Читать книгу The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle - Amalie Berlin - Страница 9

CHAPTER ONE

Two months later...

LOCKED IN A stall in the ladies’ room at Manhattan Mercy, Penny leaned against the polished metal separating wall and stared at her watch.

Across from her, perched atop the toilet-paper dispenser, sat a white plastic wand that could change her footloose existence forever.

It seemed emotionally safer to watch the hand on her watch ticking by than to stare at the tiny display for the entire minute it would take for the one line to appear, or two—results on the test she’d put off taking for three weeks.

At first, she’d been unable to accept it was necessary. She’d had condoms. They’d used condoms. They hadn’t even been purchased at the cheapo general store, they had just been in her bag in case some kind of life opportunity happened. It was New York City. She could conceivably run into anyone. Like that guy from that movie...the one with the smoldering eyes. And maybe he’d be drunk, bored, or somehow seduced by her ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and then...magic would happen. If she had condoms.

A week later, she’d accepted they may have been old condoms.

Last week she’d known for sure she needed to take a test. It had really only taken a week or so to take it...

Still, hoping it was negative felt wrong. Because what if it wasn’t? She’d already be in the running for Mother of the Year from procrastinating on a pregnancy test without making disappointment the first emotion she felt for a tiny life she’d created.

Definitely the sort of thoughts you never ever tell your child. Or anyone else.

Or even better, thoughts to avoid having altogether.

Every second the tiny hand ticked, her stomach grew heavier and more rumbly. When it finally passed the sixty-second mark, she lowered her wrist but still couldn’t bring herself to look at the test.

This was not how women took pregnancy tests in commercials. They had pink bathrooms and a partner waiting outside the door, ready to celebrate, with something bubbly but nonalcoholic.

Which she didn’t want anyway.

It would be all right. Everything would be all right. Nothing bad would happen just because she looked at the little window...

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, shoring up her flagging courage that came with a twinge of self-disgust. The fact she even needed to boost her bravery should shame her into looking. Courage was a cornerstone of her entire personality. If something scared her, Penny had a personal maxim to run toward the thing, unless it was a bear.

Another deep breath slowly exhaled didn’t help either.

Nope.

A minute—or even two now—wasn’t sufficient time for this. Why didn’t they make delayed response pregnancy tests so you could work up to it? It wouldn’t have to take that long for the testing, just some kind of delay on the display.

I feel I’ll be ready to look at this Thursday. Push the Thursday button. Then take that many days to come up with a plan for how not to freak out.

She couldn’t wait for Thursday. She also couldn’t look at the thing in a bathroom stall. Leaving aside questions about her emotional maturity, if she wanted to get in the pre-flight and maintenance checks before their shift started, she needed to go now.

She snatched the little wand and stuffed it into the thigh pocket on her flight suit, zipped that pocket closed, and barreled out of the stall to clean up and get upstairs.

The whole not-looking business was even dumber than her hike through a hurricane. She didn’t need to look, the answer had burned into her frontal lobe before she’d swiped her debit card at the pharmacy. Regular Rosie didn’t miss a single period, let alone two, for no reason. The test was a formality, therefore she was extra-stupid for not just looking at it.

Gabriel would’ve told her so too, only she’d been unable to tell him about any of this before now. He would’ve picked her up, and squeezed her like an orange until she tinkled on the damned wand.

The morning after that night, which she still found herself lingering over in quiet moments, he’d suggested the things they’d done never leave the motel room. It became the No-Tell Motel, minus all the sleazy connotations, because he’d declared it and she’d agreed. It was the sensible thing. Gabriel never suggested things that weren’t sensible, and sometimes he was the only reason she did things that were sensible. She’d seen the sense, despite not really wanting to see it.

When he’d opened the door to leave the room, she’d grabbed his head and kissed the breath out of both of them one last time so she could hold to that agreement. The hedonistic part of her, the part that loved life and experience, hated giving up that experience so quickly.

But? Sensible. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship, at least not a relationship relationship, even if she could’ve carried on a little longer. Tried out other rooms and, through trial and arduous study, gathered the data to support the hypothesis their night had borne: sex with Gabriel Jackson was as good as it got.

But so was working with him.

She really had no idea what friendship would be like with him, or anything else outside work and the unspeakable night because, despite her efforts, they hadn’t gotten to the cards and friendship-building conversations. They’d showered...vigorously. Then they’d made a mess of the bed even more vigorously. The wine had been drunk in between all that. There had been other pit-stops where they’d consumed cheese and sausage because stamina required fuel, but none of the business their mouths had gotten up to had been in the vicinity of talking.

Unless you counted that talk. The sexy smattering of words between lovers.

Just like that.

Don’t stop.

Oh, God...

Heaven help her, she was doing it again. Thinking about all that, which had caused all this. The consequences.

She took the stairs at a run, pounding up the ten flights separating her current floor and the helipad on the roof.

At the top, with blessedly buzzing lungs and legs, she checked her watch on her way to the chopper. Just over two minutes. She’d have to do better if she was going to make it up eighty-six floors at the Empire State Run-Up in the New Year. If she even could do the stair-climbing marathon while pregnant.

She climbed into the thing she’d been calling “Baby” for two years and worked through the checklist to go over gauges and start it up. Only when she’d finished did she sit back and reach into her thigh pocket to pull out the wand. Before giving herself a chance to think anything or to get worked up, she flipped it over and read the display.

Two lines.

Yep.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. A full look tracked Gabriel’s long stride eating up the distance between them.

“Dang it.” She stuffed the wand back into the pocket and zipped it as fast as she could.

Then the door opened and he gave her a look.

“What?”

“Why aren’t you starting it up already? Is there a problem?”

“What problem? There’s no problem,” she blurted, too fast and too loud, then gestured haplessly at nothing, trying to get back on course. “I’ve already done the checks. Why are you...?”

He never came up to the roof anymore unless they had a call.

“Did we get a call?” She looked at the radio and her stomach sank. Off. She hadn’t turned it on during her pre-flight checks.

He said nothing, just turned the radio on while she started the massive rotors spinning.

“Where are we going?” she asked, buckling in, and by the time he’d answered she was ready to lift off. That was part of why she went through the pre-flight checks—it was set up to go from nothing to flight in under a minute.

“Is everything all right?” he asked through the comm once they were in the air. It wasn’t concern she heard so much as that hint of frustration that appeared in his voice every time things didn’t happen when he expected.

To lie, or not to lie...

“Can’t complain.”

She really couldn’t, at least not right now. And complaining was something she tried to only do inside her head. Complaining about anything could still trigger her loved ones trying to rescue her, which she could appreciate on an intellectual level even if she couldn’t abide it anymore. Complaining about anything related to health? That might even bring her whole family out in full flailing fit mode, maybe even with questions about whether she was healthy enough to gestate a human life.

The shape of the test in her thigh pocket stood out, and she prayed Dr. Notices Everything didn’t notice until she was ready to share.

“You’re pale. Are you sick?”

* * *

Gabriel might not understand much about what went on inside Penny’s head but he understood her body unfortunately well, beyond just what his training had taught him about her physiological signs of distress.

Pale face and darkness under blue eyes so bright the blackness beneath them seemed blacker. Some kind of unsteadiness in her hands. The silent call radio. No music either during her pre-flight routine, and she always listened to music when on standby. Tight-lipped when normally talkative...

She squinted at him, then adjusted something amid the toggles and switches without answering him. Not right.

Despite the somewhat fumbling quality her hands had taken with switches, on the controls everything went smoothly. The flight was steady, a straight line, something he could appreciate since his life depended on it, but something was wrong. And if she stayed true to form, he was going to have to shake it out of her. Later. They were already in the air, so his chance to swap out a focused pilot had gone.

The two months since their...mistake...hadn’t been entirely easy months. The first couple of weeks had been the worst. Awkward enough that she’d barely looked him in the eye any particular day, which had been rougher than he’d have thought. But with a little willpower, and a pact of mutual amnesia, they’d worked through it and things had found a new normal, somewhat off-center from the way things had been before.

Like when they bumped into one another changing in the locker room. She’d been wearing the same kind of simple and somehow ungodly sexy cotton things, and when she’d looked at him, he’d seen his thoughts reflected back at him. The pink that had infused every inch of her pale flesh had backed it up.

Not embarrassed. Aroused. And unhappily so.

Awkward.

Now he changed in the men’s room and avoided the locker room unless he had to, or unless she’d gone home for the day. His initial plan had just been to keep everything as low-key and low-stress as he could so that she could forget. He knew he couldn’t forget, but he wasn’t as prone to impetuousness as she was—he could resist. When he found himself watching the way she tapped the end of her pen on her lower lip while filling out paperwork, he could shake himself out of it. Stop thinking about her mouth. Not give in to temptation. But that seemed harder for Penny to do, so he just tried to keep temptation from coming up.

It had worked at first when they’d started working together and just had to ignore a spark, and it had even worked briefly in the middle of the time since their night, but a couple of weeks ago things had started getting tense again. Made no sense, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Time was supposed to take care of things like this, but their agreement not to discuss it meant he couldn’t even act as he would’ve in the past. Ask her what was wrong. Offer her an ear for her troubles. Just suss out symptoms and determine whether her oddness was physical or emotional... No easy course of action.

If this was attached to the desire for another night, he couldn’t blame her, even if he would turn her down.

“How long?” he asked through the comm, since he already had one patient to focus on, righting his thoughts. If she wanted his help, she’d ask for it.

Normally he wouldn’t have to ask how long. Normally his chattering partner freely gave information during flight.

She still didn’t look at him, but she did let go of the controls with one hand to point. “There. We’re landing on the roof next door.”

Taciturn. Definitely something wrong. If he didn’t expect to need her paramedic skills, he’d put her on light duty for this run. But the patient they were flying to was a steel worker who’d fallen from the beams of a new construction site. Since they’d called for an ambulance rather than a coroner, all he knew for sure was that he’d need her at her best.

“We’re bypassing the stretcher. I don’t know what the site looks like, the board is the only safe bet. Are you well enough to carry it?”

She did look at him then, her eyes narrowing to slits. “I can do my job. I’m fine.”

Gabriel didn’t argue with her, but he’d never heard the words “I’m fine” and had it be anything near fine. Even if she put up a fight to stay on the job anytime she was ill, she’d never looked so put out with him over asking.

With an easy touch, she put the chopper down atop the neighboring building, and he unstrapped and went to grab bags.

“Get the board,” he ordered, wrenching open the sliding door and hopping out to make a run for the roof access door.

It always took her a moment longer to disembark due to having to power down the chopper. Him running ahead to the patient was part of their usual routine as every second mattered and he did whatever he could as she brought up the rear.

He hit the stairs running, and took all eighteen stories down on foot. Waiting for the elevator always slowed them down.

Across the lobby with a nod to Security, he bustled out the door and rounded the building. Just as he reached the construction site, the manager met him, slapped a hard hat onto his head and led the way across the dirt and gravel lot, around piles of construction material, to the concrete pad beneath steel beams, and his patient.

No blood haloing his head, a good sign and something he’d seen enough on the job with jumpers and falls from great height. Heads didn’t stand up well to concrete, unless they didn’t hit first. The man had landed on his feet, at least briefly, and his head had probably hit last.

Gabriel fell to the man’s side.

Unconscious.

Breathing fast.

He felt for a pulse, found a rapid rate to go with the breathing.

“How long ago was it?” He began gathering information as he fished out a penlight to check pupils. One responsive, the other fixed.

“Less than ten minutes.”

“How far did he fall?” Gabriel looked up again at the open beams for one that would align with the man’s location.

“About thirty feet. That beam there.”

Onto concrete.

When he lowered his eyes again, he saw Penny running full tilt across the construction site—without a hard hat but with the backboard held over her head. That would help a little if someone dropped something on her.

“Get her a hat,” he said to the manager, then went back to his patient.

When she reached him, she put the board down alongside the patient and then began digging into his bag to help, extracting a neck brace first thing. A hat made it to her head, but didn’t slow her down.

“How’s he doing? What’s his name?”

He hadn’t asked.

“Frank,” someone answered, and Penny thanked him, then started talking to Unconscious Frank as she fitted the brace around his neck, explaining what she was doing, as was proper.

“He’s seen better days. There’s some kind of cranial hemorrhage or swelling, one pupil unresponsive. And I think internal bleeding, his heart is going hard. Get a line in him, saline.”

He ordered, she complied. That was the one thing unchanged since their unfortunate encounter—she always worked hard and fast. Competent, and something more. She may have been born to society, but she’d managed to become compassionate in a hands-on way, and it made a difference in the way she treated their patients. She might not be one hundred percent today, but she was still fighting for them.

A whole family of doctors, and she’d become a paramedic. He should ask her why sometime, but knowing her adrenaline junkie tendencies, paramedic fit. They were the first on the scene for the big emergencies.

Opening the man’s shirt, he looked his belly and chest over, noted bruising on his left rib cage, then began to feel his belly for telltale signs of bleeding.

Like the turgid area on the left upper quadrant. “How’s the line?”

She flushed the catheter she’d just inserted into the man’s arm, nodded, and then hooked up a saline line to it. “We’re good. I’m going to pin it to your suit. It’s wide open, do you want it slower?”

“No, his spleen is ruptured, I don’t know how badly. Run the drip wide open. We have to get him in the air.” He lifted his head out of the way and Penny produced a massive safety pin from somewhere, and clipped the saline line to the shoulder of his suit.

It wasn’t exactly the kind of protocol taught in medical training, but she’d done it before. Once they got to the chopper, she’d have to fly them to the hospital, and unclipping it from her own shoulder to free her to fly would slow them down. The first time she’d done it, he’d been surprised, but over their months, working together, her unusual methods had ceased to be strange. She always had a reason for the things she did, and he didn’t doubt she had a reason to be so pale and stiff-lipped now. Which was what worried him.

“Get his legs,” he ordered once the bag swung from his shoulder, and waited until she was there. On the count of three they lifted, moved, and lowered their patient, then secured straps.

“You and you, help me carry him,” he said to the manager and another strong-looking worker watching them. “Let my pilot run ahead and get the chopper running so we don’t lose any time.”

Penny waited until they’d started moving, then went to take his bag of supplies, swung it over her shoulder, and ran. She would push the button for the elevator and have Security hold it for them while she took the stairs. That was how she worked. She thought ahead, and he was grateful for that.

So, whatever was wrong, she was probably handling it. Maybe he should just let her handle it. The problem was, he had to be the one who forced her home when she did get ill, or would admit to being ill. It had become a happily infrequent part of his job description, but a part nevertheless.

By the time they’d reached the chopper, the blades were whirring. They got Frank loaded quickly and he put his headset on.

“They’re already prepping an OR.” Penny’s voice came through the comm. “A surgical team’s going to meet us at the roof to type him for transfusion.”

“What did you report?” He locked himself into the jump seat over his patient, and while she flew he affixed leads for the portable heart monitor and checked again for pupil dilation.

“Internal bleeding, most likely splenic rupture, irregular pupil reaction, possibly some kind of spinal damage, and unconsciousness.”

All that was the most she’d said to him all day.

“Okay.” He called in another update, laying on the need for an MRI, then asked over the comm, “Why did you suggest spinal damage?”

“Skydiving. Landing jars badly.”

Not his favorite answer, but not wrong either. Leave it to Penny to frame things in terms of extreme sports activities, that was like her. Answering with so few words on a subject she could chatter hours about usually? Again, not like her.

No matter how hard she’d hit the ground running today, something was definitely wrong.

* * *

As soon as they’d handed over their patient to the surgical team atop Manhattan Mercy, Gabriel took Penny’s elbow to keep her from following the team inside. Not letting himself touch her had been another way to keep temptation at bay, and even this casual, platonic touch to her arm felt exasperatingly intimate to him. But it had a purpose.

She turned to look at him, her elbow held out from her body at an unnatural angle, her brows up in question. On top of the high building, the wind blew loudly enough that talking meant shouting, even with the helicopter blades silent. He jerked his head back toward the chopper.

“You want to go somewhere?” She was nearly shouting over the wind, eyeing his hand on her arm again. It wasn’t as though he gripped her in anger, though he’d admit frustration at having to have this conversation again, and his grip wasn’t strong enough to hurt. Sometimes he had to grab her to keep her from flitting away.

A quick shake of his head and he answered with one word. “Talk.”

The flare of wariness in her blue eyes only firmed his resolve. He released her, went and opened the sliding side door, climbed in, and scooted to make room for her.

If he hadn’t suspected anything before, the way she looked at the sky, at her feet, and generally stalled for time would’ve given it all away.

She had to talk herself into speaking with him.

After about half a minute, she squared her shoulders and marched over to board the helicopter, nearly closing the door behind her. It was enough to dampen the wind and make this conversation less stressful than it would’ve been if it had to start from a position of yelling, but remained open enough for easy escape.

She perched on the edge of the seat, one hand staying on the door handle, and looked at him. “What do you want to talk about?”

So ready to fly.

“You know what I want to talk about. You shot me a nasty look, but you never actually answered me. Are you ill? Because you look like hell.”

Blunt. Maybe a little too blunt, but if that was what it took to get through to her, so be it.

“I’m fine.”

“Pale. Black circles. No motormouth. No music before flying. No band radio. You didn’t even know we’d been called out. Want to revise your statement?”

“That was a mistake. Normal people do make mistakes sometimes!”

“Fine. If you want to stick to the Not Sick story, then are you hungover? Are you distracted by whatever last night’s festivities were?”

“Oh. My. God. You’re jealous? That’s what this is?”

She couldn’t have shocked him more if she’d just decked him.

They’d made an agreement! And the only way to keep up his end was to refuse to rise to the bait.

“I have plans to be alive tomorrow. A distracted pilot is a bad pilot.”

“Did I fly badly?” Her voice rose, bringing it right back to near shouting level. “Did I perform badly today?”

“No.”

“No. I did my job just fine.”

“You’re distracted, at the very least, and you’re a distraction. Whether or not you’re willing to admit it. I can’t focus on the patients if I’m constantly checking on you to make sure you’re still upright.”

“I’m not sick—”

“I don’t care.” He cut her off. “Do whatever it is you need to do to function at your usual level. Do shifts in Emergency until then, I don’t want you on my crew. I’ll get another pilot.”

A fierce blush washed into her cheeks but didn’t detract from her paleness. It actually amplified how very pale she was against that bright red contrast.

“I’m so glad that you don’t care.”

Still shouting...

“Since you don’t care, and I know you don’t because we’re not friends, this is probably the perfect time to put your mind at ease. It’s not an illness.”

She never liked him questioning her over sickness, which had always bugged him, like he should feel guilty for being concerned about her or about their patients. But this was extreme, even for her. His neck prickled and he fought the urge to touch her again, but this time because he wanted the connection that was still there. But her reaction was so far outside the bounds of normal, he couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t make things worse.

She ripped open the sliding door, climbed out, then forced her hand into a pocket on her suit. In the next instant she had something in hand, but before he could identify it, the thing bounced off his left cheek and she slammed the door.

She’d thrown something at his face.

He didn’t know whether to go after her or let her stomp off.

A glance down confirmed the thing had bounced out of his field of vision. With a sigh, he bent forward to look beneath the seats.

There was some stretching and, although he’d spotted it, to reach it he had to smash his face against the front seatback and feel blindly.

As soon as his fingers curled around the length of it, his stomach bottomed out.

He knew very few things that shape.

And only one that could be an answer to what wasn’t an illness.

He straightened, pulling his hand from beneath the seat, and looked down as his heart beat louder and louder, like thundering rotors.

Positive.