by Beverly Bird
Cross lofted a brow. “Most people make an appointment.”
“I don’t have time for that. This can’t wait. It’s important.”
The psychiatrist watched him for a beat, then nodded. He stuck his head in his office and said a word to the woman, then he returned. “Five minutes.”
“Fine.” Sam turned to a door across the hall and threw it open. He stepped into his office after Cross and closed the door, being careful to turn the lock. “Have a seat.” He said it like an order.
“That’s usually my line.” But Cross sat. “What’s going on?”
Sam went behind his desk and sat, as well. There was no way to handle this, he thought, other than to dive right in. “I’m losing my mind.”
Jared Cross laughed. “My practice is thriving. I ought to start charging more.”
Sam scowled at him, not understanding. He raked his fingers through his hair, agitated.
Cross relaxed, leaning back to rest one ankle on his knee. “Okay. Tell me about your childhood.”
Sam felt his eyes go to slits. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, not entirely. Cooperate with me.”
“Well, I didn’t wet the bed, that’s for sure.”
“You?” Cross shook his head. “No, I can’t imagine that you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve led a gilded life.”
Sam thought about it and eased back in his own chair. “Yeah, right.” He shrugged. “What’s to tell? My parents have been married for almost forty-five years. I had dinner there last Sunday. The only thing they said to each other was ‘Pass the salt,’ in the exact same tones they used when I was six.”
“Ah.” Cross steepled his fingers under his chin. “School?”
“Straight A’s, for the most part.”
Cross grinned. “I’ve been your colleague for some time now and I know you’re not that smart.”
Sam relaxed enough to laugh a little. “I did a hell of a lot better with the female teachers, I can tell you that. Is this supposed to give me some insight as to what’s wrong with me?”
“Yes. Because I’m smarter.”
Sam laughed outright. Then Jared got serious.
“Try this on for size. My guess—knowing you as long as I have—is that you learned early on that what you failed to accomplish with your brain, you could always wing on your charm.”
Sam didn’t like the sound of that, but he nodded cautiously. “That’s me. Charming.”
“Personally, I think you rely too much on the knowledge that your looks and your talents of persuasion can get you out of pretty much any sticky situation.”
“People pay you for this?”
“You’ll have my bill in the morning. In the meantime, let’s get back to what I was saying. When you were abducted last week, you ran headfirst into a brick wall. For the first time in your life, you hit up against something you couldn’t finesse your way out of.”
“Correction. I did get us out of it.”
Cross waited.
“Okay, with some help.” And, Sam thought, things had been looking pretty dismal until Tabitha Monroe and Jake White had arrived. Yeah, that bothered him.
“Now you find yourself doubting your every move in areas that had always been your strong suits,” Cross continued.
“Not every move.” Though he’d had a horrible moment in surgery yesterday, Sam thought. What was the sense in denying it? He had asked this guy for help. “Just most of them.”
“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder,” Cross said.
Sam stiffened. “I don’t do stress and I don’t do disorders.”
“You do now.”
“That’s bull—”
Cross held up a hand to cut him off. “It basically happens when the predictable order of one’s life is suddenly derailed by any sort of catastrophic event. Things you once put trust in are no longer viable. You find yourself reacting differently, in ways you never considered before.”
Sam breathed again. There it was. The answer. That was why he couldn’t get little Nurse Sweetness off his mind. “So give me something for it.”
Cross shook his head. “No can do.”
“Come on, there’s a drug for everything these days. Turn me into me again.”
“You’re a doctor, a surgeon. Kids’ lives depend on you. I’m not prescribing you so much as an aspirin. Besides, it wouldn’t work, anyway.”
There was that, Sam thought, feeling chastened. But he was desperate. “What, then?”
“I want to see you again. Make an appointment this time. We’ll talk our way through it.”
“I’m not going to start seeing a shrink over this.”
“You already have.”
Sam rubbed his jaw. “I’ll think about it.”
Cross stood. “In the meantime, you might want to think about confronting the source of your trauma.”
“Come on, Jared, ‘trauma’ is a little harsh.”
“The scene of the crime, then.”
Sam’s mind flashed immediately to Caitlyn—and what they had done in that basement room. “You can’t be serious.”
Cross gave him an odd look and nodded. “Try visiting the place where it began, where you started realizing you were a day late and a dollar short on saving yourself and Nurse Matthews.”
“The storage room.” Sam breathed again. That he could do. “Why not? It beats the hell out of tangling with little Nurse Prim-and-proper.”
“You seem more focused on your hostage situation than on the actual abduction,” Cross observed. “What exactly happened to the two of you in that underground room, anyway?”
I lost my mind for a woman I never thought I liked, Sam thought, and now she’s metamorphosed on me. “Nothing.”
Cross shrugged. “You’ll tell me. Sooner or later.”
Sam had a staggering thought. “This post-traumatic stress disorder could have happened to Cait, too, right?”
“Cait?”
“Caitlyn. Nurse Matthews.”
Cross fought a grin. “Presumably. If the normal order of her world was rocked.”
“This sort of thing could really change people,” Sam mused.
“It changed you.”
“It’s tripped me up a little, that’s all.”
“You know, after we’re finished with the stress disorder, we can work on your ego problem if you like.”
Sam made a gesture in Cross’s direction to tell him what he thought of that. Then he got to his feet, too. “You’ve already fixed me. Thanks for taking the time.”
“Make an appointment, anyway.”
Sam watched Cross leave the office and he took a deep, steadying breath. It wasn’t him. Well, not entirely. It was Caitlyn, too. She’d gone wacky on him. He was essentially fine.
He had pre-op routines to do on Gilbert. Sam headed for the door. He stepped into the corridor almost squarely into Dr. Kimberlie Leon’s impressive chest.
“Hey there,” he said, grinning. “Looking for someone?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. You.” She tossed back her mane of long, dark-blond hair. She was the newest addition to Mission Creek Memorial’s staff—an oncology physician.
“My lucky day.” He leaned a shoulder against his door. “What can I do for you?” He was back, Sam thought. Oh, yeah, he was definitely back on his stride.
Then he looked over the doctor’s shoulder. He saw Cait Matthews coming toward them down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder with one of the interns, a dark-eyed Lothario from somewhere out West. California, Sam thought it was. As he watched, she tucked that tidy, short blond hair behind one of her ears and glanced up at the guy out of the corner of her eye. Then she laughed.
She’d been a virgin until a few days ago! Was she trying to turn that one inaugural event into a whole four-year term or something?
“Got to go,” he said suddenly to Kimberlie.
“But—”
“Catch up
with me later.”
He left the doctor gaping after him and stepped back into his office. He slammed the door hard.
It was well after four before Cait returned to the maternity wing. She was so tired her legs felt weak.
She had managed to keep her contact with Sam to a minimum through the rest of the day, but each isolated encounter with him had drained more out of her. Emotions had been ricocheting through her for the past eight hours—ups, downs, highs, lows and everything in between. She’d found herself sneaking peeks at him, remembering. Again. Then she’d found herself hating him for his newfound brusqueness, though she’d noticed that he was foul with everyone, not just with her.
Maybe he, too, was having trouble regaining his equilibrium after what had happened to them, she thought as she made her way down the flamboyant corridor. The absurdity of such an idea would have made her laugh if she’d had the energy. The unflappable, outrageous Sam Walters? Hardly.
Cait’s feet stalled as she reached the storage room across from the nursery. She touched the doorknob tentatively, praying it would be locked and she could just turn away from here and go home. Why did Jared Cross want her to do this, anyway? Her every inclination was to turn her back on what had happened, to walk away from it, close it out, forget it. Then again, if she’d been able to do that, she wouldn’t have gone to see him in the first place.
The door wasn’t locked. Cait leaned into it and it opened. She stepped over the threshold and let the door swish shut behind her.
She took a few militant steps into the room, then stood in the center of it with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her heart started beating a little too quickly. She unfolded her arms to press the heel of her right hand to her chest. “This is ridiculous.”
Her gaze slid over the shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. Someone had picked them up, she thought, because they’d gone flying when Sam had briefly struggled with Hines the day the man had taken them. Hines had come back into the room to find the others escaping through the vent, and Sam had held him back long enough to keep him from grabbing the last woman in the duct. By then, of course, it had been too late for Sam and her.
Cait shivered and glanced at the hard plastic-and-metal chairs tangled together like some kind of absurd jungle gym in one corner. Then her eyes were drawn to the door, and the memories came rushing back….
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Hines shouted, waving his gun.
Cait took a step that way, then balked. The thought of leaving the room with him had cold sweat beading along her spine, between her breasts, under her arms. Then Dr. Walters was behind her and she couldn’t back up anymore, couldn’t get away.
“Do it. Just go ahead,” he whispered. “I’m right behind you. We need to placate him until I have time to think our way out of this. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She’d believed him, Cait realized, had trusted him blindly. Probably because, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t been able to think her own way out of what was happening to her. Hines had forced them down the hall to a maintenance room and into a laundry chute there.
Now she went to the vent and placed her palm against the cool metal. Then she eased down to sit on the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen here. Was she supposed to feel miraculously better for confronting this place? Well, she didn’t. She covered her face with her hands and closed her eyes.
Then she heard the door open.
For a single moment her heart seized. She was afraid to look to see who it was. She was suddenly, insanely sure that Hines was back to try again. He’d escaped. It was going to start all over again—except this time she was alone.
She kept her face covered, afraid to breathe. Then she recognized the tread of rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum. Hospital shoes. She pulled her hands away and opened her eyes. What she saw was very nearly worse than her imaginings.
Sam.
He didn’t notice her in the shadows. He made a guttural sound of anger in his throat and walked over to the air-conditioning vent, punching his fist into it hard. The metal rang. Cait let out a yelp. He jerked around and spotted her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
She’d die before she admitted she’d seen Jared Cross and he’d recommended it. “I could ask you the same question.”
“I asked you first.”
They both seemed to realize how juvenile that sounded. Sam looked away, and for a moment she thought he looked almost embarrassed. Then he went to the pile of boxes and began moving the ones on top. “I was looking for something.”
Cait astounded herself by snorting. “And then the vent did something to offend you?”
He stopped moving and looked at her as though she had changed color. “Damn it, would you stop doing that?”
“What?”
“Being sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I don’t know about that. I never really tried it on before.”
“Well, you have now, and I don’t like it. So knock it off.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I only report to you between the hours of eight and four. And that’s on a bad day. If I want to be sarcastic on my own time, that’s my choice.”
His eyes—they were the color of chocolate in the dim light, she thought—almost bugged. “You just did it again!”
Suddenly the fight went out of her. Cait slumped back against the wall and looked away. “Please. Just leave me alone.”
He was silent for a long time. “You’re not doing okay with any of this, are you?” he asked finally.
His voice was kind. She brought her chin up quickly and looked at him once more. “I’m doing great. You?”
“Terrific. Good. No problem.”
“Which explains perfectly why we’re both here.”
“I was looking for something,” he said again.
“Then get it and go. Don’t let me keep you.”
He sat on the floor across from her, instead. “You know what part I liked the most?”
She knew, somehow, that he was talking about the ideas for escape they’d bounced back and forth during their first few hours in their underground prison. What did it mean, that she was suddenly able to read his mind? “Which?”
“When you were going to hide in the ceiling pipes and drop down on him after I called him into the basement.”
Cait sniffed. That one had been her idea. “You wouldn’t have fit up there.”
“You’re too small to have done any damage to him. He would have thought a flea had landed on his back.”
She felt anger kick in her again. “So you said at the time. But I believe you called me a sparrow.”
“Flea, sparrow, same thing.”
“Tell that to the itchy sparrow.”
He stared at her again, then he laughed and shook his head. “You really have gone off your rocker.”
Cait stiffened. “I’m not the one going around beating up ducts.”
He ignored that. “I would liked to have seen it, though—you falling through the air like Wonder Woman.”
Suddenly she felt hot again. Her skin felt excruciatingly warm, all her senses heightened. “I believe she was a bit more substantial than I am.”
“‘I believe,”’ he mimicked. “That’s good. You’re sounding like you again.”
“I was an English major before I decided to go into nursing,” she said tightly.
“Why’d you change?”
“Nursing pays moderately better than teaching. Then again, teaching doesn’t demand interaction with arrogant God’s-gift-to-women doctors.”
He looked genuinely affronted. “I’m not arrogant.”
“You’re arrogant.”
“How am I arrogant?”
Cait pushed to her feet. She crossed to the door, but she wasn’t leaving. She stopped there and rested one shoulder against the frame, a wide, cocky grin on her face. “‘Looking for someone?”’ she mimicked him.
He watched her, mystified.
She left the door and turned around to face it. She put a simpering look on her face and tossed back an imaginary mane of hair. “‘As a matter of fact, I am. You,”’ she said in a falsetto.
When she turned around this time, she saw the light dawn in his eyes.
“Kimberlie Leon?” he asked. “You were too far away to hear what I said to her.”
“Obviously, not far enough.” Cait leaned back against the wall.
“Regardless. That wasn’t arrogance.”
“Okay. Cockiness, then.”
“I was flirting.”
“Well, if the way you slammed your office door was any indication, your technique needs work.” She came back at him quickly, because she hated the hot shaft of something unseen and inexplicable that hit her in the gut, something bizarrely like jealousy. “She was all over Kenny Estrada the moment you were gone,” she added.
“The intern?” Sam scowled. “She was?”
“She was.”
“I guess that took you down a peg.” He shot at her.
It had, actually. “Why would it?”
“You were flirting with him.”
She crossed her arms. “I don’t flirt.”
“Maybe not two weeks ago, but you were sure as hell doing it today.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
He got to his feet and proceeded to pick his steps across the room. He looked coyly out of the corner of his eye and gave a high-pitched little giggle as he tucked invisible hair behind his ear. “That’s flirting.”
Cait opened her mouth in outrage. Then a laugh came up from her belly. She clapped a hand over her mouth in an unsuccessful effort to stifle it, and then a sobering thought hit her. This was just the way he had been in that underground room. Whenever she’d started to come undone, he’d made her laugh until her panic had subsided.
Cait dropped her hand and turned around again to reach for the door handle. “I’m leaving.”
“By the way, you’re not less substantial than Wonder Woman,” he said suddenly, stopping her. “Not in all areas.”
She whirled back to him. Her heart kicked her chest and vaulted into her throat. “What?”