by Carly Keene
MADDOX
HEART DOCTORS 3
CARLY KEENE
THISTLE KNOLL PUBLISHING
COPYRIGHT 2020 Carly Keene. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author. The only exception is that short excerpts may be quoted in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by DesignRans at Fiverr.com.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
EPILOGUE
THANK YOU!!
COMING SOON:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
ALSO BY CARLY KEENE:
ONE
Deena
At 3 a.m., the ER gets crazy. It’s never crazier than on a Saturday night or a full moon. On nights when Saturday and the full moon coincide, double the crazy.
And if there’s a full moon on the first Saturday of the month—right after the government payments hit people’s bank accounts and they have the cash to spend on alcohol and other recreational substances? Quadruple the crazy.
That’s what we’re looking at tonight. Along with the usual run of strokes, heart attacks, appendicitis cases, falls, and vehicle accidents, we’ve also got drug overdoses, alcohol poisonings, and domestic violence of all varieties. Not to mention bar fight victims and self-harmers, plus the patients who combined intoxicating substances and stupidity into accidental near-death experiences.
Don’t tell anybody, but I secretly love the crazy. On the surface, people think I’m a goody-two-shoes: I don’t sleep around, I don’t swear, I don’t have more than one glass of wine at a time. I don’t even speed five miles over the limit. I keep my apartment spotless, I work hard, and I return my grocery cart to the rack. I never tell secrets, whether they’re mine or somebody else’s.
But I’m not perfect, by a long shot. I have weaknesses. One of them is that I love the adrenaline rush. I love being the one in control of herself, calm and cool in the middle of the crazy, knowing exactly what to do in any tense situation. I like that I’m the level-headed one, and that I have clear ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong. Maybe I like it too much, because it’s caused people to resent me for being morally superior and smug. Sara, my dearest friend from college, once told me, “Deena, I love you to little bitty pieces, but sometimes you can be a self-righteous witch.” (Except she didn’t say “witch.”)
When I lose control, I completely lose it. Much better to stay in control. Much, much better.
In fact, if people could control themselves, a lot of them would not be here in the ER on the first full-moon Saturday of the month, while the residents and the nurses and the incoming rescue squads rush around trying to save them.
I’m on the short list to train as an orthopedic surgeon here, but there are only a few spots for the program and a long line of applicants, so I’m waiting to hear whether I’ll be accepted. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth it to specialize: the long hours, the insane schedules, the strenuous studying. But then I see some high school soccer player with a torn meniscus in the ER, in pain and desperate to hear whether she can ever play again, and I just want to help. I remember what it felt like to stand by helpless while someone I loved dealt with a destroyed knee. So in the meantime, I’m dealing with the crazy that is the ER on a Saturday night.
I catch a brief breather from the crazy at some point, and I use it to go grab my sandwich out of the fridge. I’m in the break room cramming turkey-on-wheat into my mouth when two of the nurses come in, laughing. Lisa puts leftover pizza in the microwave, and Emma gets sodas out of the machine while talking nonstop. “So did you see that new EMT come in with the heart attack case about an hour ago? The one who just transferred to the Short Pump squad? Oh my god, he is soooo hot! Tall. Muscles for frickin’ days. Holy shit, he’s gorgeous.”
I manage not to roll my eyes.
“Ooh, yeah, I saw him.” Lisa fans her face with her hand. “Hot enough to blister me from across the room, damn.”
“I don’t know his name yet. But since he’s been transferred to Short Pump, we’re probably going to see a lot of him. So I have serious plans to, you know, see a lot of him.” Emma laughs.
I take my napkin to the trash and shove my reusable sandwich wrap back into my lunchbag, eager to get out the door before I have to hear any more of the gossip about the Hot New EMT.
Look, it’s not that I’m against sex. I’m not. It’s just that we’re here to save lives, not to drool over good-looking men. There are some remarkably attractive men working in this ER, but none of them have any strong appeal for me.
I guess I got spoiled back in college, by what I thought was the most amazing boyfriend in the whole of the universe. And then he ruined everything.
Not that all of it was his fault, but enough of it was.
I shake my head, trying to shake off thoughts of Troy Mueller. Everything Emma was saying . . . Tall, muscles for days, generously endowed and skillful on top of it. Yep. That was Troy, back in the day. And he was bright. Sweet. Thoughtful. Disciplined. Devoted. Until the injury, and then he suddenly wasn’t any of the things I’d been so sure he was. And he broke my heart.
I wonder where he is now. But I’ve kept a rigid rein on my curiosity. I’ve blocked his cell number, thrown letters from him away unopened, deleted two Facebook friend requests, and stopped keeping up with mutual friends. There’s no point in trying to patch up what’s shattered.
Too bad my brain won’t let it go. The entire rest of the night, even while I’m setting broken bones, stitching up wounds, administering CPR, and ordering a heart cath, it keeps hitting me with memories. The smell of the skin on his neck, the shape of his hands. Or maybe it’s my heart that can’t let him go.
That’s why, when I hear the voice behind me, I know it immediately. I’d know that voice anywhere, anytime. Eight years since I’ve heard it, but I don’t think I could forget it no matter how many years went by.
The voice is talking about the two doses of naloxone given to the patient in the ambulance, giving the vital signs, specifying the time. My colleague Maddox Grey and two nurses take the patient, whisking the gurney past me on the way to a treatment room.
I feel like I’m spinning in place right now. One part of me is full of questions: How did Troy become an EMT? How did he get assigned to a station in the area of this hospital? Does he know I am here? What does this all mean?
The other part of me is flipping through emotions so violent and so confused that I don’t know how to feel.
In my attempt to not lose control of myself and start screaming bloody murder, I finish scribbling my initials on a patient’s chart and check with the intake nurse about which patients are left to be seen.
“Nobody to be seen right now, if you can believe that, Dr. McLean,” Jenny says, over the warm buzz of the male tones behind me, two EMTs joking together.
Nothing urgent at the moment. Why is my heart beating so fast? Why can’t I catch my breath? Why, for heaven’s sake, are my panties sticking to my suddenly-sensitive ladybits? But I know, really.
I take a deep b
reath and turn around.
TWO
Troy
It’s been a crazy night. You know what they say about full moons, right? It’s all true.
I was thinking that since I got transferred out of Eastside, I’d have easier night shifts. Short Pump is suburban, not ghetto, and I figured I’d have fewer drive-by shootings to deal with. Over the past two weeks, that much has been the case, but there are just as many domestic violence calls and probably more car accidents. But I keep reminding myself that the human condition can basically suck when people are shitty to each other, and there’s never any shortage of shitty people no matter where you are, and at least I’m goddamn helping people.
That matters to me.
Eight and a half years ago, I was a college quarterback hoping for an NFL career. I was about to earn a degree in chemistry. I had great teammates and the best fiancée you could imagine. I had a bright future. And then two defensive backs plowed into me from opposite directions, and I suddenly had a knee that had been turned to fruit salad under the skin.
And one by one, all those great things that I had went away.
The NFL career went first, and I understood why. Nobody wants a rookie quarterback with a replacement knee. But I was so angry at the universe for screwing me over that I did all the wrong things to try to deal with it. I argued with my coach. I turned my back on my teammates, I cursed at my other friends, and I told my parents to leave me alone. I ignored my professors and blew off my classes. And I spent a lot of time drunk. I abused my girlfriend’s patience deliberately, watching to see how much it would take to push her away: I said mean things to her, I yelled at her, I ignored her, and I finally did the stupidest thing I could think of. I broke her heart, and I did it on purpose, just so I didn’t have to see her look at me with pity any more.
As you might expect, she dumped me. Even then, she was polite, too polite. She gave me back the engagement ring and said she didn’t want to see me again, and I knew I deserved it.
The university put me on academic probation, twelve credit-hours away from my B.S. I never went back. Even after I hit bottom with the drinking the year afterward and my family insisted on rehab and counseling, even after I got sober, I couldn’t bring myself to go back there. I realized that what I really wanted to do was help people. Social work? I pondered. Teaching? Working with kids?
And then I remembered the way I’d felt when the EMTs came for me on the football field that day, when my knee was such agony that I was banging my head on the ground to try to distract myself from the pain. So that was it for me. I could help people. I got my certification three years ago, and mostly I love it.
I’m not saying it’s great to go home with blood and piss and snot all over my uniform, but it helps to know that I’m helping.
Tonight the drunks and the crazies are out in full force, and close to the end of my shift, we pick up a young guy who’s taken too much of his prescription pain meds. We bring him back from death with a couple of doses of Narcan, and his vitals are improving when we deliver him to Hopedale Hospital. And then I see her.
I see her.
I stop talking mid-word because I know that wheat-blonde ponytail. I know that straight back and that fine ass, contours noticeable under the white coat.
She turns and walks toward me. “Troy,” she says, and her voice is level. Eyes level. Everything straightforward, and the icy-cool tone of her voice would fool me if I hadn’t seen her pulse beating fast in the hollow of her throat, above those magnificent breasts of hers. My dick, which has an excellent memory, goes instantly hard in my tactical pants. Thank God they’re loose.
“Dee,” I say, but my voice is hoarse.
We have one short polite conversation, in which she asks about my parents and my younger brother, and I ask about her parents and her older brothers. Everybody’s “just fine, thanks for asking.” And we are all the time looking at each other and seeing all the ways that we’ve changed and all the ways we are the same. I clock her noticing the heartbeat tat on my inner wrist. Her eyes are the same sharp frosty blue, and they don’t soften the way I know my eyes have softened with looking at her. Her medical-green scrubs don’t really flatter those lush hips of hers, but I bet she still looks her very best naked, a substantial armful of tall athletic woman.
I always knew she’d be a great doctor.
Patrick tugs at my sleeve. “Hey,” he says. Maybe he has to say it twice, I don’t know. “Shift’s nearly over. Let’s get back to the station.”
I nod. To Deena, I say, “I’d love to catch up soon. Are you off at six? We could maybe catch breakfast.”
She hesitates. Shit, she’s going to say no the way she’s said no to any of my overtures. “Breakfast sounds good.”
I can hardly believe it. “Meet you back here? 6:15?”
“Make it 6:30,” she says. Her voice is still cool, but she’s said yes. And her pulse is still beating fast.
I still want her, and that, at least, has never changed.
THREE
Deena
He goes out, throwing one look back at me over his shoulder. His eyes are still that same forest green, deep and mysterious. He is still the sexiest man I have ever known.
Sure, he was the backup quarterback when I met him, but it was never his prominence that appealed. It was just him: the way he’d look straight into my eyes and not at my boobs. It was the way he was all-in to the things he thought were important, and I was one of those things.
“Dr. McLean, 14-month-old baby with 102-degree fever in Triage 4,” Jenny says, startling me out of my reverie, and hands me a clipboard. I take it mechanically and walk down the hall to where two distressed parents are holding on to a cranky, snotty, flushed toddler. After taking a history and examining her, I diagnose a common virus and recommend acetaminophen, liquids, and a bulb syringe. She’s going to be fine.
I update the chart and sign the board, and the day shift is already trickling in. Noah Bonner high-fives me on his way into the doctors’ lounge to hang up his stethoscope. “We survived another Psycho Saturday!” he says, and I give him a double thumbs-up.
The tiredness hits me all at once. I’m starving and sweaty and unkempt, and oh dear Lord I’m meeting Troy for breakfast in half an hour. Suddenly I get another shot of adrenaline. I clock out, race into the lounge for the set of spare clothes I keep in my bag, and hit the women’s locker room for a desperately needed shower. In fifteen minutes, I’m clean and dry, pits and legs shaved, hoping I have something besides yoga pants and a slouchy sweater in my tote.
Nope.
So much for looking and feeling calm and in control of myself, somebody with her stuff together. Because I do not have my stuff together, not where Troy is concerned, and I shouldn’t be meeting him at all after the way he crushed my dreams of happiness.
I pull out my phone and send a swift message to my friend Sara. We were roommates in college, and she was a bystander when all the mess went down. I don’t have to give her background. Besides, she has a husband who runs early in the morning and a very active five-year-old. She’ll be awake. I text her, I just saw Troy. He’s working as an EMT . . . asked me for breakfast. I said yes. Am I insane?
While I wait for her to text back, I put my hair up in a reasonably un-messy bun, and flick on a little mascara. That’ll have to do.
My phone pings. Sara’s text reads, in all caps, HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY SPOKE TO HIM???!!?
I text back. Less of the sarcasm please. Srsly, am I nuts?
Sara: Wait, lemme pick my jaw up off the floor.
Sara: How does he look? Please do not tell me he got fat. That would be too sad.
Me, considering the addictive appeal of my ex: No, he appears to have lost some weight. You know he used to have to be bulked up for football. He’s not skinny now, because his biceps are holy-crap huuuge, but you can see his cheekbones these days. And his hair is long, but it looks good on him. Sort of a Jason Momoa man-bun thing.
Sara: So he
looks good?
Me, realizing that the fresh panties I just put on are in danger of becoming damp just from thinking about Troy’s body: Um. That’s an understatement.
Me again: So seriously, is this a mistake?
Pause. The three dots appear on Sara’s side of the conversation, telling me she’s writing a long response. Fudge.
Sara: This is weird. You never ask me for advice. You never ask anybody for advice. You must still be shaken up by what happened between the two of you, and I think you never really got over it. I mean, really, when was the last time you got laid?
I have to think about that. I did try it with a guy in med school, but although he talked a good game, we just didn’t click. Maybe I was too tense or something.
Me: About three years ago?
Sara: Did you enjoy it? Never mind, if you had enjoyed it you would’ve gotten some dick again since then.
Me: [eye roll emoji]
Sara: Tell him I said hi. And try not to let your panties get shredded.
Me: WHAT?
Sara: Never mind the panties, you can let him shred your carnal curtains
Me: CARNAL CUR—that is vile. You are dead to me now
Sara: Samesies. Especially if you don’t give me alllllll the dirt afterward.
Sara: Gotta go, M just spilled her cereal into the floor vent. With milk in it.
Sara: Dammit, I have a master’s degree. Why do I have to deal with this crap?
I wait another minute, but she doesn’t text back.
So, okay, I’m on my own here. My ladyparts seem downright enthusiastic about being shredded, because my panties are even damper than they were a few minutes ago, and I can even feel the texture of my sweater through my bra, against my nipples.
Because I remember sex with Troy.
I remember loving Troy, and it was so good, until it was absolutely awful.