by C. M. Stone
“Wait.” He held a hand up to her, his other hand shutting the door behind him. “I don’t care about your apology.”
Her stomach clenched, and she thought she could taste bile on the back of her tongue. Vomiting at his feet might be worse than fainting. “You don’t?”
“No. I don’t need you to grovel. I just need you to put effort into this and make it work. Are you going to do that?”
Her heart leaped and she worried she might get a headache from the mood whiplash. “Yes, yes, absolutely,” she insisted. “Thank you so much.”
His full lips pressed together in frown. God, he was even sexy when he was frowning at her. Not making a complete idiot over herself moment by moment was going to be far harder than any surgery she had ever assisted on.
“Don’t thank me. Just do what’s required. Why are you interested in trauma medicine?”
“My mom’s a trauma nurse.”
DeMatteo raised one brow slightly, then gave her a prompting gesture. “And?”
Had that been the wrong answer? Whenever she had mentioned her family history in medicine, everyone else had simply accepted it happily. It seemed like the motivation for a lot of high-achievers, too. Darla struggled to elaborate. “And I want to be like her?”
“Why?”
Her scalp was prickling with sweat under all of the hairspray she’d put on that morning. Why weren’t her answers good enough for him? Was he just being sadistic to get back at her for earlier? “I…admire my mother?”
“I was looking for answers, not more questions. Don’t ask me why you’re doing it,” he said. “Can I give you a word of advice? Our parents make for really shitty motivators in life. Yeah, they love us, but they think they know us better than they really do. You need to do this for you, not your mother.”
“I…I am doing it for me?” Shit. She was making it sound like a question again. Darla shook her head, warding off another correction from him. “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor and surgeons seemed like gods to me when I was a kid. My dad—”
“Don’t put your motivations on your parents,” DeMatteo cut in gently.
Her mouth snapped shut, and she breathed in deeply before she tried again. “My dad died from an undiagnosed heart problem when I was three. I’d like to save people like him.”
It was DeMatteo’s turn to be silenced, and he even had the good grace to look embarrassed. After a moment, he nodded. “So why not cardiology?”
She shrugged. “It just doesn’t interest me.”
“Then you should follow your interests.”
Was trauma her biggest interest? The thought unsettled her because an answer didn’t come to her as easily as it should have, but she couldn’t dwell long. DeMatteo was already moving on. “Do this to help people, Morales. Not to impress anyone, not to make them happy. You’ll always be disappointed if you’re trying to live up to somebody else’s dream, but every day, even if you lose a patient, you can help.”
Darla breathed a bit easier with that small measure of his approval. Whatever he wanted to say about not doing things to make other people happy, it rang a touch hollow when she had to work so hard for the smallest bit of acceptance. “I take it your parents aren’t surgeons?”
DeMatteo shook his head. “No. My mom’s a high school teacher and my dad’s a professor of philosophy.”
“Oh. So you didn’t have any real urge to follow in their footsteps?”
“Not really.” After he said it, he got a thoughtful look on his face as though something had just occurred to him. “I’m a part-time instructor for the medical school, and I would like to be a professor, but that’s more about advancing my medical career than anything. If I want to be the Chief of Trauma Medicine someday, I need to be a tenured professor first.”
She cocked her head in interest and stepped a little closer to the door. The threat of hyperventilating or crying was over, so there was less reason to hide out in the supply closet with him. Not unless he had a thing for supply closets or something, in which case she’d try not to judge.
“That’s your goal? To replace the chief?”
“When he retires. I’ve got a five year plan so I can be in position for it before he leaves.”
“That’s fantastic!” she beamed. With such lofty goals, who could blame him for maybe being a little intense about his work? “I’m all about plans.”
“And where will you be in five years?”
She paused, hissing inward through her teeth. Telling him that she was planning on leaving Las Vegas for her specialty track would likely not go over well. Several other interns had warned her that saying anything before she had the program director’s permission would look bad. No one demanded it, but there was an unspoken assumption that staying with the same hospital through all the years of training was proper.
“Competing with you,” she said.
He laughed and gave her a little nod of respect before he moved to open the door. “You’re lucky your first rotation with me is in the morning. Things tend to be at their quietest in the trauma center at this time of day.”
She stepped into the hall behind him. “Not getting any experience doesn’t sound very lucky to me.”
“You ever have to deal with the aftermath of a drive-by?”
Her heart started to pound just at the thought. “No.”
“Let’s just say it wouldn’t be the best way to start your trauma education, then.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket to look at while they walked, scrolling and muttering beneath his breath. She wanted to ask what his phone had done to make him so angry, but wisely bit it back. Better not to do anything more to aggravate him.
Despite DeMatteo’s warnings of a quiet morning, they only made it through checking on two patients before he was paged to the ambulance bay. He paused long enough to take off his white coat and be helped into a surgical gown over his suit, then rushed out to meet the ambulance. His speed and the way he just ran through everything as if it came to him automatically only heightened her awareness of her every fumble. Following him felt like trying to chase after a rabbit in an obstacle course.
When she finally caught up, Chief Singh was already briefing the other teams. “—wall collapsed with three construction workers on it, so be prepared for fall and crush injuries. They got it from all sides.”
The first patient off an ambulance went to DeMatteo and her. The blur of the EMTs running through his injuries and DeMatteo barking instructions as they rushed the gurney inside filled her head with memories of facts and diagrams and skill lab practice. For a moment, she felt confident in it all. It was just a matter of remembering things and doing them well. That moment ended the second she actually saw the patient.
The man was in a collar to protect his neck and looked like he’d been beaten by bricks, which made sense if a wall had collapsed on him. They cut away his shirt to get at his injuries, revealing black bruises across his chest and stomach that perfectly matched textbook descriptions. She’d even seen identical photographs.
What she hadn’t seen was a grown man inches away from her, sobbing that he couldn’t feel his legs.
She blinked rapidly, trying to make the tears stop before anyone else saw them, and backed up a step. Just an ordinary day at work and then here he was, battered and facing his life possibly changing forever. Or ending.
“Morales, I need you to—” DeMatteo cut himself off as he focused on her. He pressed his lips together in a grim line. “Step outside.”
She took a deep, slightly shaky breath. “No, I’m fine!”
“Outside. Now.”
Worse than being banished from the room would be making a scene. She gave him a curt nod, then stepped out. She paced back and forth in the hall, unsure of what to do with herself. There was always administrative work to do, but would he be angry if he couldn’t find her?
After fifteen minutes, she decided that filing and checking charts was better than wasting the hospital’s money by
standing around. Angrily stabbing at a tablet touchscreen and reading kept her distracted too. Nearly two hours went by before Jackson was finished with the construction worker.
“Morales.”
DeMatteo walked toward her as he pulled his white coat on again. The expression on his face was frustratingly neutral, giving nothing away.
“I would’ve been fine.”
“I’m sure you would’ve, eventually. But it’s not about you.” He closed the distance between them and leaned down to speak quietly to her. His nearness made her stiffen, her skin tingling from the warmth he radiated. “Patients need to see us at our best, at all times. It’s terrifying enough to be injured and in the hands of strangers. If they see you crying, that’s going to make it that much worse for them.”
Easy for him to say. Rather than argue, she clenched her teeth together and nodded. “And how is the patient?”
“Stable and unconscious. When he wakes up, we’ll have a better idea of how well he’ll recover.” As close as he was, she noticed the tightness around his mouth and bone-deep weariness in his eyes for the first time. Stress wrapped around him like his white coat. He wasn’t as unaffected as he acted.
She offered the tablet loaded with his charts to him. “I went through and prepared for the rest of your rounds.”
“Good.” Rather than take the charts from her right away, he pulled his phone out to check it again.
This time she couldn’t fight her curiosity. “Are you waiting for something?”
He raised his eyes from the phone to meet hers and to her astonishment he actually turned a little red. “I was expecting a call from my parents about my birthday.”
“Oh.” She drew her brows together, looking around the hive of activity of the hospital. No one had said anything to him about it. Maybe she’d just missed the acknowledgment. “It’s still early. Maybe they’ll call around dinner time.”
“They’re on central time, so it’s a little harder to schedule those things.” He put his phone back, then took the charts from her. “And they forgot my birthday last year.”
“Has anyone remembered?” After she blurted the question, she cringed. What the hell was wrong with her? Her day of absolute loserdom couldn’t possibly get any worse, short of somehow lighting the hospital on fire and then falling in front of the firetruck naked.
Instead of looking offended or hurt by the question, DeMatteo gave her a small smile. “I’m having dinner with my sister and my best friend. I don’t need people here to remember.”
“But…” She trailed off, certain that saying anything more would only make things worse. It was his birthday, and he didn’t expect any of his coworkers to remember. Worse than that, it didn’t appear that any of them had. Or his parents.
She cleared her throat. “Happy birthday.”
Chapter Three
The soft-spoken birthday wish from Morales barely registered as Jackson took the tablet. Not that he was trying to ignore her, but he couldn’t let himself dwell on what day it was any longer. There were simply far more important things. Nothing that he had scheduled was pressing or especially helpful for her. Waiting for a case to come into the emergency room would be a crap shoot. Making her cry again wouldn’t do any good.
Something twisted painfully in his gut at that thought.
“Thank you,” he said when he realized how long he’d been silent. No, none of his current patients would help and it would just be cruel to throw a random crisis at her.
“We’re going back to the emergency room.” He handed over the tablet and began in that direction.
Even with her legs so much shorter than his, she kept pace with him without complaint. “Were you paged?”
“No. I’m going to find another case for you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you need it.”
Once he’d made his way from the operating rooms to the trauma center, he found an intake nurse. The direst cases would be pushed through to see someone immediately, but there were always other cases. Patients whose lives weren’t threatened might sit around for hours waiting for a doctor, which tended to make them understandably upset.
He lowered his voice when he spoke to the nurse, hoping Morales wouldn’t overhear and be offended. “I need something easy.”
“That sounds like a personal problem to me,” the nurse remarked dryly, before directing him to the perfect patient.
A young couple in Vegas on their honeymoon had suffered a slight mishap, with the groom falling during rock climbing. A quick examination found most of his injuries superficial and trauma was minimal, except for the swelling in one arm. Normally it would be a simple matter of X-rays and dealing with the injury, but he had a fresh new wedding ring that wouldn’t come off a now puffy finger.
“I don’t want it cut off,” the patient said, drawing his hand back protectively.
“Sweetie, it’s just a ring,” his wife reminded him.
“It’ll be fine,” Jackson said. “We’ve never had to cut a ring off in either of our medical careers. Morales here’ll be able to save it for you.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the mingled horror and confusion on Darla’s face and ignored it. “Morales, why don’t you go get the oxygen mask strap? The blunt-nosed thumb forceps you’ll need are already here.”
Darla stared at him a moment longer before walking away. He half-expected her not to come back at all after the day she’d had so far, but she returned promptly with the strap he’d asked for. The materials assembled, he put a hand on her shoulder to guide her in front of him to face the patient.
“Start wrapping his ring finger with the strap so it overlaps itself and compresses the tissue slightly,” he murmured into her ear. So close to her, he could feel the heat of her body clearly. Even if he’d closed his eyes, he could have pictured her curves perfectly with the way they fit against him. She must not have noticed just how little space she’d left between their bodies when she moved. He cleared his throat and backed up half a step.
Darla turned her head slightly to glance at him, then refocused on the patient and began following his instructions.
“Because the strap’s flexible, it’ll keep compressing even when you aren’t pulling tight on it, but it’ll have some give. Remember that. You won’t want to use anything that isn’t elastic,” he went on.
Once she had the patient’s finger wrapped up to the edge of the ring, Jackson handed her the forceps. “Push the end of the strap under the ring so you can pull it through. Then you’re going to pull downward toward the end of his finger.”
The swelling made pushing the strap under the ring more difficult than it would have been otherwise, but on her third try she got it through. As she pulled, the ring was pulled along with the strap, rotating around the man’s finger like a corkscrew. The swelling was, at least temporarily, pressed down so the ring could move. As it got to the end of the patient’s finger, it popped free and Jackson’s hand shot out to catch it.
“Very impressive.” He pressed the ring into her palm, feeling her fingers curl automatically to grip his hand. Heat coursed through his body from what should have been an innocent touch. Her hand was small in his and soft, good for delicate surgeries and so much more.
He drew his hand back with a jerk, desperate to shut down those unwanted thoughts. He forced himself to ignore Morales in favor of their patient. “Your wife can keep your wedding ring safe until you can wear it again. Why don’t we get you up to radiology now?”
Busying himself getting the couple sent off for X-rays and paging orthopedics was all far safer than trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. Keeping personal feelings out of the workplace was one of the easiest boundaries he’d made for himself, yet Morales kept getting under his skin in unexpected ways. It didn’t help that every step of the way as he tried to distract himself she was right there, watching and waiting.
“Why’d you drag me down here for that?” Her wide brown eyes sparkled wi
th accomplishment that had been missing before, an eagerness to her face he’d only seen for a moment when they’d met earlier.
It felt good to see her that way again from a purely professional vantage point, but it only made her more appealing. Jackson grabbed the tablet again for something safer to look at. “What did you just learn?”
“How to remove a ring without cutting it.”
“What else?”
A long moment passed before she spoke again, sounding less certain this time. “Almost lying to a patient. The only reason I haven’t had to cut a ring off before is because I have hardly any experience yet—”
“You know how to avoid cutting them now, so you’ll never have to cut a ring off,” he interrupted. “But the point was you were compassionate without getting all wrapped up in your own feelings. You saved his ring, maybe even his finger if he’d kept refusing help.”
She shook her head, making her pony tail swish back and forth. “It was just a ring.”
“You ever been married, Morales? Or engaged?”
Her lips pursed in a small frown, drawing his attention to their tempting shape and fullness. “No.”
All the rings he’d once looked at without ever buying one ran through his head. They were a good reminder of why it hurt too much to try again. Remembering that loss made it easy to return behind the walls he’d built.
“It’s never just a ring.” The words sound gruffer than he’d intended them, but maybe that was for the best.
…
The scent of homemade pesto hit Jackson the second he walked in the door. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, instantly transported back to his childhood and Nonna DeMatteo’s cooking. “Somebody must love me.”
Chris appeared at the top of the stairs to grin down at him. “It’s all your sister. I’ve got nothing to do with it.”
The split-level condo had the kitchen, dining room, and living room on the upper level, with the two bedrooms on the lower. Both Chris and his sister had complained about the layout at various times, but the two of them kept normal hours in their careers. Jackson slept during the day frequently enough that having his bedroom partially underground was a godsend, particularly with the intense desert sunlight.