by Evie Monroe
Dr. Patel shook his head. “You’re in the capable hands of Dr. Benson right now. She’s our surgeon and will be taking care of you from here on out.”
His eyes flickered to me. “Doctor? Her?”
I nodded. “I’m a trauma surgeon, Mr. Nash. Please try to relax. We’ll take good care of you.”
I saw the confusion in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something—probably nothing I wanted to hear—but the nurse fixed the oxygen mask on at that time. I smiled at her.
“Here are your x-rays, doctor,” another nurse said to me. Dr. Patel and I went to the wall-mounted lightboxes and had a look.
“That bullet bounced around his internal organs pretty good, huh?” I said, squinting at the film.
“Which accounts for the bleeding.” He pointed. “Stuck in his upper abdomen right now . . . or it could have pierced his liver. Gall bladder looks okay.”
“Well, we’ve got to find out what other organs we’re dealing with, what else may have been hit. Looks like his diaphragm . . . and . . .” I leaned in closer so that my nose was almost touching the x-ray on the light board. “Forget the CT scan for now. Let’s just get him to the OR and stop that bleeding. Then maybe we can get more pictures.”
I whirled on my feet to face the patient, just as the machines started to go haywire. Oh, no. That piercing sound only meant one thing. Sure enough, the man had slipped out of consciousness, and those piercing blue eyes were closed. The monitors showed a flat line. “No response, Doctor,” one of the nurses said.
“Get the crash cart in here!” I shouted, but the nurses were already wheeling it in and getting it charged. I grabbed the paddles and positioned them over his still chest and sternum.
“Charging at one-hundred. Clear!”
I brought the paddles against his torso and shocked him. The table lurched as I stilled and watched the monitor. Nothing.
Shit! We were losing my patient. Hell no! Not on my watch! Not on my patient. I gripped the paddles tighter and shouted, “Again!”
Chapter Two
Jetson
White lights. Machines whirring overhead. Voices of people I didn’t recognize. And the pain.
Fuck, the pain. It felt like someone was digging out my stomach with a corkscrew. I gritted my teeth so hard to stop the pain, I thought they’d snap out of my mouth.
Where the fuck was I?
I thought of Nix, my older brother. He’d gone into the Circle K to get cigarettes and came out with a pack of Laffy Taffy, which he threw over to me. That was Nix. I hadn’t been into that candy since eighth grade, but in his head, I was forever twelve. I’d thanked him, right before I gunned the engine on my bike and followed the guys . . . ?
Where? Fuck. I couldn’t remember.
I thought of Drake, my best friend. He’d been so pissed at me. He had a reason to be, but fuck. Every time he looked at his new girl, Cait, I saw it. He was whipped, which meant our days of prowling for pussy at The Wall, our local hangout, were over.
Cait . . . who was . . . Slade’s daughter. Slade, the president of the Hell’s Fury. The same Hell’s Fury our MC club, the Steel Cobras, were in a war with.
I remembered him going off to get her.
Cullen telling us we had to follow.
We did.
I’d been all gung-ho for it. The green light. Finally the chance to give Slade his reckoning. I was the first one at the door. I kicked it in.
And . . .
That was the last thing I remembered.
“Where the fuck is Nix?” I shouted. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I shouted it in my head, because no one answered, and I couldn’t hear my own voice over the screaming machines. I felt hands on my body, ripping off my clothes. Faces above me. A dark-haired man, barking orders at men and women in masks.
The hospital.
Had Slade fucking shot me?
I woke with a start, my heart pounding in my chest, and it felt like years later. My head hurt. Everything hurt. Damned if I didn’t feel so tired my eyes kept pulling closed. My vision bended and blurred at the edges. I was in the same room as before, under the bright white light. Maybe this was heaven.
I squeezed my eyes open and tried to focus on the blurred images moving over me. It didn’t work. “Where the fuck . . .” I started, but nothing came out.
No one was paying attention to what I was saying anyway.
Someone said something about surgery, just as I felt two cold hands circling my abdomen, applying pressure.
“Surgery? Aw, fuck no,” I protested. I’d survived a quarter of a century with plenty of badass injuries that I’d gotten by on, with a few stitches from Drake, who’d been a doctor in another life. I was fine. I tried to call for him to get his ass over to me, but my tongue felt thick and useless.
No one was listening—they were all rushing around, busy. I felt like the only one standing still. The pressure down below got more intense and pain rocketed up my spine.
“No . . . ow!” My vision cleared to reveal a woman. She was all done up in white, mask and all. The only thing I could see were her eyes. Big blue ones with thick lashes, dark, expressive eyebrows. Bedroom eyes. Hello, cutie. An angel? No, probably a nurse. This sure wasn’t heaven. Because whatever the fuck she was doing, it hurt like hell. “Watch it, girl.”
“I’m trying to help you, Mr. Nash,” she said in a gruff, business-like voice that was older than she looked.
“You want to help me, try going south,” I said, giving her a wink.
She rolled her eyes.
I loved it. Loved the challenge. I could work on her later, after I got Drake over here to sew me up. She’d cave. Most did, some quicker than others. Bet she was a naughty nurse. I thought of those pretty eyes rolling back in her head as I impaled her on my cock. Wondered what else she had to go with those pretty eyes, under all that cover.
Then I laughed at myself. My brothers were always making fun of my chasing pussy. They’d have a field day with this. Me, chasing a nurse on the operating table. But I couldn’t help it. It was in my blood.
I tried to laugh at myself, but the pain was too much. I couldn’t even draw in a breath without knives shooting straight through my gut. I bit down hard on my tongue until I tasted blood, but even that didn’t help.
Fuck. Maybe I needed more than a few stitches from Drake.
I looked over at the dark-haired guy with the mask and glasses, who didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. No, he was just letting this hot nurse have her way with me. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have minded her healing touch, but . . . shit. The pain was killing me.
“Doc,” I breathed out, but my voice sounded weak. I wanted the news. I wanted him to tell me where the fuck I was and what the fuck had happened. I wanted to know if I was going to walk out of here.
His voice sounded like he was speaking underwater. “You’re in the capable hands of Dr. Benson right now. She’s our surgeon and will be taking care of you from here on out.”
What I couldn’t make out was what he was saying. I couldn’t see much of this woman, but she wasn’t a fucking surgeon. She was probably all of twenty. She looked like she was born to be bouncing on my cock, not cutting me open. I didn’t know what I said after that. Probably “no fucking way.” I tried to get off the table, but something held me down.
She said something to me, but I couldn’t make it out. It stretched out like a record playing at slow speed. I blinked again and her blue eyes went liquid on me. Everything in my vision turned watery, like looking through a window in a downpour.
And the pain was getting worse. “Aw, fuck,” I gritted out, reaching for my mid-section. I wasn’t wearing my jeans. My cock was blowing in the breeze for all to see, semi-erect. What the hell? Who took my clothes? Was I totally buck-ass naked for this audience?
Then I lifted my hands to my abdomen, feeling something warm and wet and wrong, bulges and a giant gash. I knew that being naked was the least of my problems. I was in trouble. Someone pulled my hand aw
ay, and my heartbeat thudded in my throat, my chest, everywhere.
Even my heart felt wrong.
Fuck. This wasn’t good.
I wasn’t ready to die.
I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear voices, distorted, too loud, too slow, too fast, too everything. Every part of me from my head to my toes felt weird. Was this how I was going to die? Damn, I really fucked myself this time. I’m done. Game over.
Nix would kill me. No, he couldn’t. I was dead, wasn’t I? Who were these people?
Will I ever see Nix again? Shit.
Where was the angel with the pretty blue eyes? I needed her.
That was my last thought as everything went black and silent.
Chapter Three
Nora
Now I really was exhausted.
Five hours of surgery. That was how long it had taken to keep that man alive.
I might have been a little disorganized in all the other areas of my life, but surgery was different. A surgeon had to be organized and methodical, as cutting corners or doing things in the wrong order could mean the difference between life and death. The first step in any trauma surgery is to stop the bleeding. For all the blood that had been spilled all over the emergency room floor, there was even more pooling in his abdominal cavity. I found several punctures leaking blood and managed to head them off, but not without losing him a couple more times and having to shock him back to life.
Once the bleeding had stopped, it should’ve been easy. I should’ve been able to exhale.
But no. Gunshot wounds were never easy. That was because the sheer force of the projectile not only damaged areas it came in contact with, it also sent shockwaves of damage through the body, affecting other organs and tissue as well.
Turned out that the x-ray hadn’t revealed just how much that bullet had torn apart his insides. When I opened him up, I saw the real damage. It’d nicked his liver and his diaphragm, making the repairs tricky. I’d had to bring in Dr. Wilbur, a general surgeon, to help head off more trouble and make sure I didn’t miss anything.
Missing just one thing could mean the difference between life and death. And every minute that the abdominal cavity stayed open increased the risk of infection. Working against the clock, with a patient that kept flatlining was stressful, but that was where I excelled. Surgery like this was definitely my favorite part of the job.
But everyone else was a wreck. When I gave the surgical nurse the okay to finally sew him up and dress the wound, the rest of the surgical team applauded, they were so happy it was over.
And my patient was stable, for now. When they’d draped him as I began the incision, I couldn’t see his face, but I kept thinking of it. He had one of those faces you didn’t forget. Sure, he’d been a cocky jerk, but he was young. He should’ve been full of life. Not bullets.
When the nurses removed the draping around him and started to prepare to transfer him to post-anesthesia, I stared at his baby face, breathing peacefully through the oxygen mask. For some reason, I couldn’t look away.
A young nurse named Emily came over and tapped me on the shoulder as I studied him. “You okay?” she asked as they started to wheel him out of the OR.
I realized I was in the way and jumped back. “Oh. Yes.”
She motioned toward the double doors. “You’ve got a visitor.”
I turned and through the window saw Michael.
My heart leaped. I shrugged out of my bloody surgical apron and gown, peeled off my gloves, and practically skipped through the doors as I tore off my cap. “Hi.”
He smiled down at me. Michael wasn’t classically handsome. More like distinguished. Where I looked young for my age, he looked older. He had a stressful job with the gray, receding hairline to prove it. In med school, my friends never understood what I saw in him.
But there were some things better than hotness. Stability, for one. Safety. Intelligence. The ability to carry on a halfway stimulating conversation. Michael had all of those things.
I came up close to him, stood up on my tip-toes, and went to kiss his jaw, but he stiffened against the wall. Asshole.
Whoops. I’d forgotten. Michael didn’t like me showing intimacy in the workplace. He took my hand and squeezed it. “Heard you had a good one in there,” he said, motioning to the operating room.
I nodded. “Gunshot to the abdomen. It was touch and go for a while. I’m exhausted.”
“Ah,” he said, gazing at me with his warm brown eyes. I melted a little, thinking of our home together. I couldn’t wait to get him alone, in bed. He didn’t have the sex drive I had. I wanted it from him all the time, craved intimacy, but he doled it out in little packages infrequently, like treats for a dog. “You should go back to the house and rest.”
That sounded amazing, until I thought of all the boxes waiting for me. All those boxes, and no . . . him. “Will you be there?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight. I have a lot of things to catch up on at work.” He caught my disappointment and looked around to make sure no one was looking, then planted a chaste kiss on my forehead. “Come on, Nora. You know that as department head, I’m busy. I haven’t been able to breathe for the last week. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you today, but you know, the job comes first.”
I managed a smile. “I know. I’m going to stick around here, anyway. The patient’s stable, but it’s a tough one, and I need to speak to his family.”
“All right. Good job, kid. I’ll see you later,” he said, patting my hand.
I smiled as he walked away in his white coat. I waited for him to turn around and wave at me or smile, but he never did. It was fine. He was busy.
I opened the patient’s file on the computer. Jetson Nash. Jetson? Really? Shook my head and scanned the rest of the information. Male. Approximately twenty-five. No birthdate. No known address. No emergency contact. No anything. As I studied it, a nurse came by and said, “Those two men who dropped him off split pretty fast. We didn’t get their names.”
“Two men? So . . . we have no next-of-kin?”
She shook her head. “Not that we know of.” She leaned in and whispered, “They looked a little shifty. And a GSW? Had to have been doing something illegal. Avoiding the police.”
I pressed my lips together. “Well, if they want to pick up their man, they’ll have to come back sooner or later. Right?”
She nodded. “I suppose.”
After washing up, I went to the doctor’s lounge, where I sat down on the big couch. Mindless television flickered above me, so I should’ve been able to sit down and get the surgery out of my head. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking of that young man. Jetson. Cases like his were why I’d gotten into surgery in the first place.
I was a teenager when I decided I was going to be a doctor. I decided it the second my father passed away in my arms, of an injury very similar to Jet’s.
Unfortunately, all of the skills I’d learned came about fourteen years too late to save my dad. Neighbors had called 911 the second the shower of bullets ripped through the night like thunder, knocking my father down on the front lawn of our house as he came back from Church that night. I’d been asleep but heard them and ran downstairs and out the door. As I dropped to my knees on the lawn, I heard the motorcycles roaring into the distance. I gathered him in my arms as he told me he loved me and took his last breath. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.
Jetson Nash was like my father. A biker. I had no doubt of that. The similarities were too hard to ignore. The tattoos. The fuck you attitude. The motorcycle grease embedded in his fingernails. If he was part of a club, he was probably as stubborn as my father, too.
Restless and unable to relax, I went to post-anesthesia, where I learned he had been transferred up to the ICU. I took the elevator up, and the nurses directed me to his room.
I peered in at him, feeling like I was intruding, even though he was out, of course, and would be so for the next several hours at least. The ventilator was breathing f
or him, eyes fluttering. His muscled chest rose and fell with the rhythm of the machines.
Even at his worst like this, he was ridiculously good looking. In the ER he’d looked at me, drunk with pain, and his eyes had bored into me, unsettling everything inside me like a tornado. I wondered what kind of effect they’d have at their full strength. I couldn’t stop picturing the man he’d be when he was awake. Tight t-shirt and jeans, I bet.
I also wagered that he got a lot of female attention. I bet women were always looking at him, wondering what he looked like naked. And here I was, wondering what he looked like, clothed.
Scoffing at my silliness, I scooted a chair closer to him and sat down, opening his file on my iPad and trying to take some purely medical observations. Skin tone was good. Breathing, good. Heart rate, normal. Yes, all very good.
My eyes drifted to his massive biceps. I studied his tattoos with interest. Birds. A koi fish. Snake. I wondered what they meant. If they meant anything at all. Michael was lanky at six five, but he still managed to be doughy in places. He didn’t work out. But Jetson’s arms and shoulders were thick and packed with muscles upon hard muscles. I wondered what it’d be like to have powerful arms like this wrapped around me.
I leaned my elbow on my knee and rested my chin in my hand, yawning. I told myself that it was because Jetson was my first real, only-mine patient that I couldn’t stop looking at him.
I tried my best to ignore the little voice inside that told me it was more than that.
What seemed like a second later, I felt a warm finger grazing my hairline. At first, I thought it was Michael, stirring me from my sleep. But then my eyes flickered open, and I saw the tile floor of the hospital.
Shit. Had I fallen asleep in a patient’s room? On my first day at work? And whose finger was petting my head?
I sprang up, and my eyes quickly focused on Jetson Nash and his curious stare.
Focused on me.
All of my breath left me so fast, I went to grab my chest and my iPad spilled onto the floor.
Shit. How long had I been out?