Читать книгу The Doctor's Guardian - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 9

Nika snapped out of her semi-dazed state a moment later. “What?” she cried.

She was fairly certain that an elevator repairman would have been trying to do something with the cable’s mechanisms in a far more stable, accessible place, rather than lowering himself into the stalled elevator car like a frustrated trapeze artist trying to make a dramatic comeback.

Blood rushed to Cole’s head. This was not exactly an ideal position to be in and definitely not something he would have chosen to do if there was any other way to go. But according to the nurse he’d talked to on his grandmother’s floor, the company that handled maintaining the elevators wouldn’t have a repairman out for at least another hour. That was completely unacceptable to him. He needed to speed things along and this was the only way open to him: rescuing the trapped doctor.

Stretching his hand out toward the stunned blonde looking up at him, his legs securely wrapped around the cable, which was most likely permanently staining his gray slacks with grease, Cole could only reach down so far. She would have to make up the difference. “I said, give me your hand.”

He had to be kidding, right? “Who are you?”

“The tooth fairy,” Cole growled.

He was in no mood for twenty questions. He wasn’t sure just how much longer he could hang down like this. Each second that passed by made it that much harder. The hastily conceived plan was to pull her up out of the elevator car and get her to stand on top of it. From there, he was fairly sure he could get her out to the fourth floor. Fortunately, the elevator had gotten stuck closer to the fourth floor, rather than right in between the two floors. Every little inch helped.

“Now give me your damn hand,” he demanded. “Unless you want to stay inside this box until that mythical repairman turns up.”

He had a very persuasive argument. There was no way she wanted to stay here a moment longer.

“No!” Nika cried.

She stretched first both hands up, and then leaned into stretching just one. That got her a tiny bit closer, but she still couldn’t reach him. Standing on her toes didn’t help. It was a matter of “almost, but not quite.”

Frustration raked over her, making her thin blouse stick to her skin as perspiration slipped over her. Dropping her hands to her sides, she looked up at him. “How…?”

He anticipated her question. Extending his hands down as far as he could, he ordered, “Jump up! I’ll grab your arms.”

Another question occurred to her but Nika bit it back. There was no point in showering him with queries. Anxious to leave her confinement, she would have been willing to jump up and grab hold of the devil himself if he’d just get her out of here. Even with him hanging upside down, she could tell that this handsome, although unsmiling and gruff, man wasn’t the devil.

At least, not exactly.

Whatever else this man might be as he went about his life, right now, at this moment, this Flying Wallenda wannabe was the answer to her prayers.

Nika squared her shoulders. “Ready?” she asked him, bracing herself.

There was more than a shade of impatience in his stony face. Nika could recognize it even upside down. “Lady—”

“You’re ready,” she pronounced. Blowing out a breath, she gave it her all and sprang up as high as she could, her hands reaching up for the sky.

It amazed her that he caught both of her hands on the first attempt. It also amazed her that her shoulders weren’t pulled out of their sockets. The jolt had her biting down on her lower lip to keep from yelling out in pain.

Holding on to her hands tightly, the knight in tarnished armor raised her up. She could see his forearms straining. They were bulging and looked rock hard as he pulled her to him. He was still hanging upside down, but he raised her up to him until they were all but face-to-face.

He was breathing heavily.

As for her breath, it had gotten completely stuck in her lungs as she found her lips less than an inch away from his mouth.

Was that a heart palpitation? Or just adrenaline rushing through her? For simplicity’s sake, she decided to go with the latter.

“You’re not moving,” she managed to point out. If it wasn’t for the way his forearms were straining, it would seem as if they were frozen in midair.

“I’m not a contortionist,” he retorted. She could feel his forearms working, could feel a tremor begin to rumble through the taut, hard muscles. “Climb up!” he urged her.

“Climb up what?” she cried in complete confusion.

Was she an airhead? Had he just gone through contortions to rescue someone who was just as likely to harm his grandmother as help her?

“Me,” he snapped, “damn it. Climb up me.”

She hadn’t the slightest idea how to do that from this position. “You’re kidding.”

“If I were given to kidding,” he told her tersely, “which I’m not, this wouldn’t be the time for me to do it. Now, get moving,” he ordered sharply, “or we’re both going to fall into the elevator and one of us is going to land headfirst.”

That would be him. Not exactly the best way for this to end. Oh God. She could feel herself weakening.

Not now, Nika. Not now.

“Right.”

Taking a breath, she released his hand and immediately grabbed hold of his torso, holding on tight.

One hand free, Cole reinforced his hold on her other hand, using both of his.

“Keep going!” he shouted at her.

She was just trying to catch her breath. “Give me a minute,” she snapped at him. Her heart really pounded now.

He felt his grasp slipping on her. “We don’t have a minute.”

“Oh God.”

Her heart hammering in her chest, Nika scrambled up her rescuer’s body, acutely aware of its hardness and all the contours she brushed against—both his and hers—in her effort to get out of this dark, confining space.

And then she was out. Out of the car and on top of it, where the cables, the grease and an entire array of uncountable dead insects all came together. Nika huddled on top of the car, pulling her body as far into herself as she could.

Just above her head were the parted elevator doors—and light!

“Move over,” Cole shouted up to her. “I want to come up.”

“Sorry,” she apologized. Still crouching, she tried to make herself even smaller as, attempting to move as little as possible, she shifted away from the opening. To keep from being overwhelmed by this whole ordeal, Nika forced herself not to look down. “Now what?” she asked.

He took a moment to draw in a few breaths. His hand just above her huddled body, her scowling rescuer held on to the cable. He gave her the impression that he could just swing himself off his perch like some modern-day Tarzan whenever the whim hit him.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked her.

“It would be,” she allowed magnanimously. “If my brain worked.”

Fingers lightly encircling the cable, her rescuer rose to his feet, as sure-footed as if he’d been born mid-leap between skyscrapers. How could he do that? she marveled. How could he seem so casual, standing on top of the elevator car? Had he grown up on the side of a mountain?

“Now I get you up to the fourth floor,” he answered glibly.

When she didn’t rise on her own to stand beside him, Cole took her hand and began to tug her up to her feet. When he felt her resistance, he looked down at her expectantly.

“Look, you’ve got to stand up,” he told her gruffly. “I can’t just hurl you out the door like you were some kind of discus.”

“Right.” Nika exhaled, rising shakily to her feet. Her hand was tightly wrapped around his as if he was her lifeline.

It suddenly occurred to him that there might be more at play here than he’d thought. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“I wasn’t when I first got on,” Nika answered honestly. “But now I’m not so sure.”

She was still holding on to his hand as he shifted her around so that they were both facing the parted doors on the next floor. Before she could ask him what he was doing, he’d released her hand and placed both of his on either side of her waist.

“Look up,” he instructed. When she did, he said, “There’s your way out.”

All she could think was, So near and yet so far. Short of him hurling her like that discus he’d mentioned, she couldn’t see how she was going to get out. “Yes, if I was a foot taller.”

His hands tightened around her waist. Something swirled around in her stomach in response. Panic?

“Don’t worry, you will be,” he promised. “Okay, on the count of three.”

“What on the count of three?” She had an uneasy feeling she wasn’t going to like this.

“You jump. I thrust and push.”

“You what?” she demanded, twisting around so that she could look at him. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying.

But apparently he was already counting, albeit quietly, and “three” was on the tip of his tongue. It emerged half a split second later as he shoved her upward with a mighty thrust.

Stunned and caught off guard, Nika hadn’t jumped to give her body the momentum it needed. But the man who had come to her rescue still managed to get her up to the point that she could get her arms and the upper part of her torso out between the parted doors.

Leaning her whole body into it and snaking forward, she managed to keep from sliding back down. She’d gained a hold. Not stopping to celebrate the feat, she pushed and, using her elbows in a back and forth momentum, she scrambled out a little farther.

That was when a passing orderly she was marginally familiar with saw her. Gerald Mayfield came running over to offer his help. Taking both her hands as gently as possible, he succeeded in getting her up to her feet.

The next moment, the man who’d gotten her out in the first place was using his arms to vault himself off the roof of the same elevator car.

She swung around to look at him. There was a half-amused smile on his lips.

“Was it good for you?” he asked. “It was good for me.”

“Getting out was wonderful for me,” she answered, focusing only on the literal interpretation of his question. Nika stopped to take a deep breath before saying anything else. “Who are you?” she asked again, repeating what she’d asked him when he’d burst upside down into the elevator car.

“Are you all right, Doctor Pulaski?” Gerald asked, concerned. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was interrupting her.

“Yes, thank you, I am.” Nika started to brush herself off with the flat of her hand, resigned to the fact that it was futile. “And thanks to you,” she added, turning to look at the man who had gone out of his way to extricate her from the elevator.

“Before you think I’m just some random do-gooder,” he told her, brushing aside her thanks, “I want you to know that I had an ulterior motive for getting you out of there.”

He caught her completely by surprise with that one. Just what kind of an ulterior motive was he talking about? She did her best to seem both game and ever-so-slightly on her guard.

He saw a ray of uncertain suspicion enter her eyes. Good. He didn’t think much of people who were too naive to be suspicious. Better safe than sorry.

“You were on your way to see Ericka Baker when the elevator died on you, right?”

She eyed him quizzically. “How would you know something like that?”

Was this a new doctor on the staff whom she hadn’t met yet? At this point, she had a nodding acquaintance with most of the physicians at Patience Memorial, but a few might have slipped her attention. Although, looking at this one—especially right side up—she couldn’t see how that was possible.

“Did the chief of staff send you to the Geriatric Unit?” she asked.

God knew she could use the help, and it wasn’t because she didn’t know what she was doing. She’d worked summers while attending both undergraduate school and medical school and each position she took involved working with seniors, both veterans and private citizens, in various different hospitals. She had a very soft spot in her heart for the elderly, but there were only so many bedsides she could be at during the course of a single day. Nika was completely overwhelmed by the amount of work there was, and right now there were only two physicians in the unit to shoulder that work.

“No.” Busy trying to remove several grease spots from his slacks with his handkerchief, Cole raised his head in time to see the look of disappointment on her face. “Ericka Baker’s my grandmother.”

Giving his slacks one more pass with the handkerchief, he frowned, gave up and shoved the oil-smudged item back into his pocket again.

“Oh.” She focused on the bright side. He might not be here to help her with the patient load, but he’d come to her aid nonetheless. “I guess it’s lucky for me that you’re so interested in her welfare.”

He nodded his head, dismissing what sounded like the beginning of a thank-you speech.

“So—” He gave her a quick once-over. “Do you need some time to pull yourself together?”

Except for a few smudges here and there, she certainly didn’t look as if she needed to pull herself together, he thought. But he’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t go by appearances when it came to women. They had their own set of unique rules.

She slipped on the lab coat that she’d tied around her waist earlier, hoping she looked presentable. “No, I’m fine,” she assured him. “As long as your grandmother doesn’t scare easily.”

To his recollection, he’d never even seen his grandmother worried, much less scared. “She has nerves of steel.”

Nika laughed shortly. He found the sound had a nice, soothing ring to it.

“That puts your grandmother one up on me,” Nika told him. She glanced down at her hands. There were streaks across the top of each of them. “I just need to wash my hands and I’ll be ready to go.” The orderly retreated back to what he was doing when he’d stopped to help, and Nika paused for a moment as she got a good look at her rescuer’s slacks. She felt instantly guilty. “Oh, your pants.”

Cole looked down at them himself, checking to see if they had somehow gotten worse in the last minute. Sadly, the grease stains on each leg were just as vivid.

“Guess the crease isn’t as sharp as it could be,” he cracked.

“I was looking at the grease,” Nika said before she realized he was being sarcastic. Getting them cleaned was her responsibility, she thought. “Give them to me.”

“My pants?” he questioned, looking at her in surprise. Just what kind of a doctor was going to be treating his grandmother?

“Oh, I don’t mean now,” she explained quickly. Not quickly enough, she gathered, judging by his expression. “I mean, the next time you come back here to see your grandmother. I’ll send them to the cleaners—or you can send them to the cleaners and just give me the bill.”

He waved away her words. He could pay for his own dry cleaning. Or just toss the slacks away if it came down to that. The only thing this woman owed him was taking care of his grandmother.

“That’s all right.”

“No, it’s not,” she insisted firmly. He stopped walking for a moment and looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed or annoyed. Either way, she pressed on. “You wouldn’t have gotten that way if you hadn’t come to my rescue. I believe in paying my debts, Mr. Baker.”

“That’s detective,” he corrected her.

She’s resumed walking and now it was her turn to stop first. “Mr. Detective?” she questioned, her brow furrowing.

“Detective Baker.” Who the hell called anyone “Mr.” Detective? He scrutinized her closely. Had she hit her head when the elevator had initially come to a stop? “You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” She was slightly embarrassed. “I’m just a little out of sync, that’s all. It’s not every day I get to climb up a man’s torso to get out of an elevator car and into an elevator shaft,” she told him in her own defense. “I’ll be at the top of my game in a couple of minutes,” she promised.

His eyes narrowed as he focused on her. “And just exactly what does this ‘game’ involve?” Cole asked.

She really was having trouble putting her thoughts into words this morning. Getting trapped in the elevator didn’t have anything to do with it. Pulling double shifts, however, did. Someday, she would catch up on her rest and sleep for a week.

“Poor choice of words,” she acknowledged. “The only ‘game’ in town, as far as I’m concerned, is making sure that your grandmother leaves the hospital healthier than when she came in.” I might as well make use of this man being here, Nika thought as they turned a corner down the corridor. “Can you tell me briefly what her complaints are?”

She peered at his face as she asked the question and was rewarded to see the corners of his mouth curve ever so slightly.

The word “complaint” triggered memories of the last conversation he’d had with his grandmother before he discovered her neglected medication. “You mean other than the fact that they brought Becky Warren back from the dead?”

Nika stopped abruptly just shy of Ericka Baker’s single care unit and stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“Becky Warren,” he repeated. “The town ‘harlot,’ to quote my grandmother.” And then he filled her in on the joke. “My grandmother watches Living the Good Life faithfully,” he said, naming his grandmother’s favorite soap opera. “Has for the last fifteen years. It’s her only weakness—or vice. That and dark chocolate with coconut,” he added. “Otherwise, she’s a trouper who doesn’t complain. I wouldn’t have known about her heart condition if I hadn’t been there for one of her ‘episodes.’” He vividly remembered fearing the worst as he saw his grandmother clutch her chest, the side of her neck throbbing wildly. “Scared the hell out of me,” he said as he pushed open the door to his grandmother’s room. “I got her to go see Dr. Goodfellow.”

Nika nodded as she walked into Ericka’s room. “Good choice. He’s one of the top cardiologists in the state,” she informed him.

At the sound of their voices, the woman in the hospital bed turned her head toward them. The look on her finely lined face was affectionate disapproval as sharp, sapphire-blue eyes swept over the dirt and grease on Cole’s clothes.

She shook her head. “Have you been making mud pies again, Coleman?” she asked.