far too easy to let rip and roar.
And then he winked, the warm light burning bright in his eyes, giving Saoirse another unexpected shot of pleasure. Unwitting or not, she liked being the one who’d turned that frown of his into a smile. It was one worth waiting for. If she didn’t watch it... She pulled back and broke eye contact, tugging her fingers through the short pixie cut she was still getting used to as she did...
She’d just have to watch it.
“C’mon, slowpoke. Let’s go get that transfer.”