by Caro Carson
He rubbed his ring-free hand over the smooth skin of her bare shoulder as she slept.
“Brooklyn Brown, you’re a beautiful woman. I love everything about you. I love your grace under pressure, I love the way you fight for your patients, and I love the way you fight for your chance at happiness. I love the way I feel when I’m with you. I love you. Will you marry me and live with me forever?”
Yes, that sounded right.
He’d told her today that marriage would never again be in his future. Was tomorrow too soon to tell her how wrong he’d been?
Chapter Thirteen
Emergency rooms operated under their own set of Murphy’s Laws. Chief among them was this: if the day was so slow and dull that personnel were sent home, patients would flood the waiting room as soon as the staff left.
As they juggled the sudden deluge of patients, Brooke happened to pass the only other physician on duty. “MacDowell, this is your fault. You had to send Dr. Gregory home, didn’t you?”
Jamie held his hands up in surrender. “You’d think I’d know better by now. My bad.”
As Brooke picked up the next patient chart, she realized she was smiling.
Good.
That’s what Zach would say. Not, how can you be happy when work is swamped? Not, how can you be happy when yesterday was your sister’s memorial day?
Nope. If he knew she felt really content today, like a woman who was grounded, who had real friends—or just like a woman who’d slept well—he’d say “good” and then take her for a bite to eat at some unique taco joint that featured an amazing musician.
One day after her mother had tried to play a game of “Who Grieves the Most,” life was good. Being Zach’s girlfriend was even better.
Brooke was nearly through with a patient who’d arrived in the middle of her first migraine, with intense pain and visual disturbances that would terrify anyone if they didn’t know the cause. Jamie rapped on the door and asked her for a moment of her time.
“Got a patient coming in by air,” he began without preamble, all business. “Another by ambulance. Two minutes.”
“Which one do you want?”
“You get the roof.”
Brooke rapidly signed discharge orders for her migraine patient and headed for the elevator. The helicopter landing pad was on the roof of the hospital. The hospital security guard was standing by to override the elevator and take Brooke and her team straight up.
The nurse who’d manned the radio stepped in. “That got nerve-wracking in the middle, didn’t it?” she said to the orderly with her as the doors closed.
“Fill me in.” Brooke pulled her stethoscope out of her pocket and slung it around her neck. She checked her watch. The second hand was sweeping around, steady. Ready.
“Seventeen-year-old male, lost while hiking, stuck on the side of a cliff overnight. Your basic exposure call, some abrasions. The harrowing part was the rescue swimmer. I guess a gust of wind came up the cliff face and slammed him into the rocks. He caught the patient by one hand and the pilot had to do some maneuvering—I don’t know. It was hard to follow on the radio, but everyone got back onboard the chopper. Here they come now.”
Brooke didn’t need to look to know which chopper it would be. The Travis County Sheriff’s helicopter wasn’t coming in. The medical transport from a rural hospital wouldn’t land. The rescue swimmer wasn’t with the Coast Guard this far from the ocean. She shielded her eyes against the blasting wind made by the rotor blades as the helicopter with the red-and-blue logo of Texas Rescue and Relief touched down.
Her nurse and orderly speed-walked onto the landing pad after it touched down. Brooke waited by the elevator, obeying protocol despite the sick pitch of her stomach. Slammed into rocks...got back onboard...but what if he hadn’t? Oh, God, what if he hadn’t?
She’d left Zach in her bed, sleeping peacefully. Yet here he was, dressed in an orange flight suit and a black harness, his face hidden by a white aviator helmet, pushing a gurney toward her from under the helicopter’s slowing blades, jogging along with her orderly and her nurse.
Jogging with a limp. Hamstring, quadriceps, knee?
But it wasn’t until he stood next to her in the elevator, shifting his weight off his left leg, that she saw the tear in his left sleeve and the gash in his triceps. Blood was still flowing freely, only coagulating around the edges of the wound.
Brooke had already put her hands on the teenaged hiker, which meant her latex gloves couldn’t touch anyone else. She jerked her chin toward the nurse. “Are your gloves clean? Get that towel on his arm before he bleeds on something.”
The nurse folded one of the clean towels that were tucked into the gurney and placed it over the gash in the back of Zach’s upper arm. Zach automatically reached around to hold it in place, as cool and calm as if it didn’t hurt at all. When the elevator stopped at the ER and the orderly pushed the gurney into a treatment room, Zach quietly murmured in her ear. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Stitching up your arm. Don’t leave this ER until you’re seen, Bishop.”
“It’s that bad?” he asked, craning his neck to try to see the back of his arm.
“Let’s go.” She stepped up to the teenager on the gurney and started taking his pulse, two fingers on his wrist, eyes on the second hand of her watch.
“Seventeen-year-old male, exposure times eighteen hours, dehydration.”
As Zach rattled off his report, Brooke kept her eyes on the teenager. She wanted to take a closer look at Zach’s arm, but she had to do this job first.
Zach had already started all the right medical treatments, primarily IV fluids and blankets for warmth. Fortunately for the teenager, the night temperatures had stayed in the sixties, far from freezing but still significantly lower than human body temperature. His body, skinny in its adolescence, had worked hard to stay warm as the hours passed, but it was already recovering. The moment the nurse verified that the patient’s body temperature was as normal as his pulse and blood pressure, Brooke ditched her latex gloves and started donning a fresh pair.
She pulled the towel away from Zach’s arm. “Come with me. You’re worse off than he is.”
“Nah, just some bruises—”
“Don’t argue with my medical assessment.” All the private treatment rooms were full, so she led him to the curtained-off area that was used for overflow. “Sit.”
Zach leaned his hip on the exam table as casually as he’d done on the picnic table just yesterday. She started opening drawers, looking for the heavy-duty bandage scissors. Behind her, Zach made a sound of pain, a quiet curse deep in this throat.
She turned to see him using two hands to lift the heavy helmet from his head.
“Don’t use that arm,” she said sharply.
“Yeah.” He’d already dropped his left arm and was tilting his head to finish hauling the helmet off with only his right hand. He dropped it less than gracefully on the exam table. “You’re right about that.”
“Now sit. All the way. You’re going to be here for a while.” She slid her finger under the elasticized cuff of his sleeve and positioned her scissors.
Zach jerked his arm. “Don’t cut it.”
When she glared at him, he tried to do his charming smile, as if she was any old female in the hospital. “These flight suits aren’t cheap. Texas Rescue runs on donations, you know.”
Fine. If he was going to treat her as if she was any old female, she’d treat him like any old patient. “Mr. Bishop, your suit is already ruined. I’m not going to aggravate the wound further by dragging this sleeve over it.”
She began cutting. The orange tear-resistant fabric resisted her scissors, but she kept at it, revealing his strong forearm inch by inch.
“Sorry,” Zach said.
&n
bsp; She didn’t stop cutting, didn’t look up to those blue-green eyes. He was a paramedic; she was a doctor, doing her job. “You know the standard procedure.”
A nurse came from the main hall to the overflow area.
“I need a suture tray.”
“Coming right up, Dr. Brown.” The nurse left, snapping the curtains closed with a jangling of metal rings.
“I’m going to get you a pair of black-framed glasses,” Zach said, sounding like that good-time cowboy. “You do the angry schoolteacher really well. It’s got a definite appeal.”
She kept her eyes on her work. “You’re not supposed to be enjoying this.”
They both spoke quietly, aware the curtains offered no privacy beyond the visual.
“Can’t help it. Dr. Brown in action is pretty damned sexy. I always thought so.” He winced when she lifted the shoulder strap of the harness to finish cutting the flight suit. “I’d be enjoying this a lot more if it didn’t hurt quite so much. I barely felt it until you made me sit.”
“Your body isn’t pumping out adrenaline anymore.” She carefully pulled the bloody sleeve away from his arm and dropped it in a trash can lined with a red biohazard bag. “It doesn’t need to. You’re safe now.”
He was safe in her hands, but if something had happened to him out there, dangling from a wire—
Later. She couldn’t go there now. She was working.
“I want to get this harness off you before I wash out the wound. Otherwise, it will just contaminate it again when you take it off.”
Zach started to reach for the fasteners with both hands before she could stop him. He sucked in a hiss of pain at the same time she grabbed for his wrist to hold his injured arm still. “Don’t move that arm.”
“Right.”
She’d been avoiding making eye contact with him, but as they worked together to unfasten the harness with its metal D-rings, she had to glance at his face to assess his reaction to any pain she was causing. He was looking at her, too.
She refolded the towel and held it over the gash protectively as she lifted the harness and pulled it down his arm. She felt his gaze on her.
“I’m okay, Brooke, really.”
“Says the man who was bashed into the side of a cliff.” With the harness free, she placed it and his helmet onto the only chair in the curtained area. She snapped her gloves off and donned a fresh pair. “I need you to lie facedown so I can rinse this before I suture it.”
Zach fit his large frame on the exam table as best he could, positioning himself so she could slide a plastic pan under his arm.
“Were you on the radio?” he asked.
“No, but word travels fast when it’s as exciting as a near-death episode.” She began pouring sterile saline over the gash, letting the water run freely into the pan.
“That kid wasn’t near death. I had him under the arm. I could’ve held that grip for twenty minutes, if I had to.”
“Not the teenager. You. They said you got thrown into a cliff and the pilot couldn’t pull you back in right away.”
“That’s not near death. That’s more like a hard hit in a football game. The rigging held me fine.”
“While you held the teenager? How much weight did you put on that harness?” The metal rings on the webbed straps were only a few inches in diameter, hardly impressive in their thickness.
“It’s made to hold more weight than that, baby. So am I.”
The nurse returned with the suture tray. She gathered up the plastic pan and scissors while Brooke mixed the numbing agent and filled the syringe. The nurse didn’t leave, but stood there with her hands full.
“You might want to look away for this part,” the nurse said. Brooke glanced up to see her smiling at Zach, inviting him to look at her instead.
Women falling for his handsome face. Situation normal.
That sense of normalcy helped Brooke focus as she began injecting the painkiller in strategic sites around the injury. She did not think about this being her lover’s arm. This was merely tissue—epidermis, dermis, triceps—that needed numbed before sutures could be placed.
When she finished, she put the needle in the sharps disposal unit and addressed Zach formally. “The medicine needs a few minutes to be effective. I want you to rest in place. I’ll be back.”
She pushed the curtain aside, walked the few steps it took to get into the main hallway, and leaned against the cold, solid wall. Numbing that gash shouldn’t have required so much concentration. She’d pushed four-inch-long needles into countless body parts. It was necessary to cause a temporary pain that protected the patient from a more unbearable pain.
It had taken a surprising amount of effort. This, then, was why doctors weren’t supposed to work on loved ones.
The nurse stopped to deliver a message. “The patient asked me to find you. He wants to talk to you.”
Brooke nodded. “Would you please see if Dr. MacDowell is available for a consult right now?”
The nurse’s surprise was understandable. Stitching a gash was hardly something that doctors consulted one another about, but if Jamie was free, Brooke would rather he did the suturing. Jamie and Zach were friends, so there was no completely disinterested provider available, but she was the patient’s girlfriend. Surely, that made her too close to Zach.
On the other hand, Zach and Jamie had known each other for years. More than a decade. She’d only been dating him for weeks.
She remembered last night. Her bed. Their warmth.
Yes, she should be the last option when it came to operating on him.
The nurse returned quickly. “Dr. MacDowell’s not going to be free for a long time. Car accident. The patient lost a lot of blood and his body’s shutting down.” She proceeded to describe some of the dramatic measures that had already been taken.
“Thank you.” Brooke held up a hand to cut her off in the middle of her enthusiastically gory report. It looked like either Brooke was going to stitch Zach up, or she was going to leave him sitting with an open wound, waiting for Jamie for another hour, possibly more.
This was strictly business.
She whisked the curtain open once more.
“Here’s the deal. You need stitches, no question, but since we have a personal relationship, I’m technically only supposed to do it if there are no alternatives. The only other provider on duty right now is Jamie. He’s in the middle of a critical case. Since it’s Sunday afternoon, I doubt there are any surgeons hanging out in the hospital, but I could page one.”
Zach raised one brow. “Or you could do it yourself.”
She met his look squarely, wanting to evaluate her own emotional control as she looked into those blue-green eyes. After a moment’s gut-check, she said, “Yes, I could.”
“Well, then, make it pretty. You’re the one who’s going to have to look at it.”
* * *
She did it.
Brooke had done worse. Only two days ago, she’d blocked out every memory of her sister and worked on the little girl from the car accident. And now, she’d blocked out the fact that the raw flesh under her needle was the body of the man she loved.
Zach meant more to her than any other man ever had. He was as important to her as family. Family was vulnerable. She’d lost her sister. Her father. How close had she just come to losing Zach on the side of a cliff?
It didn’t matter. These were just sutures. A simple fix for a simple injury.
Still, she was glad it was over.
“Don’t bandage it yet. I want to see it. Got a mirror?” Zach was off the table before she could stop him, although putting weight on that left leg caused him obvious pain. He hopped over to the mirror by the sink, anyway, and twisted to admire her handiwork.
She opened the drawer for another pair of scissors.
“You’re favoring your left leg. Is it your hip, knee or ankle? All three?”
“Mostly hip.”
She nodded. That was good. The hip was a bigger joint, far less likely to have gotten dislocated or torn than a knee or ankle. Bruises could heal on their own, no surgery required.
“Let me see it,” she said, gesturing for him to return to the exam table.
“Brooke, put the scissors away. I’m not getting back in the helicopter with no pants on.”
At the idea of him climbing back into Texas Rescue One, something inside her snapped. How dare he endanger himself again? How dare he put her through this again?
“You’re not getting back in that helicopter at all.”
“My truck is parked at Texas Rescue. Chopper One is my ride back to the office. Besides, I have to make sure y’all don’t steal our gurney. I’ve got to take that back up.”
“You are not pushing a gurney. I just stitched you up, damn it.” She kept her voice to a hiss, mindful of the useless curtains around them. The heat inside her could have sent them up in flames. How dare he?
How dare he put her through this?
“Brooke—”
“You are grounded, Bishop. Doctor’s orders. I won’t let you undo all my work. Texas Rescue has to abide by my medical orders if you won’t.”
“Brooke, baby—”
“I don’t want you to be in danger. Do you see that? I can’t keep you safe if you keep this up. That arm is going to be at half strength, if you’re lucky, for weeks. You would be a danger to yourself and your crew.”
“Hey, Brooke?”
“What?”
“I love you, too.”
The heat inside her froze. Ice-cold. Slowly, she sank to the edge of the chair, his helmet at her back, his harness digging into the back of her thigh.
Oh, no. She loved him, and he loved her, too. And that meant only one thing would happen next: death.
No, no, no.
She pressed her hand to her temple, trying to keep herself focused. The hand that had held forceps and needle steady now shook with the terror of losing another person she loved. It was irrational, and she knew it. She’d get her act together in a moment. One moment.