So that’s why the emergency department is so vital to me now. This is my family.
Tina grips my cheeks with one of her hands, squeezing hard enough to make my lips pucker and probably look fish-like.
“You are too adorable, little Dr. Whitetail.” She squeezes even harder. “Just too adorable. And so fucking young looking.”
I scoff as I somehow escape her fingers on my cheek. “I’m a whopping twenty-five and-a-half now, I’ll have you know.”
She laughs hard at me, making fun of myself. I know I’m young. Graduating high school early and college means I’m young for a doctor and get reminded by almost every patient who looks at me with narrowed eyes and asks, “Are you sure you’re my doctor?” At first I wondered if patients asked that because I’m a woman, but there are now more women in medical school than men. Then I wondered if it was because I’m American Indian. But while working through my residency in the LA County Hospital, most people assumed I was Hispanic and had no problems with anyone non-white being a physician. No, it’s my age that most people have a problem with. I still get carded. At the movies. I don’t look twenty-five. Maybe twenty? Which should be great when I’m sixty and can pass for fifty, but at this age I feel like I have to prove myself more often than not.
Except I don’t have to with Tina. Which is awe-so-freaking-some. Or should that be awe-freaking-some? But I like the former. So I’m sticking with it.
“You’re with Tanya tonight,” Tina says. Tanya is her sister, another supervising RN. She’s also a tad intimidating with her mohawk and tattoos. But once I proved I could handle my weight with the tough cases, Tanya does nothing but glow when I work with her. Her preferential treatment is noticeable and other doctors wonder what I did to earn her adoration.
The answer is, I’m unfathomably me. I’m a geek and own it. I’m a little curvy now and kind of like it. I’m bookish and silly and love my glasses. In movies, I’d be the sidekick and I know that. I own that too. My sister was and still is ravishing gorgeous. Most of my other friends have always been beautiful, while me…my glasses are usually smudged and between the ages of four to almost now I had dirt permanently ingrained in my jeans because I’m not exactly klutzy but I’m not known for my grace either. I’m the comic relief. I’m the one everyone likes in movies, but no one watches. And I’m fine with that.
Just fine. Thank you for asking.
Yep, fine.
Okay, some days it is a bitter pill to swallow, but I do my best to push beyond it because, honestly, I’m not sure if I’d like the attention a leading lady gets. I’m not sure if I could handle it.
Tina blinks languidly.
“Tired?”
She nods slowly.
“Tough day?”
“No, boring as shit.” She smiles. “Your night should be boring too.”
I fidget with my lips. “That’s okay. I can always catch up on my sleep if it is.”
“I’m going home to force my husband to have sex with me.”
I wrinkle my nose. “TMI. TMI.”
She laughs really hard. I love her laugh. It’s like a smoker’s, although I don’t think she has that filthy habit. Talking about a filthy habit, I didn’t know Ryder smoked. On him, smoking looked…god, I’m a doctor and I’ll never admit this out loud…but he looked sexy. My crush is so pathetic I think a smoker is sexy. Don’t tell.
Tina waggles her dark, plucked-almost-to-death brows. “When was the last time you forced someone to have sex with you?”
“Is it politically correct to say that?” I shake my head.
Tina rolls her eyes. “Okay, Miss Smarty Pants—”
“That’s Dr. Smarty Pants.”
She smiles. “Let me rephrase, Dr. Smarty Pants: When was the last time you rode a cowboy hard and put him away wet?”
Laughing, I shake my head, not about to answer, and try to hide at least my upper torso in my locker.
“In that case, it’s been too long,” Tina says, and I can tell from her laughter she’s stepping away from me. God, what would she think if she knew I’m a virgin? See, that’s what comes from being the sidekick. No action. That, and for a long time I had a pretty serious chip on my shoulder about men. Not that the chip is really removed. But I manage to hide it better now.
“Much too long, Dr. Smarty Pants,” she yells from somewhere in the staff room. “Maybe I’ll rustle up a cowboy for you.”
God, I love her, but she’s got to stop screaming these things. I’m sure my face is hot enough to melt iron. I’m hotter than that, actually. Astrophysicists will think I’m star-like with how hot I am.
But I’ve got to get a zinger in.
Yelling with my head still in the locker, I slowly emerge as I’m saying, “Maybe I don’t want a cowboy.”
And there, right in front of me, less than six inches, is Ryder. He’s staring down at me like the weirdo I am.
“Hi, I was yelling at Tina.”
He nods. Once. That’s it.
“She must’ve left. I didn’t notice she left.”
I know he’s a man of few words, but I’m kind of dying right now and wish he’d at least smile.
Nope. Not even a twitch from the general vicinity of his luscious lips. They’re kind of perfect man lips. The bottom one is fuller than the top, and I’ve imagined biting it, like I am now, which I shouldn’t do while he’s standing so close to me.
I swallow, sure the humiliation on my face is heating the whole hospital, trying for a casual smile. “I—Tina and I were just joking around.”
A nod. Just once. Again.
He smells so good. My senses are consumed with the way he smells. Not a whiff of smoke is mixed with his scent which is pure…blue. I know that sounds weird, but his scent reminds me of a river cutting through a forest. He smells clean and outdoorsy. And so like a man.
My heartbeat is racing faster than it should.
His warm brown eyes narrow for half a second, and I hold my breath, wondering if The Ryder will talk to me. Yes, he’s famous in the hospital, like a local celebrity. But he turns and opens the locker next to mine, shrugging out of a black backpack. Why’d he pick the locker next to mine? Not that I’m complaining. Just curious.
“So, I guess, we work together tonight,” I say as I make sure my phone and hoodie are where I put them. The only reason I’m still in this room is because of him. I have this odd fascination with him where I long to be close, but if he ever paid me the least amount of attention I’m sure I’d run screaming.
Oh, did I forget to mention I’m a wee bit of a chicken?
But it’s not like I ever have to be anything else concerning him. He’d never catch me in his huge, strong arms and say, “Asha, you’re the one. The one for me. I’ve looked for a woman like you all over the world, but here you are. And I’m going to make you mine.”
I might read too many romances.
I stop checking on my things that haven’t moved for the last couple minutes and close my locker, looking up at Ryder who’s already closed his locker and is staring at me, his dark gaze intense. Really intense. Like I missed something.
“Sorry,” I say. “Did you say something?”
He shakes his head.
I smile, trying to calm my fluttering stomach. I might vomit if he stares at me like this much longer. God, he’s pretty. He has a scar that runs through his left jawline and up his cheek. I like that scar. The physician who stitched him must have been in a hurry. It could have been a smaller scar with more stitches, and everything in me wants to know how he came to have the wound, but I refrain from asking.
Oh what the hell.
I reach out, but stop myself from touching him. His eyes seem to grow darker as he watches me.
“How did—how did you get that scar?”
“Shrapnel.”
I wince. But for some ungodly reason I actually touch him, because I can’t seem to stop myself. “Must have hurt.”
He doesn’t answer as I finger the scar. He might hav
e shaved a day ago or so. I like his dark whiskers that have a few gold ones, glinting from the florescent light. I like his hollowed cheeks, the blade of his nose, and his gorgeous lips.
He lets me inspect his healed wound. “The physician should have used about six more stitches on this.”
Something magical happens. One side of Ryder’s perfect lips curls up. Oh my god, I made him smile. Well, almost.
“He was busy, the doc who stitched me up.” Ryder’s voice is deep and dark and twists into my body, making me feel every word he utters. “Had other men to deal with. Worse off than me.”
I nod. “You were in the war, right? A medic?”
He nods. He doesn’t ask how I know that about him.
Stalk much?
I don’t mean to know so much about him, but when he arrived, even the grandma volunteers were fighting to find out tidbits about him. And they’re more than happy to talk about what they discovered when I bring them homemade peanut brittle.
“I’m sorry. Must have been…hard.”
He shrugs. “Paid for college. It’s okay.”
I finally settle my hand back where it should be. Not touching Ryder. Slowly, I smile up at him. It’s the most I’ve ever heard him talk other than when he’s barking out orders for a bad case.
He sucks in a slow breath. “So we’re working together tonight.”
I nod. “Looks like it.”
His face does the most adorable thing. It kind of scrunches as if he’s wincing in a sheepish manner. After licking his bottom lip, he says, “You want to—”
“Hot one!” someone yells into the staff room, “coming in. Heart attack. ETA one minute.”
I’d like to kick the lockers because I will probably never find out what Ryder was going to say. More than likely he was going to ask if I wanted to stop stalking him, since I sounded stalker-y. So it might be a good thing that we race out of the staff room and into the emergency department.
But for a moment, before we left the privacy of our lockers, I swear I thought I felt him touch my hip. Not like a nudge, as if he was trying to get my ass moving. But more like the way a man would skim his hand along a woman’s hip to claim ownership. Only, it was so slight, and I was already running away, making me wonder if it was all in head.
I should stop reading my romances. Surely, they’re to blame for my over-active imagination.
Chapter Three - Ryder
ETA one minute, my ass. More like already here.
Firefighters with their blue t-shirts and tan bunker pants held with red suspenders race into the ER with a man on a gurney. There’s so many firefighters I can’t see shit about what’s going on. But they’re yelling stats, nurses flying around as adorable Dr. Asha gives them orders. She’s calm and taking in everything. She’s so smart. So fucking smart.
And I’m a fucking moron to have almost asked her to eat with me if we get a break tonight. Yeah, I’d been the schmuck, standing there with my heart on my sleeve, about to ask if she’d sit with me, get to know me. Like she’d say yes.
The minute the gurney stops I’m in action. I’m a big guy and it’s up to me and the firemen to heft the man onto the hospital gurney. We all know the signals, what to say. We move in unison. We’re a team.
This is why I chose to work for the emergency department. It’s like the Army, where I learned what it meant to be a team, to be part of a family who watches my back, and me for them. Learning what it’s like to have someone to lean on. I’d been raised by my strict grandmother who was about as reliable as a tornado. Between her failing health and religious zealousness and lack of money, my sister and I would either get belt whippings or were starved. So, yeah, that means I was dirt poor. White trash. I stole to fill my sister’s and my belly. When I got good at it, I figured out how to steal other things I wanted. I’m not proud of that time, but it is what it is.
The man we’ve moved is in his sixties, silver hair mixed with black. He’s a big guy too, about six-foot-two, muscular at one time, but now a little on, what Asha might call, the jolly side. I like her terms. And it fits for this guy. His belly is big and round, and she says men like this remind her of Santa Claus.
Yeah, I overhear her as much as I can because I’m fucking pathetic about this crush I have on her.
Asha—er, Dr. Whitetail—is bagging the man, sliding an endotracheal tube home, a nurse taking over immediately to pump air into his lungs.
I glance at the firefighter who’s pumping the man’s chest. Chris Peters. I actually know him and like him. He’s one of those people, a little like Asha, who exudes warmth and welcome. He gives me a flicker of a grin while he works. Stats are repeated.
Sixty-seven. Heart attack while driving. His wife is admitted too for stitches but seems fine, otherwise. This is his fourth heart attack.
As we cut apart and tear off his clothes, the scar running down his chest speaks of the cardiologist’s fight to save him. It’s an angry scar, still red. He’s had a heart attack not that long ago.
Come on, man, fight this. You can survive this one too.
There are lines around the man’s face. The kind of wrinkles only obtained from laughing, not from a bad life. This man has laughed. A lot. And I picture him surrounded by friends and family, chuckling so hard he has to hold his round belly.
Come on, brother. Fight this. You got so much live for.
Asha’s talking about paddles when I take over pumping for Chris. He says something. My brain takes a second to whirl the information into something comprehensible. He’s been doing CPR for almost ten minutes. Thready pulse on scene. And now…fuck.
The machines are beeping. When there’s a heartbeat, the machine makes a happy ding, meaning someone is alive. Right now the machines are beeping in a panicked tone. I don’t know who manufactures these fucking machines, but the beeping is incredibly annoying with its incessant ring of “He’s got no pulse. He’s got no pulse. He’s got no pulse.”
I push down and lift up, feeling that Chris might have already broken a rib. I might have broken a second. Fuck. But it’s what happens. I keep pumping, hearing Asha call out for calcium chloride and other IVs. She’s got this. She’ll get him back.
I keep pumping, taking a second to look at her. A nurse is getting the paddles ready while Asha glances at her patient. Her kind dark eyes flood with concern. The cards are stacked against us. This man has had four previous myocardial infarctions, making his heart weaker and weaker. He’s already had CPR for ten minutes, and now he doesn’t have a pulse. No breath. But this is why I admire Asha. Her face steels. She’s digging in her heels. I can almost hear her internal thoughts, like she’d say, “Oh no. Not fucking today.” She’s a fighter. She’s going to give everything she has to save this jolly Santa Claus. And I pump with a little more energy.
Come on, man. Come back for Asha. She’s a good girl. You’d like her. She could make you smile when you worried you never would again. That’s what she did for me.
Paddles are applied and we all hold our breath as we watch the monitor after the electric shock. The machine beeps its panicked tone. Shit.
I jump back on the man’s chest, pumping up and down. The nurse who’s pushing air into his bag catches my eye. I see doubt. She doesn’t think the man can make it. Fuck her. Asha’s got this. Asha should win a gold medal every day for what she does, how somehow she’s still sweet and optimistic. Most doctors, especially when they had a residency where she had hers at the LA County Hospital, come out of the experience cynical and jaded. Not Asha. She’s not here for a paycheck. She’s here because she cares. She cares so fucking much.
I’ve seen her cry once after losing a patient. I would rip off my arms, my own heart, anything to have made her feel better. Instead, like a coward, I pretended I hadn’t seen her. I know she was crying in privacy and wouldn’t have wanted anyone to notice. But I did.
Paddles again.
Nothing.
Paddles again.
The panicked tone.
Come on, please, I internally beg the man as I resume pushing on his big chest. Come back. You have a family. Someone who makes you smile and laugh. Come on.
“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Tanya says, squeezing an IV bag while checking her watch.
Twenty-five minutes of CPR with no pulse.
Fuck, this isn’t good.
While pushing on the man’s chest, feeling my arms tremble but telling myself to override how strained my muscles are and keep doing what I am, I glance at Asha. She’s biting her lip, her focus laser-like, angry. She’s a warrior. She keeps fighting.
She makes the decision to cut him, the defibrillation paddles will touch his heart. Where the fuck is the cardiologist? I know he was called when the firefighters were on their way. Standard protocol. Why is she making this decision alone? She shouldn’t be alone right now. Not that she can’t handle it, but the cardiologist—if it’s Dr. Murphy who would rather try to feel up his new secretary than do his fucking job, I’ll kill him—should be here to help. Fuck, this really isn’t good.
“Maybe talk to his wife first, Doc,” Tanya says while jutting her chin in the direction of the exit. “She’s on the opposite side of the ER. Tell her what’s going on.”
Fuck.
I know this tactic, and Tanya’s right to advise it. Asha needs to tell the man’s wife, to prepare her for what’s happening. Her husband is leaving this planet, but we’ll keep fighting until Asha calls it.
Asha leaves in a flurry of her green scrubs. Tanya takes over because the physician assistant, Mary Trainer, who’s supposed to be supervising, is a weenie. Mary does, though, try to swab sweat from my forehead. I should appreciate it because I’m sweating all over Mr. Goodall. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to register the patient’s name. Goodall. What a great name. Reminds me of a gallant knight, a man who made everyone laugh and was brave and decent.
Bad Medicine (Wolf Love Book 4) Page 2