Читать книгу Winter Solstice - Michelle Garren Flye - Страница 7

Chapter 3

On Monday morning, Becky dressed with a great deal of extra care. She coiled her sandy blond hair into a complicated French twist and donned her best business suit, which flattered her figure without being too sexy. She applied a light layer of makeup, and, stepping back from the mirror, barely recognized herself. Becky was more likely to wear slacks to work, or jeans when she could get away with them, but the formality of her business clothes made them a shield, almost a disguise.

She arrived early and stopped by her office to drop off her briefcase and check her voicemail. Finally, unable to postpone it any longer, she took the elevator downstairs. She half hoped John wouldn’t be around, but as luck would have it, he was the first person she saw, reading charts and signing orders at the admissions desk.

He glanced up at her approach. “Morning, ace.” His gaze slid over her. “That what you’re wearing?”

“What?” Becky blinked, startled. In spite of her careful wardrobe choice, she hadn’t expected her clothing to be scrutinized first thing.

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “C’mon back to my office with me for a minute. We need to get a few things straight before we get started.”

Biting her lip, she followed him, admitting to herself she was nervous. His office was as she’d expected. Most department heads had similar workspaces, some a little more plush than others. John’s had barely enough room for his desk, several bookshelves, a chair and a filing cabinet. He motioned her to sit in the chair while he perched on the edge of the desk.

“First off,” he said, “this is not my idea of fun, Ms. Gray. However, seeing as it’s you, and I have my reasons for believing you’re at least moderately talented, I’m willing to put up with it. Second, I need to know I can trust you. You’re going to be observing patients who’d rather not see their names in the newspaper or on the internet.”

She tilted her chin, feeling defiant. “I know all about patient confidentiality, Dr. Grant. I’ve been trained to work in the hospital.”

“Maybe. Obviously, not in the emergency room. It gets messy out there, and you’ve got to be able to move fast.” Again he gave her an assessing look, and Becky fought against the blush she felt rising in her cheeks. He returned his gaze to hers and folded his arms across his chest. “I really don’t think you’re ready for this.”

“Not ready?” Unexpected anger replaced her surprise. He sounded far too much like a teacher reproaching her for not studying for a test. “I’ve spent the past seventy-two hours getting ready for this. I’ve done my homework. Besides, what is there for me to do but stay out of the way?”

He made a sound like a grunt and gave her an odd look–almost a glare–before stalking out of the office, striding across the department without looking back.

Becky did her best to keep up, taking two steps for every one of his, but she couldn’t avoid the feeling of being dragged along in his wake. She thought of herself as being in pretty good shape, but she really didn’t consider skipping after a giant as a fair workout. Inwardly, she cursed everything from John Grant to the pumps she regretted wearing to Adam and the hospital board for wishing this assignment on her. Glaring at his back, she decided he definitely was not allowed to kiss her in her dreams anymore.

John finally came to a stop beside the locker rooms, reached into a bin and pulled out a set of scrubs. He tossed them to Becky. “Those should fit. Put them on. You’re on your own with the shoes, though. Your feet are way too small to fit any extras we might be able to rustle up.” He started back across the room at full stride, but stopped suddenly, looking back over his shoulder. “You don’t faint at the sight of blood, do you?”

Becky checked the size of the scrubs. “I don’t know. I reckon we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Probably.” He drew out the word with an ominous look before turning on his heel again.

Becky hurried to change and left her suit in an empty locker. She felt ridiculous in scrubs and pumps, but figured the staff would probably be too busy to notice. Indeed, by the time she returned from the locker room, the ER bustled with multiple accident victims from a three-car pileup on the interstate.

Deciding to prove she could stay out of everyone’s way, Becky found a spot in the corner where she could get a good view of the action, watching John call out orders and perform several procedures she couldn’t immediately name. Though she didn’t understand everything that was going on, Becky drew on her training as a journalist, jotting down quick notes and describing what she saw and heard. She promised herself she’d sort out the feeling the real-life drama elicited later.

As if by magic, the drama ended as the patients were transferred to the wards or the OR. Nurses hurried around, disposing of the used trauma trays. The activity in the ER returned to its usual level of chaos.

Seeing John look around, Becky stepped from the shadows and caught his eye. He beckoned her over.

“You can stay out of the way, can’t you, ace?” He regarded her in a satisfied manner. “Coffee?”

She nodded. “How about those guys? Will any of them make it?”

John looked quizzical for a moment, then shrugged. “There wasn’t anything really serious–a broken pelvis and some internal injuries–so they’ll probably all recover. That was nothing, really.”

“‘Broken pelvis’ and ‘internal injuries’ sound pretty serious to me.”

“I’ve probably got a different scale of reference.” He shrugged again. “I see those sorts of injuries all the time. It’s no big deal. When patients are transferred out of the ER, I forget them. I have to move on.” He gestured around at the continuing activity in the room. Nurses guided patients into alcoves where interns and residents examined them.

Becky nodded, understanding. An ER doctor couldn’t afford to get attached to a patient. At any moment, he could be called away. He had to be ready for the next trauma. She wondered if John even remembered Dee Martin and her sister.

He led her into a little room off to the side. Becky caught a glimpse of a clock and was startled to realize it was after noon.

John followed her glance. “Time goes fast in here, or it crawls. It’s sort of funny. You’ll be working on a patient, doing your damnedest to save him, sure that hours have passed, then you send him off to surgery and find out it’s been fifteen minutes.” He poured two cups of coffee and sat at a table, curling his long legs under his chair.

Stifling a grateful sigh, Becky sank down across from him, slipping off the constricting pumps at the same time. The coffee was black, which she hated, but she would as soon have asked for caviar and champagne than cream and sugar. She knew he looked for any sign of weakness, and even a simple request for something to soften the bitterness of her coffee would suffice. She put on a brave face and took a sip of the distasteful stuff. It was at least wet, and she was surprised by how thirsty she was.

After a few cautious sips, she set the cup aside and realized he was studying her, his entire attention focused on her. She searched for a question to distract him from his scrutiny of her face. “So can you explain to me some of what went on out there?”

He nodded. “If you’ll tell me why you were spying on me last week.”

“Spying?” She quailed, then realized it was no use denying it. At least he had asked instead of just assuming he knew the answer. “I wasn’t exactly spying. I just wanted to get a closer look at you before we had to start this. I guess I wanted to see what the big deal was.”

“Big deal?” He raised his eyebrows, a little grin twisting his mouth.

“Well, about you, you know?” She shifted in her seat, finding it difficult to sit still. “I mean, you’ve got to know you’re the stuff of legend around here. Your temper, and well…”

“My libido?” He leered as she hesitated, then leaned forward, looking around as if to make sure no one was listening before speaking. “I will say I’ve never heard any rumors about myself that weren’t true.”

For a moment, his grin was so wicked Becky actually imagined him sprouting horns and a tail, like a giant devil. He was obviously familiar with the stories about him and Nurse This or Nurse That in the broom closet. Despite herself, Becky couldn’t seem to disbelieve him, even though she was aware she desperately wanted to.

Regaining her composure, Becky took another sip of her coffee and nearly made a face when she remembered it was black. “Actually, I was going to say your award.” She forced her voice into a calm timbre. “You seem an odd choice for patient relations. I mean, I haven’t seen you with a patient who was even conscious yet.”

He leaned back, sipping his coffee with a nonchalant air. “Hang around. In the meantime, did you have any idea about what happened out there?”

Something about his facile disregard for the patients irritated her, although she wasn’t sure what it was. As she considered this, a radiology resident entered the break room and made a beeline for the table, holding out a chart and several films. “Thought you should see this, Dr. Grant.” He rattled one of the films in their direction. “I think the patient needs to be admitted.”

Becky watched with interest as John held the X-ray up to the light. Even her untrained eye could see the break in the bone.

John lowered the film, raising his eyebrows at the resident. “It looks like a clean break. Seems to be set okay. How old is the patient?”

“Five. This is why I think he should be admitted.” The resident offered another X-ray.

John held the second film up to the light, leaning back in his chair to look. He frowned and the front legs of his chair hit the floor. Then he stalked across the hall to the radiology reading room, his face grim, and Becky and the resident followed in his wake. By the time they got there, John was jamming films onto the light box with a ferocity Becky had not seen yet.

“Damn it all.” He wheeled around to the resident, who, instead of acting startled by his attitude, nodded agreement. “This kid’s five?” He pointed to something on the chest X-ray that Becky could not immediately see. “That break’s two or three years old and it never healed properly.”

The resident folded his arms, regarding the X-rays with professional detachment. “We did a skeletal survey. The shoulder looks to have been dislocated at least once and there are about five old, healed rib fractures in the back.”

Becky drew in a sharp breath, but neither John nor the resident looked at her. Even she saw the inevitable conclusion the two doctors had already reached.

John nodded. “I’ll call Social Services. In the meantime, let’s get him admitted and away from the parents. I’ll make something up. The mom’s here?”

“Yeah, and I think you might want to get in there before Joe goes ballistic.” The young doctor grinned, referring to another resident Becky had noticed earlier in the day working with John. “The kid’s mom keeps asking for his ‘supervisor.’”

John snorted. “You guys are too good for some of these people.” He left the room, and Becky followed, chucking the rest of the coffee into a nearby trashcan without regret.

Mindful of patient confidentiality, she stayed discreetly behind the curtained alcove containing the weary mother and her injured son as John informed her they would be keeping the boy overnight “for observation.” During the course of the discussion, John discovered there was another baby at home with the father, something Becky noticed didn’t make him happy, but he dealt with it admirably. A few minutes later, as a nurse guided the mother and son to the pediatric ward, John seized his phone to call the Social Services Department. Becky heard him reporting a probable case of child abuse treated in the emergency room with a younger sibling at home.

When he hung up, Becky started forward to ask him what would happen to the baby, but stopped when John lowered his head for a moment, looking like a bull knowing his next charge at the matador might be his last. Startled, she realized he didn’t skip with ease from one case to the next. He felt the pain of his patients more than he let on, and that empathy had reached Dee Martin when her sister had been hurt. “Dr. Grant?”

Tentative as her voice had been, he swung around. “Oh. You.” He picked up another chart and brushed past her.

“It’s not always easy, is it?” She stood her ground, determined not to let the moment pass. John Grant, after all, was her assignment.

He froze. “What’s that?”

“Moving on to the next patient when the last one still needs help.” She bit her lip, hearing more sympathy in her voice than she’d intended.

“No.” His voice was soft, almost lost in the continuous activity of the room. “It’s not always easy. And there are no easy answers, either. You get used to it.”

“Do you?” She took a step closer to him.

He glanced over his shoulder and smiled a little. “You do. Now let’s get going.”

She followed, standing aside as he checked the setting of a broken finger. More patients flooded in, and John was called on to check the diagnosis of several, including a pregnant woman with abdominal cramps and spotting, a baby with a high fever and an elderly man with chest pains.

Even as she tried to keep up, Becky wondered where she’d gotten the idea that all ER patients were car accidents or crime sufferers. She soon found out how wrong a mass media-fed person can be. In the ER, pathos mixed freely with comedy. Becky followed John from the car-wreck victims to the man who tried out his new water skis by hooking himself up behind a four-wheeler driven down a shallow creek. He’d escaped with a few bruises, abrasions on his face and a pair of broken skis, but the entire staff of the ER was shaking their heads and hiding smiles before he left.

There were also the sad cases, like the HIV patient with pneumonia and the young teenager who overdosed. Without distinction given to race, creed or sexual orientation, they were treated, stabilized and either returned to the streets, shuttled off to a ward for observation or sent downstairs to the morgue.

Around three o’clock there was a lull, and Becky noticed a lot of people disappearing into the break room. John, who seemed to have forgotten Becky, escorted a couple of nurses, joking and talking. Feeling more depressed every moment, Becky followed, but when she got into the break room, John handed her a cup of black coffee again and motioned to a couch. “St. Mercy.” When she stared at him, uncomprehending, he added, “Our soap. It’s always good for a laugh.”

The staff on break gathered around the television, laughing at the oxygen masks taped onto the faces of comatose patients, the upside down X-rays and the other various procedural mistakes committed by innocent actors playing doctors. There were hoots and laughs during the love scenes, and Becky was intensely aware of John next to her during one hot and heavy scene in a call room.

In the midst of this, a nurse stuck her head into the room and yelled, “GSW coming in. It’s a head shot.”

Her words produced an unexplained flurry of activity. John jumped up, then hesitated and looked at Becky, his face serious. “You might want to sit this one out, ace.”

Of course she ignored his warning, following him as he scrubbed up and pulled on latex gloves. She wasn’t totally sure what a GSW was but a head shot sounded serious, and John’s suggestion that she “sit this one out” made her determined to do the exact opposite. She took her spot in the corner, watching the arrangements going on around her.

Nothing could have prepared her for what they rolled in on a stretcher. Maybe it had once been a man, though what was left didn’t really resemble one. The face was a bloody pulp and at least a part of the skull had been ripped away, leaving the spongy gray tissue of the brain exposed.

For the first time that day, Becky felt nauseous. She turned away, trying to find a safe spot away from the destruction on the stretcher. She concentrated on John as he worked over the near-dead man, calling instructions to residents and nurses. When at last John stood back and said, “He’s stabilized, get him to surgery,” her respect for him tripled.

He turned and frowned when he caught sight of Becky sitting in the corner. “Bet you wish you’d taken my advice and stayed in the break room.” Pulling off his gloves and chucking them into a red trashcan in the corner, he turned as if to leave the room but paused, looking at his own shirtfront. A large bloodstain marred the scrub top, and after a moment he yanked it off and disposed of it.

“You saved his life.” She breathed the words, unable to speak above a whisper. “That was incredible.”

“Might’ve been better if I hadn’t.” John sounded grim. “It’s hard to reconcile myself to saving someone who could do that to themselves. I doubt he’ll ever have a face again.” He turned to a sink in the corner, turning on the faucet.

Becky gasped. “It was self-inflicted? How do you know?”

“Bullet entered at an angle from under the chin.” He spoke as if by rote, reaching for paper towels before turning. “I can’t swear nobody would shoot him with a shotgun from that angle, but most likely he’s the one that pulled the trigger.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but when he saw her face, he hesitated.

“Look,” he said in a gentler voice than she’d heard him use all day. “The shift ended a half hour ago. I’m heading for a shower and a change. I suggest you do the same. Then go home and get some rest. Today was bad, but tomorrow will probably be more of the same.”

Unable to summon the strength to argue, Becky nodded and dragged herself into the locker room. As the door shut behind her, the nausea hit full force. Determined not to get sick, at least not until she could make it home, she sank onto the concrete floor, her back against the cool tile of the wall, and let her head hang between her knees. Her brain fast-forwarded through the day, pausing on the most grotesque and anguishing scenes she’d witnessed. Like the worst nightmare she’d ever had, she couldn’t get away from the vision of the man with half his head blown away.

After several long minutes, she felt strong enough to stumble to the sink and splash water on her face. She rinsed her mouth and stood with her head bowed as she waited for the last of the weakness to dissipate.

“Feel better?”

Startled, Becky raised her head to meet John’s gaze in the mirror. He shrugged and smiled at her reflection. “You didn’t look too good, and when you weren’t out by the time I finished my shower, I decided I’d better check on you.”

He crossed the room and turned her to face him, touched her sweaty forehead gently, then reached back and released her hair from its knot. Perhaps his only intention was to help her relax, but as her hair fell around her shoulders, Becky realized with a jolt of self-consciousness that she enjoyed the intimacy of the gesture.

When she looked at him, he moved a little closer, his hand lingering at the nape of her neck. He drew his fingers through her hair, letting it slide through them, and she closed her eyes in pure sensuality, forgetting every tragedy she had witnessed in a simple desire to live in the moment.

Neither spoke as he bent his head to cover her mouth with his. She lost herself in his touch, aware of his arms around her, his lips first on hers, then on her neck. She slid her hands up his biceps, caressing as she did so, wanting to encourage his response. He smelled good–clean and male in a way she had never experienced. In some detached part of her brain, she thought maybe it was the hospital soap.

She clung to him, thankful for the strength of his body as her own betrayed her weakness. Not until his hands slid beneath her scrub top did she come to her senses.

“Not here.” She could only think that she didn’t want to become another of the legends–the PR woman who couldn’t resist the irresistible John Grant in the locker room.

“Where?” His body still pressed hard against hers, his lips against her hair. Becky felt the cold porcelain sink behind her, but he was warm and solid and the heat of their passion was thick in the air around them. In such a position, restraint was the last thing on her mind.

“My place,” she whispered and told him the address.

“I’ve got a few things to take care of.” His lips brushed her ear and she shivered. She felt his smile. “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

Before she could change her mind, he left, taking the warmth and safety of his arms with him, and Becky was left to wonder if she had suddenly gone insane.

* * * *

John Grant closed the door to the women’s locker room and leaned against it for a moment, glad there was no one around. “Goddamn it.” He pushed himself away with a violent gesture. He couldn’t quite believe the intense feelings she’d awakened in him. He hadn’t felt this way since the earliest days of his long-over marriage. In fact, had he ever felt this way?

Shaking his head, he strode down the hallway, finding his office and retreating inside. He sat behind the desk, staring at the stack of paperwork waiting for his signature without really comprehending it. All he saw was the expression on Becky’s face when he’d loosened the clip binding her hair–that sudden but slow transformation from distress to sensual longing. Even the memory was enough to draw a spontaneous reaction from him.

But then, she’d been able to do that all along. Even that first day, he’d reacted by instinct to her innate honesty, liking her immediately, even though Dr. John Grant was not known for liking people.

This woman was something else entirely from John’s previous experience with women. He wanted to wrap her up and keep her warm and safe at the same time he wanted to release her and see what she was going to do next. When he’d seen her in the reading room watching him, he’d felt a mild shock when their gazes met, but that was nothing compared to what he’d felt when their lips had touched just moments before.

John drew the stack of paperwork to him and cursed again. He didn’t know what else to do. Going to her apartment was a bad idea. She was more trouble for him than he needed.

But he had no idea how he was going to stay away.