Connor arched a brow at his buddy and pulled the pair of nitrile gloves he’d been holding into place while Jonah did the same. Involuntary response to the sound of sirens getting closer, he supposed. “You know, under other circumstances, I’d be jealous that you’re hogging all the pretty girls for yourself.”
Jonah laughed, although his expression quickly grew serious at the sight of the ambulance pulling into the bay in front of them. “I’ll see if they can swing a FaceTime after our shift is over. I know Nat would love to see your goofy mug, and Annabelle still swears you’re magic because you can start an IV without pinching her. One of these days, I’m going to get you to tell me all your secrets.”
The word snapped through Connor, ratcheting his pulse. That was twice in one day that his long-buried skeletons had threatened to surface. Damn, he was off his game.
“Never,” Connor said, shrugging off the stiffness in his shoulders and waggling his brows at Jonah as Tess hit them both with a tart smile.
“Sorry to interrupt your bromance here, but how about we treat some trauma patients? Y’know, just for shits and giggles.”
“You got it, Dr. Michaelson,” Connor said. As much downtime as he spent with both Tess and Jonah, when he was on the clock, they were always “doctor”. No exceptions.
Her light brown ponytail bobbed over one shoulder as she nodded and lifted her voice to address the group. “Okay. Parker, you’re with Sheridan on ambo one,” she said to the intern-slash-former-paramedic. “Vasquez, you’re with me on two, and Connor, you’re with Mallory on three. Let’s go.”
They all turned toward the trio of ambulances pulling into the bay, eyes alert and muscles primed for movement, and Connor took one last breath before disaster struck.
It didn’t take long.
“What’ve we got?” Mallory asked as soon as the ambulance jerked to a stop and the rear doors flew open.
The paramedic scrambled to the head of the gurney while Connor’s muscle memory had him moving to the foot to take care of the honors so Mallory could assess the patient as soon as she came into view. Easier said than done, since she was strapped to a backboard, one leg heavily splinted and her body covered with a trauma blanket from the waist down.
“Shelly Fitzpatrick, twenty-six-year-old female, restrained in the driver’s seat,” the paramedic said, guiding the gurney wheels to the pavement with a hard clack. “GCS 11. Complaining of chest and shoulder pain and left leg pain. No apparent head or neck trauma, no LOC.” He rattled off her vitals—not terrible but certainly not good enough to make Connor a happy camper—before adding, “Obvious left upper leg deformity. Pain meds were administered en route.”
“Hi, Ms. Fitzpatrick, I’m Dr. Mallory, and I’m going to help you, okay? Don’t try to nod. We want to keep your neck stable until we can check you out,” he said, falling in beside the gurney on the right side as they moved like a symphony toward the automatic doors. “Can you tell me if you’re experiencing any pain?”
“My leg. It hurts really bad.”
“I’m just going to take a quick look,” Mallory told the woman, who whimpered and tensed in response, and whoa, even with those pain meds on board, Connor could see why.
Mallory said, “Definite open femur fracture. Let’s pick up the pace.” Without moving his eyes from the patient, he added, “Trauma two, Connor,” and without moving his eyes, Connor steered the gurney directly toward the trauma room, his strides growing more purpose. They crossed the threshold seconds later, going through the practiced motions of transferring the patient to a hospital gurney and preparing for a more thorough exam, and damn, they had their work cut out for them with a broadsword. But while the gruesome nature of the woman’s injuries would make most people panic—or at the very least, lean toward despair—visualizing what needed to be fixed solidified the necessary steps in Connor’s head.
Assess. Strategize. Act.
First things’ first. Connor scanned the woman from her head down, using the exact same visual process he’d learned on day one in medic training ten years ago. The woman’s face was pale, sharp lines of pain etched around her eyes and mouth. A bright yellow C-collar held her neck steady, and cuts and abrasions of mild to moderate severity peppered her face and hands. There was no way to do a full exam with her jeans and sweater in the way, so Connor grabbed a pair of trauma shears and an extra blanket, making quick work of the patient’s clothing while giving her as much privacy as possible.
“Femoral and dorsal pulses both weak,” Connor confirmed after a manual check, while Mallory began a more comprehensive exam. An angry purple bruise was forming across the woman’s chest in a sash from left shoulder to right hip, and man, thank God for pain meds, because that leg injury was one of the worst Connor had seen.
And oh, he’d seen a lot.
“Alright,” Mallory said after a minute. “Ms. Fitzpatrick is alert and her pupils are equal and reactive. No dizziness, no nausea. Good signs.” He placed a quick squeeze on the woman’s forearm before adding, “Let’s clear her head and neck so we can lose this C-collar, and I want a full set of left leg, chest, and shoulder films. We need to see exactly what we’re dealing with.”
Connor had the portable X-ray machine ready to go before Mallory had even finished ordering the films. “Okay, Ms. Fitzpatrick. I’m going to take some X-rays with machine right here,” Connor told her, his gut going tight as her eyes widened and her heart rate spiked on the monitor. “I know you’re in pain. I’ll be as gentle and fast as possible, I promise. Once we get these images, Dr. Mallory will be able to see your injuries more clearly, and then we can fix you right up, okay?”
“It’s…really bad…isn’t it?” she asked, and Connor cobbled together a big, playful smile as he shouldered into the protective apron and maneuvered the machine into place.
“You’re going to have plenty of time to relax and eat ice cream while you recover.” He didn’t mention the rods and pins Mallory would almost certainly have to place in her leg, or the boatloads of PT she had ahead of her. For now, they needed to tackle the closest alligator to the boat; namely, keeping her calm while they figured out the extent of the damage to her leg and whether or not there would be permanent effects.
Strategize, Connor told himself. “So, what’s your favorite kind?” he asked, calling out over his shoulder to let Mallory know he was shooting the first set of films on their patient’s head and neck.
“W-what?”
“Of ice cream,” Connor elaborated as he continued to work. “I kind of change mine according to season. Peppermint around the holidays, strawberry in the summer. But, really, I don’t think you can ever go wrong with chocolate. It’s a classic.”
“Vanilla is better,” she said after a beat, and Connor placed a hand over the front of his lead apron, calling out for the second set of films before splashing a dramatic look of mock pain over his face.
“You wound me, Ms. Fitzpatrick.”
She eked out the tiniest of smiles. “Shelly.”
A grunt of pain crossed her lips as Connor adjusted her leg for a different view, and he bit down on the urge to wince right along with her.
“Sorry. Just a little adjustment. You’re doing great.” He distracted her with the whole chocolate-versus-vanilla debate for the rest of the films, which Mallory had been reading from the computer monitor on the other side of the partition in the room as Connor had been shooting them and sending them over.
“Okay, Shelly,” Mallory said, coming back into full view a few seconds later. “The good news is that your head, neck, and spine are all uninjured. You sustained some pretty moderate bruising to your chest and shoulder from the seat belt and you’ve got some cuts from the broken glass, but none of those injuries are serious.”
“What’s the bad news?” she asked, her eyes darting to Connor, then back to Mallory.
His pause was short enough for Shelly not to notice it, but long enough that Connor sure did. “Your femur—the big bone in you upper leg
—is pretty badly broken. The trauma is compromising the blood flow to the lower part of your leg, and in order to fix it, you’re going to need immediate surgery so we can get the bones back in place.”
“You want to do surgery to move my bones? Right now?” she asked, her voice rising in panic, but Connor stepped into her line of vision, giving her no choice but to focus on him. Act.
“Hey, Shelly. We’re going to take a deep breath together, me and you, and then I’m going to take this C-collar off of you’ll be more comfortable, okay? Here we go.” He inhaled loudly, and although her corresponding breath was far shakier, at least she followed suit. Connor made good on his promise to remove the C-collar, and bingo, a little more tension left the woman’s gaze.
“I know surgery sounds pretty scary,” he told her. “But if we don’t do it quickly, there’s a bigger risk of permanent damage to your leg, or infection, or even both. Dr. Mallory wouldn’t tell you it’s necessary unless it was the best way to help you get better.”
The words seemed to sink in, at least a little. Her eyes widened. “Would…would you be there during the surgery, too?”
Connor smiled at her to soften the news. “I’m afraid I’m not as cool as Dr. Mallory, here. He’s got that flashy surgical license, and I’m the sort of nurse that has to stick around the emergency department in case more traumas come in. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll ask the surgical nurse who scrubs in with Dr. Mallory to page me when you’re in recovery, and as soon as you’re cleared for food, I’ll use my sparkling personality to get some of the finest vanilla ice cream the cafeteria has to offer. Deal?”
Shelly nodded slowly. “Okay. Deal.”
“Awesome.” He gave her a gentle fist bump, hiding his relief with a grin.
“Thanks, Connor,” Mallory said, his expression marking the sentiment as truly genuine. “Can you do me a favor and book an OR?” He turned toward Shelly. “We’ll get you upstairs and the surgical nurse on duty will prep you for the procedure, and I can answer any questions you’ve got about the surgery along the way.”
“Is there anyone you want me to call for you, Shelly?” Connor asked a few seconds later, after the OR had been reserved and Mallory’s intern du jour, Dr. Boldin, had arrived to help with the transport.
“Oh.” She blinked. “Um, sure. My mom is going to freak out, but I guess you should call her. I’d really like to have her there when I wake up.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her you’re getting the very best ice cream after your surgery,” Connor promised. He took down her mother’s number and turned to make his way to the nurses’ station so he could make the phone call that would give the woman some extra peace of mind. But before he could make it even halfway across the trauma room floor, Tess appeared in the doorway.
“You two okay in here?” she asked, dividing her gaze between Connor and Mallory.
“Absolutely,” the doc said. “Boldin and I are headed up to the OR for a femur repair, but everything else looks stable. Did you need me for a consult?”
Tess shook her head. “Nah. Sheridan and Drake took their patient upstairs, and Charlie’s doing a consult on mine for a possible splenic lac. Everyone’s stable for now.”
“I do love a happy ending,” Connor said, waving at Shelly as Boldin wheeled her gurney past Tess and toward the bank of elevators. “Anyway, I’m going to make this call before I head back to fray.”
“Not so fast, flyboy,” Tess said, plucking the Post-It note with his patient’s mother’s contact information on it from between his fingers. “Your presence has been requested in the executive boardroom.”
“What?” Shock rippled through Connor, quickly chased by a hard shot of dread. But no. His time spent in boardrooms was another lifetime ago, long dead. Still, nothing good could come from those words, even though he was one hundred percent certain his nose was Spic and Span. “Why does Langston want to see me?”
“He doesn’t. I do,” came an all too frosty, all too familiar voice from over Tess’s shoulder, and Connor’s pulse slam-banged through his veins as he turned to look at the woman in the doorway. Sleek, light blond hair pulled back into a tasteful ponytail. Crisp blue stare. Black sheath dress that cost as much as his paycheck, mile-long legs that ended in stilettos as pointed as her frown, and God damn it.
There was only one thing that Harlow Davenport, the one woman in all of Remington that he wanted to avoid like every plague that had ever existed, could want with him in a boardroom.
She knows.
WANT MORE? Preorder Connor and Harlow’s standalone medical romance, BETWEEN YOU & I, right here.
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AND REMEMBER THAT SEXY-AS-HELL FIREFIGHTER, Kellan Walker, from the guys’ night out scene? Check out this sneak peek at SKIN DEEP, the first standalone in the Station Seventeen series (Kellan and Isabella’s story):
KELLAN MADE his way up Washington Boulevard, where he’d parked yesterday morning before shift. Funny how quiet the city could be before things like rush hour and regular workdays kicked in, all soft sunlight and clean storefronts. He slid in a breath of cool air, scanning the sidewalk and the two-lane thoroughfare where Station Seventeen was situated.
He saw the woman leaning against his ’68 Camaro from forty feet away.
Kellan’s pulse flared even though his footsteps never faltered. Long, denim-wrapped legs leading to lean muscles and lush, sexy curves. Loose, confident stance that spoke of both awareness and strength. Long, caramel-colored hair that she tossed away from her face as soon as she saw him coming, and God dammit, that was the second time this week he’d been blindsided by Isabella Moreno.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, wincing inwardly as the words crossed his lips. Not that he didn’t feel every inch of the attitude behind them, because after her fuck-up had put his sister’s life in danger three months ago, he so did. But slapping his emotions on his sleeve wasn’t on Kellan’s agenda, good, bad, or extremely pissed off. Of course, Isabella already knew he was chock full of the emotion behind door number three, anyway.
She pushed herself off the Camaro’s cherry red quarter panel, sliding one hand to her unnervingly voluptuous hip while the other remained wrapped around a cup of coffee. “Waiting for you.”
“I got that.” His tone left the what-for part of the question hanging between them, and Kellan had to hand it to her. Moreno wasn’t the type to mince words.
“I need a favor. I want you to walk me through the scene of Monday’s fire.”
Jesus, she had a sense of humor. Also, balls the size of Jupiter. “You want me to take you back to the scene of a fire that gutted a three-story house just to give you a play by play?”
She nodded, her brown eyes narrowing against the sunlight just starting to break past the buildings around them. “That about sums it up, yeah.”
“It’s a little early for you to be punching the clock, isn’t it?” he asked. Most people weren’t even halfway to the door just shy of oh-seven-hundred on a weekday morning.
Moreno? Not most people, apparently. “What can I say? I’m feeling ambitious.”
Kellan resisted the urge to launch a less-than-polite comment about her work ethic, albeit barely. “I already told you and Sinclair everything I know.”
“Okay.” Her shoulders rose and fell beneath her dark gray leather jacket, easy and smooth. “So humor me and walk me through it again anyway.”
His sixth sense took a jab at his gut, prompting him to give the question in his head a voice. “Is this part of the investigation?”
“Why do you ask?” she said, and yeah, that was a no.
“Because you called it a favor, and you just answered my question with a question.”
Moreno paused. “I’m a cop. We do that.”
Nope. No way was he buying this. Not even
on her best day. “And I’m a firefighter who’s not interested in putting his ass in a sling just to humor you with an unsanctioned walk-through.”
The RFD might offer a little latitude on firefighters revisiting scenes—a fact Kellan would bet his left nut Moreno damn well knew—but just because he’d worked the job didn’t mean he had carte blanche to prance through the place like a fucking show pony now that the fire was out.
Not that a little thing like protocol seemed to bother Isabella in the least. “Your ass will be fine. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one from you before.”
The words catapulted out before Kellan could stop them. Moreno flinched, just slightly, but it was enough. “Look, I need to get back onto that scene,” she said. “Are you going to help me or not?”
GRAB THE BOOK HERE!
KIMBERLY’S OTHER WORKS
Other works by Kimberly Kincaid:
The Remington Medical Contemporary Standalones:
Back to You
Better Than Me
Between You & I
Beyond Just Us (late fall 2019)
The Station Seventeen Engine series, all books stand alone:
Deep Trouble (prequel)
Skin Deep
Deep Check
Deep Burn
In Too Deep
Forever Deep (companion novella to Skin Deep)
Down Deep
The Line series (all free on KU):
Love On The Line
Drawing The Line
Outside The Lines
Pushing The Line
All four books available in a bundle: The Line Collection
The Cross Creek series (first two titles FREE in KU):
Crossing Hearts
Crossing the Line
Crossing Promises
Crossing Hope
Stand-alones:
Something Borrowed
Play Me
Better Than Me (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance) Page 30