Читать книгу It Happened One Night Shift - Amy Andrews - Страница 10

FIVE HOURS LATER, Gareth knew he was going to have to put Billie’s I-don’t-want-you-protecting-me convictions to the test. He had a head laceration that needed suturing and everyone else was busy. He could leave it until Barry was free but, with the Royal Brisbane going on diversion, a lot of their cases were coming to St Luke’s and things had suddenly gone a little crazy.

They needed the bed asap.

If he’d still been in the army he would have just done the stupid thing himself. But civilian nursing placed certain restrictions on his practice.

Earlier Billie had demanded to know if he’d have given another doctor the kid-glove treatment he’d afforded her over the IV and had insisted that he not do the same to her.

Would he given any other doctor a pass on the head lac?

No. He would not.

Gareth took a deep breath and twitched the curtains to cubicle eight open. Billie looked up from the patient she was talking to. ‘I need a head lac sutured in cubicle two,’ he said, his tone brisk and businesslike. ‘You just about done here?’

She looked startled at his announcement but he admired her quick affirmative response. ‘Five minutes?’ she said, only the bob of her throat betraying her nervousness.

He nodded. ‘I’ll set up.’

But then Brett, the triage admin officer, distracted him with a charting issue and it was ten minutes before he headed back to the drunk teenager with the banged-up forehead. He noticed Billie disappearing behind the curtain and cursed under his breath, hurrying to catch her up.

He hadn’t cleaned the wound yet and the patient looked pretty gruesome.

When he joined her behind the curtain seconds later, Billie was staring down at the matted mess of clotted blood and hair that he’d left covered temporarily with a green surgical towel. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet.’

She dragged her eyes away from the messy laceration and looked at him, her freckles suddenly emphasised by her pallor, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. ‘I’ll be … right back,’ she said.

She brushed past him on her way out and Gareth shut his eyes briefly. Great. He glanced at the sleeping patient, snoring drunkenly and oblivious to the turmoil his stupid split head had just caused.

Gareth followed her, taking a guess that she’d headed for the staffroom again. The door was shut when he reached it. He turned the handle but it was locked. ‘Billie,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘it’s me, open up.’

The lock turned and the door opened a crack and Gareth slipped into the room. She was just on the other side and her back pushed the door shut again as she leaned against it.

Billie looked up at him, the swimmy sensation in her head and the nausea clearing. ‘I’m fine,’ she dismissed, taking deep, even steady breaths.

‘I’m sorry. I had every intention of cleaning it up … so it looked better.’

Billie nodded. ‘It’s okay. I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘I just need a moment.’

Gareth nodded as he watched her suck air in and out through pursed lips. She lifted her hand to smooth her hair and he couldn’t help but notice how alarmingly it shook.

She didn’t look okay to him.

‘You look kind of freaked out,’ he said. ‘Do you need a paper bag to blow into? Are your fingers tingly?’

She glared at him. ‘I’m not having a panic attack. I just wasn’t expecting … that. I’m better if I’m mentally prepared. But I’ll be fine.’ She turned those big brown eyes on him. ‘Just give me a moment, okay?’

‘Okay.’

She nodded again and he noticed tears swim in her eyes. Clearly she was disappointed in herself, in not being able to master her affliction.

Gareth shoved a hand through his hair, feeling helpless as she struggled for control. ‘Try not to think about it like it is,’ he said. ‘Next time you go out there it’ll be all cleaned up. No blood. No gore.’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’

But her wide eyes told him she was still picturing it. ‘You’re still thinking about it,’ he said.

‘I’m not,’ she denied, chewing on her bottom lip.

Gareth took a step closer to her, wanting to reach for her but clenching his hands at his sides. ‘Yes, you are.’

She gnawed on her lip some more and he noticed she’d chewed all her gloss off.

‘Look. I’m trying, okay?’ she said, placing her palm flat against his chest. ‘Just back off for a moment.’

Her hand felt warm against his chest and he waited for her to push against him but her fingers curled into the fabric of his scrub top instead and Gareth felt a jolt much further south. As if she’d put her hand down his scrubs bottoms.

Oh, hell. Just hell.

Now he was thinking very bad things. Very bad ways to calm her down, to take her mind off it.

For crying out loud, she was a freaked-out second-year resident who needed to get back to the lac and get the stupid thing sutured so he could free up a bed. Gareth had dealt with a lot of freaked-out people in his life—the wounded, the addled, the grieving.

He was good with the freaked out.

But not like this. Not the way he was thinking.

Hell.

And that’s exactly where he was going—do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect any money—because all he could think about now was her mouth.

Kissing it. Giving her a way to really forget what was beyond the door.

It was wildly inappropriate.

They were at work, for crying out loud. But her husky ‘Gareth?’ reflected the confusion and turmoil stirring unrest inside him.

The look changed on her face as her gaze fixed on his mouth. Her fingers in his shirt seemed to pull him nearer and those freckles were so damn irresistible.

‘Oh, screw it,’ he muttered, caution falling away like confetti around him as he stepped forward, crowding her back against the door, his body aligning with hers, his palms sliding onto her cheeks as he dropped his head.

Billie whimpered as Gareth’s lips made contact with hers. She couldn’t have stopped it had her life depended on it. Her pulse fluttered madly at the base of her throat and at her temples. Everything was forgotten in those lingering moments as his mouth opened and his tongue brushed along her bottom lip.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Again and again.

Maddening. Hypnotic. Perfect.

The kiss sucking away her breath and her thoughts and her sense. Transporting her to a place where only he and his lips and his heat existed. The press of his thighs against hers was heady, her breasts ached to be touched and her belly twisted hard, tensing in anticipation.

She didn’t think she’d ever been kissed like this. And she never wanted it to stop.

She slid her hands onto his waist, anchoring them against his hips bones, feeling the broad bony crests in her palms, using them to pull him in closer, revel in the power of his thighs hard against her, fitting their bodies together more intimately.

A groan escaped his mouth, deep and tortured, as if it was torn from his throat and then Gareth pulled away, breathing hard as he placed his forehead against hers, staying close, keeping their intimate connection, not saying anything, just catching his breath as she caught hers.

‘You okay now?’ he asked after a moment, looking down into her face.

Billie blinked as she struggled to recall what had happened before the kiss. To recall if there had been anything at all—ever—in her life before this kiss.

He groaned again, his thumb stroking over her bottom lip, and it sounded as needy and hungry as the desire burning in her belly. ‘We can’t … do this here,’ he muttered. ‘We have to get back.’

She nodded. She knew. On some level she knew that. But her head was still spinning from the kiss—it was hard to think about anything else. And if that had been his plan, she couldn’t fault it.

But it was hardly a good long-term strategy.

He took a step back, clearing his throat. ‘You all right to do the lac now?’ he asked.

The laceration. Right. That’s what had happened before the kiss. She tried to picture it but her brain was still stuck back in the delicious quagmire of the kiss.

‘Give me five minutes and then come to the cubicle. I promise it’ll be a different sight altogether.’

Billie nodded. ‘Okay.’ She shifted off the door so he could open it.

And then he was gone and she was alone in the staffroom, her back against the door, pressing her fingers to her tingling mouth.

Billie took a few minutes to review the chart of her head lac patient. His blood alcohol was way over the limit. He’d gone through a glass window. The X-ray report was clear—no fractures, no retained glass—but she pulled it up on the computer to satisfy herself nonetheless.

The laceration wasn’t deep but it was too large for glue.

Ten minutes later she pulled back the curtains of the cubicle. Gareth faltered for a moment as he looked at her and she didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know what he was thinking.

The way his eyes dipped to her mouth said it all.

‘All ready,’ he said briskly, as he indicated the suture kit laid out and the dramatically changed wound. The blood was gone, leaving an uneven laceration, its edges stark white. It followed the still-sleeping patient’s hairline before cutting across his forehead.

Billie swallowed as she took in the extent of it. It wasn’t going to be some quick five-stitch job.

‘Size six gloves?’

She nodded as she dragged her gaze back to Gareth, thankful for his brisk professionalism.

‘Go and scrub,’ he said. ‘I’ll open a pair up.’

Billie stepped outside the curtain and performed a basic scrub at the nearby basin. When she was done she waited for the water to finish dripping off her elbows before entering the cubicle again. She reached for the surgical towel already laid out and dried her hands and arms then slipped into her gloves, hyper-aware of Gareth watching her.

She took a deep breath as she arranged the instruments on her tray to her liking and applied the needle to the syringe filled with local anaesthetic.

She could do this.

She glanced at Gareth as she turned to her sleeping patient. His strategy had worked—she wasn’t thinking about the gruesome chore ahead, all she could think about was the kiss.

‘Good grief,’ she said, screwing up her nose as a blast of alcoholic fumes wafted her way. ‘Think I should have put a mask on.’

‘Aromatic, isn’t he?’

‘It’s Martin, right?’ she enquired of Gareth as if they’d been professional acquaintances for twenty years. As if he hadn’t just kissed her and rocked her world.

Gareth nodded. ‘Although he prefers M-Dog apparently.’

Billie blinked. ‘I’m not going to call him M-Dog.’

Gareth laughed. ‘I don’t blame you.’

‘Martin,’ Billie said, raising her voice slightly as she addressed the sleeping patient.

Gareth shook his head. ‘You don’t have much experience with drunk teenage boys, do you? You need to be louder. You don’t hear much in that state.’

She quirked an eyebrow. ‘You talking from experience?’

He grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Billie returned her attention to the patient. ‘Martin!’ she called, louder, firmer. But still nothing.

‘Allow me,’ said Gareth. He gave the teenager’s shoulders a brisk hard shake and barked, ‘Wake up, M-Dog.’

The teenager started, as did Billie, the demand cutting right through her. It was commanding, brooking no argument.

And very sexy.

Had he learned that in the military?

‘Hmm? What?’ the boy asked, trying to co-ordinate himself to sit up and failing.

Billie bit down on her cheek to stop from laughing. ‘I’m Dr Keyes,’ she said as Martin glanced at her through bloodshot eyes. ‘I’m going to put some stitches in that nasty gash in your head.’

‘Is there going to be a scar?’ he asked, his eyes already closing again. ‘Me mum’ll kill me.’

Billie figured that M-Dog should have thought about that before he’d gone out drinking to excess. But, then, her sister Jessica had never been big on responsible drinking either. She guessed that was part and parcel of being a teenager.

For some, anyway.

‘Martin, stay with me,’ Billie said, her voice at the right pitch and command for M-Dog to force his bleary eyes open once again. ‘I’m going to have to put a lot of local anaesthetic in your wound to numb it up. It’s going to sting like the blazes.’

He gave her a goofy grin. ‘Not feelin’ nuthin’ at the moment.’

Billie did laugh this time. ‘Just as well,’ she said, but the teenager was already drifting off. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, taking a deep breath and picking up the syringe. She glanced at Gareth. ‘Here we go.’

Gareth nodded. She looked so much better now. She had pink in her cheeks, her freckles were less obvious and she’d lost that wide-eyed, freaked-out expression.

Billie’s hand trembled as she picked up some gauze and started at the proximal end of the wound, poking the fine needle into the jagged edge and slowly injecting. M-dog twitched a bit and screwed up his face and Billie’s heart leapt, her hand stilling as she waited for him to jerk and try and sit up. But he did nothing like that, his face settling quickly back into the passive droop of the truly drunk.

Clearly he was feeling no pain.

Gareth nodded at her encouragingly and Billie got back to work, methodically injecting lignocaine along the entire length of the wound, with barely a twitch from M-Dog. By the time she’d fully injected down to the distal end, the local had had enough time to start working at the beginning so she got to work.

Her stomach turned at the pull and tug of flesh, at the dull thread of silk through skin, and she peeked at Gareth.

‘Talk to me,’ she said, as he snipped the thread for her on her first neat suture.

He glanced at her, his gaze dropping to her mouth, and the memory of the kiss returned full throttle. ‘What do you want me to talk about?’

Not that, Billie thought, returning her attention to the job at hand. Anything but that. The military. The incident that had caused his demotion, which Helen had hinted at earlier. But neither of those seemed appropriate either. Not that appropriateness hadn’t already been breached tonight. But they needed to steer clear of the personal.

They’d already got way too personal.

‘Tell me about the patients out there.’

And so he did, his deep steady voice accompanying her needlework as they wove and snipped as a team.