The Doctor's Christmas Proposal

by Laura Iding

Mitch hadn’t wanted to help with the Christmas decorations last night either. Maybe he didn’t celebrate Christmas. Or maybe he was trying to tell her, without being rude, that he liked her as a nurse but not on a personal level. Get a clue, she told herself, taking a step away to return to work. “All right.”

  “Dana, if you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you.”

  He sounded so serious, she grew concerned. “Is something wrong? We can go into the nurses’ lounge.”

  He turned and led the way. Once they were alone, he frowned slightly. “I overheard your conversation with Jessica. I’m a little worried you’re becoming too emotionally involved.”

  “I’m not,” she protested, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. “I’m a nurse. We provide emotional support to our patients. Of course I care about Jessica.”

  “I know. I do, too, but if something happens…” His voice trailed off and his frown deepened. “I just think you have to face the truth. Jessica is very ill. She could easily die. I don’t want you to end up hurt.”

  The idea bothered him, she realized. “I can’t help getting involved with my patients,” she explained carefully. “I’d like to think it makes me a better nurse.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Keeping a cool head in an emergency is what will make you a better nurse.”

  She narrowed her gaze. Was that a hint? He didn’t think she kept cool in a crisis?

  She was about to jump all over him when he continued, “I just think you should leave the subject of Jessica’s marriage alone.” He turned to stare at the tree. “Some things are broken to the point they can’t be fixed.”

  Her righteous anger evaporated when she sensed he wasn’t just talking about Jessica’s situation, but his own also. The hint of grief in his eyes ripped her heart. There had been some rumor about him being divorced, but maybe something worse had happened. She put a hand on his arm. “You sound as if you’re speaking from personal experience.”

  “Yeah. I guess you could say my marriage was one of those things that couldn’t be fixed.” With that admission, Mitch shook off her hand, spun on his heel and stalked out of the nurses’ lounge.

  “Oh, boy,” Dana muttered under her breath. Mitch’s reaction suggested he was still hung up on his ex-wife.

  She tried to imagine the sort of woman he’d loved enough to marry. What had happened to break them apart? Was he hoping for a reconciliation?

  Attempting to hide an unexpected pang of disappointment, she returned to work. But the Christmas spirit she’d tried so hard to hold on to persisted in slipping away.

  Mitch was annoyed with himself for telling Dana about his marriage. What had he been thinking? He’d come to Milwaukee to start over, not to remain haunted by his mistakes.

  Mistakes that could never be made right.

  Overhearing Dana talk to Jessica about her marriage had annoyed him. Even if someone had talked to him about his marriage to Gwen, he didn’t think anything could have saved it. Some things just weren’t meant to be.

  Pushing away his regret for letting the truth slip out, he went over to the physicians’ conference room to review the most recent chest X-ray on their newest patient. He compared the current film to the one taken during the patient’s last clinic visit, making sure there weren’t any detrimental changes, before he returned to the unit.

  His gaze immediately zeroed on where Dana stood behind the nurses’ station. Scary, how much he was drawn to her.

  “I haven’t seen you since the Thanksgiving food drive.” One of the surgical residents evaluating a patient for potential surgical repair of a bleeding ulcer stopped alongside Dana. “I hope your toes are fully recovered.”

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” Her cheeks grew pink.

  Unable to stop himself, Mitch sauntered over. “Sounds like an interesting story.”

  The resident, whose name-tag identified him as Ryan Avery, turned to him. “I dropped a twenty-five-pound donated frozen turkey on Dana’s foot at the food drive.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Dana quickly interjected.

  Mitch’s eyes widened. “You’re lucky you didn’t break them.”

  “I’m fine.” Dana looked as if she didn’t want to have this conversation at all. “No broken toes.”

  “Dana’s a great sport. Despite me being such a klutz.” Ryan beamed at Dana.

  “You’re not a klutz. Our fingers were half-frozen from the cold.” Dana smiled at Avery and Mitch’s stomach clenched. He had to restrain himself from telling the resident to get lost.

  One of the other nurses poked her head out of a nearby patient room. “Dana? Would you come help me for a minute?”

  “Sure.” She looked relieved at the interruption. “See you both later,” she added over her shoulder as she hurried away.

  Mitch wondered if there was a budding romance brewing between Dana and the surgical resident and the idea made him frown. Dana certainly deserved to be happy, but for some reason he didn’t like the thought of Ryan and Dana together.

  Dana’s alarmed voice from across the room broke into his troubling thoughts. “Mitch? We need your help over here.”

  He rushed over. “What happened?”

  “She doesn’t look good. Her fever is over a hundred and four degrees.” Dana’s terse voice conveyed her level of concern.

  The woman in question was Mrs. Hernandez, a cancer patient from the oncology floor. “She may be going into septic shock. Has she received her dose of chemotherapy today?”

  “It’s hanging right now.” This time the other nurse, Caryn, answered. He quickly figured out Mrs. Hernandez was Caryn’s patient, not Dana’s. “She’s been running a low-grade fever all along, but this spike came out of nowhere.”

  “Stop the chemo. Let’s work her up.” He glanced up at the monitor. “Set up for a pulmonary artery catheter placement. And tell the pharmacist I want to change the antibiotics to something stronger, like vancomycin.”

  Just then the woman began to seize. Mitch wanted to swear under his breath. “Give her five miligrams of Versed. Turn her ventilator up to 100 percent. Does she have a cooling mattress?”

  “I’ll get it.” Dana shot out of the room in a flash.

  He tried to remain calm. “Where is Dr. Biloxi, the resident in charge of this case?” He asked Caryn.

  “I haven’t seen him for a while, but I can page him.”

  “Never mind. We need to keep an eye on things here.” The triple beeping of the alarm overhead drew his gaze to the monitor.

  “We lost her pulse.” Caryn had already climbed up on the edge of the bed to start giving chest compressions. The respiratory therapist was manually providing breaths with an ambu-bag.

  Mitch stared at the monitor with a sick feeling in his gut. He knew Mrs. Hernandez had gone into a pulseless rhythm as a result of her sepsis. The massive infection would be difficult to treat. There wasn’t too much more he could do to reverse the condition. Even if he could start the vancomycin, antibiotics didn’t work quite that fast.

  Dana rushed back into the room with the crash cart. “Do you want me to give epinephrine?”

  “Yes.” Protocol demanded they walk through the algorithm, but he suspected nothing would help unless they could reverse the sepsis. And considering she’d been on chemo, the chances of that were slim. Chemotherapy prevented the body’s normal immune system from fighting the infection.

  “Is she a candidate for Zigris?” Dana asked.

  Zigris was the newest and most expensive medication for treating septic shock. But the side effects came with a steep price. With regret he shook his head. “The risk of bleeding is too high. She had surgery for a double mastectomy a few weeks ago.”

  The blood drained from Dana’s face, leaving her deathly pale.

  He wanted to ask what was wrong, but the crisis at hand needed his attention. He proceeded to walk the team through the complete advanced cardiac life support protocol. Dr. Biloxi had shown up, but Mitch didn’t bother
including the resident in running the code. Finally, when nothing worked, he drew a halt to the proceedings. “Stop CPR,” he told Caryn. “There isn’t anything more we can do.”

  Dana spun away and ran from the room.

  Mitch desperately wanted to follow, but first he needed to take care of things with Mrs. Hernandez. He filled out the death notice and then called the woman’s son to give him the sad news. When he’d finished, he found Dana in the nurses’ lounge.

  “Dana?” She was sitting with her back to the door, her face buried in her hands. He went over and sat beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “Leave me alone,” she mumbled.

  “I can’t.” Helplessly, he wanted to do something, anything, to ease her distress. He didn’t know exactly what had set her off, but it looked as if something about Mrs. Hernandez’s case had hit too close to home. Gently, he cupped her shaking shoulders in his hands and turned her to face him. “Come here.”

  Surprisingly she didn’t resist. Her deep sobs tore at his heart and he held her until she finally cried herself out.

  “I’m sorry.” She sniffed loudly and he reached for the box of tissues, handing her some. She eased out of his embrace to wipe her face and blow her nose.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” Mitch used his thumbs to wipe away the wetness of her tears. She was so beautiful, even with her eyes red and puffy. “Are you better now?”

  “Yes.” She nodded and gave him a watery smile. “I didn’t mean to fall apart like that.”

  “What happened?” He couldn’t help asking.

  “My mother died of complications from breast cancer last year.” Dana ducked her head and sniffled again. “I should be happy at least my mom died peacefully at home with me, like she wanted.”

  Mitch didn’t know what to say. His heart ached for her. He knew only too well the heart-wrenching devastation of losing someone you loved. Unable to offer any words of comfort, he acted on pure impulse.

  He lifted her chin with one hand, then bent to capture her mouth with his.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DANA FELT THE warmth of Mitch’s mouth, quickly followed by a thrilling pleasure dancing along her nerves. She clutched his lab coat to hang on to as dizziness swept over her. When she sensed he might pull back, she tightened her grip and tentatively opened her mouth to taste him.

  He angled his head and deepened the kiss. The rasp of his tongue against hers caused a stab of need, reaching all the way to her soul. Dana was so lost in the sensation—his taste, his scent—that it took her a few minutes to figure out his hands were on her shoulders, gently easing her away.

  What? She loosened her grip on his lab coat and he broke the kiss, moving backwards to put space between them. Confused, she blinked and drew in mouthfuls of air. She stared at him but his expression was carefully blank, devoid of emotion.

  Mortified, she ducked her head, knowing her cheeks were flaming. She took several deep breaths, struggling for control. Had she imagined his response? Was she guilty of doing exactly what Therese had accused her of, throwing herself at Mitch? He’d kissed her first, hadn’t he? Although maybe his intention had only been to offer comfort, unable to cope when faced with a woman in tears.

  She was the one who’d turned his comforting embrace into something more.

  “I’m sorry.” She had no idea what she was apologizing for, but she felt it necessary to take the blame for the moment of out-of-control passion that had flared with that one simple kiss.

  Before he could respond, footsteps sounded outside the door. “Dana?”

  When Therese walked into the room, Dana jumped up from the sofa, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to get away from Mitch. Therese frowned and glanced between them. The awkwardness of the moment blared as loudly as a trumpet and Therese’s gaze immediately narrowed with a suspicious glint as she swung back toward Dana. “You have a phone call, something about a possible transfer from the floor.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.” Dana watched helplessly as Mitch backed away, too, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat, a curtain of indifference shadowing his eyes. Anxious to get away, far away, she brushed past Therese to take the phone call.

  As far as she was concerned, Therese was welcome to try her luck with him. Clearly Mitch Reynolds wasn’t interested in getting involved.

  And despite still feeling the tingling sensation of his mouth on hers, she would be foolish to believe otherwise, even for a second.

  Dana managed to avoid Mitch over the next few days by taking patients that were stable and didn’t need much in the way of medical intervention. Of course, she figured he was avoiding her too, the unit wasn’t that large. Still, on the morning of her day off she couldn’t help reliving the horrible moment when she’d realized he had been trying to extract himself from her fervent embrace.

  She groaned and buried her face in the pillow. His complete and utter rejection was so embarrassing. If only she’d pulled away first, she wouldn’t be feeling quite so stupid.

  Needy. As if she hadn’t been with a man for months.

  Gosh, but the truth hurt.

  When the phone rang, she crawled out of bed, praying the call wasn’t from Trinity, asking her to work. The energy it took to avoid Mitch was too much for her to take on today.

  “Hello?”

  “Dana?”

  She frowned, unable to recognize the deep male voice on the other end of the line. Mitch? Her heart stumbled, then raced with hope. “Yes?”

  Silence hung for a long minute. “This is Brian Whitney. Your father.”

  What? Dana’s knees gave out and she sank into a nearby chair. Her father? After all these years? Pulling the receiver away from her ear, she stared at it in shock. Then reality hit. No, of course not. It couldn’t be. This had to be some bad attempt at a prank.

  “If this is your idea of a joke, it’s not funny.” Dana tried to hide the tremor in her tone.

  “Dana, don’t hang up. I know this is a shock, but could we get together and talk? Are you free for dinner?”

  Dear God, this man really was her father.

  “No.” Dana’s hand shook and she gripped the phone tighter to make it stop. “We don’t have anything to talk about. Don’t bother calling here again. Goodbye.” She hung up, before she could change her mind.

  Rioting emotions raced through her body. She was twenty-nine years old and hadn’t seen her father since the age of four. Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century. Three hundred months. Nine thousand, one hundred and twenty-one days. Did he really think that after all this time they could get together and chat over dinner?

  A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat and she choked it back with an effort, clapping a hand over her mouth to keep herself in check. Apparently he had thought exactly that.

  Ridiculous. What on earth would they talk about? Nothing. She ran her fingers through her hair, as if to pry distant memories away. Desperate to keep busy, Dana jumped to her feet. First a shower. Then cleaning, a task well overdue. When that chore was finished in record time, she wandered around the house, lightly touching the Christmas decorations that had once belonged to her mother.

  For years she and her mother had spent Christmas alone. Without her father. Tears threatened once again and she wiped them angrily.

  Enough. Just because her father had called her out of the clear blue, she wasn’t going to fall apart. He’d been gone for so long, his absence was a non-issue. She and her mother had shared a wonderful life. She didn’t regret a single moment. Dana pulled herself together and decided to get out of the house for a while.

  Christmas shopping for the needy kids she sponsored every year was just the task to put her in a better frame of mind. And she might just pick up a gift for Wendy and Chad. No one could stay cranky when shopping for toys. Grabbing her purse and her winter coat, Dana headed outside, intent on going to the mall.

  But as she drove, she couldn’t help wondering what had caused her
father to get in touch with her after twenty-five years.

  And she resented her aching need to know.

  A crush of people filled the bookstore. Mitch had wanted to get out of his empty condo but he’d avoided the mall with its overwhelming Christmas decorations, holiday cheer and cranky shoppers. He’d hoped the bookstore wouldn’t carry so many reminders of Christmas but, listening to the holiday tunes echoing through the loudspeaker, he realized he’d been wrong.

  OK, so he would pick up a few books and leave. No sweat. At least he’d have something else to do at home other than stare at his blank walls, feeling sorry for himself. Especially after the way he’d messed up the best shot at a social life he’d had in months.

  Mitch gazed at the back cover of the most recent legal thriller, trying to lose himself in the story. After a few minutes, he realized he’d been staring at the words without comprehending a single one.

  Dana. He couldn’t even concentrate on his favorite pastime because his brain was stuck on a tiny brunette who had somehow managed to wiggle under his protective skin.

  Closing his eyes, he relived the intense moment of their kiss, her sweet taste more addictive than any narcotic housed in the pharmacy. For one millisecond he’d wanted nothing more than to stretch out on the sofa with her, bringing her intimately closer.

  Then nausea churned in his belly as he remembered the wounded expression in her eyes when he’d broken away. The problem wasn’t with Dana, but with him. She’d gotten too close. Feelings he’d thought long dead had sprung back to life, making him want things he could never have. A relationship. A family.

  He shook his head, thinking he should have tried to explain to Dana, but in truth, when the blonde nurse had come in to tell Dana about a phone call, he’d taken the easy way out.

  Leaving Dana alone to assume the worst.

  But over these past few days he’d wanted nothing more than to go back to Dana to apologize.

  He needed to get out more, find something else to occupy his mind. Dana was a danger to his equilibrium. He was too attracted to her for his own good.

  Something whacked him from behind, dragging him out of his daze. Mitch took a step forward, moving out of the way, glancing behind as he did to make sure he’d given enough room.