The Nightshift Before Christmas

by Annie O'Neil

  If she was feeling generous, she had to give it to him for keeping his cool. Assigning him a rectal examination as a “welcome gift” was not, she suspected, the reunion he had been hoping for. Then again, finding out her estranged husband would be her locum for the next week wasn’t much of a Christmas present for her, so tough again! Hadn’t two years’ worth of sending him divorce papers given him enough of a clue?

  “Uh... Kate?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to move so I can get my patient’s Christmas ornament back on the tree?”

  “Yes!” she blurted, embarrassed to realize she’d been staring. “Yes, of course. I was just...” She stopped. She wasn’t “just” anything. She stepped back and let him pass.

  “I’m happy to see you, too, Katiebird,” he said at the doorway, complete with one of those looks she knew could see straight through to her soul.

  She rubbed her arms to force the accompanying goose bumps away.

  “Me, too,” she whispered into the empty room. “Me, too.”

  * * *

  “Hello, there... Mr. Kingston? I understand you’ve got a bleeding—” Katie swiftly moved her eyes from the chart to the patient, instantly regretting that she’d wasted valuable time away from her patient.

  Unable to resist the gore factor, the young man had lowered his hand below his heart and tugged off the temporary tourniquet the nurse had put in place. Blood was spurting everywhere. If he hadn’t looked so pale she would have told him off, but Ben Kingston looked like he was about to—

  Oops!

  Without a moment to spare Katie lurched forward, just managing to catch him in a hug before he slithered to the floor.

  “Can I get a hand in here? We’ve got a fainter!”

  Katie was only just managing to hold him on the exam table and smiled in thanks at the quick arrival of— Oh. It was Josh. Natch.

  He quickly assessed the situation, wordlessly helping Katie shift the patient back onto the exam table, checking his airways were clear, loosening the young man’s buttoned-at-the-top shirt collar and loosening his snug belt buckle by a much-needed notch or two as she focused on stanching the flow of blood with a thick stack of sterile gauze.

  “Got a couple extra pillows for foot elevation?”

  “Yup.” Katie pointed to the locker where they stored extra blankets and pillows. “Would you mind handing me a digital tourniquet first? I’ll see if I can stem the bleeding properly while he’s still out.”

  “Sure thing.” Josh stood for a moment, gloved hands held out from his body as they would be in surgery, and ran his eyes around the room to hunt down supplies.

  “Sorry, they’re in the third drawer down— Wait!” Her eyes widened and dropped to Josh’s gloved hands. “Weren’t you in the middle of...?”

  She felt a sharp jag of anger well up in her. Typical, Josh! Running to the rescue without thinking for a single moment about protocol! Was simple adherence to safe hygiene practices too much to ask?

  “Done and dusted.” He nodded at the adjacent exam area. “He’s going through the paperwork with Jorja.” He took in her tightened lips and furrowed eyebrows and began to laugh. Waving his hands in the air, still laughing, he continued, “You didn’t think...? Katie West—”

  “It’s McGann,” she corrected quietly.

  “Yeah, whatever.” The smile and laughter instantly fell away. “I always double-glove during internal exams. These are perfectly clean. You should know me better than that.” His eyes shifted away from hers to the patient, the disappointment in his voice easy to detect. “You good here?”

  She nodded, ashamed of the conclusion she’d leaped to. Josh was a good doctor. Through and through. It was the one thing she’d never doubted about him. He had a natural bedside manner. An ability to read a situation in an instant. Instinctual. All the things she wasn’t.

  She slipped the ringed tourniquet onto the young man’s finger and checked his pulse again. It wasn’t strong, but he’d be all right with a bit of a rest and a finger no longer squirting an unhealthy portion of his ten pints of blood everywhere. He’d need a shot of lidocaine with epinephrine before she could properly sort it out, so she would need to wait for him to come to. Being halfway through an injection wasn’t the time when a patient should regain consciousness. Especially when Josh was leaping through curtained cubicles, coming to her rescue. She jiggled her shoulders up and down. It wouldn’t happen again.

  “Are you nervous, Doc?”

  “Ah! You’re back with us!” Katie turned around in time to stop the young man from pushing himself up to a seated position. “Why don’t you just lie back for a while, okay? I have a feeling your finger didn’t start bleeding half an hour ago, like it says in your chart, Ben.”

  He looked at her curiously.

  “Is it okay if I call you Ben?”

  “You can call me what you like as long as you stitch me up and get me outta here, Doc! It’s Christmas Eve. I’ve got places to go...things to do—”

  “Someone to drive you home?” Katie interrupted. “After your fainting spell, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get behind a wheel.”

  “And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to boss someone around on Christmas Eve!”

  Katie backed away from Ben as his voice rose and busied herself with getting the prep tray ready. Emotions ran high on days like this. Especially if the patient had had one too many cups of “cheer.” Unusual to encounter one on the day shift, but it took all kinds.

  “Cheer” morphed into cantankerous pretty quickly, and Ben definitely had a case of that going on. She stared at the curtain separating her from her colleagues, knowing she’d be better off if there was someone else in the room when she put in the stitches.

  She sucked in a breath and pulled the curtain away. “Can I get a hand in here?” She dived back into the cubicle before she could see who was coming. Josh or no Josh, she needed to keep her head down and get the work done.

  “Everything all right, Dr. McGann?”

  At the sound of Jorja’s voice, Katie felt an unexpected twist of disappointment. It wasn’t like she’d been hoping it would be Josh. Her throat tightened. Oh, no... Of all the baked beans in Boston Harbor... Had she? Clear your throat. Paste on a smile.

  “Yes, great. Thank you, Jorja. Nothing serious, just thought we could do with an extra pair of hands now that Mr. Kingston here has rejoined us.”

  * * *

  Josh tried his best to focus on the intern’s voice as he talked him through how he saw things panning out on Christmas Eve based on absolutely zero experience, but he couldn’t. All he could hear was Katie, talking her patient and the nurse through the procedure in that clear voice she had. The patient had definitely enjoyed a bit of Christmas punch before he’d arrived, and Josh didn’t trust him not to start throwing a few if he was too far gone.

  “Hey.” He interrupted the intern. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Michael,” the young doctor replied, unable to keep the dismay from his face. He’d been on a roll.

  Tough. Fictional projections weren’t going to help what was actually happening.

  “Michael, what’s your policy on patients who’ve had a few too many?” He mimed tossing back some shots.

  “Oh—each ER head is different, but Katie usually calls the police.” He looked around the ER as if expecting to see someone stagger by. “Why?”

  “Just curious.” He gave Michael’s shoulder a friendly clap with his hand, hoping it would bring an end to the conversation. “Thanks for all the tips,” he added, which did the trick.

  He tuned his hearing back into the voices behind the curtain where Katie was working. The patient was young and obviously a gym buff. As strong and feisty as she was, Katie was no match for a drunk twenty-somethi
ng hell-bent on getting more eggnog down his throat. Drunk drivers on icy roads were the last thing the people of Copper Canyon needed on Christmas Eve. Or any night, for that matter.

  “Okay, Ben, you ready? I’m just going to inject a bit of numbing agent into your finger.”

  “What is that?”

  Josh inched a bit closer to the curtain at the sound of the raised voice.

  “It’s a small dose of lidocaine with epinephrine,” Katie explained. “It will numb—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” The patient—Ben, that was it—raised his voice up a notch. “I’ve been on the internet and that stuff makes your fingers fall off. No way are you putting that poison in me!”

  Josh only just managed to stop an eye roll. Self-diagnosis was a growing epidemic in the ER...one that was sometimes harder to control than any actual injury.

  “I think if you read all of the article you’d find that’s more myth than reality.”

  Always sensible. That was his girl!

  Ben’s voice shot up another decibel. “Are you telling me I’m a liar?”

  “No, I’m saying digital gangrene is about the last thing that’s going to happen if I—”

  “You—are—not—putting—that—sh—”

  “Hello, ladies.” Josh yanked the curtain aside, unable to stay quiet. “Need an extra pair of hands?”

  “No,” Katie muttered.

  “Yes,” Jorja replied loudly over her boss.

  “They’re trying to give me gangrene!”

  “Really? Fantastic.” Josh rocked back on his heels and grinned, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “I haven’t seen a good case of gangrene in ages.” He flashed his smile directly at Katie. “Are you trying to turn Mr. Kingston here into The Gangrene who stole Christmas?”

  Everyone in the cubicle stared at him for a moment in silence.

  “The Grinch!” Josh filled in the silence. “Get it? Gangrene? Grinch?”

  There was a collective headshake, which Josh waved off. “You guys are hopeless. They’re both green!”

  Jorja groaned as the bad joke finally clicked.

  “Well,” he conceded, “one’s a bit more black and smelly, and isn’t around for the big Christmassy finish, but, Ben, my friend...” Josh took another step into the cubicle, clapping a hand on the young man’s shoulder from behind and lowering himself so that he spoke slowly and directly into the young man’s ear. “I’ve known this doctor for a very long time, and if she needs to stabilize the neuronal membrane in your finger by inhibiting the ionic fluxes required for the instigation and conduction of nerve impulses in order to stem the geyser of blood shooting from that finger of yours, she knows what she’s talking about, hear?”

  Ben nodded dumbly.

  “Right!” Josh raised a hand to reveal a set of car keys dangling from his fingers.

  He saw Katie’s eyebrow quirk upward. He would have laid a fiver on the fact she was thinking he’d taken up pickpocketing to add a bit more adrenaline to his life. He’d win the bet and she’d be wrong. He’d just seen enough drunks in his Big City ER Tour. The one where he had done everything but successfully forget the brown-eyed beauty standing right in front of him.

  He cleared his throat and stepped away from Ben. “You owe Dr. We—Dr. McGann an apology. And while you do that—” he jangled the keys from his finger “—I’ll just be popping these babies over to Security until we get someone to pick you up.”

  Ben opened his mouth to object, his eyes moving from physician to nurse and back to Josh before he muttered something about being out of order, his mother’s stupid car, and then, with a sag of the shoulders, he finally started digging a cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Excellent!” Josh tossed the keys up in the air, caught them with a flourish, gave Jorja a wink and tugged the curtain shut behind him before anyone could say boo.

  “Well...” Josh heard Jorja say before he headed off. “He’s certainly a breath of fresh air!”

  Katie muttered something he couldn’t quite make out. Probably just as well.

  Josh grinned, his shoes glued to the floor until he was sure peace reigned behind Curtain Three. He heard Katie clear her throat and put on her bright voice—the one she used when she was irritated with him.

  “Now, then, Ben, if you can just show me that finger of yours, we can get you stitched up and home before you know it. Jorja? Could you hand me some of the hemostatic dressing, please? We need to get the wound to clot.”

  Josh began to whistle “Silent Night” as he cheerily worked his way back toward the main desk. Job. Done.

  * * *

  “How long do you intend to continue this White Knight thing?”

  Josh’s instinct was to smile and tell her he would wield his lance and shield as long as it took for her to see sense and come back to him. Longer. Until the day he died, he would protect Katie. He’d taken a vow and had meant it. He had broken part of it, and he was going to spend the rest of his life making good on it. Even if that meant walking away, no matter how hard it hurt.

  But this was work. Personal would have to wait.

  “Where I come from, people stick around to help one another when the going gets tough.” He laid the Tennessee drawl on as thick as molasses. It always got to her and this time was no different.

  He watched as her hands flew to her hips in indignation, then shifted fluidly into a protective, faux-nonchalant crossing of the arms. Her eyes widened, the lids quickly dropping into a recovery position. One of her eyebrows arched just a fraction before her face became neutral again. But she couldn’t keep the flush of emotions from pinking up her cheeks.

  He shifted his stance, ratcheted his satisfaction down a couple of notches. He wasn’t playing fair. He knew more than anyone that teamwork in an emergency department was something Katie valued above all else. Unless, it seemed, it came from him.

  He stood solidly as she gave him the Katie once-over. He wouldn’t have minded taking his own slow-motion scan over the woman he’d dreamed about holding each and every night since she’d told him in no uncertain terms she’d had enough of his daredevil ways. He’d have to play it careful. Divorce rules shifted from state to state, and he hadn’t checked out Idaho. If she’d moved to Texas he would have shown up a lot earlier. No need to wait for a signature there. As it was, he thought two years had given them each more than enough time to know they were meant for each other. Given him enough lessons to know she’d been right. He’d suffered enough loss to know it was time to change. Move forward—whatever shape that took.

  “Where are you staying?”

  Unexpected.

  “Here.” He pointed at the hospital floor.

  There went that eyebrow again.

  “Locum tenens wages aren’t enough to get you a condo?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t know how long I’d be staying.”

  She refused to take the bait.

  “Usually housing comes with the contract.”

  What was she? The contract police? Or... A lightbulb went off... Was she trying to figure out where he’d be laying his sleepy head? Was she missing being held in his arms as much as he had longed to hold her? Truth was, he never bothered with separate housing on these gigs. Hospital bunks suited him fine... Friends’ sofas sufficed when he was back in Boston. Home was Katie, and it had been two long years...

  He heard the impatient tap of her foot. Fine...he’d play along.

  “Not this time of year. And it was too short a contract for me to put up a fight.”

  Katie’s jaw tightened before she shifted her chin upward in acknowledgment of the obvious. She knew what he meant. The locals had dibs on all the affordable properties. Everything went to the top one hundred highest-paid, most famous, with the biggest bank account, et cetera, et cetera. Life i
n Copper Canyon was a heady mix of the haves and those who worked for the haves.

  Mountain views, private access to the slopes, sunset, sunrise, heated pools, wet bars, ten thousand square feet minimum of whatever a person could desire—you name it, they had it. Copper Canyon saw most of America’s glitterati at some point, on the slopes or at one of the resorts...if, that was, they didn’t have a private pad.

  “You staying at your parents’? I remember them having a pretty plush pad out here and not using it all that much.”

  Risky question, but he couldn’t imagine why else she would have moved here. She walked over to the board and began erasing patient names and rearranging a few others.

  “They’re usually at the Boston brownstone or in the Cayman Islands, right?”

  “Jorja? Could you make sure the tablets are all updated to reflect what’s on the board? We’ve got quite a few changes to note,” Katie called over her shoulder to the main desk.

  “Sure thing, Dr. McGann. On it!”

  Josh leaned against the wall, one foot crossed over the other, hands stuffed in his pockets, happy to just watch her play out her ignoring game. He threw in an off-key “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” whistle for good measure.

  “And let’s pop something different on the music front, Jorja. Some nice carols.”

  Josh grinned at Jorja, dropped her a wink and dropped his whistle simultaneously.

  “They just don’t stop, do they? Your parents?”

  Only the squeak of the whiteboard pen could be heard over the usual hospital murmur.

  Wow. Having a conversation with a brick wall would have yielded more return.

  “The indefatigable McGanns! That’s how I always thought of them.”

  Katie’s lips tightened. She didn’t do chitchat. Especially when it came to her parents. They were the source of any well-packed baggage Katie had hauled around through the years. Parents who’d discovered they hadn’t really been up to parenting so had handed it over to nannies and boarding schools to do the work for them. They were harmless enough folk at a cocktail party, but he knew their lack of interest as parents hurt Katie deeply.