by Radclyffe
Without raising her head, Sax announced, “The heart’s still empty. Come on, people, pump the blood.” Quietly, she encouraged, “That’s it, Stein. Hold it in the palm of your hand and keep the pressure even.”
“We’re getting something on the EKG,” Aaron relayed.
“Rate?” Sax never looked away from the gaping hole in the man’s body.
“Still only forty.”
“Push some atropine,” Sax instructed. She and Deb Stein were so close their bodies were practically fused. “Keep going, Deb. You’ve got it.”
Jude tore her gaze from Sax’s face and looked at the clock. Two minutes and ten seconds.
“I’ve got a blood pressure,” one of the nurses called.
“The heart’s beating,” Deb murmured, almost as if she didn’t believe it.
“Stop the compression and see if he flies,” Sax ordered.
For a minute, no one breathed. The EKG beeped steadily, the arterial line read a blood pressure of one hundred, and the blood flow from the chest wound slowed to a trickle.
“Tell the OR we’re coming up,” Sax said, a victorious note in her voice. She glanced up then, her gaze meeting Jude’s. A grin flickered at the corner of her expressive mouth.
Watching the triumph dance in her blue eyes, Jude thought Saxon Sinclair was, unquestionably, the sexiest woman she’d ever seen.
June 30, 7:35 p.m.
Sax raised an eyebrow in surprise as she walked through the surgeons’ lounge toward the door leading into the women’s locker room. The common space between the locker rooms and the operating room proper was empty save for Jude Castle, who sat writing in a notebook at the long wooden table that held remnants of a pizza and a white layer cake.
“You’re here late.” She stopped opposite the filmmaker, who glanced up and smiled.
“I was waiting for you.” Jude pushed her work away and studied Sinclair, noting the dark patch on her thigh that could only be blood, and the sweat dampening the shirt between her breasts. She looks tired. The thought surprised Jude. She realized that she hadn’t imagined the formidable trauma chief being vulnerable to something so common, and then wondered where that idea had come from. She’s human, after all.
“Really,” Sax remarked, curious. “Why?”
“Because I owe you an apology.”
Sax rubbed her face brieflyand moved a chair so she could sit opposite Jude. She recalled their heated exchange now, although it seemed more than just a few hours ago. She remembered being angry but certainly couldn’t remember anything that required an apology. And somehow, the idea of this woman apologizing to her seemed wrong. They’d both been rather hot.
“Look, Ms. Castle—”
“No, let me finish,” Jude interjected, amused to see a quick flash of annoyance in the other woman’s eyes. Not used to being interrupted, are you? “You were right about limiting my crew in the admitting area. It’s a zoo in there during a trauma alert. I should have waited to assess things myself before I told you what I needed. I’ll work something out.”
“Okay, I appreciate you making the adjustments. Thanks,” Sax said. “I notice, though, you’re not apologizing for threatening to pull rank on me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Fair enough.” Sax stood. “Deb Stein is on call tomorrow night. You’d better get some rest if you’re going to start keeping surgeon’s hours.”
“Are you done for the day?” Jude called as Sax walked away.
“Soon.” Sax pushed open the door to the locker room. She knew she’d probably spend the night on the narrow bed in her on-call quarters because it was somehow less impersonal there than the space she called home, but that wasn’t something she wanted to share.
June 30, 8:50 p.m.
Jude sighed and tried to stop thinking about Saxon Sinclair. She couldn’t decide whether the woman annoyed or fascinated her more. She has to be one of the most infuriating people I’ve ever met. She’s rigid and inflexible and arrogant, and if that weren’t bad enough, she’s...she’s accomplished and talented and driven. And...oh, hell...so damned attractive.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Lori Brewster asked with concern.
“What?” Jude glanced at her plate and the half-eaten entr…e and realized that she had forgotten about it. “Oh, no. I mean...I was, but I’m not now.” Seeing the worried look on her attractive companion’s face, she hurriedly added, “I’m just distracted. It probably wasn’t very smart of me to make a date for the first day of this new project.”
The dark-haired attorney frowned and reached across the immaculate linen tablecloth to take Jude’s hand. “We didn’t need to go out. I haven’t seen you in two weeks.” She brushed her thumb over Jude’s palm. “We could have just gotten takeout and spent the evening in bed.”
“I’m sorry.” Jude squeezed Lori’s hand. “I’m lousy company tonight.” She hoped the fact that she had sidestepped the overture to sex wasn’t as obvious to her dinner companion as it felt to her. She wasn’t even sure herself why she wasn’t interested.
They’d been dating for more than six months, casually, whenever they could find time, which was how they’d both agreed they wanted it. Lori was busy establishing herself in a competitive law firm where she intended to make partner ahead of the rest of the pack, and she worked ninety-hour weeks to make it happen. Jude traveled frequently for shoots and promotional meetings and didn’t feel she could give a serious relationship the attention it required. So far their arrangement had been mutually satisfying.
She regarded Lori fondly, appreciating the appraising look in her eyes and reminding herself how much she liked her trim, athletic body. We’ve got similar interests, we want the same things professionally, and we’re good together in bed. What more could I want?
She shook off the odd sense of disquiet she’d had ever since leaving St. Michael’s. She also tried not to think any more about Saxon Sinclair or why she even cared if the irritating trauma surgeon liked her or not.
Quietly, she said, “Let’s skip dessert.”
*
The glass door on the shower slid open, and Jude felt a soft, smooth body press close against her back. Arms slipped around her waist, lips trailed across her shoulder. A voice, husky and intimate, whispered in her ear.
“Hey, I missed you. The bed is cold without you.”
“I tried not to wake you.” Jude leaned back into the embrace, turning her head to brush her mouth over a damp cheek. “Sorry.”
“You okay?” Lori asked.
“Yes.”
But Jude didn’t feel quite okay, and she wasn’t sure why. Nothing had changed. They had shared themselves with each other as in the past, enjoyably and with an easy familiarity that came from mutual caring. It was nice to feel the heat of another body and to touch flesh other than her own. It was nice to be physically satisfied. It had been every bit as nice as it had been the first time they’d slept together. Nothing had changed.
“Do you really need to go?”
“Mmm, yeah. I’ve got an early meeting with my director of photography in the morning. And early by surgeons’ standards means 6:30.” Jude turned in the mist and water to face her companion.
“Jesus, that’s inhuman.”
“I need to get some sleep and prepare a few things,” Jude said with a grin.
“Well then,” Lori murmured, bending her face to Jude’s neck and licking the trail of water from her skin, “you should probably leave. I can’t promise how much sleep you’ll get if you stay.”
Jude kissed her once, quickly, and stepped from the shower, reaching for a towel. “My very thoughts.”
They parted with the usual promise to call when their schedules allowed, and by the time Jude reached home in the taxi, her mind was already on her plans for the next day.
Chapter Five
July 1, 6:50 a.m.
Sax passed Aaron Townsend in the hall as he was leaving after a night on duty.
“Everything quiet?” she aske
d, although she knew that it must be. She’d returned to the hospital in the middle of the night, even though she wasn’t on call, and she knew that someone would have notified her if anything big had come in. She was second call, on backup if more than one major trauma arrived at once. Technically she could have taken call from home, but she was just as happy to sleep in familiar surroundings.
“Depends on what you mean,” he said with a grin. “The only admission we had was some guy who lost a battle with his fan belt at 2:00 a.m. Don’t ask me why he was working on his engine in the middle of the night, but he’s in the OR now getting his fingers reattached.” His sly expression suggested there was something else brewing—a secret that he found amusing.
Sax stopped walking and fixed him with a piercing stare. “Would you like to tell me what else is going on?”
“There are four people in the trauma bay hanging cameras and microphones from the ceiling right now.”
“Really,” Sax remarked dryly, thinking that Jude Castle hadn’t wasted any time getting to work. She had to admit she liked that about the filmmaker. As irritating as this entire project was likely to become, she admired Castle’s persistence and perseverance. She was a professional, and that kind of determination was something Sax understood. “Guess I’ll wander back and see what’s happening.”
“Uh-huh.” The head nurse watched her walk away and wished he didn’t have a breakfast date. He would have loved to watch the confrontation. The undercurrent of competition between the two women hadn’t escaped his notice the previous day. It’s going to be a very interesting few months around here. And they say that alpha males are dangerous when you put them together.
He’d worked with Saxon Sinclair for four and a half years, and he knew just how tough an alpha female could be. Sorry to miss the upcoming show, he pushed through the ER doors into the bright morning sun and waved to the brunette in the convertible waiting at the curb.
Down the hall, Sax leaned against the doorway at the entrance to the trauma bay, her trauma bay, and stared at the strangers fast at work. A woman in jeans and work shirt stood on the top of a stepladder adjusting a ceiling-mounted camera that was directly over the patient treatment tables. Her blond hair was half concealed by a baseball cap turned around backward with the word Sundance stenciled in bright orange letters. Her figure, at least from the back view, was neat and tidy.
Two young men were stringing cable from the camera to a bank of monitors and recording equipment stacked on rolling tables pushed up against the wall near the nurses’ station. Jude Castle stood observing them, intermittently referring to her notebook and then looking up to follow the progress of the equipment installation. She looked fresh and energized in khaki pants and a tight black T-shirt that left her nicely muscled arms bare.
For a second, enjoying the view, Sax forgot how annoyed she was at the invasion of her domain.
“The primary shots are going to have to be with the handheld,” Jude remarked to the blond on the ladder.
“The best quality is going to come from this one up here,” the woman countered.
“There’s too much action to follow with a stationary. I’ll want to focus on the surgeons, especially Deb Stein, and they’re moving all the time.”
The blond climbed down and pivoted to survey the area she would need to cover with her cameras. She halted when she saw Sax watching, and a small smile flickered across her face. “Good morning,” she called in Sax’s direction, a hint of flirtatiousness in her voice.
“Morning,” Sax responded neutrally. Pushing away from the wall, she moved into the room. Her glance slid past the attractive blond appraising her to Jude. “Ms. Castle,” she murmured by way of greeting.
“Dr. Sinclair,” Jude said smoothly, “this is my DP, Melissa Cooper.”
“DP?” Sax extended her hand.
“Director of photography, at your service,” Melissa furnished with a grin as she met Sax’s firm grip.
“Ah, I see.” Sax looked back to Jude. “Could I speak with you for a moment, please?”
“Of course. Mel, would you make sure they run a sound check once they get their lines connected?”
“Sure,” Melissa replied. As the two women walked into the hall, she checked out Dr. Sinclair’s denim-clad ass. Now there is one hot item. This is going to be a very enjoyable shoot. Oh, yeah.
*
“You’re up early,” Sax said as they walked through the still-quiet corridors. “Let’s grab some coffee. I’ll buy this time.”
“Thanks. I thought it would be a good idea to take care of some of the construction details before things got busy in there,” Jude said carefully. She sensed the surgeon had something on her mind, and she wondered if they would have another skirmish.
“Traumas don’t tend to follow a schedule, unless it’s lunar. There’s something in that tale. Every full moon we’re swamped.” They reached the coffee kiosk and Sax ordered two red-eyes.
“I just took a chance that we could get most of the set-up done this morning,” Jude said. “I know it’s unpredictable when you’ll get busy, but that hour right around the changeover from the night shift to the day shift always seems to be quiet.”
“Usually.” Sax studied Jude’s face, watching for a reaction as she asked carefully, “You’ve had some experience in hospitals, then?”
“Some.” Jude stared straight ahead and didn’t elaborate. Those six weeks were nothing she cared to discuss. She’d forgotten it, buried it, left it behind. She shivered.
“Cold?” Sax handed her a coffee.
“No,” Jude said abruptly. “I’m fine.” She took the paper cup and held it before her in both hands.
Sax found the body language interesting. Recognizing the subtle barrier to further personal questions, she said, “Okay. Let’s talk about this project of yours. Since I can’t get rid of you, I’d better find out what I’m in for.”
Jude propped her back against the wall a few feet from the coffee stand, prepared to defend her project. “Okay—”
“Wait,” Sax interrupted as she moved out of the path of an orderly pushing a wheelchair. “Come with me.”
*
The view from the helipad was incredible. Like most New Yorkers, Jude was used to the kind of breathtaking vistas afforded by restaurants on top of skyscrapers and windows of offices on the seventieth floor, but the sights of the water with white dots of sails flickering over the surface and the majestic rise of the Statue of Liberty were still awesome and gorgeous. And Saxon Sinclair in profile, the wind whipping her black hair around her starkly handsome face, was pretty captivating, too. Jude wished she had a camera.
“Nice up here,” she observed, trying to concentrate on the skyline and not the woman next to her.
“One of the few places in the hospital where there’s any privacy,” Sax commented. She wasn’t certain why she’d brought the filmmaker up to the roof. It was one of the places she came to be alone, when the chaos in the world downstairs became too much or the lonely hours between midnight and dawn stretched too long.
It was amazingly peaceful here at night, surrounded by nothing but the wind and the dark and the omnipresent lights from surrounding buildings that substituted for stars in the urban landscape. Far below, the streets teemed with life and people living it, some in desperate abandon and some in unconscious ignorance. Up here, she felt both a part of it and apart from it, a watcher who on occasion ventured forth to take part in the game.
She turned her back to the view, watching Jude study the rooftop with that same intent expression she’d noticed several times the day before. “Looking for a shot?”
“Something like that.” Jude stared at Sinclair in surprise, amazed that she could tell. Then to her consternation, she blushed faintly, because at that moment she’d been thinking again how much she would like to photograph the trauma surgeon. To change the subject, she gestured with an arm as she asked, “Am I imagining it, or is that actually a basketball hoop on the side of
the parking ramp over there?”
“That’s what it is, all right,” Sax confirmed, taking the lid off her coffee cup and tossing it into a nearby trashcan.
“Is that for Deb’s benefit?”
“Nope.” Sax grinned. “It’s mine.”
“Ah, that’s right. Aaron said you liked games.”
“Some of them,” Sax replied casually.
For no good reason, Jude’s heart skipped a beat. Forget it. That is not what she meant. You have got to get your hormones under control around her. But she couldn’t prevent a brief image of the other woman in her motorcycle jacket from flickering into her mind. And that image did nothing to still the surge of blood into places she really didn’t want it to be going. Not at seven o’clock in the morning at the beginning of a very long day.
“So, are you actually planning to take call with Deb?” Sax asked as they leaned against the waist-high cement wall that encircled the rooftop.
Grateful for a conversation to take her mind off her body’s unwelcome responses, Jude said, “Yes. I want to be where she is when something happens, and you said yourself how unpredictable it can be.”
“For twenty-four hour stretches?”
“Whenever she’s here, yes.” Jude took in the huge white X stenciled on the rooftop and the windsock snapping in the breeze nearby, almost salivating at the thought of filming the helicopter’s descent while a crowd of gowned medical personnel waited, bent low to avoid the swirling rotors. It brought to mind all those old clips from the ’60s of choppers twisting wildly over the scorched earth of a faraway land, olive-garbed men racing madly forward with their wounded on makeshift litters. God, what a shot.
“What about your crew—the photographers and sound people? Them, too?”
“What?” Jude was still focused on the faint images in her mind—battlefields and blood and Sinclair in black leather. “Oh, Mel is the main camera operator, and she’ll work nights when Deb’s on call. I figure that’s when we’re most likely to get a hit. Since I’ll be here around the clock, I’ll handle the cameras if she’s not available. I’m not as good as she is, but I can manage.”